In this era of prosperity and growing consumer confidence, what are the two things that can ruin a company's sales even when everyone else seems to be rolling along unabated? The first is employee morale and the second is customer relations. When consumers are spending and spending, why are your company's sales flat. The answer is simply lack of focus. Focus on your employee and your customer.
We have all used the Nordstroms customer service policy and what it has meant to customer loyalty. Who do you think is constantly training their employees on the subject of customer service? You have guessed it — the Nordstroms of the world. Success comes to all those that work for it. The company that is in the “flat sales” category isn't keeping focused on the two things that need the most attention, the customer and the employee.
The well-run company continues to strive for excellence. The CEOs who brag they have so much business they don't know how to handle it are fooling themselves. You can never have too much business.
Harvey Mackay, a well-known author of several best-selling business books on management, including “Swim with the Sharks,” has a chapter on creativity killers in his new book, “Pushing the Envelope, All the Way to the Top.” The chapter talks about attending a cocktail party and listening to employees talk about their company management problems.
Harvey says that people let their hair down and seem unafraid of talking with strangers about their company problems. They listed the top 25 things that company managers say to employees to torpedo the employee's morale.
Mackay's Moral: Cowards die a thousand deaths. Unfortunately, cowards kill thousands of creative ideas before death catches us with them.
Employee morale takes patience and determination and the realization that you can't satisfy all the people, all the time, hence the need for continued focus.
We have all used the Nordstroms customer service policy and what it has meant to customer loyalty. Who do you think is constantly training their employees on the subject of customer service? You have guessed it — the Nordstroms of the world. Success comes to all those that work for it. The company that is in the “flat sales” category isn't keeping focused on the two things that need the most attention, the customer and the employee.
The well-run company continues to strive for excellence. The CEOs who brag they have so much business they don't know how to handle it are fooling themselves. You can never have too much business.
Harvey Mackay, a well-known author of several best-selling business books on management, including “Swim with the Sharks,” has a chapter on creativity killers in his new book, “Pushing the Envelope, All the Way to the Top.” The chapter talks about attending a cocktail party and listening to employees talk about their company management problems.
Harvey says that people let their hair down and seem unafraid of talking with strangers about their company problems. They listed the top 25 things that company managers say to employees to torpedo the employee's morale.
- It's not in the budget.
- The boss will never go for it.
- Great idea! Let's form a committee to tackle it.
- It will never work.
- That's against our policy.
- Who will we get to do that?
- Let's think about that for awhile.
- Why not leave well enough alone?
- Let's discuss it some other time.
- It's too late to fix it now.
- It's too soon to fix it.
- We have done it this way for years and still make a profit.
- Why fix it if it isn't broken?
- We tried it five years ago and it didn't work.
- That's not how we do things around here.
- That's the kind of idea that cost your predecessor her job.
- It will take a long time to research this idea.
- That's not my job.
- The competition already does it that way.
- The competition doesn't do it that way.
- Let's let the competition try it first and see what happens.
- That isn't in our job descriptions.
- If we do it, they'll wonder why we didn't do it sooner.
- It will create more work for the rest of us.
- Sounds like a good idea. Let's run it past legal.
Mackay's Moral: Cowards die a thousand deaths. Unfortunately, cowards kill thousands of creative ideas before death catches us with them.
Employee morale takes patience and determination and the realization that you can't satisfy all the people, all the time, hence the need for continued focus.