Monthly Archives: August 2008

August 20, 2008 · 7:39 am

There are bad deals

“Tell me about the last bad deal you didn’t make,” I asked.  My friend looked back at me blankly.  “Well”, I said, “you’ve just spent the last 15 minutes telling me about a few bad ones you did make.  What about the ones you didn’t make?”  That’s pretty much when he decided we’d chatted enough about business and the conversation turned back to golf.

Awhile back, Seth Godin, whom I admire, wrote a piece on making bad deals.  His article was more directed at the deals made between individuals as they start new ventures, but I’ve taken some of what he had to say to heart as I look at any business deal.

Not all deals are worth doing.  One has to know the point at which NOT making a deal is a better option and overcoming the very human desire to make something happen, to get something, to WIN!  But in so doing, you LOSE.  Get rid of those deals – set them free!  Very much like the Buddha I am, I know.  But the Buddha’s teaching is not so much of divesting one’s material possessions, but of not being overly crazy with our desires.  Sometimes the desire for a deal outweighs its true value.  The ones where the value of what you’re offering is disproportionately less than what you’re receiving are the ones I mean.  The ones where someone will take your product (grudgingly, it seems) and almost want you to pay them or demand you give up any chance of making back your investment in supporting them, the client.

So what’s the last bad deal you didn’t do?

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August 19, 2008 · 7:32 am

The Other Side

How often have you walked away from a business or personal encounter with someone thinking “they just don’t get it”?  I find myself doing that a lot more often these days.  Maybe I’m just becoming a grouchy old guy or maybe I’m just becoming more aware of the lack of empathy that seems so prevalent.

Empathy is the capacity to recognize or understand another’s state of mind or emotion. It is often characterized as the ability to “put oneself into another’s shoes”, or to in some way experience the outlook or emotions of another being within oneself.  It is important to note that empathy does not necessarily imply compassion. Empathy can be ‘used’ for compassionate or cruel behavior.

And that’s really one big key, isn’t it?  My daughter teaches little kids and is good at it.  I think it’s because she’s very much in touch with her inner child and thinks as the kids do.  The checkout person at the supermarket who swipes their saver card so you get all the discounts when you forget your card – either they get it or their bosses do.

Conversely, we’ve all had those encounters where you feel as if you’re talking to a wall.  “Sorry, the policy is…no, we don’t do that (no explanation)…I can’t help you, sir…”  At some point, we’re all on the other side of the situation – the person who works for the phone company who needs help with medical benefits, the person at the cable company who can’t get their electric bill straightened out.  How do they not “get it” after that?  Why can’t they see those experiences are not separate and their behavior in business needs to match their expectation as a consumer?

We had an incident a few years ago at the NHL where we ran out of jerseys in our online store (and offline too!).  Customers had placed orders and were getting neither information nor jersey from our commerce partner.  We assigned people internally to do nothing but answer their questions.  We couldn’t get them jerseys but we did diffuse the situation by letting people know what the facts were (why we were out of stock), what we could do for them (not much), and, most importantly, that we CARED and were listening.  And that, dear reader, is mostly what people want to know.  Someone is there, is listening, is acting if they can, and empathizes with you even if they can’t.

If you run a business, teach empathy.  Your salespeople will sell more, you’ll spend less on customer service, and your email box won’t get filled up with hate mail quite so much.

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August 18, 2008 · 7:57 am

Feedback

One of the virtues of the interactive web is the amazing amount of feedback it generates.  I’m not talking about the Jimi Hendrix-style, blow your ears off stuff.  I mean the back and forth of conversation that is so critical to any business.  It’s inconceivable to me that a business would shut itself off to that information flow but many do.  Think about trying to reach a human at many of the companies with which you do business.  Websites such as this would not have to exist if it weren’t for the wall-building in which many companies engages.

Part of why I cook and play golf is the feedback.  If something tastes right, you know it, although what is right to me may not be right to my consumers (the other folks at the table).  Hopefully you get that feedback too (they’re not bashful around here about shredding the cook).  The lesson from golf isn’t that one gets feedback on how good or bad the last swing was – that’s pretty obvious based on where the ball goes.  The point is that one has to pay attention to it or you’re going to lose a number of balls.

Hey!  That may be the business point too!  If you don’t want to lose your balls, you need to listen to feedback and react.  Is you company paying attention?  Are you actively soliciting consumer opinions or are you making those email links hard to find?  Does a person answer your phone or is it an endless phone loop to nowhere?

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