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My Home Depot: The Go-Getters Guide to a Remarkable Experience

Customers don’t care what you do. They only care what they are left with after you’ve done it. Do you notice the customer experience you receive at a business you frequently visit? With most customers, the answer is yes if the experience is bad. The extreme endpoint of the service experience. Occasionally, however, customers make note of a customer experience design that is just average. And average experiences won’t help your business, will they? So businesses should be continually looking to improve customer experience, yes? I often take note of my home depot customer experience design and think about the changes I would make if I was in charge. This blog is a discussion of how my wife and I would improve my Home Depot customer experience.

Check out our thoughts on customer focus.

We often get questions and comments on delivering great customer service and experiences. They are from both clients directly and customers commenting on our blog.

Many relate to customer service actions that are reminders of what we already know (but we occasionally forget).

These are big enablers of customer service. They usually won’t create Wow service on their own, but their absence is noted by customers and lowers excellent customer service to just good enough or less.

See our article on Client Satisfaction …10 Secrets to Improve Customer Experience

What are the ways this Home Depot was just average in its customer experience design? Consider Home Depot’s explicit operations and design:

Saving you time

One of the most important needs of most customers is time … no one ever has enough and if you are a customer like me, you hate waiting for service in anything.

There two big-time wasters at the Home Depot.

The first is trying to find what you are looking for. This is almost always an issue for us.

Usually, when we ask directions we get a prompt answer to an aisle, which certainly shortens the search, but not enough in our mind.

The second is trying to find someone to help you. That also includes someone who can handle 90% of the answers. That rarely happens on the first try.

My Home Depot … show the value

In their store, as well as on their website, you can never find product value statements or recommendations. If you want recommendations on the best value you must ask.

And when you do, you rarely get a convincing answer. No real unique selling points for the store as a whole, at least that was obvious to us.

Store to web site integration

I visit Home Depot quite often and use their website even more frequently. In all those visits, I have been shown a terminal where the customer actually used it to answer my question only once.

My bet is that there only 2-3 computers in the entire store where a customer clerk could look online to get information and answers on products. And service for products is even a bigger issue. An area where small changes could provide big improvements

Customer education

Home Depot used to do a decent job in educating their Do-It-Yourself customers by adding a learning center in both the store and online.

The online service is still better than average, but again, they could do a lot more by integrating online and in-store customer education.

Many of the employees are just clerks and know very little about products and do it yourself activities.

My Home Depot … lots of help and directions

All stage employees should be encouraged to be ‘assertively friendly’. They should seek out those who look like they need help before they come looking for help.

But this rarely if ever happens.

The Home Depot stores are very large and directions can be confusing. The last thing customers need is to not be able to find what they are looking for. As a result, signs have to be super easy to navigate and offer simple ways to get from one place to another.

Wouldn’t it be easy to create store maps to give to customers in need?

Apparently not so easy.

Take nothing for granted

Don’t take a customer’s loyalty for granted, especially when dealing with first-time shoppers. The key to customer loyalty is not just by providing a quality service or product, but how you service and support it.

Meeting customer expectations in a first sale may not be enough. First-time buyers want to know you care. For loyalty to endure, it must be noticed and acknowledged.

That means some top-notch unique actions on behalf of customers. Have you ever received any of these? We have not.

Again, Home Depot signals that they are happy with an average customer experience.

Product choices

Have you ever been into a store that has more product options? I am not talking about product sizes here.

I am talking about different brands that do basically the same thing.

And that is not a customer benefit, because too many choices make decisions much more difficult, especially when Home Depot employees can’t tell you which product is best.

Stand tall on customer issues

Being a customer advocate is often tough for many businesses. Many overcome this by defining a customer bill of rights and displaying in the store and online.

No way to not follow these as they are predominantly displayed. Ever seen one at Home Depot? Nope, not us. But certainly at other brands.

Build trust

When you save your customer time, deliver quality service, stand tall on customer issues, and always show your value, you definitely build trust.

And trust is the basis of great customer relationships and follow-on business.

A definite win-win.

Looking for customer feedback

As customers both my wife and I like to have a business seek out our opinions.

Shows they care. On the flip side, if a business never asks, or has no way to solicit suggestions, it shows they don’t care very much.

Where do you think Home Depot falls on this spectrum?

Immerse customers in brand

At many businesses, you can look in any direction and see the branding all around. And we are not talking abound simple brand identity here.

We are talking about things that remind customers about things the brand believes in, or stands for, in the store or online.

It works to surround you with the customer experience at every moment.

Home Depot can do more to stand out in this area, much more.

Customer experience design certainly should show how much a business appreciates the importance of customers, shouldn’t it? It’s a culture they seem proud to stand behind.

Companies that are proactively managing all elements of their customer experiences are most successful in achieving customer loyalty.

Customer experience actions that are remarkable get talked about. And getting talked about in this light is a great thing, right?

No question. So ignoring well-known customer experience annoyances is a big no-no.

Here’s the thing, customer experience design isn’t just a new way of marketing, it’s really a new way of running a business. Many businesses certainly have figured this out and are using customer experience to rapidly grow their business.

Home Depot needs to better understand this concept.

Summary

Remember one simple thing here: all employees need to view themselves as customer advocates, period.

Customer service actions that are remarkable get talked about. And getting talked about in this light is a great thing, right?

No question.

Do you have a lesson about making your customer experience better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job and pay for results.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to improving your continuous learning for yourself and your team?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

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Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

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Easy Ways to Find and Keep Your Best Customers

Starting a business isn’t always easy, but if you find that you don’t quite fit in the corporate world or don’t want to be boxed into a 9-to-5 schedule, entrepreneurship is a great choice. But as with all things, the first steps are the hardest. Even if you are the best in your industry, selling yourself – which is a necessity as a small business owner – can be intimidating. Once you’ve acquired those first customers, you’ll be more confident and can work to keep your best customers.

Start social

One of the first things you can do to get your name into the public spotlight is to go social. Sites like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook already have an audience, and you can target potential customers based on your preferred demographics.

CoSchedule explains that social media provides a platform upon which to create brand recognition and to get to know your customers. In addition to interacting with buyers and potential buyers, your social media accounts are a great way to promote contests and special offers.

Take steps to ensure your branding remains consistent across your social profiles, business web design, and other marketing materials.

Become a chameleon

Change is good. Keep that thought in your mind as you learn how to adapt your business to your customer base. Their taste will change, and you will have to learn how to react to these needs, much like a chameleon adapts to his environment to stay alive.

If you sell clothing, for instance, change or inventory up each season, and make sure to stay abreast of emerging fashion trends. Many wholesale clothing distributors even offer drop shipping options, so you aren’t stuck with last season’s products that you’ll have to sell at a loss.

customer retention tactics — Customer retention tactics.

You can also keep your customers happy by providing a selection of complimentary items that fit the theme of your business. In the clothing retailer example above, you might sell trendy jewelry in the summer and infinity scarves in the fall.

Expand and accelerate

As you continue to broaden your product line or service offerings, you’ll get a clearer picture of what your customers want. If you find their demands exceed what you are capable of offering with your current budget, you may be able to get a financial boost via crowdfunding.

Fundera asserts that offering your potential investors (your previously satisfied customers) incentives may encourage more donors to put their money into your business. Crowdfunding is a viable option for small businesses since it gives your customers a chance to weigh in on what you offer. It further allows you to take advantage of social media to appeal directly to your future benefactors.

Giving your customers a voice and rewards for supporting your endeavors is a great way to build loyalty for life.

Building Innovation

identifying best customers — Are you identifying the best customers?

Keep up with customer service

More than anything, do what you say. If you promise your customers a new style of swimsuit for summer, make sure it’s available in time for spring break.

If you truly want to keep customers for a lifetime, you will have to provide exceptional service with each order and interaction. When you make a mistake, admit it and take steps to rectify your actions.

Remember that customer service can literally make or break your business. Referral programs, repeat buyer perks, and small “thank you” notes or gifts are other ways to provide excellent service and strengthen the relationship between you and your customers.

There is no one-size-fits-all master plan for managing a business. For many, it’s a matter of trial and error. However, by meeting your customers’ needs and providing consistent service, you put yourself in a much better position to keep your current customers happy while building your client base.

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16 Ideas Neil Patel Uses for Storytelling and Story Marketing Tips

You have to understand, my dears, that the shortest distance between truth and a human being is a story. Awesome quote from Anthony de Mello, isn’t it? Neil Patel uses for storytelling marketing ideas.

While most ideas lead to nothing, some create enormous value. Calculus, the theory of evolution and the telephone made our lives better no matter who came up with them first. That’s not because of the idea itself, but what was built on top of it. Ideas only create a better future when they mix with other ideas. Innovation, to a large degree, in combination.

The stories of Alexander Fleming and Jim Allison are instructive. In Fleming’s case, it was scientists at another lab that picked up the initial idea and did the work to make it into a useful cure. Then they went to America to work with other labs and, eventually, pharmaceutical companies to do the work needed to go from milliliters in the lab to metric tons in the real world.

Like to hear a great story? How about telling stories? Employ marketing tips for stories and storytelling to rapidly spread ideas.

That is an important reason story and storytelling are your best assets.

Certainly, you have noticed the tremendous abundance of marketing strategy choices in the marketplace today. No needs go wanting, do they?

Consumers have everything they need and therefore their decisions are based on what they want. And what they want is driven by what they believe.

Great storytelling and stories are a very integral part of being persuasive. If you want to persuade your customers and create a memorable experience at the same time, you must master the psychology of storytelling.

Understanding stories and storytelling

Here are some story/storytelling characteristics that are useful in understanding this marketing technique:

Are authentic and people should never question this

They make a promise that has some meaning to the community

Are targeted to a particular community

They make subtle points … and are not overwhelming

They are a trusted marketing tool

Stories and storytelling appeal to our senses and not to logic

And most importantly they are told with the heart to appeal to emotions

Why stories and storytelling?

Facts often can be boring and overwhelming, can’t they? Stories, though, not nearly as much. They are much easier to understand and much more entertaining.

Therefore they are much better at spreading ideas.

Facts are meaningless without a contextual story. Don’t tell facts to influence, tell stories.

The more you improve storytelling, the more your influence increases… it is as simple as that.

Stories make it easier for people to understand. They are the best way, by far, to spread your ideas.

Especially when there is a large competition for people’s attention.

Neil Patel uses for storytelling … elements of stories

Here are some perfect examples of the elements of stories:

The point

The Wizard of Oz

Every story should have a point. How often have we been regaled with high drama and intricate detail, only to have no payoff?

Most of us have seen The Wizard of Oz and can sing out in unison Dorothy’s final words in the story, “There’s no place like home.”

Without that, and without her realization of what she values, her adventures are all for naught. Make sure you have a payoff in your own stories.

A dramatic question

Raiders of the Lost Ark

“Will Indiana find the Ark before the Nazis get it?” is the conflict of the entire story. Once that question is answered, the story ends. But wait: there’s more. A great answer to a dramatic question can have an ironic twist.

The answer usually is not merely, “Yes.” Instead, it’s, “Well, yes…but…” In Raiders the answer is “Yes, but the Ark contains inconceivable power…more than we care to handle.”

The final shot reveals the Ark stored inconspicuously in a massive warehouse. The irony is complete. You should develop stories with both dramatic questions and ironic twists if possible.

Content that includes emotion

Apollo 13

The first time I saw Apollo 13 I was on the edge of my seat asking the question: “Will they make it back?” On the edge of my seat, I watched as the characters struggled, toiled, prayed to get the astronauts home.

Then I took a step back…:”Wait. I was there when this really happened. They make it back!” So what compels me to watch the remainder of this film every time it comes on? Ron Howard has the uncanny ability to make the audience care about what happens to the characters.

Whether it is through the riveting soundtrack, poignant conversations between husband and wife, or struggles between colleagues, we care.

Create stories that cause us to feel, to empathize, and to understand is critical. Emotion should be created in every facet of the story: words, images, voice, and music. That should be your objective.

Set a pace

Lord of the Rings

Notice any emotional scene between Frodo and Sam, or characters that have romantic connections in the Lord of the Rings?

In this story shots are long in duration, the movement is subtle, and the soundtrack is smooth and peaceful.

Contrast that with the epic battle scenes: shots are quick with no transitions, quick zooms and sweeping panoramas of the battlefield dominate the scene, and the music: as powerful and relentless as the battle itself.

All of the elements come together to develop a consistent pace or rhythm of the scene, don’t they?

At times, however, an intentional contrast can achieve a great effect. Why would a director deliberately use slow motion and cut out the soundtrack at a particular point in a battle scene?

To draw attention, of course.

Gift of voice

Stand By Me

Often times, people become reluctant about recording their voice for others to hear. Voice-over personalizes a story to an intimate level.

The narration of Richard Dreyfus as the adult Gordy LeChance, in the movie Stand By Me, adds a nostalgic tone of reminiscence to a bygone era.

Clearly, voice impacts emotional content as well.

6 Best Examples of Marketing Storytelling

Less is more economy

Master Card “Badger” commercials

This is where the mantra, “Less is More” comes out. No one needs to be a more economical storyteller than commercial writers. The entire process must be completed in no more than 30 seconds in most cases.

The old Master Card commercials about the hard-luck dog badger attempting to get home are masterpieces of the economy.

Make your objective to use fewer images and words to convey meaning. This technique can pay big dividends.

Powerful soundtrack

Jaws

Need I say more about the impact of the trademark “Da-dum. da-dum da-dum.” Don’t leave the soundtrack to an afterthought.

Its choice can make a huge impact. Choose the soundtrack as instrumental music in lieu of lyrical.

Neil Patel uses for storytelling … storytelling how to’s

How do you make your ideas more compelling? Even if your message is true and important, it’s hard to reach a general audience with facts alone.

Tell awesome stories that are memorable – stories have the power to captivate and inspire people, from high school students, busy parents, or even members of Congress.

Awesome stories surprise us. They have compelling characters. They make us think, make us feel.

They stick in our minds and help us remember ideas and concepts in a way that numbers and text on a slide with a bar graph don’t.

Stories make presentations better. Stories make ideas sticky. They help us persuade.

Savvy leaders tell stories to inspire us, motivate us. (That’s why so many politicians tell stories in their speeches.)

They realize that “what you say” is often moot compared to “how you say it.”

Here are 14 steps we recommend to create and tell an awesome story:

Step 1 Engage your audience

Your audience needs something to do. They need a reason to be there, listening. Stories, when properly practiced, pull people into a dialogue.

It’s about engagement and interaction. The audience is just as an active a participant as the storyteller.

Ask the audience to think back to early passions and interests and bundle the story with specific experiences.

Show them this is important, this is remarkable and you are a part of it.

Step 2 Make the audience care

Whenever I am fortunate enough to see and listen to remarkable stories being told ‘live’ in action, I am struck by their power to pull listeners in, much like a gravitational force that’s impossible to resist.

The best way to pull your audience in is to make them care … emotionally, intellectually, aesthetically.

But how do you make the audience care? This is the most fundamental question of all. There is no single answer.

One important answer is having empathy for your audience and trying to craft your story and design your content always with the audience in mind.

Stories in all their many forms are never just about transferring information alone. We are emotional beings, like it or not, and to make the audience care enough to listen to you, you have to evoke in them some kind of emotion.

See our article on the Guinness storytelling strategy in this regard.

Step 3 Explain why the story matters

Make it clear to your audience why what we were seeing and hearing matters. Even if it is not always explicitly stated, the message should be clear.

It is hard to choose just one element that a successful story must have, but if I had to choose just one, I’d say it is this:

Show clearly why your topic — or result, cause, mission, etc. — matters. What are the big picture and our place in that picture?

Pixar’s Andrew Stanton said something very similar when he identified the most important element of storytelling as ‘make me care’.

You must make the audience care. And you must let them know clearly why it matters.

Step 4 Make a promise

Very early on you need to get the audience to believe that this story is going to go somewhere, and that it will be worth their time.

The secret is a well told promise about the upcoming story.

Step 5 Construct anticipation

In a great story, the audience wants to know what happens next and most of all how it all concludes.

In an explanatory narrative, a series of actions can establish a narrative flow and the sense of journey that is created is one form of anticipation of what comes next.

Instead, a good story allows each member of the audience to interpret the story as he or she understands the action.

This is why people find good stories so appealing and why they find advertising that simply conveys facts and information boring.

Step 6 Spark their curiosity

Your goal is to tell stories in an opening, an aperture of excitement. Ignite the fires of curiosity that will live within us all.

It’s a celebration of human curiosity and it matters to who and what we are. You don’t have to beat people over the head with your message, nor do you need to always make your message painfully obvious.

This is not about being vague or unclear, but it is about letting the audience work on their own a little to figure things out by creating some curiosity.

That’s one of your jobs as a storyteller. We’re born problem solvers. We’re compelled to deduce and to deduct, because that’s what we do in real life.

It’s this well-organized absence of information that draws us in.

Step 7 Touch audiences with an emotional connection

The Google Reunion story is about as emotional as it gets.

Stories like this provide a chance to experience a variety of emotions without the risk of those emotions themselves.

Emotions like wonder, fear, courage, or love can be tested out in the minds of those as they listen to a story. You may remember the feelings of emotions which can trigger memories or create resolve as a result of hearing such stories.

The experience of hearing stories can awaken portions of emotional lives that may have lain dormant or have not yet been explored.

Be dynamic with your stories like Google was in this story. Nothing is more important to narrative content than imagination, so give vivid descriptions and use emotional hooks and humor to get people fully engaged.

This story definitely engages us, doesn’t it? Be creative, not only with words and images, but also with the methods you use to convey them.

Like the music as well as the messages.

Step 8 Talk about memorable human interest

Storytelling is largely an act of curation. The greats detect stories as they move through life and then pull them together in ways that make us stop and think.

Step 9 Make it personal

Well-told stories can help us to learn about other cultures, ideas and ways of thinking. They can provide opportunities to know how past generations responded to challenges.

They can also let us know how new generations are encountering and dealing with similar opportunities or the new challenges they face.

Use a creative story that builds on some big forces such as politics, religion, geography, nationalism.

If you really listen to your customers, you can leverage their stories to drive your creativity.

Step 10 Trigger a question

Good storytelling causes the audience to ask questions as your narrative progresses.

As the storyteller, you can ask questions directly, but often a more interesting approach is to present the material in a way that triggers the audience to come up with the questions themselves.

And yet we must not be afraid to leave some questions unanswered.

When we think of a story we may think of clear conclusions and neat, clear endings, but reality can be quite a bit more complicated than that.

There are an infinite amount of mysteries to ponder and puzzles to be solved. Many observations cannot (yet) be explained, but that is OK. This is what keeps us going forward.

Step 11 Emphasize the visual

“Show the readers everything, tell them nothing.” – Ernest Hemingway

Here visual does not mean only the use of graphics such as photography, video, animations, visualizations of data, and so on.

Visual also means helping the audience to clearly “see” your ideas through your use of descriptive language, through the use of concrete examples, and by the power and simplicity of metaphor.

Step 12 Make the tough choices about inclusion and exclusion

Whether you have 5-minutes, 18-minutes, or an all-day seminar in which to tell your story, it is never enough time to tell all that you know or to share everything in as much detail as possible.

Time can be a real obstacle, but it’s also a great enabler if you are willing and able to put in the time to think long and hard about what’s the most important and what’s less important for reaching your audience in a way that is honest, informative, and engaging.

You can’t include all that you know or all that there is to say. The secret is in knowing what to leave out.

This is not easy. Balance is key.

Step 13 Story is about change

We’re all learning all the time. And that’s why change is fundamental in a story. Remember, life is never static.

Think of change in two ways. First, the content of every good presentation or story addresses a change or some kind.

Second, an effective presentation or a story told well will create a change in the audience.

Don’t let the only change you create be in your audience be the change from wakefulness to sleep.

Step 14 Show a sense for the future

A good story is a mix of logic, data, emotion, and inspiration. We usually do fine with the logic and data part, but fail on the emotional and inspirational end.

Certainly, we need to infuse a bit of the future into our talks to inspire people to make a change.

Most importantly, a good story should not end when the speaker sits down or the class comes to an end.

Neil Patel uses for storytelling … secrets of success

To be most successful, stories and storytelling must play to these secrets:

They must reinforce existing popular views.

Call attention to something new.

Focus on first impressions.

Tell only what YOU believe.

Be authentic.

Key takeaways

Great storytelling and stories are a very integral part of being persuasive. If you want to persuade your customers and create a memorable experience at the same time, you must master the psychology of storytelling.

Give them a try today.

Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?

Do you have a lesson about making your social media better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

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Like this short blog? Follow Digital Spark Marketing on LinkedIn or add us to your circles for 3-4 short, interesting blogs, stories per week.

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8 Things Steve Jobs Would Know About Your Social Media Engagement

Edwin Schlosser once said: The skill of writing is to create a context in which other people can think. The more success you have with customer engagement, either online or off, the better your understanding of their needs and priorities. That is something Steve Jobs would know. Having the best customer insights makes it much easier for you to define your next moves and social media engagement as well as improve your odds of success.

I was recently sent a copy of KPMG Nunwood’s report titled B2B Customer Experience: Winning the Moments That Matter. The report is filled with some great nuggets, but I latched on to the phases of relationship connection and moments that matter.

How do you achieve relationship status with your customers? Do you know which moments matter most to them? And which are moments of failure?

When we engage with customers (or, when they engage with us), we are (hopefully) engaging for the long-term, developing a relationship. Some folks question the use of the term “relationship” when it comes to customers, but let’s just use Merriam-Webster’s definition, which tones things down a little: the way in which two or more people, groups, countries, etc., talk to, behave toward, and deal with each other; the way in which two or more people or things are connected.

That connection is what I’m referring to. We want to connect with our customers, not just transact with them. Relationships take time and work, every day; the focus and the desire to keep the relationship alive and strong should never stop because, when it does, the relationship will end. The connection is gone.

It has been said that to be a success in social media engagement you must be useful or entertaining (or hopefully both). Have you ever seen the videos of Steve Jobs with his media presentations on Apple’s new product announcements? I am a big fan, I admit … but you don’t have to be a fan to recognize the genius in his presentation. They are simple, useful and, most of all, entertaining. They are something Steve Jobs would know.

Let’s examine the strengths of these presentations and apply them to improve your content marketing. Remember … the objective of your content is to create a context in which your audience can think:

Steve Jobs would know … focus on dreams, not products

… it is the end state customer utility that counts most

Social media engagement … create ‘Holy Smokes’ moments

… grab immediate attention with your title and lead paragraph sentences

Use heroes, villains, and drama

… tell a story to communicate your content whenever possible. Stories do a good job of giving a meaning that can be remembered

Steve Jobs would know … stick to the rule of 3

… focus on no more than 3 key messages

Social media engagement … think simple

… communicate with simple words and messages for a broad audience

Rely on visual messages

… use images to convey your messages and re-enforce with words

Winning New Customers: Ideas You Should Use To Supercharge Growth

Create Twitter-friendly key points and messages

… more on the simple theme with rich keywords

Steve Jobs would know … share the stage

… collaborate and test your content and editing with others both inside and outside your business. Do include key customer advocates

To conclude, let me give you two excellent examples, one from the Marriott hotel and one from JetBlue Airline.

Marriott customer engagement example

I stayed in a new Marriott Courtyard hotel a while back. The situation was that it was recently opened and should not have been opened until the problems were worked out and management was ready. There were many problems, believe me, and it started as a significant customer failure.

But not only did the staff take care of the issues for me, the manager, once he got me back to ‘even’, continued to build the relationship with me. His techniques included exceptional, personalized service … using my name in face-to-face greetings, and continued follow-up and attention to detail. He actually made me believe I was the best customer he had ever had. Not only did I forget about the earlier problems, but I was feeling great about the entire three-day experience.

Service recovery requires remaining with your customer, through follow-up, and through unexpected contact well after the issue. All customers deserve our best service … but the ones that have a negative experience represent an opportunity to define a business.

Such an opportunity represents an opportunity to turn customers into enthusiasts and maybe even advocates. And that requires going beyond the ‘break-even’ point for that customer.

Research has shown time and time again that customers who reported a problem and were delighted with the outcome have higher satisfaction with the business than the ones who never experienced a problem. So these results show the importance of turning customer failure into full customer recovery.

My perspective:

Why should any company not want to seize such an opportunity?

Try it … the next time you have a customer who has had a back experience with your business. You will be amazed at the results.

Steve Jobs would know … JetBlue customer engagement example

This is a story of JetBlue’s customer engagement strategy built on its employee empowerment culture. I experienced it first hand and was duly impressed.

The story started a while back while I was sitting on the runway in Orlando as my homeward-bound Jet Blue flight was about to taxi toward takeoff. Like just about every other flight that hadn’t already been canceled that day on the Eastern seaboard, ours was a couple of hours late departing. The lead flight attendant gets on the P.A. system and says something very close to:

Ladies and Gentlemen, we know we’re late taking off, and even though it’s the weather and not something we caused, we’re going to comp everybody movies for this flight. We know you’ve all had a long day and we want it to end with something nice and relaxing. And for those of you who were supposed to be on the Continental flight and ended up here, we don’t ever want you to go back.

The mood on the flight which could have been a rather dreary late evening affair took an immediate upswing. People joked and smiled and made eye contact. They were noticeably brighter and calmer as the flight progressed. And I’m writing about the experience today and business travelers are reading about it.

What enabled this relatively small act of kindness and allowed it to become a major brand statement? Midflight, I went to the back of the plane and asked. I wanted to know the policy that allowed a flight attendant to make such a call.

We’re allowed to make almost any decision, the flight attendant explained, as long as we can justify it on the basis of one of the airline’s five core values: Safety, Caring, Integrity, Fun or Passion. If we can tie doing something back to one of these principles, the decision is going to be supported by the company.

My perspective:

What JetBlue is saying to its employees … if you act in support of the values that really matter to our business, we want you to take risks in order to care for our customers.

This is a very simple concept, eh? But how many of us put such a thing into practice with our own people? Sit down today with your employees and do what Jet Blue did. Start building your employee empowerment culture today.

The bottom line

To be effective in this new era, we as marketers need to see our jobs differently. No more just focusing on metrics like clicks, video views or social media shares. We must successfully integrate our function with other business functions to create entire brand experiences that serve the customer all the way through their experiences throughout the business.

We can do better. Much better. But first, we need to stop seeing ourselves as crafters of clever brand messages and become creators of positive brand experiences.

There can never be enough focus on continuous improvement in brand marketing, independent of how well the business is doing. It seems we are all looking to take their success to a new level. This is an excellent time to make a statement about their brand marketing. Changing before you have to is always a good idea.

Lots that we can apply from these eight lessons, isn’t there?

Please share an example or experience from your story vault.

Need some help in capturing more customers from your social media marketing or advertising? Creative ideas to help the differentiation with your customers?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?

Do you have a lesson about making your social media better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

20 Recommendations on How to Promote Your Blog

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Creative Leaders: 9 Success Enablers You Must Develop

When your intuition is roaring, follow it. Do you often follow your intuition? Do you consider it a success enabler of highly creative leaders? Let’s investigate what these success enablers are.

Check out our thoughts on team leverage.

There is a wide consensus in industry and academia that creativity is a key requisite to master today’s business challenges. A recent CEO survey by IBM showed that creativity is the number one requirement of today’s managers for the next years to come.

To be creative under time pressure, however, is not an easy task. Ideas are often the result of insights or come about through the long incubation and development of dispersed insights. Yet in business contexts, idea generation must work ad-hoc, on-demand and often in group contexts, as diverse and distributed knowledge is needed to solve problems creatively.

Related: The Zen of Abraham Lincolns Leadership Lessons

To facilitate such instant creative idea sessions, various creativity techniques have been developed over the last decades. These techniques are supposed to help professionals be more creative and generate novel and feasible ideas, either individually or in teams.

Still, numerous scientific evaluations show that the most widely used method in business today, brainstorming, is not necessarily an effective tool. Participants may think too far out of the box so that their ideas cannot really be put to use, as they are not sufficiently related to the problem at hand.

Based on experience we have defined 9 success enablers of highly creative leaders, as discussed below:

Creative leaders … committed senior leadership

Leadership depends on senior leadership for support. Even more so when you add creativity to the equation. This support helps remove barriers to enhance organizational creativity.

While the truly inspired and creative may break through the barriers to success, an environment where help supports organizational creativity may reap benefits from many surprising sources and not just the Einstein’s of the world. All leaders own the role to remove barriers.

Examples of creative leaders … building a community

We all need to find people that have common interests and thinking. Connecting to others helps us uncover phenomena, patterns, and solutions more quickly— and in ways, we might not imagine on our own.

Additionally, creative ideas have a difficult time thriving in isolation. Your community can inspire, ask, plant seeds, bear witness, provoke, acknowledge and nurture—all elements of a collaborative venture.

The bottom line: Our ideas need communities of contributors, and we need each other. The more connections we have, the more powerful our creativity becomes. Building communities is a critical success enabler.

Highly creative leaders and curiosity

Curiosity is the cornerstone of learning and creativity. Hands down the most important to creativity in our opinion. Think about answering these curiosity enablers: When did we stop asking questions?

What happens to our habits of inquiry and knowledge-seeking as we get older? What barriers shut down curiosity, and what reignites it?

In order to reclaim curiosity as a collaborative habit—and model the way for others—it’s necessary to embark upon a personal investigation to unravel perceptions and conventions that get in the way of a curious, open mindset and enable it.

Open communication and information sharing

Open communication and information sharing are another of the essential success enablers. Our understanding of organizational decisions and policies, opportunities to voice concerns, and a sense of ‘being heard’ all enhance leadership creativity.

For me, one of the barriers to creative collaboration is an environment where people undermine each other, information is not shared, and there is no credit given for creativity. It is essential to have access to information as creativity is often spurred on by hitchhiking on new ideas that flow past the alert mind–often converting them to a new situation or application.

Reflection

We need leaders to engage in continuous reflection, be aware and open, and challenge their assumptions. And certainly, gain from continuous learning. On a collective level, we want leaders to share and support while trusting and being vulnerable as part of a creative journey within a supportive community.

Combine and transform

To be a successful leader and thinker, you need to also be an accomplished learner. By participating in combining and transforming, we must recognize the importance of acknowledging and recognizing those individuals and works that have influenced our thinking. And learn from them.

Practicing the habit of combining and transforming is about embracing a new form of learning and finding your creative voice. It allows us to form powerful connections with other people and to engage in social learning.

Empowerment

The empowered have much freedom and authority to initiate change. Some gave it to themselves while others waited for it to be given. Often many see the anxiety that at times accompanies empowerment. Ideally, the empowerment of people results in increased initiative, involvement, enthusiasm, innovation and speed.

Learning through failure

Failing forward is a key habit of creativity. Failing fast, failing intelligently, and learning from those failures makes room for imperfection, iteration, and experiencing joy in the process.

One of the ways to practice failure is through a “crash and burn” exercise. A crash and burn is an attempt to do something with a 5 percent or less chance of success. It might be sending an email to someone who is famous and asking for help on a project or attempting to sew a dress even though you don’t know how to sew on a button.

This exercise allows the learner to stretch their comfort zone and pay attention to their failure response. By practicing failing well and observing our inner dialogue when doing so, we recondition and empower ourselves. We get a chance to examine and shore up our identity, take risks, and become better versions of ourselves.

A creative solution

The need for creativity in leadership requires innovative solutions. Creativity is not a singular skill that can be developed in one way or even in several ways. As leaders, we must create the conditions that allow creativity to flourish; keeping in mind that creativity will manifest itself differently in everyone.

One way for leaders to learn how to create these conditions is to develop a mindset that allows them to be aware of their own creative abilities. This then creates conditions for a ripple effect of awareness and appreciation of creativity in others.

The bottom line

“I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.”

For some reason, many of us have been conditioned to be more afraid of failure than we are of inaction. However, failure, in addition to being inherently valuable as a learning process, contains within it the chance of success. And no matter how small that chance is, it’s better than the chances of success when we choose not to even try.

My journey as both a learner and leader has shown me that those that are able to interact and manage their learning environment so much better as leaders than those who don’t.

I believe there is a direct link to creativity in this relationship. Building on it greatly strengthens the highly creative leader’s success enablers.

So what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is there is no conclusion. There is only the next step. And that next step is completely up to you. But believe in the effectiveness of great leadership. And put it to good use in adapting to changes in your business environment.

It’s up to you to keep improving your ability to lead. Lessons are all around you. In many situations, history may be providing the ideas and or inspiration. But the key is in knowing that it is within you already.

Need some help in capturing more improvements for your staff’s leadership, teamwork, and collaboration? Creative ideas in running or facilitating a team or leadership workshop?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options to scope your job.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that fight gets better every day you learn and apply new ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Are you devoting enough energy to innovating your social media strategy?

Do you have a lesson about making your advertising better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

Leadership Characteristics that Improve Influence

10 Leadership Competencies You Should Not Live Without

Building Collaboration and Sharing Skills in your Staff

How to Create the Best Leadership Accountability

The Zen of Abraham Lincolns Leadership Lessons

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Featured

Facts on Innovation: 6 Amazing Ones You Need to Know

Charles Darwin said: It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change. From Dan Pink’s Blog, we found the following facts on innovation that we would like to share with you:

Check out our thoughts on building innovation.

This is important: Learn How to Think What No One Else Thinks

A study of the top 50 game-changing innovations over a 100 year period showed that nearly 80% of those changes were sparked by someone whose primary expertise was outside the field in which the innovation breakthrough took place.

Wow! 80% created by someone outside the field where innovation occurred!

What other innovation facts and conclusions can we derive from this?

Innovation, while often depending on the new invention, is more about application than invention.

already been accomplished — Already been accomplished?

Often the application of something similar has already been performed in the other field, usually in a different way.

When working innovation, it helps to draw on various skills; experience sets …diverse crowds.

And finally

We need to be constantly open to new ideas, particularly in different fields of endeavor.

Probably the most persistent — and damaging — myth about innovation is that it’s about ideas. It’s not. Tremendous amounts of time and energy are wasted thinking up radically new ideas that never end up going anywhere. Middle managers never seem to tire of complaining that their ideas are ignored by the powers above.

The truth is that nobody cares about your ideas. They care about what problems you can solve for them. So if you want to innovate effectively, don’t go looking for a great idea so that you can dazzle others with your brilliance, look for a meaningful problem and get to work on solving it.

The secret to innovation and creativity is curiosity. You generate lots of ideas to find the best of the best. By creating ideas, you start by asking lots of questions. By being curious. By thinking widely and not discarding ideas too soon. By convergent thinking. All of which help us to understand better and define the problem we are attempting to solve.

Without the question “why?” there can be no here’s how to make it better. Or no game-changing innovations.

https://digitalsparkmarketing.com/creativity-ideas/

So we want to share a story to illustrate the value of why you need to ask why.

We are always on the lookout for good stories. Stories to show points we are emphasizing. So we read a lot. Today’s story is about generating ideas. Ideas from convergent thinking.

The story is about why you should ask why. It comes from Ideas Champions. A consulting company like us (but bigger and more well-known), who specialize in creativity, innovation, team building, and leadership. All favorite topics of ours. So we keep up with this team.

The story is a big problem with one of our favorite monuments … the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC.

Simply put, birds in huge numbers were pooping all over it, which made visiting the place a very unpleasant experience.

Attempts to remedy the situation caused even bigger problems since the harsh cleaning detergents being used were damaging the memorial.

Fortunately, some of the National Parks managers assigned to the case began asking WHY as in Why was the Jefferson Memorial so much more of a target for birds than any of the other memorials?

A little bit of investigation revealed the following:

The birds were attracted to the Jefferson Memorial because of the abundance of spiders, a gourmet treat for birds.

The spiders were attracted to the Memorial because of the abundance of midges (insects) that were nesting there.

And the midges were attracted to the Memorial because of the light.

Midges, it turns out like to procreate in places where the light is just so and because the lights were turned on, at the Jefferson Memorial, one hour before dark, it created the kind of mood lighting that midges went crazy for.

So there you have it: The midges were attracted to the light. The spiders were attracted to the midges. The birds were attracted to the spiders. And the National Parks workers, though not necessarily drawn to the bird poop, were attracted to getting paid, so they spent a lot of their time (and taxpayer money) cleaning the Memorial.

How did the situation resolve? Very simply.

After reviewing the curious chain of events that led up to the problem, the decision was made to wait until dark before turning the lights on at the Jefferson Memorial. About as simple a solution as you could get. Right?

That one-hour delay was enough to ruin the mood lighting for the midges, who then decided to have midge sex somewhere else.

No midges, no spiders. No spiders, no birds. No birds, no poop. No poop, no need to clean the Jefferson Memorial so often. Case closed.

Now, consider what solutions might have been forthcoming if those curious National Parks managers did not stop and ask WHY:

Hire more workers to clean the Memorial

Ask existing employees to work overtime

Experiment with different kinds of cleaning materials

Put bird poison all around the memorial

Hire hunters to shoot the birds

Encase the entire Jefferson Memorial in Plexiglas

Move the Memorial to another part of Washington

Close the site to the general public

Technically speaking, each of the above solutions was a possible approach, but at great cost, inconvenience, and with questionable results. Not great solutions.

Key takeaways

What problems are you facing that could be approached differently simply by asking WHY. And then WHY again, and then WHY again … until you get to the real definition of the problem?

If you don’t, you may just end up not correctly defining the problem. Not good. Nothing worse than solving the wrong problem. So put in enough time in understanding and describing your problem. Don’t leap to problem-solving before you do. Lots of whys help us explore and thoroughly identify the problem.

INTEGRATED_MARKETING_STRATEGY — Do you have an Integrated Marketing Strategy?

What conclusions does your business derive from these facts on innovation?

Remember … all new ideas begin in a non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of the conventional wisdom.

Need some help in improving the innovation process for you and your staff? Innovative ideas to help the differentiation with your toughest competitors? Or maybe ways to innovate new products and services?

Call today for a FREE consultation or a FREE quote. Learn about some options for innovation workshops to get noticeable results.

Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

All you get is what you bring to the fight. And that struggle gets better every day you learn and apply new innovative ideas.

When things are not what you want them to be, what’s most important is your next step. Call today.

Test. Learn. Improve. Repeat.

Do you have a lesson about making your innovation learning better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

Generating Ideas by Convergent Thinking

Amazon and Managing Innovation … the Jeff Bezos Vision

The Secrets to Building an Innovative Culture

Mike Schoultz is a digital marketing and customer service expert. With 48 years of business experience, he consults on and writes about topics to help improve the performance of small business. Find him on G+, Facebook, Twitter, Digital Spark Marketing, and LinkedIn.

Photo Credit: opensource.com via Compfight

How Does One Remain Contantly Inspired?

A list of the right quotations always gives me a lift. Here are some examples of my favorite “perspective-changing” quotes to keep you constantly inspired.

Doors of happiness

When one door of happiness closes, another one opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.

– Helen Keller

Helping others

One of the most beautiful compensations in life is that no man can help another without helping himself.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

How you see

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

– Wayne Dyer

More quotes: Innovation Quotes … 10 Fantastic Lessons from the World Best

Use your imagination

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

– Albert Einstein

Careful for what you settle for

You are what you settle for.

– Janis Joplin

Your load

It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.

– Lou Holtz

Feeling good

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

– Maya Angelou

Kindness

The two most powerful things in existence: a kind word and a thoughtful gesture.– Ken Langone

Making a difference

Unless you walk out into the unknown, the odds of making a profound difference in your life are pretty low.

– Tom Peters

Optimism

The pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.
– Winston Churchill

How to Improve the Creativity Skill

Don’t fall prey to the myth that only some people have the creativity skill and you are not of the chosen few. We are all creative; it’s just a matter of figuring out in what way. So find things you’re curious about and are interesting to you, use your imagination a little, stay motivated and work at it, and surround yourself with others who are doing the same.

So how do you boost creativity? Here are 8 suggestions to improve your ability to exercise ideation:

Be a detective
Creatives and innovators always have enquiring minds. Are you asking enough questions to get deeper and understand the problem as much as you can?

Make quiet time
Most ordinary days of the average people include an enormous amount of multitasking. Multitasking is, of course, is very destructive to the time and space of good creative thinking. Set time aside for team members’ quiet time to stimulate and let the mind wander until ideas flow.

Challenge good
The phrases good enough, this has always worked, and this is all the time we have to devote to this problem, etc. are very destructive to team creativity. Avoid these at all costs as they are enemy #1 to the best results.

Foster Autonomy
We all prefer control over our environments. According to a 2008 study by Harvard University, there is a direct correlation between people who have the ability to call their own shots and the value of their creative output. An employee who has to run every tiny detail by her boss for approval will quickly become numb to the creative process.
The act of creativity is one of self-expression. Granting autonomy involves extending trust. By definition, your team may make decisions you would have made differently. The key is to provide a clear message of what results you are looking for or what problem you want the team to solve. From there, you need to extend trust and let them do their best work.

Divergent thinking
Try the quantity approach to new ideas. Use brainstorming to improve divergent thinking. Study and then connect ideas to get new ideas.

Add play to the equation
When looking for fresh new thinking to solve a problem, shake things up by adding some fun and play to the process. It always has the ability to shed stress and pressure on a team.

Avoid these myths: Myths on Creativity … 17 to Stop Telling Yourself Now

Explore new experiences
Open up your new idea thinking. Do things in new and untried ways. Avoid the set ways of solving problems.

Experiment
Do as much experimentation as you can. Don’t worry about failures and allow the team to question any and all assumptions and consider even the craziest ideas.

Brands Best Tips for Using Chatbots in Advertising

Brands know that to advertise effectively on mobile, they need to gain access to consumers through the few apps that dominate daily smartphone use. This is one reason why brands have embraced Facebook’s recent announcement that it plans to support chatbots in advertising.

To Stand Out, Marketers Need to Be Authentic and Relevant.

WeChat, a messenger app in China, already has more than 10 million official accounts, including banks, hotels and even celebrities that are registered to interact with users through chatbots. While Chinese consumers are currently a more enthusiastic audience for messenger apps and bots, it’s likely that U.S. consumers will warm up to them as the technology and the accessibility improves.

Brands certainly hope so. They want to be able to reach a wider audience more directly through chatbots than currently possible with Facebook’s newsfeed, where recent tweaks to the algorithm could limit their access to consumers even further.

If business bots on Facebook end up looking anything like the applications on WeChat, we can expect to see mostly service and subscription bots. Service bots allow consumers to transact with businesses, book a flight, order a meal or review a movie. Subscription bots are focused on delivering pre-selected categories of content to users.

Kik bots Credit: Kik

In the U.S., many of the early bots created by brands on platforms like Kik, Facebook and Slack fall into the “service” category. Bots launched this year include KLM Airlines, Uber and Domino’s Pizza, each providing just a small and relatively cumbersome subset of the services that they offer in their apps.

Mondelez just announced its intention to invest heavily in new bots for Facebook messenger with intentions to focus on service, specifically e-commerce.

While it remains to be seen how many Oreos consumers will buy through bots, the company’s e-commerce strategy illustrates that even brands that usually focus on top-of-the-funnel advertising are starting their chatbot experimentation with service bots. It is less clear how to actually advertise with bots. Simply creating content for a “subscription” bot is unlikely to work for most brands.

Bots will most likely matter for top-of-funnel advertising because bots, like blogs and social media, have the potential to be important tools for consumer discovery.

Sephora and H&M have early examples of discovery-driven bots on Kik, allowing users to engage with the brand by asking for product tips and pictures. These bots are a lot like the first brand pages on Facebook, which means that they aren’t yet taking advantage of the platform in a sophisticated way, but do hint at future possibilities for engagement and exploration at a highly personalized level.

Like with apps, many brands will find that they simply can’t create an interesting enough bot to drive significant brand engagement on their own. While fashion and makeup mega-retailers have a lot of engagement potential for chatbots — and enough products to offer different messages to different people — brands that sell fewer products or products that rarely change will have more trouble generating interest in a specialized brand discovery bot.

And even bots like those from Sephora and H&M will mostly attract loyal fans. Like on social media and with apps, brands will need to augment their strategy by partnering with a carefully chosen selection of third-party bots to get in front of wider audiences in a relevant, authentic way.

As third parties to an interaction, brands need to fit into a chat environment as authentically as possible if they want to be successful. As bots evolve, advertisers need to weigh the risks of being awkward or annoying with the rewards of adding value and relevance.

Forkable is a lunch bot that learns people’s tastes. Credit: Forkable

For example, Mondelez might gain more scale if it partnered with a service bot rather than trying to become a service provider itself. One example is Forkable, a lunch bot that learns people’s tastes and then curates and delivers a different lunch each day. In order to be relevant, the right advertising campaign on such a bot could engage differently with each user based on the rich data history it has.

Mondelez could introduce different products to different people based on their past behaviors, rather than simply offering a coupon for a product such as Wheat Thins to the whole user base, which would be ignored by many and seem awfully rude to the gluten-free crowd.

Consumers are curious, and will always look for what’s new and noteworthy, and bots will play a critical role in shaping what they encounter, much like search or social media today. And similar to these other platforms, advertisers will find that a strategy of direct consumer interaction and partnerships with third parties gives them the scale and control they need. But only if brands focus on relevance and personalization will they achieve success in a promising new channel that will shape many future consumer decisions.

Creative Ideas to Improve Social Media Marketing

Social media has been around for a decade now, so it should be easy to figure out how to leverage it, right? Not so fast. New ideas? Definitely not that new, but they are very creative. There are recommendations on how to improve creative ideas everywhere you turn.

Social media works the way the grass grows. You rarely see it working, but every week you must mow the grass.

Before we start, let me ask you a question. What is your most creative idea to change social media marketing? We would love to hear it. Please share it in the comments at the end.

How many times have you seen companies requesting people to friend them on Facebook? Like farming followers was the name of the game. Sad but true. The truth is that social media marketing tactics are really about cultivating relationships with potential customers. Fan ‘skins’, by themselves, are of very little value.

What is the importance of social media to your business? Dialog with customers for sure. What about reading your content and remembering? Appreciating your help? Marketing? Building relationships? We believe it is all of these things, but the bottom line goal is relationship building.

In the ever changing landscape of social networking, you might be wondering if you are getting the most out of your business’s social media marketing tactics? Here we define social media community engagement as the process of gaining website customer traffic, attention, interaction, and ultimately relationships through social media sites.

In part it is true, but things get complicated by all the misinformation circulating about social media marketing. From leveraging tactics to tracking issues, you are bombarded with conflicting messages, including whether social media marketing is worth using at all.

Here are 10 ideas we use most often with our clients. We believe they are the ones most critical to the success of your social media marketing:

Define target customers

It all starts with knowing who your customers are and knowing as much about what makes them tick as you can. Without this step, most of the other steps become just a shot in the dark. So spent a lot of your time on this action. Keep in mind that you can’t be everything to everybody … not all customers are alike.

Choose best channels

Once you understand who your target customers are, you’ll need to study which social media sites they use most frequently and to what end. Social media takes a lot of time and energy, so you need to know where your time will be best spent’

Share unique content

Your content goal is simple … be as helpful as you can and/or be entertaining, or else be ignored. If you are going to put in the time and energy, you don’t want to be ignored.

Listen and engage

Listening comes first and foremost to understand what customers are saying about their needs and perhaps about you. Once you have heard, then engage in as near real time as you can.

Your personality and voice

This one is pretty simple, but takes lots of practice in the beginning. Be YOU and be consistent. Remember customers deal with people and not businesses.

Don’t be a robot

As we said previously, social media marketing takes a lot of time and energy. There many goog tools in existence that will help in the workload. But keep this in mind … customers take note when it seems they are dealing with a robot. Don’t be that robot.

Be part of the community

Remember you are dealing with consumers that are part of a community not part of the audience. Pay special attention to adding value in that vein.

Commit to a plan

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there, as the saying goes. Know your objectives and establish the best plan to get them accomplished. Remember this plan needs constant iteration.

Emphasize social

One of your key business objectives is to build relationships with customers. That end game results in customer advocates and trust. This process takes constant attention to being social on a very consistent basis.

Measure results

This entire social media marketing process is a constant iteration. Establish a few key measurements and pay attention to how well you are doing.

Analyze, correct, iterate and learn

Analyze your measurement results, and continuously make corrections, iterate, and most importantly, learn.

The bottom line

There are a lot of misconceptions about social media marketing. Just because you read something in a blog post or hear something from a credible source doesn’t mean it is true or true for you and your business.

Always do your research, and continually try to improve. Social media marketing is here to stay, and it can drive a lot of business for you, assuming you are leveraging it correctly.

There is more opportunity to fail in social media than to succeed if we treat it like any other marketing vehicle. Social media requires us to get away from being promotional and sensational and instead treat our customers with special attention. Special attention to being social, building relationships, and creating trust.

Discover These 11 Helpful Social Media Tools for Marketers

Looking for better social media marketing tools? There are excellent third-party apps that can help you build your brand and audience through these social media tools.

.Analysis Tools

1. Analyze Social Media Traffic With Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder is a B2B tool that lets you track website visitors and retarget them on social media without having to install a special code or enlist the help of your webmaster.

It connects to your Google Analytics account and uses the data to give you leads. As soon it’s set up, you’ll immediatelystart seeing which companies have visited your website from social media platforms over the past week. You can also view which products or services they’re specifically interested in.

There’s a free 30-day trial that you can sign up for using your Google account.

With your new list of leads, click on the name of a company and Leadfeeder will show you whom you can reach out to on LinkedIn from that company, including second-level and third-level connection contacts (which makes your lead outreach that much warmer).The tool also shows you which social network referred traffic, how many pages those users visited, and how long they stayed on your site.

Leadfeeder makes it easier to filter your data to analyze what’s happening with your social media traffic on your website.

2. Build a Custom Dashboard With Cyfe

There are plenty of social media dashboards available, but Cyfe makes monitoring your accounts a little bit easier. It’s a custom, cross-channel tracking dashboard that has performance (instead of scheduled posts) baked into its DNA. Better yet, it’s free.

Signing up is quick and easy with a simple form to fill out. Once you’re logged in, you can customize your dashboard by adding your own widgets.

3. Analyze Your Competitors With Mondovo

Are you wondering what your competitors are doing to capture the attention of their followers? Then you’ll want to start a Mondovo account.

Mondovo is a Facebook and Twitter competition analyzer tool that shows what your competition is doing right and wrong. It isn’t free, but it is affordable. You only pay a few cents for each feature you want to access.

To get started, you’ll be asked to choose which area you want to analyze. Click Social to analyze your Facebook competition.

Next, pick how many domains you want to analyze. They’re only $0.15 per domain. Then create your account.

Video Content Tools

4. Shoot Short Films With Cinamatic

If you’ve ever dreamed of being a cinematographer, you’ll want to check out Cinamatic. It’s an app that lets you create short films and share them on Instagram or Facebook. The big difference between Cinamatic and other video-production apps is that it lets you shoot short clips and then add filters to make your video more attractive and professional.

Cinamatic is available in the App Store for $2.99. Once downloaded, just press and hold the red button to record. You can stop mid-movie to go to a different location to add interest.

5. Combine Photos, Videos, and Music With PhotoVideoCollage

Does your business host a live event? Do you want to showcase your product in action? PhotoVideoCollage is the app to bring those static pictures to life with music.

You can take photos from your phone and put them to music using a variety of layouts. After you select your layout and add your images, incorporate music. Adjust the volume, use snippets of songs, and apply fade effects to complete the experience.

6. Broadcast Live to a Wider Facebook Audience With Livestream

Livestream is slightly different from Facebook Live. The big difference? You can reach more people by sharing your event with the masses, not just the people who like your page. If your business holds a conference or award show, this is a great tool to have.

Click the link to install the app on your Facebook page. Then choose whether you want to broadcast from your smartphone or computer.

Once you’re live, you’ll be able to engage with viewers through comments, as you can see in this livestream of the Ironman World Championships. Better yet, your viewers can engage with each other. It’s an interactive type of broadcasting tool.

7. Create Time-lapse Videos With Hyperlapse

Ever wanted to share a fun moment without taking up a lot of your follower’s time? Then Hyperlapse is for you.

Instagram build this time-lapse video software, so you know it has strong social media capabilities. But it’s not your average time-lapse video software. This app (which you install on your phone) stabilizes your camera, giving you higher-quality videos.

To use it, download the app and give Hyperlapse access to your camera. Then take a hyperlapse video of something, anything. For example, take a hyperlapse video walking through your office and saying hi to your co-workers. Or shoot a video of the sunset over your building.

Research Tools

8. Run Advanced Instagram Searches With Mulpix

One of the biggest challenges of social media is sifting through all of the noise. You have to contend with lots of chatter and algorithms online. When you’re looking for something specific on social media, you need a specialized search engine that filters based on your requirements, rather than what the bots think you want to see.

That’s where Mulpix comes in. It’s an enhanced search engine for Instagram that works by leveraging multiple hashtags (instead of just the term you used in your search), saving you a lot of time.

One of the best features is the geographic targeting. If you’re looking for places to go hiking in Boulder, Colorado, for example, you can type in the search terms “boulder” and “hiking.” The app will automatically filter out any posts that have to do with “bouldering” and instead focus on the city of Boulder.

9. Research Hashtags With Hashtagify

Many marketers use hashtags in their posts without knowing if people are actually searching for them. Hashtagify solves this problem by putting real data behind the hashtags you use. You can see the most popular hashtags related to your topic or product.

For example, if you sell running gear, you might be tempted to use #running in your posts. This is a good start, but there are other hashtags that will make your posts stronger. To discover those, type “running” into the Hashtagify search box. The results below include #everymomentcounts, which is a unique hashtag related to running that you might not have thought of before.

Contest Tools

10. Run a Contest With Rafflecopter

When it comes to social media, it’s all about engagement. Rafflecopter lets you create a contest to get people engaged with your account and build your following.

Sign-up takes only a clicks. Once you’re logged in, you can create a giveaway in minutes.

11. Run Facebook Campaigns With ShortStack

If you regularly run campaigns through your Facebook page, you need ShortStack. It lets you design and create attractive campaign pages.

Signing up is easy and takes only a few seconds. Once you’re logged in, create a new campaign using either a template or a blank page. If you’re new to the design world, a template is the way to go.

Wrapping Up

Setting up social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and so on is just the beginning. Gathering the right group of tools can make it easier to build your following and manage your accounts. These 11 third-party tools and apps stand out from the pack.

What do you think? What’s your favorite tool? Which apps do you use that aren’t listed here? Share your experience in the comments below!

Some of the Greatest Innovators in the Last Century

Innovation plays a significant role in the success of any economy. Successful companies not only respond to their current customers but often anticipate future trends and develop ideas, products or services that allows them to meet this future demand rapidly and effectively. In a broader sense, the greatest innovation is important to the advancement of society around the world. Here are some of the greatest innovators.

These are some of the greatest innovators that come to my mind:

Steve Jobs. The iconic American entrepreneur and founder of Apple will go down in history as one of the great innovators. As CEO of Apple in the 1980s and again in the late 90s and 2000s, Jobs played a central role in the personal computer revolution and in developing its key products, including the McIntosh, the iPod and the iPhone.

Larry Page. Co-founder and current CEO of Google, Page was the leading one of the most innovative and successful companies in the world, perhaps in history.

Sergey Brin. The multi-billionaire co-founder of Google, Brin has been involved with some of the company’s most innovative technologies including Google Glass, and Google’s self-driving cars.

Bill Gates. One of the great businessman/philanthropists of the last century, Gates founded and built Microsoft into an unmatched software behemoth before leaving to state the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, a multi-billion dollar philanthropic enterprise working to enhance global healthcare and reduce poverty.

Reid Hoffman. Founder of the pioneering social networking website, LinkedIn. Hoffman is a Silicon Valley veteran who was also COO of Paypal.

Richard Branson. The colorful and creative British founder of Virgin Group is one of the most successful businessmen of our time, as well as a billionaire philanthropist and humanitarian.

Jeffrey Grossman. The Carl Richard Soderberg Associate Professor of Power Engineering at MIT, Grossman has done pioneering work and research on materials science, including photovoltaics and nanotechnology.

Jeff Bezos. Founder and CEO of Amazon.com, Bezos is one of the most successful entrepreneurs of our time, and the man who revolutionized e-commerce.

Ray Kurzweil. Revolutionary futurist, celebrated inventor, innovative researcher, and bestselling author, Kurzweil received the 1999 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, and is currently Director of Engineering at Google working in the field of artificial intelligence.

Tim Brown. CEO and President of IDEO, the pioneering international design firm, Brown is a global expert on the nature of innovation in business, technology, and design.

Martine Rothblatt. Founder of United Therapeutics, a medical biotech company as well as a founder of Sirius Satellite Radio. Rothblatt’s technologically pioneering work has included innovations in space sceince, satellites, the human genome project. She has also been an activist in the transhumanist movement.

Larry Ellison. Co-founder and CEO of Oracle, Ellison is one of the wealthiest individuals in the world and has been a long-time pioneer and innovator in the software industry.

Michael Dell. Founder and CEO of Dell Computers, Dell changed the personal computer industry with his innovative business methods and pioneering use of e-commerce.

Jony Ive. A world renowned product designer, Ive is the person responsible for many of the Apple’s most innovative and pioneering designs, including the iPhone, the iPad and the Macbook.

Robert De Pera. Robert Pera is the founder of Ubiquiti Networks, a pioneering wireless technology company serving the world’s emerging markets.

Marissa Mayer. At one time the CEO of Yahoo, Mayer was the first female engineer at Google, and was the youngest on Forbes list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in Business.

Salman Khan. Founder of the Khan Academy, a free, nonprofit online education platform, Khan’s mission is to provide a “world class education for anyone, anywhere.”

Elon Musk. A co-founder of Paypal, Musk went on to found the electric car company Tesla, and the space technology company SpaceX.

16 Most Significant Business Lessons from my 40 Year Career

Significant business lessons from my 40 year career? It is tough to name just one as I have done much learning over the years and I will never be done.

Being such a business manager is a lifelong learning process. You are never done learning and renewing lessons you have learned. Every great manager always looks for ways to improve their ability to improve their leadership qualities and attributes.

If you read ten books on business management, you could easily build a checklist of 50 or more management lessons for future business managers. But more is not necessarily better for the best lessons to study and apply.

The following lessons represent my favorite lessons on business management I have learned over my 40 years. They are the ones that have made the biggest impact on my success:

I have been in management and leadership positions in the military and business world for forty years and I often get asked what the best lessons I have found. Surprisingly (or not) my list of lessons probably have varied to a degree, depending on when in my career it was constructed.

The following lessons represent my favorite lessons on business management that I believe could make the biggest impact. If I was starting my career over and could take what I learned back in time with me, these are the lessons I would choose:

Create an environment of continuous learning

It is absolutely necessary that business people be good learners. They need to instill this in all their team. They must learn from their mistakes. To be most successful, managers must acknowledge, understand, and improve on their shortcomings. And they must encourage their team to also focus on continuous learning.

Be a multiplier

Multiplier business managers know that at the apex of the intelligence hierarchy is NOT the lone genius. Rather, it is the genius who knows the importance of bringing out the smarts and capabilities in everyone in the team.

Build connections

Both managers and leaders know their job with their teams is about building lots of connections. They make people feel they have a stake in common problems.

Encourage feedback

It is vital that you let your team know you are interested and will listen to their concerns and ideas and contribute to solutions to any and all problems.

Embrace change

Change is the only constant in business, so make it your competitive advantage. Initiate change rather than react to it, and give clear instructions to help the team understand why the change is necessary, and how it will make the situation better.

Manage risk

After my first 3 years as a business executive, the business I ran was going great guns … we seemingly couldn’t lose. So I continued to ‘double down’, so to speak. The game finally caught up with me, as we got far ahead of our talent. Not a good place to be, believe me. Learn not to be greedy.

Offer recognition and always share success

Focus on building team confidence by publicly recognizing their efforts and achievements. Think of it this way; anything is possible if you share the glory. Giving others a chance to claim credit is an easy, and effective, way to magnify results.

Foster teamwork

Peter Drucker is a silent mentor for our small agency. We are big fans. He once made an interesting point when he said that leaders don’t train themselves not to say ‘I’ He’s implying that leaders innately work with others and let the team get the credit. They don’t force themselves to say ‘we’. ‘We’ is natural for them, and it’s the way they’ve always thought.

You work as a team when you don’t care who gets the credit.

So the next time you interview someone with a resume that states, ‘I accomplished x’ or ‘I did x’, it should send up a few warning signals.

Be decisive

One of the key jobs of a manager is to be an effective decision maker. Employees are never comfortable with managers who make slow decisions and the frequently change their minds. Quality managers make decisions quickly and stick with them.

Building and maintaining trust

Always do what you say and set good examples. Demand from yourself the same level of professionalism and dedication that you expect from others. Trust, once broken, is seldom restored to its original state. It is the most fragile yet essential attribute of leadership and management.

Doing the right thing

Always listen to your inner voice. If it “feels wrong” it is. It is never wrong to do the right thing. It is never right to do the wrong thing. The ends DO NOT justify the means

Take care of employees

Love your people. If your end users are viewed as people who are “clicks” or just customers you will fail. If you care about them, you will make the product that will actually make their life better or easier. You both win. Most companies are upside down.

Trust people

Don’t be precious and protective of things. Let people showcase their expertise and benefit collectively. Welcome people into the team with open arms, don’t be suspicious of their intentions. Ultimately you and the team are the beneficiary. You will meet lone superstars so find ways to connect whereby the partnership is mutually beneficial.

Keep learning

Don’t be afraid to ask stupid questions especially when you are new and fresh, its the best time to do it anyways.

When choosing work, don’t focus on what you CAN do, focus on what you WANT to learn to do.

Focus on results

You will encounter barriers, blockers but you must focus on getting results. Many instances in your process, you will be told “No” often but it is up to you to respond to it by taking whatever action possible to keep driving your project forward.

Do you need to ask for help? Do it. Can you re-negotiate by bringing certain people together in a room? Set it up. Do you need more time to make a decision? Ask for it.

Everyone is expendable

I have seen many people, whom I thought were indispensable, asked to let go. One failed initiative, an altercation with the boss, a year of under-performance is enough to undermine years of your contributions.

So don’t be complacent. If you are not evolving constantly to maintain your competitive edge, someone will catch up to you and make you redundant.

The bottom line

The moral of this story is that the best business lessons should have a great influence on team development and teamwork. If these different thoughts are possessed by your current management or leadership team, or your emerging leaders, you will be in a good position for the road ahead.

More leadership material from Digital Spark Marketing’s Library:

Build an Effective Team by Being a Talent Hound

Success Enablers of Highly Creative Leaders

Secrets to Becoming a Remarkably Mindful Leader

Leadership Characteristics That Improve Influence

Workplace Skills Young Students Need for Success

Modern workplaces are as much a living breathing thing as the world they operate in. They are ever-changing and evolving, and as a result, offer new daily challenges and goals. It’s a collaborative and competitive environment for any newcomer. The best modern workplace skills for students to have foster trust, forge leadership, and create productive results.

All kinds of organizations seek these kinds of recruits. Luckily the modern workplace skills listed below cover pretty much all the bases.

So what’s on the list? Practicality, versatility, and adaptability are key here. These are the kinds of modern workplace skills that never go out of style. As workforces evolve, these skills will likely become even more important.

Problem Solving Skills

This one heads the list for a number of reasons. The biggest reason is that technology transforms the very fabric of our society. Our students will be coming up against challenges we can’t even conceive. There are literally problems not yet invented that will need creative and versatile solutions applied to them.

Of course, the problems of the present need just as much attention. Problem solving ability is a top priory as far as modern workplace skills go. A guided process for doing this is what the 6Ds of Solution Fluency are all about. Consider it a timeless teachable and learnable system that will serve our students well.

Information Skills

There’s so much information being created every single day it’s staggering. Bernard Marr has some Web facts that are blowing people’s minds. You can check them out in the article Big Data: 20 Mind-Boggling Facts Everyone Must Read. Here are a few highlights:

More data has been created in the past 2 years than the entire history of humanity.
By 2020 we’ll be creating about 1.7 MB of new information every second for every person in the world.
Right now, less than 0.5% of all this data is ever analyzed and used.

Someone’s got to be able to wade through all this. Modern workforces need those who can critically analyze, organize, and utilize information. That’s why these are the kinds of skills that are taught within the process of Information Fluency.

Communication & Collaboration Skills

As mentioned before, the workplaces of today and tomorrow are collaborative. We are just as easily establishing virtual partnerships with people across the world as those across the room. Modern workplace skills like Collaboration Fluency focus on building teams that take businesses to new heights.

Collaborative practices begin in the classroom. That’s where our students form groups to solve problems and create projects. It’s how they interact and work together that determines their success. It’s the exact same thing for the workplaces they will graduate into.

Independent & Critical Thinking Skills

Any successful business draws on an employee’s ability to think critically and independently. Workers who need constant direction and supervision are often seen as a detriment to an organization. As such, these people will become less and less employable in the future. The same can be said for those unwilling or unable to think deeply and analytically about any issue.

It also means being able to spot problems and the potential for them before they happen. This kind of “cognitive initiative” can save businesses untold sums of time and money. Our students absolutely must add critical and independent thinking to their catalog of modern workplace skills.

Useful Failure Skills

Great students and workers turn mistakes into proactive moments of clarity. This means seeing failure as an opportunity. If we can use our mistakes to learn and to flourish, then we need never fear them. No matter what, we are always moving forward with a “useful failure” mindset. Establishing an intention to learn from failure and use it to grow as person, and then delivering on that promise, is exceptional.

It’s also the responsibility of those in authority to ensure that this is nurtured. Blame, guilt, admonishment, and derision for mistakes hinders progress and prosperity. This again is true of both the classroom and the workplace. As teachers or business leaders, we must provide encouragement and guidance when errors are made. This is how success grows for everyone.

Personal Organization Skills

There’s a reason why Mom told you to clean up after yourself and pick up your toys. She wasn’t being tyrannical or bossy. She was teaching you a valuable and respectable life skill for home, school, and work. Grumble all you want—the lady knew what she was talking about.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe instructed us as follows: Let everyone sweep in front of his own door, and the whole world will be clean. The capacity for personal order ranks fairly high among modern workplace skills. Outward order is a reflection of inward order. It positively affects everyone around us in the work environment. It’s the kind of thing that leaves a good impression on teachers, employers, and co-workers alike.

Adaptability and Agility Skills

Nothing ever stays the same. Companies get demolished, ideas fade, promises get broken, and people go their own ways. Positions get handed to new people and others get moved around. Promotions and demotions happen regularly. Physical spaces expand and contract. Money is made and lost. People gain and lose control. This is the game of life.

Here we echo the words of Rudyard Kipling and ask: Can you keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you?

The ability to adapt and be agile in the face of change is a must among modern workplace skills. Work and life will throw curveballs of every kind at us. The person who would lead stands fast with change, keeps a clear head, and fixes an eye on the future.

Relationship Building Skills

Finally we come to relationships. Life is built on them, as is success and progress. Only by interacting with others can we truly learn and grow. We can know our own strengths and limitations better. We can also come to understand others better by having solid relationship skills. This makes collaboration so much more enjoyable and productive. Students should make fostering interpersonal skills of all kinds a priority.

What other modern workplace skills do you think our students can benefit from having?

Entrepreneurial Skills Required by Successful Business People

In today’s world, if you want to be successful in business or as a business entrepreneur, there is certainly a continuous “evolutionary” process that we must all undertake. In other words, there are entrepreneurial skills that successful business people must each practice, learn and re-learn in order to thrive in today’s business world. As our business environment changes, we need to be able to adapt those skills to our surroundings, or be left behind.

Before I tell you about the entrepreneurial skills to develop, I’d like to tell you a story to set the stage, so to speak.

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday morning. Perhaps it’s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.

A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about it:

I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net. Along the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was telling whomever he was talking with something about “a thousand marbles.” I was intrigued and stopped to listen to what he had to say.

“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. It’s too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital,” he continued; “Let me tell you something that has helped me keep my own priorities.” And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a “thousand marbles.”

“You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. I know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.

Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3,900, which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I’m getting to the important part.

It took me until I was fifty-five years old to think about all this in any detail,” he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight hundred Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy. So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round up 1,000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right here in the shack next to my gear.

Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away. I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life.

There’s nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.

Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure that if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.

It was nice to meet you Tom. I hope you spend more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again here on the band. This is a 75 year old man, K9NZQ, clear and going QRT, good morning!”

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the next club newsletter.

Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss. “C’mon honey, I’m taking you and the kids to breakfast.”

“What brought this on?” she asked with a smile.

“Oh, nothing special, it’s just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. And hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out? I need to buy some marbles.”

Below are 11 essential entrepreneurial skills for today’s business men and women whether they ever become an independent entrepreneur or not:

Have fun

You won’t find this skill on many lists, because many people would not consider it a skill. We not only consider it a skill (fun doesn’t happen often without working at it!), but we consider it so fundamental to all the other skills on the list that it is our top priority. The corollary to this skill must be mastered as well … when you dislike something, stop doing it.

Decision Making

No one can deny that the ability to make decisions is a core skill that every business person must possess if he or she wants to be successful. Decisions on how to proceed with marketing, funding, product production (in some cases), vendor selection, and a host of other judgments need to be made. The key is to learn from mistakes.

Avoid Fear of Failure

Remove fear rather than fearing mistakes to the point that you avoid decisions. This is a skill that is very difficult for some people to master.

Be disruptive and change the playing field

Don’t settle for the ordinary or the mundane, even if it means a little controversy. Don’t be afraid of ticking someone off. Make those around you think.

People skills

It’s often said that no matter what business you’re in, you’re in the people business. How true that is! Whether dealing with customers, vendors, investors, the press, or employees, well developed people skills can mean the difference between success and failure.

Innovate and iterate

Car models change every year because customers want something different. This is true in all industries. Be sure to innovate on your thinking often … be creative and try new ideas.

Planning

Being able to project into the future and build a plan to accomplish your objectives is a skill that can take any entrepreneur far. Effective planning is what will guide your business and ultimately define what you’re all about. The skilled business planner knows that planning is only an effective skill when combined with action, so they don’t get bogged down in planning rather plan with flexibility in mind. Don’t exclude strong time planning and management here, as without it, little else can be planned well.

Be Decisive … Just Do It!

The Nike slogan is not just for sportswear. Stop sitting around talking about your “great idea.” Get out there and pursue it. As Wayne Gretzky said, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

Don’t believe you know as much as you think

Find an experienced entrepreneur-like mentor to help and guide you and don’t be afraid to ask for help. Listen to feedback from your mentor and others. Sure, you’ll get some bad inputs, but learn to filter.

Avoid the time killers

This includes constant email monitoring, meeting just to meet, having in-person chats when phone or Skype will work. Your time is very valuable, make the most of it.

Communication

If ever the term “last but not least” was appropriate, this is it. The skill of communication (all forms) plays a role in the execution of all of the other skills above. If you don’t have this skill, none of the other skills will be fully developed, no matter how hard you try.

Of course there are other important entrepreneurial skills you will need, but these are the key ones in our opinion.

What would you add to the list? Please share one or two entrepreneurial stories with us.

Read more:

8 Popular Social Media Initiatives for Customer Engagement

Does Your Business Build Customer Trust?

Social Commerce Business … What Ben and Jerry’s Knows That You Should Know

Learn and Keep Pushing from These Motivators

Thoughts are powerful, and negative thoughts can prevent you from achieving your goals. The flip side is that positive thoughts can be just as powerful. The next time you feel unmotivated, use any of these 35 positive thoughts to keep pushing and reenergize yourself. Really: They work!

There’s no perfect plan. There are some definite flaws in your plan — but there are in every plan.

Everybody starts somewhere. Nobody is born successful. Everyone starts somewhere, and usually from the bottom.

It can only get better. If it’s hard at first, it can only get easier.

I can do anything. It’s a simple phrase, but it helps to remind yourself — you really can do anything you set your mind to.

This is why I can. Instead of giving yourself reasons why you can’t do something, give yourself reasons why you can.

It’s never too late. No matter how old you are or how many opportunities you’ve passed up before, it’s never too late to make a decision and get a fresh start.

There will always be challenges. No matter what you do in life, there will always be challenges — don’t let one set get the better of you.

There’s no perfect plan. There are some definite flaws in your plan — but there are in every plan.

Everybody starts somewhere. Nobody is born successful. Everyone starts somewhere, and usually from the bottom.

It can only get better. If it’s hard at first, it can only get easier.

Failure is temporary. If you fail, you’re in good company — most successes come only after several rounds of failure.

Mistakes are learning opportunities. If you mess up, you can only become better for it.

Everything has to be earned. You can’t get anything in this life unless you work hard for it.

Action is a better regret than inaction. Making the wrong decision is always preferable to regretting never having done anything at all.

I don’t need anyone’s permission. If people think you’re crazy, so be it.

I’m in control of my own destiny. You can decide whom you want to become.

The risk is worth it. Know that risks are real, but the potential benefits are worth them.

Discipline feels better than regret. Discipline is hard, but it’s easier to deal with than regret.

Many good ideas seem crazy or impossible at first. Yours is no different.

Experience is always valuable. Even if your mission doesn’t turn out the way you’d expected, you’ll walk away with experience.

Every day counts. Today, tomorrow and the next day are all steps toward your end goal.

There is no problem that can’t be overcome. Everything can be solved or worked around.

Everything can be improved. Even if you start out rough, you can always make improvements to your approach.

I can learn whatever I need to know. Free resources are plentiful.

I can master whatever I need to do. Practice can make you good at anything.

I know what I want. Know what your end goals are, and visualize them.

Trying and failing is better than doing nothing. This is universally true.

I can’t win unless I try. Effort is the only way to get results.

I’m better than I was yesterday. You’re older, wiser and more experienced than you’ve ever been before.

Nothing great happens overnight. Work and patience are your friends.

I’ll reward myself when I’m done. Even small rewards can be great motivators.

There are always more chances. If you screw up, you can always try again.

If nothing else, this will make for a good story. You’ll walk away with great memories and interesting anecdotes.

What do you think? Do you have anything to add based on your experience?

Check out our thoughts on customer focus.

We often get questions and comments on delivering great customer service and experiences. They are from both clients directly and customers commenting on our blog.

Many relate to customer service actions that are reminders of what we already know (but we occasionally forget).

These are big enablers of customer service. They usually won’t create Wow service on their own, but their absence is noted by customers and lowers excellent customer service to just good enough or less.

See our article on Client Satisfaction …10 Secrets to Improve Customer Experience

What are the ways this Home Depot was just average in its customer experience design? Consider Home Depot’s explicit operations and design:

Saving you time

One of the most important needs of most customers is time … no one ever has enough and if you are a customer like me, you hate waiting for service in anything.

There two big-time wasters at the Home Depot.

The first is trying to find what you are looking for. This is almost always an issue for us.

Usually, when we ask directions we get a prompt answer to an aisle, which certainly shortens the search, but not enough in our mind.

The second is trying to find someone to help you. That also includes someone who can handle 90% of the answers. That rarely happens on the first try.

My Home Depot … show the value

In their store, as well as on their website, you can never find product value statements or recommendations. If you want recommendations on the best value you must ask.

And when you do, you rarely get a convincing answer. No real unique selling points for the store as a whole, at least that was obvious to us.

Store to web site integration

I visit Home Depot quite often and use their website even more frequently. In all those visits, I have been shown a terminal where the customer actually used it to answer my question only once.

My bet is that there only 2-3 computers in the entire store where a customer clerk could look online to get information and answers on products. And service for products is even a bigger issue. An area where small changes could provide big improvements

Customer education

Home Depot used to do a decent job in educating their Do-It-Yourself customers by adding a learning center in both the store and online.

The online service is still better than average, but again, they could do a lot more by integrating online and in-store customer education.

Many of the employees are just clerks and know very little about products and do it yourself activities.

My Home Depot … lots of help and directions

All stage employees should be encouraged to be ‘assertively friendly’. They should seek out those who look like they need help before they come looking for help.

But this rarely if ever happens.

The Home Depot stores are very large and directions can be confusing. The last thing customers need is to not be able to find what they are looking for. As a result, signs have to be super easy to navigate and offer simple ways to get from one place to another.

Wouldn’t it be easy to create store maps to give to customers in need?

Apparently not so easy.

Take nothing for granted

Don’t take a customer’s loyalty for granted, especially when dealing with first-time shoppers. The key to customer loyalty is not just by providing a quality service or product, but how you service and support it.

Meeting customer expectations in a first sale may not be enough. First-time buyers want to know you care. For loyalty to endure, it must be noticed and acknowledged.

That means some top-notch unique actions on behalf of customers. Have you ever received any of these? We have not.

Again, Home Depot signals that they are happy with an average customer experience.

Product choices

Have you ever been into a store that has more product options? I am not talking about product sizes here.

I am talking about different brands that do basically the same thing.

And that is not a customer benefit, because too many choices make decisions much more difficult, especially when Home Depot employees can’t tell you which product is best.

Stand tall on customer issues

Being a customer advocate is often tough for many businesses. Many overcome this by defining a customer bill of rights and displaying in the store and online.

No way to not follow these as they are predominantly displayed. Ever seen one at Home Depot? Nope, not us. But certainly at other brands.

Build trust

When you save your customer time, deliver quality service, stand tall on customer issues, and always show your value, you definitely build trust.

And trust is the basis of great customer relationships and follow-on business.

A definite win-win.

Looking for customer feedback

As customers both my wife and I like to have a business seek out our opinions.

Shows they care. On the flip side, if a business never asks, or has no way to solicit suggestions, it shows they don’t care very much.

Where do you think Home Depot falls on this spectrum?

Immerse customers in brand

At many businesses, you can look in any direction and see the branding all around. And we are not talking abound simple brand identity here.

We are talking about things that remind customers about things the brand believes in, or stands for, in the store or online.

It works to surround you with the customer experience at every moment.

Home Depot can do more to stand out in this area, much more.

Customer experience design certainly should show how much a business appreciates the importance of customers, shouldn’t it? It’s a culture they seem proud to stand behind.

Companies that are proactively managing all elements of their customer experiences are most successful in achieving customer loyalty.

Customer experience actions that are remarkable get talked about. And getting talked about in this light is a great thing, right?

No question. So ignoring well-known customer experience annoyances is a big no-no.

Here’s the thing, customer experience design isn’t just a new way of marketing, it’s really a new way of running a business. Many businesses certainly have figured this out and are using customer experience to rapidly grow their business.

Home Depot needs to better understand this concept.

Related post: Random Acts of Kindness for Customer Experience Improvements

Summary

Remember one simple thing here: all employees need to view themselves as customer advocates, period.

Customer service actions that are remarkable get talked about. And getting talked about in this light is a great thing, right?

No question.

Do you have a lesson about making your customer experience better you can share with this community? Have any questions or comments to add in the section below?

Need some help in building better customer trust from your customer engagement? Creative ideas to help grow your customer relationships?

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Call Mike at 607-725-8240.

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Mike Schoultz is the founder of Digital Spark Marketing, a digital marketing and customer service agency. With 40 years of business experience, he blogs on topics that relate to improving the performance of your business. Find them on G+, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Digital Spark Marketing will stretch your thinking and your ability to adapt to change. We also provide some fun and inspiration along the way. Call us for a free quote today. You will be amazed at how reasonable we will be.

More reading on customer experience from our Library:

Customer Experience Optimization … 10 Employee Actions that Lower It

Building a Customer Experience Strategy for Business Success

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