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Yesterday I indulged in my secret passion during the Thought Leaders Summit – people watching (too many years as a facilitator – part of me always observes process). Summits are held using the open spaces format, where the attendees set the agenda, work out which conversations they want to be part of and if they are not getting their needs met, they vote with two feet and move on to other groups.

I love simply observing people as they interact and play with each other. You can see the people who connect with each other – their bodies sway towards each other, their voices take on the same rhythmic cadences, they smile and move together, eye contact increases and they talk more with each other. There was a heck of a lot of connection happening between like minded people during many of the sessions.

It was also interesting to observe some middle aged guys who seemed totally oblivious to the effect they had on the people around them. If one or more of them were in a group, as soon as they would start to speak you could almost put a timer on it, within a few moments people would quietly start to drift away to explore other groups. I watched one group form with 25 people, and at the end of the alloted time period, only 6 remained – three of which were the guys in question.

I listened in to snippets of conversation during the breaks and listened to feedback from a number of my clients who attended Summit with me. All were enjoying Summit, and yet all made some comment about at least one of these three guys. Many people chose the conversations they wanted to be part of not by the topic that interested them, but whether or not one of these guys were already in the group. They deliberately opted out of participating in things they were interested in because of someone in a group.

So what made them stand out? What were they doing to create the negative impact? Well based on the feedback of my clients and my personal experience of them, they had some communication approaches that stood out.

They rarely asked questions of other participants and when they did they were not interested in the answers, or cut across the answers to highlight how the response confirmed what they were already thinking.

For example I saw one person, who had taken leadership of one of the groups, ask people to define the topic in their own words. He started to go around the group, literally sitting on his hands and physically jiggling to stop himself from speaking. He  only went through half the people before leaping in and saying “I run a program that teaches this … it it really great and (heavy plug)”.  The other half of the people who had not had their turn to speak, tried to get in their definitions, and he cut each person off to continue the plug. At the end, he tried to gather business cards to send people in the group more information about the program. Needless to say the interest in the program was lukewarm at best – people hate being sold to.

I also observed in another group two of the guys asking nominal at best questions of a participant to scope out an issue, with no questions to explore understanding or gain depth. The questions were of the closed, leading type, not allowing the person the scope to expand their thoughts or explain what they meant. The person on the receiving end just ended up giving up and giving monosyllabic answers.

They valued their abrasive approach

Two of these people labelled themselves as “challenging” and when they first came into a new group were overheard to say “so who are we going to harangue now”. Perturbation is a valid facilitation technique if used with the right intent. With wrong intent it is just being argumentative.

They leapt to solutions – theirs

The favourite saying of all three was “what you need to do is …”. They gave advice based on their own personal values, beliefs and models, without clarifying the values of the person on the receiving end. When the person did not accept their sage wisdom, they then blamed the person and did not question if their process was a valid one.

To be honest, observing my own emotions while in groups with them I caught myself thinking the word “wanker” a few too many times, and discounting whatever they said.  And while the temptation was to vote with my feet, I was genuinely interested in the topics so chose to stay in each group.

And these things got me thinking. We are all guilty at times of leaping in with advice without looking through the other person’s eyes. We are also guilty of not being aware of the impact our communication has on others. We all at times believe that our experience gives us the right to tell other people what to do, without checking in with the other person to see if they have any opinions or views in the matter. And we are guilty of moving into sell without forming any relationship with people, or having proven our expertise.

In a workplace, when Managers regularly adopt these approaches, staff mentally “check out” or leave. In business these sort of approaches will sell a small percentage of clients (just like luminous green logos will sell some things to some people), yet the same approach will also quietly turn off many other people who will vote with their two feet and take their business elsewhere.

There’s a saying that communication is what the other person receives and not what you intended. Even if you have positive intent, if people are quietly voting with their feet around you, then perhaps, just perhaps, it is time to take stock of  your communication approach.

I still love Thought Leaders Summits – I really enjoy the vast majority of interesting, sharing and fascinating people who attend. Yesterday there were just a few more “interesting” characters to learn from than normal. And for Brisbane people there is another Summit on the 1st December this year, venue to be confirmed.

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Ever had the experience when you build what you believe is a great website, you have created loads of content, you get solid traffic to your site and then … (insert sound of crickets chirruping here).  This was the case for one lady who rang me this week and asked me to look at her site.

So what was going wrong? Here’s what I shared with her. If you want to create a well converting website, there are a few elements you need for success.

1. A hungry market. Are people actively looking for what you have to offer? You need to start with the market first – if there is no market for your product, then you will never end up selling many items. Sounds logical, but you would be surprised at the number of people who start with inventing a product and then try and find a market to sell it to.
2. A good product. People are looking for solutions to their needs – they are not looking for 100% perfection. Many businesses struggle with this, spending years perfecting their product before going to market. If you find yourself on the perfectionism loop – whack yourself on the side of the head and look at Apple. Was their first i-pod perfect? What about the 2nd or 3rd generations of i-pod? They created good products and then refined them as they went (on the basis of income from the earlier versions).
3. A professional looking website. When people visit your website for the first time they judge, based on the appearance of the site, whether or not your site can be trusted. If your site looks cheap or shoddy, with budget graphics and text that cannot be read in many browsers, they will click away. Your site needs to look professional, polished and easy to see no matter the browser type. Is your site search engine optimised so that your hungry market can find you? Does your site use images that reflect the images of your market? Can they see themselves, and other’s like them, using your product or service.
4. Logical navigation. Do you make it easy for people to work their way through your site, or do you hide bits and pieces on different pages? If you make it too hard, people will leave. If you are selling a product, then one page sites are great as every time you make people click away you give them the chance to leave.
5. Are you attracting the right kinds of people? High traffic is not the be all and end all. You want to attract people who are already interested in your product or service.  There is no point in getting loads of traffic to your site if they are looking for something else. They will see that you don’t meet their needs and click away. 
6. Does your text make sense and inspire action? If your text is confusing to follow, uses too much jargon, misses core pieces of information or doesn’t ask for the sale, then sales will be less than they could be.
7. Stacks of credibility. Can people read lots of success stories and testimonials? Can they see a picture of you and easily get in contact with you? If you are asking them to buy, is your site secure or do you use a trusted payment provider like Paypal? Do you guarantee your product or service?
8. Do you make choice easy? Many businesses offer too much choice. Keep choices simple – one option is perfectly fine. Two also works, but when you offer lots and lots of minor variations on a theme, then you lose people. They simply can’t make up their mind. Keep the choice simple (This of course doesn’t apply to shopping mall type of sites like Amazon, where people expect options).
9. Is your price right? You generally need to test to find the right price for your product.  Guesstimates don’t cut it – you need to test to find the right price the market is willing to pay.
10. Are your expectations realistic? A website generally will not generate thousands of calls or sales each week. 1% conversion on a site with these other points in place is normal, 2% is good. Above 3% and you can expect choirs and angels to descend.

If you want to boost your conversions, look at these 10 areas and work out which ones you need to refine for your site. Often the problem will be in more than one area, so keep digging, testing and editing until you hit on the perfect combination for your site.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Yes, another personal post

This evening I attended the P&C meeting for Ferny Grove State High School. At this meeting the Acting Principal Mr Sutton provided his side of events leading up to the termination and reinstatement of the Music Camp. His side markedly differed from that reported to parents and students in the lead up to the situation.

If the events were as he presented, then I wholeheartedly apologise to him, the teaching body, parents and students who may have been affected by my views and comments. I recognise the passion and dedication of the majority of the teachers at Ferny Grove High School.  The teaching faculty achieves brilliant results in a number of areas, with general academic results achieved of a similar standard to many of the top private schools.

My comments were intended to broaden the debate and not create divide – but this has not been the result. For this reason I have removed my previous blog post and issue an unreserved apology for my comments.

Ingrid Cliff

Freelance writer & parent

Yesterday in Australia was a public holiday. Like most public holidays many of the shops shut, with only the major supermarkets and chain stores opening their doors to make the most of shoppers with time on their hands. This is not a new public holiday – one that has been happening since 1927, so you would think we have the idea down pat by now. Our local Coles at Arana Hills obviously hadn’t thought much about what a public holiday means in terms of shopping.

Decades ago, when I was a retail HR Manager, we would plan our rosters based on sales patterns for the relevant day. We would take into account new trends from other public holidays from the past 12 months, and we would staff accordingly. Public holidays generally meant bumper sales and most checkouts open to cope with the influx. To give you context, one of my stores had a bank of 49 checkouts and turned over $1million on opening day alone (and this was 30 years ago) – so I know a bit about planning and rostering to cope with crowds.

Yesterday, the local Coles had less than half of their checkouts staffed. They were hit with the inevitable holiday crowd, so they pulled all of the team members they could from the speciality areas to pack groceries and operate registers if they knew the technology (most didn’t). It didn’t make a dint in the crowds. So then all of the duty managers jumped on registers. Great concept – except this left no-one to organise price checks, get change, or act as traffic control to the rapidly hostile turning crowd which now snaked their way around the store and down into the frozen aisles.

Customers were yelling abuse at each other, as they jostled trolleys. One customer organised the people into a single queue to fill the checkouts in a turn turnabout way, but as soon as her groceries were processed, the queue failed and people cut in on each other again. Kids were screaming and crying in the bustle and it took over half an hour for any single person to go from the end of the queue through to the register. There were at least 10 abandoned full trolleys in the aisles – full of dairy, frozen and deli foods slowly spoiling (and money disappearing out the door). It was like the ultimate peak hour traffic experience gone wrong.

In all of this melee, the managers doggedly kept their heads down and processed individual customers at their register. When I suggested that they pull one of the packers (or managers) off the register to co-ordinate the crowd, I was met with blank stares and “we are too busy to stop”.

Only one young check out operator (would have been about 14) apologised to each customer about the delay. She was chirpy and full of life – and at her register you could feel each customer relax as they went through.

I suspect the manager on duty in the store was a junior one and had never had to deal with crowds before. She also hadn’t learnt that during a crisis, the role of the manager is to marshall the troops, remain calm and manage the crowds.

So what did I do in these situations? I used to keep a stock of free coffee vouchers on hand, as well as remove a box of Tim Tams from the shelves. I had one manager controlling the queues, apologising to customers, lightening the mood where possible and dispensing coffee vouchers and the odd Tim Tam to the crowd to keep things moving along. We would change the store musac to one a more calming – and not the usual full of energy pieces of music played at lunch time. Yes, one checkout may not have had a packer, but the goodwill and calm generated by having someone visibly in control made all the difference to the shopping experience for people.

The question is – what would your team do in an emergency? How would they cope if things in your business suddenly go wrong? Would they know how to cope, or what to do? If they didn’t know – would they know to call for advice? Most emergencies can be considered and planned for, then all it takes is to put your plan in action. Obviously the Coles Manager yesterday hadn’t experienced this process … yet.

What about you? Any team disasters or successes you want to share?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

I love this blog post on Roger von Oech’s blog by Michael Michalo. Roger von Oech is the creator of the brilliant “Whack on the Side of the Head” card set – and I was stoked to see that you can now get them in an i-phone app called the Creative Whack Pack. In my opinion, his tools are brilliant ways to give your creative juices a charge on the days you are feeling flat.

But back to the blog post … in it Michael looks at the paradoxes of creativity. In his view:

To create, a person must

• Have knowledge but forget the knowledge;
• See unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder;
• Work hard but spend time doing nothing;
• Create many ideas yet most of them are useless;
• Look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different;
• Desire success but learn how to fail;
• Be persistent but not stubborn; and,
• Listen to experts but know how to disregard them.

I would add that a person needs insatiable curiosity but be totally focussed.

What would you add?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

It’s election year in Australia and the first of the political debates on Health Reform just aired. One of the TV stations (channel 9) uses “the worm” to track real time audience response to comments during the debate.  It is a fascinating insight into people’s minds.  Channel 9 had 90 allegedly undecided voters hold keypads while they watched the debate and give feedback on whether they approved or disapproved of what was being said.  Individual scores were aggregated and then shown as a continuous “worm” to the TV audience at home. Individual audience members cannot see the worm and where it is heading, so the results are not influenced by peer group pressure.

Now there has been a lot of debate in the past about the algorithm that drives the worm and whether or not people really were uncommitted voters. Putting that aside and assuming Channel 9 learned from their debacle a few years back, the worm still gives some insight into how a cross section of people think.

So what did the worm respond to today? The clearest responses were when Tony Abbott (Opposition Leader) took the chance to put the boot into Kevin Rudd (Prime Minister).

Repeated negative comments about “can’t trust the parliament to install Pink Batts” and school hall rorts gathered more and more extreme negative responses. Each time Mr Abbott made the same negative comments, his approval scores plunged further. People are turned off by negativity and repeated negativity only serves to embed the feeling of being turned off.

People were also turned off by attempts to get a laugh at the expense of the other person – not everyone has the same sense of humour.

The worm jumped when concrete, practical information was presented from either side. People want specific details – they don’t want fluff.

The worm also took a major jump into the stratosphere when the Prime Minister stated that people really didn’t care who was to blame – they just wanted the health problem fixed.

What can business learn from the running of the worm today?  Simple really:

1. Be positive. If you don’t have something good to say with someone – shut up.
2. Be specific. Give your customers details and facts, not platitudes.
3. Don’t blame. Commit to fixing any issues you have without finding someone to blame.

If you get a chance to watch the debate, I certainly recommend it – not necessarily for what the politicians said, but to observe what people responded to.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

One of my favourite debates over the years has been with people who with hand over their heart tell me how to improve my decision making – or to put it another way,  how to become more rational and logical and therefore make more effective decisions.

What neuro-psychologists and other researchers of the mind are finding is that no decision is purely rational – that there is always an aspect of irrationality or emotion that colours our decisions. That’s the reason why smart people make some really dumb choices. Yes, we can attempt to reduce the variables and reduce the impact of emotions on our decisions, but at our core there will always be a little piece of humanness that can derail our best intentions.

Dan Ariely is a behavioural economist, and his book Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions sheds light on a number of examples where our brain gets in the way of our making good logical decisions.It is a must read for any manager, business owner or just anyone interested in why they make the decisions they do.

Dan spoke at TED about some of his findings and his talk is both funny and enlightening. If you want to learn how to get people to choose an option in a subscription form, or why certain people are chosen for dates,  these are all topics that he covers in a brilliant way in his talk.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

If you have ever managed people, you know it is rarely “one big thing” that results in someone being sacked. Rather it is the accumulation of “little things” – the cross word here, the missed result there that build up over time. They build and build until finally the person gets enough negative strikes against them that the boss decides to sack them.

So too with business. It is rarely the big things that lose you customers, rather it is the little things, the petty annoyances that build up over time until one day your customer sacks you and moves on. The problem is that customers rarely complain about the little things.

One of my colleagues mentioned in his blog post four little fees of less than $5 each that had been levied when he had his car serviced. It was enough to annoy him and trigger him to change mechanics. The servicing was fine – it was the little things that prompted change.

I have had my own share of little experiences. I have a dentist who 4 months ago changed the girl who issues the orthodontic accounts. So far not one account we have received from her has been correct. Each month she gets the name wrong, forgets to include the name of the dentist or the treatment number. Each month the mistake is different.  The orthodontic work is fine, but the irritation of each month having to hassle to get accounts printed with correct details on them is enough that as soon as the braces come off my daughter we will be changing dentists. Like I say … little things.

I have heard of customers changing businesses because front displays are too wide so prams can’t get past them easily. Other people have left service businesses because calls were not returned within a reasonable time, or because customer toilets were not regularly checked throughout the day.  People hate dirty floors in shops. They complain to their friends when they can’t hear the girl in the drive-through … but they never complain to management.

But it is not just in the physical world. People get irritated by spelling and grammatical errors in documents and websites. Slow loading sites make them click away. If they can’t easily find what they are looking for on a site, they leave. Website studies by neuroscientists suggest this is because it generates stress and increases concentration demands on people. Whatever the reason – people leave.

Humans are funny things. They can deal with big things, but it is the little things that are the straws that break the camel’s back. It is the little things that change behaviour.

What are the small things in your business that are costing you customers? Take stock today and fix just one small thing.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance writer

For years I have been nagging the kids to “turn the lights off, you are wasting power”. “Don’t swing on the fridge door – you are letting the cold air out” “Turn the TV off”  nag nag nag. And my results – nothing short of spectacularly zero. The lights stay on, the TV plays to itself and the fridge constantly has to get re-chilled.

You see, it’s one of those human nature traits – you can tell someone that something is true, but unless they can see something happening with their own eyes they doubt.  So, I tried showing them the electricity bills. But that is a lag indicator – it is a performance measure that shows past results and so therefore has little effect on behaviour.

So yesterday I had the Climate Smart people install a real time energy monitor. It shows in real time how much electricity you are using, how much it costs and how much carbon you are putting into the atmosphere. The kids were enthralled. They wandered around the house turning stuff on and off – trying to find the appliances that used the most, through the least. They opened the fridge door to see what happened. We did the sums to work out how much each thing cost each year to run – and I then equated it to i-pods, i-tunes vouchers and other items of kids currency.

And then … they started wandering around turning things off.  Last night was the first time that the light-bulb went off – literally.

I will work on reinforcing the message, but it goes to show the power of real time performance measures to change behaviour. People see the results they are getting and move to change their behaviour.

One of my colleagues – Steve Major, tells the story of a business he was working with that went from losing $1 mill per year to going to a $2 mill per annum profit just by using real time measures displayed throughout the factory.

People like to watch – how can you work with this understanding? What real time measures can you put into your workplace?

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

As readers of this blog would know I have foil roof insulation (and love it). Just to be on the safe side over the past fortnight I tried to book in electricians to double check that everything was OK. The first 3 sparkies (including my regular tradie) wouldn’t touch the job.  Each had different reasons for not doing inspections which I respect, but they are doing themselves out of work.

One of the tradies recommended me to one of the “big” electrical companies – Fallon, so I tried to book them.  Well the call centre took the booking and on the nominated day I waited and waited … only to have a “no show”. I rang the call centre and rebooked and waited again on the newly nominated day. Another no show.  So I canceled my booking with Fallon and won’t be using them for our regular work in the future.

By now I was getting frustrated so put the word out on Twitter & Facebook. One of my colleagues recommended Pulse Electrical – so I gave them a call.

The lady who answered the phone was warm and truly lovely. And she asked the question … while we are out there checking your roof, is there anything else we could do for you? Do you need any new points, switches repaired or anything you are concerned about electrically?”  Her going through the list triggered all of the jobs I had been saving for our regular sparkie, so of course I said “sure”.

Pulse were great – they turned up on time, were polite and easy to work with and did the job well. And as a result they have an additional $450 of electrical work from me in the way of new external points for our Xmas lights and a host in interior fixes. Win win all around. I’ll happily be moving all our electrical work over to Pulse.

The point is they asked the question – and made additional sales. How many times do businesses not ask the question and lose money as a result?

Oh yes, there were no problems with my foil insulation by the Australian Insulation Specialists. The sparkies reckoned it was the neatest and best job they had seen and raved about how well it had been installed (and yes they have seen many jobs by cowboys out there).

So – what opportunities are you not making the most of?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter