Business Top Ten Lists


	The Top 10 STRATEGIES to Win Customers! There are hundreds of tactics to attract customers but these 10 key strategies can help any marketing program design more effective tactics to win customers. These are not in any order of preference and often are and should be combined. ALL STRATEGIES SHOULD INCLUDE RELATIONSHIPS. 1. Lowest Price Manage business processes to lower transaction costs, inventory costs, procurement costs and all variable and fixed costs. Example: Wal-Mart 2. Best Value in Class Create a competitive combination of price, quality, service and target specific niches. Example: McDonalds 3. Highest Quality Provide the unquestionable clarity that high quality exists as a leader in all classes. Example: Lexus 4. Access/Convenience Your products and services are available when customers are ready to buy. Example: Taco Bell 5. Timing Your products/services show up precisely at the right time in the right place for the right reasons. Example: ProFlowers.com 6. Relationships By creating and maintaining relationships with your customers over time they automatically are introduced to increased layers of more complex services as the relationship continues to grow and develop. Example: Banking 7. FADS/Trends, the IN THING Sometimes the easiest way to attract customers is just to be ON the band wagon. Example: Tommy Hilfiger 8. Great Service Unquestionably the leader in service before, during and after the sale. Example: Nordstrom 9. The DREAM Why do we look under bottle caps, scratch off the sides of french fries or buy lottery tickets...even when the odds make no sense? Example: Find Yoda: Pepsi 10. Progression The next product/service in a line of products and service offerings. Example: Beanie Babies or Insurance The Top 10 Survival Strategies for Small Businesses 1. Focus completely on satisfying customers. Develop a true customer focus. Understand that customers always go where they get good value, they go where they are treated well, and when the value isn't obvious or when the level of service slips, the customer slips away. Identify your target customer; the more you know about your customers, the easier it is to serve them well. 2. Study the success of others. If you want to be a smart businessperson, study smart businesses. The smart ones ask a lot of questions, keep their eyes wide open, and adapt good ideas whenever they can. Study the competition, learn from your peers, and consider every situation you encounter as an opportunity to gather ideas to use in your business. 3. Gather and analyze management information regularly. You need strategic information on your own business in order to know what's really going on and to make wise decisions based on accurate, timely information. Use whatever technology you have, even if it's manual, to collect information in the following four areas: financial information, customer information, industry information, and market trends. 4. Sharpen marketing skills. Marketing must consider your price levels, your product offerings, your place or location relative to the customer and their daily routines, your promotion efforts, your people (working in the store), and your positioning within the market. All of these are important, but you have to decide what you will focus on and what customers are most sensitive about. Remember, marketing is learned by doing. 5. Increase the customer's perception of value. Value is not the same as price. It also includes considerations of quality (are your products better?) and quantity (do you offer more than others?). But most customers are somewhat price sensitive. Instead of across-the-board markup, small retailers should consider variable pricing strategies. 6. Position the business uniquely. You aren't one of the big guys, so don't try to be just like them. Position yourself in areas where big business cannot compete with you, like friendliness and customer bonding. Where can you say, "We're better because..."? 7. Eliminate waste. Plan your spending. Keep a budget. Constantly compare your budgeted and actual figures to learn where costs are going. Aim to bring operating expenses to less than 20% of sales. Every dollar saved from current operating costs goes directly to your bottom line. Time is money, and eliminating time wasters saves you money. Don't hesitate to spend in areas that will certainly help you earn much more. Those aren't wasteful costs. 8. Find something to improve every day. Make it a formal goal to improve one aspect of your business every day, no matter how small. The Japanese call it kaizen, but there are hundreds of ways to do this. 9. Embrace change with a positive attitude. Having a positive attitude is consistently one of the common factors of success. You must not fear change; change is your friend. As you continually improve, you'll be embracing change. Enjoy the ride! 10. Pull the trigger and start the battle. Some people stay on "Ready, aim, aim, aim-." You must learn to take action quickly and also cut losses when you're wrong. Go ahead and pull the trigger rather than wait for the perfect shop -- it never comes. Try something. If it doesn't give you perfect results, adjust your aim and fire again! The Top 10 Strategies for Changing Attitudes! As work life becomes more complex and environmental changes force people and organizations to adapt more quickly--creating turbulence among our systems--more and more people seek to institute or embrace change. The following 10 strategies are a place to begin that personal and organizational change. 1. Release people from prior commitment. Probably most overlooked is this strategy. Most often we forget that one of the reasons people don't change their attitude is that they have made a conscious or subconscious prior commitment. Uncovering those hidden agendas usually results in an opportunity to change one's attitude about previous commitments. Even stability can be a prior commitment and until I understand that this new change, method or system is going to produce stability--I am not willing to let go of what is stable. 2. Provide new information. Often, people don't see or feel the need to change. Providing information to support change or the need to change can often open previously closed doors. Communicating change initiatives prior to implementation is often scary but almost always better than not doing it until the implementation begins. 3. Use fear positively. Deming says drive out fear. Yet, fear can be positive if we take the time to frame it correctly. Fear of some sort, often creates the urgency needed for change to take place and for change gaps to be bridged, BUT THE KEY TO USING FEAR is to show how the present path is NOT the best one. You don't just threaten people by stating if they don't do it they will suffer the consequences. You use a combination of tactics to show with information how the present direction will lead to lower levels of benefits and more sacrifice than changing directions--personally or organizationally. 4. Resolve cognitive dissonance. Most often, each of us has a dialectic taking place inside ourselves about our attitudes and about the results of our behaviors. To resolve this dissonance or conflict can often lead to positive changes in attitudes for us personally as well as in organizations. People are certain that their behavior always works, yet must often protect that faulty behavior with an attitude. Helping them to understand the conflict between their attitude and the behavior can lead to positive change. 5. Gather influence from friends, peers and family. One of the major reasons--in my view--for using 360 degree assessment is so that someone can get hit over the head by people whose opinions often matter--saving leadership from doing it. While this may be the crass side of 360, it does work because of the influence of friends and peers. 360s certainly have weaknesses and used solely for the purpose of changing attitudes is probably more harmful than helpful in the "long term." However, a structured ongoing program of development that includes regular 360 Assessment and training can be effective in changing attitudes. 6. Co-opt. Giving people--whose attitude is deviant from the norm--leadership opportunity can often lead to positive change for the person and the organization. Some say resistance is energy and this resistant energy occurs often in the form of challenging attitudes and opposition--disagreeableness. Yet, often this energy can be harnessed to propel the organization forward while leading to attitudinal change in the opposition. 7. Have compassion. This may seem like a strange change initiative and a few years ago I would have thought you were "different" even mentioning it, yet compassion appears to hold the key to changing attitudes. Of course the Buddhist philosophy enamors this method in its teachings and it is consistently brought forward by people like the Dali Lama. Compassion has a way of building both rapport and offering peace to oneself and those in opposition. Often the worst thing we can do is to fight fire with fire--merely fueling the opposing forces and heightening our own negative emotions. 8. Seek first to understand. An age old maxim made popular by Stephen Covey's 7 habits, empathy like compassion forces us to take the view of the opposing force and to attempt to understand the reasons for the resistance. Much has been written about this "soft" skill but by far, the caring sense that someone expresses authentically towards another person removes barriers to changes in attitudes. Empathy creates openings for new information and influence to, reach through previously locked doors. 9. Have acceptance. I hesitated a moment when offering this particular point, yet feel that without acceptance--recognizing that we are all different and that resistance is not always bad--we would lose valuable energy and innovation. Change occurs consciously and unconsciously and sometimes resistance is just change occurring unconsciously--forcing us to examine things that are outside of our own path. By accepting that some people will oppose our path, we open ourselves and our organizations to the innovative spark of difference. 10. Dialog. Providing the space for the disclosure of assumptions, mental models and tightly held beliefs in "safe" harbors can lead to effective attitude change. If the above strategies are combined into an amalgam of actions, then change in attitude is likely to precipitate. None of this is easy, especially in those organizations or those people that are fully ingrained in the attitudes of resistance for resistance sake. Yet, taking the time to structure an ongoing dialog can be the initiative for many of the other strategies to provide motivational force to change one's attitude. Coaching often stages this personal dialog and can lead to further dialog in organizations as a result. Coaching often stabilizes the long term effects of short term intervention strategies and enables lasting and continuous change. The Top 10 : The Case for Emotional Intelligence: Emotional Intelligence is "the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions well in ourselves and in our primary relationships. It describes abilities distinct from, but complementary to, academic intelligence, the purely cognitive capacities measured by IQ." 1. 500 Corporations, government agencies and nonprofit organizations have independently concluded that Emotional Intelligence is critical to excellence in almost any job. 2. A 1997 American Society for Training and Development study found that 80% of companies are promoting Emotional Intelligence in their employees -- through training, development, performance evaluations and hiring practices. 3. Human factors in the workplace are increasingly important as the pace of change and the knowledge explosion accelerate. 4. Several decades worth of research studies identify team building, adapting to change, being a change catalyst and leveraging diversity as critically important in today's competitive environment. 5. The days of life-long employment and meritocracy are fading. Today, internal qualities such as resilience, initiative, optimism, and adaptability are increasingly required. 6. A national survey of employers revealed that, for entry-level workers, specific technical skills are less important than the ability to learn on the job. Next in importance were: listening and oral communication, adaptability and creative responses to setbacks and obstacles, personal management, confidence, motivation, initiative and pride in one's accomplishments. 7. A similar study of corporations' requirements for in-coming MBAs identified the three most desired capabilities as communication skills, interpersonal skills and initiative. 8. Harvard Business School identified empathy, perspective taking, rapport and cooperation as the most desirable qualities in their applicants. 9. The 12 key job capabilities are all based on self-mastery: initiative, trustworthiness, self-confidence, and achievement drive. 10. The 13 key relationship skills are: empathy, political awareness, leveraging diversity, team capabilities, and leadership. Daniel Goleman states, "Emotional intelligence counts more than IQ or expertise for determining who excels at a job--any job--and that for outstanding leadership it counts for almost everything. The business case is compelling: Companies that leverage this advantage add measurably to their bottom line." These are all skills, which can be improved using Personal or Business Coaching. The Top 10 Signs You Need an Executive Coach Shakespeare once said, "When the sea was calm, all ships alike showed mastership in floating." These are not those times -- we find ourselves in an environment where the winds are strong, and the seas are rough. We encounter constant and pervasive change on all levels. Competition is fierce, and customers are becoming more and more sophisticated; and concomitantly, more and more demanding. Information is the currency of the realm in today's society: Knowledge is doubling every 18 months, and it is increasingly true that on the information superhighway -- knowledge is power. Unfortunately, our world has become so complex that it is difficult for any one individual to know everything required about the issues and opportunities facing him. Consequently, many people are discovering their need for, and the usefulness of, one or more personal/business coaches. Change is ubiquitous - it's everywhere, and we experience change many times in our lives. As an executive, you face more change every day than most of us face in a month, or a year. For example, are you currently facing any of the following challenges? 1. Increasing global competition 2. Geographically distributed workforce 3. Demands to change your management style 4. Right-sizing, down-sizing, or other cost-containment measures 5. New products, markets, manufacturing procedures or equipment 6. Need to integrate IT, business, and production strategies 7. Constantly changing government regulations 8. Increasingly demanding and sophisticated customer service requirements 9. Mergers, acquisitions, leveraged buy-outs 10. Redefined organizational culture, with changing employee profiles and needs Are you feeling a bit overwhelmed by all these changes? Have you lost sight of your personal values and goals? Do you need to be reintroduced to your family when you finally do get home from work? Has work ceased to be "fun?" If so, coaching can help you regain control over your life. It can help you learn to prioritize the many demands on your time - and even, to say "No" to excessive or unreasonable demands. Coaching will help you learn to take necessary care of yourself in a variety of areas, including your health, your time, your work, your home, and your family -- and doing so, will make you even more productive, efficient and effective at work. The Top 10 Shifts to Make in the Information Age To paraphrase what Einstein said regarding the atomic age: 'The Information Age has changed everything - except our way of thinking.' According to many, if not most, credible historians and economists, the world of the Information Age is ten years old. It began in 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall - an event that marked the end of the Cold War era and the start of the Information Age, i.e. an era of globalization wherein many walls came a tumblin' down - not just the ones made of concrete! 1. A shift in metaphors If the Cold War era was like a "wrestling match" between two giants, i.e., United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Information Age is more like a "hundred yard dash" that never ends! 2. A shift in symbols The Cold War era was symbolized by the Berlin Wall that separated East from West; but the Information Age is symbolized by the Internet and the World Wide Web that unites everyone along the Information Highway. 3. A shift in anxieties The underlying fear of the Cold War era was the nuclear weapon and the accompanying doctrine called "Mutually Assured Destruction" (i.e. MAD!). Today, the underlying fear of the Information Age is that a terrorist group might one day explode a nuclear device high enough in the atmosphere to melt down the capacity of every computer system in an entire nation like the United States with charged electrons! 4. A shift in control In the Cold War era, everyone in the world knew that the two super-powers were going to have their way once their two leaders conferred and agreed over "the hotline" between the Kremlin and the White House. In the Information Age, people log on to the Internet for instant access to the global village. The playing field has been leveled, so that people's access to information can no longer be controlled by any one nation or government. 5. A shift in priorities In the Cold War era, people wanted to know the size and capacity of a nation's nuclear missile technology and warheads. In the Information Age, people want to know the speed of your modem and the capacity of your bandwidth. 6. A shift in health In the Cold War era, the relative stability of international financial markets made its patterns clear which were under girded with mineral reserves of gold, silver and platinum. The Information Age has changed the rules, so that rapid changes in market conditions can cause great amounts of wealth and power to shift in milliseconds. 7. A shift in consumer sensibilities The old ways of advertising products and services are definitely outdated. In the Cold War era, it was enough to promise that your product or service was "new" or "improved" or "brighter" or "more effective," etc. In the Information Age, consumers respond with, "Prove it!" 8. A shift in power In the Cold War era, CEOs and others "in charge" of an organization could take a page from President Harry Truman's legacy and place a sign on the corner of their desk that read: "The Buck Stops Here!" However, in the Information Age, the sign will have to change so as to read, "The Buck Starts Here" - because leaders will be the "big picture people" who get the ball rolling - but many others will be "in charge" of refinement and implementation along the way! 9. A shift in politics In the Cold War era, the political question for every nation was, "Which operating system will you choose to embrace? Communism? Socialism? Totalitarianism? or Democratic Capitalism?" In the Information Age, the only operating system that works is one that is based upon globally integrated, free-market capitalism. The choice for nations today is, how and to what extent will you choose to make this operating system work for you? 10. A shift in thinking In the Cold War, people's thinking was quite linear. People were either "left brained" or "right brained," "visual, auditory or kinesthetic," "straight or gay," "red, yellow, black, white or brown," etc. Management was "by objectives," and TQM (i.e. "Total Quality Management") was more of the same at every level. In the Information Age, people are evolving to see that the old stereotypes no longer "fit" - because globalization in the Information Age is driven not by trade, but by technology. There now exists a "glut" of information. What is needed is wisdom. In an age of "information overload," wisdom and common sense intuition is a premium product, i.e. to paraphrase St. Francis, "O Lord, give me ... the wisdom to know the difference."