The power of a phone call to your customer

From Chris Brogan, Thank You Continental Airlines. Chris shares his experience receiving a phone call from a Customer Service rep with Continental Airlines.

It's a simple act. Doesn't cost a whole lot, really. Done right, as it seems here, look what it does.

Enough. Chris' post is excellent.

BlogTalk Radio: Number One Reason Why Word-of-Mouth is Central

I just finished my weekly BlogTalk Radio show.

Since it's Wednesday's, I talked about WOM, word-of-mouth, in particular why it should be central to your business success.

There are lots of reasons. ( I may turn my weekly talk show into a Countdown-like show. Instead I'll label it CountUP show, counting the reasons why WOM, word-of-mouth is central to the success of a business, especially if the business wishes to remain sustainable, self-sufficient, in control of its own destiny: debt-free, free of shareholders' needs.)

The number one reason why WOM should be central to your business is...cash-flow. Or more importantly, I should say positive cash-flows.

Cash-flows are the life of every business. Positive cash-flows sustain it, grow it. Otherwise, the business grinds to a halt.

And a company that's generating huge amounts of word-of-mouth from its customers singing its praises is at an advantage for generating positive cash-flows compared to its competitors. Here's 3 reasons:

* Higher Sales Conversation Ratio. Your sales force will convert a greater number of prospects into customers, and do it faster. Why? Because these prospects have already been qualified, evangelized if you will, by hearing the stories of your customers experience with you..from the mouths of their friends and colleagues. And that means more revenue, faster.

It also means an inspired, motivated sales and support staff, too. Nothing adds positive buzz and enthusiasm in a company than a high sales conversion ratio.

* Reduced Advertising Expenses. If your customers volunteer to champion your product to their friends and neighbors, you'll need to advertise less. Referrals, Word-of-mouth, from trusted sources (friends and neighbors) is the best form of advertising. Its ROI far exceeds that of any advertising campaign. With enough WOM, you won't need to advertise. That means you can stop investing, or donating, your cash to an agency or Google. Instead you can invest in your cash balances or your customers and employees to start another round of WOM.

* Product Differentiation. Nothing forces you to lower your price than the lack of product differentiation. Nothing protects you from doing that like...product differentiation. Make your product different. Add value. Added value bolsters your unique selling proposition. A bolstered Unique Selling Proposition bolsters your price. Bolstered prices mean bolstered cash-flows.

There you have it. If you want to run a business in a cash-flow positive way, if you want to control your destiny as a business owner, if you want to run a business you can be proud of, build a brand everyone's proud of, then:

1). Stop advertising

2) Invest that in differentiating your product with added-value and incentives connecting your employees' goals with your company's goals.

3)  Your customers will volunteer to do the rest.

4) Stir and repeat.

I'm slowly publicizing this project with BlogTalk Radio as I get more familiar with the tool and what's required.

My BlogTalk Radio show is every Wednesday at 9:30 AM Central. Here's the URL to listen in streaming mode: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/zane-safrit. And here's the call-in number 646-915-9212, code: 19978#.

I hope to see you. Bring your examples of great WOM, word-of-mouth, to toot your horn and to help others. And be sure to join SWOM, The Society for Word-of-Mouth.

Chicken or Egg? Happiness or Success?

Which comes first?

A great post at Dumb Little Man, Which Comes First, the Happiness or the Success?

Here's a couple of snippets:

Success comes from within, knowing the true worth of our human potential.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) Preeminent leader of Indian nationalism.

I can work with these. What do you think?

Note: Dumb Little Man offers great big tips.

Never apologize...

for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for truth. - Benjamin Disraeli

Emotions give meaning to our day, depth, color to the black and white, shades of gray of logic. Logic adds order. We have to have it. But the Truth, the Beauty, comes only from deep emotion, a knowingness if you will, of what's right. And hiding that depth serves only to confuse.

Happy Monday. Have a great week.

Tax Rebates. Are they going to turn this economy around?

The much-heralded, much-ballyhoo'd, tax rebates hit the mail and some direct deposit accounts Monday.

Hey. I'm all for free money. Never look a gift horse in the mouth. And a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse.

But...is it going to help this economy? When the author of the plan says he thinks the money will help people cope with higher food prices and higher gasoline and fuel prices...I tend to think not. Home foreclosures are at a record number and growing, personal bankruptcies are rising, unemployment figures remain high (and that's just from those filing for unemployment and those still actively seeking employment. The rest of the unemployed aren't counted.) and there's no sign prices for food and fuel will drop anytime soon. The peak driving season is coming.

The irony of the idea that tax rebates will help us all cope with higher fuel and food prices stems from economists in recent years referring to these two categories as non-core items. Discussing inflation last year, economists  would refer to food and fuel prices as non-core items. Non-core meaning non-important. Now the economy's recovery is based on how well we can cope with the rising prices of these non-core, non-important items.

Somehow, the idea of giving a few bucks to us to help us cope with the rising food and fuel prices strikes me as throwing a few sheckels to the poor, the unwashed masses. Like a monarch throwing gold coins to the peasants in their time of need when the crops fail, we're thrown a tax rebate of some amount to help us provide food to eat for our families and fuel to drive to work and warm our hearths, ie, cope.

But, hey, never look a gift horse in the mouth, nod-nod, wink-wink.

It's so obvious

Flipping the channel last night to Fast Money on CNBC I saw a quick graphic:

Hybrid Car Sales Grew by 44% in 2007.

Then another graphic:

11% of all new car sales are hybrid cars.

And that's why Big 3 auto makers are still advertising V-8 trucks.

It's so obvious why Big 3 is losing market share. It's not their employee costs, their health care costs, their pension obligations. They have no product to sell, period. 

Duct Tape Saved Apollo 17 Moon Buggy

Beyond being a powerful marketing resource, maybe in a class of its own for generating a cost-effective source of referrals for small businesses...well, any-sized business...Duct Tape saved the moon buggy on Apollo 17.

Duct Tape. That's some powerful stuff.

From BoingBoing.

How blogging can work...

From Shel Holtz's post, How Blogging Can Work.

It's a good, concise, mini-case study for how blogging can work...if it's done right, with full transparency and that includes full disclosure of identity for authors and commenters including corporate affiliation.

Tip of the hat to the PR firm Shel discusses for its leadership in showing How Blogging Can Work. The PR firm is Rubinstein Associates.

Blogging can work.

Sports Wants to Control the Conversation

Sports. It's the ultimate word-of-mouth marketing machine. It's why we're called fans. Fans is short for fanatics. An enthusiast is the 4th definition listed for fans. The first is more telling. A device for creating a current of air, a breeze..

No greater breeze is found than that generated by sports fans and their word-of-mouth.

And industries worth billions of dollars have been generated from this breeze, from our word-of-mouth...And now, someone wants to control the breeze, claim ownership to the conversation, restrict it to certain hours or numbers of blog posts or certain voices. There's Ru-u-u-u-les..!

In effect, those who've made the most from fans and their free word-of-mouth, now want to say they own their fans conversations. It's a classic example of killing, by strangulation, the goose that laid their billion-dollar golden egg. 

Tension Over Sports Blogging.

Branding = "a bright red truck in mud season.

That pretty much sums up branding... From Tom Peters post: Mud Season. Not

But it's not JUST about a clean truck.

There's more to it. It's all the little decisions made within the company behind the brand that keeps its trucks bright, red, and sparkly clean in the perpetual mud season called 'the marketplace'. That translates into answering your phones with motivated and incentivized and empowered AND engaged staff, engaging your staff to make the corporate brand an extension of each of their personal brands, a brand to be proud of, invoicing and handling your customers' payments correctly, bringing prompt answers to their questions, giving them no reason to have a question, praising great work by the staff, making a customer smile, selling what the customer wants not what you want to sell, making it right when the customer thinks it's wrong, answering the phones yourself if you're the leader, leading by example, choosing good profits over bad...all the little steps it takes to send your  bright, red truck in mud season.