Posts Tagged ‘challenges’

No one wants to be in a situation where they have to raise revenue quickly, but sometimes  that’s just a reality that decision makers have to deal with.  When a past client who does business in a service industry was facing a cash crunch due to price increases from two major vendors, the only solution he could come up with in two month’s time was to push his sales people to sell more contracts. After we spoke a bit longer, he admitted that he’d done the math and that in the back of his mind, he had serious doubts about the sales team’s ability to bring in the targeted funds in the time frame that he needed.

I suggested that he try instituting a nominal price increase to all his clients. He was concerned, stating that he had a client base of 4000 contract holders, and to make such a move would mean that he would have to have reps visit each client to rewrite their contracts, plus, he feared their negative reaction. But that was his assumption, not his challenge or solution.

We took a closer look at the client base and came up with a solution that would assuage his concerns, bring in the revenue quickly, and address any clients who might call to complain. He sent via regular mail and email a notice to clients that they would see a slight price increase on their next billing cycle. For clients who had small contracts of say $40, the price would move to $42. For clients of $400, the price would increase to $420 and so on.

Still worried that he’d have an onslaught of calls, he manned up anyway and braced for the worst. And then….nothing happened. A few dozen customers called and they made what ever arrangements necessary for the new amounts to be remitted. In the end. the client pulled in tens of thousands of dollars of additional revenue per month without much work.

I credit the success of this business owner’s across-the-board price increases to the tactics which included: a pricing model that would cause the customer to say to themselves “who cares,” a well written letter and email campaign, staffing for the ‘just-in-case complaints,’ the right name for the increase, and an accounting system that had no flaws in posting the increase.

There’s always a solution to every challenge. You just have to be willing to open your mind to new ideas and to swirl those ideas around ‘cyclonically’ until you find the best solutions to your challenges.

When our kids were 4 and 5 years old,  they went through a brief stage where they would argue over whose turn it was to select and watch the program airing on the family-room TV.  Since we limited television time overall, we wanted to come up with a fair solution that took us parents out of the equation and allowed the kids to solve their own problem.  So I created a tool to empower them to do just that.  It was a daily chart reaching out over 6 months at a time.  The chart would work in 30-minute intervals and the kids alternated days.  They used to define who had control over the TV by their half-hour mark.

We also set up a few rules.  Your time is your time.  If you swap your times and you end up with a conflict, we will adhere to the chart to solve the challenge.

The results were amazing.  No more arguments at all.  None.  They managed themselves.  If you’ve got a busy household, systems and structure can rapidly create new time, harmony and balance.

Using charts, schedules, technology, and standard procedures, you can erase conflicts within your organization and provide the tools to empower your staff to work through their own challenges.

Ask who lit the first match that ignited this wild storm called recession, and the answer is as different as the people doing the answering. That can pose huge challenges when leadership is called to help solve the issue.

Leadership is about getting others to pursue an objective in some form of unity.  The higher the unity, along with other tools and methodologies, the faster the goals will be achieved.  The challenge is that everyone does have their own beliefs and expectations, and sometimes these expectations get in the way of any progress.

A native-Pakistani taxi driver that once drove me to a hotel said, “All around the world the people at the top of government are all corrupt, especially in Arab and Muslim countries.”  He went on to describe how in his home country of Pakistan, those currently in power are those that stole money under the last administration.  He then went on to say that the “Media never tells the truth.”

A member of a North Carolina Governing Board of a University says, “The trouble with the economy is that we have too much capacity, and when we have too much capacity, we have a recession until the capacity decreases.  This means businesses must go out of business to make this happen.”  When I asked about productivity and technological advances that may make the absorption of employees back into the system difficult, he said productivity has nothing to do with it.

Both different people having different perspectives as to how the US and global recession started and will continue.

As a leader, in politics, business, or organizations, the trouble is that the objective is not to just sell your ideas, but to realize that another person’s perception is reality, and you must understand their position before you can start to change perception.

An important consideration is that you, too, have an opinion so we must all be tolerant while we press forward.