Confirming SERVICE Value: Measure the Specifics

Jun 25, 2013 | Sales, Marketing & Customer Service

As businesses look for ways to cut costs while maintaining or improving profitability, I'm hearing more and more about “identifying Value” in our work processes and in our businesses overall. Identifying “Value” in its most basic form means identifying those services you perform, or those production steps that occur, that create a benefit to your customers. As a means of cost-cutting, most businesses look for ways to minimize non-value-added steps. As managers, we try to cut any step...

It Doesn’t Take Much to Say Thanks

Jun 18, 2013 | Leadership Development

I again heard a group of managers raise a common problem during a training program this past week, "How are we supposed to keep our employees motivated? We don't have any money for bonuses, raises, or gifts, and we can't afford to buy them stuff out of our own pockets. Why should we have to do that anyway? How can we blame them for not wanting to work any harder than necessary when they're not going to get paid for it?" Yikes! In addition to showing very little imagination, there are so many...

Building Business Relationships- “Good Enough Never Is”

Jun 11, 2013 | Sales, Marketing & Customer Service

I received a call recently from one of my client’s – let’s call him “Bruce”. Bruce owns a technical services firm. Bruce had just received a letter from one of his long-standing customers – and his customer wasn’t happy. Apparently, one of Bruce’s technicians had been sent out to fix the customer’s problem – and he did fix it very quickly. However, when the customer asked the technician what he'd done, the technician replied – “It’s pretty technical. You wouldn't understand.” The technician...

Are Your Employees Held Hostage or Held Accountable?

Jun 4, 2013 | Leadership Development

A client called me recently to say he'd just finished reading a paragraph from Jack Welch’s book “Jack – Straight from the Gut” to his staff. The section he’d read outlined Mr. Welch’s thoughts on the importance of “Informality” as a key leadership skill. As Jack Welch describes it, “Bureaucracy strangles. Informality liberates. Creating an informal atmosphere is a competitive advantage. Bureaucracy can be the ultimate insulator. Informality isn't about first names, unassigned parking spaces,...