Right Here Waiting

Lost your clients? Here are six steps to win them back

When you lose a client, it is almost always because of service. Price is rarely the problem.

Before you try to win back that lost client, you need to examine the problem and figure out why you lost the client in the first place.

What does your client think was the problem? What do you think the problem was? If you work together again, is the problem going to resurface? 

Here are six steps to help you get back a lost client:

1. Give it some time

Don’t go rushing after the client. Let him think about the problem if there was one. This will also give you time to think over your approach.

Client problems are sometimes like lovers’ quarrels. Time will often heal the wound without you having to do anything else.

2. Provide a referral or offer your assistance

In the world of business, you run into people who need this or need that.

Keep your lost clients in mind for anything that can benefit them.

By knowing the needs of your clients, it is easy to make suggestions that can help them either with a referral for business or your assistance for any problem.

Your former clients will appreciate the gesture – and they may be one step closer to doing business with you again.

3. Do not sever communication

Keep former clients on your mailing list. Ask to stay on their mailing list.

If you send out newsletters, keep sending to them.

If you use e-mail to stay in touch with your clients, keep your lost clients posted too.

It also will not hurt to mention any good news concerning the client in the newsletter or e-mail.

4. Make it easy for the client to return

If former clients call, sound happy to talk to them.

If you meet them face-to-face, shake their hand and give them a big smile. This will remind them why they worked with you in the first place.

5. Ask the former client to solve a problem for you

If you are working on a community project and you think the client might be able to help you out, give them a call.

If you respect his taste in food, ask him for a restaurant suggestion for an anniversary dinner.

Ask about software. Ask about people. Ask about virtually anything, but don’t sound phony.

6. Thank the client profusely when he returns

Everyone likes to be thanked. People enjoy believing that they make a difference and that they are appreciated.

Show that appreciation to your lost clients.

It takes an effort to leave. If your clients feel wanted in the first place, it is almost impossible to have someone else steal them away from you.

Once they are lost, you just need to gently look after them by reminding them of your services, your appreciation of them and your knowledge of their needs.

Once you have them back, keep them and treasure them.

Attract And Retain Talent

You will succeed in keeping your best people if they believe in the company’s value and mission

Economic, technological and social changes across the world are placing challenging new demands on organisations. Competitive talent acquisition and retention pressures have never been greater. The human resource recruitment function has come under increasing pressure with a focus on its effectiveness and return on investments.

With the labour market flooded with job seekers, one may think that there is an abundance of talent available in the market.

But there is an acute shortage of talent and an oversupply of unskilled workers within the same markets. There is also a severe shortage of skills related to technical, engineering and scientific areas and employers are still willing to pay top dollar for qualified talent.

Attracting Talent

Organisations recognise that their talent gives them the competitive edge and they use various ways to attract the right employees. Especially in today’s market, good performers are reluctant to move and need to be swayed with more than an attractive monetary package. They seek companies with values and a mission that are aligned to their beliefs.

Organisations that are astute are responding to this by getting their senior leaders to share their vision and the values of the company with potential employees. Talented people want to be part of an organisation they can believe in, and one that excites them.

Here are some ways to attract talent into your organisation:

• Treat talented individuals like customers.
• Understand their motivation, and push and pull factors.
• Have a systematic planned strategy to manage the recruitment process.
• Ensure that your reward and recognition programme is attractive and is performance-driven.
• List your organisation’s strengths and how its culture supports the growth of the company and its employees.
• Showcase your leadership team and their congruence with the company vision.

Employees these days are also concerned about a company’s stability and reputation. At a time when even large and established organisations are facing a crisis, this is understandable.

Companies recruiting these days have to work harder to convince employees of their long-term business view, while employees are interested to know more about severance packages and support given, if there is a need to part ways.

Talent retention

Talented individuals are on the radar of your competitors and other recruiters. Retaining talent is no longer about keeping the good performers within your company as long as possible.

It is more about how you can get optimum mileage from your relationship with the individuals, which may change over time from that of employee to associate; consultant to business partner; and in some cases, even competitor.

Smart business owners know how to keep important relationships alive and draw the best out of them. There are many cases where an individual moves to a rival organisation and then rejoins the company. Keep employees’ options open and fluid in order to tap into a more diverse talent pool.

Good recruiters know the value of this, especially in today’s market where employers need to extend their network globally. One way to stay in touch with talent who have left your company, is through social networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook.

A chief executive of a fast growing company recently said that he treats all his employees as if they are managers, partners and shareholders. If you lose great people, you lose success. Facilitating and growing people are valued traits of successful business leaders.

The bottom line is the organisation must foster an atmosphere where talented people need not be induced to stay but make a choice to remain connected to the company in one form or another.

Guidelines for retaining talented individuals

• Stay in touch
• Respect individuality
• Build a conduit within your company that fast-tracks talented individuals and give them access to your leadership team.
• Give talented individuals a platform to discuss their views and provide challenges to showcase their capability. Keep them engaged.
• Recognise achievement milestones besides remuneration. Talented people also do things for glory and appreciation.
• Keep track of your talents’ value, know their market worth and always keep track of who else within your playing field may be interested in pursuing them. Be aware of your own team’s push and pull factors.

Negotiating For More Pay

Here are tips on how to get the salary you deserve

You have been assigned challenging projects over the past year. Though your workload is heavy, you are coping well. However, you feel you are not being rewarded adequately for your contributions to the company.

You don’t have to quit your job to find one that pays better, but you do need to speak up. Here’s how you can negotiate successfully for a pay raise:

Do your homework

• Get an idea of your worth. It is important to find out the average salary for the role that you do. Talk to people in your industry and use salary surveys that can be found on job recruitment websites. However, you also need to keep in mind your performance, level of experience, length of time in your company and the frequency with which you go the extra mile to perform tasks outside your standard job scope.
• Make a list of accomplishments. Remember that the people who decide your salary are concerned with the company’s budget. They are looking for proven results from you. Keep a scoreboard that keeps track of the high-value projects you have completed and the results achieved. Or gather sales reports or copies of client testimonials that highlight your outstanding service.

Decide what you want

• Be open about your desired salary. While you can give your boss a number first or let him initiate the salary negotiation, you should have a specific figure in mind. Whether that figure is a 10 per cent increment or an extra week of leave will depend on your boss’ assessment of your performance and current situation.
• Propose alternatives. If your boss or company is unable to meet your desired salary request, prepare an alternative means of compensation. It could be a work-from-home privilege or even a bigger performance-based bonus.

Ask for a meeting

• Time it right. No boss has to give you a raise simply because you want one. A good time to approach your manager is if you have been with the company for a period of time and have not had a raise, your research shows that you are not compensated at a level on par with your colleagues, or if your responsibilities have significantly increased. Tell your boss you have something important to discuss. Be sensitive to his stress levels and workload, or your requests will be seen as an unwelcome distraction. Arrange a meeting that will enable you to make your case and sell your argument.

Practise

• Practise with a friend. Rehearse your meeting with a friend. Make your case and play out all the possible outcomes.
• Anticipate objections. Think of everything your boss may bring up as a reason not to give you a raise. For instance, this is not the right time or the budget is insufficient. Prepare responses to every possible objection.

Make your pitch

• When to ask. Friday afternoon is normally a good time to ask for a pay rise because it gives your boss time over the weekend to go over your pitch, and to work out how he will justify your salary increment to higher management.
• Stay calm. Do not be emotional in the negotiation. This is a conversation between you and your superior about your proven value to the company. Do not become defensive, get angry, beg or cry.
• Don’t issue an ultimatum. No manager likes to be threatened by “more pay or I quit”. Remember that your goal is to get the raise, not annoy your boss.
• Be professional. Never use personal reasons to justify your request for a pay raise. “I want to buy a brand new car” is not a valid reason. Focus on your professional achievements, and discuss how you can contribute more to your company.

Evaluate the outcome

• Make it official. If you get a pay rise, congratulations! But remember to have your boss or the HR department put it in writing. When does it go into effect? Is is retroactive? If you were given additional benefits or privileges, ensure that they are documented as well.
• Prepare a back-up plan. If a pay rise is not in your company’s budget, consider negotiating other benefits, such as flexible schedule or a bigger performance-based bonus. If these requests are denied, ask your boss what goals need to be achieved to get a future pay raise. Arrange a date for a follow-up meeting to discuss your progress towards these goals.
• Be polite. Remember to be courteous and professional. It always helps to emphasise that you want to stay long-term with a company that supports your professional and financial goals.

Just A “Friend”

Turning off an emotional affair before it gets physical

Emotional affairs (EAs) are sneaky and it is common to find out you are in one without really understanding when and how it happened. 

Facebook, instant messaging, texting, and tweeting have opened doors for emotional affairs to storm in and have also built the walls necessary to keep it secret. These are two of the absolutes for an emotional affair to exist.

EAs begin innocently enough. They take place at work, school, happy hours, and coffee hours, almost anywhere whenever two lonely people can meet up one on one and talk. They begin with conversations about interests, their ex’s or spouses, their kids, TV shows (American Idol was one of the hottest topics discussed by EA couples), and music.

People are looking for a sense of belonging, understanding, and appreciation. They may not be getting that from their marriage or current relationships, and turn to someone else who may have the potential to provide them with this. They usually don’t begin an emotional affair on purpose and they may not be seeking physical closeness. They are lonely and feel vulnerable or unappreciated.

Having someone validate that they are special and wonderful becomes a “drug” to them, and before they know it, they would rather spend time with this person than anyone else, including their spouse, children, or close friends.

Not Just Friends

The key word that keeps an emotional affair in place is the title people call the person they are having an EA with. They call them “a friend”. Due to this title, it is almost impossible to get too concerned with the relationship as they are after all “just a friend”.

It is confusing to the person having the EA also because Friend and Affair are in two different categories. However, when this “friend” begins to cause fighting in your own marriage, feelings of lust in you, and intense feelings that you have to see them right now or you will die, then you know they are no longer a friend, they are an EA.

Why do we call this person a friend at all? That’s an interesting question and one that is important to understand. When you are in love with your partner, you share yourself in a way that your spouse understands as love, even if it’s talking about the bills, the kids, or your parents.

Your partner and you share at an intimate level. When you take this same energy and focus it on another person, you lose the ability to continue sharing this intimacy with your partner. So the relationship you have with your partner begins to look more distant, more dry and brittle, and the one you are having with your “friend” begins to blossom and get fuller.

It begins to look like your true love. You begin to see faults in your partner that you may have overlooked before. At this point you may not have physical relations with your friend, but they aren’t far away if you continue this pattern.

Wait A Minute

How do you stop and notice if you are having an EA? Below are a few of the warning signs. If you have more than one of these in your current relationship, it is time to step back and make a sharp turn.

• You begin to feel closer to your friend than you do your partner.
• You keep it a secret from your partner (whenever there is something you need to keep secret from your partner, this is a red flag).
• You begin to think of your friend all the time. You begin having sexual fantasies and you notice there is a sexual tension with the two of you.
• You pay extra attention to how you look when you see this friend.
• You try to find ways to be alone with this person.
• You will begin to lie for this person so no one will find out what is really going on.
• Time of day is not important as long as you can see this person.

Stopping an EA is a lot easier said than done. Many people report taking small strides by eliminating their facebook conversations or emails, but there is still the phone, and text. This makes the emotional affair even stronger as you are now building an additional risk trying to cut it off.

Most experts in the field of marital therapy suggest cutting it off completely and fast. The reason this method works best is you get a chance to grieve it, and redirect your energy and time back into your relationship and partner. As long as there is even one form of communication open, the threat is still there. People have quit jobs, moved, and changed passwords on email accounts as well as face book.

After you cut off the affair, your life will feel empty and alone. Filling it with close friends, family and new hobbies will bring back stability in your life and relationship. The following are some quick tips to get you back and help you heal.

Getting Back On Track

• Take a class with your partner/spouse. Dance classes, financial classes, or a martial enrichment course are all good ideas. A new class or activity will help distract your thoughts from your friend, add novelty to your relationship and refocus attention to your marriage and/or relationship where it needs to be.
• Make dates to get together with your friends. Filling your life with friends is marriage friendly and also helps prevent feeling isolated and lonely.
• Do something for yourself. Get more involved in your spiritual activities, or exercise programme. Taking care of you will reinforce your health and a healthy lifestyle (which will also exclude the EA).

Being involved in an EA does not cause divorce. Not ending one will. Noticing the signs and acting on them is the surest cure.

-HealthNewsDigest.com

Get Creative

Creativity is not just for the chosen few – here’s how you can unleash your potential

Creativity is a fascinating subject.

The word itself tends to evoke images of quirky weirdness, sidelining creativity to a fringe populace of misfits.

However, creativity is less about standing apart from the crowd and more about seeking – and finding – new ways to do things.

As we encounter the little problems of everyday life, the common responses is to try and solve them. 

Nobody likes being thwarted, so we seek to remove obstacles that are in our way. In trying to overcome these challenges, we automatically engage in a very creative process.

Far from being a special characteristic that is randomly bestowed upon a select few, experts on the subject are finding that creativity is orderly and, by using a specific set of techniques, “teachable”.

A Good Habit

Creativity is, in fact, a potential that everyone has. At its core, creativity is a matter of expression.

How “creative” you are depends on how often (if at all) you engage in the following five habits which can be considered the “core competencies” of creative expression:

1. Preserve New Ideas

You often marvel at new ideas, remarking at the seeming ingenuity of the author while wondering why you never come up with similar breakthrough yourself.

Chances are, you have, and it is more than likely that you failed to preserve the new idea or insight as it came to you.

By definition, something that is new falls outside of your normal operating awareness. This means that you hardly acknowledge, much less recall, having had that creative burst of insight.

Sometimes, when you have new ideas, you reject them out of hand, fearing that they may be too weird or advanced to be acceptable.

Therefore, to be truly inspired, you have to cultivate the habit of capturing new ideas as they come to you, without making snap judgments.

A good exercise would be to keep a notepad handy at all times to record new insights as they come to you.

Simply note it down first. Evaluate the idea later.

2. Choose Your Surroundings

Mixing in the right company is crucial to determining creativity.

A large part of creativity involves expressing ideas in different and unique ways.

Creative environments and people are often regarded as interesting because their unconventional take on things challenges and stimulates us.

Therefore, exposing yourself to creative people and environments will prompt your own ideas to become more diverse, which will in turn facilitate the birth of creative insights.

3. Challenge Yourself

It is not enough to simply immerse yourself in inspiring surroundings.

Like any skill, the only way to improve your creativity is to work on it.

Habitually tackling tough problems will help to promote creativity.

When solving challenging tasks, multiple skills and behaviours are engaged, competing with each other for attention.

As a result, interconnections form as the brain synthesises thoughts for a coherent solution, prepping it for new ideas that foster creativity.

4. Broaden Your Horizons

Learn as much as you can about subjects beyond your current scope of work.

Not only will you pick up nuggets of information, diverse knowledge also helps you form more interesting interconnections, which in turn boosts your creativity.

5. Don’t Give Up

Creative people are highly productive and disciplined. As you unleash and cultivate your flows of ideas, you will encounter many that are downright impractical.

Even promising insights are worth something only if they can be applied in practical situation.

The solution is to keep working on developing your creativity. The more ideas you have, the higher your ability to have more powerful insights, allowing you to become a better problem-solver.

Sometimes, new ideas need time to be understood by other people, and it is very common for new projects to face initial resistance.

When encountering setbacks, it is important not to give up but to continue with the habits that promote creativity.

Stay focused and disciplined to keep your creative juices flowing, and let the successes you have lead you to a more inspired and satisfying work life.