Pretend You Own the Company

The most important thing your work can offer you is a chance to feel good about yourself. Do you see yourself as a productive, contributing member of your company? Do you know why your company exists? When you realize what your company offers to society, you’ll be able to understand what part you play.

Work with the attitude that you own the company that employs you. (Even if you do!) You earn your money from your employer by doing more than you are paid to do. According to the “law of sow and reap,” you will get noticed for being an exceptional worker, so never worry about giving your employers “something for nothing.” More important, you’ll feel good about yourself because you will be a productive person with a part in your company’s future. Reaping the rewards of self-satisfaction, no matter what you are paid, is the true measure of the work you do, whether in love, your career, or your life.

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Keeping up with the vigilante consumer: customer retention, customer service

  • If you increase customer retention just 5% more, your profits will increase 100%.
  • U.S. population growth is projected to be 1.1% in the next twenty years.
  • Disposable income in the US is growing only 2% every year.
  • US businesses will invest more than $1 billion this year on computer technology, just for customer service departments.

The interesting bits of information above basically mean that the number of customers are dwindling. Which is why customer service is today’s competitive advantage. If we don’t have masses of potential customers, we’d better keep the ones we do have happy. Ecstatic.

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Tips From An Unabashed, Self-Promoter

I’m always taken aback when someone asks me how much time I devote to marketing. Every single thing I do is marketing. Talking to strangers at seminars or group meetings or even in elevators or taxis is marketing. Customer service is part of marketing. I am an unabashed, relentless, promoter of my services and products. I get the drive from the love I have for this business. Here are a few suggestions on how you can attract, retain and extend your relationship with customers:

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Use an Interesting Statistic

A great way to open a talk or presentation is to cite some intriguing statistics that endorse your premise, are out of the ordinary, totally unexpected, or are not well known. This could be something you read in the Wall Street Journal, trade magazines that are unfamiliar to the audience, the annual report, website or newsletter of the company you are addressing, or perhaps you hear in church.

These statistics can be directly related to the organization or industry, or they could be general observations. Anything you can make pertinent to your topic is fair game. It can be deadly serious, like “One in four people will be affected by cancer. Either them directly or a family member.” This made my late friend Cantu’s talk “Laughing all the Way to the Hospital” more of a human interest story than just his experience. It can also be fun and frivolous, like, “Women born since 1960 are likely to have more husbands than children.” This can lead into a talk on changes in society.

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Spotting the Leaders

This is a story my Fripp Associate David Palmer, PhD told at our recent speaking skills class. Hope it makes you think and act like a leader.

It was 1952. The Korean War had been going for three years…and the North Koreans were short of resources, especially soldiers.

Both sides continued to take POW’s, but it took money to build high-security prison camps…and a lot of soldiers to guard them.

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Is It Time for Your Speaking Business to Go More High-tech?

On February 15, 2001, I woke up for the first time in 26 years without a full-time personal assistant. How did I feel about it? It was exhilarating! Of course, now and then I miss having someone to do what I am not crazy about doing, but it was time for me to take charge of my business in a whole new way. Over the years, one assistant has trained the next and although they had had wonderful strengths, also weaknesses. Fortunately, the wealth of new technology lets me reinvent how I now want to run my business and marketing for the 21st Century.

Any speaker trying to maintain an efficient office headquarters while on the road will appreciate how quickly the new technologies have been coming to their aid. I’ve been self-employed since 1975 and had my own full-time speaking business since 1984. When I reached the age of 55, I asked myself two questions:

  • How do I want to live the second half of my life?
  • How do I want to run my business for the second half of my life?

Technology is making big changes in nearly every speaker’s business. All of us already have technological capabilities that we aren’t taking full advantage of. I am constantly learning how to automate many of the processes available to us.

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7 Ways to Profit from Speakers Bureaus in Hard Times

“Why don’t I get booked more often?”

“How can I get booked more often?”

Both are burning questions in today’s difficult economy. I talked to Mark French, President of Leading Authorities, Inc. about his solutions.

Mark French was pragmatic. “In difficult economic times, there is always an excess supply of speakers. At the same time, customers’ expectations are higher than ever. They want every speaker dollar to count double. Speakers must understand this new terrain and develop a successful strategy for getting booked.

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Tips for Speaker Seekers

Help for meeting planners and resources for finding speakers.

As a busy meeting planner, with the usual overload of demands on getting your next event launched flawlessly, the last problem you want to have is for your keynote speaker to disappear off the radar screen. Whatever the reason — flu bug, scheduling glitch, bad travel karma — you’re skewered! Call in back-up from your Association? Good luck — internal bench strength is not going to get the job done when you’re expected to deliver nationally-recognized, high-performance event headliners.

Well, my friends, if you’ll read on, you’ll find that you need not wake up in a cold sweat from this bad dream. The professional speaking community is not only very well organized, but also quite sophisticated in responding to your last minute or long-range quest for high-quality speakers.

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When to Say No! (and Why)

As a keynote speaker, sometimes people ask me, “Do you ever bomb?”

Yes, once in a while. But even the worst experience, with a little time lapse, can become funny, and always a learning experience. Once I spoke for a group of men who worked in a gravel quarry. I told the organizers, “No, I don’t think this is my kind of audience,” but they were insistent. Finally, I gave in and said “yes.” (I admit to this defect in my character: when clients keep begging me to take their money I can only refuse for so long!)

How bad could it be? I rationalized. I went early, set up the environment, changed the lighting, schmoozed with everyone. I’m not saying they weren’t nice, hard working, tax paying Americans, but it looked as if their friends had given them subscriptions to the Tattoo of the Month Club. Fortunately, there were a few wives. One woman, very thin, sat in the front row. “Ah, she must have heard of me,” I thought. So I asked her if she liked speakers. “Oh, no,” she said, “My husband is a bit deaf, so we have to sit close up.

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If the World Were Perfect

Whatever you are about to do, ask yourself, “If the world were perfect, what would this particular thing look like or be like?” Of course, it can’t be perfect, but too many times we compromise on a compromise, rather than compromising on perfection.

Choose your actions, not for how they affect today, but for where they’ll get you a year or five years from now. What decisions can you make that will get you closer to the place you want to be?

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