Grow From Here

There have been a few examples recently of potential vendors who waste their opportunities to do business with us. It got me thinking about what makes for a waste of time.  Because I really do want to do business with other companies, but I want them to make it easy for me and to show me how great they can be.  (I know I sound curmudgeonly as I write some of this, but it’s from the heart…)  So here’s what I do and don’t want, and then what we commit to for our potential customers.

The biggest errors from potential vendors to us in the last few weeks have been:

1) Lack of clear message

I was at an event where a series of presentations were made. One of them looked interesting – an opportunity to support a group I would like to help by using their skills. Unfortunately the presenter didn’t know his core differentiator or how to describe his offering clearly – or if he did, he wasn’t able to articulate it to the group. During question period attendees asked ‘but what do you do?’, ‘what can you do for me?’, and unfortunately the answer was essentially ‘almost anything you want’. Instant loss of credibility when talking to a business.

2) Process for the sake of process

A company I was interested in doing business with sent me an introductory questionnaire, including questions that I didn’t even understand like ‘A story about your relationship with this industry or company’.

I’m sorry – what relationship with what industry or company? Not only is the question impossible to answer, but I don’t see how it will move us closer to doing business together.

On top of that, the questionnaire had lots of deep probing questions about our business strategy, marketing strategy, etc. Again, none of those will help move us closer to doing business. All they do is take up my time filling in the answers or make me think that you don’t know what you’re doing and so are asking lots of generic questions that are really ‘fishing for a problem’ so you can propose a solution.  They don’t tell me what solutions you offer or help me narrow in on whether I can use one of them.

Lastly, the questionnaire asked for our company’s address, website, phone, email, fax, social media links, my name, phone, email, etc in great excrutiating detail. Again, a waste of my time. Ask me for our contact us page & maybe my contact details (if you don’t already have them) & then go do the research yourself. Until I have decided to do business with you, ask me only what you need to know to help us both get closer to a solution, and please help me understand how answering the questions you do ask will benefit us both.

3) Meeting mania

You’ve learned that a meeting will get you to get closer to doing business with me. That’s fine. But make sure the meeting provides me with value and is not just to ‘move the sales process along’.

If I take the time to meet with you, please come with an agenda, a plan and a clear way that we will each benefit from the time. Once you have established that rapport, please try to send me what you can by email, with any questions clearly phrased so I can respond at my convenience. Please don’t ask for frequent meetings so you can build rapport – if they’re not adding to my perception of your value in a tangible way, I will hesitate to do business with you because I’ll be afraid that it will take too much face time.

4) No clear qualification process

One vendor I met with recently (yes, a meeting first!) asked me lots of questions about our business and our needs, said that he would go away and find out how they could solve our problems, set a follow-up meeting time, and then never showed up. My assistant followed up with his company to see whether he was just running late & apparently they couldn’t reach him. We never heard from him again.

I have no idea whether he decided our needs weren’t big enough for the service they offer, or were too hard to solve, or whether he just forgot. But I’m guessing that it’s the first one – we don’t need a lot of his solution. If so, that’s fine, but I really appreciate vendors who pre-qualify clearly. If you say to me ‘we want to work with company of size x-y’ and if I’m not in that size, then neither of us is wasting time exploring options, and goodness knows we both have lots of other things to do!

Which leads to my commitment to our customers & potential customers

1. We will tell you what differentiates us.
   1. If it’s not clear enough, please let us know! We’ll fix it.
   2. If the message has no value, please let us know! We’ll fix it.
   3. If you couldn’t care less about what we think differentiates us, please let us know! We’ll fix it.
2. We will not ask you for information that we can find on your website or through a little research. We value your time and respect the great things you are doing.
3. If we ask you for any information where you don’t see the direct benefits to what we are asking, please let us know. We don’t need to know everything about your business plans and strategy – we only need to know what may have an effect on what we are doing together.
4. Especially in the first phases of getting to know each other, we want to help you quickly either rule us in or out as a potential vendor. If you’re not going to work with us, we know you have other business strategies to move forward.
5. We will absolutely respect your time & do as much as we can to move things forward without your involvement.
6. We will come to each meeting or conversation with a clear agenda and goals to achieve. If you want to change that on the spot, feel free.
7. We will not ask for meetings to make us feel good; warm and fuzzy is lovely, but if it’s not moving your business forward, we have no business taking up your time.
8. We know what qualifies companies to work with us and helps them get the most value. We will not be afraid to tell you what it is. We will tell you if you do not fit that criteria; not to offend you but to save your time. And if at all possible, we will suggest other companies who do work with your type of business.
9. We will not miss scheduled meetings or be late without letting you know. We are proud when our customers laugh at us about how prompt we are to scheduled meetings. Every minute you spend waiting for someone to arrive is a minute you are not making money – we want you to make money and grow your business.

If we miss the mark on any of these, please let us know.  And feel free to share with us anything else we can do to be better prospective vendors for your company.

Best Practices, Business Growth, Communication

Communication can sound fuzzy, but a team with solid communication can accomplish miracles.

At Open Box, we’re all a little obsessive about communication - what works, what doesn’t, and how to have fun doing it.

Nothing can be as exciting and good for a business as good communication where people building on ideas and creating together.

And nothing is as destructive as bad communication – passive aggressive, stonewalling, talking at cross purposes…

We have created a series of short videos about the communication game – we hope you enjoy them, and do suggest more ideas for great communication tips – all suggestions gratefully welcomed

Business Growth, Communication, Fun, Video Tips

… and what makes it scary

I just relearned a lesson that I have learned before – asking for feedback is a huge winner for me and for our company.

We talk a lot about feedback at Open Box, both internally with each other and externally with customers and partners.  We try to end every project with a request for feedback on how the process went and whether it reached its business objectives for the customer and what we did well and what we can improve.  Last year we reached out to past customers asking if we could shoot some video about their experiences working with us.  Then in July our company was nominated for an award that also relates to the personal values of the entrepreneur running it, so I reached out to people in the community that know me well enough to comment on my values and how they have affected the community around us.

It makes me wonder why we don’t do this more often…

I think sometimes we see the little glitches and magnify them mentally so we are afraid to ask.

I think sometimes we are too busy to remember to ask.

I think sometimes we are afraid that if we ask for feedback, then we will need to do something with it, and maybe we feel too busy to want to take that new stuff on.

I think sometimes we take for granted the things we do really really well and forget the impact they can have on customers.

Every time we’ve asked for feedback, the results have been amazing; touching, humbling and very affirming about where we excel.  Feedback

• invigorates the team
• reminds us that we are providing the kind of value we want to provide
• remind us that our vision (setting people free to be their best using technology) is not just words on paper, but actually takes life in the projects we do
• gives perspective, encouragement, validation and fresh energy.

I shared this idea with one entrepreneur I know a while back when she was struggling with how to market her company, and her past customers came through big-time; giving her phrases that were much stronger and more powerful than anything she would have come up with on her own.  So there’s another benefit – getting great marketing content and materials.

What have you learned through asking for feedback?

If you want to learn more about the type of feedback we’ve received, check out our customer testimonials or our videos (all done thanks to the amazing feedback we’ve received).

What have you learned through asking for feedback?  Did it hurt?

Best Practices, Business Growth, Communication

The world is full of great quotes.

Here are five that give me energy & determination today:

• “Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”~~ Saint Francis of Assisi

• “We don’t grow unless we take risks. Any successful company is riddled with failures. “~~ James E. Burke

• “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day, saying “I will try again tomorrow.”~~Mary Radmacher

• “An idea not coupled with action will never get any bigger than the brain cell it occupied.” ~~Arnold H. Glasgow

• “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia. ~~ Charles Schulz

Business Growth, Communication, Fun

Reduce the number of choices you offer your customers.

Sound too simplistic?  In a way it is, but what matters more is that it works.

People faced with too many choices will be drawn and interested, but less likely to buy.

There have been some fascinating studies on this topic, starting with Sheena Iyengar and her jam experiment at Draeger’s.  For all the details, read her publications (links below) or watch her Ted talk (broader than this one question – she branches into the question of whether choices are linked to upbringing and culture – but fascinating) or check out her telling her story about this experiment and what led to it.

In short, she set up an experiment where people had either 24 choices of types of jam, or 6 choices.

The findings were that the 24 choices drew more people to look at the options, but actually led to fewer sales.

6 choices made it easier for people to make a selection and actually complete the purchase.

I know which one I prefer

To quote Sheena Iyengar, “they were actually less likely to make a choice if they had more to choose from than if they had fewer to choose from.”

Psychology Driving Business Growth

I’m fascinated by how psychology & the knowledge of psychologists can help drive business growth.  It’s not actually surprising – what we as people chose to do and buy and be is rooted in our brains – but it’s easy to think of psychology as a slightly wishy-washy ‘how do we feel’ science.  Where the real value comes in is the data driven research that helps us learn about how people behave and how we are wired – that will all tie in to helping drive business success.

For those who want do want more choices, here are some other fascinating links:

Related to Sheena Iyengar & the jam experiment:

• Her bio & links to her actual publications
• Her TED talk
• Talking about her famous jam experiment – great details on exactly what they did & the numeric results

Other useful articles online referencing this study or other similar ones and drawing additional conclusions:

• Product Variety Management & Sales Volume – references the Sheena Iyengar study
• Too Many Choices – references another paper called “When More Alternatives Lead to Less Choice.”

Interesting (and useful) psychology links:

• Mind-Blowing Psychological Facts – part 1 – from BusinessInsider.com
• Mind-Blowing Psychological Facts – part 2

Have you ever tried this?  What psychological insights have helped grow your business?

Best Practices, Business Growth, Communication, Marketing, Tips

Every week during our team meeting, we have a segment on communication (sometimes a game or some jokes, sometimes something one of our team has written, sometimes a favorite poem or story or song).  Recently we had a fun challenge to meet & what came out of it was a blast for all of us.

Here’s the challenge, for those of you who want to try:

Write a poem using the following nine words

1. Llama
2. Freedom
3. Incredulous
4. Fais Gaffe (french for watch out or be careful)
5. Panda
6. Water
7. Ominous
8. Cosmopolitan
9. Tintinabulate

Sounds a little tough?  Well, our team came through with a vengeance.  Not everyone wanted to try, but here are the results – a great set of different styles & takes on these nine very different words.  To really get the drift, you should have been with us as each author read out their poem, but you’ll just have to use your imagination…

from Audrey:

As the cosmopolitan panda wandered into the street,
The Llama exercised his freedom of incredulous speech,

“Fias gaffe!” he exclaimed, but alas was too late,
Panda met curb; sealing his ominous fate,

The Llama tossed water to revive Panda’s faint,
Panda saw stars and heard bells tinabulate,

“Hurrah! You’re okay!” the Llama exclaimed.
“Yes but now I’m all wet” the Panda did blame.

from Nick:

An incredulous llama called Amanda
Spilled water all over a Panda
With an ominous roar
To a tintinnabulate score
She scream “fais gaffe!” while she danced
The Panda said “Hey!”
“You’ve abused your freedom to sway!”
But watching her move
To the bells ringing true
A cosmopolitan he gave while entranced.

from Zane:

A llama tintinnabulates with
copious garlands of small brass bells,
he has an incredulous look on his face.

He sees a panda sitting by the road,
humming an ominous song:

“Fais gaffe!”
the panda shouts.
“Freedom is never free,
as water is not a cosmopolitan thing.”

from Mary Jane:

As the cosmopolitan church bells tinabulated
The incredulous Llama pondered his ominous luck
The Panda’s shout of “fais gaffe” had saved him
From the deep water unseen before him
Granting another day of life’s joyous freedom

from Katryn:

Llama’s Lament

The ominous waters have covered the llama – poor llama
- has he found freedom from his woes?
Incredulous bystanders stood silent and still
not a one called ‘fais gaffe’ as the waters rose
Soon funeral bells will tintinabulate across the hill
and the cosmopolitan panda continues to munch, oblivious.

Communication, Fun

Selling a franchise is – by definition – selling a system of operations, sales, production and delivery that will make money for the buyer.

One often unspoken assumption by franchisees is that you will provide them with ‘best practices’ and will continue to provide them with improvements to procedures and operations.

The franchisee expects to acquire a system of operations, sales, production and delivery that will generate profits; and they expect it to be continually updated.

A big part of the value of a franchise is having a group of intelligent invested people who are constantly trying out new things and learning from their experiences.  Since the learning that arises from this is carried out in disparate locations, the challenge becomes how the franchisor can gather, collate, distribute and continually update these found improvements to all the franchisees.

Why this is so important

• When this does not happen, the learning process comes to a grinding halt and the newly acquired data is lost.
• But when it does happen, the competitive advantage of this franchise will go through the roof!

Sir Isaac Newton said:  “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”  (Letter to Robert Hooke, 1675)   This quote speaks to any successful franchisor who learns from his franchisees.

Set up systems for people to:

• See what has been done before, what worked and what didn’t
• Easily track what they are trying, and filter results for fellow franchisees
• Easily generate graphs to see trends, leading indicators, etc.
• Learn from you about franchise-wide best practices that have been discovered
• Have a place for updated best practices, and a forum for questions and conversation

Distributing continual improvements further benefits you as it is proof of all the ongoing advancements, upgrades and value that you are providing.

It helps to justify your royalties even before the franchisee asks the question,“What have you done for me today?”

Best Practices, Business Growth, Communication, Focus, Franchise advertising, Best Practices, investors, marketing, product, selling franchises, strategy, support development

Have you ever said that keeping franchisees happy is like herding cats?

The biggest impediment to franchise growth, as you likely know, is unhappy franchisees. Even if you have leads, you won’t be able to close them if the existing zees are unhappy.  Don’t worry; no one’s franchise operations are perfect!   Let’s look at how to improve this area.

While you are working to improve operations (or trying to find the time to do so…) good communication will go a long way to improving franchisee satisfaction. If you can quickly and easily share information with your franchisees and get useful feedback from them, then you will either:

• get good franchisee validation when new prospects are in the  funnel, or
• know why you’re having trouble with franchisee validation

Sometimes when I’m discussing communication with franchisors, I hear:  “The last thing I want is more complaints – then I have to deal with them!”

The trade-off is that allowing franchisees to express their thoughts and feelings often alleviates the emotional impact on them, and it deflates the problems.

You may be very pleasantly surprised by positive feedback that comes through these free-flowing communication channels.  This positive information can validate you as it confirms what you are doing right.  It can further be used to strengthen marketing materials.

You would be surprised how easy it is to set up a system that allows people to share their thoughts, comments and questions without taking up a lot of your time or energy. 

One great way to do this through the use of an employee ‘Intranet’ - a place where franchisees can have an online conversation with you (and ideally with each other) in a protected environment.  This system also allows you to review the exchanges at your leisure, and to share information with them simply and easily.

Managing these communications so that you don’t end up with online gripe sessions (which only further inflame people) is a huge issue in itself.  But that’s a topic for another post!

Does the idea of an Intranet feel overwhelming to you?  You’d be surprised by how easy we can make the process.   Contact us at online@openboxinc.com and a 15 minute demo will show you how you can get started easily.

Business Growth, Communication, Franchise, Technology franchisor, good communication, happy franchisees, Intranet, strategy

Many years ago, a highly astute man named Pareto, led a study which concluded that 80% of our success will arise from 20% of our efforts.  This ‘Pareto Principle’, also known as ‘The 80 / 20 Rule’ can easily be applied to an examination of priorities.

The 20% to focus on is that which will drive revenue.

One of the key challenges for any business owner is how to set priorities.  A glance at your listed ‘To Do’s’ will include many ‘Nice to Have’ items.  Yet you must distinguish between these lower priorities and those that need to top the list:  those that will spur profits.

There are many demands at any given time: from your franchisees, staff, your personal goals and business development advisors.  The secret is to know what drives your revenue, and to be ruthless about new ideas as they pertain to driving revenue.

What will drive franchise revenue?   Key areas to consider are:

1. Communication
2. Relationship Building with your Franchisees
3. Driving Sales

More specifically, items that often fall under each of these are:

Communication:

• your marketing and PR
• methods used to attract new franchisees
• tasks that aid in attracting customers to existing franchisees
• ways to keep franchisees excited, enthusiastic and involved

Relationships with franchisees:

• to make them aware of the value you provide them continually
• to help and support them in getting more sales
• to train and advise them on best practices
• to demonstrate how your training facilitates their increased profits

Driving sales:

• when franchisees make money and have a good profit margin, both them and you make increased earnings
• can be achieved through a combination of online marketing, development and implementation of effective marketing materials, the use of promotions and sales offers
• all begins with market research

Focus on what needs to be done with your existing revenue drivers, and as new ideas arise, be strict in assessing where they fall in regards to the 80/20 rule.  This simple principle will act as a powerful lens, narrowing your focus so you can strengthen the profitability of your franchise.

When is the last time you re-evaluated your priority list?

Best Practices, Business Growth, Communication, Focus, Marketing

Do you tweet?  Are you on twitter?

If you know you should be, but aren’t, or if you have set up an account, but don’t know what to do with it, then this is for you.

Twitter is a huge fad these days.  It’s all over the place, being talked about by many people in the marketing field, particularly those involved in social media and online communication.  But most people still don’t know about Twitter – recently I was having supper with my family, and no one at the table knew what Twitter was or was using it.  So if you aren’t on Twitter yet, don’t feel bad – you’re not alone.

There is a lot of information on the internet about how to get set up with a Twitter account, twitter etiquette, how to attract 10,000 followers in one week, and more.  I assume you can find that information if you need it.

Twitter as a Marketing Tool

I am writing this for businesspeople who have heard of twitter, are not yet using it (or not yet using it effectively) and who want to know how to get started.  I recently met with a franchisor who knew she should be on twitter, and had actually set up an account for her franchise, but wasn’t doing anything with it because she didn’t know where to start or what to do.

I spent five months doing direct Twitter experimentation.  One the one hand, I shouldn’t admit it (Twitter is supposed to be a communication tool for the real you, right?), but honestly I needed to see what would happen if I took different actions.  So I set up a number of different Twitter accounts and tried different strategies to see what would happen.  (If you want to connect with my real Twitter account, follow me at www.Twitter.com/katrynharris).  It was fascinating to see what really happens.

My assumption is that you are on Twitter because you think it will benefit your business in some way; grow sales, increase brand recognition, build strategic partnerships, get customer feedback, keep you in touch with the market, or some other business building strategy.  I am assuming that you are not on Twitter just to be social and connect with friends (although even for a business account, that will become part of the experience).

I make no claim to be unbiased.  As you will see, I think some of the commonly used Twitter strategies are poorly thought out or dangerous for companies to use.  I recommend that before any company starts using Twitter, you first look at the question:

What do I want to Accomplish?

• Do I want to grow sales directly?
• Am I trying to bring traffic to the company blog?
• Do I want to learn about what my customers thinking and get product feedback?
• Is this a brand building exercise?
• Am I trying to find people who will make good strategic partners?

Just like goal setting and traditional marketing, to use Twitter effectively, you first need to decide what you want to accomplish.  Then you can take the steps that will help you meet your goal.  As you read through the next section, keep your goal in mind.  That will allow you to quickly discard the Twitter strategies described if they will not bring you closer to your goal.

The main strategies that I have seen people use on Twitter are:

1. Twitter maniacs – These people get as many followers as possible, indiscriminately. I have a hard time seeing the value of this, unless it’s an ego thing; ‘I have 20,000 followers – look at me’.  This is unlikely to add value to your business and I certainly don’t recommend it.

2. Niche ambassadors – You pick a niche and find people related to that niche & follow them; tweet information about your niche – get found by people who are interested in that niche.  This can be useful if you have a niche business and are looking to attract customers or strategic partners – maybe people who share your interest in the niche and who offer a complementary service or product.  The key here is to slowly increase the number of followers and people you follow so you can keep connections with the people in your circle.  Ignore people outside of your niche area of interest who follow you and only follow people who relate to your niche.  This can build strong interpersonal relationships in your area of expertise and can be very valuable in terms of building brand, strategic partnerships, and even customers.

3. Rounded Brand Tweeters – You start by building a profile around things you are interested in – this will usual be professional interests with a company account, but even with a company account, you want to have some of the personal interests showing through.  Twitter is about interacting with people, so don’t have different people posting to a corporate Twitter account every day – your followers won’t be able to get a coherent sense of who you are or know what to expect.  Building a profile around areas of interest can be very useful; for example, if you run a yoga studio & are interested in politics and international finance, you might follow people who are into yoga, political or news organizations and people talking about international finance.  The blend of interests can help make your account seem well rounded, and will attract people with similar interest.  This type of account is most likely to support a branding strategy where the goal is to get known and to build your profile and build relationships.  It may lead in an indirect way to sales but that is more incidental than causal.

4. Sweet Tweeters – Tweet lots of quotes and inspirational sayings.  This will get you followers and lots of retweets.  However it is unlikely to lead to growth for your company.  It does work to some extent for people who are sole practitioners focused on drawing traffic to their blogs / websites.  If your tweets make people feel good, they will associate positive feelings with your Twitter account, and are then more likely to read and follow links that you post.

5. Twitter-educators – Select a niche & tweet lots of information (links, news articles, other people’s tweets, events, etc) that will be of interest to people in your niche.  Many marketing experts recommend this as a way to establish an identity as a brand leader in your space.  This is ideal for people who already have a public profile that they can leverage so that they get a number of followers right off the bat, but even regular companies can follow this path.  It takes some regular time to keep providing valuable tweets, but this is a strategy that can certainly bring you lots of online traffic if you are consistent about it and have frequent links back to your company blog/website.

6. Controversial Tweeting – Some very high profile people tweet in such as way as to create controversy and get talked about online in an ongoing manner.  By having people attack them, and then attacking back, they build up a base of very loyal followers.  The downside to this (and the reason I would never recommend it for a company Twitter account) is that you also get a large group of people with strong negative feelings about you.  This is a good way to ‘stand for something’ but very dangerous to any sales efforts you may have underway.

7. Twitter Salesbirds – These are usually very clearly company accounts that have regular posts about their company products / benefits / special offers / events.  They can gather a number of followers, but it is slow going since most average people don’t get huge value from hearing about how wonderful a company considers itself to be.  It’s very easy to breach twitter etiquette with this type of account.  These can be effective in generating sales if you have a very obvious value proposition and, usually, relatively low ticket items that do not require any kind of ongoing relationship.  In that case, your tactic may be simply to drag as many one-off visitors as possible to your website / links, and now worry about providing ongoing value.

Twitter is hopefully one sales / marketing tool among many.  Remember, the keys to success are knowing what success looks like for your company, then using that knowledge to select your strategy, implementing and then measuring using your key metrics, and changing direction if necessary based on your results.  With a good plan, Twitter can be a great boost to your business, and a lot of fun along the way.

Join Open Box on twitter: www.twitter.com/katrynharris or visit our blog, read our stories about experimenting with Twitter and share your Twitter stories and questions in the comments section of the blog.

Best Practices, Business Growth, Communication, Franchise, Marketing, Twitter Experiment