Selection of Dealers

• The company does not advertise for new dealers. Whenever the need to appoint a new dealer for an area is felt the word is spread around. This is being used as the type of dealer who sell pumps and motors are mostly concentrated in a locality in every town or city
• The interested dealers are asked to present before the branch manager and the group marketing manager as to how they would be able to serve the company
• The selection is then done on the basis of following criteria:

1. Financial Strength: The capability of the dealer to be able to hold sufficient stock as per the potential of the area, both in the present and in the future, and whether he will be able to pay the companies dues in time.
2. Manpower: the strength of the workforce for handling sales, delivery, store handling, after sales service etc. the quality of the workforce in terms of educational qualifications, technical competency, and experience is also seen.
3. Contacts: As the business for these types of products is done on  the basis of contacts that form a major basis for selection and include the present customers of the dealers, experience in dealing with such customers, and overall contacts in the society
4. Floor space: Depending on the quantity of products to be stocked for the targeted sales, the floor space of the godown should be sufficient and located close to the market
5. Location: Location and ambiance of the outlet are not important.

• Feedback from the market is obtained through the market network and the present dealer network. The feedback is sought for things like authenticity of the claims and the reputation of the person to be appointed.
• Appointment is given to the elected dealers after they give a security deposit. Every dealer is required to make a deposit with the company, which works out to roughly around three months of expected sales.

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.

Focusing Process Improvement

Few customers like to have to wait because your system is obviously not functioning effectively or a breakdown has occurred. Rightfully so, they view their time as valuable. It is unfair to expect them to patiently wait,. Such defects should be handled when the customer is not present. Service to the customer should be seamless. They should get great service and never have to worry about your problems or breakdowns in your process. When breakdowns do occur, they should be fixed quickly and the customer relationship smoothed over. Additionally, it is important that customers will react differently in different situations.

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.

Talking about Bookkeeping

Everyone knows intuitively, if not experientially, that good bookkeeping is good business. If you don’t keep track of your business’s money matters—what comes in and what goes out—you will be in the dark as to how well or poorly your business is doing, and hence how well or poorly you’re handling certain aspects of the business. After all numbers do not lie. If they indicate that all is well, you’ll be able to capitalize on your success by, if nothing else, continuing to do with confidence whatever you’re doing right. If the numbers reveal that all is not well, you will be able to take appropriate measures to solve problems which if left unchecked could land you in failure zone. Just as with certain physical diseases, early detection means early cure and increased chance of survival. Lastly, it goes without saying that slipshod recordkeeping can cost you time, anxiety and even money when tax time rolls around. In sum, while its understandable that people are inclined to avoid and neglect bookkeeping matters, its fundamentally inexcusable.

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.

Tariff Barriers

Different nations handle tariff barriers differently. A country may have a single tariff system for all goods from all sources. This is called a uni-linear or single-column tariff. Another type of tariff is the general-conventional tariff. This tariff applies to all nations except those that have tariff treaties (or a convention to that effect) with a particular country. A tariff may be worked out on the basis of a tax permit, called specific duty, or as percentage of the value of the item, which is referred to as ad velorem duty. Sometimes both specific and ad valorem duty may be levied may be levied on the same item as a combined duty.

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.

Building Ethical Safeguards

Managers and employees need guidance on how to handle day-t-day ethical situations; their own personal ethical compass may be working well, but they need to receive directional signals from the company. Several organizational steps can be taken to provide this kind of ethical awareness and direction.

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.

At Work or at Home

At work we feel in control. More importantly, our efforts are generally noticed and rewarded. Apart from financial rewards, we get ego gratification at work in countless other ways. Co-workers compliment us on our new outfits. Customers thank us for good service. The boss turns to us for help on an important contract because no one else can handle it as well.

At home, on the other hand, our good work may be taken for granted; we may be noticed only when we do things incorrectly.

With the frequent disparity between the ego-strokes received at home and at work, it’s hardly a wonder that more men and women than ever before are giving in to the siren call of their work, choosing to stay late at the workplace. It is for this reason that many workaholics frankly admit that they seldom need to be forced to work; they simply like to work, more than they like to spend time at home.

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.

Travel Stress

We travel to get to work, we travel during our work, and we travel to get to distant meetings. Travel comes in all forms: short and long timeframes and short and long distances. For most people, the commonest hurdle is the daily grind to and from work. This is most acute in large cities. The problems are truly international, but some of the ugliest and best-studied traffic jams are now everywhere.

The levels of stress that this brings are extremely significant. For those who handle it poorly, it can be damaging  to their health, and may even endanger the lives of others. Medically, we know that stress mechanisms all fire at once when the body identifies a crisis. Adrenaline pours out, the stomach shuts down, the pulse races, and the hair stands up on end. The blood pressure soars, muscles clench in spasms around the shoulder tips and jaw,  and primal aggressions rise, ready for fight or flight.

With immediate flight brings out of the question, more and more frustrated drivers are turning to the fight option—either inside their cars as they tip at the heels of slower drivers, or outside their cars, where they may stomp up and beat a dent into the roof of an offending vehicle. Even the mild and polite become aggressive when they strap themselves into their bumper cars to drive to work. This means they usually arrive late, enraged and spent before they even start to face the day’s stresses on the job.

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.

Organization Health

Implicit is a concept towards organizations that needs to be made explicit; namely, that we are viewing organizations as dynamic cooperative systems. Their survival involves change and adaption, as well as, economic performance and the distribution of  incentives to members.

The presentation is organized to help the exercise understand the dimensions of his job in contributing to organizational survival. We hold that the manager should have awareness of how organizations in general function, as well as, an understanding of the character of his specific organization. The organization is thus seen as a system with needs for its own security, stability, and continuity. Managers perform the functions of organizing, directing, and controlling within the system.

The criteria for judging managers (i.e., organizational health or effectiveness) are not measures such as performance, morale, lack of conflict, or profit per se. These are important but insufficient criteria. Rather, we have to evaluate managers in terms of the total dynamic system represented by the organization. In this framework, it is more important to judge managerial effectiveness upon the basis of how the organization handles its problems (i.e., adapts and changes to pressures), rather than whether or not it has problems.

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.

A Line Organization

A line organization is one in which there are direct two-way lines of responsibility, authority, and communication running from the top to the bottom of the organization, with all people reporting to only one supervisor. The most obvious example is the army, which has a clear line of authority going from general to colonel to major to lieutenant to sergeant to corporal to private. A private reports to a corporal, the corporal to a sergeant, and so on back up to the generals. A line organization has the advantages of having clearly defined responsibility and authority, of being easy to understand, and of providing one supervisor for each person. The principles of good organizational design are met.

Disadvantages include for being too flexible, of having few specialists or experts to advise people along the line, of having lines of communication that are too long, and of being unable to handle the complex decisions involved in an organization with thousands of sometimes unrelated products and literally tons of paperwork.

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.

Service Culture

Any policy, procedure, aspect, action, or inaction of an organization contributes to the service culture. This includes employee appearance, the way employees interact with customers, and their knowledge, skill and attitude levels. It also encompasses the physical appearance of the organization’s facility, equipment, and any other aspect of  the organization with which the customer comes into contact.

Service culture has following elements:

• Service philosophy:  Direction or vision of the organization that gives you day-to-day interactions with the customer.
• Employee roles and expectations: Specific communications or measures that indicate what is expected of you in customer interactions and define how your performance will be evaluated.
• Policies and procedures: Guidelines that define how various situations or transactions will be handled. These can help or hinder service delivery depending on your flexibility in interpreting and applying them.
• Management support: Availability of management to answer questions and assist you in customer interactions, when necessary.
• Motivators and rewards: Monetary, material items or feedback that prompts you to continue to deliver service and perform at a high level.
• Training: Instruction or information provided through a variety of techniques that teach knowledge or skills, or attempt to influence your attitude toward excellent service delivery

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.