When describing the promotional products industry to people unfamiliar with it, I like to focus on the transformative power of branded merchandise: how a properly decorated and useful product can make a marketing message truly tangible. As Paul Bellantone correctly states, it’s the only advertising medium where the recipient says, “thank you.”
I also like to point out that, due to the still-manual nature of producing custom merchandise adorned with specific logos, it’s an industry where every single order has about 89 opportunities for failure: orders keyed in wrong, incorrect PMS color, or a missed event date just to name a few. Many times this will result in the focus on perfection as a path to at least diminish, if not mitigate, those opportunities for failure.
However, in the promotional products industry – just like any industry – perfection is impossible. In fact, the very notion of perfection as a business plan is dangerous for the absurdity of pursuing it will stunt a team’s willingness to take intelligent risks. Instead of chasing down something that doesn’t exist in perfection, a much better approach is to understand that success doesn’t lie within the elimination of problems, but in the art of creative and profitable problem solving.
For any business owner, it’s critical to not just accept, but embrace, that there will be ongoing mistakes – perhaps daily. However, it’s seeing those “mistakes” as opportunities to grow, learn, and profit that truly separate an average business from a wildly lucrative one. Additionally, the time frame for addressing mistakes is crucial.
When something goes wrong, it’s essential for an empathetic team member to make every effort to connect with the client as soon as possible. At the same time, it’s equally critical to begin the process of looking internally to review and analyze your performance to determine exactly what happened. With that in mind, here are the four “be’s” of squarely addressing errors:
1. Be Gracious – And do so immediately. Deep down, you know you’re going to have to fix the blunder eventually and it’s not only more cost effective to do so at the outset, it puts the client in a much better state of mind about your organization.
2. Be Generous – Apologize honestly and make sure that the value of the solution is worth more than the cost of the initial snafu. The last thing you want a client to feel about the way a mistake is addressed is how miserly the solution is.
3. Be Mindful – People love to share stories of adversity and, ultimately, redemption. This is an incredible advantage as the company has an opportunity to write the ending the way YOUwant it told. When people share experiences with your organization, it’s critical to think in terms of how that story ends – and that’s up to you.
4. Be Educated – Use every new mistake as a teaching tool for your staff – be transparent and share in a safe environment. Unless the mistake involved a lack of integrity, the person who made it has truly helped your organization by exposing new opportunities to improve.
In business, there is a very strong possibility you will make new mistakes every day which is much better than the alternative: wasting time repeating the old ones. The real secret is to address mistakes immediately in practical ways so that the organization ends up in a better place BECAUSE the mistake happened. Stanley Marcus was right, by viewing mistakes and tangible opportunities to not just repair – but strengthen – relationships, a business paves its own road to success.
Bill is president of PromoCorner, the leading digital marketing service provider to the promotional products industry, and has over 17 years working in executive leadership positions at leading promotional products distributorships. A featured speaker at numerous industry events, a serial creator of content marketing, immediate past president of the Promotional Products Association of the Mid-South (PPAMS), vice president of the Regional Association Council (RAC) board, and PromoKitchen chef, Bill has extensive experience coaching sales teams, creating successful marketing campaigns, and developing branding that resonates with a target audience. He can be reached at bill@PromoCorner.com.