A Promise Delivered
My daughter has been after me for quite a while to post some of her drawings to my website so she can share them with her friends. Now that we’re stuck in the house due to some bad winter weather I was finally able to deliver on her request. So without further delay I introduce you to Libby’s most recent drawings…
Truffles & Customer Service
A week ago I spent 4 days at The St. Regis Deer Valley hotel in Park City, Utah while attending the 2010 MediaPost Search Insider Summit. Let me begin by saying how amazing The St. Regis was in both attention to detail and physical beauty. Simply put it was an amazing destination and I will be definitely looking forward to going back there in the future.
When I travel I’m pretty easy going and will often put up with little annoyances without complaining. However, as I approached my room one night after 10 PM I found that the door to my room was open. I cautiously entered the room and luckily found that no one was in it and that none of my personal belongings had gone missing. (Especially since my iPad and laptop were sitting out on my desk.) Upon closer inspection of the situation I noticed that the deadbolt on my front door had been turned so that the door could not close fully thus allowing anyone who wanted to the opportunity to enter without a key. My only conclusion, since nothing was missing, was that the turndown service staff had accidentally left the bolt turned and did not realize they left my room open when they left.
As I stated previously I’m pretty easy going so I decided not to call down to the lobby and complain. I simply locked things up and headed to bed. The next morning I decided to swing by the reception desk and let them know what had happened just in case I discovered something missing at a later date. The front desk attendant was horrified to hear about my door being left open and apologized at least 3 or 4 times before finally recording down my information to put into their log books. I made sure to explain that I wasn’t upset but merely wanted them to know about it should I discover something missing later. Once I was done talking to them I put it out of my head and considered the whole thing a closed case with nothing else to be done.
Later that same evening as I was settling in for the night in my room I received a knock at my door from room service. Upon opening the door I was greeted with a bottle of red wine, 4 amazing truffles and a handwritten note from the Director of Housekeeping apologizing at great length for what had happened the night before. In the note she apologized for the inconvenience and promised to retrain her staff to ensure something like this would never happen again. It was an unexpected and unnecessary gift – but a wonderful one nonetheless.
In looking back at what happened regarding my room and how The St. Regis responded I’m reminded at just how important it is for companies to be open to client comments and feedback. If they had simply stopped at listening and recording my issue I would have been more than satisfied. But instead of resting on what they did The St. Regis took a huge additional step by sending me a nice gift and personalized note. They crucial thing here is they did something they didn’t have to do and as a result I’m telling everyone I know about it and helping to further strengthen their brand’s reputation for amazing customer service and attention to detail. So what did it cost them to make this all happen?
A bottle of wine ($10-15) + 4 chocolate truffles ($2) + a handwritten note ($1) = less than $20.
What did they get out of the investment?
Positive word of mouth + a repeat customer in the future = way more than $20
My advice to everyone is to always remember that doing your job is just the beginning. Look for the opportunities to go above and beyond and make an experience (even if it’s a bad one) into an amazingly positive and memorable experience. In the end it will reap dividends far beyond what it took to make it happen in the first place.
Transcending Good Karma
We’re all busy. Between work, family, hobbies and the bills all of us find ourselves pressed for time. Therefore it’s no surprise that we often find ourselves saying, “No!” when approached by people asking for our help. We’ve all done it. Sometimes we feel bad afterwords and sometimes we don’t feel anything at all. The good news is I’m not writing to make you feel worse or to tell you that karma is a “bitch”. Instead I simply want to point out that sometimes saying “Yes!” leads to great things.
I’m a professional marketer. I’ve been one for years now but before that I was an interactive strategist and producer. That means I architected and produced websites for companies of all shapes and sizes. In total I think I’ve been involved with well over 100 websites. The point here? I was good at what I did. But more important is that I always knew what I wasn’t great at doing. That would be the actual building and graphical design of the site. It simply wasn’t a talent of mine so I always surrounded myself with the most talented people I could find. The end result was perfectly planned websites with amazing design and well developed programming behind the scenes. I knew what I didn’t know and everyone benefited as a result.
So imagine my surprise when my wife (who always knows better but doesn’t always play along) volunteered me to help build a website for our parish school. No sooner had she given them my name did I receive a phone call and a request, actually more like a plea, to help build out a new school website. (Oh, I forgot to mention they needed it to be ready in 2 weeks.) I confronted my wife about her commitment of my precious time and she coyly replied, “I told them you were in the web design business before. I never said you did the actual building of the sites.”
Damage done! Quite frankly I don’t know how anyone would have been confused by her response.
So I did what any good husband, father and school parent would do…I jumped right in knowing that quite possibly the water would be well over my head with little chance of survival. I met with the stakeholders, did my strategy planning (the part I knew how to do) and then started researching my options and looking for the easiest way to make the most of my situation. And wouldn’t you know it, something unexplainable happened while I was paddling to stay afloat.
In the midst of my concern and anxiety I found myself enjoying what I was doing. I wasn’t enjoying it like I enjoy working professionally. This was different. More instinctual and raw. I was thriving on the fact that I was in new territory trying to make my way without any 3rd party help or assistance. The feeling was further intensified by the fact that others were counting on me to come through in the clutch. There I was becoming something I had always avoided because I surrounded myself with those that were better than me in certain skill areas. And while I knew I wasn’t going to be on par with any of them soon I developed a pride of ownership that I will never forget.
In the end I wound up building a wonderfully useful and quite nice website for the school that is far better than 95% of the school websites in our city. I learned the ins and outs of WordPress, hacked apart a custom theme design to fit my needs and even learned how to make some PHP do things my way. And I got to work with some pretty good people along the way. And of course like any good deed my journey didn’t end when the site went live. Since that day, over a year ago, I have constantly maintained and updated the website to add new features and keep it fresh. Along the way I also wound up serving on the school board and leading the school’s overall marketing program. Something that I actually felt confident about doing from the start.
Like I said at the beginning of this post we’re all busy. And sometimes we do things just to make sure karma doesn’t come back and kick our butts. But I have to tell you that this experience has helped see that doing things for others, especially out of comfort zone, pays amazing dividends. Whether you receive years off purgatory, continual kudos from your peers or like me, an in measurable boost of confidence and passion you are the one that winds up the winner.
So next time their looking for volunteers step up to the line. Do something for others that transcends the promise of good karma.
PS – In case you’re curious you can check out my work at www.sacs-stl.org.
Back To The Basics
Marketing. WordNet at Princeton.com defines marketing as “the commercial processes involved in promoting and selling and distributing a product or service”. Simple enough in definition and simple in terms of how I viewed marketing as I was growing up and first realized I had a real desire to be involved in the marketing industry. Today, however, my view of marketing – as well as most of the world’s view – is that marketing has become a very complex, fragmented and quite often prohibitively expensive practice of trying to get your products or services noticed by buyers over and above a competitor’s. (Please bear with my over simplification of marketing as I simply trying to get across the point that marketing has become a increasingly complex industry that often rewards those with the big media budgets.)
It is this perceived complexity and cost that keeps many aspiring small business owners from successfully marketing their products, or at least testing out new marketing channel opportunities. In my professional capacity I work with larger businesses that tend to have significant budgets and as a result I often forget that not everyone has a financial reserve to put towards their marketing efforts. Recently though I had the honor to participate in a radio interview on the Business Owner’s Toolkit that focused on the topic of online marketing for small business owners. (Listen to my interview here. My segment begins around 18:20 into the broadcast.) In this interview I covered a variety of topics but what really stayed with me after the interview was my response to providing advice to business owners who don’t have a much budget or many resources at their disposal. My advice was to stop, take a step back and observe what was going on in their market. Go online and observe their target customers in social networks, research keyword usage and volume of queries and try to get a real feel for the “right” opportunities to connect with their customers in the digital realm. Once they were comfortable with their knowledge they should then step into tactical efforts that were aligned with reaching these target customers in a way (and location) they would be open to online.
My advice obviously struck a chord as I have received several emails about my interview from people thanking me for helping them stop and take a moment to look over their marketing efforts and try and gain some perspective. In fact, I had one gentleman actually call me from Utah to discuss his thoughts on my comments as well as explore how he could better approach marketing his own business – as well as a new venture he is looking to launch in the near future. I spent an hour talking to him and exploring a variety of options for his business as well as how he could go about identifying a unique sub-niche for his new venture. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation and look forward to keeping in touch with him and hearing how things go with his efforts. And while I enjoyed the call for many reasons I think what really made it a great call for me was the fact we discussed the basics of marketing. We didn’t worry about the channel of execution, we didn’t discuss media budgets and we definitely didn’t discuss strategy. Instead we talked about taking the time to listen and to learn. To identify what it is our target consumers want and how they want to receive it. And from that we agreed that the rest of our marketing would evolve.
In summary I guess we often let the complexity and the costs of marketing get in the way of getting back to basics. I suggest that you take some time and step back from your marketing efforts and review them to see if they are really hitting your target customers in the right way. You might even want to take some time and just go online and eavesdrop on the conversation. If you do please keep it down as I will probably be just a mouse-click away listening as well.
Message Or Murphy?
Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable. We woke up this past Saturday thinking it was going to be just another Saturday spent keeping the house clean in case someone wanted to come see the house. Around 10 a.m. our neighbor Katie came by and informed us that we had a tree sitting on our house. That’s right….a tree.
As it turns out our other neighbor’s tree had uprooted due to the recent rains and fell onto our house while taking another smaller tree with it for the ride. As frustrating as this was considering the fact that our house is on the market, we are fortunate in that it creeped onto our house instead of falling and slamming into causing more damage. At least we think it creeped onto the house as we never heard it hit the house.
Now the neighbor whose tree it was hasn’t been living in their house for over 8 months now so we had to track them down via the Internet to let them know. Luckily they quickly appeared and had a company up within a few hours to have the tree removed. Now we have to wait for the insurance company to show up and let us know what they will cover and how much of the roof needs to get replaced. What a mess!
So the question we are left pondering after all of this is was this a message from God to move to the new house, or is it’s Murphy’s way of telling us to stay put. What do you think?
Happy Birthday Jack
Today was Jack’s 4th birthday. Our little boy is getting bigger everyday. We had the entire family over yesterday to celebrate his birthday with dinner and cake. Jack had a great time and received a ton of presents from everyone.
( More photos from Jack’s birthday party.)
Happy Easter Everybody
Here come Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail…..
Last Sunday was Easter although by the weather you would have never known it. With chilly temperatures and heavy snow flurries throughout the day only the bravest of all bunnies….The Easter Bunny…would dare come out for the celebration.
Despite the weather, snow and lack of spring color everyone got together for a nice holiday gathering. In the morning we hauled the kids down to Patrick’s mother house for church and then for brunch. After that it was off to Kate’s family for the rest of the day. I think the highlight of that event was watching everyone almost polish off around 25 lbs of ham…without breaking a sweat.
It was a fun day, albeit a long one. ( Click here to view the day’s photos.)
Is This Progress?
Two exciting things happened this Saturday morning: 1) We were still asleep in bed at 9 a.m. (only one child was in our bed with us), and 2) We got a call at 9 a.m. to show our house around noon.
Since we were well rested (for once) we quickly jumped into action and scrambled to get the house clean for the noon showing. As we have been keeping the house in good order since putting it on the market it only took 2 hours to get everything cleaned, dusted, and dressed (the kids of course). We then ran over to Grandma and Grandpa’s for 2 hours while the house was being shown. As of right now we haven’t received any feedback but the realtor that showed the house is one from the neighborhood so our hopes are high.
We also received the above stats earlier this week from our realtor. Based on this data it looks like March is going to see more than double the number of people looking at our property on Realtor.com. We are very hopeful that with the warmer weather will come more interest, more showings and ultimately a sale.