Engaging our Customers

I was reading the book, Strength Based Selling, and I came across this particular chapter on Engaging your customers.

We know how important customers are for business. Some says customers are "King" while others say they are the real boss of the business. There is no right or wrong to this but more importantly is the organisation end to end process align with what they see their customer as?

The key message for this chapter falls on 2 groups of customer.

1. Emotionally Satisfied Customers
2. Rational Satisfied Customers

Emotionally satisfied customers usually have strong connection to the company. They are the number 1 die hard fan and believe in the company. They are also the key reason for the growth of the company.

Rationally satisfied customers on the contrary usually behave almost the same way as customers who are dissatisfied.

How many of you knows what I talking about? 


It further note customer engagement are build on 4 emotional needs:

1. Confidence - the company can be trusted to deliver on their promises


2. Integrity - Customers trust that you treat them fairly and resolve their problem


3. Pride - Proud to be associated with this company. Customer like to feel good about the decision they made and see themselves as capable and competent.


4. Passion - Customers who are passionate about your company offering. Their describe their relationship as irreplaceable and perfect fits for their needs.

When customers feels their emotional needs are met everytime they are more likely to become emotionally engaged with you.

So, how do we know where we are? 

We all gonna start somewhere right? There are a set of questions which we can engaged our customers for status check and us to work on the shortfall.

1. Overall what things are working well as a result of our partnership


2. What elements of this relationship are helping us build solid results together


3. Is there anything that is not going well as it should be?


4. What could we change to correct this?


5. Are you dealing with any issues right now that I could help you work through to improve the business?


6. Is there any information or education you need that you are not able to get?


7. If you could change one thing about how we are working together, what would it be?


8. What would you never change about the way we work together?


9. Is there anything else that would help us build an even stronger working relationship?

The above questions I find them to be useful as a customer relationship status check amidst our hectic schedule. Try them out next time and let me know how well it works for you!


Side notes: Some of the information were extract from the chapter from the book of Strength Based Selling.

Who's Playing?

I always think that children are our teachers. Why? Because they know how to play! I was on my way home that day thinking the importance of play. What was the response when you ask an adult "What you gonna do today?". I doubt any of them will be exclaiming "play!"

Think about it. What will your life look like if there was more play? What would your experience of work be like if you had more fun doing your job? What would your relationship become with more spontaneous & laughter?

As adult, we stop playing once we assume responsibilties of life. Adults are nothing more than deteriorated children. It doesnt have to be that way. Take some time off and make time for play. Find the time to be little reckless and silly. Be imaginative at work and bring curiosity back to your daily lives.

How life will be so fun if we can get back that sense of wonder you knew when life was all about make believe and enjoying every second of the journey. This is call living! The next time someone looks at you with your briefcase, business suit and serious face, asking what you gonna do today, I challenge you to reply them "I am going out to play today!"

Let's Get Up Early?

I was reading on the internet when I bump into this article. This is an awesome article about waking up early and how it impacts productivity, thus success.  

For 15 years, Starbucks President Michelle Gaas has set her alarm for 4:30 a.m. to go running. Gretchen Ruben, popular author of The Happiness Project (Harper Perennial, 2011) wakes up at 6 a.m. and works for an hour before her family rises. Time-management expert Laura Vanderkam highlights what makes mornings special and how we can use them more efficiently in her book What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast. Here are a few benefits to getting out of bed earlier. 

You are less likely to get distracted in the morning. An entrepreneur's day fills up fast. If you wait until the afternoon or evening to do something meaningful for yourself such as exercising or reading, you’re likely to push it off the to-do list altogether. “There are going to be reasons why you can't tackle a personal priority at 4 p.m. -- things have a lot less likelihood of coming up at 6 a.m.," says Vanderkam.

You have more willpower early in the day. Even if you aren't a morning person, you may have more willpower in the early hours than later in the day. "Willpower is like a muscle [that] becomes fatigued with over-use," says Vanderkam. During the course of the day as you're dealing with difficult people, making decisions and battling traffic, you use up your willpower, leaving you feeling depleted toward the end of the day.

Mornings give you the opportunity to set a positive tone for the day. If you've ever slept in past your alarm clock or forgotten your kids' lunches on the counter, you know that starting off the day with a failure can bring down your mood and affect your productivity at work. Vanderkam says waking up earlier allows you to start the day with a victory and set the tone for a happier and more productive day.

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If the thought of waking up at sunrise makes you cringe, Vanderkam recommends these four steps to transform even a habitual night owl into a morning person.

1. Keep a time journal. Vanderkam says one of the reasons people say they don't like mornings is that they stay up too late. She recommends keeping a time journal for a week to show where you may be using your time inefficiently. Vanderkam finds when many self-professed night owls look at their time journals, they often find they aren't spending their evening hours productively or doing anything particularly enjoyable.

2. Imagine your perfect morning. Imagine what you would do if you had an extra hour in the day. Would you exercise? Read the newspaper rather than simply skimming the headlines? "[Getting up earlier] isn't about punishing yourself. You will not get out of bed if you don’t have a good reason to do it," says Vanderkam.

3. Plan your morning. Once you have decided what you want to do with your extra time, plan how to execute it, and set as much up as possible the night before. For example, if you want to exercise in the morning, lay out your clothes the night before, or gather the ingredients for your breakfast.

4. Build the habit slowly. Vanderkam says you will likely hit the snooze button and sleep in if you try to switch your habits drastically. So instead of setting your alarm for 5 a.m. when you normally get up at 7: 30 a.m. set the alarm for 10 minutes earlier each day. To make sure you don't lose sleep, go to bed 10 minutes earlier each night. If you have trouble hitting the sack on time, set a bedtime alarm.

Having seen all this, Let's get ourselves to wake up early now!

Leadership

There is a statement which I think everyone should know. "Everyone needs to be a leader." I believe for a company to move into greatness, every person on the team needs to see himself or herself as a leader. The best companies on the planet grow leaders and develop leadership potential throughout the organisation faster than their competition. Making that happen is their number one focus. And they do it quickly.

But I am not saying everyone should run the company. That makes no sense. Everyone is a leader, but not everyone does the same thing. Imagine in a resturant, the chef role is to ensure the dishes are cook, the waiter to ensure the diners ordered are placed correctly and follow up with them. The cashier, to collect money. What if the chef takes on the role of the waiter, while the waiter become the cashier and the cashier become the chef. It would be chaotic!

Know your role. Everyone needs to behave like a leader-no matter what they do. Everyone needs to demonstrate leadership traits- regardless of their position. That means everyone needs to take responsibility for getting the results that they generate. Everyone needs to do their part to shape culture. Everyone needs to be positive and inspirational. Everyone needs to keep a customer happy and protect the  brand.

Everyone is a leader, but not everyone is the same. If you are appointed as leader in your life, see how you can make everyone a leader here.

Listen now.

My mom is a very wise woman. As a kid, I loved to talk and i still do now. In school, I always like to talk to my classmate seating around me and I was constantly caught for talking. One day, Mom sat me down and said : you were given two ears and a mouth for a reason. To listen twice as much as you speak." Brilliant point!

Listen intently to someone is one of the best ways I know of to honor that person and forge a deep connection.

When you Listen to someone, it sends a message : "I value what you have to say, and I am humble enough to listen to your words." So few of us are really good at listening. Most people's idea of listening is waiting until the other person has finished speaking before answering. And the sad fact is that while one person is talking, most of us are rehearsaling our replies. How many of us are guilty of that?

New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer has a line that empahsis the best. "Never talk when you can nod" Your effectiveness as a business person, family member or human being will absolutely soar if you get this one right. Listen twice as much as you speak. Become a world class listener. Get wildly interested in what others have to say to you. And just watch how people respond. They'll fall in love with you. Quickly.

The hidden talent

Some people are just doomed to be failures. That's the way some adults look at troubled kids. Maybe you've heard the saying, "A bird with a broken wing will never fly as high." I'm sure that T. J. Ware was made to feel this way almost every day in school.

By high school, T. J. was the most celebrated troublemaker in his town. Teachers literally cringed when they saw his name posted on their classroom lists for the next semester. He wasn't very talkative, didn't answer questions and got into lots of fights. He had flunked almost every class by the time he entered his senior year, yet was being passed on each year to a higher grade level. Teachers didn't want to have him again the following year. T. J. was moving on, but definitely not moving up.

Steve met T. J. for the first time at a weekend leadership retreat. All the students at school had been invited to sign up for ACE training, a program designed to have students become more involved in their communities. T. J. was one of 405 students who signed up. While Steve was leading his first retreat, the community leaders gave him the overview of the attending students: "We have a total spectrum represented today, from the student body president to T. J. Ware, the boy with the longest arrest record in the history of town." Somehow, Steve knew that he wasn't the first to hear about T. J.'s darker side as the first words of introduction.

At the start of the retreat, T. J. was literally standing outside the circle of students, against the back wall, with that "go ahead, impress me" look on his face. He didn't readily join the discussion groups, didn't seem to have much to say. But slowly, the interactive games drew him in. The ice really melted when the groups started building a list of positive and negative things that had occurred at school that year. T. J. had some definite thoughts on those situations. The other students in T. J.'s group welcomed his comments. All of a sudden T. J. felt like a part of the group, and before long he was being treated like a leader. He was saying things that made a lot of sense, and everyone was listening. T. J. was a smart guy, and he had some great ideas.

The next day, T. J. was very active in all the sessions. By the end of the retreat, he had joined the Homeless Project team. He knew something about poverty, hunger and hopelessness. The other students on the team were impressed with his passionate concern and ideas. They elected T. J. co-chairman of the team. The student council president would be taking his instruction from T. J. Ware.

When T. J. showed up at school on Monday morning, he arrived to a firestorm. A group of teachers were protesting to the school principal about his being elected co-chairman. The very first communitywide service project was to be a giant food drive, organized by the Homeless Project team. These teachers couldn't believe that the principal would allow this crucial beginning to a prestigious, three-year action plan to stay in the incapable hands of T. J. Ware.

They reminded the principal, "He has an arrest record as long as your arm. He'll probably steal half the food." Mr. Coggshall reminded them that the purpose of the ACE program was to uncover any positive passion that a student had and reinforce its practice until true change can take place. The teachers left the meeting shaking their heads in disgust, firmly convinced that failure was imminent.

Two weeks later, T. J. and his friends led a group of 70 students in a drive to collect food. They collected a school record: 2,854 cans of food in just two hours. It was enough to fill the empty shelves in two neighborhood centers, and the food took care of needy families in the area for 75 days. The local newspaper covered the event with a full-page article the next day. That newspaper story was posted on the main bulletin board at school, where everyone could see it. T. J.'s picture was up there for doing something great, for leading a record-setting food drive. Every day he was reminded about what he did. He was being acknowledged as leadership material.

T. J. started showing up at school every day and answered questions from teachers for the first time. He led a second project, collecting 300 blankets and 1,000 pairs of shoes for the homeless shelter. The event he started now yields 9,000 cans of food in one day, taking care of 70 percent of the need for food for one year. T. J. reminds us that a bird with a broken wing only needs mending. But once it has healed, it can fly higher than the rest...