Home Office – Emerging Possibilities

Advances in technology and the downsizing of organizations offer opportunities for micro enterprises particularly for extending professional services, apparel design, crafts manufacturing and sales, catering, computer programming, copy editing, financial planning, graphic art & design, insurance agency, interior decoration, interior design, event management, realting, research, tailoring, travel agency, tutoring, and data entry/typing. You can also offer home/office cleaning services, or an errand service. The more you know about the business that you may undertake, the better.

 Subcontracting is another option. Procure orders and sublet to experts.

 My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Be Inquisitive in Customer Service

Desire quality, efficiency, and precision

• Focus on the customer’s need for accuracy and efficiency by methodically outlining steps, processes, or details related to a product or service.
• Communication should be tied into facts, not feelings.
• Have details and information prepared in advance and be thoroughly familiar with them
• Approach encounters in a direct, businesslike, low-key manner.
• Avoid small talk and speaking about yourself.
• Ask specific open-ended questions about customers’ background or experiences related o the product or service.
• Present solutions in a sequential fashion stressing advantages, value, quality, reliability and price. Also, be prepared to point out and discuss disadvantages.
• Have documentation available to substantiate your claims.
• Don’t pressure customer decisions and follow through on promises.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures

Good Pricing Decisions

Pricing decisions draw on many areas of marketing expertise. It requires a comprehensive understanding of the forces that shape the market, including competitive  interactions, technology and consumer psychology. Sometimes these forces interact and are likely to put downward pressure on prices, such as substitutes, technological advances, price-driven competition, customer experience, and changes in internal focus, such as sales forecasts. Customer makes it difficult to raise prices, as repeat customers’ ability to perceive incremental value of a company’s product or service diminishes over time, especially as substitute or competitive products emerge. Increased internal expectations in the form of expected sales increases or new budgets can send prices on a downward spiral. Customer price sensitivity may also serve  to keep prices in check, especially in the presence of available competitive substitutes or among a company’s marginal customers.

Even in a deflationary economy, there are opportunities for keeping prices from dropping or even for raising prices. However, customers must perceive that these enhancements deliver a genuine, meaningful benefit, or they will continue to seek lower cost alternatives.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Business Financial Strategy

Financial strategy examines the financial implications of corporate and business-level strategic options and identifies the best financial course of action. It can also provide competitive advantage through a lower cost of funds and a flexible ability to raise capital to support a business strategy. Financial strategy usually attempts to maximize the financial value of the firm.

The trade-off between advancing the desired debt-to-equity ratio and relying on internal long-term financing via cash flow is a key issue in financial strategy. Many small and medium-sized companies try to avoid all external sources of funds in order to avoid outside entanglements and to keep control of the company within the family. Many believe that only by financing through long-term debt can a corporation use financial leverage to boost earnings per share, thus raising stock price and the overall value of the company. Higher debt levels not only deter takeover by other firms (by making the company less attractive), but also leads to improved productivity and improved cash flows by forcing management to focus on core businesses.

A very popular financial strategy is the leveraged buy out—a company is acquired in a transaction financed largely by debt—usually obtained from a third party, such as an insurance company or an investment banker. Ultimately the debt is paid with money generated from the acquired company’s operations or by sales of its assets. The acquired company, in effect, pays for its own acquisition. Management of the leveraged buy out is then under tremendous pressure to keep the highly leveraged company profitable. Unfortunately the huge amount of debt on the acquired company’s books may actually cause its eventual decline by focusing management’s attention on short-term matters.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Glass Ceiling

Glass ceiling is a term used to reflect why women and minorities aren’t more widely represented at the top of today’s organizations. The glass ceiling is not, however, synonymous with “classic” discrimination. Rather, the glass ceiling is indicative of “institutional and psychological practices, and the limited advancement and mobility of men and women of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.”

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Personal Selling: Two Approaches

Personal Selling: Two Approaches

Many American companies do not put nearly enough effort into direct, personal communication. Japanese success in displacing the US as Saudi Arabia’s leading supplier is instructive. Japanese exporters and small teams to meet with Saudi importers: Japanese exporters; they go to Saudi workshops, travel to secondary towns, and meet with sub-agents. The Americans, on the other hand, invite all their Saudi agents together for a luncheon, do not have private meetings, do not get their hands dirty, and never travel to secondary towns—they tend to stick to the three market centers. Saudis complain that US effort is misdirected: American personnel devote infinitesimal detail to making advance arrangements for visiting executives, going so far as to specify rooms overlooking a certain view from the hotel.

Japanese firms supplement their direct, personal efforts with heavy local advertising. They use gifts generously in product introductions, and warrantees on Japanese consumer electronics range up to three years. To carry out this business, Japanese trading companies have large staffs of professional international marketers who have been cultivated since graduation from a Japanese international trading university, schooled in English and Arabic, and rotated worldwide as international trading specialists.

Compared to most other cultures, particularly non-Western. Americans are extraordinarily preoccupied with the tangible aspects of a product. They round up all their sales agents and give a product presentation instead of putting their energies into the more important component of international marketing—people. In American and only a few other countries it is normal to do business from a distance, between strangers, by mail or telephone.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Creating a Professional Persona

Your persona is how you appear to your readers. Demonstrating the following characteristics will help you establish an attractive professional persona:

• Cooperativeness: Make clear that your goal is to solve a problem, not advance your own interests.
• Moderation: Be moderate in your judgments. The problems you are describing will not likely spell doom for your organization, and the solution you propose will not solve all company’s problems.
• Fair-mindedness: Acknowledge the strengths of opposing points of view, even as you offer counter-arguments.
• Modesty: If you fail to acknowledge that you don’t know everything, someone else will be sure to volunteer that insight.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Women at Workplace

Traditionally, stress-related health problems have been considered a masculine phenomenon. Heart attacks, stomach ulcers, burnout, and strokes were all considered diseases of men in the workplace, and indeed are the reasons why elderly widows outnumber wid-owners by almost five to one. However, with the equal responsibilities women are taking at work now, they are also being exposed to at least equal amounts of stress. If anything, in fact, stress levels faced by career women can be considerably greater than those levels imposed on men.

While women are being given equal hiring opportunities and equal rates of promotion to the middle management levels, they seem to encounter a “glass ceiling” preventing their climb up the corporate ladder. In other words, they have been granted equal access, but not equal ascent. In fact, only 2% of top management in major corporations is female. This reflects a modest advance of women in selected fields such as financial services, telecommunications, retailing, advertising, public relations, and publishing.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Strategic Sales Program

The activities and influences involved in formulating a strategic sales program requires a five major sets of decisions:

1. How can the personal selling  effort best be adapted to the company’s environment and integrated with other elements of the firm’s marketing strategy? In sum, what should be firm’s personal selling strategy?
2. How can various types of potential customers best be approached, persuaded, and serviced? In other words, what account management policies should be adopted?
3. How should the sales force be organized to call on and manage various types of customers as effectively and efficiently as possible?
4. What level of performance can each member of the sales force be expected to attain during the next planning period? This involves forecasting demand  and setting quotas and budgets.
5. In view of the firm’s account management policies and demand forecasts, how should the sales force be deployed? How should sales territories be defined? What is the best way for each sales person’s time to be allocated within a territory?

The policies and plans involved in such a program must take into account the influences and constraints imposed by the external environment. The demands of potential customers and the actions of competitors are two obvious environmental factors.

In addition to customers and competitors, other environmental factors such as energy shortages, technical advances, government regulations,  and social concerns can  affect a company’s sales policies and plans.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

Going Global

Besides generating additional revenue, firms are expanding their operations outside their home country to gain other benefits, including new insights into consumer behavior, alternative distribution strategies, and advance notice of new products. By setting up foreign offices and production facilities, marketers may learn new marketing techniques and gain invaluable experience. Global marketers are typically well-positioned to compete effectively with foreign competitors.

A method used by international marketers before entering foreign markets is to conduct transcontinental product testing. Since firms must perform the marketing functions of buying, selling, transporting, storing, standardizing and grading, financing, risk taking, and obtaining market information in both domestic and global markets, some may question the wisdom of treating international marketing as a distinct subject. After all, international marketing is marketing; a firm performs the same functions and works toward the same objectives in domestic or international marketing.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.