I was talking with a friend and business person this morning and together we came to an interesting and important conclusion about keeping customers.  And that conclusion was that our customers make decisions to stay or leave based in large part on relationships, or how connected they feel to us and our organizations. 

If you ignore the relationship it’s hard for your customer to feel connected to you, your organization and your offering.  Without that relationship to guide your customers several things can happen. 

One thing that happens is that you no longer have the opportunity to communicate the value a relationship with you brings to your customer.   Another probable outcome is that your customer will make the buying decision based on some criteria other than the value a relationship brings. 

The simplest criteria for them to use in place of relationship value is price.  When all you give your customer to compare with your competition is price you’re in trouble because someone is always willing to offer a lower price.

Keep connected, stay sincere, communicate value and keep your customers. 

It’s time to switch things up a bit. For those who have visited and enjoyed this blog I will continue with my business oriented posts.  However, I yearn to also write about my more personal passions and experiences.  Business is a passion to be sure but just one of many.

The goal of my new posts will be to share and hopefully encourage others to pursue their passions.  I have known for a long while that I have a mission to be a dreamer and to help others dream too.  If you’re a dreamer, dreamer wanna be, or even a critic stay tuned I’ll have something for your soon.

As of right now I am unsure, exactly, how and when this will happen but this month sometime.  And, just so you know this getting more personal is a little bit scary for me which means it could also be fun.

For the most part the people I’ve been associated with over the years have been reasonably gracious when their candidate or proposal came up short in an election.  But that’s not always the case and some people seem to have a very difficult time getting over such a loss.  Donald Trump was clearly unhappy and lacking in grace (my opinion) after the recent presidential election.  I suspect Donald never played team sports and if so the skill of getting over a loss gracefully clearly eluded him.

My observations have led me to believe that playing team sports as a youth is a great way to learn how to gracefully deal with losing.  Note: I’m not implying that this means someone is happy about losing.  Learning how to lose, and win, well is an important, valuable and useful skill.

In part this skill is also a demonstration of appreciation of a game well contested.  For this to be true there is a degree of mutual respect for the opponent on both sides of the contest.  This respect is a good thing and sorely lacking in politics these days.

I just completed an interesting calculation, a very unscientific analysis.  Estimates vary but some $2.5 billion dollars, probably more, were spent on the recent presidential election of 2012.

What if that money had been used to hire workers?  My estimate is that $2.5 billion could pay the annual wages, provide basic benefits and pay the taxes on 30,000 above average paying jobs.

30,000 well-paying jobs is a lot of jobs!  To some this may not seem like much, a drop in the bucket in the grand scheme of things.  But surely it would produce a more positive outcome than the endless attack ads, robo-calls and mailers the money was spent on?  I guarantee for 30,000 people looking for work it would have been a better investment.

With the 2012 election results mostly in if you’re happy, sad, mad or whatever your future today is up to you and what you do.

If you expect election results or politicians will make your life better you will always be disappointed.

The one proven effective way to change your life for the better is to make changes to you, what you do and how you do it.

When was the last time you elected to purchase a product or service based on which choice was the least offensive and looked to be the least likely to create negative consequences in your world?   Near the end of a nasty, name calling, ugly, truth compromising election season I’m asking myself why don’t elections feel more like free market capitalism to me?

I think the answer is the number and variety of choices.  In our free market we are offered a huge variety of choices in each and every product and service category.  And it’s not a winner take all game.  As a business you can “win” with a tiny percentage of the market (vote).

Yet in an election it’s essentially a choice between “A” or “B”.  Turns out I’m neither an “A” nor a “B” so it feels like I have no choice at all.   This is a winner take all system if ever there was one.  Could this be why so few people vote?

In the United States of America if you have $60 bucks (fee to form an LLC) and a dream you can start a business and offer yet another option to the dizzying list of choices available to consumers.  How do you start a successful new political party, a viable choice “C”?  Historically the alternative parties haven’t done so well in elections.

Money is another problem.  It looks like it takes an entrenched party to attract the money needed to win an election.  Although to me it feels a lot more like not losing than winning.  And despite my fondness for capitalism and (mostly) free markets it seems that elections are a place where money taints rather than improves the process.  I wonder if there were parity in net worth the way there is with votes if this would change?

My question is where is the Internet?  It seems to me the history of the Internet is one of opening up once closed markets to the entrepreneurs, artists and dreamers who dare to enter.  We need some political entrepreneurs to leverage the Internet and create some new, and hopefully better, choices.  If the moaning and groaning I’ve heard this year from the voters I know is any indication, the market is ready!

Treat the people who work for you better.   One important lession I’ve learned is that your staff will treat your customers and clients about as well as they’re treated by you.

Lead by example.  If you want your staff to listen more carefully to customers, listen more carefully to your staff.  If you want them to return calls and emails more promptly, return their calls and emails more quickly.  Show them how it’s to be done, than except no excuses.

I’m assuming you are or will be comparing your actual 2011 results against your goals for the year.  Good for you!  But once you have that information I encourage you to take it one step further.

Long ago I learned how useful it can be to review or do what we called a “post mortem” on our best and worst results.  I do this every year for myself and not just my businesses.

By looking carefully at past results you can learn much to help you improve future results.  By looking over past project results at one technology company we learned important lessons that, in hind sight, would seem obvious.   We learned that the first project with an unfamiliar hardware platform or a new version of software always took longer than expected and had additional glitches to deal with.  We learned which engineers had the tendency to under estimate the time required to complete a project and which ones padded their estimates.  Moving forward we made adjustments for this.

Reviewing the past year’s highs and lows often reveal trends that are hard to spot at the time.  This has been a useful tool for me as a business owner, manager and a sales manager.  It has revealed useful data on staff idiosyncrasies, project pitfalls, product and service opportunities, price models, business partner performance, compensation packages, supplier performance and more.  All this information is useful in moving your business forward more quickly and profitably.

Take a half a day and review the past year’s highs and lows.  It’s a great way to prevent repeating past mistakes and do more of what you do best and most profitably.

As I work with clients to help them increase revenue a common question is “What’s a customer worth”?  If your answer is something like “the amount of a sale” you may need to look deeper.

To begin it’s important to understand the long term value of a customer in order to make good decisions associated with growing profits and your business.  How do you know how much to invest in advertising, marketing, and sales if you don’t know what a customer is worth?  Does it make sense to spend $1,000 in advertising to win a new customer if they’re only worth $500?  Not a good investment.

It’s important to know how much the average customer spends with you in a given period or time (year) and to know how long they remain a customer.  Knowing revenue per customer per year is good, knowing profit per customer per year is even better.  Sometimes there may be more than one calculation involved.  If you have multiple product lines or services you may want to do this calculation for each.

The important point here is know what the numbers are for your business.  As 2011 comes to a close, year end financial reports offer a wealth of information on the value of a customer.  If you know what a customer is worth business decisions become much easier to make and more obvious.  If it takes a $200 credit to keep a customer worth $1,000 a year, that can be a good investment.  And, there are intangible values that can be harder to measure.  Does the customer refer your business to others?  Do they offer advice or suggestions?  Do they pay a premium fee for a premium, more profitable, service?  Are they important in their industry and is that industry important to you?

Know the value of your customers and the answers to the questions above if you want to make even better business decisions in 2012!  It’s well worth the time and effort.

I often have deep thoughts while out in the woods running.  The idea for this post came to me on my weekend long run.  It has to do with, what seems to me, to be a shift in our culture to a “winner take all” mindset.  That, if one doesn’t win they aren’t good enough.

I was thinking about Steve Prefontaine.  Now he really was great but there is something interesting about Steve that, I think, adds to his legacy.  In 1972 Steve went to the Summer Olympics determined to do his best.  Notice I didn’t say “win”.  This is a huge distinction for a “winner take all” society.

For those who aren’t avid runners or don’t otherwise know Steve Prefontaine’s story he is a famous US distance runner but he never won an Olympic medal.  He did set numerous US running records.  In the 1972 Olympics he had a prime opportunity to win or place in the 5000 meter race for a medal, if only he had run to win.  But he didn’t he ran to do his best.

The 5000 meter race is about 3 miles long and during the Olympic medal deciding heat Steve’s competitors had the idea of running a, relatively, slow first 2 miles in an effort to have the race be decided by a sprint finish.  Now Steve was a very good sprinter and had he played the wait and sprint at the end game he would have almost certainly won a medal, maybe even the gold medal.  But Steve believed a 5000 meter race should be contested for more than the last 100 meters.

At the 2 mile mark Steve picked up the pace, a lot.  His competitors were forced to follow.  The rest is history and to understand it’s helpful to know that in running, as in most endeavors, it takes far more energy and effort to lead than to follow.  By taking the lead Steve Prefontaine didn’t win gold or silver or even bronze.  No medal for Steve as he finished 4^th.

Almost 40 years after there are some interesting lessons to be learned from Steve’s life.  First; only die hard running fans can name or remember who did win the 5000 meter Olympic gold in 1972, let alone who finished 2^nd and 3^rd.  By the way, a Finn named Lasse Viren won the gold.  Its 4^th place finisher, Steve Prefontaine, not Lasse Viren who has had the greatest impact on running lore being one of the most often referenced and quoted runners of all time.  Obviously this is NOT because Steve won or lost but because he gave it his best effort.

Now for the real point of this blog; what are you doing or NOT doing because you won’t be the best at it?  What makes the difference may be giving your best not being the best!  With that in mind what are you depriving yourself, your business, your family and your community of by holding back?  It’s okay to be 4^th, you may just create your own legend and that just might be your most valuable impact!