Culture
 

(5 Topics)

Today’s successful companies are the ones that revolve their business around their customers.

Yet how often are products or services dreamt up, produced, marketed, sold and distributed without any input from a potential customer? And how often are the internal procedures of a business set up to suit the business’ convenience rather than to enhance the experience the customer has with the business?

Unless the customer, and the customer’s needs, are the real focus of the business there can’t be any concerted effort to providing superior value. This BGR discusses how to focus on adding value by designing processes such as technology, training and internal processes to support a strategy of customer-centricity throughout all areas of the organization.

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What business owner at some time hasn’t despaired of ever freeing themselves from constantly having to think for their employees? Who hasn’t wished they had people who could work more cooperatively to sort out things for themselves and come up with effective solutions? Maybe to even be feeding ideas back into the business about how to improve things?

To get people operating this way you need to turn your group into a team. And to do that you need to know how to build a business culture that will encourage teamwork to happen. But that’s only part of the story - the leader has to know the skills that will maintain team morale.

This topic covers how to build a team in a small business by looking at how to introduce structures to promote teamwork and discussing the leadership skills needed to keep a team together.

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3.        Dealing With Customer Complaints

Statistics vary, but for every customer who makes a complaint, you are likely to have between twenty and thirty dissatisfied customers who say nothing. Or at least, they say nothing to you, but they're happy to tell other people. In fact, customers are likely to tell between eight and ten people when they are dissatisfied. And each of these is likely to pass the word on to several others.

There is a positive side to complaints however: they can be used to improve your business processes AND even cement customer loyalty. Complaints are a valuable resource. They provide low-cost feedback and if you handle customer complaints well, you can confirm customer loyalty. Good complaint resolution can actually assist in turning even customers who have a complaint into long-term clients who will recommend your business to others. This topic will show you how to handle complaints effectively and use them to actually improve your business.

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4.         Leadership As A Management Tool

All business owners must of necessity be managers. But that doesn’t necessarily make them a leader. The two are not the same, though unfortunately, people rarely take the time to consider the difference and what each contributes to the success of their business.

The role of leader involves more than just managing - it involves the ability to create a vision for their firm, determine the strategies required to get there, and motivating their team to work towards it. You do it with the aim of getting people aligned and moving in one direction--the direction that will make your business really fly.

This topic covers:

• The vital difference between being a manager and being a leader
• The essential role of leadership in business, and
• The basic technical and emotional intelligence skills of a leader

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5.        Time Management

Effective time management is about increasing your personal efficiency in achieving goals. The benefits are not only personal though, from a reduced stress level, but it means your business will be more efficiently run as well. It's about getting control, making sure that you are not tyrannized by a series of apparently urgent tasks. It's about giving the right proportion of your time to planning for the future as well as day-to-day tasks.

Time management involves honing two business skills in particular - organizing and prioritizing - by developing a set of techniques that ensure you have clear, uninterrupted time to concentrate ON the business.

This topic provides solutions to help you get ahead of the game by prioritizing your tasks according to importance and systematizing your routines for dealing with them. It also includes tools for measuring levels of procrastination and perfectionism and provides strategies for dealing with these in the work place.

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