I learned about customer service as a kid delivering newspapers. The publisher lived on my route. He was an early riser who wanted his paper by 5:30 a.m. From where I picked up my papers, I rode my bike to the other end of the route to make sure he got it. His wife gave me $20 for Christmas, every Christmas, for keeping her husband happy. That was back when $20 was like more than $100 now. One morning in the dark, I missed one customer's front porch. She called my mother to say she had not received her newspaper that morning. On the way to school I delivered her my family's copy. I found the one I had thrown in a hedge. She wrote my district manager a note about how thoughtful I was. Good service should be its own reward but occasionally someone also says thanks. Remember that and thank the members of your team for their good work.

Good and poor examples

Our office manager Hilda Crain has been with us almost 20 years. She's part of our family. Even when she's having a tough day, she is always cheerful and helpful on the phone and with anyone who walks in. We had a receptionist some time back who could not have been less friendly. It bothered us and we tried working on it with her. We advised her how important this was. She really didn't change. We had to let her go. We could not afford to drive off our customers. When was the last time you called your office to see how the phone was answered? Some merchants hire "secret shoppers" to let them know how their sales people treat them. When was the last time you fielded a complaint and what did you do about it.

Wally made a choice. He decided to stop quacking and start soaring like an eagle. Which are you?

Clients vs. customers

I like to call mine clients. That implies a deeper relationship than one with a customer. Some customers tend to be transactional. They buy from you for one of two reasons:

1. You're the only game in town.

2. You have the cheapest prices.

Other clients are relational. They buy from you because:

1. You have the best product or service.The cost is secondary.

2. You have earned their trust and confidence.

You go to a lawyer as a client when you have a problem or to realize an opportunity. Most of us don't shop around for lawyers. We find one we like and he or she gets our business. That's a relational customer. I prefer to call them clients. I want relational clients, not transactional customers.

I'm going to share with you in a few minutes how you and your team can increase your net profits 280%.

But first, I want to issue you a couple of challenges that could change your thinking about how you think. Let's say I tell you that if you can create a pencil from scratch in the next five minutes, I'll reward you with $1 million. Sounds simple, doesn't it? Just a small pencil that will write. Graphite center, wooden or plastic barrel. You have two restrictions. 1. You must do it from scratch. You can't buy, steal or borrow parts. 2. You must do it alone. No outside help from anyone else. That includes Google.

Now what do you do? Think you can find enough graphite to shape into a pencil point? A twig to shape into a barrel? Perhaps split it in two and carve out a channel for the graphite to rest in? Can you do all of that in five minutes? That's 300 seconds?

Think about this: How do you think the first pencil was invented. By someone alone?

Now here's a second challenge for you. Develop a computer that will add, subtract, multiply and divide, and on which you can write English sentences. You have 24 hours to do it. When you succeed, I'll reward you with $1 billion. That's billion with a "b". The same two restrictions apply: From scratch, no borrowed parts and you must do it alone. And here's another strong incentive to succeed: If you fail . . . I have a pistol and I will shoot you right between the eyes.

Would you take me up of either offer? I'd hope not. You'd fail both tests. I'd be tried for murder.

You might be successful in either test if I removed one restriction . . . that you must do it alone. If you could find someone with a strong mechanical bent to help you . . . creating a pencil in five minutes might be done. You would benefit from collaboration. Two brains working on a problem doesn't just double ingenuity. It squares it.

You might also succeed in building a simple computer in 24 hours the same way. You and your collaborators could even spell each other, a few of you sleeping while the others work on the problem. Think about this: If you and Bill Gates and 10 other computer brains collaborated, you might do in in even less time. Your mental power would accelerate. It would become you to the 10th power..

This, scientists say, is how puny human beings became the dominant species on this planet. Their collective intelligence did it. What determines the inventiveness and rate of change is the amount of interaction between individuals. "This idea holds out hope that the human race will prosper mightily in the years ahead," writes Matt Ridley. "Ideas are having sex with each other as never before," the science writer colorfully says.

An excellent example of this is the camera in a pill you swallow and it photographs your ailimentary canal. I have watched a gastroenterologist do this to himself. What a fantastic . . . almost science fiction-like . . . breakthrough as a gastrointestinal diagnostic tool. This fantastic tool was developed in collaboration between a gastroenterologist and a guided missile designer.

Why is this important to you and me as entrepreneurs, business owners and blue sky thinkers?

The more we ponder problems, challenges and opportunities, we find we are limited by our experience and vision. But in collaboration with other like-minded people, we could invent the next computer system. By working with people from other industries with talents and skills we don't possess, the impossible is possible.

Here's a simple example of how we created a great experience for trade show attendees. We rented a booth at a recent trade show and invited two friends in business to join us in the booth—The first was a massage therapist who gave 10-minute massages for a $20 donation to our children's shelter—The other was an artist who drew caricatures of people for a $20 donation to our town's beautification foundation. Even people who did not get a drawing or a massage stopped by to see what was attracting so much attention. The artist, the therapist, our newspaper and book publishing companies all profited by the exposure. The therapist picked up two new clients and our newspaper gained interest from five prospective advertisers.

That's a simple illustration of how we made collabortation work in creating an experience to produce business. I've talked about Mastermind groups in my Advertising & Marketing Letter before. We participate in two. One is a group of consultants who communicate on Skype monthly to help each other. We refer business to each other and will meet this fall in Philadelphia for our annual brainstorming summit. The other is a group of business owners who meet for three hours monthly in a central location. Our major thrust is each other's marketing. We also discuss other business challenges and opportunities.

There's absolutely no reason you could not do this, too. It's an opportunity to step out of working in your business to work on your business. All you need is a list of people you feel comfortable discussing your business with. They might be clients, suppliers and/or vendors. They might be friends in other businesses. Invite them to get together with you once a week or once a month. That's up to you. Make it a central location all of you can easily reach. You could make it a breakfast, lunch or dinner meeting. If you have nine people and you decide to meet for an hour, you could work on one person's business per meeting. If you decide to meet less often but for, say, three hours, each of you would get 20 minutes for your business. You could present a difficult challenge you're facing or an opportunity you're considering. The benefit of nine other people helping you weigh factors and analyze solutions creates enormous synergy. It's not just you plus nine other thinkers. It's you taking collective thinking to the 10th power.

I recently attended another mastermind group that discussed the details of one members business. This included actual revenue and costs figures. As a guest, I was asked to signed a confidentiality agreement. That was to protect the confidentiality of the owner who was to share confidential information her competitors would love to see. If you plan for your group to get this deep into detail, you will need for all of you to sign confidentiality agreements.

Now here's how you can boost your net profits 280% . . . using the methods we used.

If you want more information about this, just email me, and I'll be glad to share with you what's worked for us.

If you liked this article, you will be interested in my Advertising and Marketing e-letter, click here to find out more and to sign up.

Are you finding ways to strengthen your relations with the business community in this recession?

Partnering with business owners and recognizing their achievements will build bonds of trust. Here are three strategies you can consider. We've field-tested them and they work, What's more, other than your time and a bit of newsprint, they have zero budgets,

1

Each January we assemble a panel of local business and government leaders to discuss the coming year. This was our 18th annual forum.

We have had as many as nine on the panel but it tends to create a time problem. They are given three questions in advance and asked to hold responses to three minutes each (450 words). The questions are the same every year but, of course, the answers change.

They are:

How can we best deal with the challenges of the coming 12 months?

How can we take full advantages of the opportunities the year will bring?

How can business and government leaders work together to improve our economy?

Despite our restrictions, some of them tend to be a bit verbose and that has to be controlled gracefully. We have multiple sponsors for this event. The town donates its conference center and video taping capability. Five chamber member restaurants cater it as a marketing opportunity to prospective customers. Two local package stores supply wine. Coke and Budweiser supply other beverages. A quick printer handles the programs and display signs for the sponsors. I facilitate the program and write the publicity for newspapers and broadcasters in our area. This year 200 people turned out for the event. The sponsors were all thrilled. The cost to us: Some newsprint and my time. Our reporters take photos and notes for stories we publish after the event. This goes into a special "Trends in Business" tabloid that attracts business and industry ad support. The town rebroadcasts it on their cable channel for weeks afterward. I put about 20 hours into it each year and it pays off in goodwill and respect for our newspaper. And that's not to overlook the advertising dollars the tabloid generates.

2

Top Small Businesses
of the Year

This is an annual competition to recognize small business owners.

Here's what we do:

Contact the five chambers of commerce and four other newspapers in our area.

Invite them to nominate small business owners to recognize their success and community contributions.

Distribute nomination forms in print and online that spelled out the standards:

	Must be locally owned, operated and headquartered in our county.
	Must have 25 or fewer full-time employees including the owners.
	Must have no more than $5 million in annual gross income.

Our local chamber of commerce offers a monthly "Business at Lunch". The chamber president asked me to facilitate two—one on cutting costs, the other on increasing profits. We did the first one last month—"Cutting Costs Without Cutting Your Throat". Fifteen small business owners participated and paid $10 each for their own lunch. It was a highly-interactive hour in these four sequences:

15 minutes of identifying their pain—what keeps them awake at night.

15 minutes on what they are doing about it. This was highly-productive as they came up with some cost controls I'd never thought about.

15 minutes on seven strategies we've used in our business to control costs. These included employee incentives to cut costs as outlined in my book,"Terminate Your Profit Killers"

15 minutes of questions and answers and final comments.

This month we're doing "Building Your Profits Each and Every Day." It will use a similar format with strategies from my book, Accelerate Your Profit Builders. I use a flip chart to capture their pains, their cost-cutting solutions and their questions and answers. This enables me to write a newspaper article listing all the cost controls we come up with. If you would like a copy of the article, email me at jerrybellune@yahoo.com

Now other chambers of commerce have asked me to do similar programs for their members. None of this stuff is rocket science. It costs little more than your time. It pays off in great exposure. The people we are trying to help are small business owners who keep our newspaper in business. If you want to talk about how you could do these programs, call me at 803-331-6695.

March Takeaway Thought

If you're looking to increase the value of your property, you must ramp up your advertising and circulation sales. My new sales training course, Selling by the Numbers, will help you and your sales teams accomplish that. We used this 17-week sales course to increase our sales on one product alone by 202% over the previous year.

back to top

Let me give you an example: I got one of those calls newspaper editors get. Some callers are upset about something you wrote. A rare few call and say they love what you wrote. Note: I will always accept such calls from you and any other readers. The lady on the phone informed me that I did not know her but she loved something I wrote last week. Hooray! I thought. I should be taping this call for my grandchildren. "I like to do something nice for people who do nice things," she said. "I'd like to give you a free therapeutic massage."

Her name is Melaine (pronounced mel-an-nie) Juergens. An easy name to remember. Good pointer if you're thinking of changing yours. Melaine is very professional. She had me fill out a questionnaire just like you do at the doctor's office. I had to bare my soul with all the ill health I've attracted in my reckless life. Then she showed me to a small room and put on a CD of waves crashing with soft music to relax me. Then she began the most incredible two-hour massage I've ever had. Now I'm no expert but I've been massaged by some first-rate masseuses. This massage was the best yet.

While she massaged me, I interviewed her about her life story. Journalists are like that. We want to know everything about everybody. I learned how her courageous father went into a sugar factory filled with flammable sugar dust and was killed when the sugar dust exploded. She told me she came from Oklahoma to South Carolina because her uncle fell in love with our state. "South Carolina smells wonderful," she said enthusiastically. I felt ashamed that I had never noticed that. She also wrote some massage pointers to help me massage my wife.

Here's why this is important:

• She offered me something of genuine value absolutely free. I'm convinced she did it simply to say thanks for something I wrote. When you give to others, do it with a good heart and generous attitude.

• She shared her expertise with me to make my relationship with my wife that much fuller and richer.

I predict that Melaine is going to be successful as an entrepreneur. She's generous. She's positive. She's smart. And she knows her business. She seized the initiative, called me and made a lifelong customer.

back to top

Would you like to know why successful entrepreneurs fire some of their accounts?

They do because the accounts aren't worth their time and talent. They do it because the losers drag us all down and take the fun out of what we do. You know the ones I'm talking about. If they don't love us, and we can't love them, lets lose 'em. When our friend Joe Dawson first told me he had fired an account, I was appalled. It was an account I had helped him get. But Joe told me the account wasn't willing to do what it would take to succeed. He turned out to be right. The guy lasted about six more months and went out of business.

A business owner I know ran a small one-man computer repair company. He courted the purchasing director of a large company who was constantly abusing him. I asked him why he put up with this abuse. He said losing the company's account would put him out of business. I didn't understand his reasoning. I still don't. If you had 30 accounts you were really in tune with, wouldn't work be a joy?

Trust is the Secret to Survival in a Recession

All of us are feeling the stresses of hard economic times.Our people wonder when we plan to furlough them, lay them off or cut their hours.Our vendors are concerned that we can pay their bills.Our families are concerned that our jobs, and their livelihood, may be on the chopping block.This is no time to be wimpy. True leadership is a lifeboat in stormy seas.This year we had to let go three full-time employees and cut our freelancers pay.

That's no fun.

Our daily competitor just cut another 12 jobs in his newsroom.His paper is growing thinner than ours. His detractors are, of course, delighted.I can't join their glee. I know him and this is not something I would wish on anyone.We must maintain an optimistic attitude. We also must be realistic and candid with our team.

Open book management

When a new publisher brought me to the Philadelphia Bulletin, he told me a horror story. The former owners were in deep financial trouble. And they lied about it to their employees. They told them time and again that the paper was doing well when it wasn't. The new publisher, Buddy Hayden, practiced an open book management. There were some months it hurt him to post the numbers but he did. He was optimistic that we would prevail. The truth is, we lasted another year. But by being honest, he earned the trust of people who had been badly shaken by management lies. Why is trust and confidence in us as leaders so vital in times like this? Listen to what my friend Tom Stevens, a business leader and mayor of his town, says: "If you engender high levels of trust as a leader, you get the benefit of the doubt." People carry on with their efforts, look beyond mistakes, and work around inconveniences. "On the other hand, if trust is low or absent, people will question everything." They won't believe information you provide and will ascribe negative intention to your actions." Tom's right. We must be honest and straight with everybody. And we must do it with a cheerful nature. That's a real high wire to walk.

What you can do

Here are seven strategies you use to build trust on your team. As a Winners Circle member, you will receive my Leadership & Management Letter every month plus more than $1,200 in incredible benefits including my books, personal coaching and other products and services. Charter membership is open for a limited time. Drop me a note for details and these seven trust strategies. Be the kind of leader your people can count on to go the extra mile with them - every time.

back to top

Ever felt completely drained of energy? John Zenoni called it "stripped clean as a sapling.

"Most of your "to do" list not been touched?