Work Smarter- Not Harder

We’ve all heard it

I’m not sure I’ve ever really understood it

Until now.

I wanna tell you a story

First a confession

My name is Kevin and I’m a coffee drinker

(Ok your bit – “Hello Kevin welcome”)

I’m now up to three espressos a day.

Thankfully, when I’m out and about, there are plenty of coffee shops dying to help me manage my habit.

Best of all, they’ve started introducing loyalty cards.

You know the drill – save up the stamps and have a coffee on us.

I got one the other day – gather eight stamps and your next coffee is free.

They’d even stamped the first circle for me.

Then I went to another place which had its own loyalty card.

Theirs had ten little circles on it.

But they stamped three of them with my first purchase to get me up and running.

So then I had two cards, both with seven little circles to fill.

Guess which one I felt better about...

That’s the value of a smart piece of thinking.

If you always go back to the emotion and experience,

you’ll come up world-beating ideas every time.

Gotta go – orange mocha frappuchino calling

Amuse Bouche

Following in a long family tradition, my natural and unquestioned career path was to become a chef.

"You'll never go hungry if you work in the kitchen" seemed to be my family's battle cry.

When you had a grandfather who worked for famous chef Escoffier, as I did, food was important to me, in a way that was uncommon in most English families.

In those days the catering industry was seen in a very different light than it is now.

The celebrity chef had not been discovered and there was no chance of a fast-track career within the industry documented by a TV crew.

Like all chefs I began as a commis, learning the ropes.

Which really meant peeling and chopping vegetables.

Knife-throwing and fist fights were common place and the daily battles between the waiters and the chefs were something to behold.

Add to that the constant vigilance needed over suppliers.

After all that the cooking was easy. .

Even now I think that the day to day job can be simple.

The challenge often comes from all the other things that we need to do in order to get to the heart of the task at hand.

Pumpkin risotto anyone?

Get Me A Crocodile Sandwich And Make It Snappy

Back to my favourite restaurant for another quick tip
Tip! ..sometimes I crack myself up
Waiters who repeat customers’ order back to them make 70% more tips than guys who just say “Okay”.
Our mind subconsciously appreciates the effort taken to ensure the things are perfect.
It’s the verbalization that helps interaction.
So repeating the clients brief, in full, back to them …………..is…….. still boring

We Are Sorry The Flight Is Delayed

Have you ever sat in the departure lounge and heard one of “those” announcements.
The ones that goes something like this:
“We are sorry for the late departure of your flight, this is due to the late arrival of the incoming plane
Have you ever wondered what the heck is going on?
You maybe think, the incoming flight was theirs too.
You maybe think, that’s not really a reason.
It’s a bit of psychology that we are all susceptible to
Adding any type of reason, a “because” makes any explanation rational.
In a queue in a copy shop a researcher asked to jump the queue by giving a reason
“Can I jump the queue, because I am in a rush?”
94% of people complied.
Good reason, right?
So they changed the reason.
“Can I jump the queue because I need to make copies?”
Excuse me?
That’s why everybody is in the line to begin with.
Yet 93% of people complied.
A request with a “because” in it.
Before you ask, yes there was a control question
It was ”Can I jump the line, please?”
It generated only 24% compliance.
So try it tomorrow.
“Sorry I’m late, it’s because …..I’m late”
Let me know how you get on!

A Year Can Be A Long Time In.... Sales.

There are a lot of sales people out there, good sales people.
And yet they only seem to stick around for 12 months before disappearing in a pin-striped flash.
That’s because it takes about a year to find out if a company fits.
Here’s how it goes
Convincing people that you’re worth hiring is, perhaps, the easy bit.
It’s selling after all.
You’re face to face,
the best way to sell.
Selling something you know about.
Selling something you are passionate about.
Yourself.
Simple
Then comes the hard graft, making an impact and proving that your boss made the right choice.
If the first three months are your induction, then the next six are where you get out there and start making things happen.
Then there’s a frantic three month push to deliver something.
By the end of that time, you know in your heart of hearts (and before anybody else) whether it’s working out or not.
By the time your first anniversary comes around, you’re either digging in or off to the next thing. .
But that’s no bad thing.
To be the best salesperson you can be, you need only one thing
Total belief in the goods or services that you are selling.
If you don’t believe it, then you’re tricking customers or clients
And you won’t be convincing.
If you don’t believe then it’s not going to work and it’s time to move on.
This may come as a surprise to all the non-sales readers.
Sales is about truth.

Make It Personal

You know I love sales, the whole thing, from start to finish, the meetings, the conversations, the pitching.
It’s a rich area, and if you look at the many “moments of truth” during the process there are lots of places where performance can be improved with a little bit of lateral thinking
Here is a great piece that Steve Martin of Influence at Work shared the other day that shows the more personal you make the offer, the more dramatic the results..
He talked about a brief experiment that they ran in a restaurant.
It was to do with those mints that we’ve all seen on the way out
Yes I know the stories…
The base line was the restaurant doing just that, providing mints in a bowl on the way out.
That correlated to an amount of tips.
If the waiters included a mint as they give the bill to the customer.

The tips went up just over 3%.

When the waiters offered the mints prior to signing of the bill.
The tips went up just over 14%.
Then they tried something different.
The waiter presented the patrons with 1 mint per guest, then gave the bill and left, then as if remembering something, turned back to the table and gave another mint per guest.
The results were incredible....
23% increase in tips.
This was due to the high amount of personalization customers felt in that situation
.. and the waiter having very, very clean hands .