Stand on your own merits

Q: I lost a big account to a scumbag competitor despite the fact I told my client, over and over again, what losers these people were. I’m angry, frustrated, and out of a big commission. How do I prevent this from happening again?

A: You have just learned the dollars-and-cents reason behind Mom’s admonition: If you can’t say anything good about someone, don’t say anything at all.

People are tired of the nastiness – from Congress to entertainment to the marketplace – that seems to define life these days. They just don’t want to hear bad-mouthing any more.

In my former life, my newspaper was one of seven in the marketplace. The temptation to bash the competition was oh-so strong. We resisted following that path and instead, in our weekly news meetings, concentrated on “What makes us different?”

It was a good strategy. We figured out our strong points and capitalized on them. We let our product speak for itself.

That’s what you need to do, too. Focus on what you offer. Brag about its benefits and features. Show how it will save your client time and and make them money. Offer sweeteners, if it looks like you’re about to lose the sale.

And if your product can’t stand on its own merits, you’ve got a bigger problem than your competition.

Have faith…in yourself

Back when I was young(er) and foolish, I told a prospective employer, “I can do just about anything, better than just about anyone.”

Oh, the hubris! It’s enough to make a grown woman blush.

But I got the job and my career took off. And while the ensuing years have worn the sharp edges off that sense of invincibility, the hard core of that belief remains: I have faith in me.

As we get older, it’s easy to forget that we can do just about anything if we put our mind – and heart and soul – to the task.

It’s especially tough to remember for people who are in transition, people who have lost their jobs or their spouses. The empty-nesters and those with health challenges.  They have a sense of foreboding, a cringing in their souls as they wonder, “What’s next?”

The short answer is this: Whatever you want.

Enjoy a short-term “why me?” wallow. Once that’s out of your system, it’s time to dig in, rediscover that place of possibility. Dig out the feeling of hopelessness and despair.

Have faith in yourself to make the transition to the next phase of you.

One of the benefits of age is what you’re really good at, what you really enjoy. Now it’s time to marry the two, for moving ahead into the future that you deserve.

How do you do that?

Look at it as an opportunity, the chance to grow and learn and reach for what you really want in life.

If you’ve lost your job, look at the things you liked and didn’t like in your former position. Start the hunt for something that’s better suited for your personality. Give yourself the chance to shine.

And if you find yourself aged out of the job market, maybe it’s time to take what you’ve learned and build your own business. You know things now that you didn’t know when you were young(er). Let that work for you.

Y0u can’t change what’s happened in the past, but you can certainly use those events — and lessons — to help create the life you want. Give yourself permission to dream, to envision the way you want your life to be.

Then go after it. Be bold! Life is too short to be mousy.The only person stopping you is you.

So if your life is in transition, take advantage of it. Embrace it. See where it takes you.

It could be exactly where you’re to be.

Never going back

We will never go back to the way it was.

 

In the last year, I have heard that sentiment expressed enough times — and have seen enough examples — to fully accept that as my 2011 mantra.

 

Here are some things that will never be the same:

• Customer service. It’s no longer good enough to be reasonably polite to people. As the price of goods and services continue to rise, consumers are going to be looking at more than price (and we’ll get to that shortly).

 

You know how you’ve always been doing it? Probably not good enough. Have you asked someone to “shop” you? Get someone, unknown to your staff, to either call or visit in person (or both) and then report back to you on the service they received.

 

• Price. When price is the only thing that sets you apart from your competitors, you and your business will be at the mercy of any company that can shave a few cents or dollars off your price.

 

And there’s always someone around who is willing to do that.

 

What makes you unique? What makes you different from everyone else? Figure it out, capitalize on it, promote it.

 

It is a fallacy that you must cut your prices to compete. Research shows that people are willing to pay extra to get exactly what they want. What do your customers want? Do you know?

 

• Value. Value is closely related to price, but not identical. Are you giving your customers good value for their dollar? What ways can you increase the value of your customer’s experience without slashing your prices?

 

• Technology. This represents the biggest shift of all. If you are not tech savvy, find someone who is and either bring them on staff or hire them as an independent contractor.

 

Yeah, it’s that important.

 

Having a website that is updated regularly is just the beginning. To stay alive in the days ahead, a business needs to have at least a mobile site.

 

Why? A Morgan Stanley Internet analyst expects smartphone sales to surpass PC and laptop sales in 2012, with more than 450 million units sold. 

That number will approach 650 million units by 2013.

 

If people are looking for your business and can’t find an easy-to-view version of your website, they’ll keep looking until they find one.

 

Then there is “user-generated content” — what people are saying about you on the World Wide Web. Do a Google search and find out.

 

Are you signed up for Google Alerts? This free service notifies you any time your chosen word or phrase shows up on the Internet.

 

Find some customer-review websites in your industry and pay attention to what they’re saying abut you. For example, if you’re in the hospitality business, TripAdvisor should be the first place you go to check for consumer reviews.

 

Should you respond to every negative review of your business? There are pros and cons to that; you don’t want to let flagrant lies go encountered, but you don’t want to appear defensive.

 

Talk it over with that Internet guru you just hired.

 

Do you have a Facebook account? Do you update it regularly?

 

Most of all, you need to be flexible — as much in your personal life as in business. Make no assumptions.

 

Better yet, recheck all your assumptions and measure them against the new reality.

Because we’re never going back.

Managing across the generational divide

Jackie Harder

Do you have employees you just flat out don’t understand?

Consider the manager who was trying to increase retail sales, a small sideline to his core business.

He came up with a great plan – or so he thought – to encourage competition within his staff by promising bonuses to the clerk who made the most sales each month.

His employees, women who worked to supplement their post-retirement income, listened to his pep talk, nodded politely and quietly went back to their tasks.

Several days later, one of his employees asked for a chat.

“We’ve been thinking,” said the group’s spokesman. “We’ll do our best to sell more, but we don’t want to compete against each other. We’re all friends and we don’t want to create any problems. Is that OK?”

It wasn’t that these women couldn’t use the money; money is tight for everyone these days. It’s just that they valued their relationships more than they were motivated by cash.

The manager – a Baby Boomer, a full generation younger than his staff – was astounded. Wasn’t everyone chasing the almighty dollar?

But he went back to the drawing board and came up with a solution that met his needs and motivated the staff:

His new plan rewarded all his employees when they reached a certain sales goal each month. He put money into an account for them to use as they saw fit…as a group.

The more they exceeded their goals, the more bonus money he contributed…to the group.

They could decide among themselves how they’d spend it. Should they use it as it came in, treating themselves to lunch? Or maybe let it grow for a few months for a special dinner or a shopping trip?

His new plan honored the importance of their relationships and his so-called “Veteran Generation” staff was happy to work – and be rewarded – as a team, toward a common goal.

The happy result is that the boss got what he wanted, too.

Motivating workers is one of the most difficult jobs on a manager’s to-do list.

Boomer managers in particular don’t have a lot of patience for the working styles of younger generations.  

Gen X’ers especially drive them nuts. Workers born between 1965 and 1979 were the first latch-key kids. They have experienced, first hand, how “nose to the grindstone,” corporate-ladder climbing affected their parents and their home lives.

And they don’t want any part of it.

They insist on having a personal life; if you want to motivate them, offer them workplace flexibility, like more time off or the ability to create their own hours.

Show you value them by giving them all the latest tech toys you can provide.

Millennials, also known as Generation Y, were born between 1980 and 1994. They are more “touchy-feely” than previous generations.

These employees want to grow, learn and make a difference. They want to have an impact not just in the workplace, but in the world…a world much smaller, thanks to the Internet, than the Boomers wanted to change.

And like the Veteran Generation, Millennials are less motivated by money than by having a full and satisfying personal life.

Get their best by supporting their involvement in the causes they value. Show an interest in their personal goals and clearly show they mesh with company goals.

These are broad strokes, of course, and there always will be exceptions.

But if you use these generalities as a starting point to discover how to get the most from your workforce, you’ll grow them and your business at the same time.

 

What you feel is what you get

Jackie Harder

What one thing that you don’t have in your life would make a huge difference to you if you did?

How would your life be different? How would that affect the significant people in your life?

These questions help my coaching clients focus on where they are right now, where they want to be and – most importantly – what it will feel like once they get there.

The first question is the easiest to answer. A new car, a nicer home, a loving relationship, a million dollars, a great job, their own business…most people have no problem coming up with at least one thing that would make a huge difference in their lives.

It’s exploring the answers to the other two questions that can get dicey.

How your life would be different takes a certain amount of drilling down.

For the purposes of discussion, let’s take the million-dollar answer and explore it a bit more.

How would your life be different if you had a million dollars?

You could probably afford a nice house and a new car (or two), pay off your bills, put some money away in a retirement account, invest a chunk, help your aged parents or help launch your children on a new life, travel to exotic locales, dine in the finest restaurants, buy a great boat…the list may be so large that your million-dollar windfall would begin to look puny!

Now imagine how it would feel to you to have these things in your life. Would you feel happy? Good? Content? Wise? Proud? Secure? Magnanimous?

Take some time to delve into it. Keep digging.

You may learn that many of the things you want in your life will bring you to the same emotional place. That’s a powerful lesson for you, and something to keep in mind.

Feelings are important because they are the impetus drives you forward to reach any goal. The things you want – whatever they may be – are only the outer manifestation of what it is you want to feel when you get those things.

Now imagine how the important people in your life would be affected if you got that million dollars.

What would happen with your family? Would your spouse or lover be jealous of your newfound wealth? How would your best friend react?

How would you handle it? Would any of it matter to you?

If you feel that having a million dollars is way out of your realm of possibilities (at least at this time), look at something that really resonates with you and go through the exercise again.

How would you feel if you got that really great job you’ve been wanting? How would your family and friends feel about it? Would they be excited for you? Would they support you in your new position? Would they be angry that you would have to move or spend less time with them?

If you’re serious about getting that one big thing in your life, it’s worth talking about. Make sure they want for you what you want for yourself. And then decide whether the trade-offs are worth it.

If you’d like support in getting that one thing that would make a huge difference in your life – even a million dollars! – consult a coach.

High tech vs. high touch

Jackie Harder

Is your business high tech or high touch?

Both have their place, but relying completely on the former is inviting doom.

The best application of technology is transparent to the public, and is put in place to give employees more opportunity to enhance the oh-so-important personal element – high touch – with their customers.

Some of those invisible high-tech solutions may be as simple as networking office computers and printers, software that tracks sales and inventory, and voice mail.

But don’t go nuts on the technology side. The last thing you want is hardware replacing people in areas where you want and need that human touch.

It’s a huge turn off to call a local business – which has a dozen employees, max – during regular business hours and hear, “Thank you for calling the ABC Co. Our hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. We are located at 123 Elm Drive. If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now. If you know your party’s last name, please enter the first three letters of that person’s last name. If you have no idea who you’re calling or why, please…”

OK, so maybe I’m exaggerating on that last one…but just a little!  

Phone answering systems should be used only outside of regular business hours.

Why? Because people want to talk to people, not to machines.

I’ll never forget the call I picked up, only to hear the caller yell at someone in the background, “Hey! I got a real live person!”

It’s a sad state of (business) affairs when getting a “real live person” on the phone is the exception than the rule.

Part of every business owner or manager’s high-touch regime should be face-to-face, “real live people” networking.

Why? Because people do business with people they know, not with machines.

And that’s where small businesses have a huge advantage over conglomerates. Take advantage of it.

Networking – also called referral, word-of-mouth, viral and relationship marketing – is vital to success.

How you go about it depends on your business, and the kinds of people you want to reach.

Let’s look at the company that provides wholesale screen-printed T-shirts and canvas bags as well as high-end embroidered shirts and caps.

One set of customers is retailers that want to provide inexpensive, colorful T-shirts for resale. Where would you, Mr. Screen Printer, find those kinds of people?

Another group of potential customers could be found in the professions – lawyers, for instance – who want quality golf shirts with their company name discreetly embroidered over the left breast that firm members can wear in informal gatherings.

How can you connect with people in that group?

What about non-profit organizations? Event organizers? Who else needs to know about your product? How do you reach them?

Once you’ve got your list of networking groups, how do you take advantage of that social capital?

• Be consistent. You can’t show up one time and expect to drive droves of business through your front door. (This is also true with other forms of marketing.)

• Have plenty of business cards available to hand out.

• Prepare and practice your elevator speech. Elevator speeches are so called because you should be able to say who you are and what you do in the time it takes to ride an elevator to your destination.

• Collect business cards. Write on the back where and when you met the person. Then follow up with a note. E-mail is better than nothing, but a quick, hand-written note shows that you care.

Is all that humanity giving you the willies? OK, go high tech. There are plenty of online business-networking sites as well – about 25 million of them.

High touch is looking better all the time.

Are you a bad luck magnet?

Jackie Harder

Are you a “bad luck” magnet?

Do you expect the worst, so you won’t be disappointed? Or does nearly everything go your way? Do you see the bright side in everything that happens to you?

Either way, I’d bet a week’s salary that you get exactly what you expect.

Why? It’s call the Law of Attraction, based on the law of physics that states that whatever energy we put out – negative or positive – is matched by more of the same.

Consider the tuning fork – a simple metal two-pronged fork whose tines resonate at a specific pitch when struck against a surface – used to by musicians to tune their instruments.

Put a hundred thousand tuning forks, all set to vibrate at the different frequencies of the musical scale, in a stadium. Strike one fork – the A, for example – and all the other A’s in the stadium will resonate. Not the B-flats or C’s…just the A’s.

This is the Law of Attraction, and it applies equally to your personal life as to your business life.

Like attracts like, so if your mood or feeling is positive, you will attract positive things in your life. The reverse is surely true as well.

To bring “good luck” or “good karma” into our lives, we need to change the way we feel about it, and how we express it to ourselves.

There are three words we need to remove from our vocabulary: Don’t, not and no.

If you go to Google and type in “No football,” what will be pop up on the screen? If you say to your pet, “No treat,” what word is it going to hear?

Same thing applies to the positive and negative energy you put out.

If you say, “I don’t want to lose this account; I don’t want to cry in front of the boss; I don’t want to be broke,” the message – the energy – you’re sending out is “lose,” “cry” and “broke.”

By focusing on your “don’t wants,” that’s exactly what you’ll get back.

When you change the words, you also will change the energy and your frame of mind.

“I want this to keep and grow this account. I want to be calm. I want my life to be filled with abundance.”

Something like this has happened to all of us: Our alarm doesn’t go off and our first thought is, “Oh, man, is THIS going to be a rotten day!”

And sure enough, it is.

We stub our toe getting out of bed, we burn the toast, we lose our keys, the car has a flat and on and on.

We need to learn to use the Law of Attraction deliberately, tap into it and make it work for us.

Here’s a three-step formula to do just that:

• Identify your desire. We’re not good at this; we’re better at saying what we don’t want. But we can figure out what we do want by knowing what we don’t want.

Hate your job? Keep focusing on that and nothing will improve. Instead, try imagining your perfect job. What kind of work would you do? Who are the people you would work with? How much money would you make? What would your environment look like? And most of all, how would it feel to have that perfect position?

• Raise your energy. Give it attention, energy and focus, because the Law of Attraction says “you attract to yourself whatever you give your attention and energy to, whether wanted or unwanted.” 
• Allow it. This is the most important step of the three – and the most challenging.

What is allowing? It’s the absence of doubt, which is negative energy. If strong desire meets strong doubt, nothing happens. The moment you shift your energy to the positive is the moment you start to attract the positive to your life.

Try it. What do you have to lose, except “bad luck”?

Need help? Ask a coach!

Reinventing yourself

Jackie Harder

QUESTION: I’m convincing myself that now is the time to reinvent, so that when the economy improves, I’ll be poised to do something new and exciting. How do I do that? How do I go completely out of the box?  

ANSWER: Great questions and oh-so-appropriate on this Labor Day 2009! And here are some more, ones I use with all new my coaching clients, to help them figure out where they want to be.

Write down your answers to these questions. Be spontaneous; often the first thing you write down is your most compelling answer. But be thoughtful as well. Make sure your list is as complete as possible.

• Where do you get your energy, your “juice” for life?

Is it helping other people? Speaking in public? Do you get your juice by expressing yourself artistically, in words, music, movement or through building things with your hands?

• What is your gift that you’d feel great about orienting your life around? What is your magic? What is it about you that draws the most compliments from people? 
• What motivates you?

Interestingly enough, lots of people have trouble with this question. Money, fame, love, security, respect, admiration and service to others are a few examples. As with all these questions, there are no wrong answers.

• What are your strongest resources?

This could be many things – your faith, money in the bank, a supportive partner, and the ability to take risks and learn.

• What is one of your lifelong dreams that’s worth living, starting now? What are you deferring until “things get better”?
• What’s holding you back?

It could be external things – other people’s needs or opinions or lack of money, for example – as well as internal, such as fear and lack of faith in yourself.

Take a broad overview to your answers to all these questions. See what naturally fits together, how they build on each other.

What direction do you see in the picture you’ve just created?

Now it’s time to start researching.

Can you make the amount of money you want by following your passion, using your gift? Are there companies who pay people to do what you want to do? If not, would starting your own business be a profitable course of action?

Talk to people who are doing what you’d like to do. Get their input. Ask them what they’d do differently and what they didn’t expect as they followed their dream.

What resources do you need to move forward? It could be more education, a bank loan, relocation or something completely different.

Once you’ve determined where you want to go — literally and figuratively — you need to figure out how to get there.

Your map will be your plan of action.

Determine when you want to achieve your large goal and reverse engineer your path to it.

Break your “bigs” into “littles” – give yourself three to five specific smaller goals to reach at established intervals within that larger time frame.

Success with smaller goals leading toward your larger ones will give you the incentive to move forward.

Make sure your goals have some “stretch” to push you to the next level.

Continually review your plan. Conditions and people change, and your plan has to reflect that.

If you get stuck, ask yourself why. What’s preventing you from moving forward and how do you overcome that?

For assistance in creating a map or following it, consult a coach.

A “well, duh!” moment

Jackie Harder

You’ve heard, no doubt, of the “a-ha” moment, when you hear something that really resonates with you, that makes you stop in your tracks with wonder.

I had its first cousin — a “well, duh!” moment  — this weekend while attending the Florida Governor’s Conference on Tourism at the Fountainbleau Hotel on Miami Beach.

One of the presenters in an industry panel said, “We have to adapt to what’s in front of us.”

Well, duh!

It’s such a simple, basic truth, but I’m continually amazed at the number of people who just flat out don’t get it.

Adaptation is not just a good thing — it’s vital to our survival, as individuals and as business people. But so many people are still dealing with what is behind them or fretting about what’s ahead (or both) that they lose sight of what’s right in front of their faces.

What’s in front of them could be declining revenues or imploding relationships or changing demographics or any number of life’s challenges.

But instead of adapting to those changing conditions, they harp on the real or imagined slights from their past. They nurse grudges based on off-hand remarks that people don’t even remember making. They fret about all the horrible things that could happen sometime in the indeterminate future.

And in the process, they lose the now, what’s right in front of them, and fail to make the most of it.

Take, for example, the man who’s angry because the job he wants requires him to be bilingual…and he isn’t.

He refuses to recognize the fact that Hispanics are the largest and fastest growing minority in this country. He chooses to be a victim, wants to sue for discrimination.

How much easier his life would be if, instead, he could choose to see this as a golden opportunity to improve his skill set and employability by learning another language.

Not only is he not adapting to what’s in front of him, he’s actively fighting it. Why? What, ultimately, does he gain from the battle? I would guess anger, hostility, an ulcer, an ugly attitude and sleepless nights, to name a few.

He’s certainly not going to get that job he covets.

Persuasive writing

Jackie Harder

My coach sent me a copy of a letter to the editor she was planning to submit.

“Can you whittle this down to 500 words?” she wanted to know. Quick check of the document — it was nearly 1,700 words, more than three times the size of the final letter.

Holy smokes! That’s one heck of a lot of whittling!

Fortunately, whittling is something I did in my nearly 30-year career as a writer, editor and publisher in the newspaper business.

After the first pass, I got her letter down to 679 words — still too long for her purposes, but a heck of a lot closer than the original. I sent it back to let her fine tune the rest to get it where she wanted it to be.

Here are some tips to keep in mind to make your persuasive writing its most effective:

• Check the guidelines. Most newspapers have a word limit. Many will not publish third-party letters (your letter to a senator, for instance, even if you submit it).
• Remember your audience. Your language will be different if you’re writing for a professional journal than for a newspaper.
• Keep it short. Attention spans just aren’t what they used to be.
• Keep it simple and focused. Pick one point and stick to it.
• Be passionate, but be logical. Back up your arguments with facts. If you’re trying to change someone’s mind, “Because I said so” won’t cut it.
• Attack the position, not the person. While name-calling may be fun, ultimately it serves no purpose other than to give a momentary thrill. Remember – some day you may need the support of the person you’ve just called an idiot. This is especially true if you live in a small town where you undoubtedly will run in to your “victim.”
• Anticipate objections. Know the arguments of the “other side” and defuse them up front.
• Watch out for humor. The written word is pretty unforgiving. Your readers can’t see you wink or smile. Very few writers can do satire or humor well, even the professionals.
• Let it age. Go ahead and vent — get it all out and off your chest. Then let it sit for 24 hours. Go back and look at it with a more dispassionate eye.
• Edit, edit, edit. Yes, you’re the author and yes, this is your baby. It’s fine to have pride of ownership, but no writer is perfect. Make each word count. Make sure it says what it wants to say. Check for spelling and grammar.