Blog « 800 CEO Read

April 2, 2012

The Art of Marketing: Chicago

Filed under: Blog,Uncategorized — Jon @ 12:45 pm

Attention locals!

The folks at The Art Of are putting on a big event in Chicago that you won’t want to miss. Six of the most highly influential social media and marketing speakers today–Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Mitch Joel, Randi Zuckerberg, Keith Ferrazzi, and Avinash Kaushik–, are on deck for this year’s The Art of Marketing conference at The Chicago Theater on Tuesday, April 24th.
Here are the details:

When?

Tuesday, April 24, 2012
8:45AM – 4:45PM

Where?

The Chicago Theatre
175 N State St
Chicago, IL 60601
(312) 795-0034
www.thechicagotheatre.com

Exciting, right? Well, 800-CEO-READ has two ways to make it even more exciting…

~~FREE TICKETS~~ Thanks to all who participated in the ticket giveaway!

We’ve got a pair of tickets to give away for the event. Leave a comment on this post telling us What You Think the Most Challenging Aspect of Marketing is Today. We’ll pick our favorite two this Wednesday (April 4) and hook you up with tickets.

SPECIAL DISCOUNT

If you don’t win the free tickets, we’ve still got something for you: Discounts!

Tickets are normally $399 for the event. But if you use promo code “800CR” when you check out, here’s the discount you’ll receive:

1-2 tickets: $349

3 or more tickets: $299

Click here to register, and don’t forget to use the code above to get the discount on your tickets!

To learn more about the event, visit The Art of Marketing.

Comments (43)

March 29, 2012

The Welcomer Edge

Filed under: Blog,Customer Service — Jon @ 2:04 pm

When we have a bad experience with a company, we get upset, we’re apt to tell someone else about it, and we never return to that business. Most of the time, though, we interact with people, give them our money, get something in return, and move on our way without really thinking about it. But once in awhile, we have a great experience, a genuinely positive interaction, one that we not only want to tell others about, but one that we we’re attracted to have again and again. The people that create those experiences offer a high level of interest in us as people, and a passionate desire to help us with what we need.

Richard Shapiro calls these people ‘Welcomers,’ and his new book The Welcomer Edge: Unlocking the Secrets to Repeat Business explains how to create a company of Welcomers that bring customers back because of that welcoming and positive experience.

I’m a big advocate of pointing out good customer service stories when they happen. Sure, it’s the employee’s job to provide good service, but as I mentioned above, how often does something truly remarkable happen? When it does, it makes a big difference in our lives – from how we view a brand, to how we talk about business, even down to how we feel that day. It’s more important than we might think at first, and Richard’s book is a great reminder of the times when the actions of one person within an organization can affect nearly our entire perception of that company in a positive way.

Following my reading of the book, I sent Richard a few questions which he’s answered below. Business owners and managers take note. This is hugely valuable, yet such simple information you can put to use now.

How do people in service positions become robots?

Richard Shapiro: Unfortunately, many managers and owners of businesses act and think like robots themselves. They train their associates on the stock, how to use the checkout equipment and what the company’s return policies might be. But rarely do they educate their associates that the most important part of their job is to build relationships with customers. There were some Welcomers that I interviewed as part of my research who said it is sometimes difficult to act welcoming if they work in an environment where even their managers don’t seem to care if customers ever return again. Companies also need to have policies in place that allow frontline associates to be empowered to make customers happy, which sometimes requires “bending” some of the rules. Lastly, if management does not acknowledge and demonstrate appreciation to their associates, it doesn’t reinforce the positive behavior that is required to connect with customers on each and every encounter.

If a business (i.e. a restaurant) is extremely busy, how can employees still be Welcomers and connect with their customers?

Richard Shapiro: One of the best ways to connect with customers is to give them a big smile whether you know them or not. A smile can make the customer feel more comfortable and it takes zero time. Another suggestion is to provide the customer with your name, even if it is on your badge. For example, “Hi, my name is John, isn’t this weather unbelievable today?” Lastly, people love to hear their name. For the majority of all retail transactions, customers use either a debit or credit card with their name printed on it. At the conclusion of the meal, a Welcomer should say, “Mr. Jones, I really enjoyed waiting on you today. I work here during the week and would love to take care of you again.” The goal is to always leave the customer with a good feeling. Even saying an additional good-bye as the customers are walking towards the door can make them feel good. You can smile or say hello or good-bye to more than one person at a time. It takes less than 15 seconds to make a connection with a customer and the ROI will be amazing.

Can pay create Welcomers?

Richard Shapiro: Natural Welcomers don’t need an incentive to always make customers feel welcomed, important and appreciated. They enjoy meeting new people and building relationships, however, they need to be rewarded and recognized. Welcomers appreciate being appreciated and part of that appreciation is compensating them for the amazing job they are doing at building and creating long-term customer relationships. For those associates that act and think robotically, developing an incentive program that will focus on them not only handling the transaction, but explaining the benefits of connecting with customers and conveying a feeling that you want to see the customers again, can definitely change behaviors if management conducts themselves in the same manner.

What recommendations do you have for consumers who NEED what an UnWelcomer company has, and there are no other resources?

Richard Shapiro: When a customer comes across a frontline associate who is not very welcoming, I would suggest that the customer try to connect with the associate by asking him or her how their day is going. Tell the associate you could use their help, because most people like to help. The customer might also say, “If you were the customer, how do you think you would want the issue resolved?” It is just as beneficial for the customer to try to build a relationship with a frontline associate as it is for the frontline associate to connect with the customer. It’s a two-way street.

A key part of the book is that companies lose a lot of profit without Welcomers. What are some tips on finding and hiring Welcomers to get on track?

Richard Shapiro: Every Welcomer I interviewed had a history of helping people. They worked in soup kitchens, volunteered at community and charitable events, coached or babysat kids because they enjoyed doing it. Their families helped build the local firehouse, were teachers or social workers or just enjoyed helping others. Learning how applicants have helped others throughout their lifetime, even if they are in their teens or early twenties, will assist your company in finding Welcomers. Customer service is all about helping people obtain what they are looking for, so it makes good sense that those associates that like to help and have a history of helping will make the best representatives. If you only find one Welcomer as you start the process, make sure that you place that person in the position where everyone will benefit; i.e. hostess station, scheduling appointments, coat-check, receptionist, etc.

Want more? Grab a box of these books for your team, and give your organization the Welcomer Edge.

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March 15, 2012

The Innovative Team

Filed under: Blog,Innovation,Leadership — Jon @ 3:43 pm

To some degree, we’re all creative, and can all become better at what we do and how we do it. But think about a time you were in a group of people where you maybe felt like withdrawing and not speaking up because you felt intimidated that you might say the wrong thing. In fact, what you might have said, right or wrong, may have lead the discussion into a different direction; a direction that lead to an innovative result.

Often, it’s the people we’re with that can drive how we contribute to innovation. Perhaps there’s another situation you can recall, where everyone seemed quiet, and you were compelled to speak up and try to instigate input. Again, how we interact with others not only effects what we contribute, but how it causes others to provide input that helps move things forward.

This is the issue portrayed in Chris Grivas and Gerard Puccio’s recent book: The Innovative Team: Unleashing Creative Potential for Breakthrough Results. Written in a parable style, the book tells the story of a business team trying to deliver a project for a client. Through their journey, they break through their dysfunction by understanding the dynamics present within their team, outline a new and effective set of tools for enhanced performance, and deliver the project successfully, while also enabling themselves to work better in all capacities of their respective roles.

The Innovative Team is a personable and insightful read to help management, team leaders, or anyone interested in working better within groups of people to develop our own innovation skills, and assist in developing those skills in the teams we work in.

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March 13, 2012

The Art of Engagement

Filed under: Blog,Leadership — Jon @ 10:32 am

Another highlight from the recent B2B Summit in Miami was meeting Jim Haudan, who’s company Root Learning helps align companies on strategy by bridging the gaps between doers, managers, and leaders. Jim was the keynote at the event, and highlighted some great examples from his book about how to create engagement between people for successful results.

His book is called The Art of Engagement: Bridging the Gap Between People and Possibilities. The book starts by telling some great stories about situations that changed based on the level of engagement. When people understand each other, and when they understand the big picture, things can move forward smoothly under a shared momentum. When people don’t understand these things, and when they only see situations from their own perspective, things don’t move forward smoothly, and in effect hinder the movement of others involved. As the book explains, reality is a canyon between the engaged and non-engaged.

What happens next in the book is very interesting. A series of well-executed drawings are featured, detailing a variety of realist, yet conceptual, situations that define various challenges, systems, workflow, etc. Jim and his company (and the book) use these visualizations to create shared understanding. The idea is that by looking at visual representations together, people form understanding collectively. This clarity is absorbed as a group, as the picture reveals that everyone involved is a part of something bigger. This speaks not only to the issue at hand, but also taps into the fundamental human drive for being part of a tribe.

From there, people become the focus, not the problems or situations, and by understanding together, and working together, new heights in a company’s culture and progress are reached. This, of course, gives leaders a better understanding of their people, and helps them further develop strategies that keep people engaged.

Word is that Jim has another book in the works, but don’t miss this one as the groundwork to his interesting (and effective) ideas.

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March 9, 2012

10 Truths About Leadership

Filed under: Blog,Leadership — Jon @ 4:18 pm

This past week, I attended an excellent conference put on by the Geehan Group. I met many fascinating people and was inspired by the discussions that came out of panels and presentations. One of the people I met was Pete Luongo, whom I sat next to at dinner one night. Even after a long day, Pete was an intense character of positive energy. Almost immediately he began talking about the importance of leaders to focus on people, elaborating on the effect of that behavior not only to others, but to the leaders themselves. He described his breakthrough moment, and that he’s been a different person ever since. I asked him if he’d ever written a book.

If he hadn’t, I would have told him to do so immediately, but in fact, he has quite an excellent book under his belt: 10 Truths About Leadership: It’s Not Just About Winning. Pete speaks from the heart, but his words resonate with anyone that’s been in the challenging position of managing or running a business. Many mistakes can be made, but if we focus on the truths we know to be, we can make better decisions; decisions that satisfy the current situation, and create long-term success.

Here’s a few discussed in the book: Past Performance Predicts Future Behavior, Greatness is Achieved by Those Who Have Established the Habits of Discipline and Risk Taking, and If We Have No Trust, We Have No Relationship. Each of these truths are explored through Pete’s experience as CEO of The Berry Company, and through his understanding of how human relationships work. By cutting through the rules of how business owners generally hire, develop employees, sell, and grow their business, Pete discovered, and shares in this book, how people are at the heart of it all, and with the right people following the right vision, success is imminent.

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March 1, 2012

The Elephant in the Room

Filed under: Blog — Jon @ 3:15 pm

For some, relationships are easy to talk about. For others, that discussion is avoided, either out of fear, ego, or the perception that it’s just not a topic to verbalize. So, even talking about them can be complicated, and being active within them, even more so.

There are many historical examples of leaders who had great relationships, and because of that, experienced great success. Quite often, success is dependent on the quality of the relationships a leader possesses. And, of course, the opposite is also true. When relationships are bad, leaders struggle.

This is the focus of Diana McLain Smith’s recent book The Elephant in the Room: How Relationships Make or Break the Success of Leaders and Organizations. The book begins:

“Relationships? Get over it!” a leader once told me, looking askance. “We’re not married. We just have to work together.” Yes, and that’s exactly the point, I replied. You do have to work together, and if you don’t get your relationships right, a lot can go wrong – both for you and your organization.”

From there, various examples of positive and negative relationships among well-known leaders are discussed, identifying along the way how we readers can learn from both scenarios to help develop our own relationships. In fact, this book is less “business stories” than it is an educational guide, helping readers understand the complexity of relationships and following with extensive direction on how to strengthen and transform them.

Relationships can be affected in the moment through a surprising turn of events. They can also change over time based on patterns and assumptions. Our understanding of this, and our ability to positively manage relationships for both short and long-term can be integral to our success, and is the aim of Smith’s work with this book.

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February 28, 2012

To Forgive Design

Filed under: Blog,Design — Jon @ 2:16 pm

As consumers, we love products that look nice and are easy to use. As humans, we enjoy created environments that enhance our quality of life while offering an interesting visualization to the natural world. But sometimes, our phones don’t work properly, or our cars break down. Other times, bridges collapse, and oil spills destroy oceans and wildlife. In these instances, we are often quick to blame the design.

In his new book, To Forgive Design: Understanding Failure, Henry Petroski makes the case that there is much more involved in these situations than simply poor design, from the human systems the design exists within, to other natural elements and complex behaviors that can be difficult or impossible for engineers and designers to predict, no matter how much research has been done in advance. Because of this, Petroski begins at the starting point:

“Failure to imagine the possibility of failure is the most profound mistake engineers can make.”

Failure is a major theme of the book, and is discussed as a way to become less fearful of it, and more intelligent about how to handle it when it occurs.

“Managed failure” is something often built into systems and products to be faulty in a way that compensates some other portion of the product or its usage. But it’s the unmanaged or unplanned failures that cause the most disruption. These, Petroski infers, need to be better understood – both as insight for how we react to things, and as a guide for how we design within our own work – whether we’re engineers, or not.

There are nearly countless case studies within the book that show how well-designed and engineered situations have failed, and how in each case, it was not simply design (though that was where the flaw was revealed) that caused the failure. Per the title, the book calls us to forgive design for its failures when they occur, and look more at how the nearly infinite variables that surround design can have a huge effect on how well that design maintains over time. This is a highly fascinating read for anyone interested in why things are designed the way they are, especially when they go wrong.

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February 22, 2012

Who’s in the Room?

Filed under: Big Ideas,Blog,Book Reviews,Communication — bob @ 8:31 am

There is a misconception in American business that Bob Frisch says is getting in the way of getting things done and hewants to correct it. That’s the misconception that senior management teams, or SMTs, make the decisions in business today.

I may have shocked or surprised you with that statement, but if you have ever asked, or been asked, “Why wasn’t I in the room,” then you’ve had a taste of the challenge. Frisch outlines it all, as well as what to do about it, in his book, Who’s in the Room? How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them.

Frisch, a managing partner with strategy consultancy, The Strategic Offsites Group, has worked with many organizations, including Fortune 500 companies to family businesses and even the Federal government. He advocates the radical step of unseating the SMT as the “epicenter of decision making.” In writing of the real way decisions are made in businesses, he says:

“The senior team may be consulted or informed, but the most important decisions are rarely made by a group like this sitting around a conference table. Instead, the organization leader typically calls in an inner core of intimate advisors–a kitchen cabinet– along with any other individuals who might shed light on a specific situation. It is this team with no name–ad hoc, unofficial, and flexible in makeup–that is the group in the rom as the actual decisions get made. Yet we all persist in believing that the senior team should be the forum for decision-making.

It can be a destructive belief.

Frisch Recommends that the role of the SMT in guiding the president or CEO (the person at the top) begin by calling on the SMT to advise on three areas, leaving the ad hoc teams to advise on more specific challenges, issues and opportunities. The SMT should advise on:

• Developing a shared view of where the organization needs to go and why.

• Managing a prioritized set of strategic initiatives designed to get there.

• Managing dependencies within and among initiatives to ensure their success.

In short, he says the three areas are vision, allocation of resources, and execution–what he says are three of the most critical responsibilities of top leadership.

Frisch believes that this will leave the company with “the right teams addressing the right issues at the right time, a renewed sense of collective purpose for the organization’s, most senior and valued leaders, and, most importantly, bosses seeing the end to people asking, “Why wasn’t I in the room?”

Frisch draws on his many years of experience working with companies and provides plenty of examples of how to get advisory teams and groups aligned with their purposes so that confusion regarding roles and the appropriate areas on which each group should advise the boss on.

Who’s in the Room? is a great guide for any leader to use in mapping out his or her advisory teams and get the company working in the same direction.

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February 15, 2012

Best Business Books of 2011 Discussion

Filed under: Blog,Book Awards,Book Reviews — Jon @ 3:25 pm

As part of our ongoing discussion of the best books from our 2011 Business Book Awards, Translator hosted a very special Lab this week, inviting us in to continue this discussion in a public setting. Their Lab sessions are always interesting, ranging from talk of current business trends, new ideas, cultural phenomena and beyond. It was a pleasure and honor to bring the books from our Awards as points of discussion in this setting. Thanks again to those who attended and joined in the conversation!

Each attendee also received a complimentary copy of the Best Business Book of 2011: Jim Collins’ and Morten Hansen’s Great By Choice.

Below is a video where we talk about the winning book from the Sales and Marketing category: Gary Vaynerchuk’s The Thank You Economy.

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February 2, 2012

The Start-Up of You

Filed under: Blog,Uncategorized — Jon @ 11:36 am

It used to be that there were entrepreneurs, and then the rest of us who were happy to help others achieve their goals and somehow find our own in the process. That’s changed. Many people are pursuing their own business ideas, and catching up on ideas and knowledge to help them run that business. For those that work for others, they too sense that stability is not what it used to be, and might be mentally preparing for the next step – whether they decide to take it, or it’s decided for them.

Here’s a book that can help people on either side of the fence. Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha’s The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career. It begins with the premise that there actually are not two sides of the fence, that all humans are entrepreneurs. Each of us have the will to create and survive.

Why the start up of you? When you start a company, you make decisions in an information-poor, time-compressed, resource-constrained environment. There are no guarantees or safety nets, so you take on a certain amount of risk. The competition is changing; the market is changing. The conditions in which entrepreneurs start and grow companies are the conditions we all now live in when fashioning a career. Whether you’re working toward a promotion or simply trying to hold on to your job – you never know what’s going to happen next. Information is limited. Resources are tight. Competition is fierce. The world is changing. This means you need to be adapting all the time. And if you fail to adapt, no one – not your employer, not the government – is going to catch you when you fall.

Some will recognize co-author Reid Hoffman as the co-founder of LinkedIn, a social network for professionals to share their work histories, skills, education, and career goals. It’s clear that Hoffman knows of the world he speaks of, and understands the changes that have occurred as people try to position themselves and their skills within an increasingly competitive pool of opportunities.

And some might say that this has always been the case. It’s always been challenging to get a job, to stand out in the crowd, to have one’s unique and individual talent be seen as valuable. As true as that is, what this book clearly points out is what has changed, is the movement away from labor, the movement back toward ourselves as creative beings and survivors. When one focuses on these attributes, on themselves, they develop their skills and unique talents in a stronger way, rather than looking at which opportunities are available, and attempting to fit themselves within that. The result is more control over one’s destiny, and the ability to discover opportunities based on their strengths and interests as opposed to taking the best option available.

This is a great book to help anyone on this path, currently employed, or not. It’s filled with information on creating competitive advantage, strengthening your network, generating opportunities, better understanding risk, and becoming more successful on your own terms.

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