What’s going through your mind? Short-term security with a good “solid” job and get-by retirement, with apparently little risk? Or a much bigger risk but a giant paycheck for building and selling a business?

Before you take the plunge, take stock of your philosophies. That’s right, your philosophies, how you think about stuff, how you make decisions, and how your judgements are formed. More than any other single factor, success in entrepreneurship comes down to making more right decisions. What influences those decisions? What standards do you hold up as guides and measures? In entrepreneurship it is your decisions that can make or break you.

Do you think, for instance, that if your idea is good enough, your quality high enough, or your prices low enough, sales will take care of themselves? In other words have you bought into the popular notion that it’s all about the product or service? We did! And boy were we surprised! This is a commonly held misconception! Sure, you must have a great product at an attractive price, but actually getting it to the ultimate customer is a much bigger challenge than producing it in the first place.

Do you think that those who have a financial interest in seeing your product stay in stock and reordering it, will keep selling it? We did! Wrong again! They have too many other products to sell to put much energy in to a new, unproven one. Especially in the critical early stages, we found that we had to sell it for them, over and over again. In fact we had to do so much of what we thought was the other guy’s job that we wound up with our own sales team, and that cost us plenty.

Do you think you need tons of money to get started? In retrospect, we found that being undercapitalized actually forced us to be resourceful and innovative. If we had been “properly financed” we would have never discovered how to get the word out about our product through worthy cause marketing. We would have just thrown lots of money at advertising, the common approach to marketing.

Do you think your vendors are trying to squeeze you for payments?  We actually increased our credit when we were late on our payments! How? By treating our vendors the way we wanted to be treated, with a friendly heads-up call in advance of a late payment, along with a plan to bring our account current. We met with them bi-monthly to appraise them of our progress. Your vendors can be your strongest strategic allies!

Do you think salespeople are out to unload merchandise on you or somehow get over on you? If you do, you will lose one of the best sources of information about your competitors and the market changes. Vendors and salespeople know what’s going on and they can share it with you.

Where do these inaccurate business philosophies come from? It could be your childhood, what you have heard from others, or assumptions you have made about the market. For instance, you may think no one has come up with your great idea yet because you haven’t seen it. In fact, you may not have seen it for sale because the original developers may have been unable to bring it to market. Don’t be like them.

We can help by sharing the lessons we learned most often the hard way. Get the big picture before you take the plunge!

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

The post Thinking About Taking the Plunge into Entrepreneurship in the New Year? appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.

Then you’ve delivered that experience. Your product was in stock, priced right, and provided exceptional value. But then, something went wrong. Maybe it was a quality control problem. Maybe it was the way the customer was treated by a clerk. Or maybe it was just a misunderstanding. So they called your 800 number to seek a solution.

All that great work you and your team have done to create exceptional customer experience is suddenly at risk. Your customers don’t judge you so much by how well you do when you are doing good as by how well you do when you’re doing badly.

But when you’re doing “badly” who do they call? They call your customer relations people, and how your customers are treated on that critical phone call can make or break their opinion, their loyalty, and their message to friends, relatives and colleagues. Because they have been advocates for your brand, now their personal reputation is on the line and they feel obligated to spread the word about how you handled their problem.

How your customers are treated begins with how you treat your Customer Relations people. Do you see them as “Customer Care” or “Complaint Resolution?” Are they relegated to a lowly status near the bottom of the organization, or are they elevated as the source of current feedback from the customer to keep your products and services relevant?

We think Customer Care is where the rubber meets the road. Complaining customers are gold mines of information and the perfect opportunity to turn disappointment into advocacy. They are already fans and believe that their favorite brand will make things right. Remember, for every one customer who takes their precious time to complain, there are thousands who don’t. They simply buy your competitors’ product. The Customer Care Department makes the most powerful lasting impression, and the customer information they collect should guide your production and marketing people.

So what is your complaining customers’ 800 number experience? Do they spend what seems like an eternity making selections, being shunted around, and repeatedly giving personal data to a recording that never gets to the live representative? Are they abused by long wait times, wrong transfers and drop offs? When we call an 800 number with a complaint, we hope they really are recording it and more importantly, top management listens to not just the dialogue, but the transfers, holds, and drop offs. Chances are you’ll never hear how many of your customers get so frustrated that they just give up because that is not measured.

But when a real person, who understands how important the call is to their company, takes it on the second ring, the results can be much more effective than any advertising. For one thing, you know the caller is outspoken. For another, you know they have already chosen your product. If they are treated like VIP’s, they will sing your praises like never before. And nothing speaks more loudly about a great customer experience than the way your company handled their problem.

Dollar for dollar we think your investment in quick response telephony, adequate call center staffing, generous credits, and solid lines of communication from customer service to production and marketing are your best investments in a positive customer experience.

Who We Are

Michael Houlihan and Bonnie Harvey co-authored the New York Times bestselling business book, The Barefoot Spirit: How Hardship, Hustle, and Heart Built America’s #1 Wine Brand. The book has been selected as recommended reading in the CEO Library for CEO Forum, the C-Suite Book Club, and numerous university classes on business and entrepreneurship. It chronicles their humble beginnings from the laundry room of a rented Sonoma County farmhouse to the board room of E&J Gallo, who ultimately acquired their brand and engaged them as brand consultants. Barefoot is now the world’s largest wine brand.

Beginning with virtually no money and no wine industry experience, they employed innovative ideas to overcome obstacles, create new markets and forge strategic alliances. They pioneered Worthy Cause Marketing and performance-based compensation. They built an internationally bestselling brand and received their industry’s “Hot Brand” award for several consecutive years.

They offer their Guiding Principles for Success (GPS) to help entrepreneurs become successful. Their book, The Entrepreneurial Culture: 23 Ways To Engage and Empower Your People, helps corporations maximize the value of their human resources.

Currently they travel the world leading workshops, trainings, & keynoting at business schools, corporations, conferences. They are regular media guests and contributors to international publications and professional journals. They are C-Suite Network Advisors & Contributing Editors. Visit their popular brand building site at www.consumerbrandbuilders.com.

To make inquiries for keynote speaking, trainings or consulting, please contact sales@thebarefootspirit.com.

The post The Customer Experience is Trumped by the 800 Number Experience appeared first on The Barefoot Spirit.