Promoting Sales

First stage marketing strategies should focus on sales promotions that will attract immediate customers and selling methods that will ensure repeat business. First stage companies can also benefit from sales and promotion activities, but with a focus on short term rather than long term benefits. Ideas include:

1. Invite a local newspaper to write an article on some unique aspect of the company.
2. Invite television reporters to cover a special event sponsored by the company (fund raising drive, a banquet honoring an employee, or the introduction of snappy new product).
3. Start a charity book collection drive at local schools.
4. Sponsor a young people’s athletic team.
5. Sponsor a civic band or float in a local parade.
6. Donate materials, space, or services to community theater groups.
7. Sponsor a paper, glass, aluminum, or plastic recycling drive.
8. Get behind a social cause.
9. Donate used computers, office equipment, etc., to local schools, hospitals, or welfare agencies.

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.

Growing a Dream

It’s easy to dismiss someone else’s achievements with he or she “was lucky,” “had superior athletic ability,” “was born a genius,” “got in on the ground floor,” or, in some way, lucked into success.

But success, wealth, and happiness do not come from luck. All accomplishments stem from dreams courageous people convert into reality. The great structures we work in, the agricultural enterprises that feed us, the industries that entertain us, in the institutions that educate and inspire evolved from the ideas and dreams of productive individuals.

When you see a successful business, school, entertainment, or political institution, you are looking at an individual’s dream grown into reality. A happy family is made possible through creative dreaming.

Think of life as a garden.

Successful people are individuals who convert their dreams into services and products other people desire.

Growing a dream into success is like growing a garden. Six steps are involved:

1. Select your dream seed.
2. Prepare your mind to accept the seed.
3. Plant your dream seed.
4. Nourish your dream.
5. Focus your energy. Put “I will” to work.
6. Hire time to work for you.

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.

The Group and the Team

When interacting in a common cause, people can become a cohesive group. Understanding one another as individuals, being consciously sensitive to one another, and knowing how to aapt to individual peculiarities are what make a functioning group that will hold together. Common regard and the psychological benefits that group members derive from the association make group activity desirable and reasonable to achieve. Such a group, however, is not a team.

 A team is built primarily on the technical capabilities of its members working in pursuit of specific goals, only secondarily on attraction among the members as individuals.. the members of a team must be able to tolerate one another enough to work closely together. Beyond this, all the members must be committed to a common goal and the same set of procedures for achieving that goal.

 An athletic team does not wqin a game because the bunbers like to be together. It wins because it plays smart, knows how to play the game better than the opposition, avoids unnecessary errors, and pulls together as a coordinated unit. Camaraderie may grow out of mutual respect for one another’s abilities, but this is usually the result, not the purpose, of the team. Most certainly it is not the mechanism that makes the team succeed. The overall goal of a team is to win, and every member keeps this firmly in mind. But when you analyze how a game is won, you discover that it happens because all the players know what to do and how to coordinate their efforts.

 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, Line of Sight

Build a team that puts enthusiasm first

It makes no difference you do, you need the capable and enthusiast support of other people to reach your goals. To operate your own business, to move ahead in corporate life, to build an athletic team, or to win in politics, requires people to help you. In choosing these people, two qualities are important: ability and attitude.

Ability is important. To develop a great organization requires able people; to have a fine team means talented athletes must be recruited; and to design great buildings needs the contributions of able architects. To achieve any great result requires trained, skilled, and able people. Ability only measures what people can do; ability does not tell us what people will do. There is no multiple choice test that can measure desire or motivation.

Attitude is more important than ability. Invariably, people who made it to the top are at the top of the attitude scale. Ability is important but never as essential as a positive, committed attitude. Ability is only potential power. It has no value until turned on.

Positive people will continue to improve; negative people at best will only hold their own.

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 contact www.asifjmir.com, Line of Sight