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Terms are important in growing a business. Let us consider two very important terms: Employee, Human Assets.

Employee. There’s a tone of feudal ownership, of me boss – you worker, me worth more – you worth not so much, that is offensive to anyone categorized as employee.

Human Asset. The same sentiment is found with the term human asset. It is hard not to hear slave in that term. Assets are inanimate objects, with no heart no dreams no passions of their own. The term human assets denotes the human, you and I, who are owned and directed with no free will, to engage or not, who cares about our meaning…towards the corporate goals.

Disclaimer: Hold on. I stand on this side of the economic river. Workers of the world unite is as patronizing as Human assets are a corporation’s number one asset. Karl, you and Vlady, were no different than those you criticized.

These terms have created business culture best described with this term: uncaring. And the numbers generated from this  term do matter:

29%. Paul Herr, author of Primal Management, references a recent Gallup Poll that found only 29% of workers care about their work.  There is so much disconnect and dysfunction in this statistic. The majority, 71%, in a company labeled as workers do not care about their work.

That is the problem. These terms, employee and human assets, and their tones and meanings are bandied about freely when discussing how to grow a business. And we have grown so many businesses with these terms we can see the results: 29% of us, you and I, do not care.

We  lack the words to create a world where we, that is still you and I, can find and create purpose and meaning in our life, together or separately or back-and-forth, join together for common goals and then join others for the same purpose, recognize our strengths and contributions,  create a brand worth admiring, create a brand whose value justifies a price with sufficient margins to generate positive cash-flows.

There are some words in that last paragraph that may be squishy to some readers. We,  or find and create purpose and meaning in our life…common goals or join others…very squishy. They are very squishy if you look at your company’s reports that show in hard numbers the results of those squishy words as they are brought to life, or not,  in your company.

The squishy words brought to life create the rich, literally, filling (and stakeholder reports) in a company.

Purpose and meaning, common goals, recognition and praise, joining others to innovate new products to carve and claim a new territory, all work to create a brand that evokes pride in those who create and share it whether it is …(suggest a new term in comments, please) employees or human assets doing it or your customers sharing it in word-of-mouth or your partners and vendors seeking closer relationships for their common goals. (Relationships is a very squishy word.)

You say that is a little vague? You’re right.  Here are some harder numbers that reflect our choice or our lack of choice of words to describe those who make a brand happen (that’s you and I, again) :

2 of 10 and 10%. According to a recent study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) two of 10 companies said that just 10% [of their employees] could echo their mission statement.

Yawn. Who cares much less knows about a ‘mission statement’. Ok.

40%. Eric Brody at Healthy Conversations shared this recently:

In a recent article on MarketingProfs, Gallup research of 300,000 businesses indicated that 75-80% of employees are achieving much less and feeling far less enthusiastic about their work than they could be. If all your employees were “fully engaged,” Gallup reported, your customers would be 70% more loyal, your turnover would drop by 70%, and your profits would jump 40%. Last, Gallup found that great employees also tend to engender “passionate” customers.

Would you like to be part of a culture whose results generated 40% more profit, where the numbers of disgruntled alienated colleagues would drop by 70% or more…?

Now you may sense a whiff of that rich filling shared in stakeholder’s reports where an organization can find the terms to create their world.

3 and $0. Mary Corbitt Clark, Executive Director of Winning Workplaces (That’s a term we can use…), shared three things you can do to create a winning workplace. They cost $0.

Talk to employees.

Share information with employees.

Bring people together to solve problems.

I like that last term...people. (Learning new vocabulary is a work in progress)

Bottom line ( a hard term)

Would you be willing to take these three steps if:

• your profits rose by 40%
• your people turnover costs dropped by 70%

Terms and numbers. They do matter. Terms first create our world. Numbers report our successes.

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.

If you’ve already got a customer list for doing research, doesn’t it stand to reason that you would use that list for more than just asking questions and collecting feedback?

While I’m sure that many organizations send newsletters and write blogs and send direct marketing pieces to their customers, I wonder how many of them actually have specific turnkey communication programs to specific segments of customers.

It used to be that creating and managing a direct sales and marketing program was an expensive proposition.  But today, any sized business can exponentially increase their bottom line by increasing sales without adding a lot of marketing cost.

Today, I’ve decided to share some tools that you can explore and use to keep your customers engaged and literally add sales power without adding people.

Use Constant Contact for Sending Newsletters and Basic Email Marketing

If you have a simple customer list that you’d like to upload and send easily formatted newsletters to, then Constant Contact is a great tool.  It’s low cost and the newsletters are easy to create and publish to a simple list.  Another neat feature is that your list won’t have to double-opt in (if they’ve already given you permission).  So it’s easy to switch from a manual system to constant contact without disturbing your existing subscribers.  Another great feature of Constant Contact is that their stuff gets through to the audience.  Constant Contact has a terrific reputation and your list will receive their newsletter on time, every time.  In addition to all this, they’ve published a fantastic how-to book that will get you started on a successful e-mail marketing campaign.

iContact Is a Cost Effective Way to Run Autoresponders

By far the best way to increase the size of your sales force without adding people is to automate your selling process.  Start by creating an offer targeted toward a specific audience.  Then create a landing page that describes the benefits and features of your offer.  Include a contact form where your audience can download some free information to learn more about your offer.  Then send them regular emails that educate them about the benefits of your offer.  This process used to be very time and labor intensive, but iContact makes it easy.

While Constant Contact also has an autoresponder feature, there are some limitations as to how many messages you can send.  iContact allows you to create as many groups and messages as you’d like.  iContact also has a newsletter feature (like Constant Contact), but it’s not as robust as Constant Contact’s.  So it really depends on your marketing process.  I actually have clients that subscribe to both.  They use iContact to drive their leads toward a sale and they use Constant Contact to deliver newsletters to their customers.  iContact is extremely easy to use and the cost and service are excellent.

aWeber is the Standard Choice for Basic Online Sales and List Building

If you’ve decided to build an online business and intend on generating a large list of prospects and customers that fall into a variety of categories or segments — aWeber is the standard. aWeber delivers great results because they demand a double opt-in.  This means that aWeber is best for building a NEW list from the web.  If upload your existing list, it will ask everyone to confirm they subscription .  The good thing about that, is that it will clean your list and remove anyone who doesn’t want to receive your offer.  The bad thing is that you will lose people from your existing list.

InfusionSoft: Build Leads, Sales, Customers and Relationships

If you’d really like an all-in-one solution, then it’s hard to beat InfusionSoft.  They call their latest release Email Marketing 2.0 and it doesn’t disappoint.  This latest release makes it easy for small businesses to create dynamic, responsive email marketing campaigns. In addition, the system’s powerful customer database (CRM) tracks interest, behaviors and e-commerce, allowing email campaigns to automatically adapt to readers’ behavior.  For example, imagine that John Smith is interested in your latest widget.  He fills out the form and after receiving 3 emails outlining the benefits, he decides to purchase.  Immediately he is placed in a new list where he now starts receiving a completely different set of emails about the specific widget that he’s purchased and he may also receive offers for other widgets he’s interested in based on which links he clicks on.  Another wonderful new feature is the Newsletter.  InfusionSoft’s has a WYSIWYG feature that can literally grab colors from a picture that you place into the newsletter and design a template around that.  No technical, HTML or programming skills involved.  InfusionSoft’s price point is a bit higher, but I can assure you that it’s cheaper than hiring a sales person, and marketing coordinator to run this process by hand.

What are your favorite customer communication tools?

I was watching a video on iLearningGlobal.tv. Bill Bartmann, one of the lecturers on iLearningGlobal was discussing the difference between a goal and a promise. He mentioned a study at Yale Medical School that where 70% of the people who set goals do not meet them but 98% of the people who set promises to themselves meet the promise.

So what is the difference between a goal and a promise?

A promised is defined as a declaration that something will or will not be done. A goal is defined as the result or achievement toward which effort is directed.

Is a promise a specific outcome whereas a goal is result? It seems the person making the promise has more at stake than the person setting a goal. Is the word goal so over used that the mind (both conscious and subconscious) dismisses it as a trite overused phase that has no negative consequences if it is not achieved. Is the mind saying that you almost never meet your goals so why would this be any different? Or is a promise a more serious commitment to yourself and others? Is there more at stake personally and emotionally if you renege on a promise?

I do not make promises lightly. I would suggest that is one of the reasons they work. A promise is far more personal than a goal. A goal is usually given to us by an external source: manager, customer, market, etc. Where as a promise is personal, only we can make it and only we can break it. Because I do not make promises easily, I will think long and hard before I make a promise. I set goals all the time. I do not always reach my goals. When I make a promise I will move heaven and earth to make the promise happen.

One promise I made to myself is that I would not be late for a meetings, dates, parties, or any commitment I make. I see being on time as a sign of respect and caring for the people I am meeting. If for any reason I cannot make a commitment (or I am going to be late), I will call so they are not waiting. I can think of two times I was late in the last 20 years. I can think of only one meeting I missed because I missed read by calendar.

After listening to Bartmann, maybe I should set fewer goals and make more promises?

What do you think? Is making a promise more serious than setting a goal? If so, why?

About the Author: Ron Finklestein is an author and success coach.  His company, AKRIS works with entrepreneurs and business owners who want to build their business and balance their life.  Ron is called “Your Small Business Success Expert” by his clients because of his passion for their success and his knowledge of business.

According to a recent Mashable article, while every other news media channel’s audience is falling off — NPR’s is growing!  In fact, Mashable goes on to say that NPR is the future of mainstream media!  They go on to say that the three primary drivers of these results are NPR’s focus on local news, social media and being ubiquitous.

NPR has recently reached out to do some research with their community – and social media was a key component of the research and the feedback.  Here is how they did it and some of what they learned:

The Purpose of the Social Media Survey and Inviting Participants

Lian Hansen introduced the survey on her Weekend Edition Sunday show.  One of the things that jumped out at me is the informal tone of the invitation;

“…we’d like your reactions and suggestions for WEEKEND EDITION’s social media efforts. Your thoughts on the conversations some of us have been able to have across Twitter and Facebook are important. You’ve alerted us to stories, suggested questions for guests and become a part of our program in ways that weren’t possible just a year ago.”

The mix of respondents came from a variety of sources:

… the NPR Listens national online listener panel, on-air call outs during Weekend Edition on December 19th & 20th, Facebook postings from Weekend Edition, as well as tweets from Liane Hansen, Scott Simon, myself and other Weekend Edition staff.

For so many of us, gathering respondents involves lists and more lists, and in this case, it was a simple announcement that allowed people from the social media to self-select.

Because the purpose of the survey was to get more direction from their social media community – creating an “open mic” space probably saved a lot of money and collected “good-enough” feedback.

What do YOU think?  What do you see as the advantages and disadvantages of this type of methodology?

One of the wonderful aspects of gathering responses via social media is that you get immediate real time feedback from the audience in their real voice.  This kind of feedback almost has a type of “focus group” quality with one additional advantage — because the content is digital, you can search, tag and categorize the responses so that you can see the patterns that come up — and the real words your audience is using.

In what ways are you using social media as a way of gathering deeper, more colorful information from your customers and audiences?

Using social media in an intentional strategic way is a relatively new topic.  In fact, while many organizations know that this kind of information is available and valuable, few know how to take advantage of it to the point where it drives their strategic decisions.

It’s still not clear to me what NPR is going to do with the results - what specific changes will they make as a result?  It’s clear from the responses they’ve received that people felt more engaged, more special — as if they were behind the scenes.  This makes me wonder if the increased engagement will translate into more financial support.

What do YOU think?

Tell us about your experiences.  Have you asked your customers or audience about social media?  Does greater interaction and connection lead to a tighter bond between you and your customers?  Does it build loyalty?

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.

I’ve been told that every business has to work with “Difficult Customers.”  And, we all have to work with “Difficult People.”  Well, I don’t buy it.

What happened to the rest of us nice, reasonable people that allowed those jerks to rule us?!

There is a multi-million dollar training industry built around the assumption that we all have to work with difficult people.  But here are two big reasons why no one should work with difficult customers .

1. Difficult customers want what your business system isn’t designed to deliver. For example; I worked for a manufacturer who called some of the biggest medical device, appliance and automotive companies their customers.  But these companies had specialized systems that required literally hundreds of man-hours of maintenance on our part so that we can fulfill THEIR quality systems’ requirements – in addition to our own.   So we had two kinds of customers; high-maintenance (the big guys) and low-maintenance (the little guys).  We literally made twice the margin on our smaller customers than we did on the big ones.  They loved us, we loved them and doing what they hired us to do was fast and easy; hence profitable.
2. Difficult customers have no idea why they should work with you instead of a competitor. Do you have customers that charge their customers a lot, but expect you to do more work for less or customers that are constantly complaining about your prices?  This should tell you that your customer understands why customers choose them – but they know that you don’t understand what value you provide – and so they take advantage.  Chances are that your best customers KNOW why they choose to work with you, but you don’t.  If you like these people and want to keep working with them, be clear about what sets you apart and the value you offer and charge accordingly.  If they are disrespectful and mean, get rid of them.  It’s bad enough that you’re losing money; you shouldn’t have to be abused in the process.

You can see how you’re literally hemorrhaging profits in each of these situations.  If your customer requires specific processes and systems to meet their customers’ requirements and that would require that you either work 24/7, hire more people, or force the people that you have to jump through hoops at a moment’s notice – this is costing you money!  It may not show up as a line item, but when you have people leaving their desks in search of specific  papers, or creating reports that weren’t expected, or sitting in meetings resolving problems you didn’t anticipate, these are all unnecessary and hidden costs that are eroding your margins and driving your employees insane.

In the second case, you’re dealing with a situation of corporate low self-esteem.   You may have been so eager to put their name on your customer list, that you allowed your true value and profits to erode.  You may be living in fear that you will lose them.  But if you realize that this mean, unappreciative customer is literally taking up space that a wonderful, appreciative, loyal and profitable customer could be taking – you may see things differently.

Small Business Owners of the world – vow to work with customers who love and appreciate the value you bring and watch you profits go up!

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.