Successful Blog

Thanks to Week 101 SOBs!

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Successful and Outstanding Bloggers

Let me introduce the bloggers
who have earned this official badge of achievement,

and the right to call themselves
Successful Blog SOBs.

I invite them to take a badge home to display on their blogs.

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They take the conversation to their readers,
contribute great ideas, challenge us, make us better, and make our businesses stronger.

I thank all of our SOBs for thinking what we say is worth passing on.
Good conversation shared can only improve the blogging community.

Should anyone question this SOB button’s validity, send him or her directly to me. This award comes with a full “Liz said so” guarantee. It is endorsed by Kings of the Hemispheres, Martin and Michael, and backed by my brothers, Angelo and Pasquale.

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Want to become an SOB?

If you’re an SO-Wanna-B, you can see the whole list of SOBs and learn how to be one by visiting the SOB Hall of Fame– A-Z Directory . Click the link or visit the What IS an SOB?! page in the sidebar.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

I Asked a Telemarketer for Her Number — I Actually Wanted It!

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Leave a Message at the Tone

Customer Think Logo

My son is a recent college graduate.

Since his last year of school started, our phone has been inundated with calls from Student Loan Consolidation Services. They’re calling, asking for my son. Their objective is his business. His name is on some list of the class of 2007. They want to refinance what they assume to be my son’s school loans.

To say these calls are an irritant is to say that major dental surgery is not fun. It’s a relentless one-a-at-time water torture — daily ringing, the same hour, the same number. No message is left on the machine. Eventually we have to answer each one to make it stop.

The call routine is almost word-for-word predictable. The waste of time is pitiful. A bored caller goes through a call script, and we go through our own to get off the call list — the list we shouldn’t be on to start with.

Then this week, Maria called.

When I said, “Who’s calling?”

She said, “Are you his mother?” It was authentic and transparent. Imagine that. She wanted to know about the person — me — answering the phone.

Before she got much further, I had to ask her name, thank her, tell her how nice that was.

We had a great conversation. She asked my son’s situation. She told me two things she liked about what she had to offer and why she believed in it. We both knew it wasn’t my decision.

Then, I did something I’ve never done before. I asked a telemarketer if I could have her number. I took it down and gave it to my son. One day later, I explained to him why he should call her.

Maria, the caller from National Student Loan Division, deserves this mention. She made me a person, when her whole industry had made me a target.

Thank you, Maria.

Yeah, I’m thinking it’s sad that I find this remarkable.

I’m also thinking that maybe if we tell everyone . . . Maria might be the first and the only.

[Please know that this is not an endorsement of the company or a recommendation of their financing. I have not done the research. This is as statement of an outstanding example of customer relationships.]

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related:
See the Customer Think Series on the Successful Series page.

3 Ways the Blogosphere Made Me a Better Business Person and Human Being

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It’s the People

On my blog I finally took the time to think through what I believe. On my blog, people asked what I meant by what I said. On my blog that I dared to think and to dream — out loud and with commitment.

On my blog, my head and heart connected to the people I met.

The relationships I’ve made as a blogger have made me better as a marketer, a better writer, and a better human being. Here’s how and why.
I’m a better marketer.

    As a blogger, I live with my readers. Every morning, I meet the folks who read my blog. I know by their response, or the lack of it, whether I’ve hit the mark. How could I be more intimate with my “customers”? As a publisher, I used to think I knew a thing about readers. I didn’t know anything compared to what I know now. Now I know what they are thinking. They tell me.

I’m a better writer.

    As a blogger, I came down off the podium. I learned not to tie everything up with a bow. I quit lecturing and started listening. That’s when the real thinking and idea swapping started happening. Real people read what I wrote and added their own thoughts. When they did, I learned to write with my own voice, no self-consciousness. My relationship with words became my relationship with the people who read them.

I’m a better person.

    As a blogger, it became about the conversation. How could listening to folks talking back and learning to talk in my real voice not lead to an improvement? Suddenly, it wasn’t about me. Suddenly, everyone was an opportunity to get to know one more incredible person who offered something to learn. The more I bring to the folks who come to read, the more they give me. My readers make me smarter, better every day.

How has my blog changed how I think of relationships? It’s only made them more dear, more important, and more cellular to every letter, every link, every learning that is in this text.

I can’t imagine looking at any part of my blogging career without seeing the people who in a word, have made me who I am.

The people of blogging have made me a better person.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

One2One is a cross-blog conversation. Find the answer at dawud miracle on Monday. You can see the entire One-2-One Conversation series on the Successful Series page.
In Case You Missed It: Writing 06-13-07

Jersey Todd, Vince Lombardi, and Collecting Quotes of Humanity

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I've been thinking . . .

Jersey Todd sent me this quote by the famed Vince Lombardi, a legend in American football coaching.

“Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent’s pressure, and the temporary failures. ”

That got me thinking about success, and then . . .

And then, it got me thinking about Jersey Todd and Vince Lombardi — and all of the men and women who are like them, which got me thinking about how alike we all are. You see, I’m guessing that most of us already know what Mr. Lombardi was saying.

Been-There-Done-That!

I’m thinking that’s the reason we collect quotes and send them to friends. Those words of wisdom we pull out to share for whatever reason are a way of saying, “Hey, look . . . see. We might choose other words. Our experience of them might look different, but the essence is that we’ve been there. . . . and so has he.

Inspiring isn’t it that a sentence one person said years ago would be kept and valued?Amazing to see how a sentence can be a fine thread that connects and translates our humanity.

We’re there inside the words we say. We already know that.
If we look closer, we’ll find ourselves inside the words that everyone is saying,
Words connect us as human beings.

Young children know this.

” “Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” –Christopher Robin to Pooh(A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh)

Would you add your own quote to the list?

Liz's Signature

Stop Being Dangerous and Annoying the Blogosphere!

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Adjust Your Senses!

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I’ve been wondering, watching Internet relationships — how they are virtually the same and different from those in the real world. I’ve found patterns behaviors and looked through my experience to see whether those patterns hold up when I test them out.

My conclusion is that folks bring behaviors to the virtual world that don’t always make sense here. We do the human thing of continuing what we feel has worked for us before — without considering whether, in this new situation, it’s still the sensible thing to do.

Some foolish folks are getting this Internet thing wrong. That’s dangerous and annoying.

Read on if you are one of them. Better yet, read on anyway, we never know when a wave of foolishness has taken over us.

Here are the 5 senses that folks need to adjust to stop being dangerous and annoying the Blogosphere.

  1. Sense of Security Living online is more complicated than living in a real-world community. People here haven’t agreed to one single set of laws. The people can more easily falsify who they are, where they are, whose picture we see. If someone pulls a “fast one,” what you believe and have learned to be your legal right probably won’t mean a thing in this “world with no border.” Either way, it will probably be too expensive to enforce. If you know that, you’ll be more secure.

  2. Sense of Reality I can route my calls through Montana and answer them in Madagascar. I could be 93. You won’t know for certain until we meet. Most importantly, unless you have and have verified my street address, if I go offline, it’s possible you’ll never find me. On the other hand, you might find people who can trace back to my IP and the route my computer took to get to your to your computer’s door.

  3. Sense of Privacy Sitting at home locked in safe doesn’t make what we say secret. Writing in the middle of the night alone can feel personal and private. Remember the Internet is public and always open — forever. There is no eraser. In times of high emotion, stress, or other serious consequence, type into a word processor not your blog. Anything can wait 24 hours.

  4. Sense of Entitlement The woo of a “free” Internet can make us think everyone should serve up what we want — get over that. Re-read the story of “The Golden Goose” again. Or to put it another way, everyone has their own. It’s annoying to be asked or to be told to fulfill a request by folks who can’t bother to be polite or finish a sentence. First impressions last and last . . . and often are the last some folks will want to know of you.

  5. Sense of Humor Words in text don’t have the same context as words shared verbally. Tone is implied and easily goes askew. Here where many cultures meet, sensitivity means we use humor carefully. Make sure that everyone knows when you’re going for a laugh. It’s sad to say something seriously not funny when it was intended to be.

These five senses are critical to a successful experience in the Blogosphere. What other sense can you add to the list to make the Internet less dangerous and less annoying?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

25 Things that People — Our Key Customers — Really Want

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SIMPLE SALE SERIES

Everyone Has Customers

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I’ve been thinking a lot about customers lately. We all have them. Some are traditional sorts. They come to our businesses and pay us for products or services. Some are a little less conventional — they come in a customer role for things that don’t cost. Blog readers, first graders, park users are customers like those. Other customers don’t seem like customers at all, but really they are . . . mothers, fathers, sons, daughters all rely on our services like customers.

So it seems that knowing what customers want is more than a good idea. With that many customers everywhere we look, knowing what keeps them on a happy note would seem more like survival. Don’t you think?

25 Things that People — Our Key Customers — Really Want

Whether we have a business or we are just in the business of living, it’s good to know what will help us deliver a smile on the faces of the folks we care most about.

This list works for every kind of customer I’ve been able to think up. (Don’t go getting kinky on me.)

  1. People want help solving a problem.
  2. People want folks to notice them.
  3. People want to be heard when they offer their thoughts.
  4. People want to feel smart.
  5. People want to be a part of things.
  6. People want to be generous and for you to be generous too.
  7. People want give and be good things and want you to give and be good things too.
  8. People want to not worry . . . about time, money, health, injury, or other danger.
  9. People want to know that you’ll be the same person or better than the last time they saw you.
  10. People want to be entertained.
  11. People want to be informed.
  12. People want to learn.
  13. People want to know you don’t say bad things about them.
  14. People want to know they aren’t a number or a metric.
  15. People want good cake not just icing on a bad one.
  16. People do want the truth. They just don’t want it delivered with a sledgehammer.
  17. People want to believe in something without someone picking on them for it.
  18. People don’t want innovation. They want things that make life more livable.
  19. People want things and experiences that make their fill their time more meaningfully.
  20. People want to be understood.
  21. People want their questions answered even when the answer is “I don’t know.”
  22. People want the right to make mistakes without losing every time they do.
  23. People want to make their own choices.
  24. People want to know that you value their differences.
  25. People want to know that you know they are people.

People aren’t hard to understand. We all were born one of them. The trick is to keep in mind that folks around us — even folks we don’t know –are people too. They have their own thoughts and desires in the same way we have ours. We can meet with them where we agree — 25 points up there give us plenty to start with.

In our lives and in our businesses, people are our only customers for our actions and behaviors. If we make it about THEM, everyone will be just a little bit nicer. Lose track of that and they’ll remind us.

What things do the people in your life want? Are you a product of your environment? Could you be a better one?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.