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This week I was one of four speakers at the Hills Chamber of Commerce Breakfast in front of 200 people – talking about how businesses could best deal with peaks and troughs. The first speaker, Lindsay Adams, is past International President of the National Speakers Federation, and regularly flies all around the world to speak at conferences and events.

Anyway, Lindsay had the audience all roaring with laughter at his story about how he built the Chook Mahal in his backyard (you have to have been there). He was followed by a financial specialist from the Bendigo Bank talking about the financial outlook post GFC, and then an amazing business woman from Food Strategy Service sharing her story about how when everyone other business was contracting, they managed to turn a termite infested dump into a high value showpiece.   Talk about hard acts to follow.

I mentally rehearsed my lines … then Lindsay introduced me. I stood. And as I did, my rather gorgeous coat formed a life of it’s own, and swept a full glass of water off a table and smashed it into a thousand pieces. Talk about making an entrance! Water and hundreds of fragments glass littered the stage.

I had two choices – go into panic mode and try and pick up the shattered glass (panic was bubbling and the mother in me was torn about the broken glass), or I could make light of it and get onto my speech – hoping that the other speakers would not cut themselves in the meantime (as well as trying not to move around too much and crunch my own feet on the broken glass).

I took the “acknowledge it, joke about it and get straight into it” option. Why? If I had fallen apart, the audience would have fallen apart with me. They were watching me for cues on how to respond to the accident.

Being a manager is like that. Your staff always watch you for cues on how to deal with a crisis. It could be something small like a glass of water, or it could be major such as a close-down. As a leader, you are on display with every twitch and voice tonation watched and analysed.

They look for their leaders to acknowledge what has happened, find the positives if possible and then get on with making it happen. No matter your politics, in Queensland we saw the Premier of Qld Anna Bligh do that spectacularly after the floods of January.

And how did the speech go? I had very positive from many people in the audience – so something must have worked.  And next time, I will remove all glasses to beyond the reach of my wayward coat before standing up.

What do you do when you stuff up? I would love to hear your stories …

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Brisbane Copywriter

I constantly hear how tight things are for many businesses – particularly professional service firms.  But  I have to tell you, there are an awful lot of firms doing their utmost to turn clients away.

In the past few days I have been talking with colleagues to try to get referrals to good firms (all say the same thing – when I find one please tell them) … and doing the ring around of potential firms. It is darn scary how many service firms adopt client killing strategies as standard practice.

So on the basis of chatting with my colleagues (who were only too happy to chip in their war stories), and myself – here are my top 10 client killing strategies used by many professional service firms:

1. Hire the vaguest receptionist you can find, and train them to respond when people call to say they want to bring their business over to them “The partner isn’t here – can you call back tomorrow”. Make the caller beg to leave their phone number.
2. Don’t return or acknowledge emails … ever.
3. Don’t return phone calls within a few days.
4. Make sure you miss all deadlines for little business related corporations – like the ATO.
5. Make the client follow you up to remind you of what needs to be done – and constantly make them ask you, “So where exactly is that matter at?”  Never volunteer any information about a client’s business or where projects are at.
6. Regularly ask for thousands of reports and pieces of paper and then never tell the client what you want them for or what you are doing with them.  Then lose the pieces of paper you have asked for … and then ask for another copy … and another copy … and another copy …
7. Create a “quirky and fun” website that shows the “out there” personality of the partners of the firm. Ensure there is some reference to assorted pets, or unusual hobby (Yes – I always pick my professional firm based on whether or not they have a Bischon Frise listed on the staff and not by if they know their profession).
8. Put little gold stars or smiley stamps on documents to show how fun and friendly you are.
9. Preach ethics and good business practice to the widest possible audience, and then do the complete opposite for your own business.
10. Charge premium rate value based fees – and deliver zero value.

I am sure similar problems occur in businesses outside professional service firms, it is just they seem to be over-represented in practicing these top 10.

So – what are your war stories? I’d love to hear what you have experienced.

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Brisbane Copywriter

A few weeks back I talked about lessons from the Great Depression – and how the times of greatest challenge are also the times where the greatest fortunes can be made and the biggest lessons learnt in life.

Humans are not programmed to grow when things are all going along smoothly. We grow the most in times of challenge. And it is times of challenge that we begin to see who the real leaders are.  The best and most effective leaders don’t sugar-coat what is happening, but they give a clear vision of a way out. The communicate and then communicate some more – always explaining what they are doing, what is the next step and the next beyond that. They don’t hide their feelings, but they also don’t wallow in self pity or self-righteous anger. They give hope when others have lost their own.

Yes, the stock market has had a hiccup. It’s what it does. There are always peaks and there are always valleys. But most of the variation in the market has more to do with psychology than anything tangible. It is how people “feel” about situations – do they feel confident or do they feel scared? When people are confident, the stock market is bouyant. When they are scared, the stock market sinks. I like to imagine the stock market as a massive confidence and happiness indicator.

Right now -  people are indicating they are scared. So for a moment, I want you to imagine that your child tells you they are frightened. What do you do? Do you tell them that the Boogey monster is in fact real – and not only that, it will munch up them, their family and the family dog. Or do you take the time to calm their fears, help them to look at what is real and what is imagined, and help them work out a plan of attack?

Right now – each of us in our businesses are being called to step up to true leadership. Our role is to be “calm and carry on” – to create a strong and positive vision for our team and customers, and to inspire confidence.

This is not the time to be wasting time gossiping with other businesses about how bad things are. And it is not the time to be nervously tracking results to confirm your fears that sales are down.  It’s the time to reboot our mental hard-drives and re-focus on where we want to head.

We can join the doom and gloom merchants, or we can look for new opportunities for growth. I can tell you where my mind is focussed – bring on the growth! After all, there’s literally no better time in the world.

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Brisbane Copywriter

Humans are funny beasts. We focus on what’s important to us and can miss the most amazing things as this classic test on selective attention shows.

Now, if you have already seen that video or know about it, you need to see this one …

You see, people only pay attention to what’s important to them at the time … and miss the nuances. How can you grab their attention and make them pay attention to what’s important to you? One way is by doing something expected in an unexpected way – like this in-flight safety video.

And reach one to two three … break a pattern in your marketing today. And if you would like more information about Professors Simon’s research, take a look at Simon’s Lab.

Ingrid Cliff
We put your business into words
Heart Harmony – Brisbane Web Copywriter

Businesses that have websites, automatically think of being found in Google as the top way to attract new clients. But over the past few years, I have been watching the stats on my own site and have found some interesting shifts happening.

Yes, Google is still the number one way people find my Brisbane copywriting studio, but an extremely close second is through my Squidoo pages.

Squidoo.com is a free site where you share information about what you know. It is easy to put a page together about a topic (sort of like information scrap-booking), and provided your information is useful and low on the sell, people find your page (Squidoo ranks well on search engines) and then follow the links to find out more.  So how many people are we talking about?  Well my top Squidoo page averages around 3000 unique visitors per week, and well over half of them come back to my site for more information. Not a bad source of free traffic!

But Squidoo is not the only game in town.  I regularly submit the lead articles from my weekly newsletters to EzineArticles.com. My top article has had over 25,000 views since it went live (and yes, a large proportion of readers have clicked through on my resource link and come back to my website for more information).

You can also create a Hub Page, which is similar to Squidoo.  I haven’t found the Hub pages as brilliant as Squidoo in terms of traffic, but it is worth trying within your niche.

The trick is to regularly take a look at the analytic reports for your website, and see where your traffic is coming from. Also do some keyword research to find out what people are looking for in your niche – can you create a free or low cost product that has the information that people are searching for?

So, congratulations if you have a website … now think bigger than Google and see what else is out there to help drive traffic to your site.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – SEO Copywriter

Have you noticed the quiet revolution happening? With the GFC businesses are working harder to “liberate” clients from other businesses. You see it with banks, phone companies and insurance companies in particular – all actively touting for business and promising to make it easy for the customer to change. I was at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast this morning, and the competition between all the banks present,  trying to make it easy for businesses to change, was almost overwhelming.

I’ve had a similar experience moving from a PC to a MAC – Apple spend a lot of time holding your hand and supporting you while you change over. They take great pains to help you move your “stuff” over, and ensure that different MAC based programs all talk with each other (miracles do occur).

In most cases the changeover to a new service provider is relatively painless. And having someone handle the messy stuff is a big drawcard for people and certainly reduces buyer objections to changing their service provider.

But what about the businesses being left behind? Well often their behaviour isn’t as helpful. Professional service firms in particular do this side of things badly – seeing the person leaving as an opportunity to hit them with additional fees to transfer files or share information with the new firm. Web developers make it impossible to transfer websites, accountants sit on files, doctors don’t transfer patient records – the list of bad behaviour seems endless. They all dig in their toes and argue that they “own” the information and not the client. Legally they usually have a case, but morally?

People leave a business for a reason, which can often just be something very minor and involves no hard feelings. Digging the boot in on the way out only serves to make the ex-client vow never to darken the doors again and to share their tale of poor service with all and sundry.

What would happen if you made it easy for people – both to transfer in and transfer out? What if you took the approach that the customer owns their information and they are competent adults who can make their own decisions? What if you believed that if you help people, that they will return the favour – possibly returning to you at a later time, or referring other customers to you? What would your business feel like as a result?

Personally, I like the “try easy” approach – what do you think?

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Copywriter

Yesterday I indulged in my secret passion during an Unconference  – people watching (too many years as a facilitator – part of me always observes process). Unconferences 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 with me. All were enjoying the day, 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.

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