Category Archives: People Management

Team Members You Can Trust

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How to find good team members… It’s a tricky task. Finding the right people who will take ownership of their position no matter what it is and do it to the best of their ability; they’re the people we’re looking for. So how do we find them?

The secret is to not hire people for what they know but for who they are! Personal integrity is a much greater asset than someone with a double degree. People with good integrity are generally willing to learn so they can be taught anything that is a short coming in their resume. Give yourself time to assess a person’s integrity in their interview. Perhaps have a couple of meetings before making a job offer to ensure you have the opportunity to effectively sound them out. In the interview, ask questions like:

  • Are you someone who admits when they have made a mistake? Give an example
  • Have you ever experienced disrespectful or illegal behaviour in the workplace? What did you do about it?
  • What skills would you need to develop to continually improve yourself?

Give them time to get talking and try and make the meeting as casual and relaxed as possible. It allows people to be themselves and let their true personality shine.

Clients – If you Don’t Like Them, Change Them

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One of the benefits if being a business owner/manager is the ability to choose your own clients! This means there may be some that you decide not to do business with. It could be for many reasons – they’re not good at paying on time, they are not a profitable client, they have difficult or unusual demands that take time, or you simply don’t get along with them. The choice is yours!

Think about all the time and energy you put into some of your clients. Could you put that energy into your preferred clients who pay on time, allow you a good profit margin, are reasonable and easy to get along with? Could you then expand on your service offering to this type of client and direct your focus towards improving what you do for them? Wouldn’t that be far more enjoyable for you?

I hear you ask, “Well what about the sales I still make to my difficult clients? Even though they were difficult, they were still a sale.” This is a valid point however if you focus on your preferred clients and through this process increase your sales to them, you will not completely drop in sales. Freeing up your time will also allow you to work ON your business and not IN it quite so much. In doing this you could put together a marketing strategy to encourage new clientele, such as an incentive to increase referrals from your existing preferred clients that you are now impressing so much with your additional time and focus! Lastly, think about the stress you have eliminated from your life – what kind of price do you put on that?

The moral of the story is to keep in mind you are the master of your domain. If you don’t like it, change it.

The Importance of a Listening Ear

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Did you know that one of the greatest human needs is to be heard and understood? My dad always reminded me of this to help me be more compassionate towards others.

Your customers have the same need too, and your compassion is truly put to the test when you are dealing with a customer complaint. I guarantee you with the majority of the customer complaints you encounter, the ideal outcome for the customer is simply to get the frustration off their chest. Allow them to feel heard and understood – this is bound to satisfy them. All you have to say is something like, “Thank you for your feedback and we will look into ways in which we can ensure this doesn’t happen again. The only way our business can get better is through receiving and acting on feedback like this to continually improve our people, products and services.” That’s it!

Don’t allow customer complaints to rattle you. Cop them on the chin. Even if you completely disagree, allow the customer to vent, respond with something short and concise to put their mind at ease, and then decide what you will do with respect to the feedback. But NEVER EVER argue with a customer. This negative experience will spread by word of mouth far quicker than you could say sorry!

The customer may not always be right… But let them think they are ;)