word of mouth… in writing!

Anonymous, or obvious?

When you sign up as a Registered User of iplug – a ‘Plugger’ – you have the opportunity to set your ALIAS. This has to be unique on the site, but it can be anything; your nickname from school, your first name followed by 001 or a 69, your favourite X-Men character… anything goes.

But have you considered using your real name?

Before you shout ‘I don’t want people knowing my real name!’ consider this;

You are a consumer. You are making comments on businesses with the express purpose of improving customer service in general. But what about your own benefits? It’s all very well to contribute to the greater cause of service improvement, but how about the way companies and businesses treat you personally?

If you use your real name and give a glowing Plug to your hairdresser, what do you think will happen the next time you visit? Okay, it might be a little embarrassing. But the fact is that people like to be liked (business owners and managers are no exception) and people tend to like the people who like them back.

See where we’re going here?

Your hairdresser, knowing that you obviously like them (which you proved with your well-worded, accurate Plug) will now treat you as a VIC – Very Important Customer. This may not have happened if your ALIAS was SNOOPYFLUFFYKINS.

And so what if the whole wide world learns that you reward good businesses with Plugs (or might be prepared to Slap the poor ones)? If you’ve ever been in business yourself, you know quite well that customers who have given you positive testimonials in the past are welcomed back with open arms, and your staff are made very clear on that fact.

So maybe this is one of the exceptions to the rules of ‘protecting your identity on the ‘net’. Of course you don’t need be be completely accurate, with middle names and DOB. Your first name and initial of your surname might be enough. Or your business name; ‘BUGCATCHER’.

I’d also add that you should still be careful what you say; “XYZ Locksmiths were really cool getting me into my house at 123 Alfabet Street when I shut myself out! Their advice that I hide a key outside (in the big plant on the deck) was wonderful!”

Keep Plugging!

Is your business the best in its class?

People like dealing with the best. The only barriers to everyone having the very best of everything are price and ignorance.

Price

Not all motorists drive Beemers, Jags and Bentleys. Why? Because they cost more than Fords, Mazdas and Kias, that’s why. If the price tags of the former were lowered to match the latter – while keeping the same levels of quality, comfort and performance – the latter manufacturers would either have to raise their game or shut down.

This probably sounds a little far-fetched, and of course it is. When it comes to products and goods, the better quality examples almost exclusively cost more to produce, and use materials and processes that are much more expensive. That consigns the vision of a car buyer having a genuine choice between a $400,000 Bentley and a $25,000 Kia to the realms of the ridiculous.

But what about mortgage brokers? Or real estate agents? Or motor repair garages? Is the best option in these service categories 16 times more expensive that the worst? (Apologies to Kia – it’s not the worst, just the least expensive!)

Obviously not. Imagine a real estate agent telling you that their fees are ten times their competitors’ because they’re the best in the business. You’d laugh in their latte. Which brings us to the second barrier;

Ignorance

When businesses compete with each other for your custom, they can never be completely truthful. For the very best plumber in your region to successfully advertise this fact, it would take the second best to follow suit and the third, and so on. ‘Bloggs the Plumber’ would have to head up their advertisements “The ninth best plumber in Auckchurch”.

Clearly that doesn’t happen, and instead we’re bombarded with a multitude of advertisements and listings and billboards and banner ads and radio chatter, all proclaiming ‘pick me!’ Which renders choosing the best business in any category pretty much impossible.

Which brings us to the question; How do you determine who is the best? And the answer can only be that the customer or client is the only judge.

If only there were a fair and equitable way in which businesses could be ranked by their customers regardless of how much the business paid and what they put in their ads?

Well gee… now there is. www.iplug.co.nz

I don’t want to be Slapped!

It seems the biggest barrier to businesses joining the iplug community and collecting feedback from their customers is the fear of being Slapped.

“I don’t want to ask a customer what they thought of my service in case they tell me they didn’t like it.”

Forward-thinking businesspeople know this is a crock. It’s a bit like saying “I don’t want to drive into the city to accept the award in case we have an accident on the way, or the car breaks down.”

Back at the turn of the century the thought of purchasing something online from a complete stranger, and paying for it first, was unthinkable. “What if they don’t send the goods?” or “What if the goods arrive and are damaged?” TradeMe got off to a slow and grinding start. But things soon hotted up when the early users dipped their toes in the water of online auction shopping and didn’t get burnt (please excuse the mixed metaphor). Now half the population think nothing of paying for goods from a stranger and trusting in the site and the system to protect them.

And that’s the key; trusting in the site and the system.

People are scared to list their businesses on a site that allows customers to say things about them – because they haven’t actually done it yet! And remember, you have protection! Look at it logically;

• In the beginning the only customers who go to iplug to Plug you will be the ones YOU direct there yourself. (And if you have a disgruntled customer in your past, you’re hardly likely to ring or email them and say ‘give us a Plug’ are you?)
• In the beginning the only members of the general public who will see your Plugs are those YOU direct there and say ‘check out our Plugs!’
• We used the term ‘Slap’ for negative feedback because it’s harsh. A customer or client is hardly likely to Slap you because you sold out of papers, or because the root canal job cost them a small fortune. If they’re NOT happy with you, they just won’t Plug you.
• And finally, all Slaps are moderated by iplug. A Slap can only come from a genuine customer or client of yours, and must be detailed and accurate. “These pr**ks are hopeless!” will not get through the moderation process. “He promised I would get a tax refund of $10,000 but it was only $8,780!” is a real Slap – but only if it is accurate and from a genuine client. Don’t forget you also have the right to reply to Slaps too. “If this client had disclosed all of their income in the first place, they would have gotten more than 10k.”

Before we go, check out the big players on TradeMe or eBay. It’s almost impossible to have a 100% feedback and have more than a hundred comments. Even the best of the traders attract complainers, and what’s the best way to take them out of the equation? Pile up the Plugs! 99.9% positive is common, rendering the tiny minority who complain insignificant.

All of which means, before you worry about getting Slapped, worry instead about your opposition getting Plugs, and taking the lead in the fight for the consumer.

Where do you keep your testimonials?

And no, that’s not a rude question.

When you receive an email of thanks, or a physical letter from a pleased client, what do you do with it? Is it filed in a cabinet in your office? I suspect that it is. (If you can even be bothered printing the email, that is.)

So the real question is… what good are these documents to you?

Your testimonials are extremely valuable. These are your PROOF POSITIVE that you’re capable of doing a good job, that you have happy clients or customers. Your testimonials, more than your logo or your company motto, are more likely to convince a new customer to do business with you.

And yet they’re stuffed in a drawer (probably locked) where nobody can see them!

iplug is a feedback site. You can think of it as a ‘feedback management tool’ or a ‘testimonial display case’. Imagine that you receive an email thanking you for your service, and you reply “Thanks for that, do you want to give me a Plug?” The email author logs into www.iplug.co.nz and Plugs you. That now gives you 25 Plugs on your page. The next time someone asks for a quote or shows some interest in doing business with you, you can say “go to our iplug page and ‘check out our Plugs’”. Now everyone can read what your happy customers say about you.

More to the point, it’s a lot easier for you to initiate the feedback in the first place, to actually ask every client or customer “do you want to give me a Plug?” rather than wait for the one-in-thirty who can actually be bothered, to write a testimonial.

Just a note; you don’t have to wait until a new customer shows interest to show off your Plugs either. Imagine a notation or a button on your current advertising that tells the world to check out your Plug Rating.

If your testimonials are quietly rotting in a cold drawer somewhere (or if you don’t have any!), use iplug to initiate, collect, manage and display your feedback now!

Business cancers

At the risk of sounding a little controversial, let me make a statement here; there are a lot of parallels between running a business and preventing cancer.

Cancer is a debilitating disease that can begin in any part of the body, spread to healthy flesh and organs under its own steam, and if left untreated can destroy the host completely. But the treatments for cancer can be as damaging as the disease itself, a fact which results in numerous compromises between management, treatment and prevention.

But by far the worst aspect of cancer is its furtive approach. When you fall from a tree and break your arm, you’re aware instantly that there’s a problem, and consequently you’re able to take measures to remedy it. But cancers begin slowly and out of sight, often growing to an unstoppable level before you’re even aware that something is wrong. That, more than anything else, is the biggest issue with cancer.

Cancer starts with a single cell going out of whack (excuse the technical terminology). But imagine, if you will, that there was a machine that could detect a single cancerous cell and alert the body that something was awry. A single cell can be excised with a lot less damage to the host than if it were allowed to grow to many tens of thousands of cells. Therefore, if this machine existed, cancer would not.

All of which means that – as I’m sure you’ve heard before – early detection is the key to cancer prevention.

Like the human body, there are many furtive maladies that can affect businesses, and the similarities to cancer are undeniable. These business cancers can begin anywhere, and if left untreated can build to the point at which the prognosis is poor. But like human cancers, business cancers can be far more easily controlled or treated if detected early.

However, unlike human disease control there actually is a machine that can detect early onset of business cancer. It’s called feedback.

Whether a business supplies a service or sells a product, the customer is always king. More customers spending more money almost always means more profit, and happy customers will keep coming back again and again. Conversely anything that upsets a customer is ultimately going to upset the business. Yet many business owners or managers are unaware that their customers are getting frustrated, or not coming back, or spending less, until it’s too late.

Here’s a scenario; a business manufactures baby buggies. They’re state-of-the-art, they’re shiny and they look good. The business spends a fortune on marketing their baby buggies and initially sales are good. But their buggy has a major flaw; the collapse catches are fiddly and pinch fingers, and many mums are injured trying to fold down their buggies. Now as it happens, mums gather in herds (in places like daycare centres and play groups) and talk to each other. Soon the word gets around that these baby buggies are too difficult to collapse and sales slow down. The business then spends more on marketing – and sells more buggies. But the cost of the campaign offsets the profits from the new sales.

Ultimately the business fails due to lack of word-of-mouth sales.

Now imagine what would have happened if the management team of the buggy business had received several Slaps* from the early purchasers;

“It caught my fingers!”

“I can’t collapse it!”

“I’ve had to buy another buggy!”

*You’ll find out more about Slaps at www.iplug.go.nz

The problematic catch could have been changed at design level and the buggy improved before ‘word’ got around about it’s drawbacks. Then, when the mums gathered in their herds, the ‘word’ would have been good, and buggy sales would climb without recourse to expensive marketing campaigns.

The moral of the story is that negative feedback need not be detrimental to a business. In fact, when launching a brand new business or service or product, a whole swag of ‘nice one’s is not nearly as beneficial as a few decent, well considered criticisms.

Prepare for Slaps and welcome them.

How do I get more sales?

An often-asked question from business owners, and on the surface it’s perfectly sound. More sales means more profit, right? So how DO you get more sales?

Hang on though, before we get into this, do more sales really mean more profit?

If you owned, say, a Plasma TV shop, and you halved all your prices, you’d get more sales. I guarantee it. But you’d be selling each set for less than what you paid for it, and not only would you NOT make more profit, you’d be going backwards. Likewise if a plumber halved her charges or a lawyer slashed his hourly rate. More sales, but less profit (or none at all).

Here’s another example; if you took out full page colour advertisements in every newspaper in the country, you’d also get more sales. But a typical cost structure might be this; turnover up by $50,000 during the campaign, gross profit up by $12,000, additional net profit of $6,000 – and all it cost you was $30,000 for the ads!

More sales are easy. But the question should be ‘How do I make more profit?’

One of the best ways to increase profit is certainly to get more sales – but to attract those sales for NO COST to your business. And the best source of no-cost additional sales is your current customer base.

I’m sure you’ve heard this before; it’s far easier and more cost effective to draw additional sales out of happy customers than it is to attract new ones. That’s why a decent email database and marketing campaign is so good for business. These people already trust you! They’ve experienced what it’s like to do business with you. (And if they shy away now, you have a problem.) Every marketer in the world worth their salt will advise that you keep plumbing the depths of this resource.

But here’s the kicker… don’t restrict yourself to selling to these people.

Use their experience with you to convince others that you’re reputable, efficient, cost-effective and (fill in attribute here). In other words, use your present customers as a source of more sales from new customers. Ask them for referrals. Ask them if they know anyone else that you might be able to help. And if that’s a little difficult for you to do, at the very least ask them to PLUG you! Get them telling others how great you are, and new customers will come to you.

This is how you get more sales – that equate directly to extra profits. It doesn’t cost anything to market to existing customers, and any new customers that you attract will be pre-qualified (unlike those who come from expensive advertising campaigns or serious price-cutting).

You have a page on iplug.co.nz, and it’s available for all to see, so why not start using it!

We’ve paid out!

Just a quick update to let everyone know we’ve paid our first Affiliates! It was a good feeling depositing money into the accounts of the people who are actively promoting iplug. Especially as more than one of them were charities.

Remember, anyone can be an Affiliate, an individual, a charity, a school, a fundraising committee, and our program is actually an OFFLINE one – you don’t need a website or an email database to earn cash for promoting iplug. Just sign up as an Affiliate (it’s free) and start telling people about the site. Simple, right? Find out more here; http://www.iplug.co.nz/affiliate.html

And an update for those people who do have a website and/or an email database, the link is coming! You know what we mean.

The millionaire’s plea

Several years ago a would-be entrepreneur advertised his plight on a community television station. He was poor, had no job and couldn’t afford to continue his attendance at university. So what did he do? He told the viewers that if one million people each sent him one dollar, he’d not only be able to finish his studies, but upon graduation he’d be able to start a business and employ a dozen people.

Because this was the first plea of its kind he received more than $1,000,000 through the mail to his Post Office box. He did this because, although the TV program had minimal coverage, the story spread virally and was repeated on mainstream news stations (this was before the Internet). The whole story created such a storm in the US, that this kind of ‘marketing’ was ultimately outlawed.

Ever since that first viral success, many variations on the theme have occurred, especially with the introduction of the World Wide Web. In one instance an entrepreneur sold pixels on a page for a dollar each and financed his start-up company. You probably know a few examples yourself.

Some might say that this form of viral get-rich-quick scheme has done its dash. The Nigerians have helped on that score. Suspicions of scams and natural reticence have combined to prevent anyone else from exploiting this loophole to the human heart.

So why am I raising this phenomenon here? Because I think I can see a new version on the horizon, that’s why.

The reason this form of ‘marketing’ worked in the first place was because the successful schemes had three key factors;

1. They appealed to the viewer’s conscience,
2. The amount involved was negligible (or would have been spent regardless), and
3. There was no ‘downside’.

The reason that recent attempts have failed is generally due to the perpetrators breaking two or more of the above rules – they would lie and be caught (rule 1), they would be greedy and ask for too much (rule 2) and there would be a downside; generally that the money at risk was more than ‘negligible’ – not to mention the shame accompanying eventual discovery that they’d been scammed (rule 3).

Now let’s take a look at the iplug Affiliate program for a moment. This is a simple plan; the introducing agent for every new business signing up to iplug gets 50% of the first annual subscription fee. The fact that most businesses would have signed up regardless satisfies rule 2, while the benefits of being on iplug satisfy rule 3 (and if that’s not enough, someone had to be the Affiliate, so why not you?)

All that’s left is rule 1 – appealing to a conscience. In other words, why choose YOU as an Affiliate?

Most of us have experienced or read about unemployed entrepreneurs standing on busy street corners with signs reading “Programmer seeks programs to build” or “Will do anything for $50k plus benefits” or words to that effect. In every case that I’ve heard of, the dude or dudette ultimately got a job.

So how about appealing to business owners’ consciences? If you’re genuinely trying to raise money for med school or to pay for your brother’s gender-swap op, be upfront about it. And be creative. It’s the creative ideas that attract the attention. Advertise in the local paper, or better yet, pull a stunt that attracts the attention of the news department (legal of course). “Man in bunny suit promotes business improvement site in return for funds to pay speeding fines!”

The gist of this story is this; rather than going from company to company with an “iplug is great” script (which works well, don’t get me wrong), try personalising your approach. “Hi, as you can see I’m really short, but there’s an operation that can make me taller; I’m raising the cash to pay for it by…”

You never know…

A Plug is like a Smile

“A smile is a curve that sets everything straight” : Phyllis Diller

“A winning smile makes winners of us all” : Anonymous

“Life is short but a smile takes barely a second” : Cuban proverb

“Wear a smile and have friends; wear a scowl and have wrinkles” : George Eliot

“If you’re not using your smile, you’re like a man with a million dollars in the bank and no chequebook” : Les Gilbin

“Smile, and the world smiles with you” : Anonymous

A lot of people have written about smiles. And as you can see, a pattern is forming. As a general rule if you smile at someone, they will smile back (or at least wonder what it is that you know and they don’t).

Smiling is easy, doesn’t cost a thing, and brings many rewards. While the opposite – scowling or frowning – only forms wrinkles and sets the world against you.

A few people have asked the question; “Why should I plug someone? What’s the point?”

As part answer, here’s another quote;

“Nothing makes people so worthy of compliments as receiving them. One is more delightful for being told one is delightful – just as one is more angry for being told one is angry” : Katherine F. Gerould

If you Plug someone for being happy and continuously smiling as they work, they’re far more likely to be smiling the next time you visit them – and smiles are contagious. But if no one ever Plugs the smiler, there’s a chance that it might wear off.

This holds true for all business activities. If you don’t tell the business operator what it is that you like, then you risk that part of the operation disappearing.

There was a case a few years ago involving a bakery in a small city in the US. They had a shop from which they sold all their products, and behind the long counter there was a plate glass window through to the bakery. The customers could watch the bakers toil away at the ovens while they paid for their buns and bread and cakes. Then in a shop revamp, the window was taken away. And guess what? Business dropped off. It turned out that in a world of centralized bakeries delivering product by truck to branches, it was comforting for the customers to see actual bakers making real products. The thing is, though, none of the customers had ever told the bakery that this was the case. (As a result of a customer survey the window was put back, and subsequent marketing shouted ‘see the bakers at work!’)

If you like what you’re receiving, tell the supplier. Give a compliment, give a smile.

Give a Plug.

What if my competitors Slap me? Part 2

If you recall, there were two answers;

1. It’s unlikely they will, and
2. They very well might (you hope).

Let’s expand on them. First of all, it’s unlikely that they will.

1. The iplug Terms and Conditions expressly forbid malicious use of the iplug feedback system for personal gain, and we like to think that most business owners and managers are honest.
2. Only a genuine customer of yours can Plug or Slap you, and it’s unlikely that a direct competitor is utilising your services.
3. Should a direct competitor actually use your business and genuinely feel the need to render a Slap, then you must have done something wrong or failed to achieve a minimum standard (so you probably deserve a Slap).
4. Any business owner who goes out of their way to Slap their competitors is risking a reciprocal response, and as the Mafia learned, infighting is bad for the bottom line.
5. Finally, it’s an oxymoron that a competing business owner is savvy enough to attempt to slight your business in this way, yet be unable to see the dangers in doing so (risking being kicked off iplug, risking a reciprocal attack, and taking their eyes off their own road ahead in the process).

And don’t forget, you are able to respond to Slaps. If you suspect that the comment is bogus, and that a competitor is behind it (and you think you have proof), you can defend yourself in the same forum – if you feel it’s worth the bother.

Now… they very well might.

You should hope that they do! That would be a sign that they see you as a threat. The dominant player in a market won’t stoop to that sort of strategy against lesser players, so being Slapped by a competitor is confirmation that whatever you’re doing, it’s working!

There’s nothing worse than being ignored. I once took on one of the biggest newspapers in the country in a lucrative market – and received a three page, carefully worded letter from their lawyers. Wow! I must have stung them big time! (And the legal cost to them…!)

To summarise, being Slapped by a competitor is probably a good thing. It means you’re hurting them. It’s when your competitors ignore you that you should be worried.

And remember, the very best defence for a Slap is ten more Plugs!