Small Business Advice

Idiotic Sign Up Processes

Recently I bought a new house and had Comcast cable set up at the new place. They have probably the dumbest customer service process I’ve seen in ages. Here’s how it went.

Being someone who rises early, I was up at 5am, jumped online and started the sign up process. I filled out a few forms giving information such as new or existing subscriber, name, address, product choice, preferred installation dates and times, etc.

Once I had made my selections I was connected to a live chat with a customer service rep named Alfredo.

He seemed a nice enough fellow until he started irritating the crap out of me by asking me to give him information I had just entered into the form.

Here are snippets from the actual transcript of our chat:

Alfredo:
Hello Laura Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Alfredo.24534. Please give me one moment to review your information.

May I please ask if you you are a new subscriber? Or do you have an existing account with Comcast?

Laura: I already answered – new.

Alfredo:
Can you please provide me with the address where you would like your  Comcast service established?

Laura: I already answered (gave address).

Alfredo:
I have made a new account for you and I will start processing your order now. Please bear with me for a little while as this may take a few minutes.

Alfredo:
Laura, do you have your own modem?

Laura:
Yes, I already answered that.

Alfredo:
Alright.
I am now putting the rate codes on your order and calculating tha amounts. Thank you for patiently waiting.

Your total due would be $ xxx.xx payable to COMCAST to be given to the technician during installation. This includes the monthly fee of $ xx.xx for the services and a one time install charge of $ 47.10. This can be in check or money oder form.

Laura:
why is the install $47.10 when it said $29.99 online during the sign up process?

Alfredo:
Okay, your new total due would be $xx.xx,  $xx.xx fro the service and only $19.99 for install ,  alright? (note: interesting that the installation went from $47.10 to $19.99 in one minute)

I am now searching for the date and time to install your service. This will just take a minute more. Thank you for your patience.

This is the earliest appointment date available,  August 16, 2008 , a Saturday from 8- 1  am, would that day work for you? (note: I specifically requested 8/29 and 8/30 as my install dates).

I mean from 8- 11 am.

Laura:
I don't close on the house until 8/28 so I'd like you to come on 8/29 in the morning.

Alfredo:
Okay, let me handles this.
Oh, I see.
Your install date would be on August 28 from 8 -1  am, is this fine with you?

Laura
no, it has to be august 29, 8-1pm

Alfredo:
Ah, I see, alright then , August 29 from 8 am - 1 pm.

I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone. No wonder the cable industry has such a bad reputation!

Frankly, if there were any competition I would have left Alfredo and Comcast about one minute into the chat.

Which begs the question – what is the order process like at your company? Do you make it difficult to buy from you?

Are your customers abandoning your online buying process because it has too many steps?

Are your customer service reps attentive to details and do they really listen?

Are you sure?

Are Weekly or Monthly Newsletter Better?

This is a question I recently asked readers of our monthly newsletter.

Currently we send a monthly newsletter with three sales-related articles to over 5000 people once a month. In addition we send announcements for events (seminar, teleseminars, etc.) about twice a month.

The question I posed to our readers was "Would you rather get a sales tip once a week and have us include the event announcements in that or do you like things the way they are?"

The response has been 11:1 in favor of weekly emails vs. monthly ones.

What I infer from that is our folks want short, digestible bites of info frequently rather than longer, meatier  information in big chunks.

So, starting in September I'll be writing weekly sales tips and adding an event calendar to it.

If you'd like to see what we'll be doing you can just email me and I'll get you signed up.

Smart Phones

I'm picking up my new Blackberry World Edition 8830 smart phone today. I can't wait to see if I actually like the darned thing. I'll report back on how useful it is for a running-around-the-world entrepreneur.

I decided to get the phone after I used a pay phone in the Munich airport a few weeks ago and was charged over $40 for a 5 minute call within Germany. YIKES! That was an expensive lesson.

This phone, from Verizon, has a removable SIM card, which means I can buy a local card in Germany (where I travel most) and get local rates when I'm there.

It is also is a quad-band phone, meaning it will work on US and European networks, something 99% of US phones won't do.

We are so far behind the times!

I snagged this phone for just $99 after a $70 online discount and my new-every-two discount of $100. Verizon gives this discount to folks whose contracts are about to expire as a way to keep them on the hook.

Since I have found Verizon's service to be fantastic, I'll stick with them another two years.

Even though I'm dying for an iPhone, I've heard such lousy things about AT&T that I'll wait until Verizon has an iPhone and Apple works out a few more kinks.

I might be old and gray by then but I think it's a wise move.

Anyone have any wonderful Blackberry tricks, tips, ideas, shortcuts or pitfalls they want to share with me and the other readers?

Vacation Experiments

If you’ve tried to call me lately, you’ve likely gotten the message that I’ve been traveling for the last 4 weeks.

In the past 28 days I’ve been in Germany, England, Virginia, New York City and the Hamptons.

I started this jaunt with an experiment in mind.

Can I run the company and get my work done while hopping on and off planes, trains and busses and visiting friends? That is, can I be disciplined and structured while outside my typical work environment?

The short answer is: sort of.

While visiting friends in Germany, I found it fairly easy to hop online, answer emails and write a lot of things. I created a few new products for the company and felt fairly good about the work I was getting done.

Then I started ramping up the travel schedule. In just 10 days I was in 4 cities and my system completely broke down.

What I discovered was that I personally need a bit of routine and structure in my day to function properly. If my surroundings get cluttered by half-unpacked suitcases or if my mind gets full of travel schedules, I can’t work well.

This little experiment got me thinking about work environments in general.

What is my optimum environment and can I change it? Can I learn to work in two-hour bursts or do I need a whole day to harness my energy and concentrate?

For me, right now, I find I work best in spurts, albeit in large ones. I need whole days to concentrate just on work and other days to do nothing but recharge my batteries.

And more than that, I like those busy work days. I really like my work. I’m passionate about it and I found that I missed exercising that passion when I didn’t work for a few days in a row.

What about you? Do you still have that fire for your business?

I’d suggest a short test.

Take an entire week off work. No phone calls, no email, nothing. Just stop. Pack your days with activities that don’t even allow you to think about your business.

And see what happens.

See if you’re dying to get back to it or if you’re just not into it any longer.

If you’re still passionate, you’ll find your energy renewed when you get back into the saddle. Your creativity will soar and you’ll likely have a sharp spike in sales when you get back to work.

If you’ve lost the passion, don’t worry. You started one successful business, you can start another. Start working on your exit plan or see if there is a way to rework the business to get you reenergized about it.

If you take the test, let me know how it comes out.

If you want me to write more about how I am balancing work and travel, let me know. I’m continuing this experiment through the rest of this year (at least) and I’m happy to share my experiences, if you’re interested.

What To Do With A Sucky Day

You ever have one of those days when everything you touch seems to turn to crap?

That was me yesterday.

I woke up from some bizarre dream in which I was giving a seminar and no one was paying attention. I was both furious and horrified and began questioning my role as a businesswoman. Even after I woke up, I couldn't seem to shake that feeling.

On the way to work, the oil light in my car came on. Of course, it happened just before I realized there was a huge back up on my route, meaning at least a 30 minute addition to my commute (with the oil light on!).

Once at work, my first meeting was running 45 minutes late, bumping the rest of my day off track.

At 2pm I held a seminar and only half the people showed up. I forgot to set up a projector to show the movie I wanted to use to kick off the session and I just couldn't get my energy up through the whole thing. I felt distracted and off-kilter.

Afterwards I discovered that the reason half the people didn't show up was that I had mistakenly sent them the wrong date and time info, so they were expecting to come the next day! That meant a round of mea culpa emails and offers of refunds.

To make it just ever so slightly worse, I had a guy shadowing me all day whom I was supposed to be impressing with my organizational and teaching skills. He wants to invest in our business. Or at least he did.

I went home feeling like a failure.

I sat in the house staring at the wall wondering if I was in the right business. Sure, we'd made it seven years and beaten the small business drop out odds, but was I any good? Did I have a right to be doing this?

So what to do? Quit? Go find a job that was less demanding? Pack up and head back to the apparent safety of the corporate world.

Luckily, I read a wonderful quote the other day that just happened to sitting on my desk when I went upstairs last night and it is the thing that helped me wake up this morning with a new attitude, and an invigorated spirit.

It's from the inimitable Seth Godin and it says

"Never quit something that has great long-term potential just because you can’t deal with the stress of the moment...

If you are making a decision based on how you feel at the moment, you are probably making the wrong decision"

So what do you do with a sucky day? Pull out the Dip and give it a read. It takes all of 30 minutes and can  get your head back in the right place.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind?

Last year, I wrote about how Will and I traded offices in order to shake up our routines and get a fresh perspective on how we worked.

One of the things I lost in the move was my giant whiteboard.

This was the place that I kept all my long-tail to-do's, my plans, diagrams for new products and all my big ideas that I was going to get around to someday. My philosophy was that it was in front of me all day so I couldn't forget what I was supposed to be focusing on.

I hate little pieces of paper everywhere and I lose notepads by the dozen so I figured this was a clutter-free way to stay on top of my task.

What I didn't realize was how scattered that whiteboard made me.

Keeping all those notes in front of my eyes was just the same as having them all over the desk. I was constantly pulled in a hundred directions, subconsciously.

So, what was the solution for making sure the big projects didn't get put on the back burner while the little daily tasks of running a business got done too?

Repetition and technology.

For the big things I want to accomplish, the hefty goals, the dreams, the visions, I simply sit down with a note pad and write out, long hand, what I want (as if it has already happened) 100 times.

Yep. 100 times. Long hand.

It takes a few days for me to one of knock those out as they are the big things. I describe to myself what I want to feel and what my environment will be like when I've accomplished the goal. This programs my subconscious to never, ever forget what I'm working for.

I find that even when I have a hundred distractions, my mind always wanders back to the important things that I've programed into it.

As for the little details, I use the task list in my CRM software. I get a list each day of the things that have to be done and I check them off as I do them. Since I'm going to do all of them (I'm careful about not overbooking a day with tasks), it doesn't matter in which order as long as they are accomplished that day.

The little calendar only shows me what is on today's list so I'm not distracted by next Wednesday's junk now. Since I can put tasks on the calendar ahead of time, when I think of something to do, I just jot it in the calendar for a future date and forget about it.

What I've found using this system is that I sleep much better at night, I'm more focused during the day and I get about 5 times as much work done in a shorter period of time.

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you!

Great Depression Podcast

I had a great opportunity last week to speak with Steve Mullen who runs the Start Up Biz podcast. He interviewed me about how more millionaires were made during the Great Depression than at any other time in history.

Click here to hear the podcast.

If you like what you hear and want to listen the full one and half hour teleseminar, you can register for it here.

Hope you enjoy the podcast and thanks again to Steve for a wonderful time!

Testing 1, 2, 3...

Okay, so you haven't heard from me in almost two months. But it's not because I haven't thought of you, really. I've been testing some things out and didn't want to bore you with the details if they fell flat on their face.

So, here's what I'm working on.

Is it possible to run a business from out out of the office?

Not just out of the office, but 6 time zones away.

So far, the answer is yes.

You see, a few weeks ago I did a little experiment. I spent two weeks getting all of my ducks in a row at the office, that is, having any appointments that needed to be done, gathering up documents to work on, creating a tidy little task list of things to do on my computer and then I packed a bag and went to Germany for 10 days.

Was it a vacation? Sure.

Did I get some work done while I was there? You betcha.

The goal here is to prove that you don't have to work in the business to work on the business and that you can combine fun and work in a healthy mix.

It all started when I met a very nice German woman online. We became friends and spent a lot of time discussing the cultural differences between Europe and the US.

One of the most startling differences is that by law Germans are guaranteed six weeks of vacation. And they take them all!

Contrast that to most of my American friends who can barely eek out a week and even then, they are panicked that something will go wrong so they are glued to their cell phones and computers.

When was the last time you had a vacation?

I mean a real one where you didn't feel stressed and where you took at least two weeks away to recharge? Isn't that what owing a business is all about anyway? The freedom to do as you please and to enjoy the fruits of your labors?

Take a moment to figure out what it would take to get away for two weeks. How much money would you need? Who could you outsource oversight of the business to? Or could you just put up a "gone fishing" sign and walk away for two weeks like my dentist does?

Seriously, summer is coming. Should you be enjoying it someplace sunny and warm, perhaps with a cold beverage in your hand?

In future posts I'm going to be talking a lot about how to put the life back in lifestyle business and I'll keep you posted on my tests. I'm taking a two-weeker at the end of June and then a modified four-weeker right after that. Stay tuned!

Automated Marketing

I just got back from the most amazing conference!

I spend the week in Scottsdale, AZ with the team from Infusion Software. We recently purchased their system and are hard at work learning to set it up.

If you're like me, you have a hundreds or even thousands of client and prospects you'd like to follow up with, but you can't seem to find a system to make it all happen seamlessly.

That's where Infusion comes in. With their system you can automate complete marketing campaigns that tie in email, direct mail, fax, voice recording and your sales team's actions in one system.

In addition, if you have an online presence (or want one) they can tie your entire online process into their CRM for a completely automated system. That means all the work of ordering and fulfillment gets done without you lifting  finger!

There is no way I can do the system justice in this blog so just go to their website and see for yourself
www.infusioncrm.com.

While you're checking them out, download their new e-book "The Edge" so you can see that these people aren't just software geeks, but real marketers!

Folks, I've been in sales and marketing for over twenty years and this is one of the best books I've read on what it takes to really so sales and marketing right. If you are only going to read one book the rest of this year, this should be the one.

I know I tell you to do a lot of things for your business. Some of it I know you take me up on, and other things I know you just brush off. This is one you should do. Automate your business. Let the system do the work so you can take off.

I'm headed to Europe for 10 days at the end of this month and then again for another 30 days this summer. I wouldn't be able to do that without this system. Seriously, check it out.

 

Brilliant stuff!

Perspective

I just got back from doing a delivery route for Meal on Wheels. My Rotary club does this twice a week and about once a month I participate. It involves loading up a bunch of boxes and bags of prepared food and taking it door to door to a list of recipients.

My route is always the same. I deliver to a high-rise retirement complex smack dab in the middle of one of the worst housing projects in Richmond. The people in this complex are mostly older, mostly in terrible health and very, very poor. The facility itself has been recently renovated but still smells of urine, cigarettes and old food. The residents live in  15x18’ rooms which include tiny kitchenettes and a small bath.

Every time I go there I am reminded of just how lucky the rest of us are. As I drive past the trash-filled streets, see the huddles of men on the corners and the boarded-up buildings, I am so thankful that I didn’t have to grow up in that environment. Can you imagine what your life would be like if your only role-models were drug dealers, prostitutes and welfare families? If your playground were littered with used needles and empty liquor bottles?

If you get a chance this week, take a stroll through one of your city’s “bad” neighborhoods. It might help you appreciate what you have and better understand how you can make the world a better place in a tiny way.