There are certain rules to delegating that you need to think about:

• Am I the right person for the job?
• Who is the right person for the job?
• How much is that person doing already?
• Can I train a lesser skilled person to do this job?
• Will I have time to evaluate the job?

Delegating is about better utilising your resources to improve efficiencies within your business, it should not be used so you the business owner / manager can have time off.

By choosing the right person for the right job whilst ensuring they have the time to carry out the extra task you will find more can be done and your stress levels will not need to go through the roof during the process!!

Want to know learn more about effective delegation …………..

Unique to Dave Sewell Training & Support for Retail & Small Business are a series of management training courses designed to be held at your work premises, each lasting no more than one hour and collectively are designed to take your staff through a broad understanding of management  processes, giving them tips and skills to ensure they can maximise the general operation of your business; Delegating – It gets Work Done! is the fifth of eight modules taking your staff through that process.

Want to know more, contact me for more information and a free consult to discuss your business’s potential needs.

So much technology, how should we communicate?

The art of getting the message across effectively is a vital part of being successful, whether you are a sales person, a manager or a business owner.  Whether you want to make a presentation with confidence or close a sale communicating clearly and confidently will help you get the result you need.  Communicating is not just about making sure someone understands you when you talk to them it is about ensuring the content of the communication is relevant, it’s about how the communication is delivered, for example is it delivered as an order or as a request and it’s also about which tools are appropriate to deliver the communication.

Being Effective

Effective communication (and therefore effective business) hinges on people understanding your meaning, and replying in terms that move the exchange forward – preferably in the direction you would like it to go.  Communicating is always a two way process.  In management, you communicate to get things done, pass on and obtain information, reach decisions, achieve joint understanding and develop relationships; in sales, you communicate to find out about your customers needs, you explain the choices they have, you reach agreement suitable to both parties and you confirm the contract.

Recognising Barriers

There are always at least two parties involved in any communication, each of whom may have different wants, needs and attitudes.  These wants and needs can present barriers if they conflict with those of the other party and such barriers may stop you conveying or receiving the right message.  Any communciation must overcome such barriers if it is to be successful and the first step is to recognise that they exist.  Breaking down barriers is one of the first steps towards good communication.  Here are one or two things to keep in mind:

1. Facing the person you are talking to shows you are not afraid to listen to what is said.
2. Tilting your head slightly shows you are listening.
3. Look the other person in the eye lets them know they have your undivided attention.
4. Break down barriers by adopting the other person’s pose and actions.
5. Always, always make sure your cell phone is switched off, if it isn’t apologise if it goes off, silence it and ignore it.

Achieving Clarity

The three rules that govern good communication are all associated with clarity:

1. Be clear in your own mind about what you want to communicate.
2. Deliver the message succinctly.
3. Ensure that the message has been clearly and correctly understood.

Good communication means saying what you mean and fully comprehending any feedback.

Choosing a Method

It is essential when communicating a message that you give serious thought to the medium you choose.  For many this choice is between the spoken and the written word.  If you decide that you want speed and convenience, you may well choose speech as the best form of communication.  Alternatively you may want something more permanent and orderly – a typed document, for example, will attract a more considered reply.  Electronic media have generated more possibilities by creating a hybrid form of speech and writing.  Thus emails have the speed and the informality of speech yet they are in letter form and can be filed.  The purpose of the message will dictate which method you use, some of the methods to think about may be (and the list is certainly not definitive!)

• Email – ideal for speed with the ability to be saved and filed.
• Letter – ideal if a more formal approach is required (documents that require signatures) or for sending invoices.
• Website – Ideal for getting one or many specific messages to your chosen market place.
• Video – A very powerful way of communicating to mass audiences using internet sites like YouTube; ideal for getting more visually detailed messages to the market place.
• Presentations - delivered in person is a great way to communicate your message with a more personal touch allowing your audience to clarify the message instantly.

There is a lot more to communicating that what I have written here, but if you can get these basics right it will go a long way to helping you in both your career and your personal life.  My training module on Communication is based around fun practical exercise that really hits these points home, the module is designed so that it wont last longer than one hour, ensuring it will not disrupt the average small businesses working day.

Please feel free to contact me regarding this course or other courses that I run.

What is a SWOT Analysis?

A S.W.O.T analysis looks at the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of any subject within the business.  Too often a business owner / manager will use a SWOT analysis in their core product only; if your business is selling fizzy drinks then generally you will only conduct a SWOT analysis on your fizzy drink but a SWOT analysis can also be used for your business location, your staff as a whole, your competition, individual staff members in relation to the team and of course this list is not difinitive.   SWOT analysis can be and should be used across many parts of the business to help identify and promote it’s strengths whilst identifying and then addressing it’s weaknesses.

Referring back to my blog “Identifying Unique Selling Points” I use the SWOT analysis to help develop the key message any business wants to send to it’s chosen market.  As part of this process I identify the business strengths and it’s opportunities with regards to selling into specific markets and combine that with the business Unique Selling Point (USP) and the image the business wants to portray it can create a very strong message designed for it’s target market.  Once this message is created it can then form the foundations of everything else the business does regarding marketing itself.

Without your customers spreading the word about how good your product / service is, you will ultimately have to spend more to get that very same message to the market place or you will cease to trade.

It is one of the main reasons why you continue to farm your clients to ensure that the relationship you have with them is strong enough and friendly enough to produce good quality referrals for your business.

So how do you get these referrals?  There are a number of ways of gaining referrals from your clients from asking the question directly to providing them with incentives some will work better than others depending on your industry, Quality Referrals training looks at your industry specifically and provides solutions that will work for you.

“This is what I need for my team buy it’s too expensive to send my staff on training courses, I can’t afford to have them off the job”

Unique to Dave Sewell Training & Support for Retail & Small Business are a series of courses designed to be held at your work premises, each lasting no more than one hour and collectively are designed to take your staff through the entire sales process, giving them tips and skills to ensure they can maximise each potential sale; Quality Referrals is the fifth of seven modules taking your staff through the sales process.

Want to know more, contact me for more information and a free consult to discuss your business’s potential needs.

I spent my entire career trying to give all my customers excellent service with products that more than meet their needs, I have helped businesses in more recent years do exactly the same thing, but in all that time I have never met an individual / company pull off everything exceptionally well that left me looking for an excuse to go back for more …….. until now!!

Recently my wife gave birth to a baby boy, Lachlan, one week before our first wedding anniversary and three weeks before my wife’s birthday.  I try to be a bit of a romantic for occasions such as anniversaries and birthdays but I was thinking this year there is just no way we were going to be dining at any swanky restaurant or jetting off for a weekend away  so then I got to thinking ……………. “if I can’t get my wife to the restaurant, I’ll get the restaurant to come to our house!”.  I looked in the yellow pages, I tried Google, I tried several online business directories but I couldn’t find anything, the closest I got was a company pre-making the meals so all I had to do was heat them up ……… hmmm not quite what I had in mind, I could pull out something from the freezer and cut out the middle man if I was going to go down that line!!

The sauce was a secret but it was incredible

I was just about getting to the point of giving up when I spoke to one of our friends from our anti-natal class about my little dilemma and low and behold did they not know someone that did just what I was looking for, usually for groups of 10 -12 but she does small parties from time to time!!  They sent this lady, Marie our contact details to which she promptly emailed us with some suggestions, to cut a long story short after swapping some emails we had the menu sorted, cost per head agreed and the date booked … my wife’s birthday, to make it a little bit more special I also invited our friends along from the anti-natal class as they also had a new born son, so would be able to relax in our home with our boys and neither couple would have to worry about them crying etc.

The evening came, Marie turns up with EVERYTHING, including plates and pans, within 30 minutes of her arrival we were sitting around the dinning table tucking into our breads and dips, and boy were the dips amazing, not sure exactly what was in them (Marie could tell us but she’d have to kill us!!) but what a way to start the meal.  Then came the main course of steak (for the boys) and salmon (for the girls), all the dishes were cooked to perfection, the salmon had the most amazing sauce with it, we asked what it was (again Marie was going to kill us, so we asked no more!!), now this is where Marie went the extra mile, on starting our main course Lachlan decided to get a bit grumpy, Marie picked him up from his bed and calmed him down letting his parents continue with their meal, again awesome!!

On to deserts now and what a finale, heart-shaped berried ice-cream atop a chocolate and chai scented biscuit base, drizzled with honeycomb chocolate topping and served with a berry jus; does your mouth not water just reading that, again awesome and as we were tucking into our deserts, Marie cleaned the kitchen, packed up everything into her car and left, it was as if she had never been at our house (other than the fact we just had a meal to die for!!).

My wife and I along with our guests had such a relaxing night (considering there was two children in the house only about a month old!!), it’s something I will be raving about for a very long time to come.  What a great product, a restaurant quality meal in your home (the food was to die for) with no cleaning up to do, great service (yes Marie served for meal to us at the table), friendly and well priced.

If you are in Christchurch, want to celebrate something special but can’t or don’t want to go out, get in touch with Marie you wont be dissappointed!!

Marie’s company is called EmJay Catering and her email address is mariejenkins@xtra.co.nz

Add on sales are a great way for your business to get more dollars from your customer; one great selling technique is to introduce a product that meets their needs at a price they find acceptable then suggest complimentary products or services to enhance the the original product experience, the more you can do this the more the customer is likely to pay in the end, let me give you an example.

Customer walks into a store to buy a baby buggy, they pay $899 for one of the better buggies, but they never thought

about what they would do if it rained, after this was brought to their attention they decided to buy a rain cover ($40.00) recommended by the sales assistant; but coming into summer they will need a sun shade ($40.00); it has been suggested a nappy bag would be a great idea when you are traveling anywhere, the one suggested was designed for the buggy and was specific to the task ($120.00).  To help regulate the baby’s temperature it may require a sheep skin blanket ($80.00) and because the baby will need to be transported in a tiny car seat there is an attachment for that too so you can fit it to the frame of the buggy ($80.00).

In this example the buyers had in their mind to spend $899.00 but ended up spending $1259.00 an extra $360 or 28.5% more.  If you asked the same couple would they have set out to pay $1200 on a baby buggy there would be a very good chance they would have said no, but will the couple use all the additional products, absolutely.

When Should Add on Sales be Introduced?

Every business owner / sales person should be thinking about add on sales (or adding value) the minute they engage in a conversation with the customer.  If the sales process is done well, you will have identified what the customer needs (the central product /service or the foundations of the sale) but there is nothing wrong with then finding out what else the customer wants and if you can fulfill all these at the same time  the customer wins because they have the ultimate solution and you win because you have more dollars in the till.

Let me give you a couple of examples:

Sports Clothing – customer comes in and is looking for a T shirt, sales assistant helps them identify colour, style and size and takes them to the changing rooms to try them on, the sales assistant has one of two choices at this point, leave them trying on T shirts or offer them a couple of styles of shorts that compliment the T shirts or maybe a sweatshirt in the same range and get the customer to try all of them on at the same time, let the range sell itself, compliment the customer on how it looks on them and wella the sale is done.

Web Site Design – Customer is looking for a web site for the company, the designer can identify the size of the site, give a price and do the job or they can recommend the type of site required and then offer a whole host of additional features, effects etc giving the customer the choice to pick and choose.  The customer may purchase some or all of the additional features but if they don’t the process has allowed them to understand what else they can do in the future!!

This article compliments my training module on Add on Sales, the module is designed so that it wont last longer than one hour, ensuring it will not disrupt the average small businesses working day.  Please feel free to contact me regarding this course or other courses that I run.

It’s probably one of the hardest jobs a small business owner has to do, ask for the business, have the confidence in their product / service, know that the price they are going to be asking the customer to pay is worth every cent, often the business owner is so caught up in thinking “i think they want it, what if I mention the price and they take off, what if it’s not high enough they might think it’s a cheap service and not of good enough quality …. ” and in all that time because the business owner did know their product and they have got the pricing right they missed all the buying signals from the customer.

Buying signals, customer’s have buying signals?  Everyone has buying signals that they will start indicating when they are very interested, very rarely will some one say “ok I am getting close to buying your product can you tell me about …… so I can make my mind up” that would be just a little to easy!!

So what are these buying signals and if we see them how do we take advantage of them?

Buying signals can range from “It’s great, just what I’ve been looking for” to a simple “hmmm” in response to your discussion on a specific purchase variable.  Once you recognise the signals how do we then close the sale?  There are many ways of doing this from “trial closing”, “multi step approach close” or a simpler “full close”.

Want to know what all these mean?

“It’s too expensive to send my staff on training courses, I can’t afford to have them off the job”

Unique to Dave Sewell Training & Support for Retail & Small Business are a series of sales courses designed to be held at your work premises, each lasting no more than one hour and collectively are designed to take your staff through the entire sales process, giving them tips and skills to ensure they can maximise each potential sale; Closing the Sale is the third of seven modules taking your staff through the sales process.

Want to know more, contact me for more information and a free consult to discuss your business’s potential needs.

As a business owner or manager responsible for other employees it’s very important that you are aware of the three main management styles know when they should be used (and when they shouldn’t) and incorporate them into your day to day management practices.

Do you or your staff know when to use a Laissez-Faire style of management and when would you only ever use an Autocratic style of management?

Most employees get upset with their line managers and/or business owners because “of the way they run the business” bearing in mind that the employee sees how a business is run by how it affects their working day, where problems arise is when a business owner / manager’s management style does not suit a situation and they cannot change; this inevitably increases the stress levels of both the owner / manager and the employee(s) as any given situation could become worse before it gets better.

To give an example of the point I am trying to get across, in my early management years I used to have a manager that everyone viewed to be “as hard as nails” cross the guy and he’s liable to sack you than to talk to you; most of the staff lived in a quiet fear of him; he was the type of manager that walked into a room and everyone went quiet.  This same person also was well respected by the staff because they knew that if anything went wrong (and it often did due to the nature of the business) he would get it sorted quickly and efficiently.  This manager’s style was highly Autocratic “it’s my way or the highway” was his motto; did it lead to a happy environment to work in, no not really and he did have a high turnover of staff.

“It’s too expensive to send my staff on training courses, I can’t afford to have them off the job”

Unique to Dave Sewell Training & Support for Retail & Small Business are a series of management training courses designed to be held at your work premises, each lasting no more than one hour and collectively are designed to take your staff through a broad understanding of management  processes, giving them tips and skills to ensure they can maximise the general operation of your business;Management Styles is the second of eight modules taking your staff through that management process.

Want to know more, contact me for more information and a free consult to discuss your business’s potential needs.

Having just gone through (and still going through) a rather lean time in the economy it would be fair to say that some companies are stretching the time they take to pay their invoices out to suit them selves rather than their product / service provider, they start to become selective in who they pay and how much they pay and if your business is not on the “must pay now list” you could wait months or even longer.

How can you avoid this happening to you?

There are ways to encourage your customer to pay and still retain their business, yes that’s right, you are allowed to insist on them paying your bill without breaking down the relationship you have with them.  Here are a few things to think about to improve your cash flow:

Terms of Trade

You are a small business, you’re not a bank and you cannot afford to wait until the 20th of the next month to have your invoice paid so don’t do it!  If it suits your business to have your invoiced paid in 7 days then 7 days is what you give your customer, if 7 days is not feasible then why not make it the end of the month that your trading in, whatever works for your business, put it in your terms of trade, make sure your customers are aware of it and then stick to it.  Never let your clients dictate to you what your terms of trade are, they don not know (or need to know) the reasoning behind your terms and conditions; you may think about bending the rules for “a really big job” DON’T it is the really big job that is likely to financially hurt you  the most, and always remember that when you’re spending time on that big job that is not going to pay you when you want, you could have spent the same time working on a number of smaller jobs that will pay you on time!

Progress Payments

If you are providing a service that will take a period of time to complete or can be very clearly broken down into specific stages then progress payments are definitely something to think about.  Charging your customers a little at a time until the job is complete does two things, it ensures you have adequate cash flow and it ensures your customer is not going to get hit with a huge bill, they get to spread their costs, helping their cash flow.  The thing to think about with progress payments is this, in your terms and conditions make sure you have it written in and your customer is aware that at specific stages of the service, payment will be required (and here is the important bit) and the next stage will not be started until payment for the previous stage has been received.

Restrict the Credit  you give to your Customer

If you have a new client on board, you are perfectly entitled to restrict the level of credit you give your customer, again you can lay this out in your terms and conditions for example “once your account has been approved your credit limit will be $500.00 for the first 3 months ……” after the period of time you review the account status with the customer and agree on a more suitable limit if required.  Maybe you don’t want to give the customer any credit limit to begin with, this to is perfectly acceptable, ask for payment in cash or credit card.

Use a Finance Company.

If you sell big ticket items another option is to use another company’s credit facility, give the risk to them.  This is where you give your clients the option to pay off their purchase over a set time, lots of the bigger retailers, car yards and other large machinery companies use this option.  The customer is happy because they get to spread their cost and you as the business owner will be happy because the finance company pay you in whole for your product thus completely removing the risk of mounting debt to your business.

What if the Customer still wont pay

ASK, there is a saying “the door that squeaks the loudest will get the oil” this is never truer when recovering money from your customers, there is a system I work to, it may not work for everyone but it should for most:

1. Invoice is sent out, to be paid in 7 days.
2. Day 8 arrives with no payment, a second invoice is sent again to be paid in the next 7 days.
3. Still no payment: I phone up the customers account department and ask why my invoice has not been paid.  At this stage I get a commitment from the person (who’s name I take a note of) as to when it will be paid; I ask for a date usually within a couple of days of the phone call.  An email is sent confirming the conversation.
4. I very rarely reach this stage: Still no payment I make one more phone call again followed by an email stating that if payment is not received the debt will be put in the hands of a debt collecting agency or taken to the small claims court.
5. Never needed to be at this stage:  Still no payment, the debt would be sent to a debt collection agency or I will go to the small claims court to recover the funds.

If you find yourself at point 5 the two options I have mentioned come with pros and cons; Small Claims Court cost you the supplier nothing other than time to present your grievance whilst putting the debt to a debt collection agency costs you little in time but will cost you financially (they take a percentage of the amount owed).  It’s best to avoid this stage if at all possible because by the time you get here the relationship with the customer has usually completely broken down.

If your customers are aware of your payment terms before you do business and you stick to these terms you’ll find your cash flow should flow well.