We always talk about business and how to expand it, create more revenues and so on. But who does the job? Simple answer... not you! Your employees, those that you staff or you order contracting. But what are the principles on how to treat them:
Be Flexible and understand. There are rules to respect and rules to bypass... a good manager should know how to act on them!
Treat employees like adults. Employees want to be treated as unique, mature individuals. Don't you want the same?
Convince them by actions of your understanding but define also their position and their limits. It's always hard keeping balance, but that's the beauty of HR!
One of the supervisors called a Walmart and ordered the cake. He told them to write: "best wishes Suzanne" and underneath that write "we will miss you"...
Nektarios was arguing a few days ago on the benefits of using specifications. The sad reality for this line of thinking is though at that in most projects: - needs and thus features and thus specifications will change - assumptions on what is important will differ - two sides will be created: developer vs client - estimations on time constraints will fail miserably :)
Enter Agile Development, a completely different way to approach the issue: - customer satisfaction is the first priority - face-to-face continuous colaboration between developers and client repesentatives - acceptance that requirements will change, adoption of required development practices - shorter development cycles: develop, present, test and alter more frequently
Obviously an agile approach will not work on all cases or solve all the issues (as passionate as some of it's supporters might be!). Still, you can bet that it's output will not be like the cake in the photo!
Yesterday was a nice day. I got to one of our customers, and I heard the following: you are great on support! I always smile, but that moment I felt proud of my partners, and I got a bigger smile!
Of course there is a special trick. We never leave more than 12h to respond to a case. We are not many (we will in time), but we are all more than able to be there, to understand and to control situations and bring the best outcome for both parties. Plus, we learn from our mistakes by first of all admitting that we do mistakes! There is a certain procedure that we follow on mistakes:
we identify the reason for that mistake
why we didn't see it
why we didn't avoid it (yeap it's different than the above)
what are the impacts - act!
what would be the best solution not to repeat it
And then after, we apologize to the customer/partner while we have already fixed (maybe spend a night) on it. I have been in situations that IT companies are trying to "blame" the customer somehow, that it was their (the customer's) mistake! Finally, those companies lost many of their customers.
So... be sincere, to yourself (company) and then to the customer and everything will run smoothly even in a crisis situation!
I feel that the main question of the majority of sales and business men is: how can I get this big project? In this process the only enemy you have is you. Consider this, a dog would byte you only if it would feel fear from your side. Let's bring this now in the sales situation. If your customer or partner would feel fear, then you loose the case because it means that you don't trust either your company or your products. And finally you don't trust yourself.
I will give you now two choices: change attitude or change job... you decide. Now if you decided to change attitude I would propose to follow this road-map:
Read what you sell and "feel" it!
Identify the key elements of your business and your products.
Identify your customers need (why else would they pay you?).
Be honest.
Think big and smile! :)
Today instead of flavor of the day I would like to share a certain emotion: Love. You can measure everything in this life, but this emotion! So, put some love in your sales recipes!
When you started your business activity, the first thing that you checked was your competition. Actually what you did was trying to "imitate" your biggest competitor (I did...). So finally if you observe it in a different angle, that competitor, which you hated so much being the best and also many years in business before you... is your best business consultant! Why? Because when you started you didn't know :
the market
your products
your potential
they did though, and you learned from them. Also now, let's say that you are ready to start a business perhaps in Knowledge Management then check: Autonomy.
