The UPS Store misses the mark

It was finally my turn, and as I walked up to the counter to send my two packages another woman came in from behind me carrying a FedEX box. She obviously had no idea that she was not welcome there.
“Excuse me, do you accept FedEX packages?”
“No we don’t,” frowned the UPS Store worker. Disgusted that she even had to dignify that question with a response.
“Well, do you know where they accept FedEX packages around here?” The woman asked cautiously.
“No idea,” the UPS worker said cynically, as if it was a completely ridiculous question to ask.

I’m sorry, but the social media world has made me far more sensitive to this kind of poor customer service. What was this UPS worker thinking? Did she really need to act this way?

The customer had a problem to solve, but didn’t find any help at the UPS Store. Granted, the customer wasn’t trying to send a package through UPS, but clearly she doesn’t send packages often. It was also likely that she didn’t CHOOSE FedEX, it looked like a pre-paid package that was possibly sent to her.

The UPS Store could have won a new customer for life by:
-Helping this woman find a store close by
-Looking up a store for her in the phone book or on the computer
-Being civil

Was her question really that absurd? She walked into a “UPS Store” that used to be Mailbox Express in attempts to send out a FedEX package. How dare she, right?

Note to UPS Store employees: Put the customer first by learning where the nearest FedEX drop-off location is. It is probably a frequently asked question.

With the increased transparency of the internet, average customer service won’t cut it. Maybe nobody from UPS will ever read this blog post, but you can guarantee that me and the woman with the FedEX box will go elsewhere to handle shipping needs.

The Holy Grail of Blogging: Progress

“The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.” – Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

The Harvard Business Review recently published a paper that challenges the way employers see motivation. They asked over 600 managers from dozens of companies to rank factors that have the biggest impact on employee motivation. Their choices were: recognition, incentives, interpersonal support, support for making progress and clear goals.

“Recognition for good work” came out as a clear number 1. Unfortunately, the managers had it all wrong. In a separate, multi-year survey that tracked the employees thoughts and feelings (what a novel approach, eh?) it was determined that the one item Managers ranked dead last was the most important to workers- a sense of PROGRESS.

A close analysis of nearly 12,000 diary entries, together with the writers’ daily ratings of their motivation and emotions, shows that making progress in one’s work—even incremental progress—is more frequently associated with positive emotions and high motivation than any other workday event.

Progress matters more than anything else to us. This desire to grow, expand and overcome challenges is insatiable- and the managers that recognize this will have a much better understanding of how to encourage and motivate workers. But what does this mean for individuals? How can individuals gain greater self-motivation by understanding this principle? The answer lies in what progress means to each one of us.

When I talk to busy attorneys about desires when it comes to blogging, they have very similar concerns:

-Will blogging help me bring in business?
-Can blogging help me gain recognition for my expertise?
-Can this get me on the “short list” of experts?
-Is anybody I want to do business with reading blogs or spending time on Twitter?

What they are really asking is, can blogging help me make progress? Can it help me make progress with my network, progress in my business development and progress in the way I am perceived within my firm? If professionals don’t believe that blogging and interaction through social networks will help them progress in some way, it won’t be worth it to them. Blogging requires too much time and energy.

Progress really means very different things to different people. The #1 reason law firm lawyers cite as the reason they want to bring in more business? They feel it will substantially improve the way they are perceived within their law firm. For solo attorneys and smaller practices, they often want to blog to bring in more business because progress means survival to them. These large or small firm attorneys believe that bringing in business will help them advance the rock in one way or another.

If blogging won’t advance the rock for you, is it still worth it? Most will say no, others enjoy the connections and camaraderie that comes with blogging. The sense of feeling connected to other lawyers that are going through the same things make it worth it. In my opinion, blogging is way too much work for it to serve as nothing more than a glorified water cooler.

What does progress mean to you? If you don’t have a clear idea, you may not have what it takes to wake up again tomorrow and resume pushing that rock up the hill.

-Hat tip to Charles Green for pointing out the HBR article to me.

Why I un-followed 47,000 people on Twitter

Remember when the band members from Metallica all got short haircuts? I remember hearing people say, “those sell-outs” and “it just isn’t the same seeing them with short hair.” Did anybody consider that after having long greasy hair for almost two decades, they were ready for a change? Long hair can be hard to manage, and so can a huge Twitter following.

When I first joined Twitter I was trying to get a book published. I still have a few good friends from the old days when I was using a blogspot blog – http://adriandayton.blogspot.com. For those of you that knew me back then I had one goal- to get my first book published. It was a book about virtues, so I figured a bigger following was better. So I grew… and grew.. and grew my following.

Somewhere along the way I switched gears and started talking to other lawyers about social media. This was a far more narrow niche and required a very tight focus. For this very specific group a big following wasn’t nearly as helpful or attractive. Worse still, I was following so many people that my Twitter stream was filled with content that was at best irrelevant and at worse distracting. The biggest challenge for me was that I could no longer focus on new followers or qualified prospects because they were lost in the noise. It was time to get a hair cut.

Months ago I noticed that Alexis Neely had trimmed down the list of people she followed- so I asked her how that went for her. She responded, “I have no regrets.” Than I noticed that one of the nicest people I know on Twitter, Del Williams had done the same. She told me how great it was to no longer have so many auto-DM’s and the SPAM coming her way all the time. She told me about a program called http://unfollowall.com that let’s you un-follow everyone with a click of a button. If you have a larger following it takes about 15 clicks- but it sure beats going through them all manually.

Do I regret it?

Actually no, you see the people that CARE have sent me a message and I have followed them back immediately, the people that don’t care- well, why were we following each other in the first place? Seth Godin says the magic number is 10. I have written about this before, but 10 raving fans will make any business successful. By following 50,000 it was making it hard to focus on the 10- or 100 people that I really care about.

If you were un-followed in what I refer to as “The Great Cleanse,” please shoot me a message and let me know so that I can follow you back. And this time, my following you back will mean more. Please don’t be upset with me though, I would hate to have to “sleep with one eye open.” (that’s a Metallica reference if you didn’t catch it.)

Don’t Start a Blog You Can’t Finish

“Quitting smoking is easy, I’ve done it hundreds of times.” -Mark Twain

Starting a blog is easy. Finishing a blog, now that takes work. As I speak to attorneys all over the country about blogging, one of the #1 fears that I hear from them is:

“I don’t want to start something I can’t finish”

Two weeks ago I talked about Why anybody can blog, but most people fail. This week I want to talk about how attorneys can create an effective blog strategy AND have increased productivity. We are going to talk about how lawyers can create a process that will guarantee they can make their blog a reality.

The Devil is in the details

As professionals we work well under pressure. Deadlines, due dates and clients in crisis. These things don’t phase us, after all it is our job to make the problems of our clients our problems. This means that every client call is most likely urgent. There are always new fires to put out. It is impossible to plan for the calls, so we need to be ready to clear our schedule and help our clients solve their emergencies. This high volume of urgent and important matters can make it difficult to work on those things that matter the most to us. Some of the things that are the most important to us, aren’t urgent and certainly aren’t emergencies:

-watching your son’s soccer game
-dinner with your family
-date night with your spouse
-lunch with your best client
-follow up calls with your best prospects

None of these items are urgent, but it can be safely said they are all extremely important. Steven Covey describes the conflict of urgent/important versus not urgent/important with this 2×2 matrix

Sometimes we get so bogged down that when we finally have free time we spend it in the bottom right quadrant- doing things that are not important or urgent. Becoming “stuck” and living our lives in quadrants 1 and 4 is very common. There are four secrets to escaping them.

1. Have a clear vision of your future

What’s the point? Why are you creating the blog? What is your end goal? What matters most to you? Will your blog help you get there? If you can’t answer these questions- your blog will die an ignominious death. You won’t have the motivation to keep going.

2. Have a set time each week for planning

You’ll never find time for blogging. You can’t “make” time for blogging either. You need to schedule it, and that requires you to have a planning process. Set aside time each week to schedule your week and make it a priority to blog at times when you are less likely to have distractions.

3. Build accountability into your blogging goal

Who else knows about your goal to blog? Does your wife know? Does your boss know? Your business partner? Your coach? Make sure someone is checking up on you. Almost daily I hear professionals complain that they aren’t good at keeping regular commitments. Being accountable to someone else can help.

4. Make blogging a habit (this is probably the hardest step)

This comes as no surprise, it is difficult to start new habits.

“Man, I can’t floss my teeth. People talk about how hard it is to stop smoking; about as hard as it is to start flossing.” – Mitch Hedberg

If Mitch were alive today, may he rest in peace, I think he would agree that blogging is AT LEAST as hard to start as flossing. It takes commitment and dedication.

Ok, that is all I have to say right now. My wife is calling me, and it’s time to take my son to the park. Let me end by saying, if blogging is important to you, make it happen. If not, don’t beat yourself up for not doing it.

Are you like Madonna or Willie Nelson?

I think it’s fitting to start a blog post about Madonna and Willie Nelson by telling you a short story about my departed Grandfather. He would be 102 years old today. His wife, my Grandmother Lois, is still alive and turns 101 this January. I spent my summer’s working on a cattle ranch for my Grandfather- and he was constantly teaching me. He would tell me which plants were edible, how to move cattle and most importantly- proper dinner table manners.

“I’ll have the butter please,” my Grandpa said to me.

“Here it is,” I said as I quickly handed it to him.

“Now Adrian, good manners is not just about passing things when they are asked for, and saying ‘please’ and ‘thank-you.’ Having good manners means anticipating what people will need BEFORE they ask for it. When you see someone breaking their bread, go ahead and pass them the butter. If they don’t have anything to drink, offer to poor them some water.”

Anticipation is a powerful tool both for dinner-table manners and for business. Now on to the rock stars.

Madonna doesn’t have to anticipate. She is a pop-icon that is always recreating herself. She has such talent and charisma that whatever she chooses to be or however she choose to re-invent herself, people adore her for it. Or think about a production company like Pixar. Everything they create is solid gold, so they have the luxury to create from nothing something fantastic in every one of their productions. Unless you have CRAZY talent, you may not be able to be like Madonna.  You may need to learn the art of anticipation.

Willie Nelson didn’t have crazy talent. At least not in the way Madonna did. Willie Nelson was an extremely talented song writer.  He wrote big hits like “Crazy” for Patsy Cline.  The problem was, he didn’t want to write, he wanted to sing- but none of the major record labels would sign him.  They said he didn’t have the singing voice to be a star.  Instead of trying to force it, he changed tactics.  Willie noticed a movement in country music towards a little rougher cowboy.  Call this the “Harley Davidson Movement.”  He saw this growing trend, and he realized that it was going to be big.  Maybe even bigger than country itself at the time, so instead of trying to create the new trend- he decided to ride the wave by writing music to resonate with this new growing market.  He anticipated their needs before they knew they had them, and not only did he land a huge record deal and propel his career to stardom- he even got to sing and play the music his way.

How can you possibly anticipate the next big trend? How about anticipating the needs your clients will have next?  Do you need to read their minds, or shuffle through their garbage? No, but I would recommend you start by listening to them.  You need to be tuned it.  Talk to them.  Ask them what is keeping them up at night.  If one client calls with a new concern, chances are there will be other clients with similar concerns.  Find out from the source. It’s not the only way, but it gives you the best chance of success.  Madonna’s are one-in-a-million but new smart business people that are able to anticipate are springing up everyday.

Anybody can learn to anticipate, but for starters take a lesson from my Grandfather, and pass me the butter.

Next Page »