Why Retail Is Wrecking Service

What would retailers do if there were no holidays? In Canada, the average retail store has some sort of gimmicky promotion or sale right year round. Canada Day is followed by Back to School, which is followed by Thanksgiving, then Halloween running right into Christmas. Boxing Day (which runs up to the middle of January for many stores) kicks off the desperation sales followed by Valentine's Day and Easter.

How would your loved one appreciate a new filing cabinet to show your love on Valentine's Day? Nothing says "I love you" more than a wireless Internet router don't you think?

What would happen if we were to abolish all holidays for a full year forcing retailers to no longer try to gimmick their way into our wallets? Would there be a return to an Attitude of Service to capture a customer? What if we were to abolish having a sale and forced retailers to find a fair price for their goods somewhere between the regular price many pay during Christmas season and the 80% off they pay after Christmas?

What if your mechanic were to practice "retail" pricing and charged you $1000 for the service to your car and $200 for the same service on your neighbor's car - because he brought it into the garage after Christmas? Would you return again?

Not much wonder service businesses get hit up so hard by clients and potential clients to adjust their pricing. Retailers have made it impossible to believe that the price is the price.

Set your price. Stick to it. Have some integrity about your product or service and offer us tremendous service, we are willing to pay for that. You really only get to charge next to nothing if you plan to offer next to nothing.
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE by Kevin Burns - Corporate Attitude/Culture Strategist

Creator of the 90-Day Strategy to Greatness Culture


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One Way To Stop Being Mediocre

Most training delivers only temporary motivational highs, so what should training companies do differently?

It's not the training companies that are the problem although sometimes the problem IS a bad trainer/speaker. Most times though, the problem is the people who hire the trainers and speakers.

Companies keep hiring the wrong trainers/speakers because they are trying to fix what they THINK is the problem. Most training addresses usually only the symptom and not the root-cause. Example: poor time-management is a symptom of poor self-discipline and an attitude of mediocrity (good enough). A time-management course will not solve the underlying issue and so, for a few days, there will me a motivational high which will dissipate over time and you will be right back to having the same issue in a few weeks or months.

The same can be said of communication skills, change, leadership, motivation, productivity, stress and team building: all useless training until you address the underlying values and attitudes. Besides, if these really were the problems, you would have solved the problem years ago. They already have been given the skills so why isn't it working?

If sales are down and you have a well-trained sales department, throwing more sales training seems wasteful. They have already been trained and were doing well up to now. Something else is going on. Sales managers, look past the numbers and see what's really going on. Maybe this recession has your sales team scared. Scared sales people do NOT perform well. Address the root-cause, not the symptom.

You can't expect brain-based training (courses and trainers who only know how to appeal to the brain), you have to get past the brain to that place where all of the reasons, excuses and justifiers for not wanting to be better are: attitude. "How to" is great if you have addressed the "why" people do the the things they do. Without the "why" (the underlying attitudes), your training will fall flat and end up in a pile of mediocrity - just like every other organization before you.

When you read the testimonials from trainers and speakers, read them. If they have a lot of "You were great" testimonials, then they will deliver a temporary motivational high. What you want to look for in testimonials is how an organization is different/better after training. Or better yet, an evaluation NOT filled out in the session - but filled out 3 months after.

Speakers/trainers take the stage for one of three reasons:
1) for the applause (ego stroke)
2) catharsis (working out their own problems using your group as therapy)
3) to make a difference regardless of applause or evaluation scores

Most trainers/speakers (80%) could fit easily into the first two choices. Only 20% actually do what they do to make a difference and without need to manipulate your people into getting high evaluation scores and standing ovations. (Any speaker/trainer who quotes evaluation scores needs to be liked. Attendees rarely score a trainer low who they like.)

If you want lasting results, you want training that makes your people a bit uncomfortable, makes them squirm and makes them voluntarily want to have better than mediocre results. Address the root-cause, not the symptom. But, if your people just want to have fun, hire a clown but don't call it training.

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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Rewards Make Performance Worse

Imagine yourself standing in the middle of a large networking event. You are surrounded by hundreds of people. You reach into your pocket and pull out a handful of your own business cards. Then, with all of your might, you throw that handful of business cards straight up into the air and let them fall to the ground like snowflakes. Then, you stand back and wait for people to pick up your business card. What are the chances that people will call your phone number to place an order for your product or service using this model?

This is exactly the same sales business model that companies are using worldwide: make a cold call, throw a business card at the prospect and rush back to the office and wait for the phone to ring. Essentially it's the same as throwing a handful of business cards into a crowded room. And yet, sales managers still believe in cold call competitions: rewarding salespeople for knocking on the most doors in a day. They believe that by handing out prizes and incentives for knocking on doors that their business will increase as a result.

Dan Pink, former speechwriter for Al Gore, is now studying motivation in the workplace. What he and many other researchers and economists have found is that rewards and incentives do not work. Perhaps small incentives work a little bit but large incentives actually make performance worse. In fact the bigger the incentive, the worse the performance. As Pink says, "there is a mismatch between what science knows and what business does."

So, what does business do? The same thing it is always done: offer incentives for performance. In other words, business holds onto an attitude that says, "don't confuse me with the facts because I have already made up my mind." But now here's the strangest part, business will offer incentives for out-of-the-box thinking. Do you see the problem with this? Incentives retard thought. And the bigger the incentive the less likely someone will come up with a solution.

So now even a bigger problem exists because of the findings that incentives retard performance: there are incentive companies that have built their survival on the misconception that incentives improve performance. But science and research prove otherwise. In spite of these findings, you may still receive a telephone call from an incentives company offering their services to improve the performance of your people. Incentives companies were formed on opinion and not on fact. How many other companies do you deal with whose very business models are based on opinion and not fact?

You need to see the video for yourself. The video is from a TED conference and runs 18 minutes in length. Might I suggest that you close your office door, put your phone on voicemail, turn off your Blackberry and give your undivided attention to this video. It is important. Findings like this will change your attitude about what you believe to be true and the way business gets done. Ignore this video and its findings and you may actually be impeding the performance of your people. This is an Attitude Adjustment of monumental proportions.



http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pink_on_motivation.html
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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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Salesman Of The Year - So What

So you're salesman of the year. So what? What does it matter? Are you impressed when you see a sign reading "salesman of the year?" You see, I really don't think that a fancy title of your accomplishments really means much unless you're prepared to also divulge how you came to get that award.

What about real estate signs on front lawns that read, "Number 1 Realtor?" What is the criteria for being a number one realtor? That part of the equation has been left out.

If it's an award that you received because you made a lot of money then keep it to yourself. Your customers really don't care that you were a number one realtor or salesman of the year. All your customers care about is that you serve them well, meet their needs and make them more important than your fancy title. In fact, in our thirst to be top dog at something we will go to great lengths to prove that we are the best.

Years ago when I made my living in radio, we would scour the twice annual ratings looking for every opportunity to tout ourselves as number one in some category. Maybe one of the disc jockeys would be number one between 11 AM and noon with men 18 to 34 holding down blue-collar jobs. That demographic could be sold to a potential client who wanted to reach those very customers. But how do you go on the air and say that your number one between 11 AM and noon to 18 to 34-year-old men who hold down blue-collar jobs? What about the people who weren't 18 to 34-year-old men and the people who work holding down blue-collar jobs who just happened to be listening at the time? What about them?

You see, awards don't mean much. In fact, they're getting to mean less. When once upon a time you would celebrate the first, second or third place showing in a race, now celebrations are held for children who receive "participant" ribbons. Everyone gets a prize. Recognition is what people want at work. So employers are tasked to find creative ways to celebrate small achievements.

I don't want to be sold by the number one salesman. I don't want my house sold by the number one Realtor. I don't ask my doctor where he finished in his class. I'm just glad he finished. Besides money is a lousy way of keeping score.

And what if you are salesman of the year two years ago? What happened last year? Really, what have you done for me lately? If you're going to market yourself as the number one salesman this year are US prepared to market yourself as the number three salesman next year?

Announcing that you are number one is really self-serving -- egotistical almost. If it's not an award for service bestowed by your customers, then it really doesn't matter does it? The only thing that matters is that your customers are served well. If it's a rookie salesman who serves better than you, then I suggest allowing the rookie salesman to serve your customers. They will appreciate that he made the relationship about them and not about himself.

Let's keep our eye on the ball and the reason we're really here -- to serve to the best of our abilities.

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Attitude w/ ATTITUDE

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