Tag Archives: customers

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Growth IQ

Get Smarter About the Choices that Will Make or Break Your Business

The book review for this week is Growth IQ by Tiffani Bova.

Bova has written a powerful book that describes the optimal paths to business growth in today’s marketplace. She backs up her theories with excellent case studies using relevant businesses and their current levels of success and/or failure.

My takeaways from this book are the ten paths to business growth shown in the list and diagram below and the knowledge that most of these paths are not stand alone. Most business growth comes from applying a number of these paths in a strategically informed sequence. In fact, context, combination, and sequence can be the key to success!

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How To Build Respect In Your Organization

In a recent keynote speech, Bill Hybels stated that the performance of a disrespected worker drops by 50% until the issue of disrespect is resolved. Scarier than this is that 25% of the disrespected workers pass this disrespect on to customers!

That is something to consider!

How many times in the last month have you been treated or seen someone treated poorly by the staff of a retail establishment? Now it really makes you wonder what goes on behind the scenes at these places. How many business leaders are disrespectful to their employees and are indirectly disrespecting their customers, the very lifeblood of their business!

There are way too many examples of disrespect in today’s world! From presidents of countries down to minimum wage employees at fast food establishments. Disrespect in our culture is way to common place! In fact, a business can begin to differentiate itself just by having respectful leaders and employees!

What can leaders do to repair, build, or maintain respect in their work place and start differentiating their business?

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Lead, Sell, or Get Out of the Way

The 7 Traits of Great Sellers

This week’s book review is Lead, Sell, or Get Out of the Way by Ron Karr

Karr explains his time-proven and successful sales philosophy in this book. Essentially, salesmen need to be leaders and sales leaders have five beliefs:

  1. You have everything you need
  2. You can improve any area of your life that you choose
  3. Everything is possible
  4. Preparation maximizes your potential
  5. Customers come first

These beliefs enable the seven essential traits of a sales leader:

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Are Your Customers In Pain?

Are you actively looking to partner with your customers and add value to them by helping them identify and solve their biggest pain points or are you just trying to sell them another product?

When we become so focused on meeting sales quotas and goals we lose sight of the real reason our businesses exist . . . they  exist because we provide something of value to our customers. One of the most important tasks for any business is not to sell their product or service but to work with their potential customers to understand where the customer needs help and how your business can fill that need and provide real value.

I have seen many businesses over the years slip into the trap of myopically focusing on selling products or services. They spend more time coming up with the “perfect” charge rate sheet or the “perfect” product discount sheet then they do working with their clients to understand the challenges that are being faced and how they can assist the client in overcoming these challenges.

Guess what happens to these business . . .

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Are Your Customer Loyalty Programs Driving Customers Away?

How are you treating your customers? Do you have open lines of communication with them so that you really know how they feel? Are your customer loyalty programs attracting and retaining customers or driving them away?

On a recent trip from Calgary to Houston I was bumped out of the Air Canada “Elite” line because my ticket didn’t show my Aeroplan flight rewards status. My wife and kids categorized this as a #firstworldproblem but for those people that travel a lot, not having the loyalty status you have earned is a big deal for quite a few reasons!

For example, I use my status to get into the airport lounges between flights. Besides food and beverages, there is usually a nice place to work complete with free, high speed internet. This means I can usually get a few hours of productive, uninterrupted work completed at each connection and this means less work when I get to my destination. This one feature is really important to me!