13 Signs of Burnout and How To Help You Avoid It
By Henry Neils

In some ways it was a typical breakfast meeting. The waitress was pleasant, the eggs were average, and the restaurant was full of busy people. We shared a cup of black, coffee-like substance, and the first few times my client took a sip he managed to spill quite a bit of it. His trembling hand was just one of the symptoms of his burnout. That’s why we were meeting. He wanted to know if I could help him.

I picked up a fork and explained that as long as I used it for eating, the fork would last indefinitely. However, if I began to use it to drive nails or dig trenches, it would soon break. The key was to use it for what it was designed to do.

The look in his eyes told me he got it, but I still went on to say that people are like the fork. When they do what they are not designed to do, they eventually break.

Sure enough, his MAPP showed that he was designed to work on projects where there was a definite goal. He derived immense satisfaction from reaching goals. He also needed to work by himself about half the time. He was a scientist and enjoyed lab time, doing calculations, and interpreting test results.

What his job required on a day-to-day basis was another story. His primary task was to supervise a dozen people and maintain operations. No goals. No projects. No time alone. Consequently, his job was sucking the life out of him.

Much credit for his recovery goes to his boss who was willing to change the job content to fit the design of a valuable employee.

So how do you know if you, a loved one, or someone who reports to you is suffering from burnout? Here are the early warning signs.
Chronic fatigue - exhaustion, tiredness, a sense of being physically run down
Anger at those making demands
Self-criticism for putting up with the demands
Cynicism, negativity, and irritability
A sense of being besieged
Exploding easily at seemingly inconsequential things
Frequent headaches and gastrointestinal disturbances
Weight loss or gain
Sleeplessness and depression
Shortness of breath
Suspiciousness
Feelings of helplessness
Increased degree of risk taking

Fight burnout. Do what you were designed to do. If you (or you know someone who does) fit this description have him/her take the MAPP Assessment.

Take a close look at what is said about you in your MAPP, and what you are naturally motivated toward with regard to your work. Sometimes a simple change at work can help you avoid many (if not all) of the early warning signs of Burnout.

Henry Neils
President
www.Assessment.com

Henry Neils is President and Founder of Assessment.com, the leading online career assessment company focused on helping employees and employers work together for their mutual benefit. Millions of people have gained personal insight into their careers by using the tools, such as MAPP™ (Motivational Appraisal of Personal Potential), provided at Assessment.com.

http://www.assessment.com/mappmembers/avoidingburnout.asp?Accnum=06-5210-010.00

Characteristics of Great Sales Negotiators

Characteristics of Great Sales Negotiators

Virtually everyone in sales is required to negotiate. After conducting hundreds of workshops and working with thousands of people during the last decade, I have discovered that most sales people are not as effective at negotiating as they could be.

However, I do come across great sales negotiators from time-to-time and have noticed that they typically have a few things in common. Here are the characteristics they usually possess.

Understanding of the negotiating process. Highly effective negotiators recognize that negotiating is a process, not just something that is done when discussing the terms and conditions of a solution. Negotiating is much more than haggling about price. It requires an understanding of the dynamics that affect the process and influence the behavior of people. Great negotiators invest time learning different tactics and strategies and how each technique contributes to the overall outcome.

Focus on win-win. Win-win means that both parties feel good about the outcome of the negotiating process. Some books that state win-win solutions are not possible in business negotiating; the authors write that someone usually gives away more than they should and the outcome becomes a win-lose situation. Great negotiators don't believe that. They help their customer try and solve problems and look for opportunities to give as much value as possible. They also know how and when to limit their concessions, give-aways, and discounts so they can work out an agreement that is equitable for both parties.

Patience. Too many people search for the quick fix and try to close the sale as fast as possible so they can move on the next prospect. Great sales negotiators recognize that patience is a virtue and that rushing the process often leads to an undesirable outcome. They don't hurry to reach an agreement. Instead, they take time to gather the necessary information. They think carefully about possible solutions. They take their time during the entire process. This is critical because major mistakes are made when we try to reach an agreement too quickly. We rush through the process, not giving the other person's offer ample attention, and often end up with an outcome that is win-lose. Just because we were in a hurry.

Creativity. Most great negotiators are also very creative. They use their problem-solving skills to determine the best solution and look for unique ways to achieve their goal. A friend of mine was once embroiled in a bitter lawsuit with a company and after months of negotiation, he came up with a solution that ended the suit. He stretched out beyond the normal answers and developed an alternative that was accepted by the other party. In other words, he got creative.

Willingness to experiment. Negotiating is a very dynamic process because no two people are alike. What works extremely well in one situation can backfire in another. That's why great negotiators practise using a variety of concepts and techniques. They experiment with different strategies, solutions, and tactics. And a small failure does not prevent them from experimenting with new ideas in the future.

Confidence. Great negotiators are confident when they enter a negotiation. They aren't arrogant or rude or cocky-they are simply confident. They have developed a high belief in their ability to reach an win- win agreement. They are confident that they can handle anything that comes their way in a negotiation and this confidence is developed through experience. Great negotiators evaluate themselves regularly. They learn from their mistakes and victories. They focus on improving their skill. They develop an internal confidence that is unshakable.

Keen listening skills. People will tell you virtually everything you need to know IF you ask the right questions AND listen carefully to their answers. I personally believe that this one attribute is the most important skill in selling and negotiating. I remember my wife talking to a prospect on the telephone and at one point during the conversation she sensed that he had more to say. She waited patiently and listened carefully and the other person eventually gave her valuable information that helped her close the sale. Unfortunately, too many sales people simply wait for their turn to talk, or even worse, interrupt their prospect. This lack of listening means they often miss hearing key information that will assist them in the negotiations.

Negotiating is not a skill that is easily acquired. It takes time, effort and energy. If you want to improve your negotiating ability you must be ready to work at it. Invest the time learning the dynamics and science of negotiating. And be prepared to push yourself out of your comfort zone.

� 2007 Kelley Robertson, All rights reserved.

Behold the Power of We
By Rebecca Weeks

We Media conference attendees debate if the internet can move us from the age of access to the age of activism.

At last week's We Media conference in Miami titled "We Media: How Audiences are Shaping the Future of News and Information," one of the few statements that participants could agree on was that new voices, new technology and new platforms have leveled the media playing field.

Although We Media, a think-tank organization, has been established for several years, its events and reports are now having an increasingly larger impact on the media industry and its participants. Not only are they spawning innovation and collaboration that is creating new businesses, they are supporting people and concepts that aren't necessarily for profit-making purposes.

Hosted by the John S. and James. L Knight Foundation at the University of Miami, the conference attracted leading journalists, bloggers, publishers, entrepreneurs and investment professionals.

As a writer and internet media executive, I attended the event with the purpose of hearing not how old media and citizen media are continuing to struggle against each other, but rather how they can work together to benefit society as a whole as well as create change in our communities.

Perhaps one of the most lively panel discussions over the course of two days, titled "Soft Power," began with moderator Chris Nolan, founder and editor of Spot-On.com, stating that the internet is changing everything -- our work, our speed, our communication -- basically, our entire lives.

A New Form of Expression
Nolan and the panelists pointed out that interactive media is giving end users information, access, control and dialogue unlike anything we've ever imagined. Whereas, blogging is a revolutionary concept because it gives individuals control and a platform, but it's not a new expression; it's just a new form of expression.

"The emergence of self-publishing tools is having big implications because it means the wisdom of the audience can be brought together," Jay Rosen of PressThink and NewAssignment.net said.

But are these new tools enabling consumers enough to gain more power and influence in society than government and businesses?

"The internet is reducing the cost for like-minded people to locate each other and share info and collaborate," Rosen said. "Only now are we able to generate a wider influence and create this type of soft power."

"I think the definition of real power is being heard," said David Sasaki of Global Voices, an aggregator of international writers. "Participatory media lets everyone make themselves heard. New media is being structured so that the audience participates at will."

But is being heard enough? Like the question about a tree falling in the forest, if a blogger writes his opinion about a subject he considers important, does the rest of the world care and do anything about it?

"The way people organize is the true power," a panelist said. "Soft power is social, as in 'people power.' When people connect by a commonality, like a task or a hobby or a belief, they are infinitely stronger than if they were standing alone,"

Sanjeev Chatterjeev, a documentary filmmaker and vice dean of the University of Miami School of Communication, added a different perspective. "But the vision for connectedness has a challenge," he said. "If we are to build collected authoring, as we see with Wikipedia, the power ends up being in the hands of an editor."

The conference producers displayed CNN.com's homepage on a screen that featured Anna Nicole Smith's headshot and the headline, "Anna Nicole Smith Dies."

Looking in disgust at the screen, Nolan asked, "What if an editor decides that this is the most important news story of the day and we as the audience have to rely on his decision? How can we improve the news industry to include stories that will truly be in demand?"

Put another way, can news outlets provide added value to what people already care about?

"But this kind of stuff is exactly what they demand," an audience attendee said. "Everyone's reading Us Weekly and People all day. Maybe audiences need to be told what's important."

"It's easy to learn what's popular in today's society because those things bubble up intensely on the web," Rosen added.


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The Importance of Access

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I reflected back to a previous panel session during which a speaker asked, "Will we see a Craigslist for news?" Hiding in the back of the room, Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, shook his head and quietly said, "Not from us."

During an earlier session, Robin Miller from Slashdot stood up in the audience and said, "I'm a writer and need to make money. There are investment professionals talking about supposedly great plans to build site and feed aggregators. But why aren't I hearing them say that they want to pay people for creating content?"

A venture capitalist responded by saying, "We do realize that we need to highlight the experts that are passionate about certain subjects, but classic editorialized articles are not getting eyeballs. Community and tools get the most traffic on the websites in our portfolio."

I was brought back to the present moment as Nolan called on me to talk about the combination of media strategies.

"I'm surprised that today's discussions have focused on one versus the other, and us versus them, such as editorial versus blogging and big publishers versus citizen media," I said. "At Real Girls Media Network, we believe that all voices can coexist.

"For example, our first site, DivineCaroline.com, fuses editorial, user-submitted stories and community. It gives all women a platform for expression and connection, and everyone feels worthy of being heard."

Success of a Shared Vision
While no single formula seems to be leading the new media landscape, a blend of old and new models is starting to take shape and create substantial revenue, and many investment professionals don't mind being patient while entrepreneurs test out a few models. As one venture capitalist added, "YouTube only recently started figuring out a revenue model."

A Twin Cities Herald executive said, "We're trying to do the public radio model in which we take community stories and other interesting tidbits, but we're still trying to find the right business model."

Another audience member said, "We're using a donation model for news. People can donate dollars for stories that they want to see happen. We're trying to persuade volunteers to give their knowledge and time to this effort. I don't think anyone should rely on thinking about money and only money."

Serving the community seemed to be a common theme among writers and visionaries hoping to make waves in today's age of access.

"The success of shared vision depends on serving a specific audience's needs," said Gaby Bruna, a University of Miami student and head of the Media for Change project. "Look at how Facebook lets college kids connect when they're not on campus together, or how DivineCaroline allows women to find a philanthropic cause they're passionate about. It'll be a great day when the internet as a resource can guide an individual to take action in her community and see a real transformation."

Alan Rosenblatt, executive director of the Internet Advocacy Center, wholeheartedly agreed that the internet can inspire action.

"The internet can do a lot of things," he said. "But it is most empowering to use it to inform people, influence others and corporations and change policies for the common good. People have come to expect just talk, talk, talk. Let's take action."

The audience cheered as I sat wondering and hoping that the age of activism was finally upon us.

Rebecca Weeks is director business development at Real Girls Media, a new media network that aims to create the leading destinations online for women and girls.

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How to Really Measure Engagement

What is Enterprise Marketing Management and will it change the game?

At a recent ad:tech conference, Hunter Hastings, CEO and Co-Founder of The EMM Group, gave a show-stopping keynote presentation defining the metrics, technology and business processes behind the hotly debated concept of consumer "engagement." David Hutchinson, Senior Vice President of Program Partners followed up with Hastings to help further define this topic within the broader context of enterprise marketing management.

Hunter Hastings is CEO and Co-Founder of the Enterprise Marketing Management Group, a firm dedicated to integrated demand process management.

David Hutchinson: So for starters, please share with us Hunter Hastings' up-to-the-minute definition of enterprise marketing management.

Hunter Hastings: Enterprise Marketing Management (EMM) is the systematic management of the entire integrated demand process (marketing and sales). It takes its cue from the productivity revolution on the supply side that took place over the last 30 years, driven by a single unified enterprise supply chain vision. Enterprise marketing management combines marketing process engineering, robust and scientific measurement and customer-centric organization, and it enables them all via technology.

Hutchinson: Sounds a lot like Customer Relationship Management (CRM), or the Integrated Marketing Communications principles advocated by IMC sages like Don E. Schultz. Is EMM somehow better or more germane to today's marketing centric organizations than these other, three letter acronyms?

Hastings: CRM and IMC are components of enterprise marketing management, but they are unable to help clients manage the entire demand generation system.

Enterprise marketing management helps clients: 1) generate insights (and understand the value of their insights portfolio), 2) advance from insights to brand domains and brand equity frameworks and innovation platforms, 3) to create long-term equity appreciation plans and annual marketing plans, and 4) to implement those plans effectively as well as measuring their performance accurately for continuous improvement.

The magic of supply-side optimization is that supply-siders figured out how to optimize for the entire system. The magic of enterprise marketing management lies in the same secret: it's a holistic management system, not a component view.

Hutchinson: So tell us about the EMM Group. Where "EMM" companies like Unica seem to be more about enterprise software, your company advocates the use of software, but only as a support system for leveraging customer insights, which, if done correctly, seem ultimately to be about crafting and refining internal processes to increase brand equity. Fair?

Hastings: Right on. Enterprise marketing management is process + metrics + organization + technology. You can't apply the technology until the process is in place (that's one of the lessons of the supply-side revolution: it's dangerous to automate a bad process).

Sound marketing process begins with customer insights (at EMM Group, we have an insights generation process). These insights are turned into innovation, and the innovation is delivered to customers via the go-to-market process. Brand building (a term we believe applies to both B2C and B2B marketing) is another process.

All of these processes should be captured and turned into standards; the roles and responsibilities of the organization should be defined to implement the processes effectively. And the metrics of the process and t
heir outcomes must be defined. Only then does it make sense to apply technology: software embeds the process and puts it on everyone's desktop so that they can follow it, collaborate around it and implement it.

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A sound and universal way to measure engagement

Hutchinson: In a noisy attention economy, the metrics of reach, frequency, impressions and click through seem to be crumbling beneath a growing need for more relevant metrics, like say, (drum roll please) "engagement."

Of course, the trouble with engagement is that it's tough to measure. But at a recent ad:tech conference, you presented to a full house what seemed like a perfectly sound and universal way to measure engagement. Has EMM Group split the atom here?

Hastings: I like the analogy (especially since it was a scientist from my Alma Mater, Cambridge University, who identified the nucleic model of the atom).

The analogy we used at ad:tech was another scientific one: the transition from one S-Curve to another. In technology, the S-curve portrays the life of a technology that starts with a disruptive innovation, advances through competitive exploration of possibilities to achieve the breakthrough to industry standards, and then reaps its economic rewards in maturity.

As it does so, the next S-curve starts to form as a new disruptive cycle begins, and will eventually replace the old one.

Marketing is at the end of its old S-curve, where no matter how much effort we put into it, we will not improve returns.

One of the phenomena of the old S Curve is the model of marketing communications as a funnel. We put communications in at the top, and it gurgles through the funnel to turn -- by increasingly smaller percentages -- communications into awareness, and then awareness into consideration, trial, repeat purchase and loyalty.

It's frighteningly inefficient, and the inefficiency is designed in!

The new S-curve is based on the new concept of customer engagement. Engagement is a dialog conducted via a multiplicity of contact points, selected by the customer. Engagement is built around two key changes in the operating environment:

1) First, the addressable consumer or customer. Increasingly, we are able to reach our customer individually as an electronic address as that consumer moves between a desktop computer attached to the internet, a laptop on the go, a web-enabled mobile hand held communications device or an iPod. They might be using email, instant messenger, blogging, knowledge management tools, collaborative business software or shopping. We can reach them at most times and follow them around the web to analyze behavior that reveals their needs.

2) Second, customer control over the content they choose to receive. Advertising -- or indeed anything that we might typically have thought of as "marketing communications" that simply interrupts them before they have put their hands up to say "please tell me something" -- is anathema.

Engagement is customer controlled. To engage with a customer, we must understand their needs and preferences pretty much as individuals, or at least in very, very finely segmented groups, and communicate with them when they choose, rather than when the brand owner chooses. Engagement requires personal, individual meaning, and therefore it requires personal, individual understanding.

In order to become a standard for marketing, the first requirement of customer engagement as a marketing tool is that we have measures of engagement. At ad:tech, we introduced the concepts of :
Customer Engagement Points
Share of Customer Engagement
Engagement Conversion Rate

These are the cornerstones of the new engagement measurement system. They generate derivative measures like cost per engagement point and cost per share point of engagement.

It's a complete new paradigm, and it unleashes the new marketing S-Curve. Its key points are:
It embraces all contacts with the consumer from the web to word of mouth to conventional communications. The customer tells us what qualifies as a contact.
Every contact has a value, weighted by combining cognitive value (information generating a rational shift in favor of the brand), affective value (generating a positive feeling about the brand) and persuasive value (generating a shift in behavior towards the brand).
All the values roll up to a total brand engagement score. This is a global currency. A brand engagement point in Berlin can be compared to a brand engagement point in Beijing, or Buffalo or Buenos Aries.

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What does this do to the brand-agency relationship?

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Hutchinson: So what does this new environment, or discipline of process, metrics and "hyper-trackability" in modern marketing do to the brand-agency relationship?

Hastings: The old form of agency relationship is at the top of the old S-curve. It's run out of steam.

The new relationship has to be built around integrated marketing: how to get the most Brand Engagement Points (BEP) from the array of communications, website contacts, CRM, trade shows, word-of-mouth, product placement and product-in-use experience, all at the most efficient cost per BEP.

That requires a complex integration algorithm, and it requires a single role of integrator.

It remains to be seen if any agency can operate the new algorithm. They can run the model and do the math, but can they play the integrator role? That requires the objective allocation of dollars between all the methods of contacting the customer for engagement. It requires that the choice of contact precede the choice of creative theme, a difficult shift of priorities for agencies.

It was thought that the creation of the new conglomerates like WPP and Omnicom would offer integration to the client but it has not happened yet. We see the integrator role being played inside the client organization. That makes the agency just one of a choice of vendors, and a choice that is governed by scientific resource allocation methods.

On what will the new relationship be built? We believe it will be in efficiency (cost of service optimization) rather than creativity. We don't see a lot of agencies stepping up to the plate.

Hutchinson: Perhaps these pressures between the new and old S Curves are also contributing to the grim statistics we keep seeing from Spencer Stuart, wherein the average tenure of today's CMO keeps dropping: from 23.6 months in 2004 to 23.2 months in 2006?

Hastings: The CMO is not a real "C" in many organizations. The idea of having a head of marketing on a par with the CFO, CTO and so on is a vaguely nice concept, but the responsibilities are not well defined.

And the reason for that is that most CEOs don't understand marketing and its role in the corporation. They appoint CMOs and expect some kind of a miracle to happen, such as great PR or a brand turnaround, and get impatient very quickly when it doesn't happen. They fail to think hard enough about the organization design, process, technologies and other needs of the CMO to have a true impact.

There's a ton of resistance to CMOs from business unit heads who want command of their P&L and budgets. Unless organization design and process design ferrets this out, the BU heads will win.

Hutchinson: Your book, "The New Marketing Mission," was the first book I had ever read by a group of marketing executives to deliberately include the practices of project and program management as a means to organizationally align or "re-shape" the company around customer insights and brand.

Typically, marketing and project management have been diametrically opposed cultures and communities. Is enterprise marketing management changing this?

Hastings: Enterprise marketing management combines process, metrics, organization and technology. It employs one sub-process to generate insights and another, linked sub-process to go from insights to innovation, and a third sub-process to get the innovation to market. It develops repeatable capabilities and models such as product launch models that can be used again and again as templates. It absolutely uses project and program management principles, tools, methods, measurements and technologies.

When you see the new organizational construct of Marketing Operations popping up in technology companies, those are built on project and program management principles.

Marketing Operations will be a new dominant paradigm in marketing: highly disciplined, highly scientific, highly measured, highly enabled with technology. The old idea of marketing as an ad hoc, "pull it out of thin air" creative artistry is dead. Creativity has its role, but it plays the same role as it does in architecture: it's a contribution to a scientific and technically robust engineering process that produces a building that is beautiful but also functional, reliable, and built on a solidly engineered foundation.

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"The Matrix" Guide to Brand-Building: Neomarketing & Transmedia Engagement


Going beyond multidimensional or media neutral marketing, transmedia storytelling opens up new ways for brands to bond with consumers.

In addition to helping us confront such deep realities as the fact that "there is no spoon," it might surprise marketers to learn that "The Matrix" also answers the most vexing question facing marketers today: "What is engagement?"

In his book "Convergence Culture" Henry Jenkins writes that "The Matrix" franchise is the most fully realized example to date of a concept he calls "transmedia storytelling," sparking a conversation in marketing circles about how this approach might be used to create a more meaningful connection between brands and consumers.

Jenkins defines a transmedia story as one that "unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole." In the case of The Matrix, the full story took shape not only in the three movies, but also in anime, comics, a video game and an MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game).

As an example of the interplay between all of these assets Jenkins describes a scene in "Matrix:Reloaded" in which Niobe arrives at a rendezvous point seemingly out of nowhere just in time to make a dramatic rescue. However, for hard-core fans there was a much deeper context: arriving at this specific location was a key mission in the video game. The plots of the game and the movie intersect at this rendezvous point -- they complement one another, but don't overlap -- providing an "aha" moment that rewards the most dedicated fans but doesn't take anything away from the experience of the casual popcorn fan.

If we want to bring a transmedia approach and the "aha" moments it can deliver into the world of marketing, two fundamental questions need to be addressed: how, and why.

How: transmedia vs. media neutral
Much of the early blog buzz has focused on the "How" question, and is very nicely summarized in this post by Jason Oke of Leo Burnett Canada. As we think about how to bring a transmedia approach to marketing, a key distinction has to be made between transmedia and the media neutral approach.

If the strength of the media neutral approach is that it starts with a deep understanding of consumer behavior and channel receptivity, the weakness (at least in many executions) is that brands still tend to rely heavily on a repetition model. We may use multiple media channels, but the messages being communicated across those channels are still essentially the same.

A switch to transmedia branding would mean that not only would we use multiple media to tell a brand story, but each of the channels would communicate a unique, complementary piece of that story.

If The Matrix took the lead in the world of entertainment, then Geico's disgruntled Caveman has emerged as a transmedia brand leader. After gaining some traction with the TV spots, Geico launched CavemansCrib, where visitors can explore the Caveman's bachelor pad.

Whereas a traditional cross-channel approach might have led Geico to edit down the popular TV spots to a more consumable length and run pre-roll video placements (i.e., new channel, same content), CavemansCrib introduces a new channel, as well as a fundamentally different experience, that amplifies and extends consumer engagement with the television spots.

The approach must be working: Caveman is now in talks to have his own sitcom.

So let's move on to the core question. Why?

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Why should brands adopt a transmedia approach?

It's all about the "E" word.

Engagement. Yes, it's an overused word, but it's earned its place as the go-to descriptor of marketing's future given the combination of expanding choice and increased control that we all enjoy as consumers.

Most marketers and agencies agree that the choice/control combo necessitates a new approach. At Carat, we frame this challenge in terms of the need to move from a model based on "buying time" to one of "creating time." In other words, brands can't be successful with an approach that's about aggregating eyeballs; they need to offer consumers experiences that are compelling enough that people choose to spend time with them.

The value of discovery
I'd argue that engagement is directly linked to discovery. If our goal is for consumers to choose to spend time with brands, what we're asking is that they become personally invested in our messages and experiences. And investments must have returns.

For consumers the return should come in the form of discovery: being able to learn or experience something new, to put the pieces of a puzzle together for themselves rather than being beat over the head with the same message over and over.

The transmedia approach is all about discovery. Jenkins talks about each of the complementary pieces as being "points of entry" into the broader story, which is a great way to think about each of the communication points in a broader marketing strategy.

Instead of each communication telling the full story, the approach rewards the consumer for investigating on their own to understand the fuller picture.

Adopting a transmedia approach would certainly be a major departure for marketers. We'd need to stop thinking of consumers as entities that we "target" and begin to think of them as fans who we entice.

We need to have faith that if we seed compelling and complementary messages, then consumers will choose to spend time with them. We need to stop throwing the kitchen sink at every single communication, and we need to think in terms of one overarching communication distributed in smaller pieces.

Most of all, we'd need to think about what it means to tell great stories, as opposed to communicating messages. Stories aren't repetitive. Stories elicit emotion and start conversations. Stories are worth spending time with. Stories are engaging.

Transmedia brand-building presents us with lots of tricky issues to sort out. But to steal the sentiment of Geico's advertising, if a Caveman can figure it out, I'm sure the rest of us can, too.

Adam Cahill is VP, director of client services for Carat Fusion’s Boston office.


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The Leaders Work Ethic

Nelson Searcy
nelson@smartleadership.com
3/13/2003

SmartLeaders work. A consistent work ethic is part of a consistent character ethic. SmartLeaders work by an ethic that sets the standard for both followers and other leaders. They understand that work is more than just time on the clock; it is the key function of leaders. Like it or not, next to character, one’s work ethic is the primary way one is judged.


SmartLeaders work and they work hard. They work out of an e.t.h.i.c that can be summarized in five clear actions.

E.NGAGE YOUR WORK

When a leader works, they work – they don’t daydream, think about evening plans or wonder about things at home. Like a laser, a leader must engage the work in front of them. You’ve no doubt heard the story about the guy who thought about home when he was at work and thought about work when he was at home. He couldn’t get anything done because he spent all his time traveling.

SmartLeaders stay on the task; they engage their work. What is the one action you could take that would allow you to more effectively engage your work?

Engaging one’s work means that a leader removes distractions; focuses on one task at a time; completes the task and organizes for the future.

T.ACKLE THE MOST PRODUCTIVE TASK FIRST

Instead of jumping into the file on top of your desk, take a moment and ask “What is the most productive task I can do right now?” Do not confuse the urgent or the easy with the productive. The most productive task you can do is the task that, as the leader, only you can do. It is that task which will allow those around you to better accomplish their tasks. It is the task that offers the greatest return. Determine the productive task and engage it fully.

For a full treatment of this subject, see Stephen Covey’s “First Things First”

H.ELP OTHERS PRODUCE

A leader’s work ethic is not just about getting their work done; it is also about helping others produce. Like your mother always said, “No one is done until everyone is done.”

SmartLeaders help others produce by looking for ways to clear pathways, sharing insights and lending a helping hand. You find the time to help others produce by engaging your most productive task first.

I.NVEST IN MYSELF

Investing in myself is never time well spent – it is time well invested. As the wise Solomon once wrote, “If the ax is dull and its edge unsharpened, more strength is needed but skill will bring success.” Take time to sharpen your axe.

What is the one skill that you need to learn or sharpen to make you more productive at work?

While the answer to the above question is as varied as our readership, let me make 2 general observations based on the leaders with whom I work on a regular basis:

1. Technology. Many leaders I know would do well to sharpen their basic technology skills – how to better use e-mail, the Internet or basic company software. My suggestion: Find the youngest technology wiz in your office and take him or her to lunch. During that lunch ask if he or she will spend 30 minutes a month looking over your shoulder and offering suggestions for improvement. Lay you pride aside for the sake of productivity.

2. Delegation. Over 85% of the leaders with whom I work need to better learn the wonderful skill of delegation. Many either don’t do it at all or don’t do it well. As you know – there are two ways to get more done: work longer or get others to work with you. Delegation is getting others to work with you so you don’t have to work longer. Here are two great resources on delegation:

* Essential Managers: How to Delegate ($6.95)

* Inviting Others to Join You (free)

C.ALENDAR REST AND RELAXATION

That which gets scheduled gets done. SmartLeaders calendar rest, relaxation, time off, family time and vacation just like they schedule the most important meeting. If you don’t take time off, your body and mind will make time off – through illness or breakdown. A good pattern to follow is to: divert daily, recharge weekly and abandon annually. Divert daily by talking a walk or eating lunch in solitude. Recharge weekly by making sure you have at least one day off. Abandon annually through a scheduled 7 - 21 day vacation. Remember, the more stress you are under the more you must stress rest and relaxation.

BURN ON

Learning to live with a positive work ethic insures productivity, allows for effective leadership and sets the standard for those around you. As a leader, the type of work ethic you choose will lead to one of three options: burn out, burn down or burn on. Follow the five action steps above and you will burn on and on and on.

Creating Better Business Leaders By Honing Interpersonal Skills
By Deborah Steinborn

From The Wall Street Journal Online


Founded in 1970 with financial support from the Smith Richardson Foundation Inc., the Center for Creative Leadership today is recognized as one of the largest institutions in the world focusing solely on the study of leadership. The nonprofit educational institution has campuses in five cities: Brussels, Singapore, Greensboro, N.C., Colorado Springs, Colo., and San Diego.

CCL annually serves leaders from more than 2,000 organizations across the public, private, nonprofit and education sectors world-wide. CCL's clients include such organizations as the Economic Development Board of Singapore, DaimlerChrysler AG and the U.S. Air Force.

The Wall Street Journal recently spoke about leadership education with John Alexander, CCL's president. Here are excerpts.

* * *

What differentiates a manager from a leader?

We see leadership and management as tasks or activities rather than traits of an individual.

We like to say there are three leadership tasks. The first is setting direction or creating a vision for the future, followed by creating alignment in the organization. The third thing is gaining commitment from a team, group or organization to support the alignment or movement in a certain direction. Those are the basic tasks of leadership.

Management tasks are more tactical and day to day but also important. They include activities like creating a budget, setting goals, creating metrics to achieve those goals, and fielding new technology into a workgroup.

Looking at the two categories as tasks rather than traits can free you up from the false distinction between the two. That said, I do think some individuals in organizations are better at one than the other. Some organizations come to us and say they have good managers but want them to be better leaders. Our philosophy is that more people in an organization should participate in the leadership process. It's not just for people at the top. It has to be shared across the organization. We have clients coming to us saying that they want more people actively participating in the leadership process.

CCL maintains that leaders in business and politics need hard, knowledge-based skills as well as emotional-based skills. Why is possession of both important? And can leaders or managers really be taught emotional skills?

We've done a lot of research on executive derailment, looking at executives whose careers plateau or who just don't reach the potential everyone saw in them. We've done this research in North America and replicated it in Europe; we are now doing so in Asia as well. The No. 1 factor for derailment is poor interpersonal skills--our inability to get along with other people.

Those are exactly the soft skills that we have taught for many years. It's all about emotional intelligence--the ability to communicate, get along with others, team build, and get in the direction you want to go as a group. So in a sense, these soft skills are really the hard ones. And yes, these skills can be taught. Some people are obviously better than others at interpersonal relations, but everyone can learn and improve in this department.

How do you teach emotional intelligence?

We offer 360-degree feedback and other psychological assessments on how individuals are viewed by others. We can all speculate about how good we are at interpersonal skills. What really matters, though, is our behavior on a daily basis, our day-to-day interactions with others. We help them in a very confidential, customized setting to learn about themselves, their values, and how their behaviors come across to other people. We help people receive this feedback in a way that allows them to learn from it. And then we help them set goals to improve.

Of course, it's tough to be assessed so personally, but it's also empowering. For instance, it's liberating to learn that you are seen as an excellent listener and you really hadn't ever known this before. At the same time, you may learn that you aren't very good at managing a meeting, so you could focus on improving those skills during your coursework. We set very practical goals that the participant can implement when he or she goes back to the workplace as well. We also appoint learning partners, such as an executive coach to help reinforce good behavior once back in the workplace.

What do your executive coaches do?

They're like adjunct faculty. They may have their own consulting practices or work as professors, but they work with CCL on a contractual basis. A coach works one-on-one with an individual in sessions lasting up to three hours. The two look for patterns and themes in the participant's behavior. The coach helps draw out those themes and the individual decides what he or she wants to accomplish during the coursework. The coach and participant can stay in touch by telephone or email after the course.

In Europe, our coaches speak the local language, so an individual can request a feedback session in his native tongue even though classes are taught almost exclusively in English. We are moving to this model in Asia now, too. In Asia we have 30 coaches in Singapore who are bilingual in English and Mandarin Chinese. And we are exploring the same in India. So the trend towards executive coaching is not an American trend, but rather a global trend.

You work a great deal with executives from public and private sectors alike. How do the skills and approaches of leaders differ from sector to sector?

They are more different in degrees rather than in absolute kind. In the U.S. nonprofit sector, for example, you have to be good at working with a very large and diverse board. That's different from the country's corporate sector, where you have a very small board and the CEO also serves as chairman or chairwoman. Both have boards, but the nonprofit executive has to be more tuned in to how to deal with his board, because it's larger and has more power and works more independently.

Another thing that's different between the various sectors is vocabulary. There are different words used to describe the same thing in the military, the nonprofit, the educational and the corporate world.

But more interesting than sector difference is all the other factors that can enter the equation. If you are a global corporation, for instance, the issues related to that global context could trump whether you are in aerospace versus financial services. It's sort of four-dimensional. The size of the organization, the location can matter a lot as well. There are various contexts to which you must be sensitive. In the government sector you run into the political arena, and there you need other skills once again.

Since we work with leaders in so many different sectors we can bring them together and have them learn from one another. We have access to leadership in military, nonprofit and other sectors and learn how similar some of their problems actually are. We have tried to address that for our clients through Leadership at the Peak, a course for senior executives from different organizations, sectors and countries that we offer in Colorado Springs as well as in Europe several times a year.

How different are the kinds of skills possessed--or needed--by American, Asian and European executives? Are there certain global similarities among all executives, regardless of their origin or professional upbringing?

We don't have the final answer on this. We have a big research project under way called Leading Across Differences. We are studying leadership in more than 20 countries around the world, looking at both similarities and differences.

We do believe there are important differences, but it's all about context. One thing: Showing respect for others seems to be a consistent theme of leaders who do well, regardless of country. But how this respect is defined can be very different from country to country. How it plays out behaviorally, the nuances from culture to culture, differs.

The complexity of this research is rather daunting. For one, it's a misnomer to refer to Asian or European executives, because those in South Korea versus Malaysia are very, very different. We're trying to steer away from the idea of an Asian approach to leadership versus a European one.

And we are finding that there are many nuances. If we want to say that respect is one thing shared by all leaders, we want to be able to say here's how it looks in this cultural setting versus that one. Because when we go somewhere, we're asked. "What does that mean for us in our country?" In the Middle East, for example, hierarchy is still very important. If you are an American executive posted there, you need to understand that to be a good leader you must operate through a hierarchy; if you're not aware of that you'll get into trouble very quickly. In the U.S., this style would be viewed as passé.

How do CCL's executive-education offerings differ from programs at other schools? What is your unique selling point?

We focus on leadership and leader development and we think that's our unique advantage. We don't teach the things that leading business schools teach, such as marketing and finance. We don't teach or consult in the area of strategy. We are in the leadership arena, and that is our strength.

Individual leadership development is our forte, but we also are working increasingly with groups, teams and even whole organizations. So our ability to scale over a group of hundreds of executives and sometimes over a period of several years is another unique selling point. We worked with the Canadian civil service on an executive-education program for more than 1,000 senior civil servants, for instance. They now offer the course in-house, after we worked with them for five years. That's an example of the success we've had over time.

CCL has a diverse list of clients. How does one center serve the needs of so many?

We see the diversity of our client base as one of our strengths. Our mission is to serve society, and we would not be serving society broadly if we were just working in the corporate sector.

It is a big task, though. It means that the way in which we work is complex. In order to serve such a broad client base, we have staff from a variety of different sectors and backgrounds. For instance, when we work with the U.S. military, some of our staff will be retired military officials. We can't do it perfectly, but most of our clients want to work with a staff member who understands their context. We spend a lot of time interviewing a potential client, learning their organization's vocabulary and building it into the coursework. We spend time up front understanding the context of what leaders in this organization are doing.

We have close to 100 full-time faculty members but we have a cadre of adjunct faculty too; some teach in the classroom but many act as executive coaches. We have about 350 to 400 adjuncts, and that gives us a lot of reach.

Where do you see the greatest opportunities in executive education in the next five years?

We are seeing rapid growth in Europe. We've had a presence there for more than 15 years but it's growing rapidly. We are taking a pan-European approach since leaders in Europe have to take that same approach. That said, the former Eastern Europe, particularly Poland, is booming.

Asia is, of course, huge. Since 2003 we have had an office in Singapore, which serves the entire Asia-Pacific region. And like everyone else, we are trying to figure out how to best work in India and China in the coming years. We are working in India right now with domestic companies there and are exploring opportunities in China. The language is a challenge, but we are bringing on board adjunct faculty and staff for this. We are also in the process of translating our feedback assessments and other course and coaching materials into about 10 different languages.

We see a growing demand for leadership research in coming years. We just put together our new budget and are increasing by 40% our investment in research and innovation this year; a lot of that will go to Europe and Asia. As of this year, we will have research based in Europe. We are also launching a new virtual research center in Singapore, which we are doing in conjunction with the Singapore government to fund research about leadership in various Asian countries.

How does your status as a nonprofit organization affect its approach to executive education programming?

We see it as an advantage because it allows us to take a long-term view. Daily or weekly numbers don't drive us. We can invest heavily in research, take a long-term view, and try not to get wrapped up in educational fads of the moment. We try to do the research and find out what the long-term trends are.

CCL's mission is to advance the understanding, practice and development of leadership for the benefit of society world-wide. That's a tall order. How does an educational program aimed at executives and politicians benefit society at large?

It's a very lofty, broad mission but it's inspiring. We think that by helping leaders to become better at what they do, we can improve the quality of leadership in different organizations and even in a sector such that they are operating at a higher level of importance and thus working to solve the complex challenges of broader society.

Look in the corporate sector at the growing emphasis on corporate social responsibility. I don't think any one organization is exempt from making a better world. We honestly think that if we help people to improve within their context, they will improve the practice of leadership and thereby help the world. That can be at the top level, but it can also be lower down within an organization. After all, when the baby boomers age out of the work force, younger people will move up through the ranks.

Email your comments to cjeditor@dowjones.com.

Guiding Through Times of Uncertainty
By Beckey Bright

From The Wall Street Journal Online


Being an effective leader is challenging even when times are good, let alone during a time of corporate scandals and a rapidly transforming global economy.

Paul Taffinder, a partner in the London office of management-consulting firm Marakon Associates, and author of "The Leadership Crash Course: How to Create Personal Leadership Value," spoke recently with The Wall Street Journal Online about what it takes to be a good leader and the difficulty of leading through uncertainty. Some questions and answers were edited.

WSJ.com: How does one develop a leadership style? What leadership style is in vogue now?

Mr. Taffinder: Leadership as a practice hasn't changed in several thousand years. People react the same way to leadership and to situations in which they have to lead. But there are changes in fashions and in the context. Today, people are better educated. There are more women in the work force. And there are different perceptions about what matters.

What are some of those perceptions that have changed?

People react differently to power. There are big gender differences in leadership -- but it's more a product of who holds the power. Years ago, when women were just beginning to enter the work force in big numbers, it was more important for women to be more assertive.

That's shifting, and therefore the relationship to their followers is also changing. There is always gender stereotyping; there are expectations of how people should behave and women are expected to behave a certain way and men a certain way. In reality, women and men leaders are very similar, it's just that the expectations about them are different.

What types of leaders are best for different situations?

Some leaders are better at some organizations and at different times in the life cycle of that company. Generally, leaders fall into two types: those who are focused on making things happen, who are good at enforcing, giving a directive. And then there are those who are what we call reckless opportunists, those who are good at taking risks, and inspiring growth.

For businesses that are reasonably stable, (those that aren't suffering from regulatory changes or competitive pressures, for instance, and industries without a lot of consolidation) it is good to have leaders who are deal makers, and challenging things. These leaders make and take risks. Then there are managers who are trained throughout their career to control and manage and to some extent avoid risk. Of course you need both. Unfortunately, most organizations don't spend a lot of money training folks how to take risk. It's left for individuals to develop themselves.

What happens if your personal leadership style, or that of an employee, clashes with the company's overall philosophy?

You can be put in a tough situation if you're not evolving as a leader along with your company. It's very hard to profoundly change your leadership style. It's easy in small ways. But if your fundamental mindset is different from that of the company or from what circumstances require, it's hard to fake that. One solution is you have to find other people to do that for you. If for example you're not a risk taker, find someone who is good at that. But it's still difficult.

What advice can you give on leading a company when its future is uncertain?

There are two ways to lead through uncertainty, and you have to make a choice. The first is to declare a state of crisis and the other is to elevate ambition. I don't think you can pretend everything is okay. With elevating ambition, you are trying to convey, "We can be the best." But you have to be careful. It's easier to declare a state of crisis. One of the most important characteristics of leadership is conviction. You can't be a leader unless you have it, and it must be very obvious.

How do you convey conviction?

Examine your own beliefs and know that they are truth. It is very hard to convey beliefs that you don't believe. You have to practice being confident. If you show uncertainty it is very quickly picked up. If you look at the great political leaders, it's because they practiced, practiced, practiced. That part about conviction has been lost in the last 15 years or so. A good leader is good at generating energy. Conviction creates energy and commitment and not compliance.

So, are some people simply born leaders?

I wouldn't say anyone is born a leader. There have been some studies that indicate people who have been exposed to psychologically traumatic experiences are better leaders. They've had to overcome trials and tribulations. So they're more inclined to be challenging and look deep within themselves for what they believe in. Leaders like that learn to be clear about the story they're telling about where they have come from and where they're going.

How can you teach leadership?

Teaching people to control risk is much easier than teaching people to create it. And it's essential for companies to draw the distinction between leadership and management. It's just wrong to use them interchangeably. Managers tend to react. Leaders tend to seek out opportunities. Managers follow the rules. Leaders change the rules. Managers seek and follow direction. Leaders inspire achievement. These are profound differences. Of course you need both. But organizations fail to recognize the difference.

Organizations start to fail when they start to produce too many managers and not enough leaders. Or too many leaders of a certain type. The lesson in the corporate world, how can you simulate that [traumatic experience] in the corporate world without destroying people. How can you learn from it without becoming a casualty.

What are the characteristics of today's work environment that pose the biggest challenges to leadership?

One of the problems today is that so much emphasis is placed on shareholders and shareholder returns. There's a very rational, economic point of view. But you should be trying to unite people over a common purpose, a shared identity. There's a way of thinking about leadership that is more than just the bottom line. Companies need to determine their organizational purpose: Why it matters.

The Web is driving organizations to redefine their role in the world, reevaluate their purpose. Some organizations are making efforts to channel energy into something meaningful. In some organizations it's genuine and in others its just window dressing.

Enron had its purpose corrupted gradually into making sure its share price was inflated. There were small, incremental steps that steered the organization in completely the wrong direction. It's important [for leaders] to figure out how that happens and how you correct it.

-- Dow Jones, publisher of CareerJournal.com, has hired Marakon Associates to provide consulting services.

Email your comments to cjeditor@dowjones.com.

 
Expanding Your Concept of Service

Your definition of service shapes every interaction you have with your customers. If you hold the common idea that service is only giving customers what they want, you may well paint yourself into a corner every time a customer asks for something that is impossible for you to provide. If, on the other hand, you expand your definition of service to include fulfilling the multitude of less obvious customer needs, you will never encounter a time when you can't provide your customers with some level of service.

By addressing less obvious customer needs such as listening with empathy to customers when they have a problem or providing options and alternatives when you can't give customers exactly what they want, you widen the gap between you and your competitors.
Six basic needs

Every time customers do business with you, they are, without fully realizing it, scoring you on how well you are doing, not only at giving them what they want, but at fulfilling six basic customer needs. Following is a list of these needs:

Friendliness: The most basic of all customer needs, friendliness is usually associated with being greeted politely and courteously.

Understanding and empathy: The most basic of all customer needs, and it's usually associated with being greeted politely and courteously.

Fairness: The need to be treated fairly is high up on most customers' list of needs.

Control: Control represents the customers' need to feel as if they have an impact on the way things turn out.

Options and alternatives: Customers need to feel that other avenues are available to getting what they want accomplished.

Information: Customers need to be educated and informed about the products, policies, and procedures they encounter when dealing with your company.
A popular piece of customer service folklore states that if you give customers what they ask for (just say yes), then you end up with satisfied customers. This folklore is false. Customers do ask for what they want, but they usually don't ask for these six basic needs. When did you last go into a pizzeria and say, "I'd like one slice of pepperoni pizza, please," and then add, "Could you please be understanding, friendly, and fair?" Customers don't ask for these other needs, but they miss such gestures when they are not provided. To really provide top quality customer service, you need to move beyond the yes folklore to fulfill all your customers' needs.


The needs of your customers not only vary according to their individual personalities but can also change depending on the nature of your business. A trip to Disneyland, for example, is remembered for the fun and safety of the park and rides. These two service qualities are part of what makes a day with the mouse so enjoyable and memorable. Compare this excursion with a visit to your accountants. In this situation, your needs are more in the realm of accuracy and certainty. You would be suspicious if your accountant was having fun — when you weren't — and started to laugh uncontrollably during a meeting. Along with the six basic service qualities, dozens more exist that are specific to different businesses and occupations.
Reconsider who your customers are

Who are your customers, really? Too often, the definition of customer is limited to someone who is outside of our company. Look up customer in your dictionary. The first definition of customer is a person who buys. The second definition is a person with whom one has dealings.

In fact, everyone who works in a company has customers regardless of whether they work with external, paying customers or internal co-workers. Customers fall into external and internal categories.

The external customer: These are the people you deal with, either face-to-face or over the phone, who buy products or services from you. They are customers in the traditional sense of the word. Without them there would be no sales, no business, no paycheck. If your definition of a customer stops here, you are only seeing half the picture.

The internal customer: The other half of the picture is the people who work inside your company and rely on you for the services, products, and information that they need to get their jobs done. They are not traditional customers, yet they need the same tender, loving care you give to your external customers.

By expanding your definition of a customer to include your co-workers, you are taking a vital step toward excellent service.

The internal customer chain works both ways. Sometimes you are the customer and other times you are the service provider. For example, a co-worker may come to you and ask for a printout of a report. In this case, you are the service provider because you are giving him what he needs. However, ten minutes later, you may turn around and go to that same co-worker and ask for help on a project; now you are the customer.
The customer chain

The relationship between internal customers and external customers is what forms the customer chain. If you have a back room kind of job where you rarely see the light of day, let alone a living, breathing customer, you can easily begin to feel that your work has little or no impact on external customers. But if you look at the bigger picture, you can see that everyone in a company plays some part in fulfilling the customers' needs. Barely an hour goes by during the day when you are not, in some form or another, providing something for somebody. Each interaction with an internal customer is an important link in a chain of events that always ends up at the external customers' feet.

About two years ago, The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled, "Poorly treated employees treat the customer just as poorly." Boy, does that hit the nail on the head! A frightening percentage of managers do not realize that their staffs are their internal customers, and that the quality of service that a company provides to its customers is a direct reflection of how the staff of the company are treated by their managers. Make it a priority to view your staff as one of your most important customers and treat them accordingly. Doing so means focusing not on what your staff can do to make your job easier, but on what you can do to make their jobs easier.

Many companies seem to overlook another very important link in the service chain — their vendors. By using the techniques of customer service with your vendors, you will not only enhance your relationship with them but also receive better service.
© Expanding Your Concept of Service True. Used by arrangement with Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Use Agreement , and Privacy Policy .
Copyright © 1999-2006 AllBusiness.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Expanding Your Concept of Service

Your definition of service shapes every interaction you have with your customers. If you hold the common idea that service is only giving customers what they want, you may well paint yourself into a corner every time a customer asks for something that is impossible for you to provide. If, on the other hand, you expand your definition of service to include fulfilling the multitude of less obvious customer needs, you will never encounter a time when you can't provide your customers with some level of service.

By addressing less obvious customer needs such as listening with empathy to customers when they have a problem or providing options and alternatives when you can't give customers exactly what they want, you widen the gap between you and your competitors.
Six basic needs

Every time customers do business with you, they are, without fully realizing it, scoring you on how well you are doing, not only at giving them what they want, but at fulfilling six basic customer needs. Following is a list of these needs:

Friendliness: The most basic of all customer needs, friendliness is usually associated with being greeted politely and courteously.

Understanding and empathy: The most basic of all customer needs, and it's usually associated with being greeted politely and courteously.

Fairness: The need to be treated fairly is high up on most customers' list of needs.

Control: Control represents the customers' need to feel as if they have an impact on the way things turn out.

Options and alternatives: Customers need to feel that other avenues are available to getting what they want accomplished.

Information: Customers need to be educated and informed about the products, policies, and procedures they encounter when dealing with your company.
A popular piece of customer service folklore states that if you give customers what they ask for (just say yes), then you end up with satisfied customers. This folklore is false. Customers do ask for what they want, but they usually don't ask for these six basic needs. When did you last go into a pizzeria and say, "I'd like one slice of pepperoni pizza, please," and then add, "Could you please be understanding, friendly, and fair?" Customers don't ask for these other needs, but they miss such gestures when they are not provided. To really provide top quality customer service, you need to move beyond the yes folklore to fulfill all your customers' needs.


The needs of your customers not only vary according to their individual personalities but can also change depending on the nature of your business. A trip to Disneyland, for example, is remembered for the fun and safety of the park and rides. These two service qualities are part of what makes a day with the mouse so enjoyable and memorable. Compare this excursion with a visit to your accountants. In this situation, your needs are more in the realm of accuracy and certainty. You would be suspicious if your accountant was having fun — when you weren't — and started to laugh uncontrollably during a meeting. Along with the six basic service qualities, dozens more exist that are specific to different businesses and occupations.
Reconsider who your customers are

Who are your customers, really? Too often, the definition of customer is limited to someone who is outside of our company. Look up customer in your dictionary. The first definition of customer is a person who buys. The second definition is a person with whom one has dealings.

In fact, everyone who works in a company has customers regardless of whether they work with external, paying customers or internal co-workers. Customers fall into external and internal categories.

The external customer: These are the people you deal with, either face-to-face or over the phone, who buy products or services from you. They are customers in the traditional sense of the word. Without them there would be no sales, no business, no paycheck. If your definition of a customer stops here, you are only seeing half the picture.

The internal customer: The other half of the picture is the people who work inside your company and rely on you for the services, products, and information that they need to get their jobs done. They are not traditional customers, yet they need the same tender, loving care you give to your external customers.

By expanding your definition of a customer to include your co-workers, you are taking a vital step toward excellent service.

The internal customer chain works both ways. Sometimes you are the customer and other times you are the service provider. For example, a co-worker may come to you and ask for a printout of a report. In this case, you are the service provider because you are giving him what he needs. However, ten minutes later, you may turn around and go to that same co-worker and ask for help on a project; now you are the customer.
The customer chain

The relationship between internal customers and external customers is what forms the customer chain. If you have a back room kind of job where you rarely see the light of day, let alone a living, breathing customer, you can easily begin to feel that your work has little or no impact on external customers. But if you look at the bigger picture, you can see that everyone in a company plays some part in fulfilling the customers' needs. Barely an hour goes by during the day when you are not, in some form or another, providing something for somebody. Each interaction with an internal customer is an important link in a chain of events that always ends up at the external customers' feet.

About two years ago, The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled, "Poorly treated employees treat the customer just as poorly." Boy, does that hit the nail on the head! A frightening percentage of managers do not realize that their staffs are their internal customers, and that the quality of service that a company provides to its customers is a direct reflection of how the staff of the company are treated by their managers. Make it a priority to view your staff as one of your most important customers and treat them accordingly. Doing so means focusing not on what your staff can do to make your job easier, but on what you can do to make their jobs easier.

Many companies seem to overlook another very important link in the service chain — their vendors. By using the techniques of customer service with your vendors, you will not only enhance your relationship with them but also receive better service.
© Expanding Your Concept of Service True. Used by arrangement with Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Expanding Your Concept of Service

Your definition of service shapes every interaction you have with your customers. If you hold the common idea that service is only giving customers what they want, you may well paint yourself into a corner every time a customer asks for something that is impossible for you to provide. If, on the other hand, you expand your definition of service to include fulfilling the multitude of less obvious customer needs, you will never encounter a time when you can't provide your customers with some level of service.

By addressing less obvious customer needs such as listening with empathy to customers when they have a problem or providing options and alternatives when you can't give customers exactly what they want, you widen the gap between you and your competitors.
Six basic needs

Every time customers do business with you, they are, without fully realizing it, scoring you on how well you are doing, not only at giving them what they want, but at fulfilling six basic customer needs. Following is a list of these needs:

Friendliness: The most basic of all customer needs, friendliness is usually associated with being greeted politely and courteously.

Understanding and empathy: The most basic of all customer needs, and it's usually associated with being greeted politely and courteously.

Fairness: The need to be treated fairly is high up on most customers' list of needs.

Control: Control represents the customers' need to feel as if they have an impact on the way things turn out.

Options and alternatives: Customers need to feel that other avenues are available to getting what they want accomplished.

Information: Customers need to be educated and informed about the products, policies, and procedures they encounter when dealing with your company.
A popular piece of customer service folklore states that if you give customers what they ask for (just say yes), then you end up with satisfied customers. This folklore is false. Customers do ask for what they want, but they usually don't ask for these six basic needs. When did you last go into a pizzeria and say, "I'd like one slice of pepperoni pizza, please," and then add, "Could you please be understanding, friendly, and fair?" Customers don't ask for these other needs, but they miss such gestures when they are not provided. To really provide top quality customer service, you need to move beyond the yes folklore to fulfill all your customers' needs.


The needs of your customers not only vary according to their individual personalities but can also change depending on the nature of your business. A trip to Disneyland, for example, is remembered for the fun and safety of the park and rides. These two service qualities are part of what makes a day with the mouse so enjoyable and memorable. Compare this excursion with a visit to your accountants. In this situation, your needs are more in the realm of accuracy and certainty. You would be suspicious if your accountant was having fun — when you weren't — and started to laugh uncontrollably during a meeting. Along with the six basic service qualities, dozens more exist that are specific to different businesses and occupations.
Reconsider who your customers are

Who are your customers, really? Too often, the definition of customer is limited to someone who is outside of our company. Look up customer in your dictionary. The first definition of customer is a person who buys. The second definition is a person with whom one has dealings.

In fact, everyone who works in a company has customers regardless of whether they work with external, paying customers or internal co-workers. Customers fall into external and internal categories.

The external customer: These are the people you deal with, either face-to-face or over the phone, who buy products or services from you. They are customers in the traditional sense of the word. Without them there would be no sales, no business, no paycheck. If your definition of a customer stops here, you are only seeing half the picture.

The internal customer: The other half of the picture is the people who work inside your company and rely on you for the services, products, and information that they need to get their jobs done. They are not traditional customers, yet they need the same tender, loving care you give to your external customers.

By expanding your definition of a customer to include your co-workers, you are taking a vital step toward excellent service.

The internal customer chain works both ways. Sometimes you are the customer and other times you are the service provider. For example, a co-worker may come to you and ask for a printout of a report. In this case, you are the service provider because you are giving him what he needs. However, ten minutes later, you may turn around and go to that same co-worker and ask for help on a project; now you are the customer.
The customer chain

The relationship between internal customers and external customers is what forms the customer chain. If you have a back room kind of job where you rarely see the light of day, let alone a living, breathing customer, you can easily begin to feel that your work has little or no impact on external customers. But if you look at the bigger picture, you can see that everyone in a company plays some part in fulfilling the customers' needs. Barely an hour goes by during the day when you are not, in some form or another, providing something for somebody. Each interaction with an internal customer is an important link in a chain of events that always ends up at the external customers' feet.

About two years ago, The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled, "Poorly treated employees treat the customer just as poorly." Boy, does that hit the nail on the head! A frightening percentage of managers do not realize that their staffs are their internal customers, and that the quality of service that a company provides to its customers is a direct reflection of how the staff of the company are treated by their managers. Make it a priority to view your staff as one of your most important customers and treat them accordingly. Doing so means focusing not on what your staff can do to make your job easier, but on what you can do to make their jobs easier.

Many companies seem to overlook another very important link in the service chain — their vendors. By using the techniques of customer service with your vendors, you will not only enhance your relationship with them but also receive better service.
© Expanding Your Concept of Service True. Used by arrangement with Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Expanding Your Concept of Service

Your definition of service shapes every interaction you have with your customers. If you hold the common idea that service is only giving customers what they want, you may well paint yourself into a corner every time a customer asks for something that is impossible for you to provide. If, on the other hand, you expand your definition of service to include fulfilling the multitude of less obvious customer needs, you will never encounter a time when you can't provide your customers with some level of service.

By addressing less obvious customer needs such as listening with empathy to customers when they have a problem or providing options and alternatives when you can't give customers exactly what they want, you widen the gap between you and your competitors.
Six basic needs

Every time customers do business with you, they are, without fully realizing it, scoring you on how well you are doing, not only at giving them what they want, but at fulfilling six basic customer needs. Following is a list of these needs:

Friendliness: The most basic of all customer needs, friendliness is usually associated with being greeted politely and courteously.

Understanding and empathy: The most basic of all customer needs, and it's usually associated with being greeted politely and courteously.

Fairness: The need to be treated fairly is high up on most customers' list of needs.

Control: Control represents the customers' need to feel as if they have an impact on the way things turn out.

Options and alternatives: Customers need to feel that other avenues are available to getting what they want accomplished.

Information: Customers need to be educated and informed about the products, policies, and procedures they encounter when dealing with your company.
A popular piece of customer service folklore states that if you give customers what they ask for (just say yes), then you end up with satisfied customers. This folklore is false. Customers do ask for what they want, but they usually don't ask for these six basic needs. When did you last go into a pizzeria and say, "I'd like one slice of pepperoni pizza, please," and then add, "Could you please be understanding, friendly, and fair?" Customers don't ask for these other needs, but they miss such gestures when they are not provided. To really provide top quality customer service, you need to move beyond the yes folklore to fulfill all your customers' needs.


The needs of your customers not only vary according to their individual personalities but can also change depending on the nature of your business. A trip to Disneyland, for example, is remembered for the fun and safety of the park and rides. These two service qualities are part of what makes a day with the mouse so enjoyable and memorable. Compare this excursion with a visit to your accountants. In this situation, your needs are more in the realm of accuracy and certainty. You would be suspicious if your accountant was having fun — when you weren't — and started to laugh uncontrollably during a meeting. Along with the six basic service qualities, dozens more exist that are specific to different businesses and occupations.
Reconsider who your customers are

Who are your customers, really? Too often, the definition of customer is limited to someone who is outside of our company. Look up customer in your dictionary. The first definition of customer is a person who buys. The second definition is a person with whom one has dealings.

In fact, everyone who works in a company has customers regardless of whether they work with external, paying customers or internal co-workers. Customers fall into external and internal categories.

The external customer: These are the people you deal with, either face-to-face or over the phone, who buy products or services from you. They are customers in the traditional sense of the word. Without them there would be no sales, no business, no paycheck. If your definition of a customer stops here, you are only seeing half the picture.

The internal customer: The other half of the picture is the people who work inside your company and rely on you for the services, products, and information that they need to get their jobs done. They are not traditional customers, yet they need the same tender, loving care you give to your external customers.

By expanding your definition of a customer to include your co-workers, you are taking a vital step toward excellent service.

The internal customer chain works both ways. Sometimes you are the customer and other times you are the service provider. For example, a co-worker may come to you and ask for a printout of a report. In this case, you are the service provider because you are giving him what he needs. However, ten minutes later, you may turn around and go to that same co-worker and ask for help on a project; now you are the customer.
The customer chain

The relationship between internal customers and external customers is what forms the customer chain. If you have a back room kind of job where you rarely see the light of day, let alone a living, breathing customer, you can easily begin to feel that your work has little or no impact on external customers. But if you look at the bigger picture, you can see that everyone in a company plays some part in fulfilling the customers' needs. Barely an hour goes by during the day when you are not, in some form or another, providing something for somebody. Each interaction with an internal customer is an important link in a chain of events that always ends up at the external customers' feet.

About two years ago, The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled, "Poorly treated employees treat the customer just as poorly." Boy, does that hit the nail on the head! A frightening percentage of managers do not realize that their staffs are their internal customers, and that the quality of service that a company provides to its customers is a direct reflection of how the staff of the company are treated by their managers. Make it a priority to view your staff as one of your most important customers and treat them accordingly. Doing so means focusing not on what your staff can do to make your job easier, but on what you can do to make their jobs easier.

Many companies seem to overlook another very important link in the service chain — their vendors. By using the techniques of customer service with your vendors, you will not only enhance your relationship with them but also receive better service.
© Expanding Your Concept of Service True. Used by arrangement with Wiley & Sons, Inc.

60-Second Guide to Establishing Great Customer Service

Every once in awhile it pays to sit back and take stock of how you’re running your business. Is the accounting software still the best for the job? Is the phone system meeting your needs? And most importantly, are you focusing on your greatest asset of all: your customers? Sometimes we get so caught up in the mechanics of doing business that we forget the reason we’re in business in the first place.

In just 60-seconds, you’ll learn to establish a way to keep your customers loyal to you.

0:60 Incorporate Customer Service into Your Business Culture
Customer service should be as routine as paying your bills or ordering office supplies. And it doesn’t have to be elaborate to make an impression. Often it’s the small things that customers remember: a phone call returned on time, a card to mark a special occasion, a thank you note or a gift.

0:46 Small Businesses Have a Customer Service Advantage
An advantage of being a small business is that it’s usually easier to respond quickly and personally to customer inquiries. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Ask yourself how you would like to be treated, and then act accordingly. Remember to be proactive toward your customers as well as reactive to their concerns and questions.

0:38 Communicate with Your Customers
Keep your customers apprised of the status of their accounts. If someone’s order is held up, let them know as soon as possible. If you promise to have a job done by a certain date and there are glitches, tell your client right away and let them know when you expect the issue will be resolved.

0:20 Respond to Customers Quickly
When dealing with customers or clients over the telephone, try not to put them on hold for longer than a minute or two. If you expect to be tied up for longer than that, take a message and respond as soon as possible. When you plan to attend an important meeting or event with a client, call beforehand to remind them of how they should prepare. After the meeting, check back with the client to find out their impressions. The client will appreciate your concern, and you will gain valuable feedback.

0:11 Let Customers Know You Appreciate their Business
Thank customers for their business. If customers regularly visit your place of business, make them feel welcome with coffee. Also, if customers are likely to bring children to your store or office, keep a basket of toys handy. Harried parents will appreciate the distraction, and are likely to stick around longer if their children are occupied.

0:03 Ask Customers for Feedback
Finally, when you sit back and ask yourself how you’re business is doing, be sure to ask your customers as well. Send them postage-paid response cards or make a questionnaire available in your place of business.

Brought to you by SCORE “Counselors to America’s Small Business”

Copyright SCORE. All Rights Reserved.

Ten Suggestions to Build Customer Loyalty

The key to a successful business is maintaining a steady customer base. After all, successful businesses typically see 80 percent of their business coming from 20 percent of their customers. Too many businesses neglect this loyal customer base and chase new customers instead. Since it costs significantly more money to attract new customers than to maintain relationships with existing ones, your efforts toward building customer loyalty will certainly payoff.

Here are ten ways in which you can build customer loyalty:

1. Communicate: Whether it is an email newsletter, monthly flier, a reminder card for a tune up or a holiday greeting card, reach out to your steady customers.

2. Customer Service: Go the extra distance and meet customer needs. Train the staff to do the same. Customers remember being treated well.

3. Employee Loyalty: Loyalty works from the top down. If you show your employees loyalty, they will feel good about their jobs and pass that loyalty along to your customers.

4. Employee Training: Train employees in the manner you want them to interact with customers. Empower employees to make decisions that benefit the customer.

5. Customer Incentives: Give customers a reason to return to your business. For instance, children outgrow shoes quickly, so a children’s shoe store owner might hand out a card that makes the tenth pair of shoes half price. Likewise, a dentist may give a free cleaning to anyone who has seen him regularly for five years.

6. Product Awareness: Know what your regular customers buy and keep those items in stock. Add other products and/or services that go with the products your regular customers buy. And make sure your staff knows everything they can about your products. (Read "Know Product Basics When You Sell It" for more.)

7. Reliability: If you say it will be there on Wednesday, deliver it on Wednesday. Be reliable. If something goes wrong, let customers know immediately and compensate them for their inconvenience.

8. Be Flexible: Try to solve customer problems or complaints. The phrase, “well that’s our policy” will lose more customers then setting the store on fire. (Read "60-Second Guide to Managing Upset Customers.")

9. People over Technology: The harder it is for a customer to speak to a human being when he or she has a problem, the less likely it is that you will see that customer again.

10. Know Their Names: Remember the theme song to the television show “Cheers”? Get to know the names of regular customers or at least recognize their faces.

Top 10 Customer Service Mistakes

Good customer service is a valuable asset, especially in today's high-tech-oriented, increasingly impersonal business world. Therefore, if you are aware of common customer service mistakes and go out of your way to avoid them, you may strengthen your position in a competitive market.

Untrained staff. It does not matter whether you have two or 200 employees, you must train everyone in the art of customer service. Customers or clients will not tolerate rudeness, incorrect information, or apathy on the part of your staff. Not training the staff – which should include everyone – is a major mistake made by too many businesses.

Trying to win the argument. It is worth remembering that it takes five times more effort (and cost) to gain one new customer as it takes to maintain one current customer. Therefore, by winning an argument and losing a steady customer, you are costing your business a valuable customer.

Inaccessibility. If you want to see repeat business, you need to be accessible to your customers. If it is difficult to contact the customer service department or speak to a manager, customers may not return. Many businesses, especially on the Internet, try to maintain a distance from their customers. This rarely works. Check out Online Customer Service Basics for tips on providing a positive online customer service experience.

Standing by your policy. While the clerk who is scared that he or she may lose their job can say "that's our policy," customer service representatives and managers should be able to find ways to bend policies to build customer relationships. The phrase "If I do that for you, I'll have do to it for everyone," is one of the fastest way to lose customers.

Unfulfilled promises. If you promised a customer that something would be ready by Thursday, then it should have been there by Thursday. There are no excuses, and the only words you need to remember are "we're sorry," backed up by an extra effort to make the customer happy.

Poor record keeping. If you keep referring to Mrs. Johnson of Jackson Avenue as Mrs. Jackson of Johnson Avenue, you can be sure she will not continue doing business with your company. While any business can make a mistake, constant misspelled names and similar foul-ups do not encourage regular customers to return.

The runaround. When someone calls for customer service, they expect a service representative to be the first or second person they speak to, following a receptionist perhaps. People do not like being passed from one person to another repeatedly or sent from one department to another in a retail location. Passing the buck is akin to passing the customer on to your competitor.

Email/online cop outs. Since email is impersonal, many businesses send a form letter or a programmed response that answers 10 common FAQs, none of which may apply to a particular customer. Other businesses simply ignore customer complaints hoping the customer will simply forget about the issue. These are email cop outs, or excuses for not providing adequate customer service. It is very simple for a customer representative to respond to each inquiry in a timely fashion.

Failure to listen. Customer service representatives routinely do not listen closely to customers. Typically they respond with an answer that does not match the problem because they were not paying attention. Customer relation representatives need to be trained, particularly in the art of listening and even taking notes.

Forgetting the basics. "Please," "thank you," "we're sorry about the inconvenience," and so on are simple phrases that cost nothing, take little effort, and win big points.

For valuable tips on customer service, see Ten Rules for Great Customer Service. Also, check out the Customer Service articles in the Sales & Marketing Center.