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Issue 44 |
June 03, 2009
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10 Ways to Make a Difficult Conversation a Little Easier
Effectively making your point in dealing with employees takes skill and forethought. While you need to deliver a message the employee understands, you also need to do it in a way that does not berate or anger the person. Some managers seem to have natural people skills that enable them to coach, reprimand, and motivate employees with little or no training, but most have to learn those traits. There are many excellent management books that can help. This issue's link will give you 10 suggestions that you can implement even before you read a book on the subject.
Invest 10 minutes and take your first step toward feeling more confident the next time you are faced with a difficult personnel issue. Click here to read 10 Ways to Make a Difficult Conversation a Little Easier.
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Inspirational Words of the Day
"
Unless you have definite, precise, clearly set goals, you are not going to realize the maximum potential that lies within you.
”
- Zig Ziglar, author and motivational speaker.
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Are you a dreamer? Can you conjure up a vision of your business as you would like it to be a month, a year, five years, or even a decade from now, or is that simply impossible because of all the influences outside of your control? If you can't dream it, chances are good that what you get will be the result of dumb luck or accidents. Without good goals, you put your life and the future of your business on autopilot. Where you end up may well be a very different place than where you want to be.
Goals don't have to be set in stone. Conditions change constantly. As they do, goals and the actions you take to realize them need adjustments. However, that is no excuse for not establishing them at all.
Here are a few steps that will help you get started:
Define your goals, the steps you must achieve to realize your dreams. Commit them to writing. They should be short and realistic.
Establish short term goals. These are the things that you want to accomplish in the weeks or months ahead that provide the cornerstones of your larger goals. Prioritize them by importance and the necessary sequence or timing as they relate to the larger goals.
Share your goals with those from whom you will need help. Sell them on your goals by showing them how your goals are also important to them.
Revel in your accomplishments, even as small achievements are realized, Recognize the contribution of those who helped.
Still not sure where to start? Do you have sales goals? This is an excellent and exciting goal to establish. First, develop a “dream” sales projection by month for the next five years, in writing. Now think about what you have to do to achieve those numbers - buy more or better vehicles, acquire new customers, generate greater sales volume from existing customers, change the company culture, add or change sales personnel, incentivize sales and/or production staff, improve production facilities…it can be a lengthy list. Now work on the “requirements” list you just built. Start with the most basic and work up from there. As the months go by, adjust your goals and review the actions you need to take to continue to grow. Don’t give up. Constantly reach for your projections. You will be surprised what you and your team can do.
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Checkmate Tip: Deciding What to Keep
What drives your decisions regarding when to scrap a vehicle and which, if any, parts to keep? Hopefully, your data plays a part in the decisions much the same way as it should guide your buying decisions. Checkmate® compiles a vast amount of data for every part and vehicle you buy, plus a lot of information on vehicles you may never have purchased.
The Advanced Management Scrapping Report (Checkmate 5,12,11,R,S and Classic V12,11,R,S) presents the pertinent data for a selected vehicle in way that suggests which parts to keep and parts that may be under or over priced based on their sales-to-request ratio.
Before you build scrapping reports, always build an updated Part Analysis Report (Checkmate 5,5 or Classic V7). You do not need to print this report. Build it for the period duration you prefer and run it through the current date. The time period of the last 90 days will pick up your most current request and sales activity. Some people prefer to use 180 days or even a full year. By extending the time frame you will include more activity in the report, which may result in your scrapping report suggesting more "saves" than a shorter period report will. These additional parts will likely, on average, take longer to sell. The time-frame decision has trade-offs which require that you apply your own expertise based on your business model and personal preferences to select the period that works best for you.
Once the updated Part Analysis Report is created, you can begin requesting a scrapping report for each vehicle you are evaluating. Simply enter the stock number as requested. When your list has been built, tag each report you want to print. These reports require wide "green bar" style paper for proper formatting. You can also print them with a laser printer or "pass though" printing with the form size reduced to print on standard paper. These reports show a lot of data. Keep in mind that when they are reduced to normal 8.5" by 11" paper, the font size may be too small for production employees if you want them to work from the printed copy.
Click here to see a sample Advanced Management Scrapping Report.
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©2009 Car-Part.com. All rights reserved.
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