Do Business Well

The performance of his product was his best publicity! Let it also be yours.

If you are the first in the right market you may need little advertisement. Sun Microsystems’ workstations were the first on the market with the new UNIX operating system and needed no advertisement. They became the world leaders with their Sun workstations and in the early nineties were voted the fastest growing company on the Fortune 500 list, with a phenomenal 114 per cent compounded annual growth rate. Continue Reading »

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The majority of people who work from home, whether they be working for giant corporations or in one-man bands, work by themselves. On the one hand, that means they are extremely efficient — no interruptions, no joking during meetings, no office politicking around the coffee machine, or gossiping in the lunch break — but it also means that homeworkers can feel terribly alone and isolated.

`I found that working six hours a day at home was worth more than eight in the office,’ says Emma Dally, now Publishing Director for The National Magazine Company. ‘There are so few interruptions that you are able to work very intensively.’ Continue Reading »

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A recent survey by the psychology department at Swansea University found that the major difficulty experienced by people who had just started working from home was the inability to separate their work and home life. That was not just because they themselves found it hard, but because family and friends found it equally hard to accept that the person who was previously ‘mum’ or ‘dad’ at home was now also a worker. ‘They found it very difficult to accept the change in roles,’ says Professor Osborne. ‘It was hard for partners and kids to comprehend that the person who had previously been available when at home, no longer was, and that they had a new role inside the home.’ Continue Reading »

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Before you even start working from home, it is vital to consider exactly where you will be working and to ensure that you have one space that is always used for your work. The setting up of a home office is considered fun, but some basic points are worth bearing in mind:

Having a space of your own makes it much easier to separate your work life from your home life.’ I tried working in the front room, but it meant that when I sat down to watch the TV, I couldn’t help seeing all my papers and all the things I was meant to be doing the next day,’ says May a medical secretary. ‘It became very hard not to take them up and just have a quick browse through. Once I transformed the back room into an office, I could at least shut the door on my work and walk away.’ Continue Reading »

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Praise is easy to take. Who doesn’t want to be flattered? Criticism is another matter because it touches a sensitive nerve: our egos.

Unless it’s given properly and under the right conditions, criticism is often perceived as an attack, says Robert Bies, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. “A person’s defenses go up when it comes to taking criticism,” he says. “Nobody wants to hear what he or she thinks may be bad news.”

As unpleasant as it is to give and take, criticism is essential for getting the best from your subordinates and from yourself. Continue Reading »

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Ever wonder why an executive who makes a million-dollar mistake can get off with a reprimand, while another who does an expert job is let go? Maybe performance is not the determining factor when cutbacks have to be made. This is what a number of executives are discovering, and it’s a bewildering lesson.

“Part of our job is to find out how a person ended up in our offices,” says Dr. Adela Oliver, president of Oliver Human Resource Consultants, Inc., a New York-based executive out-placement and organization development firm. “It’s very difficult for some people to understand that even if their performance is exemplary, they are sometimes more vulnerable than individuals who aren’t quite as good at what they do— but who understand the unspoken rules of the game.” Continue Reading »

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Suddenly the air is charged as the voices of two employees rise in a crescendo of anger. Today, one is accusing the other of fouling up the production schedule; yesterday, it was because a customer’s order was sent out a day late. Enough is enough. The constant bickering disturbs other workers and upsets the departmental machinery.

Disputes between employees are common and inevitable. The difficult decision is when to step in, says Joseph F. Byrnes, dean of Bentley College Graduate School in Waltham, MA. “Give the warring parties a chance to resolve it on their own,” he says. “The time to take action is when things get out of hand and it’s affecting their work or disrupting other people’s work.”

Find out whether the conflict is work-related and has a structural root or whether it is interpersonal and has no relationship to the job or company, advises Byrnes. An interpersonal conflict can happen on or off the job, whereas structural ones are inevitable in many companies. Continue Reading »

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“Employees now feel they can get a square deal,” says William Blake. “Before, they felt the deck was stacked against them.” What has made the difference at the Borg-Warner plant in Bellwood, IL, where Blake was human resources manager before his retirement, is a peer review system for handling employee grievances.

Under this system, a disgruntled employee takes a complaint to a panel composed of other employees plus members of management. The panels are usually made up of three to six people, with the peers always in the majority. A complainant may bring a fellow employee or someone from personnel to help at a hearing, but not an outside attorney. After listening to the employee and his or her supervisor, the panel votes by secret ballot, and its decision is binding. Continue Reading »

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What to do if the prospect hesitates to sign up

Your main objective when prospecting is to sign up the new distributor. But sometimes, despite you best efforts, there are still hesitations. You may need to encourage the prospect gently to join your network. How is this done?

Focus on her needs Remind her in a positive way why you are discussing network marketing with her:

• ‘Let’s see, you want money for your child’s education?’ III ‘You have five hours per week that you could give to promoting a small home business?’
• ‘You’re looking for an organisation that can support you
  with training and help you get off to a flying start?’

Continue Reading »

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The People Express business plan is notable for its lack ofemphasis on marketing issues. After all, in early 1980 the ideaof a discount airline was new and little tried. Who could besure that consumers would flock to a new airline that offeredcut-rate fares?

But according to Burr, the founders had little concern about that issue. “We felt that a $23 price would blow the market open,” he says. He points out that at Texas International, he had been involved in pioneering off-peak fares and, “When we cut prices to the bone, we were full.”

Where to locate.Other issues were paramount in the minds of the founders, including where to locate the new company’s hub— its base and the place where all flights eventually passed through. Newark, N.J., was first on their list because the airport seemed to be underutilized and was smack in the middle of one of the nation’s most densely populated marketplaces. “We talked about Baltimore, Hartford, New Haven, Oakland, and Kansas City,” Burr recalls. Oakland in particular intrigued them because its airport also seemed to be underutilized and was located in an attractive market. But PSA was already well established in California. In addition, PSA was, according to Burr, “a better-run carrier than you tended to find in the East.” Continue Reading »

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