Good Cop, Bad Cop

Okay, no, this isn't about policing, but it is about playing roles. Specifically, what a sales rep is (and isn't) and what a sales manager has to be when it comes to Customers.

If a Customer hasn't paid a bill, asks for terms that are above and beyond what the salesperson is permitted to offer, etc., who has to be the one to tell them that they're not going to get it?

If you said the salesperson, you're fired. (How did you even get this job, anyway?)

A salesperson never says no. Sales managers say no.  That's a major part of what they're paid to do - set and enforce goals and limits.

This does not mean that salespeople always say yes, but what they can and should say, in order, is this:

"I can ..." and offer an alternative or, if that doesn't fly, "Let me check with my manager".

Managers are the bad guys* in this scenario. They have to be, because the sales person always has to be the good guy*. If they're not, why would the Customer ever bother talking to them again?

I'm not saying that the sales manager has to actually talk to the Customer every time some point of contention comes up, but the salesperson has to be able to say, "We will do X, but we won't do Y..." and know that their manager will back them up. The sales manager has to hire salespeople that they can trust (or train) to deliver that message in a way that ultimately leads to acquisition, growth, and/or no further pushback.

This means that the salesperson has to always say things in such a way that the Customer doesn't just try to go over their head to the sales manager. Otherwise, what are you paying the salesperson for?

You do this by agreeing in advance what the terms/boundaries are for each transaction (if not each client) and sticking to them, no matter what.

Remember: Customers like predictability/consistency. The road to that country is paved with boundaries that everyone knows and sticking to them.

* Please feel free to insert the pronoun of your choice.

The Culture of No

Today I want to talk about the Culture of No.

The Culture of No comes into play when we explain to a Customer why we can’t help them.

We are almost always polite when we tell a Customer no. We speak in calm, measured tones, with a sympathetic look on our faces, and sometimes a shrug that says “Whaddayagonnado?”

You know what? Customers don’t give a damn why we can’t do something. All they see is that we are an obstacle to getting what they need or want. And what do you do with an obstacle?

You go around it. If they have more aggressive personalities, they might ask to talk to your manager. If they think that you weren’t really listening, or you’re the second or third person that they’ve told their story to, they might even ask to talk to your department head... or, later, your corporate attorney.

Most people don’t have that kind of personality, though. Most people hang up. Then they go somewhere else. Forever. And they tell everyone on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and on and on to do the same.

The Culture of No is a trap – for a business, a fatal trap. There’s only one way out: Find a way to say yes.

The Culture of Yes takes more work. You have to offer alternatives – would you prefer this, or this?, Or teach yourself to say “We probably can’t do that, but we can do this – does this work for you?”

The Culture of Yes takes creativity, and flexibility. Which is a good thing, because an inflexible person is often a corpse, and an inflexible business almost always becomes one.

Everybody Knows

Tell me if you've heard this one before: Millennials are self-entitled.

How about this one: Trump supporters are racist.

Or this one: Religious fundamentalists are poorly educated.

Depending upon your own generational, political, or religious bent, you probably feel that 'everybody knows' at least one of these statements. If not, I'm certain that we can find one that resonates, because one of the things that our hyper-pattern-aware species is terrific at is categorization. We evolved to think that when caveman Erg died after eating red berries, all red berries from that point on were suspect, and that when a patch of tall grass rustled right before Erg's wife, Yrt, got dragged off by a saber-tooth, rustling of any kind meant spears up and put the kids in the center of the circle.

'Everybody Knows', besides being one of my favorite Leonard Cohen songs, is useful when you have little or no control over your environment, or when you simply lack data. The problem with it as an ongoing practice for a species that has Google, tasers, and cookbooks is the same thing that was always the problem: It only applies a certain percentage of the time, and that percentage shrinks as the data set grows. When you're talking about data sets the size of half of the U.S. electorate, a generation that is now almost 50% of the population, or a major religion, the stereotypes 'everybody knows' don't apply to literally millions of people in each of those groups.

As uncomfortable as data-mining makes some people, one of its biggest advantages is that it finally makes it possible to treat each person - each Customer - as an individual. Rather than communicating offers that a given Customer may or may not be interested in via shotgun snail mail coupons, we can gather enough information - in most cases, at little or no cost - to determine exactly what will appeal to each Customer, when, and at what price point. All that it takes is effort... and a complete change to how most organizations approach marketing.

To be heard in an age when our competitors are already probably ahead of us, even how we communicate our messages has to be individualized. How many mailbox ads do you even read before you put them in the trash? Some Customers want to be told things in person, some via email, some by phone, others by text. Deciding to communicate with all Customers in just one way is just as ineffective as making no change: a large percentage will not hear you at all.

Why waste all that time and money? That's like spending all of your money on local television, newspaper, or radio ads to reach Customers who get most of their information and entertainment online.

Remember the 3 fundamentals of keeping Customers:

• Timeliness
• Perfection
• Individualized experience

Customers love to tell us what they want, like us when we listen, and stay when we offer what they need.

Eliminate GAS

Something that happens once you’ve been in any job awhile is that you start to notice patterns in what Customers want and do. Human brains are hard-wired to spot patterns. That’s what helped you remember your mother’s face when you were two weeks old, and that’s what helped us spot the leopard in the grass 30,000 years ago. Pattern recognition is one of the things that has made us such a successful species.

Once you’ve been on the job a little longer, though, you start to make assumptions about what Customers want, and that tendency only gets stronger over time. We think we can guess what Customers will say if we tell them that they need $800 worth of brake work, or assume they don’t want leather seats, or speculate about the state of their credit based on the clothes they wear.

The trouble is, we’re often wrong. People are individuals, not pre-programmed robots. And it’s not just that we’re wrong with our first guess - a single Customer’s answers can change over time, too. And they may not want to tell a complete stranger what they really think right out of the gate. That’s part of why many sales classes teach you to ask the same question three different ways.

Don’t guess. Don’t assume. Don’t speculate. Find out. Ask, and ask more than once, and in different ways. That’s the only way to know.

Reseller or Customer?

If your organization sells products and/or services to Resellers, it's likely that the line between the two blurs from time to time. Here's a dose of reality: Resellers are not who pays your bills; End Users are. Resellers are a way to get your products/services to End Users... a transportation mechanism. If you mistake Resellers for Customers, you will begin to slant what you sell to your Resellers' needs, rather than your End User's needs. This virtually guarantees that your sales will stagnate.

"But what about Customer for Life?" you say. "Isn't the Reseller my Customer if I follow the tenets of Customer for Life?"

No. Think of it this way: Individual people within your Reseller are your Customer under Customer for Life, and your goal is to find their deep-seated needs and help to fulfill them, but the Reseller as an entity is not. In other words, companies are not people (no matter what the Supreme Court thinks).

Quid Pro Quo

Here's a rule that managers and employees must learn, regardless which department they belong to:

The amount of a manager's time (and the company's money) that any employee is entitled to is directly proportional to the amount of revenue that that employee creates or the amount of spend that that employee saves.

Simple, clear, appropriate. Notice that I do not use the word 'fair'. Fair is a fuzzy term; its definition depends upon who is speaking, and never the twain shall meet. But 'appropriate' is something that we can agree on, even if neither side particularly likes it.

Take a look at how your Customer Service and Business Development teams are comped. If your organization is like most, the first is too low and the second is much too high. And I know that the next words out of your mouth are these: "How can we compete for BD reps if we pay below the going rate?"

First, half the reason that you need BD reps is that you lose Customers because they don't receive Customer for Life service. Fix that - maybe by increasing retention among your CS reps and comping them for hitting Customer retention goals - and half of your BD needs go away.

Second, you are not looking for BD divas; you want BD reps who consistently hit 100% of goal (not above or below that) and who take the long view that taking care of Customers up front leads to more and better referrals which leads to higher revenue which leads to more money.

When you comp by value, there is less jealousy and distraction from doing work, because the math is there for all to see: Produce more or save more = get more.

You can't fulfill the American dream any simpler than that.

Ass Kisser of the Month

You know what's wrong with Employee of the Month awards? Their existence. In nearly every organization on the planet, it's an excuse for management to perk someone they like. The problem with this sort of popularity contest is that it does nothing but cause resentment among employees, who see it for exactly what it is: Another way for management to reward their buddies for being their buddies. Bear in mind, this comes from a guy who's won these types of awards many time before, and who's been in management for a long time.

If you have any illusions that your organization is a business and not a club, don't ever utter the words "employee of the month".

Okay, having said that, I'm going to say exactly the opposite, and you're going to agree with me that both answers can coexist in the same space-time continuum without causing the annihilation of this universe, okay? Here's how it works if you really want to do Employee of the Month properly:

• Management has no say in who is nominated or who wins. Let's face it, management gets to choose winners and losers in everything else; they have no business here. Every nomination must come from someone who is not a manager, and only non-managers get to vote. 
• As part of the process, each person who nominates a colleague must explain in their nomination why they believe the other employee is a lifesaver. None of this, "So-and-so is always so nice" or "Treats Customers well". They should be doing that all the time. Never reward someone for fulfilling their job description; it sends the wrong message. The nomination must be for something that was above and beyond the call of duty. 
• If no one nominates anyone in a given month, there is no Employee of the Month. Period. The moment you jigger this, you're back to belonging to a club, and not running a business. 
• Make the prize something of value to the recipient. And by value I don't mean something that costs the company a bundle. You know what most non-managers want? More time off. So award the winner an additional paid day off of their choice. Screw what HR says; the winner will truly appreciate it - it feels just like playing hooky - and their friends will want it, too, which generates more above and beyond behavior. 
• Record it in some lasting way. A plaque that you add names to, if you're old school, or a permanent page on your blog, intranet, and / or FaceBook page. Something that the recipient can look at when they're having a bad day. Something that others can see is part of your organization's commitment to recognizing and rewarding extra effort (not popularity). 

I throw these pearls out there so you can add them to your strands and shine. But it's up to you to pick them up, and to share what you've found on that beach with us, too. Got anything shiny?

Plugging the Damned Dam

How many times have you seen or been a part of organizations that spend all of their time plugging holes in the dam instead of taking the hammer away from the kid who keeps making the holes?

One of the biggest holes for B2C (that is, businesses that sell directly to consumers) is this: Employees who forget who the Customer is. (Hint: It's NOT THEM!)

You're seen it. You go to a restaurant and no one greets you. You show up at a doctor's office and there is no one to take your information. You want to ask a question about a bathroom faucet or a dress, but the sales floor is a ghost town. You call a local business in an effort to support your community, but no one picks up.

These are business killers.

If you own or manage a small business, do this: Have one of your relatives go in to your business on your day off, and have them film or make notes of the whole experience (it's certainly cheaper than hiring a Secret Shopper). If you're at home, call your business using your spouse's phone, or your kid's. You may not like what you hear... or don't hear.

You must build your corporate culture in such a way that employees act like you want them to even when you're not there. If you don't, you'll never be able to take a day off, and your spouse will kill you. The best way to get employees to do what you want even when you're not there is to hire the best employees you can afford, even if it takes a long time to find them. Never, ever hire someone just to have a warm body in the position; you'll only have to fire them later, or live with your mistake for years.

Second, make sure that you have communicated your corporate culture - mostly by making sure that you and all of your managers are living examples of it. If you always treat Customers like who they are - the people who buy your groceries - and impress on your employees that perfection is the only behavior that is acceptable, and why, things will begin to move in the right direction.

Bear in mind, when I say Customers buy your groceries, I mean Internal Customers as well as External Customers. If you don't treat your employees perfectly, nothing else you do will encourage them to treat External Customers well. In fact, they are much more likely to do the opposite. Wouldn't you, if your boss was a jerk?

Too Many Tools

Have you ever worked for or with a company that gave you too many tools? It's obvious that they mean well, and that they're enthusiastic and creative and want to help you. The trouble is, you no sooner begin to understand one tool before another shows up, and another, and another... reinventing the wheel in an effort to help you succeed.

To keep from being that company, and to help any vendors that you may deal with that already are that company, may I humbly suggest this post as a pass-along?

Here is how to do tools right:

• You have competitors. They have tools. Look at them all.
• Ask your Customers - as many Customers as possible - which tools they actually use, and why. Write this down.
• Create NOTHING - yet. (I know it's hard. You want to make something today - yesterday, if possible. But you know what? Sending 5 tools, one right after another as another brilliant idea hits you is going to get your tools sent to the circular file without even being opened, because your Customer knows another, better version is just weeks away. Always.)
• Remember: People don't want to learn anything new. You can't change that. Don't try - you will only waste all of your money, time, and sanity. People don't want a cam-retractable, variable speed, percussive impact device. People want a hammer. 
• Simple, simple, simple. A tool can do as many as 3 things, provided they are simple things. If you try to make it do more than 3 things, your Customer's faces will melt and they will become brain-devouring zombies. This has been proven by science.
• Put your name on the tool. You want them to remember who made that wonderful hammer that they use every day to kill zombies, don't you? Damn straight.
• Make the tool as durable and as cheaply as possible. Expensive tools either get lost or don't get used. This has also been proven by science. Unseen University did the field work. Really.
• Before you make your tool, go watch people use tools. I know they told you what they use and why, but remember: people lie.
• Think. Think some more. Think again. 9 times out of 10, speed is the enemy of successful execution. You're just going to have to trust me on this one.
• When you are finally sure you have invented a hammer, have not reinvented the wheel, made it to last, made it cheap and, above all, made it useful, create your tool.
• Go home. Sleep. You done good!

Last but not least: If you have to explain how your tool works, it's not a tool. It's an obstacle.

Perspective: How to Get Some

One of the truisms of any organization is that organizational growth and/or your ascension through the ranks is in inverse proportion to the amount of communication you receive from the bottom. There are 2 main causes for this. Either one is bad; both together are death:

• People below you in the org chart assume that you already know everything.
• People below you in the org chart know that you don't know everything, but they're A) afraid to be the one to tell you, or B) decide that it's not their job to tell you.

To be effective, a manager must know what's happening at every level of the organization.

So how do you get the perspective that you need?

In every organization that I've ever been a part of, Customer Service was and is the repository of (almost) all knowledge. While they may lack the 'Big Picture' view, CS reps live and breathe issues from outside (external Customers) and inside (internal Customers) every single day. They are the first to hear when there is a problem, and the first to know whether or not a proposed solution actually works. Also, because they are in direct communication with both kinds of Customers, they have their fingertips on the heartbeat of your company.

Even if your relationship with the Customer Service Manager is good, it can be a touchy thing to sit with Customer Service. Wouldn't you feel funny if another manager asked to sit with your direct reports for a few days? To avoid that whole thing, we pay thousands of dollars to consultants to sit with people for us and tell us what they say. Then we tell ourselves that we spent all that money because we just don't have time to do it ourselves, or that it's somehow beneath us. The real reason is that we don't want the confrontation that we think will result.

Everyone's job is to hold everyone else accountable for doing the best job they can, and to help them do that in whatever way you can. If you purposely create a culture where everyone sits with everyone else on a regular basis, it stops being scary. And here's the magic word that you will use to make it happen:

Cross-training.

Rolls nicely off the tongue, doesn't it? And it's even true: You really do want to know how things work in that other department, because then you'll also learn what dumb things you unintentionally do that make their lives hell, along with being able to provide fresh eyes for all of their processes. How can it possibly be a bad thing for everyone to understand what everyone else actually does, and what their challenges are? Getting inside our colleagues' skins is right in line with the whole philosophy of Customer for Life!

If I could, whenever I joined a new company, I would hire in as a Customer Service rep for 2 weeks, and not let anyone know that I was anything else. I'd take a notebook and a bunch of pens and write down everything I saw and heard. At the end of the 2 weeks, I'd think about everything good and hard, and then put together a plan of action the following Monday to address the dozens of things Customer Service assumed I already knew, or that they  (or their manager) were too afraid to tell me.

Since you can't do that, you can at least listen in on calls and watch Customer Service in action as yourself. Bring a big box of good chocolate or cookies with you; it's amazing how people loosen up over a little sugar. What is their process? Look for inefficient workarounds (there are always inefficient workarounds, most of them unintentional). Look for how often calls are transferred as opposed to completed on the spot, and ask why. Look at what extra work the Customer Service reps do (all Customer Service reps perform dozens of tasks that have nothing to do with Customer Service). Should they actually own those tasks, or are they the result of an inefficiency in your own department, or someone else's?

Question everything.

This should be a regular part of your routine, especially after any kind of reorg or process change in your own department, and don't stop with Customer Service (although you should certainly start there). The more often you do it, the less scary it is, and the more it becomes a regular part of your culture. Especially if you take the other department's manager out for lunch and speak in private about what each of you saw and heard (she gets to sit with your team, too, right?). One pair of eyes and one brain are good; 4 eyes and 2 brains are better; everyone's eyes, ears, and brains combined are the first steps on the path to Kaizen (or CANI... Constant and Never-Ending Improvement).

Databases for Dummies

Have you ever noticed that database people are fussy? Really, really fussy. (It's okay for me to say this, first because it's true, second because I am one.) It's because we have to be, because literally everyone else in the company constantly tries to mess everything up. Our lives are spent rolling our eyes and fixing problems that cost you a tremendous amount of money and lost man-hours, and that never should have happened in the first place.

If you don't have a database of your Customers and prospects, it's time to create one. If you do have one, it's time to clean it. The first will help you make money; the second will help you save money.

A database, for the purpose of today's topic, is a place to save Customer information. There are 5 main must-do's when creating a database:

• Only have one database, ever.
• Figure out in advance what information you want to save in your database, now and in the future.
• Create clear, meaningful names for each database field, with no redundancy.
• Decide which data fields are mandatory and what constitutes acceptable data for each field.
• Require that everyone use the database, always (especially salespeople).

And there are 2 must not's:

• Never, ever use Excel in place of a real database.
• Never, ever use Act in place of a real database.

The reason that you only want one database is to avoid pocketing and the cost & aggravation of having to merge dozens of databases later (trust me; I used to do this for a living). You have to figure out in advance exactly what information you want your database to include, now and in the future, because of a triusm that applies to a lot of things in business:

Plan carefully now, or regret expensively after.

You always want your database fields to have real-world names, without cryptic acronyms. Otherwise, you are just begging for people to put the wrong info in the wrong fields, means turns your database into worthless crap. Never use the same field more than once. You've already asked for the info; why do you need it twice? Some fields can be optional, like the Customer's birth date, but you should set most so that they have to be filled in. What good is a Customer name without an address, phone number, and email address?

Also, don't allow anyone who uses the database to use abbreviations, or I guarantee that you will have duplicate records. If your Customer's name is 'David', use 'David' and not 'Dave'. If he likes to be called 'Dave', put that in a 'Nickname' or 'Goes By' field. Otherwise, when you buy lead lists or someone else enters him under the other name, you'll have duplicate records. Also, always spell out street names, city names, and country names. (I once had to work with a database where a single city name appeared as 6 different abbreviations, plus spelled out correctly, which meant the company was spending money to send the same mailer to each Customer 7 times. Now imagine if the street names and county names were sometimes abbreviated, too.)

If you already have a database, now you know why you need to get someone to clean it. The sooner the better.

If your organization has salespeople, I'm going to suggest that you create a new rule, if you haven't already: Any sale that takes place before a Customer is entered into the database belongs to the company. No exceptions, period. This will ensure that every Prospect is entered into the database, because there are salespeople who have a bad habit of sandbagging leads, in the mistaken impression that your Customers 'belong' to them.

Customers belong to the company. Period.

Not only will this create a more flexible corporate culture, it will also make things much easier when you have to reassign a Customer to another salesperson or split a territory.

And, while everyone who touches Customers should have access to your database, only Sales, Customer Service, Accounting, and Tech Support should be able to enter or change data. Not only that: any good database should also record who entered or changed that data, and when.

Finally, why not use Excel or Act?

Excel is not a database; it's a spreadsheet (duh). Microsoft puts all kinds of code in each field that you can't see to make it work well as a spreadsheet. Unfortunately, this code makes it difficult to do anything with the data if you try to use it for anything else, and a costly conversion if you have to convert it to a true database format when you eventually move up to SQL or some other real database, and someone has to manually clean out all that gunk (and your pockets, while they're at it; remember the Leaky Roof rule).

Act, while easy to use and great for a self-employed, standalone salesperson, does not share data well across a network - the whole point of having a database.

Chopping Up Customers

In a prior article or two, I talked about different behavioral styles and a little bit about social media. Today, we're going to tie those together and convince you to abandon ads on TV, radio, and newspapers.

First, let's talk about what those three mediums really are: shotgun marketing. You have one message, and you shoot it at the crowd that each medium's salesperson tells you they have a lock on, and then you sit back and hope that your buckshot hits enough people to at least cover the cost of the ad (you do measure that, right?).

It's easy, right? They probably even put the ad together for you, or your agency does, and everyone tells you that that's where you need to spend your money because that's where the people are. And they're right - there are people there. The problem is, those people aren't Customers. They're media salespeople and ad agencies who make a lot of money every time you produce a shotgun ad.

The problem with shotgun ads is that they're not very measurable. This is to the advantage of everyone but you. If you can't measure the results, all you have to go by is how many people buy from you in general following a campaign. How do you know that it had anything to do with your ad? And even if you have a coupon code or something similar, and your reps don't let Customers have the special even if they don't have the coupon or the code (they never do that, right?), your typical response rate is probably somewhere between 1% and 3%, and you marketing people will tell you that's good.

Missing 97% (or more) of the people we aim at is good? Since when?

The core issue is, you're trying to hit several different kinds of slippery fish with buckshot. You don't use buckshot on fish; you use bait. And each type of fish has different tastes when it comes to bait. And some like bait that floats on the surface, some like bait that moves around or has a particular scent or color or feathers or or or...

You don't need a shotgun. You need a tackle box!

The first step in fly fishing, before you ever tie a fly, is to know what kinds of fish you want to catch, and then what those fish like. That means gathering information about your Target Customers - as much as you possibly and legally can. (At this stage, not necessarily information tied to a specific person; we'll talk about that in another post.) This is the bare minimum (bearing in mind that the needs of your business may require additions):

• Age 
• Sex 
• Household Income 
• Dependents 
• Interests 
• Ethnicity 
• Sexual Orientation* 
• Sources of Information (what used to be called 'news') 
• Behavioral Style

Once you know what your Target Customer's answers are to each of these questions - and remembering that you may have more than one target Customer - you can begin to break down their demographics. (Note: The old media that I mentioned before - radio, TV, and newspapers - will try to tell you that they have demographics, too, already all broken down for you. This is a lie. At best, they have guesses and hopes, none of which are something that you should risk your revenue on.)

Now look at as much information as you have on your actual Customers. How closely do they match your Target Customer? If it's not a close match, you just learned a bunch about whoever decided what your Target Customer looks like (hope their resume is up to date). Adjust your Target Customer to more closely match your actual Customers.

Now, how many Target Customers did you come up with? If you only have one, you'd better be a military contractor, or you're in trouble. You want a minimum of three or four to sustain your business if interest in your product or service wanes in any one group (or, in the case of B2B companies, in case one of your Target Industries has a financial downturn). As a general rule, more is better.

Once you have your target Customers finalized, you can begin to break out where your marketing money should go, and how you need to rewrite your message so that it speaks in the language that each Target Customer wants to hear and how it addresses the needs that each one has.

This is called Segment Marketing, among many other names. And while it definitely takes more work and time on your part, it doesn't need to cost more than what you already waste (I can't say "spend", because I only spend money on things that benefit me) on old media marketing - and your conversion rate will show a drastic improvement. It's hard not to like something that earns more for the same investment.

And, lest you think I forgot my promise to tie in social media, check out Mashable's lovely infographic. If your brain isn't buzzing with new marketing ideas by the time you get to the bottom, it may be a good time to take a nap.


* You are not asking Customers to come out of the closet. But knowing if a gay person is a potential Target Customer for your product or service - because they tend to have more disposable income, for example - may help you decide whether or not to spend money with a gay-focused publication or event. You could just as easily add religious or political orientation, too, depending on whether or not these factors are related to your core business.

Social Media Suckage

Social media is the number one marketing topic of the day. You can't turn on your PC without a PR pundit telling you how social media will totally change your business, help you sell more, turn your customers into content co-creators, and make your life perfect.

This is bunk, of course. Social media is just one more thing that someone will pretend to know more about than you do in order to make money from your lack of knowledge. Social media is not so readily pinned down; it's fluid, and moves with the crowd. Companies that have tried to use FaceBook to sell product (other than games) have wasted their money.

So what is social media good for?

Communication. Social media can be one of the best ways to communicate with Customers, because it is perceived as more direct and honest than plain old PR. But there is a price to pay: To be effective and not come off as out-of-touch or, worse, evil, you must do the following:

• To cover your backside, write specific rules regarding who is allowed to write about what happens at work, and what they are allowed to say. Make certain that everyone in your organization signs it, and fire anyone that violates it.
• Have a plan. Since when has anything gone well for your business when you just let things happen? Social media is no different. You need to know what you want to get out of it, the steps to get there, the metrics you want to see and the timeline by which they must be accomplished. See? You already know how to do this.
• Manage the conversation. Have Customer Service read all posts every day and immediately respond to the ones that need responding to. Some companies make the mistake of having the PR department respond to posts. PR is not a conversation; Customer Service has always been one. Social media is just a continuation of that conversation.
• Unless you are a game developer, don't believe anyone who says that they can help you make money on FaceBook. They're lying.
• Don't settle on one platform. Social media blows with the wind. To be part of the conversation, you have to be where your Customers are. New social media platforms arise seemingly out of nowhere and get hot fast (witness Pinterest). They disappear just as quickly (MySpace much?).
• Never, ever remove a post. You will instantly lose all credibility. Forever.
• Never pretend to be a customer. You will be found out, and you will burn for it.

One of the benefits of the social media conversation is that your fans and your enemies tend to congregate in one spot. If you respond quickly and positively to the latter, you grow the former. And that is where the real value comes in: as always, anything that a Customer says about you has infinitely more weight than anything that you say. No one believes your TV and radio ads; no one is seduced by your mailers or your stuffers or your email blasts. But one fan saying nice things about you on the platform of the moment resonates. (They also don't cost you a dime.) But bear in mind that it resonates just as loudly when an unauthorized employee says how much work blows on FaceBook, Twitter, or your company blog.

If you want to know what the current hot platform is, ask your kids. If you don't have any of your own, ask your neighbor's kids. They'll know. They can also tell you far more than you want to know about how each works. And at most, you'll have to buy some Girl Scout cookies that you were going to buy, anyway.

See? Social media isn't scary. Now go paste some pictures of food and kittens on Pinterest.

Liar!

The average human being lies 4 times each day (this number does not take politicians into account, because they obviously throw off the scale). So why in the world do you expect someone to be honest with you on a survey?

Long, long ago, when dinosaurs ruled the earth, I worked for a software publisher and reseller that was building an online catalog. Online catalogs were a new thing at the time, as was the idea of a user interface that was actually geared toward an average user. To do it right, we met with a fellow who did consulting for companies that wanted to do business with big players like Microsoft, Apple, and Amazon, or to emulate them.

We walked him through what we had, and our head of new product development explained how we had structured each page to push Customers toward other pages to control their experience and expose them to useful content.

"Stop," he said. We stopped. "How successful have you been at getting Customers to go to that page?"

Not very, we admitted, but we had this great plan to change that by doing this, that, and another thing.

"Stop." We stopped again. "What makes you think Customers want this?"

"We did surveys," said our product development guy. "And the majority of..."

"They lied," said the consultant guy. "They told you what they thought they should say, not what they really do." Silence.

"Why would they lie?" we finally said. "It's in their best interest to tell the truth."

"Because people lie," he said. "The U.S. spent $24 billion on porn last year, but if you ask anyone, they don't buy porn. Somebody's buying it."

Furrowed eyebrows around the table while we digested this.

"So what do we do?" we said.

"Do what Amazon does: Don't listen to what Customers say. Watch everything they do. If they don't go to a particular page, get rid of it. If they go to another page a lot, give them more of whatever's there. Don't make anything more than one or at most two clicks away from where they start out. And recheck your results every single day, so you can anticipate shifts before they become widespread."

Another note about surveys: They are hollow. By that I mean that most people don't do them, and those who do tend to be people who are strongly motivated to say something positive or strongly motivated to say something negative. If you are like most organizations, 80% of your customers fall somewhere in the middle. And, since the average survey response rate is around 3%, why are you making business decisions based on what 1% or 2% of your Customers took the time to say?

I am not saying don't provide Customer for Life (perfect, on time, personalized) service. I am saying that watching what your Customers do - how many respond to offers and when, how many you lose or retain and why, increases or decreases in spend, etc. - matters more than what a small number of them say. Don't make major changes because of a single complaint or two, or reward based on a compliment or two. Which leads us to GAS:

Don't Guess. Assume, or Speculate. Find out. Eliminate G.A.S.

DISC, By Any Other Name

By now, you've likely been in business long enough to recognize that the employees in each department tend to have similar personality traits to other employees in the same department. In fact, despite individual differences, personality traits within one department often seem to be more a matter of degree than anything else. The important thing is to learn why this is, what it means to internal and external communication, and why it's a good and necessary thing.

A psychologist named William Marston created a way to rank personality traits according to 4 main behavior styles. Everyone has all 4, but the degree of each style and the blends between them differ from person to person. Marston called his ranking system DISC, an acronym of the 4 styles:

• Dominance - relating to control, power, or dominance
• Influence - relating to social situations and communication
• Steadiness - relating to patience, persistence, and thoughtfulness
• Caution - relating to structure or organization

I took my first DISC assessment and class in 1984. The class was sponsored by the National Association of Music Merchants, or NAMM. Out of all of the profiling and communication classes that I have taken at dozens of seminars in the years since (some of which took the fundamentals of DISC and simply renamed them), I still consider it the single most important business class I have ever taken, and I have shared it with every team I have managed since.

It's probably no secret to you that individuals with a strong 'C' drive tend to end up in Accounting, high 'S' individuals tend to gravitate to IT, 'I' to Sales and PR/Marketing, and high 'D' to Management, but this is a black-and-white perspective of a shades-of-grey reality. High incidence of these traits make these employees well-suited to their roles. They would not be as good at what they do as they are if their personalities were different. Unfortunately, this often means that communication between different departments is strained, because the personalities and communication styles of the people involved are so different from each other.

Communication with external Customers is just as difficult. Salespeople with high 'I' may actually turn off Customers who are high 'C'. Customer Service reps who are high 'S' may frustrate high 'I' Customers. Every behavior style wants to be spoken to in its own native language. Isn't that what you expect as a Customer? And what's wrong with that?

For this reason, I recommend DISC profiling and training for all employees, beginning with Management, then PR/Marketing (if they haven't already had it), Sales, Customer Service, IT, Accounting, Development, Production, etc. Profiling so that each employee is aware of how they are perceived and what their own needs are, and training so that they understand other styles and learn to communicate with them in their own language.

Be aware, too, that certain behavior styles can have a tendency to bugger advancement and chain of command. For example, people with high 'I' personalities tend to move up quickly because they are social animals and often well-liked. But they also tend not to be detail-oriented or results-driven. Why advance someone into a management position if they are not likely to be any good at it? This does no one any good. By the same token, someone with a high 'D' personality has a tendency to believe that codes of conduct and process do not apply to them. Is that who you want as your CEO?

Again, people are rarely this black-and-white, nor am I saying that a high 'D' person can't be a good CEO (especially if paired with a high 'S' COO). Everyone is a blend. Just be aware of how different behavior styles can influence your thinking when hiring, managing, and promoting.

An overly complicated DISC matrix. (I had a little trouble with the scissors.)

Hiring

Just as directing a film is largely about choosing the correct cast and crew, hiring is the single most important step to ensure that your organization surpasses its goals and thrives over the long term. Nonetheless, many hiring managers treat the interview process and its all-important prep as a chore. Some even put it off until forced, and then often make poor choices that only have to be replaced a short while later.

Employees are your most important asset. If you don't believe that with all of your heart and soul, you will fail. Employees do all of the real work in any organization. They are the public face of your business, day in and day out. They are the lifeblood of every organization. Without them, there is just you, and you can't do what needs to be done alone.

If you hate interviewing and prepping for interviews, imagine what it's like for the person on the other side of your desk. They have a limited amount of time to guess what you want to see and hear and to dazzle you - and that's after they've made it past resume-screening software (which turns away better than 95% of applicants), any headhunters you may work with, and your HR department.

Of course prep for the interview; you should have a set of questions sitting in a file folder at all times, so that you are ready whenever you need to hire someone. And you know the best place to get those questions?

From the people who already do the job.

Let's face it: They probably know the requirements better than you do. You can ask the basics, too, if you want, all of the "What did you do there?" and "What is your greatest strength?" stuff, but know that any applicant that's gotten as far as your desk has already rehearsed the answers to those tired words a hundred times before. You will learn exactly nothing that isn't already the story they've told on their resume.

So: Get 5 - 10 questions from employees that already do the job that you're hiring for. Next, ask the things that matter long-term:

• What kind of corporate culture are you looking for? 
• What do you find is the best way to network? 
• What do you do to relieve stress? 
• Would you rather stay in one position for a long period of time with regular raises, or move up quickly with no change in compensation? 
• Are you interviewing with a competitor? What made you come to us? 

These are questions that help define whether or not the candidate is a match for your culture (or at least the culture of the team that they will likely join). Listen carefully to the responses and think not just about what the candidate says, but how they say it.

There are two questions that you will want to ask at the end of every interview, unless you're already sure that the candidate is a "no":

• You win the lottery tomorrow - $164 million after taxes. What do you do? 
• Tomorrow morning, you find out that you have 6 months to live. What do you do? 

There are, of course, no right or wrong answers to either question, but the applicant's answers and how they answer are revealing. Let's take question one and break it down:

• If the candidate hesitates for an extended period, doesn't answer, or sounds like they are saying what you want to hear, don't hire them. If you hire them and something goes wrong, they will either fail to tell you until you find out on your own, hide it from you, or blame someone else. Trust me on this one. 
• If the applicant says they want to take care of their family and/or friends or give money to charity, and they are applying for a customer service or tech support role, they will likely be a good fit for that role, even if they add other things to the list. 
• If they say that they will quit working and travel, they will likely be a short-term employee. This in and of itself is not always a bad thing, but it depends on whether or not that is your plan for the position. 
• If they say that they would likely start their own company doing X, they may be a potential team lead or manager. 
• Anyone who says lots of different things is likely never to be satisfied in any role. For them, the grass will always be greener elsewhere. 

You can probably figure out the rest.

Question 2 is a different circumstance. Rather than fulfillment of a dream, it presents an opportunity to see what your applicant's priorities are when faced with the grimmest of all realities: Death. Most if not all of your applicants will not have given this question any thought, ever. In fact, some may actively resist answering. If they do, or have a great deal of difficulty answering, they will likely never rise to a higher position. If, however, they are able to accept the question at face value, think it through, and present a cogent answer, they will likely be good planners who are capable of acting on their own without as much supervision as candidates who have no answer. They may even explain their answers to you as they figure them out. Bear in mind that they are probably explaining these answers to themselves, as well as to you.

Any candidate that asks why you asked either question is dead in the water. If they're that suspicious of your motives before they've even had a chance to see how devious you really are, you'll only have to replace them at some point, anyway. Why not choose someone better from the start?

Second Interview
For the second interview - if the applicant is good enough to earn one - invite employees in the department to which the candidate will be assigned to ask the questions. You should do this whether the person that you hire will be their co-worker or their manager. Do not tell them in advance what you think of an applicant; let them make up their own minds. Give each person who volunteers a copy of the applicant's resume.

After they are done speaking with the applicant, sit with them alone somewhere quiet and ask them what they think. Then listen. Then thank them for their input. Do not at any point try to persuade them to think differently or lead them to think what you think.

This process serves several important functions:

• Knowledge. Remember, these employees do this job every day. Who better to kick the applicant's tires? 
• Rapport. Your applicant will ask questions of potential team members that they might hesitate to ask you. This way, they can get a clear picture of what your corporate culture really is - rather than what you'd like to think it is - and whether or not they are likely to be happy there. 
• Ownership. Whether co-worker or manager, each employee has a stake in every new hire, since they will depend on the new person for some kind of support. 
• Buy-in. Because they were an active part of the decision-making process, your employees will more readily accept any potential hire - even if it's not the one they picked. (You, of course, always make the final choice. Never present your employees' thoughts, to them or to anyone else, as anything more than recommendations.)

The Power of Belief

The problem with trying to win people over regarding anything - issue, product, service, cause, etc. - is this:

No amount of information changes a belief.

It does not matter if you have the most prominent climate scientists in the world, or how many; if someone believes that climate change is fabricated, they will continue to believe that. If you believe that black is white and white is black, no matter how many flash cards you are shown, you will never see what anyone who does not share your conviction sees. Belief is that powerful.

Why? Because belief feeds pleasure- and comfort-inducing centers in the brain, even for those who tend to be thinkers rather than believers.

Basically, humans who believe something that is not based on fact are those whose cognitive mind is based more on intuition than on reflection. That is, they are more apt to 'skip ahead' to answers that require less conscious thought. For reflective minds, a series of easily confirmed facts presented by a source whom the observer recognizes as an authority is often enough... it's just a matter of getting your message out there. But for 'believers', even recanted statements and authoritative proof are not enough (witness Toyota's debacle with unintended acceleration). And because most people tend to congregate with others who think as they do, this confirmation of belief is constantly reinforced.

One of the positives of social media is that it is easier to directly interact with Customers than ever before. But one of the negatives is that, if a proportion of your Customer base is intuitive rather than reflective (and they are), a comment by someone who is not a fan of your organization on a blog, Twitter, or Facebook has the potential to drive away large numbers of other Customers - even if what they say has no facts to support it.

So what can influence belief in a positive way?

A better, 'hookier' story (that is, one that is more 'intuitively true') and a peer group whose ratio tips at least 70% in favor of the new belief, so that the believer feels that they are part of an easily recognizable majority. (This does not mean the majority of humans - just the majority of the people with whom they spend the bulk of their 'voluntary' time - that is, time away from work.)

The first part is relatively easy, but how do you encourage people to regularly interact outside their usual (like-minded) peer group? Especially when social media applications - for purposes of marketing demographics - keep herding us into ever-smaller, more narrowly defined 'communities'?

The first step is to identify which of your Customers are reflective and which are intuitive. This is easily accomplished with surveys, monitoring of Twitter, Facebook, industry-oriented blogs, etc. The next step is to state the facts in language that is appropriate to each group (the days of "one message fits all" are gone), and in forums that identify your organization as part of or affiliated with the group in question (obviously, not if they are a hate group or part of some other objectionable organization). This is most easily accomplished by explaining how your organization has supported Customers like the Customer whom you wish to reach, using examples that have value to that particular Customer segment.

Bear in mind, if your Customer base has a wide demographic variation, you may have to craft several different versions of your story to communicate it most effectively to each group. It also never hurts to enlist the help of prominent members of each group to help explain your position and to learn more about the concerns of each Customer segment.

At the end of the day, it is always better to build your base of support before something negative is said, so that your Customers already communicate with you regularly, consider you 'one of them', and are more apt to listen to your side than to someone who has no facts to support them. The most important thing, if something negative is said, is to answer instantly, invite the speaker to discuss the issue off-line, listen carefully to their issue without interruption, respond in a way that actually addresses their concern, and then ask for feedback.

Miserable SOB's & the (Self) Entitled

I have run a few call centers, now, and one of the things that you learn early on in that business is that customers come in a few basic buckets. Each bucket has its own needs and requires its own approach. Today, we're going to talk about two of the hardest buckets to tote.

MISERABLE SOB’S
Let’s start with the group that everyone really wants to talk about, anyway: Miserable SOB’s. Don’t you hate those? They have a shitty attitude and a shitty life, they’re having a shitty day, and all they want to do is spread that shit around. Whether complaining about something that was actually their fault, a change that actually makes things better for everyone but them, or some perceived bit of tomfuckery that was actually an honest mistake, Miserable SOB’s are the bane of customer service and support teams everywhere.

I know that you or your call center manager(s) and staff have probably been to more seminars and classes regarding this class of customer than you can count. How can so few people (roughly 3% of customers - less, if you’re lucky) inspire so much attention and dread?

And, of course, the big one: How do you handle them?

That’s not really what you’re asking, though, is it? If you’ve been to even one webinar on the topic, you already know what to say. The real question is, how do you successfully rebound from an MSOB call so that it doesn’t make you feel shitty for the rest of your day?

Simple: Pity them.

They have a shitty attitude, a shitty day and a shitty life for a reason. You’ll probably never know what it is. You don’t need to know. Maybe their parents were just like them, or worse. Maybe their spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend treats them badly, or just left. Maybe they just found out that they got passed over for a job or a raise that they deserved, or found out that they’ll be laid off right after the holidays.

Maybe their son or daughter died.

The thing is, no one thinks of themselves as a Miserable SOB, but all of us have been one. The secret to not letting that call shit on the rest of your day is to ignore your natural instinct to bitch back or talk down. Instead, feel sorry for the miserable SOB. They have a shitty life, and you (hopefully) don’t. Why not be the little bit of sunshine in their otherwise shitty day? Whether or not they reciprocate, you’ll feel better, and isn’t that what you wanted to hear, anyway?

THE (SELF) ENTITLED
Who died and made them king (or, more likely, queen), anyway? No one, that’s who! You don’t give a rat’s ass that they’re doctor so-and-so’s wife, or that your company or another employee has ‘always done’ this or that for them, even when you know damned well that they didn’t, or they shouldn’t have, or that you’ll get in trouble if you do.

These royal-pains-in-the-ass constitute about 5% of customers, but consume roughly 20% of your resources, including your time and the time of your employees. And in return, they wheedle for every discount (whether entitled to them or not), freebie, and exception that you’re dumb enough to give them.

And there’s the issue in a nutshell: It’s not them, it’s you. They wouldn’t act like this if you didn’t encourage it by letting them have what they want. In the end, they are no different than spoiled children (hell, we both know that’s exactly what they’ve been since conception), and should be treated exactly the same way that you cure a spoiled child:

Say no.

Don't Screw Employees

Okay, you're right, what I really mean is, "Don't fuck employees". And before you click away in disgust, please allow me to explain the reason that this word is the one and only correct choice for this particular subject:

The fellow who deliberately cut you off in traffic, spilling your coffee and nearly giving you a heart attack, was he inconsiderate or an asshole?

There is no such thing, my dears, as an inappropriate word. All words are appropriate, given the proper context and timing. If the usage is apt, the word is appropriate.

Now let me explain why "fuck" is the appropriate word in this situation: It refers not only to the physical act in which you are the aggressor, but also to what happens to the career of the employee in question.

In this day and age, you would think this one would be a no-brainer, but we still see it happen on a daily basis. If you are ever tempted, or one of your managers is tempted, hit the affected individual in the side of the head with a brick until these thoughts go away. Aside from the fact that it may lead to a lawsuit that may cost you your company, consider this:

• If you think your diddling is a secret, you're wrong. At work, nothing is a secret. 
• Because nothing is a secret, all of the other employees at or below the position of the person that you're diddling will automatically assume that every choice assignment, promotion, or benefit that your diddlee receives is only because of the diddling. Even if your diddlee doesn't sue you, chances are pretty good that one of these folks will. Seen through the eye of diddling, everything looks like favoritism. And let's face it - it probably is. 
• Or - because you know how it looks - you withhold promotions or key assignments that the person you're diddling actually deserves, causing them to feel righteous anger, hurt, and sorry that they ever met your sorry ass. Oh - and if they don't sue you, you can bet that they're going to make sure before they leave that everyone in your organization knows what a sleazebag you are. They may even tell your Customers, as they are busy moving them over to their new employer. 
• It's just plain wrong, moron! Putting people below you (no joke intended) in this kind of position (sigh) is one of the worst abuses of power. They used to guillotine kings for this type of behavior, sportsfans, and rightly so.

Your honor, I rest my case.

Customer = Prospect

Customer loyalty is at an all-time low. On the plus side, this means that competition is fierce. Fierce competition has a tendency to shake out the dross. No dross drives good organizations to either play their best game or fail.

Exciting, isn’t it?

It is a terrific time to win new Customers. There’s just one problem: They’re not new Customers, even if they purchase from you. Today, tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future, every Customer is actually a Prospect.

Prospects must be won over each and every day, with every at bat, over and over again, no matter how many times they purchase from you.

Again, the good news is that organizations that deliver the 3 Expectations (Zero Defects, Timeliness, Personalization) have the opportunity to win unprecedented market share.

The bad news? Those that don’t will lose it.