Babies, Cats & Dogs...

Have you ever noticed how many businesses sell their products using cute pictures of babies, cats or dogs? While little scientific research has been done to determine exactly how and to what degree these images influence our purchasing behavior, these images do catch the attention of most viewers – a good thing when you have only seconds to grab the prospective buyer’s attention.

Some other ways to grab attention:

• Whether you’re writing a book, article, e-mail or social media post, a catchy headline will encourage readers to stop and look at what you have written. Note that the headline must be related to what you have written; if it’s totally off-topic, the viewer may open the e-mail this time but may discount future e-mails from you or unsubscribe. 
• Your business (or individual) personality should shine through whatever you do. 
• Make your posts timely. Value is lost if the discussion becomes “so yesterday.” 
• Keep your content brief. Everyone is busy and if your content is too long, it’s ignored. 
• Use interesting photos. If you are posting on Facebook, don’t just post a single photo. Add at least three to an album and comment on the photos for more follower interest. 
• Include statistics or numbers (“…90% of people surveyed say our hot sauce is the best they’ve ever had!”). 
• Use humor, if it’s appropriate for your product or service. Don’t try this if your business provides funeral services! 
•  Another option is video. Provide short, educational or informative pieces viewers will be likely to share with friends and associates. 
• Use client testimonials. Real people talking about the benefits they received can be persuasive. 
• Music can also catch attention. Match the music to your product or service. 
•  Try something different. Have you ever looked up at the TV when the chatter stops to see a commercial with only moving pictures or text across the screen?

Finding new ways to catch the attention of prospects is an ongoing challenge and you may need to test various approaches to find out which is the most successful for your business. You’ll also want to monitor the results over time and adjust your approach as your audience changes or grows. Want to learn more? Send us an email at cs@vitalinkweb.com. 

Employee Information Exchange

Many businesses pay for their staff members to attend seminars and conferences with the understanding that they will learn professional skills they can apply on the job. What most businesses do not do is encourage those staff members to share what they have learned with their co-workers and others.

Websites, shared document portals, social media and other tools allow all of us to easily disseminate information. But many times conference attendees return to work only to be overwhelmed playing catch up. Why not permit that employee to take some time upon his or her return to publish some high level notes that others might find valuable and save them on a shared document portal? Or, better yet, arrange a “lunch and learn” style presentation for the conference-goer to share some of what they learned.

Do you have an internal method or knowledgebase for employees to share information? Or maybe you’ve got a closed employee-only Facebook group or a blog that requires a login? Encourage employees to share what they have learned here, as well. Set some overall structure (for example, all information must be dated and placed into high level categories or have post tags applied to make searching easy) and basic rules (i.e., the information must have value, not a forum for complaints, must be verified when appropriate, etc.). Over time as the information base builds, employees will become used to adding new information and searching the site for answers to their questions.

Even better news with this type of knowledge-sharing: those folks in your company who are responsible for creating content will have a great source of new ideas for their future web content, blog posts, social media updates and more! Encourage sharing…you’ll be glad you did.

We Did It Together!

The second annual vitalink coats & blankets drive has officially wrapped up, and we're happy to say we collected more coats, blankets and financial donations than last year. The total number of cold weather items donated was 390 and we collected $725 in cash to benefit the Raleigh Rescue Mission. Way to go, team! Our partners were a big  part of the drive. A huge thank you to our 2011 partners:

• Leone Noble & Seate
• David Allen Company
• Embassy Suites
• Davis Plastic Surgery
• Catalyst Group, Inc.
• Greenscape Inc.
• News & Observer
• Chad M. Richards, State Farm

We hope you all tune in next year for the 2012 vitalink coats & blankets drive. Have a warm and happy holiday!

While We Were Sleeping©

By Guest Blogger Jeff Nischwitz, Think Again!™ Coaching

For years businesses have been searching for what we considered to be the holy grail in business … satisfied clients, and mountains of information, hundreds of books, and thousands of hours of videos have been dedicated to providing the ideas, tactics and strategies for achieving this objective.  While all of these ideas are worthwhile, the problem is that while we were sleeping the target moved. Satisfied clients (or even clients that like us and our work) are no longer good enough; and perhaps were never good enough. In today’s business environment the only “good” client, is a client that loves us and our products or services. Today’s business truth is that if we only have satisfied clients or clients that merely like us, then we’re losing the game.

“In the beginning” (of business thought) the concept of creating satisfied clients made sense because the bar was artificially low due to limited competition, which allowed for easier differentiation. As a result, businesses could just do the bare minimum (and achieve satisfied clients) and rely upon their other differentiators to create and sustain their revenue models. But as competition improved and increased, the prior differentiators became less and less real or valuable. We all started looking alike, which meant that merely satisfying a client was not enough to differentiate our business or to provide a strong foundation for sustainability (let alone growth).

What’s “wrong” with merely satisfied clients? First, satisfied clients “fire” us (often without warning) and leave us wondering “what did we do wrong?” In truth, we often didn’t do anything “wrong,” but we did fail to understand their needs and deliver the type of value and experience that makes us memorable and indispensable. The problem is that because these clients are only satisfied, they are likely to move to one of your competitors who happen along with a better price or which talks about a great client experience. In fact, it’s often the case that merely satisfied clients leave us, while clients that are unhappy or even dissatisfied choose to stay and make our lives miserable, distracting us from our good clients.

Second, satisfied clients are silent – they don’t talk about us with anyone. While we could fashion a story that makes this sound not too bad (after all, it could be worse – they could be proactively complaining about us), a silent client is a hurtful client. This is especially true when they’re silent (or neutral) when our business or our industry comes up in a conversation. Imagine that a group of business owners are talking at a business event and you or your business comes up in the conversation. The good news is that one of our existing clients is a part of this conversation. The bad news is that this client is only satisfied and responds with a neutral and non-committal statement (e.g., “They’re okay,” “They’re pretty good,” “They do a nice job,” etc.) While not negative, these neutral (at best) comments are the kiss of death for our business because not only was the opportunity lost to have a raving fan endorsing you in the conversation, but the neutral response is heard by most people as a quiet complaint.

Being “okay” is not good enough and certainly will not differentiate you or your business. Instead, we must commit ourselves and our teams (in words and actions) to delivering a client experience and exceeding expectations so that our clients actually love us and are “Wowed” by us (which is usually more about the experience than our actual products and services). Clients that love us will pay for our value (often significantly more than the price they could get with our competitors). Clients that love us will talk about us (when asked and especially when not asked) and endorse us to other potential clients. What we call Raving Fans! Clients that love us will also usually stick with us even when we make a mistake or drop the ball because their prior experience (that created the “love”) built up a reserve of good will with the client. Most important, clients that love us will help us grow our business beyond surviving to thriving.

The bar has been raised on the client experience and whether spoken or not, our clients and potential clients are making it clear that they expect to be more than just satisfied. While the bar has been raised by clients, we must continue to raise our own internal bars so that we continue to focus our efforts, energy and tactics on wowing clients and building the “love.”  Like so many aspects of business life in our culture, the game and the rules have changed and we must change as well. Otherwise, we’ll all wake up to find that our clients and our business have disappeared … while we were sleeping.


Jeff Nischwitz is a speaker with The Expert Speakers. He can be reached at jeff@thinkagaincoaching.com. 

Mission MidTown Postscript

From Guest Blogger Doug Austin of WKIX AM-FM after the Raleigh Rescue Mission Radiothon on November 10, 2011.

I don't know why I woke up at 2 in the morning and had to send you this email....but I know I did.

I don't know if my feet have ever hurt this bad after standing for 16 hours on concrete...but I smile when I think about why they do.

I don't know if any number of variables could have changed the success of yesterday Radiothon...but I know I could not be more proud of each of your efforts to pull off what we did.

I don't know know if this group will get a chance to do this again, to change a life....but I know I hope we can.

I don't know if the crazy world we live in, that we see, hear and read about daily will ever settle down...but I know I came home to a loving Family, a warm bed, and a safe place many will not tonight.

I know we did some good for some needy folks, I know we made a difference, I know I'm lucky to be surrounded by people with good hearts that worked very hard, without complaining, and came together with a common goal in mind.

I know that any sacrifice anyone of us made was well worth it when my little girl tucked ME in to bed and read me a story and asked why Daddy had to work so late - and I said that I was helping the homeless, and she said "well,. that's good" 

I know at times as we put this together I felt like the "Our Gang" kids from old TV "puttin' on a show" in the backyard, and I know that all of us together are stronger than any us of individually and we built a team.

From Leslie at Raleigh Rescue Mission.....

Just to give you an idea of what you all helped accomplish today…we raised enough money  to provide 871 meals, or to look at it  another way, we raised enough to provide 69 days of life changing care to an individual.

I know I'm a better person for it, and I know I couldn't have done any of it with you.....Thanks.

Humbly Yours~

Doug

Planning for 2012

November 1. Every year I intend to spend time at the beginning of third quarter planning for the next year. And every year when I flip the calendar from October to November, I recognize that, yet again, I am behind in giving serious thought to what must be done the following year to ensure success. Now, I do push my clients to plan early, but somehow I always end up behind!

When you own a business, it’s really hard to take a full day (or more) away from operations, so here is my plan:

• I am setting aside one afternoon without interruption to brainstorm about next year. Some of the questions I’ll ask:

a.       How successful were we at meeting last year’s goals?

b.      Where do we want the firm to go in 2012 (and 2-3 years beyond)?

c.       Have we integrated our message across all platforms well?

d.      Have we taken advantage of new marketing means and the tried and true?

e.      Do we have the right resources to get there?

f.        What can we do differently to help us succeed?

g.       Are we meeting the needs of our clients?

h.      Have things changed within the firm where we need a brand review (or do you have a brand image and message)?

i.         Without consideration to budget, what would I do?

• After mulling the answers to the above questions over, I’ll dedicate a second session to laying out a high level plan.
• Session three will have to include the budget. Love brainstorming, but not so much the budget process…
• The fourth and final session will be a more detailed planning session based on those pesky budget numbers and key benchmark goals.

Last but not least will be the old company meeting where we talk through next year’s plan and how the team can meet our goals. It’s a big task, but breaking it into manageable chunks works every time. Do you have a process you follow to do your annual plan? I’d love to hear what works for you and what doesn’t!

Our Partners are HOT!

Or maybe warm. At least, that’s the goal of the second annual vitalink® coats & blankets drive, where we and our partners will be collecting coats, blankets and cold weather gear to keep the Triangle homeless and poor warm this winter. The drive benefits Raleigh Rescue Mission.

We’d like thank our partners for their involvement and commitment to this great cause. They are:

• Leone Noble & Seate
• David Allen Company
• Embassy Suites
• Davis Plastic Surgery
• Catalyst Group, Inc.
• Greenscape Inc.
• News & Observer

Items we need include: winter coats, blankets, hats, gloves, grocery or discount gift cards (Sam’s, BJ’s, Wal-mart) and financial donations. If you would like to donate, we are accepting items at our office at 4900 Falls of Neuse Rd, Suite 115 in Raleigh from 8:30-5pm business days from November 1 through November 18. If you can’t get to our offices, our partners are also accepting donations at their locations. Click on the partner name to access their website and location information.

Questions? Please give us a call to learn more at 919.850.0605 or e-mail Mary Ann Grooms at maryann@vitalinkweb.com. Have a safe and warm winter!