Mike, Author at The Third Zone

Feb 17 2016

Litmus Paper … An Inexpensive Way to Save Customers

What’s going on? Three times since the start of this year I have been coaching clients who shared the news that they had just lost an account. And not just any account. It was their biggest or their most profitable or their longest held. One client tried to laugh it off. Another was simply angry … at the client … and a third one was just sad and puzzled. And, after we began examining these situations all of their initial reactions moved to a place of concern.

KEY REALIZATIONS:

They didn’t recall any negative conversations and viewed this as an easy customer.
They may have done a poor job of really listening to their contact and missed some warning signs of discontent.
They realized they had no real relationship or interface with any people in higher positions thus making them vulnerable.
They viewed this customer as a long-term relationship requiring little attention.

Do you see any red flags? I bet you do and even though doing things to change the above pitfalls seems so logical we find that getting comfortable … too comfortable … is not a rare occurrence.

STEPS TAKEN TO RESOLVE THIS THREATENING SITUATION:
They …

Adopted the mindset of ”NEVER AGAIN”.
Took this loss as a signal of other potential problems within their customer base.
Created a litmus test to perform on each relationship to uncover weaknesses.
Got input from all within their own organizations who were involved with the customer in order to have a complete picture of the relationship.

EXECUTION OF THEIR CUSTOMER SAVING PLAN:

The concern and commitment to ‘never again’ was communicated throughout their company.
All were charged with the responsibility to relate any issues or comments that were made by the customer enabling them to be addressed … regardless of how big or small they appeared to be.
They applied their litmus test to every customer account to determine the strengths and vulnerabilities of the each.
They designed a ‘relationship for life’ plan for each account that would move it from what it is to what it needs to be by taking these steps:
- Arranging to meet senior company leaders if they don’t know them.
- Asking their customers what they would like from them that would help them with any aspect of their businesses … planning, pricing, usage reports … and the frequency of receiving this information.
- Suggesting a quarterly (or more frequent) communication keeping these indirect contacts in the know.
- Establishing a regular meeting with their main contact to clearly and directly address any questions, needs or issues that require attention.
- Made Plans to deepen the relationship with occasional lunches, breakfasts as out of the office opportunities strengthen the connection
  NEVER AGAIN
  Service Manual

The longer we have a relationship with a customer the more relaxed and comfortable it becomes from all sides. However, when easier and comfortable spills over the line wherein we take the relationship for granted we risk finding ourselves on a rocky and unstable path. Does it make sense to take inventory in your customers? Litmus paper is VERY inexpensive and a great tool for an annual check-up.

Mike Dorman

Feb 08 2016

We Like You … We don’t Like You … We Like You … We …

A company relies on customers to grow the business. So sales staff/customer relations staff work hard to retain current ones and bring in new ones. At the same time, you rely on others in the organization to provide some aspect of what your customer needs in order to create a raving fan. It’s simple and very normal in the relationship between customers and a company. When you think about it rationally and unemotionally it’s straight-forward. So what’s the problem you ask? Ah … good question!

There is no problem as long as everyone …

Sees the value that each customer contributes to the success of the organization
Sees the need to work hard to retain each customer to avoid the ‘revolving door’ too often found within organizations
Recognizes that satisfying the customer often takes a coordinated effort within several areas of the company … all determined to be successful in any customer’s eyes.
Believes the adage that is easier/cheaper to keep a current customer than to get a new one

Often, this is not the case. Take the situation that one of my clients recently encountered when he began a new sales position in an established company taking over an existing customer sales territory. His first order of business was to meet and introduce himself to the existing clients, understand their needs and look for opportunities to both maintain and grow the relationship. He set out to successfully do his work and almost immediately, within his own organization, encountered a troubling and potentially destructive situation. He ran head-first into a long-held perspective of some of his clients as being demanding, never satisfied and always wanting more than they had been promised … and wanting it yesterday! The result was to encounter constant resistance internally that required that he prod, push and pull to get what he needed in order to meet the customer’s expectations. The result was frustration on all sides and the consistent threat of a lost customer which wasn’t in anyone’s best interest … especially the company’s.

This situation does exist within many organizations. However, once you decide that you don’t want nor are you willing to accept it, the question becomes what you can do about it? Here are some suggestions:

Take steps to understand the past issues that have shaped the perspective that works against being successful with the customer.
- How are they perceived as difficult and demanding?
- How are they perceived as treating some of your co-workers with little respect or regard?
- How are they failing to express or show appreciation for what is done for them when others often need to jump through hoops to fulfill their needs?

What it would take to alter their perception of this customer presuming all within your organization understand the desirability, need and importance of keeping all customers for life, find out from those disgruntled co-workers.
- To what do they attribute the negative perspective that is held?
- What could the customer do or provide that would make their job an easier and more efficient?
- What are they willing to do that would meet the customer part way enabling this to carry forth as a successful relationship?

Speak with the customer to understand their view and perspective of your company.
- Where are they feeling completely satisfied with what you provide them?
- What do they believe would improve the service and thus, the relationship and what does that look like?
- What are the things they you/the company could do that would strengthen your value to your customer?

Based on what you’ve learned internally, relate things that the customer might do to enable you to serve them better and be more effective.
- Perhaps it’s being timelier in their requests thus providing more time for you to perform in the customer’s behalf.
- Arrange a meeting of key people within your company who have a role in fulfilling the customer needs with each relating their roll in serving them. Familiarity works well to break down divides in both directions.

Addressing this internal situation can come from any direction. All it takes is for someone to recognize that an existing negative perspective on the part of any individual or department held about a valued customer is the recipe for frustration and upset in the short term and a failed effort in the long run. It’s always time to develop an improved recipe for success.

Mike Dorman

Jan 20 2016

If You Got Beyond Ditch Day … Adopt the Skills of a Comedian and Succeed!

This past Sunday, January 17, was a significant day. It’s the official ‘ditch your New Year’s Resolutions day’ established because two weeks into a new year is recognized as the time that people tend to abandon resolutions, goals, objectives, commitments or whatever we might call them. If you, like I, didn’t know of this cause for celebration, perhaps we’re stuck on our path to achieve or we chose to prod onward, still determined to reach our goals for the year.

Ditch day aside, we know we have a lot of hard work ahead of us to make this year our best one ever! So imagine my surprise in reading an article written by Charisma News that encouraged one to find their ‘inner’ comedian and enhance the potential of envisioned success. Really? What’s funny about our goals given the concentration and hard work that achieving them will require? How is the stand-up comedian within us going to help?

The article made an interesting parallel. The best stand-up comic we have seen has the ability & talent to stand on a stage and perform improv comedy. Such a talented artist can take a thread of an idea and turn it into a comedy routine. The stand-up artist weaves twists and turns into his routines and we go along on an enjoyable journey.

My curiosity led me to look further. Here are some of the traits attributed to doing successful stand-up work:

be able to improvise in a way that allows you to meet your audience where they are.
react equally well to both positive and negative responses
possess excellent communication skills
be quick thinking, and respond to changing circumstances and different audiences

Back to the office. With little doubt we are definitely focused on our plans. We have goals and strategies to achieve them. This IS going to be our year!! However, at some point during year, we are awakened to a reality of unforeseen obstacles. Things aren’t going as planned. It’s the stand-up comedian within us that allow us to:

Make course adjustments on the fly in response to unforeseen obstacles. In doing so we will be more successful as opposed to those who wring their hands in the unfairness of something and risk fizzling out.
Respond quickly to market conditions or other variables that call for a change of course. Our ability to do this is not an in-born skill of knowing when and how to zig-zag. It’s launching our efforts knowing that things rarely go completely as planned
Always have a lifeboat nearby and ready to go in preparation for what could happen.

So perhaps being a successful stand-up is, in fact, no laughing matter. Who knew that it’s the skills of a stand-up comic that allow us to successfully navigate the waters on the way to achieving our goals? It’s not a funny ha ha. Rather it appears that the connection between achieving our serious goals and delivering comedy is funny through an interesting and meaningful connection. Laugh on!

Mike Dorman

Jan 06 2016

Enhance This Year’s Success With Some New … Sharper … Glasses!

Our last blog of 2015 addressed how you can make New Year’s resolutions really meaningful … and make them really count for something. It addressed the needed ingredient of a definitive plan built around 4 keys that make the difference between being successful … or not. Great! So I’m going to pretend that this hit home with at least some of you readers and here we are … 2016 and raring to go!

But wait! Because we’re talking about goals for the year … rather long-term given that it’s 12 months away, there is one significant ingredient necessary for your efforts to be realized as intended. That is your ability to be in and maintain focus. It has everything to do with achieving anything we set out to do and the further away the intended goal … the greater the opportunity for distractions will only serve to get in the way of our success.

An article written by the editorial team of ‘MindTools’ defined focus as:
“… Your ability to center your attention and energy on a specific task, object, or activity, for a sustained length of time.
It’s often quite simple to focus on short-term tasks and goals, because you see results quickly, and this helps to keep your motivation levels high. However, it’s much more difficult to focus on goals that might take months, years or decades to realize. One reason for this is that you may lose sight of what you want to achieve, and why. It can also be difficult to recognize and measure progress on longer-term goals, especially in the early stages. This means that it’s easy to get distracted by shorter-term priorities, and by other projects that seem more exciting. However, the ability to focus in the long term is a key skill for anyone who wants to be successful.

In coaching we often work with a client to help them define specific and realistic goals around which they devise their workable plan to achieve them. And although their desire and intent is clear and present there are several things that tend to be blips within their screen that divert attention elsewhere and take them off track. Here are a few. Maybe you’ll see yourself in some of them:

Blip # 1
We get a telephone call or hear the tone of an incoming email … at the same time you’re trying to work through a particularly challenging aspect of your ‘plan. What do we do? We take the call or open and respond to the email and why? Because we can and it’s comparatively easy when we feel a bit stuck in working a part of our plan.

Blip # 2
A co-worker stops by wanting just a second of our time and in the name of being ‘nice’ and wanting to be helpful, we stop what we’re doing on the plan and become side-tracked on something totally unrelated. “Why” we ask ourselves? Because we want to help others achieve their tasks and being honest … the plan we’re prodding forward on is a challenge. Why not take a break and be helpful? Step aside plan!

Blip # 3
We remember something we promised to send to a customer or client and realize that we should do this now while thinking of it even though it’s not due this moment. But what the heck … we’ll get it to them on the early side and honestly … we’ll accomplish something positive and avoid the struggle we’re having in executing our plan that will elevate our success.

Blip # 4
We know that executing our plan is going to be a challenge. Why? Because we have a history of not maintaining focus and because the plan calls for me doing things that are just and simply uncomfortable for me. At least we’re honest and maybe with time we’ll get more comfortable and follow through. So great! We’ve just given ourselves the pass that threatens to undermine what we have designed for ourselves and actually achieving it.

The more we can sensitize ourselves to recognize reoccurring ‘blips’ that serve to vie for our attention, we have the ability to see them as distractions that can get in the way of looking back on our year as an accomplished one. 2016 … a year in which we set out specific intended achievements, created the plan to accomplish them and then did so! Now that’s a memorable year and our wish for YOU!

Mike Dorman

Dec 17 2015

Successful New Year’s Resolutions? Here’s the Glue That Let’s You Achieve Them!

Annually, in December, we have traditionally blogged about looking ahead into the crystal ball of the coming year. One year ago in our blog entitled ‘A New Year’s Resolution or a REAL Resolve. You Choose!’, it spoke to what we could do that would enable us to achieve the goals … step by step. So how did you do? Hopefully you tried to improve and it worked!

Here we are just days away from 2016 and again, it’s not unusual that we give thought to what we’d like to accomplish over the next 12 months. On an individual basis these thoughts often translate into the oh-so familiar New Year’s Resolutions. Despite the high hopes and good intentions, however, most of us fail to turn our New Year’s resolutions into reality.

The good news … if there’s good news in having company in this arena … is that we’re not alone. The statistics on the chances you’ll maintain change are fairly dismal. Most studies show resolutions begin to drop off after a week and only about 40% of those who made resolutions actually stick to their goals. If you’ve encountered difficulties following through with your goals, now is the time to resolve to make 2016 different.

Amy Morin, a contributor to Forbes, has identified four keys to make our resolutions stick … making the plans work … in 2016. They are rather simple, straight forward and worth incorporating:

Identify Your Readiness to Change
Sometimes, the pressure to establish a New Year’s resolution makes us choose a goal before we’re ready to commit. Although we may feel motivated initially, we haven’t really thought about all the work the resolution entails. Thinking, “I guess I should get healthier next year,” without committing to eating healthy and exercising isn’t likely to bode well. Wanting a raise without what you will do to justify one i.e. by increasing your value to the company, is a wish without a plan or sense of personal responsibility. And your plan doesn’t need to take the action on January 1. Rather you can increase your motivation to achieve your goal while creating the plan and related time-line for doing so during the year.
Believe You Can Do It!
A lot of people try to create change, despite a nagging voice in their heads that says, “This will never work.” If your thoughts constantly drag you down and beat you up, your chances of success are greatly diminished. You’ll likely talk yourself out of taking action as soon as the going gets rough. Creating long-lasting change requires confidence. Counter the self-doubt by writing down the evidence that informs you that you will be able to reach your goal. Keep the resulting list where you can review it often to ‘affirm your strengths and reduce your negative thinking.’
Think Constructively About Setbacks
Change in our behavior often involves at least a couple of setbacks. However, it’s the way we respond to them that determines the likelihood of reaching our goals. If we approach our goal allowing for the potential of a mistake that takes us off track we view it as a temporary ‘inconvenience’ and enhance the potential that we will benefit from the error and move on. If we see the error as failure we are motivated to say goodbye to the resolution.
Build Mental Strength
For many people, New Year’s resolutions focus on tangible changes. Although tangible – and measurable – goals are important, it’s impossible to reach those goals without mental strength. It’s the mental strength that will help us reach them. Increasing your mental strength will help you follow through with your goals, even as your motivation declines – which, for many people, is mid-January.

Turning our resolutions into achievements requires that we create the strategic plan of how we will do so. Incorporating the above keys will serve as the glue that makes our resolutions real and makes them stick. 2016? Watch out! Dreaming is just the first step of relishing the achievements accomplished next year!

To all of our readers, our wishes for 2016 being wonderful and successful in every way you choose!

Mike Dorman

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