Jason A Cobb.com

The Momento Morning Routine

jason — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 13:55:05 +0000

I’ve started to use Momento as my lifelogging tool to capture personal metrics and events I will analyze in the future.

Here’s my morning routine as seen through Momento’s eyes:

7:38 AM Timestamp – Event Tag: Wake Up
8:04 AM Timestamp – Event Tag: Rise
8:31 AM Timestamp – Event Tag: Vitamins
8:42 AM Timestamp – Event Tags: Coffee Pot; Starbucks; Christmas Blend
8:51 AM Timestamp – Tweet absorbed into database and displayed inline

In a matter of moments, Momento will pick up this post as a RSS entry and absorb that into it’s database as well. Notice, none of these entries have any text in the notes section of the app – which was the primary purpose of the app. While, I do use the notes (or diary) screen on occassion, the ease of the custom tags and the autocomplete features make this app a great way to capture quantified self data to mine later.

Catch the Enthusiasm

jason — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 02:42:30 +0000

Every once in a while (or more if you really have your act together!) a client will let you know that you made their day. Those are times to celebrate and shout. Let all of your clients know and encourage them to catch the enthusiasm. Here are three simple ways how to showcase that praise.

Have a bulletin board in your store and a stack of index cards. When someone mentions something good about you or the store, ask if they would could jot it down so you can post it for all your clients to see. The same method can be used online.

Ask clients that have utilized your services for a large job or clients who you have formed close partnerships with to utilize their images and recommendations on a “Our Clients” page. Every business website has a “About Us” page but few have pages dedicated to their clients. Put up their picture, a quote or a story about why they love your business or your service, and then a blurb (and a link!) about their business. They will love the attention and the ability to showcase what they do.

Utilize images of your clients in your marketing material. One of my pet peeves is creating collateral with images that everyone knows are stock photos. Use your clients instead to create a more human feel for those who see your collateral and also to brag on your best clients.

How do you let your customer base know of your successes with clients?

The Quantified Self in Action

jason — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 01:45:50 +0000

Utilizing the Quantified Self methods is a terrific way to build productive habits to accomplish the goals you have for your growth. Put most simply, the cycle is:

Record the data
See the data
Build a habit
See the data move

Showcase your (client) focus

jason — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 00:30:27 +0000

We reviewed last time how ignoring your clients on the telephone is a sure recipe for stagnant growth. But what about those that reach out via alternative channels? It is critical today to monitor your brand online – and further – to interact and engage with your clients and potential clients online.

Engage with your clients on twitter every day by:

Checking your mention and direct feeds at least once a day and ideally three times during your work day.
Respond to clients questions and concerns (and praises too) in a way that recognizes that the public will see every word and that future sales from the client you are interacting with and many more will be influenced by your conversation.
Thank your clients for taking the time to engage with you.
Provide real incentives for ANY interaction. If a client mentions you in their feed, throw them a 15% off coupon. If a client complains, send them a hand-written apology card (if possible) or at least a nice email looking to smooth things over after the problem was resolved. If a client boasts on you, put their name on your wall as your client of the week.

Remember, those clients who choose to communicate with you (and not just ignore your business) are your fierce clients. They may be fiercely negative at first, but with superior service and problem resolution skills, they can easily be turned to fiercely positive brand champions proclaiming your praises.

By engaging with your clients via twitter you have a great forum to showcase just how client-focused you actually are! Let your superior customer service skills shine for all to see! If you don’t want to ignore clients in your storefront or ignore their phone calls, why would you ignore their tweets?

How have you utilized Twitter to reply to your clients and provide a wow experience?

Have you ever called a business that doesn’t answer the phone?

jason — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:00:14 +0000

I recently looked for an electrician for a repair I needed. I called someone who was recommended to me at around 4:30 but their office closed at 4:00. I was redirected to an answering service who put me on hold twice and wasn’t very friendly. Due to the recommendation, I toughed it out and then left a message. After a week, I still had not received a return call. I called again and hung up after three minutes of hold time during the middle of the day. Even with a strong personal recommendation, this business lost the sale from simply ignoring their potential client.

This is a fairly common problem among small businesses. Being sure that you have planned for adequate phone coverage is critical. Here are the basics:

Be sure your phone is answered within 15 seconds. If you can not make that on a consistent basis, look into an answering service to kick in after that.
Smile when you say hello. Smiles are audible through your greeting and they start off that conversation with a positive bang.
Return calls as soon as possible but never leave for the day with unreturned messages that came in that day. Even if you know your audience isn’t there, return the call, apologize that you missed them, and let them know you will return the call again in the morning.
Return any of those missed calls and the overnight messages within an hour of opening.

A lot of small businesses feel the time crunch that inhibits putting these practices into place. They then let messages go unreturned, or let the calls go into voicemail, or let their frustration show in their phone voice. All that does is institute a growth governor ensuring you will remain stuck where you are only to drive your clients to your competitors. That’s a sure-fire path to mediocrity.

Web and Social Marketing is a Client Conversation

admin — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 03:26:27 +0000

Clients who prefer small businesses expect a more personal touch. Quality customer service obviously plays a large role in that but the personal story that stands behind the products, the company, and the people is often what’s missing.

A great web and social campaign is basically like a conversation with the company’s owner. A company’s owner has passion and a knowledge of his or her clients and products at a deep level. A small business marketing campaign simply has to capture that knowledge and energy and transfer the same personal feeling that one would get from that one-on-one conversation to a medium that is one-to-many.

There are a million ways to increase the personal touch. Here are three:

Use your name. Tell people your name and use it in link structures – “Hear from Frank our Founder” for instance.
Sell your history. Tell people how you arrived where you are. If you grew from a garage organization to what you are today, talk about it. If you escaped the corporate rat race to do what you love, shout about it!
Talk about your favorite product. If you have something that you sell that really gets your blood pumping (like building a community around a small business does for me), talk to people about it and why you love it. You are the expert at your selection of products so speak with authority on them.

How do you communicate with your clients via the web to share that personal feeling of your small business?

Instant Research

admin — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 03:24:28 +0000

Yesterday, I received an email from my wife on a topic we were discussing the night before. I mentioned to her that I needed to do some research on it and get back to her to carry out the conversation to its conclusion. She then send me an email with said “research” which was a selection of a Wikipedia page with about 75% of the content removed and practically nothing added.

It occurred to me at that moment that the phrase “I need to research that” should be eliminated from my vocabulary. Today, in most cases 80% of the value of “researching” something can be derived by a 2-5 minute reading of that subject’s Wikipedia page. Granted some topics can’t be covered by that 5 minutes, but my experience shows that most can.

So,why talk about researching something in the future when you have a question about something now? From now on, I will simply get out my phone, read what I need to, and move on to the action phase faster which will keep me acting rather than talking.

How useful do you find Wikipedia in the moment? Do you still find yourself thinking in the mindset that detailed and easy-to-find information isn’t at your fingertips 24 hours a day?

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admin — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 03:09:52 +0000

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Save Time Sharing

admin — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 02:39:41 +0000

I have friends who have similar interests and some who don’t. Each tend to send me links, or videos, or images in emails throughout the day clogging up precious inbox processing workflows. While I enjoy the dialog that follows a great article that sparks an even-better conversation, too often, I find my inbox too full and simply deleting link emails while worrying that my friends and colleagues might reference the deleted email and thus throw us knee-deep into an awkward re-assessment of our friendship (I always imagine them thinking “what do you mean you didn’t read it?” with an inward and outward scowl). While I am being over-dramatic, I still believe there is value is some more context to this type of communication.

To fill this need, I’ve implemented a LinkScore system. I have asked my close friends that send me this type of email the most if they could tag their info emails with a tag in the subject from LS1 – LS5 that helps guide me to allocate my resources in a way that is in sync with them. The scale is below:

LS1 – They find the content interesting and think I may as well. They don’t really care if I read it though.
LS2 – They find it pretty interesting and think I probably will too. They imagine I’ll read it but aren’t expecting a response.
LS3 – They find it quite interesting and think I will too. They think I should read it.
LS4 – They find the content very interesting and request that I spend a couple minutes on it.
LS5 – They intend to have a face to face conversation about this in the near future and reading this will be required for that not to be a waste of time.

This system helps me understand how important these emails are to them. That way if I’m running behind and need to clear some stuff out, I’m not missing something they find critically important. At the same time, it doesn’t limit the flow so that when I find a good amount of time on my hands and I have a stack of LS1 and LS2 material, I can go through it.

What types of techniques do you use to pass tidbits of information back and forth between each other that help you from getting overloaded?