There are two major causes of business failure that result in closure or bankruptcy. The first is a company’s inability to sell its products or services, and the second is a company’s inability to get paid on time, which leads to it running out of money.
1. A company’s inability to sell its products or services: Nothing happens in a company until a sale takes place and the sales person brings in the money that everybody can live off. (more…)
Poor customer service creates a leak in your organization, causing potentially loyal customers to slip away. In other words, poor service will cost your organization money. Lots of money.
You incur this cost in two ways . . .
So where is all the lost money going? (more…)
If there is one strategy tool for building profitability in a service organization, it is the service-profit chain.
This ‘chain’ works based on the natural concept of chains which is that a chain is only as strong as its links. Hence, to make a chain strong, all the links must be made strong. Conversely, if any link of a chain is weak, the whole chain is as weak as that link. (more…)
One-size-fits-all – using the same leadership style for everyone in a team. This is a flawed approach and should be avoided because every individual is different and should be treated as such.
In other words, at any point in a team, individuals are at different developmental levels. Hence managers should vary their style of leadership based on each individual’s developmental level. This approach, developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard, is known as situational leadership. (more…)
Please look over the following questions:
If you find yourself feeling a twinge of guilt at any point while working through the questions listed above, then it’s recommended that you try Eisenhower Matrix (also known as the urgent-important matrix). (more…)
No one has control over the state of the economy. Today, due to the pandemic and its resultant impacts, the aggregate consumer demand is low. We are indeed in tough economic times.
However, this is not the time to focus less on marketing, but rather the opposite. In reality, reducing your marketing efforts in tough economic times is the last thing you should do. Instead, it is recommended that you change your approach by expanding your channels of marketing so as to increase reach without spending more. (more…)
Many organizations think that the only way to grow their business is to find new customers. But often, the best source for growth is sitting right in front of you – existing customers. (more…)
People have different learning styles. There will always be ones that understand a concept quicker and ones that need more time, ones that skim and ones that scan, ones that are night owls and those that are early birds. At the core of these styles is pace. Very important and so is its control.
When you’re not in control of your learning pace, someone – the instructor – is, and you must try to adapt to the pace of the class, with a bit of a trade off on the learning outcome. This is typical of virtual or classroom training programs where it’s almost impossible to only have students of one learning style in a program. (more…)
There was a time when what you learned in school before entering the workforce would be all you needed to know for the rest of your career. That is no longer the case. Today, skills can become outdated very quickly.
The rapid evolution of workplace technologies and best practices means you need to keep your skills current. You can no longer rely only on what you already know and must truly be a life-long learner.
Learning is the process of acquiring new, or modifying existing knowledge, behaviours, skills, values, or preferences. It is a means of honing our skills, enriching our minds, and changing the way we see things in the world. (more…)
At some point in the sales and marketing process of most organizations, they will use the phone to reach the right person, close a sale, follow-up with a customer or to handle a customer inquiry. Thus the phone is necessary and integral to most organizations’ success.
This is primarily because there is nothing entirely as personal and as fast as a phone call, which is why potential customers still prefer to call, despite having other options such as social media or chats.
Also, many people have phones. There are almost as many phone subscriptions as there are people on the planet. In Nigeria alone, the total active telephone subscriptions were 182.70 million at the end of November, 2019. This ubiquity of phones means that many prospects are accessible through calls. (more…)