Category Archives: Helpful Hints

October 25, 2019 · 3:51 pm

Harder Than It Is

Happy Foodie Friday! I was menu-planning the other day (an absolute must before the weekly trip to the grocery store) and I came across a dish that I know to be pretty easy to make yet which appears way more difficult. I’ve served it before and people are always all “oh, that must have taken hours” about it when it’s really about a 15-minute prep. As an aside, there are many other dishes I know – really good Bolognese sauce, for example – that take way more time than you’d think even using a pressure cooker to speed things up.

Seeing that dish got me to thinking, in a roundabout way, that we humans have a tendency to think things are way more difficult than they are in many cases. In fact, I think some of us go to great lengths to make it that way. I’m not talking about a particular type of person I’d run across in business every so often. You know the one – they create problems so that they can solve them and be the hero. No, what I’m talking about is that we love to make things harder than they actually are.

Think about it. What things did you do today that purposefully made your life more difficult ? It was probably so small a thing, or something so ingrained in you, that you didn’t even notice that you did it. Maybe you didn’t set your alarm to allow for enough time to be someplace. Maybe you sat on a task until right before a deadline and you couldn’t get it done on time because something unforeseen happened.  Or maybe you just enjoy the drama. It’s sort of the same thrill as riding a roller-coaster, right? You put yourself in danger and when you survive, you feel a thrill.

Here’s my take. Life can be like some seemingly-fancy dishes – much easier to pull together than meets the eye IF – and it’s a big if – you have the skills required, leave adequate time to complete the task, and don’t make it harder than it has to be. All of us make our lives both in and out of business harder than they have to be at times and unless and until we recognize the times that we’re doing it, nothing much will change.

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , ,

October 23, 2019 · 11:18 am

Learning From Leads

Like many businesses, I purchase leads to drive revenue. Leads are everything in the business I’m in now and without them, you starve. When I went to our consultants’ convention last July, nearly every conversation I had with one of my peers eventually turned to the subject of where we were sourcing leads and how productive those sources were. As an aside I’m having Glengarry Glen Ross flashbacks as I’m writing this:

These are the new leads. These are the Glengarry leads. To you, these are gold; you do not get these. Because to give them to you would be throwing them away.

In any event, following the convention, I tried out a couple of new lead sources and one of them has proven to be quite good. The reason I’m writing about them today, however, isn’t so much the quality of their leads as it is the quality of their customer experience. They do some things that are instructive for any business that has customers (and find me one that doesn’t!). If you don’t think it’s important, remember that Oracle found that 86 percent of consumers will pay more for a better customer experience.

First, although they sell packages of a fixed number of leads, they let me put together my own package as a test case. They were flexible and focused on my needs rather than on “this is how we do things.”

Second, they are generous with “freebies.” Sometimes the leads are actually not real people – the phone number is bad and the email bounces. Sometimes someone is playing a prank on someone else by sending their information in without their knowledge. Not only have I never had an issue getting the company to refund a lead because of that but they will sometimes throw me an extra couple of leads because I had a less than optimal experience. Let’s face it – who doesn’t love something for nothing?

Third, they follow-up. I get asked regularly if I’m happy with what I’m getting and if they can improve my experience in any way. That’s big because I know they’re listening and that they care. Of course, it’s imperative that if the customer does come up with a suggestion that you communicate back to that customer how you’ve handled it (and just tossing it in a drawer isn’t acceptible!).

That leads to another thought. We should always go overboard when correcting mistakes. Yes, they happen, but if you’re transparent about it and more than makeup for the error, people can be quite forgiving and what was a negative can become a positive.

It’s really about being customer-centric and showing those customers some love, isn’t it?

Leave a comment

Filed under Consulting, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , ,

October 18, 2019 · 2:45 pm

The Sides

This Foodie Friday, I want to discuss what is a sometimes-overlooked ingredient in a successful meal – the sides. I’ve got a friend who shows up for dinner every so often and the question is never “what are you making?” but “what are the sides?” That got me to thinking.

You probably haven’t given much thought to the role that side dishes play. First of all, they can help balance out the nutrition of your meal. I’ll plead guilty to being very “main” focused (you can read that as “protein”). Making a smart choice about serving a seasonal veggie or a salad or a roasted root puree of some sort can support the main dish in a way that actually improves it. Think mashed potatoes and meatloaf, for example. Many really good sides require very little work and can be prepped and assembled while the main is cooking.

There is actually research that bears out the importance of side dishes to restaurant diners. A research company published a report in 2013 called…

The Starters, Small Plates & Sides Consumer Trend Report, which details the importance of side dishes in the consumer’s choice of entree. 36% of consumers stated they selected an entree based upon the accompanying sides, and 46% stated they were less likely to order an entree if it came with an accompanying side they disliked. In addition, about 45% of consumers prefer familiar sides over unfamiliar sides. Sides can make or break an entree.

So there you go. Of course, the same is very true in business. Every team has its “mains” but every team also needs its sides. I have rarely found any star manager in business who also didn’t surround him- or herself with a phenomenal bunch of people that might not have been stars themselves but served to make the entire team better. These folks – analysts, accountants, and others – are the ones who usually aren’t front and center but who make the business successful, just as the sides make the main shine and the meal a success.

Our job as managers, much like that of a skilled chef, is to figure out the accompanying sides. I’ve sat with many clients who point out after some business development star has come to pitch them that the “star” isn’t going to work on their business day to day. It will be the “sides”. The smart clients always asked about that, often wanting to meet the people who would be on the account day to day. I know I usually asked about that as well when I got pitched by an outside firm. If the sides weren’t very good, I’d usually pass on the rest of the “meal.”

Don’t ignore your team’s sides. You’re only as good as they are!

Leave a comment

Filed under food, Helpful Hints

Tagged as , , , , ,