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People & Relationships

Tap the Power of Thank You

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Article Contributed by Dr. Joey Faucette

There may be only one day a year devoted to giving thanks, but expressing thanks year round and doing it well is one of the most profitable business strategies you can have.

Numerous studies reveal that when you thank your customers, they spend more money and tell their friends about the exceptional service and products you deliver, increasing your profits. Volumes chronicle how employee productivity zooms when appreciation is expressed, raising your margins. Vendors go the extra mile to extend credit and deliver “just in time” when they hear gratitude regularly, and keep your cash flowing. Giving thanks works in business.

But you’re already doing more with less and the last thing you want is another item on your to-do list. What are the most effective and efficient ways to express gratitude to these important players in your positive business success?

Start today implementing these 4 strategies to develop the profitable habit of saying “Thank you” to your customers, employees, and vendors year-round:

Be specific in your thanks. It’s one thing to say, “I appreciate you. Thanks a lot.” That’s a soap-bubble comment. Pretty while it lasts. Gone in seconds. When you thank them for something specific, that’s Velcro. That’s a thanks they remember because it sticks. You hook your gratitude to something the employee did. For instance, an employee just handled a difficult phone call with a customer really well. Thank them for that specific activity.

Appreciate the process. Target your appreciation at what the person did. Let’s go back to the worker who took the phone call. Avoid telling the employee, “Thanks for helping me keep that customer.” That’s just an outcome that benefits you. Say, “I like how you hung in there when that customer was being difficult. You were really patient and respectful.” The same type of strategy goes for vendors. Give thanks for their doing something that was an extra-mile effort. Recognize the above-and-beyond work.

It’s about them, not you. Showing that you know something about them is incredibly valuable. Connect your gift-giving with life beyond the business walls. If a vendor became a Grandpa, give him a copy of Goodnight, Moon to read to the little one. If an employee’s mother died of breast cancer this year, make an end-of -the-year donation to the American Cancer Society in her name. Such intimacy breaks the relationship ice in a transformational, not just transactional, direction which is the game-changing pathway to greater profits.

Go old school with your thanks. In this pixelated world of emails and texts, Facebook and Twitter, the simple and quick act of writing a handwritten expression of gratitude goes a long way. There’s something special today about a handwritten note. I keep a stack of cards and envelopes with me to write thank you notes in flight when returning from a workshop or coaching session. It takes about three minutes per card. You create return business when you take pen in hand and write, “Thank you,” to your customers. Just say, “I know you could do business with others, but you chose us. Thank you! We treasure our relationship.”

Implement these tips, and your business says “Thank you” back to you as you positively increase your profits year-round.

(This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur’s website)

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World(Entrepreneur Press), Positive Success Coach, and speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they get out of the office earlier to do what they love with those they love. Discover more at www.GetPositive.Today.

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People & Relationships

5 Tips For Building Better Relationship With Clients

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Article Contributed by Dennis Hung

Your business depends on relationships you build with clients over the years, but you may feel as though your business cannot find the sort of loyal customers who will keep you in business. Developing relationships with clients is much easier when you are taking heed to all five steps in this article. This article explains how to create new relationships with customers who will stay with you for a lifetime, and each step can be used from the CEOs office to the people in the mailroom.

#1: Hold As Many Events As You Can

Potential customers will come to events hosted by your business for a number of reasons. Customers may visit you when you hold an event in your store, and you can offer discounts to customers during each event. A customer who receives a hefty discount on one of your products will be pleased to meet you, and you will have time to develop a relationship with the customer on the sales floor.

Black tie events that are hosted by your company will bring in customers who want to have some free wine and food. You will have ample opportunity to chat with your customers at these events, and your customers will enjoy getting to know you around a dining room table. Your customers do not have many opportunities to go to a black tie event, and hosting black tie events sets your business apart from the competition.

#2: Contact Your Customers Outside Of Business Hours

Contact with your customers outside of your normal business hours allows you to create new relationships. You may ask your customers about products they have purchased, or you can make house calls to your customers over your products. The free time you spend with your customers outside of business hours will help you form a friendship that goes far beyond your business relationship. Customers who know you as a friend are more likely to recommend you to their friends and family in the future.

#3: Contact On Several Different Levels

A customer who rarely hears from you cannot have a relationship with you, and communication on many different levels helps your customers get to know someone with your business. A sales team member may get to know a customer well through follow-ups, or a member of the executive staff may get to know a customer during the exploratory phase of a new product. Business process management on this level reaches out to customers more than enough times to help you become friendly.

#4: Create Better Products

Your business must produce products of the highest quality possible. You will have a hard time making friends with your customers if your products are not any good. Good companies with good products will make friends easily as your friends stand up to support your products to their friends and family. Every one of your customers will feel proud to support your business if you create something worth supporting.

#5: Make Phone Calls

Phone calls from your offices to your customers are often more exciting for your customers than emails. You are welcome to use emails to communicate with your customers, but you should not consider emails your only option. You have customers who would much prefer to speak to you on the phone, and you can grow a relationship pretty quickly with a few friendly phone calls.

Your business must create relationships with each new customer, and the five steps in this article explain the best ways to create lasting relationships. You will get to know the people who are most likely to spend money with your company, and you could make a friend for life from your office.

About the author:

Dennis Hung is an entrepreneur and product analyst specializing in mobile technology and IoT. He’s spent most of his career consulting for businesses in North America.

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People & Relationships

Want to Really Succeed? Surround Yourself with the Best People

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Article Contributed by Colleen Slaughter

You are the company you keep. How many times have you heard that one before?

The truth is, if you want to get on the fast track to success, it’s absolutely essential to surround yourself with the right people – a positive “team” that will support you, motivate you, and hold you accountable.

Who’s on Your Team?

Start by evaluating the people in your life – who are you surrounding yourself with? Think about the people in your close circle and consider how they add to (or take away from) your life.

Are there particular people who really seem to motivate you? Are there some who just drain your energy, leaving you feeling worn out after you’ve spent time with them?

If you want to accomplish your goals, you must surround yourself with people who will help – not hinder – your efforts to succeed.

Let Go of Negative Naysayers

We all deal with negativity in our lives. We hear it in the media – after all, drama sells. We hear it in the office, and many of us hear it at home.

Sometimes, the people closest to us unwittingly bring us down. I’m not suggesting that you completely isolate yourself from long-term friends and family members, of course. This is where it becomes extremely important to develop awareness.

Plan how you’ll respond to the negative naysayers in your life. If you can create a distance between the two of you, great. If creating that space isn’t possible right now, practice assertiveness to let the other person know you aren’t willing or able to continue listening to the same negativity again and again.

Build Your Network

If you want to really get ahead – in business and in life – you’ll want to continually build your network. As you develop your own supportive network, you’ll see the immense value others offer.

Here are 3 simple tips to build your network:

  1. Join organizations that are related to your goals. Professional or trade organizations offer you the chance to connect with others who may be on a similar path as you are. You’ll be able to meet peers to bounce ideas off of, as well as those who are in more advanced positions who may offer you new perspectives you might not have considered.
  2. Take advantage of educational opportunities. Participate in workshops, seminars, conferences, or other educational classes. The benefit here is twofold: you get to learn something new or expand your skillset, and you get to network with people in your field.
  3. Harness the power of social media. No list on developing your professional network would be complete without a mention of social media. LinkedIn has redefined the professional networking landscape – people use it for referrals and references, connecting with people in their field, and new introductions.

In the words of Helen Keller, “Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.”

About The Author

Colleen Slaughter, founder of Authentic Leadership International, is a proven coach with a remarkable ability to motivate women to cultivate greater authenticity and fulfillment at home and in the workplace. Colleen’s dynamic experience allows her to skillfully guide her clients to navigate roadblocks and develop practical solutions to accomplish both personal and professional goals.

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People & Relationships

Think Strategy Not Tactics to Generate More Leads with LinkedIn

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Article Contributed By Kristina Jaramillo – GetLinkedInHelp.com

Strategy is the biggest difference between a B2B sales and marketing team that drives demand and enjoys consistent sales leads and revenue opportunities and one that just has a presence and lots of connections that they are not engaged with.

I’m sorry to say – but most sales and marketing leaders on LinkedIn do not have a strategy. They have a shopping list of tactics that need to be completed. But, there’s no cohesive strategy.

There’s no thought behind the connections they’re making. There’s no thought on what happens after that connection is made – how are they’re going to turn that prospect into a client? There’s no thought about the content they’re posting and how it’s going to position them (if they did, they wouldn’t be posting reminders on the LinkedIn content platform that do not differentiate them). There’s no thought about the discussions they’re creating and how they’re going to get prospects to move from the discussions to their blog to learn more. And, there’s no thought about what happens next once they get prospects to their blog. There is no strategy for integrating LinkedIn into their everyday sales and marketing activities and programs.

The Strategies Sales & Marketing Leaders Need to Think About When Engaging on LinkedIn

#1 – Your Social Media Presence Strategy

Look at your LinkedIn profile. Did you really take a strategic approach to creating your LinkedIn profile? I bet you that your profile is not case study driven marketing tool and that it’s simply a cover letter and resume that talks about your sales achievements (which only shows that you care about making the sale instead of providing value and building a real relationship). I bet you that you’re not speaking to different targeted audiences with different needs and showing your value to them. It’s because you took a tactical approach rather than a strategic approach.

If you treat your profile as a cover letter and resume, you’re missing a prime lead generation opportunity. Brynne Tillman from Social Sales Link points out that prospects don’t care about what you’ve done—they want to know how you can help them. To convey your worth, find out what kind of value your prospects are looking for and optimize your LinkedIn profile to woo them.

#2 – Your Thought Leadership Strategy

Many sales and marketing professionals are using LinkedIn groups as a newsfeed for their blog posts that are mostly reminders. They’re just using the LinkedIn publishing platform as another place to put their blog posts. So they’re just pushing out content instead of having a strategy to use content to pull prospects in. You need to plan out what type of content you can provide that will have decision makers thinking twice about the approaches they’re taking. You have to think about the discussions that you can create that makes you stand out as a thought leader. You have to think about whether the content inspires prospects to want to take further action and if the content is relevant– and who is it really relevant for.

#3 – An Intelligent Prospecting Strategy

Take a good look at your connections and see how many of them are “long shot hopefuls” that can possibly introduce you to so and so.  If you’re like many sales and marketing leaders that we have helped, then most of your connections are irrelevant to your business because you were focused on quantity instead of quality. You’re taking a scattershot approach hoping that someone can help you instead of focusing your time and energy on the key decision makers and influencers that can positively affect your bottom line. Your intelligent prospecting strategy should be defining who your main and secondary prospects and influencers are and a strategy to get them to open their closed doors – and keep them open.

#4 – Community Building and Engagement Strategy

It’s not about how many connections you make or followers you have on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. It’s about how many people you reach and engage with. The best way to engage is to create a social media community. Inside my LinkedIn group, Get Help with Linked Strategies, I’m engaging with 400+ sales and marketing leaders through regular content and discussions. One of my technology company clients has a community of more than 900+ decision makers from companies like Walgreens, Dannon, Target, Walt Disney Store, Pfizer and many others.

Remember, B2B buyers are looking for quick access to trusted experts and relevant content that helps them with their business issues.  Your custom, niche LinkedIn community is the perfect way to give your buyers what they are looking for. Because my client with the 900+ group members was giving their buyers what they want, they received more RFPs.

So you need a strategy for how you’re going to build your community and how you’re going to keep prospects active in your community so you can build a relationship with them.

#5 – Lead Generation & Lead Engagement Strategy

For most of the prospects you connect with on LinkedIn and other social media platforms, they don’t realize how and why they need you yet. You need to nurture these connections and provide them with relevant content (which gets them to raise their hand. You need a strategy for how you’re going to use case studies, white papers, 3rd party research that supports your claims. You need a strategy on how you’ll use webinars, webcasts and other thought leadership content that piques your prospects curiosity and gets them wanting to talk to you about their options.

You need a strategy for how you’re going to intrigue prospects enough that they are curious on how you achieved results. Then you need a strategy for how you’re going to move them into your pipeline and how are you going to get them to engage further with you.

Now, I just scratched the surface. Start with my ideas and then dig deeper. Really get strategic on how you use LinkedIn and other social media platforms. Stop just completing a list of tasks.

About the Author

Kristina Jaramillo, Managing Partner and Chief LinkedIn Strategist at GetLinkedInHelp.com has generated more leads and opportunities for tech companies, professional service firms and other B2B organizations using LinkedIn (than all of their other marketing initiatives combined). Her best practices are featured on Forbes, MarketingProfs, RainToday, Social Media Examiner, Salesforce.com and many other top publications.  You can learn more about her prospect development approach with her free webinar at: http://FreeLinkedInMarketingTraining.com/webinar

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People & Relationships

Why Smart Business Owners Invest In Their Employees

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Article Contributed by James D. Burbank

In order to expand and improve your business, you have to invest, carefully and smartly. Furthermore, if you want to make continual progress, every part of your company has to progress to. You have to work on yourself the most, as well as invest in your employees; after all, it is you who do the majority of work. Therefore, a proactive approach is the best way for your company to develop. To reinforce this idea, we provided a set of options how to invest and reasons why investing in your employees is a beneficial thing to do.

Time Investment

The first step you need to take is to talk to your employees. Open communication and a timely feedback is of great importance. You will be able to see if anything  needs improvement, if your employees are critical thinkers, are they good at solving problems on their own, do they cooperate and communicate effectively. All of these characteristics are important in making your employees a team and you will know at all times which areas can be improved and which further steps you need to make, meaning what type of training your employees, that is  your company, would benefit from. Additionally, when your employees see that you spend your time with them regularly, they will know their work and opinion is acknowledged.

Education

Technical improvements, a new, modern equipment and accessories boost any kind of business. However, if the employees do not follow, there is no real progress. All of us absolutely have to continue to learn in order to stay on board the progress space ship. Things develop so rapidly that if you fail to adapt to them instantly and continually you will certainly fall behind and never be able to join again. Therefore, what you found out communicating regularly with your employees has to be implemented without delay. Organize regular trainings in the areas that require them. It will cost money, but will return even more.

Rewards

Rewarding the best employees is another smart investment. It does not have to be anything too expensive, do it according to your budget. A financial bonus, free days or a paid vacation, for example, are a great way to show your employees that you value their contribution and show them that additional efforts should be awarded. Be fair and honest with this and base your decisions on real actions, not on your preferences. This kind of honest approach and genuine appreciation is a great productivity boost and creates a healthy competitive atmosphere which, in return improves communication and cooperation.

Closing word

Hopefully, the reasons stated above are enough to make you realize how important it is to invest in your employees. Remember, it is not the machinery you own or the buildings and company estates; it is the people that are your most valuable asset and a matter that need your undivided attention. You cannot invest too much in them, anything you do invest will return multiplied. Also, make sure these investments are continual and monitor the effect they have in order to know which employee investment area needs more attention at certain times.

About the Author

James D. Burbank has had experiences on both sides of the boss-employee relationship. He has had amazing business education experiences with Upskilled that have helped him immensely. You can find James on Twitter too – @jburbank2019