Management is the process of getting activities completed efficiently and effectively with and through other people. Management styles come is all shapes and sizes. Management is not leadership. The internal and external environments have influences on management behaviors. Management styles range from a transactional to a charismatic manager style with most somewhere in the middle. A transactional manager is about the numbers, the charismatic manager creates free-style agendas, and a team approaches where there is an intuitive commitment to the goals of the organization. The exception is micro-managers or for the article the stymie manager.Simplistically explained, a stymie manager cannot understand the vision of the organization, has personality issues ranging from a lack of self-confidence to insecurity issues about his or her position. A business dictionary definition is a close, detailed, and often de-motivating style that scrutinizes employees’ work on a continuing basis.Examples of a stymied management are, a task is assigned with little or unclear directions. Once a project is assigned, there are constant reminders or question of when the project will be complete and there is an onslaught of questions of the current progress. There is constant interruptions with new tasks, overriding the old tasks in making this new priority.One would be remiss if we never fallen victim or acted in a micro-management style. Different triggers cause people to change his or her style, resulting in acting in a micro-manager style but as intelligent workers, we need to know and understand the reasons. Micro-management in some situations is necessary, but the overuse of micro managing is counterproductive. Knowing when to act as a micro-management and knowing when to change this style is to most a basic management requirement. If a manager is constantly in the micro-management mood there will be a lack of initiative, it creates apathy, it results in a substandard product, nobody learns anything, and there is little growth.Many people that encounter this style of management become frustrated and bogged down with work, spiraling out of control. In this situation, there are three alternatives one can do; 1) deal with it and hope this manager implodes, 2) find another job, or 3) develop a strategy that keeps the job in perspective and the boss off your back.Based on the three alternatives, if the answer is to develop a strategy one must first look into the mirror and understand the amount of emotional commitment necessary to turn the situation around. Once you come to grips with your own emotions and realize that to move forward there needs to be a resiliency required in meeting the responsibilities of the job. To build effective communication one can start by evaluating his or her listening skills. This could be hard based on past emotions and how information was filtered in the past but this will be important in changing the work behaviors. During communication exchanges with the manager do not be concerned about asking clarity questions, it is always the responsibility of the speaker to have the listener understands but in this case, the responsibility is yours. Generate a running list of the tasks with times of when initially asked and the follow up communications. This may be hard to accomplish, but it is essential to develop the data needed for when the moment is right in scheduling that one-on-one talk with your manager. Remember if you want to make a change, one needs to use facts and diplomacy.Once you have collected the data, the next step is to develop a plan much like a marketing or business plan that focuses on strategies to improve performance. The conversation with your manager, which is a sales pitch that cannot be attacking or adversarial but a presentation that sticks to the facts of the project and on the current work conditions. The focus is also on the facts that need to be shared at this meeting with referencing the key performance indicators and long-term goals.Knowing that a basic trait of a stymied manager is the need to be in charge, using opened ended questions and allowing the stymied manager to give his or her advice is critical because, you do not want to come across as the one in charge. Asking his or her opinions and direction throughout the conversation is critical, especially during the first few conversations with this new communication strategy. The goal is to show the manager you have his or her back and not trying to undermine or discredit his or her decisions.After building a better communication process, the next step is developing strategies to improve performance and meet the expectations of the job. A first step is taking a more proactive approach in over communicating more frequently in getting back to the manager with updates. This may be hard to accomplish at first but going to the manager first versus dealing with the onslaught of e-mails and phone calls, you eliminate answering these question when the manager wants, and you changed the communication requirement to meet your schedule. Another suggestion is to schedule a short meeting during the day in which you come with an agenda keeping the conversation on point and focused. Taking control of communications is important in reducing the nagging, which will improve your own performance and work attitude.The next step is to change the mind-set of the manager by developing a method of delegating results. An analogy would be a conductor of a band. The conductor writes the music and the musicians play the music.Remember that if your manager is successful, so are you, and whether your manager is a charismatic manager or a stymie manager, his or her success will be your success.
Stymied Management – Part of the Problem or Solution – You Decide
Why Outsource Your Marketing Strategy
Marketing is practically the most important way to improve your business in acquiring more customers. However, before you can achieve this, you will need to delegate your marketing strategy to the professionals. This will give you more time to focus on other aspects of your business. Instead of focusing on trying to keep up, focus your efforts on things that require your expertise as the owner and leave the other to the experts.You probably think that outsourcing to a marketing company would be expensive and it would be better to just do it yourself. But the truth is outsourcing will save you money, and not just that there are other benefits of outsourcing your marketing strategy that make it more advisable:· Experience – when outsourcing your marketing you can take advantage of the knowledge of best practices found within a marketing agency, a consolidated group of experts. Outsourced agencies will have experience in a variety of marketing operations and will understand what works best for businesses like yours. You will be buying into their wealth of expertise.· Flexibility – outsourcing your marketing is much more flexible than hiring staff and can be suited to your needs. For example, if your business is experiencing a “boom” stage, a larger budget can be injected into a marketing agency when required. Whereas, if you are going through a “bust” stage, marketing budgets can be reduced quickly to suit your business and you are not tied to a long-term company employee.· Professional Service – when outsourcing your marketing investing in a marketing professional is sometimes the best thing to do because you may not be getting all the benefits that are possible. Is the person being creative, strategically minded, customer centric, a professional graphic designer, knowledgeable in web development and aware of marketing legislation? You will probably not find these attributes entirely in one person, so when you are investing in a marketing agency you will have access to a team of individuals who specialize in each of these subjects, allowing you to get more value for your money.· Time Saving – with outsourced marketing, you are also likely to save a lot of time. Instead of sourcing, interviewing and training potential marketers, you can gain access to a team of professionals as passionate about your brand as you are.· Cost Saving – outsourcing is cheaper than the cost of hiring a full-time professional, and it allows you the benefits of an entire team of experts on an as-needed basis. This saves you company money and time that can be used for other tasks· Full Access – with the right team, you will get complete access to all your data and the services provided by the marketing company. There will be no hidden fees and the service will be provided with total transparency. This allows the company to run automated without having to worry about marketing initiatives.ConclusionInvesting in a marketing agency will not only save you time and money, but also allow your marketing activity to become bespoke to your business and give you access to a team of experienced marketing professionals.
Home Based Business Leads – How To Get What You’re Looking For
Are you looking for home based business leads, but don’t know where to look or for what you should be looking? In this article, I will outline the different types of home based business leads, tell you what you need to pay attention to, and how to decipher between the different leads to know which ones you should (and shouldn’t) buy.When it comes to home based business leads, there are a whole slew of options out there in the marketplace. While I am not a big fan of using these as your main source of list-building, income-generating leads, I am a fan of using purchased leads to build your phone skill set (so that you can dramatically increase your percentage of closes).With so many different types of home based business leads available, how do you know which ones will best work for you? Well, the first thing you need to be able to do is to understand the “math” associated with these leads as it pertains to your business.You need to figure out what the average value is of each distributor who comes on board into your business. Let me give you an example to show you how to come up with that number. Let’s assume that you receive $100.00 in commission when someone new joins your business, then you receive $20.00 per month for every month thereafter that this person stays on autoship. So if a person stayed on the book for five months, the average lifetime value would be $200.00 ($100.00 + ($20.00 x 5 months)).So using the above example, let’s assume the average lifetime value of each prospect in your business is $200.00. Well then if you were to spend $5.00 per lead, then you would need to close 1 in 40 of those leads to just break even. This is not a very likely scenario unless you are a seasoned veteran.Sticking with that same example, how much would it be reasonable for you to spend on leads? You would probably not want to spend much more than about $1.00 per lead. Spending that much per lead in this scenario would mean that you would need to close 1 out of every 200 leads to break even. This is a MUCH more reasonable scenario, even for someone who is just getting started in their business and is still working on getting “smooth” with prospects.With all of that said, to get home based business leads at that price, you’re probably looking at opportunity seeker leads that have aged at least a week or so. That’s okay. Start off with those. As your skill set improves — and you’re creating a marketing funnel where you’re walking prospects through a system from one step to the next and putting your whole marketing campaign in place — you can start to buy more expensive home based business leads or (better yet) start to generate your own leads.Generating your own home based business leads is your best long-term strategy. It is advantageous for you do for several reasons, the most important of which is that it gives you total control over your website, data capture page, the traffic going to those pages, the advertising variables and the follow-up emails going out to your list.Remember that your home based business leads will hopefully ultimately become part of your list — which is the most meaningful and valuable asset your business will ever possess. Done right, your list can lead to millions of dollars in revenue. So how you generate your home based business leads have bigger consequences than just the immediate ones.Your list is an asset that gives and gives and gives, and if you treat it right you are building and creating relationships no matter where your audience is located. That is why you want to generate your own home based business leads. This is how the top and most productive network marketers are quietly (and under the radar) creating big, wealth-producing organizations that put them at the top of their company leader boards.In conclusion, purchasing home based business leads is a great way to build your skill set, create a marketing funnel and learn what marketing is all about. From a longer term vision, though, it is paramount that you learn the art and science involved in getting people to reach out to you (become the hunted instead of the hunter). To get a step-by-step blueprint for how to create your own home based business leads, grab my FREE REPORT titled: “How To Create YOUR First 6-Figure Month In Network Marketing” by clicking on the link above.