Changing Changes Everything

It happens. We all know it.

Changes come around and make us women and men, in one form  or the other.

This past week Marie and I moved from Manhattan to Westchester country, about 20 miles north of NYC. This quiet bucolic setting just seemed more in tune with our immediate needs of being close to the "craziness", but no longer having to be in it.  

The packing, moving and unpacking is always a chore, but given that this is our fourteenth move in our four decades of marriage, we are pretty experienced at it and pretty good about the changes.

What we are not good about, and I suspect that many of you feel the same way, is the feeling of being disconnected either by phone, email, Facebook or Twitter, etc.  So before we moved, I diligently notified Verizon who assured me that my move to FIOS phone, Internet and TV would be painless.

Four days later, I am still in pain and unable to receive emails on my fredkap@verizon.net Internet account.  Having placed two calls and received an official "ticket order", I began to feel that this problem would be solved.

I even received an email from Verizon assuring me that my problem would be fixed by 9:38pm on January 27, 2012.  This hour has come and gone with no assurances of when it was to be fixed.

So I began to wonder, what do our customers feel like when their problems aren't fixed immediately or within a short period of time?  How do they feel when our "customer service" people cannot make a decision without speaking to the owner, manager, boss, supervisor, etc?

Do they feel as frustrated and helpless as I do now?
Do they swear they are not going to buy from us again?
Do they tell their friends about their bad experience?
Do they choose other activities other than bowling to spend their precious entertainment dollars/

My guess is "all of the above."
In these economic times, we cannot afford not to make every customer experience a great one.

 It all starts with Hello.

Focus and Balance

We talk about focus, the importance of being one dimensional,  gritting our teeth and getting the job done come hell or high water. Professional athletes, physicians, and tech people – almost everyone talks about focus as the key element in working your career, your life and your relationships. 

Yet 3 out of 4 Americans wear some type of corrective eye wear; either eyeglasses (64%) or contact lenses (11%). I find it ironic that in a nation that values focus, 75% of us need some type of corrections just to “see”; we’re not even close to “focus” yet.

To the word focus, we add “balance”; that has been popularly defined as the ability to, if not equally, divide our lives into “time zones” where we strive to spend about the same time in each zone such as career/work, home, alone, and of course family time zone. Yet 68% of Americans are considered over weight. I find it ironic that we strive for balance, even though most of us are overweight.

So somewhere out there amongst people who are overweight and need corrective eye care, you could surmise that about 7 out of 10 Americans are trying to focus and lead balanced lives.

Seems to me, and I may be a little biased here, that bowling a game or three is really an ideal way to practice focus.

It is even better for balancing one of our time zones - Family/Friend TZ

What do you think?

No Delicatessen Please

In the past month of visiting clients, I have taken particular notice of lots of fliers in  centers. Most of them have headlines that start with the name of the center. Others have only day, date, time and price of the specific event or program they are promoting. Hardly any had a clear benefit to the customer or a clear call to action.

Your headline should be about BENEFITS to the customer, not about YOU!

Here's an example of an existing headline:
Headline: Happy lanes announces its all new 10 for 10 league
Subhead: Program starts January 23 at 8pm; just $10 per week

Here's an example of a benefit headline
Headline: Here's how to get all the bowling fun you want in just ten short sessions.  Join now!
Subhead: If you don't have a lot of time, this program is for you

See the difference?
The second headline goes to the target's obstacle and ergo its benefit. its a short 10 week season that provides the benefit of FUN!

The second thing the headline does, it asks for action ("Join Now!")

If your flyer or ad is more about you and how modern your center is or how many charities you support than it is about the benefits of the program, you have an EGO flyer and one that probably won't sell much.

Your flyer has one purpose: to tell people all the benefits of what your program offers and why they need to act now to get it.

If you want a quick lesson in this, just tune into a late night infomercial and watch how they verbally hit you over the head with all the benefits of the product they are selling.  And then offer you other benefits if you buy now!

OK, here is your homework. If you don't have an ad strategy that gets people to take action now, then review all of your fliers and online ads.  Whittle the ad down to what matters to the buyer. 


Always ask this question; "why should I, as a buyer, buy this program, over all the other options out there?  WHY?


Everything else is delicatessen.

Trying

The "needing" to do something is the difference between "doing something" and "not doing something" 


The hardest words to hear are "I am trying".  


If this sounds cold, I don't mean it to be that way. 


What I mean by this is, "there is no trying, either you do or you don't".


Ever "try" to call someone?


Either you call or you don't.