Seven Ways to Add Value to Your Job

Adding value to your job–making your contribution unique–is key to survival and success in a competitive job market.

What could you do within your existing (or future) company to increase your value and influence? The seven job skills that follow won’t mean you necessarily work harder, but that you work differently and more creatively.

You can add value if you choose to be:

Experience Manager. Every interaction with another person creates an experience that leaves a memory of you and your work. How are you consciously designing these experiences to be positive? Enriching? Rewarding? Lasting? Since most people don’t tell you about their experience unless it is awful, you have to work intentionally to design experiences that draw people back for more and that gets them to tell others about you, your products, and your services.

Value Creator. All great employees (including CEOs, owners, board members, etc.) add value to the organization’s offerings. Being a value creator is a form of job security. Value neutral employees are inter-changeable or worse, replaceable (More on this in Chapter 6).

Talent scout. Identify people within and outside your organization who would be a valuable addition to your team. Talents scouts have the ability to understand the talents and abilities individuals possess and match them with organizational needs. This makes your team stronger, but it also makes you a go-to person for resources and talent advice. Others will want to know who you know who can help.

Ambassador. A person is known by the company he or she keeps, and an organization is known by the people it keeps. You represent your organization, as well as yourself, to customers and vendors. Learn the history of your organization well enough that you can share it frankly and passionately with outsiders.

Amplifier. Increase the good that happens around you by noticing and noting it to others. Most people can spot what’s wrong and complain about it. An amplifier knows the work around him well enough to spot what’s right, praise the work, and praise the person or people responsible for it. Good news often is so subtle that it needs amplification to be heard. Noticing good work and telling others is a positive influence on any organizational culture.

Router. Internet data is broken into chunks called “packets,” and routers make sure those packets go where they are supposed to go. Similarly, a good communicator makes sure information gets to the right people in a timely manner. Peter Drucker famously said that good communication is about who needs what information and when. Developing the judgment and discernment for routing information correctly and efficiently is a valuable skill set.

Interpreter. As Erwin Raphael McManus put it, “People don’t need more information. They need more insights.” Understand information and how it applies to the people and circumstances around you. Offer context. Offer insights. Provide the links that turn chaos and confusion into order.

Mark Sanborn, CSP, CPAE is president of Sanborn & Associates, Inc., an idea studio for leadership development. He is an award-winning speaker and the author of the bestselling books, The Fred Factor: How Passion In Your Work and Life Can Turn the Ordinary Into the Extraordinary, You Don’t Need a Title to be a Leader: How Anyone Anywhere Can Make a Positive Difference and The Encore Effect: How to Achieve Remarkable Performance in Anything You Do. His book Up, Down or Sideways: How to Succeed When Times are Good, Bad or In Between was released October 2011. To obtain additional information for growing yourself, your people and your business (including free articles), visit www.marksanborn.com.

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The Power of Thank You

In the spirit of Thanksgiving I'd love to share with you the benefits and power of two simple words. THANK YOU.

They are two words that have the power to transform our health, happiness, athletic performance and success. Research shows that grateful people are happier and more likely to maintain good friendships. A state of gratitude, according to research by the Institute of HeartMath, also improves the heart's rhythmic functioning, which helps us to reduce stress, think more clearly under pressure and heal physically. It's actually physiologically impossible to be stressed and thankful at the same time. When you are grateful you flood your body and brain with emotions and endorphins that uplift and energize you rather than the stress hormones that drain you.

Gratitude and appreciation are also essential for a healthy work environment. In fact, the number one reason why people leave their jobs is because they don't feel appreciated. A simple thank you and a show of appreciation can make all the difference.

Gratitude is like muscle. The more we do with it the stronger it gets. In this spirit here are 4 ways to practice Thanksgiving every day of the year.

1. Take a Daily Thank You Walk - I wrote about this in The Energy Bus and The Positive Dog. Take a simple 10-minute walk each day and say out loud what you are thankful for. This will set you up for a positive day.

2. Meal Time Thank You's - On Thanksgiving, or just at dinner with your friends and family, go around the table and have each person, including the kids at the little table, say what they are thankful for.

3. Gratitude Visit - Martin Seligman, Ph.D., the father of positive psychology, suggests that we write a letter expressing our gratitude to someone. Then we visit this person and read them the letter. His research shows that people who do this are measurably happier and less depressed a month later.

4. Say Thank You at Work – When Doug Conant was the CEO of Campbell Soup he wrote approximately 30,000 thank you notes to his employees and energized the company in the process. Energize and engage your co-workers and team by letting them know you are grateful for them and their work. Organizations spend billions of dollars collectively on recognition programs but the best and cheapest recognition program of all consists of a sincere THANK YOU. And of course don’t forget to say thank you to your clients and customers too.

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Thank you for allowing me to share this newsletter with you. I’m thankful for YOU.

What are you thankful for? Share one or two things that you are thankful for in your life. Leave a comment on our blog here or Facebook page.

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WANTED: E-COMMERCE LEADERS

Greetings from Shoppers, Inc.!  Hope you enjoy the article below from John Tschohl, President of SQI about WANTED: E-COMMERCE LEADERS and cost reduction programs as much as we did.

Everything You Do Should Focus on the Customer

“A business that fails to satisfy its customers is worth nothing.”

I made that statement in “e-Service,” a book I wrote in 2001 about how to build a successful e-commerce business, and it’s as true today as it was then. If you don’t give your customers what they want, when they want it, and how they want it, you won’t be in business long.

If you want to survive—and thrive—especially during these tough economic times, it’s critical that you focus on customer service. If you don’t believe that, look at Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of amazon.com, which had sales in 2011 of $48 billion, a 41 percent increase over the previous year.

Amazon has 164 million customers, more than 20 million products–and a reputation of providing unprecedented customer service. There is no denying that Bezos is an e-commerce leader, and you would be wise to emulate his ideas and his drive. He has proven that blending customer service with technology can result in huge rewards.

You, too, can be an e-commerce leader. Start by taking these steps:

1. Understand your business. No matter what products or services you are selling, your core business is customer service. Everything you do must be built around providing customers with the best experience possible. Not only does that keep customers coming back to you, it results in priceless word-of-mouth advertising.
2. Be available. You must be available to your customers 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you have an IVR, throw it away or, better yet, give it to one of your competitors. Hire people to answer your phones. Nothing says service like the ability to talk to a real person. And don’t—I repeat, don’t—outsource your call centers to someplace like the Philippines. If you do, you’re placing yourself on a suicide watch.
3. Make it easy for customers to do business with you. Realize that there are many doors customers can come through, and make sure those doors are open wide. Some customers prefer to do everything on the Internet; they don’t care to engage in conversation with another person. Others, like me, prefer to talk to someone. And, still others like a combination of technology and personal contact, often doing research about a product or service online and then wanting to talk to someone who can answer their questions before they make a purchasing decision.
4. Be competitive in your pricing. Good prices and great service—what more could a customer want? Service leaders are very aggressive at reducing costs and passing the savings on to their customers.

Forbes magazine, in an April 23, 2012 article on Bezos, quoted him as saying, “There are two kinds of companies: those that try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.” He goes on to say that frugality is one of eight official company values at Amazon. It should be one of yours, too.

Look for ways to reduce costs. That includes eliminating policies and procedures that get in the way of serving the customer. Those policies and procedures cost a lot, including the salaries of the people you hire to develop and enforce them. Train and empower your people to serve your customers; don’t hinder them with needless rules.

Hire smart. Look for people who like people; you can train them to be knowledgeable about your products and services, but you can’t train them to genuinely enjoy working with—and for—your customers. Hire people who are smart and personable, and you’ll have a winning combination.

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Say Thanks Before It's Just a Memory

Greetings from Shoppers, Inc.!  Hope you enjoy the article below from Harvey Mackay about Say Thanks Before It's Just a Memory and customer service as much as we did.

by Harvey Mackay

Some time ago the owner of a small but profitable business wrote columnist Ann Landers about his practice of giving annual bonuses to his employees. The amounts were based on time served and salary levels.

He had been doing it for 16 years and in all that time only two employees had ever said "thank you." Neither were still with the company. One passed away, and the other took early retirement.

The owner vowed that he wasn’t going to give any more bonuses, and if anyone complained, the response would be, “There will be no bonuses this year because not one of our current employees has taken the time and trouble to say ‘thank you.’ “

In her answer, Ann Landers segued from that letter to the tons of letters she receives from others, parents and grandparents particularly, who want to know what to do about gifts that are not acknowledged. What happened? Did the poor thing lose the power of speech or the use of their writing hand? Did they fall off the ends of the earth? Was the gift lost in the mail?

How many times have we sent a birthday check and not heard a word back, the only evidence that the gift was received found among the pile of canceled checks returned from the bank?

How many times have you given a larger than normal tip without any recognition? Waiters and waitresses should realize a larger tip is a signal that a customer enjoyed the experience and wants to return, particularly if their generosity is acknowledged. Diners even have been known to ask for a favorite waitperson’s station.

If you’re a salesperson or own a company and have recently received a larger than expected order from a customer, what have you done to make that customer know how you feel about it? It’s great to take your spouse out to dinner to celebrate your great sales ability, but what about the guy or gal who gave you the order?

A thank you is just good manners. A prompt thank you is easy to say, a lot easier to say than “Gee, I forgot to tell you how much I appreciated your order,” or “How’ve you been after all this time?”

When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York City, the police enforced quality-of-life laws and Giuliani even called for New York City’s cabdrivers and waiters to improve their manners, pointing out that rudeness is not a great civic selling point. It seemed to work. Crime went down. Tourism went up. New York City was on a roll.

Many companies wait until the holidays to say thank you. There’s nothing the matter with that, but why wait? It’s a lot more personal and responsive to seize the day and say the magic words the moment it’s appropriate. And forget the stuff with your corporate logo on it as a thank you. It’s fine as advertising. For yourself. But it isn’t a gift.

The best gifts I have ever received have no monetary value but what I call memento value. They are the letters I receive from people who have used tips or advice I’ve given in speeches, columns or books to get jobs, bonuses or unexpected orders. When a 72-year-old woman wrote to thank me for helping her make a dynamic splash in her chosen field, I was on cloud nine for days. And what an upper it was to hear from a man in prison that he’d begun to turn his life around thanks to the inspiration he’d received from one of my books.

One area of thank-you territory that many of us neglect is our formative years. They don’t call them “formative” for nothing. Have you ever said thanks to the teachers and coaches who lifted you up, dusted you off and set you straight when you were trying to figure out what growing up was all about? Though it may have been decades, you would be surprised how many of them remember us and remain our cheerleaders throughout our life. Believe me, a note or even a phone call from you would be well received.

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