Small business/large business management and success is largely dependent upon customer acquisition, customer relationship enhancements, and customer retention, otherwise known as Customer Relationship Management, or CRM. CRM is a combination of enterprise strategies, business processes and information technologies that are used to learn about c

Open Systems At the worst of times companies can look and act like badly functioning families: dictatorial, patriarchal, rigid and uncooperative. The staff are de-motivated, communication is poor, growth is slowed and team-spirit is non-existent. Like the Patriarch in a family who says, "Something needs to be done around here", someone in the

The environment of the office coupled with other crucial factors acts as a determining factor in the overall thinking process and eventual reactions of your workforce at any specified time. The overall environment plays a fundamental role in shaping the outcomes of events and can result in desirable circumstances or deviations from the goals if not

There are many different opinions as to whether or not a company needs to hire the absolute best "A-Player" talent for every single position listed on a corporate org. chart. That said, most CEOs believe their company will perform better if the executive team is populated with the absolute best "A-Player" executive talent available. Unfortunately

Its amazing that when business seek to change or worse if things start to slide in any economy, rising or declining, managers start looking for the silver bullet. The solution to end all solutions. It tells the shareholders they are in charge and doing something. Perhaps not much, but, by golly, something is going to happen. Is there any attempt

YOU - are where your particular buck stops. You are the 'accountable one' and therefore you have to have a great team supporting you. Wait though, there's more. You also need new, capable people ready to take your key people's places when fate or something else works against you. That's why succession planning is here to help you and a key to

In Steven Covey's excellent book, "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" he tells a well-worn story about the use of time. In the story, some professor guy (I think) stands at the front of a class, with a big jar. In the jar, first of all he puts some big rocks, and asks the class, "Is it full now". Mostly they say, "Yes". Then he g

You've been there and done it. You've got the tee-shirt and your experiences mean that you can cut so many corners. So you do. It's easier. You respond to all the requests, questions, challenges and mistakes of your people. By fixing them. And after a while two things happen. Firstly - You get exhausted, because everything revolves around you

Remember the 80:20 rule? You may not get everything perfectly right, but getting most right will be much, much better than the majority of your competition. These Top Ten Tips for Customer Service will get you well on the way. 1) Be Your Customer Live the life of your customer and experience what they do. Stand in line, call your call-centre, s

You probably have a general idea of what a "negative" person is... but, in my experience, there are broadly two types: The first type is the OBVIOUSLY negative person - they're constantly whining and complaining about everything. They're actually fairly easy to cope with because if you can't avoid them altogether you can at least "switch off" w

Do you have an unreasonable boss? An unreasonable client? (An unreasonable spouse :) ) Someone who makes unreasonable demands of you - like expecting you to produce "impossible" results in unrealistic timeframes... without the people, time, budget or other essential resources to produce those results? If you do, here's an approach for respond

You'd think we'd know by now - just because someone is fantastic at doing something... doesn't mean they're equally as good at managing others to do that same thing. After all, the skill set required to practice a specific profession - whether it's plumbing, hairdressing, engineering, selling, teaching, accounting or whatever - is entirely dif

I met with a prospect the other day and he asked me "What do high performance managers do differently than average managers?" I paused for a moment, scanned the long list of behaviors in my mind; distilled my answer down to the critical few things and told my prospect... High performance managers: * clarify their understanding of their

Why is it companies will spend more time and effort on defining the decision criteria and the evaluation process associated with spending +$1 million of bottom line profit on a capital acquisition than they will in the acquisition of an executive responsible for driving +$1 million in bottom line profit (let alone the corresponding top line revenue

IIn my world of working with companies to achieve their strategic plans through execution, were always developing goals and objectives to work on achieving during a calendar year. So in the prospecting side of my business I met many executives and business owners who tell me how well they have things covered, but still wonder why business is not d