Make it Easy for Your Customers

For the last 11 years I have held a clothes swap at my house. It’s simple, I invite about 20-25 girlfriends and they bring everything they don’t want in their house (have yet to have a girlfriend bring her husband or boyfriend – lol) and bring it to mine. There are bags and bags and bags of items people don’t want and they spread them out throughout two rooms and then they all go “shopping”. The women take others items and see their “get rid of” items be picked up by someone. What isn’t picked up by one of the attendees is donated to one of a few local nonprofits (this year Sacred Heart Community Service and St. Justins Outgrown Shop). It’s a super fun day filled with great women, good food and helping others. This year we donated more than 800 items to two different charities. Believe it or not, this year was a small donation year!

The clothes swap has been successful since the beginning and most of the same women are still coming with the addition of a few new women.  This is how my clothes swap relates to your customers – 1) make it easy and 2) make it predictable.

1) Make it easy: These women have busy lives. They have careers, husbands/boyfriends, kids, social lives and so much more going on. They have very little extra time but I make it easy for them…bring in what you don’t want and I’ll do the rest. I’ll sort through all the items so that the appropriate nonprofits get what is right for them. I’ll put items on hangers. I’ll save you a trip to a bunch of locations so that you can hang with a bunch of awesome women while you socialize, shop and eat.

Your customers are super busy too. They have families, social lives and let’s not forget, lots of vendors that they’re working with. Don’t waste their time. When you say you’ll only need 30 minutes, take no more than that. When you give them a document to review, makes sure that it’s in a reviewable format. I think you get the gist. The easier you make it for them, the more that they’ll be willing and want to work with you.

2) Make it predictable: Most of the women who have been coming to my annual clothes swap have been coming for the entire 11 years. They know exactly what to expect ahead of time, during the swap and even the follow up after.

Again, if you say it’ll take 30 minutes, don’t take a minute more. Also let your customer know exactly what you expect out of them. If you’re writing a press release on them, let them know how long they will have to approve it, when you hope to release the press release, what the post press release process will be (media outreach, post to your website, social media…) and any other items. This way they’ll have the opportunity to tell you at the beginning if they can participate and if the time line will work. However, if they have to change the timeline at any point in the process that’s okay. Yes, it’s okay. I know you have deadlines to meet but the customer owes you nothing. You can give them a nudge to speed up the process but never ever get mad, yell or threaten them because they aren’t meeting your timeline. The customer owes you nothing! Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Got it?

It’s that simple…make it easy and make it predictable!

What We All Can Learn From MasterChef Junior

I’m sitting here watching MasterChef Junior and I’m smiling because it’s a very refreshing show.  As one child (they are all young kids) succeeds, they all smile.  When one receives criticism, they all grimace and feel the pain.  They are all a team, yet they are all competing for the same prize…the title of MasterChef Junior. One ity bitty little girl just said to a competitor and teammate “I would serve it at my restaurant”. Seriously!?  That’s amazing.

What happens between being 8 1/2 years old and how ever old your are now that makes us stop publicly praising those whom we work with and for? When did we lose our inner child? When did we start thinking that there’s not enough success to go around that we have be mad at those who do well? As working adults, we’re so focused on winning and doing better, getting more and going faster, that we sometimes forget to slow down and see who is around us.  See who is holding us up.

Whether it’s your customer, teammate, co-worker, friend or family member remember that there is enough to go around. Whether it be joy, success, money, love, success we all get there through teamwork and supporting each other. So next time you start to thing “Grrr, so and so just got a promotion!” Stop and rephrase your thinking to “That’s awesome that so and so just got a promotion.”

Good things happen when we’re good to others. Be good! It’s easier than you think.

 

 

All the world needs is pizza!

I was at home last week and watched the Ellen DeGeneres Show and they were spotlighting a kid (he’s in his 20s) who left Wall Street, moved home to Philadelphia and with no restaurant experience, he opened a pizza joint, Rosa’s Fresh Pizza.

At the beginning of January his little pizza joint had 599 “likes” on Facebook. Today, just a week after the Ellen Show, they have just under 10,000!!!! That’s insane. Normally I’m not a huge proponent of “followers” or “likes” because it doesn’t truly show engagement. (Side note, there are benefits of having followers and likes but many times the numbers are overrated…but that’s a different post). However, in this case, I’m making an exception and it’s because of why this little pizza company is gaining so many followers that I’m writing about them now.

Today I was at home and there was one bad thing after another on the news…a hospital shooting in Boston, a freeway collapsed in Cincinnati, gas leak down the street from my house, all of different magnitudes of bad news. There’s very little positive or happy news on the TV, and then I remembered seeing Ellen’s show on Rosa’s Fresh Pizza.

What makes Rosa’s different is that they are giving their customers (and now non-customers) the ability to easily and quickly help those who are hungry.  It’s this simple…you buy a $1 slice of pizza and you tell the person at the counter that you want to buy another $1 slice for someone who is hungry. You then get a sticky note (just today 3M  provided Rosa’s with a whole lot of sticky notes…woot woot!), write a message on the note, stick it on the wall and when a hungry person walks in, they go to the wall, take a sticky note and trade it in for a slice of pizza. That’s it!  That’s all it takes to make a difference in someone’s life…a positive difference. It’s such a great story and it’s fantastic to hear that thousands of folks have heard the story now (thank you Ellen) and are now following this little pizza shop. And, the shop is now getting in money from people nowhere near Philadelphia to help feed the hungry. Check out Rosa’s Facebook page to see and read the stories. I dare you not to smile and give a huge sigh of “wow, people really are good!”

This week I challenge you to two things! 1) Spread positive news. When you’re about to tell your neighbor/friend about something bad that happens, stop, and think of something positive to say. We need more happy stories. 2) Do something good/nice for someone to pay it forward. When I cross a bridge in the East Bay (an actual bridge, not an analogy), I always hand the toll taker a Starbucks gift card for $10 and sometimes I pay for the car behind me. It makes me feel good, I love seeing the reaction of the bridge toll taker and seeing how long it take the car behind me to realize what I had done 🙂 (side note…did you know that bridge toll takers have one of the highest suicide rates of any job?)

Check out Ellen’s blog post here.

Check out the Ellen interview here.

Pay it forward my friends, pay it forward!

Rosa’s Fresh Pizza Sticky Wall