Do You Like Your Customers?

Do you like your customers? Yes you heard me. Do you like your customers? Of course you say. After all they are the people paying me. They are my customers for goodness sake!

Indeed they are but over the years we have met business owners who spend a great deal of energy complaining about their customers. We hear statements like:

• They are high maintenance
• They expect me to drop everything for them
• They have no idea what they are doing
• They are always complaining about us
• They are stupid

And more often than not this is being said in front of other people! And the culture of the business is one in which complaining about the customers is a cool thing.

A second observation. Business owners whose attitude is 'our customers are a nuisance' are constantly battling up hill. They never achieve the success they want. In many cases they never get off the ground. How could they; after all they don't like the very essence of their business, their customers. And their customers can feel the negative vibes.

So if you know a business owner who falls into this category do him a huge favour. Sit him down, pour him a drink and tell it to him straight; close down your business and save yourself lots of stress and money.

Or try the better way. Sit her down, pour her a drink and explain to her that if she does not change her attitude about her customers she will not succeed. Tell her to take the first step to a successful business by instilling this non negotiable rule into her company ~ there will be no complaining, no whining, no negative comments about any of our customers. That's all. Just start there and in time she will see results.

Fragmented Focus Treadmill

Are you stuck on the Fragmented Focus Treadmill? You know the feeling; running and running ever faster and getting absolutely nowhere. No real purpose other than keeping up with the relentless movement of the treadmill's belt. No focus beyond staying upright on the treadmill.

The Fragmented Focus Treadmill is harmful to your health and to the health of your business. It causes great stress without any reward and it stops business growth in its tracks.If you have one or more of the following symptoms you are stuck on the treadmill:

• Tired, overwhelmed and concerned about the future
• Reacting to situations rather than being proactive
• Working on urgent things to the detriment of important things
• Working harder and harder but achieving nothing of importance
• No personal life outside of the business
• No clear vision of the future
• And to make it even worse you have lost your passion for the business

The first step to get off the treadmill is to develop a plan to map out the future of your business. This is not the back of the envelope that has scribbles on it about the revenue you want to generate. It is a carefully thought out strategic plan with a clear picture of the future (3 Year Objectives), the 1 Year Goals to take you toward your three year destination and the strategies and actions necessary to achieve the goals. The criteria for an effective plan are:

• It's measurable and realistic
• It's documented
• Your entire team knows it
• It is used on a daily basis; not locked away in a bottom draw
• It is flexible because we expect the unexpected

The Fragmented Focus Treadmill is one of the barriers to business success. Once your plan is done and you have tentatively stepped off the treadmill you must now stay off. Next time we will cover some tools you can use to stay focused and therefore stay off the Fragmented Focus Treadmill.

Delegate

The owner is often the barrier to achieving success with the business. One of the main causes is that she does not have enough time to do everything that needs to be done. The last post dealt with some tips on how to find more time. Now we are going to deal with the biggy ~ delegation.

If there is one thing business owners are really bad at it is delegation. They either refuse to delegate on the erroneous belief that they are the only ones who can do everything to the quality they want. Or they delegate badly and so it doesn't work, which reinforces the belief that noone else can do it as well as them. So today we will cover Delegation 101.

The first step in successful delegation is to identify what should be delegated. For this we have the Strategic Focus Delegation Worksheet. It is a simple tool that works! Picture 4 columns. The first (and widest) is called Activity; next is one headed Me!, followed by a column headed Delegate? and finally one called To Whom. List the activities you do over a number of days so there is a good chance of capturing 90% of the things you do. When you think you have captured everything work through the list putting a tick mark in the Me! column next to the activities that only you can do. Then work back through the list and place a tick mark in the Delegate? column.

When this is complete you will have a few activities with no tick marks; they are probable ones that can be discarded. To those activities that you have decided to delegate assign a name of a person or a job title in the To Whom? column. You are now ready to delegate! For purposes of this blog, which is all about delegating successfully, we will bypassing the topic of recruitment and assume you have in place the person who will be the delegatee. This is what you:

1. Clearly identify and agree on your "expectations"
2. Show the person how to do the job
3. Watch the person do the job correcting where necessary
   
4. Let him do the job and you check the results
5. When you are satisfied that the job is being done to your expectations you have delegated!
6. From time to time check the results

Follow these simple steps and you will soon be delegating like an expert ~ and finding time to do the things you love to do ~ and achieving the success you want with your business.