Employee Feedback

“Dogs like a pat on the back, and people do too.”

W. Edwards Deming

People want and need feedback on how they are performing. They want to learn. People have an inherent desire to perform well, improve, and excel. Long ago, Human Resource or Personnel department staff recognized that supervisors and managers did not provide sufficient feedback to workers so they devised performance appraisal systems to force feedback at least once a year. Think for a minute, do we wait for months to give feedback to our puppy for wetting on the floor or coming when we call? Yet we often treat people that way by waiting months to provide feedback. Obviously, we need to give feedback in real time as performance is noted. The more time that is expired between the event and the feedback, the more the effect is diminished.

Okay, so we need to give feedback promptly, but how? In order for people to learn and grow, they need guidance by both positive and negative feedback. A good rule of thumb is to give three “atta boys” to every “aw shucks”; three positives to every negative. Positive feedback can be given in front of others as long as it does not cause jealously. Negative feedback should always be given in private to prevent humiliation. Both types of feedback should be constructive, helping the employee increase performance and sense of worth.

Be thoughtful and considerate. It is best to deliver the feedback in person unless the individual, or group, is remote. In that case, a handwritten note is more effective than cold email or voice mail. You might be surprised to find how many people keep handwritten notes, as they are meaningful to them.

Be real; be genuine in your feedback. Think carefully about what you say or do as the impact can have a lot more impact than you think. People can tell the difference when you are going through the motions or are sincere. Insincere positive feedback can be more damaging than doing nothing.

Pay attention to the frequency of your feedback. Too much, or too often, feedback loses effect and you may not be taken seriously. Too little and you don’t help the employee learn and they may feel neglected. Employees who feel neglected often look for another job where they will be appreciated. Turnover in employees is expensive.

For those on the receiving end of feedback, learn how to take it. Many people feel uncomfortable receiving a compliment because they do not know how to act. They don’t want to be seen as an egotist and so tend to deflect the compliment. A good way is to stand erect, look the person straight in the eye, and let them know how much it means to you. Sincere recognition deserves sincere expression of gratitude.

Don’t forget that managers and leaders can also be the recipients of feedback. You too, can feel good with a pat on the back. Learn how to accept it as employees will observe your behavior and emulate it.

Marketing Tools for Small Business

Do you like treasure hunts? How about one in which you can be assured of a successful hunt and find a treasure that you will cherish? You can enter this treasure hunt by taking your computer to www.score.org and clicking on Templates & Tools. There you will find a choice of seven paths to take and you will probably find a treasure at the end of each path. The seven categories are: Startup, Run & Grow a Business, Business Advice, Marketing, Management, Technology, and Finance & Money. For this article, I chose to go down the Marketing path and took the fork, “Five Marketing Must Haves for Small Business”.

The five paths are:

1.     Brand Identity

2.     Elevator Pitch

3.     Promotional Tools

4.     Social Network

5.     Experienced Mentor

The key to great marketing is asking the right questions, both of yourself and your customers. Establishing your brand identity starts with asking yourself, what exactly are you offering, who will you offer it to, and how will they benefit. What will you be known for--something not otherwise available, great value, great service, convenient, high quality, etc.  Questions to ask yourself are:

·      How do you define yourself

·      Who is your target audience

·      What are their needs

·      What problems do you solve

·      What makes you different

·      How do your customers benefit from doing business with you.

Now take all your answers to these questions and condense them into a clear, concise, and understandable format.

The term “elevator speech” comes from the scenario in which you find yourself alone on an elevator with the key individual you wish to convince of your value and you have about a minute to make your persuasive argument of why he/she should buy from you (or recommend you to a friend or colleague). In that minute, you have to introduce who you are and what you do. Describe why you and your product/service are unique, how others benefit from it, and how that person would also benefit from it. And don’t forget that old piece of advice, “ask for the order”. Describe specifically what action you would like that person to take and in what timeframe. Now rehearse, refine, and rehearse some more until you can deliver your message naturally and smoothly in the time it takes that elevator to go from one floor to another. Remember what I said in a previous article, “The best extemporaneous talk is well rehearsed.”

Promotion is a key part of marketing and many tools are available which are inexpensive and carry your message long after your contact with a prospect or even in your absence. A good logo, which is unique to your business, memorable, and maybe tells your story, is a good place to start. Repetition is key so use your logo everywhere-business cards, brochures, web site, stationery, and throughout your company. They should be clean and neat, containing your name, organization name, telephone number, email address, web site address (social media profiles), and physical address. The rear of the card could contain the key points of your elevator speech.

A professional web site is a must today. People will check your web site to confirm that you are real and here to stay. Branded marketing materials such as flyers, mailers, and handouts are easy ways to keep your name and benefits in front of people. One should ask the question of what handout would people tend to keep or what would they toss without paying much attention.

We have all learned in our experience that word-of-mouth is the most effective form of marketing. Today social media is the new form of word-of-mouth. Through Facebook and other social media programs, photos, designs, tips, video clips, breakthroughs, and other news about your organization can be shared. If informative or interesting, viewers can share with friends, their friends share with their friends, and your message gets widespread exposure.

Business today is very complex and it is useful to take advantage of the brains of others. No matter how experienced and knowledgeable you may be, there are always challenges that emerge and you can benefit from the wisdom and experience of others. Mentors are available from SCORE, Small Business Development Corporation, friends, and other business owners, who bring a fresh perspective and can act as a sounding board for you. People like to be asked for advice; why not take advantage of it.

This is only an example of the treasures that await you at www.score.org. It is free and easily available so good luck to you. It could be useful and practical for you to use in your organization.

Electronic Word-of-Mouth Marketign

Basic Business Cents

Electronic Word-of-Mouth Marketing

An old story relates of three business owners vacationing in Florida. One said he was celebrating a very successful fire sale. The second said he was also celebrating a very successful sale but his was a flood sale. The third inquired, “How do you start a flood?” There are many better ways to bring customers to your door, but the best by far is word-of-mouth. Getting your customers to brag about your goods and services to their friends and colleagues is effective, but slow to develop. A tool is available today to speed up that development, social media.

Many tools, called application programs or apps, are available to help you. The most common are Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, Google+, Pintrest, and blogs and new ones are emerging regularly. A posting by a customer about a positive experience with your product or service is made on their favorite app. If readers are impressed, they might re-post it and it is read by a whole new set of friends, and then another reposting, etc. This can cause an exponential growth in information about your products or services. If it really takes off, it is called going viral.

As important, if not more important, to posting on social media is listening to social media. What are your customers saying? What are they looking for? Are you offering them what they need?

All of this is dependent on the quality of your products and services. It can work in reverse and that is disastrous, so you have to make sure that you are providing goods or services that will cause people to brag about you. Just meeting their expectations or satisfying them is not enough; they should be so proud of the decision that they made to do business with you that they will want to share with their friends the good experience. People who use these apps tend to be on line daily so the news can mushroom quickly.

To kick start your electronic word-of-mouth marketing, get a presence on various apps for your business. You do not need to be on all of them, but be timely, current, and careful of what you post. Do what you do well. You will want to have frequent messages, at least weekly, that are not blatant advertising, but attention getting and interesting. They might be informative, useful, or practical. Of course, they need to be brief, which is mandatory on some apps.

Next, you need to get your customers to enroll as friends of your business app. You can do this with a small sign next to the cash register, use email “blasts”, direct mail, media advertisements, or simply talking to your customers when you come in contact with them. Make sure the directions are clear on how to transcend the process of becoming a friend of your company. Or better, collect email addresses of your clients and send them emails to invite them to become friends or contacts of your organization.

Electronic word-of-mouth is fast, effective, easy, and inexpensive. Our forefathers never dreamed of such a wonderful tool to use to promote their business. And you don’t have to reduce profit by having sales or wondering “how to start a flood.” Just make sure the quality of your goods and services is high and continually improving, so the resultant word-of-mouth is positive.

Elating Your Three Constituents, Satisfying Isn’t Enough

Dr. W. Edwards Deming often said, “Satisfying your customers is not good enough; satisfied customers will switch. You have to provides goods and services that are so good that your customers will brag about you to their colleagues and stay true to you.”

You have two other key groups that are equally important, stakeholders and owners.  Satisfying isn’t good enough for any of the three groups; all three must be elated with their relationship with you and your organization.

Customers will tell you what they want and need if you will only listen. Sounds simple but listening is hard as we like to talk and may not know the right questions to ask. Listening is an art and must be practiced.

Customers’ objectives can be broken down into three groups-quality, delivery (timeliness), and cost. Of course customers are looking for quality, not just of the product or service but also of the processes that produce the product or service. If the process is of high quality, then they can depend on the product or service to be of high quality. No one sets out to buy an unreliable or poor quality product or service.

Delivery or timeliness can relate to the product/service being available when and where needed. It can involve development time of new products, handling time, ensuring reliability of suppliers to deliver on time, or any element of time consumed from the raw material to the point of use by the end customer.

Cost is larger than the out-of-pocket cost of the purchase. The total cost of ownership should be considered including maintenance, product life, down time, and difficulty of use.

Stakeholders will also tell you what they want and need if you listen. Stakeholders include employees, suppliers, local businesses that benefit from your existence, and lenders. They want to be treated with integrity, fairness, honesty, and respect. They should understand your vision of the future for your organization and want to be a part of achieving that vision. The environment is also a stakeholder. The employees want to see growth opportunities, which involve a growing organization that provides education, training, and tutoring. They should be excited, energized, and comfortable that they made the right decision to join in your quest.

The owners are the third group, which must be elated with your performance. They also will tell you of their needs and wants if you listen. Their key objectives revolve around return of investment of time and money, growth, recognition, prestige, and leaving a legacy. Sounds like the same things you want, right?

What if you are the owner? Same thing applies and must be planned the same as the other two groups. Too often small business owners toil long hours without paying themselves a salary. Good planning and execution takes into consideration fair compensation for the owners as well as stakeholders.

The three groups can be likened to the abc’s of business-customers, stakeholders, and owners. Each is of equal importance and must be elated with their transactions with your organization. Satisfying them is not good enough.

Electronic Word-of-Mouth Marketing

An old story relates of three business owners vacationing in Florida. One said he was celebrating a very successful fire sale. The second said he was also celebrating a very successful sale but his was a flood sale. The third inquired, “How do you start a flood?” There are many better ways to bring customers to your door, but the best by far is word-of-mouth. Getting your customers to brag about your goods and services to their friends and colleagues is effective, but slow to develop. A tool is available today to speed up that development, social media.

Many tools, called application programs or apps, are available to help you. The most common are Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram, Google+, Pintrest, and blogs and new ones are emerging regularly. A posting by a customer about a positive experience with your product or service is made on their favorite app. If readers are impressed, they might re-post it and it is read by a whole new set of friends, and then another reposting, etc. This can cause an exponential growth in information about your products or services. If it really takes off, it is called going viral.

As important, if not more important, to posting on social media is listening to social media. What are your customers saying? What are they looking for? Are you offering them what they need?

All of this is dependent on the quality of your products and services. It can work in reverse and that is disastrous, so you have to make sure that you are providing goods or services that will cause people to brag about you. Just meeting their expectations or satisfying them is not enough; they should be so proud of the decision that they made to do business with you that they will want to share with their friends the good experience. People who use these apps tend to be on line daily so the news can mushroom quickly.

To kick start your electronic word-of-mouth marketing, get a presence on various apps for your business. You do not need to be on all of them, but be timely, current, and careful of what you post. Do what you do well. You will want to have frequent messages, at least weekly, that are not blatant advertising, but attention getting and interesting. They might be informative, useful, or practical. Of course, they need to be brief, which is mandatory on some apps.

Next, you need to get your customers to enroll as friends of your business app. You can do this with a small sign next to the cash register, use email “blasts”, direct mail, media advertisements, or simply talking to your customers when you come in contact with them. Make sure the directions are clear on how to transcend the process of becoming a friend of your company. Or better, collect email addresses of your clients and send them emails to invite them to become friends or contacts of your organization.

Electronic word-of-mouth is fast, effective, easy, and inexpensive. Our forefathers never dreamed of such a wonderful tool to use to promote their business. And you don’t have to reduce profit by having sales or wondering “how to start a flood.” Just make sure the quality of your goods and services is high and continually improving, so the resultant word-of-mouth is positive.

Electronic Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Marketing Tools for Small Business

Do you like treasure hunts? How about one in which you can be assured of a successful hunt and find a treasure that you will cherish? You can enter this treasure hunt by taking your computer to www.score.org and clicking on Templates & Tools. There you will find a choice of seven paths to take and you will probably find a treasure at the end of each path. The seven categories are: Startup, Run & Grow a Business, Business Advice, Marketing, Management, Technology, and Finance & Money. For this article, I chose to go down the Marketing path and took the fork, “Five Marketing Must Haves for Small Business”.

The five paths are:

1.     Brand Identity

2.     Elevator Pitch

3.     Promotional Tools

4.     Social Network

5.     Experienced Mentor

The key to great marketing is asking the right questions, both of yourself and your customers. Establishing your brand identity starts with asking yourself, what exactly are you offering, who will you offer it to, and how will they benefit. What will you be known for--something not otherwise available, great value, great service, convenient, high quality, etc.  Questions to ask yourself are:

·      How do you define yourself

·      Who is your target audience

·      What are their needs

·      What problems do you solve

·      What makes you different

·      How do your customers benefit from doing business with you.

Now take all your answers to these questions and condense them into a clear, concise, and understandable format.

The term “elevator speech” comes from the scenario in which you find yourself alone on an elevator with the key individual you wish to convince of your value and you have about a minute to make your persuasive argument of why he/she should buy from you (or recommend you to a friend or colleague). In that minute, you have to introduce who you are and what you do. Describe why you and your product/service are unique, how others benefit from it, and how that person would also benefit from it. And don’t forget that old piece of advice, “ask for the order”. Describe specifically what action you would like that person to take and in what timeframe. Now rehearse, refine, and rehearse some more until you can deliver your message naturally and smoothly in the time it takes that elevator to go from one floor to another. Remember what I said in a previous article, “The best extemporaneous talk is well rehearsed.”

Promotion is a key part of marketing and many tools are available which are inexpensive and carry your message long after your contact with a prospect or even in your absence. A good logo, which is unique to your business, memorable, and maybe tells your story, is a good place to start. Repetition is key so use your logo everywhere-business cards, brochures, web site, stationery, and throughout your company. They should be clean and neat, containing your name, organization name, telephone number, email address, web site address (social media profiles), and physical address. The rear of the card could contain the key points of your elevator speech.

A professional web site is a must today. People will check your web site to confirm that you are real and here to stay. Branded marketing materials such as flyers, mailers, and handouts are easy ways to keep your name and benefits in front of people. One should ask the question of what handout would people tend to keep or what would they toss without paying much attention.

We have all learned in our experience that word-of-mouth is the most effective form of marketing. Today social media is the new form of word-of-mouth. Through Facebook and other social media programs, photos, designs, tips, video clips, breakthroughs, and other news about your organization can be shared. If informative or interesting, viewers can share with friends, their friends share with their friends, and your message gets widespread exposure.

Business today is very complex and it is useful to take advantage of the brains of others. No matter how experienced and knowledgeable you may be, there are always challenges that emerge and you can benefit from the wisdom and experience of others. Mentors are available from SCORE, Small Business Development Corporation, friends, and other business owners, who bring a fresh perspective and can act as a sounding board for you. People like to be asked for advice; why not take advantage of it.

This is only an example of the treasures that await you at www.score.org. It is free and easily available so good luck to you. It could be useful and practical for you to use in your organization.