Should you accept feedback in your business?

This morning I received an email from a contact of mine. It went something along the lines of “Just listened to your new audio. I have some feedback if you are interested.”

Oh dear, I thought. That doesn’t sound good.

I’m pretty sure that if the feedback was positive, the email would have sounded like another email I got recently – “just listened to the audio. Fab by the way. Can’t wait for parts 2 and 3).”

So, I sat there this morning, having a really good think about whether I wanted to hear this feedback or not.

You see, as small business owners we’re taught that any feedback (good or bad) is a good thing. And bad feedback is actually brilliant news because it helps you to improve.

But, here’s my take on things. I don’t believe that receiving every bit of feedback is helpful or useful to your business.

The reason I say that is this.

I think there are three types of people who give feedback to businesses and that you should generally only be listening to one of them:

Type 1 are people who are genuinely angry and are making a complaint about you or your business. These are the people who you should listen to and go out of your way to sort out. This sort of feedback, while usually not good is definitely worth listening to and doing something about.

Now here are type 2 and 3 which you should be very careful about listening to.

Type 2 are people who want to sell you their own products and services. They will deliberately criticise what you’re doing and tell you that they can do it better for you. Listen to these people at your peril.

And type 3 – well they are just people that like a good moan. Nothing will ever please them and they delight in passing back their negative feedback to make themselves feel better. Of course, they’ll never admit that though!

Why shouldn’t you listen to these people?

Well, for starters if you start releasing things from your business i.e. sending out a newsletter, recording an audio podcast, sending out letters or even just having a website, there will inevitably be people who don’t like what you do.

They won’t like the look of it, think it could have been worded better or believe that it could be done in a different way. No matter how hard you try, it will be impossible to please everyone – all you can do is try your best.

I have one lady who insists on giving me her ‘feedback’ every time I release something new. I think she believes she’s being helpful – and yet, she’ll automatically subscribe to and download everything I do too so I can’t be that bad!

What you have to realise is firstly, you’re being brave enough to put yourself out there and send out newsletters etc. I’m willing to bet that the people who are criticising you haven’t done the same for their business. When they do, by all means pay a bit more attention to what they say, but until then ignore them.

The other thing to remember is this, if you do listen to these people it can very quickly zap your confidence and you begin to question if what you’re doing is right. The best way to avoid this is to ignore people in types two and three and concentrate on doing what you do best: running your business.

And that’s way, I won’t be contacting this person who sent me an email this morning asking if I would like feedback – I’m willing to bet that he’s either a type two or a type three person and I don’t need that kind of (un)helpful ‘feedback’ now or ever eating away at the confidence over what we do.

Positive comments though are always welcome!

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides advice and help to small businesses on their marketing and to people starting up in business.

Why being pushy doesn't work for me

Last week I missed a phone call from a company and they left a message asking me to call them back. When I did, the guy on the other end of the phone said to me that they were following up a flyer that they'd sent via email.

I apologised and said I hadn't seen the flyer and could he tell me what it was about. He said that they did PC support and that for a monthly fee they could provide a comprehensive service for me looking after all of our computers. I thanked him for his time, but explained that someone else already offered this service for us and that we were not interested on this occasion.

At that point, he got pushy. He asked how much we were charged - I told him and he said they charged less than that. Again I said that we were very happy with our current supplier. He said did we put customer service over the amount we paid and I said absolutely.

To cut a long story short, this guy absolutely would not give up - to the point where I had to put the phone down on him just to get him to stop.

I'm very sorry but being pushy doesn't work for me. People can hassle all they like, but it actually means that I'm less likely to use that person as a result. I'm happy for people to ask once, but if the answer is no, I feel they should respect this.

I also have another situation going on with a personal trainer too. I used his services a couple of weeks ago but ended up injuring myself and have been advised to rest for two weeks. So, I have cancelled my sessions with him until I have recovered. But, he has been on the phone every day at the moment or emailing me - I know he's trying to be helpful, but there is a fine line between following up with someone and hassling them.

The golden rule seems to be three follow-ups with people. If you're hearing no all of the time, send them a gentle email 6 months down the line to see how they're getting on. That way, you'll get a good reputation as someone who follow-ups up, rather than a bad reputation of someone who hassles!

How people are feeling

It's really interesting this year how people's moods are changing. Back in December, everyone was full of doom and gloom about how 2009 would turn out. At the end of January, people had cheered up realising that things were not as bad as they feared.

And now in April, everyone's mood seems to have gone the other way again. Things have gone quiet for many people and small businesses are a bit down in the dump!

But let's break things down a bit. I think this quietness has got a lot to do with Easter and the end of the financial year too. Last year, Easter was at the end of March and first week of April, so three weeks of each month were left.

This year, Easter has completely taken out two weeks of April, meaning that many people have taken those two weeks off! Combined with the end of the financial year for most people being in March, many companies still haven't got their act together yet about the budgets in April.

But, now is not the time to sit there and wallow in feeling down. Now is the time to get out there and do some marketing to build things for May and June. As Chris Cardell said yesterday "if someone put a gun to your head and said unless you got 5 new customers by the end of the day, you'd die", you'd do everything possible to get that business wouldn't you?

So, get up, shake yourself off and get out there and get some business!

What to do with all your business cards?

How many business cards have you gathered since you’ve been in business? I’ve seen business owners with hundreds if not thousands of business cards stored in card boxes, in jacket pockets, stapled to diaries and contact details scribbled on bits of paper.

Are you the same? Do you have hundreds of business cards lying around in various places?

I’d like you to ask yourself a question…how effective are these business cards for you at the moment?

A few years ago, I was in the same situation. I had piles of business cards. In fact, I remember I had to go out and buy two more business card boxes because I just did not have the space to hold them all.

But I didn’t actually do anything with them. They were just sat there looking at me.

Occasionally, if someone asked me for some contact details, I’d go through them quickly to find the right person, but rarely found the card I was looking for.

Then I began to realise the power of contacting past contacts and it dawned on me that I would actually need to do something about my business cards. So, I painstakingly sat there and typed them all out onto a database on excel.

Just putting these contacts somewhere made it possible for me to do something with them. For instance, I could:

· Touch base with these contacts to find out how they were getting on.
· Make notes and colour code excel to show what was happening with each person.
· Find people quickly and easily.
· Produce reports and statistics if I needed to.

The most important difference though was that I was able to follow up with people and start to build a relationship with them. Because I could touch base with people properly, I found it had a dramatic difference on my business and got me new customers.

Next time you collect business cards, make sure firstly that you jot down where you met the person and the date. Then, when you get back to your computer, put the person’s contact details onto your database and follow-up with them. You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.

I’ve just released a free audio recording on marketing your business. If you’d like a copy, go to www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/clients1.htm

Exceptional Thinking (http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk) provides help and advice to small businesses on their marketing and to people who are starting up in business.

Update on Twitter

I've been on Twitter now for a couple of months so I just wanted to post and tell you how I'm finding it.

When I promote my profile on Twitter, I always get an influx of followers, which to be honest I like getting. It definitely inspires me to keep posting when I get more followers. When it goes through a quieter period where I'm not actively promoting my profile and I don't get followers, that's when updating gets harder to do.

Having said that, we were discussing in the team yesterday Facebook v Twitter. My team who use Facebook for personal uses, definitely prefer this medium. And yes, because I don't actively use FB, I prefer Twitter and I like the fact that Twitter can update FB and other on-line profiles for me without me having to actively do this.

So the jury is still out for me on whether it's useful for business, but I'm going to keep at it and see where it takes me.

Patience - what patience?

It's funny how in business there are times when you have absolutely no patience at all. At the moment I have man-flu thanks entirely to my husband! I hate colds. They always make me feel rotten and I can't stand the bunged up feeling.

When I'm feeling rubbish, that's usually when my patience levels dry up and people who take the micky or ask relatively silly questions usually get it in the neck.

I wonder though, is this just me who has low tolerance levels at various times, or does everyone feel this way?

It certainly would be interesting to find out how people feel and whether there are times when you run low on patience too...

New look to Exceptional Thinking

After six years running Exceptional Thinking though, we decided it was time for an upgrade so we've been very hard for the last 3 months to develop a new logo, change our newsletter and update our website. We launched the logo and newsletter on Friday.

It's always a big deal in a company when you change the look and feel of it. Let me tell you we were all a bit nervous the night before as to whether people would like it. We opened on Friday to a flurry of emails - and the good news - most of them were positive! Great news for us. But there's always one isn't there who comes back with not so positive feedback and that's pretty hard to take when you've worked so hard developing the new stuff.

When you get negative comments you just have to remind yourself that you can't please everyone and after all, they're not publishing a newsletter etc, so how can they really criticise?

And then on the Sunday morning, I realised I hadn't altered a button on our database and one of the old look, March newsletters was sent out by mistake - nightmare! Again, flurry of emails asking what was going on. I'll have to explain on the next newsletter now. Oh well, never mind.

Check out our new look newsletter by going to http://www.exceptionalthinking.co.uk/news/Newsletter1300309.htm