QuestionPro Blog

Why You Should Read “Talk Less, Say More”

January 6, 2010 · Leave a Comment

In a world of ubiquitous communication, I thought it might be fun to see what was available at the other end of the communication spectrum.  And this is where I found “Talk Less, Say More: 3 Habits to Influence Others and Make Things Happen” by Connie Dieken.   This book was on my list of must-reads for 2009 and I hope that it will get on your list as well.

The first thing I thought of a couple of pages into this book was “This is a book about LISTENING!”  But I don’t think that “Learn How to Listen” has as much sizzle as “Talk Less, Say More” do you?   Who really wants a nagging re-hash of all the reasons why it’s better to keep your mouth shut and let other people talk?  No one!  What we all want is to get our way and make things happen.  And this is what Connie Dieken delivers.

Why We Should Listen to Connie Dieken

Connie Dieken has built a career around structuring information in a way that gets people to listen.  She is an award-winning former television news anchor, and an inductee of the Radio/Television Broadcasters Hall of Fame.  She is also the founder and President of onPoint Communication, where she has guided thousands of leaders from organizations like Apple, Olympus and McDonald’s to be more influential.  In other words, Connie knows how to inform and influence and audience.

It’s Easy to Read and Easy to Understand

This book consists of 160 pages of short, useful and applicable trade secrets about developing powerful content.  It’s so easy to read and use that I’ll bet you could read a chapter over coffee, apply what you’ve learned by noon and give a presentation that afternoon that will have them throwing budget money at your next project.

Connie practices what she preaches in the way the book is structured.  She frontloads as much of the concepts as she can, and then layers on the detail.  For example; there are three major sections of the book that are her “Connect – Convey – Convince” model.   So you already know how to become more influential and make things happen, just “Connect, Convey and Convince.”  Then there are four chapters under each section that tell you exactly how to connect, convey and convince.  By the time you’ve read the table of contents – you’re already half-way there.

This book is entertaining because it reads like a magazine.  Each section begins with “10 Signs You May Be a Weak…Connector, Convincer or Conveyor.”  This is a little quiz section that asks “Do You Do This?”  Where you get to go down the chapter lists and spot your weaknesses.  This way, you can target specific areas to read or you can simply do what I did and read the whole thing from start to finish.  There are also tips and exercises throughout the book to help you focus your message for maximum impact.

Each chapter is an excellent example of how to structure a message that’s short, sweet and effective.  The good news for you, as the reader, is that you could actually breeze through this book in one sitting.

Is this book for you?

This book is written for anyone who has to communicate with another person to get something done.  Well, I suppose that’s all of us.  More specifically, if you find yourself in meetings where you have to inform people and then get them to approve projects.   Perhaps you’re a sales person who is at the end of your rope and looking for new ways to increase sales.  Or you are a business owner who has to motivate a team to do less with more.  Maybe you are a parent, spouse or friend who is simply trying to be heard and understood by those around you.  All of these situations can be improved by having “Talk Less, Say More” at your side.

About the Author: Ivana Taylor is CEO of Third Force, a strategic firm that helps small businesses get and keep their ideal customer. She’s the co-author of the book “Excel for Marketing Managers” and proprietor of DIYMarketers, a site for in-house marketers. Her blog is Strategy Stew.   You can reach her directly at Ivana@thirdforce.net.

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Search Engine Marketing Secret #3 Revealed: Links are Like Recommendations

January 4, 2010 · Leave a Comment

This is the last of our “Search Engine Marketing Secrets Revealed” series with The Search Guru, Leslie Caruthers.  In the first post, we learned how important it was to focus on search engine marketing because it’s one of the most powerful ways that your customers will find you.  Our second secret was to use natural phrases that your customer might use and search for.  Leslie has included great resources, exercises and links to help you get the most out of the series; I hope that you’ve been bookmarking them!

3. Links are like recommendations; they tell Google you are important.

Inbound links are links from other websites to your website. Solicit and earn valuable inbound links, as this is an indication to Google that your site is popular, relevant and valued by others, as well as helping the search engines understand better where your site fits into the web and what you offer.

Carefully crafted link building campaigns:

  • contribute to Google PageRank
  • position your site as a hub or authority on the Internet
  • drive targeted traffic to your website
  • help your website achieve high rankings for competitive keyphrases and therefore
  • increase your viability in the search engine results pages to
  • boost your conversion flow and sales.

And don’t forget… While it is critical to rank well with the search engines, you must never forget it is the human customer that matters – search engines don’t buy your products, services or click on your advertisements; people do.

Next month, we’ll share insider copywriting strategies to get started including those great keyphrases you’ve uncovered!

This month’s opportunities:

Didn’t take on last month’s opportunities? Go back and start there – that’s your best bet – then move up to this list after that.

  1. Bonus: read past blog posts: http://www.thesearchguru.com/blog/ and back issues of the newsletter here: http://www.thesearchguru.com/email-archive.asp to learn more.
  2. Register for Google Analytics if you haven’t yet: http://www.google.com/analytics/
  3. Register for Google Webmaster Tools http://www.thesearchguru.com/google-webmaster-tools.asp if you haven’t yet.
  4. Read through the Search Marketing Terms Glossary and catch up on basic terminology.
  5. Burning question or comment? Email me at Results@TheSearchGuru.com.

Leslie Carruthers is President of The Search Guru, a best practices full services Search Marketing firm creating breakthrough results for their clients since 2004. Leslie can be reached at 440-306-2418 or Results@TheSearchGuru.com.

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IdeaScale Now Integrates with iPhone Apps

January 1, 2010 · Leave a Comment

With over 100,000 apps the popularity of iPhones is ever on the rise. Thus, it made sense to develop an iPhone IdeaScale Widget…

More info:

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Can Behavior Change Be Fun?

December 30, 2009 · 3 Comments

Ultimately, yes? But, that’s rare, isn’t it?

If the incentives are there, if the change answers 3 questions from the perspective of those whose behavior is meant to change then…yes, maybe.

Those 3 questions are:

* What’s in it for me?

* Why should I care?

* Why should I believe?

Watch this video. Do you think it’s inspiring? (Hint: I did. But that’s just me. What’s your thoughts?) See if the solution it presents answers those 3 questions. (Hint: I did. But, that’s just me…)

Link and more on this story at Innovation in Practice.

About the author: Zane Safrit’s passion is small business and the operations excellence required to deliver a product that creates word-of-mouth, customer referrals and instills pride in those whose passion created it. He previously served as CEO of a small business. Zane’s blog can be found at Zane Safrit.

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QuestionPro Video Learning Series Ep. 5: Branching/Skip Logic

December 28, 2009 · Leave a Comment

John Basile (aka Scraster) produces videos to help explain complex software and online services. His work can be found at scraster.com and at the scrast.net blog, where “it’s all about screencasting”.

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6 Simple Ways to Give Your Brand a Powerful Online Presence

December 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Half of all new product revenues come from the introduction and early stages of a product’s life cycle.   But what about brands?  Can you create a whole new life cycle by re-launching your brand online?

Sure you can.  In fact brand managers have been working overtime on finding the best ways to keep their brands at your fingertips .  Here are some of the best online brand building tools and how you can use them to build a powerful brand presence online.

  1. Blogging:  Blogging isn’t just for individuals.  It’s a wonderful way to personalize and humanize a brand that’s being perceived as too big or too corporate.  The Wal-Mart brand has really taken a beating in that area over the years.  So when I ran into their blog a couple of years ago, I was pleasantly surprised at how fun it was to read and how truly informative the articles were.  As it turns out, the writers are all real-life buyers and their writing and bios show a real enthusiasm for their topic.  I actually left a comment with a question about a toy and almost fell off my chair when I got an e-mail from the writer with a direct link to where I could get this hard-to-find-toy!
  2. Microblogging (Twitter):  Now that Oprah has a Twitter account, we can be sure that Twitter has truly arrived as a “brand enhancement tool.”  Today’s consumers want a relationship with their brands.  They want to know that there are real people behind the products and services that they buy.  Best Buy’s Chief Marketing Officer, Barry Judge has his own blog and Twitters as “@BestBuyCMO” just looking at his Twitter stream makes me feel a little closer to the Best Buy brand.
  3. Online Videos (You Tube):  If you want to get your brand ranked highly on Google, then put up a video.  If your brand has “before and after” demonstration value, then you can’t afford NOT to use YouTube or post videos on your site.  You can’t mention using videos online without mentioning BlendTec’s Will it Blend Videos.  These videos are so popular and so viral because they do a fantastic job of BOTH being fun AND demonstrating the strength and features of the actual product.   Other ways to use video are to actually teach your customers how to use your product or service
  4. Social Networks (Facebook Fan Page or Group): Starting a group or a fan page on social networks like Facebook or LinkedIn is a wonderful way to get your customers to interact with each other about your brand and the ways in which your brand plays out in their lives.  Johnson and Johnson’s McNeil Pediatrics sponsors  a group on Facebook called ADHD Moms.  They provide a space for moms to share info and links to information for moms to share and reference.  You might think that creating a group on a third party site would dilute your brand, but that’s not true.  Creating groups and communities outside your web space actually grows your brand’s fan base.
  5. Widgets : If having your logo plastered on clothes, shoes and hats is cool, then having your widget appear on web sites and blogs is even cooler.   Wal-Mart has developed a series of recipe widgets.  These not only keep the brand name on your site – but also whet your appetite for goodies you can pick out at your local store.  Inexpensive, Viral, Practical, Communicates your value.  Excellent use of widgets to build brand.
  6. Crowdsourcing A great way to move your brand into the future is to use some of the crowdsourcing tools that are available such as UserVoice, Idea Scale or Suggestion Box.  Crowdsourcing lets your customers suggest what improvements or changes you will make next.  Starbucks was one of the first big global brands to launch crowdsourcing to its customer base through its My Starbucks Idea web site.  While it might seem frightening to put the fate of your brand in the hands of your customers, it’s not only an inexpensive way to collect ideas, but it gets your customers involved in the process as they vote ideas up or down.  It also serves as a marketing communications opportunity as Starbucks comments on the status of ideas as they are implemented.  Customers get to put their two cents in.  You get to save thousands and thousands of dollars in market research.  As their ideas are implemented, customers become loyal to your brand and refer it to their friends. Does it get any better than that?

Taking your brand online isn’t a choice any more. It’s a necessity.  The ways that you can bring your brand to life online are only limited by your creativity.  In fact, the technology that’s required to implement any of the tools I talked about here are mostly free or relatively low cost.  So there is no excuse to hold back.

About the Author: Ivana Taylor is CEO of Third Force, a strategic firm that helps small businesses get and keep their ideal customer. She’s the co-author of the book “Excel for Marketing Managers” and proprietor of DIYMarketers, a site for in-house marketers. Her blog is Strategy Stew.   You can reach her directly at Ivana@thirdforce.net.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Branding · Newsletter

Consumer Product Feedback Contributes to Product Improvement

December 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment

This is a story about how a giant corporation collects customer feedback from a variety of sources and uses it to improve it’s products.  Proctor and Gamble is known throughout market research circles as being obsessive about customer feedback.  I had worked with several market research firms in the past who served Proctor and Gamble and I was always impressed with their attention to every detail.

But I had never had a personal experience with their customer feedback system until recently.  I love trying out new products because you just never know when you’ll run into something that’s a real time-saver.  That is why I snatched up the Bounce Dryer Bar when I saw the $1.00 off coupon in my local paper.

It was a little pricey, but I figured that not having to purchase dryer sheets and liquid softener was a good trade-off.

Of course, I couldn’t wait to get the thing in the dryer and give it a try.  I read the directions, which were pretty clear and quickly go the plastic base adhered in the dryer.

The next thing I needed to do was get the actual softener bar into the plastic base.

This proved a little more difficult.  The softener bar insert lies on top of a blue base which snaps inside the plastic base.  In theory, this is a good design;  when the softener depletes itself, you unsnap it from the plastic base and replace it with a new one.  I can see that you’d want to make it unsnap relatively easily.

Well, as it turned out — all it took was the tumbling of the dryer and clothes hitting the dryer bar to unhinge the softener bar from the plastic base.  At first I didn’t know what happened – I only heard this racket in the dryer and when I saw that it had come loose from the base , I wasn’t surprised.  It snapped it really easily, so it made sense that the constant tumbling of towels and clothes could easily displace the bar from the base.  So, this is what my dryer bar looks like now:

I kept the bar inside the dryer and just let it tumble around in there — separate from the base.  it made noise, but the benefit of not using dryer sheets was still there.

I decided to send this feedback to Proctor and Gamble.  I looked on the back of the package and found that they had an entire site dedicated to this product.  That might not surprise you being that it’s P&G and they have thousands of brands to manage.  But that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t ask yourself if having a complete website for a specific product or brand isn’t a good idea.  I think it is.

The first thing you’ll notice on the site is the GIANT feedback button.  This is a great idea, since it’s a new product and a new concept.  The next thing that happens is a likable scientist and mom gives us a little intro to the product and volunteers to help us use it.  It’s a short clip and does the trick.  There are also extra instructions on the menu to the left.

I got on the site and clicked on the “contact us” button to send them an e-mail.  This is where I explained specifically what happened.  Not long after that, I received a letter from the Bounce team along with a coupon for another Bounce Bar.

I didn’t see the point in that since I had a bad experience the first time — so I did nothing.

But just yesterday, I received THIS:

A sturdy box with a new Bounce Bar and a letter that said this:

Dear Ivana,

On behalf of the entire Bounce team, I am sorry you had a disappointing experience with our latest product, the Bounce Dryer Bar.  Our livelihood depends on the trust from consumer like you, so when we let you down, we will do our best to make it right.

We also want to thank you for reaching out to us with your honest feedback.  Your feedback helps us to improve our products, especially on new products like the Bounce Dryer Bar.

In fact, because of feedback from consumers like you, we have done more extensive testing to understand how to improve our product.  Based on this testing, we are making the following changes to the Bounce Dryer Bar:

  1. We are increasing the length of the tape on the back of the dryer bar holder.  This change will reduce the chances of the bar holder falling from the dryer drum and reinforces the dryer tabs that keel the Dryer Bar in its holder.
  2. We are clarifying the installation instructions.  It’s our job to provide clear, simple instructions, so we are making our instructions on the package easier to follow with clear words and visuals.

We hope you will give us a chance to make it right.  Along with this letter, we have sent you a complimentary Bounce Dryer Bar, with the longer tape on the back of the holder.  On the next page you will find revised installation and replacement instructions that will be added to our package.

Because your honest feedback has helped us shape this product, we want to give you the modified Bounce Dryer Bar before it is widely available.  We value your opinion and would love to hear your thoughts, so please call us at 800-5-BOUNCE oncve you’ve had the chance to try this complimentary product.  Please indicate that Bounce gave you complementary Bounce Dryer Bar with new instructions and longer tape when providing your feedback.

Once again, thank you for your role in transforming the Bounce brand.

Sincerely Bob Stallman, Bounce Brand Manager.

This is an example of a great feedback and brand reputation management at work.

What experiences have you had with brands?  Send us your good ones, bad ones and what lessons we should take away from them.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Best Practice · customer research

The Complaint Line Effect

December 21, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Not being able to identify when your organization is experiencing this dangerous cycle sets you up for a series of unpleasant consequences.  Here’s how you’ll spot it.

A healthy customer feedback system engages customers at all times and in a variety of ways.  Your customers are already grading you, after all.  You just need to ask them to share that information with you.  And when that happens the result is that you’re looking at feedback from a nice cross section of your customers.

But the process of consistently asking can break down for a variety of reasons.  Turnover at home office, people get busy, something becomes a big priority.  The bottom line is that the means of asking customers for feedback falls short for a while. 

The Complaint Line Effect. The result is what we call the Complaint Line Effect.  Those customers who have a great experience which they’d like to share aren’t reminded to do so.  Customers who have an axe to grind, however, will continue to find your guest satisfaction survey to share their concerns.  As traffic in your feedback channel drops and complainers become a disproportionately large percentage of traffic, your “customer grades” drop.

Here’s an example.  In this case, turnover at this company’s home office created a period of time when their regular means of asking customers to share feedback – website, signage in their restaurants, their email club – fell by the wayside.  Their average grade is calculated on a trailing 30-day period so as the weeks went by and traffic continued to decline it dragged their average customer grade underwater with it.

Why is this important? Most companies take some form of customer feedback seriously, and their managers and corporate leadership are used to seeing these grades in one form or another on a regular basis.

Failing to recognize that satisfaction metrics are dropping because the profile of your feedback traffic has changed can cause morale to take a hit, especially if there are other challenges that your organization is facing.  This can also create wasted time as your team works to address illusory drops in performance.

Worse, if left unattended this situation can create the perception that a higher than usual percentage of complaints is normal.  And that can be poisonous to any culture of service.

About the Author: Max Israel is founder and CEO of Customerville.  Customerville helps companies to measure customer satisfaction and then project actionable information to their front-line teams in real time.  You can read The Customerville Blog here, and Max welcomes your direct comments atmisrael@customerville.com.

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Case Study: How Small Business Trends Used QuestionPro to Help Choose Best Business Books of 2009

December 18, 2009 · Leave a Comment

When Anita Campbell, editor of the award-winning online publication Small Business Trends,  decided to expand her “Best Business Book Awards,” QuestionPro was the obvious answer.

The 2009 first Best Business Books were really chosen by the editors (Anita and I) with some input from out community.  In 2009, Anita wanted more reader and expert input into our business book choices. Besides, it was so hard to pick the top books that we wanted more opinions to help us choose.

We decided to use QuestionPro as a way to allow our readers to vote.  I’m going to share some of our insights into this process, what we learned and what kind of feedback we got from the community.

The Picture Layout Challenge

We quickly decided that our survey would be primarily one multiple choice question – where readers could pick up to 5 choices for their favorite books.  Then, I had the bright idea of actually using pictures of the books in the question accompanied by the author’s name as text AND a link to either our book review or to amazon.com where they could read about the book.

It wasn’t hard to do, but it was rather tedious:

  1. Find the pictures you want to use and make sure that they are exactly the same pixel size.
  2. Determine how many lines of text you’d like to use – and stick to it.  We decided that we could only have 2 lines of text.
  3. Upload the pictures using the multimedia button at the top of the edit survey page.
  4. Add a multiple choice question where you can choose more than one answer.
  5. Now this is where you will need some very basic HTML skills.  I know EXTREMELY little HTML and I was able to do this.

Now the challenge that took at least a couple of hours was figuring out how to make the books line up nice and straight.  The way to do this is to click on “edit question” and then head over to “settings.”  This is where I found these terrific options of laying out the choices in columns:

One thing to keep in mind is that your “answers choices” – in my case, the pictures, are going to be formated and look something like this:

1   4

2   5

3  6

And NOT

1   2   3

4   5   6

This may not seem like a big deal – until you decide that you want to insert more pictures or if some of your text can’t be edited down to 2 lines.  All of these things happened to us and caused for about an hour of tweaking.

Success

Ultimately, the project was a wild success!  Small Business Trends was able to include over 2900 reader votes into its Best Business Books choices.  We also created another survey where experts were able to contribute their votes to the editor’s picks.  Once the first survey was done, we simply copied it and made some tweaks to customize it.

This has to be THE MOST creative way I’ve used QuestionPro so far.  The staff was amazing in helping me work out the kinks and tweak the settings in order to get fantastic results.

As the book editor for Small Business Trends, I want to thank QuestionPro for their support through this project.

About the Author: Ivana Taylor is CEO of Third Force, a strategic firm that helps small businesses get and keep their ideal customer. She’s the co-author of the book “Excel for Marketing Managers” and proprietor of DIYMarketers, a site for in-house marketers. Her blog is Strategy Stew.   You can reach her directly at Ivana@thirdforce.net.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Best Practice · Newsletter · QuestionPro · customer research

Single Sign-on with RPX for IdeaScale Users

December 17, 2009 · Leave a Comment

IdeaScale now includes the ability to enable RPX support for its users.

→ Leave a CommentCategories: Best Practice