My wife and I were ta our local Mall before Christmas and we found this cute Tea store called Teavana . First I’ll give ya why I love Teavana.

1. The store is really cool. Lots of ornate teapots, teacups, statues and tea. Really up my alley! I love looking at “Old World” type of stuff. They have a great range of teapots.. Did you know that some cast iron teapots can set ya back over $200.oo!  Definitely something I’m not ready for yet, but as I’m getting to like different teas, I’m starting to covet them!
2. The Teas are great. They must have 50 different teas to choose from, if anything it’s a little bit overwhelming, so many to choose from! I am really enjoying this process of becoming areal Tea drinker, Who knew!

Here’s where they are really chapping my hide… And please realize that this is my experience only, but I will add that my wife had the exact same experience when she initially bought me my teapot and tea there….

As a Customer… Especially a new Customer I expect to be treated fairly and with respect. That means you listen to how I respond top you, and you remember my responses. That didn’t happen!

The girl that was helping me was nice enough, in fact maybe even a little too “familiar”. When she approached me she asked if I was a tea drinker already.  I explained that I was a new tea drinker, told her that my wife had gotten me a pot there for Christmas and some tea and that I was just looking a round trying to figure out what to buy… She asked if I had a Cast Iron pot (those are the $200 pots) I said no, and she immediately tried to sell me one… This after I just told her that my wife had given me one not ten days ago from their store for Christmas… Was she indicating that my wife had made a bad decision and that they sold me a bad ceramic pot?  If she had offered me a trade up, perhaps I would have taken it, but there was no offers coming, just pitch about the pot!

Next I was trying to select teas, I explained that I liked the fruitier sweeter types as I had no sense of smell and that affects my tastes…

She asked if I was interested in the health benefits, I told her not really, if I liked the tea and it was good for me, well, that was an added bonus. So she proceeded to list all the teas with health benefits…

10 minutes later I told her again that I didn’t care about the health benefits so we moved on, I had read in their literature, (which is VERY well made and fascinating) about a bunch of the teas so I wanted her opinion of them.

She proceeded to take each tea off the shelf, show it to me and whaft the scent of the tea at me with the lid… Well to me they all look like something that I raked up in my back yard, and I have no sense of smell. So I explained and asked her nicely to stop waving the lid around, it was doing me no good… She didn’t listen, just kept on waving and kept saying it was force of habit….

Finally I had decided on a six teas. You have to buy them by the ounce with a  2 ounce minimum per tea. Some are as high as 10 to 20 dollars an ounce. I’m OK with  all that.

Here’s where I am really pissed. I asked for two ounces of the first tea, she poured 3 ounces in the bag and asked if that was close enough… I said no, I only wanted to pay for 2 ounces as I have no idea if I will like the tea, she begrudgingly took out some of the tea and proceeded on, we had this same ritual six times as I was trying six types of tea. Each time I told her I only wanted 2 ounces.

Ya know…If I was buying bologna at the deli at $4.00 a pound and they go an ounce over I’m not worried about, but at ten bucks an ounce, if I order 2 ounces I want 2 ounces. PERIOD.

Well, I get home and am discussing this with my wife, and they did EXACTLY the same thing with her. So I checked my receipt to see how much tea I had bought…

Each and every tea was rung up at over 2 ounces. One of them was 2.90 ounces! In my opinion that’s stealing from me. That’s unscrupulous, dishonest, deceitful business practice.

(I have to assume they are trained to do that as they did it to my wife, and she had a different clerk.)

She them proceeded to try to sell me tins to keep the tea in. I was lucky that she asked me, they just added the tins, one per tea to my wife’s order.(The tins are about 6 bucks each). She was shocked when I came home with tea in a bag as that was never an option of her, they just hustled another 24 bucks out of her!

SHAME ON YOU TEAVANA!

I appreciate that they are training their clerks to sell. I appreciate that artful upsell. What I don’t appreciative is deceptive and dishonest sales practices. And that’s what you are doing.

Will I buy there again… MAYBE. I have to look around online and see what my other options are now. As a new Tea drinker they had my loyalty until they stole from me… Now they need to earn it again, and it aint gonna be easy to do…

Folks, never, ever steal from your Customers. Never, ever treat them like anything BUT your best friends. Nothing good will EVER come of deceiving them!

The secret behind all and any advertising being successful is getting to know your Customer!

Simple? Yes

Easy? Sure!

Often missed? ABSOLUTELY!

Most advertisers spend a lot of time talking about :” The Wonder Of Being Me!”. They discuss how long they have been in business, where they came from, how much they know, how wonderful they are, the awards they have achieved etc etc etc.

But ya know what. Your Customer doesn’t give a hoot about that stuff. They care about what THEY care about.

So… What do they care about?

I don’t know. It’s different for every product and service.

That’s your job to find out. You need to identify who your customer is and really get to know them. Really identify who they are, what their pain is and whet their REAL desires are.

If you just said “Well John, that seems great, but all of my Customers are different.” Then you have a bigger problem.

You need to identify and segment your Customers into related groups. If you are selling a great hand cleaning soap, your customers should be anyone with hands.

But go deeper than that… look at the niches. Perhaps one would be Moms. One might be Automobile Machine shops. One might be Hospital employees.

You need to identify those niches and then create marketing that will speak to them, in their words, solving their problems, eliminating their pains.

Get to know your customers, deeply know them. The future of your business depends on it!

Locations: Starbucks – Derby, Ct USA

Time: Saturday Morning about 10:00 AM

My Wife and I were out refrigerator shopping. On a side note… I feel that if a refrigerator keeps the beer cold and the food from spoiling I’m Good – SOLD! In fact… I liked  the refrifgerator we ended up with on the 3rd unit, we ended up buying it – 7 hours, 8 stores and 46 units later…. but that’s another story…

We stopped at Starbucks for brerakfast and some morning “go juice”. I’m usually thrilled with their service, today was an exception.

There was a really nice Barista working the counter. He was probably in his late 50’s. He did a great job, and took wonderful care of us.

But as he was serving us… A line about six people deep grew behind us. Now I know that will happen occasionally. Here is where, as a business owner, I get a bit frosty… Sitting at the closest table to the counter is another Barista , jabbering with her girlfriend and enjoying a cup of Joe. Seemingly OBLIVIOUS to what was going on at the store.  She didn’t budge to help this poor Barista clear the line. We sat down, finished our breakfast and she still had not moved.

Now maybe she was on break, or maybe she was off work. I realize that in America people get breaks, but if you’re on a break, go sit in the back or leave the store.

To sit in front of a growing line, laughing with your gal pal is insulting to the Customers that are trying to get the hell out of Starbucks and on with their Saturday. It’s the true sign of someone that does NOT have an owners mentality. If I were there, especially as the owner of the business, I would have jumped up to serve whomever was kind enough to walk in my door and was kind enough to offer to buy my 31 cent cup of coffee for $2.95! After the Customers leave, there will be plenty of time to take your break.

If you have to take your break… and yes, sometimes you just HAVE to… get out of sight. Don’t insult me, the Customer by, from my perspective, ignoring the growing line. It’s just plain rude.

To make matters worse, about 8 minutes later another Barista appeared from the back room… who knows what he was doing back there, it doesn’t matter. The store is full of people who would like to give you their money in exchange for good food and good service. Making them wait 5 or 10 or 3 minutes when they don’t have to is  simply ridiculous.

Use this as a lesson for your business. Are you ready to make hay while the sun shines? Do you forgo your time to serve the Customer? Do you have lines out the door?

Lines out the door can be a good thing. At least you’re attracting people. But if you don’t have a system created and tested and honed to razor sharpness, that moves them a long quickly…. say good bye to that line. Say good bye to those pesky Customers…. Ya know what really sucks… To look out the front window of your empty store and watch that line grow out the door of the restaurant across the street.

You may have excuses for the long line, but are they just excuses or are they valid reasons.

The Customers perspective of your business and how you serve him is all that matters.

Forget about what your mom, your wife or your favorite Customers tell you.

Listen to the other customers. The ones who are just getting to know you. They don’t give a hoot about the paperwork you have mounting, the break you want to take or the phone call you just have to make. They care about themselves and what they want and need to make THEIR day better. If you make sure you serve those needs, they will always take care of you…

How can you better serve your Customers? What can you do today that will make a Customers life a little happier?

Lets discuss it. How have you been served by a merchant that either made you feel really great or made you feel like an unwanted pest? Let’s hear the great and the lousy and let’s take lesson’s from both of them!

Talk to me!

Trust is something that’s earned. It’s not bought, negotiated, forced, or connived. Once you forfeit that trust in your relationship, it’s over. You have to start at the very beginning to win back that trust – and even at that it may be a losing cause.

I was just reading an article and I’ll copy it here… I think it explains the trust issue as well as I could, probably even better!

This really is a hinge pin to the sale!

Please comment below and talk to me about trust.

How have you won it?

What caused you to lose trust in other companies?

Let’s learn from our and their mistakes!

John
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The One Thing That Changes Everything
By Alexander Green

One indispensable quality affects every relationship in your life.

It holds together all your associations. It determines whether you realize your dreams, both personal and professional.

And it virtually defines you to others. Without it, true success is impossible.

Stephen M.R. Covey is even more emphatic. He writes:

“There is one thing that is common to every individual, relationship, team, family, organization, nation, economy, and civilization throughout the world — one thing which, if removed, will destroy the most powerful government, the most thriving economy, the most influential leadership, the greatest friendship, the strongest character, the deepest love.

“On the other hand, if developed and leveraged, that one thing has the potential to create unparalleled success and prosperity in every dimension of life. Yet, it is the least understood, most neglected, and most underestimated possibility of our time.

“That one thing is trust.”

Simply put, trust is confidence. It is other people feeling good about relying on you.

And its value can hardly be overstated. Trustworthiness is the universally accepted test of good character.

When you trust someone, you have confidence in his honesty and abilities. You can delegate things easily and effectively. You can relax. You have peace of mind.

But when you doubt someone’s integrity, question his accomplishments, or worry about his agenda, confidence is replaced by suspicion and anxiety.

Take a moment and picture someone you trust implicitly. It could be a spouse, a parent, a sibling, a friend, or a business associate. How does this relationship make you feel? How easily do you communicate? How quickly do things get done?

Now imagine someone you distrust. How does this relationship feel? How easily do you communicate? Do you enjoy this relationship? Or is it complicated, cumbersome, and draining?

The difference between a high-trust and low-trust relationship is night and day. In a high-trust relationship, you can say the wrong thing and your listener still understands you. In a low-trust relationship, you can choose your words carefully, be very precise, and you may still be misunderstood.

Sadly, trust is at an ebb in our society. A Harris poll reveals that only 27 percent of Americans trust the government. Only 22 percent trust the media. Only 12 percent trust big companies. And only 8 percent trust political parties.

Personal trust is waning, too. Many people look back on contracts or commitments as something to negotiate. Half of all marriages end in divorce. Many (perhaps most) founder on a lack of trust.

We naturally gravitate away from individuals we can’t believe or rely on and towards those we can. Low trust is the very definition of a bad relationship. And once you forfeit someone’s confidence, it’s awfully hard to win it back.

This is particularly true in business.

We all survive by selling a product, service, or skill. Yet every sale has five basic obstacles: no need, no money, no hurry, no desire, no trust.

If trust is lacking, forget the other four. You’re done. The moment someone suspects your motives, everything you do becomes tainted.

That’s why successful companies make a priority of building and maintaining confidence. John Whitney, Professor Emeritus of Management at Columbia Business School, estimates that mistrust doubles the cost of doing business.

You may have the best product, great service, competitive pricing, mountains of supporting facts and figures, and testimonials galore. But if you don’t command and deserve trust, you will not enjoy long-term success.

It is never enough to simply invite trust. It must be earned.

In personal relationships, that means handling responsibility, proving your credibility, allowing yourself to be relied upon again and again. It’s not just about integrity. It’s about looking out for the other person’s interests as well as your own.

Employers build trust with employees by assigning them important responsibilities, giving them the freedom to make mistakes, and setting an example. Real leadership is about getting results in ways that inspire confidence.

In a world that changes as quickly as ours, trust is a critical factor. It is the vital currency.

Business consultant Tom Peters calls trust “the issue of the decade.” Trust makes work easier and more productive. It makes relationships stable and predictable. It creates a sense of community.

That’s why it’s crucial that we not violate it. Trust can take years to build but only a moment to destroy. And you may not even get an opportunity to try to restore it.

For each of us — and for every organization — trust is something to be built up, protected, valued, cherished, and carefully preserved.

It is the one thing that changes everything.

[Ed. Note: Alex Green is the author of The Secret of Shelter Island: Money and What Matters, as well as the editor of "Spiritual Wealth," a free e-letter about the pursuit of the good life.]

This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.

My wife and I went to Montego Bay in Jamaica, and stayed at the Half Moon resort. We had a Beach Front Suite, literally about 20 steps from the Caribbean Sea. % star meals, peace, quiet fun and relaxing.

One of our favorite things to do was a Dolphin Experience. We got to swim with 2 Atlantic Bottle Nose Dolphins that live on the resort in their Dolphin Lagoon. (They also had 4 of the most adorable Dolphin babies there!)

Here’s a little video of our experience!

Pretty cool, huh? It was so great to be able to just – exhale… We spend so much time as Entrepreneurs running and rushing, we really need to just unplug and ‘get the hell out of Dodge!!

I’ll share with you over the next few days some of my insights, and I had a bunch.

I did my best thinking at Sunrise. I LOVE Sunsets on the ocean, but Sunrise has almost a magical feeling to it, it’s so peaceful, so warm, it always inspires me and reminds me that today is a day fill of new possibilities, opportunities and blessings.

More to come tomorrow!
We be Jammin Mon!
John