Blogging for jewelers and metalsmiths made easy! (and for those interested in jewelry and gemstones)

I love eBay.

It has connected me with many other entrepreneurial business people, like me and you.

And it’s created a fairly well managed marketplace.

I typically only buy from sellers who have a positive feedback rating of 99% or higher. So I was surprised the other day when I had a truly bad experience with a seller who had tens of thousands of transactions and a near-100% Positive Feedback rating.

For privacy’s sake, I’ll change the details: I bought an iPod cover about a month ago for the impossibly low price of 99 cents. This sells at retail for $25, so I considered the item an amazing deal.

The seller promised:

• Shipping within two days of payment
• Expedited shipping for $9.50

What a great deal! I bought the item on a Monday and figured, with shipment on Wednesday I’d have it by Friday.

The seller went to great lengths in their listing and follow-up e-mails to stress how dedicated they are to quick shipping, near-immediate responses to inquiries, and receiving positive feedback.

Promises, promises.

First, I didn’t receive shipping confirmation until five days after I paid for the item.

Second, the confirmation e-mail said the item would be shipped that same day, but it didn’t ship until two days after that.

Finally, it was sent by regular US mail, not an “expedited” service, which I assumed to mean something like Priority Mail.

I guess when he said “two day turn-around” he didn’t mean two consecutive days.

I wrote to the seller, and they explained that they left for a brief but unexpected family trip two weeks earlier. The seller – who ships more than 200 items daily — left his high-volume business to a friend who promised to send everything out.

It was like Gilligan bungling the Skipper’s orders on Gilligan’s Island.

This is not a rant about eBay, it’s a cautionary tale for any jewelry maker, whether you sell on eBay or online or not.

It IS about how to deliver on promises as a jewelry seller.

Almost all of the jewelry artists I know have other responsibilities in addition to managing their jewelry business. Many have families, other jobs, and the attendant responsibilities that those roles require.

Here are five things to help you keep your promises to customers:

1. Don’t wait for an emergency to have a back-up plan. If your sudden unavailability would stop orders from being processed and mailed, have a plan in advance for ensuring that customers are notified and that the orders can be sent out, If possible.

2. Write out your fulfillment process step-by-step. Several years ago, I created a step-by-step outline of everything I do to fulfill an order. I keep this handy in case, in an emergency, I need to hand off this process to the few people who have agreed to pitch in on short notice.

3. Don’t promise so much it strains you. Although most of orders I receive can be filled the same day, I don’t state that on my website. That’s because there are days when I’m not in the office, or leave early and can’t package and mail the same day. Don’t promise something that sounds good but would be impossible to do on a regular basis.

4. Exceed expectations whenever you can. You will consistently delight your customers when you deliver more than you promise. Faster turnaround, additional bonuses or gifts they didn’t anticipate, and, above all, a handwritten thank you note for every order.

5. Offer multiple ways to reach you, and include those methods in each reply to inquiries. Don’t offer just one way for people to contact you. Not everyone likes using e-mail, and not every e-mail reaches its intended destination. Imagine a frustrated client sends you a note that gets diverted to your junk mail folder. Now they are mad about what happened AND that you didn’t answer the note they don’t realize you never got. At least offer your telephone number and an e-mail address where people can reach you. On your voicemail, provide an e-mail address where people can send a note if they choose. On your e-mail auto responder, provide a telephone number if that would be a quicker way of reaching you. Either way, let EVERYONE know when they’ll hear back. For example: “Thanks for your e-mail! We reply to all customer inquiries at 12 pm and 5 pm Eastern Time every business day.”

The seller could have avoided what happened on eBay. Although they had an excellent reason for why things went south, they trusted someone to do the work for them without changing their standard website text and follow-up e-mails to indicate a longer turnaround time on orders.

With their high volume, I can only imagine that now — after the fact — they are spending five times as many hours responding to complaints as it would have taken if they had temporarily changed their promises to something they can actually deliver on during the period when he was on vacation.

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2010 Next Exit Sign

Happy New Year!

It has been an interesting, challenging, frustrating, rewarding, and memorable 2009!

I had intended to include the graphic above in an e-mail I sent to thousands of customers and subscribers all over the world. In my haste to get the e-mail out, I forgot to include it!

So, if you got my Happy New Year e-mail, imagine that cute little photograph above appearing at the top of it. ( If you didn’t get it, and want to get future e-mails, which contain all kinds of amazing wisdom about selling handcrafted jewelry, creating memorable marketing material, and eating chocolate, go to http://www.marketingjewelry.com and sign up for it.)

Here are some “sudden thoughts on second thoughts” — reflections about my own experiences in 2009. I believe in giving credit where credit is due, by the way, and the title “Sudden Thoughts and Second Thoughts” belongs to legendary Philadelphia Inquirer sports writer Bill Lyons. Bill is now mainly retired from the Inquirer, although when something really special happens, they ask Bill to write about it.

So here, in no particular order, are a few things I’ve learned over the past year:

1. There is almost no device requiring electricity that can’t be repaired by simply unplugging it, leaving it unplugged for several days, and then plugging it back in.

2. The people who design the interiors of airplanes have never flown commercially.

3. You should generally respond to people using the same medium they use to contact you.

4. At the front of any traffic jam in Philadelphia, there’s usually nothing that would cause anyone to slow down.

5. People who love Starbucks don’t want to hear what you hate about Starbucks.

6. If you say things with enough authority, people believe it.

7. If you want to learn about real customer devotion, amazing products and a company that knows how to delight its clients, walk into an Apple store and stand there for one minute. That’s all it takes.

8. If you want to learn how to create angry customers, make up an excuse to call your cell phone carrier, the company that made your computer, the company that provides your Internet service, or most airlines. It will take more than a minute, but you’ll learn a lot.

9. What used to be bad for you is now good for you. What used to be good for you is now bad for you. The exceptions are cigarettes, which have always been bad for you, and chocolate, which is always good for you.

10. You can learn a lot from everybody if you take the time to listen.

11. You can learn a lot about yourself by writing in a journal every night.

12. There is no such thing as bad pizza.

13. When the toaster I inherited from my grandfather stopped working after 40 years, I bought a new toaster. When the new toaster stop working after a week, I went on eBay and bought a 40-year old toaster the same model as my grandfather’s. It still works.

14. No matter how fresh the battery you put in a watch you don’t wear that often, it will be dead the day you decide you want to wear it.

15. Regardless of your leanings, if all sides devoted their energy to working together, there’d be no stopping us. So, don’t wait for them — start looking for ways to cooperate with everyone. No matter where they get their coffee.

I hope that you have a phenomenal 2010 filled with great health, terrific happiness, and abundance beyond your wildest dreams.

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My good friend Bob is one of the top real estate brokers in my state.

I always admired how polite he was to everyone from close friends and family to complete strangers.

He once told me, “My father always told me to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,” and those two phrases have been a huge part of my success.”

For years, I’ve told jewelry makers like you to include a brief, handwritten thank-you note with every order.

Why?

Because in a world that has become automated, the personal touch means a lot.

Because in a world where everything comes off a printer, your handwritten note STANDS OUT!

And because taking the time to write not only makes an impression on the customer, it impresses on you, too, how important it is to appreciate and show gratitude for the people who give us their hard-earned cash.

If you’re not sending hand-written thank-you notes with each order now, go get some and start writing!

If you’re sending pre-printed notes, stop and switch to the old-fashioned kind.

I never thought I’d encourage people to do what’s traditional to stand out, but my friend Bob’s dad was right.

Now you can be, too.

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Get a free copy of my 10-page “Profitable Jewelry Selling Home Parties” report for taking a moment to participate in a survey about the marketing habits of artisan jewelers.

The survey takes about 5 minutes to complete, and it asks questions on how you market your handmade jewelry:

Take the survey.

As a thank-you when you finish the survey, you’ll be directed to a page where you can immediately download your free copy of the jewelry home parties special report.

The survey closes at midnight on October 22.

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Every iPhone owner I know loves their phone.
Apple understands how to create raving fans. Think about this from an advertising perspective — they’re not paying for advertising, people are BUYING the product and then advertising it for free through word of mouth for Apple!

I don’t own anything made by Apple.

But recently, I discovered a product that I fell in love with right away, so I can relate to what it’s like.

It’s the grilled chicken sandwich at Lisa’s Italian Market in Ventnor, NJ.

Grilled chicken. Broccoli rabe. Roasted peppers. Garlic. Herbed mayonnaise. All on Italian roll that was slightly crusty on the outside, chewy on the inside.

I saw them put the chicken breast on a metal platter to grill it in a wood and brick oven.

I watched them carefully roast a pepper over an open flame.

Every ingredient was fresh. Quality is clearly important to Lisa.

If you’re not familiar with the South Jersey shore, Ventnor, where Lisa’s is located, is a quiet beach community just south of Atlantic City.

I took the sandwich to the beach.

It was amazing. And large. So I wrapped half and put it away. I took my time eating the rest.

Every bite was excellent. The broccoli rabe was slightly crisp, nutty-flavored and added some bite to the sandwich. The herb mayonnaise married well with the grilled chicken, which was perfect.

When I was finished, it was like the ceasing of exquisite music. I never had a sandwich that good.

Well, half a sandwich.

So, here’s the rest of the story:

I had nowhere to put the rest of the sandwich. No cooler, and throwing it away was unthinkable.

Although I was no longer hungry, I looked into my backpack at the wrapped half of the sandwich.

“Well,” I thought, “chicken is good protein, so I won’t eat the rest of the sandwich, but I will eat the grilled chicken.”

So I pulled the sandwich out of the bag and unwrapped it. I picked the chicken out and ate it. It had some of the herb mayonnaise on it, and it was ambrosial. I heard arias from La Traviata coming from my back pack, but there was no radio.

With the chicken gone, I was left with what was essentially a roasted pepper, garlic and broccoli rabe sandwich.

“I wonder what that a roasted pepper, garlic and broccoli rabe sandwich would taste like?” I asked a seagull that was pecking at seaweed nearby. The seagull did not stop pecking at the seaweed, which I took as permission to go ahead.

I took a bite. It was delicious. That led to another bite, and, well, you can figure the rest out.

It was the best sandwich I’ve ever had.

And now I understand how people can become slavishly devoted to a product they really love.

Apple (and Lisa) share the value of creating innnovative and quality products that delight the senses.

Back when all computers were tan, Apple made them in the colors of candy to delight the eyes. The iPhone is smooth and fun to hold or touch.

A lot of places sell a grilled chicken sandwich, but the one at Lisa’s has a few points of difference that make ALL the difference. From sight to touch to taste, it delivers more than you expect.

When you’re designing your next piece of jewelry, follow Lisa’s lead and consider how to make it better.

A little more special.

A tad more pleasing to the eye or touch.

The small difference may make a big difference in delighting your customers.

And if you’re ever cruising through Ventnor, stop in at Lisa’s Italian Market and get yourself a grilled chicken sandwich. Then head down to the beach and enjoy all of it.

It’s a really good thing.

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Customer service personnel in large companies often think of customer service as a separate function of the business.

But when you think about your own thoughts and feelings about receiving poor customer service from a company, you begin to realize that it truly is a marketing function.

Recently, I call a company from which I buy a monthly service. Two days after upgrading that service, I received an e-mail offering a 15% discount on the very service I upgraded to. I called the “customer service” department to ask if they would honor the discount on my upgrade.

Here’s what happened: “Well, it’s too late. We can’t do that,” I was told.

I told the customer service rep, who had a personality somewhere between an iceberg and a pile of compost, that I had been a customer for years, and it seemed to unfair that they wouldn’t honor this permanent 15% discount for someone as loyal as me.

She became argumentative, and snapped that she would check with the supervisor, but that they “never” honor the discount under the circumstances I was in.

When she got back on the line (clearly, from her tone of voice, she hated her job, her supervisor, and me) she said, in the manner wardens use to tell prisoners they are being paroled but the warden doesn’t agree with it, “We are going to give you this discount this time, but that’s it. We won’t ever do this again.”

Without going into details, it would be very difficult to move from this vendor to another one. However, I have stopped recommending them to my friends, and business colleagues, as this isn’t the first time I’ve encountered a rude customer service rep at that company.

A letter I wrote to the president of the company once went unanswered. A fish rots from the head down.

Customer service truly is a marketing function. In your own jewelry making business, consider all the processes that you use to handle order-taking, fulfillment, follow-up, returns and complaints.

In all of those areas, you want to make the customer feel terrific about how they were handled.

One way or the other, they will tell others about their experience. Make sure the story they tell about you is a great one!

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About a million years ago when I took my first psychology class, I was fascinated by the concept of the “just noticeable difference.”

This was described, if my memory is correct, as the amount that a sensory stimulus must change for you to notice that it changed.

For example, the amount that the volume of a sound must increase before you would notice that it had increased.

In Martin Lindstrom’s thought-provoking book Buyology, he says that many (if not most) advertisers (and in the context of his book he’s referring to major companies, but it applies to everyone) fall into the trap of creating advertising messages that are so similar to one another that no one notices or recalls most of them! They all blend together because they are so similar.

No one is taking the chance to be different.

To prove his point, Lindstrom says that he collected approximately 60 commercials from 20 different cars and found that almost all of them followed the same pattern: the cars zipping around turns kicking up dust in a desert setting.

With so many things the same, unless you do something truly different you blend into the pattern.

Consider this when you’re creating your own marketing messages.

As you’re already aware, the average person is confronted bya huge number of advertising and marketing messages every day.

That means, to quote the great marketing author Harry Beckwith, you are whispering into a hurricane.

Dare to be different.

Create messages that stand out from the crowd.

Use your advertising, direct mail, story cards and website to ask questions that no one else is asking, or to make statements that no one else is making.

Consider what is truly different about you and your jewelry and stated boldly and in a memorable way that will demand attention and connect you with your rightful buyers.

You don’t need to boast. You don’t need to shout.

But you do need to communicate differently.

And as a jewelry maker, you are uniquely gifted to do just that.

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When I go to jewelry shows, I notice that many jewelry sellers, when standing at their booths, cross their arms in front of them. Many say they are doing this as a way of resting their arms. The problem with it is that crossed arms are a universal sign of defensiveness.

In fact, even if you are not consciously feeling defensive, crossing your arms in front of you may send a message to your prospects that you are defensive.  Additionally, defensiveness is not something that we are always aware of.  So, it is possible that crossing your arms when you are not consciously defensive may send a signal to your brain that there is something you should be defensive about.

To avoid this, monitor where your arms are what you are selling face-to-face.  If it helps, hold something in your hand (such as a pen or a piece of jewelry) that would prevent you from crossing your arms easily.

If you notice that a prospect has his or her arms crossed, take that as a sign that they are not quite ready to “open up” to you. Use that opportunity to ask some questions and probe and how they are feeling or what they are thinking. You can also hand them something, such as a piece of jewelry to look at, or an information card, that causes them to uncross their arms.

You will notice when you do this that people become more at ease with you.  And that makes engaging them with your jewelry much easier!

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As Harry Beckwith astutely observes in his wonderful book What Clients Love, some of the most successful innovations of our time – the personal computer, Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) and other things we now use daily – emerged not in response to customer demand or focus group results, but because someone got the inspired idea to create them.

Think about that if you’re tempted, as many artisan jewelry makers are, to try to design and make jewelry to follow prevailing mass-market jewelry or fashion trends.

People buy artisan jewelry because it is unique. A piece that they’ve never seen before.

If you’ve ever seen someone say “WOW!” when seeing a unique design, you understand what I’m talking about.

Strive to create from within, not from without.

The result will benefit the entire field of artisan jewelry, as consumers begin to learn that if they want something inspired, unusual and one-of-a-kind, there’s only one place to go for it: An artisan jeweler.

Go make something great!

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