A few months ago, I began using more stories in my communications with my subscribers and customers.  As it turns out, stories are an incredibly powerful way to communicate - especially in today’s age of marketing communications saturation, where everyone is so fatigued by the constant bombardment of ads we’re exposed to daily.

So, I decided to try a few story-based campaigns - tests designed to find out for certain just how well this story-based approach works.  In short, the results were truly remarkable in one of my niche businesses (an online training and membership club site).

I had been emailing my subscriber list of around 25,000 regularly for years (a list that steadily grows), but that I’d noticed had become less and less responsive over the last 12 months or so.  I thought at first there might be an email deliverability issue, due to spam filters, for example.  It turns out that is a part of the issue, but not the biggest issue.

The biggest issue was in how I was communicating with this audience.  In short, they were simply “bored”.  Tired of the same old dry offers, advertisements, free giveaway promotions, and regular communications like newsletters - what a good friend of mine calls “SOS” (same old sh**). 

He says that most of today’s communications ends up in the SOS bucket in people’s mind - they quickly recognize the form factor of the email, landing page and/or sales page as an advertisement or a cleverly disguised promotion designed to sell them something.  I think I agree with that assessment.  The old models are just that - old, boring and less effective in this era of permission-based marketing.

Today, people are hungry for content - content that’s interesting and useful for them - that meets their own selfish desires as consumers of content.  Yet as marketers, we have our own selfish needs - to promote our products and services. 

So, how can we get our message through these increasingly sophisticated “filters” that our prospects and customers have erected to protect their time from being constantly invaded and to avoid being sold?

Short Answer:  Story.

Stories provide the “envelope” within which we can deliver our messages - an envelope that will actually get opened, read, understood, remembered, repeated by word of mouth and acted upon.

Not just any stories, but stories that are interesting, that provide context for our products, but without hard or soft-selling. 

Relevant stories about customer successes (not dry “case studies”).  Personal stories about what we’ve been through that they can use to relate to us as fellow human beings.  Stories of our biggest triumphs - and our biggest failures and lessons learned.

Stories make use human to our readers (as do typos).  And people will make time to listen to a good story!  Stories help to build trust with our readers.  And properly-crafted stories build a lasting relationship - one that creates enough interest and desire to cause our reader to actually listen to us (for a change).

The key is in how we carefully weave our marketing messages into these stories so they get consumed by our readers - while our readers are in a receptive frame of mind.

So, back to my story here…

I sent an email to my subscribers, telling the story of one of our members who had been losing a lot and was extremely frustrated.  This story took the readers through the emotions this member was experiencing, and created empathy and understanding.  Then the story shared the solution - how this member managed to overcome what had seemed like insurmountable obstacles (prior to joining our membership site).

The support this member received from other members on our site, via our private forums, as well as some personal assistance by one of our coaches, who reached out and helped this member directly, was the key to his turnaround. 

At the end of this story, our member had gone from losing thousands of dollars a month to paying off credit card debt and generating thousands of dollars in profits - in just 6 weeks.  In fact, this member was so successful, he actually quit his job to pursue his dream of working from home.

As soon as I published a couple of these stories, three things happened:

  1. Our blog started getting comments - people were now interested enough to get involved, and THEY became a part of the story themselves.  This provided these readers with an outlet - a way to be heard, to share their feelings and points of view.  Prior to this story, the blog had rarely garnered any participation by its readers (who were obviously bored to tears with my ramblings before that).

  2. Our private membership site forums became more active - our members became more passionate, engaged, starting talking more about the site, and referring more of their friends to join us.

 3. Sales started pouring in.  Our sales during the month we sent just 2 of these email stories to our subscribers actually doubled.  Let me say that again.  We DOUBLED our sales - by sending 2 stories to our subscribers over a 2 week period!

Now, there’s an art to crafting these stories so they have the desired effect, and combining the power of the stories with social media to enable the interactive environment that creates the “social proof” - one of the by-products that results in rapid increased sales results.

Story-telling in our marketing is something that companies need to do more of.  Our listeners, prospects and customers are tired of the SOS communications style we’re using with them. 

I have done enough experiments with this story-based methodology to say for certain that it really does work - and it works surprisingly well, too.

I wish I could take full credit for having come up with this technique of using stories to take our prospects on what I now call a “magic carpet ride” - a magic carpet that’s powered by the stories we use to ensure our messages get through and have a real impact. 

I learned to incorporate stories into my marketing from Frank Kern - a brilliant Internet marketer who’s probably best known for having sold over $23 million of product in less than 24 hours on 3 launches. 

Besides being extremely funny and entertaining, Frank’s approach to story-telling absolutely rocks - and it gets amazing results.  He calls these techniques “Mass Control” (a course that’s now sold out).

I attended Frank’s Mass Control seminar in San Diego a few months ago (along with 600 others), where I learned even more about his approach to story-telling, which I tried as discussed above - which turned into immediate, amazing results. 

Since then, I’ve been studying up and learning a lot more about the key underpinnings responsible for these methods’ success - a combination of story-telling, relationship-building, trust and some aspects of NLP.

This is an area you’ll be hearing more about, as I continue to refine these powerful techniques and share my findings.  The power of story in marketing provides us with access to an additional “segment” of our market that rejects traditional advertising and promotions - a part of the market we can readily tap into by expanding our marketing to include more use of relevant stories.

Finally, the reason stories work so well is that it “frames” the decision-making processes within our prospects mind - setting up a framework for that decision-making that enables us to influence how facts are interpreted and how decisions are made - “implicitly” instead of explicitly.

Explicit decisions are what traditional advertising attempts to do - to “sell you” into submission through repeated exposures, compelling copy, impressive claims, strong benefit statements, great offers and solid calls to action.  While these traditional methods certainly have their place, it’s increasingly difficult to use these traditional approaches as the “starting point” for campaigns - or we risk falling into the SOS bucket.

Implicit decisions happen when we’ve shared a few stories with our prospect, and she decides for herself that she wants to take action.  She makes her own decision to take action, without the need for prodding, cajoling or hard-selling tactics.  And once she makes this decision, she’s much more passionate and active than if we’d pushed her into taking action *we* wanted or requested directly.

Incidentally, If this success story sounds interesting and like something you or your company could benefit from learning to incorporate into your marketing campaigns, contact me and let’s discuss how to craft a story-based campaign or product launch for your business.

(see how that works)

I hope you find the power of story as interesting and useful as I have in my marketing.  Until next time, all the best in your online business efforts.

Here’s another interesting perspective on why certain email communications is interesting to us and our readers.  And a great Top 10 truths in branded story-telling article.

To great story-telling,

Rick

Unsolicited email has got to be one of the biggest time-wasters in our known universe.  Over the years, my personal Yahoo account had become under siege from just about every attack vector known to spammers.

What’s more, like a frog in boiling water who doesn’t notice the temperature slowly rising until it’s too late, I had become accustomed to my daily (and sometimes hourly) task of fighting this little private SPAM war going on in my email inbox and spam folder. 

Worse yet, with Yahoo Mail’s constant freezing up, failing to respond and forcing me to log in over and over again was crippling my productivity (and my attitude at times, and I didn’t even realize it).

The issue had become so acute, I was getting many hundreds of these spam emails a day - often times dozens per hour.  And I had actually become addicted to fighting this battle!  (not realizing it fully).  Combined with the slow and unpredictable Yahoo Mail service, my email had become a black hole for time - sucking away at my productivity at every turn…

Fortunately for me, last week Yahoo Mail became so slow and annoying (requiring me to log in again after I sent each email for like 30 minutes), I decided enough was enough. I was sick and tired of having my precious time wasted day after day - with Yahoo’s horrible web email client and service that was so slow and unreliable… well, as it turns out, that’s the straw that finally broke SPAM’s back!  (Thank You Yahoo!)

So, out of sheer frustration with horrible email service by Yahoo Mail, I decided to finally take the leap - and switched over to GMail.  Wow!!  What a difference. 

No wonder Google’s dominating this market. They have the best product available (both for search and personal email).  It only took a little time learning that “Label” means “Folder” to get over the initial hurdle and I was well on my way…

I’d resisted GMail for years, even though everyone else in my family had abandoned Yahoo long ago.  I have so much stuff archived in my Yahoo Mail folders, that I just couldn’t bring myself to make the switch.  Turns out, that barrier was more in my head than anything (I can still go back to Yahoo and search through my folders, in the rare cases where I need to find something).  Over time, this will become less and less an issue.

Back to the SPAM battle… So, I quickly noticed that GMail’s SPAM filter is much more accurate than Yahoo’s, but still not perfect.  I was still getting a few dozen SPAM emails a day coming through the filters (and felt I had to look through the bulk folder in case something legitimate fell in there, which happens all the time with Yahoo Mail).  To my surprise, I rarely found a legitimate email in the GMail SPAM folder (nicely done Google).

Still, due to my various Internet businesses and the many hundreds of emails I get per day, I was left with a residue of SPAM, even in GMail.  Then, something fortuitous happened… 

I sent a broadcast mailing to my OPT-IN list of newsletter subscribers (about 25,000 subscribers total).  One of them bounced an email right back to me… it was SpamArrest, prompting me to enter in the CAPTCHA code (that little string of characters proving you’re human).

Then the light bulb went off!  I could’ve stopped this whole SPAM problem a long time ago, if I had just taken a few minutes to seriously learn about and try out SpamArrest - an ingenious solution to the SPAM problem (Actually, I wish I’d thought of it - it’s an elegant, ingenious tool that’s now patented). 

Since I still have so many emails flowing into my Yahoo mail account, and I don’t want the same issue cropping up in my new, pristine GMail account, I finally found the solution…

So now, instead of just simply forwarding my Yahoo Mail account directly to GMail and pushing the SPAM problem over into GMail, I’m using SpamArrest as my SPAM filter intermediary.  It works like this…

All my original public email arrives at the Yahoo account.  I have registered this darned Yahoo email address with so many hundreds of places since I first opened my account (so long ago I’ve forgotten when I opened my Yahoo Mail account - like a lot of people on AOL and HotMail, I’ll bet), I have no idea where all this email address is even used anymore.  But it doesn’t matter…

Every 2 minutes, SpamArrest now wakes up and reaches into my Yahoo Mail account via the POP3 email gateway, pulling down all new incoming emails that have recently arrived in my Yahoo Mail account. 

First, SpamArrest checks the sender of each incoming email to see if they are on my pre-approved list.  If the email sender is on the approved list, SpamArrest simply forwards the email to my GMail account (where it gets further scrutinized as potential SPAM - a job GMail is very well-suited to handle). 

If the email sender is unknown (not approved), then SpamArrest automatically replies to the sender’s email asking them to verify they are human (you must enter the text you see on the screen to prove you’re a human and not a SPAM-bot).  This is where 99% of the SPAM will get stopped in its tracks.

You see, spammers are a lot like cockroaches.  When the light comes on, they scatter, looking for a place to hide.  The one thing you can absolutely count on spammers to do is constantly change their From email address (so they don’t get caught, and so their latest spam email “creative” has a better chance of getting through the existing network-based SPAM filtration gauntlet).  Anyway, even if a spammer could somehow reply to the “challenge” email sent by SpamArrest, it wouldn’t matter because they won’t be using that same email address ever again…

All remaining emails from unknown senders (mostly spammers), remain locked up in SpamArrest’s “holding cell” (the Unverified folder), where they sit for up to 7 days (after which they’re deleted).  I can still periodically have a look in this folder - to satisfy my SPAM inspection habit and curiosity, I suppose

So far, I have received ZERO new SPAM emails into my GMail account - they’re being stopped in their tracks by SpamArrest.  And I intend to keep it that way…

Some of the reviews I’ve read about SpamArrest were perplexing.  People claimed that you could lose important emails because people might not be willing to enter the CAPTCHA code to ensure your email gets through… and that the sender should’nt be burdened with the receiver’s spam problem. 

Hey - it’s a brave new world out here on the Internet… if your email is important enough to be read, it’s important enough for you to register (to opt-in) with the receiver.  This is very similar to opt-in permission for people to send you email (a proven technique that’s perfectly acceptable today).

If I send an email that matters to someone and they’re protecting themselves against SPAM, I will definitely take a few seconds to enter the one-time code so I can communicate with the person; otherwise, them receiving my email apparently wasn’t very important to begin with. 

It’s only $4.95 per month for SpamArrest - a pittance compared to the value of most anyone’s time these days… (how much of your time are you forking over to spammers - what’s it worth to you to be 99% SPAM-FREE?)

So my strategy is simple.  I plan to continue using Yahoo Mail as my “SPAM-SINK” - where I’ll register with all the people I may or may not choose to communicate with, who may sell my email address, or otherwise find their way into my Inbox “uninvited” (Yes, if I wanted your mail, I just might actually invite you; otherwise, you need “permission” to enter - and my SpamArrest Gatekeeper will decide who gets in and who doesn’t).

My GMail address will only be shared with people I trust and want to have an ongoing, long-term relationship with (friends, family, business associates, etc.).  And SpamArrest will manage the “neutral zone” in between the hostile Internet zone and my SPAM-Free Zone in GMail.  So, I’m using SpamArrest as my own personal ‘SPAM Firewall” - and loving it.

Moreoever, as a SpamArrest user, I can now simply go inspect the Unverified folder once a week (or once a day if you’re still in SPAM fighting withdrawal, like me) to ensure that nothing important ever gets lost.

I have to say, SPAM free email feels GREAT!!  And SPAM-free email delivered to GMail is even better!!

And to be perfectly honest, it FEELS GOOD to win vs. the spammers!

The combination of using a PRODUCTIVE email system (GMail) along with SpamArrest has probably given me back one half to one full day per week of productivity - enough time I can now spend more of it doing fun, productive work again - like BLOGGING or Twitter!!!  (what a concept)

When you add up the time wasted on dealing with SPAM, combined with the distractions from one’s ability to focus on productive tasks that it creates, it’s truly an amazing productivity gain. 

I sure wish I’d found this dynamite combination earlier.  Now if my GMail account eventually becomes overrun somehow, I know exactly what to do (open a new GMail account and filter the old one through SpamArrest!)

Thank You Google for GMail and SpamArrest!  You’ve given me a significant percentage of my life back that had been wasting away to non-productivity.

A SPAM-FREE life is the good life.  In case you’re wondering why GMail is so much faster, here’s a great little piece on GMail’s performance advantages.

Rick

P.S.  Here’s a tip, Google…  Go buy SpamArrest and make it FREE!  (hey, it’s worth asking )

P.P.S.  Please share this solution with as many people as you can. We really need to gang up on these spammers and drive their response rates as close to zero as humanly possible.  The spammers are turning what used to be a great Internet-based marketing vehicle (legitimate opt-in email) into a distorted playing field that’s confounding the end-user… we have to defeat these spammers.

P.P.P.S.  Apparently others are growing weary of the poor Yahoo Mail service, based on this Business Week review

Well, we’re in the final pre-flight and QA stages with Landing Page 2.0 and the WinningWare.com site launch.

Version 1.0 of the landing page concept and associated videos are now live.  Would love to hear what you think and get feedback/comments…

http://www.winningware.com/info/wware_player1.html  (Landing Page 2.0 - hybrid video sales/squeeze page)

We’ll be split-testing this page vs. a more traditional landing page / sales page combo:

http://www.winningware.com/info/wware_landing1.html

Will provide an update after we launch and gather some data from the A-B split-test (using Google Optimizer).

Rick

Well, we’re knee deep in video production now preparing for the release of the Executive Leadership Guide…

This is the 2nd time I’ve tried to use Camtasia Studio for creating moderately complex videos, and I can safely say - don’t even try…  It crashes way too much when you zoom in and pan around to do detailed editing, the transitions are very limited, you can only have a single video channel and worst of all, you can’t resolve source video material of different resolutions easily (e.g., using a screen capture PowerPoint Presentation with an HD video clip).

After hours of fighting with Camtasia most of the day, my daughter, Amanda, got off work (she’s a professional video editor and producer, fortunately for me) and dove right in to help us.  We quickly rendered the screen-captured video from Camtasia, then moved the entire project into Vegas Video 8 - a tremendous (albeit complex) video production tool.

Talk about day and night!  With Amanda at the helm, we were able to finalize the first and most important video for the new Landing Page 2.0 iPhone-style player - the Introduction video.  You can see it here:

http://www.winningware.com/info/wware_player1.html

I learned my lesson the hard way this time. “When in doubt, hire it out”. It’s always best to hire the best professional you can get if you want the end product you’re producing to be top-notch.

So, we’re back on track and well on our way again!

Thanks Amanda!!

Dad

I’ve been working on a new landing page that I previously termed a “hybrid sales page / landing page” - kind of a mouthful.  I’m now calling it “Landing Page 2.0″, the next-generation landing page and sales page paradigm.

http://www.winningware.com/info/wware_player1.html

We still have a lot of video content to create this week to finalize this first version, but it’s starting to come together - then it’ll be split-tested against a “landing page 1.0″ text-based squeeze page / sales page combo.

Should be interesting…

Well, this week we’ve been wracking our brains trying to figure out how to dramatically increase sales conversions on our landing page in order to support higher-than-expected advertising costs to reach our B2B audience…

The solution - a “video-based hybrid squeeze page / sales page” design:

http://www.winningware.com/info/wware_player1.html

At the time of this posting, the video clips are just sample, placeholders.

We’re going to burden the video with the usual sales copy, instead of having a mile-long sales page…

More as it develops…

Rick

Boy, things have been really hectic - as they always are right before a product launch - so much to do, so little time…

The product is actually “soft-launched” right now and available for sale, even thought the big push will come around July 15th.

www.winningware.com/info/

Been testing all kinds of Google AdWord ads the last couple of days, homing in on and validating messaging and various advertising angles, in anticipation of our big push.

Our target market for this first product is entrepreneurs and executives of small businesses (100 employees and under).  The product enables an executive to set their revenue goals for the business, then put the right team, strategy and plans into place, then execute successfully to drive sales. It’s aimed at businesses who transact online, and businesses that derive leads from online sources, but deliver their products and services in more traditional, offline ways.

We’re providing a 5-Week Mini-course (free) and an online business planning spreadsheet to anyone who joins our list.  The 5-week course covers:

1. The Online Gameplanner spreadsheet tool and how to get the most out of it
2. Online Sales Conversions - the two key paths to success
3. Relationships and Trust and how they factor into how much money is made
4. Lead-generation and Traffic strategies - the keys to scaling revenues and profits up
5. Testing and Optimization - keys to increasing profits and identifying/plugging “profit leaks”

www.winningware.com/info/

More as it becomes available.

Haven’t posted on the blog in a number of weeks. We’ve been heads-down working on our new product line, the Online Business Game Plan(tm).  Our line of new products is branded WinningWare(tm).  The website will be located at www.WinningWare.com (it’s currently under construction).  Here’s our new product line logo:

The first product in the product line is the Executive Leadership Guide.  This product is for anyone who owns, leads or manages an online business of any kind - whether selling products or services online, or using online methods to generate leads for an offline sales force of an existing business.

The purpose of this leadership guide is to arm business owners and leaders with everything they need to properly plan and lead their online businesses.  The challenge is, there’s lots of managers out there who own their online business machinery and preside over those who run it for them, but that don’t really fully understand what they own.

In other cases, people are starting new businesses and need to be successful with one or more components of online marketing to succeed.  The Executive Leadership Guide will help anyone who owns or manages an online business:

Now you can have access to an “off-the-shelf,” field-proven solution, to help you:

• Set and achieve goals for your online business
• Generate more hot leads for sales
• Convert more prospects into customers/revenue
• Acquire new customers/sell more to existing customers; plus
• Maximize the profitability of the online business and increase its competitive advantage

The product includes a FREE tool known as the Online Business Gameplanner(tm), a spreadsheet calculator.  This tool is available for immediate download and use right now.  I would be very interested in your comments, feedback and suggestions (consider this one version 1.0)

Using this calculator tool, it’s now possible to quickly and easily plug in your online business’ goals (e.g., how much money you want to make, target conversion rates, list size, etc.) and have most everything you need to know calculated for you.

The Online Business Gameplanner tool includes an online sales model that looks like this:

You can get the Online Business Gameplanner spreadsheet tool here.

I’ll post more details on all this as we approach the launch of the first product in the product line - the Executive Leadership Guide.  Be sure to register now to get in early.

I figured a less intensive, less serious, thought-provoking post might be in order…

My brother-in-law is one of the smartest, most intense people I’ve ever met. Anytime we get together, I never know what to expect he’ll come up with next. It’s usually quite entertaining, and almost always thought-provoking…

A while back, he shared one of his theories of the Universe with us. He calls it The Law of Conservation of Convenience (or is it Inconvenience - I’ll have to ask him sometime when a I have few hours to talk )

Anyway, this “natural law” says that there’s only a finite amount of “convenience” to go around in our universe - which explains why some people are having a great day while other people are having a bad day… One person has the door opened up for them by a stranger, and another person has the door slam into their shin…

There’s only so much convenience to go around, so when things are convenient for one, they must be equally inconvenient for someone else.

Like you’re driving down the road and you’re getting green lights all the way it seems - you got it - while someone else is stopping at every red light they encounter that same day.  Conveniences ebb and flow around like matter, while the corresponding inconveniences balance them out like anti-matter.

So, what attracts and repels convenience and inconvenience then?  Perhaps a good thing for us to contemplate and share with one another, as we figure this whole thing out…

Maybe this finally explains why karma exists - as a means of keeping the Universe in delicate balance!

As I was driving to our lake house recently, I had time to ponder a number of things.  I was thinking a lot about the biggest issue we face when marketing and selling anything online: TRUST.  Then it hit me…

Perhaps there’s a link here that’s been overlooked:  The “5 Dysfunctions of a Team“, a tremendous book. For anyone who hasn’t read it, this book can save your business or project if you’re experiencing teamwork issues and will serve as a tremendous foundation for success building.

In case you haven’t read this book yet, I highly recommend you stop, order it now and actually read it when it arrives :)  Then, order copies for each person on your team and make it mandatory reading.  Finally, organize some team-building exercises and make an investment in your teams - your executive leadership team, their teams, and their teams (and so on). 

Trust me - you’ll be glad you did this… (it’s one of the success secrets I learned while at Citrix).

This is one of those great leadership books that’s a must-read for every business owner, executive and manager of people - it’s surely destined to become a classic, like Good To Great (another favorite of mine).

A quick overview may be helpful as background, then I’ll discuss how this ties back into building strong customer relationships.

The premise put forth by author Lencioini is that groups of people working together on a “team” ascend through various levels of cohesiveness and effectiveness as a team, as depicted in the following diagram:

The foundation of any team is Trust. The Absence of Trust (as shown in the above chart) is at the root of most teamwork problems. This is especially acute whenever: 1) the team is relatively young and people don’t know each other well and haven’t developed the bonds of trust yet, and 2) whenever someone new joins an existing team. 

The absence of trust causes a dysfunction referred to as “invulnerability”. This means that team members don’t trust each other enough to become “vulnerable” to the other team members yet, so they often clam up in the group setting, afraid to speak their mind.

It’s easy to tell when people on a team begin to gel and trust one another - they begin to surface and air Conflict openly with one another - both in team meetings and in 1-1 sessions. By surfacing the conflicts, it becomes possible to face the real issues together and work them as a group, greatly increasing the effectiveness of the team.

The absence of Conflict leads to “artificial harmony”, a situation where issues aren’t raised, and team members are often afraid to speak up as it might cause conflict.

Worse yet, team members may actually disagree with one another on key issues, and by failing to face and resolve these disagreements, artificial harmony undermines the team’s success, or even causes “divisiveness” - disunity or disssention.  Ever see this one in a team?

Lack of Commitment is the next level of teamwork, where team members openly make commitments to get certain things done.  Have you ever seen the situation arise where one person proposes that someone else on the team get something done (that the person proposing it needs to be successful), and there’s not a resounding commitment shown by the person who must deliver?  Of course we have - it happens all the time!

The absence of commitment leads to ambiguity around what the team can get accomplished, as one or more team members won’t openly commit to doing what the team needs to succeed as a whole.  Sometimes this is due to a difference in priority, could be due to budget or other constraints; however, if the team members are able to openly confront and deal with conflicts properly, these barriers can typically be recognized and then addressed by the team (if the team’s commitment is truly required for them to succeed together).

The next thing that invariably happens is a deadline or commitment cannot be met. Instead of fessing up to this failure with the team, the team member avoids Accountability. This manifests itself in the form of excuses or reasons the commitment couldn’t be met, or even redirection to another team member who supposedly caused the failure (instead of the individual being accountable and working directly with other team members to resolve the issue before it became a failure in the first place).

The absence of accountability results in “low standards” for the team, where less than optimal results are being accepted and dealt with by the team as a whole.  This can be failure to meet a deadline, desired quality level or deliver on the commitment.

The final level of teamwork is innattention to Results. In this situation, results aren’t being achieved and instead of holding each other accountable and ensuring success, the team succumbs to failures or shortfalls, overlooking the real results that were expected, promised or required.

The absence of results can be a by-product of people’s egos or status, where they just won’t admit they’re failing and instead make excuses or try to justify the lackluster results in various ways.

So, in a a truly effective team operating at its optimal level:

• Team members trust each other and always assume the other members have the best interests of the team at heart
• Have open, unfiltered debates about the most important, and often, most difficult issues and are able to face and resolve issues effectively together
• Commit to each other on decisions and plans of action they truly intend to follow through on
• Hold each other accountable for delivering on their commitments
• Focus on achievement of the results the team needs to reach its goals and be successful.

For a deeper analysis of the 5 dysfunctions book, here’s an excellent book review.

One last key point, from Good to Great. It’s critically important to identify those individuals who aren’t progressing as the team grows, and either help them, or replace them. This is sometimes one of the most challenging things to face - a team member who just doesn’ fit for some reason(s).  It’s important to “get the right people on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus (team)” in order become a great success.

So what the heck does any of this have to do with customer relationships, you might ask?

Well, as I was saying, this is the question I was pondering while driving to the lake, trying to find some good music to listen to on XM radio…

When dealing with a “prospect” who has yet to become a “customer”, the biggest foundational barrier to progress is often “trust”. This common thread of trust is what got me thinking about this in the first place.

Especially when doing business online, the number 1 barrier to success is lack of trust by prospects of the vendor or website owner. There’s a couple of reasons for this. First, we’re all taught from a very young age not to trust strangers. So, unless someone we already know and trust introduces us to someone new, that unknown person starts off in the category of “stranger”.

Second, there are so many scams and untrustworthy sites and people (stangers) on the Internet, trust doesn’t come easy - that Trust must be EARNED.

When dealing with customers, we ultimately want a relationship exhibiting most, if not all, of the same characteristcs we see in functional teams. Ever hear customers say they’re looking for a “partner”, when doing business?  I certainly have…

What they’re saying is…

• They want someone they can trust to do what they say they’ll do
• They want someone who will face the most difficult issues together with them and resolve issues effectively
• They want someone who follows through on their commitments
• They want somene they can hold accountable for delivery
• They want someone who delivers the results they promised when the sale was originally consumated.

Isn’t that interesting?  The highest level of customer service actually shares many of the same characteristics as great teamwork.

These realizations have given me a new perspective on dealing with prospects, converting them into customers, and then driving that customer relationship to the highest possible levels.

Why?  Simple. Happy, satisfied customers are our biggest source of profits, due to lowering our cost of sales, through repeat business, referrals and testimonials.

I’m starting to think differently about customers who raise issues, and think this perspective may help us carefully examine how we’re responding by understanding what level of “teamwork” we’re exhibiting with our most valued business asset of all - our Customers.

So, what are your thoughts on this connection between Teamwork and Customer Relationships?