Don’t Got Metrics? Then You Won’t Get Change.

As the old saying goes, “you get what you measure” and trying to make change happen in your organization is no different. I worked with a telecommunications client a few years ago who was trying to transform their collections call center. Customer satisfaction surveys were spotty, agent turnover was high and while the supervisors and managers tried all of the usual call center agent motivation tricks of pizza Fridays and drawings for free movie tickets, the center had a pretty negative view of its customers and behaved accordingly. It should be no surprise to our readers that paying your bill …

business lessons from european entrepreneurs

4 Key Business Lessons From European Entrepreneurs

I recently returned from a family vacation in Europe and having previously lived and worked extensively there I was once again struck by the distinct cultural differences in business from which American entrepreneurs could learn a thing or two when contemplating business change. And so I present 4 key business lessons from European entrepreneurs. Lesson 1 from the Italians: Be passionate about your customers. No one can deny that the Italians are a passionate people. One need only witness an animated mobile phone conversation complete with wild hand gestures, or the expressiveness of an Italian driver to know this is …

Do You Wonder Why Good Clients Suddenly Stop Coming Back?

A new client (we’ll call her Jessica) recently came to me with a concern that she was delivering a service she was so convinced was a market need, yet clients who she expected to be flocking to her in droves were somewhat lukewarm, and other good clients would suddenly stop returning yet seemed happy with her service. We spoke about the importance of identifying her market sweet spot, the full discussion of which will be a topic for another day, but when I walked her through my “Buy It” chart, her eyes lit up with understanding. The Buy It chart …