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Donna Moritz Social Media Sorted Donna Moritz is a two time winner of Social Media Examiner’s Top 10 Social Media Blogs in both 2015 and 2016. Donna’s business is called Socially Sorted and she and her team are known for helping businesses take their social media to the next level with original, traffic-driving visual content + content strategies that get results. It’s about driving social shares and sales in business. Donna’s also big on helping us avoid social media overwhelm and doing more in less time.   During my conversation with Donna, we talk about: How to get cut through on social media with visuals How she got 500k views through visual content The success of infographics and slideshare presentations The end goal essentials for social media Examples of how visuals drive people into the sales funnel Facebook group types and purposes Growing community through groups on facebook; and Donna’s suggestions for time-saving tools – visual, scheduling, task management and engagement   Selected Links For This Episode Join Donna’s free facebook group Visual Content Creators 3 Part Video Series Her top 3 customer-centric businesses – Ontraport, Mololo Island Resort and Hilton Suggests Canva and Adobe spark for visuals creation Email mailchimp, aweber, convertkit Scheduling tools – meetedgar  agorapulse  later Asana.com , google calendar, slack.com The app for killing the facebook newsfeed   “The platform to use is where your best customers are hanging out… then look at where you feel comfortable” Donna Moritz   “We find that following up from initial content and especially if they reply, it starts a conversation and gets them used to opening and reading your content…it’s a bit of work but it’s worth it” Donna Moritz “As far attracting new customers, speak to their challenges…if you can show them that you can help them in the online content you provide them then that’s going to attract people. As far as retaining them, it’s about and giving them value on an ongoing basis and essentially showing you care” Donna Moritz Would you like this episode on your blog or website? Our podcast player will look like this on your site: Get our podcast player onto your site by simply copying and pasting the following code: <audio src="https://archive.org/download/TheCustomerCentricShowPodcast/069_Donna-Moritz_customer-centric-show-podcast.mp3" controls></audio> The post 69. Social Media Sorted With Donna Moritz appeared first on Customer-Centric Coach | More Customers, More Profits | Mel Telecican.

The Merrymaker Sisters Monetising Social Media Emma & Carla Papas are best known as the The Merrymaker sisters. They are  communication professionals turned health and happiness advocates, passionate entrepreneurs and health coaches. These sisters from Canberra have built their brand on three elements – health, happiness and abundance. Once paleo-only recipe creators, Emma and Carla have now relaxed a little on the strict paleo diet recipes but that hasn’t affected their following. They have sold over 10 000 cookbooks, their blog gets over 150 000 visitors every month and they have around 100 000 followers on social media. Their brand is about real food recipes, positive mindset and ways to find and to live your best life.   During my conversation with Emma and Carla they share:   How their instagram following determines product and service offering The benefits of instagram for product awareness How their audience has transformed over time The purpose and result of starting a podcast How to find the balance on creating content Their discovery of their point of difference that’s led to their success How they monetise their social media audience What they use to focus and plan content on How and what they choose to outsource How they manage their time successfully; and Their invaluable suggestion they do to nurture business relationships   Emma & Carla’s Example Of A Customer-Centric Business   Marie Forleo’s B School Bonita Bonita Mexican Restaurant   Selected Links For This Episode MerryBiz podcast The Merrymaker Sisters website   “Our core goal is for our audience to leave happier and healthier, whenever we’re writing or creating content we always have those two things in mind” The Merrymaker Sisters   “It’s never really felt like work at all for us and that’s the real joy in what we do everyday” The Merrymaker Sisters   “I will literally schedule every single hour in the week and that keeps us accountable” Carla – The Merrymaker Sisters   “What we’ve done really well that I recommend everyone to do, is when you go to live events, keep up those relationships with people we really connect with…we focus on how we can nurture the relationship so when we do need them they’ll help us, because we’ve already helped them in some other way” The Merrymaker Sisters Would you like this episode on your blog or website? Our podcast player will look like this on your site: Get our podcast player onto your site by simply copying and pasting the following code: <audio src="https://archive.org/download/TheCustomerCentricShowPodcast/068_The-Merrymaker-Sisters_customer-centric-show-podcast.mp3" controls></audio> The post 68. Monetising Social Media With The Merrymaker Sisters appeared first on Customer-Centric Coach | More Customers, More Profits | Mel Telecican.

Karen Schmidt Cultivating Exceptional Leaders Karen Schmidt is a frontline leadership expert and Director of Let’s Grow. Karen developed what’s known as the Practical Leadership Development model to give frontline leaders the skills they need to boost their performance, improved team productivity which in turn, gives senior leaders peace of mind. She incorporates her Workplace Gardening Philosophy for a down to earth approach to leadership.   Karen is a speaker, workshop leader, facilitator and coach and her career took this road as a result of encountering disengaging leaders and colleagues who were performing below their capabilities. Originally a Human Resources practitioner, Karen’s been nurturing frontline leaders for more than 20 years. Her experience comes from working with organisations across 20 industries and over 8 countries in both big cities and regional centres. Karen is the author of 5 books including “Greenhousing: nurturing the next crop of leaders” and “Green Thumb Leader: how to grow from a frontline manager into a frontline leader”. Today she works with current and future leaders across Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia. Her clients include corporates, government, professional associations, not for profits and small business.   During my conversation with Karen, we talk about:   How Qantas listen and improve the customer experience A brilliant follow up and referral program that clients love and is growing a chain of hair salons Why frontline staff are the key to referral business What makes a leader versus a manager Common mistakes we make in our management hiring ‘The Peter Principle’ explained and how to avoid this easily-made mistake How to achieve 3X profits Customised, ‘slow-release’ leadership programs; why it achieves better outcomes How to minimise ‘knowledge and implementation’ separation How the ‘I can do it’ mindset can work against us Progress measures and achievement milestones; and The need for personalisation to boost the client experience   Links For This Episode   www.letsgrow.com.au www.karenschmidt.com.au Karen’s top 2 recommendations as a customer-centric business:  www.tigerlamb.com and www.qantas.com “Engaged employees are the key to having loyal customers. Employee engagement is a direct result of who their supervisor is” Karen Schmidt   “I see too many people who are pushed into being a team leader. For the reasons:“you’ve been here the longest”, “you’re the oldest”, “we need to find a way of paying you more money and this is the only way to do it”. If these people don’t want to do the role then it doesn’t matter if they have the skills or the knowledge. If they don’t have the mindset or the attitude to do it, then they will fail.” Karen Schmidt   “Look around and see people who have the mindset to do the role and approach them early on…Sometimes you need to give people weeks, months to get used to the idea. ‘I see you as team leader potential. We’ll help develop you and support you. Three or six months down the track there might be an opportunity for you. Think about whether you’d like to do it’.” Karen Schmidt   “For an effective leadership program, it can’t be a ‘one size fits all’. There’s nothing worse than saying ‘I’ve got 5 people in team leader roles, let’s put them through this one program’. They’re all at different stages and need different things…It can be become theoretical rather than practical” Karen Schmidt   “I find the accountability aspect of coaching is what works. When you say ‘here’s your action items, we’re going to come back and I’m going to see what you did’. I’m going to hear why you didn’t do things or what the results were and get you to critically reflect on your own behaviour. Because what I’m trying to do is help them become self directed learners so they can take those strategies and use them when I’m not around.” Karen Schmidt Would you like this episode on your blog or website? Our podcast player will look like this on your site: Get our podcast player onto your site by simply copying and pasting the following code: <audio src="https://archive.org/download/TheCustomerCentricShowPodcast/067_Karen-Schmidt_customer-centric-show-podcast.mp3" controls></audio> The post 67. Cultivating Exceptional Leaders with Karen Schmidt appeared first on Customer-Centric Coach | More Customers, More Profits | Mel Telecican.

Dr Jesse Green More Patients, More Profits & Less Stress Dr Jesse Green has been in dentistry for 22 years, has owned several practices and has coached or consulted in excess of 145 more. As a result of this experience, he knows the strategies that do and don’t work in this industry. In his business Practice Max Mastermind, he works alongside dentists to accelerate their practice growth & put them on the fast track to achieving their goals. Jesse has created a system to support dentists who are in their own practice and navigates them to experiencing outstanding commercial success. Jesse is the host of Savvy Dentist podcast and is also author of Amazon bestseller ‘Retention – How to Plug the #1 Profit Leak in Your Dental Practice’.   During my conversation with Jesse he shares:   Why values are integral to business success Examples for how to create a meaningful connection with clients His experience and success in being able to retain clients The impact of being clear on our ideal patient (client) avatar Processes of ‘systemising’ and ‘humanising’ explained His four step process to encourage referrals The conversation he has with clients to How to reduce the client ‘churn’ rate The benefits of ‘pre-appointing’ His tips to manage workload as both a service provider and day-to-day operations   Jesse’s Example Of A Customer-Centric Business Be Well Dental   Selected Links For This Episode Savvy Dentist Podcast Dr Jesse Green website Practice Max Mastermind   “Being values-driven produces profitability and a better customer experience, but it’s also fulfilling for the people within the business” Dr Jesse Green   “To develop client relationships takes time and effort and energy but it yields much better results” Dr Jesse Green   “Look at how you can build moments of connection. Ask ‘How would an exceptional or inspiring business behave at this particular moment?” Dr Jesse Green   “It’s important to remember the lifetime value of a client. The larger ‘sales’ will come at subsequent appointments. By the time you’ve developed a relationship with that patient, they’re far more likely to know you, like you and trust you. And as a consequence of that, they’re far more likely to ‘buy’ from you” Dr Jesse Green   “There a gear shift that needs to happen that involves moving from client-facing and delivering great experiences to being the person who builds teams who deliver great experiences for their clients” Dr Jesse Green   “What I have observed with Dentists is, when we can build and lead a team who can deliver great outcomes for patients, the practice begins to grow exponentially in terms of profitability and time freedom…The owner then has the capacity to take some time away from the business and know that when they get back to work, their bank balance hasn’t been savaged and has grown in their absence.”  Dr Jesse Green   Would you like this episode on your blog or website? Our podcast player will look like this on your site: Get our podcast player onto your site by simply copying and pasting the following code: <audio src="https://archive.org/download/TheCustomerCentricShowPodcast/066_Dr-Jesse-Green_customer-centric-show-podcast.mp3" controls></audio> The post 66. More Patients, More Profits & Less Stress With Dr Jesse Green appeared first on Customer-Centric Coach | More Customers, More Profits | Mel Telecican.

John Hart Adapting To Market Needs John Hart is the CEO at Restaurant and Catering Australia. The association assists small businesses with the hospitality industry by influencing the policy decisions and regulations that impact the operating environment. They proactively lobby the government on issues like policy reform and provide information for business owners on superannuation, education and training, food safety, workplace relations and liquor licensing. John Hart has led Restaurant and Catering Australia in the role of CEO for 17 years and is a passionate industry advocate. Here he shares practical ideas to survive and thrive in a competitive market.   During my conversation with John he shares: Why what you currently offer may need to be dumped to adapt to market desires Why staff need to have freedom to make decisions without management approval Suggestions for how to identify customer needs Why social media must be considered as core business How to select ‘influencers’ on social media to promote your business Ideas to counter labour costs The need for investment to streamline functions and maintain customer connection What’s required to ensure owners in hospitality can take holidays   John’s Example Of A Customer-Centric Business Tartufo Italian Restaurant   Selected Links For This Episode Restaurant and Catering Association of Australia Restaurant Australia campaign   “Having a relationship with your staff that empowers them to serve customers and make adjustments that they need to make through their daily work…Having the latitude to give away a free bread roll or a serve of vegetables if that’s what it takes. It’s about empowering them but also taking that information from them and using it in your business. Having a relationship with your staff and time to talk about what customers are saying” John Hart   “I think we can get a bit carried away with quantitative evidence. It’s really about about staying in touch with your customers. In our business that means getting around to the tables, making sure you’re talking to the people in the business everyday and they’ll soon tell you what they like and what they don’t. Maybe validating that with some very easy survey instruments .. it’s about talking to your customers, speaking their language and listening what they say” John Hart   “Loading up into facebook and having a community with facebook or instagram is not a ‘nice to have’. It’s an absolutely necessity.” John Hart   “Unless you’re engaged and treat social media as part of core business, then you’re going to lose. The businesses that are making good strides in this new world of attracting that very fickle customer are doing a great job in the area of social media and making users their own and attracting new customers in the process” John Hart   “It’s about using the review sites and making sure you’re managing that process. Ensuring that if there’s been a bad review, it’s followed up and if it’s a good review, it’s acknowledged” John Hart Would you like this episode on your blog or website? Our podcast player will look like this on your site: Get our podcast player onto your site by simply copying and pasting the following code: <audio src="https://archive.org/download/TheCustomerCentricShowPodcast/065_John-Hart_customer-centric-show-podcast.mp3" controls></audio> The post 65. Adapting To Market Needs With John Hart appeared first on Customer-Centric Coach | More Customers, More Profits | Mel Telecican.

Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPTION: THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SHOW PODCAST with Mel Telecican (Customer-Centric Coach) Episode 64. Changing The Client Experience In Law With Clarissa Rayward ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Mel: Hi welcome to episode number 64. My name is Mel Telecican I am your host and today I am speaking with a lawyer who is really shaking things up in the industry and has been for some time and recently was awarded by her peers as thought leader of the year. She is really changing the client experience and in an industry that is typically very traditional, it is really fascinating story about what she does and how she does it and how other people sitting up and taking notice as a result. Clarissa: Hello I am Clarissa. I am the Director of Brisbane Family Law Centre and I am also known as ‘The Happy Family Lawyer’. *MUSIC* You are listening to the customer centric show with Mel Telecican where we talk with successful business owners and experts to share smart ways to attract more customers, profits and freedom by thinking customers first. Now, here is your host Mel Telecican. Mel: Clarissa Rayward, is the Director of Brisbane Family Law Centre. She’s also known as ‘The Happy Family Lawyer’. I invited Clarissa on the show because she is an example of how, even in an industry like law, there is a better way. A way can do things differently to the benefit of the customer, or in this case, the client. As a Divorce Lawyer, Clarissa specializes in helping separating families stay out of the Family Courts and stay friends as she believes that a divorce can be a positive end to a marriage. Over the past 13 years Clarissa has worked as a specialist family lawyer and has helped over 2,000 Australian families through their divorce. That experience has reinforced her belief that traditional legal processes do little to help separating families find a positive future after divorce. She believes it takes more than lawyers and Courts to help families through divorce and separation in a way that ensures a positive end to a marriage. For this reason she established Brisbane Family Law Centre, a multidisciplinary practice where lawyers work alongside counsellors and financial planners to ensure that clients receive the holistic support they need at such a challenging time like that. Clarissa is determined to change the way Australian families experience divorce and separation for the better. She is known as ‘The Happy Family Lawyer’ because she believes that a divorce can be something you can look back on with pride. So for this reason I’m excited to bring you Clarissa who is a good friend of mine, to share with you the importance of thinking about the client experience and outcome above and beyond what is the traditional approach. So thanks for joining me today Clarissa. Clarissa: Thanks so much for having me. Mel: Now let’s talk about your example as we do every episode of a customer centric business. Is there anything that brings to mind for you? Clarissa: So I had to think about this and I got on so I am really happy with that hah. My first example and just few weeks ago I was up in Townsville doing some teaching and they started the client hotel I want to give them applaud in Townsville and good lovely hotel. Nice and clean and usual. Nothing remarkable though about the hotel itself. It is a nice hotel. But their service and what did make it remarkable for me was their service because we have those classic occasions where you have been doing business where you have to check out it is 10 am but you are not leaving Townsville and it wasn’t until about 10 pm that day and they come back to the hotel after we have done our day at work. Use their facilities, leave our bags there. They really went out of their way to make our whole experience there. Then when we checked out it was really great and I myself been talking about ever since anyone I met but I know I might do business in Townsville because it really was something that I haven’t experienced in a hotel for such a long time. I mean you checkout and they look after your bags. Best of luck using the shower something like that later in the day. That’s one example. Mel: Wow that is great. So do they allow you access to the room? Clarissa: They allowed us access yeah. There is some facilities there that they have included the shower and other stuff which meant we can do silly walk to the top of castle hill in afternoon get little hot and comeback have a shower and yeah it made such a difference. Mel: That is great so yeah that element of surprise like I guess is the fact that you actually ask for that. Did someone ask or offer it? Or how did they come about? Clarissa: I think one of the guys that I was travelling with just made the comment that we were there at really long time and it would be nice to still sort of do some stuff rather in Townsville the hotel I think that was the owner/manager said that’s okay we got showers here you can use them. Just kept saying we will give you all the stuff. I must say I don’t go to Townsville a lot but I know that when I do I make the effort of staying in that hotel because of that. That’s the links they went to. Mel: Fantastic. Good Stuff and you said you got others on that list. Who else you thinking? Clarissa: My first is well I am a mad coffee lover so every morning my daughter and I go to same coffee shop around the corner in our house and it is amazing and what makes it amazing is the staff or goals that work there. They are like my friends now and know probably more about me than my friends because I go there every single day hah and that’s what makes that experience amazing because it is probably 4 coffee shops in distance but I go to this one and the coffee is good but it is that capacity to have a five minute conversation in the morning with someone who genuinely seems interested in what you are doing and something that just reminded me is on Saturday I got a good morning written on my coffee cup by Tyler who works there who has become friend of mine. In Instagram I posted it and said thanks so much Tyler for my good morning and Tyler then engage with me on Instagram and it just was a reminder to me because I love social media. It is a big part of my business and I always make the effort when people are engaging on social media to engage back because I think it is customer, client or someone that’s connected with your business takes the time in the effort to engage in that sort of positive and public way. It is so worthwhile to engage back and I do that as a customer all the time for business and it always amazes me how many businesses just never engage. So you might be throwing public comment and I always do things positive and never do any negative and we just met here and everything versus the time and the effort to come back to you and say just anything whatever it might be makes a big difference. Mel: Absolutely and so does Tyler you know typically look after the Instagram account? Is it something she manages? Clarissa: No she came back with her own personal account and that was really nice and sort of personal relationship. Kudos to guys who run this coffee shop because they really got a great team down there who are creating customer service without serving to be part of it. Mel: Like you say there is competition there and they are all doing great coffee then that’s the differentiator isn't it? it is that connectivity and the thoughtfulness and I guess there is another example though the purpose for staff to be connected to you know there are obviously element of pride to what they do that they actually would be filling their business they work for, their Instagram account but actually to be looking out for those sort of things that is fantastic. Good example. Thank you for sharing that one as well. Both hospitality business based ones and perhaps that’s a big area is in Australia that we don’t have is brilliant experiences and there is some good examples of where is being done really well. So perfect. Thanks for sharing that. Clarissa: Simple things. Mel: Yes they are but it is that stopping and taking time and thinking it through I guess having the right people onboard. Now let’s talk briefly around why you took this approach? I expect it would be easier for you to start a family law practice that was just like the others and it is traditional and I guess falling the same way everything is always been done but instead you have taken a different park. Can you give a bit of reason to what led to that? Clarissa: Absolutely and I think in some way it is a selfish reason because I started early in family lawyer. It really started to take a toll on me watching what was happening to the people I was working with and families I was working with. The impact of a traditional legal process. What that often means is families find themselves in family courts, that’s very expensive process. Both financially but also emotionally expensive and so for me as young lawyer it started to take a toll on me as well because I didn’t feel like I was doing a good thing in this world. I was sort of looking and thinking wow I am part of potential problem and that’s not all what I went into law for. So by setting up a business that focuses on keeping families away from the courts and ideally finding positive ends to merges is personally family satisfying but I see that for the families I am working with, the outcomes are so much better. the cost and emotional cost are lower and when we are talking about families we are talking about children, we are talking about parents having ongoing relationships with children for literally the rest of their lives so the work that I do I am pretty privilege to do but it can have some positive and significant impact in a very negative way as well. So I was looking for a way of

Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPTION: THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SHOW PODCAST with Mel Telecican (Customer-Centric Coach) Episode 63. Tourism & The Customer Experience with Mark Evans ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ You are listening to the customer centric show with Mel Telecican where we talk with successful business owners and experts to share smart ways to attract more customers, profits and freedom by thinking about customers first. Now, here is your host Mel Telecican. Mel: Mark Evans is my guest tonight. He is the owner of Paronella Park, a hugely successful heritage-listed tourist attraction in far North Queensland that has been in his family for over 20 years. During this time, customer service has been not only been their biggest focus, but has resulted in their biggest marketing successes. In this episode Mark reveals the many ways his family and team go above and beyond for every customer to ensure their visit is wonderful - focusing on the little details that amount to a superior experience. Paronella Park has an active and engaged Facebook community of over 20,000 fans, and thrives on partnerships and referral business. Great to have you with me Mark. Thanks for joining me. Mark: Thanks very much Mel, nice to be with you. Mel: Now we start the show by asking every guest with an example of customer centric business is that they are aware of and what it is that makes them customer centric. What’s yours? Mark: There is a small but vibrant business just down the road from us. A business that is a carrier van park and it is called August Meeting and it is just outside in this farm and that business for years has had bit of check and career and new owners took it over just a couple of years ago. In fact I met the owner before they purchased and we had a chat about this exact subject but being in customer service and how people can improve their relationship with their customers. I must say that they have grown their business in a very short time which I think about 20 months now and they have set themselves up well and truly for this season to be to have a positive season and I think the things that they do extremely well is that they face it with the customer. On arrival, they took a bit of leaf out of their own book but they do greet the customer in the car park so the customer doesn’t have to be looking at around to whether that reception desk is. They also and I get to meet quite a few of those customer because they are also referred to our business. So you get a firsthand feedback on the experience that they are having and they always mention Julie and Cameron at august moon as having the ultimate in customer service and so helpful and I guess it is just as simple as being so helpful. Mel: Yes absolutely. I think of who do care even and the amount of times they come across new people who are heading in the opposite direction into them and that you know unless they got every sort of stop mapped out then there is a great potential for referral business for them because they can actually refer to them by name and say you know they come out to you and greet you as to searching around as you say then that’s a big differentiator I expect in that space. Mark: Yeah and it is the opposite too. The opposite side of the coin is if you are looking in good referral you possibly get in negative referral and for a long time we have looked at the value of things like social media and so on but at the end of the day if you have person at your business, at your door, ready, willing and able to purchase, if they leave and tell someone else, you really don’t have to spend a lot of money and time using other means that might cost money to get people to come back to you because those people that you looked after would be referring guests back to you. Particularly in the Caravan business. Mel: Yes absolutely. So many people coming across each other and sharing that news 100 percent. Now do you mind Mark giving us a brief history of Paronella Park, what it is? And the family background attached to it? Mark: Yeah look it is extremely hard to describe what paronella park is and quite often the first we say and you hear me talking a little bit later about meeting our guest but the first point I make is you arrive at paronella park, well and truly uncertain about what it is and that sounds strange for any business that you pull into the car park with friends to visit but still not be sure what it is and the reason for that is I guess there is no other place quite like it. it is a tourist park in North Queensland just outside the south at a place called Meet and creek, it is on the road that used to be the boost highway so it was the highway in 1960s and there was gentlemen by the name of Jose Paronella who came out from Barcelona around about 1912 and he saw waterfall just off the highway next to the highway and on the street called media creek and he decided he wanted to purchase that land and he finally purchased the property in 1929 for 120 pounds and his total dream and commitment was to present it as a pleasure garden. So to build castles and fountains and bridges and tennis courts and all these lovely pieces, and he built Paronella Park from 1929 to 1935 which is year he opened the park to the public. He actually planted it out with over 7000 trees and it was a hugely successful business. He had people from the local area. It was a wonderfully successful business. A couple of things about Jose Paronella, he was inspired by Gatti and work back in Barcelona. It was not an architect or builder. He was qualified pastry chef and so he I guess was competing against people saying we cannot do it and so it was a really and he harvest that in fact. It was a motivator for him to actually build Paronella Park against the words of maybe people that consider themselves more logical and the end result is he had a hugely successful business but only for a few years because in 1948 Jose Paronella passed away. He died at age 60 and I guess a couple of things that come out of that is no doubt he was the huge motivator and inspirer and dreamer for Paronella park but also we saw Paronella park to a degree start to fade over the next few years but certainly when things like highway diversion took place in 1960s, things really went quite badly and Paronella park fell away and it was in 1993 that we found Paronella park after spending a couple on the road with our children salivating this one different country and having someone suggest we might be interested in checking out this property called Paronella park as if it was for sale. Mel: Okay and so you always run it? Mark: Yes. There has been the Paronella has sold the property in 1977 and the people have purchased in basically abandoned a couple of years later and there were a couple of attempts over the following years to try and get going again but I think the thing that was lacking is we now own the freehold and if you don’t own the freehold it is very hard to commit time and for the dollars into something that maybe you are not going to get a full return on so it is a lot easier for us to be totally committed to putting an invest in the future and so we have earned it now for 22 years. We have been involved in all those years since we don’t certain say ourselves as anything else but doing this for a few years. Mel: Great so where were you from originally Mark if you are cultivating around the Queensland region or you… Mark: We in fact just came back from Singapore, Julie and I for many years in computer industry and we had transferred to Singapore for 6 years and in the computer industry you got to move around quite a bit in those years back in the 70s and 80s and in 1991 we decided to head back to Australia as a time to ditch the corporate world and try our own thing. So we travelled from Perth that was where Julie grew up and so Perth we called home for a while but we decided it was time to look at Australia and take our children and show them what Australia is like rather than Singapore and we certainly looked at couple of things. We were looking down in Tasmania, we loved Tasmania but in the end it got a little bit cold and we decided it was time to head north and hit the topping. Mel: That’s it hah. So okay it is interesting because it is more than just resurrecting a business that previously existed so many decades before successfully and then you also have the potential obstacle of not knowing anyone in the area having to build the relationships in the partnerships with local business so that you can actually get some attraction. Was that a difficult process? Or was it a long process? How did you find it? Mark: I think it still is part of the process because one thing is for sure, you hit a key point on head when attraction has had a check in career for quite some years in business. You cannot go in and say well you draw a line and we start from here. You don’t start from there. You start well back from the line and it is a true handicap. For example we borrowed some money to have property in Perth and the bank manager I can recall when I made the phone call, he actually said yes I can setup a meeting for Monday. Can I ask you what you are looking at buying? And I said we are looking at purchasing Paronella park and before he even met us he said well I wouldn’t and couldn’t recommend anyone purchase Paronella park and so we may have some issues there about lending other money and we got there on Monday and some percent of listeners would enjoy this, he walked up and shook our hand in meeting on Monday morning and said I apologize. He said I spoke to my wife on weekend and she actually suggested that if the right people buy Paronella Park, that would do very well. So we finished up getting the things we needed to launch the property and buy the property and get things going. Mel: Wow that’

Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPTION: THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SHOW PODCAST with Mel Telecican (Customer-Centric Coach) Episode 62. Anticipating Customer Needs With Phillip Di Bella ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hi everyone thanks for joining me for another episode of customer centric show. I am Mel Telecican your host and today on the interview on the show I speak with Phillip Di Bella. Now apologies in advance I had a bit of tickle in my throat and it was trying to muffle my cough while having the interview and even through the magic of editing it couldn’t be removed without taking out value. So ignore me and listen to the great content that Phillip Di Bella is addressing during the episode. Now what I really like about Phillip is that he is very generous with sharing information. He just turned 41 and built an empire and now is diversifying even more into a whole bunch of different things you are going to learn about today. In the episode we talk about what he believes makes customer centric business are the force that he adopts for his business and team. Why he actually enjoys this covering mistakes or errors in processes. What makes for an effective complaint handling gives bit of example of what happened recently with his business. The 3 questions that he determines that client perception of Di Bella so the 3 questions that he asks people, how we determine people locations and the business modules for all of his international café locations, how his business growth have come from anticipating customer needs, why he believes the whole concept of disruption in business is rubbish and the dangers that are commonly made when you are expanding in business. He also talks around why he believes that it is not a great idea to hire people wiser than you or have more experience than you. He talks about the questions he asks when he selects his staff, why he believes reflection is most underutilized but fantastic tools for business owners to be using and he shares with us in the end personal goal that he has set for himself. So look, great episode ahead I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for joining me. Let us know what you think. *MUSIC* You are listening to the customer centric show with Mel where we talk with successful business owners and experts to share smart ways to attract more customers, profits and freedom by thinking about customers first. Now, here is your host Mel Telecian. Mel: Phillip di Bella founded Di Bella Coffee back in 2002. It began as a small coffee roasting operation in the suburbs of Brisbane in Queensland, Phillip ended up taking a big portion of the market in several ways. One of these was when they were the first to develop a system that was coined the "Crop to Cup" system taking quality coffee direct from farmers all over the world to consumers in Australia, and now internationally. Phillips current role of Managing Director Remains at Di Bella Coffee despite selling to Retail Food Group in 2014. He still sets the vision of the company and provide the support and mentoring to the senior management team. Phil is an active collaborator and contributor to the community. He has been on the Queensland Premier’s Advisory Board for 3 years, he has remained as the Director of Brisbane Marketing for 6 years he is the Director of Tourism & Events Queensland. Phillip is also on the Department of Marketing Industry Advisory Board at Griffith University where he was awarded as an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship for his significant and ongoing work, insight and contributions. I am very excited to have you on the show Phil. Thank you for joining me today. Phillip: Thank you Mel honor to be here. Mel: Now can I ask you to share with us an example of a business that’s customer centric. I expect you have come across quite a few in your travels around the world. What stands out for you the most? Phillip: To me businesses that are customer centric actually have the ability to put themselves in the shoes of the customer and it sounds quite simple however it really is a difficult thing to do because you are really transponding yourself from within yourself to somebody else and I think one of the highlights for me in the best program I have seen all over the world is written by Steve London out of the States when he did the fish program. Had he take a boring industry like selling fish and make it so exciting that people in their lunch time just go and sit there for half an hour watching the show that happens the best customer service experience I ever had are those that actually again put themselves in the shoes in their audience and the people that do that most often have the best successful business in their industry. Mel: That fish philosophy is fantastic. There is visuals that people can actually look online and see the performance that those guys actually put on in that fish market. They are completely engaged it is not just an act thought that they are very connected to what they are doing and people just love it and come back for more. So can you think of an example locally or internationally that stands out and doing that for you? Phillip: Well I fly a lot you know and flying is not as glamorous as it might seem as if you are on a plane every week or sometimes 5 times a week and there was an incident where I am a chairman member there and I like to travel business class with my athletic body. It is more comfortable travelling in economy so I prefer business class. It is because seats have more space. There was an incident where we got into book one of the legs of travel and they actually prompted us by ringing us and saying well we know that his customer profile is he travels business class most of the time. We noticed he is travelling 4 or 5 flights this week but there is a flight missing. Just want to make sure it wasn’t missed and it is okay if you booked it with another carrier and the way they handled that was brilliant because one, people follow procedures and if they followed procedures I would have been stuck half way around the world seeing the leg of my seat or two I would ring and say why did you book that leg, why would you book another leg with somebody else. It was done with total care. It was done compassionately. It was done from a friendly space but more importantly it was done because I put themselves in the shoes of the customer by saying well if this person truly did forget to book, the flight, imagine what he is going to feel like when he is stuck somewhere and he misses in because someone has made an error. So that’s probably one of the most recent examples of to me what we call customer service and dedicated to deliver. I think the problem with customer service sometimes is that people think saying hello and smiling and being nice is customer service. To me that’s not, that’s politeness. There is a different between customer service and politeness so to make customer service is in fact when a team is dedicated to deliver. Mel: Yeah absolutely comes down to the people for sure. I like that there is that pre-empting of what you potential problems could be that there is an overlooked flight but also they have obviously created the systems that can I guess set off the alarm bell to say hey there is a leg of journey that is missing or I wonder if that applies to everyone along the way or whether that’s for their preferred customers. That would be interesting to determine. Phillip: Well it would be I mean I can give you another example actually. A lot of people use reward systems. Now reward systems for rewarding your regular customers step one. Reward system become excessive you know. I come in, I swap my card, there is nothing engaging about that. How about knowing which customer frequent your business in every 2 weeks shove them the coffee. It means you are paying attention to the business. Two, it is unexpected surprise. It is dedication to deliver. It is unexpected reward which holds a lot more warrant and weight than something that’s expected and that because we preaches the habit where we are human. Something that’s expected is not going to be taken with as much as with something un-expected. Mel: Hmm that element of surprise definitely has its worth. Now you mentioned before something your staff being integral part and I think about putting yourself in the shoes of the customer and thinking about all the steps they go through when they are going to buy something in café or elsewhere. So can you talk us through what it is that you believe that staff need to be doing today to develop those relationships? You said those basic manners are important but can you talk about how perhaps you map out the customer journey when they come to you and how you can say when they come to your café because I know you got café now that is part of the business. How do you actually go through that process to be able to explain to staff so that they can make sure that whole process is really streamlined? Phillip: I do love to claim it's mine but it is not but hopefully listeners would love it and it is easy to adopt and it is actually from state London fish and we called it fish philosophy. So we have a thing called fish philosophy which simply follows four steps. One's attitude before going to work. You are going to have hustle and bustle. If you got kids something is going to go wrong in the morning. You might miss the bus. Something might happen. Your pet might have been tried. Things are going to happen to us before we go to work that is going to affect us. The way that we got system in place is to neutralize that and is to tell people your attitude. If your attitude is going to be bad at work don’t come to work today. So something happen to you before you go to work then you won’t be able to choose your attitude. Step two is be present. There is nothing worse when somebody talking to you, engage w

Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPTION: THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SHOW PODCAST with Mel Telecican (Customer-Centric Coach) Episode 61. Improved Service And Sales With Roger Simpson ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hi there and welcome to another episode of customer centric show. This is Mel Telecican your host and this week I am having a conversation with the author of the retail solution. He is the specialist to help businesses optimize their sales and their service and he has had plenty of years in the game and really knows what he is talking about so I am going to give you a rundown of what is going to be sharing in that episode so you know exactly what you are going to be talking about. The necessities of recruitment process. The reason that we need to be setting up processes and why our staff should be involved in that process too. A story about global business that focuses on customer affection. The benefits of implementing digital customer experience feedback. I am not talking about review sites here. So actually implementing yourself. While research continue to reflect 96% of customers who have had a negative experience actually wouldn’t complain mystery shop style assessment of customer experience can be inaccurate. What the top tips are in profitability to retail environment. Can conversations meet to sales boosts and why we often set up managers for failures apparently? This is really common in what you can do to change it. All in this episode I hope you enjoy it. It is about 30 minutes so let’s get into it. *MUSIC* You are listening to the customer centric show with Mel Telecican where we talk with successful business owners and experts to share smart ways to attract more customers, profits and freedom by thinking about customers first. Now, here is your host Mel Telecican. Mel: Roger Simpson is a CEO of retail solution and has worked in retail himself for over 35 years. His company focuses on helping their clients improve service and sales and focus on service standards, sales techniques, measure up and follow up. Roger believes these 2 areas can be improved dramatically to provide the end customer with the great experience that means more visits and increase sales. Rogers company helps owners and managers put in place the skill learned into the training sessions by following up in store. The focus on training managers is excellent coaches so that they can actually provide ongoing supporting in their store as managers. Over the past 19 years retail solution team have trained excessive 5000 frontline staff managers and owners so I am interested in learning the tactics of how you do this. Good to have you with us this morning Roger. Roger: Thanks Mel nice to be here. Mel: Now I am looking for example of a customer centric business of you are aware of or experience yourself. What is your example? Roger: I got a couple actually and obviously Apple is the one I think you mentioned before everyone rolls so that’s one that always stands out because they got such focus on service and it is also I think what they do is because they provide such a good service is that people buy more from them but they are other one that actually thought of where I had personal experience where I went into Disney land to the to Disney institute and we had 2 days at there so actually take us through their training and what they do to deliver such an amazing experience when you visit the park. Mel: So most people access the Disney institute? Roger: It is a public course. I went there with Tom who runs the business with bakery. So Tom and I went with his managers and it was just amazing insight because they actually shared the whole training program and it was actually really good because it also confirmed some of the stuff that I have been doing here in Australia and new Zealand was actually the right way to go and the big thing for me Mel was that surprise there is no quick fix. Mel: Sure absolutely. You need to be giving that consistent focus and change something that does take while. Roger: Sure does Mel. It was amazing experience and I still talk about it like it was yesterday. Mel: That’s interesting because Zippos have documented all of what they do and people can buy the books on how they run their business so that whole transparency I guess willingness to share what it is that they do so effectively with other people is just that next level isn't it? Roger: Yes it is and it is because they got it so well documented and they got well processed but also it is about the people. It is interesting because the Disney trainer we had, he sit to us and said we still got 20 percent of our people who probably are not right for business and it was pretty amazing. Mel: How do they identify that? Roger: Well they are constantly because one of the key things they do is that every single day team leader had to go and evaluate 3 of his team so dealing with guests. You go with the gate or it might be hotdog stand or on the certain right. So they constantly get evaluated and then getting people feedback so that they can tell from that process also everyone is going to have a training plan so everyone is really focused about learning and keep being really good. Mel: So that 20 percent they look at that and look at how that can give them some sort of professional development to solve issues and if they cannot then they are gone. Anything else that stood out for you? Roger: One big thing I talk to my clients about is that they introduce us to non-negotiables and what Disney is very clear on is that they have certain rules in their business and they are completely non-negotiable and they introduced those from the first moment you actually interact. So if you are applying for the job, you are introduced to non-negotiable. So what it does of course is it weeds people out because it is a bit like a cult and so focused and Disney is a bit cultural as well because they have certain style of people that they want. So they recruit to that and it just weeds people out who not going to fit there. Mel: Great so qualifies people to that position and then it shows makes it very clear what the commitments that are required. Roger: Yeah and it is so obvious because what frustrates me here in Australia is that you going to a store and people don’t smile and etc. and they are allowed to do it because no one is doing anything about it and I will guarantee that in their process it must say you must smile every single customer. So why doesn’t that happen? It is because they are allowed to do it. Mel: That’s right. So in terms of non-negotiables then one of the consequences if you don’t do it, is that instant dismissal? Like is it that serious? Roger: Depending on what it would be but it is more that use it on particularly as recruitment process but actually got that and people go oh I am okay with it. So often people go somebody I want to do I will get it and see how it go and obviously it gets enforced so often those people were actually fall out through the trial periods but they continue to use non-negotiables once they are in and those apply. So they would use them and they use them as coaching pieces. So if someone is not performing to the standard required then obviously get feedback and improve and if they don’t improve then that’s down the warning track. So that’s pretty simple. Mel: Nice and clear like you said it is follow up in going back and making sure you re-enforcing those things and I think that’s something that a lot of businesses just accidently don’t do. I have said that these are the perimeters of your role, this is what I am expecting from you but actually re-visiting is really important. Now we talked 3 areas in our show Roger about how we can keep our customers and get more of them and I expect you got plenty of reasons for examples and tactics of what we can do to do that. What is your suggestions? Roger: It is actually pretty simple. It is defining what the customer actually wants so when I come into whether it is a bakery or clothing store, what do they actually want? They want to be smiled at? So it is all styling stuff. It is having a process to follow but they need to understand the reasons why they do it not just do it and if they get the why piece, the much more likely to do it. Then it is obviously training them to those processes. Then it is managers owners have to leave by example which is just critical and then next 2 step we see don’t happen anyway near enough so it have to follow up. It have to have service evaluated so what they are actually doing? Are they planting steps to have that we train them on? That they have agreed to and if they are, they get positive feedback. If they not, I hope to improve and it is simple as that. Mel: I want to pull you right back to the first thing you mentioned and that was around defining what the customer wants because I have spoken to a lot of people about this who are exceptional business people and there is very much responses. A lot of them say well there is group of people who say they need to find out what the customer wants and then there is another that says often customers don’t know what they want so if you ask them you are going to end up with whole variety of responses that may not be effective. So what your thoughts on that and how we can articulate what they want? Roger: Yeah great question. So for me I got my foot in both camps just because I can. So I would say this well about the basic service steps don’t change. Again 99 percent want is that when they walk into the store they want to be acknowledged and generally in 19 OT 20 seconds because most of us are busy. They want to smile etc. So those things you can just get verified with your customers because you can do survey about service etc. so there is interesting and this is about how we serve them and the technology etc.

Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPTION: THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SHOW PODCAST with Mel Telecican (Customer-Centric Coach) Episode 60. The Customer Culture Imperative With Dr Linden Brown ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hello everyone welcome to episode 60 of the customer centric show. Today I am speaking with Dr. Linden Brown who is the author of the customer culture imperative and is also the CEO of market culture strategies. Now during our conversation today Linden is going to be talking about an exceptional story of a customer centric business who actually carries out and made good situation. A business makes and trying to fix that one and they don’t deliver expectations. He also talks about the needs for this after understand the concept of lifetime value of customer and give examples there. How he came to identify that a customer centric culture contributes to profitability and lots of research there. The eight factors to measure and drive sustainable business performance and how in past businesses of his own how he has used collaborative approach to boost competitive advantages. Ritual benefit across target marketing engagement success stories. So much into this interview. It is almost an hour but I guarantee you, you really will find this one valuable. *MUSIC* You are listening to the customer centric show with Mel Telecican where we talk with successful business owners and experts to share smart ways to attract more customers, profits and freedom by thinking about customers first. Now, here is your host Mel Telecican. Mel: Hello and welcome to customer centric show. Today’s guest is Linden Brown. Linden is a professor, keynote speaker and an author who works with businesses around the world to improve competitiveness through the adoption or market centric values practices and skills. Linden’s business market culture strategies offers benchmarking, skills assessment and strategic planning for teams that results in measureable improvements in sales growth, profitability and customer satisfaction. Linden is also the author of customer culture imperative, a book that won marketing book of the year in 2015 and it is a book that knocks secrets used by businesses like amazon, virgin, apple, starbucks. It creates insights of more than 100 businesses to identify seven key factors for success. I am very excited to be speaking with you today Linden. Thanks for joining me on the show. Linden: It is a pleasure Mel. Mel: Now we start the show by asking every guess what an example of a customer centric business is that you have experienced yourself. Do you have a story that you can share with us? Linden: Look I got call few stories Mel but I will start with one and this is of a company in United States called Zain Cycles and they operate over in candidate in eastern state of the US. A bike retail operation. So essentially they sell sakes and Chris Zane who started this business about 25 years ago is a real example of customer centric leader and he has been able to get that culture through entire business. He only has one store but he has probably have 30-35 people in this business and a lot of his business is down online as well as through the shop that he actually has and I think that what he said to me was the test of a customer centric business is what you do when things about what particular customer could share a load to the shop on one occasion and said look I want you to decorate this and pick it up for my husband he love cycling and I want you to have it in the window so when I come out with my friends and husband I will surprise him by taking him across the road and show him the bike in the window. Of course what happened was that I forgot to put the bike out. So when over there of course she was ready to spring the surprise but didn’t happen. The very next day they said well what can we really do about this? Well quite a few things we can do and we should do. The first thing that we should do is to forgive the 50 percent payment. So she paid 400 dollars and there was another 400 to pay and they said well we want you to pay that. We made a mistake and we feel bad about it and we want to fix it. But also they realized that there was an emotional element to this and so they offered her tickets to the movies for some of her friends and also for them to go back to that restaurant with Zane cycles actually paying the bill for two of them. So there are number of things that they actually did and they didn’t do it up by fun, their store manager went down to where she actually lived and personally told that this is what we are going to do and was telling me that this guy went back and said you want the lead and she actually kissed me so the customers overcome with the response of the company and I think the thing that really reflected the culture in this around the customer centricity was the person who was responsible in the back part of the shop, the one that was fixing the bikes and telling who is responsible to put this bike in the window actually wrote a check for 400 dollars to Zane reflecting that it was his responsibility. So that’s a real test of culture and in his business he talks a lot of his staff about the life time value of the customer and that the customer if they coming for 1 bike is worth to the business 800 dollars but if they are life time customer they will buy 7 or 8 bike in their lifetime and that will be worth 25-30k dollars so the whole thing around customer centricity in the Zane business was doing things like that and having a culture where everybody in the business understood it and then creating a measurement tool that says customer is important not only because we like this people but because they really create profitability for the business and this business is been continually growing over the last 20 years. Mel: Yeah fantastic story. Really amazing. The tapping in as you said and the emotional side of things but the empathy of there was a lot of effort put into coordinating and requesting that might be put in the window so we didn’t deliver on that so let’s make it right and completely turn around negative into not even neutral but sounds like a positive. Linden: Well definitely this person would be an advocate and he has been able to create the staff and also the link between the wellbeing of the customer with the wellbeing of the business and there is not a transaction when we are dealing with the customer but it is the relationship. Mel: Yes and the fact that the employee actually fronted out with the check speaks volumes about it. It is clearly so ingrained in everything that they do that the employee knew that it is just no way around it and this is vitally important that how we believe the business should be run. Linden: What is interesting is that in Zane office you will see that check fined in his office wall. He didn’t have to cash the check. But it is almost a legendary story around business and that creates a lot of power I think. Mel: Absolutely speaks volumes. Now Linden you have got a great background of what led you to your business market strategies and also led you to writing your book. Can you have given us some background into how you ended up in writing a book and where this came from? Linden: You know my original was in finance and accounting but I was actually bought up in a family that led small business and so I was sort of tuned into the fact that business is much more than just about the money side of things and when my first job with Cadbury in Australia I worked with them in England and once when I was in England I came across a guy who is really an inspirational marketing and sales leader and I said to him look I need to know more about this part of business. What should I do? He said go and work in the supermarket and listen to customers, see what they do, how they behave and you learn a lot about what it means to understand customer needs and most important thing in business is really knowing about and being able to provide them with products and services that meet those needs really well. So I did that and that was really the start of my marketing experience I suppose because when I came back to Australia after that I then started to study marketing and get evolved in marketing education and also with one of two startups in Australia. Experiences what it was like to have customer to have problems in delivering value to them and work all out and so it was quite a long period of what I suppose experience in business generally but particularly with customers and also in studying it and teaching it in various universities. Now that led me to really knowing that the customers are really the center of your business because you don’t have anything and when I was doing a lot of this marketing consulting work and marketing education work in particular large companies in the US and other places, started to realize the cultural side of it is very important but if you didn’t have a culture that supported a market orientation in business which is building growth into your business and delivering value to customers and well then you really didn’t have an ability to be able to profitably grow that business over time so it let me put a small team together to study this area and to ask some key questions. One of them was is customer centricity actually important? Does it contribute towards building business profitability? And the second question was why companies aren’t as a majority customer centric? what is it that wrong because there is a research that is telling us that 90 percent of large companies in US believe they were customer focused but only 10 percent of customers actually agreed so huge gap and so this research was designed to answer those questions and the third one question was if it is important to be customer centric business. Can we actually measure it? Bec

Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPTION: THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SHOW PODCAST with Mel Telecican (Customer-Centric Coach) Episode 59. Outstanding Personalised Client Experiences With Dr Bryan West ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hi everyone I hope this episode finds you well rested after a very long weekend whether you celebrated Easter or just taken it in your stride and relaxed or perhaps you have done few things around the house like I have seen a lot of my neighbors have done. Now today’s episode is with Dr. Bryan West. He owns an online learning business, vocational training and basically share some great wisdom around what he does and what his team does to individualize or personalize their clients experience with them. Why they choose to turn away some applications? How they use phone conversations actually early on in the sales process. His unique staff engagement approach that helps him create a good team. How they overcame a quiet period and solidify a much effective business model as a result whether positive amount referrals comes. Why they don’t use any sales e-content in part of their marketing approach. How his team builds trust personally and professionality with their clients and plenty more. Actually another great thing is how he reduces 30 hour administrative load down to 3 or 4 hours per week. So actually saving them a lot of money in those wages. So great episode up ahead I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for listening. *MUSIC* You are listening to the customer centric show with Mel Telecican where we talk with successful business owners and experts to share smart ways to attract more customers, profits and freedom by thinking about customers first. Now, here is your host Mel Telecican. Mel: Bryan West is my guest on the customer centric show today. Bryan West is the founder of Fortress Learning which was launched in 2009 as a high quality online learning environment. Bryan and his team support around 1500 Certificate or Diploma students each year, with the number carefully controlled to make sure each student gets their full attention. Fortress learning success is attributed to integrity and some basic courtesy and so many organizations use these sort of words as marketing tools. Fortress has embedded them in all of their operations. In terms of uncertainty or questions are answered through reference to questions what is the right thing to do. No qualification is issued to anyone who is less than competent that is much as less than the business strategy as a commitment to acting ethically. At a time many organizations are under media spotlight for scrupulous behavior. Fortress is committed to making sure their name and logo is something to trust. Within fortress Bryan have more than 20 years of experience of teaching and strived to reduce time student spend jumping through unnecessary hoops. That’s why we got him on the show today. Welcome Bryan. Bryan: Hi Mel. Thanks for having me. Mel: Now let’s start off, we start each episode with an example of a customer centric or client centric business. Who is yours? Bryan: I think perhaps ironically it is my local video shop and they are destined to close as writing on the wall all there but they are not trying as fast as they could be. I put that down to service and the way they conduct themselves. Especially have couple of young guys working there, the university students and they worked there part time on weekend. But they conduct themselves with such professionalism. It would be very easy for them to say this is just a video shop and I am just killing time until something better comes along and this is beneath me but they don’t, they never conduct themselves from that point of view. Instead that they make it their business to make the staff, they are really helpful. They do their job with it is quite like a passion. You walk in the door and they greet you by name. It is very much relationship sort of service and it create sort of mutual obligations I mean these guys certainly do so well I cannot feel like out to them to greet and even that we are ahead. We still find themselves visiting the video shop because of their loyalty to these particular people. Mel: Right have you always used that video store Bryan? Has it been ones that you used 10 years or is it more of recent thing? Bryan: It is more of recent thing and it allows couple of years since we lived in this particular area but for the very first time we went there, we have been going there over since. It is probably bit further away than another one and to be honest I think their rental fees is a little higher but that doesn’t even factor. Mel: It is fascinating because there is a lot of video stores closing everywhere I know one store that a lot of the employees were actually film students so they were passionate. So it comes down to obviously recruiting right type of people who are invested in that industry. It would be interested that after 10 years they still got that staff and things have progressively gotten better. Bryan: I would like you to speak with the owners of that particular franchise to find out if these 2 guys are conscious decision or whether and even discover Mel with even realize that it is quite possible what these guys do and in a way they do that is probably keeping their business going for longer than perhaps. Mel: Yeah absolutely and in the spirit of I guess what could be perceived as negative spirit of doing business, they still continue to keep their passions. That’s a great story and thank you for sharing it because that certainly would be one front of mind for me but yeah it is definitely it is still value in that space for short term at least. Bryan: I think so and to my mind it speaks to how important that is for front line people to be able to authentically live the purpose. Communicate the purpose of that organization through their actions in a way that they believe is best fitting for each customer needs. Mel: Yeah and I think doesn’t matter what is whether it is a career or I guess something that you are going to do long term. You are going to find that in your job so that you are in university and you are studying. There is great value in spending time focusing on selecting the right career and when you are actually in that role to fully embrace because as an employee truly enjoy the experience if you do that. Bryan: Absolutely and to be honest for these guys I let both of them know to give me a call once when things do go to a certain point and they positions are no longer attainable. If I cannot help them then I would be very happy to recommend them to others. Mel: That’s fantastic. Now Bryan do you mind explaining to me I know the story of fortress learning but if you could just give a brief sort of summary of what led you to creating fortress learning. Bryan: It is a common question. As you mentioned earlier I have a teaching background before being a high school teacher I was involved in community and corporate education. When I was a high school teacher there was a number of deputy roles responsible for teacher education including overseeing vocal education and training in schools. It was sort of growing thing. There is some differences between training and teaching that subjects so teachers were skilled and teaching wasn’t possessed with right knowledge to be able to deliver that qualification in a way that was compliant and so I organized training for them to go off to. What I actually found was that they come back great stories with wonderful pastries with lunches but they didn’t necessarily come back in a way much with knowledge and I guess the whole concept of training and that’s why when fortress learning was ultimately on it has the word learning and not training because I believe the training is something that we do to people whereas learning is something that happens within them and back to the story about these teacher is I found that I was having to teach and trading them myself and so I put together programs and those programs became sufficiently successful and the teachers were learning more of relevance in the stuff that I was doing with them then they were paying with elsewhere and that really got me to thinking and I had conversation with friend of mine and about learning generally and how we felt that Australia training industry seem to be missing the transformational element that comes with learning and it became to transaction and so we said about the challenge actually whether we could deliver this particular program online in a way that exceeded national standards for quality things like that but also in a way that made it more accessible to people and that experiment was successful in 7 year later. Mel: Hmm so can you explain to me what it was that you think that you did differently because when I think of let’s say stock standard training. It might be one person talking onto the front and everyone else was consuming and I think of perhaps you were more involved or interactive. Would you say that it is what the differences? Bryan: I think the differentiator is with the standard model of the stage, the participants of training are generally considered to be passive. We put the stuff into them that we need them to know or believe in it to know and we done with it I think our job is done? But from a learning point of view it comes from starting to saying what do they already know? What they already done and identifying from there what sort of structures in place of their brains and then work out how can we leverage from that existing base of skills knowledge and experience to add in the bits that they need to know in a meaningful way? So rather than you sitting in the classroom and having a same relation given to you that is given to everyone else. We prefer to start with you and say what is the best information that you still need and what

Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPTION: THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SHOW PODCAST with Mel Telecican (Customer-Centric Coach) Episode 58. Digital Strategy With Doyle Buehler ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hello there Mel Telecican here you host of the customer centric show. Welcome to episode number 58. Thank you for joining me. Today I am interviewing Doyle Buehler and before we get underway I will give you a quick rundown of this sort of content that we end up talking about throughout this episode. In this show Doyle Buehler talks to me about what a digital e-commerce system is. The starting point for effective customer communication regardless of which social media platforms we use. That’s right. How to choose the correct platform, how to monitor our customer engagement online, how to minimize the distractions of digital in other words knowing which areas to spend time investigating and determining whether we should be using or not. Who we should be getting to manage our social media and how we need to be using all of these options as a sales process from turning our customers to our potential customers who are looking and researching online. So all of that and more in this episode. Today’s show is brought to you by brand storm. So what is brand storm? It is a subscription based graphic design service. You pay a simple monthly membership depending on complexity of designs you require and this gives you access to unlimited graphic design throughout the month. You submit 1 job at a time and it is turned around within three days. There are no limits on revisions and you could submit as many jobs throughout the month as you have ideas for only one active job at a time now. I have used this service and I found it to be fantastic. My new branding is all done through brand storm so I do highly recommend it and great thing is there are no locking contracts. The base of the business class package covers all of your regular design needs. Things like flyer stationery social media images and banners and posters photo re-touching and even things like building vehicle wraps. The 1st class package includes more complex designs. Things like infographics landing pages. E-mail templates and logos. Now customer centric show listeners can access an exclusive offer and save 50$ per month off the business class plan for the first six months. Simply go to brandstorm.co/customercentric. *MUSIC* You are listening to the customer centric show with Mel Telecican where we talk with successful business owners and experts to share smart ways to attract more customers, profits and freedom by thinking about customers first. Now, here is your host Mel Telecican. Mel: Welcome to the show. Doyle Buehler is my guest today. He is known as the digital dude. He helps small businesses and entrepreneurs globally become outrageously outstanding online. A former military pilot in air space engineer, Doyle has spent the last 14 years in the business world with startups and online e-commerce businesses around the world. He has MBA in leadership and is the author of the digital delusion how to overcome the misguidance and misinformation online. A book about digital strategy and online business leadership. Doyle’s book discusses the new reality of the online industry and what business leaders can do to get beyond the clutter and distraction of the online world. There is plenty of it I know. He does this to probably develop in his client's digital eco system including the strategy content planning, social media, SEO, website development, sales implementation and marketing automation. Doyle recently won the smart 100 innovation award ranking as Australia’s 100 most innovative products with his digital leadership methodology amongst other significant business awards. He holds a number of US devices online business methods. He has a growing online learning community where he teaches his digital leadership methodology. Doyle is regular on the road speaking about social media, digital marketing and almost everything about online business. Spreading the word about digital leadership and today we are speaking with Doyle who is normally based in Australia but chatting with me today from Canada. Welcome to the show Doyle. Doyle: Hi Mel, pleasure to be here. It is a combination of both so as you can talk from my accent I am originally from Canada so yeah it is a little bit of business and little bit of pleasure. Mel: You been on the road for little while? Doyle: Yes since couple of months so yeah. Mel: Yeah fantastic. Sounds like the right time of the year to be in your part of the world. Now we start the show by talking about an example of customer centric or client centric business, do you have your recommendation and your feedback as to who is that customer centric business? Doyle: Umm good question. I mean I am sort of more of a philosophical type of person. The more I sort of look for key indicators of okay what customers are happening and is there sort of sentiment towards that so I don’t have a specific company to say but what I find is that you can monitor social media laws. You can really see these stories crop up. Unfortunately they are usually negative in scope where somebody dislikes this company or somebody dislikes another company so it is actually rare that you hear sort of positive vibes on social media about company. Mel: True. What do you think of biggest mistakes in that social media space then that means they are not doing the right thing by their clients or customers? Doyle: Well I guess it comes down to the fact that everybody has an audience with social media so it makes it a lot easier to kind of project that voice and say hey this company did me wrong and kind of develop it from there. So I think it is because we have that forum not because before it was like well yeah I told your friends, your family about your bad experience and such as this and then you kind of stop there. So I really think that businesses have to take that extra step now and they have to monitor that, they have to manage that and deal with it when you do have an customer. That’s you know right or wrong they obviously made a complaint. You have to be able to address that very quickly. Mel: Great so jumping on making sure that you are aware. Is that something like for instance google alerts where you can be aware of who is talking about you online or just platforms themselves? Doyle: Yeah there is actually a lot of tools that marketers can use to sort of monitor that sentiment that’s going on. One of the buzz feed but google alerts as well as obviously pretty important. It can be a little lagging whereas few something like buzz and that sort of thing. It actually pulls that information out of the internet live kind of thing so you can sort of monitor who is talking about this company or who is talking about that company. Mel: Okay buzz sooner okay I have to check that out. Now can you share with us a story briefly that lead you from pilot and air space engineer to becoming the digital dude, how does that happen? Doyle: Ha-ha. That was sort of my adventure of many years ago. I guess I will start from the air space side of things. I was kind of began my Masters in business at that time and this was the turn of the century and I always have that sense that hey you know I can do things a little bit differently, a little bit better so I kind of took that upon myself and 2002 had sort of built the foundation for a business while I was sort of working in the aerospace field and launch that all the way back over here in Canada and that sort of was my introduction to it. It was a tact focus business with 3D printing and 3D scanning and other sorts of things. So we are pretty far ahead of the game because that’s just kind of come into play now. Mel: Yes absolutely. So okay you were creating your own products and you were coming out of these innovative ideas. So what then drew your focus to actually becoming the digital dude and actually spending considerable amount of your time teaching other people how to do this online instead of say continuing to do more in that innovation space. Doyle: Good question. It pretty much came down to when I moved to Australia and decided that hey you know what I have been in e-commerce business for some time. A lot of customer service, a lot of operations management, startup leadership and that kind of thing and I kind of wanted to okay how else can we take this type thing. So it is a matter of saying okay well let’s sit down and talk with a lot of businesses and that’s kind of what I did and I found sort of that they were struggling with certain areas with digital with online business and with ads and all that stuff. Kind of built up this procedure that said okay look if we look at things little bit differently you kind of don’t have to put everything in the side. You have to sort of integrate and manage it and by managing it build a process so that it is kind of what I did and then when I started providing that as coaching and training and that sort of thing. Mel: Yeah okay because this is struggle that continues to exist with business owners even people who have been using social media for instance for a long time, is it because it is just a change in landscape all the time and being on top of how I guess best practices that are out there. Is that the biggest struggle? Doyle: Well yes and no. it is a struggle because we kind of make it struggle. If you kind of step back and say what is my overall strategy, you can kind of get down to minimum of your essence as I call it and once you do that it doesn’t really matter what comes up next if there is Facebook this year and Facebook doesn’t exist next year and another one snap chat becomes the most popular one as well. if you look at the fundamentals, it works regardless what platforms comes up nex

Damien Colbert Mastering Performance   Damien Colbert is the owner of 10k Consultants. His business is focused on supporting people to make wise decisions so that they can master their work performance while ensuring alignment with customer needs. Damien has worked across commercial, nonprofit and government sectors successfully designing and delivering solutions for managers across industries including energy, engineering, professional services (IT), transport and logistics, healthcare and retail.  He has translated his experiences from a career with large and medium sized organisations into the development of pragmatic solutions that focus on wise decisions for individuals and businesses. Damien’s drive to continually improve business performance is framed through the lens of effective engagement of people that achieves the goals of the business.   During my conversation with Damien he shares: Why making better decisions is the key to individuals and business performance The need to understand the ‘why’ of how bad decisions are made The 3 pillars of a wise decision Examples of surface level decision-making effects The compounded results of static minded behaviour How to begin collaborative input towards better business outcomes His 5 performance principles to enable wise decision making Powerful questioning techniques to move staff to a positive mindset The need to revisit decision-making effectiveness The difference between concern-driven and inspiration-driven decisions   Damien’s Example Of A Customer-Centric Business Kangaroo Point Cliffs Cafe   Selected Links For This Episode Damien’s Business 10k Consulting 10k Consulting on YouTube   “If you can make great decisions, you can always improve performance” Damien Colbert   “A lot of the time we make poor decisions and then try to rationalise our behaviour around it rather than starting with rational information and making a great decision” Damien Colbert   “A growth mindset drives people to want to be great contributors to the team. A fixed mindset creates selfishness and silo-ed-type behaviour where people want to contribute for themselves at the expense of the team” Damien Colbert   “Questions reveal more than statements…Ask not from a critical mind but from an inquisitive mind. People will then feel more appreciated” Damien Colbert “Ask ‘What do you think?’ rather than ‘What do you know?’ ‘What do you know?’ merely goes on a historical point of view. ‘What do you think?’ starts to say ‘let’s analyse this…let’s move this forward and allows for growth in a conversation’. ” Damien Colbert   Would you like this episode on your blog or website? Our podcast player will look like this on your site: Get our podcast player onto your site by simply copying and pasting the following code: <audio src="http://podcast.customercentriccoach.com/057_Damien-Colbert_customer-centric-show-podcast.mp3" controls></audio> The post 57. Mastering Performance With Damien Colbert appeared first on Customer-Centric Coach | More Customers, More Profits | Mel Telecican.

Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPTION: THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SHOW PODCAST with Mel Telecican (Customer-Centric Coach) Episode 56. Profitable Hospitality With Ken Burgin ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hello, thanks for tuning into episode number 56. Today we are talking with Ken Burgin profitable hospitality and even if you may not be a hospitality business owner there is still some valuable gems in here for you. We are going to be talking about what we can do with our staff to make sure that we have got them on board and communicate with them with some really clever ideas and what can we do to save money and how can we spend our time better by working on our business. There is some valuable topics in there and I am sure you are going to enjoy it. Let’s get stuck into episode 56. *MUSIC* You are listening to the customer centric show with Mel Telecican where we talk with successful business owners and experts to share smart ways to attract more customers, profits and freedom by thinking about customers first. Now, here is your host Mel Telecican. Mel: Ken Burgin is a former restaurant and café owner in Sydney. He now works with food services worldwide to make their businesses more popular and profitable. He is founder of the leading industry website profitablehospitality.com resource for the latest information on food and beverage marketing, management and cost control. He likes finding out why business success and why not a business problems. With more than 25 years’ experience in all area of hospitality he is the expert on how to optimize hospitality businesses. So I am pleased to have him on the show thanks for joining me. Ken: My pleasure. I love talking about this business and talking to someone who has run restaurants and everything on the inside as well as the customers. Mel: Absolutely now great to have you. Now you see lots of different restaurants and café. What is your perception of what is an example of customer centric business Ken? Ken: So I guess one of the things is I wanted to be predictable in the good way. I wanted every time I go back, I don’t want to see same people there because I know people change around. It is kind of like going to see maybe musical and you know the act is going to be difficult but the sound is going to be the same. It is just going to be good. So I wanted to be predictable in a good way if I wanted to be really loved by their. I want quickly and I don’t mean fast food but I just don’t un-necessary delay and I just want to cut off the warm smile. I want sort of genuine and think it is interested with that. I am well into my 50s now and you know most of the people in this industry willing to be into their 20s. it is a bit of generation thing there because a lot of young just not that comfortable with dealing with people other than their own group and they get better at it but actually not good at it and that’s a trainable thing too so yeah predictable I really like. Mel: Yeah and I think when you have this signature dish you want to know that there is that consistency and that efficiency is important too and if you can’t be efficient for whatever reason then communication needs to be there right to be able to make sure that you are not left wondering what is going on and rewarding eye contact that sort of thing. Ken: And we all remember those times you know the early days when there was the real sale off and you try to avoid eye contact with hah customers doesn’t work. Mel: It really doesn’t and something else you mentioned there warm smile. I got to say last week I went to restaurant in South Bank next door and there was a women who served me young lady and I got the warmest smile and I cannot remember the last time I got a really warm genuine smile like that and that just stood out for me. The food was great but that just really talked it off. Ken: Yeah so do you think that is that training or is it that just someone who is always smiling? Mel: I don’t know because it is not someone I consistently go to. It just show off the road but it just seemed natural and I guess that’s interesting isn't because it is not something that you can always teach maybe if it is a gradual thing people feel comfortable as you say but some people are just very natural like that and it is hard to get people like that sometimes right. Ken: Yes and that’s an skill and operator whether that is hospitality or any industry actually being able to find and you see them as they walk in the door for the interview too, there is a crispness about the way they step and sit down and smile. Mel: Yeah absolutely. So who is your example though? Do you have an actual business where you live in Sydney or in Brisbane that you would say is consistent or is efficient? Ken: Well over in Brisbane your town couple of days ago and went back to a place I really like called Gun shop café in West in and I have been going there on and off for years and years and it is always great. The food is always good. Like I was up very early and I bet they were not open the quarter and there is so many places that are almost like dance there hah and then I guess because I have been industry too. As some of those customers we can actually create a good experience by just going to initiate a conversation and I say oh I love coming to this place. So that the young women that came straight back said oh wait where you from? Which is a very easy thing to do I said I am from Sydney and she said oh I grew up in Sydney and then we had brief chit chat and that’s thinking about those conversations that’s trainable stuff I think. That’s something we can get our staff to do you know and look some people just stick their head in the paper and don’t want to talk to anyone. Mel: Yeah I tend to agree and I think that if staff realize if that comes to leadership down to that and this is what we want to encourage and have a chat and enjoy your work, you are probably going to have more time if you do more of a good time if you do actually interact and you do get to know people who are just occasionally visiting. Ken: And that’s where there is going to be some monitoring too you know to see that people you got nice smiles and you know they are efficient but you got to check they are actually having a conversation or another thing that I always laugh about and I do a startup workshop for people in café so I talk about when is the last time you went to the place and they cleared your coffee cart and they said would you like another one? And maybe one hand goes up in 20 people. No one ever does it and that’s trainable too. That’s a system. Once staff just get into it and remind you didn’t ask them or whatever. Oh okay next time and then you just almost they didn’t realize they were doing it. They always just doubled your coffee sales. Mel: Yeah absolutely. In my experience Ken sometimes when we would do things like that, it was actually having to solve to communicate but that’s actually a helpful thing to do, because have the choice they can say no you are being pushy. It is just offering and offering it just that. It is very open and people can make that decision. Ken: Yeah and look some people have kind of sales gene that might come from family or culture where you just always need to hustle to survive almost. Aussies well we are born with sales gene and we need to learn this and a lot of your staff you actually need to teach them. Then they will get it and it will just become part of their DNA hah. Mel: Yeah and I think also if you look at your own personal experience that we got good service and if we really broke that down, those are things they are doing. If you are wanting that, they are including that sales conversation with ease. Ken: And then you can have little talk about okay you got 4 business guys and you all have why and they all just being little bit kind of smart and how do you get a coffee and interact and something like that. Let’s practice how it work. Mel: Yeah roleplaying is good absolutely. Now you have been in this industry Ken for a long time. You had your own café 20 odd years ago. Couple of café is that right? Ken: Café and restaurant and a takeaway food bar in dourly. Mel: Yeah tell us about that and what led you to building profitable hospitality and you have been doing for such a long time now. It is a wealth of information there that you have created. Ken: Yeah well I love the café business and restaurants. My café was my main business which is build up for 10 years from a very tiny business that I bought and then put my foot on the accelerator and just made it bigger and bigger and it is always I like efficiency and I always looking at better ways to turn table. Out of efficiency we actually create good customer experience as well. Because someone says oh you never seen someone eat so slowly but suddenly say oh my god is that the time? I need the bill and they kind of suddenly it is a panic. If you got a good system to get the bill really fast and swap the credit card in there off, fantastic. But so many places that fluff and cannot find documents and all that. I mean investing huge amount of money at that time putting a real point of sale system with table tracking and that sort of things are now pretty much part of the scenery but different sort of things are made. So that was a stuff that I was always trying to bring into my business and then making it easy for the kitchen to get food out fast because boy there is a lot of and those guys work so hard and often times really difficult situations and I remember going to 2-3 group coffee machine oh what a revolution that was. We can get everything out so much quicker. So that was optimizing. They create good service just by getting more efficient. So there was the café the which has usual stall of things and light meals and I h

Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPTION: THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SHOW PODCAST with Mel Telecican (Customer-Centric Coach) Episode 55. Business Growth Essentials With Kevin Gammie ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hi there Mel Telecican here, I wanted to say before we start a very big thank you for those of you listening and a very big thank you to my fantastic guests as well. We are not up to episode 55 which is pretty exciting. Started back in June last year and now we are averaging anything between 900 and a 1000 listeners within a week of publishing an episode and that doesn’t happen easily. It happens because people choose to share their wisdom with other business owners and with that I am really grateful and I am sure you listeners are and I am sure also our audience. So I am very grateful for you tuning in and I guess we are making that step and taking the time out to listen and be thinking about your business in a different way and listening to different perspectives based on people specialties whether that be strategy web content, leadership productivity or the different angles that we come at from on the show because the customer centric show is more than just talking about customer service, it is about looking all angles. So thank you to my listeners and thank you to our fantastic guests as well. I wanted to quickly mention something that people ask me pretty regularly if I am going to networking events they often ask me what I do and I tell them I have a podcast and their next question is oh really okay what is it that you do that for and truthfully the reason why I do it is because I love learning from other people and I made the mistake of starting my restaurant business going into it with lots of energy and heart and prepared to go ends with it to get stuff done and I realized that we need to be constantly learning from others. The world is changing. The customer needs and desired are changing and we really need to be on top of what is out there and what is working right now and book are fantastic and I have got plans to write a book. I guess the best thing about podcasts is that you get really up to date information that’s working for people in their businesses right now or they are helping other people do this in their businesses right now. These are recent successes. These are things working in the market as we sort of speak. So like I said I am very fortunate to be meeting with people who are super passionate about what they do. They got legitimate excellent results and they come highly recommended and I investigate them thoroughly to make sure that they are worthy of being on the show because the worst thing I would imagine is that we would be bringing information that’s false or blown up to be something that it is actually not and so I work really hard to make sure that it doesn’t happened and so you are getting really valuable information that’s actually going to do something for your business so thanks for tuning in I really appreciate it. Hope you enjoy this episode with Kevin. Let’s get into it. *MUSIC* You are listening to the customer centric show with Mel Telecican where we talk with successful business owners and experts to share smart ways to attract more customers, profits and freedom by thinking about customers first. Now, here is your host Mel Telecican. Mel: My guest on the show today is Kevin Gammie because I have seen him as an advocate for small business. He has built an active community of business owners who come together to ask questions, promote their business and to help each other too. But it wasn’t always like this. Originally he was an accountant, consulting salesman and state manager in fortune 500 business as well as small and midsize organizations but he started his first small business in 1999. Like many others the GFC though nearly wiped him out and so with 15 people on the books, 15 staff and losses in 2009 and 2010 set him reeling so he discovered at that time that small business owners were receiving consulting support that was much more suited for big business that is just been re-packaged for small business. It didn’t suit small business so he sat out to create a better service to help small business owners. So growth mentors became a reality and since its inception has helped grow many small businesses. Today we are going to learn about many of those successes. We are meeting together face to face at Kevin’s office. So hope you enjoy the show let’s get into it. Thanks for joining me. Good to have you on the show. Kevin: Thanks for having me. Mel: We always start out show by talking about example of a customer centric business. What is yours Kevin? Kevin: In reality I don’t think the demise of masters is anything rather un-expected because at the end of the day earning just helps customers service because you go in they have what they are looking for, if they don’t then they don’t get in. I recently was at Walmart and we got a smallest patch of grass in the road so we just wanted battery of that from Walmart. So we found one and it bit of tired us as well I found one that was in the package and it was a promotional item out at my local store. They were just waiting and patiently asking the right questions until they started calling out the other stores to find one. The next day they called me out to let me know it was there and also to be able to come and pick it out. The story doesn’t end here though. I managed to somehow in assemble, so I took the model back. They didn’t question me about how on earth that useless and not able to do that. They just said hey lets replace that with just long one and I said really? They just look what it will do is that but also the whole time they were focused on how we can help. It wasn’t no we cannot and go away but many times I had similar things and I am not best man in the world so the things I do is first and they were very helpful, patient and when it comes to service it is fantastic. The product knowledge of their people was great and that was one of the main challenges with masters is that the people were walking in and those were the habit of just not know what talking about if they could find them. Mel: I have to say I experienced exactly the same. We are having to return things after Christmas but the wrong set of lights. There was no questions about it and yes sure go get if you need and get the credit and it made it really easy for me and I guess that’s the nature of their business too. They are such a large business. They are going to have people in every shape and size in terms of mobility or not and so they are obviously been brief but that’s how they do it minimize friction and get people back again. Kevin: And nothing to hassle. That’s what we love about it. Like so often when there is a problem with customer experience, it become tense and hassle. Other than that that’s a different approach and not hassle and we help you with that. Mel: Good stuff. Which store was it? Kevin: The one over Debian but also we go Stafelado. Mel: Yeah okay great. Thanks for sharing that. Now I am sort of giving the intro into the difficult time you experienced having all the recruitment and there is decent glory days before that. Kevin: Yeah a lot of fun as well. Mel: Yeah so in 2009 impact was being felt couple of years after the states really started shaking and that was the difficult time and yeah talk us through that story. Kevin: Sure. With the financial crisis we haven’t had anything like that really since 30s. We had few downtowns but wasn’t on the global scale and everybody felt that we would be resilient and it would bounce and we had 15 staff going into the financial crisis. One thing that happens when that occurred is people stopped recruiting. So when you got 15 staff and large office sitting around the Queens Street Mall in Brisbane which is up there in the most expensive real estate in the country. It doesn’t really help. So you try to make that and we made huge losses and we held onto the staff way too long and we made a lot of mistakes and we do learn from the mistakes. That’s the good thing. The wash up was that we did have to eventually let go all the staff and re-build the business and in re-building the business we focused more on the accounting market believing that with different taxes accountants would make accountants. Unfortunately what happened over the re-build of their businesses, they off shored a lot of their work and so there wasn’t the bounce in that market that we expected, three years after the financial crisis seeing there and looking at the business we now had and I couldn’t see a role that I wanted to have in that particular business. We tried working with some business coaches and they were also business coaches in different situations and maybe I was a tough student. But the end result was the models were doing and creating more work that were potentially focused on long term when we were in survival mode. When you are looking at the different levels of maturity at a very basic level, you need survival mode. You need your next meal and that’s kind of where we were. We needed not to get out of survival mode and move up to a higher level of thinking but we needed to survive and all the models were being fed to us and all the things we are doing. We are giving us more work to do to staff that would pay off further down the track without filling jobs right now and it was then that I realized that the coaches were doing it and it didn’t understand the dilemma that we had and didn’t explain that well enough or didn’t have the models to help us and that’s when I wanted to create something to help business owners help themselves. Mel: I have spoken to people who have create things out of their own personal experiences because I know especially when they ca

Reeve Kruck 25 Years of Titan Success I invited today’s guest on the show because I feel like I’ve grown up always knowing this brand. Reeve Kruck is the owner of Titan Sheds and Titan Garages – The Titan Group. A business that was bought in April of 1991 and this year is celebrating it’s 25th year of business. In that time they’ve built over 130 000 structures and now employ over 150 Australians. From home garages and tool sheds through to industrial and commercial buildings, Titan has over 30 distributors in Queensland and New South Wales. Reeve Kruck is well and truly the king of the sheds and a great person to talk to about growing a sustainable business throughout the decades.   *** This Episode was brought to you by Brandstrong. The Customer Centric Show listeners can access an exclusive offer, and save $50 per month off the Business Class plan, for the first 6 months. Simply go to www.brandstrong.co/customercentric and on checkout, use the code CENTRIC ***   During my conversation with Reeve he shares: How he came to take over Titan Sheds 25 years ago The book he refers to as his ‘bible’ for business His focus on sales over other elements of a business His experience that led to his Titan success The reasoning for his reluctance to take on digital sales tools An insight into the sales conversation processes How he grew to a staff of 150 His loyalty to long-term employees How he moved from full time hands-on in the business to work himself out of a job The system he devised to monitor Titan remotely A valuable tip about delegation of work Insights into his business planning processes The ongoing effort put into the sales process Why advertising is still go-to and the spend allocation His commitment to customers The story behind the Titan TV ads now and in the past How he tracks and monitors advertising and marketing spend His advice to scale your business; and His goal for the next 25 years of The Titan Group.   Selected Links For This Episode Titan Garages Reeve’s sales bible – Think And Grow Rich “You can have the best systems in the world … but if you haven’t made a sale, you’re out of business. Doesn’t matter what business you’re in. If somebody goes broke, I’ll guarantee within 10kms of that same business, I’ll find somebody in that exact same business going just fine, because they go out and sell, sell all the time” Reeve Kruck “It still involves sitting belly to belly, face to face and getting them emotionally involved” Reeve Kruck   “It’s not the telling process, it’s the selling process. I like my guys to involve the customer all the time” Reeve Kruck   On face-to-face sales over digital sales: “I’m a great believer in that you have to use a whole lot more senses. When you’re talking to the customer, you have to paint a picture. When you’re dealing with somebody and you’re in the person’s backyard and where they want the building to go and you’re involving them and putting stakes in the ground…The whole time, they’re seeing what I’m talking about” Reeve Kruck On rewarding staff: “You try and do things for people that they really can’t afford to do themselves“ Reeve Kruck   “I believe delegation without supervision is abdication. You need to come back all the time.” Reeve Kruck   Would you like this episode on your blog or website? Our podcast player will look like this on your site: Get our podcast player onto your site by simply copying and pasting the following code: <audio src="https://archive.org/download/TheCustomerCentricShowPodcast/054_Reeve-Kruck_customer-centric-show-podcast.mp3" controls></audio> The post 54. 25 Years of Titan Success With Reeve Kruck appeared first on Customer-Centric Coach | More Customers, More Profits | Mel Telecican.

Francesca Moi Explosive Network Growth Francesca Moi is known as the MeetUp Queen. Starting afresh as an Entrepreneur in Australia, Francesca realised that the power lies within your network. With no friends or family in Australia, Francesca decided to grow her networks and community and she did this using the MeetUp and Facebook platforms. Francesca has since created a system to show her clients how to build a profitable network of raving fans. From 0 members to over 10 000 people in her meetups, Francesca has generated a 6 figure business for herself and her clients via workshops and training programs. Due to her success, she was soon labelled “The MeetUp Queen”. Francesca is also the author of the recently published book “Follow Me – Shutttuppp and Build your Network!”   During my conversation with Francesca she shares: How the ‘MeetUp’ platform works How she got started with her ‘MeetUp’ groups Why honesty and authenticity is key to building a following How she leveraged her contacts from networking What you need to do develop and KEEP a community/following How she incorporates Meetup with facebook groups How businesses across a variety of industries can use Meetup for education and exposure The keys to building a long-term community How she develops content for Meetup events and products Her confidence and skill level when she started Meetup events Advice on how to improve each event Her suggestion on frequency of events; and Her business goals for the year ahead   Selected Links For This Episode Follow Francesca The Meet Up Queen on Facebook   On business using Meetup platforms: “Meetups are about a community. It’s not for a business to sell. It’s for like-minded people to come together” Francesca Moi   “We need to build trust. You’ve got to give, give, give and when people are ready, they will come to you” Francesca Moi “You have to share your personal facebook for your business without selling…then it’s easier for them to take the next step with you” Francesca Moi   Would you like this episode on your blog or website? Our podcast player will look like this on your site: Get our podcast player onto your site by simply copying and pasting the following code: <audio src="https://archive.org/download/TheCustomerCentricShowPodcast/053_Francesca-Moi_customer-centric-show-podcast.mp3" controls></audio> The post 53. Explosive Network Growth With Francesca Moi appeared first on Customer-Centric Coach | More Customers, More Profits | Mel Telecican.

Cholena Orr Happiness Before Productivity Cholena Orr is a productivity expert whose posts I’ve been reading over the last year. Some of the topics include leadership, productive and happy workplace cultures as well as mindfulness in business. As the Director of Pac Executive Human Capital, Cholena leads a team of coaches and Human Capital specialists who consult to an impressive list of leading executives and corporate companies globally. Cholena is a business builder who, over the last twenty years, has worked at organisations building their internal talent acquisition teams and establishing new teams in new markets and cities for consulting companies. She is a regular contributor to business journals such as the CEO Magazine, Business Woman’s Media, Business Insider and Kochie’s Business Builders and releases her first book “the Mindful Work Week” in the latter half of 2016.   During my conversation with Cholena she shares: Why it is important to to identify habits in the workplace Ways to identify staff habits that reduce productivity The value in understanding (behavioural) triggers What mindfulness in business is An example of mindfulness impacting customer experience Why happiness leads to productivity (and not the other way around) Ideas for how to create a happy workplace The home life-workplace culture connection Stress management – responsive over reactive Examples of how to increase happiness in our workplace Why rewarding should be about ‘how’ they do something not financial outcome alone How to track habit change, happiness improvement and productivity; and The most effective way to delegate tasks   Cholena’s Example Of A Customer-Centric Business Zappos.com   Selected Links For This Episode Find Cholena’s articles in the Newsroom at Pac Executive   “Very few of us are taught how to work – and actually learn through trial and error. Sometimes the strategies we come up with don’t lead to productivity and happiness. Therefore we end up unhappy at work, become unproductive and it spirals from there” Cholena Orr   “We focus on habits. 40-45% of the decisions we make today are simply due to habit…we need to develop good habits and do it in a sustainable way” Cholena Orr   “High performance = efficiency x effectiveness” Cholena Orr   “Hire happy people. Hire people who already have happy attitudes… they do what they would naturally do anyway” Cholena Orr   “Identify what people’s natural strengths are. Those natural strengths should be the types of strengths that work well within  your environment, your culture, with your clients or customers” Cholena Orr   “We encourage people to exercise on their breaks or together. We also create social opportunities which don’t necessarily involve alcohol” Cholena Orr   Would you like this episode on your blog or website? Our podcast player will look like this on your site: Get our podcast player onto your site by simply copying and pasting the following code: <audio src="https://archive.org/download/TheCustomerCentricShowPodcast/052_Cholena-Orr_customer-centric-show-podcast.mp3" controls></audio> The post 52. Happiness Before Productivity With Cholena Orr appeared first on Customer-Centric Coach | More Customers, More Profits | Mel Telecican.

Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPTION: THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SHOW PODCAST with Mel Telecican (Customer-Centric Coach) Episode 51. Maximising Sales Through Automation With Barry Moore ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Hello and thanks for joining me for episode 51. We have crossed the halfway mark to 100 episodes. Now, today’s episode is going to be a cracking one. It is about saving your time, making things more efficient and allowing you to be able to streamline the sales process so you can convert more potential customers into actual paying ones. It is going to really interesting. And before we get into this can I ask you for some feedback? I am wanting to know what you think of the show and the best way you can do that is on iTunes. You can give us a rating out of 5 and you can also leave us a detailed review even few words for your wish but i will love to hear what you think. If you can do that for me iTunes I will be grateful and look truthfully what it does for this show is it means that the higher rating we get, the more reviews the we get, the higher it sits in iTunes and Stitcher and that means that other business owners get to access this information. So like I said if you think it is giving you value and you are learning from it and you are being able to put these things into action then please leave us rating or review it would be really grateful. Alright let’s get into the show! *MUSIC* You are listening to the customer centric show with Mel Telecican where we talk successful business owners and experts to share smart ways to attract more customers, profits and freedom by thinking about customers first. Now, here is your host Mel Telecican. Mel: Today’s guest is Barry Moore and I can safely say that Barry would be the first former fighter pilot we have had on the show. Barry Moore is a former e-commerce executive turned marketing automation specialist & podcaster at The Active Marketer.com. He helps business owners put the power of sales funnels and marketing automation to work in their business. Barry is adamant that one way to make your business more customer centric is to stop sending out boring generic ‘newsletters’ that lead customers straight to the unsubscribe button. Barry’s focus on sales and marketing automation is all about putting behavioral triggers and automated communications in place to get the right message to the right person at the right time. Welcome to the show Barry. Barry: Thanks so much for having me. Excited to be here. Mel: Yeah excellent. I can’t want to get stuck into automation. I mean this sounds like it is going to give us a little freedom but let’s kickoff with an example of a business that you know that you believe is customer centric and give us some reasoning as to why? Barry: I have been thinking about that one and the one that brings to mind is for me at the moment is Netflix. They have really kind of raised the bar in kind of paying attention to what their customers want. They started out as DVD rental kind of thing. Mailed to your house and you can automate the messaging both front and the back end messaging and then you can scale up. Once they are in place you get more people and get more sales. Then they moved to the online streaming and bought a bunch of content and starting streaming TV shows and movies etc. and then watched all that data to determine what their customers really like and now they actually produce TV shows and full length movies. They have turned from the supplier to actual producer. This is what my customer likes, let’s just go out and produce more of that and they decide what you might like based on your previous behavior so you watched these 3 movies I think you will these other ones over here. So really doing their best to watch what you do and tailor that for you and that create customer content that you can’t find anywhere else which is pretty big move for somebody who just started selling DVDs. Mel: Yeah I have watched the documentary about Netflix and I was quite fascinated that it actually took off at some point because obviously I am different from other people but the whole thought of ordering and waiting for post of your DVDs seemed I guess not great idea to me at first but clearly it was and that as you said listening to their customers and looking at their data and tell what they like and don’t like and suggesting is pretty cool and they got star ratings as well so you can give them that additional. I did see recently actually that I was talking about one of the movies that they were saying was the biggest download of the summer and that actually made everyone hated it and so I am guessing they have data down the detail of where people dropped off during that film as a process of watched the whole thing to the end. So it is pretty fascinating stuff. Barry: Yeah and they also kind of pioneer binge watching, they created an episode like house of cards which is a fantastic show and unlike other broadcast TV they just don’t release one episode a week and then you tune in next week for next episode, they released like 13 episode at once. So they are not restricting you to how you consume the content either. Mel: Yeah I would have to agree that’s a great example thanks for sharing that. Now I am going to ask you in more detail about what you do? So you look at sales automation or helping business put that into place as well as marketing automation. Can you break down two concept for us and explain what that means and what that looks like? Barry: Well I can break it down into two schools. Marketing automation is getting message in front of people, getting them to back to your business and website until they buy something. So once they buy something it becomes how do we deliver that? So marketing automation is how you get them on and sales automation is get the process within your own business and how can we officially deliver more that product and that service inside my own business with my own staff. Does that make sense? Mel: Yeah so marketing automation is things like EDM electronics direct mails, direct mail SMS what are we talking? Barry: As I am specialized in kind of the e-mail and online service funnels type of marketing so I don’t get involved too much in the traditional kind of stuff. So it is mostly SMS and e-mail. Mel: So tell me what is the draw card for you? Why is the scenario focused that you like so much? Barry: I thought it absolutely fascinating because with these marketing automation platforms and we can talk about some of those later but you can do exactly what we talking about Netflix. So similar once someone subscribes to your e-mail and every business should be getting e-mail list. With marketing automation performance you can actually watch everything that they do. How they interact, what links they click on but even down to what pages on your website they viewed. For example if someone says you are service based business and you have got a product page for one of your services coming for adjustment right and someone got to that page 3 times and they haven’t booked yet, so probably much more qualified lead in some way hasn’t seen that page at all. So you can put automations in place which could be mailing them out special for that product or it could even be to alert yourself or one of your salespeople to say hey Mel was with this page 3 times there is something stopping her from picking that next step and buying that product. So maybe we have sales person reach out to you individually and give you a call and try and find out what is going on and so Netflix monitors everything going on and customizing the experience when you logging into Netflix, the marketing automation platforms can do exactly the same. They can monitor everything you look at and start giving you more what you interested in unless you are not interested. Mel: Yeah interesting. So I have to ask you question around heat maps. I have heard web portfolio responsible for design talk about heat maps where you see where people going and what they are doing so you can optimize your content or re-format your website. So when you are talking about people coming to particular page of your website, you are talking about being able to identify uniquely who those people are and then being able to direct communication to them is that what you are saying? Barry: Yeah exactly that. So the heat map example is generic right. it shows at what area of page people looking. But I don’t know who those people are. But once you got someone got into your e-mail list and I know you have given me your mail and address now, I can track everything back to you. Like Mel has looked at this page that day. They are coming to volley trip so they are really interested in volley. So I start sending them e-mail about how great volley is right and then 3 e-mails about how great volley is this time of the year. That very last message is some sort of special offer for the product you can look at for the last month. So it is not a generic e-mail it is going out to everybody. It is much customized to you. Based on the behavior you displayed to us. Mel: Yeah I was reading something recently Barry talking about this shift to personalized communications or personalized marketing and this year is the year of individualized engagement so this is perfect example of that because you are actually doing it based on the prompts they are giving you through the path way they have travelled on your site. Or through actually e-mail, can we talk about that little bit? What an e-mail or marketing funnel might look like in an e-mail? Barry: Yeah for sure. So a typical kind of one is let’s say there is 2 kinds of traffic. 1 traffic is people know about you and heard about you and mainly your customers. Then there is call traffic and it is people who never heard you before and have f

Read Full Transcript TRANSCRIPTION: THE CUSTOMER-CENTRIC SHOW PODCAST with Mel Telecican (Customer-Centric Coach) Episode 16. Steve Baxter on Processes and Networking to Scale Your Business ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ Before we get into today’s episode I want to bring your attention to Nora. Now this is not a paid post. This is me telling you about it because I think you will find some value in it. if you are in retail and I know a portion of my listeners are. So I got a mixture of hospitality services based businesses and retailers. If you are in retail, you really should check out Nora because they have put together a bunch of resources but also they run fantastic events that you can be part of as well. So just to give you a bit of an insight into what they are doing in Sydney. They got an event coming up on the 11th February. It’s expedition to Lush. Lush is international cosmetics brand that you may be familiar with. They have essence overloads if you ever went into those stores. You get to see the behind the scenes of this business. Now that’s a business growing to 800 stores. So if you want to check that out that’s in Sydney and in Brisbane this one I am actually heading to, there is expedition to beginning boutique that is explosively growing brand. There is a fashion brand online as well as seeing behind the scenes edible balloon a company that puts chocolates into amazing looking cakes and seeing how these business run. Being able to ask questions and also to collaborate and talk to people who are in the industry is a great opportunity that exist when you get along to these events. So events aren’t the only thing they do. They put on free webinars for their members and they create lots of other valuable resources. So I would suggest go over to their website and have a look, Nora.org.au. I am positive that you will find real value in what they do. *MUSIC* You are listening to the customer centric show with Mel Telecican, where we talk with successful business owners and experts to share smart ways to attract more customers, profits and freedom by thinking about customers first. Now, here is your host Mel Telecican. Mel: Hello and welcome to the second episode of 2016. I have invited today’s guest on the show because he has been involved in researching specifically the Australian market around customer retention and what it takes to generate a loyal customer and while there is quite a little information out there globally, there is remarkable in depth research in the Australian. My today’s guest changed that by commissioning the independent study. Adam Posner is the CEO and founder of directivity. Having been a data driven direct market for 23 years, he started this back in the mid-90s with a loyalty program for a shopping center called a scratch and save initiative. Since then he has been involved in a range of customer loyalty and retention strategies and programs for clients like Hotels and Apartments, Mt Buller, Global Beauty Group, Chemplus, Horseland, and Milwaukee Tools. Adam is all about helping his clients establish and maintain valuable loyalty programs that are both profitable to the business and meaningful to the members. Those parts go hand in hand. I first came across his research back in 2013 when the money report was first released and then since the 2nd report published in 2015. Adam is also author of ‘give back to get back’ and ‘making price irrelevant’. Adam thanks for joining me on the show. Great to have you. Adam: Thanks Mel for inviting me. Mel: Now can you tell me an example of who do you believe is a great example of a customer centric business? Adam: Yeah I have been thinking about that a little bit and I have actually got 3 great examples. One of international one which is an interesting proposition which is Toms the show footwear. They are famous in a sense that they accompanying matches of shoes and giving new pair of shoes to child in need and why I love this business in terms of customer centricity is not for typical reasons that you might think but because they really know their purpose and I think that a business that really understands why every day they wake up to deliver obviously great product for their customer and they got a bigger purpose and customers love it because I think they are giving something like 45 million pairs simply. So if 45 million pairs have been given that means 45 million pairs of shoes have been sold. So that’s the one international one that I am a big fan of and then locally there is fantastic food business called Foxes Dan in Melbourne which is a chicken and salad organization. It has got 4 stores and what I love about their customer centricity is they made an error one day on my order and they did apologize but when I got home there was surprise and delight in the pack. It was some extra chocolates and dessert which his never really expected, didn’t know about and that’s what I call a business that really understands and heart to delight at a small. Just something as basic as doing that is really amazing. Mel: So they didn’t tell you when they handed you your order. Adam: No they said we really sorry for that mistake. I said look it is fine I understand and I accepted their apology, I was slightly grumpy but that’s okay but overcame everything when I came home my kids came and saw them and it is one of those moments when you know business really understands their customer. Mel: Hmm and they are showing that they care aren’t they? It is not just enough to say thank you we are actually being quite thoughtful about how we can make it up to you. Adam: Exactly and going little bit you know unexpected and the third example I have which is my web guy called emphatic design and reason why I share with you is that it is a business that is so focused on getting successful. So his mantra is if my web is clean and successfully working, then I am successful. He is always pro-active, always looking for bugs, these sorts of things I just think we forget about. It is taking those extra steps. Mel: Yeah absolutely. So what does your web guy do? Does he notify you that he has gone back to your site and checked for things? Adam: Yeah he first made analysis and I trusted the guy in person. So it wasn’t sort of international based analysis that you often find coming through. I had met him and trusted him. Just for a moment I said maybe you can help me. He said no problem I would do a quick analysis of your site and tell you what the bugs are and that’s all complimentary and that night sitting and really simple stuff because I am not an expert in that space, he gave me a quote and it was so reasonable and every time I had a bug he says no problem I can fix it. It is just so service centric businesses. Mel: Yeah excellent. So you recommend him to other people as well then? Adam: Recommendation is the great form of marketing and advertising and we don’t do it likely. Human beings don’t recommend truthfully unless they believe and it is their reputation to recommend in. So I agree. Mel: Excellent. Can you share with us that was this deliberate thing that you sort of gone down this path of focusing on retention and loyalty? Adam: It is a funny thing how we land up with life and what we do with business and personal. I am from South Africa and I migrated Australia about 30 years ago and my life of loyalty was different there because it almost forced on me to and I to do conscription. But always funny enough that it was in my DNA that I was forced to do things and loyalty forced was natural and when I got into business of commerce and into world of opening business and I had a food business and I had café and so on, I got into space of understanding data. Now in early 90s it was those little cards at the back of the shop. You were lucky to even have a spreadsheet. But it landed based on that concept that you mentioned because I was walking around shopping centers and talking to retailers and saying look I will do local area drop and we will go 20 and hit discounts behind on this card. You give me ads, I will promote your stores. I will drive people to your stores and they will scratch and you will give those discounts and you get your peak business. Great concept but bit hard work knocking doors and getting people take it on. But then I got these questions from these businesses saying great they are coming in, they are buying, how do I get them back again? And it was all in the beginning of the days what we call direct marketing capturing customer info and using direct mail and phone. It was really back off the retailers asking me well I get all these customers but how do I get them back again? Brilliant service, great product and marketing methodology and that’s how it all started. Mel: Great. So they didn’t have anything in place to be able to have that retention. So then what was the next stage? Adam: We started giving them the opportunity to start collecting the data. So basics of getting their name and address and their phone number and without that it is anonymous and then the work CRM started to come customer relationship management and databases and keeping info and it was fun to have spread sheet driven also had the opportunity to capture customer information. Mel: Yeah I think in those days people just didn’t know what to do with it or did nothing with it right so the opportunity is there but whether you take the next step I guess and seeing value in it. So you have seen this whole space change and evolve over the last 20 years. What would you say the biggest change has been that you have experience or that you have seen has made the biggest impact perhaps? Adam: Clearly and we all believe technology. It is just explosion of applications and technology that is available. So it has almost created a lot of confusion in