Over the last few weeks I have gotten great feedback from companies and leaders about my articles and videos on delivering excellence to your customers. While it is always great to get feedback, I felt a little sad and frustrated after some of these conversations because some of these leaders agreed with me but had no power to change anything in their business

This led me to wonder why some leaders still cannot see the connection between sales growth and execution of service. It puzzles me that so much money is thrown away on advertising or buying new leads and NOTHING is being spent on delivering an excellent experience so I keep on preaching to lead this change.

In these conversations, I hear the glowing praise for the icons of service, the Apple’s, Disney’s, Ritz Carlton, Nordstrom’s etc. but when I pose the question to them as to why they are not delivering the same excellence, I am bombarded with reasons why it won’t work.

• “It’s too hard to change now”
• “My staff is used to doing it a certain way”
• “ I can’t take the risk it hurts my sales now.”
• “I am doing ok as it is.”

But what businesses are not taking into consideration is that customer experience is the currency of the future. Many products are commoditized. Profits are harder to make simply by focusing on price. Studies show this but still business owners smile, nod in agreement and move back on as if the future looks bright FOREVER.

Right now most company budgets do not include anything in terms of developing the consumer experience from a delivery standpoint. Companies focus on marketing effectiveness, or user experience on their website but not when it comes to communication or face to face delivery of their goods or services.

Now for the companies that have challenged this thought and shown me the training tapes or list of videos they use I applaud them for at least beginning the journey. My next challenge to them is how do they implement this training.

Do they have a line item or a role in their company that allows them to have ongoing training, side by side coaching and then accountability measures as well? This is where many fall off and to that I say, save the $$ on the tapes it isn’t going to work. Without long term coaching or follow up you are living on HOPE that things will work out.

Customer experience is how you will differentiate yourself, it will be how you market yourself it will be how your company rises above the others and becomes the go to place of business for your product or service. The caveat is it takes time, it takes consistency and it takes leadership buy in. Without it, you have lone voices wishing for change but no power to act.

Take the time before it is too late to look at how you deliver to your customers and see what it will take in terms of investment, time and training to separate yourself from the pack. Keep me posted.

Glenn Pasch is the current CEO of PCG Digital Marketing as well as a writer, National Speaker  and Management Trainer. If you liked this article, please share and connect with me @sidebysidecoach.

With the announcement on 11/26/13 from Google that it had redesigned it’s Review Monitoring System for its Places for Business Dashboard (http://bit.ly/1bizbiv) you would expect that business would understand how important it is to have a steady focus on garnering customer feedback.

What is great about this new platform is that it will not only provide a summary of reviews from Google + Local but also other review sites that Google crawls and finds your business’s name. This is huge as a time saving aggregator for those who monitor their presence online.

In a previous article, Your Reputation is Not Being Shared Correctly I focused on the difference between Reputation Management (passive) versus Reputation Marketing (active). This new dashboard will make it easier to find great reviews and then leverage them in marketing as well as responds when necessary.

I have put together a quick summary/checklist for businesses who are wondering how to get started.

Goal: to control and improve your online reputation

Strategies: Visibility, Engagement, Incentives, and Monitoring

Tactics:

• Visibility
  • Research where you are currently showing in reviews
    • Look in Google + Local Account
    • Type in Search: Business Name+ Reviews
    • Create monthly list of what sites you will send customers to in order to post comments
  • Work with your Website platform to make it easier to find reviews on your website
  • Make sure that in your business physical location that you have posters of your staff, Wall of Fame and other assets to show you use feedback in order to serve customers better
• Engagement
  • Ask every person who does business with you. Create a process that engages without overwhelming customers with requests for feedback.
  • Respond to all negative posts. Post short response to bring conversation offline.
  • Respond to 60% of positive reviews as well.
  • Keep responses short. Do not try to defend your business online
  • Make sure you are using Social Media platforms for review postings
  • Create and post video testimonials from customers on website and YouTube.
• Incentives
  • Do not give incentives to staff for reviews. It will lead them to create “one and done” accounts that Google and other platforms do not like
  • Do not offer gifts or services to customers in order to get reviews
  • Find creative ways to involve your team.
    • Team breaks a certain goal they get lunch
    • Top reviewer gets on Wall of Fame
    • Have reviews scrolling on a flat screen TV
• Monitoring
  • Monitor accounts daily in order to respond accordingly
  • Track amount of reviews on all platforms monthly
  • Read competitors reviews to see how you can capitalize on their failures

Each week, reputation results should be reviewed in weekly staff meetings. If the top leadership does not make this important, it will not happen. Reviews have an impact on buyers of your products.

This is a short version of a process I recommend. If you would like to have a longer version please contact me directly and I will be more than willing to help.

Glenn Pasch is the current CEO of PCG Digital Marketing as well as a writer, National Speaker  and Management Trainer. If you liked this article, please share.

Listen to the radio today and you hear advertising from companies explaining how their services will protect you from, “Google Death”, which is where someone posts bad reviews or false reviews about your services, thus impacting what people see about your company online. Protecting from a bad review is important but I believe that getting and marketing reviews is such an effective marketing tool that companies need to focus on this first.

For the last few years I have been educating businesses on how customer reviews are one of the most important marketing tools they can use to increase their customer base but still I hear from many leaders that it is not happening in their company. Many tell me that they cannot get their staff to ask customers for reviews, some say they still do not understand how to use these review to market and some will still hold firm to the idea that no one reads reviews.

Companies must embrace the fact that all of their marketing drives consumers to their website. What if, when customers get to a website, reviews or videos of customers praising their product/service are front and center as well as praising the experience they had doing business with their company. Do you see the impact?

If customer reviews are the golden seal of approval that many people use to help them decide which company to do business with, why is getting reviews and marketing with them still such a struggle for businesses to embrace?

Let’s debunk some of these issues that some business leaders have shared with me.

• Reviews are too hard to get / I can’t get my staff to do it.

This is really a two-part discussion. The first part would lead me to investigate if there is a written out process within the company that employees have been trained on. The second part is more of an accountability issue. In my opinion nothing happens consistently without inspection and leadership making it a priority? I would decide which of these two issues plagues your company and address it accordingly.

• No one really reads reviews.

Well the statistics are in. Customers do read reviews and more importantly are influenced by them. According to the Local Consumer Survey 2013, reviews are increasing in importance vs. 2012. 72% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. If 3 out of 4 people trust reviews I am not sure why businesses see that reviews have no value. Here is a link to a great info graphic on reviews, which outlines even more statistics that should help convince business owners of the importance of getting customer feedback. http://archive.fohboh.com/profiles/blogs/online-reviews-statistics

• What should I do with the reviews once I get them?

There are a few things that businesses can do with printed reviews or even better a video testimonial. Reviews can be posted on their website, they can link to them from email signatures, they can use a testimonial video in a blog post or on their social media channels.

Another thing that can be done is to advertise reviews inside their place of business. Maybe a banner stand or a poster providing a link where people can see what customers are saying? Maybe a scrolling video screen with reviews or testimonial videos right besides the other advertising they may be doing. Think of this feedback as better than any catch phrase that your business can come up with. Real people, real praise. Nothing is better than that.

Make sure to spend some time reading the above survey to see how customer reviews are such an important way to communicate a company’s worth to the next round of potential customers. We can all thank Jeff Bezosfrom Amazon for training every one of us to read reviews and take this feedback into our consideration set. Any company that is not actively getting reviews and then marketing with them is letting their competition sneak into the minds of their potential customers.

Let me know your thoughts.

Glenn Pasch  is the current CEO of PCG Digital Marketing as well as a writer, National Speaker  and Management Trainer. If you liked this article, please share.

In many dealerships across the US and Canada, reputation management is a very passive activity. While this topic is coming back around as a very important marketing tool, I have seen in too many cases, dealers are convinved that they should outsource this important task to a third party who will monitor review sites and alert them if something is said negatively about the company or respond on their behalf.

I want to speak to the dealers or marketing managewrs directly. To me, this is a disconnected approach to interacting with the feedback from your customers. This approach is only creating a level of comfort for you and your management that you are on top of the dealership's reputation. They have checked it off the list of items that they were told is important in this day of the Internet.

Where I differ on this topic is my belief that dealers should be looking at this part in terms of reputation marketing. This strategy is an active pursuit. It is taking control of the experience your customers receive and embracing it to fill the “influence” pool of information on the web for future consumers.

Why is marketing your reputation so important? Based on which reports you read, almost every consumer begins their car shopping experience online. Their quest for a new or used car or repair service includes researching not only the products you offer, but also what previous customers say about the experience they had doing business with you. That is where you need to insert yourself into the experience.

There are many different ways to market your reputation online, but I’ll use one of the most useful feedback tools for any company as my example: The Customer Testimonial Video. These videos are the golden ticket of feedback.  They show emotion and allow others to watch actual people using your product or service. Plus you can use this video in many different ways.

There is no need to complicate the process as you can use a smartphone to record this video. Another option is buying a camera, tripod, and minimal lighting for under $700 that can be set up in a specific area of your business where a quick video can be shot. You could also ask your customers to send you a video of them using your product or letting you know how their shopping experience was.

Make sure to keep the videos short, 30-60 seconds max. Only ask five questions. Most people will not watch long videos unless they are really creative. The point of these videos is to confirm that your business delivers a great user experience.

Make sure to ask the customer’s name, where they came from (so you can optimize the video for their town), what product or service they came in for, how their experience was, would they recommend you to others and any variation of these questions that you feel show off your business in the best light.

Once you have the video, here are a few ways to use a customer testimonial video to market your reputation:

1. Create a YouTube Channel for your customer videos with a link off of your website.
2. Highlight the video on your website, making sure to point out that you have customer testimonial videos. Turning it into a series like “Customer Feedback of the Week” is a great way to set the routine.
3. Write a blog about the customer doing business with you. You could highlight that shoppers from a certain town come to you for your service, or tell the story of the people and why they came to you for your product or service.
4. Include a link to the video or website saying, “See what our customers are saying about us” in employee email signatures.
5. Put the video on your social media channels and promote it.

This active marketing strategy for your reputation is one of the key components for ensuring that your dealership is in multiple places where consumers do their research for products and services. More importantly, what your potential customers are finding are other customers vouching for your business versus just reading your marketing materials. 

This is worth all your effort because you will stay on their consideration list longer which, in turn, will increase your sales.

When one thinks of great customer service, Disney comes to mind. At this past DSES, Bruce Kimbrell of Disney touched on the subject of employee indifference and how he had experienced this silent killer of business. He also spoke in depth about how Disney trains their staff constantly to make sure this never happens to one of their customers. Their "cast members" are trained to be aware when a customer may have a question or concern so they can fix the situation. I agreed with Mr. Kimbrell about how detrimental employee indifference is. Let me explain a situation I encountered while in Las Vegas, right after hearing this session and then what you can do to look for this potential “indifference” in your own staff.

As DSES finished for the day and I had a little time before meeting some people at an event that night, I was alone so I thought I would just have a quick bite to eat before heading over. I came to the restaurant Japonaise in the Mirage Hotel. As I approached, their sign said “ one of the top restaurants in the world”. I wanted to get in and out and it did not look that busy. There was no host at the entry stand so I went to the bar and sat down. The bartender brought over a menu and I ordered a salad and 2 sushi rolls. Nothing too complex I thought. To my surprise it took over 25 minutes to get the salad.

As the bartender dropped off the salad he never mentioned he was sorry for the delay, nor did he even notice that I was waiting. He was too busy telling stories to a group of young drinkers at the end of the bar. Now after my salad was cleared, time dragged on and I sat there for another 25 minutes and no food. I had to ask the bartender where my food was and he said, ”Oh they must be backed up”.

You would think he would go check for my food but no he just went back to his side of the bar. Finally I had enough and told him I had to leave seeing as no food was coming. Again one would expect he would try to see how to keep me there, go check on my food but no, all he did was go get my check and put it down. Never apologized. Just said, “Have a good night” as he does to everyone.

I then went to the manager and guess what, there was no manger to be found. The hostess had a look of confusion when I asked to see a manager. Her response was, “I have to stay at my station”. So as I walked away annoyed at wasting my time but more because of the indifference of the bartender. As if he felt that because he was in a casino, people would always be coming into the restaurant so giving poor service is not a big deal. He obviously has not been trained to care about what he does and it was obvious that no one is checking his work. You can see finger pointing is part of the daily routine because his response, “they must be backed up” was a way to say, “I did my job”

Three things to help you avoid these pitfalls

1. Train your team on what level of service you expect and follow up to make sure it is being executed. As we saw here, there seemed to be a basic sense of doing tasks but no one took service personally and no one was afraid of not performing well because no one was checking.
2. Empower all employees to take it upon themselves to find a solution. As we saw here, no one felt they could move out of their “job” or “silo” to solve a problem. This bartender seemed to only want to do his part, (put in the order) and then wash his hands of any further work to ensure the customer is satisfied.
3. Make sure that upper management is aware of an issue. As we saw here, no one wanted to bring up the fact that they had an upset customer. They would rather hide in their silo and hope no one noticed.

Mr. Kimbrell was right. Business has a choice, either you make sure your company has the drive and purpose to deliver excellence for your customers or else your employee’s indifference will drive your customers down the block to your competitors

Glenn Pasch is the current CEO of PCG Digital Marketing as well as a writer, National Speaker  and Management Trainer. If you liked this article, please share.

I had the pleasure of attending DSES and listening to Leif Babin, Former Navy Seal talk about leadership and how to build a successful team. Now many of you who know me, I am a leadership fanatic and am always looking for ways you improve myself and my team When Mr. Babin took the stage, the room quieted because of his presence and out of respect for what he has accomplished. You do not become the choice to create and lead the leadership training for future Navy Seal teams by accident. You have not only the expertise but also the ability to communicate it to others.

Although his keynote was packed with information and stories of his experiences, I wanted to focus on three things that I took away as did others based on conversations I had after the keynote finished.

1. Choosing the right team members.

Mr. Babin brought up a point that I am sure many people in the audience had. “Of course the Navy Deals are a great team because look at the people you have on that team.” Correct but what Mr. Babin pointed out was that the reason he has great people is because he is very clear on the characteristics that his team members will need to have and then they have a rigorous screening process where 80% of the people drop out of the initial interview process.

Does your business have a clear set of defined characteristics for team members? Not just skills for the position but WHO they are. Then what is your screening process? OR are you so focused on filling a spot that as long as they can fog a mirror you bring them in. “Let’s see if they work out. We need someone”.

Well just brining someone in is not a great strategy because you have to focus on the collateral costs of having to train a new person, which takes away from the trainers job as well as how this new person can pull other’s focus away from their tasks. You are better off hiring slowly than just trying to fill the void.

2. Clear defined orders of execution

Mr. Babin explained how each of his team members needed to have their orders given in a clear and simple way or else that led to interpretation or doubt, which on a battlefield can be disastrous. Now you may not have the extreme consequences that a Navy Seal would have but what about time wasted on lack of effort or mistakes that were made due to your team not understanding what was expected.

I have always trained my team with the understanding that if I cannot demonstrate it physically, then it is not actionable or clear enough. Can all of your employees explain what their job is? Can they repeat back what you want them to do? Can you demonstrate what you want so there is no misunderstanding?

3. Extreme ownership.

I think this was the most important fact Mr. Babin communicated. A great leader owns the performance of their team for both good and bad. Mr. Babin pointed out many times he made mistakes and he had successes but he owned it all. A few examples of extreme ownership that you can take from him was that after each mission they debriefed and talked about what they did well, what went wrong and how to improve. Even if they had a great success they questioned if it was luck or because the executed well.

Does your team have these types of meetings? After a long weekend of sales do you talk to the team and break it down to actionable things that they can improve on? Do you look at data and review it when you succeed or fail?

The last point I took away was that a strong team leader does not point fingers. Ask yourself when you as owner/manager ask your team what happened, does the finger pointing begin? “I did my job.” “If the others just pulled their weight” “It was them not me”

If that is happening look in the mirror. YOU have created an environment where this is allowed. Do not blame anyone else. If you want to succeed then you must train your team to own their process, own their execution and own their results. Being brutally honest with yourself and your team is what creates ongoing success.

That is extreme ownership.

Mr. Babin, we appreciated your service and the lessons you shared. We can all own our own actions a little better and I am sure many of us will.

Glenn Pasch is the current CEO of PCG Digital Marketing as well as a writer, National Speaker  and Management Trainer. If you liked this article, please share.

I was asked this question the other day by a client as I was working with his team. He asked me what I meant when I said he needed to develop his people versus just training them but more importantly how to do this. 

So I want to be clear on what I mean by developing versus training. Training is done to learn a specific task or action. Think assembly line. You have been trained to do the task, insert this part into that part and that encompasses your job. You as an employee are necessary to the function of that task but you are not INTEGRAL to the running of the business.

Now look at it from a management point of view. You knowing this task only can be replaced if needed. I can just remove you and slip in another person who can be trained to do that job. This model works for certain types of businesses but NOT a dealership. What we are looking to do is develop our people to do more that just execute a certain number of tasks.

When I say develop, that means taking time to know the person and what makes them tick. That means looking at their strengths and their weaknesses and assessing how they can become INTEGRAL to the success of your business. What can they bring to the table that no one else has or that could benefit the whole team?

This takes time to invest in your employees like you would your own children. We do not just teach our children to execute tasks we focus on what type of people do we want them to become so they represent our family in the best light and can be successful on their own.

We need to do that as well for our employees. Not that we want them to leave us but if we invest in them and develop their skills they will more often than not stay with you. They see that you depend on them to think and execute for the greater good of the business and that you want to see them be a success, not be held back.

My question to you is how are you developing your employees? Are you creating people who can think on their own, who help see ways to improve the business or are you just training people to execute tasks? Understand that having people just execute tasks means that you have to think of everything, you have to make sure all tasks are completed correctly which means you are not focused on growing your business but instead babysitting tasks.

Give the same attention to your employees as you do or did with your own children so that how your team represents you and the personal success they feel just improves your business and frees you up to lead.

Let me know your thoughts. 

Glenn Pasch is the current CEO of PCG Digital Marketing as well as a writer, National Speaker  and Management Trainer. If you liked this article, please share.

I have been traveling a lot lately to help install new processes for dealers both on a digital side and from a business process perspective. I have run across many of the top trainers video platforms on my trips and dealer employees really do like the daily short videos to get them going. From Driving Sales University, Grant Cardone, Joe Verde, Sean Bradley and now Jim Zieglar, dealers have great information at their fingertips as never before.

Where I have seen some breakdowns is dealer employees not knowing what to do with the information. Once they take the test, once they run through a few quick questions, then it is out to the floor and back into the day to day. 

I have trained thousands of employees in my lifetime. From hospitality, to customer service phone skills to sales, management and now automotive and the thing I have always worked hard on was how to take training and bring it out to the employee's day to day to have the biggest impact and change not only for the business but the employees themselves.

It is not easy, because it takes time and manpower to really implement training so what I would like to hear from everyone is what things are they seeing that takes this training and brings it out from the classroom and into real life. I have my own thoughts but before I share, I would like to hear from you.

What have been your struggles and what have you seen as solutions. I think that if we can help take all of the great trainers information and make it pop off the screen and see teams using it, we all benefit.

What say all of you?

Thanks.

Glenn Pasch is the current CEO of PCG Digital Marketing as well as a writer, National Speaker  and Management Trainer. If you liked this article, please share.

Now some of you may think this harsh, but many managers are guilty of creating dependent team members just like the drug pusher who builds their clientele on a similar style of dependency.

The original idea for this article came from a moment at my son's summer camp. Each day begins and ends with all the camp members and counselors joining in “community.” In the center of their community circle is a “worry” stone. Some cultures have a stone in the center of their meeting place so each person can touch it before they begin their business. The stone is a physical representation for participants to symbolically remove any worries they have so they can focus on the task at hand.

It reminded me of managers who are guilty of this style of management. Managers feel that by allowing employees to come in and transfer their worries to them makes them a good manager. But just like the rock at my son’s camp, eventually it cracked. The story at camp was that there are only so many worries the rock could hold. I would say the same holds true for managers. By constantly taking on others worries, managers end up spending their own valuable time and become unable to accomplish their own workload.

Now this “worry stone” style of management is harmful but affects one person, the manager. A more harmful style of management is what I call the “drug pusher” management style that is prevalent today.

A drug pusher builds their business by seeming friendly and wanting everyone to feel good. They may start by giving something for free, but their goal is to create a dependency on their product and increase their business. For managers, the pusher analogy applies because they want to be viewed as helpful and friendly. They begin by reaching out and telling their team that they are there to help.

Next, the managers go out and give advice with the intention of helping. Some managers will view this helping as a good idea since giving advice is great. Where it goes wrong is when they end up telling their employees what to do versus taking the time to train them to do it.

For example: Reminding their team of a deadline, seeing them getting ready to make a mistake and then preventing them from a failure. All under the guise of saving time.

I can hear the chorus of managers saying, “Why would I want my team to fail?” “It is easier to tell them versus taking time to train them. I don’t have that time.”

My answer is that just as raising children, small failures are necessary for long-term success

Each time managers go out and give employees a "taste" of their help, employees begin to become addicted to it. They expect it. They crave it and will now begin to search their manager out for a solution, instead of working to solve it for themselves. Why would they? Just go to their “pusher” and get their fix.

Managers, ask yourself if any of your team has come in at any time to ask what they should do. Do you take the time to train them, or do you just give them the answer? You just gave them their “fix” for the day.

Just like an intervention, you sometimes need to wean people off of your management style “drug.” It will not be easy. You will be seen as a downer; you have changed, just like the person who gives up being the life of the party. In the end, it is better for all involved.

There are three things that managers can do to help wean employees off of their dependency.

1. Ask the employee what they think they should do. They may respond, "I do not know," so then it becomes a teaching opportunity for the manager using the 8-Step Coaching Process.
2. Have the employee will present their plan for approval first.
3. Review the progress of a project and give advice on higher-level strategy when the employee implements plans on their own

The third option should be the goal of any manager, but it takes a commitment to the first two steps in order to get there.

A well-run company has managers who train their employees and then monitor progress. Companies that fail to achieve have management styles that create dependent employees who are constantly looking to get their “fix” so they can do their job. It’s time to kick the habit and get your team thinking for themselves.

Glenn Pasch is the current CEO of PCG Digital Marketing as well as a writer, National Speaker  and Management Trainer. If you liked this article, please share.

Too many times our companies are so focused on delivering great value to our customers (and we should be) but we forget to give that same value to our employees

The reason this came to mind is that I was with my family recently at Hershey Park in Pennsylvania. I was learning about Milton Hershey and his philanthropic nature. He and his wife could not have children so he built an orphanage to help. He also created a trust so that it owned the company and eventually the resort so that it would always be funded. The building is now a school for underprivileged children and those in need. What inspired me the most was how he felt that if he took care of his employees and gave them a good lifestyle, they would be more productive.

There are examples today of great places to work, but in the case of most companies, we need to ask ourselves: do we look at our employees as something we nurture or as something that is replaceable?

Take a look at your employees as if you would a garden. If you feed and water the plants and make sure the weeds are taken out, they will grow.

Are we feeding them with training to make them better, are we mentoring them and making sure they are growing correctly? Are we weeding out bad habits or obstacles that could inhibit growth?

I looked at my own company and it is not always easy, so I am not saying that I am perfect. But I have committed to doing these following steps that you can use as a starting point to help your team grow.

Weekly communication:

We have quick staff meetings each Monday and Friday to communicate what we have going on, new developments, updates and recognition.

One of the biggest things employees find important, based on multiple surveys, is being kept in the loop.

Weekly/Monthly Training:

Department heads and team leaders have time set aside time for training. Anyone can attend, even if it is not your department, because I want people to learn what others do. I think it helps with communication and team cohesiveness if you understand what another person does each day.

Upward mobility:

We let people know of our new opportunities or positions and work to fill these roles internally when we can. Bringing people up internally helps because they already know the culture and shows that if hard work is applied, new challenges can be met.

Lastly, open door policy.

Now this one is tricky because everyone is still stuck in the mentality of the Boss/Employee roles. I am not naive to think that everyone will come running into my office, but being available and out on the floor breaks down the barrier and gets you out from behind the desk. I think of it as walking through the garden and seeing how things are going.

Leaders need to get out from behind their desks and see the impact of their efforts. If you want to keep your people, invest in them. Put in the time and effort to make things grow.

Glenn Pasch is the current CEO of PCG Digital Marketing as well as a writer, National Speaker  and Management Trainer. If you liked this article, please share.