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

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© 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

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© Copyright Jim Lucas 2007-2013 All Rights Reserved