Vlad Mazek – Vladville Blog

This is the second of three in the series of dumb things I see small businesses say or do. Take a look at We don’t do that.. Or do we? for an overview of easy opportunities small businesses squander through pride & ignorance and stay tuned for another post on this topic.

“My Employees Are Idiots”

This is something that I am thankfully not guilty of, but I can tell you that it really leaves a very bad taste in the clients mouth when they have to participate in the following conversation:

Client: You didn’t meet my expectations. (the cleanest I can make it 🙂
You: Oh my god, I am so sorry, I know who did this and I am going to kill him!

First, unless you operate a fast food franchise, your company should not be comprised of idiots that respond to verbal abuse. Strike #1: if your employees are really treated like this then no wonder they dropped the ball, they may have been busy receiving the third degree and just didn’t care by the time my problem came up.

Second, in professional services there is no such thing as “the customer is always right” – if you think that, get over it. The customer is always right when it comes to a dispute of a retail transaction where you need to meet the clients expectations in order to make the sale. In professional services, that criteria is established by a contract.

Third, following on the topic from the second problem, is to never take clients side. Why? Because it always comes off insincere. If you must apologize, do so. Promise to find out what went wrong instead. Ask the person that caused the problem to follow up with the client and explain the issue. Here is the bottom line here: every single big company out there has a group of apologists – the customer service department. Outside the retail business, their purpose is to calm the client down and to pretend to take the clients side.

Fourth, don’t put out fires. Unless the issue is truly trivial, you should not rush to please them right away by providing the first answer that comes to mind. I know, makes no sense, you need to answer on the first ring and provide immediate answers, right? Consider what happens if the response you give is wrong or fails to satisfy the client? You are now in a hole you cannot dig out of and someone else has to clean up the original problem and your mess too. This only serves to further infuriate the client and have them keep track of who they talk to or which misinformation they are offered. Bottom line: in problem situations, clients seek clarity. They want to know how the problem happened and how and when it will be fixed. This is critical for MSPs and other B2B operations – clients aren’t inquisitive fools, they likely will have to explain the issue to someone else.

Finally, consider some of the basic staples of how you project your company and your employees. Look up when you answer the phone. Smile and be happy to hear from the client even when they have a problem – they are a part of your paycheck even if they are just problem client. Never say no – there is no coming back from a no. Don’t be afraid to put someone on the hold while you get them the right answer – they bothered to call/email/show up, do them the courtesy of helping them and making them seem important.

When all this fails, always remember the Karl rule – you don’t need money so bad that you should take on abuse or deal with assholes. Life is too short. And abusive people only get more abusive, not more tolerant. If people get used to walking all over you to get what they want, you will always lose. Be patient. Be tolerant. Be nice.

The Reality

But never, ever, ever throw your team in the fire. Yes, you may suck at times. We all have our bad moments. But if they are truly bad, the heads roll. If they don’t, it’s just insincerity.

Your company deserves better, your clients know better and professional services are just that – services delivered by professionals.

This is the first of three stupid small business decisions I have made or seen others make. Hope you enjoy them.

Limitations.

We’ve all got them.

Unfortunately, some of us rely on those limitations for making excuses about why we are not where we want to be, why we don’t have as many employees as we need to get to where we need to be in order to get to that next level that we’re constantly reaching for.

The entrepreneurial spirit crashes into the obstacles and we make very logical and very firm excuses for why we do not pursue certain things. I’m certainly guilty of a number of those – but allow me to be honest here and admit the ugly truth:

The only business venture that you should not pursue is one that does not make you profitable.

The end.

Yes, there are nuances to every business decision and even with all the due dilligence and perfectionism in the world – you could fail. That said, you can fail at anything but hopefully you learn something from it. I’d argue it’s far better to be learning that holding pattern in the land of ignorance.

Excuses

We are not big enough to take on that project at this time.

We do not have the sufficient expertise to pull that off.

We are too busy. (I don’t know enough four letter words to properly comment on this case).

We are not in the business to do that.

We do not have a business model that makes that possible.

Reality

Business (and business models) are designed to convert opportunity into revenue.

If there are opportunities to be pursued that can produce revenue, the only reason for not doing it is an excuse.

In the IT space in particular, we have to quickly face the fact that we have to do more than what fits in our little comfort zone. Why? Because everyone else is doing it, and the choice becomes between remaining relevant or becoming comfortable with a very small client base.

More on that in the next post, two more left on this topic.

How much do you think it would cost to build an exact replica of your business?

Put it on the paper. Start with the simple stuff like incorporation, legal fees, accounting fees, software and hardware leases (let’s assume that the business will grow rapidly and “buying” stuff doesn’t make any sense) and so on.

Now add in all your processes of delivering the service, training employees and managing clients and vendors. Keep the focus on the process and the costs associated with the process, not the actual delivery cost. For example, expensing out a CareerBuilder.com ad is valid, “wisdom of the master” is not.

Subtract paragraph 1 from paragraph 2.

That’s your net value to the corporation.

If the number is bigger than you imagined, sell. If it’s smaller than you hoped, automate and revise.

Live and learn, try to get better tomorrow.

Long time friend, SBS Show guest and a fellow Floridian Sarah Perez recently wrote a very interesting article titled “Social Networking Users are Creating Less Content”; Lot’s of partners that I talk to have also noticed this trend along with there being less blogs, less bloggers, less active Facebook posters, fewer Twitter updates and all things just generally slowing down a lot.

I share their sentiment and by numbers alone I’ve slowed down quite a bit. However, this year I’ve written a book, I’ve doubled the size of Own Web Now and launched 2 major projects. I also happen to have a private Facebook page (too many people found pictures of me without tshirt too attractive and distracting) and I genuinely like interacting with people directly – so I publish my direct cell phone number and invite everyone I speak to or in front of to contact me directly.

I suspect majority of people are the same. Several of my close industry friends aren’t allowed to post stuff on Facebook or Twitter, and even when they are the policies prohibit them from posting company related info, being friends with customers or really being open in any way.

The social euphoria really crosses some serious privacy boundaries that many people are not comfortable with. As cool as it may be to see where all my friends are around the Ben Griffin Hill Stadium on Saturday’s, it’s equally demoralizing for my employees to see that I’m in Cabo San Lucas while they are working.

So that’s all there is to it.

Now, how to fix it and why you shouldn’t do it

People always ask me how I pick stuff to blog about, how I get ideas, etc. Personally, I learn something new every day.

I try to share it.

That’s it.

My friend Susan Bradley blogs more often than even people whose primary job it is to blog. Why? As she explains it, her blog is a storage of tidbits and tips that are going to be useful sooner than later. She is certainly the most prolific blogger I know.

So blog about what you know, what you learn and what you feel would be valuable to someone else. If you wouldn’t say it out loud, you shouldn’t blog it. Now off to www.wordpress.com and get started.

One word of caution: don’t blog to your peers. Unless you have a business concept, freelance blogging is something that will simultaneously get you in trouble and expose you to unfair criticism. It might also be illegal, it might get you in trouble with your employer/employees and it will certainly be used against you at some point or another because as a blogger you’re not allowed to be wrong or opinionated. While it might get you some recognition and respect, don’t count on it making you rich and certainly don’t count on it helping you (compared to any other business activity you could take up with the time that you would spend blogging).

But you don’t know if you don’t try and if you’re disappointed in the lack of content, community or friends, I have some advice. I started OWN with a dream and little else. Over the years I was able to build it into what it is today. Blaming others doesn’t get you far, doing something about the problem will always take you somewhere.

The SMB IT community as an open free-for-all medium died as a valuable thing years ago. Yet many of us have gone on to have very rich and fulfilling business and mentoring relationships with one another. Take it at the face value, it’s there to introduce you to the world. What you do after the introduction is up to you. But you’ll never get there unless you put something up first.

There you have it, the good, the bad and the ugly. What you make of it is up to you.