Astounding Words

One of the fastest ways of building your client base is to search out mutually-beneficial collaborations. The key words here are’mutually-beneficial.’ Find marketers and entrepreneurs who have already got enormous’responsive’ contact lists and make them an offer they can not refuse.

many of us have attempted using this technique but have failed badly. I should tell you why.

The problem with most folk is that they are only targeted on what they can get out of the deal. You can never get it if that is what your focus is on.

When you are trying to form joint ventures, target the other party and ask,’What do they need? What can I offer them that’d be valuable to them?’

Sure, you can just offer the other person a slice of the profits if they agree to recommend your product/service to their list, but that is what everybody does! And these days, that isn’t alluring enough. How is your offer unique?

Apply the USP - the’twist.’ Be unique! Create price for them! Make it worth their while. Make them an offer they can not refuse!

When I send out an offer for a joint venture I simply tell them I would like to market their product/business/service for them and not be paid for it. Rather than receiving 40 percent commission as an affiliate I offer them to keep 70+% of the profit. All they have to do is let me use their service just once ( considering that they’re an ezine, newsletter or business with a giant opt in list ). I assure them that a singular page will be made and payments will be made right to the partner.

Think about it!

You’ll be giving the partner additional exposure, higher profits and security of their business. In doing so, you also will be able to provide discount advertising/products/services to your members or visitors giving YOUR business more value . Because now, people will know to come to you for repayments on products and services they need!

With this concept in mind , go out there and seek for some firms who have already got a big list or some high traffic.

—
Original article was written by Kevin Lam from www.TexasSEO.com - Texas SEO is a Dallas-based web marketing and consulting firm specializing in SEO & SEM, PPC, copywriting, web designing and more.

Success in the modern business environment depends on efficient people management skills. These skills can be improved and studied. It can be a plus to have a intuitive affinity for people, however there are some skills you can do that will make this procedure simple. Developing relationships: Begin by using the names of the employees. Encourage conversation; look people in the eye as you are speaking. Show respect, in addition be attentive to everything the other person says, irrespective of whether you are in agreement or not. The development of the ability to listen is one of the most important things you may do to improve your talent management skills. Be sure to show interest in what they can offer the business organization.

Live up to promises: Keeping your word is fundamental. If you can’t keep your promises, the delicate bond of trust is damaged, and without trust people will not perform at their best. Everytime you make a commitment or make a promise about something, do be sure that you can follow through or don’t bother giving your word at all. To be frank, when your people can’t depend on you, you can be assured they will behave in the same manner.

Feedback is important: Feedback must be a reciprocal process. Having an open mind with regard to other people’s ideas is an important skill in effective human resource management. Being approachable and receptive demonstrates that you want to listen to other’s ideas, your opinions will be respected in the same fashion. Open discussion in addition encourages creative problem solving, ways of achieving the goals of the company, and strengthens the team. When your team members are given a voice, each team member takes an interest in the outcome. Communication is essential: Good communication is the key to dealing with employees skilfully. Be accessible, listen attentively to other people’s opinions, be open minded, and permit all your team to express their views. Staff should be encouraged to talk to each other as well as with you. The creative process relies to a great extent on the open exchange of opinions, when the staff communicate efficiently, you can discover problems swiftly, and measures may be implemented before matters get out of hand. A little effort is necessary, however the payoff is worthwhile. Through establishing the bonds of a good team and developing good listening techniques, a thriving business can be achieved.

The job interview is a give and take scenario. You have to ascertain whether they are ok for you - just as much as they need to find out if you are right for them. So, do your research and gather the information you need to satisfy yourself that this placement is where you want to be operating for the next few years. Ask some questions:

• What will I be accountable for?
• What will be my situation within the organisational structure?
• To whom should I report?
• Where does my line manager fit within the structure of the unit?
• Who will report to me?
• How much experience do they have?
• What do you think would be reasonable outcomes for me to achieve in the first six months?
• What level of performance do you expect from me?
• Who are your customers?
• What is the direction of travel for the unit?
• What are the chances of advancement/promotion in this position? What would be a reasonable timescale in which to expect this?
• What will be my salary, benefits and bonuses? [Do not bring this up too early in the post interview - wait until they are sold on you.]
• Will travelling be required in this position?
• Is the organisation likely to remain located here or would I need to expect to be relocated soon?
• What kind of training is there?
• When will you decide on the appointment?
• What is the next step?

For more data on interview advice

Once you’ve set a goal for yourself as a leader - whether it is to create your own enterprise, energize your organization, build a church, or excel in sports - the challenge is to find good people to help you accomplish that goal. Gathering a successful team of people is not only helpful, it’s necessary.

So to guide you in this daunting task of picking the right people, I’m going to share with you a four-part checklist.

Number One: Check each candidate’s history. Seek out available information regarding the individual’s qualifications to do the job. That’s the most obvious step.

Number Two: Check the person’s interest level. If they are interested, they are probably a good prospect. Sometimes people can fake their interest, but if you’ve been a leader for a while, you will be a capable judge of whether somebody is merely pretending. Arrange face-to-face conversation, and try to gauge his or her sincerity to the best of your ability. You won’t hit the bull’s-eye every time, but you can get pretty good at spotting what I call true interest.

Number Three: Check the prospect’s responses. A response tells you a lot about someone’s integrity, character, and skills. Listen for responses like these: “You want me to get there that early?” “You want me to stay that late?” “The break is only ten minutes?” “I’ll have to work two evenings a week and Saturdays?” You can’t ignore these clues. A person’s responses are a good indication of his or her character and of how hard he or she will work. Our attitudes reflect our inner selves, so even if we can fool others for a while, eventually, our true selves will emerge.

And Number Four: Check results. The name of the game is results. How else can we effectively judge an individual’s performance? The final judge must be results.

There are two types of results to look for. The first is activity results. Specific results are a reflection of an individual’s productivity. Sometimes we don’t ask for this type of result right away, but it’s pretty easy to check activity. If you work for a sales organization and you’ve asked your new salesman, John, to make ten calls in the first week, it’s simple to check his results on Friday. You say, “John, how many calls did you make?” John says, “Well…” and starts telling a story, making an excuse. You respond, “John, I just need a number from one to ten.” If his results that first week are not good, it is a definite sign. You might try another week, but if that lack of precise activity continues, you’ll soon realize that John isn’t capable of becoming a member of your team.

The second area you need to monitor is productivity. The ultimate test of a quality team is measurable progress in a reasonable amount of time. And here’s one of the skills of leadership: be up front with your team as to what you expect them to produce. Don’t let the surprises come later.

When you’re following this four-part checklist, your instincts obviously play a major role. And your instincts will improve every time you go through the process. Remember, building a good team will be one of your most challenging tasks as a leader. It will reap you multiple rewards for a long time to come.

To Your Success,
Jim Rohn

Reproduced with permission from Jim Rohn’s Weekly E-zine.
Copyright 2005 Jim Rohn International. All rights reserved
worldwide. To subscribe to Jim Rohn’s Weekly E-zine, go to
http://Jim-Rohn.InspiresYOU.com

Online employee time clock service (a web-based application) is an entirely different system from the usual employee time clock system that records employee arrival and departure times by manually entering work hours in a database or sending reports to an accounting staff. By using online employee time clocks to record work hours, an industry can track time more efficiently and allow extra time for constructive activity.

Online employee time clock service can be accessed through websites. A username and a password are given to protect personnel information. The data is recorded on an online form and recorded. In essence, an employee clocks in and out. Online employee time clock service includes all the standard timesheet and hourly rate entry functions, project tracking abilities, as well as automatic salary calculations and comprehensive time and cost reporting. Some online employee time clocks can even feed directly into a check writing software program for automatic check processing (to be verified and authorized by the employer every pay period.) This can be a valuable time-saving measure, in that it will take the accountant less time to process payments, thus freeing up more time for accounting employees.

This service enables employees and administrators to submit and analyze data from any location, at any time. Online services may also include provisions for expense calculations, and some offer their services in several languages. Certain websites offer online employee time clock service sometimes free of charge or at a discounted rate. But make sure you are getting all of the whistles and bells you originally set out to attain.

1. Process Thinking follows the natural flow of the business

A business process is a collection of interrelated work tasks triggered by an event and geared towards providing results or outcomes valued by the “customer”. The adoption of process thinking causes an organisation to align its activities and systems with the natural flow of materials and information from the start to the end of the value chain.

Functional thinking creates silos with boundaries across which information and other resource flows are not seamless, leading to the absence of a shared understanding of what the business is about, what factors are critical to the achievement of objectives and how efforts can be coordinated to best attain those objectives.

Carry out an experiment in your organisation. Take any core process: ask five managers in different departments involved in the process the following questions.

• Describe this process
• Who are the customers to the process?
• What valued outcomes do they expect?
• Who are the suppliers to the process?
• What inputs do they provide?
• What is the cycle time for this process?

If yours is a functionally oriented organisation, their answers, where they understand your questions at all, are likely to be all different. Some processes you might consider are order processing, product development, recruitment etc.

2. Business Process Thinking focuses the organisation on customer needs

Because of the insistence on definite identifiable outcomes valued by the customer, process thinking helps the organisation focus on correctly identifying and satisfactorily meeting and exceeding their expectations. Measures of performance are tied to current customer satisfaction levels as well as the enhancement of capacity to satisfy the customer in the future.

Departmental or functional thinking is, on the other hand, focused on internal measures of no value to the customer. Examples of the different kinds of measures are input measures (e.g. items delivered by suppliers), process measures (e.g. cost, time, involvement, efficiency) and output (e.g. timeliness, quality, ease of use, returns on investment) measures. Decisions on appropriate measures must meet the dual requirements of value to the customer and improvability.

3. Business Process Thinking Encourages Focus on Value Addition

Organisations that have adopted a business process mentality constantly strive to ensure that certainly all their processes, and as much as possible, all activities within those processes contribute towards the final outcome paid for by the customer. All non-value adding processes and activities are eliminated or minimised.

Many functionally oriented organisations for example have lengthy approval requirements that serve no purpose. A company drastically collapsed its approval chain after an experiment in which unsuspecting approvers failed to detect that the documents they had just endorsed only had the usual cover sheet followed by a sheaf of blank sheets. This meant they were approving requests without reading the contents! Talk about non-value addition!

Consider also that in many processes the actual contact time between a process document or work piece and the workers or process operators is usually a ridiculously small fraction of the process cycle time. The balance of the time is wasted on such non-value activities as waiting, unnecessary movement, locating misplaced items or documents etc.

4. Business Process Thinking Encourages a Focus on Quality

The bane of good quality products or services in majority of organisations is the variation or inconsistency of process outcomes. Organisations with a process mentality continuously ferret out and eliminate sources of variation to achieve consistent results. This is almost impossible to achieve within functionally oriented organisations as their narrow focus prevents awareness of the causes of problems that span functional boundaries.

While a functional organisation might call for an arbitrary amount of improvement in quality (e.g. 10% reduction in defects) process oriented organisations apply a fact-based understanding of the relationship between results and the processes that drive them. Statistical tools are used to study what factors have the most significant impact and effort is focused on influencing these factors.

5. Business Process Thinking Institutionalises High Performance and Guarantees Execution of Organisational Priorities

A focus on business processes institutionalises high performance in the following ways.

• Uses measures of performance that are meaningful to the customer and other stakeholders. This is very important in view of the axiom that what gets measured gets done. Rewards are aligned to measures, which in turn support valued customer and organisational outcomes.
• Standardises processes by minimising waste and variation, drastically reducing defects and improving speed of delivery.

Samuel Okoro is the CEO of Leapfrog Alliance Ltd, a management training and consulting firm that helps organisations located in the African region to improve quality and reduce costs through better business processes. His personal passion is to help move African business to world-class levels. For further details please visit http://leapfrogalliance.com.

Communicating is a constant in all negotiations; in all interaction for that matter. Understanding the dynamics of effective communications to settle conflict is an important aspect of managing the negotiation process. The challenge to communications during any conflict situation is that listening is typically impaired. Those involved, even when they do listen, are not apt to hear what is being said. To reach an accord the parties need to be able to communicate with each other. The first rule of any negotiation is to open channels of communication.

Communication concepts are important to understanding human interaction.

- Learn to listen: The ability to effectively state your message is obviously important. But the ability to clearly hear the other person’s message is equally important to reaching an accord. Everyone should work at developing effective, interactive listening skills. When the other person is talking, you have the chance to learn something; if you are listening to what they are saying rather than thinking about what you are going to say.

- Learn to Observe: Observing other people while talking enables you to make sure they are awake, alert and interested. If not, regroup and find a way to get them personally involved in the conversation. When speaking, you are responsible to make sure the others are listening. Verify this by observing the non-verbal reactions to what you say. You are looking to see if they are thinking of something else, if they are planning what next to say, or if they are just asleep!

- Take Responsibility: It is important that you are being heard and understood. We all know the game of telephone. Appreciate that the other person will likely have to review what was said today with others. It is your goal that he or she be able to clearly restate your case as you intend it to be heard. So proactive speaking is an essential tool when negotiating.

There are simple ways to keep the other person interested and attentive to you. 1. Pepper your comments with questions designed to draw them into the discussion. By being involved in the dialogue, they will have to consider what they are saying. And when they speak, it is your turn to listen. They may reveal something of value. 2. Use silence to draw their attention. Pause before an important point you are about to make and let the silence grow until they take notice. Then proceed knowing you have their attention at the moment. 3. Use questions to reinforce their understanding of what you have said. Ask their opinion of a point you just made. If they have missed the point, restate it. You won’t have as good a chance to reinforce what you have said once they leave the meeting.

If you aren’t clearly understood, what chance do you have?

The author is an assistant editor at How-to-Negotiate.com, a site featuring articles about organizational skills required in the dispute settlement process and how people negotiate everything in their daily lives be it personal issues, parenting matters, social conflicts, or business or work related challenges. The site promotes the fact that conflict is a natural aspect of everyone’s life and we should all work at improving our ability to negotiate the curves life throws our way.

At the beginning of November 2005 a respected publisher contacted
me out of the blue and commissioned me to write a book on
‘Achieving Your Goals’ (I realise that after that opening
sentence, I’m going to have to work hard to re-establish rapport
with any aspiring authors, whose first thought would have been
“Lucky b*****d!”).

The bad news was that because of commitments in January, I had to
complete the book by Christmas.

As it happened, I had already freed up that time to write a book.
The one I had been planning was the “Practical EQ” book on
emotional intelligence that I have been promising myself to write
for a while now. At the last meeting of my goal-setting group
(more about goal-setting groups in a future newsletter) it became
very clear that there were not enough hours in the day to do this
and all my other goals as well, so as the book was the most
important, I cleared the decks of everything else until after
Christmas.

So, I had the space available, and I was able to get the
manuscript to the publishers on time. Incidentally, the number of
people who have said “Wow, how did you manage it in that time?”
is beginning to make me think this was quite an achievement,
although while I was writing it I was mainly aware of how much
time I was wasting.

The book I wrote, as it turned out, was not the one I had been
planning - but I’m not complaining, because things turned out
better than I was expecting. If I had written my original book, I
would have been happy - but then I would have had to find a
publisher, something I had no clue about how to do.

This way, I have a publisher, I was paid an advance while I was
writing the book, and of course having to commit to other people
to meet the deadline provided an extra incentive on the days I
didn’t feel like writing.

I have learned a few things from this experience:

Firstly, this tremendous lucky break would not have happened
unless I had made myself ready for it by clearing the time to
write a book. OK, the publishers would probably still have
contacted me, but if the time was already committed to some other
project, I could not have said yes - or at least, the lack of
enthusiasm as I thought about the hassle of making the time
available would have come across in my reply and put them off
signing me. So:

- make yourself ready for what you want, otherwise it won’t happen.

Secondly:

- when you do make yourself ready for what you want, sometimes what you get is better than you expected!

Finally, I undertook a few assignments in 2005 that I wasn’t
totally enthusiastic about - because deep down I didn’t feel
ready for them. Not surprisingly, they were the ones that didn’t
turn out that well. The money was pretty good, but the wear and
tear on the spirit was such that I’m going to be much more
careful about what I accept in future.

By contrast, it took about a tenth of a second to decide to accept the book commission. This
suggests that:

- if you’re not 100% enthusiastic about your goal, you’re not ready for it

- so, what do you need to do to make yourself ready?

© Andy Smith 2006

Andy Smith is an Emotional Intelligence consultant and NLP Trainer based in the UK. His new book, “Achieve Your Goals: Strategies To Transform Your Life”, is published by Dorling Kindersley in summer 2006.

You can find more ideas and advice for changing your life at the Create The Life You Want web site at http://www.createthelifeyouwant.co.uk. Sign up for Andy’s “Create The Life You Want” newsletter by sending a blank email to:
andy18-159754@autocontactor.com