I’ve seen a lot of books out there lately that have taken a lot of pages to explain how to get and keep customers, but it’s really pretty simple:

1. Thank your customers for their business, preferably with a smile
2. Follow the Golden Rule in all your communications with customers, no matter the form
3. If you mess up with a customer, own up to it and apologize
4. Repeat 1-3, replacing “customers” with “employees“, and “business” with “service“

That’s it, in a nutshell.

This is exactly what we did at the last company I worked for, and it worked beautifully.

(By the way, ever wonder how the expression “in a nutshell” came to be?  Check this out - fascinating……)

Put this on your bulletin board, make it required reading, establish it as a mantra, and watch what happens.

Carol Roth, author of "The Entrepreneur Equation"

Carol Roth is a truth teller.   I figured that out the first time I met her in Chicago, before a recent SOBCon.   She has never shied away from hard facts and uncomfortable realities,  especially when it comes to the business world.

She has faced many of these realities herself, during her career as an investment banker, deal maker, and business strategist.  By her own admission, she’s always had this “Lucy Van Pelt” (the character in the Peanuts comic strip) thing going on, putting up her own version of the “Doctor is In” sign, telling it like it is to all who frequently ask her for advice.

I have been one of those people myself,  because I’m about to make the big jump into my own business (with a partner, Liz Strauss), and Carol knows a thing or two about that.

There is SO much to think about when starting a business, and I needed a few doses of reality as I slogged forward.   Carol has been extremely helpful, and now I feel a lot better about what I’m doing, and, on top of that, I have a great new friend, because she also happens to be a good and caring person to boot.

So it was with great interest that I recently read her latest book, “The Entrepreneur Equation“.   The book is a wonderful distillation of all that advice she has given over the years, well sequenced and organized.  It really is essential reading for any would-be entrepreneur, because it really “lays it all out there” – all the hurdles and “screens” that one has to jump and pass through to conceive, plan, fund, staff, model, manage and execute (just to name a few) a new business.

The crux:  Just because you think you CAN be an entrepreneur, that doesn’t mean you SHOULD be one, until you answer all the right questions.

I’ll pass along just a few of the examples of those “right questions” in the book that “got” me (and made me reach for the yellow highlighter):

• Are you going to create a “salable” business, rather than a “jobbie” (a hobby disguised as a business) or a “Job-Business” (a one person business that isn’t scalable)? There’s a great chart in the book that breaks this down perfectly.
• How are you with your personal finances? Because if you can’t manage your own finances, then “you shouldn’t be an entrepreneur trying to manage a business (and implicitly, the business’s finances)“.   That one really made me think (as I stared at my unbalanced checkbook).
• Are you willing to put in a LOT of hard work and practice? The “Secret” of success is not just a great idea, a positive attitude, and venture funding.  A lot of us are so impatient when it comes to this – we want instant success.  But it’s rarely so.
• Are you a “Santa or an Elf”? That is, are you better at giving direction, or taking direction?  If you are the latter, it will be very, very hard to run a business on your own.
• Are you “too smart for your own good”? That is, you can’t give up control over anything because “nobody can do it better than you”?  Carol has quite an interesting take on this one.  And boy, it made me look in the mirror (thanks Carol).

I highly recommend this book to anyone even remotely thinking about starting their own business – it’s a great reality check that covers all the bases.

Carol also has put together a pretty cool pre-book launch contest, that runs through Friday (2/18/11):

http://theentrepreneurequation.com/special-offers/

She has some great bonus offers to readers who buy the book this week, so check it out.

AND, for every book purchased this week, Carol will be donating one book to SCORE, the national business non-profit, as a way to help as many entrepreneurs as possible to succeed.

Well done Carol!

In early 1997, its stock price was $4.

This once proud company had taken a bunch of body blows, and was staggering – badly.

Its CEO at the time was great at cutting costs and preserving capital, but investors weren’t buying it.  Plus, his communication skills were sub-par, and at about the company’s lowest point, he delivered a speech at a major trade show that was considered a rambling, unfocused, “unmitigated disaster“.

Something had to change. And change it did,  because the new CEO had a vision that went beyond product, and costs, and overhead, and costs of capital.

It was about passion.  And about people who have it.

Thirteen years later, the stock price is now above $240, and it has a market cap bigger than Microsoft.

That company is Apple.  And that CEO is Steve Jobs.

Jobs returned to Apple full-time in 1997 and quickly put together a brand new marketing campaign that he presented in a speech that summer.

A video of that speech has surfaced again recently, and it is nothing more than an absolutely essential case study in how a leader must present a company’s values, vision, and purpose, BEFORE a company can march forward with its products.

Which brings us back to passion. Jobs, in that speech, declares that “Marketing is about values”.  He added that companies “have to be really clear on what we want them to know about us“.

Then, he says “we’re not about making boxes for people to get their jobs done“.   It’s not about the product.

With that stage set, Jobs delivers Apple’s “core value”:  “We believe that people with passion can change the world for the better”.

That’s about as far away from product as anyone could get.  But yet, this statement, and the resulting “Think Different” ad campaign, set a tone that resulted in the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and Apple’s domination of the technological “cool factor”.

Not to mention that $240 share price.

So does a vision matter? Do core beliefs matter? Can a passion for change translate to nuts and bolts success?

Oh, yeah.  Ask Steve Jobs. Or better yet, watch the video yourself. Several times.  And remember that line from the commercial:

“The ones that are crazy enough to want to change the world are the ones that actually do”

By now I’m sure you’ve heard or read about the Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater - his actions have caused quite a disturbance in the Social Media universe.

While the interesting part of all this is the intense debate as to whether or not his behavior should be notable or celebrated in the first place, that’s not what I want to write about today.

Rather, I’d like to talk about the flip side of all this.

That is, the many thousands of people out there serving customers who have the audacity of professionalism.

This Jet Blue incident is far from the first time a customer acted in an inconsiderate and cruel way.

It happens quite a bit, unfortunately.   And in response to those actions, these particular customer service people are biting their lips, summoning up all the courage, control, and grace they can muster, and acting like professionals.

They don’t lash back.  They use their guile and their common sense to stay calm and diffuse the anger,  despite whatever harm that may have come their way.

And more often than not, this professionalism carries the day, and the situation is controlled.  In some cases, their actions can even totally turn the situation around, creating a loyal customer for life.

Hopefully, within the organizations that employ them, this professional behavior is rewarded and celebrated.  But usually, that’s as far as it goes.

No viral Facebook campaigns.  No Twitter avalanches.  No press conferences. No 15 minutes of fame.

Well today, that’s not good enough for me.  I want to offer my heartfelt salute to all of those service professionals who have the audacity to be just that – a professional.

What this whole Steven Slater brouhaha demonstrates, and the real lesson here , is how difficult it really can be to hold it together when that kind of customer behavior takes place.

It is SO easy to lose it.   We’ve all been there.

The next time you see someone display their professionalism in such an extraordinary way,  send their boss a note. Or just say “thank you”.

For they deserve our recognition, even in that small way.

My wife and I have been in Paris on a two week vacation, spending the holidays in one of my favorite cities in the world.  While the sights, lights, art, food, chocolate (oh yes), and all else this place has to offer have been fantastic, there was one particular thing I really wanted to share with you.

In our shopping for vegetables we encountered a produce shop and a owner/proprietor I will not soon forget.   It’s called “Le Potager Mermoz” on 36 Rue Jean Mermoz in the 8th Arrondissment.

The owner, quite simply, delivered one of the best customer service experiences I have ever received, if not the best.

Here are all the attributes he displayed on our visits there:

Proper Greeting – without fail, a hearty “bonjour monsieur“.

Meticulously Arranged & Attractive Goods – so meticulous, that you were not allowed to touch them. And the fruits & vegetables looked SO fresh.

Proper Attire – He wore a clean,  bright white coat that screamed “you can bet that I love these vegetables as much as you will love them on your table“.

One-On-One Service – You pointed out what you wanted, and he actually picked it up.

Great Packaging – He individually wrapped every vegetable like it was a delicate bunch of flowers, and packed them lovingly in our reinforced paper bag with string handles.

Patience – While we knew very little of each other’s language, and there were several people waiting in line,  he still exhibited great patience while we deliberated (and stammered through) our selections.

Handling Queues- He was very good about greeting customers as they arrived, even though he was still attending to us, and telling them he’d assist them as soon as he could.

Respect - When an older man entered the store (I would guess in his late 70′s), he immediately pulled up a chair for him, so he could be comfortable while he waited.

Positive Attitude – Smiling, gregarious, pleasant – all through the transaction.

Salesmanship – On our second time there, he showed off his recent acquisition of black truffles by inviting us to smell them (gosh, they smelled good!).

Remembering Past Buying Behavior – On that 2nd visit, he remembered the vegetables we bought the time before, and led us to them.

Valued Return Customer Treatment – He also, haltingly but sweetly, made a bit of conversation with us the second go-round,  exchanging pleasantries about our general well-being.

Thank Yous and Farewells – A heartfelt “merci“, “au revior“, and “joyeux noel“, all again with the French “sir” equivalent attached.

Proper Manners – When we left, he opened the outside door for us.

Proper Manners, II – As we were leaving, he noticed that my wife was carrying the bag of vegetables.  That was not going to stand – he took the bag and handed it to me, and said something in French roughly equivalent to “hey dude, be a gentleman and carry that bag!”.

It was a totally unique experience, and one that left an indelible impression on me.   Why couldn’t customer service always be this way?  And here’s the kicker – because we were being treated so royally and so graciously, and the produce was so clearly superior,  we GLADLY paid well beyond the supermarket rate.

Customer service, done well, is a personal experience – it’s two people, interacting, and benefiting from it. The buyer gets great value, and the seller gets the personal satisfaction of delivering the value. And, if all those elements noted above are part of the process, those benefits and go beyond value, and into the realm of lasting positive impressions, and long-time unfailing loyalty.

I only wish I could put that store, and that wonderful person, on the plane back to the states with us.  What will be coming back with us is my memory of that place, and the great lessons I received  from the Paris Produce Man.

Bill Clinton at the World Economic Forum, 10/7/09

This is my second post of observations from the World Business Forum in NYC.   My first post , covering the 1st Day of the conference, tied all the presentations on Leadership into the theme of “sitting tall in the saddle“.

This post continues the thread on Leadership, but from a slightly different direction.   The 2nd Day speakers, particularly in the afternoon sessions, made it clear to me that a lot of effective leadership practice is hiding in plain sight.

That is, sometimes we go too deep in searching for answers.   The best illustration I can offer came from one of the speakers, the CEO of Kraft Foods,  Irene Rosenfeld.

Ms. Rosenfeld has turned Kraft around by simply making some common sense observations, and not necessary digging too deep into what I’m sure was reams and reams of data that showed the arrows pointing downward.

The one in particular that was hiding in plain sight for Kraft?

The food needs to taste good.

I know, you must be saying to yourself – isn’t that just absolutely, positively obvious – they are a food company!

But apparently it wasn’t to the previous management – Rosenfeld discovered that way too many customers really didn’t like their products.

Ooops.

That, of course, has now changed, and the ship has been righted. But not before the discovery of what had been hiding in plain sight.

It’s the use of some good ‘ol common sense that really separates the great from the good.

This was also illustrated by the closing speaker President Bill Clinton.   His speech was peppered with insights as to how he came to many of his tough decisions, and it was interesting how he would “connect the dots” with very basic observations.   For example, when talking about lending money to Mexico, he would speak of being a “Good Neighbor” just as much as he would be dig into the economic and socioeconomic data.

He also was asked about his core Leadership principles – he cited 5:

• Have a vision
• Lay out a strategy
• Get the right people to execute it
• Sell it
• Use your charisma

Nothing very complicated here  – once again, it’s usually all hiding in plain sight.

All too often the “too obvious” gets pushed aside – it can’t be that uncomplicated, could it?  We need more analysis! We need more study! We need more committees!

Nope, we just need common sense leadership.  Be a master of the obvious. You might not be crowned a genius – just as someone who “gets stuff done”.  I’ll take that any day.

I’m part of the “Blogger’s Hub” covering the World Business Forum in New York City, and focus during the morning sessions was on Leadership.  Three well-known speakers, Bill George, Bill Conaty, and Patrick Lencioni, talked about Leadership in the context of crisis, performance, and effective team building.

Their presentations were all very good in their own right (Lencioni in particular was wonderful, and darn funny to boot), but there was a common theme in my mind that bound them together:

A Great Leader Needs to Sit Tall in the Saddle.

There’s so much more to this than “hitting the numbers”.  Just like John Wayne on his horse, leaders need to set the example for all to follow, by doing things like

• Facing reality (George)
• Not taking on the world alone  (George)
• Making sure the team is prepared for the long haul (George)
• Following your True North  (George)
• Showing commitment (Conaty)
• Demonstrating values (Conaty)
• Always telling it like it is (Conaty)
• Balancing passion and compassion (Conaty)
• Over communicating (Lencioni)
• Encouraging truth telling among your charges (Lencioni)
• Promote and enjoy conflict (Lencioni)
• Preach joint accountability (Lencioni)

It takes character, guts, resolve, and yes, even a little swagger to pull all this off.    It can’t be for the faint of heart.

These are the kind of things they don’t teach you at business school.   Each  speaker acknowledged their obviousness, but yet admitted their difficulty.

How can something that looks so simple on paper actually be so hard to just step up and do?

Because in reality, it’s hard.  Unless you can stand tall in that saddle.

Giddy-up!

This week Starbucks launched its new instant coffee,  “VIA”,  to much fanfare.  On two consecutive days, I was handed free samples of the product as I purchased my daily lattes.

I tried both varieties of Colombian and Italian Roast, and they were surprisingly good. Just as good or better than my office’s “by the cup” pod machine.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but be disappointed by what Starbucks and its founder Howard Schultz has done – launched its self-proclaimed “product of last resort”.

According to Eric Felten of the Wall Street Journal, just a few years ago the Starbucks director of research and development uttered that line at a conference – because instant coffee was way “off the target” from the core of its business.

It was a complete and total capitulation to the one powerful thing that had always worked against the Starbucks ideal, especially as it grew by thousands of stores – speed.

Today, fast always wins. This is a society where the concept of “lingering” is rapidly going the way of the dinosaurs.  The Starbucks store, for me, has been quite the laboratory to observe this change over the past 15 years.

I can remember the smell, the music, the zen vibe, and the relaxed “no rush” atmosphere in 1994 when I first made my daily visits. Nobody hovered around the barista like vultures circling their prey.

Today, the music is turned way down.  The lights are brighter and the zen is long gone.  And 9 out of 10 of us are using our handhelds impatiently as we hurry the barista along.  We want our lattes, and we want them now.

From that perspective, I can’t  blame Starbucks for launching this product of last resort – it’s just tapping into our speed culture.  Fast and faster.  I even find myself growing more and more inpatient about waiting for just about anything – even if a Google search takes more than 5 seconds.

Deep down, I don’t want fast to win – so when one of the last bastions of  “the experience rules” throws in the towel, I truly worry about what’s to come.

As I hover around the barista and buy a few packets of VIA.  Life can be such a contradiction……

Columnist Alina Tugend is tired of hearing about “finding our passion” in the workplace.  She wonders if we are falling into a “trap of believing that our work, and indeed our lives, should always be fascinating and all consuming”.

That’s the interesting theme of a piece she wrote this past Sunday in the New York Times that is well worth your time.

It is filled with great little tidbits on how various Professors, Psychologists, and Authors look at job fulfillment, and the role of passion in achieving it.

The point she makes amongst these opinions is that not everything we do in the workplace is going to be “passion-worthy” – there is a lot of routine, boring, and outright unpleasant stuff that happens along the way.  But that shouldn’t stand in our way of a general sense of career enjoyment, or finding some meaning in what we do.

So instead of shooting for all passion & glory, all the time, perhaps there is a more reasoned way to approach it.

One way that made a lot of sense to me in the article was offered by Professor Csikszentmihalyi, and his concept of “flow” – or “a state of complete involvement“.   Put simply, it’s being so absorbed in your work that you lose track of time.

I could completely relate to this – during the part of my career when I was unhappy, I was always looking at the clock – counting the minutes to when I could go home.  These days, where I’m in a job I like, time just totally flies, and there never seems to be enough of it.   So my “flow” is pretty good – not perfect, but good.

Then there’s dopamine.   That’s what gets released in our brain when we accomplish goals – and makes us feel good.  Professor Gary Marcus concludes that “the way to be happy in life is to set a series of achievable goals”.    Fair enough, but the purpose of the goal setting does factor into it – otherwise everybody would be fulfilled in life by winning at video games instead of cracking the genetic code or inventing a new Social Media software.

Finally, there’s “the love of the job”- to Tugend’s point, it’s pretty rare when we absolutely love everything that happens on any given day on the job.    It’s more like a series of trade offs that lead to a generalized good feeling – as she quoted Byron Wolt, “if you love what you do, what you don’t love about it isn’t so bad“.

In the end, Tugend concludes that perhaps searching for passion is “not so bad”- but it has to be infused with a sense of realism that understands that it’s not going to be there all the time.  In fact,  it seems like any way you look at happiness in the workplace, be it through passion, or “flow”, or goal setting, or love, if we can indeed keep our sense of perspective through it all, we don’t need 100% of any of it.

How much DO we need?

Tugend quotes Author Lawler Kang as saying – “if 85 percent of what you’re looking for is there, that’s great“.

85 Percent – that’s sounds about right to me.

Let’s call it the “85% Happiness Solution – Because The World Ain’t Perfect (and Neither Are We)”

Sounds like a pretty half-full way of looking at it, don’t you think?  Thanks Alina for a great article, and the inspiration. 

“That’s what capitalists do”.

I was scanning the business pages of the NY Times yesterday when I read a column by Joe Nocera about the recent government bank bailout.    It questioned whether those banks, in the wake of their rescue,  have a responsibility to “do what’s right for the country” and in essence be “kinder, gentler banks trying to repay their debt to society“.

Nocera noted that the folks in the bank executive suites have the same perspective as anyone running a business – their job is to maximize profits, and not necessarily be thinking of the public good.   Hence the line at the beginning of this post – “that’s what capitalists do“.

This is the classic tug-of-war between capitalism and altruism, and while the bank bailout is a very large scale version of it, playing out in front of a world-wide audience, this tightrope gets walked on nearly every day by nearly every business owner and manager out there.

Especially in a service business.  Put in this context, “service business”  is very nearly an oxymoron – serving others while at the same time acting like a capitalist.

Can this fine line be successfully navigated?  I believe it can, but clearly a few compromises have to be made.    We can’t serve everyone the same way and expect to be profitable.  We need to have a standard of service that is appealing relative to the price, but yet cost effective.

The interesting thing is that there is a wide-spectrum of relativism at work out there, where price considerations can almost obliterate any service obligation.   A great example I saw recently in the NY Times was the case of the airline Ryanair.   They are doing well financially, but not because of their service  – here’s the view of their CEO, Michael O’Leary:

Mr. O’Leary said in a recent interview. “Our customer service is unlike every other airline, which has this image of, ‘We want to fall down at your feet and you can walk all over us and the customer is always right,’ and all that nonsense.”

By contrast, Mr. O’Leary continued, Ryanair promises four things: low fares, a good on-time record, few cancellations and few lost bags.

“But if you want anything more — go away! Will we put you in a hotel room if your flight was canceled?” Mr. O’Leary asked rhetorically. “No! Go away.”

Not a lot of altruism there.

But this is what capitalists do – because the end game is profit.

As consumers we really do wish we could hold every business up to the same altruistic standard, in that we all should be dealt with in a certain “spirit of service” that is indeed kinder and gentler, and everything is completely transparent and fair.

As businesspeople, however, we have to shift our perspective, and say yes, we want to do that, but only to the extent we can and remain profitable.

Those that can walk this tightrope successfully are the glue that holds a capitalistic society together – filling common needs as well as filling pockets.

It ain’t perfect, and sometimes we need our government to intervene – the bank bailout saga certainly illustrates that – but it’s hard to argue with where this version of capitalism has taken us, and will take us, as long as this delicate balance with altruism can be sustained.