| May 16th, 2008 | Develop Your Managers and Keep Your Staff |
Following on from the last edition of The Organised Times where we spoke about developing the people in your business, this week we’re focussing on the importance of the continual development of your managers. Leadership comes from the top down. Poor management skills is the cause of most employee dissatisfaction and results in their poor performance. The following article by Nathan Chanesman from My Profile is worthwhile reading: Poor management skills lead to poor employee performance It’s disheartening to read that poor management skills is the cause of most business dissatisfaction. You’d think that with all the training and investment that has gone into this topic that we’d learnt by now to get it right. Employees have lost trust in the companies they work for Kelly Services Survey published in October last year indicated that 47% of Australian employees believe “that companies do not have their best interests at heart”. Dissatisfaction seems to be the order of the day. 50% of Australia’s workforce want to quit it’s job and nearly 40% reported that they often “woke up in the morning not willing to face the day”. SEEK, the online job board survey of October 2003 reported that 75% of employees questioned are not happy with their current job. Asked what they liked most about their job 51% said “the people I work with”. And what did they hate most? 60% said “the quality of management”. Not surprising, dissatisfaction with management increased as people got older. The Solutions Get Profiled Visit www.myprofile.com.au They’ll help you find the right person for the job, and help you understand yourself and your employees and how you can work together as a cohesive team to achieve your business vision and goals. 360 degree Pirihi Productivity Profile Discover how effective a leader you believe yourself to be and receive feedback from your people stating how they see you. This can be a real eye-opener and extremely beneficial. You’ll be able to utilise that feedback and in areas requiring attention, we can help you become the best you can be. Email lorraine@office-organiser.com.au for more details or see our special offer below. Ask for direct feedback from your people. This can work however it may also be very confronting and you may not get the real truth. Often people will not voice how they really feel for fear of repercussions or because they know that whatever they say will fall on deaf ears! Get coached A good coach will help you enhance your skills to be the best you can be. Ensure whoever you use is external to the business. We can also help you in that area. Just send us an email lorraine@office-organiser.com.au for more details. Be Aware Take a look around you. Are your people happy? Do they enjoy coming to work? When you speak to them are they generally positive or negative in their responses? Is there a high turnover of staff or is your team stable? Consider the absenteeism rate. Are your people often away from work? These are a few questions to ask yourself. Encourage regular feedback from your people. Ask them individually and as a group what they think & how can you be a better manager? What can be improved? What do they like about their work, the people, the industry, the management etc. You can also choose to do nothing, which is not a good option. Don’t wait until a crisis occurs. A business owner I know said everything was fine. He said his staff were happy although he never did anything to pro-actively ensure they were. His perception was that he believed all was well because no-one complained. He only acted if a problem was brought to his attention. One week, three of his key people resigned. They had enough of the owner’s poor leadership skills. The loss of those people nearly brought the business down. So stay on top of things, be proactive, ask questions and take nothing for granted. The success of any business is a reflection of its leadership. Lead from the top. About The Author Lorraine Pirihi, principal of The Office Organiser (http://www.office-organiser.com.au) is Australia’s Personal Productivity Coach Lorraine specialises in working with businesspeople showing them how to dramatically boost their productivity, reduce the stress and the mess in their lives and have more time for enjoying their life. We Offer a Broad Range of Services and Products including: Coaching for small business owners and professionals, keynote presentations and workshops, books, CD’s, DVD’s and on-line learning programs. Take action today! Contact Lorraine to discuss your specific needs at lorraine@office-organiser.com.au Posted in Better Management | Comments Off
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| May 10th, 2008 | Unethical Negotiating Gambits and How to Protect Yourself Against Them |
Let me teach you the unethical gambits that people can use to get you to sweeten the deal. Unless you’re so familiar with them that you spot them right away, you’ll find that you will make unnecessary concessions just to get the other side to agree with your proposal. Many a salesperson has had to endure an embarrassing interview with a sales manager who can’t understand why he made a concession. The salesperson tries to maintain that the only way to get the order was to make the concession. The truth was that the buyer out maneuvered the salesperson with one of these unethical gambits. There’s no point in getting upset with the person who uses these unethical Gambits. Power Negotiators remember to concentrate on the issues and think of negotiating as a game. Unless the individual is Mother Theresa, he or she is simply doing what he or she is on this planet for, which is to get the best possible deal from you. You must be skilled enough to instantly recognize these unethical gambits and smoothly counter them. The Decoy The other side can use the Decoy Gambit to take your attention away from what is the real issue in the negotiation. Several years ago, an association hired me to do a seminar at John Portman’s Peachtree Hotel in Atlanta. That’s a Westin Hotel and a fabulous place. It’s 73 stories high, one of the tallest hotels in the country and possibly the world. It’s like a round tall tower with only 15 or so pie-shaped rooms on each floor. As I walked into the hotel I was wondering what I could do to provide an illustration to the people who would be in the seminar the following day, to show how effective Power Negotiating can be. A room had been pre-arranged for me by the organization that had hired me, and I decided to see what I could do about negotiating down the price of the room. Rooms at the Peachtree then typically cost $135. They had given me a very good corporate rate of $75. Nevertheless, I determined to see what I could do and within 10 minutes got them to reduce the price of the room to $37.50. So, I used the Trading Off Gambit. I said, “Well, I might be willing to settle for a twin-size room, but if I do that for you, what will you do for me?” I thought possibly they might offer a free breakfast, or something like that. However, to my amazement he said, “We might be able to adjust the price of the room a little bit. How would half price be for you?” The Decoy I used was that they only had twin-size rooms available, not king-sized. That wasn’t the real issue at all, of course; what I wanted to accomplish was a reduced room rate. The size of the bed took their attention away from the real issue. Watch out for people who lure you away from the real issue with the Decoy Gambit. Let’s say that you sell custom made tools and dies, and your customer is insisting on accelerated shipment. Stay focused and isolate the objection. “Is that the only thing that’s bothering you?” Then go to Higher Authority and Good Guy/Bad Guy: “Let’s get something in writing, and I’ll take it to my people and see what I can do for you with them.” Then turn the tables: “We may be able to accelerate the shipment, but it’s going to increase the non-recurring engineering charges.” The Red Herring The Red Herring Gambit is a further twist on the Decoy Gambit. With the Decoy, the other person raises a phony issue to get concessions on a real issue. With the Red Herring, the other person makes a phony demand that he will subsequently withdraw, but only in exchange for a concession from you. If the Red Herring distracts you, it will deceive you into thinking that it’s of major concern to the other side when it may not be. The classic example of the use of a red herring came during the Korean War armistice talks. Very early in the talks the parties concerned agreed that each side would be represented at the table by officials of three neutral countries, along with their own national negotiators. The South Korean side selected Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland as their three neutral negotiators. The North Koreans chose Poland and Czechoslovakia, but couldn’t seem to choose a third. They suggested that the talks start, and they would identify a third country later. What they were really doing was leaving an opening for the Red Herring Gambit. When the time came and they had set the stage, they announced their selection for the third country: The Soviet Union. The international outcry was unanimous: “The Soviet Union? Now wait a minute. The Soviet Union isn’t a neutral country.” The North Koreans responded by saying that the Soviets were not directly involved in the conflict, and there was no reason for them to be considered biased. They waged the battle of the Red (pardon the pun) Herring for quite a while, until the situation became absurd. The North Koreans continued to insist that they couldn’t understand what the objection was to using the Soviet Union as a neutral third party, until the objections of the South Koreans seemed as ludicrous as the demands of the North Koreans. The negotiations had stalemated. Just as it seemed that the pointless arguing would continue forever, the North Koreans announced that they would abandon their insistence on having the Soviets at the negotiating table, but they expected a reciprocal concession. Both sides had agreed earlier that during the negotiations, neither side would rebuild their airstrips. The North Koreans realized later that this left them at a severe disadvantage because we could fly planes off aircraft carriers, but they needed their runways. So the North Koreans decided that it was time to use the Red Herring Gambit and suggested the Soviet Union as the third neutral country. Now it was time to name the price: They would concede and choose a different country to represent them, but only if the South Koreans would waive the restriction on rebuilding the airfields. When the other person is creating a red herring issue that she will try to trade off later, keep your eye on the real negotiating issues and don’t let her link it to a concession you’re reluctant to make. Cherry Picking Cherry Picking is a gambit that a buyer can use against a seller with devastating effect, unless the seller is a Power Negotiator and knows his or her options. If you’re thinking of acquiring a new piece of equipment for your company, you can use Cherry Picking to your advantage. Shop around and accumulate information before you make a decision. Call up companies and have all their sales people come in and make a presentation to you. You’ll find that one has a good point in a particular area, perhaps a fast shipment. Another has a low price and a third has a good guarantee. So, from all these interviews, you piece together the ideal piece of equipment. Then you go back to the one you like best and say, “I’d like to buy your equipment except that I want to get the longer guarantee. Or I want to get the faster shipping.” In this way, you create the type of deal and the kind of contract that you want. So, buyers should push for itemized contracts whereas sellers should avoid it. Because Cherry Picking is to me an unethical gambit, the perpetrator is less likely to do it to someone he knows and trusts than he is to a comparative stranger. So, sellers can forestall this tactic by building a personal relationship with the buyer. Another way to handle people who might want to Cherry Pick you is to forestall the Gambit. Let’s say that you’re a contractor who is trying to sell a remodeling job to a homeowner, and you know she’s going to talk to all the other contractors in town-how do you forestall it? The answer is to know more about your competition than they’ll ever learn. So the homeowner says, “I want to check with some other people before I make my final decision.” You respond, “I absolutely agree with you.” Always agree up front, right? Salespeople should always agree with any objection however ridiculous it is and then work to turn it around. “I absolutely agree with you. You should check with other companies before you make a decision. But look, let me save you some time. Have you talked to Ted Smith over at ABC Construction? He uses XYZ cabinets that have this feature, this feature, and this feature; but they don’t have this. Then if you talk to the national department store company down at the mall, the sales person who’ll come out will be Fred Harrison, and he’ll tell you about model number such and such . . ..” By the time you’ve gone through letting her know how much you know about the competition, she’s going to think, “Why on Earth do I need to waste my time talking to all these other people, when this person knows more than I’ll ever learn.” To defend yourself against Cherry Picking always consider the alternatives of the other side before making a concession. The fewer alternatives the other side has, the more power you have. If you as a seller refuse to budge on your price, then you force the buyer to pay more from another supplier or use multiple suppliers. In the case of the home remodeling job, this would mean that the homeowner would have to bypass you as the general contractor and contract with each sub-contractor separately. This may require more knowledge or expertise than the other side possesses or may create extra work and pressure that it is not worth the savings. The Deliberate Mistake The Deliberate Mistake is a very unethical tactic, and as with any con job, it requires a victim who also lacks ethics. The seller baits the hook when she prepares a proposal and deliberately leaves out or under-prices one of the elements. For example, the car salesperson who runs an adding machine tape on the cost of the car but includes only the price of a tape player, when the car also has a CD player. If the buyer takes the bait, he starts thinking that he now has an opportunity to put one over on the car salesperson. He becomes eager to close the deal before the salesperson spots the mistake. This eagerness makes the buyer a sloppy negotiator, and he may end up paying more for the car than if he had pointed out the mistake. Apart from that, the salesperson still has the option of “discovering” the mistake before the buyer consummates the sale and, with an accusing look, shames the buyer into paying the extra amount. The Erroneous Conclusion A variation of the Deliberate Mistake is the Erroneous Conclusion close. Using this method, the salesperson asks a question of the buyer, but deliberately draws an erroneous conclusion. When the buyer corrects the salesperson, she finds that she has made a commitment to buy. For example, the car salesperson says, “If you did decide today, you wouldn’t need to take delivery today would you?” The buyer responds, “Well, of course we’d want to take it today.” The real estate sales person says, “You wouldn’t want the sellers to include the refrigerator would you?” The buyers hadn’t been thinking of doing that, but the refrigerator looks better than theirs does so they reply, “Do you think they would include it?” The salesperson responds with, “Let’s include it in our offer and see what happens.” The boat salesperson says, “You wouldn’t expect us to include a CB would you?” The buyer sees an opportunity to get something for nothing and responds, “I sure would.” The Default The Default Gambit is one that involves a unilateral assumption that obviously works to the advantage of the side proposing it, such as the company that sends a payment check to a vendor after having deducted two and a half percent. Attached is a note that says, “All of our other vendors discount for payment within 15 days, so we assume you will too.” Or the salesperson who writes a potential buyer, “Because I haven’t heard from you on your choice of options, I will ship the deluxe model unless I hear from you within ten days.” The Default Gambit preys on busy or lazy people; it assumes that rather than take action the other side will take the easy way out and let you get away with it. Once you have failed to respond, the law of precedent comes into play. When you finally do object the perpetrator is able to say, “But you’ve never had a problem with it in the past.” As with all unethical gambits, call the other side on it and gently explain that you expect to see a higher level of ethics from them in the future. Escalation I once knew a man who became very wealthy after he sold his real estate franchise to a large corporation. He had been one of the original purchasers of a territory when real estate franchising was new, and the founder of the company was running around the country trying to sign up anyone who believed in his concept. Many years later a huge New York corporation had bought the master franchise and was starting to buy back the territorial franchises. After attending one of my Secrets of Power Negotiating seminars, he asked me to join him for a drink and asked me, “Roger, have you ever heard voices speak to you when you’re negotiating?” Not wanting to admit it if I had, I asked him what he was talking about. He told me that after he had agreed to sell his territorial franchise to the new corporate owners for what he first thought was a huge amount of money, he started to have second thoughts. Because his was the first franchise the corporation was buying back they flew him to New York for a signing ceremony to be followed by a press conference at which they would announce the corporation’s plans to buy back all the franchises. “The night before the ceremony I had trouble sleeping,” he told me. “I lay on my bed wondering whether I was doing the right thing. Suddenly I heard a voice talking to me.” “What was it saying,” I asked him, half expecting a humorous punch line. The history of big business is full of stories of people who extorted a little more out of a deal simply because they had enough leverage to do so. Frankly, I have mixed emotions about how to respond. My heart tells me that if people do that, you should call their bluff and walk away from the deal on principle. However, I also believe in keeping emotions out of a negotiation. If that New York corporation was able to pay the extra half million and still have it be a good deal (and it was still a very good deal) then they were right to swallow their pride and pay the money. o Protecting yourself with Higher Authority. Tell them that their suggestion does not offend you, but that your board of directors will never renegotiate a deal once it has been made and they will force you to walk away. Then Position for Easy Acceptance by telling them that although you cannot budge on the price, you might be able to offer them something of value in another area. o Escalating your demands in return. Tell them that you are glad that they want to reopen the negotiations because your side has been having second thoughts also. Of course, you would never renege on a deal, but since they have chosen to negate the original proposal, your price has now gone up also. It is better to avoid Escalation than to have to deal with it. Avoid it by using these techniques: o Tying up all the details up front. Don’t leave anything to “we can work that out later.” Unresolved issues invite Escalation. o Building personal relationships with the other parties that makes it harder for them to be ruthless. o Getting large deposits so that it’s harder for them to back out. o Building win-win negotiations so that they don’t want to back out. Planted Information Returning from a speaking engagement, I was discussing that day’s Presidential press conference with my seatmate. “I don’t believe he’s telling us the truth,” he told me. “I met a man who knew someone who works at the White House, and he told me that the President did know all about it all along. He’s covering something up.” What amazed me about this was that I found myself believing what this man was telling me, rather than believing what I had earlier heard the President of the United States say at the press conference. Why? Because we always tend to believe information that we have obtained surreptitiously. Planted information can be an astoundingly powerful influencer. A salesman is making an impressive presentation to a board of directors. Flip charts and audio visual aids surround him. He is fervently making a plea that they go with his company because it offers the best value in the marketplace. He believes that no competitor can undercut his prices and feels confident that he can close the sale at his asking price of $820,000-until he sees one of the directors pass a note to another director who nods and lays the note on the table in front of him. Curiosity gets the better of the salesman. He has to see what’s on that note. He finishes his presentation, then approaches the table, and dramatically leans toward them. “Gentlemen, do you have any questions?” Out of the corner of his eye, he can now see the note. Even reading upside down, he can see that it says, “Universal’s price is $762,000. Let’s go with them.” The chairman of the board says, “I do have one question. Your price seems high. We’re obligated to go with the lowest price that meets our specifications. Is $820,000 the best you can do?” Within minutes, the salesman has lowered his price by $58,000. Was the note real or was it Planted Information? Although it was just an unsubstantiated note scrawled on a piece of paper, the salesperson believed it because he obtained the information surreptitiously. Even if they had planted it, could the salesperson cry foul later? No, because they didn’t tell him that the competition’s bid was $762,000. He obtained the information surreptitiously, and he must accept responsibility for his assumptions. Simply knowing about planted information will help you to diffuse this unethical tactic. Any time that you are negotiating only based on information that the other side has chosen to tell you, you are extremely vulnerable to manipulation. When the other side may have planted the information for you to discover, you should be even more vigilant. The best advice I can give you about unethical negotiating tactics is the same advice as I would give you if planned to walk down an alley in a third world country: Learn the swindles and the tactics that unscrupulous people use. Be alert to them and when you see the first evidence of a scam being pulled, don’t hang around out of curiosity or a desire to outsmart the perpetrator-just run away from it as fast as you can. Never let your greed get the better of you. All con artists need a co-conspirator to pull off a con game. If the tactic doesn’t sound right to you, pull away as quickly as you can. Roger Dawson Roger Dawson is the author of two of Nightingale-Conant’s best selling audiocassette programs, Secrets of Power Negotiating and Secrets of Power Negotiating for Salespeople. This article is excerpted in part from Roger Dawson’s new book - “Secrets of Power Negotiating”, published by Career Press and on sale in bookstores everywhere for $24.99. Posted in Better Management | Comments Off
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| April 22nd, 2008 | Learning Disability 7 - Management; a Team or Prima Donnas in Suits? |
Personally this is my favorite disability. Perhaps many of you will agree with me. Others know the frustration all too well and won’t want to agree but will acknowledge frustration with a quiet nod! As we have described management disabilities over the past in this mini series, the faults or problems that can easily befall us all are put to the test in the management team. This group has to battle the demons that surround the organization and still come out smelling like roses! In larger organizations, managers feel a need to look good and protect their own credibility. They hire people similar to themselves or people not as smart so they can ‘coach’ them. They look good and their subordinates keep it that way. Wittingly or otherwise. An appearance is created of a well oiled management team, the frog is being boiled. Decisions are compromises and as democratic as a third world government. Decisions are seldom thought through and dialogued, seldom is one voice heard above the others when something doesn’t seem quite right. Disagreement is about laying blame, learning’s are lost, differences hidden, opinions are diverse. Poor frog. Management teams remind me of the prisoners’ dilemma - the Economics of game theory. When you hold two accomplices and give them the option - talk and walk, send your partner away or your partner shops you for the whole deal. If you both say nothing you are home free. Tough call. How well do you know your partners? Management teams that are not learning teams will fall over themselves when issues get tough and they have to apply themselves. Teams split, make irrational decisions or support the wrong team mates. With Sarbanes Oxley in effect, this could mean a jail sentence. Pressure kills faster. mmm, is that poor frog in a pressure cooker? Management’s approach to surviving the top floor has often been to talk fast and talk often, never listening to others that may throw you off your stride or interject with facts. We reward those that solve the problems not those that pose the problems… Posing solutions under the guise of being proactive or to be seen as a ‘hero’ manager makes business management even worse, but managers often use this approach to win favor and gain PR points. Does this seem like a learning organization in the making? Get out, learn, dialogue, evaluate, share understand the system How’s your management team?  Graeme Nichol, Principal Arcturus Advisors (http://www.arcturusadvisors.com), has worked on 4 continents gaining experience through Big Six consulting companies and boutique firms. Working with management to learn and achieve the impossible. In areas including; Business strategy, project management, change management, systems thinking, developing learning organizations, team development, productivity and quality improvement, and large scale ERP implementations. Posted in Better Management | Comments Off
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| April 6th, 2008 | It’s Easier To Get Two Things Done, Than One! |
If you’re like me, you are a person who enjoys focusing on one task at a time, while actively eschewing distractions. This is how I am when I write, work out, or make business calls. Single-minded. But surprisingly, I actually get more accomplished, and enjoy greater piece of mind, when I’m involved in two, different sorts of tasks at a time. To illustrate, let’s go back to my college days, when I was carrying a full load of credits and working full-time for a living, simultaneously. When I mention the fact that I put myself through school most people start to have a “poor baby!” reaction, which is totally inappropriate. Sure, I was very, very busy, but seldom was my burden backbreaking. As a matter of fact, I believe I did a better job of accomplishing those tasks than I would have done had I been “blessed” with only one. Here’s the reasoning that applied to those circumstances, and which pertains still, to this day. When one task is sailing smoothly, the other can be leaking, threatening to submerge in a stormy sea, and you still feel pretty good about yourself. After all, one major duty is doing fine. And the other? I’ve found that sooner, rather than later, it recovers, and suddenly, you have two great projects that are thriving, and you feel ahead of the game. During at least a couple of semesters, for example, I made the Dean’s list with straight A’s, and I was clocking over 50 hours at work. This isn’t multi-tasking, which is trying to do two or more things at exactly the same moment. For me, that doesn’t succeed. By doing two things, I mean setting aside enough time to alternate between them. If you do this, you’ll find it stimulating, relaxing, and incredibly productive. Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com Posted in Better Management | Comments Off
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| April 2nd, 2008 | CRM …The Emperor’s New Clothes |
The story of the emperor’s new clothes is a fairy tale about men who fooled the emperor into believing that they had made him a beautiful suit of clothes. In fact they had not made anything. The emperor went out in public wearing nothing but his underwear because he didn’t want to appear stupid since they had told him only the wisest people could see the fine fabrics.When the emperor went out in public a little child yelled…”The emperor isn’t wearing any clothes!” Today I am that child. “CRM doesn’t cover your mistakes or fix your problems and you have been lied to about its ability to “manage” your client relationships!” CRM is a system that is based on faulty logic. The premise that companies can manage clients is foolish! Business 101 will tell you that clients manage businesses. They tell the company what to sell, when to sell it, how to sell it, where to sell it, and will stop buying it on a whim depending upon a long list of uncontrollable situations (they are getting older, economic circumstances, politics, trends, health issues etc etc.) What does CRM do? It lulls CEOs, sales and marketing department heads into believing that they can hold onto clients by using data alone. CRM bogs down sales & marketing teams and creates massive amounts of additional work, keeping them connected to their computers instead of visiting clients. CRM requires cleaning just like any other database and the larger the database the more time it takes to clean. The sharing of information within a company can, in some instances, actually slow down the process of customer service, since more people are now involved in decision making processes. The bottom line of customer service is pushed to the side and direct mail marketing moves forward. Direct mail marketing has abysmal response rates and even if it was improved is a poor alternative to actually communicating with clients. Now is the time to go put on your clothes and fire the tailors! You have spent a fortune in purchasing the software, you spent thousands of dollars on man-hours used up in training and retraining, sent memos and held staff meetings, paid tailors(I mean consultants), and still are no closer to getting customer loyalty than you were 6 months ago. As a matter of fact it may be worse because client services have suffered while you spent all this time getting CRM up and running. Cut your loses and run! Now pull out a clean sheet of paper and write down this “to do” list… 1. Set goals for customer service that involve “WOW” customer service principles. Design a quality customer service program. Set a start date and end date for evaluation purposes. 2. Read a book a week on client relationship marketing and “WOW” customer service and give yourself a test to make sure you have retained the information. Then USE it! Make sure all your employees do the same to one degree or another. 3. Evaluate all your employees, are they happy, do the have a vested interest in your success, would they want to be your client? What is their body language on the job, enthusiastic, angry, indifferent, bored? Get rid of dead weight! If a customer is likely to meet your employees it MUST be a positive experience. Pay your front line employees what they are worth. Smiles and enthusiasm are worth at least $1.00 per hour. 3. Reduce advertising budget… increase marketing budget… understand the difference. 4. Cut out or reduce systems that tend to isolate you from your customers, voice mail mazes, advertising campaigns designed for the general public, autoresponders, self help kiosks or webpages, overseas customer service centers. 5. Increase communication through handwritten notes, visits with clients, feed back and brainstorming sessions that put the client and the business on the same side of the table as partners, reduce outsourcing, reward good clients frequently, use greeting cards with commerative stamps instead of postcards with bulk postage ( Customers think, “If I’m not worth 37 cents you don’t need my business.”), put some thought into client gifts (diabetics don’t appreciate candy) and finally ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, for referrals! Then ask for referrals again. Don’t look to CRM to solve the problems of customer loyalty. Look at your relationships with your clients. Meredith Gossland is owner of Lasting Impressions2, a Small business marketing service, specializing in multicultural marketing and high quality low cost customer service. Posted in Better Management | Comments Off
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| April 1st, 2008 | Procrastination Guilt Trip |
I’m guilty of procrastination. And I should know better. My newest book, 57 Ways To Take Control Of Your Time And Your Life,” covers the time management subject in considerable detail. I need to re-read chapter 6, “Discombobulated” on page 14. While I’m at it chapter 34 on page 80 called, “The Key To Finishing Is Starting,” is another one for me to look at again. Sometimes I vascillate between being really organized and feeling overwhelmed and my desk is a good way for me to judge which end of the spectrum I’m in at the moment. I wish you could see my office right now. I’m surrounded by boxes. These big boxes are filled with three ring binders for my new “The Ultimate No-Brainer Selling Skills Manual Volume I,” which is now available. There are even more boxes that were delivered to me yesterday containing my three audio book albums. Then there’s my desk - what a sight to behold. It includes 6 unread magazines, a stack of mail, and thankfully a stack, at least it’s prioritized, of things to do, and a stack of pending projects to be worked on. My desk is huge - yet it isn’t big enough for me. So the answer must be for me to get a bigger desk. Wrong answer. The good news is that I’m not always like this. Usually I’m pretty organized. But from time to time I do lose my grip on things going on in my home office. Then it’s back to the book on time management, that I actually wrote, and I’ll find the cure again on page 39 chapter 17, “Don’t Stash It - Trash It.” I only need the biggest trashcan liner I can find and about 10 minutes. This radical therapy simply says I should throw away everything that isn’t absolutely essential to my success as an entrepreneur. I seem to do this ritual every three months or so. When I fill up that trashcan liner with everything I haven’t used during the last three months - I feel liberated from the chaos all that stuff created. Trust me this works. I suddenly feel calm and comfortable again after I trash my office. The guilt trip flares went off today as I was re-reading a copy of my October 27th newsletter. In it I said I was going to discontinue the special pricing on my Boot Camp-In-A-Box on November 1st. If you ever get to feeling about your office the way I’m feeling about mine right now - try trashing it. Right now I’m getting the trashcan liner so I can get rid of the stuff that’s been driving me nuts for the last two weeks. In just a few minutes my procrastination guilt trip will be vaporized. Let’s go sell something . . . Jim Meisenheimer PS - Now available, “The Ultimate No-Brainer Selling Skills Manual Volume I. Go here to see what the bonuses include:  Jim Meisenheimer publishes The No-Brainer Selling Tips Use this link to sign-up for Jim’s F-R-E-E No-Brainer Selling Tips Posted in Better Management | Comments Off
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