Archive for July, 2009
“After July 8th, pay this amount…” Within that simple, familiar phrase lies a tactic that will help us improve our communication skills.
You undoubtedly go through this, too. A few times a month you gather up the bills coming due and write checks or pay them online. As I was doing some bill payments a couple of weeks ago, I noticed the tactic one company uses to get its customers to pay by the due date. It was very simple: “If you pay by July 8, pay $23.48. If you pay after July 8, pay $23.77.”
Now, this was a small bill so the penalty for paying after the due date was just a matter of a few pennies, but still, I got the point. While other companies might list the late charge in percentage terms, this one wisely adopted a dollars and cents approach.
This company made an important leap by making the penalty tangible, rather than abstract. Listing a percentage fee shows the penalty in abstract terms. Listing it in dollars and cents shows it in tangible terms.
As communicators, we should remain alert to the differences between the abstract and the tangible. It’s sometimes a subtle difference, but a critical one.
Let’s look at a couple of examples that illustrte the difference:
When you give instructions, try to work on the tangible side of the abstract-tangible continuum. For example, if you ask a subordinate to carry out a task, then provide details and specifics. In many cases, this might be summed up with four of the 5 Ws: Who, What, Where, and When, as well as How (we’ll get the fifth W in a moment).
Looking at the other side (providing context, for example), you’ll find your communication will be more effective if you try to get to the abstract side. For example, if you’re trying to explain a new strategic direction for your organization, you might refer to conceptual issues like positioning and competitive advantage. This, you’ll find, is where Why? — the fifth W — fits rather nicely, but the other 4 Ws have little relevance.
One more thought: You need not settle for one end or the other because you can pick any point along the whole continuum between abstract and tangible. Watch for examples of your own as you go about increasing your communication expertise.
All of us have places to be, and appointments to keep. Some more than others, it’s true, but we all have a busy schedule. There are cases when you just have too much on your mind and you start forgetting certain things, like meetings and phone numbers. While this may not be that big a deal for some, it could be vital for others.
The lucky ones have secretaries to keep their schedule, and remind them of everything they have to do on that day. Of course, not all of us can afford the luxury of paying a secretary, so we keep writing everything down, and if our notebook gets lost somehow, that is a tragedy. Or we could try to remember everything, but I don’t know anybody who can do that.
Of course, that notebook is made of paper, and it tends to rip after a while, the handwriting gets blurred, so every year you have to spend time to copy everything to a new one. It might not seem a big deal, but it is time consuming, and you would like to find something more reliable than that.
A Personal Digital Assistant would be the solution to this problem, and the hp ipaq 111 classic handheld is the best on the market. You won’t have to remember everything anymore, the HP PDA will. All the important or less important appointments, telephone numbers, dates, will find their place in its memory, and it will take care to remind you everything you need to know.
You don’t have to be a tech-wiz to learn how to use it; in fact it is quite easy. Throw away your old notebook, say goodbye to the times you forgot about a date or a red-letter day. Your PDA will take care that you would never miss an important appointment, it will keep track of every point on your busy daily schedule, if you’re not too busy to charge it, from time to time.
It is time to thing again if you have a perception that conducting surveys can be a useful exercise but are far too time consuming to prepare, unwieldy to deploy and require extensive resources to process the responses into a meaningful report.
Online surveys turn what was once a time consuming, resource hungry, cumbersome process into a low cost, quick, easy exercise that delivers real-time reporting.
Ease of Design
Out with the word-processor, now there is a quick and easy way for almost anyone to create surveys using a simple menu system that allows surveys to be created in minutes and with the ability to add additional questions and modify and move existing questions around.
Ease Of Delivery
Once a survey has been created it is deployed through the internet or organisation’s intranet making it instantly available to anyone with access to the internet.
The Ease of Promotion
Getting respondents to participate in a survey is achieved with ease by either sending an email that contains a link to the survey and/or linking to the survey from a suitable website.
The Ease of Participation
Online surveys don’t just make it easy for the publisher, most respondents find that completing a survey online is quicker and easier when compared against the traditional pen and paper survey and from the publishers point of view a lot less prone to mistakes such as respondents missing out questions or multiple responses being entered against single response questions.
Ease of Managing the Survey
With an online survey the publisher can view in real-time the response rate, summary and detail results.
Ease of Analysis
The response data is ready for detailed analysis immediately the survey publication has ended; the information can also be exported to a spreadsheet or third-party analysis program where the survey result data can be further analyzed.
Appreciating the Ease
Once business managers have appreciated the ease of the total life cycle of conducting a survey online they will then recognise the multitude of new opportunities that exist.
The costly annual employee satisfaction survey can now be done quicker and cheaper allowing the exercise to be conducted bi-annual or quarterly ensuring any employee problems are identified and dealt with early. There is also now an opportunity to conduct smaller and more targeted ad-hoc surveys on a departmental level or a niche area of the business improving the communications between the employee and employer.
A survey can be used to help deliver a management message and measure the employee support and concerns of introducing new initiatives, something a simple one way memo style directive cannot do.
Surveys can be used as a marketing tool by explaining the benefit of a product or service and gathering the response from potential customers.
Return of Investment
Technology can often deliver better efficiency but can require ‘investment’ first with the ‘return’ coming later. Many of the available hosted online survey services have not only turned a cumbersome task into a cinch, but reduced the cost down to a pinch, giving you a return on investment from day one and opening up a world of possibilities and further savings.
With the opportunities that online surveys bring it is a tool the smart manager will always have to hand in their personal tool box.
I run a small firm, there are not many employees, but I can assure you, there are a lot of problems every day. There are meetings, appointments, people to meet, problems to solve. I can hardly find time for a proper meal, and late hours have become a habit. But for my secretary, I would have got lost. She was priceless; the only person in my firm I thought I could never replace.
She was really efficient, never forgetting anything, always knowing everything. I really depended on her. She was the one to tell me who I was suppose to meet, and at what time, when I there was a celebration in my family, even which was the best place in town for a business lunch. She was the one person in my firm I could never replace, but there came a time when she announced me that she would have to move with her husband to another town.
I had no choice, but try to find someone as good as she was. That proved to be an impossible task. I interviewed a lot of people, and finally I had to hire someone, but she was far from being as efficient as my first secretary. Getting tired of my complaints, one of my friends recommended me to buy a PDA. I had heard of these gadgets, but I never thought an object could replace a person. Anyway, I decided to give it a try.
After almost missing my son’s birthday, because I had forgotten about it, I decided to give the Asus mypal A626 pda a try. I’m not used to such devices, so at first it seemed really difficult to learn how to use it. I spent some time entering all the necessary data, and telephone numbers, but now it’s piece of cake. I have to admit I depend on my Asus PDA, and I couldn’t do without it.
That little gadget that knows everything about business appointments and anniversaries in my family has become indispensable for me. It might seem a little too expensive, but I can assure you that it’s worth every cent.
It’s a sunny morning and you’re sitting in your office. With a cup of hot coffee by your side and memories of your last holiday still fresh in your mind, even if you say so yourself, today at least, life is sweet.
As you take a sip of your early morning double espresso you feel a rush of cool air and catch a movement from the corner of your eye. Like a rabbit pulled from a hat there is now an impeccably dressed stranger sitting in front of you. You are surprised; you didn’t hear anyone knock and just as you are about to ask who he is he begins to speak in what can only be described as a calm and reassuring voice.
‘Here’s the deal’
‘In every city of the world I am going to advertise your product on billboards at the busiest junctions.’
‘I will be able to tell you how many people see the advertisement, their gender, age group and nationality.’
‘I will tell you what they think of your product and in many cases I will give you their contact details. While they are reading the billboard I will make it possible for them to view your website and, if they feel the urge, make a purchase.’
‘I will have all this ready in two days and it will cost you less than a small advertisement in your typical trade journal.’
He stops for just a second. ‘Interested?’
Okay you might be forgiven thinking that such an offer was too good to be true, you might think that you are going to wake up from a dream or maybe it really is time to get a lock on that office door.
But let us just take time to reflect. If you are still reading this well I am that man who has come from nowhere and offered you a deal.
The advertising site is on the Internet and the billboard I’m offering is the humble online survey.
Take a fresh look and start to associate an online survey with ‘marketing’ and not with ‘market research’. And not any type of marketing this is ‘Marketing’ with a very large capital ‘M’ and in flashing neon lights. Marketing that is quick, effective, direct and low cost.
You can advertise a published online survey on a website, or via email and like a billboard by the side of a transport hub, your message will appear in front of people. The number of people that see a billboard advertisement can not easily be verified where as the number of respondents starting an online survey can.
By asking demographic questions such as age, gender and nationality you can collate important information that will allow you to measure the effectiveness of your promotion and ensure that you are interacting with your target market on a one-on-one level.
Unlike a billboard where the message is often subliminal, or maybe just trying to achieve brand awareness, with an online survey you have the opportunity to connect with the public to find out what they really think about your product, how it relates to them, how it is perceived.
Using an online survey website it takes only minutes and hours to create a survey and using the power of the Internet an online survey can reach hundreds of thousands of people on a daily basis.
Throw in a prize as an incentive for people to complete the survey, maybe some Pay Per Click advertising to capture an even wider, or more focused audience and you are still talking low cost effective marketing.
‘So,. Do we have a deal?’
The 5 Ws provide a handy guide for communicating the right kinds of information, and for exercising good communication skills . As you may recall, the 5Ws refer to five touchstones used by journalists, to ensure they don’t miss any critical aspect of a story:
- Who? The person or people involved.
- What? Describe the action taken (or not) by these people.
- When? A time or date, in numbers.
- Where? Specify the location of the action.
- Why? Give us the motivation for the act.
To the 5Ws, we can also add an H:
- How? What methold or approach was used?
Here are two applications in which we’re specific for tangible communication, and non-specific for abstract communication.
To start, though, let’s define these terms. Tangible, or specific, communication means providing lots of detail (”Take that box to the front counter at 3 p.m.”).m.”) Abstract communication, on the other hand, leaves details up in the air (”Let’s get together again one of these days.”)
Tangible Communication
How often have you been in an office coffee room and come across a sign that says something like “Will the last person to leave the office please turn off the coffee machine!That’s not much help, not specific enough, when the last person out changes frequently. When you need something important done, you’ll want to specify Who by name, rather than by some vague qualification.
You’ve probably found, too, that it helps to specify the What, Where, and When in dealing with suppliers, for example. When you’ve been specific, as in who, what, where, and when (but not necessarily why), you protect yourself against future problems.
As these examples indicate, concrete language is specific and unambiguous. Abstract language, on the other hand, goes in the opposite direction.
Abstract Communication
I’ve recently been reading Patrick McManus’ book, The Deer on a Bicycle: Excursions into the Writing of Humor. He argues that aspring humor writers use few details, so readers use their imagainations.
Similarly, radio works very well for story-telling because of a lack of visual detail. Consider the love stories, the adventure yarns, and the spellbinding mysteries from radio’s Golden Age? They exploited our inclination to fill in the blanks when the information was vague. Unlike television or the movies, you don’t see the people in radio stories; instead you concoct your own picture of them, based on people you met in the past.
So, in aiming for abstraction, be non-specific, avoid the 5Ws as much as possible. Your readers or listeners will fill in the picture. On the other hand, if you want tangible communication, be specific, using concrete words and phrases. Keep the 5Ws in mind whenever your goal is improving communication skills .
With finance departments being held increasingly accountable for their fixed assets under the ever-changing and stringent requirements of Sarbanes-Oxley (Sarbox) and IFRS in particular, the need for an asset tracking system has never been greater for US companies or overseas operations that are subsidiaries of a US listed company. Organisations have to ensure they remain up-to-date with the latest compliance requirements for their sector. In particular, Sarbox requires CEOs and CFOs to personally certify that the company’s books and records do not contain untrue statements and fairly represent the company’s results. Penalties built into Sarbox can be severe for non-compliance, false declarations and other violations, Fixed asset accounting can easily contribute to potential violations of Sarbox, under or overestimating the value of fixed assets or the incorrect application of depreciation rules.
For many accounting departments, the reliance is on the ever popular spreadsheet. They are quick and easy to set up and easily modified. Simple calculations are easily defined and they are useful tools for management wanting to make “what-if” style projections. At the level of accounting complexity required in today’s legislative and business environment however, spreadsheets can quickly become complex and difficult to verify. Integrating a spreadsheet with other enterprise systems to track asset changes or producing a clear audit trail is also difficult. Physical assets can easily “disappear” from a spreadsheet and IT assets (where most of the value is invisible software) are even more difficult to track.
A far better solution is to use dedicated and tailor-made software that can control, track and record any changes that occur throughout an asset’s lifetime. Real Asset Management International for example offers systems that will provide accurate, up-to-date and historical data spanning the point from which the asset was entered onto the system to its present state. User-definable fields means that organisations have the freedom to describe things in their own, familiar, corporate language and a Windows inspired interface ensures that the learning curve is as steep as possible.
Systems like these save time and effort by eliminating the need to manually enter and update each asset and provide a seamless interface with leading general ledger products, thus retaining the usefulness of existing software and avoiding additional cost that would be required in upgrading or replacing legacy systems. Organisations can choose to consolidate multiple registers for group reporting purposes and can concurrently maintain discrete financial information. Any number of historic and/or current cost accounting books can be set up to allow different values and currencies to be associated with individual assets and the capacity to create fully comprehensive and detailed asset histories means keeping track of your physical and IT assets is fully compliant, easier, quicker and cheaper.
Anyone who knows about the Coach designer brand certainly has the desire to own one of their own. A Coach handbag is one of the most favorite and recognized styles in the fashion world today. CThe best thing about a Coach handbag is that it brings out personality adding up to the quality of the product despite its high price range.
Coach founders found inspiration in a leather baseball glove to create Coach handbags with the same concept where the more they are used, the softer and smoother they became. The American leather goods company started as a family owned business in a Manhattan loft in New York that grew to become a leading designer brand in the fashion industry worldwide with stores located around the world.
The elite crowd and celebrities are two portions of society that cannot live without Coach handbags. This designer brand is specifically known for their high quality and chic designs in each of their products. Thanks to its business success, Coach decided to expand in to other areas such as watches, footwear, wallets, briefcases, belts, scarves, umbrellas, sunglasses, key chains, and luggage.
A Coach handbag is one of very few designer brands that still hold their envision that shows off a woman as swish, refined and classy. When one purchases a Coach handbag they definitely buy something that is quality guaranteed in which the leather, color, texture and the stitching is identical in design, inside and out. Not to mention the leather is handpicked by the designers only from the top 10% that are produced for manufacturing.
Coach handbags come in an assortment of colors, shapes, sizes and styles giving you the option of selecting exactly what you want that is suitable for any occasion. There is still a selection of classic favorites for those Coach fanatics who don t choose the higher fashion collection. Coach handbags are classified into a mixed bag of families that include satchels, shoulder bags, hobos and flaps, totes, crossbody bags, business bags, baby bags and small bags.
Much of the new arrivals for this season are hobos and flaps, totes and shoulder bags as they are styles that can be used for any occasion whether it is elementary or elegant. Having a Coach handbag will certainly produce gratification in superior, solace and expressive style.
Can you use a 30-60-90 day sales plan for non-sales jobs?
Certainly — it works for engineering, management, customer service, and many others. As an example, I got a phone call from a candidate going for a job interview in MARCOM. He had a 30-60-90 day sales plan template, but needed help translating it into a document for a non-sales job like the one he wanted. We spent a few minutes brainstorming together, and came up with some ideas and new directions that I also wanted to share with you.
To begin with, remember that there are objectives you have to achieve in every job. Not all objectives are achievable within the first 90 days (the period of the plan) but even long term objectives should be listed, with their starting points. So, for example: if you are in Marketing Communications and a product launch to be completed within your first 9 months, there are a number of things that can be listed out to be done in the first 30/60/90 days in order to set yourself on the path to success. Those are the goals that you would use in place of sales goals.
The same types of communications happen in many jobs - just not necessarily with prospects. Instead of meeting with prospects (as in sales), you might have more internal meetings, or you might be meeting with external contractors. For instance, if you’re an events coordinator, you’re going to have to go on site, request and review bids, share those with the marketing staff perhaps, and have a plan for what needs to be done when.
Other possible objectives to include in your 30/60/90 day plan: training, site visits, or learning company systems. There are many ways to tailor a 30/60/90 day sales plan to whatever job you’re interviewing for. Also, finding out enough about the job to put one together will be helpful to you when you ask your own questions in the interview, because you’ll start off with more information than the average jobseeker.
The point to keep in mind is: Creating a 30/60/90 day plan shows preparation, initiative, written communication skills, and that you’re interested enough in this job to have done your homework. That’s always impressive to interviewers.
The website http://30-60-90-day-sales-plan.com/ offers tips and advice on the highly successful 30-60-90 day sales plans for interviews, as well as insights and suggestions for successful job interviews.
Management styles
We all make decisions every day. It is these decisions that allow us to manage our lives, enabling us to do the things we want to do, while working with and around: other people, time and the everyday problems which always seem to occur.
Similarly a business needs to be managed. An Organisation is not called that because it falls apart every five minutes, but because the various parts have been managed and organised in order to fit its purpose
How the various parts are managed and by whom, largely depends on the type of organisation /business and its aims and objectives and the management styles of the individual managers themselves.
In it’s most basic form, management is about how a business makes use of resources. These resources can be anything from how your money is spent and balancing a budget, moving people around, , planning training, designing and placing items, in order to make the best of what you have.
There are four main management styles which can be employed within a business structure.
Management style 1: Is authoritarian and almost despotic. Instructions and directions are sent from bosses and generally imposed directly on the workers.
This sounds very Victorian with images of men in Top Hats and unskilled workers in flat caps and clogs.
However it really means that workers are not privy to the decisions and policies made by management, but are given jobs to do which fill the objectives of the organisation. This style is generally used if decisions have to be made quickly or health and safety considerations are concerned.
Management style 2: is quite similar to the first, in that orders are given from the top and filtered down to the workers. Their is a subtle difference between “You will do this” and “you will do this because”.
This is a get along management styles. The workers are given an insight into the workings of the business. Their needs are met. Holidays, flexi – time, days off, maternity/paternity leave and crèches are acknowledged as long as the worker continues to fulfil the aims of the business. This style generally means that workers will stay with the organisation for longer.
Management style 3: involves communication throughout the business.
Why things happen like they do? What are we to do?
You are learning how to do this because…
This style puts senior management and workers at the same table even if they aren’t eating the same food..
Workers are cajoled into taking part; they become a team and are allowed to speak about their own role in the organisation and how it can be improved. They are given training which can lead to a sense of “this is your business too”.
Workers feel if they do a good job they will get just as much benefit.
Management style 4: almost allows people to ‘do their own thing’. Workers and management are on the same level. The manager takes a step back from their responsibility for the workers letting them develop their own role in the department.
It is generally felt that some high performers are able to take to this sort of self-management and have the ability and motivation to make it work.
Most workers will however need some sort of focus and with no real management or leadership will fail at their tasks.
Taking each of these Management styles individually does not show a true picture of how a business should be managed.
It is likely that in most modern organisations many, if not all, of these styles are used at some time or other as changes to policies and practices are made almost on a week to week/month to month basis.
Which management style does your organisation use when and why?