The First Line Manager: Trust Begins a Process That Leads to Success
What can trust do for a first line manager? Trust opens opportunities for you.As night auditor at the Ramada in Tuscaloosa, I thought management did not care about how I did my job. I performed night audits prior to the Ramada at two hotels. These prior hotel managers required me to balance the books daily. Here at the Ramada, they let me a carry “out of balance totals” forward. I was not required to balance the audit. I started to not care. My figures on the sheets were sloppy. I did not care if I finished the audit on my shift. I would come back and finish the audit during the day. A fellow employee told me I was going to be fired. I needed this job to pay for my college. I went to the manager. I told him I was sorry about my performance, I would do better. I became energized again. I regained control of my attitude about my job. I learned that my attitude was mine to control. The manager renewed his trust in me. This trust led to his faith in me.Trust leads to faith. I graduated from the university. The next week the manager promoted me to a management trainee position with the company. This was because my trust worthiness led to his faith in me. Two weeks after this; the manager quit.The day he quit I came into the restaurant. I saw the owners sitting at a table in the restaurant. They motioned for me to come to the table. I sat down. They told me the manager quit. Then, Mr. Edmondson asked me, “Can you manage the restaurant and lounge?” I think they would have not asked me the question if they did not trust me. Their faith in me; gave me faith in myself. I said, “Yes, Sir.” I was the restaurant manager. Trust leads to faith. Their faith in me; and, my faith in myself.Faith leads to action. The owner’s faith in me, led me to take actions to make our restaurant better. I took actions to learn the business; thus, to justify their faith in me. I took the restaurant from a business with a primary cost of around 72% to one of 65% in three months. Their faith led to my willingness to take action to become knowledgeable of the restaurant business. My actions increased the faith the owners had in me; I got a chance to manage a larger restaurant. I eventually became a general manager for the company. They gave me the restaurant manager’s job because of their faith in me. Their faith led to my actions.Action leads to change. My actions, most importantly, led to changing me. Your actions let you make change. First line managers get to implement changes from others; and, they can formulate changes. Change is not an option in today’s world; it is mandatory. Mostly this change is not necessarily innovation. These changes are mainly small improvements in existing processes; or, changes you are instructed to do by your manager. You are there to maintain the status quo. This does require changes to support the activities of the operation as business processes change.There is a need for caretaker management and for innovation management. These first line management types are very different. Let me explain.Bill, a manager at the bakery where I worked, is a good example of what I call caretaker management. His station was at the panning machine. This machine took the raw dough cut it, and placed it in pans. Workers placed these dough pans on sheet pans before they went into the proofer. Bill stood there during the shift. He hardly every moved. He listened to the machine and watched the workers. Mostly, he did not have to do anything. His role was to do just make sure the machine was working properly. He managed change by making sure nothing went wrong in this process. He was a caretaker. If something went wrong he made changes to restore the process. Otherwise, he only made changes given to him by the plant manager.Change leads to innovation. Innovation is change to better ways of doing things; new paradigms in thinking. A first line manager can be an innovation manager. It take courage to change paradigms, because you are stepping out of the traditional way of doing things. This is the first step in first line leadership; when, change leads to innovation.For example, I changed the way we sold appliances at the West Blocton office. These innovations lead to an increase in sales from $47,000 to $213,000 in two years. This sales increase required a new marketing paradigm. My Vice President questioned some of the innovative processes; because, other mangers did not know how to do them. He did not think that was fair.Here is the difference between a caretaker manager and an innovation manager. For example: if a company hires a caretaker manager for a cemetery, they mainly want someone to make sure all the processes work. The grass is cut regularly. The hedges are trimmed. The grounds keepers perform all the burial routines. The cemetery is open at sunrise and closed at sunset.What would they get if they hired an innovation manager? This innovation manager would perform all the routine duties. This manager knows how to manage a cemetery. But, in addition, this manager might make innovative changes. Install lighting so the cemetery could be open at night. Fireworks on the 4th of July. Have spring and Fall fairs. Companies that hire this innovation manager you might not be happy with these innovations; and, the innovation manager would not be happy if the innovations were not made. Companies should not hire an innovation manager, if they want a caretaker manager. The innovation manager might make the cemetery a lively place.But, remember, innovation leads to more successful change. A change that may preserve a department or company’s future. Companies’ need both types of managers; and, both management styles are valuable.Innovation leads to success. Innovation gives you a chance to be the best. Innovation sets you apart from other first line managers. Innovators find new ways of doing traditional processes. They create new paradigms that lead to their department and company’s success.Here is what innovation might feel like. I and our division supervisors formulated a new training system. This program is to replace the traditional corporate training program. My manager approved the process because he had faith in my ability. Our new training requires the employees to take an active part in training for a new computer dispatch and order management program. Our training program is only four hours instead of the traditional corporate 8 hours.The day before we were to start or training classes; my manager called me on the radio. He asked me,” was I sure the training course will work?” I told him I am confident the training is more effective than that being done by corporate trainers. He then told me the corporate team would be in the class watching me. If they did not like the program, “They were going to jerk the training from under me.”
The new way of training was very effective. It saved our company over $18,000. But, more importantly our employees were trained better and more effectively.The point is, trust leads to faith; faith leads to action; action leads to change; change leads to innovation; and innovation leads to success.The first line manager must be aware; the start of effective management begins with trust. There is one destroyer of trust; dishonesty. I was truthful with the motel manager. This gave him trust in me; and, eventually, led to my success as a first line manager.Most important, remember, trust leads to your success. Success leads to respect.
How a Sales Training Course Was Developed to Give a Whole Team Selling Success
How a sales training course, with some unique techniques, was developed to give each member of an average team an effective process and selling success.The new sales manager was introduced to the existing team at their monthly meeting. The team of 15 field sales people were a mixed bag of industry veterans that had been around forever, and younger people who had moved into selling from other parts of the company. There were a couple of salesmen and women that had sold in other markets, and some with C.V.s that showed a long a list of selling related roles such as account management and company representatives.After the introductions the new manager wanted to get a feel for the level of sales skills the team had. In a conversational style, the manager asked questions that would highlight the team’s knowledge and experience. The idea was to assess their sales skills and the manager would then provide the sales training courses that would increase each individual’s sales results and make the team successful.After asking questions and discussing the sales process that each of the team used, the manager discovered the following:Very few of the sales team had an effective sales process that took the prospect from first contact to closing the sale. One of the more mature team members said they had received only one sales training course in their 20 years with the company.Each sales person on the team had one way of selling, and their lack of sales skills meant there was no flexibility in their sales pitches. If what they did didn’t work they lost the sale, and then blamed the company, the product, or even the prospect.Sales introductions focused on telling the prospect that they would try to offer them a cheaper deal than the one they currently had. Sales questions were poor and did not highlight real customer needs. They established the details of what the customer currently had, but not what they really wanted.All the sales presentations were based on price. The aim of all the sales presentations to prospects was to beat the current supplier’s and the competitor’s prices. Despite the team’s many years in sales they had not had effective sales training on how to sell to a prospect’s needs. The team talked about features and benefits but didn’t know how to use them to sell.Sales objections were answered with prepared replies that came from their own experience and they had no real process for dealing with objections.You would expect the sales manager to have been surprised, and disappointed, at his new team’s lack of sales ability. Here was a team of people who had been in sales for many years but did not know or understand the sales process. You might think the manager would feel there was a massive uphill struggle ahead to turn this team into consistent target achievers. But the experienced manager had seen it all before. It’s an unfortunate fact that many people in sales have not had the benefit of effective training. There are sales teams around the world in exactly the same situation as this one. Some have had sales training, but it either hasn’t worked or they haven’t taken the techniques on board. Others haven’t received sales training. Many sales people don’t know what they don’t know, they are unconsciously incompetent. It isn’t their fault and it can quickly be fixed.Instead of feeling negative about the new team the manager used a sales training course that covered all the sales skills needed to build a successful selling process. The course used a step by step guide so that all sales people could learn, and fully understand, the professional sales skills presented. What made the course different was a unique set of exercises that helped each person to build their own successful selling process one stage at a time.It started with a sales introduction, that grabbed the prospect’s attention, and then used special motivation techniques to move them through to the next stage, sales questions. The clear instructions, and unique exercise program, showed every person on the team how to structure their sales questioning to get all the prospect’s real needs. Then the sales presentation section used a technique that really explains features and benefits, and how to use them for selling success. The sales presentation gently led into an easy closing technique, which meant there was no need to use trick closes or hard sell techniques. One of the most effective parts of the sales training course was the sales objection section. A four step process that was easy to use in real sales situations.The sales training course worked so well because it had been developed by the sales manager while training and coaching real sales people in the field. These were not complicated classroom sales skills, which had obviously not worked with many of the team in the past. This was sales training that had been developed and proven with working sales people, selling to real buyers, and each individual on the team used the course content to achieve selling success. The result was that each team member had an effective sales process, in their own words, and unique to their products and services.
Get Your Trademark With Search, Classes and Registration
In every country now it seems to get some over strict rules for corporate sector. For developing countries like for India, China, Singapore and many more that involves in export and import are compulsory to follow all types of business rules and regulations. These countries comprise wide range of corporate sectors offer different types of products and services to the world market. In this all world leading companies usually hire the services of business law companies that facilitate all types paper work and other business legal solutions to these business houses at the international level. There are many business companies that offer all these types business law services to corporate sector of different level. Among the different services trademark search India, federal trademark search, company registrations, company formations, company names search, trademark monitor, paralegal trademark, copyright registration, PCT filling in India, patent trademark attorney, brand registration, logo registration, trademark infringement and many more. All these services involve huge paper work that should be submitted to particular law office scattered to the different sections of the globe and it is very easy for these business law companies to come over with these legal services that must be follow by different business houses world wide.Among these services trademark registration is one of the most demanded and favorable legal services of the corporate sector. Trademark is a mark in the form of design, logo, attractive words or phase that represents a particular company in the world market. As per the rule one should not use / copied / misuse other’s trademark previously registered by the trademark register office. There are many rules and procedures to be follow for trademark registration including describing a mark to the trademark registration application, when it was first used along with classification and describing the services or products on which the mark will be used. Apart from these trademark search plays an important role for business houses where these business law companies facilitates the complete search for trademark with its legal availability. As in many cases there are chances to get trademark which is not legally available.Mainly during the time of trademark litigation, these business law firms played a vital role for the cheated company where they have to submit claim application and many other processes have to follow in order to get justice. Apart from these trademark watch and trademark classes are also offered by law firms under which the classification of trade mark has taken place. These classifications involve the types of services or products under which the trademark is to register. These legal firms assist you in selecting classification and deciding what type of products you have and under which classification your trademark is to be get registered. Besides these, there are many services that one should follow in order to get all types of benefits at the corporate level. It is recommended to follow as without following it is very difficult to run business smoothly across its boundaries in the long run.