Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The Awesome Power of Goal Setting!
http://humanresources.about.com/od/performancemanagement/a/goal_setting.htm
Monday, January 9, 2012
Resolving to Be a Better Boss in 2012 - Great View Of Why Companies Struggle And What Their Leaders Can Do About It
http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2012/01/09/resolving-to-be-better-boss-in-2012/
Even in the face of a feeble labor market and uncertain economic environment, American workers are fedup enough with their work situation and looking to make a change.
According to the 2011 What’s Working survey from Mercer, nearly one in three employees polled was “seriously considering” leaving their job. What’s more, most of these respondents cited their sour rela tionships with their bosses as a main reason for looking for employment elsewhere.
Whether you are a line supervisor, middle manager, or executive, you, as the boss, are responsible for setting the tone and creating a positive and productive work environment. When bosses fail to do this, turnover increases, morale drops, and hiring expenses skyrocket.
Here’s the problem: Too many bosses enter into their leadership roles with little experience and support. Many bosses were likely promoted because they were good at their job or had peaked out in their role. I call this a great American business tragedy because we reward workplace success by putting people in a position they don’t necessarily want and often aren’t well suited for.
Not everyone’s goal is to be the boss; but in most companies, upward mobility means taking on people responsibility. To make matters worse, many companies don’t spend the time or money to provide the requisite training for new bosses to actually succeed in their new role. In other words, we reward success by setting people up for failure, creating a lose-lose proposition.
Both as a former employee at a major consulting firm and as an executive coach, I’ve had to deal with my share of bosses, particularly new bosses. As much as I disagree with the typical premise for corporate promotions, I do believe there are ways to help inexperienced bosses become successful. Here are three tips to get any bosses off to the right start in 2012.
1) Look in the Mirror . It always starts with you. You have to know how to manage yourself before you can manage others. Get to know your personality and your management style before you take on the burden of managing others.
Even in the face of a feeble labor market and uncertain economic environment, American workers are fedup enough with their work situation and looking to make a change.
According to the 2011 What’s Working survey from Mercer, nearly one in three employees polled was “seriously considering” leaving their job. What’s more, most of these respondents cited their sour rela tionships with their bosses as a main reason for looking for employment elsewhere.
Whether you are a line supervisor, middle manager, or executive, you, as the boss, are responsible for setting the tone and creating a positive and productive work environment. When bosses fail to do this, turnover increases, morale drops, and hiring expenses skyrocket.
Here’s the problem: Too many bosses enter into their leadership roles with little experience and support. Many bosses were likely promoted because they were good at their job or had peaked out in their role. I call this a great American business tragedy because we reward workplace success by putting people in a position they don’t necessarily want and often aren’t well suited for.
Not everyone’s goal is to be the boss; but in most companies, upward mobility means taking on people responsibility. To make matters worse, many companies don’t spend the time or money to provide the requisite training for new bosses to actually succeed in their new role. In other words, we reward success by setting people up for failure, creating a lose-lose proposition.
Both as a former employee at a major consulting firm and as an executive coach, I’ve had to deal with my share of bosses, particularly new bosses. As much as I disagree with the typical premise for corporate promotions, I do believe there are ways to help inexperienced bosses become successful. Here are three tips to get any bosses off to the right start in 2012.
1) Look in the Mirror . It always starts with you. You have to know how to manage yourself before you can manage others. Get to know your personality and your management style before you take on the burden of managing others.
- Face three mistakes: Reflect on three major mistakes or bad decisions from 2011. Assess what went wrong and why. Take responsibility for your part and make sure they don’t happen again.
- Get feedback: Seek out feedback from colleagues, mentors, and key employees. Ask for constructive criticism and be willing to hear the good and bad.
- Self assess: Take self-assessments such as personality and management style inventories (often your HR folks have access to these tools) to get a somewhat objective view of how you operate.
- Ask, don’t tell: Resist the temptation to tell your employees what to do. Instead, try asking them what they would do to solve the problems they bring to you. Remember, successful managers don’t hand their people fish on a platter, they teach them how to fish for themselves.
- Find teachable moments: Life is about learning, so be sure to use every interaction as an opportunity to teach, not just talk.
- Reward one positive act each day: Always take time to seek out the positive and recognize it! Every employee does good work, so be sure to notice it.
- Be genuine: Make sure to be genuine in your recognition. Don’t just give a pat on the back for the sake of it.
- Be Fair, but not equal: Don’t treat people the same. Everyone is different and has different needs, which means that which is motivating for one person may not be motivating for another. Know what motivates your individual players and use that knowledge.
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Small Business Strategies: Twelve tips for 2012 - Interesting Perspective From Rhonda Abrams - Which Businesses Will Follow These Tips?
Small Business Strategies: Twelve tips for 2012
Great. But now what?
To help you actually achieve your goal, I've got 12 tips to make sure you do make more money this year.
COLUMN: Index of Rhonda Abrams' Small Business Strategies columns
1. Get listed free. Take 30 minutes -- right after you finish reading this column -- and list your business, free, on search engine local listings.
This helps your company show up when a prospective customer searches for a business like yours on the Web or a mobile device. No technical expertise is needed. Get started with Bing business portal, bing.com/businessportal; Foursquare, foursquare.com/business; Google Places,google.com/places; Yahoo Local, local.yahoo.com; and Yelp, biz.yelp.com/claiming.
2. Figure out what makes you money. Businesses have two kinds of money, cash and profits.
Cash comes from making sales. Profits come from selling products or services for more than they cost you to produce. Small businesses generally focus on bringing in cash, and that's OK because cash keeps the doors open.
But to get ahead, you need to focus on the parts of your business that bring you the most profits.
3. Market to current and former customers.Satisfied customers are the ones most likely to be future customers or refer others to you.
Yet small businesses typically neglect to market to them.
When my garbage disposal breaks, will I remember the name of the plumber I used two years ago? Not if the business doesn't keep its name in front of me.
4. Get a contact management system. You need a good way to organize, manage, and stay in touch with your contacts, something easy and that you can access from mobile devices, not just a drawer full of business cards.
My company just switched to Salesforce.com.
5. Create a marketing plan. Spend your marketing dollars and time wisely.
Identify your best prospects and the most effective ways to reach them. Then market consistently. You have to stay in front of prospects.
6. Contact at least three prospects a week. Or seven. Or 20.
Give yourself a realistic quota, make a list of top prospects and referral sources and keep it where you see it. Get out there and sell.
7. Bother people. I mean be persistent, not annoying.
People are busy, including your prospects. Even if they want to buy from you, they may forget you. So stay in touch repeatedly.
8. Close the deal. Marketing is great, but at the end of the day, you also have to make -- and close -- the sale.
Sure, you have to let prospects know about your products or services, but you also have to ask them to make the purchase. Give them incentives to purchase now and make sure they see a strong call to action in your marketing materials.
And ask, directly and in person, to take the order, close the deal.
9. Shop local, shop small. I asked a woman at my gym where she got her workout shoes.
She responded: "Try them on at (name of local small store), then order them online." Yikes!
Small businesses can't survive as showrooms for online retailers. If we want customers to buy from us, we have to shop small.
10. Check out social-media marketing. I'm not saying that Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn will make you money, but you can increase your visibility.
At least know enough to figure out whether it might be right for you.
11. Get a cloud-based email newsletter service. Don't be misled by the word "newsletter." You can use these services to announce sales, new products or services, whatever.
Some choices for small businesses: Constant Contact, Mail Chimp, Vertical Response, Emma. An added bonus of cloud services is analytics. You get far better information about how your sales efforts are performing and who is responding to your emails.
12. Develop a business plan. In many ways, this is the most important.
Yes, I'm biased because I've written two books on developing business plans. But developing a business plan has been the single most important contribution to my company's survival and success. Planning gets everyone moving in the same direction and provides structure for decision-making.
Now is the perfect time to develop a business plan for 2012.
Rhonda Abrams is president of The Planning Shop and publisher of books for entrepreneurs. Her newest is the 5th edition of The Successful Business Plan: Secrets and Strategies. Register for Rhonda's free newsletter at www.PlanningShop.com and "like" The Planning Shop on Facebook for updates. For an index of her columns, go tosmallbiz.usatoday.com. Twitter: twitter.com/RhondaAbrams. Copyright Rhonda Abrams 2011.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Metropolitan LifeWorks, Inc. Launches New Website With The Opening Of New Location In Texas
Metropolitan LifeWorks, Inc., a sales and marketing firm, has opened in a new location Houston, TX and has launched a new website. The new user friendly website has officially launched and will serve to inform both current and potential clients of new services available. Since the company is rapidly expanding and hiring new account representatives, the site is also a resource to potential employees.
Metropolitan LifeWorks, or MLW is a client acquisition firm originally founded in 2004. MLW's first opened its doors in Barcelona, Spain and served as a boutique business consulting firm. Metropolitan LifeWorks’ original client list included organizations like the University of Hamburg, MCI, Aguas de Barcelona, and the US State Department. Once the company relocated to the United States, it changed its scope to marketing and sales. MLW now specializes in client acquisition and retention for national service providers.
Metropolitan LifeWorks recently took on a new client in the mobile telecommunications industry. The new client is the U.S. wireless operation of one of the largest telecommunications companies in the World, with nearly 130 million customers worldwide.
The new user friendly website has ten informative pages with details for all audiences. The Home page gives an overview of the company in addition to links to find Metropolitan LifeWorks at all you favorite social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Blogger. The home page also includes links to navigate through the website and a map of the new Houston location.
The About Us page gives an overview of the team at MLW as well as a biography of the President of the company, Derek Fisher. The Clients and Services page talks about how Metropolitan LifeWorks’ new national client is a leading provider in the telecommunications industry.
There is a Frequently Asked Questions page where users can find answers to questions regarding MLW’s history, client questions as well as questions asked by potential employees. For more information about the open positions at MLW, users can access the Careers page to find current openings as well as an explanation of training and benefits offered by the company. The Growth And Development section of the website outlines MLW’s goals for expansion and the MLW Online page gives users the ability to browse other sites with information about the company.
The Contact Us page includes an interactive map giving users a view of how to get to the new location from all directions. For those trying to contact Metropolitan Lifeworks, this page includes an online application form which can be used to send a message to the company or submit a resume for an open position.
“We are excited to have relocated the company back to the United States and we are excited about the growth potential we have. I know the new website will help our past clients understand what direction we are moving in as well as open doors for new clients. We already have a strong team of hard working individuals and I am excited to see them evolve in their career as we grow. I look forward to working with the new team members we will be adding as well during this time of expansion,” explains Derek Fisher, President at MLW.
As outlined in the Growth And Development section, Metropolitan LifeWorks has goals of expanding to multiple locations with goals to go global by 2012.
Members Of Metropolitan LifeWorks, Inc. Plan To Donate Time To Serve Dinner At Bereavement Center Bo’s Place
Members of Metropolitan LifeWorks, a sales and marketing firm founded in 2004, will be donating their time to serve dinner to children at Bo’ Place. Several members of the company, along with friends and family, will volunteer for the bereavement center.
Metropolitan LifeWorks, or MLW, is a client acquisition firm founded in Barcelona, Spain. Its original focus was to serve as a boutique business consulting firm. Metropolitan LifeWorks’ primary client list included organizations like the University of Hamburg, MCI, Aguas de Barcelona, and the US State Department. The company relocated to the United States and changed its scope to marketing and sales. MLW now focuses on client acquisition and retention for national service providers.
Metropolitan LifeWorks is hired by national clients to represent their brand name to business account holders. MLW is in charge of increasing the number of business account holders in an assigned market share as well as retaining these account holders for long term profitability.
Since shifting its focus, Metropolitan LifeWorks’ took on its first client, a leader in the mobile telecommunications industry. The new client is the U.S. wireless operation of one of the largest telecommunications companies in the World, with nearly 130 million customers worldwide. The new client is a national provider of wireless voice, messaging, and data services and claims to be capable of reaching over 293 million Americans.
Bo’s Place is a non-profit organization that offers grief support services free of charge to children, families and adults. Bo’s is the currently Houston’s oldest and only on-going, free-of-charge, grief support program for children. The free of charge support comes in many ways, while the organization provides education and resources for those who assist people in grief.
Bo’s Place was founded and operates on the belief that a large part of healing process involves allowing grieving children and adults to share their stories, memories, experiences, thoughts, and feelings with other grieving children and adults.
With its inception in 1990, Bo’s Place began as an Information and Referral Line that provided callers with free grief resources. Initially, the organization provided support contacts in the Houston Area and in 1995, Bo’s Place moved its headquarters to Houston’s Museum District. There, its services were expanded to include support groups for grieving children and their families and filling the need for a program directly focused on the needs of the children. The most recent change occurred in 2005 when Bo’s Place designed a location specifically for grief support groups.
Members of Metropolitan LifeWorks plan to get involved with the organization this winter. MLW will be joining the individuals of Bo’s Place to serve dinner and share their time.
“We are excited to be in our new location in Houston and we want to make more of an impact than just doing business in this town. We want to be a bigger part of the community and Bo’s Place is a great place to start. As we grow over the next few months, we want to continue giving back to the Houston community. I’m proud to say we have a team of individuals at MLW who have similar values,” explains Derek Fisher, President at Metropolitan LifeWorks.
As Fisher explains, the company is planning to continue its philanthropic efforts as it continues to grow. Metropolitan LifeWorks plans to expand globally by 2012. More information about the companies goals to expand can be found in the Growth and Development page of their website.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Metropolitan LifeWorks, Inc. Is Now Open For Business In Houston
Metropolitan LifeWorks, Inc. Is Now Open For Business In Houston
http://www.free-press-release.com/news-metropolitan-lifeworks-inc-is-now-open-for-business-in-houston-1325041490.html
Metropolitan LifeWorks, Inc. has moved to Houston and is now open for business. The once international consulting firm is now focusing its efforts on national clients. In addition to celebrating 7 years of successful business, the company is celebrating the opening of their new location in Texas.
Metropolitan LifeWorks, or MLW, is a client acquisition firm originally founded in 2004. MLW was founded in Barcelona, Spain and served as a boutique business consulting firm. Metropolitan LifeWorks’ original client list included organizations like the University of Hamburg, MCI, Aguas de Barcelona, and the US State Department. Once the company relocated to the United States, it changed its scope to marketing and sales. MLW now specializes in client acquisition and retention for national service providers.
Metropolitan LifeWorks is hired by national clients to represent their brand name to business clients. MLW is in charge of increasing the number of business account holders and retaining these account holders for long term profitability.
Metropolitan LifeWorks recently took on a new client in the mobile telecommunications industry. The new client is the U.S. wireless operation of one of the largest telecommunications companies in the World, with nearly 130 million customers worldwide. The new client is a national provider of wireless voice, messaging, and data services and claims to be capable of reaching over 293 million Americans.
“We are excited for our new location and the shift in the company’s direction. We are already looking at expansion and new clients in the next year. I have a great team of hard working individuals here and I am excited to give them the opportunity to advance in their careers as we grow,” explains Derek Fisher, President of Metropolitan LifeWorks, Inc.
Metropolitan LifeWorks opened its doors in Houston in December. The company expects to expand to multiple locations next year before returning to the international market in the coming years.
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