by Angela Taffs | Aug 20, 2015 | Business Success
Have you got your website up and running and all your marketing material finalised and out there working for you? Or are you still working on it and waiting until you get it perfect? Are you holding back until the time is perfect to release your new product or service?
All too often we wait before moving forward until we have the perfect website or until the timing for launch is perfect. But do you know what? That perfect website and perfect time is never going to happen. You are simply going through the motions of procrastination in the name of research and development.
Life is not perfect. It is full of imperfections. If you start to put unnecessary pressure on yourself to be perfect in whatever you do, you run the serious risk of being severely disappointed and never getting where you want to be. You will continually find flaws which will again delay your forward movement whilst you strive to fix things that are unlikely to be the deciding factor in your clients buying decision.
Whilst you continue to fix and tweak, your potential customers are out there buying a similar product or service and building relationships with your competitors that you are missing out on.
You may have your big dreams and big plans and feel that every single angle has to be covered before moving forward, but in the business world and in personal life also, a single tiny step that you take, even if a stumble, is far better than any grand dream sat waiting in the planning room. You simply will not get things off the ground and moving forward if you continually sit and wait for things to be perfect.
Don’t get caught up in perfectionism. Save it for when you really need it such as providing excellent customer service. Just decide to do as well as you can with what you have and then continually look to adapt, improve and tweak as you go along and fix things that you discover are broken. This way you have far greater chance of being on the path to great results.
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As Mark Victor Hansen is quoted as saying:
“Don’t wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what… Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”
Just get out there and do it!!!
by Angela Taffs | Aug 4, 2015 | Customer service
I believe I have found a way for you to beat your competitors in a guaranteed way. This is just by delivering what you promise to do. Simples!!
I never cease to be amazed by the appalling service that so many companies still think is acceptable.
Just this past week I have encountered the following:
Laura Ashley promising delivery within 3 working days and yet 10 days later still no order received. Their customer service is non-existent with emails being ignored and a wholly incompetent customer service representative on the other end of the phone when I eventually got through.
I have booked flights with British Airways and encountered numerous problems on their site when trying to enter Advanced Passenger Information and reserve seats. Again, emails ignored until I took to social media. I then get an email telling me to follow the links on the website. But they don’t work! This was followed by no less than 8 failed attempts to speak to them by phone as after following the automated service it either went to a constantly engaged tone or cut off altogether.
I went to enquire about a new car from Nissan only for the salesperson to say he would email what they had and the prices. Why? I was there in the showroom potentially ready to buy. Was it because I was a lone woman and he didn’t believe I was serious without a man by my side? I emailed Nissan to complain about his attitude, got an automated response saying someone would be in touch within 48 hours and never heard from them again. Appalling!
Finally, a dodgy estate agent who is lazy beyond belief waits until the last minute to negotiate with the vendor on items he promised to do on day one. He then uses the cop out line that the vendors have changed their mind. I have reason to believe he lied through his teeth to get the sale and was just too incompetent to do his job properly. Suffice to say, when I come to sell in the future, this agent will be last on my list.
All of these instances I wish I could say were rare but are unfortunately all too common. Tradesmen who don’t return calls, or who come and give an estimate never to be seen again. If they don’t want the work, just say so. Cleaners who come to the office full of promises of how good they are only to leave a half done job that has to be redone. Financial advisors who promise information to be sent only for them to have to be chased continuously.
So if you want to beat your competitors hands down, try focusing on customer service. At the very least do what you say you will. And if you can go the extra mile, I bet those customers will be so impressed they will come back to you time and time again.
I am now going to start noting good and bad customer service and writing about examples of these. If you have any of your own that you would like to share, please pop over and add them on the Facebook page.
by Angela Taffs | Jul 27, 2015 | Running a Business
The Importance of Home Office Organization
When you are working from home it is just as important to keep your office space organised as if you were working elsewhere. By being organised you will increase your productivity. The trap we fall into when working from home is getting too relaxed and things start to slip. Piles of paperwork start to appear that you will ‘deal with later’.
Too many personal items start to appear and make themselves at home on your desk such as birthday cards to send, household bills and shopping lists. This then starts to blur the lines between working on your business and completing personal errands.
It takes great discipline to organise a home office but it is such an important part of your business that you should not let slip and neglect to take control of.
Getting Started
Start off with having a good declutter. The same principle applies as in having a declutter of your home. Get rid of anything that is:
- Broken
- No longer used
- Dated and/or obsolete
- Doesn’t work (pens fall neatly into this category!)
- You wouldn’t miss if you never saw it again
Now make sure you have the correct furniture and/or accessories for keeping paperwork tidy and to avoid creating piles of clutter on your desk which needs to be kept clear for you to work.
Get a filing cabinet and split into sections for each area of your business. This could be for finances, client files, marketing ideas etc. Now take all that paperwork that has been building over time and put into its correct place. Remember the saying ‘A place for everything and everything in its place’.
Any documents or paperwork that you have been meaning to read for 12 months or more is likely not to be that important, or relevant, any more so be ruthless and bin it. Obviously, be aware of data protection and legal requirements but for general paperwork, get rid of it and stop it clogging up your valuable office space.
Get a bookcase and neatly arrange files, folders and books. Is there space to put your printer on top of the bookcase or filing cabinet to keep as much space free as possible on your desk?
Arrange your desktop so that you have everything you need regularly immediately to hand. This could be items such as pen pot, stapler, hole punch, calculator and diary. Having these items immediately to hand is much more convenient than having to scrabble around looking for them and wasting precious time.
Get yourself a desktop standing file for documents or files that you will be using regularly such as current projects.
Daily Organisation
During the day, use the one-touch rule for any incoming paperwork. Touch a piece of paper just once and deal with it there and then. Don’t add it to a pile to deal with later. Pay bills immediately and file away. Answer that letter and file or shred with complete. It will have to be dealt with at some point and will take the same amount of time so that time might as well be now. This will help keep your mind clear by knowing you are on top of things and will keep your pile of clutter to a bare minimum.
At the end of each day, double check to make sure your office space is tidy. File away any paperwork and check you have completed everything on your daily to-do list. Write down the top three things you need to complete the next day. This will help organise your mind and put you in a feeling of control allowing you to relax for the evening and recharge your batteries.
Follow these tips for organising your home office and see just how much more productive you become.
by Angela Taffs | Jul 13, 2015 | Business Success, Personal and Lifestyle
I have just read an article in The Guardian by Michelle Mone, the co-founder of Ultimo.
In this article she writes:
I can’t stand people who say you must be a graduate to succeed. I think it’s fantastic if you are a graduate because it gives you the ability to learn, but it doesn’t give you common sense. In business it doesn’t matter whether or not you’re from a wealthy background or how good your education was. I just love it that if you’ve got drive, determination and a can-do attitude you can achieve anything you want as an entrepreneur.
These words were joy to my ears. All too often I come across both men and women who think they can’t compete in the world of business because they don’t have a degree or equivalent. And I always say to them that a degree is not what will make them successful.
In my opinion, and what I have seen proven time after time over the years, is that life experience and a can do attitude wins over higher education every time. Personally, I would far rather deal with someone who has been out there and learnt from the grass roots up than sat in a university and studied books but never actually put their learning into practice.
I have had people come to me and when I ask why they think they will be successful they tell me because they have a diploma in business studies. This always rings alarms bells with me because no amount of book reading and attending lectures will give you the same knowledge as being out there and doing it.
Now don’t get me wrong. I am not putting anyone down who has taken time to further their education. And this is critical to do in certain industries such as medicine and law. But not having this level of education should not be a barrier to being a successful entrepreneur. Just look at the likes of Henry Ford, Richard Branson and Walt Disney amongst many others – there is a list of 100 degreeless entrepreneurs on Business Insider. They learnt from the bottom up and it did not take letters after their name for them to be successful.
So believe in yourself. Have a passion and a determined, can do attitude and you have all the pre-requisites of being able to start and run your own business.
by Angela Taffs | Jul 6, 2015 | Personal and Lifestyle
Did you know that when you are feeling stressed, one of the best ways to help you relax is to read? Even just six minutes can be enough to reduce the stress levels by more than two thirds.
Surprisingly, in my view, research from Mindlab International at the University of Sussex has shown that reading works better and faster to calm nerves than other methods such as listening to music or going for a walk.
The reason for this psychologists believe is because the human mind has to concentrate on reading and with the mind being taken into a literary world, tensions in muscles and the heart are eased.
We all know that feeling of being transported to a faraway world with full of excitement and interesting people with no limitations on our dreams when reading a book. This is another reason why reading fiction can be good for us in addition to all the non-fiction that small business owners tend to try to soak up.
However, by reading non-fiction such as motivational books, or those that deal with specific problems you are having such as losing weight, getting fit or organising a home, you can realise that you are not alone with your problem or frustration as other people understand how you are feeling. This can give you a sense of hope in solving your problem and provide encouragement to put plans in place a better future.
Reading biographies of successful people that illustrate how they overcame difficult situations against all the odds can inspire you and give you the inspiration to take on a new challenge that had previously seemed unobtainable.
Humorous books can make you laugh out loud – a great stress reliever in itself.
The research from Mindlab has shown that to reduce stress levels by up to 68% subjects only needed to read, silently, for six minutes. This was shown to slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles and in fact, it got subjects to stress levels lower than before they started.
So choose your reading material carefully and always carry a book with you (or your Kindle/iPad). When you feel you are in a moment of stress, take a few minutes out and go read. Transport yourself somewhere else that no one else can enter and enjoy the experience.
