Accountants Rock

"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy

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Gates/Ballmer Handover -- several of you had trouble getting a full version of the WSJ article last week. The link remains elusive (it goes from being the full article to becoming a teaser for subscribing to WSJ), but you can always go to Google News and search "Gates Ballmer WSJ Guth" and find a link that displays the entire article. The article is entitled "Gates-Ballmer Clash Shaped Microsoft's Coming Handover" written by Robert Guth.

Tiger Woods and John D. Rockefeller Related? -- not exactly, but David Brooks wrote an outstanding Op-Ed in the NY Times, on the heels of Tiger's amazing US Open win, on Tiger's power to focus -- it's an article every business leader/manager should read. And like Rockefeller, Tiger was going to be an accountant! It's all about discipline -- accountants' rock! Here's a link to the article.

Discipline of Customer Feedback and Daily Huddles -- speaking of discipline, Susan Mealer, Owner/CEO of Memphis-based Answering Advantage, sent me a note detailing the impact daily huddles have had on boosting the confidence of her frontline employees -- knowledge is power! She also noted that the weekly customer calls drove them to revise their training and re-program individual accounts and message tickets. They are also working on their "uncommon offering" -- this is Bob Bloom's process for figuring out your unique selling proposition from his book Inside Advantage.  Details of her feedback and results are under DETAILS below.

Uncommon Offering -- Bob Bloom interview -- take three minutes and watch Bob Bloom's interview from the Sales and Marketing Summit. About a minute in he gets to the uncommon offering discussion. Almost like his "four imported cheeses" example, we've decided our uncommon offering is the Gazelles One-Page Strategic Plan tool along with our other "four one-page tools." Gazelles -- home of one-page tools for growing your business! The key, as Bob suggests, is to repeat this message at all your customer touch points. View interview at www.gazelles.tv -- scroll down right hand column.

Class III-IV Whitewater, Rock Climbing, Mountain Biking and a 4x4 Off-roading Experience in Aspen, CO August 13-17 -- "Work Hard, Play Hard" -- 7 spots left in Maverick Business Adventures� experience taking place August 13-17, 2008 in Aspen, CO. Join fellow like-minded CEOs and successful entrepreneurs along with special guest Frank McKinney, who the Wall Street Journal called "the Real Estate Rock Czar". Frank builds $10, $20, $30...even $100M+ luxury ocean front estates entirely on spec. Watch 12 different Maverick members (several Gazelles among them) share their candid insights about their experience: Even if you're a little unsure about your schedule for August, don't worry. Maverick members are covered with the added assurance of "cancel anytime" insurance policy. So you can get a full reimbursement for any business reason right up until the last minute.

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Here's the note from Susan Mealer, CEO, Answering Advantage:

I wanted to share some feedback about the implementation of my many take-aways from the ATSI Owner's Forum in January.

Mentor -- First I found a mentor as you suggested -- John Ratliff agreed -- lucky me! And he's been very patient in allowing me to "suck his brains dry" (your words)!

Daily Huddle -- The daily huddle is an outstanding idea! (I was the undecided one at the Forum who asked you during a break for motivation in starting a daily huddle in my small business). I couldn't be happier with the results. Our front line supervisors now have insight and better understanding of issues (payroll, cash flow, service inquiries) that I have attempted to help them understand for many years. Their main focus has always been in the call center and on the employees. Having this extra knowledge seems to have given them more confidence in what they do on a day to day basis. I also see more ownership from them. I created a month of daily basics which are read at the end of every huddle. Many of the quotes I have chosen have sparked many fantastic conversations. (Because we are smaller, we have extra time during the 15 minutes). I have hooked so many peers on this concept -- practically everyone in my peer-peer mentoring group has started a huddle. Of course, I tell them to read your book first.

Weekly Customer Calls -- Also, we started making the weekly calls to our customers, asking the 4 questions you suggested. The results have been better than we could have ever expected -- even my 2 naysayers in the office (they're the number crunchers, naturally their glass is half-empty) see that the feedback is invaluable. Based on the results, to name a few changes, we have re-tooled our training ("your operators always do a great job, but we can always tell when you have a new operator") and re-programmed individual accounts and message tickets ("I've been meaning to call you because I wish you could do X for me" You'd think we invented the world wide web)!

Uncommon Offering -- Almost finished with our "uncommon offering." I polled most employees individually about what they do well -- most said the same things. It was an extremely humbling exercise to ask our customers what we did best and/or set us apart from our competition. A practice administrator in a big GI group actually went to EVERY practitioner, to everyone in A/P and to all front-line staff who regularly interact with our service to obtain a response. Another customer obtained feedback from every staff level as well before responding. Wow! Taking that amount of time to answer our question was overwhelming!

One of the most enlightening outcomes? That we mean so many different things to different people. The On-Call techs like us becauseour operators are friendly and appreciate the fact that they have to deal with the same cranky customers they do. The On-Call coordinator likes our flexibility when she has to change the on-call schedule sometimes 2-3 times a day or even within one hour. The physicians like our compassion with their patients. The business owner likes our tenacity in tracking down the on-call personnel to deliver a message as quickly as possible. The billing office likes our quick response time to billing questions.

Net Promoter Score (NPS) -- My 3rd quarter goal?  To implement NPS!  The recent articles in FORTUNE Small Business magazine were great!