The use of the word ‘continuously’ is purposefully placed in the title of this blog article. Why? Because I fully believe that if a company does not continuously sharpen its competitive edge, it won’t be long before they do not have one in today’s ever-increasing pace. I’m sure we can all think of examples of companies who have been market leaders and no longer exist or have had to sell assets and/or shrink in size to survive. Eastman Kodak is a prime example. Kodak began to struggle financially in the 1990s when digital camera technology hit the retail market. Only recently they have emerged from bankruptcy, after selling many of its patents to current giants including Google, Apple, Samsung, Microsoft. Woolworths is another case in point. It used to be one of my favourite stores for spending my pocket-money. A few pence went a long way in Woolworths – a child’s paradise. Several months before they closed their retail outlets in the UK, I recall walking in and out of Woolworths, … [Read more...]
Why you need to improve your listening skills!
It’s not often that I write an article for business people telling them to do something. Typically, if someone tells me to do something, my urge is to do the opposite! Due to that fact, I avoid telling others to do something unless I feel very strongly about it. I feel very strongly about the importance of possessing excellent listening skills and have yet to meet someone who couldn’t improve theirs, however good they are (or think they are). Why? Because they are essential! Listening is the key to understanding, whether in conversation with a business partner, an opponent, a sales call, trying to close a deal, figure out why a staff person is unhappy or demotivated, or what’s really going on at your child’s school. It is all through your listening skills. What isn’t being said? It’s not just about what the person says, but what the person isn’t saying. There are clues in their word choices. Are they being evasive or direct? Are they hesitant? Having you used language that allows … [Read more...]
Are successful business leaders born or made?
The answer to this poser invokes the old, ‘nature’ versus ‘nurture’ argument. Maybe we need to study twins who were separated at birth, where one became a business leader, and determine what happened to the other? In the real world, business leaders, like any other leaders, come in all shapes and sizes. If you studied a group of successful business leaders from various industrial sectors, I would hazard a guess that they would have different personality traits and backgrounds. The variants are likely to be greater still according to discipline. Successful business leader in the financial sector are unlikely to have the same personality characteristics as one in the high technology sector or in the hospitality arena. An accomplished executive in the insurance sector, however, may very well have more in common with a leader of a banking institute. I’m making some assumptions here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you are in agreement. Are business leaders born or … [Read more...]
How to build innovation into your business
A great way to building innovation into your business is to be looking for problems to solve and opportunities for improvement in your industry. That’s not to say that inventions haven’t succeeded by accidentally creating an invention and then looking to see what can be solved by that invention (case in point – post-it notes). However, that is not the topic of this article – today’s topic is about actively seeking to build innovation into your business. Create a culture for innovation to flourish First and foremost, if you want to embed innovation into your organisation, create a culture for innovation to flourish. If you forced me to come up with a formula, I would say: Make sure you hire people that are not only smart, they think creatively and are not afraid of change Relinquish control to your managers within a framework Encourage multi-disciplinary teams and internal networking between your sales, marketing and R&D team Make sure your employees understand … [Read more...]
Why chatbots are great for business!
Recently we’ve been seeing in the media how robots/chatbots/AI (artificial intelligence) are transforming how we do things and how robots might one day take over the world and we humans will become superfluous to most tasks. Worries over AI and how robots will become sentient beings has been dramatized in Channel 4’s ‘Humans’. That’s all well and good, but for now, the area that excites me the most is how chatbots will take over the delivery of repeatable knowledge that Tier 1 (lowest level) support technicians/engineers deal with via call centres. Most of us will have been on such a call to a support centre, to fix a software bug or a hardware issue, and been asked questions that are obviously being read from a script. Unfortunately, they need to assume one has zero computer knowledge and the pace is exhaustingly slow and incredibly boring for the likes of me. Indeed, I would be most surprised if that script isn’t in a decision-tree flowchart format whereby if the … [Read more...]
How To Set – and Keep – Your New Year’s Business Resolutions
Make twelve New Year resolutions for business, one for each month! By breaking them down into workable pieces, you’ll actually get them done. Our local Bollywood-style keep-fit class in my local area is led by Nikita, an instructor who has inspired me on more than one occasion. At our recent pre-Christmas dinner celebration, she surprised me with her response when I asked if she had made a New Year Resolution by answering ‘Actually I’ve made twelve!’ It turns out that in 2017, she implemented a different resolution every month. I found myself hanging on to her every word, relishing her answers, and inspired to the core at this extraordinary young woman. As I listened, I got excited thinking about the projects I had let slip and was yearning to get back to. She told me that by having a new resolution each month, it ensured that they actually happened. They didn’t feel onerous. Better yet, she nipped procrastination in the metaphorical bud. She … [Read more...]
How to Define your Unique Selling Points (USPs)
If you came to me and asked me to help you to grow your business, the first thing I would ask is: ‘What are your unique selling points?’, or to put it another way, ‘Why, in your opinion, do your clients purchase your product/service from yourself and not from your nearest competitor’? Jot down 3-4 answers. Now take a good look at those answers – are they unique? Does the competition offer the same? Are you emphasising certain aspects that your competition isn’t? Are you doing things differently? Are you perceived as being different even though you aren’t? Is it the same product/service but the business model is different? The more you analyse your answers, the more you may realise that you have true USPs – or not! If you are struggling, it would be a good idea to call your clients, those that are happy and are repeat purchasers, and ask them why … [Read more...]
5 Ways to Get Past the GateKeeper
New recruits making sales via ‘cold’ sales calls often struggle to take their generic sales training and put it into practice. If they are not trained professionally on how to make the pitch, they will lose calls and burn leads. Worse, they often make their company look bad if they managed to say where they are calling from before the callee hung up and won’t get a second chance for a while. Sometimes the caller may receive abuse, further reducing their will to make more calls, with their confidence dropping at an exponential rate. Here are 5 simple tips to helping your team get past the gatekeepers so they have a chance to convert to sales: Monitor the team, especially new recruits. Within days they may acquire bad habits that are hard to break, if left unchecked. You need to determine if they have an issue about making cold-calls, by listening and monitoring their behaviour whilst on the call: Train – Script – Monitor – Fine Tune – Interview – Retrain – … [Read more...]
10 Top Tips on How to Penetrate a New Industrial Sector
If you’re in a certain industry, or looking to get into a new industrial sector, you need to learn all you can about the industry. Questions you might want to ask include who are the key players? Who are the up-and-coming and on the ‘watch this space’ players? Who has been mentioned in the news, or in leading websites? Who has appeared in leading trade newsletters? What are the industry trends? How fast is the marketplace growing? Who are the leaders? Who are the opinion leaders? What academic research is going on in the field? What patents are being registered? There are a number of ways to research and answer the above questions: Put industry keywords into search engines such as Google and Bing and see which companies come up in the search, learn all you can about them by going onto their websites, read their About Us, News section and research/technical section. Put keywords and hashtags into Twitter. See which white papers and blogs come up in the search, look at … [Read more...]
