First Step Marketing

You and your clients

The customer is always right. A cliché or the truth? In my case, my students are my clients. If I fail to maintain good relations with them, I am out of a job. This applies to all of us.

Put your clients or customers first by putting the ‘you’ attitude into practice. Place the other person’s needs and problems before yours. For example, in a transaction deal you may want to say, “You must pay your bill by September otherwise we’ll cut off your credit.” If you have a ‘you’ attitude, you would rather say, “In order to protect your credit rating, you should pay by September the first.”

When a customer forgets to give full information on a form, you might want to retort, “You haven’t filled in your invoice number.” A ‘you’ attitude would incline you to say, “Please fill in your invoice number so that we can send the order to you as soon as possible.” Simple courtesy, but it makes all the difference.

Action points

• Remember the ABC of business courtesy. Shake hands and smile. Don’t leave a client hanging around your office like a spare wheel. Introduce him or her to your colleagues. Give the newly acquainted parties some information to help the conversation along.
• Take care to put clients at ease during luncheon meetings or when entertaining. If you think that male clients might be uncomfortable with a woman paying the bill, arrange previously with the restaurant and have them charge you.

Help! I’m the boss

Congratulations! You have been promoted and you now have your own team or work group to manage. But once the euphoria has worn off, proceed with care. Pave a smooth road to the top rather than throwing rocks under your wheels and those of your staff.

There is still a lot of resistance to the idea of women as bosses. Male subordinates may find a female boss an undesirable novelty, especially when you are outpacing them. They may mutter, “We need a man for this job.” Secondly, there is flack from other women too at times. Older women may say, “I’d much rather work for a man.” Your peers may wonder, “How did she get the job?”

Finally, there may even be some resistance from a most unexpected quarter — yourself. It can take a while before you are at ease with your new role. What will be your style? How do you strike the happy balance? Not too soft, too nice, too harsh or too bossy.

In the next section we look at some of the problems that you may encounter in your first 100 days and at ways to handle them.

Coping with friends

One thing is certain. Nothing will ever be the same again. The sooner you accept this, the better. All your relationships in the workplace will be fundamentally altered by your promotion. This includes those close personal relationships that you have enjoyed with office friends.

You are now required to give them instructions and supervise their work. Here are some important hints for coping with the transition from peer to boss:

• DO break the news gently. If possible, tell your friends about your promotion yourself. Do it in private. Don’t apologise for your new job or defend your promotion.
• DON’T expect the worst. Give your friends the benefit of the doubt. Assume that they are as pleased as you are (even if they’re not!). If you and a friend have been jockeying for the same post, be tactful about your triumph. Don’t rub it in.
• DO base your friendship on mutual interests other than work. Keep social get-togethers for after hours. Your new position will require you to keep your own counsel about many matters which you can no longer share freely. So steer clear of topics or situations where you will be tempted to discuss other members of staff or divulge information.
• DON’T allow friends to use your friendship for personal gain. If they try, cool it. You have to be fair to everyone in your new team. There’s no room for favouritism. Don’t be snobbish or distant, just strictly professional. In no time your hard-to-convince friends will be saying, “I wouldn’t work for anyone else.”

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)
Working effectively with “others” continue…

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 21st, 2008 at 2:48 am and is filed under Business Management, Career Management, Jobs, Promotion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.