I can't think of a better way to start a new business year than focusing on the bedrock of customer relations – how we treat our clients from the get-go, from the first “hello”. The term “Customer Service” has been abused to the point of becoming a cliche, and that's really a shame. Remember, the vast majority of lost business and employee turnover whether it be they don't buy again, call again, darken our doors again, or resign is due to how a person perceives they've … [Read more...] about The Sails Game
Heat And Humanity Redux
They say the end of the year and the beginning of the new year is a good time for reflecting and reassessing, so let's do just that. In a nutshell, human interaction dictates that conflict and confrontation are just a part of life. And mastering the skills to effectively avoid conflict and to manage it when it does occur will improve both our personal relationships and professional success. Just think for a minute about the quality of our lives if we were able to spend … [Read more...] about Heat And Humanity Redux
Who’s Driving This Bus?
Whether it's an unsafe driver cutting us off on the way to work or an upset client threatening to march into the lobby and give us a piece of their mind, we just never know when conflict and confrontation are going to rear their ugly heads. Our ability to train and learn to effectively deal with conflict can very well determine our level of professional success and personal fulfillment. In a previous edition we discussed how when confronted our bodies will instinctively shift into high gear … [Read more...] about Who’s Driving This Bus?
Condition Cool For the Win
As they old saying goes, “cooler heads will prevail”. It's easy to say, but the real challenge becomes maintaining a cool head when a situation starts heating up. As we discussed in an earlier edition, when someone is very angry or very afraid they are simply unable to use the very faculty that might save their day: their ability to reason. So, before we focus on helping someone else regain their composure, we had best train and learn to maintain our own composure. A … [Read more...] about Condition Cool For the Win
Heat and Humanity
It's an old joke in southeast Texas, “If it's not the heat, it's the humanity”. Fact of the matter is truer words were never spoken. Unless robots completely replace humans in the arenas of commerce and education, we will forever be in the “people business” whether we like them (people) or not. Relational skills are foundational to both personal fulfillment and commercial success. It's the cruelest of ironies that one can invest decades in formal education and work one's way up from the … [Read more...] about Heat and Humanity
