The Power of Negative Feedback

“The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” – Ernest Hemingway

Without a strong understanding of your customer your company will never reach its full potential, and most likely, won’t exist in ten years. The defining characteristic of a successful company – large or small – is a fundamental knowledge among employees of what its customers want and need.

Gaining such an understanding can be tricky. Should you put out surveys? Should you get the latest market data about your audience? Should you hire a full-time customer service rep to take the pulse of your client base? Well, that’s all good if you have the time and resources to do it, but what if you don’t?

Try asking them. There is often no better way of learning what a customer needs than by asking. Take the time to call up a long-time customer and invite him or her to lunch. Try to choose someone that you know is capable of being candid with you.

You only have to ask one question: What didn’t you like about our product or service?

It’s so simple it seems stupid, but don’t underestimate the power of a single customer to change the entire direction of your company. Negative feedback may tell you where to focus more of your energy when you’re developing a new product or service or where you need to rethink your strategy.

Don’t let negative feedback hurt your feelings – it’s the only way to improve.
So I welcome your true comments no matter how painful they can be.

What's On Your Web Site? Why Content Matters

Are you passing up on hundreds, thousands, or even millions of potential clients and customers? If your company’s Web site doesn’t have quality content, then the answer is yes.

If you’ve ever wondered why your Web site doesn’t garner the kind of sales conversions that you expect, perhaps you should consider this: you have to give to receive.

Visit my friend, WujiMedia, to read the full article about creating great Web site content.

The Essence of Writing

Has there ever been a writer who has been completely satisfied with the words he or she has written? Whenever I write something, I like the idea behind it but there’s always something I’m leaving out. It’s just something simple yet completely inexpressible like an invisible weight on the chest when you see something heartbreaking, or the way snowfall makes you feel clean.

You have to have an audience in mind when you write; otherwise the story will not make sense. The bible was written with God as the audience. Dr. Seuss was written with his children as the audience. You have to find an audience before you can tell the story. Your story all depends on who you’re telling it to. The process of writing is the process of visualizing this person, this audience.

The more I write the more I understand that all writing, fact or fiction, is a series of pictures, not words. The job of the writer is not to proselytize about his beliefs in vain efforts to convert the heathens, but is more that of a director. The writer needs to decide what pictures to put in and what pictures to leave out. Non-fiction comes from interviews; sources, primary and secondary.

My Average Day

Driving down the road I couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be there tonight. He had been gone for a couple weeks now and I started to miss him, I guess. At least, I didn’t get that feeling that I wanted to punch him or mock him for being stupid. I know he’s not dumb, just low common sense, and he comes on too strong. But at the same time, he’s warm and loving, and gives incredible massages. My mind was racing and I stopped to take a couple of deep breathes, glancing at the scenery.

This part of town was an endless string of strip malls and under construction commercial sites. It gave me a melancholy that I could only escape with my CD player. I pulled on my headphones, ignoring the awkward glances of pedestrians and other drivers. Do people ever feel like they are always being invaded? Or was I the only one? It wasn’t necessarily a bad feeling. I mean, it was fine around most women and children and some good cheered men. But, for the most part, it was like everyone’s negative thoughts were being pulled into my body, like the way a leaf absorbs water through osmosis. It was a constant struggle to exert my own mind and emotions, to balance myself with both the obvious and subtle feelings of others. It always makes me think of hearing a juicy conversation that you know you shouldn’t be listening to, but you can’t help because they just talk so loud. That was the difference between him and most others. He always made me feel equalized, as if there was a perfect give and take of all the essential nutrients.

Secret Smile

“How do you feel?” She asked. She held a little device for cutting the cuticles of her fingernails. She didn’t look up when she asked, but held her hand close to her face, examining the tiny pieces of skin that protruded from her fingers.

“I feel fine I guess,” I answered. She was in the habit of asking questions at inconvenient times. I had lately begun to grow tired of it. “How about you?”

“No, I don’t mean right now. I mean in general,” she looked up and caught my eyes. There was a fire there I hadn't noticed before. She paused, keeping eye contact. “What’s it like to be so frigging gay?”

I scoffed. “What?”

“You know what I mean.” She looked back at her fingernails. “I know you have the hunger.”

I laughed, not understanding what she was saying. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“The hunger. You know… the hunger for male genitalia.” She smiled.

“Baby, you lost me.”

“Okay.” She nodded in a mock gesture of understanding. “That’s what I figured. Forget it.”

“No, wait!” I said. She had pushed me and now I was going to push back. “You can’t just say something like that and expect nothing to happen.”

What My Dream Guy Would Write About Me

We met at the park.

It was the end of another New England summer and there was the intoxicating energy of the season’s change in the air. It was in that small envelope of time just before the leaves start changing color. There’s freshness in the air and the breeze feels a little crisper as it blows through the long sleeve shirts you’ve just begun wearing again.

Maybe I just feel tied to September because it’s the month I was born. But no…I think there’s more to it. It’s the month of harvest, the time of plenty, and the entire northern hemisphere seems to be letting go of its final exhilarated breath before it launches itself headlong into the abyss of winter.

She was standing along the fence that bordered the bay, looking out over the inlet towards the naval yard across the waterway. The sun was setting and the sky was exploding in these beautiful extravagant tones of blue, and red, and purple that she said reminded her of the dresses Marie Antoinette must have worn – she didn’t see the Kirsten Dunst movie, incidentally. Standing there, all alone, I can’t fathom the glorious, scattered images that must have plowed through her mind as the ocean breeze seemed to glue that light cotton skirt to her legs.

Feel

“Baby, I’m hot just like an oven. I need some lovin’,” I sang as I sat in my car, taking my lunch break. “And, Baby, I can’t hold it much longer. It’s getting stronger inside of me.”

These words filled the cabin of my late-model Volvo until they poured like water from the open windows into the cold air of the parking lot in which I sat. A woman, older than I and presumably more cautious, judging by the look on her face as she witnessed my full-bore outburst of song, shook her head at me and frowned. It was a strange reaction now that I think back on it and it brings out such gravity and interior motivation that I am called to follow it.

I am a strange person. I do strange things: I dance around the house, radio on, trying to move every muscle in my body to different beats within a song while I cook French toast; I stretch, doing toe-touches randomly in groups of people; and I am occasionally gripped by the urge to break into spontaneous and dramatic singing of soul songs by Marvin Gaye or Al Green.