Grow From Here

Developmental psychologist and author, Robert Kegan once stated that, “Behind every complaint lies a commitment.”

The theory behind this is that people do not complain about something unless they care about it.  If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t bother to comment.

Sometimes, I am very hard on my credit union.  I love what they stand for, and want them to live up to it.  But every time they fall short of their high standards I am all the more disappointed.   So I complain.  But unless things get too bad, I am fiercely loyal to them as long as I believe that they are doing their best to live up to their brand promise.  Companies that I don’t think care, I don’t bother to contact with complaints - I just leave and go elsewhere, silently.

Complaints often spring from a person’s frustration.  Attempts to voice their frustrations often come out as complaints.   As the person receiving the complaint, it can be seen as a negative (oh no, what a pain) or as a positive (this person cares about my franchise and believes it can be better).  The perspective you bring to the complaint will make a huge difference in what you do with it.

Although you are on the receiving end of the belligerence, you are also the one in control.   It is up to you to turn things around, and it will definitely benefit both parties.

How can you turn a complaint around?  Change the dynamic by changing the way you listen.

If you can create an atmosphere of safety and allow full expression, then several things happen.

• The relationship stays strong
• The speaker no longer feels victimized, but is now empowered
• The complainer is no longer part of the problem, they are part of the solution
• You become known as a good listener
• More importantly… You have accessed new information
• The complaint is turned inside out, becoming useful data
• This constructive feedback can improve systems and operations

The potentially disagreeable situation can be turned around, by the way that you chose to see and respond to it.

You have shifted the complainer from being a problem to being a part of the solution.

Open ears and an open mind are very welcome to an agitated speaker; it leaves them feeling heard as well as reinforcing the feeling that you are committed to your brand promise.  This creation of a safe space will work wonders to diffuse the frustration of the beleaguered grouch.

Who in your franchise complains a lot?

Why do they bother? 

Are they trying to make things better? 

Are they committed but caught up in feelings of frustration? 

Even when a complaint appears as a self-centered attempt to increase profits, bear in mind that you can turn the situation around, and use the feedback to benefit you both.  And yes, I know that not every complaint indicates commitment, but I have found been impressed by how some of our customers have managed to add huge value to their franchises by changing their perspective on how they receive complaints.

Remember, if they didn’t care, they wouldn’t complain.

Best Practices, Business Growth, Communication, Tips

This is a Guest post from Paul Segreto – Franchisessentials, originally posted at http://franchisessentials.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/controlling-brand-trademark-within-social-media-what-to-do-if-franchisees-got-there-first/

I was recently asked to share my point of view on how a franchise brand can — or even should — wrest control of their brand on social media destinations when franchise holders have been early entrants.

Here are my initial thoughts:

As is typical in most franchise agreements, there’s most likely a clause regarding use of the brand name and trademark. It may need some interpretation to Web 2.0 usage, but there should be no problem applying the language in this regard. Also, online branding falls into marketing, and ultimately, advertising. I’m certain franchise agreements provide typical clauses that prohibit franchisees from utilizing non-authorized ads, etc.

All that being said, it’s always best to convince rather than demand. If the organization is large, it may be more effective to work through advertising cooperatives and franchisee advisory councils in pushing anything regarding social media. One strategy could see the franchisor contributing financially to a social media strategy. (Much cheaper than legal expense to enforce clauses in franchise agreement; not to mention “expense” of diminished morale) As incentive to initiate the same, franchisees would need to voluntarily relinquish their online identities so the parent company may establish one facebook page, one twitter id and one website.

I would recommend developing a template for franchisees to use that would piggyback off the national identity. For example, if corporate identity is Zippy Lube, the franchisee could use Zippy Lube NY or Zippy Lube NY 101 or Zippy Lube Jamaica NY and so on. Each franchisee could have their own web page linked to company website. It’s important to maintain uniformity and a sense of organization when attached to company brand or when linked together.

Please share your thoughts below. Thank you.

Best Practices, Communication, Franchise

Top Ten Tips to increase online community interactions

Have you set up an online community that isn’t getting the traffic you are looking for? Online communities can be set up very quickly based on a vision that seems compelling.

‘Build it and they will come’ is one of the most misleading phrases out there when it comes to creating an online community that takes on a life of its own and accomplishes the goals that caused it to be created.

Like any marketing tool, online communities can be hugely effective if you have value to offer that your potential community members also value, and if you are able to spread the word. But getting to the critical mass tipping point is not always simple. Many sites about online communities are full of suggestions about which tool or software package to use. Don’t get distracted. You can have the best software package in the world, but if you don’t get interaction happening, your online community will not grow.

People are swamped by online communities they can join. They may already belong to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning communities or other special groups. There are thousands of specialized communities they can pick from and join.

Open Box has developed a number of online communities, and works with customers to design, build and then draw traffic to their sites. Here are our top ten tips to help increase the interactions in your online community.

1.  Offer something that is of high value TO YOUR MEMBERS. It is very easy to offer something that you consider to be of high value – the most important thing is to know what your potential members see as being of high value – these two can be very different and you must know what they see as valuable. If you don’t know the answer to this, don’t read any further until you do – none of the following tips will help.
2.  Have a tightly targeted community – don’t try to be all things to all people – do one thing extremely well and have a simple message that tells people exactly what your community has to offer them
3.  Seed the community – get a core group of people who are both interesting and experts in the field who will start interesting conversations and get interesting posts going to kick-start the conversation
4.  Try arm twisting and bribery – the key goal is to get to critical mass – where you have enough members and conversation that when new people come they see the community as alive and interacting – then they will want to join and interact themselves. Find people you know who will comment on the early posts and/or start discussions – ideally people who also know each other will get the ball rolling
5.  Reward interactions – make sure that people who do post are getting replies and that a positive feedback loop is being established
6.  Quality not quantity – it will be of greater benefit to you to have three conversations going that are passionate and involved than 50 that each have one or two posts. Map out a strategy for those first conversations (be they in forums, articles, feedback forums or others) then implement
7.  Know what people are doing – use analytics tools to see where people are going, what they are doing, and especially where they are leaving the site. Where they are going means you have done something right – where they are leaving is a place that you may want to make some changes.
8.  Try rapid small changes and measure the effect – this tip ties in with #7 – make numerous small changes and always track the effects. If you add a new or bigger button, do you get more response? How about if you change the wording? One site we worked with was free, but simply adding ‘it’s all free’ above the ‘register’ button increased the number of sign-ups significantly.
9.  Find passionate people – people who are passionate about the subject of your community will make the best contributors. Find them through twitter, through their blogs, through other online conversations. Get in conversation with them and find out what might draw them to your community. These are the people who will post, reply, and tell others about this great new site they have found.
10.  Ask for help – people love to help, so posting questions asking for help / advice / input is a great way to get the conversation going, especially once you’ve found your passionate people in tip #9.

Non tip: Being controversial is often advised as a way to get people talking about you. If you try it and it works, let us know in the comments, and maybe it will be in the next top 10 list!

Best Practices, Communication, Tips

Online Coupons Bringing In New Customers

CBC had an interesting interview recently related to the recent increases in online coupon usage.  They’re in huge demand these days and websites like Red Hot Deals are doing a booming business.  Online coupons can be a great way to attract customers and bring new people in to your location.   People are looking for ways to save money these days, and many are open to trying new suppliers/companies if they can get lower prices.  Coupons can be a great way to entice new customers, and the cost can be extremely low (close to non-existant) if you use online coupons.

Using the internet to distribute online coupons for some retailers has led to a reduction in catalouge production/distribution, saving both the consumer & the supplier money, not to mention lowering environmental impact by reducing paper waste.

Statistics on Online Coupon Usage:

Many retail franchises have traditionally used coupons to bring in new clients, and according to a site called Prospectiv, “Tough times are seeing more people using coupons – 72% of consumers are using more coupons than they did six months ago and three quarters say the state of the economy is the reason for doing so”.  This is strong evidence that using online coupons to promote your product(s) or service(s) is a sound marketing strategy.  When times change and new trends on consumer spending practices surface, they often become the norm for the long term rather just surfacing as a “fad”.

Prospectiv also quotes the following survey stats from polling 1,386 consumers, (August 2008): 

• 80% said they would be very likely or likely to increase their use of coupons if they could be tailored to their interests and delivered online.

• 87% of shoppers said they would be more likely to shop at a retailer that offered coupons.

• And the good news for newspapers: 47% found print and online coupons equally convenient, while just 9% reported online coupons were most convenient.

An article on how to market your coupons can be found at TamingTheBeast.net, where ideas such as; raising standard prices; offering a coupon sign up registry on your site; submitting your coupons to online coupon sites & setting up an affiliate program are discussed.

Creating Your Own Online & Print Coupons:

Other options are to create your own coupon(s) using websites such as MerchantCircle.com (for a fee, their service is to assist you with online advertising), or CouponsReady.com  (design your own coupon for your business website, or print distribution).  Each charges a fee for their service, but make the process of online coupon creation a relatively simple process.  Even better, you can set coupons up for free using Google Coupons.

Get set up with Coupons in 10 minutes or Less With Google:

If you’re not already set up on Google Maps, do that first (5 minutes).  Then go to www.google.com/local/add to create an online coupon for your company.

Google Coupons

Best Practices, Business Growth, Communication, Franchise, Technology, Tips advertising, clients, consumers, creating, Design, distribute, economy, franchises, Google Coupons, Google Maps, ideas, marketing, new, offiliate, online coupons, polling, prices, print, product, promote, retailers, service, statistics, strategy, submitting, trends, usage

There are lots of blogs out there about franchising & particularly about how to buy or select a franchise.  When I started looking for blogs for franchisors, I had a very hard time finding good blogs with valuable information specifically for franchisors.  I tried Google searches, etc and kept coming up with blogs for franchisees.

Thanks to Twitter, I have come across a number of blogs providing high value information specifically for franchisors.

Top Five Blogs for Franchisors

Note: these are listed alphabetically not in order of preference – they’re all worth following!

1.  “CrappyToGood” by Christian Faulconer.

Christian Faulconer is the CEO of Franchise Foundry which focuses on helping new concepts with high growth potential.  Christian provides business advice and talks about how to achieve growth through franchising.  Nice short posts, thought-provoking…

Sample posts:

• Trust is the New Competitive Advantage
• Failure Is Not An Option, It’s a Requirement

2.  “Expert Franchise Guide” by Shelley Pearson. 

Shelley Pearson is working to solve one of small business owners’ biggest operational obstacles: access to decisive, experienced and cost effective franchise business guidance.   Shelley is also the developer of the Expert Franchise Guide. She aims to develop a progressive network of ethical franchisors who work together to improve the industry’s best business practices.

Sample posts:

• Economy Slowing… Franchising Hotting Up
• Where Government can help small business

3.  “Franchise Essentials” by Paul Segreto.

Paul Segreto is the Founder and President of FranchisEssentials.  He is a franchising veteran – for over twenty years he has exclusively served the franchise industry as a consultant and coach, senior-level corporate executive, activist, multi-unit franchisee and area developer.  Paul has a great collection of resources and sources of information on his blog, as well as his useful and informed posts that cover a variety of viewpoints with dexterity.

Sample posts:

• Franchise Growth – Are Concessions and Discounts Necessary
• Franchise Success & Web 2.0 

4.  “Franchise King” by Joel Libava

Joel Libava is a franchise consultant, so you might think his blog would fall under the category I first mentioned – blogs for franchisees.  It does.  But his blog made this list because it also offers a wide variety of information that can be useful to franchisors.  Look especially for information on social media marketing and check out his business advice links.  Follow trends in franchising and keep a finger on the pulse of a wide variety of information.

Sample posts:

• Using Franchise Brokers and Consultants
  Do You Know Anybody That is Financially Stressed?  Here’s A Way To Help Them 

5.  GrowFromHere by Katryn Harris

No modesty here; this list is not complete without this blog itself!  Depending what you are looking for, you can find technology tips, business strategy posts, book reviews, and even some fun stuff…  Suggest new topics you would like to see anytime, and post a comment if you know other good blogs for franchisors.  Let’s grow the list!

Best Practices, Communication, Time Savers

Magpie Heaven

If Twitter is anything, it is lots of information in a fast moving environment.  Picture a revolving door in a busy shopping mall; as varied as the folks who pass through it and constantly changing.  Other adjectives: interesting, colourful, amusing, random & enlightening.  It’s a lot of fun to see what’s coming through the ‘tweetvine’ & to follow the various links.  It makes me feel a little bit like a magpie with piles of neat shiny objects to go after.  The challenge for me is that I don’t have ‘extra’ time.  My time is tightly allocated and very much in demand.  So how do I get the best use out of Twitter?  There needs to be a balance between the magpie attraction and the usefulness/direct relevance of the information I find.  Like any social networking site, I need to keep track of my time by quickly valuing the links and contacts I encounter.

Building relationships

Twitter has been a fascinating way to make initial contact with a large number of people that have similar business values/interests.  I can see their tweets (and they see mine) and we can both decide whether;

 a) the other person is someone I want to know, and

b) whether they have value to offer.

Then we can get in touch.  So far, people I’ve ‘met’ on twitter, I’ve followed up with by email, Linked In, their websites, etc.  The trick here is to ensure that I am the opposite of the magpie.  I need to make sure I am collecting only that shiny bits that are valuable at the end of the day and not just picking up connections and contacts that may be fun but distracting.

Automatic Refollow

With Twitter, you can set up your account to automatically refollow any other peep who choses to follow you.  Alternatively, you may prefer to opt out of this as some people treat twitter like a popularity contest; gathering up as many followers as they can, rather than as a B2B social networking environment.  There are two avenues of thought on this and it depends on your purpose for being on Twitter.  If you choose the automatic refollow, you need to later review the followers to make sure they have your interests at heart (similar purpose), otherwise your ‘tweetstream’ will be overloaded with useless & time wasting micro-blog posts.  Which do you choose?

So Far

Time spent to date:  roughly 21 hours (time is decreasing now that I ‘get it’)

Questions I have:

 1) Do people really try to keep up with all the flow of information? 

2) What are the best third party tools to use with Twitter to save time?

3) What’s with the ego thing of checking how many followers I have?

ROI:  Introductions & connections have proven to be advantagous.  I have useful information to send prospects, have been introduced to HARO, and have located a network of international experts in a variety of fields.  So far so good.  Time will tell if the usefulness of this ‘tweetvine’ takes root or fades out like a spring annual in my garden.

Communication, Twitter Experiment

I had a great meeting with a company yesterday that is considering different options for how to move forward – grow their own sales team, grow their distribution channels, start new projects.  As we talked, I kept going back to a couple of key questions:

1) How does this fit with your value/what’s special about your company?

2) How does this option fit with your mission?

Keeping focused on those two questions allowed us to quickly discard some of the options that were under consideration.  One option didn’t advance the company’s mission at all – in fact, it would have distracted them from their key objectives.  Another option was fear-based; what if our value isn’t good enough to sell our product?  – even though their value  and story is actually very powerful.

‘Brand’ and ‘value’ have become buzzwords, which sometimes means words lose their value. 

Do you know what is the story/the secret sauce/the passion that sets you apart from your competitors?  If not, before you do anything else, figure it out! 

Then you’ll have a quick measure for any decisions you’re looking at.  Does it fit with our value/our brand?  If not, don’t get distracted, move on.  If it does fit, then you may have a winner, and it’s worth investing more time in looking at whether this decision is a good way to grow your business.

Business Growth, Communication

Twitter Roundup

After a week and a half checking out Twitter, I have to admit I am at least slightly hooked.  I am spending far too much time on Twitter.  I’ve found a lot of fascinating websites and articles (some of which I will share here), relating to business, franchising, trends, communication and search engine optimization/online marketing. 

I’ve found people to follow who have great information in my areas of interest (franchises & franchisors, business growth, search engine optimization and online content development). 
Interestingly, some of the blogs/people, I couldn’t find through Google searches.  For example, I had a hard time finding franchise blogs that I thought were really valuable via Google.

The one basic question that still remains unresolved for me is whether Twitter is where potential customers spend time, or more of a place to come in contact with potential strategic partners and others who are passionate about online marketing?  I have asked a couple of people I know who have been using Twitter for a while for their thoughts on this, and so far most people say they have actually found strategic partners and interesting information.  I would love to hear from someone who has actually sold product/services from twittering.  In fact, consider this an invitation to get in touch if you would like to do a brief interview about how you found actual customers through Twitter!  Just post a comment saying that you would be willing to do that, with your Twitter name and I will get in touch via Twitter to learn more.

Useful articles/websites from Twitter posts

Top 4 Success Saboteurs for Entrepreneurs: http://www.theperfectbizfinder.com/blog/beat-the-top-4-saboteurs/

Winners of the 2009 Franchisee Satisfaction Awards: http://jan.freedomblogging.com/2009/03/09/happiest-franchisees-6-are-oc-companies/10293/

Challenges for Women in Business: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/business/businesstruth/4934018/Women-in-Business-The-bias-against-women-entrepreneurs.html

5 Great Companies to Form in 2009: http://www.thecompanymerchant.co.uk/blog/index.php/2009/01/five-great-companies-to-form-in-2009/

Tell People What You Want Them to Do For You: http://www.doshdosh.com/tell-people-what-you-want-them-to-do-for-you/

50 Social Entrepreneur Blogs to Watch: http://evancarmichael.com/Tools/Top-50-Social-Entrepreneur-Blogs-To-Watch-In-2009.htm

and just for fun… http://www.brepettis.com/blog/2009/3/3/the-cult-of-done-manifesto.html

So Far

Time spent so far:  probably 6 hours (much of that following fascinating links posted by various tweeters)

Questions so far:  How in the world are people finding my profile to follow?  Why would someone be following >1,000 other people?  What does that mean to follow at that point?  Surely no one has time to read all the tweets from many thousands of people?  Are any of my potential customers using Twitter?

ROI: Nothing direct yet, but coming in contact with some fascinating people – more potential strategic partners than customers, it looks like to me.  Some good franchise blogs that I wasn’t able to find via Google searches with very valuable information.

Communication, Search Engine Optimization, Twitter Experiment

I’m sure most people hold this truth to be self-evident: that technology is not always the solution.  Let me repeat that – technology is not always the solution.  And yes, I am the CEO of a technology company.  But before you even worry about your technology, you want to nail two key questions:

a) What am I trying to accomplish?

b) What do I have to offer?  What’s my value?

What am I trying to accomplish?

I recently met with Bob Garlick (a marketing mentor) for coffee, and he asked what makes our company different from other companies.  The answer was easy; we use technology to further business purposes and when we meet with clients, what we want to know first is what kind of business purpose they are trying to accomplish – not what technology they are looking for. 

After all, most franchisors and business owners don’t care much about the underlying technology – what matters is whether the final solution accomplishes the right purpose; be it increasing sales, generating leads or building the brand.  When clients know the answer to this question before we ask it, we know that they will be a pleasure to work with.

If you are looking at developing/purchasing any kind of software solution, make sure you know what you’re trying to accomplish with the software.  That answer will form the basis of how you evaluate and rate potential solutions that are presented to you.  If you don’t have that, it’s easy to get caught up in the latest cool thing (if you’re a technology person) or the most features (if you want to have lots of options later) or the best marketing materials.  But none of those help much if your core need is not being addressed.

What do I have to offer?  What’s my value?

Just the other day, I signed up for a webinar.  It was offered by a reputable organization, and the topic looked good.  The content was dreadful; lacking substance, poorly thought out, and delivered in a soft meandering voice.  Having recently had conversations with a couple of clients about webinar delivery, I was struck again that even if the technology is all great, if the content is lacking, the webinar won’t build business – and in fact, may drive it away.  I would certainly not want to do business with the person who hosted that webinar.

Content creation and generation is one of the best ways to add value to customers, but it needs to be substantive first, and then delivered professionally second.

So remember, before you even think about the technology, know what you’re trying to accomplish, and know what you have to offer in terms of value.  Once you have those two, the technology will be easy…

Best Practices, Business Growth, Communication, Technology

To Twitter or not to Twitter?

I have been hearing all the arguments for Twitter for a while.  Even though I run a software / website development company, I tend to be slow to adopt new technologies.  I don’t want the latest version or the latest fad and I’m too busy to try the latest great toy out unless I see value from the getgo.  If it’s not going to grow our business or our customers’ businesses, then I probably don’t want to know.  Fortunately our Creative Director, Jeff, just loves all the new stuff and raves to me about all the possibilities for this and that as it comes out!

We had a great conversation yesterday about Twitter – pros (mostly Jeff) and cons (mostly me).  Jeff says it’s important to be part of the online conversation and a great way to come in contact with people you would never have come across otherwise.  I was trying to figure out how to find anything useful (there’s so much information out there – I find information filtering more of a need than how to get more information) and whether it would take a lot of time or whether it would actually bring value.

The Experiment

Being experiential and empirical, I decided to try it out and see what happens.  Is all the Twitter buzz true, or are the people I know who say that it’s just a big time consumer right?  Will it actually add value to our company to have a Twitter account?

I already had a twitter account created, but had never done anything with it.  So yesterday I went in, found a couple of people I know & a couple of people I don’t know but who are in our industry (franchise and franchise services) and set it up to follow them.

For those like me who have trouble finding anything useful in the default twitter search, Jeff sent me a link to a good search tool; search.twitter.com, which allowed me to find some conversations that I found interesting.  I also uploaded a picture, set up my basic profile, and changed the background image.

Day Two

This morning I was surprised to find that I had acquired some followers – some of them the people I had chosen, but also a couple of others.  Note that at that point, all I had was a profile – no tweets, nothing.  I did do a couple of tweets today, and found some very interesting links to a variety of websites and articles that are useful and/or interesting. 

Time spent so far:  probably 2 hours (some of that figuring out how it all works, some of that browsing the tweets & profiles).

Questions so far:  with so many tweets coming out, do most people just browse the most recent ones from the people they follow, or do they really go through them all from when they last checked in (even skimming)?

ROI: aside from the interest factor, nothing so far, but I have learned about some interesting people out there & seen some good websites….

Communication, Technology, Twitter Experiment