Blind spots.  We all have them, even if we don’t like to admit it.  No matter whether you’re a mid-level or senior executive or a small or medium-size business owner, the most dangerous thing to your livelihood is not your co-worker or competitors, but rather it’s yourself.  Your blind spots are what’s holding you back.  These are the proverbial “what you don’t know you don’t know” sort of things.

How to Eliminate Your Blind Spots So They Don’t Ruin Your Career or Business

So how do you eliminate your blind spots.  Quite simply… you have to embrace the truth.  Seek it out.  Listen to it, and then make the appropriate adjustments.  Pivot if necessary.  Be willing to change.  Remember the definition of listening is the willingness to change your mind (and your actions) based upon what you hear.

So the next logical question, is how do you get the right feedback.  Well if you’re an executive, ask for a 360ᵒ feedback evaluation.  This type of evaluation will give you feedback from superiors, subordinates, co-workers, partners, vendors, suppliers, and especially your coach.  What do you mean you don’t have a coach?  Go get a coach!  A coach will enable you to take this feedback and translate it into an impactful action plan.  If you’re a business owner, you can do the same thing, but with one major addition; you need to actively seek feedback from your customers.  And I don’t mean via social media alone.  Yelp! is not a valid research methodology.  Its feedback can be quite skewed.  This is where a survey of your customers can provide real insights into your business.  It can provide a wake-up call.  And it can be something you act upon with confidence, especially when you seek customer feedback on a consistent basis, so you’re not mislead by a single snapshot in time.

If you’re not seeking this sort of feedback, then it is likely you have blind spots that could be damaging your career or business.  What you don’t know you don’t know can indeed be deadly… catastrophic.  If you are ready to listen to your key constituents.  If you’re ready to hear the truth.  If you can handle the truth.  Contact us today so we can help.  It’s what we do.  Go to: tnlbusinesscoaching.com   or   bizferret.com

Call us today at 720-219-4303 or at scott@tnlbusinesscoaching.com or scott@bizferret.com.

There’s Only One Way to Improve Results

It’s easy to make the running of a restaurant or coffee shop a complex endeavor.  But when it comes right down to it, the foundation of all successful restaurants is a simple one.  Make your customers happy and do so in a profitable manner.  While it indeed sounds simple, it is NOT easy.

For starters, how do you know what makes your customers truly happy and what makes them dissatisfied, merely satisfied or just “meh”.  Here’s a revolutionary idea.  How about asking them directly and not relying on Yelp! and social media as your customer feedback mechanisms.  If you could find out 5 things about how your customers truly perceive your restaurant or coffee shop, what would they be?  Why those 5 things?  What value would you get from knowing this information?  How much more money would the business earn as a result of this?  What would the business do with the extra money?

Constant Tracking in Key

What you don’t know that you don’t know will kill your business.  You need to constantly track how your customers perceive your quality, taste, value, speed of service, cleanliness, friendliness, environment, staff attitude, etc.  Surveying your customers’ happiness should be done over the course of each and every month, because a snapshot in time can be very misleading.  Constantly surveying your customers allows you to compare month to month and even year over year, and notice trends that provide you with the confidence to react in a powerful way.

Survey Data Can Be Reported Many Ways

The survey data can be reported by location, demographics, visit frequency, daypart, day-of-week, product ordered, staff member(s) involved, etc.  This ability allows problems to be uncovered that the aggregate numbers might hide.  You might find that customer dissatisfaction occurs during a particular shift, day or among a certain customer-base, for example, women 50+.  Or you might find that there’s a problem with a specific product or type of product.

Survey Results Are Truly Actionable

By finding out for sure how your customers truly perceive specific aspects of your business, you will be able to ACT with CONFIDENCE.  You’ll know for sure if the dissatisfaction is connected to a staff member who you then need to fire, or a product that you then need to delete from the menu or re-train the staff to deliver better.

Do not be so arrogant as to believe you know how your customers truly view your business.  Unless you do customer tracking research, there is no way to know for sure.  Ignorance is not bliss.  It avoidable and relatively inexpensive to eliminate.   Make this year the year you truly understand your customers and what will make them fanatical about your business.

To learn more about how to do Customer Tracking Research and Customer Satisfaction Surveys, contact us at www.bizferret.com or call 720-219-4303 and ask for Scott.