Business Distinction, Leadership, Personal Distinction, Sales & Retail
Whoever said, “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery,” got it all wrong. As I have often said (and been quoted for it), imitation is the sincerest form of theft.
Being like your competition was assumed to be a safe space for many. No longer. If all you are is a mirror image of your rivals, then you’re nothing more than a commodity.
- Being distinctive is the key to success.
You must be willing to think uniquely and develop ideas to stay ahead of the curve. It is why “Creativity” is the second of the Four Cornerstones of Distinction.
To help you get started, here are ten steps that will help you think differently:
Step #1: Be curious. The best innovators are always curiosity seekers. They’re constantly exploring new things and looking for ways to improve their products or services.
Step #2: Embrace change. Change can be scary, but it’s required for innovation. If you’re not open to change, you’ll never create anything new. You cannot create distinction by doing things the way they’ve always been done.
Step #3: Take risks. Innovation requires risk-taking, so don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things.
Step #4: Be open to feedback. Feedback is essential for innovation, so make sure you’re always listening to what others whose opinions you value have to say. This doesn’t mean the nay-sayers on social media should rule your thoughts. It means seeking and obtaining insights from those who sincerely want you to succeed.
Step #5: Think outside the box. (As much as I hate that old cliche — it is the truth here.) Don’t be afraid to come up with unconventional ideas. Think about it; someone really said in a meeting somewhere, “What if sharks got caught up in a big tornado?”
- That sounds strange, but it was probably just as wild when Marc Randolph (my colleague on the “in residence” faculty at High Point University) said to Reed Hastings, “What if you got DVDs in the mail instead of having to go to Blockbuster?” (You know how that turned out with Netflix, right?)
Step #6: Be persistent. Innovation doesn’t happen overnight, so don’t give up if your first few ideas don’t work out.
Step #7: Brainstorm often. For many, the most productive approach to develop innovative ideas is by brainstorming with others.
Step #8: Be patient. Innovation doesn’t happen overnight, so be prepared to work hard and put in the time necessary for success.
Step #9: Stay up-to-date. To stay ahead of the curve, you need to keep up with the latest trends and changes in your industry and others. By learning about what’s new in other industries, you may get insight into what you could do to stand out in yours.
Step #10: Get inspired. Inspiration can come from anywhere! Be certain that you’re constantly looking for new sources of inspiration. I’ve learned they are all around us – we just need to be on the lookout for them!
Remember, it’s not about copying what others are doing! It’s about creating fresh ideas that will help you stand out from the competition and create distinction!
Business Distinction, Customer Experience, Leadership, Personal Distinction
When you stop to think about it, the qualities embodied by the spirit of the holidays — a giving attitude, an appreciation expressed to others, and gratitude for your blessings — define how we should treat our customers and team members EVERY day throughout the year.
Giving Attitude
A “giving attitude” is best expressed as the perspective that puts the needs of others above your own. It’s the attitude of being willing to help, to give freely of yourself, and to think of others before yourself. We should bring this spirit to our relationships with both our customers and team members.
When we are open to giving more than we receive, it creates a feeling of joy and abundance. This is the attitude we want our team members and customers to experience. We should think of ways to give more, treat our customers differently, and make them feel special.
Instead of focusing on what we want or need, try shifting your perspective to giving freely to others without expecting anything in return.
Appreciation
Another aspect of the holiday spirit is appreciation. Naturally, we appreciate our customers. However, appreciation also means thankfulness for the team members who make our businesses run. They are the people who serve our customers, package and ship our products, produce and fulfill our orders, deliver customer service, and keep everything organized behind the scenes.
Expressing appreciation to our team members is the only way to show that we value them and their contributions. Keeping it to yourself does no good for anyone! A simple “thank you” can mean a lot, but it’s also important to show appreciation in ways that will be meaningful and memorable. Everyone likes to know that their efforts matter, so take the time to make your team feel valued.
Gratitude for Our Blessings
Finally, gratitude for our blessings is of utmost importance. If we want to grow in the future, we must appreciate how the lessons of the past – good and bad — have brought us to this point. We should also be grateful for our current situation, even if it is not ideal.
Our hearts open when we are grateful, and we become more compassionate. We see the good in life and in others, and this transforms how we interact with them.
Ideas Into Action
To put the spirit of holidays into action, consider these four questions:
- What does appreciation look like in my organization?
- How can I demonstrate appreciation for my team’s past efforts and current contributions?
- What can I do to uniquely express gratitude to my customers through unexpected acts of appreciation?
- How can I increase the joy and abundance in my organization to enhance our organizational culture during the coming year?
When we embody the spirit of the holidays every day in the coming year, we prepare for creating distinction, no matter the circumstances of the economy, pandemic, or unforeseen challenges.
- Apply these insights, and you’ve planted the right seeds for ICONIC achievement in 2022!
(And please keep watching here! We want to partner with you to enhance your professional and organizational growth. Our consulting/coaching/training business is limited to a few select clients each year. I would love to have a conversation with you about how we can work together to help you achieve the distinction you deserve in the coming year!)
Business Distinction, Customer Experience, Leadership, Sales & Retail
Employee happiness is a critical factor when it comes to excellent customer service. Employees who are happy with their work — and how their employers treat them — are more likely to care about their customers. This factor is because when employees are treated with respect and engaged, they naturally want what is best for their company.
If employees are happy, it means they will be willing to go above and beyond for their customers — which in turn leads to more delighted customers.
The employee-customer relationship is an essential factor in successful customer service; when companies put their employees first, they find success.
What do employee happiness, employee engagement, and customer satisfaction all have in common? Granted, they are all very similar. However, employee happiness is perhaps most critical.
Employee happiness is the employee’s overall contentment for everything related to their job, including how they’re treated by management and customers alike.
Here’s an aspect easily overlooked: employee happiness has a much more significant impact than employee satisfaction.
Satisfaction is just the employee’s opinion of their current job; happiness means employee contentment for all aspects of their work-life, not just their specific job assignments. Employee happiness means employee engagement.
Here are three ways to improve employee happiness:
- The first step to employee happiness is that there must be buy-in from leadership. If leadership doesn’t care about employee happiness, it won’t go beyond something as minimal as creating a flimsy employee satisfaction survey.
- It is incumbent to communicate with employees how their opinions are vital for improvement and what changes are in process due to their input.
- Decide to make employee happiness/employee engagement an organizational priority. It’s impossible to have employee happiness without employee engagement. A company cannot be engaged with its employees if managers aren’t showing constant commitment to their teams.
- Employees believe that if their manager doesn’t care about the happiness of team members, how can the rest of the organization?
- Offer benefits and compensation that matter. Employee benefits and compensation are essential aspects for employees to feel as though they are compensated fairly for their work.
- It’s difficult to feel valued and under-compensated at the same time. Make sure your wages and benefits also display your commitment to your team.
The more employee happiness there is within an organization, the better the workplace culture will be for everyone involved!
When employees are happy, customers are too.
Leadership, Personal Distinction
It’s one of the most challenging aspects of leadership: How do you effectively have a difficult conversation with a team member or customer?
The answer: With sensitivity and respect.
Difficult conversations should never be taken lightly, especially in the current climate of heightened emotions.
Executives, managers, and entrepreneurs all know they need to have tough talks with their employees from time to time — but that doesn’t mean it gets any easier. In fact, it might be harder now because of a heightened tension between different ideologies that have spilled over into workplaces everywhere — combined with the fact that there are more generations in the workforce now than at any time in history.
“One thing we can’t escape is that this (time) has been very divisive for many Americans,” said Bill Hybels, senior pastor at Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago. His church draws more than 25,000 attendees each weekend from across the country and around the world. Difficult conversations consumed two days of training during Willow Creek’s annual Global Leadership Summit earlier this month.
“I’ve seen the level of anger escalate at an alarming rate,” Hybels said, “and I’ve seen the level of outrage rise exponentially.”
This is not just a problem for business leaders.
School teachers, college professors, church pastors, non-profit directors — anyone in any position of leadership or authority — could find themselves having these difficult discussions with employees or customers who may be upset over changes that affect their families.
Difficult conversations arise frequently and at all levels, and they should be handled with respect and for the good of everyone involved — even those who may disagree.
- Difficult conversations happen whenever we hold accountability sessions, give performance reviews, address challenges with an employee’s attitude or behaviors, challenge a viewpoint that someone holds dear to them, or when we deliver difficult feedback.
- Difficult moments often come up when people feel stressed by their circumstances and about making hard choices about where scarce resources will be distributed.
- Difficult conversations also arise during routine day-to-day interactions such as meeting deadlines and resolving workplace disputes.
While these conversations aren’t easy (that’s why they’re called “difficult,” isn’t it?), here are three basic steps to handling these uncomfortable situations:
1. Prepare yourself
- Remember why you’re having the conversation
- When difficult conversations come up, it’s easy to lose sight of what you want to achieve in that conversation. Your goal is not necessarily to change your team member’s mind or get them to agree with you, but just ensure they understand where you’re coming from and why this matters so much to you. You may even be able to find some common ground on which both parties can meet.
- Acknowledge their feelings
- The #1 reason many people resist giving constructive feedback is because they don’t know how the other person will feel about it. When we fear upsetting someone — especially someone whom we care deeply about — our natural response is often to avoid it. Difficult conversations are never easy, but the more you can do to put people at ease, the better your chances of having a productive conversation.
- Be respectful of their time and priorities
- Everyone has responsibilities that take some precedence over work–with kids or parents who need help, problems at home that need solving, commitments to attend religious services, not to mention taking a lunch break! Difficult conversations might cut into time they needed for family commitments. Therefore, be respectful of their time and priorities by keeping difficult conversations as brief as possible – no longer than 15-20 minutes – with a clear understanding of how much time they have.
2. Lean In to the Difficult Conversations
- Identify what you’re trying to accomplish
- Before you say one word, be clear in your own mind what exactly it is that you want to accomplish or communicate.
- State specifically what you think the person did
- People don’t usually have a problem hearing that they’ve done something wrong–it’s having to acknowledge responsibility for their actions that gets them defensive. Difficult conversations are especially dicey when emotions escalate; people get more hurt and angry, which makes it more difficult for them to hear what you’re saying. Be sure your intentions are right by starting with “I” statements instead of “you” statements–which will deflect any defensiveness on the part of that other person. If possible, cite specific examples or even evidence of behaviors (not feelings) to support your perspective.
- Describe the impact of their behavior
- What results did you see as a result of them doing what they do? What has it cost (time, productivity, affecting others’ morale)? Difficult conversations are tough because people often hear “feedback” as being criticized–and then simply shut down. Diffuse this by focusing less on them and more on impact to your organization. Be sure to describe how their personal attitudes or behaviors have affected you, other team members, or customers–or even perhaps themselves by using phrases like “You’ve made me feel…”
3. Check Progress & Agree on Next Steps
- Remain open-minded throughout difficult conversations
- Sometimes people don’t hear us or understand our perspective until we’ve given them all the information and they’ve had a chance to process it. Difficult conversations often elicit strong reactions, so give this person some time to think about what you discussed and come back with any questions before moving forward.
- Stay flexible throughout difficult conversations
- The best way to avoid conflict is through open dialogue–and both parties really listening to each other. Difficult conversations involve humanity, warmth, empathy and respect–which means that if your first attempt doesn’t work, try not to take it personally and just keep iterating until you find a way through. Difficult conversations might require several iterations before either party feels satisfied with the results; this is normal!
- Difficult conversations require both parties to stay flexible and open-minded throughout.
Difficult conversations really test your ability to listen, understand, empathize and collaborate with others — and can therefore open new levels of trust and respect. Difficult conversions might be challenging at times, but remain respectful, honest, and empathetic throughout the entire conversation — even if it means agreeing not to agree on certain topics!
Difficult conversations can bring about new insight or awareness from someone else’s perspective.
Difficult conversations are essential for building great relationships and professional environments.
Difficult conversations can also bring about new insight or awareness from someone else’s perspective.
Difficult conversations might require several iterations before either party feels satisfied with the results, this is normal!
Difficult conversations might even lead to a healthier work environment where everyone thrives and delivers the best results under the pressure of being held accountable for their actions.
Difficult conversions are essential in building great relationships and professional environments.
Difficult conversations bring closure to both parties involved (the one who is having difficult conversation as well as those receiving feedback) ensuring that they mutually understand each other better.
Difficult conversions are essential in building great relationships and professional environments. After all, you’d rather have tough conversations now than have them erupt later down the road or catch you by surprise! Difficult conversations might be challenging at times, but remain respectful, honest and empathetic throughout the entire conversation–even if it means agreeing not to agree on certain topics!
Business Distinction, Customer Experience, Leadership, Personal Distinction
Here’s a statistic that’s a bit difficult for me to wrap my head around: in July, 4,000,000 people quit their jobs! By the end of July, there were almost 11,000,000 jobs open — an all-time record, according to Harvard Business Review.
As I talk with entrepreneurs and leaders of large corporations, all are singing a similar tune: “It’s tough — almost impossible — to find and keep great people.”
Since the Great Recession of 2008, you have likely been hearing about the “skills gap.” That is, “there aren’t enough trained workers with skills needed to fill open jobs at a time when a record number of them are going unfilled.” But it does not stop there. We hear from constant news reports and analysis about the “Great Resignation” — a tsunami of employees walking away from their employment. It’s a critical challenge for every business, regardless of size.
In the book “Why People Resign: The Great Resignation and What to Do About It,” author Robert Bacal states that his research found eight principal reasons why people quit their jobs. A few of the reasons he discovered were that employees were resigning due to:
- lack of appreciation
- being under-challenged or overly challenged at work
- being paid less than their colleagues.
Bacal’s research discovered that when employees quit, it has much more to do with the overall employment experience than simple matters like salary.
For many years, I’ve been writing and speaking about the customer experience — always pointing out that we need to be equally concerned about the experiences that our internal customers (often called “employees” or “team members”) are having and not focus solely on external customers who buy our products and services.
In my first business book, “ALL Business is Show Business!” over twenty years ago, I wrote:
“The purpose of any business is to profitably create experiences so compelling that loyalty becomes assured.”
Many would read that sentence as advocating an Ultimate Customer Experience® for those who purchase from us — and it does!
- However, it’s also to state the superior importance of delivering an extraordinary experience for internal customers, as well — so their loyalty becomes the result of our efforts.
It’s amazing to me that if an employee quits, walks out of the building, and tries to leave with the company computer she has used during her employment, the manager would call the cops and have her arrested for theft. That same employee, however, can walk out with customer relationships, knowledge of the business, and recipient of an extensive investment in training and education from the company…and most managers just shrug and say, “That’s the way business works today!”
I promise you that it’s more likely their knowledge and relationships are significantly more important to your business than their company laptop!
Yet, you would never know that, because the vast majority of managers are blind to this. Some even think all employees are interchangeable. If they can’t find a good replacement from within, then they just hire from the outside without much thought or consideration for what is really going on.
(By the way — do you know your turnover rate? Do you know the primary reasons that people are leaving your employment? Have you done a bit of research to discover why great candidates aren’t accepting your job offers? Until you take these steps, you probably aren’t going to solve your employment problems.)
The reasons for this are many, but several sources report that the most common reasons people quit their jobs are:
- The work is not engaging.
- Leadership doesn’t care about employees.
- There are no opportunities to advance or grow.
- I don’t feel valued by my employer.
(You can probably think of more. But, please note, salary is not among the primary reasons that people quit.)
You probably have an acquisition strategy for customers — in other words, you’ve planned out how you are going to attract new customers for your business.
- You have one for external customers…how you’re going to get paying customers away from your competition and over to your side; and you probably have a recruitment approach for new employees, as well.
- The problem is that today’s marketplace requires a retention strategy that is engineered with as much passion and precision as your acquisition strategy. What is your detailed plan to keep the customers you have — both internal and external?
In this time where people feel little reticence about quitting a job, planning a distinctive retention strategy for your internal customers may be one of the most profitable steps you make this year.
Want to obtain and retain your customers — both internal and external? You’ll discover how when you join the Iconic Inner Circle. There’s zero risk — your first month is free and you can cancel anytime. Check it out: https://IconicInnercircle.com
Business Distinction, Leadership, Personal Distinction
No matter the size of the business, every entrepreneur seeks to build a foundation that will allow growth to happen. All entrepreneurs dream of success for themselves and their families, and hope to attract employees who will help them grow.
However, there are three common mistakes entrepreneurs make with their businesses. Certainly, all three can be corrected — if you know what those mistakes are. And the entrepreneur who understands these common mistakes will be ahead of the game — hopefully she or he will not make them in the first place!
First Mistake: Not building a solid foundation for growth
All entrepreneurs start small businesses and frequently use their personal credit cards and bank accounts to finance their operations in the beginning. But when capital begins to run low, the entrepreneur either must figure out how to raise more money — or cut back on their growth plans. Often, cash flow challenges are the entrepreneur’s worst nightmare.
Desperation is never something you want your customers or employees to perceive about your business. Businesses that are not capitalized correctly do not grow past the entrepreneur’s four walls. An entrepreneur who does not build a solid foundation early on is doomed to stay small — and often they merely hope to remain afloat.
Second Mistake: The entrepreneur’s attention is divided
When too many responsibilities are given to one person, there is no longer an entrepreneur at all! The entrepreneur can and should make the primary decisions. However, there are only so many hours in a day and only so much attention one entrepreneur can give to their business.
The entrepreneur must develop a team of professionals with strengths that complement his or her weaknesses. This doesn’t mean you must have a cadre of full-time employees!
Acquire people for your team who are better at the aspects where you need help. For some, that means you hire a part-time or freelance bookkeeper. For others, you may need accomplished sales professionals. Whatever it is for your individual situation, your business gets better when your team gets better. You cannot do it all.
Third Mistake: The entrepreneur is too isolated
Many times, entrepreneurs are guilty of not doing sufficient market research. This mistake often results in the entrepreneur starting a business with little or no customer interest — resulting in wasted time, money, and effort.
It is extremely important for entrepreneurs to have knowledge of their potential customers before they put substantial work into making their product or service available for purchase. It means you put people (customers and team members) ahead of products and services — and you listen to those who work for you and purchase from you.
It is vital to be flexible. There are few things more frustrating for consumers than the entrepreneur who refuses to adapt the product or service after receiving valid customer input. This may mean temporarily shelving a pet project that isn’t moving forward, or adjusting your business model so it better fits your customers’ needs. And remember, what people say matters to you and your business.
- However, a word of warning here: the entrepreneur must be careful not to let a customer’s suggestion change a product or service into something it was never intended to be!
It is vital that entrepreneurs stay focused on what they are trying to accomplish, while also considering what their customers are saying. You should embrace constructive criticism from customers and employees.
However, be careful not to let it take the place of your original vision. There’s likely a compelling reason you chose to do what you’re doing. Most often, feedback helps us make mid-course corrections — but it usually shouldn’t move us to change our destination.
When you take care of these three mistakes, you are well on your way to entrepreneurial success — and creating distinction in a hyper-competitive marketplace!
We discuss this entrepreneurial success in detail – and provide specific strategies for you to enhance your ability to obtain and retain customers – in our Iconic Inner Circle.
I’d love for you to check it out – your first month is FREE! Simply go to: https://IconicInnerCircle.com
