Most New Year’s Resolutions are bad! Which is, at least in part, why most are not successful. Consider the following common resolutions: Spend More Time with Friends and Family Improve Your Fitness Lose Weight Quit Smoking Quit Drinking Enjoy Life More Get out of Debt Learn Something New Help Others Get Organized What a sorry set of vague and distant wishes! No wonder people fail to follow through!!!
Providing great value for which customers are willing to pay is the name of the game. But great value alone is not enough. If you build it, they won’t necessarily come. You can’t be a well-kept secret. Berkshire Brewing Company is a perfect example of a well-kept secret. As a matter of fact, it says so right on their website: “Western Massachusetts’ Best Kept Secret.” They aren’t a complete secret, of course. They have been brewing great beer since 1994 and have many fans.
Many advise bloggers to post meaty articles frequently. Many serious business bloggers equate meat with length. I believe it is important to provide value and stimulate minds with as few words as possible. The time we have to read seems to be shrinking while the complexity of issues grows. Thus, concise is good. Of course, it’s not just blog postings that suffer from verbosity. Ever notice how most business books run out of things to say less than half way through? Ever tried to submit an article for publication and received length guidelines such as 800 – 1200 words? Just think about that. Could this explain a portion of the print media woes? No one should be more focused on filling space and meeting length guidelines than providing value. I say keep it short. Think haiku. A sonnet, perhaps. Remember the words often attributed to Mark Twain: “I did not have time to write you a short letter so I wrote you a long one instead.”
It has been decades since I heard the recording “All circuits are busy. Please try your call again later.” Way back then, maybe as far back as the 70s, this would happen on Mother’s Day or other holidays when everyone was trying to place long distance calls at the same moment. Those long distance calls were rarely critical, so it was just an annoyance. In the last few weeks, I have heard this message three times when trying to call my daughter’s cell phone. I don’t know if the bottleneck is a cell phone issue or land line issue. What I do know is that there is something more ominous about this. Long distance calls were quite rare back in the 70s. Phone calls today are ubiquitous and frequent. We depend on them, probably too much, whether land line or cell.
I would have reported sooner on the “Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Today’s Economy” conference that I attended last Thursday at the Log Cabin in Holyoke, Massachusetts, but the ice storm that hit the Northeast set me back to the middle ages. Suffice it to say, it was a long weekend and blogging was not an option. At the conference: I spoke about the three types of people in the world:
PRESS RELEASE December 11, 2008 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Ann Latham 617-939-9654 Uncommon Clarity, Inc. EASTHAMPTON, MA – Latham participates in 1st Annual RTC “All Networks” Convergent Meeting
Frustrated Shampooers Unite! Are you tired of reverse torpedo shaped bottles that rocket out of your wet and soapy grip? Would you hoot for joy over an easy-to-open bottle? Have you winced upon discovering a bottle left open now upside down above a colored streak wandering drain-ward? Listen up Suave, Fructis, Herbal Essence, Pantene, Aussie, Salon, Flex, VO5 and more! Please make shampooing easier! This innovation and customer satisfaction opportunity is brought to you by Uncommon Clarity, Inc. On the web at www.uncommonclarity.com.
Have you noticed hair color incongruities? Camouflaged slow downs? Attention seeking, albeit reluctant, talk of pain? Weight gain? Debates over gravity vs. discipline vs. new priorities? Poorly disguised flatulence? Discernible stair-top breathing? General angst? If not, you haven’t been listening! The Baby Boomers are aging. All of them! And that represents a lot of change and opportunity for businesses that are paying attention!
A visit to Verizon’s website one day when I was furious with them, provided the inspiration for this series of postings. It was there that I saw “Customer Service Innovation” and immediately thought “Lip Service Innovation” more apropos. I post my customer service experiences here in the hopes that other businesses can avoid committing similar offenses. And for those of you thinking of pledging great customer service, as Verizon did, you may want to read my article, “Keep Your Mission to Yourself!” Transgression #1: I have reservations to fly Northwest Airlines to Minneapolis in 2 days. I recently received an email from NWA promoting a great sale for the holidays. I decided to run a price check against my ticket, just out of curiosity.
The urge to tackle low hanging fruit is strong. People like to see quick results and quick results usually fuel subsequent results. But often people see low hanging fruit in all the wrong places. These may include tidying up loose ends, finishing projects already started, jumping on an exciting new idea, tackling the easy stuff first, and generally getting the house in order.