The answer to the question "What will make us successful?" is never exactly the same for any two businesses. Stock solutions and canned answers would be great if they worked. Principles and ideas can be helpful but it’s dangerous to mistake them for real answers. As I've consulted with all sizes of corporations and start-up companies I've found the following business tools to be especially valuable if you’re looking for what you need to take you to the next level faster. Remember however that these are merely tools. Tools only exist in the context of what you intend to build and what you have to build with. Even with all the best tools, the finest plans and everything else in place the foundation always and ultimately comes down to your commitment.
The question “what am I trying to say, really?” gets much easier to answer when we first ask “who am I trying to say it to?”. Why are they here? What can they hear? Effective communication is about matching the message with the audience. That’s why I
wrote my book on Acknowledgment. It gives us the power to shape who’s listening and therefore to say things they could
never have heard before. When people have learned to listen to you for acknowledgment they will hear everything you say more clearly.
Understanding why employees, customers and even our families react to us in the ways they do is invaluable to the communication
process. That’s why I've found the CAPS Behavioral Profile so helpful in developing the best possible managers, teams and service
providers. People aren’t patterns but they can be more predictable when we recognize that they have a few typical response modes that
help us understand what will and won’t work for them. Get CAPS and get clear with whom you’re interacting.
Discover how successful you can be with only Word-of-Mouth Marketing.
Grow your business faster and better with a focused referral
strategy.
I was originally interested in what drives customer retention. The answer quickly became apparent that external customer retention is never better than internal customer retention. Employees never take better care of customers than management takes care of them; that simple.
The good news is most people are inherently loyal; we prefer the safety and comfort of the familiar. Employee
turnover isn’t about doing everything right or pampering your workforce. It’s about understanding a few simple things that drive them
away and reducing those drivers.
The scoreboard rules the game. Determining how you put points up is the single most critical aspect of good execution. If your feedback loops don’t closely align with your strategy you may as well not even have one.
Think about the game of basketball before the advent of the shot clock and the 3-point rule. Scores were much lower and everyone took most shots as close to the hoop as they could get. Today it’s a fast, exciting game with much better athletes. The ball and court were the same but it became a new game because the rules for winning changed.
I spend a lot of time making sure every player has a clear, actionable understanding of how they
score both as individuals and as a team.
Surveys are more than just a way of gathering information from large groups of people. They can help you convince both customers andemployees that you’re really listening to them.
Surveys and questionnaires can also drive word-of-mouth marketing, engage newsocial networks and reawaken interest in flagging brands and programs. Companies that use surveys only for gathering market and employee
information are overlooking one of the most powerful communication tools available. Online surveys with a few “enhancements” can achieve
greater reach than nearly any other type of media campaign.
