What do we live for if it is not to make life less difficult for others
The purpose of your business, is firstly to get and then to make sure that you keep your customers. Something that’s difficult to do without some kind of plan. It doesn’t have to be a marketing plan, but at least something that provides your employees with a direction in terms of satisfying customer demands. Here are some things to consider when putting together a plan for encouraging people to do business with you. [Read more...]
A long time ago in a workplace very far far away, our careers were something that happened to us on the road to retirement. Very few of us actually managed our careers, rather we waited for our bosses and managers to notice our work and then hopefully we would get promoted onto better and greater things.
Those days are long gone now. YOU are in charge of your career, not your boss. People no longer typically advance in a straight line up through management in one company. The truth is – you will more likely take a lateral move into a new project team or into a new area of your company, without being promoted. Some of us will instead move up by joining a new company.
Given this, the questions that you need to focus on becomes: [Read more...]
Too many business people neglect to keep tabs on their competition. How in the world will you know where you stand in your market and your category if you don’t keep a weary eye on the other guys?
Shop the Competition, but go with an open mind. We all have a tendency to look for everything that the competition is doing wrong. It makes us feel better and superior, and it helps confirm that what we are doing is right. Here’s an even better idea :
Send your employees out to do your competitive shopping. Give them the assignment to come back with 10 things that the other guys are doing right. Think about that… What could you possibly learn from paying attention to what your competitor is doing wrong? What you really want and need to know is why those customers are in his store instead of yours.
Your employees will come back with ideas that they can incorporate into their work. Furthermore, you will get better result from your internal customers, your employees, than you will if the boss goes out and comes back to tell the employees what she learned. If that happens, the employees will not have bought into it or internalized it.
Dont do this once and forget about it. Make it a regular program. Send your staff out once a month or once a quarter, whichever is appropriate for your business.
In his seminal book What colour is your parachute ? Richard Bolles lists ten things that will greatly improve your chances of finding a new job.
Looking to fill a position at work this week, I received more than 200 resumes on my desk – this was apart from the hundreds more that will be processes through our career database software. Everyone of those applicants are waiting for that call, for that email in the hope that they are the ones who will get the nod, that they will be the one that gets the job.
The thing is: waiting to be picked for the right team is a cultural instinct. When we were kids on the playground, we dutifully waited on the sidelines hoping that the anointed team chooser/gatekeeper would notice us and pick us first for the team. Unfortunately, the job market today is not the school playground and if you want to get picked in today’s job market then you need to start by realizing that no one is going to select you – you need to work to be the chosen one. [Read more...]
In our business we strive to make our customer experience the best that it can be in our industry. Even though we have systems in place to ensure that customers leave us happier than when they arrived, sometimes , just sometimes – something happens in our interaction with the customer to make them really really angry.
Not just confused, or disappointed – but actually angry!
This got me thinking about the lessons I learned in psych grad school, and how I could apply the techniques I learnt from dealing with emotional/upset/angry clients/patients to better dealing with angry customers. [Read more...]
Most small business owners (and some large ones too) sadly operate under the false notion that their customers will usually say something to them when they are unhappy – unfortunately this is a incorrect assumption.
The thing is: Most customers won’t say anything if they are unhappy, they just stop buying.
The time to start asking your customers what you can do to improve your customer service, was yesterday, last week and last year. The time to start asking your customers what you can do to improve your customer service is definitely not the day your customer becomes angry, nor is it the day that you realize that you haven’t seen the customer in a while, because he has gone somewhere else.
The time to ask your customers what you can do to improve your customer service is when they are currently with you. [Read more...]
In your career, your colleagues can impede you as you strive to do good work and get promoted, or they can help you succeed ! Rather than looking at these colleagues as enemies who you have to confront at every turn or as colleagues who you are fiercely loyal to, you can look at them as whole people with whom you have likes and differences. Your goal then is to understand both and use both to one another’s mutual advantage. Here are 6 strategies to help you handle how co-workers approach their work differently [Read more...]
As a leader, as a manager , you are always responsible. This principle is incredibly important for good management. In a previous job, i worked with someone who was always blaming somebody else for his business unit problems. If a store did not look very good, he would blame his store manager. Then he would complain about his area manager for not being tough enough on the manager. Then he would blame HR for not providing good enough managers. [Read more...]
