Are Your Dependable Employees Killing Your Business?

Mar 25, 2013 | Leadership Development

Here’s good ‘ole Ted. He’s worked for you for almost 10 years. He arrives at work each morning between 7:55 and 7:59 AM. He follows the same procedures he helped create years ago. He does his work the same systematic way each day. He quietly attends all required meetings and training sessions. He provides reports when asked. He’s polite, doesn't challenge his co-workers, and doesn't get stressed, excited or ruffled by much at all. He usually eats lunch at his desk. He never wastes a...

Helping Ourselves by Developing Others

Mar 12, 2013 | Leadership Development

This past month has been an amazing time. We have facilitated planning sessions and have provided management training programs to several clients on topics ranging from Strategic Planning to Enhancing Communications. Each group, without exception, voiced their concern over their organization's current inadequate training for new staff to those in management positions. Each group, of their own accord, acknowledged inadequate knowledge sharing from "veteran" employees to less-experienced staff....

Can You Provide Extraordinary Service?

Oct 30, 2012 | Sales, Marketing & Customer Service

What do you think of when you hear "Extraordinary Customer Service?" For most business owners or managers, when we hear those three words we immediately think of costly endeavors to win over or win back customers. We envision things such as large-scale construction projects to make our sales floors more "customer friendly," intensive staff training on "Building Customer Relationships," or intricately-designed customer loyalty programs to get our customers to buy repeatedly from us. Given these...

Is Leadership Training More Important Than Flowers?

Aug 28, 2012 | Leadership Development

I just got off the phone with a prospective client. They have serious employee and management retention issues. They have few managers with the right skills to be effective managers, let alone develop into effective leaders, they have a multitude of staff with less-than-effective front-line customer service skills, they are in an industry that is growing by leaps and bounds, and their reputation for less-than-stellar service is starting to spread. So why are they calling my office? They've...