Posted on June 2nd, 2008 — in Commercial Stuff
I was sitting at a new hip day spa and salon when the entire staff of stylists and technicians suddenly disappeared. “Wait a minute! Where are you going? I’m wrapped in foil!” I think to myself. Moments later, the ownership team re-appeared with the entire Broadway staff, donning party hats, clown noses and a birthday cake for one of the other patrons who were celebrating her 48th birthday. You see, this Savvy Staff had waited for the “precise” moment when our birthday girl had gone into the Changing Room for maximum Surprise Power when she came out. Well it sure worked!
The reason I go to this particular salon, is not only because a girl knows a good haircut when she finds one, but it’s because of attention to customer service. It’s the Extra’s and Surprises and not just on your birthday. They Remember that I like my coffee, black with equal and have it ready for me and imagine my delight, when during a standard “Wash” I get a relaxing scalp massage. That’s Very Unexpected and Extra.
But S-E-R-V-U is not only important in Customer Service to distinguish one company from another. It is also important in personal relationships. It’s what makes our partners, children and employees feel “Valued and Important”.
Test your SERVU Quotient with 4 simple questions:
1. S: In the last 30 days, how have you used the element of Surprise to provide a memory for a customer, colleague or loved one? A note slipped into the luggage of a family member who is traveling, wishing them well and saying you will miss them, a surprise birthday celebration for a customer.the possibilities are endless.
2. E: In the last 30 days, site specific examples of how you have exceeded expectations by providing a littleExtra in a personal or professional relationship or task? What do I mean by that? Well It’s the type of thing that prompts the other person to says “Geethat’s was above and beyond the call of duty.
3. R: Fortunately technology is making it a lot easier for us to remember special occasions. What’s your system for remembering the birthdays, anniversaries, and special interests of your customers, those you live and work with? A colleague and friend of mine, sends me via snail mail, articles he knows will be of interest to me. In the age of e-.mail, his occasional, unexpected, hand-written notes and attention to my interests makes me feel like I’m dining by candlelight. It’s also great to get something other than Publishers Clearinghouse in the mailbox.
4. Do you V-U People?: Say again? Yes, Do something Very, Unexpected! To delight others and shake things up a bit? While flying recently, a flight attendant during the safety demonstration stopped mid-sentence and said “Hey, I don’t think you’re listening”. That sure got our attention and then she warmed our heart with a smile that said - “I’m fooling with you”. Very Unexpected and Delightful. When you do something totally unexpected, you’re unique and that often translates into something and someone very special.
So this week, this month, today - Apply the S-E-R-V-U Formula to those most important to you. Customers, Employees, Family and Friends. Remember to Surprise them, Give Something Extra, Remember the little things and occasionally do something Very Unexpected.
Rosemary Rein is a Professional Speaker and International Management & Training Consultant. She is the Author of “Go Wild: Survival Skills for Business and Life” published by Career Track Seminars, and is the founder of Costa Rica Learning Adventure. http://www.costaricatraining.com
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Posted on April 22nd, 2008 — in Commercial Stuff
The game of golf looks easy. Just grab a club, put the ball up on the tee, and swing away. Easy!
Those of us who play the game would beg to differ.
All of us have at least seen someone swing a golf club before. But there are several people who have never even held a golf club in their hands, much less played a round.
How much sense would it make to give a golf club to a non-golfer and say, “Here you go … good luck”?
Yet that’s just what we’re doing every day when we hire new people and don’t train them in Customer Service.
Many employers assume that since new employees have seen others give good service, they should automatically know how to do it. Customer service training time is cut back or eliminated, and employers wonder why customers are treated poorly and don’t return.
The next time you’re meeting with your staff, try this exercise to illustrate how important this is.
Bring a golf club to your next meeting, and start by asking someone who’s never played golf before to come to the front of the room. (For the sake of demonstration, let’s assume it is a female.) Hand her the golf club. Then ask the golfers in the room to help coach her to properly swing the club. How should she hold the club? How far apart should she have her feet? How far away from the ball should she stand? How far back should the club go? Where should the shoulders be? The hands? The head? There’s a lot to think about.
Now that our new golfer has had all these instructions, have her go ahead and try a practice swing.
How do you suppose that swing will look?
Certainly this employee has seen others play the game plenty of times. So why does her swing look so ugly? It’s because she never had to think about swinging the club herself until that very moment. It’s one thing to watch others; it’s very different when you have to do the job yourself.
You must take the time to train the very basic of basics to each employee. Things like how to present themselves to others without being offensive, how to greet a customer when they enter the store, how to ask the right questions to uncover what they’re looking for, and dozens of other important skills. Each employee may have seen it a hundred times or more, but they may never have had to do it themselves until now.
Great customer service doesn’t just happen magically. It requires training. Tiger Woods, widely considered the best player in the game of golf today, has 3 different trainers he works with constantly. He understands the value of training. Do you?
Bill Guertin, The 800-Pound Gorilla, was one of the youngest licensed Radio broadcasters in the state of Illinois at age 16. Bill’s 25+ years of real-world, on-the-street experiences in broadcast sales, service sales and marketing have given him a broad understanding of how and why people do the things they do.
He is currently the Director of Market Development for Riverside Medical Center in Kankakee, IL, and Chief Enthusiasm Officer of The 800-Pound Gorilla, a professional speaking and consulting company in sales, customer service and marketing.
Groups appreciate the fact that Bill is a “working professional”, on the streets and in the trenches every day. He understands the challenges of his audiences first-hand, and your group will immediately relate to him on the subject matter. He may be reached at (815) 935-3272, or on the Web at http://www.The800PoundGorilla.com.
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Posted on April 20th, 2008 — in Commercial Stuff
Affiliate programs promising huge rewards are spread liberally throughout the Internet so why choose to become a poker affiliate? There are so many reasons that the odds are baffling but here are a few of the main decision clinchers.
Poker is a game that is enjoyed by millions all around the world. It has been played for centuries and has only grown in popularity. It is an established and hugely popular game, which will no doubt endure for centuries to come.
As such the online poker industry is booming. Where other industries have dropped off or levelled out after initial interest has faded, the online poker companies grow from strength to strength. Due to the phenomenal growth and the huge profit turnovers, there is high demand for advertisers in various guises. Luckily for affiliate programs, they have provided much of the space and have therefore reaped much of the reward.
The online poker industry like all others in the world has their market leaders and the pacesetters. Prominent names have risen like cream to the top, becoming recognisable international companies. Affiliating a Website with such colossal businesses not only maintains their prowess as a competitive site, but also rewards you handsomely. The rewards can be so great that sceptics my think that their was something illegal or immoral about this. But the truth is that it is simply an entrepreneurial pat on the back. Money finally filters down from the huge poker sites, which turnover millions each day giving normal internet users the opportunity to taste a bit of that success. It is unequivocally legal, there are no back handers or laundering deals to be done, it just gives affiliates their share of the profits that a company makes.
Of course not all affiliates taste instant success, even when dealing in an industry as large as the online poker sites. Website owners looking to become affiliates must create interest and generate new players to gain from this scheme. So some effort is required in order to succeed. Like in all businesses you can reap the rewards if you are willing to put in the hours. You wouldn’t expect to be paid top brass if you only turned up once a month to work, so why should you in an affiliate scheme. The truth is much of the scheme is also based on luck, but you can help make your own luck by becoming proactive and really selling your site and those of your affiliates. If you fail to attract anyone to a personal site you will make no money is the cold hard truth. Attract many and you could soon be earning a lucrative income from the online poker industry without risking a penny.
Learn the secrets of top online poker affiliates and discover how to find the best poker affiliate programs at http://www.epokeraffiliate.com/
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Posted on April 16th, 2008 — in Commercial Stuff
by Simon Minister, DXTrainers
What are the benefits?
It is well known that one of the safest, most lucrative
investments you can make on the Internet today is the business
of Market-Making [online currency exchange requests]. There are
several online currencies available for both business and
personal use on the Internet, and each competes with the others
on the basis of various options. All online currencies are
easily convertible from, and to, most National currencies.
Online currencies are simply the optimal form of worldwide,
instantaneous payments over the Internet. Examples of online
currencies are:
href="http://www.e-gold.com/e-gold.asp?cid=1329427"
target=_blank rel="nofollow">E-Gold,
href="https://intgold.com/m/i/181969" target=_blank rel="nofollow">IntGold,
E-Bullion,
target=_blank rel="nofollow">NetPay and
target=_blank rel="nofollow">Pecunix.
Millions of individuals, the world over, hold at least some
funds in one or more online currencies. Since different
businesses accept different online currencies for the products
or services that they provide, individuals find themselves
trading across these online currencies: for example, from E-Gold
to IntGold, or Pecunix to E-Bullion, etc. There is literally
teeming millions of online currency exchanges requested and
fulfilled monthly, and every exchange is made through a
Market-Maker, who usually charges a fee of between 5% and 20%
for rapid trades, conversion to hard currency, or other
conversions.
Online currencies are the equivalent of an ATM machine being
placed into every household, worldwide. Online currencies are
virtually free to own and operate, and they can be used to
create excellent income. Market-Makers act like the actual
payment services for ATM machines: like Cirrus, or Star Network,
or MasterCard, or even Visa. Thus, online currency transactions
have the power to be far more common than ATM withdrawals, and
the demand for online currencies is rising constantly forcing
the recent huge increases in the value of gold in general.
Market-Makers have one vital job: to accumulate as much of each
commonly traded online currency as they possibly can, in order
to lower their fees below their competitors and work on ‘volume’
trades for a living. For the average Market-Maker this requires
intense marketing of their service. Clearly, there are two
options open to the Market-Maker who wishes to compete at higher
trade volumes. The first option might be that the Market-Maker
can operate as part of a network of Market-Makers, such as the
massive
target=_blank rel="nofollow">DXInOne network. That network will distribute
exchanges fairly based on the participation and funding of each
Market-Maker. The other option might be that the Market-Maker
may already have access to sharply increasing ‘demand’ for
exchanges, and merely be interested in offering a share of
profits to individuals who provide additional online currency to
that Market-Maker, allowing for more and larger exchanges in
shorter periods of time.
Typical Online Currency trade
You are surfing the net and you stumble across a service or
product that you would like to buy. The payment choice which is
required for this product is NetPay. Let’s say you have a NetPay
account, but you don’t have any money in it. However you have
plenty of Pecunix in your Pecunix account. Therefore you look
through the directories of Market-Makers for both NetPay and
Pecunix, and you choose to fund one that works for your needs.
You discover that an overnight exchange, less than 24 hours,
would cost you about 10%. Since this works for your needs, you
make the transaction: you will send that Market-Maker your $100
in Pecunix and in exchange you receive $90 in NetPay. You are
now immediately available to go and buy that product or service.
Notice that the Market-Maker has just made $10, minus whatever
they may have had to pay in receive fees for the Pecunix they
received, which depending on the trade, may have come to $3. So
they have made probably a net of about $7 for this $100 trade,
or 7%.
Cashing out profits
You decide to withdraw $500 in profits you’ve earned from
processing online currency exchange requests. You have the money
sent for example, to your IntGold account, and then you use your
IntGold debit card, which may charge you a small transfer fee of
2%, to withdraw the money. Or for example, you could have the
money sent to your E-Bullion account, and then have it
transferred directly to your bank account overnight for a 4%
fee. These small fees don’t bother you at all, because they keep
the systems operating so that you have quick and flexible
options for receiving your money.
Buying Online Currency
You choose to buy e-gold from your bank account, but first you
would have to have an E-Gold account, so you would go to e-gold
and open one, which just takes a few minutes. Then you would go
on a hunt and perhaps you would use the services of
href="http://www.londongoldexchange.com"
target=_blank rel="nofollow">LondonGoldExchange, where you find that you
can buy E-Gold from your bank account for a very small fee.
Following the instructions, you can have your E-Gold within just
a couple of days, and you can begin to make money with it
immediately.
By now, you should have a basic idea about online currencies
and Market-Makers in general. Clearly, Market-Makers are in an
excellent position: they virtually make money ‘out of thin air,’
by simply having money in different ‘buying-power’ forms
available for trades. The interesting thing to be understood is
that the demand for online currency exchanges is rising faster
than the ability of current Market-Makers to keep up with the
processing of those exchangers within a relatively efficient
period of time. In other words, DXInOne needs more people to
help them process these exchange requests efficiently so that
they can remain competitive with other networks. Some
Market-Makers work in small networks, say 20 or 25 people, who
are pooling funds. Some, like the DXInOne system, is far larger
yet. The DXInOne system makes it possible for anyone to add any
amount of funds, at any time, to the entire Market-Making
network provided by the system. There can be as many as 60,000
or more exchange requests in the main network, at any one time,
for one online currency alone; huge numbers of Market-Makers in
the DXInOne system are already working around the clock,
worldwide, and never able to process all of the exchanges that
they see!
They are often given more than $25,000 in requests, each, to
get to daily, and simply don’t have enough funds at the ready to
run them all swiftly, even though each exchange pays the
Market-Maker about 6% - 14% in profits!
It is simply not possible for any one Market-Making network to
have enough funds available at any one time to keep up with all
of the worldwide exchange requests. An exchanger processor who
works with about $5000 in funds can only process about $5000
worth of exchanges at once, and then needs to get his or her
money exchanged back around, within a few days, in order to
process another $5500 worth of exchanges, meaning the original
$5000, plus the profit from the first batch of exchanges. We
have thousands of exchange processors in our network who operate
in this way and because demand rises so rapidly we are in need
of thousands of more. In this system, it’s not about whether you
will make this kind of money, but rather how fast you will make
this kind of money, with the money remaining in your
control.
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Posted on April 4th, 2008 — in Commercial Stuff
This may not be a popular view, but I think writing a web site is very similar to writing a piece of direct mail. I’m not talking about smash-and-grab fliers. I’m talking about those large mailings with brochures, a four or eight-page letter and a reply card.
And no, I’m not saying that the experience or the approach is identical. There are numerous differences too. But the similarities are significant, and can guide us in how we write for the web.
Here are some similarities:
1. We can guess that our conversion rate will be pretty low. In the area of one to two percent. More, if we do a good job.
2. We have very little control over the sequence in which people will read the information we provide.
With a direct mail piece, people might start with the letter, or the brochure. And who knows where their attention will settle first within either one. You never really know which part of a direct mail brochure people will read first. And the same goes for a web site. (If you have ever sat in on a web site usability test, you know what I mean. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out why people choose particular links or pathways through a site.)
3. We know we are losing readers at every stage of the process and have to write in a way that is clear, engaging and compelling.
This is very true for both direct mail and web sites. Of the hundred people who start reading, we will lose the interest and attention of almost all of them before the ‘task’ is completed.
4. We can identify significant ‘danger points’ when it comes to losing a reader.
In a direct mail piece we know we lose readers at the end of pages…at the end of page one of a four-page letter for instance. Or after someone has completed reading a page in a brochure.
Online, we know we are losing readers when they read or skim a page and don’t click forward one step closer to completing a task.
5. We know that we lose a significant number of people at the point of completing an application or purchase. They get that far and then back away at the last moment. This is very true for both direct mail and the web.
Now for one very significant difference between direct mail writers and web writers.
Direst mail copywriters KNOW all this and write accordingly.
- A direct marketing copywriter pays very close attention to the end of each page in a letter, writing in a way to pull people forward to the next page.
- A direct marketing copywriter looks through years of test results to write an application or purchase form that will yield the best results. (As does the DM designer.)
- A direct marketing copywriter writes in a way that is deliberately and carefully both compelling and informative.
A complex product takes several pages to sell. Knowing that, a copywriter needs to cover a lot of information for readers with a very fragile level of attention. The writer has to write in a way that is fluid, engaging, informative and persuasive.
- A direct marketing copywriter knows that key benefits and offers need to be repeated throughout the package. When you know that most readers don’t read every word, you need to repeat key messages so that everyone gets to read them more than once.
What’s my point?
I have two points to make.
First, there is a degree of sophistication in writing good direct mail that is rarely evident online yet. DM writers understand the nature of their medium and their readers in minute detail. At least, the good ones do.
However, online, while the quality of writers may be good, the sophistication with which they apply their craft just can’t compete right now.
For instance, it’s very rare to find a web page where you can see how carefully the writer and designer have worked together to maximize the number of people who click forward to another page.
In time, all this will change. It’s just a factor of the relative immaturity of the online medium.
My second point is that DM copywriters live or die by results. Every single day. And to give themselves the best chance of success, they study the successful work of others, and they obsess over test results. DM marketers test everything and are always learning.
This is the second element that hasn’t got up to speed online. It’s so easy to test everything and anything online. We should be doing more of that and adding to our knowledge of what works best in given situations.
By way of wrapping this up, online writers can learn a great deal from DM writers. (The same is true for online designers, who can learn a lot from DM designers.)
Both media depend on action, repeated actions - whether it is paper pages being turned or links being clicked.
Good DM writers are masters at driving action. We should learn more from them.
Nick Usborne is a copywriter, author, speaker and advocat of good writing. You can access all his archived newsletter articles on copywriting and writing for the web at his Excess Voice site. You’ll find more articles and resources on how to make money as a freelance writer at his Freelance Writing Success site.
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