My husband and I went to see a movie recently and in the middle of it a baby started screaming. Heads turned and a wave annoyance swept through the theater followed by the sounds of “Sheesh,” sighs and cursing.

Have you ever stopped to consider why most of us find that so irritating?

A lot has to happen to pull off a blockbuster movie. You need a great script, phenomenal actors, a director who can translate the written word into something visually compelling, brilliant programmers who push the boundaries of technology to make what doesn’t exist real to our eyes, editors who remove the non-essential and marketers who distill the essence of the movie into 15-30 second sound bites that make us want to rush to the theater.

Think about the theaters. The seats are arranged so that everyone has an uninterrupted view of the screen. The theater goes black, protecting our eyes from distractions around us. The sound systems and placement of the speakers support the fantasy that we are with the actors in the scene. Our sense of smell and taste are activated by the goodies we eat.

In short, we are immersed.

Then the baby cries or the cell phone rings or a teenager kicks our seat. And the illusion that thousands of people helped create, dissolves like sun-kissed morning mist. We are back in reality.

What Is Customer Experience

In my business boot camp, I teach the Recruits (attendees) all about customer experience and how to create one that uniquely fits your products, model and sales goals. Here’s how I define customer experience in class: The accumulation of experiences that cause your customers to be loyal and long-term or to look somewhere else to spend their money.

It is a continuum of experiences beginning with the moment a prospect hears about you through their last interaction with you. To look at it another way, one beautiful moment in a movie cannot make up for bad acting, bad animation and a shoddy script. What makes a good movie is what happens from the opening credits to the moment when the lights are raised.

My question to you is this: What happens in your customer continuum that reminds your clients they are back in reality, dealing with another company that just doesn’t care? You’ve got a least one thing that interrupts their beautiful perception of  who you are and your value proposition. Perhaps it is the time to ship, the way your employees answer the phone, the lengthy response time to customer requests, a website that is too difficult to navigate, your invoicing process or cutting remarks made in social media.

Creating a rich customer experience is as much about what you proactively do as it is about eliminating distractions. Business owners, it is time to get radical about identifying the distractions in your customer experience and eradicating them.

Click the link to get more information about business boot camp or follow us and all the graduates on our Facebook page. A new class is opening in January.

PS – On a personal note, when you come home from a long day of work, are you the “reality” or do you create an environment in which your family can relax and immerse themselves in love and nurturing? Food for thought.


Photo © we are dc; courtesy of we are dc via Flickr.

It’s funny how being a coach causes me to turn inward and examine my business practices. I regularly have to ask myself if I’m taking the advice I give to my clients. Unfortunately, the answer is “not always,” particularly with regard to niche markets.

You see, I’m doing a lot of work with clients (and in Boot Camp) around niche markets. We are discussing how going after the “everybody” market is less than hopeless, the importance of identifying niche markets, how to overcome our fears about selecting niche markets and finally, how to select one. It’s pretty powerful stuff. In fact, today, one of my clients had a major breakthrough in determining what her niche market should be. We figured it out and it was awesome to hear her regain her excitement about her business! I live for these moments with clients.

When I first started tweeting (February 2009) I followed the people who I knew and loved most – Human Resources (HR) professionals. Coming from a 15 year stint as an HR Leader, it was (and still is) important for me to keep a pulse on what is happening in that industry. What HR brings to organizations is vital and can often make the difference between a company making their budget or needing to do layoffs. These folks have my greatest respect.

So here I am, 1 year later, blessed to have 5,700+ followers, most of whom are in HR and recruiting. And this is where (forgive the over-used expression) “The Cobbler’s children have no shoes.” I love HR, admire HR pros and enjoy watching all the improvements happening in HR. In the last year I have developed life-long friendships with HR and recruiting professionals I met strictly via Twitter:  @meghanmbiro, @mikevandervort, @chareeklimek, @valueintowords, @kevinwgrossman, @anitasantiago, @stephaniealloyd and @stelzner (and others I’m sure I’m forgetting – forgive me). I’m blessed to be friends with a hundred more I tweet with regularly. I was even a sponsor for the first annual HRevolution unconference last year.

However, in the last two months, people I respect and admire have asked me whether I’m in HR, in small businesses or a combination of both. That was a big red flag. As much as I hate to say it, the reality is that I’m not a corporate HR person any longer and Sanera is not an HR company. I’m a business coach and corporate trainer. That is what I do and what I love.

What does all this mean? I need to make sure that my core message about coaching and training isn’t confused with my love for HR. You will probably see me tweet less about Human Resources issues and more about small business issues. But I will be DMing my HR friends more often and will regularly comment on their blogs, even if I’m not retweeting them as much as I used to. Along with other small business owners, I will continue to look for opportunities to blog, coach and speak to HR consultants and recruiters about how to grow and improve their businesses. And, by the way, there are a lot of similarities in how small business owners and HR pros need to brand themselves. Thereare also similarities in how business owners and job seekers sell themselves.

I usually blog about things that have practical application for you, so I appreciate you indulging me in a little self-reflection.

If I can admit I’m not always focusing on my niche, what would you say about your focus?

Special thanks to Matthew Egan (@imagefreedom) for his post which inspired me to write mine.

Yesterday was session one of Business Building Boot Camp. Everyone had “ah-has,” including me. My friend and SEO specialist Matthew Egan, @imagefreedom on Twitter, wrote about his revelations in his post “Hey Mr. Big Stuff.” Among other revelations, the rest of the business soldiers (aka participants) discovered they have a few things in common:

• Perfection paralysis -- wanting “it” to be perfect before taking action.

• Planning paralysis -- taking so much time to plan that we don’t do anything but plan. (If you are such a to-do list nut that you write things down that you’ve already done, just so you can cross it off -- you’ll find you’re in good company.)

• Low tolerance for risk -- otherwise known as fear of failure.

When we were discussing perfection paralysis, Dawn Cole, @lettergirl on Twitter and author of the blog Not Going Postal had the perfect prescription for it:

“Get off your butt and do something.”

Um…she’s right.

That’s the cure for perfection paralysis, planning paralysis and fear of failure. It doesn’t come from reading a bunch of books, although that’s helpful. It doesn’t come from talking about what you “one day” hope to accomplish. It comes from doing it.

If you’re happy where you are, then plan away, discuss possibilities with your friends and hide in your cave. You are not my ideal client.

If, however, you want more, if you’re not content with mediocrity, hear this: life is about figuring things out. You’re going to trip, make mistakes, feel uncomfortable and potentially look like an idiot. But eventually, over time you will become a master. Even this kid had to grow some serious callouses on his fingers (which by the way, takes years of pain and blood) before he could knock out this amazing acoustic version of Billy Jean.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgVqX0a49HM

PS -- one of the participants, Lisa Ramirez, said this about fear: “Instead of being afraid, I need to be afraid of fear because fear leads to failure and that’s not where I want to be.”

Photo Courtesy of The U.S. Army.