Business, economic development - the unofficial Chamber of Commerce

It is worth remembering that the work environment is primarily an unconventional setting for adults. At home we may have responsibilities for bringing up children, paying mortgages, doing DIY and being good neighbours. These are all self-regulating activities and most people manage to do these without too much stress. The workplace however often requires us to leave our adult instincts at the door and adopt a ‘role-play’ approach in order to fit in with the prevailing culture. Such a setting can encourage competition which in itself can encourage the individuals within it to raise their game and perform better than they may do alone. On the other hand, this competitive ’system’ can lead to behaviours that seem to conflict with adult best practice. When disagreements arise, the consequences can often be ugly and lead to ongoing stress and low morale amongst those involved. Below we shall look at how such a situation may arise and how a facilitated discussion might help.

Let us take an example - Joe is in charge of business development for an IT consulting firm. He has successfully negotiated a key contract to develop some software for a hedge fund company. The negotiations were difficult, considering that a competitor was also bidding for the same project. Joe is very pleased to have won the deal. A team is assembled to design and deliver the system. It is estimated to take six months and cost £200,000. There are financial penalties involved for late delivery. The project seemingly starts well but as it progresses, Kevin, the Project Manager is getting stressed and key deadlines are being overshot. Five months later, it is clear that the project is way behind schedule and the company looks likely to incur penalties. Whilst Joe had consulted with his analysts before pricing the deal, he had ignored some of their concerns about a particularly complex module of the work. The analysts couldn’t quantify how potentially complex it might be until they started the work. In the end Joe decided to ‘wing it’ by taking the most optimistic scenario, i.e. that the module would be easy to develop.

A meeting has been called by the CEO of the consulting firm to find out what has been going wrong. Joe is blaming the analysts and the project manager for not being efficient in their work. Kevin, the Project Manager is furious that Joe is questioning his ability and his integrity. He tells the CEO that Joe has set the team up for failure by incorrectly pricing the deal in order to get his commission. The CEO meanwhile is furious at the prospect of his resources being wasted and of having to pay considerable financial penalties. Clearly we have a situation of conflict. Joe is stressed because he feels that Kevin has got him into trouble with the CEO and that his team has let him down by not delivering the project on time. Kevin is stressed because he feels Joe was being dishonest in his negotiations and is trying to use him as a scapegoat.

Is this an unsolvable stalemate? Perhaps and perhaps not? It depends on how the individuals handle it from this point forward. In an ideal situation, a good facilitator, (in-house or external), would convene a meeting between Kevin and Joe. Open communication is key at this point and it is important to look at the positive intentions behind each person’s behaviour. Kevin would be asked what his positive intentions were in not communicating earlier that the project was off-track. He might say that he didn’t want to cause any concern or that he didn’t want anyone to think that he was a failure. As for Joe, he might say that he ignored the analysts concerns when pricing the deal because he was desperate to prove that he was able to win good business for the company. He was also determined to ‘beat’ his opposite number at the competitor firm, whom he had worked with before and disliked intensely. A deeper analysis would probably reveal more positive intentions for each party. The key thing about this conversation is that even though Kevin and Joe are at loggerheads, it is clear that neither of them had any intention to offend or undermine the other. Their intentions were pure given the ’system’ that they are operating in.

The discussion could then look at the values or ‘drivers’ of each employee. If Joe were asked what was important about winning the deal he might list the following: Money, Pride, Recognition, Job Security and Success. These are the ‘drivers’ behind his intentions. Kevin on the other hand might say that it was important to him not to flag the problem earlier because he strongly values: Harmony, Determination, Pride and Teamwork. Both parties are ‘driven’ by different things (although the both value ‘Pride’). Since Kevin values Harmony, he didn’t want to cause a fuss by indicating that there might be a problem. Since Joe is driven by Money, he may do whatever it legally takes to secure it. In this type of dialogue the facilitator would encourage both parties to see how the methods they have used to meet their values might have caused collateral damage to other people. They could then explore new ways of meeting their values that may be better for the other party and the company in general.

The type of facilitated discussion outlined above is entirely realistic, even when there is animosity or conflict. It broadens the participant’s awareness of how other people have good intentions and admirable values irrespective of the outcomes of their actions. The participants can also come away with a better understanding of how they themselves think and operate. Building this type of awareness is an excellent way to foster understanding and future cooperation amongst employees.

Noel is an experienced coach with a solid corporate background that enables him to closely empathise with the issues facing his Executive Coaching London clients. Find out more at http://www.inspiring-potential.com

Statistics consistently reinforce that the biggest challenge in today’s contact center environment is agent training. Turnover continues to be high; new hire costs are on the rise–$6500 per agent! At the same time, losing customers because of bad call experiences negatively impacts your bottom line. What can you do? How do you justify the training expenditure?

Research has been making a case for how spending in human performance areas such as training, translates into bottom line growth. Accenture’s study on the impact of training on ROI has some interesting results. (Smith, David. Y. and Waddington, Ted. Running Training Like a Business: Determining the Return on Investment of Your Learning Programs, Outlook Point of View, March 2003.)

First, in the area of recruitment, training opportunities were among the top three criteria people considered when deciding where they want to work (the others are the opportunity for advancement and a good benefits package).
In the area of productivity, as a result of training, employees were:

17% more productive

20% higher performance levels relative to their peer group

Stayed with the company 14% longer

In the area of retention, employees who had access to the training were:

More than 2 times more likely to expect to be with the company in 2 years

More than 6 times more likely to think the company is a ‘great place to work’

More likely to think they are fairly compensated

Dollar figures associated with their statistics for a fiscal year report the annual per person net benefit or $25,324. They multiplied this number by their 50,000 employees yielding a companywide benefit of training of $1.26 million. By dividing the benefit by the cost of one year of training ($358 million), researchers concluded that the ROI (at Accenture) is 353%.

Negative Customer Service Experiences?

How many of you know (and track) what percentage of your calls are bad experiences? Hopefully, you do know the number, and they’re in the low single digits.

In a recent study, in answer to (1) did the agent satisfy your needs in the call, and (2) based on any negative experience, would you stop using this company and go to the competition? the results were:

Ages Would Stop Using the Company in the Future

18 - 25 100%

26 - 35 97

36 - 45 53

46-55 50

56-65 33

Over 65 63

Source: 2003 Purdue University/BenchmarkPortal.com

As you can see, there is a strong correlation between participant’s age and his/her tendency to stop using the company after a bad experience. Notice that younger participants were less tolerant, more likely to go to the competition, and those over 65 are more demanding that those in middle age.

Therefore, it’s very important to take great care of your younger callers so as to maintain their loyalty. Callers above 36 have more of an ‘emotional bank account’ with the company they’re dealing with-probably had some good experiences and are more willing to ‘forgive’ a bad one.

If you know your percentage of bad experiences, put a dollar amount on that call and then total it out for the year. I think you’ll be very surprised at the amount of lost revenue. Now if you have a 1% improvement, as a result of a training initiative for example, the amount of recovered revenue (and customers) is very encouraging.

This is just another means to tie soft skills to ROI, and to include your front lines as part and parcel of the revenue-producing operation of your company.

Customer Satisfaction Driver #1

We all know first call resolution (one and done) is the #1 driver for customer satisfaction with best practices reported at 86%. However, if your center is at 86%, this means that 14% of your customers are contacting you more than once to resolve their issues! This not only frustrates your CSRs and yourselves, but your customers as well. Repeat calls are costly not only to operations and the bottom line, but they negatively impact customer satisfaction, and ultimately, customer loyalty.

How do you define first call resolution? And how do youif you docalculate it? Research shows that there is no common measuring method. However, what gets measured gets managed, and what gets managed gets better.

In a recent study (Ascent Group) more than 90% of companies measuring first call resolution reported improvement in their performance. Another study (callcentres.com) reported a dramatic fall in call volumeidentifying that a minimum of 20% of all calls were repeat calls from customers needing an answer or help they didn’t get. Further, that the absence of first call resolution was found to account for a minimum of 30% of a call center’s operational costs!

The bottom line: Invest in your peoplegive them the training, the tools, and the authority to get their job done right the first time. After all, CSRs are the interface who handle customer issues. One of the foremost methods to boost customer satisfactionand improve first call resolutionis to consistently and ongoingly train, train, train your CSRs in world class customer service skills.

ROSANNE D’AUSILIO, Ph.D., industrial psychologist, President of Human Technologies Global, Inc., specializes in human performance management for contact centers, providing needs analyses, instructional design, and customized, live, world class customer service skills trainings. Also offered: agent/facilitator certification through Purdue University’s Center for Customer Driven Quality.

Known as ‘the practical champion of the human, she authors the best-sellers, Wake Up Your Call Center: Humanize Your Interaction Hub, 4th edition (hot off the press), and Customer Service and The Human Experience. Reach her at Rosanne@human-technologies.com, sign up for her complimentary monthly e-newsletter in its 7th year, and check out her new virtual store.

It happened again. I ran into an old friend while registering for the World Masters Games last month and as we were catching up, she complemented me on a necklace I was wearing. When I told her I bought it in South Africa on my last trip there, she exclaimed, “You have to start importing these. You’d make a fortune!”

The Great Import Plan

This is a refrain I’ve heard over and over again and while there is some truth in it, you can make money being an importer, there is a certain amount of naiveté in the plan. First of all, most people don’t take into account the shipping costs, tariffs and insurance involved - though some do sneak through customs with suitcases brimming. But the biggest flaw in the Great Import Plan is distribution. Canada is a vast but sparsely populated country. In order to sell necklaces, or whatever, you need some method of getting it to the people of Lunenburg at one end and Nanaimo at the other. Even if you are only targeting your local market, you need exposure to lots of customers to make the venture profitable. Do you open a retail store? Hit the Farmer’s Market? Find a distributor?

Before I go on, I bet you’re thinking, “I thought this article was all about exporting?” Well, it is. This little scenario is exactly the same dilemma facing exporters - getting your product to the people that need it and will buy it.

After in-depth market research you may be 110% convinced that everyone in Italy will be clamoring for your product and you may have it all figured out with respect to shipping but the big question is, how do you get it into the hands of your customers? Open a retail store? Sell in local markets? Find a distributor?

Finding an effective market entry method that meets your needs is probably one of the most important and time consuming methods of exporting, yet, in my opinion, it is one that companies concern themselves with the least. I’ve seen companies make mistakes in foreign countries equivalent to giving a mom and pop shop in Flin Flon, Manitoba exclusive, nationwide distribution rights to sell African jewelry. Sure, they might sell a few pieces but it’s not likely they are going to penetrate major urban centers. And as far as I can tell, the only reason companies make this error is because they are lazy in conducting their their due diligence.

Star qualities of a distributor

So don’t sign an agreement with the first person to approach you (I call it “accidental exporting” and there are a lot of unscrupulous people out there that do just that - then never deliver, waiting to be bought out of a contract). Be active in finding a distributor that meets your needs and avoid the temptation to sign an agreement with a distributor merely because they are the biggest, most persistent or super-enthusiastic. At a minimum, consider these qualities when evaluating a distributor:

- Proven track record in a similar line, but no conflicts of interest with competing products.

- Mix of product lines that complement your product. Check to ensure that they actually do represent those products.

- Established distribution networks and strong contacts with key buyers. You may have to appoint several distributors in a country like Italy where business is done regionally and there is little consolidation.

- Solid financial history (be sure to do a credit check) and sufficient cash flow in order to extend credit to customers, as well as a willingness to invest in your line.

- Appropriate staff (in terms of numbers but also marketing savvy) to promote your product.

- Storage facilities, showrooms, shops, service workshops and after-sales service as required by your product.

- Knowledge of local import procedures and regulations.

- References from other suppliers and customers.

- Personal rapport - and this may end up being the most important factor in your success!

Finding a distributor

Finding a distributor that meets all of your criteria can be difficult. I suggest that you interview at least five potential partners (preferably in-person) before you appoint a distributor. Unfortunately, there is no one way of finding an overseas partner and it is a time consuming process. Many companies have good luck approaching the Canadian Trade Commissioner service in their target market, though results can vary from country to country and I always caution that this should be only one source of information. Other options include chambers of commerce, asking for referrals from other Canadian exporters, checking with your end customer to see who their distributors are, trade associations and trade shows. Also, your local library (the Business Link in Edmonton is an excellent resource) will have books such as “The International Directory of Agents, Distributors and Wholesalers.”

Show me the money!

It’s not always possible to sign-on with the largest distributor in a country. Sometimes it is necessary to work with a smaller partner, with the agreement that they will grow as your company grows. It’s like the movie “Jerry Maguire” when Cuba Gooding Jr.’s character, Rod Tidwell, signs on with Tom Cruise’s agency, even when no one else would take the chance. By the end of the movie, when Tidwell’s football fortunes were rising, so were Jerry’s - they grew together. Plus, Jerry was able to devote all of his time to Rod. Wouldn’t that be great for your product?

The important thing is to have a systematic method of evaluating each prospect. At a minimum you should prepare a detailed questionnaire that addresses all of the issues I identified above. Companies that take the time to fill it out will be serious. You would be amazed at what a great filtering tool this is and it will help you to more objectively evaluate prospective distributors.

Bronze medal success

As for the Masters Games, I’m happy to report that my basketball team won the bronze medal in our category. I’m in the front row, center, looking a little goofy (there were a lot of people taking photos, it was hard to know where to look). It was a true international event (we had an Aussie on our team) with over 5,000 of 21,000 athletes from outside of Canada, proving that sport is a common unifier regardless of citizenship, language, religion or political beliefs. It was so much fun, we’re thinking of going to Sydney in 2009!

Copyright© 2005.

Cheryl Lockhart of International Strategies Ltd. assists small- to medium-sized Canadian and foreign enterprises navigate the complexities of global business development. Services include international project identification and management, market research and analysis and foreign partner development.

To learn more about exporting and gain access to more FREE e-zines, visit her web site http://www.intl-strategies.com

According to a Miller Heiman 2003 Sales Effectiveness Study, over 60% of sales organizations are being pushed to increase results with reduced budgets and fewer salespeople compared to last year

Whether you are a sales rep or a sales manager this information is probably not a surprise to you. Simply put, the current business climate demands you work smarter and not harder. It’s about being organized enough to put your best foot forward in order to close business. The sales professionals I work with sales pros who rarely disagree when I say that time management is not only important but a critical factor in being successful. When I break down the most important components, here’s what I find:

Prioritize. Most sales professionals I work with have a clear understanding of their goals and priorities, but shifting priorities have become the norm in most organizations. Being able to change quickly can mean gaining a competitive advantage, but it might also leave the employee feeling confused and over-whelmed. To remain flexible, re-visit your priorities several times during the day. Try working on priorities first thing in the morning BEFORE accessing email. This is a much more effective approach, both long and short term. However it can be difficult to implement because we tend to respond to the urgent (email) first. Your time management habits should support your ability to focus and proactively seek working on what’s important, because focus and importance shouldn’t be on any customer and prospect but on the right customer and the right prospect. Otherwise you’re simply wasting time and opportunity.

Process. Selling is a process. It requires being efficient (doing the right thing) and effective (at the right time). And that’s what time management is all about. But the first rule of effective time management is to overcome personal disorganization. How do you handle all that incoming information? Is the pile on your desktop stressing you because you fear something might be falling through the cracks? Can you store, manage and retrieve electronic and paper-based information easily? Paper and time management are interconnected so having a roadblock in one area usually leads to a challenge in another. If your systems and processes are already in line, ask how you can make them better because little shifts can make a huge difference in increasing productivity and reducing stress.

Proceed. ‘Hope is not a Strategy’ is one of my favorite book titles. The same is true for improving your time management skills. It’s action that makes the difference. Doing something that moves you forward helps you feel you have more control of your day and your workload. Just thinking about doing something is a waste of your time. Time that would be better spent overcoming roadblocks.

Don’t be a slave to poor time management habits, cluttered desktops (and hard drives) and procrastination.
Being successful means having more time to spend with your family and friends as well as pursue some of your own interests.

Copyright 2004 Cynthia Kyriazis. All rights reserved.

Cynthia Kyriazis is a Professional Organizer, trainer, consultant, speaker, coach and author with over 20 years management experience in multi-unit corporations. She is President of Organize it, Inc., an organizational consulting firm serving Fortune 500 clients since 1995. Cynthia has worked with over 150 companies and hundreds of professionals to help improve performance in the areas of time, information, space and electronic file management.

Cynthia has appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Kansas City Star and the Legal Intelligencer. She currently serves as Secretary on the Board of Directors for the National Association of Professional Organizers (NAPO), member of the National Speakers Association (NSA), member of International Society for Performance Improvement - Kansas City chapter (ISPI-KC) and consultant to the American Coaching Association.

The funny thing about presenting and public speaking is that the majority of people will tell you they don’t enjoy it and/or aren’t very good at it. And yet regardless of who they are and what they do, most of the speaking they do on a day-to-day basis IS public speaking.

You see, mostly when we talk to ourselves we keep it as an internal dialogue that nobody else can hear. But whenever we open our mouths and actually make a noise in front of another person we’re speaking in public - hence “public speaking”. So why do so many people find it so scary?

I think it’s the eyes. All those sets of eyes fixed on you….. BORING into you. It’s unsettling. So would it be any easier if your audience was ignoring you and all looking the other way? What if they all dozed off so it WAS as if you were talking to yourself? (Have you ever been a Rotary after-dinner speaker?)

Whatever the reason, the fact is that before getting up to speak, even the most seasoned professional will have some butterflies, whether they choose to call the feeling nervousness or excitement doesn’t really matter. Rest assured, we all experience it to some degree.

If I had one tip to pass on, if I was asked to tell you the most important lesson I’ve learnt over the years I’ve been presenting, it would have to be to stress the absolute necessity of being totally prepared.

Now this may sound obvious and I’m sure you’ve heard this before, possibly many times, and like a lot of important messages it tends to become diluted the more we hear it “Oh yes, I knew that, now what else?”.

And yet, knowing this, some people will be outside in the car park seconds before they have to deliver their sales pitch scribbling it out on the back of a business card. I know, I’ve been there.

When I talk about being prepared, I mean you should know your talk off by heart. You should be able to give it verbatim, standing on your head, without even having to think about what comes next.

Now some of you may be thinking “Yes, but I don’t work like that. I like to keep the spontaneity” or “Yes, but I want to tailor my talk to the occasion” or “Yes, but that would be boring because I’d just be on auto pilot.”

But actually, that’s not what happens. In effect, the opposite is true. When you know your talk by rote, it gives you the freedom to change it around, to add, to subtract without losing your direction. It’s like driving from A to B. If your route is set from the outset and you know it well, you can safely veer off and browse in a few antique shops and have a pub lunch in a picturesque village off the beaten track and still get back to where you were to complete your journey. But, if you’d just set off in the general direction with no main route to which to return, you’d soon get lost if you were to be diverted and you’d have difficulty picking up that thread again.

You see, there are so many things out there that can throw the speaker, and lots of unexpected things can occur when you’re dealing with the public. No matter how good you are, you will become distracted, so knowing your material to the nth degree is absolutely crucial.

If something happens that needs your attention, you’ll have to stop and deal with it, but you can return to your talk with barely a glitch and appear calm, collected and hence the ultimate professional.

You see we all get nervous. We all stick our feet in our mouths sometimes. We don’t ever operate in a hermetically sealed environment, especially when exposed to other humans. But prepare, prepare and over-prepare and not only will you enjoy the confidence of knowing that nothing can phase you because you know your material, but if you’re forced off your chosen route for any reason you can return smoothly and appear to be the consummate professional speaker.

And after all, if you can’t - or won’t - speak about your business, who will?

Maria Davies is the UK’s top professional speaker and presentations coach for women. Find out more at http://www.laddersofsuccess.com

Ed was just appointed team leader in a public works organization of the federal government. In preparing for his first meeting with his new team, Ed thought long and hard about some of his prior managers’ leadership styles. One characteristic that he particularly admired in several of his managers was the ability to connect with the team through humor. He decided on a strategy that would help the team accept him as a leader–he would show his human side and use humor to connect with them.

Ed had his first meeting with the team and was very satisfied with the results. The team seemed to really like him. The meeting was filled with laughter and both the team and Ed seemed to really be enjoying themselves. Ed was very happy and believed things were getting off to a great start.

With each passing meeting, though, there seemed to be a growing concern among the team. While Ed seemed to connect with the team, he didn’t see the cooperation on getting things done as he had hoped. There were also a couple of team members who asked for permission to interview for positions outside of the group. Ed was growing concerned over the trend and asked Betty, one of the team members, what she thought was the problem. Betty’s counsel hit Ed right between the eyes: “Ed, you’re a great guy and people really like you, but I just don’t know if you’ve got what it takes to lead this group. We’re kind of feeling like you may not have the skills needed to lead us, which is creating a lot of concern among the team.” While Ed’s focus on using humor to connect with the team is great, he didn’t take the time to establish the necessary credibility with the team.

Any one of us can think about an influential figure we’ve had in our lives, whether a parent, boss, or religious leader, who used humor to build camaraderie and inspire people. Leaders who have a sense of humor motivate those around him to want to participate in the journey. The problem arises, though, when a leader tries to connect with a team of people prior to establishing himself as worthy of being followed. If a leader fails to establish his worthiness by gaining credibility with the team, the team may only stick with the leader when things are going well and there are no problems on the horizon. The moment that problems start cropping up, team members will be more apt to defect because they won’t have faith in the leader to navigate the storm. Credibility breeds acceptance, humor fosters inspiration.

So why is the failure to establish credibility such a massive issue? Here are the biggies:

Team members need to trust that the leader can get from origin to destination - Being a leader means knowing the plan and leading the team down the field. The leader not only needs to know the plan and how to execute, she needs to communicate the plan to the team and ensure the team understands and believes in the plan.

Team members need to feel secure that the leader will navigate well through stormy issues - Think of an airline flight you’ve been on where some unexpected turbulence hit. While the plane is rockin’ and rollin,’ the pilot speaks to the passengers with incredible calmness and control. His job is to make you feel that things are well in hand. Imagine if turbulence hit and you heard the pilot scream “HHHEEELLLPPP!!!” I’d be heading for the exits. Having credibility with the team gives the team greater security that the leader will get them through sticky issues.

Use of humor by a credibility-starved leader will exacerbate the credibility issue - When leaders continually use humor as a means to connect with a team without establishing credibility up-front, the use of humor itself becomes a credibility inhibitor. Teams will tend to see the use of humor as the leader trying to “cover up” the fact that he may not know what he is doing. Thus, each time the credibility-starved leader cracks a joke, he is actually reinforcing this lack of credibility issue with the team. Rather than seizing the opportunity to gain credibility, the leader uses it to brush up on his lounge act.

Appropriate use of humor is a great means to inspire a team to perform, so long as the credibility has already been established. Use the following tips to help you get over the credibility hump:

Start with listening - Gaining credibility doesn’t mean you have all the answers before you understand the questions. In fact, not taking the time to listen can actually hurt your credibility campaign and brand you as arrogant (we’ll talk more about this in lesson #2). Demonstrating a clear understanding of team concerns and issues is a great credibility builder in that the team learns to trust you as a leader.

Use humor sparingly up front - The team first and foremost wants to know why they should be following you. Use those initial opportunities with the team to connect through understanding the issues they are facing and gaining an understanding of the most important things for you as a leader to focus on. As you build the credibility, feel free to introduce more humor to move the team from accepting you to being inspired to follow you.

Don’t be so gun-shy of using humor that you are viewed as a stick-in-the-mud - Being cautious about using humor shouldn’t give you a reputation as stern, mean, or stoic. By all means, be pleasant, approachable, and engaged in your interaction. The team will find it easier to talk to you and will get a more comfortable feeling that you understand their problems.

Use a bit of self-deprecating humor - I use this technique a lot particularly when I am doing presentations. I will frequently tell of a situation where I did something really foolish or where I publicly embarrassed myself in front of a group of people. This demonstrates that you’re secure enough with your own abilities to share them with other people. It also shows that you are able to laugh at yourself and not take yourself too seriously. One note of caution here: don’t be self-deprecating to a point that the team sees you as having a self-esteem issue.

Avoid humor which tarnishes the credibility of others - Using humor which trashes other people or competitors creates problems in a couple of ways for you as a leader. The first has to do with the trustworthiness of the leader. While team members may see destructive jokes as funny, they can develop a viewpoint of “so what does this person say about me when I’m not in the room?” The second has to do with the questionability of your motivations. When you trash talk others for a laugh, you can be viewed as attempting to build your credibility at the expense of someone else through your own insight and wit. For credibility to be well entrenched in the team it needs to be absolute, not relative. Otherwise, you’re only demonstrating that you are worthy to lead a team until someone better or smarter comes along. Not a good foundation to establish credibility.

Look, none of us wants to follow a leader with all the personality of cottage cheese. Having a leader who is able to share an occasional joke and laugh with a team is huge in moving a team from acceptance to inspiration. Just ensure that you as a leader take the first step to establish credibility with the team and garner their trust in you before you get too liberal with the funny stuff.

From the book Humor Minus Credibility Equals Doofus at http://www.leadingonedge.com

Get all 12 Back to Basics Leadership Principles Anyone Can Follow at http://www.leadingonedge.com

Lonnie Pacelli has over 20 years’ experience with Accenture and Microsoft and is currently president of Leading on the Edge International. Lonnie’s books include “The Project Management Advisor: 18 Major Project Screw-Ups and How to Cut Them Off at the Pass” and “The Truth About Getting Your Point Across”. Get the books, leadership products, other articles, MP3 seminars and a free email mini seminar at http://www.leadingonedge.com

Negotiations and the people involved in them are going to be managed by someone. Managing a negotiation, all of the parties at the table, requires exceptional people skills to influence and motivate others. Honing these people skills is a sure way to improve your ability to negotiate successfully.

The parties to a negotiation are people. People are unique individuals. To reach them through a debate of the issues requires that you present your case in terms they can readily understand. To effectively communicate with the other person you must understand the person. Not his or her argument but the “person”. Researching the other party before the settlement conference can provide valuable details about their background, professional, personal and scholastic. Another way to learn about your adversary is to ask associates or common acquaintances about the person with whom you are about to meet. Finally, the time spent informally talking with the person before a negotiating session serves the purpose of providing insights into how you might phrase your arguments.

An assertive management style can be counter-productive unless it is mitigated by the proper mode of delivery. To lead an informal group you must adopt a subtle manner rather than boldly taking command. You want a management style that enables you to gain control the actions of the group with out confronting the other person and backing him or her into a corner. Rather than commanding try leading the others by informing, educating and convincing them that there are viable options in addition to what they came expecting to achieve.

To influence how others will act or respond requires intervention or management on your part . As they don’t work for you and assuming you don’t have absolute power in the negotiation, this means you have to make them want to do what you need to have done. This requires leadership. Leadership requires that you win their minds and convince them that doing what you want is in their best interest. Typically settlements arise when the parties become convinced that modest compromise on their part is worth gaining concessions from the other person. A small negotiation manager will seek to define and sell strategic compromises that achieve the needs of the parties. Mediators are adept at this small group management technique and negotiators benefit by applying the mediation techniques of leadership and management in their negotiations.

Managing another person or a small group requires good people skills. Those not within your control must want to listen to you and go along with your suggestions. The personal traits most likely to win favor with an adversary are not those of an adamant, arrogant, ruthless despot. They are more likely to warm to the approaches of a benevolent, sharing, nurturing benefactor. Teaching, coaching and informing are viable tactics to garner the support or at least attention of the other person. by attacking their message or facts you are not attacking them. By adding information to the equation you can inject doubt into their position. By demonstrating how things might work out for them, you offer options to be considered. All of these actions serve to establish your subliminal leadership role.

The author is an assistant editor at How-to-Negotiate.com, a site featuring articles about effective people skills required in the dispute settlement process and how people negotiate everything in their daily lives be it personal issues, parenting matters, social conflicts, or business or work related challenges. The site promotes the fact that conflict is a natural aspect of everyone’s life and we should all work at improving our ability to negotiate the curves life throws our way.

The typical day in the life of an elite advisor may be chock-full of appointments with clients, strategic alliance partners, staff members and speaking engagements with your target groups. With so many things to do and such little time to get them accomplished, advisors often overlook business-building measures like prompt referral follow-ups and maintenance tasks like contacting clients for birthdays and anniversaries.

Leading advisors are spending less than 2% of their time prospecting, according to Advisor Impact, a leading research firm. So how do you handle the need to fight off the competition, find new affluent clients and balance an overcrowded schedule?

The answer doesn’t involve being cloned or increasing your staff, but adding action plans into your daily routine. Yes, action plans! Our military is considered the most elite in the world because of their deliberate and consistent planning for the inevitable. Adding trackable action plans for new clients, seminar registration, age 70 and many more items can help you manage all of your tasks and most importantly, they give you more time for prospecting, converting leads to clients and keeping current clients satisfied.

To help you infuse action plans into your practice, here are three simple steps that you can implement today!

Step One - Map out all the steps

When you make your marketing plans you include things like seminars, client appreciation events, direct mail campaigns and client communication programs. Each of these projects involves several steps. You need to list those steps out. For instance, you shouldn’t do a client appreciation event without a location, date, invitations, refreshments or entertainment.

Step Two - Put the steps in the right sequence

When you bake a cake you have to pre-heat the oven and mix the ingredients before you put the batter in the cake pan and the cake pan in the oven. The same thing is true for each marketing effort. So now go back to your list of tasks and put them in the right sequence.

It would help to put a time line on the tasks. For instance, if you are going to mail client newsletters at the end of every month, you need to get the newsletter put together and send it to the printer. You need to take into account the time the printer will need to complete printing. Then the newsletters need to get mailed, which also takes some time. All of this means, you might need to finalize the content by the 10th of the month in order to get the job back from the printer and mailed by the 25th of the month.

Step Three - Delegate and automate the tasks

What you created in step one and two were action plans. Now, you need to delegate them in a trackable format. Automating your action plans and marketing campaigns is the best way to manage your busy schedule. Furthermore, it’s more reliable, cost-effective and time-saving. It will allow you to designate a group within your database like all clients. It will allow you to schedule that group to receive a customized newsletter or email on a specific date and then record in the database that the client was sent the newsletter, greeting card or email.

Building a marketing campaign or client communication plan is just a series of action plans that are linked together. For example, let’s say you are hosting your client appreciation event. That action plan could be built to send a reminder to yourself and your staff when the deadline arrives for choosing a location. Another reminder goes to you to finalize the invitations. The action plan can then send the invitations to the group of clients that you pre-selected. It can send a reminder to you and your staff to call and confirm the RSVPs on the day before the event. It can send a follow-up ‘thanks for attending’ card to those who attended and a ’sorry we missed you’ card to those who didn’t. And it can record all of this in your database.

Over the span of a year, you might combine newsletter mailings, client events, annual client review appointments and even regularly scheduled phone calls into your client communication plans.

For your marketing campaigns, you might create a series of “drip marketing” contacts to follow-up on seminar attendees. These could be personalized post cards or letters that are mailed automatically over a two- or three-week period. The concept of marketing a campaign to a targeted audience using a pre-defined series of contacts is another type of action plan.

If you are seeking to learn more about using action plans to better manage your business and to allow more time for prospecting, client conversions and up selling to existing clients, visit BuildYourMarket.com (http://www.buildyourmarket.com/). You will find fully-automated, pre-packaged action plans for just about every imaginable event.

Reprinted with permission from the Ezine: AdvisorMarketingNews.com- “Delivering Today’s Trends the Advisor Professional” (http://www.advisormarketingnews.com/)

“There are incalculable resources in the human spirit, once it has been set free.” Hubert Humphrey, Former U.S. Vice President

Remember the old television series, The Lone Ranger? A lot of traditional managers see themselves in a similarly heroic role. In the TV show, when the poor hapless townsfolk got themselves into big trouble, the Lone Ranger and his faithful sidekick would come riding over the hill. With the right degree of courage, wit, and cunning, he faced down the mean hombre or otherwise took care of the problem for the town. At the end of the nice, neat, half hour episode, our hero would leave the grateful townsfolk behind wondering, “Who was that masked man?”

The same spirit of rugged individualism runs deep within many of today’s “heroic managers.” They solve problems, take command, control and direct, occasionally empower team members, and are caught up in putting out daily operating fires. They are often overworked and a growing number are burning out. Managers often talk about their volume of email, voice mail, projects, meetings, and many hours worked. Is that bragging or complaining? One of the big reasons typical managers are caught up in their “busyness” cycle is because it makes them feel important. They are at the center of the action. They are making it happen. They get the adrenaline rush of urgent heroic problem-solving that saves the day for their poor hapless team.

Leaders spend much less time personally solving problems. They invest their time in making sure that the right problems are being solved. Here’s how we might rewrite The Lone Ranger script for a leader rather than a heroic manager:

Responding to the call for help, the Lone Ranger rides into town, gets down off his high horse, takes off his mask, and facilitates a process by which the townspeople solve the crisis for themselves. He gets to know the people and matches their strengths and abilities to established performance targets. After seeing them through the crisis, he rides out of town, with the townspeople saying, “Hey, we solved this ourselves.”

When the next problem arose, the townspeople might still call for the Lone Ranger, but in an advisory capacity; they would be more likely to handle the crisis within the team. Each time they handled their own problems, they would increase their ability to identify and eliminate the root causes, their capacity to work as a team, and their level of confidence. Eventually the Lone Ranger and Tonto would join the lonely Maytag Repairman, flipping playing cards into their hats as they swap stories around the campfire.

Of course, the “leader version” of the Lone Ranger wouldn’t make very good television. It’s less dramatic and action packed. The hero doesn’t save the day. Heading off problems and solving root causes leads to less pressure-packed “excitement.” Getting teams to share the workload and become more self-sufficient reduces the short-term adrenaline rush. It totally shifts the team leader’s role and focus.

The fact is that organizations need both management and leadership. Ultimately it depends on the situation. There are times when the manager needs to ride into town, take control, issue commands, and solve the problem immediately. Indeed, to do otherwise in such cases might be seen as an abdication of responsibility. But such actions are generally needed only as a short-term response in times of crisis. If managers stay in crisis mode continuously, they weaken their teams, increase their own workload, multiply dependence on them, kill commitment and ownership, and reduce partnering. Personal, team, and organization growth is stunted.

Excerpted from Jim’s bestseller, The Leader’s Digest: Timeless Principles for Team and Organization Success. View the book’s unique format and content, Introduction and Chapter One, and feedback at http://www.theleadersdigest.com. This book is a companion book to Growing the Distance: Timeless Principles for Personal, Career, and Family Success. Jim Clemmer is an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, workshop/retreat leader, and management team developer on leadership, change, customer focus, culture, teams, and personal growth. His web site is http://www.clemmer.net/articles.

Easier said than done. Negotiating is complicated. No one style is effective in every situation and it’s important to stay focused on your objectives and remain flexible in finding ways to achieve them.

The other side will not necessarily play by your rules or behave in a reasonable way.

The ideal case situation is when both parties are clear and collaborative and work towards a win-win solution.

Positive approaches include:

-Talking about interests

-Friendly discussion of issues

-Facts, data to support position

-Problem solving, looking for alternatives, tradeoffs

-Acknowledging the other party’s point of view

-Asking questions, ‘What if?’

Negative approaches include:

-Making demands

-Provocative and threatening statements

-Digging into a position

-Being adversarial

Take a break — Walk Away

If the negotiation becomes deadlocked, or the other party is unreasonable to deal with, you may need to walk away. You can’t force the other party to be reasonable, and making too many concessions is not the basis for a healthy business relationship.

Involve an intermediary

Sometimes cultural or style differences make it advisable to involve an intermediary. Effective negotiation needs to be peer-to-peer. Involving an intermediary can help to bridge the differences and find the common ground or ‘win-win’ outcome. Be careful in your choice of intermediary. You want a deal — not a battle.

Dealing with Adversarial Lawyers

Not all lawyers are adversarial, but the sad truth is that lawyers make more money when there’s a fight. Lawyers have an economic incentive to turn amicable business relationships into protracted negotiations and even adversarial outcomes.

Here are some warning signs:
Lawyer is posturing and taking positions that are obviously one-sided and trigger protracted negotiations in order to get to a position of reasonable balance for all parties.

Lawyer demands last-minute concessions, price reductions or other major changes just before the deal is to be completed.

Lawyer uses massive boilerplate documents, 80% of which are incomprehensible and 90% are irrelevant to the deal.
Adversarial negotiations are unlikely to produce a good deal and business relationship. The deal needs to be fair to all parties to work well. The party that feels unfairly treated usually finds a way to get even.

To avoid having your deal derailed by such lawyer tactics, I recommend that you keep adversarial lawyers out of the negotiations.

I recommend that:

The parties draft a term sheet which is the essence of their agreement on one page. (Answer the questions: Who? What? Where? When? And how much?)

Each party reviews the term sheet with his/her respective advisor and revises the term sheet based on such input. (Basically, use your lawyer as a coach and do the negotiating yourself.)

The parties discuss the agreement and revise the term sheet. Then, instruct the lawyers to write up your agreement, without gobs of boilerplate, and include a provision to mediate any dispute. (One lawyer should draft and the other review.)

With this approach, you’ll get a deal that is fair and workable and an agreement that you understand. The parties should be able to track from the term sheet to the agreement easily.

In conclusion, negotiating is situational. To get the outcome you want, you need to adapt to the situation.

Jean Sifleet is a practical and experienced business attorney whose career spans many years in large multi-national corporations and includes three successful entrepreneurial ventures. Jean has extensive experience in dealing with intellectual property matters in the large and small companies and as a small business owner. She has authored numerous books and publications on avoiding legal pitfalls in doing business. This article is excerpted from her new book, Advantage IP - Profit from Your Great Ideas (Infinity 2005). For more information, Jean’s website is http://www.smartfast.com