Comparing Starbucks, Cilantro and Costa

If you are a service provider all you care about is the quality of your service. If you are a coffee shop for example all you care about should be your quality of service. I thought of comparing three of the well known coffee shops here in Egypt regarding the quality of service: Costa, Cilantro and Starbucks.

I will focus on the following points regarding the quality of service in my comparison:

1. Cleanliness of the place.
2. How friendly, prompt and professional the waiters are.
3. Quality of food and drinks.
4. Speed of service.
5. Quality & usability of the take away utensils.
6. Their working hours.
7. Environment.
8. Cost

Let us take the above points one by one:

1. Cleanliness of the place.
   • I think all are very good in that regards.
2. How friendly, prompt and professional the waiters are.
   • Cilantro would rate the highest in this regards. They are always smiling and friendly and they execute your special requests promptly. What is more important also is that they listen! They let you finish what you are saying and then comment if any.
   • After Cilantro comes Starbucks, they are not friendly at all. Most of the time you can not figure out what they are saying, they never smile and they would not care if they spilled your drink, they will give you the mug dripping!! (it happened to me). They also do not listen. Once I asked them to heat my cheese croissant an extra amount of time than they usually do. After he did heat it, I asked: “did you heat it extra?” I got a weird answer, “It is ready”, the waiter said!!… This meant only one thing to me; it is as if he told me “shut-up”. But they are fast. They will not make you wait forever for your order.
   • The last is Costa, most of the time waiters are not concentrating, they are very slow and they forget what you ordered sometimes. In many cases you have to check on your order several times until you get it. Once I asked for a hot egg sandwich, I got it cold! So I told the waiter it is cold. The first answer was, “no it is heated” ….frustrating!!
3. Quality of food and drinks
   • Starbucks is the best when it comes to quality of drinks. I have not tried their food though so I can not judge (except for the cheese croissant and it is delicious). In Cappuccino for example, Starbucks is the only one who gets right. The right amount and flavor of coffee with the right amount of milk. I never get it too strong and never too much milk.
   • Costa comes second in the quality of drinks (but food wise Cilantro is better).
   • Cilantro comes third in the quality of drinks (but in food Quality rates higher than Costa). Cilantro’s coffee is too strong; maybe they are rare on milk. I do not know but I never drink coffee at Cilantro. But they have nice varieties of food, whether desserts or breakfast and lunch foods. And they do something very annoying if you ask for a delivery; they only fill half the cup!! But you pay for a full cup.
4. Speed of service.
   (I am not comparing in peak times. The comparison is based on the time when they have a reasonable amount of customers)
   • Starbucks. When I go there whether to stay or take away I do not feel that I waited at all for my order. I just order, pay, pick-up and go.
   • Cilantro. Here I feel that I waited sometime especially if I am staying. Not an annoying interval of time but I feel it.
   • Costa. I can take a nap until I get what I ordered!!
5. Quality & usability of the take away utensils
   • When I order take away drinks from Starbucks I know I am safe. The cup is holding itself well. It is not easily twisted; its lid is well closed. I know I will not spill on myself if I am in a moving car or walking on foot. They also provide the hard-cardboard cover to protect your hands from the hot drink automatically without you having to ask for it.
   • Cilantro rates second. The quality of the cup is less than Starbucks’s (it is not as hard) and the lid is not as tight. But they did something new and nice, you can lock and un-lock the lid. I do not think they have the hard-cardboard cover. Actually I do not know as they never gave it to me.
   • Costa is a disaster in this respect. The cups get twisted and squeezed very easily and lid flies away and you suddenly find the very hot drink all over your clothes. And again they do not give you the hard-cardboard.
6. Working hours.
   • Starbucks is the smartest; they open 6:00a.m. So they get most of the customers who need an early breakfast before they go to work.
   • Costa opens early as well but they provide only one waiter who is trying to wake up most of the time so the service is very slow.
   • Cilantro is not intelligent in that matter. They do not open before 8:30a.m. or 9:00 sometimes (Abbas el Akkad branch). So they miss all the possible customers who could pass by before going to work.
7. Environment:
   • Starbucks again is the best because it is a smoke-free place. Smoking is completely prohibited in Starbucks which shows that they care for your health as their customer. It is also wise because it will make you able to stay longer to finish some work or chat with your friends and in either case you might order more than once.
   • Cilantro and Costa are the same in that matter, it is very difficult to sit and enjoy your drink. Although there is a section for smokers and a section for non-smokers, but the two sections are right beside each other and you will suffer from the smoke and want to leave quickly.
8. Cost:
   • Costa and Cilantro are nearly close in that matter and relatively ok (could be cheaper of course)
   • Starbucks is very expensive.

Very small issues matter when it comes to customer service. Here in Egypt we are very weak in that matter. I am sure chains like Starbucks and Costa outside Egypt will never serve the way they do here because they will have strong management watching their backs. We need the firm manager who would not settle for less than perfect when comes to serving customers. Especially when you have lots of competitors, you have to excel to attract more customers.

How about you give me your opinion? Answer the survey below to compare the three coffee shops. I will give the survey one week and then I will publish the result to see how most of us rate those coffee shops.

http://www.polldaddy.com/s/793F64665980240A/

Ten Signs your are offering a bad customer support service

Want to know whether your customer support service is good enough? Need to know whether your customers are satisfied or not? Check for the following ten signs. If they exist then be sure your customer support needs a boost.

1- You are not directly communicating with your customers and not collecting their feedback on your level of service. Some good examples are: online feedback forms, surveys, questionnaires, feedback collection phone calls .....
2- You do not have any targets or standards for performance. This means your customer support employees do not have any standards to meet. If you work without targets then you do not have a challenge to meet and hence you will not go anywhere.
3- You do not have any effective training programs (whether internal or external) to leverage your support team’s performance and refresh their minds every while.
4- You do not have a clear workflow that all support members follow clearly and without a flaw when serving a customer.
5- You have a set of de-motivated customer support employees. This can be because they are not rewarded for extraordinary effort, or there is no room for growth or no room for acquiring new skills or they work in a bad environment…..
6- You are not watching your support staff closely. By this I mean:
a.if your are offering customer support over the phone: overhearing their conversations with customers and recording them for future reference
b.If it is face-to-face support service with the customer: Watching their performance on shift and commenting on the spot (not in front of the customer of course). In other word you are not doing one-to-one sessions with each employee to show him where he went wrong and when he performed well and why.
7- You do not have a clear reward and punishment policy based on performance that is actually being implemented.
8- You are not willing to swallow some costs to compensate customers for bad customer support services they received from your employees.
9- YOU LIE TO YOUR CUSTOMERS. Whether regularly or once in a while to cover for an issue you have, in either ways lying is the worst thing you can do.
10- You are not easily accessible. Example: your phones are busy all the time, your web site is too heavy to load or always down, your support centers are not easy to find and visit (you are awkwardly located) , OR…..

I’ll give an example from one of the projects that I worked on. I used to work as a Business Development Manager at an IT company that offered customer support services over the phone. They had most of the 10 fatal signs above:
1-They had a group of de-motivated employees
2-No defined workflow
3-No targets or standards to meet
4-No training program
5-Never thought of asking their customers what they thought of their service
6-No close monitoring of support center team performance
7-No clear reward and punishment policy
8-Lied to their customers all the time.

After I tackled the issues above, here is how their performance was boosted within the period of one year (we had a milestone after 6months and then contiued to improve):
1. Increased the average percentage of accepted calls per day from 50% to 94%
2. Improved the average speed of answer from 3mins to 21secs.
3. Increased the percent of cases resolved and closed in the same day from 57% to 64%
4. Improved the ability of call center agents to resolve cases without routing to other departments to increase from 35% to 57%
5. Improved the average case resolution time from 35hours to 20hours
6. We conducted regular surveys to collect customer feedback. Some where online questionnaires and others were quick short ones over the phone. The scores in one of the short over the phone ones once we started collecting feedback was as follows:
In four questions (out of 5) respectively: 4, 4, 2.8 and 2
After 6 months of applying the new workflows the scores became:4.9, 4.8, 3.6 and 4
The questions were:
A-How do you rate the CS representative in terms of: politeness - clear voice - attitude?
B-How do you rate the CS representative in terms of: understanding his duties - asking effective/reasonable questions - know the reason of the problem?
C-How do you rate the resolution time of the problem and avoidance of repeating it again?
D-Generally, how do you rate your experience in dealing with the support of X Company?

Want to enhance your customer service? watch the smallest actions

I went to Starbucks (City Stars branch) yesterday and I ordered an Earl Grey tea with milk. First the Starbucks employee told his colleague who was supposed to prepare my order “tea with milk”. I had to remind him that I ordered it Earl Grey. He then said “yes Earl Grey”. Then I paid him and he was supposed to give me back my change (10LE). He did not and moved on to the next customer, I had to tell him that he did not give me my change. He said “ah yes Oops sorry” and he gave me my money. Then his colleague, who was supposed to prepare my drink, spilled some milk while pouring it in my mug. He did not even bother to clean the mug; he just gave it to me dripping!!!! He did not even apologize.
This morning, I went to Starbucks again for my morning cup of tea but this time the branch beside City Center. I ordered it take away and I asked him to add extra milk because he usually puts very few milk. What happened is I regretted asking for the extra because when I got into my car and we started moving, the cup spilled on me. He filled it too much till it became too close to the opening in the lid. Once we moved it started spilling. I had to drink as much as I could very quickly ,and it was extremely hot, to make it stop spilling!!. I have to add here that the employee on shift is also not friendly at all. Every time I go, he never smiles and he replies back in a rude way. Once before I asked him to heat my croissant for an extra amount of time than he usually does. His reply was astonishing: “It is ready khalas”. Is that a reply to what I said?
I wonder if there were branch or shift managers available on shift, what would they have done in both cases. Would they have noticed and took action or not? How would they rate this quality of customer service?
If I were the shift or branch manager in the city stars branch event for example, I would have apologized and changed the whole mug before giving it to the customer. I would never have let the employee hand in a dripping mug to a customer. And definitely I would have deducted from his salary for such an action.
Want to really offer your customer a high quality customer service? Watch your employees’ smallest actions.

I miss you dad

Today is my father’s birthday. Had he lived he would have turned 73. He died last April and yet I still feel that it was a week ago. I miss him so much. I miss the way he laughed, smiled and talked. I miss his advice to me. I miss consulting him before I take any decisions. I miss the way he greeted me when I went to visit. I miss his funny comments. I still sometimes feel that he will walk through the door and talk to me any minute. On my daughter’s birthday last October, I wished he were there. It was her first birthday and he had lots of plans for it, I cried a lot because he missed it. I am still thinking about him all the time and I feel that I am turning to be like him in a lot of ways. I feel so lonely and insecure without him, it is as if something is missing all the time but can’t explain what it is. I feel so fragile without you daddy. I need you so much. I never imagined how much you are the source of my strength until I lost you.

My priorities changed ever since he died, I felt that the number one priority – after of course strengthening my relation with GOD – is to make sure that I please my Mom all the time. To make sure that she is not mad at me for any reason. To make sure she knows how much I love her and respect her. I always feel that I never really made sure to let dad know how much I love him, respect him and how proud I am for just being his daughter. I do not want to make the same mistake with my Mom.I am so lucky to have my Mom and Dad as my parents. They are really the best. They were always my friends and not just my parents.

My dear dad, may GOD rest your soul in peace. I am praying for you all the time and I hope we meet by GOD’s will in Al Ferdaws Al 2a3la in paradise ISA.

Self Awareness and the Effective Leader

Very Important article:
http://www.inc.com/resources/leadership/articles/20071001/musselwhite.html

Most of Egyptian managers pretend they know it all, when in fact they do not! They even go the extreme of harming the business because they do not want to learn what they do not know. There is an illusion that a manager should be an expert in everything.

Read the article above, it is very true ....I even borrowed its title

Keep your customers happy

Read this, Very true!

It simply says do not promise the world to your customer if you can'y keep your promise. Promise what you truly can deliver or else you will endup with unhappy customers.

This is the tip to keep your customers happy 100% of the time
http://www.goldbusinesstips.com/page/2/

This is What I call Customer Service

Do you want to reach the customer loyalty stage? Do you want your customers to believe that their satisfaction matters the most to you? Well, actions speak louder than words. You have to treat them the way that makes them feel so. Do not only use slogans about customer satisfaction in your marketing campaigns, customers will not remember any of those. It is how they are treated that matters.
A couple of days ago I called a small pharmacy near my house to ask them to deliver some medicine. The phone rang and they did not answer so I hung up. A few minutes later I was surprised to find the pharmacy call me back and ask if I wanted anything and apologize for not answering. Well!! This is what I call customer service. I was happy to see that they keep track of their unanswered calls. They are keen not to loose a single customer. They made me feel that I really matter to them. To be honest this pharmacy was not the main one that I always get my needs from. But after this action on their side, I felt comfortable calling them whenever I need something. This is mainly because I felt that they are keen on every sale. They really understand the meaning of customer service and their customers are important to them.
This is what I mean by concentrate on your actions. You can say all the nice words in the world in your marketing campaign but your actions can spoil it all.

Good Example of Bad Management

Taxi el 3asema is a new service in Egypt that was introduced maybe a year ago or something. It is supposed to provide people with on-call taxi service. You call the company and reserve a taxi for the place you need to go on the time that you need. Three companies offer this service in Egypt.

The funny thing is it has not been more than a year and the service already sucks!!

All the following issues happen:
1- You call and reserve a taxi, the taxi never shows up, the company never calls to say sorry. And if you call they tell you the taxi made an accident.
2- You call and reserve a taxi, before your date by 10 minutes they call and say they have no car available for you.
3- You call and reserve a taxi, it is late, and you call the company they keep telling you it’s on its way until you are fed up and late for your appointment!!
4- The taxis now have parking slots in some places (Tahrir, beside city starts). The rule is, you go to the parking area and if you find a free taxi you ride in and then tell him where to go. What really happens is: you find a free taxi, he asks you where you are going and if he does not like the destination, he says No!
5- One day I tried to take one of those taxis at Tahrir square, I found the taxi but could not find the driver, and then I saw a man standing near the taxi with a tourist, I asked him: are you the taxi driver? He said NO. So I kept waiting. I waited for a long while and that man was still chatting with the tourist. Once I got bored and started moving away, the man and the tourist took the taxi and the man – who turned out to be the driver- drove away. Obviously he was discussing fees with the tourist to cheat him out and take the fees to himself instead of delivering it to the company.
6- My sister once tried to take one of those taxis from beside city stars. First he said no and then he changed his mind and told her to get in; he did not start the charger to calculate the fees based on the distance traveled. So she commented and told him that he is supposed to start it. The answer was: It is for your own benefit I will take less than what it will charge you!

All this is a sign of bad management. There are no rules or regulations and no one is watching over those drivers. No one is monitoring the call center as well to make sure that if you book a taxi, you get one on time.

Writing Good Reports

Writing good, readable and meaningful reports is not easy. Sometimes people over do it, by imagining that the more they write the better. They also try to complicate it and make it seem as “professional” as possible. Professional in their definition is to use words that are rarely used by people to make them check the dictionary to be able to understand. Or use too many formulas and scientific facts and details. The result is a too long and too complicated document to read.

When you write a report the simpler the better. Your focus should be in meeting the aim of the document. Always ask yourself, what is the aim of this report? How should it benefit the reader? If you start this way, you will know exactly what to write in it.

If you want people to read what you write, do the following:

Step 1: Why are you writing this report? Define its aim and what is it supposed to serve.
Step 2: Define your scope. Depending on the topic of your report, sometimes it could be too wide and you yourself can digress while writing. Define your scope to avoid this problem and to avoid making your report too wide and hence vague to the reader. Every report should have a scope that limits the contents of the report.
Step 3: Know your audience. A report written to a technical audience differs than a report written to managing directors and executives, differs than a report written to accountants,..and so on. You have to know who will read the report to address them with the language they know best. And if it is a mixed audience, then write in a straight forward simple language that they will all understand. And if it is needed to mention some details for a group of the audience- do that - but clarify it in simple language in order not to loose the rest of your audience.
Step 4: Write the table of contents. This has to be finalized before you start writing to avoid loosing your focus in the middle of the report.
Step 5: Have all materials, statistics, research findings, images and references that you will need ready.
Step 6: Write your report.
Step 7: Include your conclusion or wrapping paragraph. A report with a conclusion is a wasted effort.
Step 8: Include the next step. This should highlight to the reader what will we do next or what is requested of him after he reads.
Steps 9, 10 and 11: PROOFREAD and PROOFREAD and PROOFREAD. Any document with spelling mistakes or grammatical mistakes or logical mistakes will loose its audience and will never deliver the message.

Notes:
When you are writing the report take care that visual effects make a great difference. So make sure to make your report visually accepted as follows:
1-Use the same font throughout the document. Same type and size for content, headers and titles. And of course use a readable size.
2-Use normal black color for writing and use a different color to highlight parts that you need to stress their importance.
3-Whenever charts or images can make a certain idea or fact clearer use them.
4-Avoid too long sentences and too long paragraphs. The shorter and to the point the better.
5-Paginate your document.
6-Fix your margins and make sure your document prints well if you are going to send an electronic copy.

Communication skills

I want to share with you the results of one of the projects that I worked on as a project manager. I was responsible of minimizing the gap between financial revenue records and actual production records. I will not get into details of the project and what type of service I am talking about to avoid revealing business secrets. But I will say just enough to clarify how bad or missing communication can cause disasters. The gap they suffered from was both ways i.e. over booking of revenues that do not exist and under booking or missing revenues that should have been booked but they were not. The main problem though was in missing revenues that were not recorded. Over booking was minimal as it happened only when an order was cancelled and never reported to finance.

Most of the production records were missed and not listed as financial revenues. The company was actually losing money because no one kept clear and actual track of what they were actually producing and selling. When I started we had 50% gap between finance and production i.e. 50% of actual revenues were not listed in the company's financial records. In only one month for example we had 87,000 LE missing revenues. I started working on this project on May 2005; on Jan 2006 I reached 66% reduction in losses.

You will be astonished to know that the main reason of such losses was communication issues. Involved teams did not have a common terminology to describe things. The financial team used certain terms to describe some things, while the production team used the same terms to describe totally different things. The production team itself was divided and did not have common terminology. They did not have common templates to fill for record keeping, they did not have a clear workflow and they did not have an established communication channel. Some people used to talk over the phone, others used the email and others did not bother communicating at all.

The service the company was selling was an online service, so it was dynamic i.e. sometimes the original cotract used to state something but after actual production lots of changes were introduced. Those changes sometimes increase the contract value, sometimes decrease it and sometimes ends up by canceling the entire thing. All those changes were never reported to finance, so they used to book only the original contract value. this resulted as well in a lot of revenue losses.

Most of my work was focused on:
1- Creating a clear workflow where every team member can know when to start, how to start, which template to use, how to pass on to the next team member and how to follow up.
2- Creating a common terminology where everyone uses the same word to mean the same thing.
3- Creating templates and IDs to avoid misunderstanding issues.
4- Establishing a performance evaluation method.
5- Introducing an automated process for the teams involved to be notified upon every change. This was mainly to make sure that finance are informed of all updates and changes.

By making sure that all team members are able to communicate effectively, we were able in 9 months to reach 94% matching between finance and production although we started with a 50% match only.

Communication skills are critical for the success of any business. If you are unable to communicate effectively, you will not get anywhere. Even written communication has its rules to make sure you deliver your message clearly and properly.

A nice link that I came across is: http://www.communication-skills-4confidence.com/communication-skills-test.html
This is a Self-Assessment Exercise that tests your communication skills, try it out and check how good you are.

Why teams fail

If we think why teams fail, it is always because of lack of proper communication. The biggest responsibility lies on the manager even if the team is weak. The manager controls everything, and it is his job to get the best out of each member in his team. No one is weak in everything, so the manager has to know the points of strength of each member of his team and utilize it to get the best results.

What actually happens is managers do not:
1- Have a clear vision.
2- Set a clear direction with priorities.
3- Support their team members.
4- Motivate their team members.
5- Create a healthy and cooperative environment.
6- Reward when deserved
7- Punish when earned
8- Hold effective and to-the-point meetings.
9- Share information when needed.
10-Understand their teams’ differences and their feelings.
11- Develop team members with potential.
12- Manage the interface between their teams and the rest of the organization effectively.
13- Get proper feedback from the team.
14- Deal with negative behaviour from inside the team to avoid its bad effect.
15- Allocate resources effectively.
16- Create and manage balanced work loads.

On the other hand team members do not:
1- Develop themselves on their own to enhance their work quality.
2- Take responsibility for all their actions.
3- Put aside any personal differences with their team members.
4- Avoid wasting the time on self interests and making sure no body else gets promotion before they do.
5- Avoid wasting their time trying to befriend the boss instead of earning any reward or promotion by the quality of their work.

But again a good manager can erect any negative actions from his team members. So it is always up to the manager to make a team fail or succeed.

Think you are a good manager?

If you are not sure how good you are as a manager, read this. I will list some of the things that bad managers do. If you find yourself doing any of those, then you are a bad manager.

1- Do not listen to their employees. These types of managers think that they are always right and hence no need to listen to ideas from their employees. This is the first step to failure.
2- Embarrass their employees in public. By criticizing them and highlighting their mistakes in front of each other or in front of someone else.
3- Withhold praise. Some managers think that if they praise anything good their employees do, they might cause them to think highly of themselves and hence their performance degrades. This is not true; praising good work is an essential tool for motivation.
4- Be vague in what they say and do. Those managers are difficult to understand and they leave their employees always confused what to do and what not to do.
5- Enforce unrealistic rules. Weak managers enforce unrealistic rules that are too harsh to follow and treat their employees as slaves to cover their weakness.
6- Never say they are sorry or wrong. Some managers never admit their mistakes. This is fatal as it causes them to fall into series of mistakes.
7- Never acknowledge individual differences and talents. A good manager should be wise enough to understand the strengths and weaknesses of his employees and work to get the best of everyone understanding their differences.
8- Treating all employees the same way. Yes, a good manager has to be fair and has to set and execute the same rules of reward and punishment. But he has also to be wise enough to understand the way that positively impacts everyone. Some employees do not work hard unless closely monitored and harshly treated, some others do not excel except when they feel they have a room of freedom…. And so on. A good manager should be wise enough to know how to treat each of his employees to bring the best out of him.
9- Never support employee development. Bad managers are always afraid of their employees' improvement and development. This is because they are insecure and afraid if they develop, they could loose their job. A real manager creates leaders; hence he should always work on improving and developing his employees' skills.

McDonald's customer service

Today my sister ordered a meal from McDonald's (Abbas El Akkad branch - Nasr city) at 3:30p.m. At around 4:15p.m she decided to call to ask them why her meal has not arrived yet. They told her today the restaurant is very busy and the orders take an hour to reach the customer instead of the usual 30mins. Whoever answered the phone added that her order has already left the restaurant and should reach her shortly. She hung up and waited until 5:00p.m. and nothing arrived yet.

This time I called and here is the conversation that took place:
Me: I ordered a meal more than an hour and a half ago and it is not delivered until now.
Mc’s employee: Please wait until I transfer you to the employee responsible of complaints. (his words were: “ el mas2oul 3an el comblain”)
Me(to the customer complaints employee): I placed an order more than an hour and a half ago and it has not been delivered yet.
The employee: Yes we are sorry but today there is a rush and orders take an hour and a half to be delivered.
Me: But when I called an hour ago you said orders take an hour, now it became an hour and a half
The employee: Yes we are sorry, it was an hour but now, because of the rush, it became an hour and a half.
Me: I was told an hour ago that my order left the restaurant.
Employee: Let me check
…….He put me on hold……
Employee: No madam, your order has not left the restaurant yet
Me: This means that you are not only late on delivery, But you are also liars. You lied and told me that it already left the restaurant
Employee: No it has not left, let me check when will it be ready
………He put me on hold………
Employee: It will be ready in 10min.
Me: I do not want it anymore, cancel the order
Employee: OK, just a second.
………..He put me on hold……..
Employee: OK, madam your order is cancelled now. We are sorry for that.

This is it!!! They are VERYYYYYYYYY late on delivery, they lie and tell me it left when it did not, the employee responsible of complaints, did not even bother to try to make me change my mind about cancelling the order. He did not try to compensate me in any way. And what really made me laugh is:
After I hang up with him by not more than 3mins, the door bell rang. I opened to find McDonald’s delivery man with my sister’s order!!!!!!!!!!!

They DO NOT EVEN know which orders left the restaurant and which orders did not leave yet. And they do not know how to cancel orders :)

How to be persuasive?

Want to bring a conversation to your side? Want to close a deal with the profit margin you had in mind? Want to win a debate? Want to convince others with your point of view in a discussion? Want to gain friends and yet let your opinions prevail? Check it out!

You can be persuasive without being offensive and without being looked at as arrogant, stubborn and the kind of person who always wants to rule and control.

How?
1- Understand people. Not all people are alike and not all people accept the same way of treatment and conversation. So the first step is to understand your audience. Know what intimidates them and what makes them listen. Always use the right way to get their ears. If you manage to make them listen then there is hope they will be convinced of what you say if you have a good argument.
2- Do not be offensive. Do not loose your temper if people disagree with you. Do not use words like: you do not understand / don’t be stupid / of course not / You are wrong. And do not start the conversation by assuring that your listener is wrong or that you are angry with him or that there is no hope that you could change your mind or compromise.
3- Listen. Do not start a conversation with your mind set that you are 100% right or that you will not meet half ways or compromise. If you want to be heard then you have to listen.
4- Convey your message clearly. You have to be able to speak clearly and have a strong argument. If you can not express yourself or you do not have a strong basis for what you are saying then definitely you will loose your audience.
5- Be confident but not arrogant. You have to be convinced yourself of what you are saying to be able to convince others. Your confidence should show in your discussion. But do not over do it to the extent that you seem arrogant and stubborn and you intimidate your audience.
6- Start by putting in mind that you could be wrong. Yes you have to have a strong convincing argument and you have to be confident, BUT always put in mind that there is a possibility that you could be wrong. After all no one is always right
7- DO NOT DISCUSS SOMETHING THAT YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT. Never get into a conversation when you do not know anything about the discussed topic, especially if it is something you should have read about before discussing.
8- In business deals do not over price or under price from the beginning to avoid getting into debates that will force you to sell with little or not profit. In short, be honest and not greedy. If you are known for your honesty, people will not discuss your pricing because they will know from the beginning that you are pricing fairly.
9- Always stay calm and have eye contact with your audience. Do not ever turn a discussion or conversation into a fight.
10- Do not start a conversation putting in mind that people HAVE to be convinced of what you are saying. There is no have to! Do not try to force them. Be content if the conversation ends by both parties keeping their opinions and stay friends. You do not have to make enemies from people who disagree with you.
11- BE HONEST. If you know you are lying or that you are trying to cheat people into something or trying to convince others of something that you know is not true, you will never be able to be persuasive. Even if you do for a while, people will eventually know that you are not honest and they will never believe you again, even if by chance you happen to be saying the truth.
12- DO NOT jump into people's mouths. Interrupting people while they are still talking is very offensive. Let them finish and then discuss and comment. This will even give you a better chance to answer back every point and convince them of your point.

In short being honest, polite, calm and having a strong argument are the keys to being persuasive.

Are you a good manager?

I came across the following quiz over the net that tests your managerial skills.

Source: http://as01.ucis.dal.ca/hrd/hrd_2592_1605.html

by Bob Nelsonwww.ivillage.com

1. Do you personally thank employees for doing a good job - one on one, in writing, or both?
2. Are you willing to take time to meet with and listen to your employees?
3. Do you provide specific feedback about your employees’ performance?
4. Do you strive to create a work environment that is open, trusting and fun?
5. Do you provide your employees with information on the upcoming products and strategies, how the company makes and loses money and how each employee fits in to the overall plan?
6. Do you involve employees in decisions, especially decisions that affect them?
7. Do you encourage employees to have a sense of ownership in their work and their work environment?
8. Do you create partnerships with your employees by giving them a chance to grow and learn new skills?
9. Do you celebrate the successes of the company, the department and the individuals in it?
10. Do you use performance as the basis for recognizing, rewarding and promoting your employees?

After you answer all the questions above scroll down to know how good you are.....


DO NOT CHEAT













If you answer "No" to more than 3 questions, then you are not a good manager. You have to improve the way you work with and manage your employees.

CIB Customer Support - Should I laugh or cry or ....?

I mentioned customer support before and today I have an example of the worst customer support ever that I went through myself. My father had an account at the CIB Bank; the university opened it for him to transfer his salary. After he died and we had "2e3lam al weratha" (the document that we use to prove that we are the heirs and that we can collect the money and close the account) ready, I went to the bank and gave them a copy of the death certificate and 2e3lam al weratha and they informed me that they will start their procedures and the money should be ready within one to two weeks. They said they will call when they are ready.
After one week passed and no one called, my mother went to the bank to check out what happened so far. To our astonishment, they kept searching for our papers until they found them. And then they discovered that they have not done anything and that the papers were put aside and no one took care of the matter. On that day mom revived the issue again and they promised us another date to come to collect the money. When we arrived on the day they said everything will be ready, we stayed there for an hour and a half waiting for them to finish their paperwork. After all this waiting the customer support representative went to the branch manager and came back to tell us, sorry we can not issue the money for you. WHY? --- The funny part is coming --- They have to check with the university because the money was transferred to the account after my father's death and they are afraid that the university might have transferred the money by mistake and that they might come back and request from the bank to return the money!!!!!
What is really frustrating is they had more than two weeks to finish their procedures and paperwork, why didn't they do all the checks they need? Why did they wait until we came to tell us this frustrating piece of news? And even if the university is stupid enough to transfer money by mistake, legally they can not ask to get it back because it is already in our account and legally it became our money.
I do not want to comment now because I am furious; I'll wait until I calm down :)

Work Ethics

Have you ever felt pressured to compromise your values in order to succeed? Have you ever lost your job because you refused to do something against your values and beliefs?

I have, I did not lose my job but I faced a lot of problems because I never agree to compromise my values. I always stand to what I believe in, which often makes me the dull person around the office. Everything has changed what is right became wrong and what is wrong became right. The following became the trends:
1- Employees come very late to work.
2- Employees spend a lot of time chatting and socializing.
3- Employees spend a lot of time talking over the mobile phone.
4- Employees spend a lot of time over the MSN messenger, facebook,…or whatever other distraction.
5- The rest of the time is spent in pretence; employees fake the busy appearance to seem that they are working very hard although they are doing anything else.
6- Go around the office talk about how hard you work and that without your efforts this company would have been a mess.
7- Take credit for other people's work
8- Feed his/her boss's ego and spend a lot of time in his office praising him and his work. And of course agree to whatever he says even if it is a stupid thing.
9- Try to go up the hierarchy on other employee's shoulders. Try to cause trouble to their colleagues to get an undeserved promotion.

The result is they get promoted and their work is praised.

On the other hand if you work hard and do not do any of the points above you are not liked. Your boss thinks you are dull. Your colleagues can easily make your boss think that you hate him or that you are criticizing him behind his back (even if you don't) and you will not get promoted although you are the one who deserves the promotion. You might even be put in the situation where your boss envies your intelligence and success and tries to get rid of you in order not to reveal his weakness.

Do you think there is hope that the workplace will get clean again? Do you think that one day we will see qualified people only in their deserved posts? I hope so!!!!

Business Writing for Results

I read a book once titled “Business Writing for Results”. I liked it because it summarizes what you can learn in months or even for some people years of hard work. A lot of people write emails, reports, offers, proposals,…. But a few think of how to write it to make your audience respond in exactly the way you want.

How to make sure that people respond to your writings the way you want. How to make them read what you wrote to start with? This is not an easy task and requires great care while you are writing.

The following lines summarize what the book said:

Divide your task into the following three steps:
1-Get Your thoughts in order:
a. Answer the question: “What do I want my readers to do as a result of reading this?”
b. Analyze your audience by considering their personality and how they would react to your writing.
c. Be persuasive.

2- Create a Draft (on the computer or on paper)
a. Organize your thoughts.
b. Put your thoughts on paper and then select your beginning and ending paragraphs. (Those two paragraphs have great effect on whether your readers will read and respond or not so write them with care)
c. Generate a complete first draft.

3- Revise for Clarity
a. Revise to create a second draft.
b. Check if you need to add index, appendix, attachments,…
c. Revise to make sure your writing is specific, clear, concise and positive.
d. Select the best words and rephrase whenever necessary.
e. Check your spelling, grammar, punctuation and capitalization.
f. Make the draft visually appealing.
g. Read the entire draft again to produce the final version.

People Management

Managing people is a very critical and difficult task. Not anyone can become a manager. If you do not have the right skills, you can cause a lot of problems and you can drive away your finest employees.

Here are some hints and tips on how to be a successful manager:

1- If you want to be heard and if you want your descendents to follow your instructions and finish their work correctly and on time, INSTRUCT do not ORDER. Some managers go around the office giving orders with an angry tone. This never works. Befriend your employees and give them instructions and you will find that they will cooperate much better.
2- DELEGATE, do not DUMP. Some managers do not know how and what to delegate. They just keep dumping loads of work on their employees. Some others keep doing things they are supposed to delegate. To know the difference and do it right is the key to a successful manager.
3- INSPIRE. Be a leader not a manager (there is a big difference). You should be a figure your employees are looking up to. If you want them to come to work on time, you should be an early comer yourself. If you want them to perfect their work, you should be a perfectionist yourself. If you want them to love to come to work and finish their work on time, you should create a good spirit around the office that makes them love working with you.
4- Be FIRM but GENTLE. BE FAIR. FOLLOW YOUR OWN RULES. You have to have a clear policy and set of rules to follow around the office. And you have to apply the policy not just have it or else it is meaningless. You have to punish whoever deserves to be punished and reward whoever deserves the reward. Reward and punishment is a very important motivational tool. When employees who work hard find that they are treated exactly the same as the ones who do not, they simply stop working. And when you do not punish, mistakes keep increasing and you create chaos around the office. You have to be fair in your judgments. Reward or punish based on the quality of work and the behavior around the office and NOTHING else. Do not open the door for employees to feed your ego and make you give them more than they really deserve.
5- CREATE a balanced work load. Leaving your employees too much free time will create laziness and will make them use the company resources for fun. On the other hand overloading them constantly will wear them out and will make you gradually lose them. You have to balance. Never accept unreasonable deadlines, just because the customer wants the project to be done in two months when it really needs six months. YES, the customer is king and is always right. But to to make your customer happy you have to be honest. Do not promise a deadline that you know you can not keep even by wearing out and squeezing your team. If you do so, your customer will be angry because his work will be delayed. And your employees will be frustrated and will loose their momentum. Be smart enough to convince your customer of the realistic time plan. Think of both sides and meet them both half ways. (lean more on your employees of course)
6- ADMIRE. Give encouraging comments to those who produce quality work and those who excel. Admiring your employees’ work and making them know that you do, is a very important motivational tool.
7- Make sure all necessary office resources and tools are available. You can not ask your employees to do their work and excel when for example: The Net is always down or too slow (if needed at work), or the office is not clean, the toilets are not proper for human use!, the printer never prints, the air conditioner is always down, needed stationary is always late,…….or whatever other office needs.
8- Be HUMAN….But a smart one. You have to accept excuses but be smart enough to know when your employee is honest and when he is making up excuses. It is acceptable that sometimes an employee is tired, sick, his father or a relative died, he had a family emergency, had to run an errand…. You have to accept in a balanced manner some of those excuses, as long as the work is not delayed or harmed. Be human and remember that you yourself are subjected to such issues. But do not be too loose to the extent that your employees are constantly not showing up or coming late for one reason or another.
9- Understand people differences. Yes, you have to be fair and treat everyone according to your policy the same way. But remember that people are different and that everyone responds to a different way of treatment. Some employees for instance do not work except when they know that you are monitoring closely and that you are ready to punish. Others can not work at all when they feel that they are closely monitored as such. On the contrary when you give them space, they excel. You have to be smart to know your employees and treat everyone the way that brings the best out of him.
10- A successful manager creates leaders not followers. You have to be able to create leaders, ones who can figure out what to do and manage situations on their own. Do not be happy that your employees are always waiting for your instructions. This creates a load on your shoulders. Setting an example and making them able to stand up on their own feet is what makes you a good manager. Leave room for your employees to innovate and come to you with suggestions for improving the wok quality.
11-MAKE THEM RESPECT YOU. If they do not love you, they at least have to respect you. If you follow all the above points, they will respect you and love working with you.

I was lucky enough to have a manager with all the above qualities. He was my very first boss when I started working just after I acquired my masters. His name was Hakam Kanafani and to him I owe my success as a manager later on in my career. He taught me how to become a leader and how to create leaders, how to concentrate on the finest details and be a perfectionist. Also, how to be a source of inspiration around the office and how to be able to understand people differences and treat everyone the way that suits his character best . He was a character you respect and love working with. Everyone around the office was so keen to make him proud and happy of his work. I take this chance to thank him and to tell him that if I am a successful leader today and if I was able to create leaders it is because he inspired me.

Further on Customer Support

One of the highly irritating things that most customer support representatives tend to do is try to convince you that you are wrong. For example: I purchase a roasted turkey sandwich from a restaurant and I get it smoked and when I complain they try to convince me that it is roasted not smoked!!! (bas 2ana ely mesh wakhda baly!!!!!!!!!) . I ordered once a Toffee tart and they got me fruit tart instead and the waiter kept trying to convince me that it is the Toffee tart.

When you call your DSL customer support to complain that the speed of your connection is too slow, you get the frustrating answer: “No it is not…it is perfectly well”. Or they try to convince you that you did something wrong on your side or you have a virus that is causing this speed issue, without even trying to troubleshoot with you.

NEVER try to convince your customer that he is wrong or that he does not understand. If your customer is complaining try to resolve the issue. Try to know what is bothering him and solve the problem. Even if the customer is really confused or complaining of something that you know 100% is not right, do not tell him straight away that he is wrong. Keep doing some troubleshooting steps with him and take it step by step to make him feel that you are helping him resolve the issue and then in the end convince him in an intelligent way that there is no problem. He will appreciate it and might even apologize. But the main point is you never tell your customer that he is wrong. Do not ever frustrate your customer by telling him that he does not understand or that he is complaining of something that does not exist. After all it is your job as a customer representative to make the customer happy.

Also admitting your mistake, fixing it and apologizing for it (you might even need to make up for it by giving something extra or for free) is much much much better than denying it. Sometimes you complain from something and all you get is denial and then you find out that it has been fixed. This is more annoying than admitting the problem because you feel that that the company does not respect you. They are willing to lie and they underestimate you to the extent that they think you will not understand what they did.

Such issues relate also to bad management. If the customer support department is managed by a competent manager, such mistakes will never occur. A good manager will know how to monitor the performance of his employees and control their behavior and attitudes. A good manager will set the rules from the beginning and will tell his employees how to handle all types of customers.

The link below is an interesting article that talks about the same issue...Importance of customer service:
http://buzz.greatfxbusinesscards.com/what-ever-happened-to-customer-service.htm

Customer Support

In Egypt we have a BIG problem in customer support. We do not understand what it means to begin with. It means that "The customer is always right". Even that customer who does not understand how to use the product and did not read the manual and caused a damage or problem in the product because of misuse. Even that customer who is so angry and calls to yell over the phone. Once the customer starts yelling, we yell back at him or we speak in a tone that shows that we cannot stand his yelling.

Unfortunately, companies in Egypt do not understand that a good customer support service is a more important selling department than your sales department itself. Any company can have the best sales department and customers know that before they purchase anything they are dealt with as kings. Once the sale is closed, and once the customer needs post-sales service all the problems come up. Either the customer cannot reach you by phone or if he does, he finds incompetent and unfriendly people answering the phone.

If you really want to boost your sales and engrave your name in the market, invest in your customer support department. Hire highly qualified people, invest in continuous training programs for them, monitor their performance closely, overhear their calls with customers, provide for them the best working environment to make sure they are happy and in good mood because it reflects in how they deal with their customers.

I worked in a company once that stacked their customer support team in the dirtiest room in the company. They did not have a single working air-conditioner in office. One of the air-conditioners, before it went down, used to leak water which completely damaged the walls and changed its color to black spots. The room was dark; lighting was not enough for the number of people in it. Chairs were in terrible shape (not comfortable, broken backs, employees can not adjust them to their desired position). Add to all the above that the company did not have proper communication channel with their customer support department. They used to launch new services and products without informing the customer support department early enough. Customer support representatives used to receive customer calls asking about the service and how to use before the representatives knew anything about it. Also when the company faced any problems that affected the quality of service they provide to their customers, the support representatives were the last to know. They used to come up with any stories over the phone with customers and try to make the customer believe that there is no problem and it is from his side not the company’s until they knew about the problem. Not to mention of course that the company policy was always to hide the real problem and lie to the customers. The support representatives did not have any form of motivation. No clear career path, No respect from their colleagues in other departments (they were looked down to – seen as the least qualified in the company….after all their job is to answer the phone!!), did not receive any training courses and not enough financial packages.

All the above is a recipe for catastrophe. Your customer support employees should be pampered so that in return they can pamper your customers. At the same time they should be monitored closely and the smallest mistake should be harshly penalized. They should know that the customer is King. They should know that their job is to go beyond pleasing the customer to gaining his loyalty. A loyal customer will never switch to another company, will give a good word about the company everywhere and will recommend the company to everyone he knows.

Companies must continuously collect feedback from their customers about the quality of the service and their support. This can be done by random over the phone calls, customer support questionnaires and surveys to be put online or distributed in outlets or any other appropriate form. This makes customers feel that you care and that you are keen on improving your service to their satisfaction. And it also helps you know your weak points and improve them. Companies also should offer several ways for support. Do not rely only on phone calls. Offer online services. Make a knowledgebase from the cases that you come across on put it online for customers to browse through and resolve their case without having to contact you over the phone and wait on queues. Think of all possible alternatives to make your customers’ lives easier.

You cannot imagine the boost that happened in the service when I tackled and resolved the problems above. The support department used to answer only a maximum of 50% of incoming customer calls, after the changes they answered 90% of incoming calls. The average number of cases that used to be resolved in the same day they were opened did not exceed 50%, after the changes it reached 65% and were still improving. The support department used to resolve 35% only of the received cases without routing them to other techincal departments internally and wait for their feedback. After the changes they used to resolve 57% of the cases without routing. And there are many other factors that showed that once you CARE for your support employees, they will CARE for your customers and in turn customers will be happy and loyal.

The company with the best customer support service is the company that will dominate the market. Customers know that once they buy the service they will suffer whenever they need support. So now they try to buy from the company that offers great post-sales services.

What if your manager is a psycho!

Some managers go beyond being dictators to becoming real psychos. They treat their employees as their slaves. Whatever you do is not good enough, they keep criticizing and under-estimating your work. They always think that whatever they do and say is brilliant and whatever you do is disappointing. They interfere in your daily work to the extent that they paralyze you.

I came across one of those once. The ironic thing is I was an Organization Development manager with 11 years of working experience. So I was on a strategic managerial post and I was supposed to have responsibilities and authority to manage my projects. The healthy way to deal with me was to evaluate my work based on results. But instead see what she used to do:
1- Insist that I CC: her on every email I send.
2- Read every email and find something one way or another to criticize in the email. (Something like the tone of the email might annoy the audience, not clear enough….. )
3- Insist on attending most if not all the meetings I conduct.
4- Criticize me in front of the audience sometimes.
5- Criticize my work all the time especially if my customers praise it.
6- Continuously add new projects to my schedule (overloading me to the max.) and still request very tight and unreasonable deadlines. This of course is to give herself the pleasure of criticizing me for being late.
7- When the time for the quarterly evaluation comes, she gives me a completely unfair evaluation. And when I ask for logical explanation, she is unable to give me one. She starts saying stupid things like: “Everyone thinks your work is not good enough”. Of course without saying WHO “everyone” is and WHY it is not good enough and WHAT exactly is not good enough about it.
8- She wants to be treated as GOD. Whatever she says I should agree with. Whatever she wants she gets anytime.
9- Start all her meetings after 6:00p.m. and if I start complaining and asking not to be forced to stay late every day then it becomes a big issue. And suddenly I get comments like “It is not professional to refuse staying late”.
10- Go to the CEO (her boss) and show-off her work and exaggerate its impact and results. And when it comes to my work that she is supposed to report to him, she either undermines or does not mention at all as if I am not doing anything.

The funny thing is the projects she was responsible of did not deliver outstanding results as mine did. As a matter of fact I am convinced that she used to treat me in such a way because she was jealous that everyone is praising my work and not hers. Also because her way of dealing with people was extremely repulsive, (arrogant, bossy and aggressive), people preferred dealing with me. I think that made her jealous too.

WELL, how to deal with such psychos?
1-Resign to get rid of the headache.
2-Be his/her slave as he pleases. And of course praise him all the time, befriend him and feed his ego.
3-Go behind his back and befriend his boss, praise him and feed his ego. Then use your relation with his boss as your boss’s whip.

As for me, my choice is 1- all the time as I can not do, neither 2- nor 3-. It is not just me to be a slave or hypocrite. As a matter of fact I feel sorry for such people that they have to live with themselves. They are really sick and they definitely need help.

What would you do?

Management Issues

Our biggest and most serious problem in Egypt is management. The main reason, as I see it, is because unqualified people reach managerial positions. Those employees gain their way up the hierarchy because they were able to befriend their boss and make a show that they are the best employees ever, although they are unqualified. When they become managers they make a mess.

Here are some of the issues that customers and employees suffer from because of unqualified managers:

1-Lying to customers: some managers think that the best way to deal with the customer is to promise anything (the sky is the limit). They think that whatever the customer asks for, they must promise that they will deliver even if they know they can’t. Some promise delivery dates that they can not fulfill, just to get the deal and then they keep coming up with excuses to calm the angry customer. Some promise to deliver products that they know they can not develop because they do not know the “know-how”. They promise nonetheless and then start searching for someone with the required expertise to hire, a process of course that can take time and effort and it is possible not find him in proper time.

NEVER LIE TO THE CUSTOMER (Or potential customer). The best way to get a deal is to be honest and to promise only what you can fulfill. When the customer deals with you once and sees that you keep your word and you deliver what you promise, he will ask for more business with you and he will recommend you to others. On the other hand if you lie, he will just finish the current deal with you and will never want to see your face again. His frustration and anger will make you loose at least from 8 to 10 potential customers.
2- Overloading employees: To get as many deals as possible, managers accept too many projects at the same time. They do not think of their resources, all they think of is closing the deal. The result is overloaded employees who are worn out, they can not concentrate and hence quality of the work degrades. Managers to exercise their authority start criticizing and pressing more and more on the employee’s nerves. This in turn results in even worse quality of work, missed deadlines, angry employees and angry customers.

BUILD REASONABLE PLANS AND BALANCED WORKLOADS. Do not pressure your employees if you want to get quality. Do not also leave them too much free time. A balanced workload is always wise. Remember that if your employee wears out you will loose all the projects that you were so eager to gain. Delivering two successful projects is better than loosing ten.
3-Being a Dictator: Some managers think that the best way to manage is to become a dictator. They only see and hear themselves. They leave no space for employees to express their opinions. Although, if they think carefully they will realize that if they leave room for discussion they will get better results.

NOT TOO BOSSY / NOT TOO LOOSE. Balance yourself between being organized, firm and exercising your authority and at the same time listening to your employees. Remember you are one team and you should play as a team to win. Remember that you are human and you can and will make mistakes. So, do not rely on your head only. Befriend your employees and gain their trust to get the best out of them. But, do not make them rule!
4-Not being fair: Be fair in evaluating the performance of your employees. Do not judge based on who is nice to you or who is praising you and agreeing with whatever you say. Evaluate based on output and performance.

BE FAIR TO YOUR EMPLOYEES IF YOU WANT TO GET THE BEST OUT OF THEM

Sales Plan Guidelines

There are two views for a sales plan:
The First View:
There are three broad areas to consider in a sales plan:
1-The Territory
2-The Account
3-The Call

The second view:
There are four broad areas to consider in a sales plan:
1-Customers
2-Competition
3-Pricing
4-Marketing

I will explain briefly each view below.

The first view:
1- The Territory:

1.1 Create your territory
a- A critical part of sales planning is discriminating between Poor, Good, Better and Best accounts.
You then divide your time and attention in the way that most of your time is spent where the money comes from. The only way to do this is to give less time to the small accounts.

Your top 5% money volume accounts are “A” accounts. The next 15% are “B”, the next 20% are “C”. The remaining 60% are small players.

b- Create a “Hit List” containing 6-10 large potential prospects and treat them as your “A” list.
Allocate at least 50% of your selling time to your “A”, “B” and “Hit List” accounts.
About 30-40% to your “C” list. And the last 10-20% can be divided among the remaining 60% of customers that provide around 10% of your revenue.

Note: some people say, create your hi list from your competitors' customer list. I see this as unethical. I think that if we concentrate on doing a better job than our competitors and offering a better service, their customers will move to us without having to deliberately target them.

1.2 Map your territory
Take your prioritized customer list created in the first step and plot it on a map with colour coding to indicate importance. Start calling customers to schedule visits. Using your map identify one or two top-tier (A, B, Hit List) to visit in the morning every day and another one or two in the afternoon.

2- The Account
2.1 Set Targets
After identifying your key customers in the previous step, set annual sales and product targets and goals for each of them. Part of the goal will be to maintain and protect existing business and another part is to grow new business.

After targets are set ask the following questions and set your plan to answer them:
·Do I currently have 100% of the target or do I only have a percentage?
·What can I do to reach the target?
·What competitive threats exist?
·How can I neutralize/eliminate my competitors?
·What habits or practices are standing in the way of my getting my business?

2.2 Create customer records
Targets and action plan should be recorded in each customer record. The record should include important data about the customer and its personnel (sales history, names, roles, phone numbers, etc.)
Information learnt about the account is very important.

3- The Call
This is related to the account plan. The call plan is developed using: Long term targets, progress reports and current marketing or sales promotions. It is about how to utilize what you have and when to call/visit you customers.

Second View
Main topics of a sales plan:
1- Customers
2- Competition
3- Pricing
4- Marketing

Customers
· Who are your customers?
· Are your markets growing? Steady? Declining?
· How will you attract, hold, increase your market share?

Competition
· Who are your five most direct competitors?
· Who are your indirect competitors?
· How are their businesses: steady? Increasing? Decreasing?
· What have you learned about their operations?
· What do you know about their marketing and advertising?
· What are their strengths and weaknesses?
· How do their services and products differ from yours?
Note: Create a file for each competitor. Save their advertising and promotional materials and any pricing information you can gather. Review these files periodically, determining when and how often they advertise, how they participate at industry gatherings and anything else you can about the way they bring business.

Pricing
Your pricing strategy is another marketing technique you can use to improve your overall competitiveness. Although your pricing will be based on your industry and cost, it is good practice to know what pricing strategies your competitors are using.

Marketing
Your Marketing / Advertising Plan is critical in helping you reach your customers and create a unique image for yourself.

A letter to my beloved father

My father died last Wednesday (11-4-2007) and suddenly I feel lonely and insecure. Although I am married and I have my lovely 6 months old baby Mariam, I still feel so lost like a 7 years old child who lost his father. Imagine yourself trying to walk without your backbone; this is exactly how I feel.

My father was a great man. He was a true gentleman, so kind hearted, firm but gentle. He was so honest, hard-worker and with a very high conscious. He graduated from the American University in Cairo in 1960. He studied political science and mass-communication. He started his career as a journalist in the Associated Press for 15 years, then at Reuters for 17 years, then the Middle East News Agency. He then started teaching Journalism at the American university in Cairo. He has been teaching at AUC for the last 11 years. The day he died I saw how much he was loved, respected and appreciated by his students. They attended his funeral and they were deeply sorry for loosing him. When I saw them cry and heard how they speak of him, I cried harder for our loss. But it made me also happy and proud of my father. They dedicated a whole page on him in the newspaper he used to supervise issuing at AUC. The articles they wrote on him touched my heart. It made me cry so hard to read the students talk about him as their father, friend and mentor and not as any other professor. This is a live example that when we die nothing remains except our good reputation and our good deeds in life.

I still see him walking around at home, I still hear him talking to me and I still remember his advice to me. I wish I had enough time to tell him how much I love and respect him. If I am anything good and successful today, I owe it to him and my mother.

My dear dad,
I hope you can feel now how much I miss you, love you, and respect you and how much I am proud of the fact that I am your daughter. May God rest your soul in peace, may HE forgive all your minors and reward all your good deeds.
I will always do whatever I believe that you would have been proud of if you were alive. I will remember every advice you gave me and will abide by it. I will try to raise my child the same way you raised me and my sister, so that I can be proud of her one day the same way I hope you were proud of us.

You will live in my heart forever,
Love,
Doha

Business Meetings Hints & Tips

I noticed from my years of work experience that managers tend to rush into conducting meetings with their employees without really making sure that what they will discuss needs a meeting.

It is very important to make the right judgment. Is it a meeting, an email, a memo,....what exactly do you need to do to deliver your message? unnecessary meetings are a waste of time, effort and money. And on the long run your team will resent your meetings and will not listen.

How to manage and document your meeting findings is also critical, or else your meeting is useless.

I came across the following document once and I find it interesting and useful. It summarizes a lot of important points to consider in business meetings, enjoy reading it.

© 2000, COMMERCIAL SOLUTIONS TRAINING & Development (214) 503 - 1706

ME E T I N G MA S T E R CH E C K L I S T

Before The Meeting
1. Is A Meeting The Best Way To Handle Your Communication Need? (Consider A Memo, Conference Call,E - mail, Video Conference, Presentation, etc.)
2. What Must You Leave The Meeting With (A Decision, Commitment, Ideas, Consensus, etc.) In Order For It To Be A Success? (After You Answer This, Revisit The Question Above)
3. What Is The Sequence Of Topics That Must Be Addressed In Order To Accomplish Your Meeting Objective?
4. In What Ways (Discussion, Brainstorming, Planning, etc.) Must You Address Each Topic And For How Long?
5. Who Must Be Present At Your Meeting For You To Accomplish Your Objective?
6. Where Should The Meeting Be Held In Order To Increase Comfort And Reduce Influence? (ie. You Influence More In Your Office)
7. When Should You Meet And For How Long?
8. Have You Prepared And Sent A Detailed Agenda To All Participants?

During The Meeting
1. Did You Arrive Early Enough To Prep The Meeting Room And Yourself?
2. Did You Start The Meeting On Time?
3. Did You Confirm That Everyone Received And Understood The Agenda And Is Prepared To Work?
4. Did You Introduce The First Agenda Topic And Indicate The Preferred Way Of Addressing It (eg."Generating Ideas Is The Approach I'd Like To Suggest With Our First Item, Sales Initiatives.")
5. Did You Encourage The Less Talkative And Ride Herd On Monopolizers?
6. Did You Alert The Meeting Members When Agenda Items Were Within 2 to 5 Minutes Of Their Allotted Time? (eg. "We've Got Five Minutes Left With This Item, So . . .")
7. Did You Use A Concerns Flipchart To Capture Unfinished Business?
8. Did You Summarize & Confirm Conclusions And Commitments?
9. Did You Thank Participants?
10. Did You Take Notes?

After The Meeting
1. Did You Complete A Short, Clear Summary Of The Meeting, With Emphasis On Decisions And
Commitments That Were Made?
2. Did You Distribute The Meeting Summary To Every Participant And Anyone Else With A Need To Know Within 36 Hours Of The Meeting?
3. Did You Begin And/Or Complete Any And All Of The Actions That You Committed To During The Meeting?
4. Did You Follow Up With any Meeting Participant Who Made A Commitment?
5. Did You Express Thanks To Any Participants Who Added Superior Levels Of Value To Your Meeting?
6. Did You Probe Any Participants Who Were Unusually Quiet Or Who Expressed Reservations With Topics Or Outcomes?

How to put a Business Plan?

Any business plan in general should include:

1- Defining a plan for ongoing projects:
Any on going project should have a time plan i.e. a deadline for it to be completed, A budget estimate and a goal. We should state how do we intend to benefit from it and what should be the minimal gain out of it.
2- Analyzing all our services:
Putting a plan on how to enhance our service and how to better benefit of what we have. This should have a time plan as well and cost estimate.
3- Analyzing all our existing clients:
The main aim is to see how we can better serve them. Whether we want to offer special promotions to our clients or not. And if we do make special offers, to whom, when and how. The budget allocated for that purpose should be defined. A time plan is very important to pick the best time to place our offer. Also what do we intend to gain out of these promotions is very important since we will spend money so we have to know that we will collect more than what we will spend.
4- A time plan on how to approach new customers.
A well-defined time plan and a budget should be allocated for that purpose as well.
5- Development needs:
All our internal needs to achieve all the above stated points. Things like hiring people if needed, attending training courses if needed, buying needed equipment like computers....and so on.
A budget limit should be allocated for that purpose and all our needs should be well defined.
6- Marketing plan:
Should we use advertising in news papers? or should we plan a seminar and invite people to attend and get to know about our services? what is our budget for such a market campaign? how many adds or seminars can we do for the whole year? All this should be planned ahead.
7- A new Idea:
In any business plan, you have to have one new idea. Something new that you want to do this year. The whole year should be its time limit. A budget should be allocated for it and it should be our goal for the year
8- Market research:
We should carefully study the market and assess the competition. We have to know where we stand facing our competing companies. We have to state our weak points in comparison with the competition and put a plan to solve it. This plan should have a time and cost estimate.

And of course, for all the points above, the plan has to be honest and realistic. Never overestimate or underestimate your capabilities. Also never include something in your plan that you know you can not and will not accomplish.

Successful presentation hints and tips

Presentations are meant to deliver a message to your audience & you might also want to reap a benefit out of them (like sell your new product). To be sure your presentation is a success, use the following tips:

There are two factors that affect the success of a presentation: The speaker & the presentation material itself.

I. The Speaker:

1- Prepare long enough before the presentation time.

2- Conduct timed rehearsals at least twice before the presentation. (Even better if you can do it with some of your colleagues or friends to collect feedback & enhance your presentation)

3- Make sure you are well dressed, clean and looking bright. The Speaker's appearance is a critical factor in making the audience willing to listen.

4- If number of speakers from the same company will conduct the presentation, it is better if they wear a uniform, a dress code or at least a badge with the company logo (to give a uniform appearance).

5- Speak clearly & surely.

Not too LOUD Not too FAST

Not too LOW Not too SLOW

6- Control your body language. Do not make unnecessary movements that could distract your audience. Point only when needed and use your hands only when needed. If any point needs acting to elaborate on it, do so.

7- Have Eye contact with your audience. This reassures people that you understand and is sure of what you are talking about. This makes your speech more convincing.

8- Avoid Jargon or abbreviations unless explained.

II. The Presentation:

1- The topic has to be defined and clear.

2- The message that you want to deliver has to be defined and clear.

3- Visual aids are very important. Use more images, videos and effects than text. One image can explain much better than 100 words and your audience will remember it much easier after your presentation is over.

4- Divide your presentation into: Introduction, Body and Ending. Prepare your audience in the introduction then make them understand when you reach the body of your presentation then wrap up to remind them of the important points in the end.

5-Leave room for interaction with your audience, whether in the presentation or through questions and answers at the end.

6- Distribute handouts if needed.

Email writing skills for business

From my professional experience, I learnt a few hints and tips about email writing for business purposes that I would like to share.

We all have the tendency to write the same way we speak. Writing is different!
When you write, especially an email, you have to be very clear, short and to the point.

1- People tend to resist reading very long emails, even if they are important. So you need to write short emails.

2- Written words are harsher than spoken ones. The same thing that you can say to someone, if written can annoy or hurt him although it did not when orally said. This is because when you speak it out, the way you say it makes a difference. So take care, when you write an email, revise it several times to make sure that the tone of it is not harsh and will not annoy your reader.

3- After you write your email, proof read it for rephrasing. It is important to make sure that all sentences can not have more than one meaning. If you write sentences that can be interpreted in different ways, you will loose the aim of your email. You can even cause problems or delayed deliveries.

4- Never use colors, special signs (like exclamation mark), Capital letters or bold fonts to express your anger or to emphasize something. It gives the impression that you are fighting. Even if you have the right to be angry, do not show it this way because you will definitely lose your audience.

5- Never use abbreviations unless you mention the full phrase first and its abbreviation beside it in brackets. Then in the rest of the email body you can use the abbreviation. (Unless of course it is a well known abbreviation in your business or something that is frequently used and you are sure it is known to the recipient)

6- After you write your email, proof read it again for spelling mistakes. A business email with spelling mistakes is repulsive.

7-After you write your email, proof read it a third time for grammatical and logical mistakes. A business email with such mistakes is extremely repulsive.

8- Do not CC: someone on an email unless absolutely necessary, requested by a manager or the CCd: person will do something related to the email (has a role).

9- The color of your font should not be red, green, yellow or blue. Use colors that are comfortable for the eye and would not cause your recipient to refrain from reading your email.

Dell Computers with Linux

Dell has decided to start selling PCs preinstalled with Linux. The decision came as a result of a survey they made earlier this year. More than 100,000 people participated in the survey and more than 70% said they would use Linux.

Check Details here:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6506027.stm