Newsletter #106 – Glassdoor, Restaurant test, and Stories that sell

GREG’S RIGHT FIT NEWSLETTER #106
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Quick notes to help you get more done in less time. . . next week.

In this issue: a mini-manifesto

– Techniques for FIT
– Being Human
– Random Stuff

Techniques for FIT
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• Glassdoor.com says it has reviews on over 600,000 companies worldwide. If your company has an open position, surveys suggest their website is the first stop for research by job seekers.
• Spend any time on the site and it’s like most review sites, people at the extremes dominate discussion. “I hate it” and “I love it” with very few “it’s okays,” which is how the majority of employees feel about their company.
• Companies can pay the site to take control of their pages. It won’t prevent negative reviews, and it runs anywhere from $6,000 to six figures for the privilege. The new price of corporate transparency.
• Next week, think about what you’d like your employees and ex-employees to say about your organization on a site like that. If you ask me, part of my answer is making business development everyone’s business. My book has the details.

Being Human – The restaurant test
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How will I know it’s working?

He takes a look at the book, flips through the pages, and with a slight grin, asks me to give him the two sentence version of what it’s about. Gotcha! he thinks. And he’s not wrong.

I stumble through an explanation like, if it’s true that new opportunities for your organization can be lost by any one of your employees, the opposite is also true, new opportunities can come from any one of your employees. This book shows you how to get everyone selling. He gets the point.

“And how will I know that what you say is working?” he says.

I start making a list like, there’s going to be an increase in business, your cost per lead will go down, you’ll attract new employees, people outside the company can describe your business, and you can pass the restaurant test.

“Restaurant test?”

Take your sales and marketing team out to dinner. Stand up and in your loudest voice, ask everyone in the dining room to raise their hand if they’ve heard of your company. If over half the hands go up, you pass the test.

That’s how you’ll know it’s working.

 

Random Stuff
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Get rid of some of this stuff

Things with stories are more valuable than things.

Many moons ago, I made a little extra cash by selling items on ebay. At the time I figured something out: if the item I am selling uses a standard description, like the boilerplate copy from the items website, it sells near the average “sold” price. However, if the item has a story attached, bidders tend to pay more.

I discovered this when selling a scraping tool. I bought it to power scrape my house in a fit of handyness. It was a German tool, not easy to find in the US, and it worked like a charm. I paid $350 for it, hooked it up one Saturday morning, scraped a 6×6 section of my house in about an hour, did some quick math, and put the thing back in the box. There’s no way I’m going to finish it, I thought. My neighbor saw me working and asked if he could use it. A week later, he had a perfectly stripped house.

When I put it on ebay, I told a long, drawn out story about my dreams, my reality, and my proof that it works as advertised. What did it sell for? $350.

I repeated the exercise a few times, most recently with iphones, an old bicycle, and my last laptop. Each time, the items sell for a higher average price than similarly listed items.

So tell a story. It’s not just an old Nike 9-iron. That’s only worth $40. It was used by Tiger Woods, daily, on his practice tee outside his home in Floriday. It’s been touched by greatness. That’s worth $80. But wait, not only did Tiger use it, it’s rumored that his wife at the time, Elin, used it too. She embedded it in his car as he tried to drive out of his house. That explains the kink in the hosel. Now, how much will you pay for that Nike 9-iron?

Use stories to sell your stuff.

 

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