Maurilio Amorim

Month: October 2012

How Not to Deal with a Customer Service Fail
Sometimes you are not in your best game. Things go wrong, and you know what just happened is in no way close to your best effort. You or your team fail your customer, client, or audience. So what should you do as a leader?

Recently I ate at a restaurant where everything went wrong. Horribly wrong. From the moment my party arrived to the time we left, the entire experience was a disaster. Sometimes we have an off day. And rarely, an off day can turn into a truly awful day. It happens even to the best. But as I watched my dinner experience deteriorate with every course and exchange, I had hoped that management would at least try to “right” some of the “wrongs,” that in my opinion, were many. But that’s not what happened. After giving the manager a run down of the list of grievances, from poor service to the sword fish that had to sent back because it was drier than the Sahara desert, the best she managed to come up was, “Wow, usually people rave about their experience. I’ve never heard this before.” That was not the proper response.

So what should her response have been? Here’s how I would have approached it:
- I’m so sorry you were disappointed with your experience. What could we have done differently?
- How can I make this right for you?
- Would you give us another chance to make a different impression?
Without having to agree with me that the service and food were substandard, the manager should have asked specific feedback and then tried to remedy the situation by offering to comp the overly dried entree that had to be prepared again, leaving the poor guy who ordered the bad dish having to eat his meal after everyone at the table had finished theirs.

We will make mistakes. Even the best of teams will botch something (just ask Apple about their new map app). But the way we handle a momentary failure will help us avoid creating a culture of excuses that will likely lead to permanent failure.

What’s the worst customer service experience you have had lately?
October 28, 2012
How to Impact the Emerging Generation

Impacting an emerging generation is not easy work, especially if you want to create a shift in thinking and attitude that lasts a lifetime and not merely create an emotional experience that is only remembered but has little impact. My son Marcus has been part of the Student Leadership University (SLU) for the past 3 summers and the experiential program has had a profound impact in his life. He has spent a week in Orlando going behind the scenes at Sea World and Universal Studios, a week in Washing DC learning about how our nation works and the faith of our founding fathers, and a week in England and France discovering how leadership and faith have transformed that continent. He’s looking forward to going to Jordan next summer to finish the program.

For the next few weeks SLU is sponsoring a webinar featuring some of SLU’s staff. Dr. Jay Strack, the organization’s visionary leader, is the first speaker in the series. These videos are up for one week only, so if you want to learn how to communicate with the emerging generation, you will want to watch them.

Here’s what you need to know:

Who: Jay Strack, Matt Lawson, Brian Mills & Brent Crowe
What: “Think Bigger” webinar series hosted by Student Leadership University
When: October 22-November 18
Full schedule available at http://webinar.studentleadership.net

This four-week webinar series is designed to equip youth leaders, teachers, administrators, and others influencing youth to reach beyond the average youth program and challenge young people to think bigger, develop a Christian worldview, and awaken their potential.

The series kicks off this week with Dr. Jay Strack talking on “Managing Present Demands While Leading for the Future.” Each session will be available for one week only, with a new speaker each week, so be sure to check back and experience the entire “Think Bigger” series.

What event or experience had the most impact in your life?

October 25, 2012
An Immigrant and the Best Political Commercial

A few days ago I saw a very effective political commercial. I have grown tired of attack ads where the opposing candidate is depicted in black and white while the foreboding music plays in the background and the ominous voice-over tells of his or her evil plot to ruin our lives. This commercial was different. It was created and financed by self-made billionaire Thomas Peterffy.

Mr. Peterffy, who pioneered electronic trading practices in U.S. markets and now leads discount-brokerage giant Interactive Brokers, embodies the rags-to-riches American dream. Born during World War II in Hungary, he spent his childhood behind the Iron Curtain, where he says the country’s national spirit was eroded by a system that took away the drive of its people to work hard, build businesses, and create jobs. He left for the U.S. as a young man and today his net worth has been estimated at more than $4 billion.

The ad is powerful because it is not only Mr. Peterffy’s perspective, it’s narrated by him in broken English and shown on TV with subtitles. He doesn’t attack the current administration but makes his case from the heart and from personal experience.

Whether you agree with his conclusions is not important. What’s important is that you are compelled to listen and try to understand what he is saying. He opens the commercial by saying, “I grew up in a socialist country, and I have seen what that does to people. There is no hope, no freedom, no pride in achievement. The nation became poorer and poorer. And that’s what I see happening here.” One of my favorite lines is: “in socialism the richer will be poorer but the poorer will also be poorer.”

Just in a few seconds you hear the word poor mentioned many times. While it might not be great writing or very subtle, it’s quite effective in driving his message home.

This is the first political commercial I’ve seen in years that has got my attention and spoken to me. Perhaps because like Mr. Peterffy, I came to America to pursue my dream and, like him, I want to preserve what has made this country a place I chose to call home for the past 30 years.

What is your take on this commercial?

October 22, 2012
Your Talents Could Hurt Your Organization

The more talents and skills you have the more likely you are to take something from nothing to up and running. Talented people who can learn quickly, adapt, and grow are the heart and soul of start-ups. But unless you learn to let go of most of those things, the organization you serve will not be able to grow beyond your incompetence level. Yes, incompetence.

No matter how talented you are, you cannot be an expert on all the skills that your business or non profit need to grow and thrive. The skill set that got the organization from ideation to reality are not the same skills that will take it to the next level of growth. Early in my career as a business leader, I used to spend hours learning how to use software so I could design marketing pieces or edit videos. I had to come to grips with the fact that, regardless of how much I enjoyed the design process, I should not be doing it for the sake of the organization.

Over the years, I had to let go of several other tasks in order to allow the organization to continue to thrive. Last year, I gave the presidency of The A Group to Shannon Litton, our then Executive VP of marketing. It was the right call. Shannon is much better at developing business processes than I’ll ever be. We have seen our best year yet because of her leadership.

The blessing of the talents can quickly become a curse of the talents when you hold on too closely to tasks and lose sight of the overall organizational health. Personally, I had to make a shift in thinking: I had to get my satisfaction from the overall success of my business as opposed to the quality of my own work. For those of us who equate productivity with success, giving up control and the accolades that come from accomplishing the tangible is a tough thing to do.

But giving up control is not an option for growth. It’s essential.

You might be a talented person, a life-long learner, and an overall amazing individual, but you cannot be the best at everything–no matter what your mother has told you. Unless you learn to define success as reaching the organization’s goals instead of accomplishing tasks, you will go from being seen as the organization’s builder to its choker, where you thwart growth on the anvil of your own incompetence.

Have you ever been in a situation where someone strangled growth?

October 17, 2012
Body Transformation: 3 Foundations

I have been hitting the gym hard the past year and I have seen great results. I went from roughly 15% body fat down to 8% while increasing muscle mass. There are a lot of nuances to get your body on a full transformation schedule, but as I contemplate my journey, I always come back to three basic foundations.

Weight training. I loved to run, cycle, and swim. But the older I got, the more muscle I lost with a cardio-only exercise routine. While training for a marathon, I got so thin that I looked like a starving zombie. It’s not the look anyone is going for. I found that for a significant body transformation, resistance training with weights is a great way to prevent bone mass loss as well as to increase muscle and give me an overall healthy look. And I feel better than I’ve felt in years.

Proper diet. I see people who work hard at the gym only to waste most of that effort on empty calories later. You know who they are: people you see day after day, year after year, and they don’t look any better, only worse. Maybe that’s you. It used to be me as well. It wasn’t until I started eating to fuel my muscles with the proper nutritional ratios that I started to see results. The right combinations of foods and quantities is important. If you can’t afford a nutritionist, find a personal trainer who can help tweak your diet for optimum results.

Supplementation. Years ago, supplements were seen as a less-than-honest way to achieve your fitness goals. Truthfully, without them it’s virtually impossible for the average person to get all the body needs to fuel growth. After all, our engineered modern food lacks a lot of the nutrients our body needs to perform at its best. I drink 2-3 protein shakes a day in order to get enough protein in my diet. I could not imagine having to eat all my protein intake. Not only is it practically impossible (I consume between 250-300 grams of protein a day), but it would cost a fortune in lean meats, fish, and poultry. Other supplements as creatine and glutamine help build and sustain muscle growth. Good supplements are essential if you are going to succeed in a body transformation program.

Have you gone through a physical transformation? How did you do it?

October 15, 2012
Encouragement: Why I Need More Than a Paycheck

I need encouragement. For someone who sees the glass half full and opportunity during the tough times, I am not a natural encourager. That’s not an excuse, however. If I need encouragement, why shouldn’t those around me need it as well? They do. We all do. Here’s what I know encouragement does for me:

It motivates me. A simple “well done,” a pat on the back, or a nod of the head gives me enough motivation to want to do it again, and better. How many times you and I have done a menial task because we wanted to please someone that matters to us? We do it all the time. Those of us with children do it every day.

It abates my insecurities. I remember feeling defeated in a job that was not going well. “I don’t have what it takes to get this done,” I had reasoned. I was working for a perceptive man, who came to my office and said, “Hang in there. You are where you need to be. Just keep doing what you’re doing.” That was all I needed to continue. He was right. Things got better, much better. I got a raise not long after that.

It reminds me of my humanity. Machines need energy to operate. You give them fuel and they perform. Humans need more than energy. We need purpose, and a reason. An encouraging word will fill my emotional tank when a paycheck cannot. It reminds us that God has created us to be more than machines working towards a goal. We are complex human beings in need of community that supports and encourages us.

How important is encouragement in your life? Are you getting enough?

October 11, 2012
The Wrong Assumptions Can Derail Your Organization

Eventually all our assumptions need to be either validated or disproved. In the world of business, the sooner we have clarity on foundational beliefs the better decisions we make with increasingly better results. Entrepreneurs have a sense of timing and intuitiveness that allow us to take calculated and yet successful risks early in our enterprises. Unfortunately this “beginner’s luck” is not a sustainable business practice and the same skill that got us going early on can lead to our undoing.

Take online advertisement for example. Intuitively we think that Generations X and Y would spend more time online than any of the previous generations since they are digital natives as opposed to digital immigrants for the rest of the population. As it turns out, Baby Boomers spend more time online than any other demographic*. As a marketer my understanding that 46-65 year-olds spend more time online than their younger counterparts has great significance. Entire business models, marketing campaigns, and communication strategies can be built on a false assumptions, such as that 18-35 year old is the primary audience of the web.

I have seen organizations have a difficult time getting past the “start up” mindset even though their balance sheet tells a different story. They keep making critical errors based on unproven bogus assumptions. Ignorance is not bliss; and your intuition is not a sustainable business or communication model. Assumptions must be tested and proven. Research is not the answer to every problem, but as a communication’s professional, I would hate to design and execute a branding or marketing plan based on a faulty set of beliefs. If the foundation is not solid, the plan and its implementation are irrelevant.

Have you ever been in a situation where your assumptions were wrong? What happened?

*(Source: Q1 2010 Three Screen Report, Nielsen Online NPOWER –Live +7 Total Screen Time July 2009 –July 2010 and Nielsen Online NetView Panel aggregated.)

October 8, 2012
Sometimes You Can Only Win After Failure

Sometimes your client or potential client needs to fail before you can help him. That was a difficult lesson for me to learn, but has proven to be an important one. And if you’re going to be successful in the service industry, you better learn this one, and fast.

Earlier in my career as a consultant, I would try to argue and convince my clients of a course of action that I thought was best for them. Most of the time my advice became strategy or a tool that eventually brought results. But from time to time I encountered, and still do to this day, people who believe they know more than I do and decide that their solution is preferable to mine. As a consultant, this know-it-all attitude has always puzzled me. After all, if you know the “what” and “how,” why hire me in the first place?

In the early, lean days of The A Group, I would take on the flawed strategy projects because I needed the money. They were disastrous. No one ever won. My team would begrudgingly execute a plan we knew was not going to work. The anemic performance would cause the client to blame the implementation, of course. That’s a lose/lose situation.

One day I wised up. I walked away from a potential big project because I knew that even a well-executed but flawed strategy was not going to bring results. The potential client went to another firm that took the project as directed. It failed. A year later they were back. This time there was no big argument, no arrogance, but collaboration and eventually success.

As counter-intuitive as walking away from a potentially lucrative project might be, sometimes it’s your only option. Unfortunately, the ignorant and arrogant are not able to learn from others’ mistakes. They must make them and pay a high price before they are ready to be helped.

What has been your experience with an arrogant leader/client and a project doomed from the beginning?

October 4, 2012
4 Skills Every Good Salesperson Must Have

We are all in sales. No matter what we do for a living, we all represent ourselves, our employer, and our value system to those with whom we come in contact. The very best sales people are not those who will promise anything and harass people to close a deal. People like that don’t last long in any job. They burn too many bridges in the process of getting it done. In my experience, here are some thoughts on what makes a good salesperson:

They believe in their product. Whether you’re selling pen, cars, software, or hope, you cannot be great at it without believing in your product. I’m not saying that the product has to be great, but you must believe in it in order to champion it with heart. I once bought hundreds of pen fors my company because of the infectious conversation with the lady who cold-called me. She was so excited about the darn pen that I just had to place a big order.

They genuinely like people. Gregarious men and women have an advantage when it comes to sales. They genuinely like to meet new people. When I walk into a room full of people whom I do not know, my first instinct is to think “I wonder how many new friends I’ll meet.” Eventually my entrepreneurial self kicks in and I’ll think about how many potential clients I could have. But to this day, that’s never the first thought.

They do what’s best for the customer even if it costs them the sale. I was very proud of one of my team members who recently told a client that he should not have our company rebuild their online back end system but use what they already have for the time being. While that cost us a potential big sale, it was the right thing for the client. I’m certain that when the time comes, we’ll rebuild the whole thing.

They make you want to buy from them again. When you take care of your customer and you treat them well, they come back. Products cannot give you an “experience,” but people can. A beautifully designed store with bad salespeople will not last long. If I like you I’m more likely to buy more and more often than I need because it’s fun doing business with people you like. Just ask the guys at Max Muscle where I buy enough dietary supplements that I have enough inventory in hand to start my own franchise.

When you think of a great salesperson, who first comes to mind?

October 1, 2012