Recently I attended a three-day spiritually-based seminar in which we discussed tenants from the Beatitudes urging us to purge ourselves of grudges and resentments. We were asked to write then down, whether the degree of hurt ranged from slightly irritating to overwhelming. There were two objectives:

1.) Share what we wrote with one trusted person from the group, who would in turn would share his/her list with you
2.) The seminar leader had a stack of rocks in back of her riverside home, weighing from a few ounces to several pounds. We had to choose a rock from the pile for each hurt and carry it around in one of those ‘green’ grocery bags that you can buy for a buck. We were instructed to carry that bag of rocks around with us throughout the seminar until we were truly ready to unburden ourselves from each hurt by hurling each and every stone into the river. Once that stone was thrown—the assignment was to, as my ex-New York buddy John Ingrisano says, “Fuggit about it!”

The results were amazing. Some people had one tiny rock and several carried a dozen. Since participants came from all over the country, and were instructed to carry them until we were truly ready to get rid of the hurt once and for all, it meant that they might have to stick some rocks into their respective suitcases and haul them back to California, Virginia, or Texas. With the cost of luggage on airplanes, it could be an expensive proposition.

Therefore, two options were offered: a.) Get about this forgiving business right away; or b.) Leave the rocks at our seminar location, but finish the project at home in some decisive manner. One alternative recommended was to deposit each hurt into a shredder in our home or office.
So how does all of this have an effect on you as an entrepreneur?

Dr. Bill recommends the following:
It is easy for all of us to get distracted in our daily work activities by that complicated issue known as LIFE! You are human. You have fears and hang-ups and resentments and past hurts and prejudices and scores to settle and problems. In order to not let these distractions get in the way of your work day, I suggest that you, for 30 days in a row, write your woes on a piece of scratch paper and run it through the shredder. Let the transaction be your version of throwing a rock into the river. Do it as many days in a row as necessary—but each day let the act represent freedom from whatever has been bugging you.

When those burdens are shredded each morning, you’ll have nothing to concentrate on but being the most effective and efficient entrepreneur on the planet!

Bill Sheridan    www.sheridanwrites.com      william_sheridan1@msn.com

Frankly, I have no strong feelings one way or another about the issue. However, I am fascinated by Bill Clinton’s second most famous line during his presidency (right behind # 1, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman!”) regarding the issue. That second most famous line: “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.”

A slightly modified version of it should become a mantra to all entrepreneurs: Don’t ask—don’t sell!

It absolutely amazes me when a sales person (and I firmly believe that, regardless of our respective titles, we’re ALL selling something) presents a product, idea, or service to me, and then never asks me to buy. It’s as if they think that I will be so dazzled with their product or concept that I should be foaming at the mouth to make the purchase!

If you are among that group who wants to ‘educate,’ with the expectation that your prospect is going to miraculously want a piece of that action without you asking for the sale, I have a question for you, “Are you nuts?” And I also have a suggestion for you: “Get a grip, Skippy.”

I don’t care HOW you do it. But DO it. Here a just a few possible ways to ask for the sale:
1.) Can we get you started on this program?
2.) Is there any reason you would not want to make this purchase?
3.) When can we start?
4.) I need a check and your signature?
5.) What quantity/color/size would be right for you?
6.) In my opinion, this is a perfect fit for you. Are we in agreement?
7.) Based on what you said about your wants/needs, it’s my professional recommendation that you go ahead with it today.

Many of you will have even better suggestions than the few I’ve provided above. So I repeat, I don’t care HOW you do it. Just DO it.

Don’t ask. Don’t sell.

Ask. Sell.

Bill Sheridan 8106 Brookview Drive Urbandale, IA 50322

515.669.4913 william_sheridan1@msn.com www.sheridanwrites.com

While still at the counter, my friend removed the wrapper from his breakfast sandwich to see if an irritating and recurring service problem had improved. As CEO of his own company, he was keenly aware of how people at the front desk represented his lumber business in a favorable or unfavorable light.

It was immediately apparent from the look on Jim’s face that he was not a happy camper, “Look at this biscuit,” he complained to the teenager on the opposite site of the counter. “It’s falling apart in my hands. Just like the last time. And the time before that!”

Frankly, the young employee could not possibly have been less interested in his customer’s dilemma. He looked bored and disinterested when responding, “What’s the deal, mister? Ya’ want a new biscuit?”

“What I want,” explained my exasperated buddy through gritted teeth “is someone who cares.”

Wow! I don’t know if the bored teenager learned anything that day, but I learned a ton.

I’ve reflected on Jim’s reaction about the crumbly biscuit many times in my dealings with customers in the corporate world through the years; and it’s a mantra that I repeat often to myself as I’ve established a freelance writing and writing coach business.

In your case and mine, our clients and prospects expect and deserve a quality product from us. But just as importantly, they deserve someone who cares.

Bill Sheridan  8106 Brookview Drive   Urbandale, IA 50322     515.669.4913

william_sheridan1@msn.com        www.sheridanwrites.com

The Issue: Small-business owners–and anyone else who enjoys a good sandwich–need a place like “Shelly Deli.” This sandwich shop in a convenience store by the bay in Safety Harbor, Florida makes the best “Cubans” and hoagies in town. Any town!

With friends coming for lunch Thursday, we’d phoned-in for two-dozen sandwiches that morning. When I picked up our order, the deli owner grinned and asked when our compliments would be rolling in? I returned the grin, but suggested that our repeat business could be viewed as a pretty decent compliment!

I think he got the point.

What I Think

Part of building a business—sandwich shops included–is turning customers (people who buy from you once) into clients (people who will buy from you over and over). Thus, a “client relationship” is one in which buyers and sellers agree the first transaction is not a one-time event. Along with repeat business, client relationships typically spin off referrals, which increase profitability by cutting front-end marketing costs.

But “client” status is not a label that can be stuck to the buyer by the seller, and it must be cultivated and nurtured to stay healthy. To borrow a line from former New York mayor, Ed Koch, simply asking clients, “How am I doing?” is a great way to find out.

Client service should be performed for profit, and with specific objectives. The mechanics of client building are easy (we’ll thumb-check a few techniques), but understanding the dynamics of client relationships and how to manage them is more difficult.

You and your clients have different, yet complementary, motivations driving the commitments you make to each other. On the one hand, you’ve made a sale, but expect to make repeat sales and may want the client to help you develop additional business through referrals. The client, on the other hand, has purchased a product or service that (you say) will meet one or more objectives. According to management consultant, Theodore Levitt, clients may begin to see the sale as a “favor” bestowed by them, not as something earned by you. In the Harvard Business Review, Levitt wrote, “In your excitement and eagerness for additional successes, it is easy to misread these subtle changes in attitude and damage the relationship before it gets off the ground.”

Your behavior and promises during and after the sale help shape the client’s perceptions. If a client feels that you’re taking the purchase for granted, or want to rush off to the next victim, the effect is predictable. Over the long-term, you’ll need to meet your client’s expectations by anticipating needs and problems (not just reacting to them) and establishing routines that assure the right kinds and frequency of client contacts.

Your client database and automated communications system can put most client-building activities on autopilot, but you’re still in charge and must manage the process. So pay attention to the details…like these:

• “Keeping-in-touch” e-mails, phone calls, and other informal contacts, can, and should, be ongoing.
• Set specific dates for formal meetings. Identify clients’ next priority issues; ask when they can be addressed.
• Ask relevant questions; have specific ideas. Introducing ideas from out of left field each time soon teaches clients to see contacts with you as thinly disguised sales calls.
• Be prepared. Read online and hardcopy newspapers, newsletters and other periodicals, sending relevant clippings to keep clients up on issues affecting them: Sid: Saw this item in today’s paper. Thought you’d find this interesting. All the best, Bill
• Respond quickly to problems, questions, and service requests. Treat phoned in, or e-mailed, service requests from clients as priorities, and follow up within 24 hours.
• Schedule times for callbacks and return e-mail. Many business owners reserve the last hour of the business day for those.
• Be aware of clients’ changing personal and family needs. If you don’t bring something up, you may not be asked. Never wait for people to ask the right questions at the right times.
• Call, write, or e-mail to congratulate clients on important business or family occasions.

With apologies to the wisdom of Ed Koch, all this reminds me of probably THE best-ever illustration of customer service, client building and follow-up:

A cartoon of a chicken asking: “How’s the egg!”

Bill Willard is a commercial freelance writer in Clearwater FL. A high-impact writer and editor for over 30 years, in addition to his byline pieces, Bill’s beat includes ghostwriting and editing for businesses of all types and sizes, professional practitioners and individuals.

Contact him at billw15@tampabay.rr.com to sign up for his popular e-blog, “Take Back America.”

Responding to a 1979 Stanford Research Institute survey, 37,000 affluent individuals said they were frustrated with too many financial services companies with too many poorly trained high-pressure sales reps pushing too many prepackaged products.

 In 1982, a young Ohio financial advisor, Nicholas Gregory, read that survey and realized this was no way to run a railroad. Before long, Gregory also knew he’d lurched uncontrollably into a hot new business opportunity! A fellow Floridian these days, he told me all about it over a recent cup of coffee.

“Accidental” Entrepreneur

“There had to be a better way,” Gregory reasoned at the time, “And I believe we found it!” The objective, as he saw it, was to combine those “disturbing” survey results about half-baked sales reps with a basic principle of engineering: It is essential to thoroughly understand your subject before you can make sound judgments about it. The result is the now-patented “Financial Engineering Process,” which provides quality financial education, training and advanced case design through Nick Gregory’s Financial Engineering Institute, LLC.

“Just as engineering provides manageable answers to complicated questions,” Gregory notes, “The traditional approach to financial services meant looking at consumers’ needs and objectives, and making suitable product recommendations–and for many advisors it still is. But doing business with wealthy individuals and business owners—the high-end “Affluent Markets”–requires specialized knowledge and professional education in the full-range of complex, ever-changing issues unique to that much sought-after ‘niche’ marketplace, and which, frankly, are beyond the reach of most financial services reps.”

Out of reach perhaps, but thanks to Nick Gregory, not unavailable!

Today, The Financial Engineering Institute, LLC, helps the financial services community reach and acquire affluent clients by mastering the levels of planning, marketing and technical tooling required in today’s volatile financial world. As a speaker and writer, for example, Nick Gregory has a firm grasp on cash management, risk management, investing, taxation, estate preservation, employee benefits, business succession and retirement planning–and routinely consults on those essential topics with attorneys, accountants and top-tier financial services professionals, as well as some of the largest financial service organizations worldwide.

Yes, those subjects are complex, but as with any intelligent engineering or smart business design, the beauty of Nick Gregory’s Financial Engineering process is its simplicity. “Financial Engineering-trained advisors are able to adopt a repeatable and customizable process for delivering financial services to high-end personal and business-owner clients,” Gregory concludes, “And because it really works, it’s a great confidence builder!”

What to Know More? Visit Nick Gregory on the Web at www.thefei.com, or contact The Financial Engineering Institute at P.O. Box 249, Tarpon Springs, FL 34688. 

Bill Willard is a commercial freelance writer in Clearwater FL. A high-impact writer and editor for over 30 years, in addition to his byline pieces, Bill’s beat includes ghostwriting and editing for businesses of all types and sizes, professional practitioners and individuals. Contact him at billw15@tampabay.rr.com to sign up for his popular e-blog, “Take Back America.”

Here’s what I do:  I look for ways to directly increase my sales or lower my expenses by a few dollars here, a few percentages points there.  

For example (and you can read more about this is my column in the March  2010 edition of Corporate Report Wisconsin), when I had my ill-fated Jimmy Buffett retail store in the Caribbean, I learned that if I put a CD player at the door and played some of Buffett’s island songs, it brought in just a few  more customers, which led to roughly a 5% increase in sales.   Adding that to a $500 day meant $25 in additional sales.  Yawn?  No way.  That meant potentially $175 more per week, or more than $9,000 more a year.

What can you do?  You tell me.  I invite you to spend some time over the next few days looking at one or two minor things you can do to push down your expenses or ratchet up your income.  Then add a comment to this post let me know what you came up with. 

And as always, work hard, make money, have fun!

Oh, and by the way, speaking of ratcheting up sales, I invite you to order a copy of my The Back to  Basics Book of Selling.  Click on the title link or order directly from me by sending a check for $19.94 ($35.89 for two), and I’ll throw in shipping for free … and autograph your copies, as well.   

John R. Ingrisano
204 Lakeview Drive
Algoma, WI 54201

Capitalism makes it possible for people to purchase the greatest variety of goods for the lowest possible prices.  (Government subsidies, by the way, artificially lower prices temporarily, but eventually lead to recession-like economic declines, if not the eventual downright collapse of the entire economic system.)  It also keeps prices at their lowest level possible, thanks to true competition (something a government cannot manipulate).

Example:  I purchased a Kindle e-reader from Amazon.com in March 2009.  It was a revolutionary development, one that intrigued me so profoundly that I went out and added Amazon.com to my stock portfolio immediately. 

I paid $359 for the gadget, well worth every penny.  Well, lo and behold, here it is January 2010 and competitors are now flooding the field with their own versions of e-readers.  And these products aren’t just clones.  No, instead, they’re next generation devices … new and improved. 

As a result of this wonderful competition, that same Kindle I bought in March is now available for $259; that’s $100 less than just nine months earlier.  And I expect the price to keep dropping. 

A teachable moment (or three lessons about competition and capitalism):

1.     It keeps prices low.  When a McDonalds and a Burger King set up shop at the same intersection, it pretty much guarantees that they will keep their prices as low as necessary to keep your business.  (No, this is not collusion; it’s competition.  Close one and prices at the other will increase.  Add a third and prices will decline even further, until each reaches what is called the “break even point.”  That’s the minimum a business can charge without going broke.  It’s also the ideal price from the point of view of a customer.)

2.     It gives us more choices.  Remember the images of Russians in the now defunct Soviet Union back in the 1960s standing in line for the next shipment of low-quality sausages (or any product, for that matter)?  Centralized management and government-run, non-competitive planning destroyed their choices under the “government knows best” theory.  Sorry, but it doesn’t.

3.     It leads to innovation.  Kindle’s competitors are offering new features (not just lower prices) to get your business.  That means Amazon.com must improve its next generation of e-readers.  The reason we got from the Model T Fords to the incredible cars of today in just 100 years is because of competition.

The bottom line:  Competition is good and capitalism builds wealth.  It is the ONLY economic system that does so.  Enjoy the day and celebrate the competitive advantage created by the bold thinking of Capitalists in what is left of our free-market economy. 

The Issue: As much as Obama & Co. wants to direct the efforts of American business by appearing to be confident, in-charge leaders who know exactly how things will turn out, it’s all an illusion. No one in this administration has gotten his hands dirty in a private business–big or small (yes, I know there are women involved, too; I hate de-gendering on principle)–and that has put our nation’s economy at risk.

What I Think: Make that, what lots of Americans have come to believe!

His polished demeanor and charismatic rhetoric notwithstanding, Barack Obama is dangerous to American business. In grooming this narcissistic community organizer for a presidential run, master-manipulator George Soros had one sinister goal: To profit by advancing the Left’s redistributionist agenda–in effect, a way for America’s Have-Nots to extort Big Bucks from the Haves—while the absurdly criminal Soros works his Big-Money cons on the sidelines. Pretty clever, no?

Not So Fast: This is Still America! You cannot believe New World socialism is good and still be taken seriously by a free people. If we follow the socialist lead of Soros/Obama and redistribute enough wealth long enough, eventually it will all be gone! Wealth has to come from somewhere. That’s why socialism has failed everywhere it’s been tried—except at the end of a gun.

Let’s Get Back to Economics 101. Remember the difference between creating wealth and making money? Making something that was not there before creates wealth. Only a few industries do that–farming, construction, manufacturing and mineral extraction come to mind. But so do small businesses run by you Freestyle Entrepreneurs out there! Other businesses–banking, insurance, Wall Street trading and lawyers–make their money by shuffling other people’s cash around.

We need to prop up those industries and businesses that actually create wealth, as opposed to those that thrive by making money. That’s why merely “creating jobs” is of no real value. After all, jobs can be anywhere, especially in an increasingly large and rapacious government…to become even larger if Mr. Obama’s government-run healthcare scheme ever comes to pass.

No! We must strengthen our key wealth-producing industries and businesses, and then get out of their way. But first, we need to get Barack Obama and his crew of anti-capitalist, anti-American New World socialists out of our way!

With thanks to John Ingrisano and Ron Gurtler for their insights.

What Do You Think? Are you with us on this? Do you, too, want to Take Back America? We’d like to hear from you. Have you registered?

Bill Willard is a commercial freelance writer in Clearwater FL. A high-impact writer and editor for over 30 years, in addition to his byline pieces, Bill’s beat includes ghostwriting and editing for businesses of all types and sizes, professional practitioners and individuals.

Contact him at billw15@tampabay.rr.com to sign up for his popular e-blogs, “Daily Grin” and “Take Back America.”

Whatever happened to “You’re welcome?”

What I Think

Several months ago Issue of the Week gently chastised sales and customer-contact people…and waaay too many others in all types of businesses…who say “No Problem” when thanked.

Not that I thought we’d nip that particular verbal transgression in the proverbial bud, but it’s been getting worse. Much worse! Lately, in fact, not one person I’ve commended for their service in a restaurant, retail store or at online customer service departments has come back with anything but No Problem! And it’s usually said in a whiney voice…another pet peeve of mine, as Issue of the Week readers know.

One small step for man… I have no employees, but if I did, they’d get the message about “No problem” PDQ. The same would go if Sue and I still had children living at home. Our culture is falling apart piece by piece; it needs all the shoring up it can get!

What Do You Think?

Are you with me on this? Do you have employees who are guilty? Have you corrected them or considered it? We’d like to hear from you. Have you registered?

Bill Willard is a commercial freelance writer in Clearwater FL. A high-impact writer and editor for over 30 years, in addition to his byline pieces, Bill’s beat includes ghostwriting and editing for businesses of all types and sizes, professional practitioners and individuals. He is a www.thefreestyleentrepreneur.com Contributing Author.

Visit his Website: www.writergazette.com/WillardAssociates.shtml. Or contact him at billw15@tampabay.rr.com to sign up for his popular e-blog, Daily Grin.