Chinese Business and Styles of Negotiation Tips

By Tomas Donovan

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Not every country is the same, which is something you would understand from a passing glance. China is one country that many have yet to fully grasp and understand, but it is sometimes necessary to try. When in the business world, a person will visit a long list of countries in their career. One that is usually high on the list is China, which does have a different way of going about business. From the appearance to etiquette and manners, professionals should know how to present and hold themselves while in the country. This can make or break a meeting because, just like every other country, their first thoughts of you will stick with them for a long time to come. All professionals must know what it is Chinese businesspersons look for when in a meeting, the styles of negotiation used, and what they look for when it comes to first impressions. You can ask around, look online, or even use a business Chinese book to get at least a little info on what it is they want. When negotiating with Chinese a cultural perspective is needed, it is what their country is about, after all.

Of course, one of the most important aspects to any business meeting is your appearance. While it is alright to wear jeans and casual clothes around town, that is not something to do in the meeting itself, which most people are used to and already know. China is more conservative than some other countries, though, so it is important to know the type of dress clothes to wear. Men and women both need to stick with subtle colors. Nothing too fancy or out there, just something comfortable and quiet. Women must remember that, in China, the men may find a businesswoman wearing revealing clothing offensive. This is a more conservative country and culture. Every businessperson must remember that when negotiation with Chinese a cultural perspective is very important, in both how you act and dress.

If you are already dressed for success, then it is all up to manners and how you act during the meeting. Stay formal, of course, and remain cautious of what you do. Some items and actions that are average in other countries might come as offensive in China. A business Chinese book would usually list the items, actions, colors, and several other "need to knows" to keep your meeting going and well. You must know the styles of negotiation used, by both the single business and the culture as a whole, if you want to make it. While there are some things that stick with business in every culture, like arriving on time and being polite, China is still very different in several ways.

Most business Chinese books would be able to tell a person the basics of what they should know. When negotiation with Chinese a cultural perspective is what will win you the meeting. Negotiating with them in a way that they appreciate, enjoy, and understand can be the deciding factor on whether or not there is future business. From appearance to styles of negotiation, everything does matter.

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The Secret to Happy Retail Employees

By Ron Pawlowski

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Money Is No Longer Buying Happiness

Let's face it. Today, building an effective team of retail employees is more challenging than ever. We all agree that the key to an effective retail operation are high performing and productive employees. Furthermore, in spite of a great location or a superior line of goods or services the behavior of every single team member well have a dramatic affect on the overall success of the operation. Every time the employee steps out onto the sales floor and interacts with a customer a change in brand equity is realized. In other words, the behavior and interaction of your employee with your customer will have an ongoing affect on brand identity and brand equity within the competitive marketplace.

Understandably great customer experiences create gains in brand equity while disappointing performance by your team members will create a deterioration in your brand equity. Exactly what is the secret to ensuring that each and every one-on-one customer experience in your store consistently increases brand equity in the eyes of the community? In other words, what makes a team member consistently delight and dazzle your customers so that long-term customer relationships with ongoing repeat business are realized?

The secret is a team of engaged employees. Why is employee engagement so critical in today's retail landscape? In earlier times employee expectations were quite simple. Employees were happy to come to work and do as they're told, collect their paycheck and go home at the end of the day. In contrast today's employee is far more sophisticated, educated and connected than ever before. Not surprisingly, the Internet has been instrumental in increasing knowledge levels and subsequently employee aspirations and expectations in the workplace. Unlike earlier times, countless surveys have demonstrated that compensation itself is not enough to satisfy employees over the long-term. In fact, in a ranking of 10 critical elements in one recent survey compensation for employees was rated 6/10!

Today, a retail employee is not just motivated by compensation. Above everything else there is a need to belong to the organization and have a sense of ownership. Ownership can be realized through employee empowerment. Trusting your employees and empowering them to make decisions close to the customer creates personal long-term relationships between your team members and your clients. Empowering your employees creates a climate of ownership and belonging for your team members and generates a great level of loyalty to the company.

Building a team of engaged employees that generates powerful long-term customer relationships takes a long time to build. However once realized the organization will enjoy greater productivity per individual employee, higher morale, lower internal and external theft rates and most importantly, lower employee turnover.

How does an organization that has traditionally operated through a regimented model began to create a more productive and loyal team of engaged employees?

1] Make sure that all employees are kept informed of new and relevant developments in the company. They should hear them first and they should hear them from their organization directly. There is nothing more demoralizing than hearing about new organizational developments last or hearing them from an outside source that was aware of the development before your team was.

2] Give staff increased responsibility and trust. Expand their decision-making powers even if you impose some limitations. Empower staff to make decisions close to the customer and give them the necessary support and Training to enable them to make good win-win decisions for all stakeholders.

3] Encourage staff to make decisions close to the customer and even when on occasion a bad decision is made, offer supportive training and refrain from chastising or punishing the employee.

4] Ensure that a structured process is in place to recognize exemplary customer service on a regular basis. Recognize and reward engaged employees who go above and beyond the call of duty to create a memorable customer experience. To keep momentum going, this strategy is most effective during weekly meetings where peer recognition is realized and small rewards are given to stellar employees. Rewards do not need to be extravagant. The recognition and appreciation is the key to effective leadership of engaged employees.

5] Create a formal and informal system that enables engaged employees to voice their opinions and help steer the future direction of the organization. Empower them to voice their opinions on a regular basis and contribute their ideas in a positive way that will make the company more effective and more efficient. Successfully implemented ideas also merit some form of recognition and a reward.

Building a team of engaged employees is the key to future survival and prosperity in every retail organization. Although this can be complex and protracted in time, the key to success is a change in leadership style that supports a greater level of empowerment, involvement and ownership of today's retail employee. Start now and create the culture that generates higher morale, higher productivity and lower turnover. Rise above the competition in small steps today, and soar to being number one tomorrow!

For more information visit http://www.retailinstitute.ca

The Retail Institute is dedicated to progressive small to medium sized retailers and offers manuals, systems, solutions and concepts at affordable prices. http://www.retailinstitute.ca

How To Talk To Your Creative Partner

By Michael Irvin

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Notice I wrote "Creative Partner" not graphic designer. I prefer Creative Partner because it does two things; first it defines the relationship properly as a partnership with each partner being equal, and second it covers more than just graphic designers and includes others like web designers, TV production, copywriting, etc.

How you talk to these important partners is vital to getting the most out of them. As one I know. I perform so much better when I understand the goals and directions of the company I'm working for.

Communicating your goals as a businessperson is essential in conveying your needs to your creative partner. Being clear and succinct in communicating avoids wasted time caused by miscues and assumptions. In addition to being clear in your communication I have three phrases to consider not using when you talk to your creative partner.

"I'm not feeling it"

This gets you nowhere. I don't know how many times I've had not only customers but supervisors in the industry use this phrase leaving me standing there wondering what the hell that means. If you're going to use this phrase follow it by, "and here are my reasons why." Be prepared to explain in plain English why you're not "feeling" it. Feelings are very subjective and open to interpretation. If you don't explain your feelings then the next round of revisions may be a waste as the designer, writer, or producer may interpret your feelings wrongly.

"I'll know it when I see it"

These are dreaded words in the creative community. This means that the creative has to spend hours of billable time chasing ideas down rabbit holes only to be told "I'm not feeling it." You want to drive a creative insane use this phrase a lot. Just be prepared to go way beyond you budget because any creative worth his salt should/will bill you for the time spent "exploring" your thoughts. By being to verbalize your concerns and desires you can save yourself a lot of money.

"My wife likes _______ so use it in the ad"

As the client you have every right to ask your creative partner to do whatever you ask. He/she should comply but first they should challenge you and ask why. Be prepared to have a good, logical answer other than "she likes blue." Creatives pride themselves on their knowledge of their field. They spend a lot of time keeping up with trends, culture changes, and what is working now. To say your want blue because your wife did some research and found that business like yours stand out in the corporate world when they use blue is adding to the partnership. It's bringing in valid information that the creative can use to your advantage. Together you are creating a strong marketing piece that will benefit you more than a poorly thought out one.

As you can see the more effective the communication between you and your creative partner the more effective and cheaper the outcome. Conversely, your partner should be able to communicate to you simply the whys of what they have done. You shouldn't be hearing things like; "I did it because I liked it," or "I like yellow." There should be reasoning behind every aspect of your marketing. From the reason you are marketing to the design of your business cards, everything should be well thought out.

I'm a freelance graphic designer and marketer specializing in putting together customized creative teams to serve the small businessperson's marketing and creative needs.

Creating Good Karma For Your Personal Brand

By Maria Duron

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Managing your personal brand is essential to your success. You want to stand out among the crowd, be noticed, be invaluable. You don't want to be someone who is easily replaced and easily forgotten. You want to be someone who people will listen to, look up to, and most importantly be remembered.

To be a strong and successful personal brand, one of the most important things you need to have is a network of contacts. And it's essential that you manage your relationship with those contacts well, to ensure that you have a smooth and hassle-free working relationship.

As your brand or small business continues to grow, you may have difficulty with relationship management. People get muddled up in your mind and you may become confused as to which tasks need to be done by which people. You may forget names, as well as the faces associated with those names. So how do you manage?

Keeping the important - important

Depending on the person you're talking to or interacting with, it can range from being funny to being offensive if you mix up their name or their work title. So it's really important that you keep track of who's who so you don't end up angering anyone.

For this purpose, you need a relationship management tool that's intuitive, easy to use, and something that can really help you manage your contact list so you don't get confused. One of the latest and most promising tools available today is KarmaCRM.

KarmaCRM makes managing and maintaining a huge contact database incredibly simple. The site offers advanced filtering and tagging features so you can easily search and find the contact you're looking for in your list. You also have the convenience of importing contacts from third party integrations such as Freshbooks and HighRise. Add the information you need for each contact, so you always know who you're talking and connecting with.

Another excellent feature that KarmaCRM offers is email integration with your contacts. Each email account will be given a unique KarmaCRM dropbox, and all you need to do is CC, BCC or email this address whenever you correspond with a client, colleague or customer, and Karma will automatically attach the email with the contact's file. This makes it easy for you to remember previous conversations with a specific contact. KarmaCRM will even create a new file if there's no record of that person.

Involved in sales?

KarmaCRM also offers a great feature for personal bands that are involved in sales. Within the site, you can organize your contacts according to the sales status you associate them with. Whether you're in the contact, proposal or follow-up stage, KarmaCRM helps you easily identify what part of the sales process you're currently in. You can even get updates on deadlines associated with different contacts. With this tool, you'll never miss a proposal or deal deadline again.

Yes, there are other tools out there yet they can be cumbersome or even overwhelming when you're talking about just managing your personal circle of influence's information. If you have a sales team, this can help you and if you don't if can help you and not overwhelm you with too many gadgets to get in your way or bog you down with a large daunting learning curve just to figure out how to access your information.

And let's not forget the easy-to-read reports that Karma provides. Any good CRM tool should offer reporting that's easy to create and easy to export. KarmaCRM offers you a custom report builder that's intuitive and easy to use.

The tools you use are an extension of you

KarmaCRM also integrates with different third party applications such as Freshbooks, Highrise, MailChimp, and Google Calendar. And it is continually working to integrate with other third party applications so that people can have a better experience using Karma.

Perhaps one of the BEST things about KarmaCRM is the fact that it's entirely cloud based, so you don't have to download any special software or application to be able to access the tool. Anytime, anywhere, you can easily check your contacts, see any deadlines looming, and monitor progress and reports.

As a personal brand, it's important for you to build trust with your clients and customers, so make sure you use a customer relationship management tool that helps you manage and monitor your contacts.

"Maria Elena Duron, CEO (chief engagement officer), buzz2bucks | a word of mouth marketing firm, is skilled at making networks "work" and harnessing powerful online and offline buzz, she facilitates online visibility services and word of mouth coaching and workshops - taking companies and professionals from buzz-worthy to bucks-worthy, http://buzz2bucks.com."

Why It's Easier for You to Learn Calligraphy Online

By Jarvis Lloyd

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The art of calligraphy is one that most people take for granted, but which is very important nonetheless. When most people think of calligraphy, the first thought that comes to mind is the use of this form of art for making cards and other literature. However, the use of calligraphy is much more extensive, especially in today's world. For instance, if you are very good at it, you may even be asked to create a new font for a website or software. Therefore, apart from being lots of fun, calligraphy can also be a very good way for one to earn a decent income, even if it's as a side project.
However, before you can get to such levels, you would need to first of all learn the art of calligraphy. Fortunately, this is not as hard as it used to be in the past. A few years ago, one would need to go to an art college and spend quite a bit of time learning about calligraphy, which meant that learning about it was not accessible to people who had other things to do such as a job. In this day and age, however, one can learn about this form of art from a variety of sources, chief of which is the internet.
Learning calligraphy online is the way to go if you are looking for a relatively stress free way to go about it. The reason for this is that there are many companies that offer such services online, and all you need to do is select one that suits your needs and then pay them for the service. This means that even if you don't live in a location that has a college offering such courses, you can still learn about calligraphy from the online source.
The other benefit of the online schools is the fact that you are likely to have a more flexible schedule. You don't need to confine yourself to a timetable set by a school or your teacher; you can always log on during the times you are free and then learn about the art. It is also possible to learn at your own pace, which means that if you are a fast learner you may not need to waste time doing units that you already have mastered. Learning calligraphy online is also much cheaper than going to an arts college and learning it, since you may not need to spend much more than the training fee, which is in itself normally not much.
Of course, when you are looking to learn calligraphy in this manner, you also need to keep in mind that you should practice a lot. This is the only way you can move from strength to strength. This can be done by doing what you have learnt on the online program in real life, such as by trying to design cards, sign boards and other literature for people who may need it. At first, you may do this for free, but as your skills develop you can even start charging for this service. If you are very good, you can earn quite a lot this way.

Learning calligraphy can be a really interesting art and with the convenience of the internet, you can now master the art of calligraphy easily!

5 Strategic Objectives To Supercharge Your Business Profits

By P Stewart

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As a business owner, you should be aware of and regularly take time out of the business to re-assess the strategic path your business is travelling on and whether your end destination is still in sight.
It's a key skill we all possess although at times, we forget about it. However, there is a tendency to demonstrate how capable you are at carrying this through when you have booked your holidays and are ready to go.
Why?
Simply because it's the same process - select your preferred destination, organise your resources to achieve it (money, baggage, people), organise the steps to success (i.e. what you need to do and by what date), arrange transport to the airport and finally board the plane.
All of the key planning stages are present in this process. Therefore, it's not unrealistic to expect you to have demonstrated your abilities to plan for your business.
The first stage of course is to establish a vision for your company. Then, reverse engineer to create short term and medium term objectives. And finally, you develop your strategies for success.
Now you've got to pull it all together and make it work. So what's the best way to make it happen?
Planning, Policies and Procedures.
What do I mean by these words?
Planning - that's simple and shouldn't require any additional comment.
Policies - This may seem an unusual word to use but it is highly effective. If you are to implement change in your business, then you must insist on certain "laws" or rules being written. You already have them in place, but perhaps they are centred around the administration of your business? That's fine, but what about introducing laws or policies revolving around your business growth, marketing and sales activities?
Procedures - Michael Gerber, in his book The E Myth, introduced us to the phrase "this is how we do it here." Procedures set in stone the work to be carried out, by whom and how it is to be done. There is always a deadline too. After all, nothing happens unless a deadline is specified.
Now you have the template to organise your business growth, let's focus on the five strategic objectives. There are so many variations here and I have chosen five from a longer list.
A strategic objective is begins with a very powerful question.
In my experience, business owners do not ask good, or the right questions to catapult their business forward. questions. As a result, they get mediocre answers, which in turn leads to mediocre results.
It's important that you ask specific, target-driven questions, which will generate a huge array of answers from your team. It may be that you will find a ton of golden nuggets in the answers alone.
The key then is to implement one answer at a time, using the 3 P's as your guide.
OK, let's share with you the five strategic objectives...

1. What would keep customers/clients longer?
2. What would make customers/clients buy faster?
3. What three things would make each employee more productive?
4. What are the three things you would want every customer/client to say about you? How as a company can you make this happen?
5. What could you add on to a sale that would be most valuable or convenient to a client/customer and increase revenue per transaction? This doesn't have to be something you produce.

I hope these questions have now got you thinking. No doubt you will find your own versions but you have to admit that they generate a lot of ideas, many of which you can implement in your business today.
These questions form part of a bigger strategic assessment or makeover that I run with clients and their teams. They are incredibly powerful and set the scene for the strategic work to be implemented in order for you to achieve your goals.
As you would expect, this strategic work then takes the highest priority in completing, after serving customers. This work should form part of your teams working day/week and be monitored very closely to ensure deadlines are met.
If you are interested in a strategic 1 day session with Paul, visit: UKBusinessCoachingForGrowth

Founder & Director at Profit Masters Ltd, a UK registered company
Paul is the originator of the "Scooter Philosophy of Business" The first advert he wrote was for a second hand computer and computer parts shop. The shop opened at 9am on Saturday morning and had to close before 3pm as they had sold their entire stock.
Co-author of a finance publication and author of a marketing publication. Built a test website in a niche market, attracting upwards of 24,000 hits per month in under 3 years and dominated page 1 of Google for key search terms.
Areas of Expertise:
Low-cost, low risk, tried and tested marketing Experience in both offline and online marketing | Strategic direction and staying on course | Master practitioner in NLP, which means you benefit from his arsenal of inside and outside the box thinking to help you achieve your goals.