Archive for the ‘Improving Profits’ Category
Hiring Priority, Skill or spirit?
Business is picking up and it’s time to start hiring. After you get past the basics of the job, what should be your priority? Skills or Spirit?
Below is an article from Michelle Randall with some interesting insight and examples.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1793369/hiring-for-skill-or-spirit
Why You Should Stop Being a Wimp
Who succeeds in the world of work? It’s not the person that sits back and takes no chances. This is a great article from Suzanne Lucas.
http://www.bnet.com/blog/evil-hr-lady/why-you-should-stop-being-a-wimp/2671
Helping companies run better, grow faster and make more money
Insperity – Helping companies run better, grow faster and make more money.
My last post talked about how business owners can achieve greater profitability with a human capital strategy. Insperity can help make that happen for small and medium-sized companies.
Contact me at broh@dfwbusinesspro.com for more information.
Business Owners make more money with an effective Human Capital Strategy!
Business Owners make more money with an effective Human Capital Strategy!
For centuries we have known that leading and motivating employees in a positive way results in a better place for everyone to work. It also drives greater revenue and profits for the business.
A 1994 Harvard Business Study of 435 public companies showed that companies rated in the top 10% of Human Resources practices had 3.66 times higher revenue per employee than companies rated in the bottom 10% of HR practices. Annual studies by the Insperity Mid-Market group of the top 100 best places to work in the United States shows these companies out produced and out gained the Dow, NASDAQ and S&P.
How does this work? A simple formula.
A persons total capacity for work, TC, equals their minimum required work, MR plus discretionary effort, DE.
TC = MR + DE
As a business owner you can demand MR. Your employees choose to bring DE. How can you help with this decision? Here are the best practices:
- Align employees with business strategy
- Improve employee engagement
- Improved performance management
- Align compensation with goals
- Improve recruiting and retention
- Reduce the cost of benefits compliance
I will expand on these practices in future articles. Email me at broh@dfwbusinesspro.com if your business can’t wait.
“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”
Coach Wooden’s quote is more important today than ever before. The rapid changes and multitude of inputs that surround us can be overwhelming. What should I do now? How can I ensure we can still win tomorrow?
One of the most important questions to ask today is, “What should I QUIT doing?”
We keep hearing that little voice in our heads telling us “winners never quit.” Unfortunately, that little voice does not always tell us what we really need to hear. We need to continually challenge and sometimes quit doing things that used to work but now get in the way of success.
- Quit Taking a Ride . . . and Take the Wheel
- Quit Getting Comfortable . . . and Explore the Edge
- Quit Analyzing . . . and Follow your Intuition
- Quit Managing your Time . . . and Manage your Attention
- Quit Showing Interest . . . and Commit
- Quit Moving . . . and Be Still
- Quit Striving for Success . . . and Seek Significance
Lee J. Colan, Ph.D. is President of The L Group, Inc., a Dallas, Texas-based consulting firm. He is a high-energy leadership advisor, author and leadership expert. Dr. Colan has a great insight and tools to help with change. Contact me and I will make the introduction.
Graciousness can pay priceless dividends.
When it comes to serving customers, working with employees or just dealing with people, Bob Greene writes on how graciousness can pay priceless dividends. And it doesn’t cost a thing.
4-star general, 5-star grace
You may have heard the story about what happened between White House adviser Valerie Jarrett and Four-star Army Gen. Peter Chiarelli at a recent Washington dinner.
As reported by the website Daily Caller, Jarrett, a longtime Chicago friend of President Obama, was seated at the dinner when a general — later identified as Chiarelli, the No. 2-ranking general in the U.S. Army hierarchy, who was also a guest at the gathering — walked behind her. Chiarelli was in full dress uniform.
Jarrett, apparently only seeing Chiarelli’s striped uniform pants, thought that he was a waiter. She asked him to get her a glass of wine.
She was said to be mortified as soon as she realized her mistake, and who wouldn’t be? But the instructive part of this tale is what Chiarelli did next.
Rather than take offense, or try to make Jarrett feel small for her blunder, the general, in good humor, went and poured her a glass of wine. It was evident that he wanted to defuse the awkward moment, and to let Jarrett know that she should not feel embarrassed.
As Chiarelli wrote in an e-mail to CNN Pentagon Correspondent Barbara Starr:
“It was an honest mistake that ANYONE could have made. She was sitting, I was standing and walking behind her and all she saw were the two stripes on my pants which were almost identical to the waiters’ pants — REALLY. She apologized and will come to the house for dinner if a date can be worked out in March.”
Now, even if you’ve never met Chiarelli or followed him in the news, you have to be impressed with him after hearing that story. With his lofty rank in the military, he could have given Jarrett the deep freeze, reproached her and corrected her. But he poured her the wine — “It was only good fun,” he wrote to Starr — and invited her to a meal at his home. He came out of the incident as a decent and magnanimous person.
It’s easy to do, if you care about other people’s feelings. Sportswriters who covered the National Basketball Association in the late 1980s and 1990s like to tell a story about Karl Malone, the great forward for the Utah Jazz. It seems that one day in the baggage-claim area of the Salt Lake City airport, a woman was trying to lift her bags from the carousel and, seeing Malone, who was there to pick up his brother from an arriving flight, mistook him for a skycap.
She asked him to carry her bags to her car.
Malone was a wealthy and world-famous athlete at the time. He could so easily have hurt the woman’s feelings, rebuked her. But what did he do?
According to longtime Salt Lake Tribune sports reporter Steve Luhm, who covered the incident at the time and who confirmed it to me last week, Malone carried the woman’s bags all the way to her car. Only when she reached for her purse to give him a tip did he in a friendly manner introduce himself and decline the offer.
One of the most indelible stories about a person going out of his way to avoid humiliating another person was told in Gay Talese’s 1966 Esquire article “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,” widely considered to be perhaps the finest magazine profile ever written.
In the article, Talese described a party at the home of Sinatra’s former wife, at which Sinatra, who maintained cordial relations with her, was acting as host. A young woman at the party, according to Talese, “while leaning against a table, accidentally with her elbow knocked over one of a pair of alabaster birds to the floor, smashing it to pieces.”
Talese wrote that Sinatra’s daughter Nancy, also a guest at the party, started to say: “Oh, that was one of my mother’s favorite…”
Talese continued:
“But before she could complete the sentence, Sinatra glared at her, cutting her off, and while 40 other guests in the room all stared in silence, Sinatra walked over, quickly with his finger flicked the other alabaster bird off the table, smashing it to pieces, and then put an arm gently around [the young woman] and said, in a way that put her completely at ease, ‘That’s OK, kid.’ ”
It can work the other way, too, and can be remembered just as long. I was once working on a profile of a famous singer, also for Esquire, and one evening we rode in his limousine to a concert hall. As he walked backstage he was stopped by a young, nervous and inexperienced usher with a clipboard who had been assigned to make certain everyone in the area was authorized. The usher asked the famous singer if he was the comedian who would open the show.
The singer did not speak to the young usher or make eye contact with him, but instead walked immediately over to a person in the management of the auditorium and demanded that the usher be dismissed.
The singer, in trying to make the young man who had made a mistake feel small, had only managed to make himself seem tiny. What Gen. Chiarelli did, though — like Karl Malone, like Frank Sinatra — was to demonstrate, instinctively and in an instant, what it means to be a big person.
The rest of us may never reach the exalted status of those three men. But kindness knows no social stratum. Every day, we’re given the choice. Consideration? It’s free of charge. It can echo forever.
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/02/13/greene.gracious.gesture/index.html
Extreme customer care does not cost, it pays!
Extreme customer care does not cost, it pays. Most of us have heard the saying, “please a customer and they will tell a friend. Treat a customer badly and they will tell ten friends.” The story below from Dr. Philip Humbert tells us times have changed. Even if your business is not participating in social media, you are being talked about. Ignore the comments at your risk, leverage the comments for higher profits.
Bill Roh
Strictly Business: Where Do You Buy Cigars?
In an age when “customer service” is rare, I recently had an
example of outstanding customer care that went far beyond
my expectations. I want to tell you about it, with an emphasis on the potential profits involved.
Not many of you value cigars, but stay with me for a second.
This is important to your bottom line. I recently ordered a
box of excellent Carlos Torano cigars as a gift for a
colleague who had done me a favor. Unfortunately, when they
arrived, they were terrible!
I was disappointed and embarrassed, and expressed my
feelings by posting a negative review on the website of the
company I bought them from. Then, a remarkable thing
happened.
Arthur Zaretsky, the President of famous-smoke.com saw my
note and sent me an email. He expressed his personal concern
and said he had forwarded my note to the President of Torano
cigars. As a customer, I was impressed that he had taken my
complaint seriously. This is good customer service!
But it gets better. Within an hour(one hour!) I got an
email from Charles Torano (Carlos’ son) expressing dismay
and offering to send me a replacement box and a bonus gift.
They sent it by express delivery and it arrived two days
later.
Even if you hate cigars, there’s a vital business truth
here.
I want to emphasize that there is absolutely no evidence the
problem was caused by either famous-smoke.com or the fine
people at Torano! The cigars could have been damaged in
shipment, or even frozen in the UPS truck right in front of
my office. These gentlemen had no obligation to take care of
my problem! But they did. They went “above and beyond” and
they have a customer for life.
Now, I don’t smoke many cigars, but I’ve just told this
story to 42,000 people and there is no question where I’ll
go when I do buy a cigar.
Think of it this way. What is your cost of attracting a new
customer? What does it cost in advertising, account-set-up,
time and trouble to get that cautious first-time buyer? Now,
compare that to the cost of working with an existing
customer to create a “raving fan” who will sing your praises
to (potentially) 42,000 people. Get the point?
Figure it out! Answer your phone. Make it right. Go the
extra mile. This is not rocket science. Extreme customer
care does not cost, it pays.
Contact him at:
www.philiphumbert.com or email Coach@philiphumbert.com
You can’t do great things if you’re just a little better than everybody else!
I read several articles over the holidays that got me thinking about the new year, careers and business leadership. The article below aims to help employees with career and work/life balance. Indirectly Mr. Taylor is advising business owners on managing employees, their business and themselves.
Eventually the “I’m just thankful for a job” business climate will improve. Creating an environment where employees give that “discretionary effort” for success today will also keep them when opportunities open up. It will also help your bottom line, now and down the road.
Call or email me if you want proven help with this critical situation!
Happy New Year!
Bill Roh
Is It Time to Leave Your Job?
by William C. Taylor
It’s the holiday season, when we start making lists of the gifts we want — and of the pros and cons of the jobs we have. The end of one year and the start of a New Year is the time when just about everyone takes stock of where they are with their work, and whether they are where they expected to be.
So as you get ready to transition from your Christmas list to a wish list for your career, ask yourself these five questions about your company, your colleagues, and your personal game plan for what comes next.
1. Does my company stand for something — anything — special?
It’s hard to be thrilled with your job if the company you work for is struggling to succeed, or feels stuck and irrelevant. I’m not talking about obvious problems — red ink and layoffs. I mean the nagging sense that the company will never be anything more than OK, just another ho-hum player in its field. In this hyper-competitive age, you can’t do great things as a company if you’re just a little better than everybody else. Does the company you work for really stand out from the crowd? If not, why on earth are you working there?
2. Am I excited to see my colleagues when I show up for work on Monday morning?
Lots of people sign on with a company because it’s got a cool reputation, or it’s prestigious, or it’s got a great stock price. But quickly you realize that “working for” a company is an abstraction. The reality is that you work with the people closest to you — those in your department, in your unit, in your region. Most experts say that over the long term, employees aren’t loyal to a company as a company. They are loyal to the people they work beside day after day. Can you imagine not spending 40 or 50 hours a week with the people you work beside every day? If so, maybe it’s time to make a move and fine a group of colleagues who stimulate you and motivate you.
3. Do I have a voice at work — does anyone who matters listen to what I say?
There’s nothing more depressing and demotivating than feeling that you don’t matter as a person — even if you’re part of a group that’s working well in a company that’s doing fine. In this age of participation and communication, people are hungry for a say, a voice, a sense that their opinion counts. If you feel like your opinion doesn’t count, maybe it’s time to find a company where it does.
4. Am I learning as fast as the world is changing?
I first heard this question from strategy guru Gary Hamel, and I ask it of myself all the time. In a world that moves so fast, the most dangerous thing in anyone’s career is the sense that you’re standing still — that you’re not learning, that you’re not being challenged, that you’re stuck. If that’s how you feel, that’s a strong sign that it’s time to make a change.
5. Am I making enough money?
Strange as it sounds, this is the worst reason to leave a job. Virtually every study I’ve seen shows that there’s almost no connection between how much money you make and how satisfied you are with your job. There really are things that money can’t buy — and happiness at work is one of them.
Here’s hoping you get what you asked for-both in terms of what’s under the tree and what’s ahead in your career.
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/111648/is-it-time-to-leave-your-job?mod=career-worklife_balance
The Five Deadly Facebook Sins
Great advice for those of us who mix business and friendship on Facebook!
The Five Deadly Facebook Sins
By Elizabeth Southall, Published December 05, 2010, WomenEntrepreneur.com
It’s official: U.S. web surfers now spend more time on Facebook than they do on any other website.
Online tracking firm comScore just revealed that the average U.S. web surfer now spends about 10 percent of his or her total time online on Facebook, with Google coming in second place.
With Facebook the most popular destination on the internet, many savvy entrepreneurs are now looking for the best ways to market their businesses to Facebook’s 500 million users.
But Facebook marketing isn’t as easy as you may think.
If you know what you’re doing, you can quickly generate a large, loyal fan base to which you can market your products and services. But if you violate the unspoken rules of Facebook etiquette, you not only could find yourself without fans — you could also end up generating negative buzz for your business on the world’s largest social network.
Here are five cardinal “sins” to avoid when marketing your business on Facebook:
Mistake No. 1: Sending Business Traffic to Your Personal Profile
As a general rule of thumb, profile pages are for people, and fan pages are for businesses.
The main benefit of using a fan page for your business is that fan pages are indexed by the search engines, while most profile pages are not (depending on your settings). This means your fan page content can show up in Google, Yahoo! and Bing search results, exposing your business to tons of potential new customers who are not on Facebook.
Plus, if you add your website URL to your fan page bio, you’ll have an inbound link from Facebook (a high-ranking site) to your website. This can boost your website even further in the search engine results.
Another disadvantage of using a profile page for your business is that you can have a maximum of 5,000 friends. With a fan page, you can have unlimited fans, which is essential if your goal is to attract as many fans as possible.
Mistake No. 2: Giving Your Fans the Silent Treatment
Many business owners put a lot of time and effort into attracting fans on Facebook, then never engage them in conversation. This is a big mistake.
Think of your fan page as a never-ending networking party you are hosting for like-minded people. Would you invite people to your party and not speak to them after they walk through the door? Of course not.
The whole purpose of having a Facebook fan page is to engage and interact with your fans. It’s a social network, after all — so go socialize.
In this case, the party is your fan page, you are the host and the mingling is happening on your fan page wall. When people post comments on your wall, a good host will reply, ask questions and engage. Aim to create a conversation.
Do this, and when it comes time to promote your products or services down the road, you’ll find your fans will be much more open and receptive to what you have to offer.
Mistake No. 3: Posting at All Hours of the Day or Night
The whole purpose of your fan page is to get your message in front of as many fans as possible and to get them commenting on it, hitting that little “like” thumbs up, or sharing it on their wall feed so their Facebook friends will see it, too.
If you post an update for your fans in the wee hours of the morning or super late at night, it doesn’t matter how good your content is — chances are, the majority of your fans aren’t going to see it.
Atlanta-based Vitrue, a company that manages social media marketing for hundreds of high-end brands in a range of niches, recently released some excellent data on the best time of day to publish a wall post on your fan page.
After comparing stats from 265 million fans from the hundreds of Facebook fan pages it manages, Vitrue noticed that wall posts made before noon get an average of 65 percent more engagement than wall posts made in the afternoon or evening. (Again, Facebook engagement means shares, likes and comments from your fans on your fan page wall.)
It seems most people check Facebook in the morning, most likely over a cup of coffee at the office before the day gets busy.
With this in mind, save the early-morning or late-night posts for your personal profile page. Put posts on your business fan page wall before noon.
Mistake No. 4: Posting Text-Only Wall Posts
Posting text-only wall posts day after day is kind of like serving the same thing for dinner over and over. Even if what you’re serving up is delicious, repetition is boring.
To keep your fans interested and engaged, mix it up by posting a combination of text, pictures and video.
More data released by Vitrue reveals that wall posts containing pictures usually get 54 percent more fan engagement than straight text posts. Video posts come in second, getting 27 percent more engagement than text posts. Text posts come in last out of the three.
So to get your fans commenting on, liking and sharing your content, include pictures, graphics and other eye candy in your posts — and include them often.
Mistake No. 5: Promoting, Promoting, Promoting
One of the reasons Facebook is a fantastic place to attract new customers is because the social network is such an open, friendly place. Most Facebook users are on the site to connect with friends and, as a result, you can market here without encountering a lot of buyer skepticism you’ll find elsewhere.
Less-than-savvy business owners who relentlessly post promotion after promotion will quickly find their fan numbers dwindling. Annoyed fans can choose to hide your updates or simply “unlike” your fan page altogether.
To avoid this, observe the 80/20 rule.
Eighty percent of your wall posts should offer no-strings-attached value to your fans in the form of tips, advice or friendly banter. Once you’ve built up a relationship with your fans, you can talk about your products or services the other 20 percent of the time.
When it comes to marketing your business on Facebook, keep in mind that you’re entering a social network, and new rules apply. Social networks are all about networking, interacting and connecting.
Start with a professional fan page, post a combination of text, video and images during the first part of each day, and focus on building relationships instead of selling. That way, you’ll be positioned to grow a large, loyal fan base of potential customers.
Elizabeth Southall is the founder of Dot Com Diva. A former direct response marketing coach to Fortune 500s and seven-figure website owners, today she shows women entrepreneurs simple, ethical and fast ways to reach more customers online.
http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2010/12/05/deadly-facebook-sins/?cmpid=prn_baynote-js_The_Five_Deadly_Facebook_Sins
The Great Business Discovery of 2010
Do you know what’s working and not working in your business? Are you following old habits or developing new and innovative ways to serve your customers? The article below comes from an email newsletter I have subscribed to for years. If you are a business leader with three or more employees in the Dallas/Fort Worth area you need to attend the Untyed, Connecting Leaders events. Investing an hour of your time will pay great dividends. Check them out at www.untyed.com.
Bill
Welcome to TIPS for Extraordinary Living!
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Written & Published by Philip E. Humbert, PhD
Strictly Business: The Great Business Discovery of 2010
We are nearing the end of 2010 and one of the most important
(and profitable) investments you can make is to review the
past few months very, very carefully.
To an amazing degree, we humans are creatures of habit. We are
great examples of Newton’s law that, “a body set in motion
tends to remain in motion.” We tend to plunge eagerly ahead,
repeating yesterday’s mistakes and failing to learn from
experience. Yes, we take great pride in the fact that we “can”
learn, but my observation is that we rarely do.
We tend to assume that what worked last year will continue to
work next year. We know intellectually that we should be
innovative, creative and original, but in our daily work it’s
easy to follow old habits, whether they still work or not.
When Jack Welch was the head of General Electric, he insisted
that half the company’s profits come from products and
services that were less than five years old. Why? Because he
knew that yesterday’s methods won’t fit tomorrow’s world.
Take time — several hours if necessary — to review the
following questions:
1. What worked best last year? What surprised me, inspired me
or taught me something new for my work or business?
2. What did not work, or is working less and less well? What
was less profitable or less effective than I expected? What
should I drop altogether in the new year?
3. What’s new in my field? What are my colleagues doing that I
should apply to my business?
One of the absolute BEST things any professional,
business owner or manager can do is invest in seminars
and conferences. The chance to get away and “see the forest
for the trees” is incredibly valuable. Conferences generate
new perspectives, and new ideas create vast new opportunities!
Invest in yourself!
Copyright (c) 2010, all rights reserved.
U.S. Library of Congress ISSN: 1529-059X
You may copy, forward or distribute TIP’s if this
copyright notice and full information for contacting
Dr Philip E. Humbert are included. Contact him at:
www.philiphumbert.com or email: Coach@philiphumbert.com.