Chief Operating Officer — Helping companies achieve Growth, Profitability and Efficiency through operational excellence.
Ask yourself are you paddling or floating your canoe down the river of your business life? If you’re floating then you’re on the defense, if you’re paddling then you’re on the offense – where do you want to be?
In today’s business climate if you’re not on the offensive then you’re being whipped and buffeted from every side by the obstacles you encounter. If something isn’t working in your advertising and you’re a floater then you just wait until next week, or next month and see if it improves. But if you’re paddling and guiding your business, then you’re busy working out how to fix what’s not working.
Take for instance that big boulder in the river known as “competitive intelligence”, which refers to the knowledge needed to implement successful competitive strategies. If you haven’t got a handle on this it can spell disaster to your business. Let’s look at an example of what I mean.
Suppose you find out that a competitor has dropped the price on a product competing directly with your business’ highest gross margin item. Before you drop your price to match, ask yourself whether this could affect your ability to compete. If the answer is “yes”, you should do a bit of sleuthing to answer some key questions like: * Is the price cut an unequivocal comparison, or have certain features/services been modified? * Is the price drop sufficient to overcome customer inertia to change? * Does the competitor have the capacity to handle increased demand without damaging customer satisfaction? * Is the price change restricted to one territory or account, or is it across-the-board?
Effective strategy covers product design, branding, services, and a host of other variables that, in total, comprise your competitive edge. Protecting your edge requires a real-time stream of knowledge about the changing competitive landscape. The most significant fund of ongoing information, on an ongoing basis is your sales force.
Salespeople have the most direct contact with customers, and have customer feedback on the competition which is both real and perceived. However, their job is to sell, so it’s important that you make them aware of their importance and involvement in gathering competitive intelligence.
For the successful collecting of information from the sales force, you must prove to them and their sales managers that the process is of value to them. This means you have some homework to do which is gathering information that is already available internally. Look at and analyze call reports, won-lost reports, and sales records for red flags and trends. A competitive move in one territory may seem insignificant until added to information from other territories, or as part of a global rollout strategy.
Augment these finding with public data from published sources and industry analysts, and you can offer your sales force tips on competing more successfully. By initiating the information sharing process, you will encourage reciprocity on the part of sales once they see what’s in it for them.
In addition to the sales force, people from other functions in your firm are often repositories of useful competitor information. Accounting, procurement, HR, and other functions attend professional meetings with competitor counterparts and may have bits and pieces of the competitive landscape puzzle. Do they know how important this data is, and have you motivated them to share it?
This is but one little corner of your business life, but unless you’re on the offense – paddling instead of floating – you’ll lose your edge and be left in the dust by your competitors. Personally, I’d rather be paddling my little heart out instead of being tossed by whatever winds blow my way.
Starting a Start-Up can be as tasty, exciting, and fresh as eating a salad or it can quite frankly be terrible. Just like a salad, for your business to succeed you need to have the right ingredients. You need an experienced management team, planning, realistic expectations, effort, commitment, and market research. So I just put the salad and mixed it with nuts, strawberries, oranges, chicken, cheese, and tomatoes. It is good, but it is missing something, what is it? Well, the most important ingredient in a salad the dressing and one of the most important in starting a business innovation. You must innovate and set yourself apart, but make no mistake it starts with management. Management needs to plan, act, and react.
Motivating yourself to excel at your job or to be an example to your employees, should not be something you do only when the spirit moves you. It’s an ongoing process that should include every facet of your business life. This means your mental attitude, physical well-being and appearance, work atmosphere, your interaction with others (clients and employees alike), and your off-the-job environment.
Motivational experts get paid big bucks to tell professionals, striving for success, that they must constantly examine these factors. How do you do that? Follow the 5 tips that follow, and watch the changes.
1. Maintain a Positive Attitude – Life is only 10% of what happens to us and 90% how we react to it. We’re responsible for our own actions and attitudes, and changing them when appropriate. When you’re around people/things that are uplifting and positive, you feel that way. You have more confidence in yourself, and know you can change whatever needs changing. If you can make your workplace such a place you’ll find happier workers and higher production. You might even find your employees look forward to coming to work!
2. Leave Personal Troubles Home – Everyone has problems, but they don’t belong at work. Turn your attention and energy entirely to your on-the-job tasks. This will actually be good for you because you’ll get a mental break from your troubles.
3. Create Positive Affirmations – The reason for writing goals for your business is the same as creating positive affirmations on paper. What your eyes see and ears hear, your mind will believe. Try it! After you’ve written them down, read them aloud to yourself – and do it every morning when you get into work. You’ll be amazed at what happens. Come up with a set of new ones every month. Statements such as, “I’m an important and valuable person,” or “I know I’ll make good use of my time today.” Repeating them out loud everyday at a set time will help reinforce positive actions.
4. Make Sure Break Times Are Really Break Times – This is an area where many bosses fall down. You become so intense about the project or situation you’re working on that you don’t ease up. Thinking that it’ll be solved in the next few seconds, and then you’ll get a cup of coffee can lead you right up to quitting time. Regularly adhering to a specified break schedule, even if you’re the boss, releases the tension. If you work on a computer this is even a greater problem because before you realize it – you’ve been working in that same position for hours. The best answer to this is to set yourself a reminder on your appointment calendar for every 2 hours, and let the computer reminder chime send you the alert to move around.
5. Exercise, Exercise, Exercise – I know that lately it seems that “exercise” is the cure-all to every physical ailment or your love life, but despite that there is some truth to that ugly word. By “exercise” I don’t mean that you should go out and join a gym and spend your lunch-time, 3-days-a-week there working out. What is really beneficial and workable is that at those chiming alerts from your computer, get up and walk around your desk or room. Maybe go outside and get the mail and enjoy the sunlight (if you’re an entrepreneur that has a home office), or just get up and do a few stretches. Concentrated, tense thinking – typing – plotting plans – or whatever your work, makes all those muscles tighten up and knot up. Then when we move we “ooh” and “ouch” because we’ve knotted up into a ball of tension. Periodic stretching, even at our desk, or just getting up and walking over to the window and getting a different view can help. One of the greatest disservice modern business decor has done to us, is making our offices pristine, sleek, unencumbered spaces. There is nothing more relaxing than getting up from your desk and walking over to a peaceful,
If you are in the service industry, good customer service can be your bread and butter. By having good customer service, you can generate more profit as it will promote company loyalty. It can create a win-win scenario for both the business and the clients. The clients can get a good experience and can get their money’s worth while the business specifically the employees, can have a share in the profits in the form of bonuses and raises. To have an excellent customer service, here are some secrets worth sharing.
1. Strive to build customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is the most important secret to achieve good customer service. It will be nice if you know your customers” full names, contact numbers and other personal information. If you show concern for what matters to your customers, you are just building their loyalty and you are acquiring customers for life.
2. Provide authentic customer service. Nowadays, service has been a cliche and just a traditional way of dealing with customers. If everyone’s doing it, it’s a high time that you personalize your service. Be creative; personally know your customers and identify their individual needs. Make certain that your offerings are valuable to your customers.
3. The old adage “customer is always right” is still applicable. If one customer approach you and complains, be serious about handling his concern. If the customer is angry and upset, calm him with soothing words first and show him how serious you are in correcting any problems.
Once the customer is satisfied by how you addressed his complain, thank him for conveying the problem to you. Keep in mind that advertisements will not be enough to repair a damage done by failing to address customer complaints. Silent complainers can also do great damages to your business. These are those who just walk out your shop without any complains but you”ll never see them again. They are openly criticizing your services to other people thus establishing a bad reputation for your business.
4. Be honest with the customers. Once your customer suspects that you are lying on them, he is an instant lost buyer. If a customer seeks for your advice about a product, openly tell them what they need to know. In the end, they will thank you for being so genuine with what you offer.
5. Go the extra mile. If you want superb customer service, you should exert extra effort. You can send a birthday card or insert a thank you note on a customer’s package. You can send a congratulatory note when a client gets promoted or you can clip the article if you see their photo or names in print. There are various ways to bring your clients closer to you.
6. Pass it on to your staff. If you are handling other personnel, educate and train them about good customer service as well. There will be times when you can’t directly deal with your customers and your staff must be able to show them the excellent customer service they want.
Competitors are looking to cater to those unsatisfied customers of yours so it’s better take care of your clients through good customer service. It should not only be a lip service; authentic customer service is one which comes from the heart and achieved through visible actions.
As a Chief Operating Officer of a group of companies in the manufacturing sector, including PKM Steel, Mark Hamade carries executive level responsibilities in the areas of human resources and operations. His extensive business experience is uniquely positioned to help his companies leverage strengths and grow business. Mark leads the implementation of strategy and continues to forge relationships with key influences in the manufacturing industry.
Mark enjoys more than 14 years of leadership experience with top-tier companies. He specializes in vision and mission re-engineering as well as setting goals and objectives for human resources. Mark ensures that each business recruits, maintains, develops and rewards a high-quality workforce in order to successfully manage change.
His extensive business experience gives Mark a unique set of talents:: effective leadership, HR, P&L management, strategic thinking, organizational design, behavior and architecture, social networking, solution identification, mergers and acquisitions, organizational performance, recruitment, investment (start-ups, angel, private, and venture) sales, consulting, compensation, international know how, executive coaching, strategic alliances, contract negotiations, motivational speaking, a key understanding of legal issues, presentation skills, ability to deal with people from all backgrounds, and a high level of administrative competency.
Mark is passionate about all types of companies: Start-Ups, Early-Stage, Growing Companies and Fortune 500. He is equally dedicated to people, human capital and training. Hamade loves to assist companies in finding capital, and identify and recommend companies in which to invest.
