Iselector by Far The Best I've Owned

This is a follow up post to my original entry where I reviewed or I guess I critized the Beats Headphones. 

I went through about 30 different headphones online and at stores, checking them out for confort sound, stereo quality, features, accessories included, design, aesthetics and more! I couldn't decide what to buy. Then I came across Beats.. This headphones almost had me convinced! But most reviews only talk about how "COOL" they are and the brand and how comfortable they are...

OK. Almost. 

What about sound? Well I talked to a few sound engineers and artists and they all seemed to agree that although beats are seemingly cool headphones, they sound is not any better than your average 20-50 dollar range headset. I was surprised!

Then I found out about their marketing strategy, and the added metal to give them that heaviness and thus "improvised quality" feel to them!

So my search was on... Until I found ISELECTOR Over The Ear Headphones.

This set has a multi-function button that acts as power button/siri caller, transmitter, skip button and more. The noise cancellation works amazingly but even without the NCS on the sound is significantly reduced!

The reviews this headset has are impressive. I'm not even kidding, check out some the reviews below

These reviews speak about the quality, the sound and functionality of the headset and better yet their overall happiness for the price and what they get which as a business person I will say that this only means that the headset is actually worth more than what is being charged. 

What does this mean??? Well it means that if you are looking for an over the ear headphone set with bluetooth capabilities and is super confortable and looks great on - you should get this ISELECTOR BNC80 Headphones! 

The loss of a customer

YOUR CUSTOMERS used to get what they paid for, more or less. Now they're poaching value left and right. Just a few years ago, when typical retail shoppers went to a store and received advice on the size, style, or purpose of a product, they almost always bought the product right then and there. If they were looking for personalized service, they chose stores that offered it - and paid premium prices for it. If they were bargain hunters, they sought out no-frills shops. Whichever distribution channel they opted for, they stayed with it until the sale was made.
Not anymore. Today's customers "channel surf" with abandon. They routinely avail themselves of the services of high-touch channels, only to buy the product at the end point of another, cheaper channel. Who among us hasn't leafed through a catalog before heading to the mall, or called a travel agent for advice about airfares and then either bought the tickets on-line or purchased them directly from the airline to get a better price? The result is that companies are left with "stranded assets" - physical and organizational capabilities, typically developed at great expense, that become more useless by the day. Depending on the situation, these may include highly trained but underused salespeople, lightly trafficked retail floor space, and obsolescing inventory dedicated to displays and immediate fulfillment. Forrester Research analysts suggest that as many as half of all customers now shop for information in one channel, then defect from that channel when it comes time for money to change hands. Our own knowledge of clients' situations in both consumer goods and B2B markets supports this finding.

Surely, this isn't news to you. But what are you doing about it? You should be rethinking the core logic of your go-to-market strategy. Instead of designing channels to capture targeted demographic segments, you must design them to support unfettered buyers' behaviors. What's crucial is that customers get what they need at each stage of the buying process - through one channel or another - and that, at the end of that journey, your company has not spent more money on customers than they have spent with you.

Source: Wall Street Journal, Nov2003, Vol. 81 Issue 11, p96-105. 10p. 3 Color Photographs, 1 Chart

Oringally posted at HonestMaids.co:

Maids of Phoenix Home Cleaning Services

We have been in business for a short while, but this is a good thing. Our team is working harder than any other maid service out there to ensure your complete satisfaction. Honest Maids team members are not afraid to work hard and earn your trust and complete satisfaction.

 Honest Maids of Phoenix AZ[/caption] Running a business is harder than it seems, you might think “Oh, she has a cleaning business. That’s super easy to launch!” or “Wow, she got a business degree and is doing that?” Some people even go as far as assuming that me and my team are doing this because we can’t do anything else. Well let me tell you that running a cleaning company is difficult, growing it much more. Also know that you offering house cleaning as owner operator is not the same thing as running a company that is competing with large multi-million dollar franchise companies.

I’m writing this because I want to share some aspects of growing a business.

Part of our compensation and benefits to our maid team is that we will work with them to build a team of dedicated members under each who commits to the values and efforts Honest Maids is about. We will do our best to get them their own franchise in their own area fully and independently operated by them. This letter should give them a bit of insight too onto what they should expect. There are days were Honest Maids receives 10 calls a day, there’s others where we get none. In this environment marketing and pricing is everything but we are working hard to build a trustworthy brand that doesn’t have to compete on price alone and instead compete based on quality and commitment.

To do so, there is a branding effort that must take place, the strategies for this are time consuming and any misstep can cause the entire plan to fail. We depend a lot on social media- why? Well

• Franchise companies have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in Google Search results, we can’t compete with that.
• Referrals are huge in this type of business, we are still building ours – most clients will freely share with friends but is harder than it seems to get customers to go to Yelp or others to leave a good review. Unless that review is bad, then you better bet they will be there.
• A lack of Yelp or Google or BBB reviews is actually a good thing because of this, but few people realize that. Social Media remains key.
• My husband is a marketing genius! Really! He has achieved for our website to receive hundreds of visits a day on a $0 ad budget. All content and all just good PR which is free.

We would love to use Yelp, and although you can leave reviews there of us we don’t promote in it. WHY NOT?

• Yelp is running like a mob, unless you are a business you might not realize that you get blackmailed into spending “advertising” with them.
• Competing businesses are promoted in your own profile!! Unless of course you pay hundreds of dollars a month to keep them from doing that.
• My personal thought is that once you receive a call from them and reject their “ads service” they stop or reduce the search results for your business!! I tracked this after I noticed a sudden drop in visits where before we had a ton of traffic. – Again, my thoughts based on experience.
• This leads me to this, if you want Yelp to show more of your business you guessed it! You gotta pay!
• If you want to have a slideshow of your products or completed services…Yup! You gotta pay!
• Restrict Competitors Ads on your own page? Yup, you gotta pay!
• Then they have their actual ad services which help you in return appear in competitors profiles.

So as you see, marketing can be difficult and expensive. Social Media is by far the best approach, as a business owner there are many things I need to make sure get done, like payroll and other HR issues, sales are being processed, insurances and bonding get added to each job and maid member, answer customer and employee phone calls (although my husband takes care of this for the most part).

My husband, he has been helping with a lot of the workload, but the burden falls on me since this is my business and my company. Employee and Customer satisfaction is a team responsibility. So as you can see, there is a lot to do no matter what business you are in and marketing, building a reputation, crafting an image, spreading the word, getting visitors to your website, complying with state and local laws, keeping customers happy, earning trust, building a team, helping with cleans, training and growing the business is not a menial task. It requires a savvy entrepreneur who can take on big enterprises and do so with her chin up.

Yes we clean homes and do so with pride.

-Diana

Don't forget, let us clean your home before or after guests visit. 

Call or Text 602-500-2285

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The Broken Zenefits Sales Team

Zenefits director of sales department believes that the company is currently  "overpaying" their sales people. This director, a position I actually volunteered for and was rejected doesn't seem to know what to do to fix this. My understanding is that they believe that they lack incentive to sell and should fire everyone.

This is of course a really bad expensive idea and won't fix anything either.
I used to train sales personnel for Cox, Century Link, Unthink and various other small startup and some not so small household brands.

Here is what I would suggest:

Develop a culture based on the current employees and managers, conduct surveys to find out what hobbies, interests, professional development, incentives, reductions in tasks, etc. are being currently sought after by the sales staff. 

Implement changes that reflect the most popular ideals that embrace and create value to the company's mission and vision. Company culture and improved customer service is a competitive factor that cannot be easily replicated and can help create "Blue Oceans" for any company. 

The changes in environment, expectations, limits, reductions, promotions, ideas, etc. will take time to implement but it will be much cheaper than firing and rehiring. It will also drive those who don't fit the culture to weed themselves out, or have weed each other out. Then as you replace with new hires, make referrals a strong focus, they are cheap but also help enforce that like mindedness in a team. The goal is to have a set of shared values that are so embedded in each employee on their own that matches company culture that you drive entrepreneurship with a sense of responsibility and ownership onto the what the company is about.
If you have clock punchers, workers that are motivated by the "have to" or "need to" you won't make a good sales force out of anyone no matter how much you pay or how many you fire or train. Culture is key. Drive value innovation among your team. 

I know you think is obvious but you would be surprised how much is not for some managers out there. 

Also, and just as important - TRAIN BETTER. 

Improving sales teams with the right words, rebuttals, sentence compositions, and linking, etc. will make sales so easy that they would have less of a reason to not complete sales quota for the month.  

I'm for hire, feel free to add me on linkedin. 

READ THIS TO GROW YOUR CAREER, SALE MORE, AND BECOME A LEADER

You are going to want to read this because is literally life changing!

Ask yourself, Have I ever though “If they only gave me a chance! I know I can prove them I can!!” ?? or how about “I know customers will buy from me once they realize their benefits!”

I will admit to both.

You might claim to that yourself or most definitely have heard someone say it. Although you might have agree with the person at the moment they said it, the TRUTH is that they needed to vent out their frustration because they are not being heard. You are not being heard! You lack an audience that listens. More so you lack what I call an ALPHA AUDIENCE.

IF YOU WANT TO ADVANCE YOUR CAREER

An Alpha Audience at work can be your supervisor, the company owner, your manager, the project manager you wish to work with, the supplier or vendor. It can even be a coworker.

They need to like you so much that they become ambassadors to your effort and your career. They believe in the WHY you do something, the WHY you work there that they create a sort of halo effect on you that they begin to look up to you in a personal way, they begin to share your goals and skills – they begin to consider you for a promotion or project.

IF YOU OWN A BUSINESS

You Alpha Audience are brand loyalists and evangelists that not only connect with your mission and vision but they connect behind the why you do what you do. For the most part consumers are emotional buyers, they don’t buy or hire you because of your services and list of features they will hire you or buy from you because they like your views, your true passion for why you are in business.

Apple conveys this perfectly! They always promote the why behind an OS change, their simplicity, the why behind an upgraded camera… or keyboard layout.. You intuitively agree and then thus buy the product as a personal statement.

You Achieve an Alpha Audience by simply sharing the WHY behind your actions. But the why has to be something meaningful more than saying I work because I have bills or I sell this because is my business or I like X products. You must dig deeper. For example:

I launched Unthink Me a few years back because I felt a call to help bootstrapped entrepreneurs break through certain obstacles to grow their businesses. I do engineering because I love the being able to couple my creativity with my technical side to find solutions to building construction.

Ask yourself why you work here rather than why you work. This should help you dig deeper on why you work. You might say, I work here because I enjoy how I am treated or Because I am trying to bring meaning to this line of work, or I somehow feel passionate about the simple perks this job allows.

Honest Maids has turned jobs into great careers options.

Win superiors with the words: YES (while you smile), using their NAMES (nothing sweeter than hearing your own name), BECAUSE (a passive method to lead someone to do/believe something), AND (this word is amazing during arguments/negotiations/sales), and BUT.

CAUTION!!!
Don’t use BECAUSE during an argument or under duress. This word is magic if used during lighthearted moments.

Example:

Potential Client: “Hello, this is John I am interested in your services and would like more information.”

Sales Person:  ”Yes of course John, let me tell you about our packages AND I’ll give you my opinion on what is the best deal!”

Potential Client: “ok”

…See that… very passively but firmly you lead the conversation, you showed you care by repeating their name (you listen to your customers), you went straight to prices (a lot of customers who want to lead the conversation hate talking about $$ because they hate being sold to but with the word AND you stop becoming a sales person for the company and start being their confidant… this is huge!

The word BUT

This word is dangerous. It can ruin a perfectly good first date, interview or sale.

Example:

Samantha: “I think you would be a perfect fit for our company culture! Tell me why did you leave your last employer?”

You: “Yes I think so too, thank you, I loved working for them they had me doing really enjoyable work but I had a conflict of schedules that didn’t allow me keep that position”

Notice how this might seem like a perfectly good response, however you used the word BUT in the wrong way. Everything before the BUT is forgotten and all you said was that you had schedule priority issues.

The new YOU would say: “Yes I think so too, thank you, I loved working for them they had me doing really enjoyable work and I had a different schedule that I feel is better suited for this company”

OR

“Yes I think so too, thank you, I had a conflict with my schedule but I loved working for them they had me doing really enjoyable work!”  

Imagine losing the potential love of your life because she sais... 

Her: "I really love the show Friends, they always make me laugh and just so random!!"

Dumb You: "Yes they are funny BUT they're not that funny"

Smart (happily married) You: "Yes they are random and sometimes I like their jokes!"

Thank you for reading, I really hope this helps you out in closing more sales, becoming a listened to person, getting that interview or promotion. As a favor to me please leave a comment and don’t forget to like my facebook page http://facebook.com/unthinkme

1 year old making strides!

Honest Maids of Phoenix Arizona turns 1 year old!

As you know, I do marketing for various companies – I don’t tout search engine optimization, pay per click advertisements, conversion pages specifically… My goal as a hired consultant is to help businesses breakthrough certain thresholds that are currently holding the company from achieving greater market stake, increased profit margins or added brand power. 

My wife started a business a year ago; her goal was to alleviate the time constraints professional parents have when it comes to good housekeeping. She wrote her business plan (with my help) interviewed a ton of parents and figured out just what needed to change.

Diana's mission was just that, to provide families with a healthy alternative to the time spent cleaning their homes with a hired professional housekeeping service.

In order for that vision to stay top priority she would focus as her main responsibility the tasks of long term strategy, quality, partner relations and operations and would hire coach-able, versatile, and entrepreneurial minded members for her cleaning team. She dubbedit Honest Maids.

Honest Maids has been pretty much all I have been working on for the past 6 months, decreasing my workload to accommodate to the harsh environment that the cleaning industry deals with. Each day cleaning businesses go out of business, mainly because the barrier to entry is almost non-existent that anyone who wants to start a cleaning business doesn’t need to know basic business to do so, and thus when it comes to competing the only thing these other business owners can turn to is price competition. Since most cleaning freelancers are owner operators they can reduce their fees as low as they want in efforts to win your business but what they are not realizing is that they are setting a very low expectation for these services and their costs. After they win your business with a very low price they then disappoint you, just how they did to us before we created Honest Maids, so that you now have this halo effect where you assume every cleaning company is either overpriced or just not worth hiring anymore.  

Diana and I are both graduates of Grand Canyon University’s B.A. program – something we are really proud of because GCU not only has a great welcoming environment they are true leaders in practicing what they preach when it comes to being a servant leader, entrepreneurial and community leadership.  Be assure that when you hire my wife’s team to stop by your home you will not only receive green natural and allergen free cleaning products and equipment you will also receive a great price because you don’t pay the hour like with other services and you, the customer is the very top priority – because without you – the business is on the verge of always going bankrupt, is just the nature of this industry.

Because client satisfaction is so important they will often go out of their way to deliver a great experience. I will continue to work hard for her business hopefully with you by our side helping ensure this company lasts many more years to come. 

Diana is building her linked in network, feel free to join here on on Linkedin here.