Would you invest in these guys?

So, these guys walk into your office and ask you to invest in their fledgling company. What do you think? First impressions?

If your answer is - I love pocket protectors and facial hair you'd be onto a winner. You'd have just invested in the original Microsoft team (see a fresh faced Bill in the bottom left hand corner?)

Now while this is clearly an old photo - it goes to remind me that first impressions aren't everything.

If you're going to a job interview, am I recommending wide lapels and orange tones? Probably not.

But if you're conducting a job interview, am I recommending you look past initial first impressions? Absolutely. I wrote in my book Retired at 27 If I can do it anyone can about a fabulous former employee who I didn't call back after a not so great first impression in a group interview (she was shy and faded into the background). Strangely, the next day she was in our office for a day's trial. I was confused. Turns out the girl I'd meant to call back had the same name as the girl who'd shown up. Not wanting to be rude we let the unexpected candidate work her trial and at the end of the day every team member she worked with insisted we hire her. First impression - not stellar. Lasting impression - Kim was and is one of the more exceptional young ladies I've ever worked with.

Where do you need to look past the first impression today?

By Kirsty Dunphey with No comments

Positively Pervasive

"I am staying positive," she said to me adamantly. I've been saying things to myself all day like "it can't get any worse than this!"

I wish that was some sort of a punch line, but the girl I was speaking to believed wholeheartedly that this statement represented her being “positive”.

She didn’t realize that it’s really difficult to phrase a positive statement around negativity.

It's like trying to motivate yourself to lose weight by saying that you want to be less fat today than you were yesterday. It's like trying to get positive about your education by saying you want to be less stupid.

I wrote in my book Retired at 27, If I can do it anyone can about keeping a journal of the high point of my day. Nothing else other than a one sentence statement indicating the high point of my day. I kept a journal for 3 years until seeing the high point became habit and something I could easily do.

I recommended it to a friend going through a hard time and then I saw her journal. Written on the front was “It’s good news week…. It can’t get any worse”. Arghgh!

I’ve been in a rut before where the world seems like it’s falling down around me. We all have. But I can assure you, fueling your mind with negativity ‘aint going to break you out of that rut.

We’ve all done the exercise where you close your eyes and try to pick everything blue around you (if you haven’t, do it now). Now open your eyes and all you can see is blue – pens, the sky, clothing. Your mind will gravitate towards what you focus on. What are you choosing to focus on?

So where to from here? Maybe each night when sharing dinner with a loved one, you share the high point of your day. Maybe you tweet it to the world or to me - @kirstydunphey. Maybe you email it to a friend. Recognise the highs, the positive moments and I assure you, they may start small and less frequent, but by choosing your focus there will be more and more to focus on.

By Marjorie with No comments

Hold the line…

I called Towns Shearing (an independent real estate agency in my home town of Launceston) today and was greeted by an extremely professional voice on the phone asking me if I wouldn’t mind holding for just a moment. Having started on the phones in a real estate agency I understood that she was likely fielding multiple calls and so I replied that I wouldn’t mind holding.

As soon as I was placed on hold I realised that I might do better just to call the agent I was after on his mobile and so I hung up the phone and did that, connecting with him straight away.

Surprisingly though, when I got off the phone to that agent I had a voice mail message from Daisy (the professional voce who had put me on hold only minutes earlier). On finding that I’d hung up, Daisy had called me back (their phone system had showed my number) to offer service.

While I had already had my enquiry dealt with and didn’t need to call Daisy back I was blown away by this extra level of service. How often have you left an organization superbly impressed after being asked to “hold the line”?

By Marjorie with No comments

It’s not you… it’s me.

So I got broken up with this week. Dumped. I’m even a little heartbroken.

Don’t worry – my marriage isn’t in jeopardy. A client broke me up with me.

I say “broke up with me” instead of “fired me” because I’m being dumped not because of anything I’ve done. The client still loves us. They’re not going to another service provider. They’ve just had a change in circumstances.

Now, I could present a wealth of service strategies on what to do to win back a client who is firing you, but I had to pause when I thought of what to do with the client who was simply ending our relationship with a “it’s not you, it’s me”.

So here’s the approach I took and I kind of based it on how I’d like someone to treat me if they actually broke up on me:

Step 1. I took it like a champ. I let the client know how disappointed I was, but that I understood their reasons behind their decision.

Step 2. I took a step back. I reflected on their reasons and offered a creative solution to work around their current situation. While I wasn’t sure it would work (it didn’t in this case) I was sure my effort would be appreciated (it was, with the client responding with “Thanks for always trying to work out a mutually beneficial solution though - it's really impressive”).

Step 3. I didn’t make the break up unnecessarily hard or convoluted. In short, I didn’t try and create any unnecessary hurdles to the client leaving. I made the transition as easy for them as possible. Why? Because they’ve now just reverted from being a current client to… a future client.

They’re back on my prospecting list and as much as it took me 2 years to get them on board in the first place, I’ll keep working until they’re a current client again.

Stay tuned.

By Kirsty Dunphey with No comments