The crown jewel in the Apple portfolio – The Apple Retail Store.

Not only is an Apple Store, a perfect retail environment for the sale of technology; it’s an example to retailers all around the world as to how to constantly exceed customer expectations.

As was suggested to me on Twitter recently, the cornerstone of an Apple Store’s operation is the execution of a positive customer experience over all over considerations, even the sale. I’ve seen many occasions in my many, many visits to Apple Stores across the globe where employees have not only not taken the opportunity to up-sell a customer, but have actually convinced them to spend less on a lower specification of machine that will better meet their individual needs.

So what does Apple do that’s so different? How do they consistently get it right?

Here’s some observations that might be useful.

(1). The In/Out experience.

For Apple the sales experience begins the moment you arrive in the door and ends when you leave; in between these two points everything is part of the overall experience.

You will always get that welcoming feeling at the entrance from either one of the many Apple Hosts or the entrance signs highlighting what’s on in the store that day. It won’t be long before one of the legion of staff members will stop you and in a friendly, non intrusive or pushy way, introduce themselves and

(2). Handing over the cash.

Ready to purchase? Your store assistant’s device has a built in card reader so they can take your payment right there while you’re standing at the shelf, they grab a bag from a nearby hidden cupboard and you’re ready to leave. Or if you have the Apple Store App on your phone and credit on your ITunes a/c you can check yourself out.

Your receipt? Well that’s been emailed to you again direct from your assistant’s device and automatically vallidates the warranty so no more forms to fill in.

(3). After Sales.

Once money has changed hands you would imagine that the transaction is over – not so. If you’re just purchased a new Mac or MacBook then you’re invited back to take part in your choice of numerous free training sessions covering everything from the basics to specialist topics like video, audio and graphics creation.

(4). Pure Genius.

But where the Apple Store experience shines above all others is with the Genius Bar.We’ve all had the experience; a phone/laptop or other technical device decides to infuriate us by not working in some way. You take it back and are stared at blindly by someone behind a counter who clearly knows as much about solving the problem as you do. The Genius Bar is the Apple Store’s dedicated area for problem solving, staffed by specialist staff who I’m certain could find a solution to world peace if it was put to them.

In the end the real genius behind the Apple retail store experience is that from start to finish there’s a comfort factor that inevitably leads to easy purchases. If you’ve never been, no matter what industry or business you’re in, it’s worth a trip.

I mean how many retail stores do you know that offer the facility to cater for a class field trip?

Apple’s Covent Garden Store caters for several classes each and every week.

Dear Mr/Mrs Recruiter,

Has it ever occurred to you that any one who applies for a job at your company is  almost certainly a fan of your company?

If they’re willing to dedicate their daily existence to working for the company then it’s pretty certain that they must have good things to say about it. They probably like how you do business, or love your products, so generally they’re what we’ll call an advocate of your business. So they decide to apply for a role at your company, spent some time preparing their CV and submit their application.

And then silence. No “Thank you for applying”, No “Sorry your experience doesn’t meet our current needs”, No “We’re looking for someone with more experience of working in outer space”.

So why, oh why, would you treat them with such disrespect? Why would you take a dedicated fan and advocate of your brand and treat them so badly that they’ll almost certainly walk away with a negative and bitter attitude to your brand? Does your marketing department know what you’re up to? Does your Managing Director?  One quick email to say “Thanks for applying, we’ll let you know”; that’s the very minimum a candidate could expect.

Shame on you!

People often complain about recruitment companies and their treatment of candidates but honestly many in-house recruiters are  worse. There is simply no excuse to justify such poor treatment of candidates. Sure, back in the day, there was all that paper to move from one file to another etc; these days with everything being on computer means that its a matter of clicking buttons.

And besides, with great online management services like Zartis out there, its means that for a very small fee you can deliver a world class experience and organise and automate a massive amount of the work involved in the recruitment process.

The power behind any business is in its people and they say that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

Have you stopped to think about the first impression that a candidate gets when they engage with your recruitment process?

Just finished watching another excellent keynote presentation from the king of culture shifts, Gary Vaynerchuck. You can catch it here.

Gary’s talk covers the whole area of culture shifts and how life and business are changing faster than they have ever changed before in human history. He illustrates the point so nicely by taking a show of hands on how in the audience swore they’d never be on Facebook and now are and compares it to those who swore they’d never need a mobile phone…

Business these days is incredibly tough and so so difficult. Traditionally every business person is told that every decision should be based on control. Actions should be planned out in intricate detail and executed flawlessly. Control the message, control your customers, control your product.

Unfortunately that’s too slow and with the newfound ability for your customers and competitors to communicate at the speed of social media, its unrealistic. Business today is all about fast reactions.  In a global business environment, something can happen today on the other side of the world that can dramatically change your industry overnight.

How the hell can you survive in this environment?? Simple – you no longer control your business, you ARE your business. It’s time to start thinking on your feet, time to start trusting your instincts, time to understand your industry inside out, time to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your business and act on them. It’s time to be different and time to try new things. It’s time to run your business without a fear of change, without worrying what the next guy is doing and instead basing on the capabilities that you know your business and your people excel at!

You’re not just competing with your neighbour anymore so so doing the same as them wont be enough. You need to be exceptional, you need to find that angle, that way of standing out. You need to rediscover the reason that you’re in your business in the first place.

Sure I understand the fear, the uncertainty but I also understand the rewards for those willing to take the leap.  It’s all about the right attitude.

Time to Think fast.

or  why stealing/borrowing ideas isn’t always a bad thing!

(and no I’m not going to be talking about copyright infringement or internet piracy – topics for another day!)

I’m talking about the over-obsession of businesses with finding an original idea which can sometimes lead to stand still moments of inaction.

Look at some of the great success stories of the last few years – Google, Apple, Facebook… original ideas? Nope! Each of them took an established business model and made it their own. Where they did succeed where so many went wrong?

Well its simple; they executed their vision with passion and originality. They looked at the idea with an open mind, explored it in detail and came up with a unique spin on how to execute the idea and make it happen.

You can steal ideas but you can never steal execution or passion!

So explore the world of business, find some good ideas and then think long and hard about how those ideas could be adapted to fit your business. Then concentrate on making those ideas happen, come up with original ways to make those ideas happen.

Execute WITH originally, not against it.

Start talking about business measurements and most people glaze over at the though of revisiting of their leaving cert accounting class. And who can blame them, often these measure mean little and often provide complicated information that’s of little use to a small business rebel.

Here’s three simple measures that I always use when deciding whether a business has potential or not. Now none of these are fancy finance formulas or the sort of data that you’d swear on but they do give you a great indication of how your business is doing and really give you great backup for your gut feeling.

1. Cost per Acquisition

Sometimes used in a very complicated way, its very simple – how much money is every new customer costing you?

Simply put take the amount of money that you spend on sales and marketing for your business during a set period of time; say a month. Then divide by the number of new customers you actually got during that same time period, Bingo – it’s your cost per acquisition!

Why is it important? Well it can help you with all sorts of decision making. You can compare marketing spends per month and see if you’re getting more customers as a result. Is that new salesperson worth the money their getting? Compare the costs before and after their arrival.

2. Revenue per Employee

My personal favourite and how I casually rate most businesses – how much money are you making when compared with the number of employees you have?

Adding an employee to any business has many strings attached and also additional costs. As a rule, extra employees should also bring extra revenue. Sure they’ll always be exceptions but as a golden rule more employees should mean more cash coming into the business.

Keep an eye on this measure and think about it before every time you consider hiring, is this person an additional source of revenue or a drain on existing resources?

3. Lifetime Customer Value

Some people ignore this measure; those companies usually don’t have any sort of long term success in their future. It works differently depending on the type of business you’re running but basically its simple – stop thinking about the once off benefits to your business of a sale and start thinking about the long term value of a customer.

Start thinking about the amount of business that customer can generate for you in one year, three years, five years. Start thinking about the value added when they start to refer other customers your way. Start trying to work out how to keep them happy and satisfied over a long period of time!

Start a relationship with your customers and stop treating them like a one night stand!

During a recent meeting with a company I’m mentoring, we fell into a discussion about ideas and why some people seem to be so much more open-minded when it comes to thinking “outside the box”.

Here’s a simple exercise that works that I’ve always used as a way of training my mind to be open to ideas.

Think of a current, simple everyday situation. How would you normally deal with it? How would you normally react?

Now imagine doing the entire opposite of what you would normally do! Think it through in detail, imagine the actions, consequences and results of your actions. Enjoy the feeling of rebelling against your natural instincts!

Our brains are hardwired to see some options as infinitely better than others for a multitude of reasons. Occasionally taking time out to examine “the road never travelled” creates a way of framing situations so that your brain looks beyond the way it always does things.

Repeating this process daily as a short mental exercise quickly creates a situation where your mind considers all possibilities not just the obvious ones or just the accepted way of doing things. Pretty soon, you’ll get into the habit of taking in information and processing it in a variety of ways before leaping to the “obvious* conclusions. You’ll find yourself coming up with multiple solutions to problems.

A lot of people have been asking me lately about  the businesses that I mentor and my impression on the whole idea of mentoring in general.

I’m currently mentoring 3 particular businesses which is about the normal for me over the past 4/5 years. I strongly believe in the whole idea and here’s why.

When you’re starting a business there’s a lot going on. For business founders there can be be an overload of information and decisions to be made and sometimes it can be pretty intimidating. And sometimes it can be very hard to find impartial advice because many people have a vested interest in the success or failure of your business.

That’s where a mentor becomes very useful. Mentors are guides, teachers and a voice of positive enthusiasm for a new business.

A good mentor gives you advice, based on real and practical experience. Sometimes they have been in your shoes and sometimes they just have the expertise to understand what it is like and what the choices and the consequences of those choices are.

They don’t judge you or chastise you. After all it’s your business, not theirs. They are just trying to help by being an objective and friendly voice in business. Whether they fully believe it or not they support you. Most importantly a good mentor knows that they don’t know everything.

They don’t assume that just because you’re a startup business that you don’t know what you’re talking about. They recognise that you’ve chosen to go into a particular field of business because you’re passionate about that business sector. Therefore you must have some amount of specialist knowledge in that area.

A good mentor knows when you’re wrong, knows when you’re right and knows when to shut up!

If it won’t fit on a Post It, it wont fit into your day. Sensible right?

If you’re like me then you’re bound to know several time management junkies, people who obsess about the latest way to organise their day to the detriment of actually getting things done. Personally I’ve always found that people who write down their simple To Do list somewhere and just scribble off bits as they go usually get the most done in their days and don’t have to worry about the battery dying on whatever gizmo their hi-tech list is stored on.

You can check out more on this simple, but effective idea right here

The Million Dollar MBA.

That’s how USA businesses refer to those tough, but beneficial lessons that you learn when everything goes wrong and your business goes belly up! Here are five companies that failed. And the lessons that their owners learned from them.

I’ve highlighted some of the memorable bits from each. You can click through to their full analysis to get the full story direct from the founders of each.

(1). EventVue. Private Social Networks for Events

• tried to build a sales effort too early, with too weak of a product after initial financing
• waited too long to address the “nice to have” problem
• went after enterprise sales model with a non-recurring, small price
• didn’t make Eventvue self-serve to let anyone come and get it
• didn’t focus on learning & failing fast until it was too late
• didn’t care/focus enough about discovering how to market made compromises in early hiring decisions – choose expediency over talent/competency

(2). The Condom Key Chain Guy

• “I need product liability insurance,” I would say.
• “Sure,” the agent would reply. “What’s your product?”
• “Condom key chains,” I would answer.
• “New market penetration?” the agent would say.
• This was funny, maybe, the first 10 times.

(3). Monitor110:

• The lack of a single, “the buck stops here” leader until too late in the game
• No separation between the technology organization and the product organization
• Too much PR, too early
• Too much money
• Not close enough to the customer
• Slow to adapt to market reality
• Disagreement on strategy both within the Company and with the Board

(4). Riotvine

• Ask yourself how people are going to find out about your product
• Ask yourself how people are going to find out about your product
• The best metric you should measure yourself against is whether you can make people feel something when using your product.

(5). Playcafe

• Find quick money first
• Know when to value speed vs. stability
• Marketing requires constant expertise
• Control and calculate your user acquisition costs
• Form partner relationships early, even if informal

There’s plenty of extremely valuable lessons to be learned from all of the above posts. Sometimes our enthuasim for a great idea can blind us to small and simple realities. Maybe by reading about other’s failures, some of the more obvious ones can be avoided.

Overall I think it’s best summed up by a company made to one of the company founders in a comment….

And you didn’t lose 10.000 dollars, you just paid 10,000 dollars to get this amount of experience.

It all comes down to a fear of failure really doesn’t it? These days, the notion of impossible really just means you’re afraid to try.

With the knowledge and resources available, there’s very little that is outside the realm of possibility for most people. When it comes to business I hear “impossible” all the time. My day job involves helping businesses plan solid strategies for their futures and there’s one problem that I come up against, time and time again.

My goal in dealing with startups is always to structure the future of their business according to their vision, their ideals and the reason that they got into their business in the first place whether that’s saving the world or rolling around in swimming pool full of cash.

When we start talking about the future, we inevitably start talking about someone else’s company. The owner’s vision for the business will often be based on doing what larger competitor X did, their ambition and vision limited to copying what someone else has achieved. Their initial resistance to my suggestions is always on the basis of “that’s impossible!” or “that’s not how it works in our industry!”

I accept that every industry has it’s norms, it’s safe zone and its understandable that its where businesses are comfortable. Trouble is that it’s where 99% of your competitors are. So before you write off that great idea that you’ve seen in another industry as one that won’t work in yours, spend some time deciding whether that’s really the case or not.

Not everything is as impossible as it seems.