Hartford Business Journal

www.HartfordBusiness.com August 24, 2015 • Hartford Business Journal 21 BIZ BOOKS Positive thinking can unleash leadership qualities "U nleashing Your Inner Leader — An Executive Coach Tells All" by Vickie Condolff Bev- enour (John Wiley & Sons, $45). Norman Vincent Peale, the author of "The Power of Positive Thinking," stated: "People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking they can do things." The key- words emphasized by Bevenour's self-coach- ing model are: start thinking. What's the process? Awareness — Know yourself. Identify your strengths. Doing what you love to do and doing what you are good at equals strength. The client studies throughout the book show that playing to your strengths propels results. What about shortcomings? Identify them, too. Consider how improvement will enhance doing what you love and doing what you're good at. Personal values are part of awareness, too. You can't do your best in a work environment where your values are at odds with the way the organization/manager executes. Acceptance — Knowing that you must balance the use of your strengths helps you succeed. It's about knowing and appre- ciating the perspectives of others. Leaders require engaged followers, not all of whom have the same strengths. Example: Highly competitive people need to back off their accelerator a bit in order to get more cau- tious others on board. Letting people use their strengths cre- ates win-win. Choices — When what you think about "Brand You" doesn't synch with how you're viewed by colleagues, you're walking a career tightrope. How oth- ers see you leads to choices in how to use your strengths to build your brand. Look back on what's built your brand through CAR (Challenge, Action, Results) stories. Look for cues that resulted in disconnects with others. Change — Continuous improvement means commitment to change. Situations change; people change. To effectively lead, you must change over time to ensure career growth. Advice for readers: Take your time to think through your answers when complet- ing the various exercises in each chapter. • • • "Chief Customer Officer 2.0: How to Build Your Customer-Driven Growth Engine" by Jeanne Bliss (Jossey-Bass, $28). Engaging the customer isn't just the job of the marketing team. Regardless of the size of your firm, Bliss' five interrelated customer leadership competencies apply to sustaining the engagement process: 1. "Honor and manage customers as assets." Just as you measure employee satisfaction, you must measure customer satisfaction. Think of customers as tal- ented employees; if they leave, you need to know why. Talking with former customers provides valuable information about their experience. Their input should be viewed as a path to your continuous improvement. 2. "Align around experience." Since no two customers are alike and customers' needs change, knowing what they value drives "differentiated" action. To differentiate, you need to define customer touchpoints that drive their experience from initial contact through post-sale. Identify cross- functional operations that inter- act at various touchpoints and eliminate information silos. 3. "Build a customer listen- ing path." When measuring customer satisfaction, don't just look at the overall score; analyze its components. Doing so allows you to iden- tify experience issues and link them to touchpoints and trends. Social media platforms provide real-time feedback, too. Those plat- forms also give you ways to tell your story and invite comments. 4. "Proactive experience reliability and innovation." Where are your customer- ser- vice red flags? What are your procedures for addressing them? Bliss cautions against fixing customer issues "one-off" because such fixes are usually confined to a silo, and don't take into account the breadth of the problem. She also believes that managing the cus- tomer experience plays a large role in new product development. 5. "Leadership, accountability and cul- ture." Engagement begins with the leader- ship team, which connects work to the customer experience. Leaders must actively solicit customer-experi- ence feedback from their cross-functional teams. Key takeaway: A well- coordinated internal pro- cess that provides a differen- tiated customer experience drives profits. n Jim Pawlak is a nationally syndicated book reviewer. Jim Pawlak EXECUTIVE MANAGEMENT Seven tips for reducing business expenses By Andy Singer W hether your business is a startup, or a more mature organization, cutting costs and improving profitability is always a good idea. Cash is king, and a lack of cash flow is a reason many startups fail. Here are seven tips for reducing business expenses. 1. Grow wisely: Sometimes busi- nesses will grow too fast. Employees are expensive, and start- ups need to be care- ful of the rate they increase staff. Studies have shown it can cost anywhere from $4,000 to $20,000 to find and hire a new employee. After you hire the new employee you will need to spend time and money training them and pro- viding benefits. One way to grow wisely is to outsource. There are a number of websites that make it easy to get help for specific projects and tasks. One great site is Fivver, which offers tasks beginning at a cost of $5. Not all tasks can be filled by these types of freelancers, but you might be amazed at where you can save. Yes growth is good, but be sure you grow wisely. 2. Review your expense ledger: Unless you sign the checks or carefully review the expense ledger, you never know what you may be paying for. After settling in at one company, I arranged to be one of the co-signers for all com- pany checks. It was surprising what I found in the first few months. Getting a detailed look at your expense ledger can provide the details you need to understand where money is being spent wisely and where it's not. 3. Control office supply expenses: If you don't take control, there are two rules about office supplies you learn. The first rule is that they grow legs. The second rule is that unless you are careful, your company will pay too much. The solution to dealing with these rules is simple. In regards to the first rule, be sure you have a central control point of distribution. This could be an executive administrator or similar role. In regards to the second rule, some office supply sources will provide points (good for free stuff) that the buyer earns. The more they buy, the more they earn. Nothing is free, so it's more than likely these sources are not the lowest cost providers. When selecting office supply sources, be sure you do your research and have more than one person on the team that makes the final selection. 4. Negotiate everything: Almost every- thing is negotiable; you just have to know how to ask. The discount you receive may vary, depending on the situation, but no matter what it is, you are still saving money. 5. Reduce outsourcing expenses: The first time I took over a marketing department I was able to quickly reduce the advertising budget from $2 million to $1 million. It turned out we outsourced advertising to a firm that was just average, but charged well above market rates. We changed agencies and lit- erally saved $1 million per year. When you outsource, be certain to understand what you are buying and market rates for that service. 6. Control your marketing budget: Marketing expenses and travel and entertain- ment budgets are a good place to start to look for overindulgence. You won't always find it, but it's not a rare occurrence either. 7. Set up a cost reduction team: By selecting the right team members for a cost- reduction team and providing excellent coach- ing and motivation, you might be amazed at how much you can save every year. Experi- enced outside coaching can help you be suc- cessful with these cost-reduction teams. n Andy Singer is the president of Singer Executive Development, a professional training and development company that helps optimize business performance of employees and executives. Andy Singer ▶ ▶ Almost everything is negotiable; you just have to know how to ask. ▶ ▶ You can't do your best in a work environment where your values are at odds with the way the organization/manager executes.

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