Category Archives: Sales

Use of Time Video

Uncluttering Your Use of Time

The video below show the content of a one-hour workshop to be used for business or organizational meetings. The video is 15 minutes in length and indicates some of the subjects covered in the workshop. Our workshop are not lecture but are facilitated sessions where the participants don’t just sit and listen but become actively involved. Consider for comany meetings, amnnual associatioon meetings and lunchand learn sessions. Contact us for more information.

bob@plangoals.com

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Uncluttering Your Use of Time

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Better Use of Time

Decluttering Your Use of Time

goals Nine out of ten managers and leaders tell us that they wish they could make better use of their time. They look for programs in what is called Time Management. We have found that what is really needed is not a management program, but an overall strategy in determining the goals to be achieved and how they can be integrated into our daily workday habit… Read the rest

The Investment of Time

Investing Your Time

One of the greatest lessons in time management is to realize the difference between spending time and investing time. The dictionary defines spend as “to use up, exhaust, consume.” If you spend, you have no return. On the other hand, when we invest we “spend with expectation of some satisfaction, of obtaining an income or profit.”

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Eeny, Meeny, Miney, Moe

The Games of Time Management

success

Have you ever sat at your desk and literally played this mental game. Have you ever heard these types of questions or statements rolling through your mind?

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A Life of Habits

Habits Can Create Business Success

business success Every morning I have a routine to start my day. I get up, brush my teeth, floss, rinse with mouthwash, shower and put in my contact lens. If for some reason that routine is disturbed, I might find myself later in the day wondering why I can’t see well. Have you ever found yourself leaving home and going in the wrong direction in your car because you are not going to work that day, but to a different destination. These are two examples of the habits that develop over time into routines.

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Rewards vs Recognition

Rewards vs Recognition as an Employee Motivator

As a business or organizational leader, we often need to consider ways to motivate people. One business owner was lamenting about the lack of motivation in his sales staff and remarked that if they were all on straight commission there would be a much greater level of performance. Let’s consider two of the most common approaches to motivation; rewards and recognition.

Rewards

Webster defines rewards as, the giving of either money or another kind of payment for something good which has been done. Reward practices we have seen include piecework incentives, sales commissions, and prizes for performance. Piecework was very common in the manufacturing of goods where an employee was paid by the number of products they produced.… Read the rest

Recognition Awards

Employee Recognition Awards Create Progress

awards In difficult situations, when companies are in crisis and can only be saved by major effort, group morale often rises to far higher levels than before. Individual objections and objectives are bypassed in the collective drive to do what must be done. This is where recognition awards take importance. High group morale can enrich individual motivation and performance remarkably! These are two types of awards: planned and unplanned.

Planned Awards:

1. Recognition Awards

On its basic concept, recognition awards are effective ways of increasing and boosting people’s morale. It encourages them to be accepting of and have a desire for change at all times. The change they will make is not entirely for the advantage of the company, but to their own personal achievement as well.… Read the rest

Best Practices in Performance Management

Recognition as Part of Performance Management

Performance Management is a system developed out of the best practice of top performing organizations to provide managers with a structured approach to the key retention criteria.Simplistically, most people will feel motivated and will want to stay in their job if their manager:

pays attention to their work
provides them with a job to match their skills, knowledge and experience gives them opportunities to grow and develop
judges their performance objectively

Most Performance Management processes contain critical opportunities for recognition.

Appraisals

Traditionally, the annual appraisal is the only meeting during the year when an average or better worker will meet his or her boss to discuss performance. People with poor performance can and do have a regular audience with their manager; sometimes on a weekly basis.… Read the rest

Avoiding Employee Failure

The Downward Spiral of Employee Performance

As a manager or organizational leader, you must be constantly aware of the environment you create. The environment can prove to be one where people perform well or one where people feel unappreciated and destined for failure. In a March 1998 article in Harvard Business Review, The Set-Up to Fail Syndrome, Jean-Francois Manzoni and Jean-Louis Barsoux discuss this exact situation.

Have you ever experienced a situation in an organization where, although you have been appointed to a responsible position, you don’t seem to be part of the in-crowd. Meetings are held without extending you an invitation. Your superior by-passes you, talking directly with your subordinates when requiring information or making decisions. You inclusion in social functions is often an afterthought.… Read the rest

Employee Absence

Steps to Stop Absence and Make People Happy At Work

absence If you’re an employer or manager, then work place absence is costing you money, inconvenience, and upsetting your customers. So we all know, not all days taken off work are due to genuine sickness. Many employees “take a sickie” because their morale is low and they just don’t like or can’t do their work.

The challenge for employers and managers is to make people happier at work. If people are happy at work, they are less likely to take a day off every time they wake up with a stuffy nose.

Some bosses think that paying more money, improving job security, or working conditions is the answer. It isn’t and it’s also something that can be very hard to achieve.… Read the rest

Learn to Build a Great Organization

A Successful Organization Starts With You

So often we hear from the owner of a business or the manager of an organization lament about the performance of employees or associates. They speak of it as though they were having an out-of- body experience in which they were completely separated from the activities of the group. When I hear these types of comments, I am reminded of an old Greek phase, translated to the fish rots from the head down.

Leaders often feel helpless in changing the performance of a group. There are many practices and personal work habits that they can adapt which will make a difference. Let us look at three areas and look at behaviors and how each affects others in the group.… Read the rest

The Listening Side of Communications

Really Good Listening Habits Are Hard to Find

Listen

When is the last time you had a conversation with someone where you really felt like the person you were talking with was engaged in the conversation and was really interested in what you were communicating?

Their body language, eye contact, and tone of voice were focused and inviting and surrounding distractions seemed irrelevant. Every one of us can remember a meaningful conversation and what it felt like to “be heard.” Being heard is an important component to how we measure our self-worth and self-confidence.… Read the rest

Business Success Starts With a Sale

sales

No process improvement, quality control program, financial report, or employee satisfaction survey can start without the sale of a product or service. Business of any kind cannot exist without a sale. Young entrepreneurs and people starting business quickly learn this lesson and, unless they successfully master this skill, will not succeed.

Salesmanship in the 20th century was all about product knowledge, personality and persuasion. In the 21st century, the buy has a lesser need for that traditional method of sales selling. An article in a recent issue of the Harvard Business Review, Teaching Selling states, “In the realm of selling, it’s the buyer who is newly empowered. Customers no longer need a salesman to know about a company’s offerings, much less to place an order.… Read the rest

Developing Loyal Customers

Some Points on Developing Customer Loyalty

The August issue of the Quill has several articles on the need and reason for developing customer loyalty. Now let’s begin to look at some of the concepts involved in the customer loyalty development process.

A point of connection is every time a customer or potential comes in contact with you, your employees or your firm. It may be personal, as is the case with employees; or it may be physical, like the appearance of your building. To develop loyal customers, every point of connection must provide a positive emotional experience. Let’s look at two examples of these emotional experiences… Read the rest

Leadership and Emotional Intelligence

In a previous blog, we considered Bosses We have Loved, Lessons in
Leadership /. I would like to share with you a lesson I learned from a boss, which I later learned to be emotional intelligence.
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Building Loyal Customers

Customer Loyalty

A Key to Business Success

Business owners and managers must be focused on building a successful organization. Let’s define success as a business which is profitable and sustainable. All businesses must be profitable in order to cover their costs and provide the owner with an appropriate income. Sustainability refers to the ability for a business to survive tomorrow, next week, next month and far into the future. Having loyal customers is key to both profitability and sustainability. The questions are, therefore, why are loyal customers important to success and how do you create loyal customers?

Why are loyal customers important to business success?

Loyal customers are those who appreciate doing business with you and return over and over again.

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