[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]What’s the purpose of your business?

What do your customers really want?

Are your employees satisfied?

The sole reason your business exists is to fulfill needs.

Your product or service fulfills your customers’ needs. Their purchases fulfill your business’ needs (and in turn, yours). Your business fulfills your employees’ needs, and so on.

Fortunately, systems can be put in place to support this end result. One important system is to gather data to better understand how to serve your prospects, customers and employees – rather than just assume you’re already doing it. This is good marketing: understanding how your customers think and make decisions.

A common, and often overlooked, way to gather this data is by conducting surveys.

One client told me his demographic was males between 35 and 45 years old. After just sitting in his retail store for 3 hours, I didn’t see one person that matched his demographics. I saw women between the ages of 30 to 50 years old. When I asked him about this he was shocked! We then pulled his client sales records and he had 1 male client in the last 300 sales. Once we confirm this, he changed the focus of his business and his revenue went through the roof.

Today there are so many options for a business of any size to conduct numerous surveys. If you are going to do a survey, remember every survey has a different purpose and goal. You need to know what you want to know from conducting a survey.

Here are just a few common surveys:

1. Net Promoter Score (Customer Satisfaction)
While there is a large range of customer satisfaction surveys to choose from, one of the best researched and proven formats is Net Promoter Score (NPS), a methodology created by Bain Consultant Fred Reichheld. In his book, The Ultimate Question, he details how one simple question — How likely is it that you would recommend [company] to a friend or colleague? — has been shown to be the single best measure of whether or not a customer will become a repeat customer and refer business in the future. This survey has become a norm in almost industry today.

2. Gallup Q12 (Employee Satisfaction)
There are as many formats for employee satisfaction surveys as there are for customer satisfaction survey. The Gallup Q12 (brief 12-question survey) is easy to deliver and comes based on massive amounts of research into what factors lead to engaged employees. Gallup went through thousands of employee surveys to find the twelve that most strongly correlated with employee engagement, which in turn leads to increased employee retention, profitability and revenue growth.

3. One Question Survey (Headline Testing)
A little bit of effort researching headlines can pay big dividends in creating messaging that persuades your prospects to take action. My favorite format comes from Joe McVoy of Profitable Marketing Enterprises, who advocates a very simple format. Brainstorm your ten favorite headlines with your team; strive to make them as different as possible since meek headlines rarely win. Next, send an email to at least one hundred of your target prospects titled “One-question survey” (or buy advertising on a website your prospects use) and offer a chance to win a small incentive such as a $50 gift card for completing your survey. Once they click on your survey, ask them to rank the ten headlines from most to least compelling. Make sure to have your survey tool randomize the order of the headlines so that the results are not biased.

4. Educational Customer Research
One of the best ways to engage your market can be to create original research they can use to improve their businesses. This original research provides valuable content to staffing companies that want to learn more about current best practices in their industry to improve their service and financial performance. Naturally, companies that engage with the original research you create are often interested in learning more about how you can help them with paid services.

5. Online Quizzes
Last but not least, online quizzes can be a good way to engage your prospects. These are typically more casual in nature, but they can spark a positive conversation and engagement. Quizzes can be featured in one newsletter and then the results can be shared in a blog post, social media and the next newsletter to keep visitors coming back.

If you are going to you a survey, know what information you are looking to get. Don’t just put out surveys because they are fun to do. Have a purpose of the survey. Develop a plan of action on what to do with that information to enhance your business.

#bizcoachstevef[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

When you started your business you probably through of the freedom you will have because your staff will handle many of the problems, you wanted that control over your life to do the things you want to do in your business – your way.  Some of you allow your staff to run free-letting the inmates run the asylum (hopefully not that extreme). Some of you are micromanagers-overseeing everything your staff does. Many of you have a nice balance of leading your team while giving them the freedom to control themselves and develop within your organization.  Being the owner, you have all the power to determine the amount of latitude you give your employees.

This is what employee mentoring is all about. It starts with accepting the real responsibility that lies in having authority and influence over someone else’s paycheck, not to mention the rest of their day. This is one of the most essential components in I speak with my clients. You must have regularly scheduled meetings with each person who reports to you.

How is your business ever going to reach that beautiful vision, embody those deeply-held values, and reach those financial goals, if the people you need to get there are left behind in the process?

The first thing to do is book monthly meetings with each member of your staff. You know, those “one-on-one” meetings. Call them whatever works for you.  Just meet with every member of your staff (or direct reports if your company is very large) on a regular monthly basis to talk. To gather information. To check in. To tune into what is really going on within your business.  These meeting are not the time to be critical on their performance, but to develop your staff, create goals with them, provide them the confidence to do better at their job and giving them the chance to make a mistake and learn.

Here is some example of questions you can ask your staff during these meetings. Find questions that are appropriate for you and your business. You should do very little of the talking and 90% of the listening during these meetings.

1. “We talk a lot around here about our company values – which one of them is most important to you? Why is that?” “Was there something that happened before you started working here that caused you to feel that way?”
2. “I’d love to hear an example of where you feel like we didn’t live up to our standards, or anything else you see along those lines. Was there something we did that you felt let down by?” “How do you think we should handle it differently next time?”
3. “Do you feel like you’re in the ‘center’ of your job? Meaning, are you doing something that really suits you? And do you feel like you have the right amount of responsibility and authority to do it well?”
4. “What would you say is the ‘theme’ that runs through your work here? For example, do you tend to get lost in the details on projects, or struggle to feel relaxed in talking with our customers? What are you working on as a professional goal for yourself in being here?”
5. “Does working here make you ‘better’ at your life outside of here? Meaning, do you go home feeling good about yourself and your contribution? What do you think is in the way of you feeling more that way here?”
6. “When you think about where you want to be a year from now, or three, how does working here serve that personal dream? What is it giving you, or could it give you, that serves you and the life you want?”

As you can see, these questions are ‘soft’ – they’re not about today’s tasks or next week’s deadline. They’re questions that invite your people into the big picture, not only to ‘do better’ at work, but to ‘be better’ in their life, and most importantly, experience that they matter to you as a person – that their individual hopes, dreams and fears are all part of the magic that is your brand. That’s the real purpose of the meeting, so they can bring that much more of themselves into work today than they did yesterday, and most importantly to feel they have your support in doing it.

Conducting these kinds of monthly meeting will help you retain the most talented people in your business as well as attract highly qualified people that will want to work for you. Without great staff, your business could be doomed, and you don’t know it yet. Hire great people. Develop them. Listen to them and what they want from you to be successful in your business.

It’s that simple. If you want to know what really motivates your staff – just ask them.

#bizcoachstevef

The African impala can jump to a height of over 10 feet and cover greater than 30 feet.  Yet these magnificent creatures can be kept in an enclosure in any zoo with a 3-foot wall.  The animals will not jump if they cannot see where their feet will land.

A lot of humans are like this.  They are afraid to take a risk.  Growing up, I was surrounded by lots of very successful business people. Listening to their stories you would think they were the most unsuccessful business people in the world. It took me years to understand they failed many times before they found success.  Then they built on that success.  They taught me that you need to fail in order to learn, then take that knowledge and grow to try again in a different way.

Thomas Edison found thousands of ways a light bulb does not work, before he found one way it did work. Those failures gave him the knowledge and took him one step closer to success.

Failure can be one more step on your road to success – you just have to turn it around in a positive direction.  Failure can push you harder to succeed.  Failure can strengthen your determination to overcome obstacles.  Failure can make you braver in the face of opposition.  Failure can help you learn what you need to do in order to succeed.  Failure can teach you what your limitations are – and your strengths.  Failure can encourage you to change your strategy.

“Failure is not an option” became a popular catchphrase after the release of the movie Apollo 13.  Failure happens, but when you’re responsible for the people working for you, you have to do everything you can to guard against it.  As a leader, devote yourself to avoiding these crucial failures in leadership.

• Disconnecting from people.  Don’t get so caught up in strategy and planning that you forget to talk to the people who work for you.  Most of the time, they know more than you about how things work from the ground level, and their insights can be invaluable.

• Doing too much.  Delegate appropriately so you don’t get overwhelmed and lose sight of the big picture.  When you hire, look for people who can perform aspects of your job as well as or better than you can.  Your role is complicated enough without adding tasks that your team should be able to handle.

• Avoiding risk.  Play it safe, and your organization will never grow.  That doesn’t mean being foolhardy with your organization’s assets.  Seek opportunities everywhere and be willing to commit resources wherever you’ve got a reasonable chance of success.

• Falling in love with authority.  You’re the boss, not a monarch ruling by birthright.  Don’t rely on your title, and the volume of your voice, to get employees to do what you want.  Base your decisions on your experience and judgment and be willing to listen to other points of view instead of assuming that only you know what’s right.

When J. K. Rowling, author of the phenomenally successful Harry Potter series, had been out of college for seven years, she found herself at a dark juncture in her life.  At that time, she says, she had failed in life on an epic scale.  “An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded.  I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless.”

In short, Rowling says she was the biggest failure she knew.  And while she says there is nothing ennobling about being poor, she believes she reaped benefits from her failures.  Failure, she says, stripped away all the inessential aspects of her life.  She stopped pretending to be anything other than herself, and it was then that she began to earnestly pursue the only work that mattered to her.  It was not, she says, the fairy-tale transformation to success so often written about her in the media.

It never is, by the way.  “Overnight sensations” are rare indeed – most of us have to plug away, pay our dues and have a few failures before we can begin to imagine real success.

#bizcoachstevef