“Are You a Maker or a Taker?”

By: Geoffrey James

These 12 characteristics determine whether you’ll be a success or a failure.

There’s been a lot of talk over the past few years about the difference between “makers” and “takers.” While I don’t agree with the standard political definition of the two groups, I do think that there’s some validity to the basic idea.

Here’s how I see the difference:

1. Confidence. Makers know they’ll succeed and don’t care whether others believe in them or not. Takers draw upon others for their motivation and constantly worry what others will think.

2. Commitment. Makers find the resources within themselves to run the race and turn roadblocks into speed bumps. Takers look to their institutions and their families to protect them from the risks of failure.

3. Sacrifice. Makers choose to do things that they’d rather avoid if they’re necessary to achieve a goal. Takers have a multitude of excuses why they sat on their duffs when something needed doing.

4. Selectivity. Makers constantly assess what they see and experience, focusing on what’s useful and filtering out what’s useless. Takers immerse themselves in the mindless distraction of broadcast media.

5. Awareness. Makers focus upon their own behavior and how it impacts the behavior of others. Takers waste endless hours speculating about what other people are doing and why they’re doing it.

6. Courage. Makers have the courage to make changes in the world around them, even when everything seems okay. Takers crave the security of knowing that things won’t change and do everything they can to keep the status quo.

7. Mastery. Makers work on essential skills and techniques until they’ve completely mastered them. Takers try out new skills or techniques and give up when they don’t immediately get the desired result.

8. Control. Makers see themselves as captains of their own destiny rather than pawns of fate. Takers believe that their success is a matter of luck, fate or divine intervention, none of which is within their control.

9. Responsibility. Makers see problems and think “Great! How can I help change this for the better?” Takers see problems and think “Damn! I wish somebody would come fix these problems.”

10. Gratitude. Makers deeply appreciate the help they’ve gotten and never take it for granted. Takers wonder why everyone else isn’t doing a whole lot more to help them get what they want.

11. Generosity. Makers step up and give of their own when they see others in need. Takers complain when they think some people might be getting something that they don’t really deserve.

12. Perspective. Makers realize that they’re successful because they’re “standing on the shoulders of giants.” Takers think that they’re successful because they’ve built everything themselves.

“9 (Free) Ways to Dazzle Your Customers”

By: Rene Shimada Siegel

It doesn’t take much time or money to truly blow customers’ minds. Here are a few ideas.

Lee brought three lattes to our table. He put one cup down, made eye contact with each of us, and asked how we were doing today. Then he stopped as three customers met his gaze. He smiled and chatted for about 10 seconds… and then Lee put down the other two cups and walked away to tend to other customers.

It takes mere seconds to make a connection, to really look and listen to customers. Lee delivered a free “wow” along with those lattes–and earned himself a memorable tip.

Sure, your business may be more complex than beverage service, but that’s exactly why a few seconds of truly personal attention can blow people’s minds. And it doesn’t have to cost anything. Here are nine ways to dazzle your customers without spending a dime:

1. “Just thinking of you.” At my company’s recent event, blogger, author, and speaker Peter Shankman challenged the audience to try this: scroll through your contacts and pick five people you haven’t talked to in a year. Call them and say, “I’m thinking of you. How are you?” It’s that easy. Who knows? This might be the day they need your product or service.

2. Eye contact. Every weekday, we see an estimated 900 people. How many do you really make eye contact with? One or two? Lee the latte server had it right. A 10-second chat with customers was remarkable because his eye contact said, “I’m present. I’m listening. I care.”

3. Smile. Show off those crow’s feet! Really genuine smiles like a Duchenne smile (first noted by a French physician in the 19th century) includes the area around the eyes, cheeks, and mouth. There’s nothing like a winning smile to show customers you appreciate them and their business. Speaking with a customer by phone? Smile while talking and they will hear it in your voice.

4. Appropriate touch. Let’s preface this section by saying this can be very sensitive and depends on each unique situation and relationship. A handshake that lasts micro-seconds longer or a light touch on the shoulder or pat on the back can convey warmth and sincerity to an employee or customer. Hugs may be well intended but could be uncomfortable for the recipient so unless you know them well, let their actions take the lead.

5. Shared interests. While waiting for my husband and son to shop at a boutique men’s clothing store, Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September” came on the radio and I started to groove. The owner was busy and could have ignored me, but instead we had an animated conversation about the Best EWF Concert Ever. Music created an opportunity to bond and we ended up staying longer–and buying much more than planned.

6. Personal interests. Remember a few details about your regular customer’s life so the next time they come in you can ask, “How are the kids doing on swim team?” Even if your customer isn’t local, Facebook, blogs, and other social sites provide clues about triathlon training, family reunions, and trips to Burning Man.

7. Compliments. Is there anything better than getting a compliment out of the blue? “I love that color on you!” “You really took care of that project quickly.” To successfully deliver a compliment, it must be honest and specific. General comments like “You’re a rock star!” come across as blasé or insincere.

8. Lend a hand. Everybody needs something. Maybe it’s a new babysitter or referral for a plumber. Or maybe like my recent challenge, you need to find housing for a college student in Copenhagen. Create a special connection by coming to the rescue of a customer or prospect. And Shankman says when they thank you, just reply, “I know you’d do the same for me.”

9. Likes and dislikes. Big businesses, like hotels, use customer relationship management software to help them remember you like foam pillows instead of feather. Track and show customers you care about their preferences, like Apple’s Pages instead of Microsoft Word.

Pick one of these ideas and try to dazzle one person tomorrow. See how customers respond and chances are they’ll come back for more of what you’re serving.

“Can Zuckerberg Really Not Find Enough Engineers?”

By: Eric Markowitz

Facebook’s CEO tells investors the tech industry desperately needs more high-quality engineers–but Facebook has no recruiting problems, thank you very much.

On yesterday’s Facebook earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg repeated a familiar Silicon Valley refrain: talented, U.S.-born tech workers are hard to come by.

Specifically, here’s what he said:

Hiring great people–especially engineers–is one of the biggest challenges that any technology company has. We’re doing really well against the hiring goals that we have. But I mean there [is] a systemic issue where our country doesn’t produce the volume of engineers that the companies would want to hire.

Zuckerberg then goes on to say that despite the hiring challenges, Facebook is exceptionally good at finding senior engineers. He found himself is something of a catch-22: on one hand, Zuck must placate investor worries about Facebook’s ability to hire talent; on the other hand, as an influential voice in tech and the founder of a well-financed immigration reform PAC, he needs to keep the drumbeat going on the idea that the U.S. can’t produce enough tech workers.

This thought–that tech companies have a hard time finding technical talent–is echoed by pretty much every other major tech company in the Valley. It’s also been the underpinning for several national campaigns targeted at immigration reform that seek to increase the number of guest visas (most notably the H1-B) that would allow highly-skilled foreign tech workers access to American tech firms. The latest immigration reform bill doubles the amount of H1-B visas–a major coup for the industry.

The only problem is that this claim–that the tech industry can’t find enough U.S.-born workers–is, at best, an exaggeration. At worst, it’s downright bogus.

I’ve written about this disconnect before, drawing on research from Norman Matloff, a professor at the University of California, Davis. Matloff published a report back in February 2013 that came to two major, controversial conclusions. First, he found that “on a variety of measures, the former foreign students have talent lesser than, or equal to, their American peers.” And second, “skilled-foreign-worker programs are causing an internal brain drain in the United States.”

This week, another report surfaced that came to a similiar conclusion after studying job applicants’ resumes and openings earlier this year: “There were more than enough potential candidates in the United States”–particularly for high-skilled programming positions. That study, prepared by Bright, a San Francisco-based recruiting firm that uses cloud data to match employers with employees, found that there were “134 percent more candidates nationwide than there were positions requested,” specifically for the IT sector.

As Quentin Hardy at The New York Times pointed out earlier this week:

Many economists take issue with the industry’s argument, too. One side points out that wages have not gone up across the board for engineers, suggesting that there is no stark labor shortage. Another counters that unemployment rates in the sector are minuscule and that in any event, H-1B workers represent a tiny fraction of the American work force.

Of course, there are limitations to the Bright study. One economist pointed out to Hardy:

The case for and against expanding the H1-B visa program should be done on an overall assessment of the impact on the U.S. economy (workers, consumers, investors, students/future workers) and not only on whether there are short-run ‘shortages’ in any specific occupation.

This isn’t to say that American tech companies may sometimes need to recruit highly skilled workers from abroad. It’s just that the qualifications for what meets “highly skilled” should be defined carefully. Guest visa programs, particularly the H1B, were created to help employers recruit workers with “exceptional skills”–not as a way to find cheap labor from abroad, at the expense of American-born workers.

So the next time Zuck makes this claim, it’s worth asking him: Really?

“How Not To Screw Up Your Website”

Your website can increase a customer’s loyalty–or become the last time he does business with you. Get it right.

My company is getting ready to create a new website. After a woefully tardy and somewhat dysfunctional launch a few years ago, I know we really need to get it right the first time on this version. The website, like most, is meant to allow customers to do business their way, any time doing so is convenient for them, and to put any and all relevant account information at their fingertips. If a site works well, it is a powerful tool in boosting customer satisfaction–but if it doesn’t, it is a shortcut to customer meltdown.

If you are thinking about re-designing your company’s website, here are some pitfalls to avoid that I have culled from my own mistakes and experiences.

Going Global? Go All the Way

If you are looking to make your site accessible to customers in multiple countries, be sure to think it through carefully. Showing home currencies for the customer can be helpful, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. For example, for one of the earliest versions of my company website, I didn’t think about the fact that the U.S. is the only country that uses standard measurements. An international customer can visualize an inch about as well as I can conjure up a vision of a centimeter–so forgetting to translate measurements rendered the information difficult for international customers to decipher.

This kind of oversight doesn’t only happen to small companies. The well-recognized multi-national bank my company uses just made all customers move to an international platform, and forgot that Americans do dates in the month/day/year format. Now all the data I was once able to easily export from the bank’s website into my accounting system only comes with dates that won’t work with my American accounting system–causing me aggravation and costing me time. Someone definitely should have thought about this in advance.

Customer Needs Trump Everything Else

The website my company had for seven of nine years in business had a shopping cart function that saved customers selections forever–that is, until they either submitted the cart as a purchase or until they deleted it. So about a month after our last redesign, I was as surprised as my customers were that their carts seemed to be “disappearing”. Luckily, I was able to change the mechanism to keep the carts indefinitely, but not before a few customers were left frustrated that they would have to start over. For the redesign I’m doing now, I asked five different types of customers to tell me how they shop online–everything from the browsers they use to the times of day they buy, to how long it takes them to make an order, to what makes them remove or add things in the cart. Hopefully, the insight they give me will help create a cart with functionality defined by what they need, rather than a web team looking to finish fast or add lots of unnecessary bells and whistles.

Too bad my bank forgot to consult its customers. If it had, I bet it would have heard that having the site open a new tab every time I ask to perform a new task is not only annoying for customers, but decidedly less secure.

Train Your Staff to Use Your Site

When I launched the last Metal Mafia site, I had sales reps create logins, make orders, and look for glitches, like most companies do. So when the site went live, I figured they could easily answer customer online shopping questions. Unfortunately, it turned out I forgot to show them some important things customers needed help with–like lost password retrieval, and shopping cart recovery. I quickly figured out I needed to create both a learning session and a frequenty asked questions sheet for the reps so they could help customers without needing to refer them to the IT team. This time around, I’ll have a tutorial for all these issues in advance of the launch, so anyone on the team is able to help customers without shuffling them around–and all answers are consistent.

To me, this is the most important step. My recent experience with my bank’s helpline made this crystal clear. When I had trouble with the site, and called the helpline, one person told me the “value date”–or when the price would be set–was the date the money appeared in a beneficiary’s account, while another told me it was the date the money was being sent. In business, these answers have two very different meanings and require very distinct courses of action. One person’s answer costs me interest on my funds, while the other’s costs me a communication crisis with a vendor partner.

Nothing makes customers angrier than having their time wasted by poor website planning on the part of a company they are doing business with.

Your websites can either be the gateway to deepening customer loyalty or the last time someone does business with you. Take the time to get yours right.