Leadership Skills for Business Success Part 2
Decisiveness
Decisiveness is an exercise in good judgment, affording well informed, fast and sound decisions when needed from a leader, but it is not to be confused with inflexibility. It’s often conspicuous, which sometimes makes it difficult for leaders to enforce their decisions comfortably. Everyone has some degree of fear of being liable for a conspicuous, albeit incorrect, decision.
However, the alternative is worse. Even though you are less conspicuous if you remain indecisive, the chances of facing more tragic consequences are higher and will be remembered by others much longer. Decisiveness is an important rule in leadership, the decisions you are willing to make will have a direct impact on how you’re accepted as a leader. Deciding by going with your gut feeling or intuition wouldn’t hurt either.
Purposefulness
Every business needs a vision to set its direction and every successful leader can tune into that vision to achieve success. Business books of yesteryears clearly advocate businesses using vision as a resource, but having a vision in the 21st Century may not be enough for today’s leaders. What may be more advantageous today is the ability to own a strong sense of purpose and the ability to convey this purposefulness to your employees and co-workers. Purposefulness can be more powerful than a vision because it shares the ambition of growing your business with others. Understanding what the real purpose behind the vision is will inspire others. Collaborative Skills Technology has opened up new avenues for communicating and working in today’s work force. Today’s business environment benefits greatly from a culture of collaboration within your business and across all departments, both internally and externally. The Internet makes this extremely easy to do at a very low cost.
Collaboration is a technique that can quickly add to your bottom line if you are able to develop a system where everyone can play their part in contributing ideas or increasing sales.
Innovate and Execute
Another advantage of creating a culture of collaboration is the constant exchange of innovative ideas within your organisation. To be a great leader, become the person that everyone approaches when they have a new idea or innovative approach to a problem.
Leadership means understanding that you don’t have to come up with all the ideas yourself; you can also nurture growth and innovation in others that will benefit everyone.
Leadership Skills for Business Success Part 1
Adaptability
As a leader, adaptability means reacting in an effective manner to shifting circumstances in your business environment. Everybody experiences adaptive challenges, but leaders are keen to resolve these issues with a carefully thought out plan of action. If there is one trait that every business leader needs most in today’s business environment, it is adaptability.
If adaptability is not your strongest asset, then hone your skills. Learn to accept difference as just that, difference, not a problem. Develop ways to anticipate problems and prepare backup plans to effectively cope with those problems. Keep an open mind and commit yourself to learning constantly, learning quickly and reacting accordingly. Adopt an approach of flexibility when faced with any situations that require adaptability.
Remember that if you design your work style around a plan that provides plenty of adaptability, you will be able to provide better support and leadership to your team or company. You’ll also be the person that others turn to for guidance when things change or an unexpected crisis arises. Lead by example, if you show them that you are adaptable, open-minded and flexible you’ll discover more opportunities opening up for you.
People Skills
The ability to observe people in your business. This gives you the insight needed to take the appropriate action required for the right result.
The ability to communicate, effectively. Contrary to popular belief, it is not easy to get ideas across to a group of people when attempting to make the right decision or reach a solution. A leader should be able to communicate effectively to everyone, not just some people, in order to be productive.
The ability to motivate gives you the leadership edge to get the best out of those who work for you or with you.
Developing better people skills, specifically in the areas highlighted above, helps you attain your business objectives much faster by working more productively with today’s very knowledgeable workforce. It is about genuinely connecting with those you work with and who work for you. When you connect well with others, you develop a trusting, productive relationship that benefits everyone.
Self Awareness Leaders who are aware of how they are perceived by others or how they impact the behaviour of others are more likely to succeed than those who are not self aware. Most of us are guilty of believing we are better than we really are because of intent. Unfortunately, living our lives on intent and assuming others can read our minds or instinctively understand us can be a recipe for disaster.Others can only judge us based on our behaviours, which can often lead to misunderstandings and miscommunication. You can not, as a leader, assume that everyone around you instinctively understands the “how and why” behind what you do. You need to practice self awareness in order to establish a more positive working relationship with your employees and co-workers.
Identify your personal strengths and weaknesses and then determine what you need to do to overcome them, whether it is explaining things more clearly, being more willing to compromise or developing better team-building skills. Remember, even if you don’t see your flaws, those around you do. If you are self aware, people will see that you are making the effort to overcome your faults, a very important trait of a great leader.
Boost Profits In Four Simple Steps
One of the most common mistakes companies make when they are trying to boost their profits is to try and get new customers. Typically this behaviour is a reflection of their history. When they were new, they probably had zero or just a few customers. To survive, they had to get more. Getting new customers made sense.For companies that are out of survival mode, and are instead trying to boost their profitability, acquiring new customers is not the best strategy.
Studies by Cap Gemini and Gartner Group have shown that depending on the industry, it costs 3-7 times more money to acquire a new customer than to get an existing customer to make a new purchase.The best profit boosting opportunities lie in optimising the relationships you have with your existing customers. Here are four simple steps to do just that.
Find and Strengthen Your Pillars
Do you know which five of your customers contribute the most to your bottom line each year? Can you name them off the top of your head? Can all the employees in your company name them? If not, that is a problem to be addressed, and addressed quickly.
Depending on the size of the organisation, a loss of any of the top five customers can range from serious to catastrophic. These clients are the pillars supporting your company. Think of your business as a structure sitting in the middle of shark infested waters. Five pillars are arranged in a circle and your business balances on top of them. What happens if one or two of those pillars shrink. What happens if one of them goes away completely?
Part of the key to optimising profits is securing your pillars. If you look at the amount of time your organisation spends on customer service, and break it down by customer, would you find that your “pillars” are the five customers who get the most service?Most likely they do not. “Problem” customers usually command the most attention, followed closely by efforts to get new customers. Change that. Focus a proportionate amount of attention to customers based on how critical they are to your business.
Take the resources being applied to the problem customers and focus them on the pillars. Task those people with making your relationship with the pillars so strong, that they will never crumble. Challenge them to find ways to help the pillars be successful. Be a pillar to your pillars.
Inventory Your Offerings
Starting with your pillar customers, take an inventory of all the products and services that you currently provide. Rank them in order of profitability. When all the offerings have been identified, categorise them from one to five. Ones should be the twenty percent of the offerings that are most profitable. Twos will be the next twenty percent, on down to five, which will be those products and services that are in the bottom 20% in terms of profitability.
Now comes the interesting part. Create a grid with clients across the top, and offerings down the left side. Arrange the clients in order of how much they impact your bottom line. The client with the most impact should be the first one, and the least impact client should be the last. For the offerings, which are on the left side of the grid, keep them in order of most profitable to least profitable.When you have finished creating the grid, go through and for each client put check marks on the products and services you provide for them. This is your profitability map.
Attack the Gaps
Look at your pillars. How are you doing in terms of providing your full suite of offerings to them? Any boxes without checks represent an opportunity for you to solidify your relationship. Start with the offerings that are ranked low and not being used by your pillars, and focus on getting those blanks filled in.Now look at the rest of your map. Where are the check marks? Where are the gaps?
Every gap represents an opportunity to boost your profits. Start with the more profitable clients, and try to fill in all the ones and twos. Educate those customers about the additional products and services you offer. Find out what needs they have and identify ways you can fill them. These efforts will not only strengthen your relationship, but it will also make them more profitable clients for you.
Learn From your “Lovers”
As you are implementing the above step, take another look at your graph. Find the five customers who use the greatest percentage of your products and services. These are the customers who just love what you do. They represent a tremendous learning opportunity.There is some reason or group of reasons that these customers love you so much. If you can find out those reasons, you can apply that knowledge to the way you interact with the rest of your customers.
Perhaps a particular salesperson has figured out something that is really working. Maybe the account representative or customer service contact is particularly good. Whatever the reason is, you need to know.Interview those “lovers” and learn from them. If they say it is because of a particular person in your company, interview that person and find out what they do that is working so well.
Within those interviews lies profit boosting information. Gather it and then apply the learning to the way you interact with your other customers. Again, start with the pillars and then work your way across the customer list.Most organisations acquire customers by filling a single particular need. The key to boosting profits is not to go out and get more of those customers. Find and strengthen your pillars so that your organisation is well supported, inventory your offerings, fill the gaps, and learn from your “lovers”.
These four steps are the way, to boost your profits and to ensure business success.
Providing Excellent Customer Service Part 2
Customers and clients are becoming increasingly disenchanted with the merely adequate. For them, extraordinary service is the rule, not the exception. Anything less and they’re happy to vote with their feet and their wallets.
For business success you need to help your business establish and maintain an ongoing climate of service excellence.
Share Information
If you run a retail business, business management tools, can be invaluable in tracking critical data, such as what items and services are selling particularly well. If you have that data, don’t keep it a state secret. Sharing the information with your employees lets them know what is hitting on all cylinders. It also helps them promote these products or services to customers. Sharing information with others is a really positive step. In other words, don’t keep critical customer information close to the chest. That holds true with businesses other than retail.
Customer Relationship Management, (CRM), software lets you share valuable information about clients and customers with your entire organization. Customer buying habits, particular needs, interests and other data can be stored in a central location and easily shared.
Share The Commitment.
Nothing can prove more destructive to a commitment to extraordinary service than management for whom the concept is little more than lip service. Walk the walk by buying into that commitment just as much as you hope your people will. Make sure you reward top performance. Invest the time and expense in any sort of training that may help employees carry out and maintain high performance standards.
Don’t forget yourself and others in the front office. Make sure that training takes in everyone, not just sales, marketing and other front line employees. Training is an important part of creating a lifelong culture for service excellence since it helps build an understanding of the concept of service. And that means a top-down commitment. Leadership should set the tone for the entire effort.
Don’t Expect Magic Overnight
Another potential hurdle to extraordinary service is the expectation that it’s like flicking a light switch, on it goes, and everything’s hunky dory.
The truth is, exceptional service takes time to take hold in an organisation, particularly one with an array of people and departments. Give it enough time. Review performance every four to six months. It is essential to stay the course so you can improve service ratings.
Expect Mistakes And React Accordingly
The road to top notch service is not without its bumps. Don’t pretend they are not there. Rather, make them a part of the journey by acknowledging a slip up and, in so doing, recommitting to extraordinary performance.
For example, if a customer receives the wrong item, don’t stop at making sure they get the right one. Let the customer know that you are sorry for the mistake and build their confidence that it will not happen again. When you apologise for problems and really listen, you build a relationship. Build customer loyalty, not just satisfaction.
© James Chapman Business Leader Coachinghttp://www.adversityovercome.com
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