Live and Lead For Impact Podcast with Kirsten E Ross

EP 169 Mike Swigunski – Work and Travel With Ease


https://globalcareerbook.com/

 

Mike Swigunski is a #1 bestselling author of Global Career: How to Work Anywhere and Travel Forever. He is a remote job and travel expert that has helped build multiple six, seven, and even eight-figure online businesses while traveling around the world to more than 85+ countries! 

 

 

Learn the Delegation Strategies I’ve shared with THOUSANDS and get your team to do what you need! Grab a copy of my EBook, The Six Simple Steps to Great Delegation

DefeatTheDrama.com/DelegationSheet

 

Kirsten Ross Vogel is an author, podcast host and CEO of Focus Forward Coaching where we help leaders 

 

  • defeat team drama 
  • to 4X productivity, 
  • wow their customers 
  • and improve their bottom line 
  • with simple, actionable strategies, systems, communication hacks and mindset shifts.

 

Ready for some individualized help for your leadership challenges?  Grab a spot on my calendar and let’s discuss how I can help you transform your leadership and your team.

DefeattheDrama.com/Call

 

EP 168 3 Keys to More Productive Meetings

EP 168 3 Keys to More Productive Meetings

 

Excited – 

Who here hates meetings?

 

 

Help you feel confident and empowered as a leader

 

My name is Kirsten Ross Vogel, author, HR Pro and CEO of Focus Forward Coaching where we help leaders who want to make a bigger, bolder impact

  • defeat team drama 
  • 4X productivity, 
  •  And improve their bottom line 
  • with simple, actionable strategies, systems and mindset shifts.

 

Common Meeting Frustrations

  • Meetings Starting and Ending Late – LOOK AROUND AND CONSIDER THE TIME AND…..MONEY BEING WASTED!
  • People Not Attending or Not Prepared
  • Feeling Like You are Wasting Time
  • Unclear Objective ~ Why Am I Here?
  • Including Unnecessary People in the Meeting – HIGH JACK MTG, IRRELEVANT OR NOT FACT BASED OPINIONS
  • Dealing with Power Struggles and Undefined Roles
  • Texting/Emailing During Meetings!
  • Sidebar Conversations – OR BACKHALL AFTER THE FACT
  • No Follow Through / No Progress

 

 

INSTEAD

 

  • The Meeting Must have at Least 1 Goal
  • A Real Goal – sharing info, discussing, deciding, sharing ideas? –quick updates among team members or departments Not just someone said we should have meetings

 

 

  • A Meeting Must have the Key Players – if you need to make decisions but decision makers aren’t available – don’t have the meeting

 

 

  • A Series of Meetings Must Create Progress
  • Real Progress – if you decide in the meeting assign next steps – what will happen before the next meeting and who is accountable

 

 

Struggling with a Team or Family Business Challenge?  Grab a spot on my calendar.  You’ll get a Business Breakthrough in 15 minutes and we’ll talk next steps.  DefeatTheDrama.com/call

 

Ep 167 Tara Murphy: Providing Hope and Resources to Struggling Parents

Tara is the mother of 2 children with autism and founder of the Parenting Frontier, a non-attorney advocacy which specializes in appropriate education for special education students. 

 

Her legal struggle for her children provides hope and inspiration to many. Despite what others think Tara stands up for what she believes in.  

 

Theparentingfrontier.com  

 

Learn the Delegation Strategies I’ve shared with THOUSANDS and get your team to do what you need! Grab a copy of my EBook, The Six Simple Steps to Great Delegation

DefeatTheDrama.com/DelegationSheet

 

Kirsten Ross Vogel is an author, podcast host and CEO of Focus Forward Coaching where we help leaders 

 

  • defeat team drama 
  • to 4X productivity, 
  • wow their customers 
  • and improve their bottom line 
  • with simple, actionable strategies, systems, communication hacks and mindset shifts.

Ready for some individualized help for your leadership challenges?  Grab a spot on my calendar and let’s discuss how I can help you transform your leadership and your team.

DefeattheDrama.com/Call

EP75: Each Customer has a Unique Relationship

DTD Episode 75 Show Notes
Each Customer has a Unique Relationship

Click to download the Show Notes for Defeat the Drama Podcast Episode 75

This episode is sponsored by Pillar Social Media. They create, manage and grow brands on the social web. They’ve done some great work for me! Check them out at PillarSocialMedia.com

I recently had a little snafu with my schedule and showed up for my son’s Dr. appointment 30 minutes late. Bummer! The earlier time would have been much nicer, actually.

How did it happen?   It was a combination of things.

First, I somehow added the appointment incorrectly in my calendar. I was actually about 10 minutes early for the time I had documented.

Second, the Doctor’s automated appointment reminder system malfunctioned. My phone showed a missed call from the office but there was no message. That message would have brought the error to light in time to make an adjustment in our arrival time. All would have been well.

Okay, so I own my error but did the Office Manager own their error? No.

As a matter of fact, she was a bit ticked at me when we arrived.

Now, I get it. It’s always frustrating when a client, customer or patient is late or misses an appointment altogether. It can throw off your day.

However…….do I think I deserved the greeting I received? No!

And not for the reason you think…….even if they hadn’t also made an error, I believe we still should have arrived to a friendly greeting.

Here’s why.

We’ve been going to that office for years! Lately we’ve been there every 4 to 6 weeks. They know us. And we know them.

We have NEVER missed an appointment and have never been late. In fact, we are almost always 10 or 15 minutes early. It’s a small office so they know this.

We should have a little trust bucket filled to the brim with them. They know that we are respectful of their time and honor our commitments with them.

Think about your personal relationships. Over time, don’t you get to know people? There’s the friend you know you can count on in a pinch, there’s the one you know shows up late no matter what but who has so many other redeeming qualities you love them anyway.   How about the friend who will listen to your problems and offer sound advice?

Isn’t each relationship unique? Don’t you love a relationship where you are known? Where there is a positive history that offers you the chance to receive the benefit of the doubt when make a small mistake?

Food for thought for the day. Are there interactions in your business where you are forgetting to treat your customers individually?

Get to know your customers. If you have a client who is always on time who suddenly arrives a bit late show concern not disdain.   They have a history of respecting your time. Something has probably gone awry.

Acknowledge that customer who comes in every day around the same time to pick up a sandwich or a newspaper. They should be filling up a loyalty bucket with you.

I used to bank with a company that never acknowledged me as a known customer. A colleague who was also a business owner used to laugh about it with me. Between she and her office manager they were in there at least 3 times a week and yet the tellers never knew their names or greeted them any differently than they would a complete stranger.   It wasn’t a very busy branch. No one was looking for preferential treatment. We just wondered what it would take to be treated as a repeat customer? How could we establish a warm teller/customer relationship? What could we do to feel known?

The answer for both of us in this instance was to switch banks. And we did.

If you’ve watched the Today Show over the past 10 years or more you have probably seen Linny. He gained notoriety simply by standing in the crowd outside the studio. They called him the Today Show Super fan. Over time he became known by Today Show staff members and viewers. All he did was show up on time everyday and smile. They began to talk to him during outdoor segments. He was really just a Today Show fan but generated a relationship through his loyalty. They treated him in a special way as a result. When he passed away in 2013 it was a big deal. There was a relationship, he was known.

Let the experiences you have with your customers generate a relationship based on that history.   Have they been a good, loyal customer or a high maintenance one? Get to know a bit about them. At a minimum notice and acknowledge their patterns, tell them it’s nice to see them again or thank you for coming in again.

Acknowledge and appreciate those who respect your business and remain loyal over time. Loyalty means longevity! You want your business to succeed.

Need a comprehensive program to help you defeat drama in your organization?

Join the Defeat the Drama, Delight Your Customers and Improve Your Bottom Line Boot Camp

A Surefire 7 Step System to Get your Team Doing what you Need, Loving what they Do & Directing Focus where it Should Be

You Will Learn To:

  1. Gain Clarityabout what you sell, how it should feel and why do you do what you do?
    2. Generate Actions Aligned with Business Objectives
    3. Empower Your Team to take Targeted Actionwith Tenacity
    4. Identify and Remove Barriers to Team Productivity
    5. Drive Focused Employee Correction Conversations
    6. Hire Well
    7. Establish Harmony and Productivity

Kirsten will personally walk you through the required transformation step by step via video. Each module is available 24/7 and includes an Action Guide to walk you through implementation. You will also have access to exclusive office hours with Kirsten.

Click to get your discount exclusively for Podcast listeners: http://www.defeatthedrama.com/podcastdiscount

EP22: My Bad Customer Service Experience: Could it have Been Avoided?

DTD Episode 22 Show Notes

My Bad Customer Service Experience:
Could it have Been Avoided?

Click to download the show notes for the Defeat the Drama Podcast Episode 22

bad_customer_serviceRecently I was at a large chain retail store with a tire center.  I’ll let it remain nameless. I needed two new tires before a trip so arrived by about 8:00 AM to drop off the vehicle with the simple instructions to move the front tires back and replace with two new tires. I was told the job would be complete within 45 minutes and I left to begin my day with a plan to pick it back up after some coaching calls.

Approximately 7 hours later I returned with the intent of quickly picking up the van and getting back to my day. As it sat in the parking lot I immediately noticed the state of the tires. Not new! What was up?

The employee who had checked me in that morning walked out to greet me and announced, “We weren’t able to change your tires! There was corrosion blah blah blah and that would be a liability on us. We would need your permission to do the work”

“Why am I just hearing about this now”, I asked?

“We aren’t allowed to call our customers, “ he replied. “Anyway”, he continued, “I told you I would be done in 45 minutes and you’re just now coming back. I would have told you earlier if you had been here earlier.”

All of this made no sense and according to him it was my fault that I had not been informed sooner. And, what, I was supposed to come back 45 minutes later to have the face to face conversation and then wait for the work to be done – or leave again? I didn’t realize he needed me to structure my entire day around being present and available for his updates. Who knew that, in this day and age, providing a cell phone would not guarantee efficient communication to me regardless of my location! I guess this incident is still a bit close to home so my sarcasm is showing……

Is it even worth stating that this is not the optimal way to handle this customer transaction?

In the end everything worked out fine. The Store Manager did a good job of clean up and will continue her investigation. I got a free tire and I’m pretty sure I got at least one new podcast listener out of the deal.   After all, she’s obviously got some drama happening!

So, they were out a tire. They have lost me as a customer for the future. And I must add that there were no other customers in this service department during the drop off or during the entire time I waited for it to be fixed during my second trip there. That should have been a cue to me!! I’m thinking service is an ongoing issue.   That also means that the 3 or so employees they were paying to man the area weren’t bringing in much revenue, if any.   Net loss.

For this very large chain giving away a tire or paying a few employees for unproductive time is a drop in the bucket. But, in a smaller business giving away what would have otherwise been purchased or paying salaries during downtime is a much bigger deal. And in any business having to do either too often will break you.

So, why did they create this experience? Did workplace drama play a role?   How could it have been avoided?

  1. There are hints that this company did not hire the right people. The one employee, in particular, was much more interested in creating down time for himself and blaming me for not waiting than in providing good service. Someone missed the boat during his interview process. Hire for personality not just skills! You can’t teach someone to care about your customers if they are focused on getting out of work. Ask candidates to share examples of a time when they went above and beyond for a customer in the past. They should have some good stories and look for their eyes to light up!
  2. These employees had not been encouraged to be resourceful. One employee made the decision to set a car aside rather than do the work and made the unilateral decision NOT to call me. Why didn’t anyone else take initiative to ask about the lone car sitting in front of the empty service garage? Why did no one investigate the situation and call? It certainly wasn’t because they were busy! A resourceful team would have asked more questions and applied some logic. Someone would have called me to ask whether I’d give the go ahead to change the tires. Teach your team to think creatively and problem solve individually or together. Make sure that employees and leaders alike are charged with solving problems.
  3. There was no focus on great customer service. It was not about completing a job well and delighting me, their customer. They had been allowed to provide sub-standard service and the empty service bays were the just reward. Leaders, create a focus on great service. Make sure every team member knows the importance of jumping in to help a customer. Make top notch service a priority by speaking about it often. Don’t tolerate anything less. Celebrate successes and brainstorm ways to improve always.

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