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