Back in the saddle

The restaurant experiment is over and now closed, which is a whole blog series by itself. And now I have returned to the land of the upwardly mobile or at least horizontally in today’s economic environ and am realizing the challenges of a very fast changing market. I am not Rip Van Winkle, but I think I have an idea of what he felt like. Although I have not changed all that much, the people, the industry and the regulations of the products that I used to know so much about have. This is a little intimidating, but fortunately the principles of what I have been doing for over 25 years have not. I bring people and their ideas together with the company(s) with which I work. In a nutshell, I develop, build and maintain relationships…pretty simple actually. Really?!! In theory?-yes, In practice?-No. The people that I have worked with for so long have moved on to new relationships in my area, so now I have to use better more tactical methods of doing business and in more creative ways. Not really so hard, just time consuming. But I am a consummate optimist and know I will be back in true form soon. So I will add my stories of successes and challenges of how I go about re-acclimating myself. Stay tuned for more stories from the saddle.

Until next time

Your getting back in the saddle business development guy,

Bo Hussung

Could Wal-Mart actually go out of business?

Consider this, Wal-Mart operates one of the largest private fleets of trucks in the country (7,200+). When oil spiked in 2008, Wal-Mart paid a little less than $4/ gallon for diesel including a .50 cents/gallon volume discount and drove over 900 million miles. Assuming those stats, then Wal-Mart spent 22.36b for fuel costs, a whopping 8.5b more than estimates or 66% of their net income of 12.7b. If fuel prices only go up $1.85 more/gallon over what they were in 2008, then Wal-Mart breaks even. A 1.86/gallon, then they begin losing money. $2 more per gallon..well you get the idea. They don’t have enough cash on hand (7.9b) to sustain revenue loses of that size for extended periods of time. When you consider their suppliers, who are already forced to price below market in most cases and of course how they export most of their products via diesel fueled container ships, then there is nothing left for Wal-Mart to do but to raise prices or pass that off to consumers. That is a dicey proposition because when oil prices reach those levels, then most people will be cutting their driving habits much less going to Wal-Mart to shop. It is a vicious cycle that Wal-Mart is simply not ready to handle. They don’t have a sustainable revenue model when fuel costs start climbing and current forecasts have prices for crude going up 18% by the end of this year alone. It is not a pretty situation.

What do your policies say to your customers?

Are your company’s policies consistent with a positive customer service experience? Sound rhetorical? That should seem obvious, but let me tell you from daily interaction with the people who keep the doors open, it is critical to make sure your interaction is consistent with that objective. Customers are the life force of your business. And, their experience is the crucial component of that understanding.

Our technological landscape has changed the way customers do business and with whom they choose to do business. It is simply too easy to go somewhere else. And the last thing a business needs is for the customer to think to themselves, “wow these folks are awful and I did not have a good experience. Case in point; a store manager walks to your table at a local cafe /coffee-house and states, our owners have established that if you are not a paying customer, that you must leave and make room for the paying customers….SERIOUSLY! First reaction is outrage. Second reaction is thank you very much and I will not do business with your establishment again. In fact, I will probably go out of my way to make sure I let everyone know of my negative experience.

You get the point….a policy with the intention of helping customers to your establishment that has the unintended consequence of alienating the customers that are at the establishment that can and do use social media to tell all their friends and followers what a wonderful experience they are having, invite all their friends, stay and eat lunch, drink coffee and make it an Awesome experience for everyone. Make Sense?

My last and final reaction was to leave a $100.00 bill on the table and write nice and sincere “have a nice day, I am not coming back”

Your positive customer experience advocate

Have a great day!

Bo

Are you Awesome?

I don’t mean this in an arrogant or conceited way, quite the contrary. I mean it in a quietly confident way. So ask yourself……Does your planning include being the best?

….in life?

….in your career?

….in your relationships?

In a metaphysical /spiritual sense you already are. The only issue for most of us is that we don’t usually acknowledge it or worse we are oblivious to it. We usually spend the first half of our lives allowing the bricks of self defeat and negativity pile over time and ultimately get in the way of that realization. And, even more sad in most cases, we put them there ourselves. We build our own obstacles completely unaware of not only what we are doing, but the affects of doing it. So what we are born with becomes obscured over that period of time.

The trick for most of us is that it takes conscious “right action” to achieve this objective and it is very difficult to accomplish. We believe in divine providence, but only because of our conscious decision to actually “do” something about it. It starts with a belief that we can, developing a plan to do it and putting the plans in motion. It has to happen in that order! When one of those components is missing, it will fail. This is not something that occurs through luck.

It is our highest purpose in life to be the most awesome version of what we were intended to be from the minute we came to this world. To not realize this would be tragic.

So it is never too late to Be Awesome!….or Expect the best. Work hard and remain diligent.

Peace!

Stay Sharp and good luck!

Until next time my friends,

It’s a short drive to Crazy

I am sure everyone has at some point in their lives had someone or something…”drive them crazy”. Goodness knows I have. In the last 3 years, the crazy economic environment which we have all witnessed and either become a victim or know someone who has, in many ways driven me a little crazy!

So I started pondering this thought the other day and well……it’s a short drive. On some days I am frankly so much in the midst of it, I am already there. CRAZY…that is.

Sense of humor and perspective is what it is all about.

If there is one thing that I have learned in my life, it is that a sense of humor can help smooth an otherwise very rough day. I was born in November and this morning I read that Scorpios take things way too seriously. Now, I don’t really buy much into all that stuff, but it is interesting that it hit that point, spot on….I do have a tendency to be a tad bit too serious about things, particularly life. So I decided I was going to smile today……a lot and better yet, I was going to make someone else smile. I figured the worst that could happen is I felt a little better and at the very least, the contagion would come back and quite possibly release a whole of bunch of pent-up anxiety and stress. So far so good.

Perspective

The other way I figured might help cope and might be a mechanism that would get me through this craziness is a sense of perspective. Life is full of lessons. They are around every corner and the ability to not only understand those lessons, but recognize that the experiences in one’s life has a lesson is one of the essential keys to working one’s way through a particularly stressful situation. Nothing good or bad lasts forever! And no matter how you may think things are, it could always be worse.

I am certain we will come out of this mess just fine, perhaps a little bumped and bruised, but fine nonetheless. For many, the nadir of the crisis has already passed or otherwise is very close….so the trough cannot be that far away. The perspective is we are closer now to an end than we were when we started this journey and the key to getting through it is a smile and knowing it is all part of a process of knowing it will not last forever and of course knowing that I am already a little crazy! 🙂

Stay Sharp, good luck and be well!

Your smiley faced and a little crazy business development guru,

Bo

Negativity, business, life and darma

……to separate yourself in a down economy?

Yeah, I know, it’s tough out there. I get it. We all get it. Businesses are losing money and downsizing, unemployment is high,  government deficits continue to increase, the Us and world economies are in the tank, people are glum, the bad news doesn’t seem to ever end and so, I ask the question a little differently, what CAN you do to make a difference and separate yourself from all this negativity? …or more accurately, what action(s) can you do?

In some Eastern religions, there is a term called darma, that basically means nothing in life happens without an action tied to it. Positive and negative results occur all the time, the biggest difference is the thought, planning and action(s) that move one through to a desired result. Now you may be asking, why tie religious principles to business? Simple; life and business parallel each other. The underlying principles are the same.

Let me explain: Since hope is not a plan for achieving objectives, people and businesses need a map, so to speak to achieve stated objectives or goals. Once goals are carefully articulated, a plan has to be written and then an action has to be implemented to achieve those goals. Life and business does not simply happen by accident. You don’t get on the freeway without first knowing where you want to go and then getting behind the wheel and making sure the car is carefully navigated to get to the destination.

The best way to overcome negativity in business or life and set a positive change in the way you receive all this information, is to stay busy toward a focused objective. Be a positive change in your life and your company. Set your thoughts toward an objective, have a plan in place and set an action to achieve your objectives. Remain focused and shortly you and the people around you will begin to notice a positive change in the world and your circumstances.

Now go!

Good luck and stay focused
To you success!
Bo

How are you positioning yourself for the next minute of your life?

……And are you doing it with the knowledge that your next action is not only a learning experience for you but a necessary part of the process of living your life. Okay, that may sound a little heady! But the reality is that the whole is not greater than the sum of it parts. In other words every single thing we do is a building block and a measure of who we are and what we are becoming. It shows our depth of character and as long as we are conscious of how we are impacting those around us, then those actions are the manifestation of our purpose.
Stand tall and stay sharp. Be the best you can be and always approach every situation you are experiencing with what you are bringing to it. You are much more powerful than you think!

Have a great day tomorrow and thanks for stopping by

To your success
Until next time my friends,

Bo

Build your database the organic way……

Churn and burn, you’ve heard that,…right? “A lead generating technique of driving business through marketing efforts based entirely on a price and cost savings benefit gimmick to get a customer to buy a product or service. Wow that is a mouthful.

Let’s break this down.

According to Wikipedia, “In marketing language, a gimmick is a quirky feature that distinguishes a product or service without adding any obvious function or value. Thus, a gimmick sells solely on the basis of distinctiveness and may not appeal to the more savvy or shrewd customer”. Seriously! Who the heck does this? And why?

Here is the answer.

People are gullible and savvy marketers and sales people not only know this, but will go out of their way to exploit this fact and they have lots of money to accomplish it. Yeah, I said that. Savvy marketers. That doesn’t mean that marketing is bad, it only means that gimmicks typically are and even savvy or shrewd customers make mistakes. But the odds work in the favor of the marketer /salesperson.The more they spend on marketing on a campaign that touches the most amount of potential customers, the better chances they have of converting them to a closed sale.

There is a better way.

I propose this alternative; be a relationship management professional. Know your product or service better than your competition and instead of convincing a customer (savvy or not) to buy something they do not need or want, build the relationship and let the statistics of building that relationship work in your favor. If your objective in sales is to help people get what they want, then the money will happen. That doesn’t mean make the pursuit of money your primary objective. It means make people your objective.Zig Ziglar, legendary sales guru, used to say, You can have everything in life that you want if you will just help people get what they want”Engage your customers by giving them what they want first. Ask questions and then listen. If they show signs of not wanting what you offer, then politely ask for a referral and move on to the next prospect (we will technique in a later post).

Selling is more the art of cultivating relationships in your sphere of influence by being the local expert in that circle. It isn’t complicated. Building relationships never should be. Be a friend, believe in what you do, be the expert, constantly improve, stay in touch with your prospects and customers and sales will happen.

People like doing business with people.

Stay Sharp and good luck. Until next time, my friends

Banks are too big and it is hurting customer experience

Branding for most banks has only recently become a problem as it relates to building trust. A recent post by JJ Hornblass on BankInnovation.net addressed this and as I agree that the banks soundness and stability is a critical component of building the bank brand to consumers, the more important element (IMHO) is building trust the old fashioned way – through meaningful relationships. I am not sure when it actually happened, but I estimate that it started back in the 80’s during the mega-bank merger exuberance ( Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Wachovia, Citibank, etc). The bigger the bank became, the more they moved away from the consumer. They disengaged relationships and alienated their customers with non customer friendly bank policy. Banks profit not only from sound financial practice, but through solid deposit activity from their customers in order to develop good lending to those customers.

I recently switched banks here in Nashville form BancorpSouth to Avenue Bank for this exact reason.  BancorpSouth was using unfriendly policies that further alienated me as their client and I switched to one that knows my name and communicates to me as a valued customer. I walk in the bank and they walk over to me and greet me, shake my hand and offer me a drink or warm cookie, before we even get to conducting business and the initial reason I walked in. They engage me and make me feel welcome. They want to get to know me as a customer so they can serve me better. They make decisions at the branch level that bridge the gap between common sense and exceptional customer service. All these techniques help them better serve me as a valued client. There are still credit committees, but not without me knowing that my branch manager and officer know how to properly articulate my unique circumstances.

These critical relationship techniques are missing at the larger banks and perhaps one of the reasons that the local, smaller community banks are doing okay in this economy. They know their customers! It is not that mega banks don’t care but because they have become so big, they set policies that move them farther and farther away from the customer relation experience. When this happens, consumers loose and ultimately the bank does as well.

Good luck and happy customer experiencing!
Your customer service advocate

Bo

Do tough times bring out the best or the worst in you?

Okay, I am not going to spend my time writing about how tough things are, you already know that. Economically we are still having some problems. The entire financial system is still in a bind (internationally) and the realities are that it is not getting better anytime soon.

The issue I am having is that I continue to read stories of past colleagues and friends experiencing some less than savory ethical situations among their competition. Specifically, I read a recent post discussing the pitfalls of dealing with short sales in the real estate arena and some of the practices that were being experienced to get these listings some attention. Essentially, the agents involved were lying about the properties.

So it left me wondering, when times are tough why do people resort to jeopardizing their integrity and ethical standards to try and carry out a living? I do not get it. It never, ever, ever, ever pays off. And, worse it hurts so many people during the process, especially the perpetrator.
I am going to paraphrase an old saying that goes something like this,…..”Why climb a tree to tell a lie when it is so much easier to stand on the ground and tell the truth?” Pretty simple if you ask me.
No doubt tough times create stress and anxiety in peoples lives. Business, cash flow and revenue drops, money gets tight, bills have to be paid, basic needs have to be met, a recipe for a very stressful circumstance – no doubt. But here is my take on stress, It is almost always self induced. (IMHO) And, that is mostly due to making poor decisions in the first place. Why create more stress by misrepresenting the truth? Just stop doing it! Do the right thing and let the rest take care of itself. If you have to resort to these tactics, maybe it is time to go do something else.

Keep practicing the principles of building solid relationships, taking care of your current customers and I promise it will get better.

Stay Sharp and good luck!
Until next time my friends,

Bo