Matt Ortolani

To add here, the body language, and the nonverbal is extremely important. Especially in business, there is a lot that people will read into with regard to your communication. Be ready for that, train it in the mirror, or with others, who are trusted parties, and communicate using the training that you’ve developed. You always want to be respectful, but when someone tries you, you have to stand up. It’s vital.

This is definitely dependent upon the person. Some people are highly motivated by being self critical, while others are in need of grace for themselves. Whatever floats your boat, do it. But be aware of how appreciation of your efforts, or the lack there of, impacts you. This self-awareness will go a very long way in your success with SEM. And in life in general, good luck.

Excellent insight. I’d also say two more things. One is to always be honest with your benchmarks and the research around them. Many people can skew their collection, methods or analysis to account for biases. Do not do this. The second. Always let the data to talk. Crucially important to be informed by the data and informed properly. This is difficult at times, and extremely simple in other situations . Sometimes the answer is staring you directly in the face and other times things can be hidden that must be surfaced. Do the hard work.

All of this is great, and to add, improving policies, procedures, and guidelines is vitally important as your business develops and more critical customer feedback is received. Criticism can be something extremely valuable, when it is harnessed properly. Then you need to buttress against future criticism, depending upon the criticism itself. When in conflict with a patron or customer of any kind, it’s important to step in front of it quickly and address it. Then the learning and improvement can come in forms outside of just actions in the sales process. There can always be a misunderstanding that can be cleared up with a policy whether that policy is for employees or customers.

To add here, gratitude goes along way with anyone. So long as they are a good actor, versus a bad actor in your network, you’ll always get further showing that you are grateful and appreciative of those who do good business. When you have a positive thing to say to a person, one of my favorites, being that they are a consummate professional, it’s remembered. Second, when you refer them, and help them, improve their financial situation, and further their business, you have a friend and partner for life. Never attribute to malice what can be explained by innocent or ignorance .

Never be afraid to test around KPI’s. Meaning if things start to get a little haywire in your KPI’s, and their success, implications, make sure to understand the long term effect and short term effect of those changes. If you CPC increases massively and your CPA increases, but you have indications that your LTV is much higher due to average order value increasing or more actions inside of your funnel, be open to these indicators, and what they mean. Not everything needs to be as cheap as humanly possible in order to get a great customer. This usually is known, but it can be ignored early in a campaign, especially.