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Lately I met some enterprise instructors for a self-run workshop on enterprise enhancement. Our aim was to discover how we help SME clients to strengthen their companies, distinct and evaluating our techniques. As we distributed our customer encounters, we discovered there were primary four techniques that we adhere to with versions for a particular little business:

Moore’s Law

Gordan Moore discovered that there are styles in technology: IT elements efficiency increases every two years; the price of technological innovation sections as the snowballing sales double; and the number of World Wide Websites increases every nine months.
If you look out for the market styles that will effect your goods and services, you can concentrate your enterprise enhancement initiatives where the styles will help you to strengthen what you offer your clients.

Kaizan

Kaizan categories break down your enterprise procedures into elements that you can observe for efficiency. Within the dimensions, the group search for circumstances of best efficiency that if implemented generally could strengthen the efficiency of the whole enterprise.
You could stretch this by searching for out best methods not just in your own organization by in your providers and clients. When you have found how other do a procedure faster, more cost-effective and to a better conventional, you apply this conventional to strengthen your own efficiency.

Continuous improvements

Total Quality Administration looks for yearly changes using the abilities and information of your whole group. Small categories concentrate on a particular procedure, discover how it works, gather thoughts to try out and then adhere to the changes that strengthen the procedure.
Thus you could focus on particular areas that you want to change this year and motivate your personnel to recommend changes. Each recommendation is handled as an research run as a venture (with a set objective, set start and end times, a cost and attempt funds and open reporting). Where the enhancement is proven to be effective, it then becomes part of the recognized exercise.

Groves corollary

Andy Groves considered “only the weird survive” so he designed very competitive demands on his organization before his competition did.
In this strategy, you check out your competition regularly, check their efficiency levels, determine their items and strengthen before they do. A success is when you acknowledge new possibilities and create the functionality to make use of it before others do.

The key concept that we selected from our teaching getting together with is that to depart your competition behind, you need to shell out attempt and energy into increasing your enterprise.
The method that meets particular clients is determined by the people engaged – whether they want to produce their own changes, be motivated by the success of others or check out what is developing in other companies and businesses.
So one more concern is “How will you go forward?”

The best business improvement training programs leave participants with a continuing ability to surface the reality in their organizations and painstakingly work out detailed solutions that satisfactorily answer all the “How” questions.

Research shows that eighty percent of learning takes place outside the classroom. If this is true, it means that the most effective business improvement training programs will be designed to improve learning and execution outside of the classroom where the participants will spend the vast majority of their time.

Here are some ways to improve the effectiveness of your time with executive learning participants.

1. Make Your D.A.R.E. Explicit

D.A.R.E. stands for “Detail And Reality Extraction”. Make it clear to participants that every training program is business improvement training, and that business improvement is about increasing the “signal-to-noise” ratio in all business competencies – about finding the reality and creating detailed action plans for which there can be accountability. This is the heart of execution, and a culture of execution must be at the heart of business improvement effort.

2. Make it Project-Based

Many learning organizations have fallen into the bad habit of putting their leaders and staff through generic training programs that are not connected to business outcomes. That is a wasteful and energy-draining mistake. Take pains to design your seminars around projects (or desired outcomes) in your business. This type of learning is infused with energy and relevance.

When learning needs are connected to the needs of the organization, you have a greater opportunity to pool the creative energies of the participants and improve knowledge retention from the program.

3. Emphasize Tools

By tools, I mean anything from process improvement programs like Six Sigma, TOC, and others, to workshops on specific capabilities like software applications and programs that are used within your business, and even skills training programs targeted at the specific needs of your business (i.e. Workshop on “Selling to National Accounts”).

4. Use Visual Aids

Use visual aids to help explain or clarify complex concepts and ideas and to show the relationships between ideas. Research shows that humans process visual information many times faster than text. Funny pictures on a PowerPoint slide for instance can liven up your presentation while also making your point.

Use tools like webs (visual maps that show how different categories of information relate to one another), pictures and charts. Put in the effort to supplement the oral presentation of particularly important information with visual aids. Studies have shown that we retain 20% of what we see, 20% of what we hear, but 50% of what we both see and hear.

5. Weave Communications Skills Improvement into Curriculum Design

An organizational culture that emphasizes deep dialogue is the greatest pre-requisite to achieving significant business improvement. By building a continuous emphasis on communication in all your training programs, you will create a powerful embedded competitive advantage. Infuse your workshops, seminars and facilitation sessions with:

* Lessons on Speaking and Writing Concisely
* Lessons on Effective Questioning Skills
* Lessons on Effective Coaching and Facilitation
* Lessons on Active Listening
* Lessons on Difficult Communications & Conflict Resolution
* Lessons on Effective Teamwork

6. Monitor The Environment

Environmental factors play a significant role in the pace and flow of communication during learning situations. Make sure that the main elements of the physical environment support learning. Within your constraints, you can adjust seating arrangements or develop “themed” programs with the relevant visual props.

You can make it active and engaging without spilling over into pure entertainment.

7. Incorporate Social Learning and Interactivity

One of the well established principles of learning acceleration is that social interaction greatly improves mastery and retention of new knowledge. Breaking up your class into small groups for brainstorming, analyzing or judging ideas is a great way to secure greater gains from group interaction.

Business Improvement – Protect and Grow your Business

USE THE POWER OF HINDSIGHT
Business people often say, “I am going through a tough time right now, I need more business”. If they need improved results now then they probably required urgent change or improvement some time ago. Improved results such as sales growth will very often follow if you have implemented the right changes or taken some action. However, it is rare for success to be instant. Businesses often require long lead times before they see clear results from change or action. Some may have instant ‘wins’ but it is very rare to see significant instant results. So, business leaders need to be able to make the right changes at the right time in order to deliver benefits ongoing into the future. Here, hindsight would be very useful; it’s definition is ‘wisdom after the event’ and as they say, ‘it’s a wonderful thing’!
So, you need to have wisdom after the event before it has happened, to realise its power.

Planning:
On the basis that businesses cannot always change the current position immediately, they need to plan ahead to avoid poor performance or to mitigate negative market impact and so on. Avoid the typical business response to immediate problems which is often to re organize (too late), do something different (for the sake of it), focus (on the wrong things), blame people (for poor performance) and so on. Business leaders need to have a Change Plan. This not only sets out what you will focus on for the next 12 months but also how you will respond as a business when you experience the need for change. It will help you to prioritise, what to change and when. As the WHEN is often the hardest part to judge you will need to focus even harder on it. You will need to set and measure the indicators which will tell you when it is time to take action.
My friend ran her business according to what she saw as the constant elements; costs, sales order book, activities, required capital outlay, salaries, taxes etc. Then she expected much of the same in the next year -plus a bit. Nothing wrong with this in principle- it’s what most business owners do. What could she have done differently using the power of hindsight?
1. She could have added a factor of ‘unknown’ into all of her figures, say + and – 5%. This is not just growth but an ‘extra over’ factor against all of her figures. Then she could have challenged herself how she would cope with the various swings. What could she do differently to avoid the peaks and troughs of such a change in the coming year? She did some of this but perhaps did not go far enough.
2. Then, she would have needed to plan her actions to cope with these swings. What would she do? How would she prioritise her time/efforts? How would she measure if the swings were going to affect her? When would she need to change the way she does things? In the majority of cases she could have implemented modest changes there and then which would have mitigated the swings (if they ever happened).
3. Then she could have imagined a big swing – one which could put you out of business. Such as an unprecedented tax rise, a major slump in sales, her largest client going out of business, a major new player in her market. You get the picture. What might this calamity be and what she might do about it?
4. Having thought about a business threatening change, she could have looked at insulating her business from it as far as would be practicable. She can look at her wider options such as, closing her business down, changing her business radically, doing other things, finding ways to spread her risk. At least she could have been ready for the consequences and saved herself a lot of heartache and self-doubt…and would have known when to act.
5. My friend did not have a ‘plan B’..I would recommend a ‘C’ and ‘D’ too. Look to the horizon, see what might come and be ready for it.

Not only is it good to know good topics for social networking, but with small business marketing you need to know how to create a good post. The best posts will be informative and they will pull the reader in. they will also be grammatically correct, as there is no reason to let quality slip just because this isn’t a sales letter. Also, make posts for your demographic. If you sell to college kids, include some college humor; if you sell to mothers, your posts should be sensitive to their needs and their children.

Another thing to think about is over posting. In this realm of small business marketing, most people think that quantity is the name of the game. It’s not. Quality, that should be your guiding principle. If you over post, people will stop following your account and you may receive other penalties as well. Now, onto the 10 best post topics.

1) Tips and How

This gives you a chance to educate the customer, which can increase sales numbers. Not only that, but people love learning things, so this will increase your readership.

2) Company Achievements and Awards

Has your company recently received an award for outstanding customer satisfaction, or great sales numbers? This is a great way to jump ahead of the competition and thank your customers for making you the best company.

3) Industry Related News

Is something going on with your company or a topic that relates to your company? Sharing this can intrigue and inform your followers.

4) Blog Posts

Most companies have a blog, but they are worried about telling people about their blog with their social networking account. Add a link to your latest blog post, so all of your followers can easily stay in touch with your business.