Front Line Marketing
November 2008
Sparks Fly!
Your spark can make a connection and that can make all the difference 
Sparks Fly! is a monthly service tip sheet, generated by Front Line Marketing as an educational and motivational source promoting better communication.
 
 
head shotAt Front Line Marketing we are passionate about maximizing the engagement within employees and clients. Engagement is quite simply the differentiating element for business. The level of your employees engagement and that of your clients, will determine your businesses level of success. There is an ROI to service and it exists in measurement, reward and intervention of engagement.
 
Let us show you how to develop an ROI for your companies service while at the same time helping you to create happier, engaged and more productive employees and clients that are partners in your success.
 
Can you afford to still think of service as a 'nice to do'? After all, Your Brand Is on The Line
Zappos Offers New Hires $2,000 To Quit 
zappos 
 
 
 
 
The on line retailer is widely known for providing legendary service and they achieve that through the engagement of their employees. Zappos puts new hires through an intensive four week training on company culture, structure and business practices. Then they show their confidence by not only paying new hires a salary but offering them $2,000 after their first week to quit if they don't think that Zappos is a good fit for them. The result? A 97% stick rate.
 
Zappos is acting on the understanding that the character of a company can be the most powerful yet most difficult competitive advantage to develop and maintain. "The Offer" suggests a rare company that believes if you really want to amaze your customers, a great way to start is to amaze your employees and inspire them to amaze everyone who comes in contact with your enterprise. 

 
Zappos Core Values
1. Deliver WOW Through Service
2. Embrace and Drive Change
3. Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4. Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5. Pursue Growth and Learning
6. Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7. Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8. Do More With Less
9. Be Passionate and Determined
10. Be Humble

Check out their site and you'll see the 24/7 customer service number right up top. You'll see plenty of customer testimonials, a free shipping offer and 365 day return policy.
 
Thanks to Gary S. for bringing Zappos to my attention
In This Issue
Zappos
Forget What You Know
Percepion Is Everything
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Forget What You Know 

 
Many times our knowledge gets in the way of brilliant solutions. We know too much. Part of learning is trial and error. If you've been working on something for a while with no solutions, think about the failed attempts of Henry Ford's engineers who declared shatterproof glass impossible. Can you forget what you know? How about simulating the environment of Ford's new batch of engineers who naively didn't know that the innovation was impossible?

Young children believe that most everything is possible. Until someone convinces them otherwise. The world is a wide-open place filled with delightful possibilities. They can imagine flowers that talk and spaceships that shrink down small enough to fit under their bed. Nothing is off limits. To reconnect with that limitless sense of possibility is one of the most powerful benefits of heightening your natural gift of curiosity.

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."
"Perception is consistent and self-fulfilling. What you see reflects your thinking. And your thinking reflects your choice of what you want to see." A Course in Miracles

Hotel Maids Made Buff by Thinking Thin
Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer is a researcher who has published several important and provocative studies. In this study, she decided to look at whether our perception of how much exercise we are getting has any effect on how our bodies actually look. To do this, she studied hotel maids. 
 
As any casual observer of the hospitality industry knows, hotel maids spend the majority of their days lugging heavy equipment around endless hallways. Basically, almost every moment of their working lives is spent engaged in some kind of physical activity.
 
But Langer found that most of these women don't see themselves as physically active. She did a survey and found that 67 percent reported they didn't exercise. More than one-third of those reported they didn't get any exercise at all.
 
Perceptions Matter
What was even more bizarre, she says, was that, despite the fact all of the women in her study far exceeded the U.S. surgeon general's recommendation for daily exercise, the bodies of the women did not seem to benefit from their activity.

Langer and her team measured the maids' body fat, waist-to-hip ratio, blood pressure, weight and body mass index. They found that all of these indicators matched the maids' perceived amount of exercise, rather than their actual amount of exercise.
 
So Langer set about changing perceptions.
She divided 84 maids into two groups. With one group, researchers carefully went through each of the tasks they did each day, explaining how many calories those tasks burned. They were informed that the activity already met the surgeon general's definition of an active lifestyle.
 
The other group was given no information at all.
One month later, Langer and her team returned to take physical measurements of the women and were surprised by what they found. In the group that had been educated, there was a decrease in their systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio - and a 10 percent drop in blood pressure.

The Point 
 
What is your perception of your employees? What is your perception of your clients? Your family? Your friends? Politics? The economy?
 
Whatever your perception, you're right. 
Thoughts are like powerful magnets. Practice powerful thoughts.
 
To your success,
 
Bruce Cameron
Front Line Marketing
 
 
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