Time...how do you manage it!

Five Keys to Creating an Uplifting Service Culture

Five Keys to Creating an Uplifting Service Culture

You can unleash superhuman strength in your company's culture by following simple instructions on a safety poster, says consultant Ron Kaufman

Recently I was walking through a distribution warehouse to meet a client. Hanging on the wall were safety posters instructing employees how to lift heavy boxes. Most of us have seen these posters many times. This was the first time I stopped to read one.

"Ron, are you ready to get started with the meeting?" asked the vice-president showing me around the building.

 "I want to read this," I replied. "Can I take a second?"

As you can imagine, the VP's facial expression registered confusion over my interest in a standardized safety poster.

Soon I was seated in the boardroom with a table full of executives. The conversation focused on an obvious lack of performance that was affecting the company's bottom line. "Mr. Kaufman," said the chief executive. "You're a service guru. We already have a fantastic service department. And we don't get many customer complaints. But this is a cultural issue. Is this really something you can help with?"

Don't Leave It to a Department

I've heard these types of comments for more than 20 years, in all corners of the globe and inside some of the world's most recognized heavyweight organizations. The perception of many companies is that service is something handled by a department or a specific job title. It's something only necessary to customer satisfaction.

"Would you mind if we talked about your safety posters?" I asked the CEO.

My seemingly odd question captured the CEO's attention. Safety posters offer a simple, best practice to lift anything heavy, like a package, a tool—or even an entire culture. The posters instruct employees to stretch properly, position their body carefully, and use their strongest muscles. Plus, they tell employees to study and practice proper habits continuously.

When it comes to uplifting a culture—engaging people, motivating people, building loyalty, increasing performance, and creating a sustainable advantage—many companies pass by service as a solution, because somehow the concept has been improperly labeled.

I define service like this: 'taking action to create value for someone else'. Those are powerfully simple words. So consider the impact of an uplifting service culture, a shared purpose within every aspect of your business, interaction, and transaction, from the boardroom down through the front line, where everyone focuses on creating value for someone else both internally and externally. Imagine the effect on performance, engagement, customer loyalty, employee retention, value, and competitive advantage.

 "Let's talk about the basic instructions for lifting anything," I said to the group. "Let's use the instructions of a safety poster to talk about building an uplifting service culture."

1. Stretch. Yes, there are calisthenics for your culture. Stretch your mind and your old habits. Get the creativity flowing. Ask the big questions of why: Why do we need to change? Why service? Why now?

2. Position yourself. Lifting a culture requires proper positioning and support from all levels. Leadership must lead service. And everyone else must make himself or herself a service leader.

3. Use your strong muscles. The architecture of your company is akin to physiology. Muscles need flexing. Blocks need building. The building blocks of your culture, such as communication, recognition, vision, and metrics, need shaping. Analyze each block to understand which needs improvement.

4. Study. Educate your team with continuous exercise and understanding. Just because I read the safety poster once doesn't mean I will perform properly. True education means I can perform based on the knowledge I have acquired and the practices I have learned.

5. Practice. Results really pay off here. Practice is the action of continually seeking improvement. It's the correcting, steering, and adjusting to find continued success.

Build your Attitude...

Tips to Keep you in Business

Here are some tips to keep you in business as shared by Barbara Wold

1. Stay positive. Attitude is a big difference between the winning and losing businesses this year. Every employee needs to do his or her part in keeping a positive outlook. Take a leadership role and turn negative colleagues positive. The press will be looking to cover how bad things still are, but your customers will be looking for businesses that make them feel good. Make a customer feel great and a sale will follow. 

2. Take action on the things that move you toward your goals. Delegate It, Ditch It or Do It! Keep focused on the final outcome and plan each day around doing the action steps that move you ahead.

3. Stand out by showcasing your uniqueness. Give your customers a unique experience that they can't get anywhere else.

4. Get more creative. When times get tough, business is down or our marketing budget is cut is when most of us start to get creative and think outside the box. But just think how much more you can achieve if you get in the habit of being more creative all the time.

5. Succeed one day at a time. If you have a bad day -- shake it off. If you have a good day -- do it again. You make your month by making your week. You make your week by making your day. You make your day by making your hour.

6. Maximize every customer opportunity. Make your day by focusing on the needs of every single customer.Don't let your guard down and miss even one sale, because that one sale could be the difference in success or falling short.

7. Don't pre-judge what a customer is going to spend. Customers aren't a survey in the newspaper. Customers aren't a sales projection in some pundit's article. Customers are unique individuals who offer us a unique opportunity. Give them a unique experience and you're sure to be rewarded.

8. Be a better salesperson every single day. Push yourself out of your comfort zone. Keep showing products until the customer says they're done. Focus on increasing your average sales and unit-per-transaction.

Gary Vaynerchuk’s Business Success Advice

 Gary Vaynerchuk’s Business Success Advice

Inspirational Running Video

Les Browns 6 Keys To Self Motivation

The Legendary Les Brown’s 6 Keys to Self Motivation

By Joel

Over the years Les Brown’s audio tapes, books, radio shows and speeches have inspired millions around the world to improve the quality of all areas in their life.

We came across the Keys To Self Motivation by Les Brown and have found these keys very helpful in improving and planning our self motivation. Read on, take note and enjoy!

 Self Mastery

One of the things we MUST always be working on is achieving Self Mastery.

You must work on yourself continuously, never be satisfied with yourself. Always know that as you invest the time and effort on you that’s the greatest ability that human beings have above animals. A dog can’t be anything but a dog, a tree can’t be anything but a tree.

Human being you've got unlimited potential, you can put effort on you, and by concentrating on you and developing you, you can transform your life no matter where you are right now.

 

Stop Settling

Most people settle, What have you settled for lately? You know when you make an out of court settlement that means that you have decided to take something less than you originally wanted to get had you gone in to court and the reason that you've settled out side of court is because you didn't believe that you could get it. Many of us are making an ‘In life Settlement’. We are settling for less than what we actually deserve. We don’t feel good about it but we make it work in our minds.

 Develop A Health Plan

You can’t perform if you don’t have good health, your health is VALUABLE. Develop a health plan, a plan that you will follow because this is the only vehicle that you have to carry you through this experience we call LIFE.

 Live Life with Energy & Passion

You want to make a conscious effort to be lively. In life you either ‘sing hello or sing goodbye’. You are either ‘on your way or in the way’. You want to smile, you want to be happy, you've got a lot to be thankful for.

 Monitor Your Inner Conversations

The things that you say to yourself, you want to watch them and in watching them you want to take charge.

Short circuit and override that conversation that’s always going on, 85% of what that conversation will tell you is NEGATIVE. It will tell you that you’re tired when you’re really not tired, it will tell you you can’t do it, it will fill you with FEAR. So you've got to watch that conversation, and when you find it going on you've got to stand up to it and say “I’m gonna do this anyhow, I’m afraid but I’m afraid not to do it, and I’m not gonna let you stop me”. The biggest challenge in life that you will have is with you.

There is an old African Proverb that says, “When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.”

Know Why You Are Doing It

It is important to know why you are doing it, because your mind will say “Why bother?” “Why go through all of this?”, “This is too hard”.

Here’s how you can override that… Write down 5 reasons why you deserve it, why you? why do you deserve it? “What meaning and value will it bring to your life”, “what’s so different about you, that you deserve your goal?”

When you write down those 5 reasons, when you have those down moments and you will have them, When that conversation starts talking to you, and it will start talking to you, what you can do is, you can pull that out and read it and it will build you up. It will be your rod and your staff to comfort you through some challenging moments, because you’re gonna have some. Life will knock you between the eyes, it will catch you on the blind side and come out of nowhere, stuff you can’t anticipate. That’s why it is important for you to work on your self, listening to tapes, building yourself up, talking to yourself with power, feeling and conviction, building yourself up day in and day out.