Tag Archives: business situations

What Every Business Can Learn from the Social Media Efforts of @Delta

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It was about 6:30 last evening when I found myself at the Delta Sky Club in Tampa, Florida. I was booked on Delta’s 7:45 flight to Atlanta (where I am speaking to a group of Ford dealership managers about Internet processes this morning). I had a yearning for a cup of coffee, but I really didn’t think indulging in a caffeinated beverage that late in the day made sense. (Between my upcoming flight and the strange bed I was soon to be sleeping in, it would be hard enough for me to get any rest. As it ended up, I got a solid six hours.)

I grabbed a clean cup at the self-serve coffee station and placed it under the decaf jug’s spout. Pushing down on the lever I discovered they were out of decaf, so I moseyed to the bar to let the Delta bartender know this fact.

“Oh… thank you,” she replied.

I got a glass of water to hold me while she made the decaf and headed back to my seat in the lounge.

Twenty Minutes is Plenty of Time to Make a Pot, Right?

At about ten minutes before seven, I headed back to the coffee station only to discover that the decaf jug was missing. Clearly, the bartender just forgot to return it after she made a fresh pot, I surmised, so I walked over to the bar to ask her if the decaf was ready.

“Oh… it’s too late to make any decaf,” she replied.

I looked at her and just blinked my eyes for a couple of seconds to get my bearings.

“Um, isn’t nighttime when people usually drink decaf?” I asked.

“Well, I was told it’s too late to make any more decaf tonight,” she replied smiling.

Would You Like a Double Gin & Tonic instead?

I figured that a pot of decaf must cost Delta all of two dollars, so I wondered why they were being so cheap. Had I been ordering double Gin & Tonics all night they wouldn’t have batted an eye – even though my drain on their profits would have been much greater.

Since I really wanted that coffee – to the point that I could actually taste it on my way back to my seat – I decided there was nothing I could do but sit down, shut up and be a good Delta customer. In other words, I was fuming. Not because I didn’t get my precious coffee, but because of the arbitrary nature of how the Delta team at the Tampa Sky Club chose to create rules. They didn’t want to have to clean the pots after a certain hour (I surmised), so they invented a rule that you couldn’t make decaf after six.

They reminded me of a bunch of teenagers working at any fast food establishment fifteen minutes before closing: “Oh shit, here comes another customer. Don’t they know we close in like fifteen minutes?”

Vent or Die

I could keep my now rage about being denied a cup of decaf inside me or I could let it out. I chose to let it out. Of course, rather than throw chairs around the Sky Club or even demanding to speak to a supervisor, I decided to just Tweet about this experience to my 1,200+ alleged followers. (Because it was a Friday night, I was pretty sure that no more than 1 or 2 would even read the damn thing. I just needed to vent.)

I followed that message with one more Tweet a minute later to complete my thoughts about the whole affair:

Feeling somewhat content having gotten this off my chest; I sent a couple of emails, packed up my belongings and headed for the departure gate.

A few minutes after I settled into my seat and cracked open an unsatisfying bottle of water, a Delta agent came to my row and asked for me. Instinctively, I just knew I was going to hear some regurgitation of why they don’t make decaf after 6:00 PM and how sorry she was but that “the policy was important to ensure the blah, blah, blah…”

“Mr. Stauning?” she asked.

“Yes?” I replied.

She followed with “We were wrong not to make a fresh pot of decaf for you in the Sky Club this evening. Can you tell me who it was that told you this?”

I was floored. She admitted they were wrong and actually wanted to know which of their employees needed some additional training on customer service.

After I told her my experience and the brief conversations with the bartender, she thanked me for being a loyal Delta customer and handed me a $12 meal voucher for Atlanta. (Delta knows, you see, that I am flying out of Atlanta today after my meetings and so they correctly assumed that I might have to grab a bite in the airport.)

For the cost of a few minutes’ time and $12, Delta was able to completely resolve a minor situation with a long-time customer (and often vocal critic). Moreover, the half-dozen or so people who heard the exchange on the plane were undoubtedly impressed.

#TheLittleThingsThatMatter

As I hashtagged in both of my Tweets, it’s the little things that matter. Not making decaf for your frequent fliers is a little thing; but it genuinely pisses customers off. Telling your customers you were wrong and offering to buy them a $12 lunch the next day are little things; but these are what customers remember and appreciate.

The lessons that all businesses – whether they’re a B2C or B2B establishment – can learn from how @Delta handled this “little thing” are these:

  1. Be diligent and genuine about your social media pursuits. If you’re going to be on Twitter or Facebook, don’t do it for branding or marketing purposes; and don’t just become another spammer. Be social. React genuinely. Solve problems. Or shut the hell up.
  2. Be quick and don’t escalate the little things – SOLVE THEM. I don’t know who made the decision to greet me on my plane and present me with a meal voucher, but this decision did not have to be reviewed by a committee. Imagine if the team that monitors Delta’s Twitter account had simply waited until the next day and responded to my Tweet with “Dear Mr. Stauning: blah, blah, blah…” That would have been infuriating (I know, because another minor issue with a company last week was handled just that way. They would have been better off ignoring my Tweet than to send me down the customer service path of hell I am currently on.) Delta has empowered someone to make quick decisions in the field to solve minor customer issues. This seemingly tiny act can do more to defuse a bad situation than all the “we’re sorry you feel this way” emails and calls from insincere customer service drones.
  3. In all relationships, it’s truly the little things that matter. This is especially true in the realm of customer relationships. The customer is not always right… but, they are always the customer, and when it’s your fault that they feel bad you need to tell them it’s your fault, and then you need to fix the problem.

But The Steakhouse Did So Much More…

Some of you may be familiar with a similar, albeit more extravagant, response from an overpriced steakhouse to a loyal customer who also Tweeted his desires from the Tampa airport. The differences in this case are that Delta (in my opinion) wasn’t looking for publicity, just hoping to satisfy their customer. Additionally, Delta operates on a much smaller margin and deals with many more customer service issues than a chain of restaurants, so sending a guy in tuxedo to deliver me a porterhouse dinner would not have been fiscally responsible. Finally, the guy who Tweeted about steak was just a whiny traveler who wanted something he couldn’t have.

(Well, I guess the two stories do have a little in common.)

The 10 Douchiest Job Titles in America

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The 10 Douchiest Job Titles of 2012

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to keep my business cards free of my title. I feel this way for a couple of reasons: primarily, I don’t want those outside of my company getting hung up on my title; also, I really don’t give a shit what you call me inside the company; so long as the work is challenging and fun – and that my role can somehow influence the company’s results.

Of course, I understand I’m in the minority here. There’s an episode of Cheers that humorously magnifies America’s love for important sounding job titles when Woody, Sam and Carla individually go into Rebecca’s office to demand a raise; only to come out overly satisfied with nothing more than artificial titles.

So, while I get why some people want a title and want to proudly display it on their business cards, I struggle to understand why anyone would want a title that basically screams to the world “Hey, look at me: I’m a major douchebag.”

Do you have a douchie title or do you know someone with a douchie title? If so, please share them here. For now, here is my list of The 10 Douchiest Job Titles of 2012:

10. Lifetime Value Business Leader – This title is douchie for so many reasons, not the least of which is that I have no fucking idea what it means. To me, this title sounds more like something that would be inscribed on a crappy award you get from the Fort Wayne, Indiana, Chamber of Congress than something you would print on a business card. Chances are, if you’re a Lifetime Value Business Leader, you probably can’t lead and likely provide no value to your business (even in the short term).

9. Talent Acquisition Expert – I have two major problems with this total douche bag title: first, if your title shows that you are an “expert” anything it means you are exactly the opposite; and second, the title “Talent Acquisition Expert” springs from the same political correctness that brought us such classic douchebag titles as “Sanitation Engineer” and Subway’s oxymoronic “Sandwich Artist.”

8. Director of Customer Experience – Taking care of customers should be Job One for everyone at your company; but if your business actually names someone their Director of Customer Experience, your front line employees are likely just paying lip service to the actual customer experience. Of course, that’s not what makes this title so douchie. What makes this title really douchie is that the role can only be filled by complete and utter douchebags. Think about it: have you ever met a Director of Customer Experience who didn’t annoy the fuck out of everyone around them? Sickie sweet phoniness does not make for a great customer experience.

7. Chief Motivational Officer – Similarly to the Director of Customer Experience role, if your company needs anyone with any variation of the word “motivation” in their title, then you have a real motivation problem. In fact, your lack of genuinely motivated people will not be solved by giving some made-up title to someone who cannot execute; but he’s really fucking nice so you named him your Chief Motivational Officer. Fire this guy and use the money you save to buy the employees a pool table for the break room and pizza every Friday.

6. Entrepreneur – This title is certainly douchie on the surface: it screams “look at me; I’m a real risk-taking maverick.” Yet these risk-taking mavericks who call themselves entrepreneurs are using the more cultural (mostly incorrect) definition of the word as “someone who starts a business that promises economic gain, but also entails great risk.” In fact, the word actually describes any manager or owner of a business – regardless of actual risk or gain. Putting “entrepreneur” on your card is equivalent to putting the non-descript “manager” as your title; only way more douchie.

5. Company Evangelist – The only people who should be allowed to have “evangelist” on their business cards are those hell-bent on saving our souls and taking our money. (Just taking our money is not enough to make you an evangelist.) In all seriousness, if you don’t spend your Sundays on television speaking to a bunch of sheep and fleecing them of their life savings, then you need to leave this off your business card.

4. Guru – The word is Sanskrit, and if you did not know that, then you’re not a fucking Guru. Moreover, this type of douchebag title is one of the “self-anointed” kinds. This means that no one ever called you a Guru (unless their tongue was firmly planted in their cheek) – you gave yourself this title; and for that, you are a douchebag of the highest order. In fact, you might just be the Guru of douchieness.

3. Mentor – What in the world would prompt someone to put this drivel on their card as their title? It is the job of everyone in your company to mentor to those with less seniority, knowledge or experience than themselves. However, if any douchebag put “Mentor” as their job title on their business card, then they are just announcing to the world that they really value their experience and opinions a whole lot more than the rest of us. I can honestly say that I have not learned a thing from a single person who ever “tried” to be a mentor to me. The true mentors in my life never tried, it just came naturally to them – and they gladly mentored without fanfare or the need to be officially called a mentor.

2. Visionary – Putting this on your card literally screams that what you lack more than anything else is vision. Because… if you had any vision at all, you’d see what a douchebag you look like with this on your card. Let me break this to you gently: being right about a few things does NOT make you a fucking visionary; knowing more than your boss about technology or the Internet does NOT make you a fucking visionary. “Visionary” is a title people bestow upon you at death (think Steve Jobs), not something you call yourself when you’re still alive and annoying the rest of us.

1. Thought Leader – The King of all douchebags, the “Thought Leader,” is another self-anointed position. Those who use this title to describe themselves really see their place in your industry as Socrates meets Einstein. They believe – generally because they have a below-average IQ – that they are both philosopher and genius. While the rest of us see the obvious for what it is, the self-proclaimed “thought leaders” point out the ordinary as if they’ve cracked the genetic code. Deep inside I think many “thought leaders” are truly just “do nothings” who gave themselves the title of “thought leader” because they don’t want to do any real work; they just want to regurgitate what others have published.

…

Generally speaking, I think the Internet magnifies the self-importance that the douchebags who proudly display any of my Top Ten douchie titles tends to feel and feed upon. Make no mistake, I get that many of you who read this think I’m a douchebag for my often ranting style of writing. The difference between me and the douchebags that might desire one of the above as their titles is that I know whatever I write will be douchie to someone.

Of course, if you happen to be one who thinks my writing is douchie, then I feel good that I could help you feel superior to someone; even if it is just some douchebag who rants when he writes…

How TrueCar.com Caught Car Dealers Off Guard

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The Internet is (finally) introducing progress to the car business… whether automotive retailers like it or not.

While the Internet itself has so far been little more than an evolution of how car dealers do business (think about it: dealers have been receiving and responding to sales leads from Internet customers for more than fifteen years, yet most dealerships still see less than thirty percent of their sales coming from these online customer inquiries), what TrueCar will bring to dealers is nothing short of a revolution… and most dealerships aren’t prepared.

TrueCar’s business model is designed to eventually eliminate car dealers. For now, they seem content with just getting rid of the pesky commissioned car salespeople. If TrueCar gets their way, every car dealer in the country will provide the actual selling prices of their vehicles up-front; with no haggling. This, it seems, has gotten some in the industry a bit peeved.

“It’s not too late to put this beast down,” commented one such peeved industry veteran about TrueCar on one of the leading automotive dealership forums, DealerElite.net. Others on the site are calling for government investigations and dealer boycotts of TrueCar.

Can they put the beast down?

Forget for a moment how good their model of showing a guaranteed selling price is for consumers, TrueCar still needs car dealers to pay them $299 to $399 per vehicle sold or TrueCar will simply go away. If dealers truly abandon TrueCar, then what?

Unfortunately for the TrueCar detractors, there are two unstoppable forces at work that guarantee that even if TrueCar crashes and burns, the TrueCar business model will not only survive, but eventually become the industry norm. These forces are competition and consumers.

While there have probably been hundreds of dealers who have dumped TrueCar as a provider of sales leads since the industry call-to-arms officially began in November, there have likely been hundreds more who’ve signed on. Dealers, you see, want to sell cars; TrueCar, it seems, actually helps them do that. The competitive nature of car dealers simply won’t allow them to leave these sales leads to their competitors.

From a consumer perspective, one might ask “what took so long?” Why is it we can discover the actual selling price of everything from iodine to iPads before we ever leave for the store, but with cars we still have to haggle as if we’re walking through the Istanbul Grand Bazaar? With or without TrueCar, consumers were already moving toward no-haggle pricing for their vehicle purchases. TrueCar accomplished just one thing that had not been successfully deployed before: displaying the final selling prices of identical vehicles from competing dealers… and this, you see, removed the dealers’ greatest advantage in the car deal.

Why would dealers ever knowingly give up their advantage?

It only took a few car dealer indiscretions to allow TrueCar to get into the position of radically reforming the way new cars are sold to the public; and nearly all of these are examples of failed leadership at the dealer level.

Because most managers of car dealerships got to their level without the assistance of a solid training program or a heavy focus on process or process improvement, it’s no surprise that they “lead” with virtually no focus on these, as well.

Automotive retail provides some of the best examples of bad leadership, likely due to its history (“no one trained me, why should I train anyone?”) and its unbelievably high turnover rate (“why train my salespeople, when they’ll just end up working for someone else in a year?”). Additionally, car dealers have survived for years without the need for formal training programs or progressive leadership; why should anyone think they need these today?

With no focus on training or continuous process improvement, most dealership Internet sales managers – the ones who should have seen TrueCar coming and warned the others – were so busy playing with Facebook and Twitter; so busy thinking they were in the technology business that they never even realized they were in the business of selling cars at a profit. Of course, for most Internet managers, it didn’t help that since they receive almost no respect or support from the other managers in their store – including their direct supervisors – it is doubtful anyone would have listened to them about TrueCar anyway.

Interestingly, the dealerships that wasted (and continue to waste) countless hours and dollars to perfect some social media identity generally feel that social media is a revolution in the auto industry – while missing the true revolution: transaction price transparency and the guaranteeing of transaction prices via the Internet.

Not all dealerships want to put the beast down…

The dealership owners and general managers who never fully embraced the idea of selling cars online are the ones that are the most annoyed by TrueCar. They are the ones rallying their local state associations and regulatory agencies to protect them from themselves. Progressive dealerships – those organizations where everyone is pulling toward the same goal; and where the future brings opportunity, not uncertainty – are comfortable with the move to TrueCar. Many of them got rid of commissioned salespeople years ago.

In his book, Adapt Or Die: How The Internet Is Destroying Dealer Profits And What To Do About It, Kurt Baumberger warned of this phenomenon three years ago. Did any dealers listen? Perhaps a few, but for the most part, dealers continued to run things as they always had: heavy on telling and yelling; light on teaching and improving.

What is most surprising to me is that anyone is surprised. There has been a race to the bottom in automotive retail since the first online listing of vehicles became available. I think what is also surprising is that it’s taken until 2012 for this to become a reality in automotive retail.

Progress happens…

TrueCar is merely the first. Soon, industry leaders like Cars.com and AutoTrader.com will have to insist that dealers post guaranteed pricing on their new vehicles or consumers will simply flock to TrueCar (and the soon-to-emerge clones) to avoid the hassles of negotiating.

To those outside of automotive retail, the TrueCar detractors are probably starting to resemble what the horse-drawn carriage makers, smithies and groomsmen must have looked like as the first automobiles started rolling off assembly lines over 100 years ago. Cursing progress does nothing but make those doing the cursing seem small-minded and naïve.

The thing about progress is that it progresses – whether those in the way of progress like it or not. The progress that is radically changing the car business today has been moving like the lava flows of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano. It has been slow and deliberate, but it’s gaining strength. You can try to divert it; but you cannot stop it. It is steady and it is devouring everything in its path.

So is TrueCar a consumer’s best friend?

I think there might be genuine concerns over how TrueCar acquires and manages private customer data; but I think the real threat they hold over car dealers is their guaranteed up-front pricing. They could get rid of their silly bell curve and no longer aggregate sales transaction data; and their effect on the industry would remain unchanged. They could also stop telling consumers what dealers paid for their cars, as this information is irrelevant in the transaction and has been available online for years, anyway.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I was first exposed to the TrueCar bell curve in 2009 – which showed what consumers had paid for similar vehicles – and I was impressed. Back then, I felt it would be a game-changer for TrueCar.com. Since then, TrueCar has expanded their online offering to include certificates guaranteeing what consumers would pay from member-dealers for a given vehicle. This innovation, coupled with pitting dealers against each other on a single webpage, made the bell curve unnecessary. Now the TrueCar bell curve is nothing more than worthless eye candy.)

With some in the industry mad as hell about TrueCar’s use of data, it is interesting that as recently as this past weekend, TrueCar CEO Scott Painter was quoted bragging in a New York Post article about the plethora of data sources his company employs to produce their useless bell curve. “We collect information from consumer reports, insurers, lenders, government records and other industry sources in addition to what the 5,400 US dealers provide so we can decipher the true cost of a new car,” said Painter; clearly oblivious to the government’s and the public’s feelings about data privacy.

Everyone is missing the point…

Consumers, if asked, would likely tell you that they don’t care how much dealers paid for a car; “just tell me how much I’m going to pay.” Dealers, because they hid even the latter information from their buyers until they’d successfully worn them down in the dealership for a few hours, have no one to blame but themselves for the growth of TrueCar.

When we buy a book on Amazon.com, we don’t care how much Amazon paid for the book or how much profit they make from the sale. We only care about the transaction price, the delivery terms and the service before and after the sale. The same is true of buying a car. Why should I care if the dealer who sold me my last car made $5 or $5,000? All that mattered to me was the price I paid, the delivery terms and the service before and after the sale.

If TrueCar wasn’t so busy trying to get every scrap of data from every consumer vehicle transaction, they might realize that the TrueGold they provide to consumers occurs when they pit dealers against each other to post guaranteed selling prices. Of course, just as car dealers suffer great leadership voids, so does TrueCar, it seems. CEO Painter comes across as an egomaniacal prick (which, more often than not, means he probably is an egomaniacal prick to everyone around him); he also seems to truly relish his role as the villain to his paying customers: the car dealers. (Not a smart move, if you plan to withstand the inevitable competition for the long term.)

Sincerely, TrueCar Dealer Development Team…

To their dealer-customers, TrueCar behaves more like a government agency than a trusted partner; and their customer communications are signed by divisions and not people. It will be easy for dealers to dump them once real competition emerges or the major online classified websites begin posting guaranteed prices for new and used cars (and thus start driving leads and sales, instead of just expensive branding).

What won’t be easy for dealers is to get this horse back in the barn. If comparison shopping is a way of life for consumer seeking a $500 HP, what makes anyone think it won’t quickly become the norm for someone considering a $30,000 Honda? The leaders in the automotive space understand this, because leaders understand progress and they take advantage of it – even if it means destroying a business model that works today.

The leadership lesson in all this for those in and out of automotive retail is two-fold: First, business owners and their senior leaders must take a stake in the innovations brought on by technology (and not leave this to some “Internet manager”); and these same leaders need to find ways to leverage the inevitable change to their advantage (or they need to be ready to do something else with their lives).

Like it or not, progress has come to automotive retail; and it’s not going away.

 

Google Builds a Better Mousetrap and their Reward is an Antitrust Investigation?

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“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.”

While this is actually a misquote of Ralph Waldo Emerson from the nineteenth century, the phrase is an affirmation of the power of innovation and a confirmation that hard work and great ideas will be rewarded by the marketplace.

Fast forward about 130 years or so and the saying might well be:

“Build a better mousetrap and the Feds will beat down your door.”

It seems that Google, because of their better mousetrap, is now the target of an FTC investigation, according to a recent story in the Wall Street Journal. And while there has been no official announcement as to what the probe will entail, experts are speculating that the investigation will examine whether Google searches unfairly point consumers to Google’s own network of services at the expense of the competition.

Oh, Say it Ain’t So!

How dare Google exploit their own search results in an attempt to steer people toward Google services! Why that would be like McDonald’s not offering their customers a Whopper; or the Apple store not offering HP laptops! How dare they, I say! As Americans, we cannot stand by a let a company like Google be rewarded for their better mousetrap; we must stand united with the Federal Trade Commission and allow them to dismantle any company that would dare profit from their own innovations.

In all seriousness, the free markets have (by a 2:1 margin) determined that Google’s search results are superior to what came before or since. Why should anyone expect Google to not profit from this innovation? Why should we expect Google to highlight their competitors in their search results? (Um, which by the way, they do.) Why should we expect Google to not build out a better suite of mousetraps (like Google Places) that make the Google results even more relevant to consumers?

The truth is that if Google does not deliver what consumers want, consumers will try other search engines and Google would quickly lose its market dominance. Google became Google because their results are relevant. (I truly cannot recall the last time I looked past the first page of Google results for anything.) Google understands better than anyone that they cannot break the trust of consumers or Google’s market share will evaporate just as quickly as it grew.

Who’s Next Up for the FTC?

I most often shop at Safeway for groceries and I noticed that the Safeway brands are ALWAYS priced lower than the national brands. This seems like Safeway is trying to steer me toward their brands so that they can (wait for it…) … make money! Moreover, Safeway decides what to put on sale and what not put on sale. This seems like an unfair practice, because my favorite brand of mustard is almost never on sale there. (Sacrilege.)

Is Safeway next up for the FTC? Not likely, but how far are we from an FTC antitrust investigation into Facebook? Does Facebook compete unfairly because they only sell Facebook ads on their website? Shouldn’t they allow others like Yahoo! or ReachLocal to sell their own ads and place them on Facebook? How about services on the horizon for Facebook that will have the sole intention of keeping people from leaving Facebook to do anything else on the Web? (I don’t even like Facebook that much, but they have every right to build a better mousetrap and provide additional Facebook services that will engage their user base – even if that means that users no longer visit other websites.)

As a business owner, I have no right to a share of Google’s traffic – even if my website provided a superior or less expensive alternative to whatever Google ranks above me. It is up to the markets to decide my fate (and Google’s); and the Feds should stay out of it.

 

Young Managers Working in a Small Business: What Can They Do To Get Respect From Below and Above?

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For Young Managers, it’s not Just About Gaining the Respect of Subordinates

One of the most common questions from our readers concerns how they as younger managers can lead older subordinates – all while maintaining respect and sanity. Where we felt we could help, we’ve provided these youthful leaders advice and guidance as recently as last month when we responded to a question posed by a reader named Sourabh from Mumbai, IN. He was curious how he could convince a firm he was interviewing with to hire him despite his age. Prior to that, we’ve explored possibilities for other young leaders in responses dealing with young business owners, leading grizzled older subordinates, and also how a young manager can keep from being run over. Recently, a new reader found our site and posed her own questions after exploring our advice about how a first time manager can gain respect:

Hi, I stumbled across this site as I was searching for some help. … I am not only the manager but the youngest technician at my company. … I work in a small family owned salon where everyone is on top of each other all the time. Here are my concerns that I am hoping you will be able to help me with:

As I mentioned, I am the manager of the salon but unfortunately I don’t get any respect from some of the older employees as well as the employees that are around my age (25). It seems that no matter what I ask them to do or how I say it, as soon as my back is turned I am a “bitch” etc. My requests usually go ignored until the very few times I have yelled at my employees. Which trust me is not many. I have worked for people that were demeaning and constantly yelling and my goal when getting this position was to be assertive but fair and never intimidating. It is getting to the point where if things don’t change I might snap.

I know I am young but I put in more paid and unpaid hours into the salon than any other employee. I work really hard to make us the thriving spa we are becoming and it frustrates me when people cannot reciprocate. I spend the majority of my time (when I am not with my own clients) ordering the supplies that the techs need, coming up with marketing ideas to make their books more solid, building our website, etc. But all I get back is arguments over why they have to do this special for the price I gave them when they want to charge more, or complaints when things they need aren’t ordered (they usually don’t tell me what they need I have to figure it out myself).


I am becoming resentful because I feel like I am constantly doing for them with no respect being given back to me. With the employees that are my age I am just blatantly ignored or told I am being a bitch. But when everyone wants something i.e. to leave early or come in late the next day all the sudden they are calling me “Miss Manager…”

How do I get the respect I not only desire but deserve?

My boss is way too nice to everyone. It really is out of control. I love her and consider her a great friend but at the same time my role as manager has been blurred by her as well. Sometimes I feel like I am not the manager just her personal assistant. She doesn’t want me to reprimand employees when it needs to happen.

How do I establish with her what my role as manager is?

I have asked her this question before with no real answer. I don’t think it’s fair for me to be telling the staff what to do but unable to say anything when things are not getting done. It would be one thing if she dealt with the issues but she is way too nice for that. I get upset because the employees take advantage of her and I don’t like watching that happen without being able to do anything about it.

Please help!!! – MM, USA

Ms. MM, may we call you M? Our apologies on the length of time it took to effort a response, but your questions were so specific and your situation so intriguing that we wanted to ensure we got this one right. (Not that we don’t try to answer all questions correctly, it’s just that you so completely described your issues that we felt compelled to reciprocate just as completely.)

We’ll tackle your issues and questions one at a time, and in the order you presented them…

I work in a small family owned salon where everyone is on top of each other all the time.

It’s always easier to manage large than it is to manage small. We often laugh when we hear about the tremendous “leadership” provided by this Fortune 500 CEO or that one – when you’re armed with a seemingly unlimited budget, surrounded by Yale and Harvard MBAs and staffed with more Administrative Assistants than Congress, you’re going to have very little trouble executing – provided, of course, that you have a brain, a plan and your ego in check.

Contrast this to a young manager trying to get the most from a group of high school graduates and having to do all the heavy lifting herself. It’s clearly easier to manage large and we feel your pain, MM.

It seems that no matter what I ask them to do or how I say it, as soon as my back is turned I am a “bitch” etc. My requests usually go ignored until the very few times I have yelled at my employees.

On the surface, it seems to us that there is no consequence for either insubordination or inaction by the employees. People yell when they are out of options, and if there were consequences at your workplace, you would certainly never have to yell.

Our advice here is two-fold. First, never yell again. When you lose your cool with someone you are telling the world that you are not in control and that you can be controlled by others. In your case, you are ceding your power to your employees and they are likely getting a big laugh at your expense. Second, it’s time to sit down with the owner and create your version of an operations manual. This manual need not be fancy, but it must detail the policies and procedures for the company, and especially the consequences for poor behavior. (Of course, no business rules are worthwhile if they’re not enforced.)

I work really hard to make us the thriving spa we are becoming and it frustrates me when people cannot reciprocate. I spend the majority of my time (when I am not with my own clients) ordering the supplies that the techs need, coming up with marketing ideas to make their books more solid, building our website, etc. But all I get back is arguments…

This piece of advice is probably going to seem odd, but it might be time to empower this team to make many of their own decisions. Where possible, ask the techs to carry some of the weight. For example, if you like to order supplies on Fridays, then create and distribute a simple Supply Order Form to everyone on Wednesday, and ask them to tell you what they need by Thursday night. Those who fail to order the proper quantities and run out could be docked the express shipping charges or the retail price difference required to get their supplies in on time.

For the marketing decisions, encourage all complainers to provide you with what they would like to see next month. Do this in a non-confrontational, sincere manner in front of everyone, and be sure to give serious thought to their ideas. If you choose to implement one of their marketing schemes, be sure to let everyone know before, during and after the promotion that the idea came from so-and-so by thanking them regularly. They will likely take ownership and do everything in their power to make sure it is a success.

But when everyone wants something i.e. to leave early or come in late the next day all the sudden they are calling me “Miss Manager…”

There’s a Latin term that applies to this situation, M: Quid pro quo. Literally, this means “something for something,” and in business it means “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Each time one of your charges is looking for a special favor, you have a golden opportunity to do some coaching.

If the employee is the loyal, hardworking sort, then you grant their favor (when possible) and you reinforce their good behavior by saying something like “I have no problem letting someone who accomplishes so much go home early now and then.”

When the person requesting the favor is someone who has made your life miserable, you should take time to explain some of your needs before deciding whether or not to grant their request. For example, you might say something like “I appreciate that you would like to arrive late tomorrow, though I think you’d agree that allowing special treatment to someone who rarely cleans up their own work station sends a bad signal to the rest of the team. If you were in my shoes, what would you do?”

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How do I get the respect I not only desire but deserve?

This, M, might be the real question. Certainly, we feel that if you’re able to incorporate the advice we’ve provided so far, you will begin to build respect with your team. Of course, respect is a lot like love: The more you give, the more you get.

Make a pact with yourself to begin each day by respecting your team. This means listening to their ideas (especially the hair-brained ones), and soliciting their opinions about the company’s direction on issues that are important to them (even if you don’t care). As you begin to respect them, they will (eventually) begin to respect you.

While this is a great first step, the behavior of your team could very well be only a symptom of the real problem. From what we can gather from your comments, the underlying problem you face likely has more to do with your relationship with the owner than it does your relationship with your team.

The Real Question is How to Gain the Owner’s Respect

Let’s get some facts about someone who owns their own company on the table: Right or wrong, the owner is the boss. The goal of every company is to make money for the owner. If the owner is crazy and wants you to waste money, for example, you have two choices: Get another job or waste the money. It’s not passive aggressive behavior to give the owner what they want – even if it’s not in their best interest. This is not to say that you shouldn’t attempt to do what’s right; though in the end the owner is the owner and you are just an employee. If the owner wants to allow people to take advantage of her, that is her prerogative (and not your concern). Like the customer, the owner is not always right, but they are always the owner.

M, your issues may appear like they start and end with your subordinates, but in fact, they seem to be caused by the company owner. In our opinion, you are suffering from a lack of respect for your leadership from your boss; and this lack of respect transfers onto your fellow employees. Now, before you march into her office and demand some R-E-S-P-E-C-T, you need to understand that the owner’s behavior is consistent with someone who wants to please everyone. In her effort to please her employees, she is unwittingly minimizing your authority.

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How do I establish with her what my role as manager is?

While the owner certainly thinks you’re qualified, she has likely been continually undercutting you since the day you were promoted – and all of this undermining was occurring without her knowledge. She possibly has no idea what she’s doing, and that’s why we think it might be time to have a very serious, though friendly, meeting with her.

We suggest you seek the guidance of others before acting, though our advice is to sit down with the owner at an offsite location (to minimize distractions) and to ask her a few pointed questions. In a concerned, friendly tone, you may want to ask her:

  • Do you value me as a leader?
  • Do you believe I possess the necessary skills to manage the team?
  • Do you think I am capable of growing the business?
  • What are your expectations of my roles and responsibilities?
  • What are your goals for the business and how do you see my role in that?

Based on her answers to these questions, you should know where you stand. If the meeting is going well, you may want to finish with a simple statement about how much you love working for her, how much you respect her, but how you sometimes believe her leadership style is diminishing your effectiveness as a manager. Explain to her that in order for there to be rules, there must be consequences. Without consequences, or her backing, you will not have the respect of the employees.

Not surprisingly, once the owner begins to respect your leadership, so will the employees. Unfortunately, this reverse is also true (as you discover every day). On the bright side, if your boss chooses to keep the status quo, you can mimic her style and become “too nice” in an effort to win over your charges. Because it’s always easier to change your style from “strict” to “relaxed” than the other way around, you stand a good chance of still becoming a semi-effective leader even without your boss’ respect.

Email Etiquette for Message Importance – When “Importance: High” = “Don’t Waste Your Time”

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Quick, Read This Email… Now!

Today I received another in a long line of email messages from a certain vendor touting their newest and greatest product improvement. This email, like all of its predecessors, arrived in my Outlook inbox as a message of High Importance. Because I receive just one in five hundred messages marked “Importance: High,” I generally give these more than a quick glance when they arrive.

Imagine my surprise when I noticed a subject line this morning that read **Special Sneak Peek: (Vendor Name Omitted) New Guided Search**. I thought, “Wow, this is big news! You made an enhancement to your website that will have little to no effect on me or my business, and you sent me the details in a message marked High Importance. Congratulations! I now like you even less than I did five minutes ago.”

The Email Who Cried Wolf

No need to rehash this as a new millennium version of the famous fable attributed to Aesop, except to say that with each email of miniscule importance sent by this vendor that masquerades as a critical Top Secret UMBRA message, I lose more interest in reading anything they send… anything.

In fact, it’s become so bad that I now treat all of their messages akin to how one would treat the proclamations of a ten-year old who brags about what a big boy he is every time he makes “doody in the toy-toy.” We get it, congratulations; you pooped.


It’s not just egocentric vendors who misuse the High Importance selection in Outlook, though it does seem to be solely the province of the unintelligent and unsophisticated. Ever get the High Importance email on Tuesday afternoon sent to everyone at your company reminding you that the office refrigerator will be cleaned out promptly at 5:00 PM on Friday? Chances are your CEO didn’t send it.

You Don’t Sell Plasma

Out of every 500 High Importance emails I receive, about ten truly require my immediate attention – and none of these ten ever originates from a vendor. Here’s a quick email etiquette tip: if you’re a vendor who does not sell plasma, stop acting like you sell plasma. The more you try to make your customers care about your (fill in the blank), the less they care.

High Importance status should exist solely for those emails that require both immediate attention and for which there will be negative consequences if they do not receive immediate attention. If your email merely requires that the recipients read and respond, write “RESPONSE REQUIRED” in the subject line. Likewise, if your message requires that recipients take an action based on the email, try placing “ACTION REQUIRED” in the subject line.

What About Tagging Something “Low Importance?”

Here’s a bonus to those vendors who don’t understand basic email marketing rules, and who mark their outbound sales messages as “Importance: Low.” Likely you tagged these emails as having Low Importance out of some misguided consideration for your recipient. Congratulations, your emails are ending up in SPAM filters all across the Web. Quick tip: never mark any email as having Low Importance. If the email is truly of Low Importance, don’t send it.

For that matter, if the message only highlights some unimportant feature enhancement of your website, don’t send that email either.

Stop the Madness – Social Networking is not a Panacea

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You’re Not Ready for Social Networking

A colleague who operates a retail franchise asked me my thoughts about incorporating social networking into his Internet sales efforts. Currently, he tracks about 35% of his sales directly to customers who first contacted his store via the Internet.

As I explained to my colleague (without trying to sound like a killjoy) I have no doubt that franchisees can and do sell their wares using Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. The question, however, should not be “How do I use social networking to drive sales?” but rather “Am I ready to use social networking to drive sales?” For 99% of the franchised retail locations out there, the answer is that you’re just not ready.

“Internet sales” (let’s not call it Internet marketing just yet) is an evolution. Think of your Internet sales approach as a “crawl-walk-run” strategy and determine where your store is using this scale. For example, if you’re not closing 20% of the leads generated by your website, then you’re still crawling. Put some processes and training in place to make sure you’re selling all of the low-funnel buyers before spending hours maintaining a Facebook page to possibly attract high-funnel browsers.

I Think I Can Fly

Social networking, you see, is in the flying stage of the crawl-walk-run continuum, because it takes roughly 100 times the effort to generate one sale as a good old fashioned salesman following a good old fashioned process working a good old fashioned lead. The ROI is just not there. Spending time managing a company MySpace account without successfully managing the leads and calls you’re already getting is like skipping first, second and third base on your way to home. It’s just not a homerun if you don’t touch all the bases.


I gave him a few examples to help him determine where his store was on the crawl-walk-run continuum:

You’re still crawling if:

  • You don’t have a written, clearly defined Internet sales process that includes at least 90 days of follow-up;
  • You’re not actively managing your store’s online reputation; and
  • You don’t currently collect 99% of customer email addresses in your store.

You’re just walking if:

  • You’re not logging at least 90% of your inbound sales calls in your CRM tool for future follow-up;
  • You’re not sending monthly, targeted email messages to your database (and I’m not talking about an e-newsletter here); and
  • You don’t have a clearly defined SEO strategy that includes managing your presence on the local searches.

You might be running if:

  • You’re consistently closing 20% of your Internet leads and phone ups;
  • You employ an effective SEM strategy; and
  • You’ve exhausted all the traditional leads sources available to you and you are actively seeking new ways to drive customers into your store.

But Twitter is Cool

The sad truth to all of this is that the cool stuff you can do on the Internet in the retail business, like social networking, is useless to an Internet sales department that has failed to do the heavy lifting first. We all want to do what’s new and glamorous, but there are no magic bullets in sales – it all takes work and 99% of that work is not glamorous.

This is not to say that social networking can’t have a huge impact on a brand, because it can. As I explained to my colleague, leave the bulk of the social networking to the manufacturer (the owners of the brand) until you’ve successfully harvested the low hanging fruit for your store.

Lazy Kids and the End of Entrepreneurship in America

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The Future of Entrepreneurship in America

I noticed something strange while sitting on my front porch today: A professional landscaping crew of seven had descended on my cul-de-sac to industriously cut the lawns and trim the bushes at my home and the homes of my neighbors on either side.

While this same event happens twice each week during this time of year, it finally struck me as odd today when I realized that there were children of lawn-mowing-age living under our very roofs. In fact, of the eight kids occupying our three homes, five of them are old enough to mow lawns. (While I began mowing neighborhood lawns for cash at 9, I am only counting those kids 11 and above as being of lawn-mowing-age.)


Help Wanted: Lawn Mowing Tweens and Teens

It’s not like we never offered to let our children mow our lawns for cash. I have offered, begged, cajoled and even pleaded with both of my sons of lawn-mowing-age to let me keep the cash in the family. My oldest mowed twice last year, though once he had earned enough cash to acquire whatever video game he simply had to have at the moment, he lost interest. (We “allowed” him to lose interest because he seemed unwilling or unable to edge or trim; a feature we enjoy with our current professional landscapers.) Likewise, my neighbors have used every tactic known to mankind to see their kids on the business end of a lawnmower, all with no luck.

Something has changed over the past few decades. While I’d prefer not to sound like my father or grandfather and lament about how “this generation blah, blah, blah;” it’s important to mention that my current neighbors and I literally fought with kids in our respective neighborhoods to mow the lawns, trim the bushes or shovel the snow of childless homeowners back in the 1970’s and 80’s.

What does all of this mean?

The End of Entrepreneurship in America

American fathers and mothers of school-aged children should sit down when they read this: Your kids are destined to lead a life of indentured servitude. They don’t share the American Dream that made Gates a billionaire and Obama a President. They want everything handed to them, and that simply will not happen in the real world.

I wish the news was better, but it seems they are lazy and they are ungrateful and they’ve lost the Great American Spirit and innate entrepreneurship that built such lasting companies as Lehman Brothers, WorldCom and Enron.

The good news is that they can always get jobs as landscapers.