An issue in many offices is that the real work gets done outside of the office, either early in the morning, at nights or on the weekends because team members are in meeting after meeting during regular work hours. Those meetings typically only add more to the to-do list and also soak up time that could otherwise be spent being productive working on projects.  When not in a meeting, the remainder of the day is filled with interruptions, emergencies that usually aren’t true emergencies, and just simply trying to get settled in to actually get into a flow.

Right about this point you’re probably nodding your head up and down admitting that you’re experiencing this same issue.  It’s not surprising because the modern workplace has become addicted to meetings and other forms of interruptions.

This is a consistent issue for me even though my team tries to run as lean as possible and reduce the number of meetings and miscellaneous interruptions we have. However, when I’m not traveling, a normal week will have 40-60 meetings appear on my calendar. One of the reasons for this is because we’re a fast-growing company with big ambitions and a lot of moving projects that require our attention while the other part is that we have weekly status calls with each of our clients and I lead the majority of these calls.

As more meetings and interruptions have continued to find their way into my work day, I’ve learned to block out time on my calendar that is marked “DO NOT SCHEDULE!”  This allows me to schedule blocks of time to get work done instead of only small windows of time.

With how often I travel, I’ve also learned how to be productive from anywhere and how to leverage any time available even if it is only 15 minutes.  This has lead me to become very good at getting work done with short pockets of time in between meetings and at home.  Even if I have a day without a lot of meetings, I have found that I am more productive on projects when I’m workshifting because I find that I can focus more because it’s just me, my laptop and some great music.

Just as I was thinking about this while sitting on my couch doing work on a Sunday afternoon, I came across an interview with Jason Fried,co-author of Rework (affiliate link) and Founder of 37Signals where he addresses exactly this issue. Jason describes some of the tactics that his team uses at the 37Signals office and offers some tactical advice that you could implement into your office.

Have you broken your company of their addiction to meetings and other interruptions? If so, what were the tactics you used?

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I recently posted an article over on the New Marketing Labs blog regarding asking for feedback and the importance of having a feedback loop.  I thought it might interest you and I also wanted to get your opinion on it.

Do you ask for feedback on a regular basis? No, not whether or not you look good in stripes but feedback from your customers, clients, vendors, partners, employees and managers.

Some of us are scared of asking for feedback because we’re worried what the response will be.  It’s ok, it’s a natural feeling.  However, asking for feedback from those folks that we spend all day interacting with is important in ensuring that you’re always delivering consistent value.  If you’ve never asked if what you’re doing is valuable, how can you ensure it is?  Simple: you can’t.

At New Marketing Labs we just launched a quarterly feedback form that we’re asking all of our clients and partners to fill out.  It’s quick, it’s simple but it gives us a pulse on how we’re doing.  This is in addition to the many other forms of communication, feedback and reporting that we have in place with all of our clients.  When we were developing this report we knew it needed to be fast or else no one would ever fill it out thoroughly.  We decided that we would ask to be given a letter grade in 5 areas with an overall grade and then a simple question at the end.  Here’s what we asked for feedback on:

• Communications professionalism, effectiveness, & enjoyment
• Reporting effectiveness, usefulness, format & aesthetic
• On time, as promised deliverables
• Overall value added
• Meeting your expectations
• How can we improve to be a better partner and add more value (not a grade, but telling us how to be better partners!)?

Nice and simple but hits on all of the key areas that we care about to ensure we’re being helpful in a timely, appropriate and needed way.

In addition to asking for feedback from our clients, I ask my team members to provide weekly feedback on their wins (successes), opportunities (where they can do better) and to tell me how I can be more helpful to them in the coming week(s).  Just like with our clients, this is not the only communications that we have over the course of a week to ensure there is an open loop of feedback happening.

While feedback isn’t always fun especially if it is critical of the work you’re doing, it is necessary.  Burying your head in the sand and telling yourself that everything is going great even though it isn’t will lead down very dark, lonely and broke paths.  Also, remember, that not all feedback is negative.  Positive feedback can be energizing and help to boost morale.  But, if you receive positive feedback, don’t take that as a sign that since everything is good you can sit back and put it on auto-pilot.  Use it as an opportunity to go deeper, provide more value and try to be even more helpful.

Do you have feedback processes in place?

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Photo Credit: Padday

Early yesterday morning while walking my dog, Sasha, I noticed a vehicle in my parking lot had been vandalized.  The car was sitting on two slowly buckling milk crates and it was missing all four of its wheels.  As I walked past that vehicle I realized that another vehicle beside it had one of its windows smashed.  I called out management offices as I was heading into the office to alert them and get the police en route.

Towards the end of the day I ended up running into the property manager and inquired as to what he suspected happened and whether or not there had been other problems reported on the property.  He told that me that it appeared to be targeted to the main vehicle because it had expensive tires and rims.  I was surprised that my wife or I hadn’t woken up during the night when the vehicle’s alarm, presumably, went off while the car was being jacked up and the tires were being stolen.  The property manager explained that the resident reported hearing his alarm go off but had just silenced it from his apartment figuring that it had been accidentally tripped by weather or an animal.  Had he actually looked to see why the alarm was going off, it is possible that he could’ve interrupted the crime.

Besides ensuring that there was nothing left in my vehicles that could attract criminals, I began thinking about how oblivious we are to car alarms nowadays.  We have become so accustomed to hearing alarms buzzing that many times we won’t even glance in the direction of the alarm while walking through a parking lot.  Have you ever done that?  I know I sure have.  Now, related that to your marketing program.  Are you ignoring the alarms going off all around you?  Do you even realize that alarms may be sounding crying for your attention?

Identifying the Alarms

Being able to identify the alarm and knowing what you need to be listening for is the first step.  What types of alarms should you be aware of?  They can come in a variety of formats but some of them may include:

• Declining responses to a marketing campaign
• An increase in spam complaints
• Continued lack of engagement from your community
• A decline in RSS or email subscribers to your blog
• A lack of growth in followers, fans, or subscribers

These are just a few of the many alarms that could be sounding that you continue to hit the silence button on.  Your alarms may be different than those that I have listed.  Exactly what the alarms are really doesn’t matter.  What matters is that you identify them so that you can properly respond to them before it’s too late.

Responding to the Alarms

So, you’ve identified the alarm, now what?  You should develop both a strategic and tactical plan to address the issue and respond to it.  The level of the response will be dictated on what the alarm actually is and based on how long you might’ve ignored it.  Much like a progressive disease, the longer it goes untreated, the harder it may be to correct.  What are some ways you can respond to the alarm(s)?

• Switch up the day and time you send your email marketing
• Review your site analytics over a period of time. Identify where the decline began or where it started to level off.  What were you doing (or not doing) during that time?
• Did you recently update your blog and forget to add the “Subscribe” button back?  Yep, I’ve done that before.
• Have you ever analyzed what type of content you produce?  Is it one-way push? Are you promoting others? Do you only retweet others work?

What’s Next

The next steps are to continue monitoring the changes you have implemented and track whether or not they’ve been successful.  Always monitor, evaluate, experiment and adapt.  This will ensure that you’re staying alerted to alarms before it becomes too late.  Much like the resident who lost all four of their tires, when you realize that you shouldn’t have hit the silence button, it may be too late.  Worse case scenario is that you’re so blind to the alarms that you slowly bleed your entire community or customers and have nothing left.  Just a hint: try to avoid that from happening.  It’s usually not healthy for your business.

Do you silence the alarms going on around you?

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Photo Credit: wallyg

Most of the business books that are published focus on teaching you what you can do to improve your sales, marketing, customer retention, productivity or a number of other business-related goals.  The case studies in these books typically highlight role models of the concepts being described and then have actionable tips that you can follow to achieve similar results.

Well, Derailed (affiliate link) by Tim Irwin takes the exact opposite perspective but that’s what makes the book so great.  Derailed reviews the decisions, personalities and eventual derailments of six high-profile leaders.  Irwin finds that:

deficits in authenticity, humility, self-management, and courage become more dangerous as we take on more leadership, and can cause us to ignore glaring signals that might otherwise save us from catastrophic demise

It is from these derailments that Irwin puts together a list of five lessons can we can all implement into our lives to avoid current or future failures in leadership if we’re currently in an executive position or seek to obtain a position in the future.

Catch more of my review in this quick video review.  If you can’t see the video, you can grab it over on YouTube.

Note: Apparently there was some background noise from my washing machine, or who knows what.  Sorry for the little annoying hum.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DodZDAx8sEI[/youtube]

Have you read the book?  What were your thoughts on it?

Disclosure: This book was provided as a review copy.

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One of the most inspiring and captivating presentations of the Inbound Marketing Summit was the keynote that Chris Brogan delivered.  Yes, I work with him at New Marketing Labs.  No, that is not why I feel the need to pimp the hell out of this presentation.  I have the distinct opportunity to hear Chris speak often where I see him develop concepts that he then takes on to other cities.  He usually shares his thoughts on where these tools are taking us and how it’s changing the way we work, think and interact.  Usually a few concepts spark conversations and get retweeted and shared around.  But, at the Inbound Marketing Summit, on that day, Chris was in a different zone.

I highly encourage you to take the 20 minutes to watch/listen to the entire presentation.

[blip.tv ?posts_id=2732653&dest=-1]

I’m curious to know your thoughts.  What did you think of this presentation?  Did it get you thinking of how you could do your business a little differently?  How are you using these tools that we call social media?

Note: This a post as part of the series of presentations  from the Inbound Marketing Summit that was held at Gillette Stadium on October 7-8, 2009.  You can check out all videos on the Inbound Marketing Summit Blip.tv channel.  Content from all over the interwebs are being aggregated over on Delicious.  All posts on this blog will be tagged ims09 for aggregation purposes.

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A few weeks before the Inbound Marketing Summit took place, Chris Penn and I were discussing what he should speak about.  Of that discussion came the decision to do the presentation on how to determine the ROI of social media.  Figuring out social media ROI continues to be a very hot topic not only for the social media geeks but also for big brands that want to determine success measurements of their investment into the space.

Outside of this conversation I had been bugging Chris to analyze my restaurant, Caminito Argentinean Steakhouse, for some time now.  Other case studies have focused on what we’ve done but not tearing apart the metrics.  Chris is a genuis at analysis and analytics.  So, I really wanted him to expand my knowledge and ability Google Analytics and other tools to properly analyze our efforts at the steakhouse and determine our ROI.  For those that don’t know, approximately 1.5 years ago we cut out 80% of our traditional marketing budget and turned our focus to our website, SEO, social media and other digital initiatives as a way to drive sales.  Surprise, surprise, it worked.  Since then we have seen a minimum of 20% increase in sales when comparing the same month the previous year.  But, one thing we never did was break out and track those individual efforts between the website, social media, and other areas we were spending our time online.

As part of his presentation Chris asked if he could use the restaurant as an example and do an analysis of our ROI.  What Chris found, in terms of hard dollars, surprised me and I think it will surprise you too.

You can check out Chris’ presentation, both slides and videos below:

Video

[blip.tv ?posts_id=2725975&dest=-1]

Slides

As I said, I was surprised at the actual dollar values but I wasn’t surprised at the result that Chris found.  For us, our entire focus has been on SEO.  We have used social media as a tool to augment that but not as a primary vehicle to drive revenue for the restaurant.  For instance, we have made a conscious decision to not set up a Twitter account where offer discounts.  It is something we’re considering doing in the future, but right now we aren’t utilizing social media in that way.

While this presentation gives you some information about my brick and mortar and the decisions that we face and have to make, have you taken these steps to determine the ROI of your efforts on your website, blog, or social media profiles?  If you have done this exercise, did you change anything about the way you spend your time post-analysis?

Note: This is the first post of many highlighting videos from the Inbound Marketing Summit that was held at Gillette Stadium on October 7-8, 2009.  All posts will be tagged ims09 for aggregation purposes.

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If you need yet ANOTHER reason why you should buy Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith, today I explain what I’ve seen these two friends of mine go through over the past year to ensure that the best possible book that they could write hits bookshelves.

If you can’t view the video, you can also find it on YouTube.

[blip.tv ?posts_id=2504123&dest=-1]

Note: Apparently I was tapping the laptop as I was recording so my apologies that it’s a little bumpy

To pick up a copy of Trust Agents, head on over to: http://bit.ly/buy-ta.  I really hope that you’ll support them and pick up a copy of 20 of the book.

If you already received your copy, what did you think about it?  You can let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or better yet, write/film a post reviewing the book and tag it #trustagents.

Is it possible to provide great customer service without ever speaking to your customer?  I think so.  Actually, I know so.  Since its inception, I have been a regular customer of Netflix.  There have been a couple times where I’ve canceled the membership because of traveling, moving, etc but I’ve always come back.  Why?  Well, beyond the fact that it’s a genius system for a great price, I have always loved their care for the customer experience.  I’ve never talked to one representative at Netflix.  Do they even have customer service reps?  I’m sure they must have to but I’ve never had a need to go looking for a number.  Yet, I always feel like they are continually trying to improve customer service thus improving the overall customer experience.  How so?

One of the big ways is through the below email I get randomly from Netflix.

It usually comes about once every couple weeks.  It simply asks what day I dropped the movie I was returning in the mail.  But, it is so much more than just remembering that you dropped it 2 days ago.  Netflix is using that data to track the delivery time from mailbox to shipping facility.  Sure, that allows them to know it takes 1-2 days from the greater Boston area because they have a shipping facility in Worcester, MA (about 1.25hr drive from Boston).  It also allows them to strategically determine where to open new shipping facilities.  If they see that the average delivery time moves from 1.3 days from Boston to Worcester up to 2.2 days, that will show them that maybe the Worcester shipping facility is overburdened because of the number of customers in the area.  Netflix could then build a new shipping facility closer to Boston using their customer address data and the average return time of a movie based on what customers tell them on these email surveys.

Those are just a few examples of the many possibilities for using the data that Netflix receives just by you telling them what day you sent back a movie.  Also, that’s only one way of many that Netflix is working to improve their customer experience and they’re doing it, at least in the above example, without ever speaking via phone to their customers.  Furthermore, they’re making the customer feel as though they’re valued by the company.  Remember, every customer matters!

So, how are you working to improve your customer’s experience?  Do you analyze every touch point that your customers have with your brand?  Do you strive to continually improve those touch points?

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It’s no surprise that word-of-mouth can be the best marketing a company could ask for.  It can also be the most detrimental to a company’s brand if that word-of-mouth is negative or even indifferent.  As we are going through difficult economic times, it becomes even more important that you cherish every single customer.  Furthermore, word-of-mouth is now on steroids with the speed at which information travels across and through social networks.  So, how do you ensure that your customers become a positive word-of-mouth vehicle for your company?  One way is through developing raving fans of your brand.

A few years ago I first read Raving Fans: A Revolutionary Approach To Customer Service. Back then I was in college studying sociology.  While the book made sense, it didn’t really sink in what a “raving fan” was or why they were so important.  I recently decided to re-read the book again since I’m fascinated in developing positive employee cultures and the concept of developing raving or super fans.  If you haven’t ever read this book, this is a must-read and you should order it immediately.  Even if you have read it before, it’s one of those classic business books that should be read once a year or so just to remind yourself how important it is.

What are some ways that you can develop raving (or super) fans?  These are just some of the ways I try to develop raving fans at my steakhouse.

Developing Raving Fans

1. Take the time to learn their name and something interesting about them.  Write it down and next time you meet them, ask them about whatever it was.
2. Set up a listening post.  If you find someone talking negatively about your brand, address it directly with that person.  Chances are, they will appreciate it and may actually become a super fan of your brand.
3. Learn what your customers actually want and then find a way to deliver it.
4. Be humble
5. If you find someone talking positively about your brand, reach out to them and thank them.
6. Don’t always make it about your top or bottom line.  Zappos.com runs their warehouses 24/7 to provide fast service to their customers.  Inefficient from a labor prospective? Probably.  Develops raving fans who continue to buy?  Absolutely.
7. Be human

Do you agree with this list?  What are other ways that you develop raving fans of your brand?

Over the past 6 months or so I have become increasingly fascinated with Zappos.com.  First, it was how fast the shipping was.  Order something, go ahead.  See when it comes in and you’ll be amazed too.  Next it was that they have over 400+ employees on Twitter.  Don’t believe me? They have a subdomain set-up dedicated solely to Twitter – twitter.zappos.com.  Once I found out about the Twitter piece, I began to dig more.  The more I continued to learn, the more of a fan I became.

I didn’t start begin becoming a fan because I thought they sold cool products at good prices (which they do!) but because of the importance they placed on culture, both internally with their teams, and externally with their customers.  While in Las Vegas for CES I was given a copy of the Zappos 2008 Culture Book.  No, this is not a management book where Tony Hsieh, CEO, talks about all the great things he’s done or his team has done to grow the company to more than $1 billion dollars in sales in just 9 years.  This is a book that starts by asking a simple question on the first page: “What is culture, anyway?”  To answer this question, Tony sent a company wide email stating:

Our culture is the combination of all of our employees’ ideas about the culture, so we would like to include everyone’s thoughts in this book.  Please email me a few sentences about what the Zappos culture means to you…We will compile everyone’s contributions into the book.

What follows at the end of that email is over 460 pages of employees who responded to Tony’s email with what the culture of Zappos.com and what working for the company means to them.  If you had never read about the 10 core values that the Zappos.com culture is based on, you would quickly learn what they are after reading the first dozen or so responses.  Oh yeah, and the reason why you would know what those core values are is because the employees truly believe in them.  It wasn’t a PR, marketing or branding move.  It’s what these employees live, eat and breath by.  Want to know what they are?

Zappos Core Values

1. Deliver WOW through service
2. Embrace and drive change
3. Create fun and a little weirdness
4. Be adventurous, creative, and open-minded
5. Pursue growth and learning
6. Build open and honest relationships with communication
7. Build a positive team and family spirit
8. Do more with less
9. Be passionate and determined
10. Be humble

So, how do they go about embodying these core values?  Instead of boring you with example after example of what I’ve read through previous interviews, presentations, or through the book, check out these 2 videos.  The first is a piece done by Nightline which goes inside Zappos.com offices in Las Vegas.  The second video is an interview Tony recently did with Seesmic founder, Loic Le Meur.  I highly recommend watching both videos in their entirety.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFyW5s_7ZWc&e[/youtube] [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZpU8oIT8tM&e[/youtube]

Do you actually live by your core values, personal or professional?  What can you learn from what Zappos.com is doing and adapt or create within your organization?  Let’s chat about it in the comments below.

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