We've Moved!

Thanks for checking in.

 http://lucavia.com/blog

Come see us in our new location.

If you find us there, please leave a comment on the posting you read so we'll know you made it to our new home. Thanks!

This blog will remain active for a little while in order to redirect folks.

Jim

What Your Staff Is Telling Your Clients

Hi,

Small businesses are in direct contact with clients. Unless the owner works every business hour, the staff is the primary representative of the brand. Therefore, in most, perhaps every, small business the owner and staff is the number one medium of brand communication in terms of cost, effort, and impact. It makes sense to have a plan complete with goals, strategies, objectives, and measures to help you speak with one voice and tell—not only the same story—but the right story to each and every client.

There are many ways we communicate: body language, posture, facial expression, language, dress, etc. Here are three recommendations to get you thinking about how you currently communicate what your company stands for.

Get more focused on the client. The great majority of businesses are focused on efforts and tasks rather than results and clients. When your staff remains seated, doesn’t introduce themselves, spends more time looking at their screen or papers than looking into the eyes of clients, or when they don’t seem curious about the client or interested in developing rapport, there is an opportunity for more customer focus. Developing a Branding Framework and creating a Transformative Client Experience makes it clear what your company stands for and informs the staff as to the why and how of treating every client every time.

Let your personality shine through. Do not let your clients see you as beige. Off-white may be a safe choice when it comes to home resale value, but it’s not a good strategy for you, your staff, and your small business. Look at your exterior and interior design, your use of space, the way your staff dresses, the language they use, and the way they bring clients into the brand experience. Does every element tell a particular part of your brand story—and are these elements self-reinforcing? Developing a Branding Framework that spells out all these elements, and more, is be an important step.

Language and Metaphors. You know the old joke: What sounds better? “Sushi,” or “Cold Dead Fish”? Language can break through or fall short in trying to convey meaning. Clients hear the difference between something that is described with an overused “Awesome” and something that is “Insanely great.” For example, there is a qualitative difference between a hair stylist greeting a client with, “Come on back,” compared to stopping, offering a handshake or hug, looking the client in the eye, complimenting something about their appearance, relating to the client’s recent anniversary, and then asking, “How have you been?” as she takes the client by the arm and escorts her to the station.

Similarly, businesses located in Victorian mansions or urban lofts have built-in character by virtue of the space they inhabit. You wouldn’t usually put lace curtains in a loft and you wouldn’t expect concrete floors in a Victorian. If your business is located in commercial space or a single story shopping mall you need to adopt a metaphor to help convey your brand story through the use of interior design and architecture. Your space needs to look like a place where people that you want to reach feel like they belong. Again, both a Branding Framework and a Transformative Client Experience can help achieve these things.


Jim

Lucavìa
gojimlucas@lucavia.com
www.lucavia.com
(925) 980-7871

Tweet
© Copyright Jim Lucas 2007-2013 All Rights Reserved

To Change Your Mind: Change Your Environment

Hi,

A good friend and colleague, Jay W., marvels at the percentage of college graduates who enter sales as a profession sometime during their careers. He’s done some research and even though the percentage of graduates who get into sales is surprisingly high, he was unable to find many college-level programs that provide specialized degrees in sales: AA, BA, B.S. or otherwise. He concludes that even though, “Nothing happens in business until someone makes a sale,” we seem to train salespeople on-the-job, by trial-and-error, or by some form of self-study.

I was talking with a young lady, let’s call her Jessica, who has been in the work force for about three years. She was telling me about her success in school but how much difficulty she’s been having making the transition to the workaday world. Jessica has an artistic, creative side but so far most of her jobs have been in “business.” As a liberal arts major that kind of surprises her. She has no lack of drive, character, or intelligence. Nonetheless, Jessica, while recognizing her mastery at school, worries that she’s, “Failing at life.” I reminded her that she spent sixteen years practicing her school skills in an environment that was designed to create incremental improvement and, essentially, force like-minded students onward and upward.

How many small business owners study business in college or other structured environment? How many of these amazing risk takers, with ambition and vision, now find themselves in an environment where they are exposed to new ideas, supported as they learn, and have a circle of colleagues they can bounce ideas off as they learn from one another?

Inherent in the nature of small business, I often see owners facing at least three challenges—which sometimes they recognize and sometimes they don’t:

1.  Isolation. Not really knowing what’s going on outside their immediate daily routine.

2.  Stagnation. Continuing to do the same things they have done in the past.

3.  Choosing to be busy instead of being effective.

One of the benefits of working with Lucavìa is we create an environment where small business owners overcome these three obstacles. We bring in fresh perspective and collaboration to rekindle innovation. We help our clients choose the future over the past in order to start growing again. And, we help our clients discover where to spend their time to make a real impact—ignoring busywork, systematizing routine tasks, and making things, that hold them back as executives, part of someone else’s job.


Jim

Lucavia
gojimlucas@lucavia.com
www.lucavia.com
(925) 980-7871

Tweet

© Copyright Jim Lucas 2007-2013 All Rights Reserved

It Happens Every Day

It’s a beautiful sunny and warm afternoon in San Francisco; one of those typical “summer” days we enjoy in the fall after our usually cool June, July, and August. I’m meeting a friend for coffee at a small, independent-looking place on 3rd Street in the trendy SOMA neighborhood. We met to catch up and talk a little business.

We picked this coffee shop strictly based on the look of their sign out front. Neither of us has been there before but it struck us as “not Starbucks” and had a slightly warmer, hipper look than the place we passed just up the street. It’s not crowed but there are several customers arrayed in the typical way sipping their drinks, working their smart phones, or engaged in conversation.

As we approach the counter a young, tall exotic-looking man in dreads gazes out from behind the counter. My friend reflexively orders an iced tea after getting an explanation of the one kind they serve. Our cashier glances at me and then begins preparing Nancy’s tea. Just as he begins to ring us up, I ask, “May I order something as well?” After we’re served, we find a comfortable spot and begin chatting about the experience we just had at the counter.

I wonder if the cashier, or his coworkers behind the counter, was trained to take orders the way he took ours. In my mind’s eye it would have sounded something like this:
• Always appear busy.
• Don’t look customers in the eye because there isn’t time for conversation.
• Most customers just bark their orders at you so don’t waste your energy asking them what they want.
• If they don’t speak up, close out their ticket as fast as you can.
• When you process their payment, look over, through, or past them to the next customer in line so they understand that the transaction is over.

After I’d had my snarky fun, I realized I’ve had 100s (if not 1,000s) of similar experiences in coffee shops, grocery stores, restaurants, hair salons, banks, big box stores, small retail shops, and on and on. That moment reconnected me with the one thing I’m most passionate about: Working with small business owners to create experiences where their customers actually feel better after they leave than when they came in—not the other way around.

This is what I call the Transformative Client Experience and it is the one thing I do better than anything else.


Jim

Lucavia
gojimlucas@lucavia.com
www.lucavia.com
(925) 980-7871

Tweet

© Copyright Jim Lucas 2007-2013 All Rights Reserved

Branding Fundamentals

Hi,

Apple, AT&T, BMW.

At one point, brands were just labels. They were nouns, in other words, names of things. They were products—like Frisbee, Yo-Yo, and Kleenex—and they were entire companies like Nike, IBM, and Boeing. Brands were often represented in simple terms, usually by a recognizable corporate logo or product logo. Can you recall the logos for Apple, Levi’s, or Coca-Cola?

Once brand names become very well known they acquire a certain power of their own. They have the power to generate sales simply by associating a brand name, or a logo, with a product or service. Think of all the t-shirts and caps that have been sold because they carry the name Dodgers, Yankees, or Red Sox. Think of the number of toys that sold because they have the Walt Disney or the Star Wars logo. Do you think the quality and durability of those t-shirts, caps, and toys were responsible for those sales? Or is the brand name imprinted on them--and all that stands for--the reason people purchased them?

As industry recognized the power of brands and logos to sell products and services, they wanted to find out why. They wanted to know the associations people made between brands and products, and the satisfaction of consumers who used them. They also wanted to figure out how powerful brands became powerful. If they could discover the formula for creating a powerful brand they could repeat market success more reliably. By studying the secrets of brand development, “branding” became a new verb—a set of action steps companies could take to increase their market success. And it works.

The purpose of this post is to tell you that the key concepts of branding can be distilled and made them useful and real. You can take action to create your brand and then invest in it until it becomes a powerful force in your market.

We don’t have to be marketing experts, or trained in business strategy, to benefit from the work that has gone into understanding how strong brands are created. We can understand the basic principles of branding and put them to use building your salon’s business. By recognizing a few important concepts, and looking at your firm through the lens of branding, we can increase the probability of your market success.

If you would like to learn more about how to transform your business into a brand please contact me for more information.


Jim

Lucavia
gojimlucas@lucavia.com
www.lucavia.com
(925) 980-7871

Tweet

© Copyright Jim Lucas 2007-2013 All Rights Reserved