How To Create Loyalty Within Your Team

James Caan

One of the best ways of judging the quality and ability of a leader is by looking at the levels of loyalty they inspire from their staff. Getting your team to follow you through the good times and even more importantly the tough times, is the hallmark of a great leader.

And to get people to follow you when things are not going well you have to make them want to stay with you on the journey. In other words you need your staff to be to totally loyal to the cause and to you as individual.

There are plenty of people out there who expect and demand loyalty from their employees at all times. They think that giving someone a job is enough of a reason to expect them to be completely loyal and totally committed.

However, true and lasting loyalty is not simply about giving someone a wage and then demanding they follow you through thick and thin.

The fact is that loyalty is something that has to be earned and comes as a result of a relationship that is built up over a long time.

Some people think that you can lead through fear and that all you have to do is tell an individual to do something without expecting to be questioned in any way. But to get the very best performance from people you have to have a mutual understanding and the kind of relationship where you can sit down and have an honest on open discussion.

Of course in a business, especially one in the early days of its life, there can only ever be one boss. In my experience trying to run a company by committee and as a democracy is always going to end in failure. I have invested in firms where this was initially the case, and decisions took too long to be made. There needs to be a clear decision maker - someone at the top of an organisation who makes the big decisions and takes the ultimate responsibility.

But as a company grows and expands, then there is a need for a clearly defined structured and a board of directors. When you get a situation when you have one individual micro-managing it can lead to paralysis.

However even as a business grows and the management team expands it is still important that the person at the very top commands respect and loyalty.

To do that you have to be prepared to give something back to your staff. You need to understand what makes them tick, when they need a word of advice and support and when they need to be encouraged to do better.

All of us as individuals like to feel appreciated and like to be told that we are doing a good job from time to time. Showing empathy and understanding as a leader does not means that you are a soft touch and it can be the best way to motivate members of the team.

Great leaders are able to give something back to everyone, no matter what their position is in the hierarchy.

 Posted by:James Caan

5 Strategies for Generating Consumer Demand

Generating demand for your product requires much more than simply releasing it onto the market. You need to conduct research, determine what consumers' needs are, establish yourself as a leader in your industry and repeatedly prove your products' worth. 

Industry professionals recognize that before, during and after you introduce a new product, there is a lot of legwork to be done to pique consumers' curiosity and get them interested. Here are five things you should be doing:

Pay attention to market research. Your company should aim to figure out what customers need and want through surveys, test groups and feedback on social media and reviews left on your website. If you notice certain issues that keep popping up, there might be a need for a new product to solve the problem. 

Produce stellar content. If you're just starting out, your business should promote its new product and prove that it's solving a problem currently plaguing consumers through informative and educational content. Determine your target demographic and do some research to find out where they are active on social media and elsewhere online. Your content should aim to entertain and inform your customers of the value of your products.

Release an explainer video that relates to your business or a humorous video they'll want to share with friends (think Old Spice or Dollar Shave Club's spots), an infographic that educates consumers about a pertinent issue, or a blog post written by your CEO that contains industry insights. By producing quality content on a regular basis, you'll begin to build trust with your audience and ideally increase sales from this newly established relationship.

Feature customers' reviews. On your website, product pages and elsewhere, you should be featuring customer reviews. Customers are going to trust testimonials from their fellow shoppers. In a survey conducted by Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange, it was found that 78 percent of American customers aged 18 to 64 who shop online consult reviews before purchasing a product.

They won't hesitate to purchase from your competitors if there's a plethora of bad reviews about your products, which is why your employees should be apologetic to any customers who had negative experiences and respond quickly to any feedback that comes up. You also need to track their reviews and analyze them in order to improve products. Rating and review software such as Bazaarvoice, Re-Vu or Gigya will allow you to do just that depending on the size of your business and your budget.

Give new customers a deal. Another method to get consumers to try your products for the first time is to offer them a discounted or special rate. Initially, customers may not be willing to try out a product at full price. If it's offered at a rate lower than your competitors' -- they just might.

Once customers have received your product and find it useful, they'll likely be inclined to purchase from you again at the regular price. Make sure you're clear that the deal is a one-time offer, because you don't want customers to be discouraged when they decide to shop with you again and find your products priced differently.

Create an exclusive club. Once a person becomes a repeat customer, you'll want to reward them and make them feel appreciated. Create an exclusive club for these loyal customers that gives them access to certain promotions, lets them in on company news and secrets before they're released to the general public, and communicates to them that they're part of the process of perfecting your products. Ask for their opinions and encourage them to take surveys.

Virgin Airlines offers its loyal customers a tier system where they are given more perks including discounts, expedited check in on flights and priority boarding depending upon their status. Boloco, a restaurant chain in New England, encourages customer spending where after every $50 purchase, they get a free menu item.

When attempting to generate customer demand, you have to realize that no one is going to listen until you substantiate your usefulness. Always keep the customers' needs in mind and aim to please.

How did your company generate demand for your products or services? 

Firas Kittaneh

Firas Kittaneh is the CEO & Co-founder of One Mall Group and Amerisleep. His award-winning team is focused on bringing housewares online to a larger consumer base using cutting-edge technology.

The Only Woman in the Room

For most of my business career I’ve been the only woman in the room.  When I started selling mainframes back in the day – I was the only woman sales rep in my company.  When I moved into marketing, I was the only woman in the team. When I started my own consulting business in the late ‘80s, I was the only woman in the executive team meetings or the boardroom for my clients.  It was a man’s world and I learned how to live in it.

Fast forward to today. I’m still usually the only woman in the room.

Some folks say women are discriminated against in managerial and executive positions. Personally I’ve rarely felt that was true.  Sure, a few people have been less than respectful to me, but that’s true outside of business as well. In my 30+ year career, I’ve usually been treated with respect as my clients trust me to drive revenue growth for their businesses.

Some folks say women are discriminated against in managerial and executive positions. Personally I’ve rarely felt that was true.

Yep, I’m one of those rare women in the boardroom. I choose to be there as an executive consultant. To this day I enjoy working in those male dominated rooms. I suppose I’m somewhat of an exception.

Most women choose to simply move on.

Why Do Women Leave?
Some women leave the work force to have families. They choose to stay home and raise their kids. Then they find other ways to create business opportunities for themselves. Some of us, like me, leave to start our own businesses. I did just that when I was 27 years old.  I wanted the freedom of being my own boss.  But then I came back, on my own terms. Some women get frustrated with the corporate politics and leave.  Some don’t see an opportunity for advancement and so they leave.  Regardless of the reason we women leave, the majority of us do leave.

When we leave, it’s the corporations that suffer. Here’s why.

The Diversity of the Female and Male Brain
In her brilliant books, Dr Louann Brizendine* paints a detailed picture of the differences between the female and male brain. Here’s a summary of how those differences begin.

• Every brain is female in utero until 8 weeks. Female is nature’s default setting. At 8 weeks, if a burst of testosterone occurs, the brain will become male.  If it’s doesn’t happen, the brain remains female.

• That burst of testosterone dramatically changes the makeup of the now male brain.  That testosterone kills off cells in the communication and emotional centers and grows more cells in the sex and aggression centers.

• A female brain continues to grow a significantly larger communication and emotional center than the male brain, fueling empathy, intuition and more.

When we leave, it’s the corporations that suffer.

Because of our larger communication and emotional centers, females read facial expressions, hear vocal nuances, sense what’s happening in individuals and groups and create strong one-on-one social relationships.

Male brains are wired by their aggression and sexual brain centers to focus on making things happen, getting to the goal, defense of territory, physical strength and general domination of those around them.

That certainly explains a lot, now doesn’t it?

It’s the Business That Loses
I think we need both the male and the female brain’s wiring to create a balanced culture that drives business success. As women leave the corporate world for their own pursuits I have to ask:

Does communication play a key part in business success? Team success? Market success?

Is empathy important in creating customer loyalty? Employee loyalty? Team collaboration?

Is seeing the reality of a situation, sensing the unspoken truth, important in business?

I believe the answer is “YES!” to all of the above. Which is why I’ll keep on being the only woman in the room. And asking other women to join me there. Now more than ever, corporations, businesses and our modern world need the skills we bring with our oh-so female brains.

* I highly recommend you read both The Female Brain and The Male Brain. These books are amazing studies for ourselves, our kids, our teams and more.  Click here to learn more.


Photo Credit from Flickr
Rebel Brown (4 Posts)A masterful agent of change, for over 25 years Rebel has inspired, coached and empowered over 250 global organizations to ultimate performance and profitable market advantage. Rebel blends the power of neurosciences with her deep business expertise to guide executive and corporate clients to unleash their ultimate performance potential. She has been featured in First Business TV, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Business Insider and Business Week. Her best selling business book, Defy Gravity, is any leaders’ guide to breakout growth. Rebel’s Rebelations blog is read by thousands weekly. She is a an NSA and a Vistage International speaker, acting as a keynote speaker and leading workshops globally. She also was named one of the Top 100 Women in Computing. Besides speaking and writing, Rebel has vast consulting experience in shifting corporate perspectives to create breakout strategy, positioning for advantage and profitable growth. She works with US and European venture firms to successfully fund and launch companies. She also ran a consulting practice in Paris for two years, bringing European firms to the United States. Rebel is also the founder and director of the Unstoppable U Foundation, a non-profit program committed to guiding kids to know that they are born to be Unstoppable.

Generational Astrology - loyalty and job life expectancy

See if the following story is consistent with so much that has been written about Generation X, Y, and Z in the recent past by countless “generational consultants”:

They get restless after a little while in one place,” said an employer. “For the last few years I haven’t counted on keeping the ordinary fellows more than six months. I just let them go and take the next one who is always dropping in.

“Madam, I assure you I could just cross the street tomorrow and be paid as much as you give me.” Selfish, satisfied, and capricious, these young people newly emancipated into economic freedom are seldom idle; they work, but they are marking time on the spot they have reached, for the do not perceive any options desirable enough to lead them beyond those they are now enjoying.”

An enormous amount of ink has been spilled on this topic, usually along with the different characteristics of the Baby Boomers and Generation X, Y, Z, ad nauseam. One reason for this increased attention is there are simply more generations interacting in the workforce today than in the past.

One reason is life expectancy. The average knowledge worker today will outlive their employer, with an average active work life of approximately fifty years compared to the average organizational life of thirty. This translates into the average worker today having many more jobs—and even careers—than those of their ancestors a century ago.

It may be an interesting academic and historical exercise to create lists of the differences between the Baby Boomers, Generation X, Y, and Z, but knowing the personality traits between the generations does not necessarily assist a company in attracting or inspiring its knowledge workers. All of this “generational astrology” has all the explanatory power of asking people their signs—it is an incredibly weak theory.

A more robust explanation for today’s workers—no matter when they were born—is the fact that they are knowledge workers, who are far wealthier than their parents—they grew up in what economist Brink Lindsey calls “The Age of Abundance.”

Wealth provides more options, from extending education, traveling the world, living with parents longer, or simply delaying gainful employment. John Adams, America’s second president wrote:

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy and they in turn must study those subjects so that their children can study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

In an intellectual capital economy there is a far greater range of talents that can be rewarded. America’s best-paid chef, Wolf gang Puck, earned $16 million in 2005 while Takeru “Tsunami” Kobayashi earned more than $200,000 a year for holding the title of the world’s hot-dog eating champion (from The Economist, October 7, 2006: 23-24).

Another crucial difference in today’s workers is they own more of the means of production in their heads than ever before, which gives them enormous market power in the economy. They also understand this fundamental fact better than their predecessors. When I entered the CPA profession, I believed I was a service worker; today’s students understand they are knowledge workers.

Organizations can lament the fact that Generation X, Y, and Z are not as loyal as their parents, but the fact of the matter is loyalty is a two-way street; it must be earned. No business deserves any loyalty, either from its customers or its associates, until it does something to earn it.

Loyalty is not dead in the business world, but a reason to be loyal may be dying in some industries. The real question is, does the organization deserve the loyalty of its workers.

In tribute to Mark Twain’s quip that history may not repeat itself but it does rhyme, the opening story above is from the 1907 book The New Basis of Civilization, by Simon Nelson Patten.

I suppose one generation has always had issues with the next, but it is hardly any reason to treat human beings different. To believe otherwise is to take astrology seriously.Posted by:

 Ron Baker

Four No-Regret Moves to Convert Your E-Commerce Site Into a Big Seller

 

E-commerce sites convert about 5% of their visitors to buyers. In comparison, many retailers achieve conversion rates in excess of 60% (depending on the format). There are plenty of reasons why offline shopping conversion rates would be higher (e.g. shoppers have already shown commitment by walking into the store) but you don’t have to spend too much time with the data to see there is a massive opportunity for websites to improve their e-commerce sales. Even a 200 or 300 basis point improvement in the current average online conversion rates would be a massive boost. And it’s a reasonable goal.

Recently I was honored to speak to dozens of e-commerce leaders on the McKinsey Chief Marketing & Sales Officer network with a colleague of mine, Stephan Zimmermann, about this topic. We shared a systematic approach to understand and close gaps in conversion performance. Here are a set of 4 no regret moves we shared that you can put in place today:

1. Fix comparison engine entries. Most companies devote attention to getting SEO and SEM right, but one of the most overlooked traffic sources for true "down-funnel" purchasers are comparison shopping engines. I'm amazed at how often the data linkages to comparison engines are either inaccurate or the price is so much higher than competitors that the results are well below the fold or worse on a second page. I encourage my clients to try a simple experiment. Take 15 products that you sell and look them up on one of the popular comparison shopping engines - if your company isn't listed in the top 5, forget about attracting or converting the customers most ready to buy. Fix the entries right away.

2. Understand and address exit points. In retail stores, we often conduct exit interviews in the store parking lot. We stop people with and without shopping bags to understand why their customer journey. For every 100 people that surf a site, on average, 95 leave without buying anything. If you ran a store where you had that type of throughput, you would be out of business.
In our experience, companies need to ask the "five whys" on the highest traffic exit pages.
Systematically attack the root cause of exit pages (e.g. product, price, availability, description) and put in actions to fix them. At one company, they leadership team established a "war room" to fix broken pages and within weeks results started to improve.

3. Boost average order value. Many companies use computer-driven algorithms to drive product recommendations and next-product-to-buy options to increase average order value. These can be very helpful, but as I've written in the past (see: One Big Mistake Retailers Are Making: Not Thinking Like Their Customers), a more nuanced and deeper understanding of customer preferences can be lost in the data shuffle. Many companies will put hours of energy to putting this great technology in place but very little time on maintaining and optimizing it. You need to constantly tune recommendation engines with human intervention from merchants and adjust the technology based on what you learn. If you don't have a periodic human rhythm in place to evaluate and refine the right recommendations for additional products to buy you are missing out on valuable sales.

4. Get smart about loyalty. Not all customers are created equal. A bad customer is worse than no customer at all, especially when you’re spending money trying to keep him or her loyal. It’s critical to do a “recency-frequency” analysis of your customers to spot the opportunities and line up communications to the customer life stage. Identify your new customers, and figure out how to expand their shopping with you so they remain loyal but frequent shopper. Encourage repeat purchases with follow-up emails and next-product-to-buy offers. Keep your frequent and active shoppers loyal; they’re gold to you. Find out who are your customers who were once loyal but no longer are. They might be easy wins to get them back. Most importantly, improve your algorithms to detect customers at risk and take early intervention to keep them.

We've seen this work. I’ve found time and again when you ask follow up questions and the "five why's", the opportunities abound. Follow these four steps and find the opportunities. Because, believe me, there are lots of them. 

Posted by:Josh Leibowitz

The One Skill Most Leaders Lack

Bruna Martinuzzi

A study reported in the Harvard Business Review shows that one of the skills most serial entrepreneurs lack is empathy. Empathy is a powerful antenna for understanding the experiences of those around us. It helps good leaders become great leaders and is a key to business success. 

As management guru Peter Drucker said, “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.” Empathy is an important component of keeping a customer.

In Wired To Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, Dave Patnaik illustrates how successful organizations practice empathy for the consumer in the way they do business. One such company is Herman Miller, which uses empathy to understand the customer and build better products. A company statement explains, “We gain empathy by engaging with nurses and other caregivers in multiple ways. Facility tours, focus groups, gaming sessions and job shadowing help us develop insight into the work of caregivers, to really understand what they do, what their workday is like.” The company then shares those experiences with product development teams through reports, hallway conversations and workshops.

 

Some people are gifted with a high empathy level while others struggle with the notion. If you or your business struggle, here are seven ways you can practice empathy on an organizational level:

1. Use outsight. Allot five to 10 minutes in your regularly scheduled meetings for everyone to quickly share what they have heard in the field about your product or service. It’s a good way to keep your ear to the ground to find out about customer issues that may otherwise not surface. Don’t wait until you hear a complaint to respond. Use all the knowledge you gain to engage with customers and let them know you care. Empathy engenders loyalty.

2. Build a culture of empathy. When empathy is not practiced within the organization—with all constituents—it’s impossible to expect it to happen with customers. Whitney Hess, a user experience consultant, talks about how designers, for example, focus their efforts on developing organizational empathy for the end-user, but neglect to do the same on their own home turf. As she put it, “They say you can’t truly love another before you learn to love yourself. Organizations are no different. If we don’t love and respect and admire the people we work with every day, we can’t collectively give our customers the love they deserve.” Empathy is an inside-out job.

RELATED: The Importance of Grace in the Workplace 

 

3. Know who you want to do business with. Entrepreneurs often start businesses without being fully aware of who they want to cater to. A company might start with a B2C model, only to find out in midstream that a B2B model is where they would have focused if they had done a proper analysis. Seth Godin writes, “… too often, we pick the product or service first, deciding that it’s perfect and then rushing to market, sure that the audience will sort itself out. Too often, though, we end up with nothing.” Whether you’re a real estate broker, a bowling alley investor, a yoga instructor or app developer, Godin adds, “in every case, first figure out who you’d like to do business with, then go make something just for them,” Are you targeting the right people? Do you fully understand their needs? If not, what can you do to change this?

4. Build empathy in your post-purchase policies. While everyone should be trained to use an empathetic approach at every touch point with the client, this is particularly important in your post-purchase policies. Make it easy for people to seek redress, if needed. How a customer is treated when things go wrong has an impact on whether or not the person continues to be your customer. For example, watch commission-based frontline employees who may treat a customer seeking a refund with less warmth than they did during the purchase. In Nice Companies Finish First: Why Cutthroat Management Is Over And Collaboration Is In, Peter Shankman shows how a focus on empathic service builds revenue. A customer-centric leader has a framework in place to quickly meet customer demands, puts a premium on what customers say and do, and changes what’s not working without looking back.

5. Write intelligible user manuals. We have all been through the annoyance and frustration of having to follow instruction booklets that tested our patience. Some are so badly written, in a rush to get the product out the door, that you would never know from the writing that the person actually followed the same instructions themselves. Putting yourself in the shoes of the manual reader is one small but impactful way to show empathy.

6. Take an empathy test. People generally know whether or not they have empathy. However, we often misjudge the extent of our empathy. If you need help to raise your self-awareness in this critical area, consider taking this free online Empathy Quotient test. To get feedback from your constituents on your empathy level, consider taking an emotional intelligence test. 

7. Empathy as a way of life. If you have children, there is probably no greater gift you can give them than to help them understand and practice empathy early on. Take an inspiration from this video showcasing how Japanese fourth grade students are taught empathy. Closer to home, we have Roots of Empathy, an organization that has been successful in developing empathy in children and decreasing aggression and bullying.

 
Bruna Martinuzzi is the founder of Clarion Enterprises Ltd., and the author of two books: Presenting with Credibility: Practical Tools and Techniques for Effective Presentations and The Leader as a Mensch: Become the Kind of Person Others Want to Follow.