Many Silicon Valley tech companies purposely make their technology as addictive as possible to maximize user engagement. Who, after all, can blame them? We’re not here to discuss the ethics of the matter, but rather the practical implications of how addictive technology may be impacting your employees’ work. Many believe it is damaging, others, a harmless inevitability. Studies suggest people are increasingly unhappy with their use of screen time and social media. The endless refresh cycle of major apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Twitch, etc. are highly addictive and, as we said, that’s no mistake, they’re engineered that way. In greater and greater numbers people have begun sacrificing their friends, family, and personal lives in the name of spending more time on social media and elsewhere online. So, although technology clearly has its benefits, the question remains: is our tech addiction good for business?  

Decades ago, at the advent of the internet, companies often seek to limit unnecessary screen time by blocking sites and apps from work computers. Now, with the broad proliferation of personal smartphones at work, blocking simply won’t cut it. You may be able to restrict the websites your employees use while on their desktop but the trouble is that people do most of their social media browsing on their personal smartphones anyways! And, short of complete, intolerable micromanagement, there’s no stopping it. Moreover, the employees you most need to retain are often the ones least comfortable with site/app blocking. Another complication arises due to the fact that some employees actually need to be on social media and other distracting websites in order to do their jobs. That, in fact, sometimes is their job! In the battle for your employees’ well being, there are a number of proven techniques that can really help.

Encourage screen time boundaries

Screens are sometimes good, sometimes bad. You don’t need to be a Luddite to recognize the fact that a constant stream of never-ending screens can create some problems. Try running creative meetings that involve no screens (mobile, watch or laptop) whatsoever and watch focus increase. At company gatherings and socials you should implement a strict “no electronic device” rule. People may be resistant to this at first, but over time they’ll adjust and eventually, they’ll appreciate it. By clearly articulating “This is a no-device time” for specific events, you will have a greater impact on people than a blanket ban on all devices, so use it sparingly.

Make Lunch (At Least Occasionally) A Thing

One of most odd paradoxes of social media is that, in spite of it being built to “connect” people, it actually ends up making them feel more isolated. This can affect both employees personal and professional lives and sometimes even lead to serious depression. You can’t overestimate the importance of good ole’ fashion face-to-face interactions with employees, and lunch is a great, easy way to do it.

Create A Distraction-Free Time

The average employee’s workday is filled with distractions. Some are enjoyable like friendly chit-chat, and others like excessive emails can be frustrating. Either way, “distraction-free zones” can dramatically improve overall employee happiness, which usually leads to better productivity.

To have employees take this time seriously and literally, you should have them actually schedule a small hour or so block of time off in which they can have their “distraction-free time.” This can be achieved via things like auto-responders and hotel-style “do not disturb signs.” But the main thing is cultural, everyone in your company must be made to understand and take everyone else’s “distraction-free time” seriously.

Technology is but one of several important facets of a successful business. Contact us today at 1-888-201-0567 to learn more about branding, marketing, sales training, and how to turn your practice into a growth machine. We offer individually tailored consulting packages that produce an average return on investment of 165%.

A lot has been said about success by a lot of different people. Among them, however, there are some commonalities. Here’s our guide to the most important steps to unlocking your professional success.

Find Something You’re Passionate About And Then Do It!

We all have something we’re deeply passionate about. Whether we realize it or not, we do.

There are certain jobs which make us more fulfilled than others. Those things we would do if money were not an option. For me, my passion is empowering others whether through speech, or the written word. Finding your passion helps you deliver you best performance which goes a long way in helping you achieve your career dreams.

Define Success For Yourself

My definition of success is and should be different from yours. The second secret to unlocking your career potential is knowing what success means to you, and you alone. So you’ve identified a career that is in line with your passions, now you must measure whether or not that career will be as successful as you want it to be…and the only way you can measure that is if you know what success means to you. Not what success means to your parents, your friends, your old college roommates, Donald Trump or even your spouse.

Develop Self Awareness

Self-awareness is the key cornerstone to emotional intelligence (this according to psychologist Daniel Goleman). The ability to monitor our emotions and thoughts from moment to moment is key to understanding ourselves better, being at peace with who we are and proactively managing our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. In addition, self-aware people tend to act consciously rather than react passively, to be in good psychological health and to have a positive outlook on life. Being self-aware is also essential in knowing your own potential. This includes being realistic about your strengths, your weaknesses – even your limitations. Once you know what you’re good at and what you’re not, you can begin working on amplifying your strengths and strengthening your weaknesses. Anyone can’t be anything but everyone can be great at something. And it’s important to know what exactly that “something” is.

Know Your Allies

Who can help you in your quest to unlock your career potential? Knowing your allies is critical to know who to spend time with – and who to avoid. Allies basically come in three forms:

• Coaches
• Leaders
• Partners

The key to using allies effectively is knowing which category they fall into. Every type of ally has his or her strength, and likewise, a weakness; so, for instance, asking a Partner to be a Coach or a Coach to be a Partner puts them in a precarious position of trying – and failing – to be something they’re not.

Now that you know the most important steps for unlocking your own personal success, don’t hesitate to contact us today for a free consultation so we can help you make your business as successful as you are. With an average growth rate of 165%, our clients are redefining what success looks like. Isn’t it time you did too?

Working well together as a team is necessary to the success of any enterprise. But building an effective, well-oiled team is no easy task. Here’s our guide to how to build a powerful collaborative team.

Why Is Collaborative Teamwork Important?

Be it in sports or business, teamwork is always the road that leads to success. It’s the best weapon you have in your arsenal against competitors, and it’s vital that you and everyone on your team understand this because talent, according to Michael Jordan, wins games, but teamwork wins championships.

Collaboration helps you to create a team-oriented workforce that promotes a great environment to work and ensures your employees’ job satisfaction. However, it is a challenging task to implement a collaborative environment as it calls for a paradigm shift, changing the focus to the success of the team as a whole and not individual accomplishment. That being said, collaboration is a teachable skill. All your team needs to do is actively harness their strengths and work together to reach common organizational goals. So how do you do that?

Create And Clearly Define A Compelling Cause

To create a cohesion, team members must be provided with a convincing reason to be a part of the company’s mission. The more compelling and exciting the mission, the easier it is to inspire team members to want to be a part of what the company aspires to accomplish. When they are given a clear and gripping cause to be involved with, team members naturally become as passionate about the goals and objectives of their leaders. If team members do not care or are unclear about the goals and objectives presented to them, they will find all kinds of reasons not to work together. For collaboration to work, the vision and purpose must be clear.

Establish Standards

It is essential to establish team norms to define how each member interact with each other and conduct themselves. Establishing ground rules helps team members express things that are important to them and learn from each other without disturbing the work culture. In addition, it plays a significant role in the success of a project. Having ground rules in place even before starting a project will provide a context for discussing any issues arising in the future. This will help you avoid frustrating interactions and grievances, arising due to miscommunication or misunderstanding. Clear ground rules also diffuse some of the stress so that your team members can better focus on the end results.

Set SMART Goals

To drive success in team members, it’s important to set measurable goals for each on a quarterly basis. The purpose of these goals is to provide team members with achievable wins. These wins have a magical way of breaking down barriers and creating positive momentum individually and collectively.

Further, it’s imperative to re-evaluate goals and redirect whenever necessary. At each quarter’s end, the outcomes of quarterly goals must be made available to the whole team as a way to measure and celebrate progress, and to determine where improvements need to be made. Working with this type of transparency decreases confusion, finger-pointing and the disintegration of team cohesion.

All of your team’s goals should follow the “SMART” framework which means they must all be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. Simply saying “Improve the company” or “Increase revenue” is not an acceptable goal.

Now that you know how to build a powerful collaborative team, don’t hesitate to contact us today for a free consultation on how to put them into effect. With an average growth rate of 165%, our clients are redefining what success looks like. Isn’t it time you did too?

More than 2,000 years ago, renowned military strategist Sun Tzu wrote his magnum opus The Art of War. In it, he said, “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory … Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Today, there’s a lot of confusion on the internet over the difference between marketing strategies and tactics. Some use the words interchangeably while others seem to misunderstand both terms entirely. Before moving forward with the more difficult tasks of actually developing effective marketing strategies and tactics, you must understand what exactly they are. This isn’t just semantics, and it’s not a waste of time. It is, on the contrary, a key component of a business’s marketing success and/or failure. Here’s our guide to strategic-based marketing versus tactical.

Definitions

To get a true, high-level understanding of strategic-based versus tactical marketing, we also need to introduce and define two additional terms: goals and objectives.

Goal

A goal is a broad primary outcome. It’s a clear and concise statement about an outcome which is to be reached within a specific timeframe. Further goals should be broad, general, tangible, and descriptive. Goals do not say how to do something, but rather describe what the desired results look like. Goals should be measurable in terms of both quality and quantity. In short, a goal is an outcome statement that describes what, as an organization, you are trying to accomplish on a large scale.

Strategy

A strategy is an approach you take to achieve a goal. It’s an idea, a conceptualization of how a particular goal could be achieved. Setting realistic, actionable marketing strategies is one of the hardest things to do in business. Luckily for you, strategic marketing is one of our specialties at Creative Coaching Inc. Check out our consultation services if you need help developing and/or implementing an effective strategic marketing plan for your business.

Objective

An objective is a quantifiable step one takes to achieve a strategy. Objectives are specific, measurable, actionable, realistic, and time-bound. It is a series of objectives that must be attained to accomplish specific goals. Objectives define the actions that must be taken to reach the goal.

Tactic

A marketing tactic is a tool you use in pursuing a particular objective (an objective which is aligned with your overall strategy). It is, in other words, a real, tangible action you take in executing a specific strategy.

Business Is War

Still confused? Well, let’s take the classic battlefield analogy. The military is, after all, where these terms originally came from.

In battle, an example of a goal could be to win the war. A strategy towards that goal/end could be to divide and conquer. One particular objective, or step, towards that strategy, could be to land and capture the beach at Normandy. And a tactic towards achieving that objective could be to land in secret and all at once so as to overwhelm the enemy’s defenses and quickly establish a beachhead.

If you need help developing an effective marketing strategy for your business or advice on efficiently implementing actionable tactics, give Creative Coaching a call at (888) 201-0567 for a free, no-obligation consultation.

Whether you have two employees or a team of hundreds, the success of your business depends on how well you train every single team member.

Employee training ensures each person feels ready and able to take on their role. No to mention, it makes recent hires feel included and provides new challenges for longtime employees to meet. Training both rolls out the welcome mat and sets the stage for what each person can achieve.

But, you need the best training to make such results (and more) happen. Here are all the ways quality employee training makes a difference in your company.

1. Builds a More United Team

To reach any level of success, everyone has to be on the same page. This is the basic function employee training accomplishes – especially if you plan company training from time to time.

Employee training is mostly used when you’ve just hired someone or you’re making changes to business processes. Company training is like a refresher. It brings everyone together for a day to talk about current expectations and where you can all go from here.

2. Strengthens Company Culture

Whenever you focus on training, you shouldn’t just talk about employee skills and business functions alone. Put an emphasis on the culture, too.

That’s the difference between offering quality employee training and taking the average approach. If you underestimate the value of training, you’re going to have trouble getting employees bought-in to the culture. But, if you make training exciting and execute it well, your team will feel more connected to the business as a whole.

3. Ensures Everyone Feels Safe and Respected

Most people think culture is only the fun stuff. Employers and employees alike usually mention having a beer in the office or bringing dogs to work when they talk about culture.

But, a major part of having a strong company culture is ensuring everyone feels safe and respected. Include some sexual harassment and diversity training in your employee development program. Combined with skill training and culture expectations, this will result in a truly amazing team.

4. Creates Better Communication Systems

How do employees relay when they feel harassed, or as if their work isn’t challenging anymore? Through the right communication systems.

Use individual training as a chance to gather feedback from current employees. When bringing on someone new, make sure they know their channels of communication for everything from project updates and getting the go-ahead on their ideas, to reporting misconduct or asking about payments.

This is a proactive way of reducing any confusion that may occur during day-to-day operations.

5. Increases Productivity Levels

Speaking of day-to-day work, consider how productive your team is right now.

Have your sales numbers lingered at the same amount the past few months? Have people stopped staying late every once in a while or worse, started going home early?

Make sure your team is invested in the work they’re doing and focused on the goals you’ve all set together. The right training and development can do exactly this. It refreshes current employees to work harder and tells new employees exactly the kind of work environment they’re getting into.

6. Encourages Innovative Thinking

When people start to work harder, eventually, they find ways to work smarter.

The better skills and mindset your employee training produces, the better ideas your employees come up with. This may be the difference between a mediocre marketing campaign and one that goes viral, or the shift from being the second-best business in your industry to reaching the number one spot in your market.

7. Supports Individual Development

Employee training, on a one-on-one or company-wide level, should always focus on the individual. How are you making sure each person on your team feels included and motivated?

That’s the key to the success of the team. Training has to provide stepping stones for each person to understand their next step.

For new hires, it may look like 30-60-90 day goals. For longtime employees, it may be a conversation about possible roles they can take on in the future. For everyone, though, you have to offer the right tools to get each employee from where they are to where they want to be within the company.

8. Identifies New Opportunities

Sometimes, you need quality employee training to totally transform the way you do things. This is mostly used by businesses who are entering new marketings or going through some sort of rebranding. Other opportunities may call for training, too.

Still, the point is to regroup and move forward as a team. Employee training can help you gather feedback on which new direction to take. It also gives you the chance to recognize shining stars within the team, which you should start thinking about new tasks and roles for.

9. Provides Better Customer Service

At the end of the day, your team is what builds your business, but your customers are what keep you in business. You have to be able to serve loyal customers and new users well, whatever their issues may be.

As such, employee training should include a customer service portion. This is something everyone should be aware of. From marketing personnel to the sales staff and even the people in HR, customer service training ensures everyone is upholding the brand image you’ve worked so hard to build.

10. Reduces Turnover

The final reason to invest in employee training is to keep your employees. The right training builds higher levels of job satisfaction. It makes new hires excited to get going and encourages longtime employees to keep going.

The last thing you want to do is to be in training sessions over and over again for the same reason. Every training should be focused on the next steps of the business, on new opportunities in the market and challenges within the company to fix. This is how growth happens and how success is maintained.

If you’re too busy training a new hire for the same position over and over again, you have a bigger problem to tackle.

Quality Employee Training, Marketing Tips, and More Business Insights

Did you recently start a business? Have you owned and managed the same company for years, but you’re looking for ways to better use today’s job market and digital marketing trends?

You’ve come to the right place.

Keep checking back in with our blog for further advice on employee training, smart marketing moves, and other valuable business tools.

Stagnant Business Growth? This Might Be a Good Thing

There are few things as frustrating as a plateauing business. Slowing revenue, a lack of new client acquisitions, or diminishing website traffic can lead business owners to panic and wonder “what am I doing wrong?”

Contrary to how stagnated growth may appear, reaching a plateau is actually an insightful accomplishment: the methods you used to grow your business maxed out the possible returns. You now know that the methods you were using had a finite reach, which is a powerful indication that you must either adapt or abandon your current strategy.

To make use of this important discovery, business owners need the ability to pinpoint problem areas in all aspects of their operation. Did your growth slow because you’ve tapped out a market? Were you relying too heavily on customer referrals? Perhaps your value proposition could be communicated more effectively?

With such crucial decisions to be made, it can be intimidating figuring out which direction to go in on your own. While you may know the in’s and out’s of your industry like no other, you not be able to fully extricate yourself and view your business from an objective standpoint. Unbiased insight is your strongest ally in reassessing your business strategy – making a business coach the ultimate secret weapon you never knew you needed.

What is Business Coaching?

A business coach isn’t a cheerleader with a neatly boxed checklist of “do’s” and “dont’s.” They are not idea factories, constantly pitching “what could be” but never having a plan of execution. Business coaches provide extremely deliberate guidance, including:

• Helping you assess business pain points
• Identify strengths and value positioning
• Discovering avenues for the greatest potential profit
• And much, much more

Through the creation of unique, step-by-step plans tailored to your business, a business coach accentuates what’s great about your business and helps to finetune what you’ve already established. One-on-one consultations are essential to ensuring a mutual understanding of both parties. Your business coach wants to know your vision and bring it to fruition, while also facilitating your understanding of best practices and a ‘big picture’ perspective. A business coach’s focus never changes for change’s sake, but rather to streamline your business in order to maximize returns on all of your efforts.

If your business is experiencing stagnation it’s far from being a result of failure. This is a fantastic opportunity to take a step back and review how your business got to this point – and most importantly, to ponder “what could I do better?” Take advantage of this moment and partner with a business coach to transform a plateau into a turning point. A successful coach will be able to help you identify what was successful, what wasn’t, and work with you to create the positive growth and financial success you’re capable of.

Dr. Paul Inselman has helped numerous businesses just you like yours overcome mechanical blocks and double their income. Call for a free growth consultation. Dial 888.201.0567 today to break through business stagnation and begin your path to positive business growth.

A positive customer experience can do more to generate sales than anything else.

In fact, when American Express conducted a survey back in 2011, it established that 70 percent of customers said they would spend more on a company that offered exceptional customer service.

When a company creates that kind of reputation, they create loyal customers. Those customers then promote the brand by word-of-mouth referrals and reviews. Here are some customer service ideas for improving customer service skills in your company.

Improving Customer Service Builds Trust and Loyalty

These days, people have so many choices that loyalty doesn’t come easy for any company. You have to work to keep customers. You need to spend time and effort building your customers’ trust in your brand.

The best way to increase trust is by providing consistent, quality customer service. Customer service, or lack thereof, can make or break a customer’s faith in your company.

A bad experience is enough to drive a customer away from you and straight to your competition.

Pay Attention to Customer Feedback

Customer satisfaction surveys are still good sources of data. Though, they are no longer the only ones. What are your customers saying about you on social media? How many customers are sharing your website and other product links?

What issues are your customer service agents logging? Analyzing this data will let you know what your company is doing right. It will also let you know where you need to improve.

Some trouble spots may have to do with the product or service. Though, many times, customer dissatisfaction comes from a breakdown in customer service.

Companies do well to study customer behavior. Once you understand your customer, you can improve your product or service. You can also better the customer experience that comes with their purchase.

Investing Based on Customer Feedback

Understanding your customers also helps you determine which investments to make. Investments may be in your product line or your internal processes.

You’ll learn what qualities and features they’d like more of. You may also justify installing new technologies if they enhance the customer experience.

Customer Service Exists Across Multiple Channels

Customers today can interact with your company using multiple communication channels. They may visit your website, then go to your brick-and-mortar store.

Or they may visit in the reverse order. Some use your mobile app rather than the full website. If you haven’t heard the term “omnichannel customer experience” before, now is a good time to learn.

Your brand should be present wherever your customers are. That includes online, in-store, email, Twitter, and so on. Customers interact through all these channels, and so should you.

These are more avenues from which to collect the all-important customer service data.

Build Brand Awareness

Word-of-mouth is still the strongest form of marketing a company has. What your customers say about your company can make or break your business.

When you provide the best in customer service possible across all channels, people will have more positive things to say. They will remember your brand and recommend your company to others.

Customer Service Is a Stronger Draw than Price

Studies often show that consumers feel customer service is more important than price. They are happy to pay a higher price if it means having a positive customer experience.

Customer-Centric Business Model

If your brand focuses on delivering great customer service, then you have a customer-centric model in place. Your organization needs to remain focused on the customer and delivering your brand’s promise.

This should be the focus of all your staff, not just the sales people and customer service agents. Everyone from executive management on down should place the customer at the heart of everything they do.

Everyone in a company plays a role in the experience of the customer.

Giving Customers What They Want

Some people may think that business is all about getting the sale. That may be true to some extent. Though, today’s customer expects proper treatment. They expect to have a customer experience to go along with the purchase.

They know they are not just a number in line. Providing customers service along with the sale ensures you are delivering on your brand’s promise.

Quality Customer Service Mitigates Problems

No matter how customer-centric your company is, problems will pop up. If a customer voices a complaint, and your company addresses it right away, they may stay loyal despite their issue.

Pay attention to the negative feedback that comes through your channels. Don’t let a negative comment sit out there without responding.

If your company is willing to correct an issue right away, you will preserve that customer’s faith in your brand. This keeps them loyal to you and off of your competitor’s website.

Enhancing Training for Frontline Staff

Customer insights also let you know the strengths and weaknesses of your customer service people and other frontline staff. Your frontline staff interacts with customers the most.

Thus, they influence the customer’s experience more so than anyone (or anything) else. Their customer service skills need to be on-point to deliver consistent results.

Analyze customer feedback. Find out what’s keeping your frontline from delivering the best customer experience possible. Perhaps they need to be more knowledgeable about the product.

If communication is the issue, there are relevant classes for that. For example, English language or soft skills training. Your newer staff may need more customer service skills training.

Improving Customer Service Means Improving ROI

When it comes down to is, not a whole lot matters if you offer poor customer service. Take some time to review these customer service tips. See how you can better provide the best in customer service.

If you’d like to learn more about improving customer service for your business, please contact us.

Dentistry is a great vocation. It requires skill, helps people, and can be financially rewarding. But good dentists are not necessarily good business people. That changes today. We’ve helped a lot of dentists over the years here at Creative Coaching and we can help yours too. Keep reading for the five biggest business mistakes dental practices make.

Not Seeing Or Recognizing Potential Patient Problems

Recognizing problem patients before they have the chance to waste your time or sue your practice is essential to proper risk management. If you are paying attention, problem patients are usually not too difficult to recognize. They tend to have lengthy care histories from multiple providers, an above-average number of emergency room visits, numerous complaints about past care providers, an ongoing failure to pay for services, and a bad track recording of adhering to your medical advice.

These kinds of traits are common in plaintiffs and litigious patients. It’s best if you, or someone working in your office, is able to identify these early so you’re able to avoid even accepting them as a patient, to begin with. If, however, you’re already accepted them or for some reason choose to, then you should be extremely careful about documenting all of the care you provide them to protect yourself from potential future litigation.

Avoiding Technological Progress

Software, and technology in general, is eating the healthcare industry, and that includes dentistry. Cosmetic imaging systems, digital X-Rays, and argon-curing lights are becoming staples of a good, up-to-date dentist and you shouldn’t try and resist these changes. Technology can do a lot, aside from the obvious operational optimization, to improve your dentistry practice. It can make your life easier by minimizing administrative tasks and allowing you to focus on actually working with patients rather than endless amounts of paperwork.

A Bad Office Environment

Your practice’s brand (i.e. the particular image you want it to convey to patients) must shine through in your office’s design. You can’t expect people to come in wanting cosmetic dental procedures not to get turned off by old furniture or tacky decor. When patients step into your office they should feel comfortable, like they’re in the right place. Moreover, your office should exude a “successful” kind of feel, and that means professionalism. Both you and your staff must look the part.

Unfairly Or Rashly Sending Patients To Collections

A lot of malpractice claims come about as a result of dentists sending patients to collections. The problem is that once a malpractice claim is filed in response to a collection claim, a defense to the malpractice claim must be made. This is true regardless of how erroneous the claim is. You should therefore carefully consider any situation where you’re thinking about sending a former patient to collections. And if you do decide to do so be sure that practice provided the patient with top-notch, otherwise they’re more likely to fight collections and possibly file a malpractice claim.

If you need help or advice developing a successful business strategy for your dental office, give Creative Business Coaching a call now at 888-201-0567 for a free, no-obligation consultation. Our team can help you revamp your marketing, manage sustained business growth, and get high-quality new patients.