Management Skills Articles

Want to corner the market by implementing the best CRM system? Then you are on the right path towards success. Once you choose the right CRM system for your organization, half of your work is done. But make sure to research well on pros and cons of every CRM system, before choosing the one for your organization. By implementing Customer Relationship Management system in your organization, you can strengthen your customer base. This eventually leads to a positive change in yo

Given the choice of dealing with a positive, upbeat employee with a "can-do" attitude or dealing with a disgruntled, distracted, uninterested one, which would you choose? No contest. Customers always want the best experience possible; they want it to be easy and pleasant to do business with your company. Enter the real challenge of "Relationship Management," the relationships. Until all of our business is done electronically, and much of it might be, managers, in addition to

The ability to motivate others well flows from the importance that we attach to the concept of today. What can we do TODAY? John Wooden was the most successful college basketball coach of all time. His UCLA teams won 10 national championships in a 12 year time span. Wooden created a major ...

Yesterday I heard something in a yoga class that shouted out to me as a valuable leadership lesson: The idea of putting a label on an experience. Think about how many times a day you get caught up in labeling. We endlessly label our experiences (and sometimes those of others), we label our feelings, moods and thoughts as positive/negative, good/bad, strong/weak, etc. Our brains benefit from our ability to categorize and label; it is a way of accessing the huge amounts of da

Channel Marketing Management is the process of making formalized applications meant for servicing the needs of customers within a assigned channel. It is additionally designed for selling a given product or service to the customers in a very good manner. Actually, there are several kinds of channel management solutions out there. They as well offer particular applications in several forms. In any case, there's always the right channel management program that can suit your nee

Freelance a person who usually works for multiple companies at different times, who is independent and not on the permanent payroll of a company. Management consultants are very much needed in the current market scenario, many startups are being formed and freelance management consultants, helps these companies to grow. The steps that a freelance management consultant takes is slightly different to a person working in a firm, these are the steps involved while executing a pro

If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there - Lewis Carroll It doesn’t matter whether I’m working with Entrepreneurs, Executives or Business Owners the questio WHY always comes up at some stage. The context normally arises when we begin to look at what drives the individual or company to do what they do, or don’t do. Without knowing WHY you do, or don’t do something can have disastrous results, yet the situation can be easily resolved by using such a small but powerful word – WHY. To get to the root of the reason of using WHY I want to explore what WHY means.

Four simple marketing strategies for keeping your head above water: Can you remember back when we didn't have laptop computers, mobile phones and tablets? Yes, I may be giving away my age, but I'll ask the question anyway. Can you remember back to what your life was like without all this technology?

A SHORTCUT TO PROJECT SUCCESS Speak to an experienced project manager, and they can give you a wealth of good advice on the do's and don'ts to successfully manage any project. All this advice, in a nutshell, would be about how to manage the people doing the work (that includes you too), to ...

Knowing that safety is important is clearly not enough to create (or even put a dent in creating) incident-free environments. We have heard the messages “Safety First,” “Target Zero” and, as a very dedicated guy in rural Louisiana explained it, “We ain’t toleratin’ no more dead dudes!” As powerful and eloquent as these messages might be, they haven’t produced the buy-in we might have hoped for. Frankly, it’s not hard to imagine some skepticism arising in r

Leaders are the target of a lot of writing. Blogs, articles, courses. I know. I’m one of the perpetrators. Executives, coaches, consultants and entrepreneurs are leaders - of small to large teams and organizations. If you are one, the writing targets you. Much of the advice is useful. Especially articles and blogs that focus on emotional intelligence and what we’re learning from neuroscience that directly impacts adult behavior change. More and more research shows that se

Leo was a sales rep for a furniture company. Every day, he would visit different stores to offer his products. He covered a huge geographical distance, but always visited the same places - as regular as clockwork. There was one particular store that always said, "No." They already had a furniture distributor and there was no need to even have a meeting with Leo. The floor staff would always sent him away before he could even meet the buyer to describe how his service and products were different.

If you want your people to be more accountable, start with making changes to your own behavior. When you care for and support the people who report to you, they will thrive and you will see more of results you're looking for. At the end of every quarter, I sit down with my clients for a review. We discuss the benefits they've seen from us working together, and the value they get out of the relationship. We also look at what changes they've made, and the behaviors they still need to change.

For the purpose of project designing in Microsoft Office Suite applications and other related ones, VBA applications are globally accepted by professionals. For protecting the source code of the VBA projects from unauthorized use, password is applied to them so that nobody can modify or make use of it for wrong purpose. But sometimes, the affect of password protection works in opposing direction and the administrator of the VBA project himself fall under troublesome situation

How to Build an Effective Business Networkr Givers are people that after learning as much as they can about you and your needs, will help you in the most natural and easygoing way and usually without even being asked. Their help could be translated into a good advice, an idea, a contact, or any other form that the giver could deliver on. The best giver you could have in your network is a proactive giver, one with high quality contacts who would have the wisdom to give you the highest value possible.

Leadership can be defined as the art of influencing and inspiring subordinates to perform their duties willingly, competently and enthusiastically in order to achieve the desired organizational goals. A dictatorship, under which the subordinates have to perform, would not be considered as leadership. A true leader motivates the following to follow and induces a belief that the followers will gain by the policies of the leader. Generally speaking, leaders are known to posses

Strategy building is crucial for the success of any business. Implementing Partner Relationship Management or PRM is one important practice that all vendors dealing with channel partners should adopt if they wish to increase sales and avoid hassles associated with traditional methods of channel management. PRM in essence is broader terms for a system that incorporates strategies, software, methodologies as well as web-based applications that help companies manage channel part

The concept of supply chain must be clear before understanding anything about Supply Chain Management. It is a coordinated network of people, organizations, activities, resources and information that is required in making a finished product and eventually dispensing it to the customers. Its management involves planning, applying and overseeing its operation with the sole aim of satisfying customer needs and requirements in an effective way. Obtaining customer feedback is an e

Teams and organizations are constantly plagued by project execution errors and failures. These failures create an execution gap -- a gap between what an individual and/or team plans to do and what they actually do instead. Just as retention rapidly degrades after learning, so does project execution after strategic planning. So what can be done?

I have a problem with the term ‘work/life balance’. It implies that life begins when work finishes. The words we use are critical to our self-awareness, our situation-reading and to our learning and development, and yet we pick up phrases like jackets in a wardrobe, trying them on for size and ...

Leaders, do you have an “Eeyore” on your team? Someone who acts as if the glass is half-full? Someone who acts as if he is resigned? Many of us read the classic Winnie the Pooh as children (or had it read to us). You may recall one of the key characters was a donkey named “Eeyore” who was Pooh’s close friend. Eeyore’s persona was gloomy and depressed. According to Wikipedia, “his house is regularly knocked down, but he always rebuilds it. He usually expects misfortune to hap

If you're not satisfied with how your people are performing, maybe it's time to back up and check whether your expectations are clear. The fact is that even though you may assume your people are clear about their roles and responsibilities, often that's not the case. And if you, as the managing partner or CEO, never raise the issue, your people are likely to stay in the dark fumbling around ineffectively.

Sometimes I really wish I could become deaf and blind to all the naysayers and negative people who seem to want to sabotage my dreams and stand in the way of my goals. Don't you? The people who surround you, even the closest ones, can often be the hardest obstacle to overcome on your way to ...

A headhunter was on the other end of the phone. He was looking for an assistant to a CEO/Owner for a small, but very successful business. Essentially, he wanted someone at his disposal night and day. That didn't seem like a huge deal. And then the next question came..."Do you mind if someone screams at you?" As soon as I could get past the sirens going off in my head, and visions of Dilbert comic strips, I replied, "Yes, that's not acceptable". The headhunter continued, "Well

Now that it's a New Year, I've been thinking about how managing partners and leaders of organizations are so busy, busy, busy, doing, doing, doing, they don't take the time to think, plan and then act, which is my mantra for overbooked leaders.

Meetings get a bad rap in the workplace these days, and rightfully so. Too often, meetings are unproductive, boring and a general waste of time. What’s the problem? The biggest issue is time. With executives and managers being so overbooked, meetings get cut short when they rush in from the last thing they were trying to get done. As a result, people have all these great ideas but there’s no accountability for follow-up and no carry-over from one meeting to the next. Ground rules for meetings

A major problem for employers today is attracting the best talent, and then retaining key employees. Research shows that the key ingredient for retention lies within the manager’s ability to understand what employees really want.

How far are you willing to go to get the word out about your business? How about 18 miles? That’s how many miles my client walked to distribute 1000 fliers to market her business. Impressive. She’s going to do it 7 more times. We built a marketing campaign that’s perfect for her business. She is a personal trainer in a community full of her ideal clients. She could have easily said she doesn’t have the time but she’s willing to make the time. Is it easy? No. It takes dedication and perseverance. It takes getting over the hang-ups most of us have about marketing.r

Business videos can be great advertising opportunities for you and your business. Customers like being able to see what you have to offer, and a video is a good way to showcase this much more effectively that you would otherwise achieve via print ad. Whether you are selling a product, promoting a service, or just looking to raise awareness, these are the top 5 places to distribute your business videos online. 1. YouTube

In today's management environment, new forms of and tools for corporate leadership development programs have emerged. One of the most popular development tools is executive coaching. The number of executive coaches has more than doubled in the past decade and corporate leadership development programs are utilizing their services more frequently. However, the fundamentals of executive coaching have actually been around for many years in the form of debriefing.

As the name implies, effects-based thinking (EBT) is an approach to strategic planning and decision making where the effects of specific actions are assessed, not in a narrowly defined and time-limited way, but through a perspective that is sensitive to broad-ranging and lasting impacts. Effects-based thinking is the opposite of short-sightedness or myopia.

Performance appraisals, as you may know, can be very stressful for both the employee and the manager. I’d like to share some of my tips in making the appraisals less nerve-wracking and more productive.nnTips for EmployeesnnFor the employees, performance appraisals are inherently difficult because evaluations are naturally anxiety-provoking. For most people, it is intimidating to feel that you are being critically evaluated. Because many employers are not the best about givi

A partner portal is common these days especially since majority of modern companies have to deal with a great deal of channel partners. It has been proven that utilizing channel management strategies and making the most out of business partnerships and selling products and services through channels can help improve the number of sales, increase productivity and revenue generation and ultimately help a business achieve unparalleled success. Various companies, whether starting

So what's the big secret you ask? Did you know that it is possible for your company to land on page 1 of Google organic searches within 24 hours if done correctly with one simple element... a video. You may or may not be aware that back in 2006 Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 Billion dollars. Okay, so that may not be a secret, yet it is the implication of this knowledge that is the big secret. As an SME, business start-up or entrepreneur, everyone wants to be on page 1 and preferably listed in the top 3 places on the page. Video can get you found faster than your competition.

I often hear stories about button pushers. I have them myself. When you have an automatic, negative response to something, this often indicates a hypersensitivity that’s referred to as “getting your buttons pushed.” Usually these sensitivities have developed due to hurtful childhood experiences, such as repeatedly being criticized, rejected or controlled. For example, if your parents were very controlling, when someone tells you to do something you may resist—often subconsci

Here Are Some Recommendations For Developing Independent Business: 1. Discipline-Your best friend or your worst enemy - You choose. Put in regular hours. 2. Make sure people know what you do (e.g.Training, speaking, Consulting, etc.) 3. Get a mentor who has been successful in the business. 4. Prepare a 30 to 60 minute talk you can give to organizations and leave them wanting more. Follow up any leads within 48 hours. 5. Join organizations (like your local Business Chamber) and become active. This is one form of marking your services. 6. Write a newsletter.

Remember Curious George from the childhood book? Always curious and getting himself into one adventure after another because of his intense curiosity. Curious George took curiosity to an extreme. Yet, he inspires me to think about how curiosity is a necessary and often underrated leadership quality. How often does it happen that we jump in to solve a problem? At work and at home, experienced leaders often want to simply “fix” what needs work so we can move on to the next th

Unless you hold a mirror to your face each time you speak with someone, you really have no way of identifying what messages and signals the listener is receiving. This, by the way, applies not just to face-to-face sales calls, it applies to telephone conversations too. You see our face tells ...

The need to carefully consider what is available to you when it comes to managing a business cannot be overemphasized. On the average, a good business can be run when there is a great and determined management team, effective strategic planning, great sales teams and personnel, available capital to keep the wheels of the business running and a number of other intricate and business inclined factors that may not be understood by the average customer. However, all of these woul

The phone rings. I answer it with trembling hand, because at the time I was an Eastern Regional Customer Service Manager for Matheson Tri-gas. Outside calls usually meant a displeased customer that asked for the manager. I thought "What did one of my customer service representatives do now?" After taking a deep breath, I answer the call to an anger customer. Funny thing was that the customer did not have a real problem... No late delivery, No billing issue, etc. He just did n

If you're just getting started with your business, then you probably know how critically important it is to get the word out about your products or services. After all, people can't support your business if they don't know you exist and what you do. It's no longer enough to have a good physical location; you need to have a strong online presence as well. Of course, there are many benefits to this because doing business online means that you can expand your potential market worldwide.

In the workplace, we make presentations all the time, be it to internal or exte al stakeholders. One of the reasons many people fear making presentations to the boss or clients is they are afraid of being the focal point of everyone's attention and don't want to risk making a fool of themselves. Put your best foot forward every time! There are several things you can do to "fool-proof" your speaking event or business presentation so that you deliver your message well every single time.

When you're holding regular accountability meetings with your people, it's natural for personal issues to come up. If you're still stuck in "leave your personal life at the door," thinking, get over it - that's old school, and will keep you stuck where you are now. If you want better results, face the fact that personal and professional issues are bound to intermingle at work, and taking care of the personal stuff WILL take care of the business stuff.

The New Year is here and with it comes hope and optimism for new business, new partnerships, increased profits and overall business success. Some people may ask, is it possible to be so optimistic when the global economy is still in recovery and companies remain in survival mode. My answer to that is yes it is possible. More importantly it's time for companies to shift gears from a business that is just surviving to one that is thriving. There is business out there to be had by all, but first both B2B and B2C clients and customers need to know you exist. It all starts with strategy.

After making careers out of all my passions: Business Growth, Branding, Marketing and golf, I’ve come to notice a lot of gob-smacking parallels between them. Whether you’re taking a crucial golf shot or an important business decision the same principles that make us winners in sport are the same ones that can help us win in business. The first winning principle you need to know

"What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth. No smallest atom of our moral, mental, or physical structure can stand still a year. It grows — it must grow; nothing can prevent it." — Mark Twain, American author and humorist Change happens. We can't control much of the world changing around us. But we can control how we respond. We can choose to anticipate and embrace changes or resist them. Resisting change is usually like trying to push water upstream. Generally w

Webinars have become used in a wide variety of fields from educational lectures to workplace negotiations. The great thing about automated webinars is that they can be used over and over again to achieve the same benefit. For instance, if you are trying to train new employees on the operations of your web management system, they'll be able to watch the same training material as everyone else in the office without requiring you to invest the time and energy of pulling someone else from their job to teach the new guy.

Do you know what your business's core competencies are? Is there just one or are there many organizational attributes? If you answered that there are many, how would you describe them succinctly? Core competencies are one or a combination of a few unique or rare abilities; however, a description of core competencies is not simply a laundry list of various organizational attributes. It seems like a simple task, but naming your core competencies can be very difficult.

Why is it so difficult to hold people accountable for their results in today's workplace? Because it requires follow-through and tough talk. Confrontation can be challenging, and some leaders avoid it at all costs. And it could be costing you plenty - in lost revenue, high turnover and people problems. With most hard-to-have conversations, it's the anticipation that gets you. You may worry about it all night, maybe even lose some sleep. Your mouth may feel dry as the person approaches. You may need to clear your throat a few times.

I am a huge fan of working with entrepreneurs. I'm one myself. In fact, some close friends might venture to say that I'm a serial entrepreneur, but that's a totally different story. I often wonder what goes through people's mind when they make the decision to venture out on their own. Is being a business owner something that they always envisioned for themselves or were they forced into the role as a result of not being able to secure a position within a company?