Touch Points

Doing Well vs. Doing Good

Roy Williams' Monday Morning Memo for August 30, 2004

Donald Trump has been doing well all his life. But Agnes Bojaxhiu spent her life doing good.

Born in Skopje, Macedonia in 1910, Agnes was 21 when she began teaching school in a bad part of town. Looking outside her door each day, Agnes saw such pain and despair that it jarred her sensibilities. At 38, she walked out that door and began doing what she could to help, a task that bought the rest of her life. Agnes died at the age of 87 and some people believe the world is a better place today because she lived.

Agnes Bojaxhiu made a positive difference in the lives of others. I wonder if the same will be said of the Donald?

How about you? Are you spending your life only in the pursuit of doing well, or are you trying to do some good?

In 1979, when asked about her Nobel Prize, Agnes said, "I choose the poverty of our poor people. But I am grateful to receive (the Nobel) in the name of the hungry, the naked, the homeless, of the crippled, of the blind, of the lepers, of all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared-for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone."

I admire Agnes because she was willing to pay the price for her beliefs, a rare trait in these shallow days.

Some people enjoy great wealth because they're clever. I do not admire them. Right or wrong, my respect for a person's accomplishments is usually tied to what that person has endured. I'm not a Catholic, but I admire Agnes Bojaxhiu, also known as Mother Teresa. I'm not Hindu or even a pacifist, but I admire Gandhi. Heck, I don't even know what Nelson Mandela did or said or believed that got him thrown into prison for so many years, I just know that he was willing to go. And for that, I admire him. A carpenter from Nazareth once said, "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." (And I like to believe he added, "I'm going to go do that now. I'll be right back.")

I speak to you now as your friend, assuming that you consider me so. What I'm about to say has nothing to do with your achieving wealth or recognition and I'm certainly not trying to be sarcastic or flip and maybe I'm not even talking to you, but to the other 99 percent who read this. But all that being said; Isn't it time you got off your butt and did something with your life?

Talk is cheap. Go do something.

Roy H. Williams

PS – You really should try to come to Austin Oct 2 if you can.

The Smile On Your Face

“Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.”
Mark Twain

Did you know that it is impossible to feel bad when you have a smile on your face? Think about it.
How do you feel when you’re smiling? You feel good. You feel energized. But so many people
walk around in their own little world, feeling down and depressed when the simple action of
smiling would help lift them out of the doldrums. ...

ATTITUDE, IT’S YOUR CHOICE!

There is nothing either good or bad
but thinking makes it so.
-William Shakespeare

As the dawn breaks on another season of the Stratford Festival, it’s this quote from Hamlet, scene
II, act ii, that has my brain careening off in different directions looking for more. What we think
about, we do. Why is such a simple display of attitude driving me mad? Each day we see displays
of people thinking the wrong things and choosing the wrong attitudes. Earl Nightengale says,
“We become what we think about.”
The man is visibly upset...

We must accept a loss of control

I ran across this article in the Canadian Tourism magazine written by Jean B. Chretian (not Canada's former Prime Minuister) . These branding and advertising principles are universal. They are true of every buying situation.

Clients have taken control of the buying process, for travel and tourism products as well as many
others, and if destinations and businesses are to succeed they must embrace this new reality. Every
potential traveller has expectations of what is wanted from a travel experience; with the boundless
array of information and options available through the Internet, customers can get exactly what
they want. Travel distribution channels have undergone big changes in the last decade...

Is Personal Experience Factor Castrating Your Advertising?

Roy Williams defines Personal Experience Factor (PEF) in SECRET FORMULAS OF THE
WIZARD OF ADS “A customer’s experience with your company. Your PEF is, effectively, your
reputation. Perfect neutrality scores a PEF of 1. The growth or decline of a business will usually
follow that company’s PEF as it rises and falls above and below a score of 1. Your PEF score
cannot be changed through advertising.”

How often is a customer...

Enterprise of Note

Here's a comment from Michele Miller:
An update on Enterprise: I was in Austin again last week, greeted by the typical "wet blanket" humidity that is ever-present there in August. As I walked out to the Enterprise pick-up booth, they had set up a HUGE industrial-sized fan (easily 4 feet by 4 feet) for renters to stand in front of while the staff pulled the rented vehicles up to the booth. Amazing...

Ponderings from the World Wide Offices of the Wizard of Ads
by Michele Miller - Phoenix, Arizona, USA

In Texas, they do everything in a big way, including the weather.

As I drove to the Austin airport after several days at the Wizard of Ads home office, I encountered a typical Texas thunderstorm, complete with jaw-dropping lightning strikes and a downpour that nearly required the use of oars to keep the car going in the right direction. I pulled into the rental car return area, steeling myself for one of those mad dashes of unloading my luggage in the pouring rain, hoping I'd eventually be dry enough to sit on the plane without a puddle around my feet...

Cecil, Charlie, and Lagniappe

Are your customers buying with delight? Elsewhere? From my partner Roy H. Williams' WIZARD TOWER CHRONICLES comes this article:

Lagniappe (Pronounced - Lan-Yap, for us Aussies)

“I was charged a fair price,” is not the statement of an excited customer, yet many business owners mistakenly believe they need only to convince the public that they will be treated “fairly” to win their business. Phrases like “Honest Value for Your Dollar” and “Fair and Honest Prices” tempt me to say (with no small amount of sarcasm), “Yippee Skippy, call the press.”

If the most your customer can say...

Unexpected Help Creates a Lasting Memory

Are we as helpful as we can be to visitors to our towns? Here's Craig Arthur, author of MAKING ADS WORK my good friend and partner from Australia with his take on helpfulness.

I was backpacking Europe with two mates from Australia. The day had started well. We left Dover, England on the early vehicular ferry bound for the port city of Calais, France. We were the only ones silly enough to sit on the outside rear deck of the ferry. It was the middle of winter and the day was freezing. However, the attraction to view the white cliffs of Dover disappearing over the horizon was far greater than the bitter bite of the cold. And I have to admit, after the first two or three Baileys Irish Crèmes hit my stomach, the cold didn’t seem to matter...

We're back!

Hi everyone,

I'm now back from a canoe trip to the wilds of Northern Ontario, so the stories and research will return to a more normal pace (I hope). If you have stories to share about customer experiences, please send them to me. I look forward to reading and publishing them.

Cheers,

Steve

Four Ways to Motivate Service Professionals-

Here's another article from Mary Sandro in which she makes some great points that we should all try to emulate.

© ProEdge Skills, Inc.
http://www.ProEdgeSkills.com

The only thing harder than delivering excellent customer service consistently is motivating someone else to deliver excellent customer service consistently. Customers are more demanding than ever. Professionals are more difficult to hire and retain than ever. Splitting an atom might be easier than rallying an entire organization to Wow customers. Yet, some organizations succeed. Four motivation strategies can help your organization succeed too…