How To Handle Bad Reviews And Lies

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 12:16 am  
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By Mike Moran -

When my friend called me, there was a little panic in his voice. He owned a successful, customer-friendly small business, and was generally an easygoing person. But he didn’t know what to do. A long-time and loyal customer alerted him to a savage review of his business on an Internet Yellow Pages site. And so now he was turning to me to find out what he could do about it.

I asked him for the details and he ruefully related the story. When he read the review, he immediately knew who the unhappy client was, recognizing some details in the story. He told me that this client had been impossible, constantly changing her mind about what she wanted with no notice, and although he did his best to satisfy her, at the end he had to tell her that he had done all he could for what he had been paid.

Image representing Yelp as depicted in CrunchBaseImage via CrunchBase

He would have understood if she had honestly expressed her disappointment in him in the review (even though he felt she was expecting way too much), but what irked him no end was that her review attributed egregious bits of behavior to him that were completely made up from whole cloth. He had objective proof that some of her comments were lies.
This isn’t an isolated case. Although most reviews are factual, and some small businesses have it coming, there’s nothing stopping dissatisfied customers from responding in extreme ways. And the services that post such reviews, such as Yahoo! Yellow Pages and Yelp, don’t want to be in the position of having to discern who’s telling the truth, letting the “wisdom of crowds” sort things out.

So, what’s a small business to do? First, treat your customers well, remembering that they have more power than you think. Encourage your happy customers to post reviews online, so that the wisdom of your crowd is in evidence–that will dilute the power of any one negative review.

When someone posts a bad review, consider engaging that person online to try to make amends.

Unfortunately, it might require that you develop a thicker skin, because the rudeness of some online reviews might be more than you can bear. One San Francisco bookstore owner was arrested for battery after responding to a Yelp reviewer.

But that’s no reason to accept outright lies. When it clearly goes beyond a difference of opinion, and you can prove you’ve been wronged, go to the review site and plead your case. Show them that it’s a lie and ask them to remove it.

That’s what my friend did, and Yahoo! Yellow Pages, to their credit, did remove the dishonest review. But my friend learned form the situation. Now, he solicits good reviews and he works harder to satisfy even the nut jobs. It’s a different world out there, so make sure you know how to make your way through it.


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How Smartly Do You Work?

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 12:22 am  
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By Stacy Karacostas – Thu, 01/21/2010 -

Have you ever noticed how some small business owners get more done than others? I’m talking about increased productivity that isn’t because of working longer days or multi-tasking to madness, either. You know…those incredible people who have successful businesses and still manage to have a life.

What I’ve learned is that it’s not about how hard they work…It’s about how smartly they work.

There was a time when I was new to running my own business and “working smarter” seemed so pie-in-the-sky. It was something other people somehow pulled off. I wasn’t even convinced it was real. I didn’t have time to stop and think about better managing my time because I was working too hard!

Somehow, it was clear that other entrepreneurs were better at doing things that truly created more efficiency for themselves—in how they completed tasks, achieved goals, arranged their day, got found by potential clients, and so on. So I’ve spent the past eight years learning how to make this happen for myself and my clients.

The thing is, it’s clear working smarter doesn’t come naturally to everyone. Most small business owners have to, well, work at it a bit. But it’s worth the extra effort up front to get more done with less effort later.

Wanna be one of those folks who works smarter instead of harder? Here are some simple tips for you to get started…

  • For starters, let’s take multi-tasking. Believe it or not, studies now show that multi-tasking doesn’t increase productivity or speed up the completion time for each task. (Just type ‘Juggling Too Many Tasks Could Make You Stupid’ into a search engine for a great Wall Street Journal article by author Sue Shellenbarger. Or go here: http://208.144.115.170/columnists/workfamily/20030228-workfamily.html)Americans are a distracted bunch, and we have so many more ways now that things compete for our attention. You know the drill—the phone, email, Facebook. You may have a huge sense of busy-ness, but don’t mistake it for true productivity. Basically it ultimately creates a kind of stress response and messes with your memory so you get less accomplished and everything takes more time.Stop doing it and work on just one task at a time until it’s done.
  • Create more hours in a day by staying focused. Be committed to setting aside time for doing work with your phone and email turned off, and your office door closed.Few things come in via email or voice mail (remember that handy tool?) that must be handled right now. A few hours or a day later is typically just fine. So actually schedule time in your day to focus on a project, or time in your week or month to sit in a quiet space and do some planning.
  • Stop reinventing the wheel! While for most people the idea of sitting down and creating process docs for the different tasks you do seems like about as much fun as a trip to the orthodontist, it needs to be done—even if you’re a solopreneur.Otherwise you end up wasting time figuring out how to do the same thing each time and your efforts lack consistency. Plus, when you are ready to hire an employee or outsource tasks, those process docs are worth more than their weight in gold.
  • Get it off your plate! This is one of my favorite solutions for getting more done with less effort…If you’re really strapped for time, or you have tasks you just can’t stomach doing or are bad at, hire a Virtual Assistant (VA).They can do everything from answering email to setting up social networking profiles to building blogs, creating newsletters, sending holiday cards, and more. Some even specialize in online marketing. I hired my first VA 4 years ago and it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done for my business.
  • Turn it down! Not the volume—rather, be more choosy about work that you take on. Juggling as many projects as you can doesn’t inherently mean more success for your small business.Especially in the beginning, it’s easy to take on any and every client or job that comes your way because you need the cash. But it might well end up being just more tiring to take on more work rather than adding significantly to your bottom line. Plus, you want to make sure your more lucrative projects/clients don’t suffer from your diluted attention and efforts.
  • Make it happen, even on a budget. If you know you need to put more energy into marketing but you keep putting it because of funds there are some very inexpensive low-hanging fruit to go for.Try putting out press releases online, using social networking sites and doing email marketing. And when is the last time you spruced up your personal bio? Or committed to attending live networking meetings? If you have stuff to say that potential clients might want to hear—have you thought about blogging? You can create a blog for free on WordPress!

If you need more info on these marketing ideas, or other ways to manage your time and grow your business more easily, I’ve got another terrific resource for you…

While today is the last day of my f*r*e*e* Small Business Success Telesummit 2010, you can still join in for the final four experts. And you can also grab a copy of the audios and/or transcripts so you can listen in on all 12 hour long calls.

Five of the presentations cover information exclusively devoted to helping you run your business more efficiently and drive up your productivity. The other seven are devoted to things you could be doing to spread the word about your business, products or services and help more potential customers find out about what you have to offer.

Here’s a list of all the speakers that joined me for the three-day event:

Social media expert Nancy Marmolejo, PR experts Shannon Cherry, Diane Ennen and Nancy Juetten “The Bio Whisperer”, Time Liberator Susan Lannis, The Tips Booklet Queen Paulette Ensign, Savvy Networker Zita Gustin, Results Coach Leanne Hoagland-Smith, Founder of the HUBstreet social networking site Nancy Fox, New Business Mentor Leah Grant, Internet Marketing Strategist Erin Blaskie, and Practical Marketing Expert Stacy Karacostas. Plus, everyone receives a bonus ebook packed with helpful articles from these experts.

With the help of these amazing experts, you can get the info you need to transform your business without traveling anywhere!

Phone lines for the calls are limited, so get all the deets and nab your spot right away by going here:

http://www.smallbusinesssuccesstelesummit.com/

If you’ve already missed the live event (the last call ends at 2:30 PST Thursday, January 21st), you can get your very own copies of the recorded audios and/or transcripts right here. Or, if you register on the live events page listed above, you’ll be taken to a page with all the purchasing options.

http://www.smallbusinesssuccesstelesummit.com/sales.html#up

Do you have other tips and tricks you use to get more done with less effort? If so, I’d love to know about them. Please do share by leaving a comment…



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