I’m sure you’ve heard of Groupon – undoubtedly one of the most famous and popular daily deal  sites (sometimes referred to as Group Buying Sites or Flash Sales) in the world. If you’re anything like me, your inbox is probably full of their tempting offers!

But do you know how these group buying sites work? Have you been tempted to promote your products or services through one if these sites?

If the answer is yes, then you’re going to want to read on as I explain what Daily Deal sites are and discuss some of the pros and cons of using them to market your products and services.

How do Daily Deal Sites Work?

They aren’t called group buying sites for nothing… basically, each deal promoted through these sites has a preset minimum amount of sales as well as an established maximum, all within a fixed time period – it could be 24 hours or could be 3 days.

Sites like Groupon have extensive email lists full of subscribers eagerly awaiting their next irresistible deal. When a deal goes live on their website these subscribers are sent the offer. Customers purchase the offer on the deal of the day website which acts as intermediary between customer and supplier.

Once the minimum number of deals have been sold via the website, customers’ credit cards are charged and the deal is delivered as an electronic voucher or coupon which can be redeemed directly from the supplier. These vouchers normally have specific expiration dates and must be redeemed before said date – most allow buyers a six month window in which to use their coupon; however, I’d encourage you to negotiate this down if possible.

If the pre-established minimum number of sales is not met, the deal gets removed and no one gets to buy it. On the other hand, if the deal is popular and a certain number of people sign up, then it becomes available to all. This is a great concept as it helps reduce the risk for sellers, who can treat the coupons as quantity discounts.

Most Daily Deal Websites will require you to offer discounts of between 30% and 80% on normal retail prices of your products or services. That’s not all: They’ll also charge you a hefty commission for each sale made which can range between 20% and 50%! Doesn’t look so interesting anymore does it? Bear with me, it’s not all doom and gloom

Rather than a means of generating outright profit, it’s probably best to look at the use of these sites as a new marketing tool which undoubtedly allows you access to hundreds of thousands of users who could be potential clients.

The main players in the market are Groupon and Livingsocial. Both companies have been buying up competitors and increasing their market share of the lucrative daily deals market place.

Groupon and Livingsocial tend to sell all sorts of products and services; however, we’re starting to see more specific niche daily deals sites which focus on particular industries and customer segments. TravelZoo, which offers – you guessed it – travel related discounts and offers and Opentable which specializes in restaurants would be two clear examples. All these sites have different terms and conditions so it’s worth studying each one to determine the best fit for your small business.

Bear in mind that Daily Deal Sites are looking for products and services which offer quality and to some degree, exclusiveness – they won’t take on any old product or service, you have to offer something unique and attractive to their client base.

These sites are not ideal for all businesses. If you offer a service, you probably have better margins to play with and can probably make these deals work for you. If you sell physical products, you need to be buying directly from the manufacturer to achieve margins that will make the operation worth your while; if not, the commissions these sites charge will erode any profit margin you might obtain.

Let’s look at some of the Pros and Cons of using Daily Deal Sites to promote your small business:

The Pros

• One advantage of using Daily Deal Sites is that you only pay for what you sell, there are no upfront costs to participate.
• The benefit for businesses is exposure and brand awareness for their product or service to a large number of customers in a short period of time; they are basically handed clients on a platter.
• There is evidence of significant exposure value (increase in sales because of exposure received) from running a one-day deal.
• Businesses can capitalize on the long-term lifetime value of new repeat customers.

The Cons

• If you consider the large discounts and steep commissions to the deal of the day sites there is often little scope to reach profitability.
• Another negative effect on profitability is the type of consumers attracted by daily deals. Often, those who purchase a daily deal are “price-sensitive deal-seekers” who are less apt to return to the business in the future to buy at full price.

• If a deal is successful, a small business could be swamped by too many customers and be unable to handle the increase in demand; this could result in poor service levels and a shortage of product which would ultimately lead to dissatisfied customers who wont be coming back!
• It’s the daily deals website which retains customer data (emails) rather than the company offering the deal.

Most Popular Products and Services Promoted in Daily Deals

You’ll find all sorts of great offers on daily deal websites and flash sales; however, the following list highlights some of the most popular products and services which get promoted on these sites.

• Travel (Hotel stays, holidays, etc)
• Education Services
• Health and Fitness
• Medical Services
• Auto and Vehicle Services
• Retail (Clothing, furniture, jewellery, complements, gifts, etc)
• Beauty and Spa
• Restaurant and Bars
• Special Events

Key Takeaways & Recommendations

It’s important to bear in mind that many of the clients who purchase your offer on sites like Groupon are simply bargain hunters and wont buy from you again… it’ll be hard to make a profit if  all your clients are like this!

Use the fact that you’ve got them into your business as an opportunity to sell them complimentary products of services. For example, a Spa that offers a spa circuit at 50% discount can make up margins by selling beauty products, creams and other related wellness products to clients who use a Groupon offer.

Ensuring that your business benefits from using daily deal sites is largely dependent on you. Some of the original clients you attracted with your offer will come back to spend more money in your business but in order for this to happen, you have to ensure that their experience with your company is exceptional: Top class service, good quality products, value for money… these are all things you need to be striving for! Also make sure you get the customers email address so that you can send them offers and updates about your products or services, without having to rely on the third party daily deal sites

Many Daily Deal sites have fixed commissions for all products and services they promote; however, there are some that are reasonably flexible and allow you to negotiate the commission of each offer you promote through them. Obviously, if you have a unique product or service that a site like Groupon would be interested in promoting, you’ll have more bargaining power.

You’ve now got enough information to make a decision on whether or not Daily Deals Websites such as Groupon are an option for promoting your business and increasing sales and profits. Just make sure you take the time to study the terms and negotiate favourable conditions.

Are you using Daily Deal and Group Buying sites to promote your business? Have you had any success with this? Do you think promoting your products and services on sites like Groupon ultimately leads to increased profits for your business? Please let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

Because it’s the mighty Facebook, we tend to forget that we can lose the valuable information we’ve worked so hard on. A hacker, a user error, viruses, data corruption or sabotage are just some of the possible causes which can lead to a total loss of the information on your Facebook page.

Well, the other day I stumbled upon a solution which could save you from losing all your Facebook page data… introducing Backupify!

What is Backupify?

Backupify is a leading backup provider for cloud based data. This fantastic solution offers complete backup services for the most popular online services including Facebook, Twitter, Gmail and more…

So although this post focuses on backup services for Facebook pages, bear in mind that you can use Backupify to protect many of your social media and online accounts.

 How Much Does Backupify Cost?

Here’s the good news: Backupify is free for 3 accounts. You get 1GB storage limit and can back up your services on a weekly basis. This free package only includes email support.

If you feel you need more, their paid plans start at a reasonable $4.99 per month and include more frequent daily backups as well as extended support services.

Choose the Facebook Fan Page option

Setting up an Account with Backupify

1. First of all you need to head over to https://www.backupify.com/social-media-backup and choose the free plan option by clicking on the ‘sign up now’ button.
2. Enter your details in the sign up form.
3. Choose the service you want to back up. In this case we want to backup our Facebook Fan Page so click ‘add’ to include the service.
4. 

   Tick the options you want to Backup

   You’ll now be prompted to log in to your Facebook account, once logged in choose the page you want to backup (if you have more than one). Backupify archives all the data from your Facebook Fan Page: All the content from your News Feed, Wall Posts, Photo Albums, Events, basically everything you’d want to save. You can go through and tick off the exact items you want to backup from your Facebook Fan Page.

5. Save your choices and Backupify will do its magic and begin backing up your valuable data.

So there you have it, a simple – and free – way to backup your Facebook Fan Page and avoid the headache of losing some – or all – of your data. Have you tried Backupify? What do you think of the service? Do you know any other backup services? Let us know in the comments below.

Are you using Youtube Marketing to try and get traffic – and potential customers – to your website? Are the videos you’ve uploaded to your Youtube channel struggling to get viewers and therefore failing to send visitors to your website? You’re definitely not alone… stick around and I’ll give you a few (9 to be precise) ideas on how to optimise your Youtube videos to get more views and to help you get more traffic to your website.

With more than 3 billion daily views, Youtube has become the world’s second largest search engine (no points for guessing which is the first ) and an opportunity for small businesses and entrepreneurs to increase visits to their websites.

The videos you upload to Youtube can be found by people using the video site’s search feature as well as being indexed in Googles main search engine results pages, so it’s important to ensure that you are optimising your video for improved search performance.

Here are 9 different ideas you can start to apply to your Youtube Marketing strategy today and get the traffic flowing to your videos and ultimately to your website:

1. Create good titles for your videos

Hopefully you will have done your keyword research beforehand Make sure you start the title with your keyword phrase if you can. By all means try and slip in as many keywords as you can but make sure the title is written for your viewer and not for the search engines; no keyword stuffing!

As with normal SEO, make sure the title includes benefits that will entice people to click on it. If you just stuff your title with lots of keywords and it all looks like a jumbled mess, you aren’t going to get too many people to click on it!

2. Use the Description Box

Again, this is a great opportunity to include your keyword phrases; however, as with the titles, make sure you don’t simply keyword stuff this important area of your video’s real estate. Write one or two paragraphs describing what your video is about and how it can help the viewer; including benefits would be a good .

Creating a link to your website in the description box

A very important tip: Youtube allows you to include clickable links in the description box so make sure you take advantage of this fantastic opportunity. I recommend you include the URL of the page you’d like to link to (make sure you include “ http:// “) right at the start of your description. In the image above you can see how Pat Flynn does this on his videos.

3. Register a Separate Domain

A neat little trick to take advantage of the clickable link in your description box is to register a separate domain name – one that is related to your videos or business – and then link to this domain in your video. Having a domain that sounds as if it’s for more tips related to the subject of your video will entice your viewers to click through to see more. Obviously, you need to make sure that your content is of top quality.

So, for example, say that you have a swimming pool maintenance business; you could register a domain like www.poolmaintenancetipsvideos. com (Not the best example but you get the idea) . If someone is viewing one of your videos on Youtube and they see this link in the description, they are more likely to click through and watch more of your great information than if you linked to something like www.Smithpools. com .

4. Don’t go mad with your Tags

Youtube gives you the possibility to include tags in your videos. Again, don’t simply repeat your keyword over and over again in this space. By all means include it – and some kind of variation – a few times and introduce some other themed keywords. Go for between 7 and 10 tags max; there’s no need to go crazy and stuff every single word you can think of here.

5. Create a Watermark for your videos

A lot of people create watermarks to include in their videos. This technique doesn’t help your video rank any higher in the search engines but it does help drive traffic to your website if done properly. Don’t waste this opportunity by just including your company’s logo as a watermark, it’s best to use your full website URL.

6. Include a Call to Action

This is vital. There’s no point in creating a beautiful and educational video without including some form of call to action. Include a short clip at the end of your video where you ask your viewers to go to your website for more information.

Another good way to encourage clicks to your website is by offering a free gift or a special report in your call to action. For example, using the pool business example from above, your call to action could read “Download our free report, ‘10 Ways to Save Money on your Pool Maintenance’, just head over to www.smithpools. com” You’ll definitely have more chance of getting your viewers to click through to your website by including this type of offer in your call to action, just make sure it relates to the content of the video. Check out the great example below from one of the videos on Hubspot’s Youtube channel.

Hubspot creates various calls-to-action at the end of their video

7. Use Annotations to Keep your Viewers Engaged

Youtube videos have a great little feature called annotations. These are snippets of text which you can insert into your videos (once they have been uploaded to Youtube). Unfortunately, these annotations can’t be made to click through to your own site ; however, you can send them to other videos on your Youtube channel, get them to subscribe to your channel or just ‘like’ your video.

8. Get your video Transcribed

This is a fantastic little trick to give your Youtube SEO the upper hand. Why? Because almost no-one does it! Youtube allows you to upload a full transcript of your video and indexes all the words.

All of a sudden, you’re video becomes a supercharged search engine magnet as Youtube now has another very important source of information for determining your video’s topic and doesn’t have to rely on just the title, description and tags fields. You’ve now improved the chances of ranking higher in the search engines than someone who hasn’t taken the trouble to upload a transcript.

Are you ready to turbo charge your Youtube marketing efforts? Start applying the above tips and suggestions today and you’ll soon notice a marked improvement in the performance of your videos. Do you have any other Youtube marketing and optimisation tips to share? Feel free to tell us about them in the comments below.

As entrepreneurs and business owners, you probably experience your fair share of meetings during the course of a working week; however, many of these meetings will end up being a complete waste of time – and you know what they say: Time is money!

Let’s at least help you ensure that the meetings you organise and run with your teams are as productive as possible.

So what’s the definition of a meeting? For the sake of this blog post, we will use the following definition:

“A meeting can be defined as a gathering of three or more people sharing common objectives, where communication is the primary means of achieving those objectives”.

In order to make your meetings effective, the objectives of the meeting must be achieved in the minimum time and to the satisfaction of the participants: this is no easy task.

There are actually two types of meeting: Information meetings – which are used to advise, update, sell or present – and decision making meetings, where you set goals, solve problems and collect ideas. Information meetings are probably the easier of the two as you’ll be relying on your presentation skills to get the most out of them. Decision making meetings are more difficult to conduct; it is these that we will be focusing on in the 7 stages outlined below.

So here goes, 7 steps to an effective meeting…

1)      Decide on your overall objectives for the meeting – What do you want to achieve from the meeting? Just make sure the objectives you set are measurable, achievable and realistic. For example, you may want to define a policy or procedure for dealing with customer complaints.

2)      Identify the decisions that will need to be made in order to achieve the objectives you’ve set for the meeting. Expanding on the example above, you would need to review existing procedures for complaints handling, agree different complaint categories, agree a training method for teaching the new procedures… you get the idea.

3)      Consider who should attend – I recommend you use the “Two Thirds Rule” i.e. each person invited to the meeting must have information relevant to a decision on 2 of 3 of the items on the meeting agenda. This helps to keep attendance to those who are actually necessary and useful to the meeting; it can also help reduce the length of the meeting. Consider the following when selecting meeting participants:

• Knowledge of the subject
• Commitment to solving the problem
• Time to participate
• Open mindedness
• Expressiveness
• Diversity to viewpoint

If you invite someone to the meeting who feels they should not be there, all they will do is disrupt the meeting causing it to lose its’ direction. As a result, you may fail to reach a decision and the meeting will have been pointless.

4)      Decide when the meeting should take place – You will need to consider the availability of those attending and you will also have to allow them time to prepare.

5)      Decide where the meeting is going to take place – Is the venue available? Is it easily accessible by all attendees? You’ll also want to avoid all interruptions and disturbances.

6)      Inform all involved – The participants will need to know the following:

• Date, time and venue
• Items to be dealt with in order of priority
• What preparation participants need to make
• Scheduled breaks (if you’re planning a day long meeting)
• Meeting finishing time

Make sure you inform anyone else that needs to know – secretaries, team members etc. You want to avoid all interruptions.

7)      Check the environment of the venue – It’s important that you and other participants will be comfortable and seated in positions that will aid and encourage participation. If you are going to use an overhead projector, make sure it works properly. Also ensure that the room seating, lighting and temperature are all conducive to a productive meeting.

Follow these simple key steps and you’ll be ready for a successful and productive meeting. Do you have any other good tips for planning and effective meeting? Please feel free to include them in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Office Now

1. Be Prepared for your Sales Presentation

• Appearance is important; you need to create the right impression for your prospects, so make sure you are dressed adequately and look the part.
• Prepare note cards that will help to guide you through the presentation, that way, you won’t forget any of the important points you want to get across.
• Prepare the room: Room layout is vital and can affect the whole atmosphere for your presentation. Sometimes, you may not have a say in how the room is set up, especially if you are presenting at a conference with other speakers; however, if you do have the option, take advantage of the fact that seating can have a big effect on your presentation. For example, a “U” shape – if you are presenting to a smaller group – is much better for interaction, eye contact and promoting discussion.
• Check your equipment at least 15 minutes before your sales presentation: Nothing could be worse than starting to speak and seeing that the microphone doesn’t work or the projector doesn’t display your slides. Make sure you also have a contingency plan…just in case!

2. Know Your Audience

It’s vital that your presentation suits the needs, interests and abilities of your audience; you don’t want them yawning or, even worse, falling asleep, do you?

Here are a few points to keep in mind about your audience?

1)      Number of People

2)      Why is the audience assembled? (need for your information, interest in your topic, etc)

3)      What does the audience know about your company?

4)      What does your audience need from your presentation? (Ideas, information for making a decision – like buying your product or service J- entertainment)

5)      What is the audience’s likely attitude toward your presentation? (Will they be tolerant, sceptical, hostile?)

6)      Characteristics of the audience? (How many people will attend? Ratio of male/female attendants? Age?)

7)      Audience expectations? (What is the level of formality? What is the standard room set up? What is the typical format?)

3. Define Your Sales Presentation Objectives

What do you wish to achieve as a result of your sales presentation? There are two types of objectives: Primary – a commitment to do business – and secondary – follow up to next stage, information gathering (which leads to commitment) –

Define your objectives in terms which are:

• Specific (linked to the stage of your relationship with the client or prospect)
• Measurable
• Achievable (Make sure you can achieve your objectives with the people you are presenting to)
• Realistic (Reasonable within the time frame)
• Results oriented (Some concrete evidence of your success)
• Time bounded (By when this should be achieved)

4. Research the Subject of Your Sales Presentation

Your objectives allow you to decide how much of the subject you need to cover in your presentation; remember to keep this and your audience in mind when you prepare all the material for your sales presentation.

So where do you start? I would recommend using a mindmap (I personally use NovaMind Mind Mapping software) but a piece of paper and a pen will work fine. Brainstorm ideas on your presentation topic by placing the topic in the centre of the page and then write down the first element you think of that is related to it, connecting the two with a line. Keep on doing the same by adding sub-elements; don’t worry about the order the ideas are in, just get them on paper and you can organise and prioritise later. If you haven’t used mind mapping before, you’ll be amazed at how easily the ideas start to flow!

Once the ideas are all on paper, it’s time to prioritise and decide what must be included in your sales presentation.

1)      Select what you MUST cover in order to achieve the objectives you have set for yourself.

2)      Identify what you SHOULD cover to make a good case.

3)      Cross out all irrelevant items and you’ll be left with content you COULD add to the presentation if you have sufficient time and without going off topic.

Now that you have a list of relevant topics in order of importance, all you have to do is write them out in a sequence that will be easily digestible for your audience.

And that’s about it. If you follow these 4 steps, you’ll be in a great position to deliver a killer sales presentation; that’s exactly what we’ll cover in the next post about sales presentations: The structure and delivery of a great sales presentation.

Photos credit: jscreationzs 

What is Article Marketing?

Good question. In its most basic form – and the one we are going to be discussing in this post – Article Marketing consists in writing an article related to your business or specific niche market and then submitting it to – one of the many – article directories available for this purpose.

That’s a very simplified version but, to tell you the truth, it’s all you need to know at this point.

How can Article Marketing help you gain more traffic? 

• Article Directories get a lot of traffic from people searching for specific information; this information is archived under specific categories, for example: Sports, Business, Health & Fitness.
• Article directories like Ezinearticles.com tend to rank well in Google (They used to rank better before Google’s Panda update, but that’s the topic of another blog post) and other search engines. If you choose your keywords well, your article could get some good visibility and generate traffic due to its high ranking.
• Other website publishers and bloggers use articles from these directories as content for their sites. This is perfectly legit and also free! This results in possible increased exposure to your article which always includes a link back to your site.
• These links on your articles means more back links to your website, and as we all know, Google likes sites with relevant back links so this should help your SEO efforts and improve your site’s ranking.

Any article you submit to an Article Directory will contain a special resource box – usually at the end of the article – which contains links to your website. Most directories allow you to include two links in your article marketing efforts; if other publishers use your article on their site, they have to include your resource box and links. See how this can lead to more traffic?

If you write a really interesting and useful article, it has the potential to be published on many sites; depending on their popularity, you could see a nice increase in traffic to your site!

3 Things to Keep in Mind

1)      Make sure you choose the right keywords for your article. This is vital; if you choose keywords that have a lot of competition, your article marketing efforts are destined to fail as it’ll be very difficult to rank well in the search engines for these highly competitive words. Do some careful research and see if you can find some less competitive keywords, that way you’ll have a chance of getting your article ranked, found and ultimately read! For ideas of good keywords to target, you might like to try Market Samurai (This is the tool I use and highly recommend) or you can go with a perfectly acceptable free tool, Google’s Keyword Research Tool .

2)      There are literally thousands of article directories many of poor quality with little traffic; you want to make sure you submit your articles to one of the “better” article directories. The following is a list of some of the larger and more recognised ones which should help you get started:

• Ezinearticles.com
• Goarticles.com
• Buzzle.com
• Articlesbase.com
• Articledashboard.com
• Amazines.com
• Isnare.com

Open accounts in each of the above directories and start submitting articles on a regular basis; try to aim for, at least, one a week. If you’ve done your homework and chosen good keywords, you’ll soon start to see and increase in traffic to your site – and if traffic is a little slow in coming, at least you’ve got all those great back links to your site helping with your SEO

3)      Make sure you prepare a resource box that will entice readers to click on your links; the success of your article marketing campaign depends on this!

You need to ensure you offer a compelling reason for readers to click on the   links in your resource box and head over to your site.  I would recommend you take a  look at how other authors have worded their resource boxes and see what works best for you; you’ll have to do a bit of testing here until you find the right formula. Just remember that there has to be something in it for them; what are they going to gain from clicking on your links? May be a special report or other relevant articles.

It’s not rocket science… article marketing is relatively simple but it does require some work and dedication. Give it a try and apply the above tips; with a little work – and patience – your efforts will soon reap their rewards.

Yes, it’s difficult to find clients and even harder to keep existing ones; you’re faced with competitors who slash their prices and desperate businesses who are willing to resort to all types of sleazy tactics to keep afloat. Sometimes, you have to look beyond this mayhem and go back to basics by reviewing the core essence of what your business is about. Let’s take a look at a couple of areas which may be to blame for the loss of clients and business:

Don’t Ignore Customer Complaints

When you’re bogged down in paperwork it’s easy to lose track of basic everyday issues such as dealing with customer complaints.

It’s possible that some clients who receive poor service will simply “defect” and go elsewhere; however, most will try to bring their issues to your attention in the form of a complaint. This is where things start to go wrong as these complaints are ignored or often badly handled; guess what? You’ve just lost a customer!

Use these “opportunities” to analyse your internal systems for handling customer complaints. You need to listen to complaints and determine whether they are justified or not; if it’s the former, you’ll have to analyse the situation and introduce changes to ensure that such complaints are avoided – or at least reduced – in the future.

Don’t forget that a big part of successful customer complaint handling is to make sure your employees are adequately trained in how to handle customer complaints. It’s not rocket science and if you follow 5 basic tips (see link), you and your team will be able to handle the most difficult of customer complaints.

Make Sure Service Levels Live Up to Customer Expectations

This relates closely to the above point on customer complaint handling; if you’ve set certain expectations – through marketing, branding, advertising, PR – but your customer experience is not aligned with these expectations, you’ve got a problem.

Before spending money on expensive marketing, make sure you understand your target market and you’re company’s limitations. It’s much better to offer less services or product features and be able to deliver excellent service than to promise the world and only deliver on part of that promise; all that will lead to is negative word of mouth, customer complaints and ultimately, loss of customers and business.

These two tips may seem simple and obvious to many; however, when was the last time you took a good look at the customer complaints you receive? Have you made sure your customer expectations are being met by aligning your products and services to these expectations?

I’d love to hear your thoughts…feel free to comment below

Photo Credit: Latente

Without proper preparation, any employee selection interview is pretty much doomed to failure. You owe it to yourself to spend some time preparing for an interview as it’s an integral function of the recruitment and selection process; believe me, the time spent on adequate preparation will safe you time and money in the future.

There are, of course, many people who are content with hiring the first person available – “They’re not exactly what we were looking for but we’re desperate to hire someone” How many times have you heard that excuse? This type of attitude – hiring the first semi respectable candidate that comes along – can be fatal. Don’t be complacent and lazy and don’t rush things; invest in proper preparation.

Here are 3 things you want to keep in mind when you are preparing to interview candidates for a job:

1)      Do You really need to hire a new employee? I know, I know, that seems pretty obvious; however, sometimes it’s just easier to go out and find a replacement when a job vacancy becomes available. You might just want to take a step back and assess whether can be an opportunity to distribute responsibilities to other positions without the need for a new hire.

Don’t forget that the business environment is constantly and rapidly changing and that there may actually be no need for that job anymore; maybe you can use technology to cover, at least partially, the vacant position. Think it through; you could save yourself a salary!

2)      Prepare a Job Description – Are you filling an existing position or are you creating a new one? Either way, you need to make sure you have a proper job description for the new position. If you already have one, make sure you check it in case you need to make any changes to it; you may need to add new requirements and responsibilities.

With the Job Description, you’ll have a tool that will help you determine exactly what you are looking for in a candidate and you will also be able to paint a realistic picture of what the new job will entail, that way the candidate will be able to determine whether or not the job is a suitable fit for them.

3)      Establish Job Relationships – You need to decide where your new employee will fit into the company hierarchy. Who will be their immediate boss? Will there be employees reporting to the new hire? Make sure this is clear and that the rest of the team are aware of their roles and responsibilities in relation to the new employee.

Be sure to remember the above points next time you have to do an interview; it’ll take you a little longer to prepare but it’ll be worth it. What about you? Do you have any tips to share?

So what is “motivation”?

The following quote sums it up nicely: “That which makes a person act in a particular way; an inner impulse”

Anyone who is in a managerial position and is responsible for the day to day management of a team plays a key role in influencing their employee’s level of motivation.

Here are 5 key points you want to consider when tackling the complex, but vital task of employee motivation:

1)      One size does not fit all – Individuals have specific needs and requirements. Some may be motivated by career growth and ambition and others are motivated when they are able to satisfy the most basic of needs; providing food and shelter for their families. You, as a manager and leader, need to pay attention to each individual’s specific needs. Yes, it’s more work, but imperative to ensure success of an employee motivation policy. Take time to listen to your team and try to understand what motivates them, both in and out of work.

2)      The Power of Appraisals – You need to ensure regular feedback. As a manager, you time is, literally, money; however, you must make time to sit down with subordinates to discuss performance. Some companies have formal performance appraisal policies and procedures which require managers to meet with each individual on their team on a regular basis; this is great if possible but even informal meeting and chats can serve the purpose of increasing motivation. These meetings are the perfect time to provide positive reinforcement for a job well done and also to discuss possible weaknesses.

3)      Invest in Training and Development – offering employees the opportunity to learn new skills that will help them to advance in their careers is a great way to motivate your employees. Whether it be onsite or offsite training initiatives, effective and focused training can lead to high returns for both company and employee. When a company has taken the time and effort to train their employee and has spent money in organising training courses, the employee feels valued.

4)      Empower your team – Empowerment is a key aspect of motivation. By encouraging contribution and input from your employees, you make them feel valued and important; if you then add to this by allowing them to make their own decisions, the results are even more powerful. Start off by delegating tasks you don’t need to accomplish yourself; let them take charge of easier tasks to begin with and as they gain confidence, hand over more important and sensitive tasks.

5)      Recognise their Achievement – It’s important to mention that this recognition does not have to be financial. Yes, money does motivate, but it tends to be a short term motivator. Try simpler – and cheaper – methods such as handwritten notes, verbal recognition in front of peers, or a simple thank you for a job well done; you’ll be amazed at how effective these techniques can be for achieving short and long term motivation.

I could go on for hours about the importance of employee motivation. There’s no doubt that a motivated workforce will always outperform one that isn’t; the above points barely scratch the surface of what you can achieve by applying motivational techniques to your management style; however, they will certainly help you on your way to increasing your team’s output.

What do you think? Do you have any specific techniques you use to motivate your employees?

How many times have you been faced with a situation when a customer is angry and upset with the service they have received and are demanding an explanation, an apology or, god forbid, some form of compensation! I’ve worked in hospitality for most of my working life and have had my fair share of customer complaints to deal with. Luckily for me, one of my first bosses was a great believer in staff training and introduced us to a very simple but effective 5 step process to deal with customer complaints.

These principles are ideal for training new staff members who have to deal with customers on a daily basis; however, it’s also useful for service veterans who are sometimes guilty of forgetting the basics of handling customer complaints effectively.

So without further a-do, here are the 5 steps to effectively handling customer complaints:

1) Listen

Yes, Listen; simple, but very important. You must remember that people who actually take the time to complain are feeling very emotional. Our first objective is to deal with these negative emotions before actually dealing with the complaint itself. Let the person say what they have to say and let off steam; don’t even think about interrupting them!

By taking the time to listen to the complaint you’re demonstrating that their problem is taken seriously and that you understand their frustration. If you listen to the whole story, you reduce the risk of misinterpreting the situation and making matters worse.

2) Sympathise

The customer’s complaint isn’t directed at you, even though it might seem like it. Make sure you don’t take things personally or you’ll just make matters worse.

Your customer isn’t interested in the how’s and why’s of a problem; they just want it fixed! Don’t make excuses. Be sympathetic and you’ll be diffusing the customer’s anger from the very beginning.

3) Ask the Right Questions

Once you’ve managed to calm down the customer, you need to find out the root of the problem. You’ve dealt with the emotions – often the hardest part – but now you have to ask questions and establish the facts of the complaint.

Be careful how you word your questions; asking open ended questions will help to get the customer talking more freely. Try starting questions with How? What? and When? Customers must see that they stand to benefit from answering your questions; the last thing you want is for them to think you’re trying to catch them out and blame them for the problem.

4) Agree a Course of Action

You’re customer is now calm and you’ve found out the route of the problem, now comes the difficult part: What to do about the problem!

First of all, make sure you offer your customer alternative solutions; this is pure psychology. By giving them at least two options, they feel more involved in the outcome. Often, your options will be restricted but if you use phrases like “What if…?” and “How about….?” you make it sound like you are offering them a customised solution.

One key point to remember: Never make a promise that you can’t keep. You’ll just make matters much worse.

5) Make Sure It’s Carried Out

Once you and the customer have agreed a course of action, you cannot leave it at that. You must take ownership of the situation and ensure that what you have agreed is actually carried out. In a larger organisation that might mean involving more team members; however, the ultimate responsibility must lie with you.

So there you have it, 5 simple but highly effective steps for diffusing even the most delicate of customer complaints. Try them out and see how easy it can be to turn a potentially negative experience for your customer into a positive one.

Photo Credit : angusf