I always find my inspiration for articles comes from all areas of my life, when I am eating in a restaurant, like today, when I am at the local store or even when networking to name a few examples.

Today DaveOJ and I decided to have our lunch in a local stores restaurant. It was obvious the waitress was friendly but not very good at taking our order, definitely not very fast and the restaurant was almost empty and she could not remember who had ordered what so gave me the drink intended for DaveOJ. This prompted us to chat about why organizations hired people and either decided not to train them or when they were trained did not excell at the job they were trained to do. DaveOJ suggested it had a lot to do with the type of job and also the salary involved.

Speaking as someone who has worked in a store and the salary was defintely not any more than minimum wage I do know from experience that anyone off the street could do the job I used to do. How do I know that? It was pointed out to me on many occasions by the manager of the store. But, I learn fast, and when I do something I do it well, very well in fact, and not everyone is like me. I noticed on occasion that some of the staff did not do their work well and some even showed they cared very little for the customers. I often saw customers walk away without making a sale because of those reasons. I wonder how much revenue is lost and how many customers went away and referred their friends or family to this store or any other store that lacked great customer service and great products?

Why not employ staff who actually want the job offered, would enjoy the work and train those staff, if needed and thus offer the customers excellence and the money paid to the employee in wages and training would quickly be paid back with the increase in  sales? It sounds so simple but more often than not my way is not adopted and this has to change. With the social media opening up so many opportunities to let organizations know when they are doing well or not so well, millions of people are now making choices because of the experiences of others and this impacts the organizations greatly.

I really believe that this is not rocket science it is so simple a child could work it out and until organizations realise this they will continue on a spiralling path downwards never to return.

As a business development coach I know how it feels to want something so badly that you would do anything to get it. Whether you want to work for a large corporation or whether you want to build your own business, you want it so bad you come to me to help you.

I know how it feels because I have been there and done it! I could talk about doing it but I did it, so I know what you are feeling, the struggle you  feel every day when things don’t go according to plan, how difficult it is to keep motivated, believe me I do know. The thing is people pick up on your excitement, or lack of it and your passion or lack of it, and we tend to act differently on line sometimes to the person we are off line.

As a people person I watch, listen and keep an eye on how other successful people succeed, I learn a lot and sometimes sigh a lot, not everyone does it right, all of the time. What is most disturbing though is this blinkered view of social media platforms, especially Facebook. I can still see you whether you are on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, I can see how you present yourself, how you appear to other people, how you interract.  If we take me as an example, I have the Linda Ockwell-Jenner Facebook Page and what you see is what you get online or off. I have a mixture of family, friends and business connections.  Some days I might be ranting about something in the newspaper and another day I might gently hint that I am giving up alcohol because I attended a party. What I don’t do is go overboard and say things I might regret the next day, or even be read by someone who might be looking at me as a possible keynote speaker for their event. What you put on  Facebook stays on Facebook and can be read and passed on to people you might not even know. This is not a privacy issue, this is about conducting yourself in such a way that you never let yourself down.

I know for a fact that LinkedIn in particular is the place where most recruiters go now to find possible candidates for jobs, so these same recruiters may even be your friend on Facebook, but you may have forgotten that fact. It’s ok to have a great reputation on LinkedIn, but that same reputation has to stand true on Facebook, or people may start to wonder exactly who you really are.

Ideally never pretend to be someone you are not, on the other hand always be aware that your friends might be the path to your success in some degree and how you interract on Facebook can also be a factor in your future success. Another example could be if I am friends with someone on Facebook and they message me privately to let me know one of their friends is interested in me speaking at their conference. I then go and talk about this possibility on Facebook, but it would have been better if I had waited to see if I got the gig and  then announced it to the world in a passionate and productive manner.I know I look at people I connect with on Facebook and this offers me an idea of who they are and it could be a good or bad thing, so obvioiusly people do it to you also. You are being watched, nothing to be scared about just remember to conduct yourself in a manner to be proud of and be authentic to who you are.

For those of you who know me well you know by now that if there is a cause that I feel needs fighting for I am your woman. You probably also know that before I succumbed to breast cancer twice I worked 3 jobs, all of those jobs involved dealing with people, clients, customers, and sales. Me a sales person – no way! But I am not a sales person, honestly, what I am is a great, no fantastic people person, I relate to them and I know how people think. Ultimately when we are dealing with people it comes down to customer service and, even when I was waiting the first time for my results to tell me whether my breast cancer had spread, I had a smile on my face and my customers had no idea what was going on inside my head. Why would they? I had cancer so they had to suffer too? No way. I carried on working until I knew what treatment my doctors and surgeons suggested and when it was over I went back to work.

This week has been pretty stressful for me, and yes I know I created my own stress before you say it. The thing is I like to be treated with respect, I like people to consider my feelings and I am a good person. I treat others how I wish to be treated and that is fair. Unfortunately I do not always get treated fairly, but in the comfort and safety of my own home I do have choices. When the home telephone rang at lunch time a few days ago I answered politely and was subjected to what I first thought was a recorded message. A woman was offering me information, I had no idea who she was, and then she was barraging me with questions and I still had no idea who she was. I finally managed to ask who she was, and she shared her first name and place of work but could not care less who I was because she had no idea of my first or last name.

What eventually happened was I was so angry and upset with this call from someone who was very rude and nasty to me I spent my time finding out who she was so I could ask for an apology. Eventually I did track her down, but was met with more rudeness and the third time I talked with someone who apparently was her spokesperson who denied the calls ever happened and pointed me in another direction.

There is no point me telling the whole story, as it is still an ongoing drama, but I wanted to share with you all how this can impact not only the innocent people like me who answers these kinds of calls but also the organization these people are working for. When I worked the 3 jobs I was for all intents and purposes representing the company, and their brand and their reputation. Ultimately if an employee does not act in the best interests of the organization they are employed by not only does it mean customers could be lost via word of mouth, but the employee could face dismissal.

No matter how badly we want the sale, no matter if we detest the job we are employed to do, we have taken on the responsibility and trust of the person who employed us and I believe we should never abuse that gift. In this day and age with the economy not being the best it can be everyone is struggling to keep their heads above water and make a decent living.

Where customer service is concerned I am the best! I treat everyone I come into contact with equally, with respect and the best I can offer and I expect the same back. I do not blame the organizations for employing people who do not treat the customers with excellent customer service. But I do encourage other people to do what I do, let the organization know there is a problem and maybe, just maybe they can save one customer.

Today is another day, I have another cause to fight, and I will move on, one voice may be deemed a whisper, but one whisper can be heard by many.

Have you noticed how stores dress their windows? They want to show off their products so arrange the dresses, shoes, purses, etc nicely in the window for all to see. Some stores have taken to putting curtains in the windows and not showing people what they sell until the customer walks into the store. I think once you have taken the leap of faith and walked into one of these stores to see what they sell you probably know straight away if you are going back or not. I notice the younger generation clothes stores definitely are popular with the curtained window idea. I think this is because the brand is trustworthy, well known and customers have confidence in the brand.

Another example for a long time would be websites, we think of our website as a window to the world, so we dress our web site appropriately, or not, whatever takes our fancy! My point is some well known brands do have more choice than the lesser known ones, and it is OK to take a chance and gamble with an idea but be careful you don’t lose credibility or clientele.

That brings me nicely to the idea of dressing our social media windows. What you may ask is that? Well, when you sign up for a Twitter account you are asked to provide a name, a profile, a photo/logo and this is in essence your window dressing made easy. The social media sites provide you with a template and you add the bits you want to and leave out the bits you chose to.

On the other hand the clever window dressers will do their best, even with a template of sorts to dress their window in a unique and interesting way to draw more attention to themselves. This could be in the form of a really wow profile that compels people to want to know more about the person, or a photo that is friendly and welcomes people to connect to them.

We do have the lazy window dressers who prefer to stay anonymous and this will work in some cases, especially if your brand is well known, but in most cases people walk straight past your window. Remember when you went to look for that shiny new car you wanted to buy and you got to the dealership and found out that they were closed early so all you could do was stare at your dream car through the window? Imagine if the car was dirty, and scratched and looked sad and falling apart? Would you be temped to buy it? No is the answer.

It may seem like I am always talking about being dressed when writing articles about successful social media efforts, whether you are naked online or have not dress your social media window, it all comes down to how you want to be perceived.

I love to dress my social media windows and I always look my best and that draws people to me and they want to find out more about me and connect with me.

Here I am again with my thoughts:)I wrote an article recently discussing quality over quantity and by that I mean no disrespect. My thoughts are how important is the number of people in a group or the number of connections you have versus what you actually do once you have those connections?

As a business development coach I wonder why people focus so much on making a certain number of connections versus taking the time to actually connect with fewer connections and building the all important relationships we talk about all the time.

My article asked if you are a trophy hunter and how many trophies you have on your wall. This could be taken to mean Facebook in particular because we do have “walls” there. Once we have our trophies do we polish them and leave them be?

So you now have 500 members what happens next? What would be wonderful and very beneficial to everyone with groups here on Facebook would be for us all to connect via email, Skype, face to face etc and find out how we can help each other. We may not actually want to connect with everyone in the real sense of the word, but doing nothing other than displaying our trophies really leads to nothing.

Are you full of ideas, and decide to act quickly and just do it? Or are you one of those people who seem to like other peoples ideas better? They do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but surely you want to be your own person, and make a success of your own ideas?

Next time you are inspired by someone who is successful in their business look at how they did it, what they did and ask if they will mentor you, but do not decide to become them! We all have our own unique and special gifts but some of us do not believe in ourselves or have the passion to work hard to make our dreams a reality.

An example could be if you admire a business who offers printing to small business owners, and they are successful, have found a way that works for them, but part of their success is who they are and how they treat their customers. They offer excellent customer service, follow up and like to connect with their customers on a regular basis. Obviously you can take whatever works for you from that, but if you are not excellent with customer service, or do not like following up you will not achieve the same success the other business did, in the same way, because you are not like them.

Make your branding YOU, make your branding your own, make your uniqueness stand out, be yourself! So when I said do you have your own Bandwagon or are you jumping on someone elses, the question I am asking is, do you want to build your own business, or do you want to make it easy by trying to be like a successful business you know!

Today I am talking about how my personal philosophy, The APE Philosophy, can help you grow your small business to the next level of success you are working towards.

Awareness:         Being able to plan ahead, write a business plan with short and long term goals.

Prevention:         Knowing how to prevent some of the major challenges many small business owners encounter.

Early Detection:   Dealing with known challenges early enough before they get out of hand.

If you are aware of the steps to take to ensure your business has strong foundations this will save you time and money.

If you know how to prevent loss of revenue, credibility and even clients in the early stages of your business this offers you more opportunity to move forward.

Detecting any problems early enough to deal with them can mean the differende between success and failure.

So how are you made AWARE in the first place. One of the steps people sometimes like to skip when planning a small business is market research. Being aware of what is out there, who your competition is, how much financial backing you have or do not have are crucial elements within your business. If you decide to miss this step out and jump forward too fast you may find your small business does not succeed. Being aware is quite simple, visit your local small business centre and find out how they can help you. You may have friends who already own a business and they raise your awareness by offering tips and ideas how to build strong foundations for your future sucess. AWARENESS is a vital tool which, if utilised and used properly can benefit you on a daily basis.

How can you PREVENT certain challenges impacting your business. Prevention works hand in hand with AWARENESS, by practising both Awareness and Prevention you can definitely ensure your success. Let’s use your office computer as an example of practising prevention. You may not be able to hire an IT consultant in the early days so you decide to set up your business computer yourself. You can prevent the loss of data, and other serious issues from occuring by being Aware of the consequences in the first place. If you do not have a firewall are you preventing the bad guys from breaking into your computer and stealing all your client information? Prevention means you are aware of the relevant facts and ensure you act accordingly to prevent challenges to the best of your ability.

Does EARLY DETECTION mean you failed to ensure your business was adequately protected in the first place or does it mean that you detected a challenge early enough to ensure less serious conequences? Early detection means that there is a challenge, which you discovered early and you can deal with it before it gets out of hand. It may or may not be that you were not Aware, or practised Prevention, but ultimately, the goal here is not to be perfect but to do your best.

APE is a tool you can use in every situation every day of your life, I do and it works for me, so try it and see what you think!