Welcome to the TGIM e-Zine!
Transform your team from “snooze-button hitters” to “rock-star performers” and create a buzz-worthy environment your clients will love.
Issue 24 Topics Include: READ NOW
Not signed up for the TGIM e-Zine?
Sign up today and receive the TGIM e-Zine and Weekly Audios every Monday morning!
Most of us live “reasonable” lives, looking at what we CAN do and using that as a guide to what we WILL do. Shoot for mediocrity and you’re guaranteed a bull’s-eye, every time. But a life worth living is about setting unreasonable goals, doing unreasonable things to make them happen, making unreasonable requests of people every day to stretch them to their undiscovered greatness.
Hey wait a minute, you say. Times are tough. The economy’s in the tank. Everyone is running for cover. My 401(k) is in flames! I can’t even count on that pension!
Whoa there. Deep breath, partner.
If mediocrity is a shallow moat in good times, it’s even less protection when times are tough. Aiming low and being “reasonable” doesn’t bring out the best of who you are. If you want to enliven your teammates, your kids, your friends, here’s a surefire way to do it: Make unreasonable requests of them. (more…)
You can’t monitor and audit every tiny facet of your business, or you won’t have time to run the business. So where does execution matter most? It matters most in the critical moments I call Moments of Truth—the moments where execution can mean the difference between success and failure.
Moments of Truth are those critical times when a customer forms an impression of you, deciding whether your offerings and their standards see eye-to-eye. Though they vary from industry to industry and business to business, every business has them. (more…)
Customer Service is Key
Customer satisfaction. Now there’s a nice phrase. It’s so, you know…nice. Everybody likes to be satisfied.
Heck, everybody likes to be fed, too. But when’s the last time you picked a restaurant just because they would feed you? EVERY two-bit restaurant will feed you. Whoop de doo.
Thing is, just about every business will “satisfy” you, too. They’ll get your dry cleaning done, your package delivered, your hair cut. So if just about everybody can step over the low bar of customer “satisfaction,” why do we keep talking about customer satisfaction as if it’s a meaningful goal? (more…)
Credit: © Monkeybusinessimages| Dreamstime.com
When’s the last time you heard someone say, “The problem with working here is I’m just appreciated way too much?” Healthy cultures have appreciation and celebration as their cultural backbone. They create an environment in which everyone oohs and aahs over each other’s successes and contributions.
Notice I said EVERYONE, not just managers. You might convince yourself that the manager who high-fives the top salespeople is just doing his or her job. But once you get celebration and congratulation flowing from peer to peer, you know you’ve created a celebration culture.
So how do you get there? By creating rituals of celebration. (more…)
Credit: © Saniphoto | Dreamstime.com
Are you in marketing? Let me give you a hint: The answer is YES.
Marketing is not a department—it’s a mindset. If you want your company to succeed (Hint: YOU DO), you must consider marketing a key part of what you do every day.
Marketing isn’t just a matter of mailing out flyers or designing ads. Marketing is about representing your company to the outside world. Everything you do that reaches customers and potential customers—i.e. THE WORLD—is marketing.
So what is good marketing? (more…)
Credit: © Leaf | Dreamstime.com
There are a thousand different faces of success—and failure, for that matter—each with a different track leading to it.
I’ll assume success is your destination. What does it look like? Specifically, what are the values that drive and define your sales culture?
I’m not looking for some secret set of “right answers.” I said there are a thousand different ways to be successful, and I meant it. But you can’t aim for all of them at once. If you want to end up somewhere meaningful, something that fits your corporate and personal values, you have to train your sights on a very specific vision of the future, then lay the tracks that will get you there, and only there.
So how do you know which way to head? (more…)
Credit: © Leoblanchette | Dreamstime.com
Most marketing is based on out-of-touch philosophies and is delivered in such a way that fed-up consumers do not believe it anyway.
American Demographics once said that “Americans trust marketers about as much as the U.N. trusts Saddam Hussein.” Unless marketers fancy the idea of being ferreted out of a spider hole at gunpoint and hung, that is NOT an analogy to celebrate.
Over 70 percent of U.S. adults believe marketers exploit and mislead them. You can’t create a marketing strategy that works until we accept it. When you use this knowledge as a basis for your marketing strategies, you will reach your market in such a way that they WILL believe and accept your marketing. (more…)
For much of mid-February, the smell of grilled bankers hung over the nation’s capital.
Eight of the nine CEOs of banks that received TARP bailout money were testifying before the House Financial Services Committee. Among the complaints of the Committee were the enormous bonuses that executives have been getting even as their companies lose billions.
The bank executives countered that they have to compensate their key people lavishly or they’ll lose them. Money is essential to motivation, they said. And they say this with such complete conviction that it’s hard to believe they might be wrong.
But listeners to Marketplace on National Public Radio were treated to a different perspective when the show asked some working people in L.A. what inspires them to do a great job.
“It’s my passion for arts and beauty,” said a hairdresser. “I want to be the best, best shoeshine man there is,” said the owner of a shoeshine stand. “If you care for your customers, you want to do the best you can for them,” said a Starbucks barista.
Obviously none of these people would turn down a raise if it was offered to them. But when asked what motivates them to do a great job, unlike the CEOs, money was not the first thing knocking on the back of their teeth. (more…)
“But Roxanne…”
Hardly a day goes by that I don’t get an email that includes those two words. It’s usually followed by something like this: “I’d like to energize my workplace, I’d like to make a difference, but I just don’t have the power. I’m not the CEO, I’m just a [insert position here].”
Leadership is not a position—it’s a way of being. You aren’t assigned to leadership, you SEIZE it. It’s about being powerful regardless of your position. (more…)