We hem. We haw. We decide. We buy. We go. Then what? First, let’s go back to the start. What is the education budget of your dealership? There is likely a marketing budget, a maintenance budget and even a coffee budget (especially if you’re a high-line store). Where is your education budget? How much is spent on outside support and consulting away from a vendor rep or “consulting” reseller that simply pushes products and trains on them specifically?

Sure, it is important to take care of your image, your facility and your customers. However today, more than ever, the investment made in dealership staff is more important than the payroll investment and on par with any other expense or cost center. The number one thing that can move a business forward is typically forgotten, let alone budgeted for.

So the dealer, general manager, marketing or Internet manager make it to a conference. Once everyone is happily back in the nest, 30-95% of what is learned is lost or not executed on (delayed loss). $2,000-3,000 is spent to have one to two people there; however sustainment investment typically runs about 5-10 times what the event does. Where’s the investment to ensure the information, implementation and platform for success? $10,000 will usually be spent in a flash to simply appease the manufacturer’s rep with some local newspaper advertising to push the new model, where’s the $10,000 over six months to keep the dealership staff on the leading edge?

Information is great, fantastic, liberating and exciting. However the actual implementation and sustainment is more so and the other benefit is you actually get to see the results rather than simply reminiscing “remember back at that conference when the guy (or gal) talked about doing that new thing” and then getting back to doing things the way you…always have.

The cost of the information is practically zero. Yes, some companies and publishers in the industry charge you for webinars with expert speakers but where’s the follow up and how do you actually do what they’re talking about. The cost of implementation is significantly higher but it’s the only way to get the results.

Don’t go to the conferences if you won’t back it up with the real investment. Don’t send your staff to get information that, with about five minutes of searching on Google, is otherwise available within the confines of your dealership. And don’t send your Internet director for the “amazing networking events”. Get the rubber to meet the road by attending, considering, spending, measuring*, reviewing and reinvesting.
 *measuring that involves using a proprietary dashboard rather than an unbiased third party is typically a short-sighted move.

The greatest reward any dealer will receive from their digital marketing is no different than any other investment, like a facility upgrade or a redo of the fixed operations department. It causes people to work and think in fresh ways, generating better results.

Invest in the best assets you have and make those efforts ongoing. Replace "I liked that conference a lot and will likely go again, especially if I can fit in a couple rounds" with "I can't believe the growth we've had from doing what the speakers taught us about and am already booked for next year".

See you at the conferences!
 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog.

We hem. We haw. We decide. We buy. We go. Then what? First, let’s go back to the start. What is the education budget of your dealership? There is likely a marketing budget, a maintenance budget and even a coffee budget (especially if you’re a high-line store). Where is your education budget? How much is spent on outside support and consulting away from a vendor rep or “consulting” reseller that simply pushes products and trains on them specifically?

Sure, it is important to take care of your image, your facility and your customers. However today, more than ever, the investment made in dealership staff is more important than the payroll investment and on par with any other expense or cost center. The number one thing that can move a business forward is typically forgotten, let alone budgeted for.

So the dealer, general manager, marketing or Internet manager make it to a conference. Once everyone is happily back in the nest, 30-95% of what is learned is lost or not executed on (delayed loss). $2,000-3,000 is spent to have one to two people there; however sustainment investment typically runs about 5-10 times what the event does. Where’s the investment to ensure the information, implementation and platform for success? $10,000 will usually be spent in a flash to simply appease the manufacturer’s rep with some local newspaper advertising to push the new model, where’s the $10,000 over six months to keep the dealership staff on the leading edge?

Information is great, fantastic, liberating and exciting. However the actual implementation and sustainment is more so and the other benefit is you actually get to see the results rather than simply reminiscing “remember back at that conference when the guy (or gal) talked about doing that new thing” and then getting back to doing things the way you…always have.

The cost of the information is practically zero. Yes, some companies and publishers in the industry charge you for webinars with expert speakers but where’s the follow up and how do you actually do what they’re talking about. The cost of implementation is significantly higher but it’s the only way to get the results.

Don’t go to the conferences if you won’t back it up with the real investment. Don’t send your staff to get information that, with about five minutes of searching on Google, is otherwise available within the confines of your dealership. And don’t send your Internet director for the “amazing networking events”. Get the rubber to meet the road by attending, considering, spending, measuring*, reviewing and reinvesting.
 *measuring that involves using a proprietary dashboard rather than an unbiased third party is typically a short-sighted move.

The greatest reward any dealer will receive from their digital marketing is no different than any other investment, like a facility upgrade or a redo of the fixed operations department. It causes people to work and think in fresh ways, generating better results.

Invest in the best assets you have and make those efforts ongoing. Replace "I liked that conference a lot and will likely go again, especially if I can fit in a couple rounds" with "I can't believe the growth we've had from doing what the speakers taught us about and am already booked for next year".

See you at the conferences!
 

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog.

Many times people ask me why IM@CS is not a training company, even though plenty of people call what we do by the "T" word. The response every single person receives, for the last five years - and emphatically - is that people despise being trained. People, more successful ones for sure, love learning. In short, we've never had a staff member at a client that ever deserved such a low pat of the attention span.

Education, however, is what people and businesses that want to succeed tune into. There are plenty of trainers to choke 17,000 new car franchises to death, and then some. There are so very few educators, especially in the digital space. That aren't beholden to vendors they recommend (read: if you take a fee from a client and a commission from a vendor, that's called a conflict of interest). That don't work at a store 40 hours a week (read: that's an employee, not a consultant). That learn from outside the industry (read: recirculating existing data, quotes, white papers and results from others is simply an affront).

Education, for the few that want it, is the only thing that moves our industry forward. "Getting back to the basics" and "blocking and tackling", while called for and part of daily operation especially when things drop through the cracks, is needed. However, you can't increase results from eCommerce, increase your SEO footprint, establish social media signals, improve your email lead response rate or conquest a new market or brand by "doing what has always worked".

This week brought a great opportunity to share what might be considered as more "digitally savvy" dealerships and vendors in a conversation with an industry colleague. He happens to be someone that I respect, having OEM, portal and agency experience including outside automotive. He asked, among other items, what we're most proud of that we were able to do with a now, more-successful client. My response was that he should ask them, not me...

You see, training is something you do everywhere for everybody that "needs it". Education is something that you provide with varying degrees of success, seeing the results later through your clients and only for those that absolutely want or will kill for it.

One thing I've always been passionate about in providing services to different business over the past twenty plus years is watching their growth. By providing turnkey services or an enterprise-wide platform, as needed as those services are, the baseline is so muted. That doesn't get me or the team of people I get to work with up in the morning. What does is making a difference through education and then supporting the education. Anyone call sell or buy a widget. And many will tell you their widget is better or drives better results. Bulls**t. The people using the widget to their best capability win. Remember who people buy cars from? The least educated one, right?

So what's the difference between training and education? Education is one letter longer. And likely the only thing keeping your dealership back from excellence...

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales or on our blog

Many times people ask me why IM@CS is not a training company, even though plenty of people call what we do by the "T" word. The response every single person receives, for the last five years - and emphatically - is that people despise being trained. People, more successful ones for sure, love learning. In short, we've never had a staff member at a client that ever deserved such a low pat of the attention span.

Education, however, is what people and businesses that want to succeed tune into. There are plenty of trainers to choke 17,000 new car franchises to death, and then some. There are so very few educators, especially in the digital space. That aren't beholden to vendors they recommend (read: if you take a fee from a client and a commission from a vendor, that's called a conflict of interest). That don't work at a store 40 hours a week (read: that's an employee, not a consultant). That learn from outside the industry (read: recirculating existing data, quotes, white papers and results from others is simply an affront).

Education, for the few that want it, is the only thing that moves our industry forward. "Getting back to the basics" and "blocking and tackling", while called for and part of daily operation especially when things drop through the cracks, is needed. However, you can't increase results from eCommerce, increase your SEO footprint, establish social media signals, improve your email lead response rate or conquest a new market or brand by "doing what has always worked".

This week brought a great opportunity to share what might be considered as more "digitally savvy" dealerships and vendors in a conversation with an industry colleague. He happens to be someone that I respect, having OEM, portal and agency experience including outside automotive. He asked, among other items, what we're most proud of that we were able to do with a now, more-successful client. My response was that he should ask them, not me...

You see, training is something you do everywhere for everybody that "needs it". Education is something that you provide with varying degrees of success, seeing the results later through your clients and only for those that absolutely want or will kill for it.

One thing I've always been passionate about in providing services to different business over the past twenty plus years is watching their growth. By providing turnkey services or an enterprise-wide platform, as needed as those services are, the baseline is so muted. That doesn't get me or the team of people I get to work with up in the morning. What does is making a difference through education and then supporting the education. Anyone call sell or buy a widget. And many will tell you their widget is better or drives better results. Bulls**t. The people using the widget to their best capability win. Remember who people buy cars from? The least educated one, right?

So what's the difference between training and education? Education is one letter longer. And likely the only thing keeping your dealership back from excellence...

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales or on our blog

The special time of the year is nearly upon us, again. From September through February: conferences, expos and 20 Groups with the veritable sales crunch of "you have to get this or you'll be left in the dust!" pitches. You can feel dealers' and general managers' certain body parts tightening up now (not that they aren't pitched every day of every week of every month or every year already).

With very little assistance, which is by choice, direction or information, vendors are chosen and deals are signed. Does that mean dealerships make decisions without "data"? Not necessarily. However decisions made with vendors' own calculators (remember when lead estimating in your market at certain NADA website booths was the fix of the day?????), skewed analytics/search results and by recommendations (you know, what works for a dealer with half the competition and market size one of their 20 Group buddies has should work the same for someone else in a major metro with twice the stores and massive gross degradation?).

What generates results are a combination of relevant data, unbiased information, support, updates and consistency. However what we still see dominating today are dealers using:

Websites:

• Without any SEO (and sometimes even basic optimization), micro-sites/landing pages and SEM with no/poor call-to-action, heavily redundant non-inventory based content (which Google LOVES! right?!) and the like...

CRM:

• The "take it as it came out of the box" processes and templates that can't get a call back from a desperate buyer, no management notifications set up, and people with access sending out marketing messages to dealerships' database that are not proper, timely or accurate...

Social media:

• Left up to companies setting up personal profiles on Facebook, Google Plus, Foursquare, etc. for businesses and/or...
• Duplicating content on hundreds of dealership social networks and/or...
• Solely following industry people's accounts and them fanning/following back and/or...
• Simply buying audiences gaining thousands of eyeballs while most of the paid followers are in different countries (or simply spam accounts)...

...and the list just goes on and on and on. 

If you want to sell cars, you have to do it right. Meet and greet, the walk, the drive, the pencil, the close (yes, the road to the sale to many) that can't exist without process, checklists, audits and accountability. Yet most dealerships' entire digital presence has none of those!!

What we need to do is do things right. Businesses are responsible for everything they do. It's 2012. If you don't understand websites and SEO, get someone that does in your store. Don't think social media is right for your point? Ask your customers where they want you to be and then get someone that does it inyour store. And get advice before you hire your person/people or bring on the vendor! You must ownevery part of your marketing today and not turn a blind eye. And no, it's not too much to do or to get someone in the store or close to you to provide reporting that is not from a vendor's proprietary dashboard (read: manipulation) that can't be validated by another unbiased source.

There are no excuses for businesses today to not know how to do things right and expect results. Sending texts from employees phones without permission based marketing and legal/opt-out included? Having a website for a 150+ unit store that has 800 inbound links and no +1's? Promoting a blog that has the same content as every other (fill in your brand) store within a 1,000 mile radius? It's NOT fine. It's NOT ok. Get real.

Act as if you're a customer to your own business! What are the chances you'd return to your own website if the home page never changed? Would you buy concert tickets from a site that never featured your favorite artists? Would you Like United Airlines on Facebook if every other post from them was two sea lions fighting or two mimes fighting with an intro of "caption this"? would you follow Morton's Steakhouse on Twitter if EVERY post was simply a push from their Facebook account and no interaction with diners? Would you continue to read Marriott's blog if all it contained was posts about awards they were winning from magazines rather than updates on their resort locations that you wanted to travel to? Look it's really simple, it's just not easy.

Own your marketing. The pisser is you've been hearing this for over five years now from a number of sources in the industry including this one. Quit cutting corners and believing everything that the large enterprise-level providers are feeding you. How can one provider claim to be the #1 vendor in an industry and charge half of what everyone else does? It doesn't work that way! You know that...

Look at it this way. McDonald's (as good as some of you may think they are) is not number one in hamburgers. They are number one in volume! Do they serve the best burger? No! Their burger is not the best...and neither is your website/CRM/Social Media if you don't know better.

If you're going to do it, do it right!

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog 

The special time of the year is nearly upon us, again. From September through February: conferences, expos and 20 Groups with the veritable sales crunch of "you have to get this or you'll be left in the dust!" pitches. You can feel dealers' and general managers' certain body parts tightening up now (not that they aren't pitched every day of every week of every month or every year already).

With very little assistance, which is by choice, direction or information, vendors are chosen and deals are signed. Does that mean dealerships make decisions without "data"? Not necessarily. However decisions made with vendors' own calculators (remember when lead estimating in your market at certain NADA website booths was the fix of the day?????), skewed analytics/search results and by recommendations (you know, what works for a dealer with half the competition and market size one of their 20 Group buddies has should work the same for someone else in a major metro with twice the stores and massive gross degradation?).

What generates results are a combination of relevant data, unbiased information, support, updates and consistency. However what we still see dominating today are dealers using:

Websites:

• Without any SEO (and sometimes even basic optimization), micro-sites/landing pages and SEM with no/poor call-to-action, heavily redundant non-inventory based content (which Google LOVES! right?!) and the like...

CRM:

• The "take it as it came out of the box" processes and templates that can't get a call back from a desperate buyer, no management notifications set up, and people with access sending out marketing messages to dealerships' database that are not proper, timely or accurate...

Social media:

• Left up to companies setting up personal profiles on Facebook, Google Plus, Foursquare, etc. for businesses and/or...
• Duplicating content on hundreds of dealership social networks and/or...
• Solely following industry people's accounts and them fanning/following back and/or...
• Simply buying audiences gaining thousands of eyeballs while most of the paid followers are in different countries (or simply spam accounts)...

...and the list just goes on and on and on. 

If you want to sell cars, you have to do it right. Meet and greet, the walk, the drive, the pencil, the close (yes, the road to the sale to many) that can't exist without process, checklists, audits and accountability. Yet most dealerships' entire digital presence has none of those!!

What we need to do is do things right. Businesses are responsible for everything they do. It's 2012. If you don't understand websites and SEO, get someone that does in your store. Don't think social media is right for your point? Ask your customers where they want you to be and then get someone that does it inyour store. And get advice before you hire your person/people or bring on the vendor! You must ownevery part of your marketing today and not turn a blind eye. And no, it's not too much to do or to get someone in the store or close to you to provide reporting that is not from a vendor's proprietary dashboard (read: manipulation) that can't be validated by another unbiased source.

There are no excuses for businesses today to not know how to do things right and expect results. Sending texts from employees phones without permission based marketing and legal/opt-out included? Having a website for a 150+ unit store that has 800 inbound links and no +1's? Promoting a blog that has the same content as every other (fill in your brand) store within a 1,000 mile radius? It's NOT fine. It's NOT ok. Get real.

Act as if you're a customer to your own business! What are the chances you'd return to your own website if the home page never changed? Would you buy concert tickets from a site that never featured your favorite artists? Would you Like United Airlines on Facebook if every other post from them was two sea lions fighting or two mimes fighting with an intro of "caption this"? would you follow Morton's Steakhouse on Twitter if EVERY post was simply a push from their Facebook account and no interaction with diners? Would you continue to read Marriott's blog if all it contained was posts about awards they were winning from magazines rather than updates on their resort locations that you wanted to travel to? Look it's really simple, it's just not easy.

Own your marketing. The pisser is you've been hearing this for over five years now from a number of sources in the industry including this one. Quit cutting corners and believing everything that the large enterprise-level providers are feeding you. How can one provider claim to be the #1 vendor in an industry and charge half of what everyone else does? It doesn't work that way! You know that...

Look at it this way. McDonald's (as good as some of you may think they are) is not number one in hamburgers. They are number one in volume! Do they serve the best burger? No! Their burger is not the best...and neither is your website/CRM/Social Media if you don't know better.

If you're going to do it, do it right!

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog 

Things are changing. So fast, they’re staying put, at least for the most part. It usually brings a smile to my face when they phrase “We’re doing well. Things could be better, but compared with (fill in competitor) we’re actually doing fine/well“, is muttered for two reasons. First, it’s part of our selection process and second, it’s part of the business’ selection process. “No, we’re not changing” is a great response, even though most can’t get it out of their mouths.

Recently one of our clients called to advise us that they were being pushed be their OEM to do some print advertising, their first in nearly two years. So they advised us that they’ll do it for two months, just to get the heat of their back. That made me think about what business owners and senior management do to simply make their business partners happy, or trying to make competitors worried, or to make a statement as well as a list of other, mostly ego-driven or self-centered, reasons.

Many businesses today are out of touch with their customers even though consumer sentiment and feedback is so readily available today, to the point of nausea. And we don’t ask. Heck, we can’t even get accurate sourcing at the point of sale today as “the fastest way around the system” is what most of those in sales will do because “I just want to sell a (fill in the blank) now”.

Logic tells us if something is easy enough, we should just do it! Logic also tells us most people won’t opt to do things that are deemed difficult so the few that do that harder work reap the greatest benefit. Most things that can increase results relatively quickly, given the proper attention, will absolutely give an unprecedented advantage. Yet most fall short. Well short.

Take, for example, call tracking. Why would you want to use your cell, at your desk, when you can kill two birds with one stone on the business’ land line (unless you have a more advanced CRM that can append a cell call to a customer record)? Convenience is not a reason, that’s called an excuse. Sure, there are reasons to have your land line forwarded to your cell, however it makes sense to get the most out of each contact, being somewhere you can easily take notes and/or check something online and more, simply by making/taking the call at your desk on a tracked phone. (Using this example due to the fact that for most car dealerships this is a huge pain point in accountability and tracking.)

Do we really think the top producing salesperson will drop 20-70% of their sales when pressed to follow a process versus letting them “do it their way” since nobody wants to “rock the boat”? That’s not likely to happen and,  better yet, it’s more likely to provide a boost in production.

More than ever we need to stretch the rubber band if we expect to succeed, not just get along. There are so many simple things that we can get done offering huge benefits in return. They may not always be easy, but they are worth it. The salesperson chatting on the front line may just be able to reach five more people today on the phone. But it won’t happen..

Because if it were really that simple, it just won’t get done. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a big issue.

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales or on our blog.

Things are changing. So fast, they’re staying put, at least for the most part. It usually brings a smile to my face when they phrase “We’re doing well. Things could be better, but compared with (fill in competitor) we’re actually doing fine/well“, is muttered for two reasons. First, it’s part of our selection process and second, it’s part of the business’ selection process. “No, we’re not changing” is a great response, even though most can’t get it out of their mouths.

Recently one of our clients called to advise us that they were being pushed be their OEM to do some print advertising, their first in nearly two years. So they advised us that they’ll do it for two months, just to get the heat of their back. That made me think about what business owners and senior management do to simply make their business partners happy, or trying to make competitors worried, or to make a statement as well as a list of other, mostly ego-driven or self-centered, reasons.

Many businesses today are out of touch with their customers even though consumer sentiment and feedback is so readily available today, to the point of nausea. And we don’t ask. Heck, we can’t even get accurate sourcing at the point of sale today as “the fastest way around the system” is what most of those in sales will do because “I just want to sell a (fill in the blank) now”.

Logic tells us if something is easy enough, we should just do it! Logic also tells us most people won’t opt to do things that are deemed difficult so the few that do that harder work reap the greatest benefit. Most things that can increase results relatively quickly, given the proper attention, will absolutely give an unprecedented advantage. Yet most fall short. Well short.

Take, for example, call tracking. Why would you want to use your cell, at your desk, when you can kill two birds with one stone on the business’ land line (unless you have a more advanced CRM that can append a cell call to a customer record)? Convenience is not a reason, that’s called an excuse. Sure, there are reasons to have your land line forwarded to your cell, however it makes sense to get the most out of each contact, being somewhere you can easily take notes and/or check something online and more, simply by making/taking the call at your desk on a tracked phone. (Using this example due to the fact that for most car dealerships this is a huge pain point in accountability and tracking.)

Do we really think the top producing salesperson will drop 20-70% of their sales when pressed to follow a process versus letting them “do it their way” since nobody wants to “rock the boat”? That’s not likely to happen and,  better yet, it’s more likely to provide a boost in production.

More than ever we need to stretch the rubber band if we expect to succeed, not just get along. There are so many simple things that we can get done offering huge benefits in return. They may not always be easy, but they are worth it. The salesperson chatting on the front line may just be able to reach five more people today on the phone. But it won’t happen..

Because if it were really that simple, it just won’t get done. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a big issue.

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales or on our blog.

It was years ago, and repressed on and off over the years, that I received what would have easily been the biggest gift received in my young life. The box was huge, maybe up to my neck if I can remember correctly. It was wrapped. That was the fun part, or maybe the following minute or three.

After opening the box, another smaller box was revealed. Followed by a smaller next box. And another. And another. And another. My grandfather, who had given me the gift, was starting to really enjoy himself about two or three feet away from me in his favorite rocking chair. The box reduction play went on until it was almost unbelievable that they could get any smaller.

At some point, a handful of minutes later, I achieved present status and my only memory,(to this day) is the exercise that took place. No, the present does not exist in my memory. What is there is the half-hysterical feelings that existed.

So, as it's time for a question, what is it that you take your customers through and what do you give them? What is their level of expectation when you have them start their box-opening process? Do you get to the present (car, reward, incentive, warranty, etc.) quickly, or do you make it more about the entertainment (throwing keys on the roof, driving their trade for appraisal to lunch and back while they're waiting, etc.) prior to the painfully long process?

Regardless of how time-deprived "we all are" today, there are unbreakable rules in retail today, especially when driven by online/eCommerce. Yes your customers, like I did years ago, have expectations. While my grandfather's only intention was to get his laugh on for the day PRIOR to my getting the gift, do everything you can to ensure that you don't end up with only a laugh and your customer walking (or running) out of the store to the next one.

Too many businesses today still make the same fundamental mistakes in making customers happy because (1) that's the way you have always done things, (2) you're not willing to change, (3) you're not truly connected with your customers or (4) because customers "don't expect it". You can never ask enough questions, properly validate enough and set/work with expectations well enough.

Tomorrow is first day of the rest of your "I'm in retail loving, customer service-oriented" life so what are you doing? Do you have your stack of boxes and scotch tape ready or are you heading an in-the-game organization toward the happy, engaged customer base?

p.s. (anyone know a good shrink?)

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog.

It was years ago, and repressed on and off over the years, that I received what would have easily been the biggest gift received in my young life. The box was huge, maybe up to my neck if I can remember correctly. It was wrapped. That was the fun part, or maybe the following minute or three.

After opening the box, another smaller box was revealed. Followed by a smaller next box. And another. And another. And another. My grandfather, who had given me the gift, was starting to really enjoy himself about two or three feet away from me in his favorite rocking chair. The box reduction play went on until it was almost unbelievable that they could get any smaller.

At some point, a handful of minutes later, I achieved present status and my only memory,(to this day) is the exercise that took place. No, the present does not exist in my memory. What is there is the half-hysterical feelings that existed.

So, as it's time for a question, what is it that you take your customers through and what do you give them? What is their level of expectation when you have them start their box-opening process? Do you get to the present (car, reward, incentive, warranty, etc.) quickly, or do you make it more about the entertainment (throwing keys on the roof, driving their trade for appraisal to lunch and back while they're waiting, etc.) prior to the painfully long process?

Regardless of how time-deprived "we all are" today, there are unbreakable rules in retail today, especially when driven by online/eCommerce. Yes your customers, like I did years ago, have expectations. While my grandfather's only intention was to get his laugh on for the day PRIOR to my getting the gift, do everything you can to ensure that you don't end up with only a laugh and your customer walking (or running) out of the store to the next one.

Too many businesses today still make the same fundamental mistakes in making customers happy because (1) that's the way you have always done things, (2) you're not willing to change, (3) you're not truly connected with your customers or (4) because customers "don't expect it". You can never ask enough questions, properly validate enough and set/work with expectations well enough.

Tomorrow is first day of the rest of your "I'm in retail loving, customer service-oriented" life so what are you doing? Do you have your stack of boxes and scotch tape ready or are you heading an in-the-game organization toward the happy, engaged customer base?

p.s. (anyone know a good shrink?)

Best Practices: Professional Insight, Powerful Results

You can read more IM@CS posts here on DrivingSales.com or on our blog.