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Galaxy research has released a study that shows that queuing in stores is the fastest way to lose sales. In the Australian Queuing Behaviour  Survey it was shown that 67% of people will abandon their purchase if it means standing in line and 75% will take their money elsewhere in future. Danger times are queues over 5 minutes in length.

We are also less tolerant of queues in particular industries. If you have a queue at a fast food restaurant you will have more irritated people than if you have a queue at a supermarket.

And what the cashier is doing while the queues are in place are also a problem. If your cashier is not hurrying but is taking their time you can expect more people getting hot under the collar than if they appear to be moving quickly.

I will quite happily admit to being someone in the 75% category. Recently I had to buy joggers for my daughter so off we went  to Super Amart All Sports. There were about 4 staff at the shoe section – all milling around vaguely helping people and generally doing very little in particular. We ended up just locating the options ourselves and headed to the checkouts.

With three possible terminals, only one was working. There was only on assistant on the terminal – who just happened to be a person I had sacked in a previous role for poor performance – not a good sign. Well she hadn’t improved at all and if anything reinforced my previous decision. She was very slow (walking through custard slow) and pfaffed around with each item for the customer she was serving.

Did I mention that by the time we joined the queue there were 20 people already waiting – and it took her 5 minutes to process one transaction. A person at the back of the queue grabbed one of the sales team and directed them to the register (there was no manager in sight to control the rapidly worsening situation).

The sales assistant looked at everyone and said “we are out of register rolls for the other machines” . “Is anyone getting more” “I dunno”. The assistant then proceeded to slow down the processing even further for the lucky next in line.

At that point I put down our purchase of high priced joggers, and walked out. We were followed out by another 5 customers who put down purchases of everything from smaller items to some who were buying very high priced gym equipment.  A very expensive loss of sales for a few register rolls.

If you make people wait – you lose sales. It is that simple.

This is also true of online businesses. If you are selling a product and then don’t give people to opportunity to pay immediately you are losing sales.  The more hoops you make people jump through the harder it will be to get the sale. So asking someone to email you their order and you will call them to confirm it, is the equivalent of a queue over 5 minutes in length in a traditional shop. You will lose sales.

Ideally allow people to buy and then instantly download your product. People are time poor and want to buy and have it now.

If your product is a tangible product that you are selling on the net, the way to get around this objection is to specify the shipping time for your product – and deliver within those timeframes. Allow for express shipping wherever possible to make it even less of an issue. Many people will happily pay the premium for faster delivery.

There is a saying that time is money. It is!  Your money if you make people wait.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Copywriters

Over the past few years we have heard a lot of managers complaining about the time their employees spend on Facebook. Many companies have taken drastic measures to close their internet access to these types of sites, while others have looked the other way.

Managers who are not technologically savvy deal with the issue as atraditional performance issue – that social media reduces time available for work in the same way that smoking breaks limit the available time for work.

Managers who are technologically savvy argue this is the way the world is going, and to retain good employees they need to allow a window into that world.

In the mean time we have scientists trying to prove that open access is great for productivity or is the worst thing possible for productivity, depending on who has funded the study.

But … all of these issues pale into nothingness compared with the whole raft of ethical issues arising from social media that have not adequately been debated.

What am I talking about?

• Managers “Googling” potential candidates to see what their social profiles may say about them. Smart managers ask more questions about candidates who list their hobbies as “getting wasted every night with mates”. Is this an invasion of privacy or should candidates realise that their information is public domain once they have posted it on sites such as MySpace and Facebook?

• Companies putting in permanent Google Alerts, Blog searches and Twitter searches to alert them whenever their companies’ name is mentioned in the social media – and then disciplining or sacking people who vent their anger at the boss in social media.  Recently a US coach was fined for an ill-considered comment on Twitter about the referee after a match.

• Companies are starting to hire Social Media Managers and teams to find and respond to customer complaints in social media. But what happens if they cross over the line into deliberately planting waves of positive stories? We all know spin happens – but where is the grey line between spin, propaganda and bald faced lies?  How do these strategies blend with corporate Codes of Conduct? What happens to the person who disagrees with completing a positive spin directive on moral or ethical grounds.

• Social media team members in  a company building a fantastic following on Twitter while they talk about their company – then being hired to work elsewhere. Who owns the followers – the company or the individual? (Thanks Duct Tape Marketing for raising this issue)

• Employees responding to questions on forums and sites like LinkedIn arguing that this is building the company profile, when they really are aiming to build their online personal profile and expertise (and then leave).

• Insider trading becomes much murkier, as people track comments by employees about their organisation in the social media, which can then impact on share prices.

• Managers deliberatly searching out the Twitter and Facebook accounts of their team and either joining as a friend/follower or just regularly checking in to see what is being said/done. Visa Versa for employees doing the same for managers accounts.

At this point of time, the ethical discussion about what is acceptable and appropriate within companies and within society around social media has not yet been had. There are some blanket policies in HR manuals and employee manuals, but in most cases managers have not had any discussion with their team about the relevance and impact of these policies.

Many managers are flying blind and don’t yet know what questions to ask to even begin the discussion with their team. Given at least 40% of all small businesses don’t yet own a website, let alone any form of social media presence – how many of these managers will have the knowledge or skills to be able to deal with these questions when they arise in their company?

For example, I put in a Twitter search to track people tweeting about their performance reviews. Comments like:

“I have to worry about costs on my performance review? #FAIL! I only deploy projects on free software from now on. No support contracts.”

“I sure hope the new bosses will review our payscales. @ev STILL hasn’t done my last performance review”

“I have my annual performance review today. No raises, so what’s the point?”

“Performance review was totally boring.”

“Annual performance review meeting coming up top of the hour. Bogosity shall ensue I’m sure.”

“There’s one person I work with who I’d really like to vote off the island. Typically, she’s now responsible for my performance review. Blah.”

“Just got a message from YMCA saying I have a performance review tomorrow- only worked once in the last 7 months. It’ll probably be bad.”

These are all just samples from a 3 day period. It isn’t hard to figure out where these people work – in most cases it is recorded in their profiles. How would you as a manager feel if one of your employees tweeted to the world about you and your reviews in that way? What action would you take? Would you even know how to find out what they were saying?

What other ethical questions do you think that social media creating for managers?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – HR writers

Thanks everyone for helping me out! I have been so busy burning the midnight oil on our great book Employee Performance Reviews: Tips Templates & Tactics that I have totally lost track of time. So my wonderful newsletter just welcomed everyone to March! Big sigh.

But …  that doesn’t take away from the brilliant offer we have. Just visit our special page and you can download a pile of free performance review templates and forms PLUS a free recording of our Introduction to Performance Reviews & Performance Management Myths.

Grab it now, before I catch up on my sleep and take down the offer!

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Human Resource Management writers

Recently when I talked about the 20 year web anniversary, some people wanted to know what would be next … so I went to check out TED. TED stands for technology, entertainment and design, and while originally a conference where leaders in thought would meet annually, it now hosts TedTalks, where the best and brightest speak and share their ideas. It is worth getting the RSS feed of their blog to stay across some brilliant information.

http://blog.ted.com/

Here is a fascinating February 2009 presentation by Patti Maes on an amazing human interface under development. Watching it gave me lots of clues as to possible direction of technology – where information on the net becomes an integral part of your everyday decision making. It is worth watching and then thinking about the implications for your business and the words you use on the net.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriters

Happy April Fools Day – the day when people can play pranks on others in an attempt to create some fun.

But what I have found is that reality is often much funnier than forced pranks. We all do stupid things at times – but by laughing at them we take the sting out and realise  our humanity.

My colleague Kurt Johansen did this to great effect with his extremely funny promotional email yesterday, telling readers about the challenges of being a 14 year old boy and dissecting rats at High School.

His email reminded me once again that you can use your mistakes and missteps as great fodder in your copywriting and marketing. By owning up with a wry smile at your stupidity, you create a sympathetic bond with your reader. They are more likely to relate to you as an equal rather than someone in an ivory tower – and are more likely to buy from you as a result.

So if you are the victim of any pranks today – your response could be “Thanks – I look forward to using this in my book/emails/marketing some day”.

That said … I don’t think the home owner of this house in Qld is seeing the funny side of things. One of those “It looked OK in the plan” moments.

Check the driveway and garage location

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance writer