(Time to read this Blog is about 3 minutes)
Before we get to the main topic, here are a few things to get you thinking or smiling:
- My Biz Quote of the week:
“You can’t grow your business without growing your people…and without growing yourself. What do you and your Team need to learn to improve and grow the business…and who will be in charge of making that happen?”
…Donald Cooper.
- Quick Biz Tip:
Stop ‘striving’ and start ‘committing’! On their websites, in their advertising and sales pitches, most businesses say that they strive or aim to do this or that. One former Biz Coaching client proudly stated on their website, “We strive to be ethical.” Ethical is like pregnant…you is, or you ain’t. We replaced that one in a big hurry with, “We commit to be ethical”. It sounds different because it is different.Weak and wishy-washy words like ‘strive and aim’, along with words like ‘goals, targets and objectives’ need to be replaced with one powerful word… ‘commit’ or ‘commitment’. Nobody cares what we ‘aim’ to do. They want to know what we ‘commit’ to do.
How will you change the language in your business to create a culture of commitment, urgency and accountability? If you need help with that, perhaps we should talk. I’m easy to find.
- Fun fact: Mice have an excellent sense of smell. They have 12,000 ‘odour receptors’ in their nose. Humans have 350.
- Not so fun fact: According to a recent Angus Reid Poll, 25% of the citizens of the Canadian province of Alberta would vote to separate from the rest of Canada, if a referendum were held tomorrow.
- Wonderful innovation in the midst of tragic circumstance. Clean, drinkable water is an increasingly scarce resource, with 50% of the global population experiencing severe water shortages for at least some part of the year.
With all the horror going on in Ukraine, this is the last place that you’d expect to find globally-significant innovation taking place. But a Ukrainian-Polish startup is applying ‘supercavitation’ technology, a principle more commonly associated with high-speed torpedoes, to develop a much more sustainable and cost-effective way to desalinate and purify water.
The business message that comes from this is that we shouldn’t wait for everything to be running smoothly before we work to innovate and reinvent. Innovation and reinvention should be in our business DNA, regardless of the untidiness around us.
Now, to this week’s important topic:
Your internet rating matters…how many ‘stars’ does your business get?
A recent survey shows that 70% of people look for ‘Social Proof’ before doing business with a company. For millennials the number is 84%. So, what exactly is ‘Social Proof’? It’s simply the process of checking on the internet and social media for proof that your product, advertising and marketing claims are true. In other words, people trust what others say about you much more than what you say about yourself.
One of the most accessible and familiar forms of ‘Social Proof’ are the reviews and star rating of your business on Google. The maximum number of stars is 5. Any rating below 4 out of 5 is a killer. How many stars does your business get on Google? Have you ever looked? Have you read the reviews? How many stars do your competitors get? Have you done anything to correct the negative things that folks have said about you? Your target customers are paying attention to this stuff…perhaps you should too.
While doing some online research on the lawn care and snow removal industry a few years ago, I came across a company named ‘Five Star Landscaping and Snow Removal’ in Waterford, Michigan. A great name…but on Yelp, they get only one star out of 5 and 21 scathing reviews. You can’t screw people around anymore. They’ll get back at you…and they’re more believable than you are.
To complicate matters, there’s another ‘Five Star Landscaping and Snow Removal’ company, just 30 miles away in New Haven, Michigan, owned by a different person, that gets 4.5 stars and mostly brilliant reviews. How two companies in the same line of work, just 30 miles apart, end up with the same name is a mystery to me. It makes no sense.
So, what specific things will you do or fix to deserve and get at least a 4.5 star rating and many glowing reviews from your customers on the internet and social media? When will you start this important project…and who will do the work?
That’s it for this week…
Live brilliantly and be kind to each other!
Donald Cooper
Donald Cooper speaks and coaches internationally on management, marketing, and profitability. He can be reached by email at donald@donaldcooper.com in Toronto, Canada.
