Linda's Business Blog

Customer Service: are you a May or How person?

In a potential sales situation, which of these two approaches do you think will bring a more successful response from a customer:

May I help you?

or

How can I help you?

If you are the salesperson or the business owner who inquires, the first question most often results in only 1 of 2 one-word responses:

"Yes" or "No"

If you ask the "May I help you?" question as part of your good customer service policy chances are your sales won't be as high as the salesperson or business owner who asks "How can I help you?"

The "How" question requires the potential customer to respond with a sentence.  Even if the response is "I don't need any help," or "I'm just looking," it is far more engaging than a simple, often dismissive "No."  The hoped-for answer, "Yes," often invites an inquiry back that opens up a true conversation between sales person and potential customer such as "Do you have this item in blue?"

As simplistic as this seems, the way in which you open a sales/potential customer scenario can make or break a sale.  Have you ever been shopping and been approached by the sales person who asked "May I help you?" and you could swear you heard in his or her voice a tone that almost begs you to reply in the negative?  I have.  It's as though the sales person doesn't really want to be bothered and hopes you'll just go away.  A "yes" answer is good, it does open the conversation but it requires further questions by the salesperson such as "How can I help you?" Better to just start out with "How can I help you?"

I think the gist of what I'm saying is that if you have a business, whether you are a solopreneur or the CEO of a major corporation, you have products/services that you wish, hope that others will purchase.  If you are the solopreneur then it is you and the customer...this is the quintessential direct selling situation.  If you are the CEO then you have selling divisions and personnel responsible for the selling situations.  Whichever case, it is important that the sales person have their heart in their work:

• a true belief that the products/services are worthy of sale, purchase and ownership
• a true belief in the value of the products/services
• a true desire to serve the interests of the potential customer

I follow the work of sales and positive attitude guru Jeffrey Gitomer.  He has an excellent article on his website, BuyGitomer, titled, "What's the best part of selling? Is it really just the sale?"  In this article he talks about getting your enthusiasm back for sales in what has been a down economy.  He lists thoughts to consider that remind a person of why they went into sales in the first place, such things as [from Mr. Gitomer's list] as:

• The challenge of asking and engaging.
• The great feeling of serving customers and helping them succeed.
• The personal pride of making the sale, and knowing the customer made the right choice.

Mr. Gitomer lists 5 things to put your heart into as regards sales:

1. Put your heart into your job.
2. Put your heart into your desire to serve.
3. Put your heart into your product belief.
4. Put your heart into your presentation.
5. Put your heart into delivering customer value.

So.   What better question to ask of a potential customer than, "How can I help you?"

Human Element is essential for Customer Service Success

When you go shopping or are in some kind of retail situation, don't you want the salesperson, manager or establishment owner to be friendly, helpful and accommodating?  Who wouldn't?  Who doesn't?

Recently I wrote about the importance of point-of-sale customer service and received a great response from a reader.  This reader, a young mom, related her experiences on a recent afternoon when she planned to take her toddler [age 3] to an afternoon matinee at the movies.  Her afternoon involved not one, but two examples of what NOT to do in the area of customer service.  She has given me permission to relate her story.

Example One:  First this young mom took her son into a discount retail store to purchase some snacks to take to the movie.  She thought she had allowed plenty of time before the start of the movie...and the discount store was in the same shopping center as the cinema.  In her words:

• "...I spotted at least 5 employees in [the store] just as I was standing in line. Only one checkstand was open and the line was growing. We waited in line for over 5 minutes before someone came and opened up another line...."

Granted this seems a small thing, but the store's manager should have been on his or her toes and put the clerks to work rather than let a line of customers grow at one lone open checkstand.  At the very least, if the clerks who seemed to be loitering were not indeed yet on shift, they should not have been standing near the cash registers giving customers the feeling of being ignored.  Yes, I'd have to agree with this reader that this was an example of poor customer service.  The result of this for her was to put her late buying tickets for the movie.

Example Two:  I think we've all, at one time or another, been late to the start of a movie.  I know I have.  I've rushed from the parking lot to run to the ticket window only to be told the movie had already begun...but still I bought my ticket and quietly took a seat.  This reader had a much different experience.  Again in her words:

• "...So now we were even more late to the movie...it wouldn't matter to [her son] if we missed the first 15 to 20 minutes of the movie so I went inside to buy my ticket. The girl at the ticket counter said we were too late and wouldn't sell us the tickets. My thought...why would a business turn down a paying customer? I was willing to pay full price for less of a product! I spoke with the manager and she told me that after 20 minutes the option to sell that show physically disappears off the computer. So she used the old, 'the computer wouldn't let me do it' excuse. If I would have been her, I would have said, 'Let me ring you up for your movie,' and 'I'm sorry for any inconvenience.' But she just said the computer doesn't let them. What kind of a business has a point of sale system you can't override? To me that is poor business...."

In this I totally agree with this reader.  There are a few key factors that made the manager's decision not to sell the young mom a ticket the incorrect decision:

• this was a weekday matinee - in most cases the house is no where near full, so allowing someone to enter the theater after the movie has started shouldn't be an issue
• "humanity" should have swayed this manager's decision: surely you can't look into the face of a 3-year old little boy and tell his mom that she simply won't be able to buy a ticket because the computer says 'no!'
• every business should have 'exceptions to the rules' for just such cases as this - yes the computer system has built-in time changes for ticket sales...however, managers should have the ability to receive cash, make out receipts and then account for them at the end of day

Business reputations can be made or broken by how that business' employees or processes affect and effect the buying public.  I know what it is like to have to face the disappointment of a child when a ride at an amusement park is sold out or broken down and they can't get on as example.  The human element of customer service is every bit as important as the dollars and cents elements.  In the movie theater example of this young mom and her son, for goodness sake manager...sell her the tickets and let them see the movie!

I will say that it is difficult sometimes to know what to do in a customer service situation.  Earlier this year I was faced with making a hard choice at a convention.  This convention had a day that was open to the public.  The convention involved attendees making and then bringing and displaying things they'd created.  The 'public day,' as it was called, was to allow the general public an opportunity to see these "cool" creations.  People had to pay a small entrance fee and the viewing hours were clearly posted.  The complication came when the public attendance grew beyond all expectations.  By afternoon it became clear that people would be turned away.  My job for the convention was public relations...never an easy job.

The situation that is relevant involved the very end of the public day.  The signs were up that public viewing was now closed and the very last of the public was in the main hall finishing their viewing of the displays.  Then a woman came to one of the fellows standing "guard" at the entrance and said she needed to get in, that her family was in there.  The man at the gate told her politely that we couldn't allow anymore people in and that she was welcome to wait right there for her family to come out.  Behind the lady was a small group of those who had been turned away and, for whatever reason, just didn't leave.  A bit of an argument was arising between the man and lady so I went to investigate.

Turns out that the "family" was only this woman's adolescent son and she was concerned that he didn't realize she'd been late to arrive.  There was more to the story, but suffice it to say that I made the on-the-spot decision to allow her to enter the hall.  After several minutes she and her son came to me, both very grateful for my decision.  However, one of the people in that group of disappointed people came up and demanded to also be let in.  In this case I had to be firm and say 'no,' but did offer that person an abbreviated explanation - which they graciously accepted. 

It's my belief that customer service policies should never be so carved in stone that they become cold and unyielding.  What would I have done in the case of my reader and her son?  I'd have just let them in, free, and offered them popcorn.

Marketing and the Solopreneur

I don't think Ivanka Trump is actually a solopreneur, I think she is probably an entire industry.  I like to include photos at the beginning of a post and went to PicApp [a great place to get photos for blog posts by-the-way] to find one for the word 'businesswoman.'  And I got photos of Ivanka Trump!  Well, it does show her holding a book she wrote, "The Trump Card: Playing to Win in Work and Life' and attending a book signing.  A book signing is a great marketing strategy where the producer meets directly with the buying public...kind of like direct marketing don't you think?

Solopreneurs are small businesses; actually they are one-person businesses.  Solopreneur businesses run the gamut from virtual assistant to business consultant to network marketing opportunity independent distributor to writer to artist.  Solopreneurs have all the same business stuff to deal with as businesses of any size: accounts receivables, planning, marketing, producing products or fine-tuning services...whatever the owner of the local tavern has to do for his business the solopreneur has to do for hers just in differing ways and degrees.

Marketing is important to the solopreneur just as for the huge multi-national business.  I found a great website, The Solopreneur Life by Larry Kelto, himself a solopreneur.  He has a post on his site titled, "Our Hunt for the Best Marketing Web Sites for Solopreneurs."  In an interesting take on writing a post, he has listed some great resources in the 'comments' section of that post.  It's well worth checking out.

An online marketing venue that is new to my art business is that of YouTube.  Now everyone knows what YouTube is and people are always talking about interesting, funny or outrageous videos they've seen.  What didn't occur to me until recently was that YouTube can be a valuable part of a social media marketing strategy.  I read a book recently by Michael Miller, "YouTube for Business: Online Video Marketing for Any Business."   His book does a good job covering "How YouTube can help you market your business."  He asks good questions to consider such as:

• What is the purpose of your YourTube videos?
• Who is your customer?
• What does your customer want or need?
• What are you promoting?
• What is your message?
• How does YouTube fit within your overall marketing mix?

He gives a great list of possible online strategies:

1. email
2. websites
3. search engines
4. blogs
5. social networks
6. photo-sharing sites
7. video-sharing sites

I read through and studied Miller's book with the idea of using YouTube as part of my business' marketing strategy.  My newest marketing strategy was to sign on with a print-on-demand company, Fine Art America, as I mentioned in my last post on Linda's Business Blog.  At local art events this year, prints and notecards of my art images have been selling well so I wondered how I might expand that and Fine Art America fits that piece of marketing.  Now, how to spread the word about that?  After reading the book about marketing on YouTube and looking at videos by other artists and photographers it began to make sense.  I made my first "sales" video and uploaded it yesterday which you can see below.

There are many good 'tips for making YouTube work for your business' out there just by entering that phrase into a search engine.  I found a good one at Mashable, "Top 10 YouTube Tips for Small Businesses" written by Amy-Mae Elliott.  Her tips:

1. Create and customize your channel.  As a 'first' tip this is a good one.  Miller's book gives quite a bit of how-to on this.  So, it was the first thing I did.
2. Add subtitles.  I haven't done this yet as I have yet to make a video that is a "movie" with talking; right now my videos are artistic slideshows with text.
3. Don't overuse annotations.  Seems YouTube allows you to "write over" parts of your video but I don't see the need.  I agree with Elliott that "...Sure, you want to grab people’s attention and make an immediate impression, but your video content and other info you’ve added to the site should be enough to not have to rely on extraneous text...."
4. Act to remove offensive comments.  Elliot gives good advice for this tip and so does Miller in his book.  He says, "...There's no right or wrong here. Just know that if you enable comments, you will receive some negatives one. How you respond to those negative comments depends on how your company deals with them...."  Since my company is just me I decided to enable 'moderated' comments so that I can best handle this issue.
5. Engage with the YouTube community.  This is good advice whether you are participating on YouTube or any other social media site for business reasons.  In the real world, if you belong to the local chamber of commerce and derive a portion of business from the community itself, especially business-to-business, then you really ought to go to the mixers.  Be a good business neighbor.
6. Organize your content. 
7. Don't overlook tags.  Both Elliott and Miller give great advice here.  Anyone familiar with social media, blogging, websites, and article writing knows how very important tags and keywords are for search engine reasons...people need to find you.
8. Promote your YouTube videos elsewhere.  Of course.
9. Use YouTube's free analytics tools.  I've just gotten started on YouTube and have already found value here.
10. Don't neglect your channel.  The obvious here is that making social media of any kind or variety a part of your marketing strategy is also you making a commitment to your business - a commitment of time and creativity. 

I would encourage any type of solopreneur business that is not already utilizing YouTube to take a look.  Also during this month's review of your business plan, see where this might fit.  -  You do review your business plan every month don't you?

What is the Business of Business for an Artist-preneur?

Times they have changed...but not all the way.  Artists still use easels and canvas and brushes and pigment but the female artists I know [me included] no longer wear those ridiculously tight and long and hot dresses! 

Although I think we're all influenced by those who went before us in whatever profession we work.  Tools may change over time, materials may upgrade or go out of existence but the desire to manipulate the media [speaking of art materials] to express through color and shape and form an idea or feeling remains a shared thing.  I expressed this thought as the closing statement on my art blog, Mosaic Mandalas, today.  Doesn't matter the profession, we learn from the successes and failures of those who went before.

Business is the same.  I remember ten years ago when I was considering becoming a full-time working artist I did some research into art marketing.  Not the "where do you go to buy art" type of marketing, but the "where does an artist market his or her work" type of marketing.  In doing my research I read of the trials and tribulations of artists who tried one marketing ploy after another in an effort to peddle their wares.  The key point I learned from all this research was this: marketing is no different for an art business than for any other type of business - you have to communicate to and connect with the marketplace.

So an artist has to ask: where are the people who are looking to purchase Art looking?  Then the artist must ply their selling efforts in those places:

• outdoor art shows and festivals - these are where individual artists and artisans [fine artists and fine art craftspeople] set up a booth and sell their art works: directly artist to end buyer
• exhibits and shows - these are art exhibits where an artist has one or two works hanging that are for sale during the run of the exhibition: artist receives a percent of the sale, anywhere from 70%-80%
• galleries - these are the traditional brick and mortar storefronts that represent one or more artists: artist receives a percent of the sale, anywhere from 50%-60%
• online: this is a whole 'nother world.  There are online galleries that charge a commission for sales, others that do not.  There are online companies that allow an artist to have their images for sale as prints and notecards - the artists gets a flat amount per print or notecard, but they retain the physical original...some of these companies will list the sale price of the original and provide a way for a prospective customer to contact the artist directly.  [These companies make their money on the sale of the accouterments that attend a print: the matting and framing.]
• artists' own websites and gallery pages - here the artist sets up their website and gallery pages - this is artist to end purchaser directly.

The above are some of the places people looking for art to buy find it and places where artists put their work for sale.  There still remains the whole marketing thing, how you let your target market know where to find your work.

• most outdoor art festivals have their own marketing/advertising to publicize the event as a whole.  Individual artists still need to let their audience know that they will be there
• most exhibits are advertised and publicized as a whole before the fact and are lucky if they get media coverage for the opening reception after the fact
• all galleries employ their own marketing strategies to advertise the gallery as an entity and the artists they represent
• online - depends upon the entity: a print-on-demand company markets both to an art buying public and to artists [they need to have art uploaded to their site for the public to buy]; an online gallery, like its brick and mortar counterpart will market itself
• artists with their own websites and gallery pages hold the entire magilla of marketing

So what to do?  The business of business for an artist-preneur is to 1) produce work and 2) sell that work.

• maintain a mailing list of people who have a) said they enjoy your work and b) will allow you to market to them via either postal or e-mail
• take full advantage of online Social Media: Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, blogging
• publicize yourself through press releases [awards won, major show appearances, etc.]
• have your booth at relevant art festivals
• take active part in exhibits and events such open studios tours
• seek gallery representation if that is part of your overall business plan
• have images with the best print-on-demand online company you can find
• image licensing

There are many ways to market [advertise and publicize] your work and the above list is not exhaustive.

So.  I am an artist-preneur and have taken my own business advice...which is saying a lot as it is so much easier to give someone else advice than to follow it - that whole 'do as I say, not as I don't do myself' thing!

I took a sabbatical last year [2009] from my art business to re-do my business plan and direction.  The result has been an exciting 2010 for my home-based business.  Taking my own advice:

1. I have had my work in exhibits - winning an award in one for one of my new mandala mosaic pieces
2. I've filled my 2010 schedule with relevant outdoor art shows where I set up my booth and have original work for sale as well as prints and notecards - an am participating in an open studios tour in October [I'm pleased to be one of the artists listed on Chico's Artoberfest site]
3. At this point gallery representation is not in my business plan; however I did just this week sign up with a premier print-on-demand company, Fine Art America.
4. I'm getting more adept at utilizing Social Media for my art business.  I started a Fan Page on Facebook [see the Fan Box in the right hand column] specifically for my art business which has direct access to my work on Fine Art America - my Fan Page has a shopping cart which allows for direct purchasing of prints and notecards via FAA.  Pretty cool from a business standpoint.
5. I do have an art blog, and there are gallery pages which showcase my work.  Part of the traffic to my blog is a result of utilizing Twitter for announcing new posts to the blog.

There is still much more I can do from a purely business standpoint for my business and I'm working on it.  And down economy or not, paying attention to the business of business is key to remaining in business for any type of endeavor.

How to achieve a Work to Life Balance

It's no joke that many people consider balancing work and Life a juggling act.  I'm married to someone who, as a young man, was a professional juggler and still amazes me with his 5 clubs in the air routine.  Now if only I could be so skilled with my life!

I'm going to posit that this work/Life thing isn't so much a balance or juggling act as it is a teeter-totter. 

Juggling to me implies that you have many items in the air and you're constantly scrambling and shifting underneath to keep them there because should one item drop, they all come tumbling down.  Not so catastrophic for juggling balls but potentially so for Life and work and stuff.

Balance implies to me that all the Life and work and stuff is neatly weighed on a balance beam and that you are skilled at not letting any one thing tilt to far either to the left or right.  Again should the tilt be too severe, everything might go tumbling down to the mat below...hopefully there is a safety mat below.

Rather I like the idea of a teeter-totter.  I was watching a pair of toddler boys about a month ago mastering the art of the teeter-totter.  The fun came when they finally got the rhythm...the fun is the going up and down, first one end and then the other.  I think Work/Life balance is more like this.

I've tried the whole superwoman thing with working, career, marriage and raising my children as well as community involvement.  Talk about a lot of balls in the air!  Like many career-minded women [whether the working is by choice or necessity] I stressed over the fact that I was expected [a perceived expectation granted] to give 100% on-the-job and 100% at home and 100% to community efforts.  But I wasn't a 300% human...most days I was lucky to register about 72%.

Now that I'm older, hopefully wiser, and a grandmother I have discovered this teeter-totter philosophy.  Whether we think so or not, we all choose what occupies our time.  We choose to marry, we choose to parent, we choose to be an employee or employer or a solo-preneur.  We choose our lifestyle.  We make our own mistakes and carry our own trophies of victory.  So I put all my choices on one end of the totter, myself on the other and enjoy the ride.

What that illustrates is that sometimes I'm the one who is up and sometimes it's all my self-chosen obligations that are up.  And that is that.  It is what it is, to use the vernacular.

One of my favorite online reading locations is She Takes On The World.  Natalie MacNeil always has interesting and thought-provoking articles in this award-winning blog.  On June 24 she wrote about the release on dvd the first season of a new series on the TNT network called "HawthoRNe."  Natalie said in the post, "...One of the issues we talk about A LOT on She Takes on the World is work-life balance, something many women struggle with. The issue of work-life balance is very prevalent in TNT’s hit series, HawthoRNe...."

I discovered this series when it first came out and quite agree.  I could relate.  I was a single mom at one point in my life and had to work a fulltime job to support my family and pay off staggering debt.  Finding time for my girls while trying to give 100% at work was always difficult...I constantly felt I was neglecting something.  Usually that something was me.  Had I adopted my new teeter-totter philosophy back then, I would have realized that "me" was important too and would have given myself more care...which meant I'd have not been so sleep deprived nor so nutritionally deficient which would actually have equated to a healthier, better rested mom and employee.  Go figure!  

So. How to achieve a Work to Life balance:

• throw out the balance beam and the juggling balls
• build or purchase a teeter-totter
• realize that all things in your life got there by some kind of choice you made
• put all those things on one side of the totter
• put yourself on the other side of the totter
• enjoy the ride

Oh and one thing my grandma told me: don't sweat the small things, keep your eyes on the blossoms.  My grandmother was a master gardener.