Growth Mode

Great minds have stated that no matter where you are in your business, the Great Wisdom is that your business is either “green and growing” or you are “stagnant and wasting away”. The spirit here is that no matter how good things might possibly be at any one given moment, you as a business, need to be perpetually recruiting and constantly in “Growth Mode”. Many an excellent Business who thought they were set for life has encountered a sudden or unforeseen downturn and ends up gone. For instance, who thought we would ever see a day when the mighty and pervasive Eastman Kodak company would ever cease to exist?  Same for Polaroid. Montgomery Ward? A&P was once thought to be so well established their name was “The Great Atlantic and Pacific (Tea) company“.  All are no more.

Not being one to ever dwell on the negative, my point is simply as a business you need to be looking at every human interaction as a chance to promote and enhance your company. I often say that kindness is the universal language so well understood that even the deaf can hear it and the blind can spot authentic kindness a mile away. Quit sending meaningless, impersonal or worse yet, “plain ordinary” e-mails, texts and voice messages when, in 90 sec, you could send a PERFECTLY appropriate card via Send Out Cards! You know what I’m talking about when I describe the warm fuzzy feeling you get when someone does something you don’t expect. Why not hand out “thankfulness, gratitude and appreciation” like candy by sending really meaningful cards to your customers, colleagues, suppliers and referral partners? We, at Send Out Cards, call it “Appreciation You can Touch” Let Ralph show you how effortless and automatic it can be. Have a conversation with Ralph Harold, “guywithtwofirstnames.com,” avoid “perceived indifference” and “Take it to the Bank.”

Ralph Harold

ralph@guywithtwofirstnames.com

816-808-2465            

Someday Is Today

Does your spouse, girlfriend, close friend or business associate ever accuse you of being a procrastinator, especially in the area of “Follow Up?” Maybe you have even added that label to yourself. So quit Procrastinating and proclaim “ Someday is gonna be Today!”  

Now, in our defense, there’s a lot of things to do in a day and while you mean to get a lot done, eventually you have to prioritize and that means some things get done and some other things get put off. Too often, one thing that continually gets put off is your “Follow Up” or your outreach to customers, clients, suppliers, coworkers, consultants, etc.

Perhaps you have heard numerous network marketing gurus proclaim that the “fortune is in the follow up”and they are quite right. Anybody can take and fill orders but only a truly great person can make you feel fabulous once the process is completed. Is your business just an ordinary, “also ran”, no better than the next guy? Obviously not, they’ve got you working for them! So quit treating your customers and clients with “ordinary”, “lack-luster” or “ totally forgettable” communications.  Admit it, those emails, texts, etc. don’t even move the needle on the “impressiveness” scale.

Your Customers/Clients are really important to your bottom line.  Why not take a selfie of them and their purchase and put that picture on a Card that tells them just how S-I-N-C-E-R-E-L-Y you appreciate their business?  The next card they get can instead thank them for their L-O-Y-A-L-T-Y or maybe that card can roster list other goods/services you also provide. The back of the card has YOUR Logo or YOUR picture and contact information, not Hallmark, not AMERICAN Greetings or not even SendOutCards.  Make them feel like there is “no comparison” between the other guys and the Customer Experience at your place.  

Quit putting off tomorrow and take the steps to get your follow-up automated and actually happening! Have a conversation with Ralph Harold, “guywithtwofirstnames.com”, realize that SOMEDAY IS TODAY and “Take it to the Bank.”

Ralph Harold

ralph@guywithtwofirstnames.com

816-808-2465            

It Was Right There

I can’t believe it. It was right there in front of both my face and your face the whole time and neither you nor I couldn’t see it!  How often how do you say to yourself ‘this is so blatantly obvious why didn’t I invent that or patent that because actually I had the idea for it a long time before they did.” How many of us would want to remember something later so we would attach a note to all kinds of things but since the note wouldn’t STAY attached, we had to either use tape or a rubber band?  Wouldn’t it be nice if the note “would just attach itself?” Well guess what, you didn’t invent it and I didn’t invent it even though we had the idea probably 1000 times before someone else invented Post-it notes and are now billionaires for it.  Missed opportunity.

Well guess what, this process is ongoing and so we did it again. Yes, you and I missed another golden opportunity that was staring us right in the face. It was so incredibly simple and yet we missed it again. My wife and I have a friend whose husband is a patent attorney with a large prestigious law firm. One of the things this patent attorney says to us is that sometimes some very lucrative patents are simply improvements on an existing product or service.  Didn’t we just get done kicking ourselves for not inventing  Post It notes even though we had a similar idea countless numbers of times before them? Well guess what, not all Post It notes adhere to all the things you wanted to attach them to. The type of adhesive used when trying to attach them to things in the freezer, refrigerator or very windy or humid conditions just wasn’t adequate.  So wouldn’t it be great to have a Post-it note that had a stronger, more aggressive adhesive? Well you and I should’ve thought of it, but we didn’t!  I just saw in my friendly neighborhood office depot or OfficeMax store that there is a new version of Post It notes with a stronger, more aggressive adhesive for use in the freezer, high humidity conditions etc. Why didn’t you or I think of that?  It was right there.  Another missed opportunity.

The lesson here is that there are countless opportunities around us that are so simple a second grader could come up with the idea, but it’s just a matter of applying the idea to the situation. You have been looking in vain for a way to boost your business and yet the simplicity and beauty of my “Send Out Cards” System has been staring you in the face all this time.  Don’t let the third time be another missed opportunity! Reach out with an email to ralph@guywithtwofirstames.com or text/call Ralph at 816-808-2465 and let’s have that conversation about SendOutCards as it applies to your business before either you or I miss another opportunity.

Ralph Harold MD

816-808-2465

ralph@guywithtwofirstnames.com

AVOIDING PERCEIVED INDIFFERENCE

I’m going to go way out on a limb here and say that you really actually DO care about your customers and clients, don’t you? Of course, you’d be an idiot to NOT care about them. These entities are putting food on your table and keeping the lights on. Ask any business owner and they’ll tell you they think they show customer appreciation really well.  So why then is customer satisfaction so low that people will either shop around for better price or leave you when a competitor is the smallest amount more affordable?

It is absolutely imperative that you make your customers feel like they are the most important person/entity in your business.  Otherwise, that once loyal customer will gravitate to the competition if they instead make them feel better, more special, or more importantly more appreciated. To illustrate how important this is, for example, the changeover rate in the financial advisor business is unbelievably high. This does not mean that we have bad financial advisors, it means that they get busy and too often if they don’t have anything significant to communicate to “the customer” they don’t bother “the customer”. “Bother” being the operative word. Unfortunately, the client, upon not hearing from the financial advisor for long periods of time, incorrectly perceives the advisor as “indifferent, uncaring, or non-caring”, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth. This “perceived indifference” shows that if your clients don’t think you care about them they will gravitate to someone who makes the customer feel special.

We at Send Out Cards can keep your name and face in front of these people as often or as little as you like.  You are in control. We can make all this communication and “Follow Up” happen automatically so that you don’t have to be thinking about it!  Yes, you can go on with what you really want to do and that is run your business. Have a conversation with Ralph Harold, “guywithtwofirstnames.com,” avoid “perceived indifference” and “Take it to the Bank.”

Ralph Harold

ralph@guywithtwofirstnames.com

816-808-2465