What are you ignoring?

Ignorance is bliss, they say…until it has a direct impact on your results and your revenue.

Research tells us that 68% of customers stop doing business with us because of staff indifference. 68% translates into a pretty big impact on your sales, not to mention your reputation.    

As a business owner or leader, you need to be aware of the way your staff are behaving – how engaged they are. You need to have an awareness about how your customers perceive your business. Ask yourself, “if I looked at my premises, website, staff, product, service offering etc., with my customers’ eyes, what would I see?”  

Could the way your staff treat customers be turning them away?  

Could the way it looks around your place be a disincentive to enter?  

Could the fact that your processes are perceived as user-unfriendly be pushing them to your competitor?

You need to know these things. You need to be aware. You see you can’t afford to ignore when it comes to EMIT and its relationship to your results.

I is for IGNORE: 

A lack of awareness about behaviour, surroundings and perceptions is based in a lack of knowledge or information; otherwise known as ignorance.  Your customers certainly won’t ignore poor treatment, unwashed windows or clunky search facilities on your website. But the chances are you may be ignorant of them.

Ignore the signs at your peril – it’s your choice.  

Let me tell you the story of a retailer whose sales were plummeting. Her first reaction was to blame Centre Management because, in her view, they weren’t doing enough marketing to stimulate foot traffic to the shopping centre. Centre Management felt the issue was far more localized. So one day, after I’d shared the fact that 68% of customers stop doing business with us because of staff indifference, the Centre Manager decided to subtly observe the store throughout the day. 

Every time a customer entered the store, the hired manager would move to the back of the store, make himself look busy, avoid eye contact and basically wait for the customer to leave. No wonder sales were plummeting!  

When presented with the evidence, the retailer was defensive. “That’s not possible” she said, “I go in and out of there all the time. I’ve never seen that.”

And she hadn’t…because she had never really looked before.  

Things remain hidden to us if we choose not to have awareness, even when they are going on right under our noses. It’s only when we bring our focus to things – look at them with other people’s eyes – that we can break our pattern of ignorance.

You are always accountable for poor behaviour in the workplace. But first you have to be aware of it. Ignorance is not bliss when it spells the demise of your business. And awareness always starts with self. Ask yourself, “Am I Enabling poor behaviour? Am I unconsciously Modelling poor behaviour? Or do I have a habit of Ignoring what’s going on around me, because I’m looking through the same old lens?