spafu:
For naija? This is not Atlanta o.

Some Nigerian businesses I know actually get crowdfunded. I know you would want to ask for names, but I can't give the names yet. Maybe I will in the future. Please don't get discouraged before trying new stuff; you never know which would come positive.

Business entity or business monster

'This organisation has not hired you to fall sick!  And between me and you, I seriously think you are incapable of the stress of this job. But didn’t you mention in your CV that you can work well under pressure? No, tell me, didn’t you?  We are not paying you to fall sick, and for your information, the mood of this organisation does not tolerate laziness in any way!’

Chinenye sobbed at her supervisor’s outburst. Earlier that morning, she had called to inform him that she would be visiting the clinic, for she was ill.  In response, the supervisor warned that, if she failed to report to work within the following 30 minutes, she could forget she ever had a job with the organisation.

Some minutes past lunch, she fainted, fell off her seat, and was rushed to the hospital.

A research on how beneficial the attitude of that supervisor is to the workplace got some shocking responses. Some respondents considered the supervisor’s reaction necessary and beneficial, arguing that the business is an entity of its own and must be protected first. More so, the duty to protect the business falls more on the supervisor.

Then one can wonder, 'Where is empathy in all these?' The business is an entity not a monster! In fact, a recent study revealed that good employees quit their organisations for another, more because they have lost regard for their supervisors than the fact that the new place is a better offer. It seems some supervisors and business owners hide behind the business entity to live out their cruel alter ego, after all.

It needs be reiterated that one of the ethics of Total Quality Management (TQM) is that, employers and supervisors must inspire trust in their employees and subordinates. Trust borders on admiration, and no sane person admires monsters.

Remember: No trust, no business. And happy employees make happy business. 

 

What are your thoughts on making employees happy? Discuss with us now on our tweet-chat activity on Twitter with the hashtag #TweetChatExcellaid.

http://www.excellaid.com.ng/blog/business-entity-or-business-monster

A sure way to make your customers unhappy with their purchase

Have you ever made a purchase and later discovered you have paid too much for the product? Or that gown did not just look as beautiful outside the boutique lights. For whatever reason, we have all experienced sadness on one purchase or another.

This has been technically termed ‘Post Purchase Cognitive Dissonance’ (PPCD). Sometimes, our PPCD is deserved and at other times we can rightfully lay the blame on the selling company or their salesperson. As a company, if your customer can rightfully blame you or your salespersons for their PPCD, that is bad news. And a sure way to accomplish that is dishonesty in the selling process.

Okay, you are never dishonest, but do we not all bend the truth to achieve a sale? We are wont to hide some discouraging facts about our products from the customers. Yes, we only have to say what is necessary to achieve a sale, but such information as aftersales cost and care should be clearly stated. What about how your product affects the customer’s health?

Only consistent truth breeds necessary credibility for winning customer loyalty. Do not make your customers feel fooled. That is what happens when they discover you have been untrue. Now what should you do? As a salesperson, you must be well-informed about your product. This cannot be overemphasized; you do not want to goof unknowingly. As a company, constant product improvement is important; eliminate the weaknesses in your products, so that you do not have to lie to make sales.

Finally, you must follow up on sales to maintain the positive image of your product in the mind of customers. And return policies help, but they must be clearly explained to the customers at the point of sale.

Keep delighting your customers.

 

What are you thoughts on making customers unhappy? Discuss with us on our tweet-chat activity on Twitter using the hashtag #TweetChatExcellaid.

http://www.excellaid.com.ng/blog/a-sure-way-to-make-your-customers-unhappy-with-their-purchase

You do not have to eat that frog - dealing with repetitive tasks

‘Eat that Frog!’ is a bestseller by Brian Tracy which focused on how to handle jobs that you are not enthusiastic about. The trick is to do it now!  It gives the ultimate cure for procrastination; to always handle the important and difficult task first.

But what if you do not have to eat the frog at all? What if you do not need to bother with the task at all? And I am not referring to unimportant tasks.

In fact, it is about very important tasks that are repetitive; like payroll management, sorting and organising mails, replying mails, administrative bureaucracy and lots more.

One lesson from a programming class was, 'if it is repetitive, you must automate it!’ Works get boring, if you have to do the same thing over and over again, and this increases the chances of the inherent errors in manual handling.

The whole concept of Business Process Automation (BPA) is to reduce monotony, increase efficiency, reduce human errors and manage time effectively. Interestingly, you do not need to go bankrupt to achieve this.

A good place to start is your mails. Myriads of email clients are available from which you can choose. They help to automatically sort your inbox by attaching priorities to messages. You can also automate reply for recurrent requests.

A major component of BPA is Business Process Outsourcing (BPO); some frogs are just not meant for you to deal with at all and must not necessarily be automated. Such frogs have to be passed over to other hands. We happen to know so much about this. Why not contact us to learn how we can help your business through BPO?

Remember, if you ever have to repeat any process, you must automate it!

 

What are you thoughts on dealing with repetitive tasks? Discuss with us now on our tweet-chat activity on Twitter with the hashtag #TweetChatExcellaid

http://www.excellaid.com.ng/blog/you-do-not-have-to-eat-that-frog-dealing-with-repetitive-tasks

Pay your customers to outdo the competition

The recent buzz in the tech arena is on how Ved Sanmay, an ex-googler, bought Google for $12 only. The purchase came through and he owned the domain for a minute, within which he flagged the flaws to the Google’s security team and carted away a generous sum in bug bounty. Oh, he did not actually cart the bounty away, but donated it in a more generous offering, augmented by Google, to charity. 

The question is, why should Google pay Ved for uncovering a nippy slip?  

Another case is the epic ‘Error free banking’ tagged ‘We pay’ by Dr. Aderotimi Adelola of the defunct Owena Bank (later Omega Bank). The maxim was, ‘If we didn’t serve you within the next 5 minutes of your entering our banking hall, we pay you NGN 500’ – this was a generous sum at the time. The move put the staff on their toes, made the customers happier, repositioned the bank for financial prosperity, and has now become a case study for Customer Service training in Lagos Business School. 

To cut cost, googlers have worked, ever redoubling precision, to keep bug bounties claim at minimum and it can also be argued that Google’s statutory bug bounty will encourage hackers to rather report flaws in order to claim bounties, than exploit it in other malicious ways. Anyway, this may not apply to Ved, or some psychotic hackers, who does not do this for the money. However, it sends a positive message that says, ‘We will go to any length to serve you,’ to customers. 

The best of customer service is indeed customer-centric, putting customers at the centre of decision making.  It should also push you to continually outdo yourself. After all, outdoing the competition only takes you ahead, but outdoing yourself keeps you ahead.

 

What are your thoughts on paying customers? Discuss with us now on our tweet-chat activity on Twitter with the hashtag #TweetChatExcellaid.

http://www.excellaid.com.ng/blog/pay-your-customers-to-outdo-the-competition

Are you serious about hiring staff who put in 25 hours a day? Then, go for intrapreneurs. 

They are crazy. They are motivated. They are skilled. They handle your business like their personal pet projects and never give up until they get the desired results. Have you ever had a staff, who was crazy and passionate enough to take the backdoor whenever the front door was inaccessible? They are not necessarily breaking rules, but are adept at proffering creative solutions.

Steve Jobs described the practice of his Macintosh team as ‘Intrapreneurship'. They were folks who, though worked within a successful organisation, operated with the ethics of the garage days when the big dream began. As entrepreneurs within an organisation, they were lateral thinkers who operated in terrains where logic failed and never hesitated to switch hats to meet with the demands of the time.

In periods of economic uncertainties, you need intrapreneurs to grow your business. From Google, to Sun Microsystems, to Sony, companies now understand the importance of recruiting intrapreneurs into enabling environments. And they have profited from the move. 

The popular Gmail with generous capacity, the first mail to successfully incorporate search features, developed by Paul Buchheit, was a product of Google's 20% time policy (employees spend 80% of their work hours on their job function, and 20% on personal pet projects). Later, Marissa Mayer, addressing the Yahoos, told them it really was a 100/20% policy, because Googlers put in extra hours to achieve excellence. Now, that is what only intrapreneurs can do. 

But what should you do with intrapreneurs? Put them on specific projects; no bar holds, because they are not good with taking orders and would not defer to anyone. Let them explore their creativity in a delayered environment, where everyone is their own boss. The reward is generous.

 

What are your thoughts on hire staff with high committment? Discuss with us on our tweet-chat activity on Twitter with the hashtag #TweetChatExcellaid.

Are you a startup owner or manager looking for intrapreneurs? Contact us for employee search service

http://www.excellaid.com.ng/blog/how-to-hire-staff-who-put-in-25-hours-a-day

hahn:
When a clients feels happy about an order or the way they are treated, they instantly become your advertising managers. For free!

You are very on point Hahn, the best of goodwill a business can enjoy is for customers to become their brand ambassador. And that is what MLM firms try to leverage on.

A secret that increases sales by 150%

Have you heard of Boloco’s card and Amazon Prime? They are open secrets!

Okay, this is about customer retention, and I was not bluffing when I hinted that it can increase your sales by 150%. Harvard Business School reported that a 5% increase in customer retention can increase profit by 25-95%. So, you do the maths.

Moreover, returning customers spend 67% more than new ones and, ironically, it costs 5-10 times more to acquire a new customer than to keep old ones.

Customer retention is the reward for excellent customer service delivery. And what better way to deliver service excellence than to relate with customers on a ‘spiritual’ level, giving them a dream to live up to. That is exactly what loyalty programs do.

So, Boloco’s card and Amazon Prime are loyalty programs of Boloco, the burritos connoisseur, and Amazon, the ecommerce giant, respectively. Successful companies create loyalty programs like clockwork, because they understand how radically it transforms the bottom line. But if you must do it, you must get it right. Give customers real value, a true dream to live up to.

If you get it right, you own the heart of your customers, you own their purse, and get your deserved share of the purse. You know what? You would also increase the emotional and physical cost of your customers leaving you for competitors. After all, we all jealously guard our reward points.

So, it is high time you create a loyalty program for your customers. Make it a game for them to play, fun for them to have.

 

Now, let us rub minds. What are your thoughts on increasing sales with loyalty programs? Discuss with us on our tweet-chat activity on Twitter with the hashtag #TweetChatExcellaid.

http://www.excellaid.com.ng/blog/a-secret-that-increases-sales-by-150-percent

like and unlike button, especially for group chats.

Dapo777:
they can only pretend to love just to get married and then show the man a living hell. (

lol @ living hell. So true!

banjicom:
too long!
what happened to summarization

she deserted for a more worthy heartthrob.

Fine

falconey:
[color=#990000][/color]

Already on the front page of the site. Front page of Nairaland will be fine. Lol. Thanks.

‘I realize I’m 27 with no interest in getting married (at the moment), but I want to marry eventually. It may not be the best for me to wait till I feel like it before stepping out, but I guess not with someone who’s ready now.’

That’s my friend’s stance on relationship, and I agree with him. It is common for guys (that are of age) to feel unready for marriage, but I don’t think that should discourage them from entering into relationships. While you may not know your partner enough in courtship, no matter how long, healthy friendship can be developed and strengthened during this period.

But every lady now talks about time wasters. And by time wasters they mean guys who are up for ‘friendship now, marriage later.’  But do I blame them?  Who wants undefined friendships? As the saying goes, ‘once beaten, twice shy.’ Our ladies have been fooled. They have entrusted their heart to fools and have been crushed. They have tried to heal, but are left scared. They have learned from the mistakes of their past, though, and now guard their hearts with militaristic vehemence.  Their wisdom they swore to pass down generations and will never give their hearts without the commitment of marriage again. No! They aren’t fools!

In the wake of every burning love lies ashes of indifference.

However, as a guy, I’ve learnt that love and marriage are not synonymous. Love makes relationship work, but not marriage. You decide for marriage, and until you are ready, it’s not just going to happen to you. I strongly feel that when you are ready, the decision to get married should be executed on a relationship built on love, not one propelled by the will to get married.

Now, I think the best fit is someone who wants to be with you, marriage or no marriage; someone who wants to marry you even when you are terminally ill and death beckons. Someone that will say, ‘If all that is left is just one more night, I will spend it with my head on your chest listening to the harmony of our heartbeats, of a love that has become unexplainable and sacred.’  But that’s hard to find.

Selfless Love.

I’m of the opinion that if the drive for love is to be married, then it’s selfish.  Marriage should be a selfless union, of mutual affection, a blessing shared by the couple.

Now let’s contrast two sentences:

‘I love you, so let’s get married;’ and

‘I need to get married, so I love you.’

Who wants the second?  I, for one, will give my heart to the love that will marry the broken and beaten me, the love that has seen me at my worst and will still deal, just one more night, if that’s all we’ve got.

To the ladies who love me, to the ladies who have heard of hurts, to my ladies who have been hurt… You all deserve to love without the pressure of marriage. You all deserve to bask in the sun of pure friendship. And you all deserve to be married, when you are ready!


Every lady now talks about time wasters.... Now these are my thoughts on relationships and marriages. I will be glad to have you read through and comment. Share your thoughts in the comment section. And you know what? You need not agree with me. The beauty is when we all learn from the diversity of opinions. https://labimide./2015/09/09/every-lady-now-talks-about-time-wasters/

cc: lalasticlala, UyiIredia, ladywriter, therock5555, chidinho, AudreyTimms, vivly, kilokey, bakingsoda, olufemiabbey, nitefury, onihaxy, dapo777

Feminism, Gender equality and Parenting. What's your take? https://labimide./2015/08/12/my-dad-my-mom-my-parents/

rahdio:
Just tried taking the test. However, it brought up my previous score, as I had taken the test in the last application.
And the submit button seems not to be successful.

Has anyone else tried the test?

Please how did you resolve this. I need help ASAP.

Please correct the topic of this post for subject-verb agreement; 'If we have...' That being said, I think such 'one and only' programming language can only be FORTRAN

marenx:
Love comes before this pure sex and then leave after this pure sex? Tell me!

They both love sex than living together, pretending they can't obtain a plantain.

Old boy shoot up and see them through the crevice!

Shoot up? Who's your mate?

James, mentioning chemistry when talking about relationship shows you are unprofessional.

Who mentions chemistry?

Chemistry becomes a cliche nearly to trash in gmail but it won't die as a subject or a course in schools.

Stop talking about chemistry James and see him removing his long thing, he get am no be small.

Hey! Stop watching movies!

See her opening her legs dear widely but soon the love will end.

Who cares? Stop thinking of love. I say think of the important thing that join them.

That's why I am telling you to see it through the crevice but you talk of chemistry. You won't obey.

What will I gain by seeing it?

You will not know. Seeing it is more than having it because it won't just go easily like love.

Now I know!

You know what?

I know you're masturbating.

Masturbating ke?

Yes! Don't deny it Brokkoli. Just stop this thing I tell you. God gives you a woman because masturbation or gaying is not good. Go and have your woman! If you marry, you won't have time to masturbate I tell you.

I won't talk again.

Yes, don't talk again. But I tell you my church mind.

Nice one...

mayuzbaba22:
hi all,
I would from time to time require the services of an article writer who is affordable, and one whom i can outsource article writing to such a person .
mayusbaba01@gmail.com

We should talk. I'm sending you a mail.

cremeandchic:

I would look into getting help. Probably start a review program here and sub-contract to those who need reviews. That should do the trick.

Madam Jumoke, please maami throw me some bones too o. I desperately need some excellent reviews on freelancer. And your boy's got talents, he can write exceptionally well.

bakingsoda, I sent the application twice o, I hope there is no trouble with that.

bakingsoda, got your mail, I'm applying immediately. Thanks.

Ladywriter ma, I sent you a mail.

Happy Birthday Ladywriter. You will go from strength to strength and this new year will launch you into greater heights in glory, career, fulfilment... Your health will not fail you and you will surely enjoy the fruits of your labour in Jesus' name. Be blessed.

BizBloke:


Alright, send 120 to 131 for your next subscription. You'll get 4.5GB segmented into 1.5GB (day) & 2.5GB (night).

Cheers.

1.5 + 2.5 =/= 4.5
1.5 + 2.5 = 4

So what's happening? Is MTN now shortchanging their customers?

aspirebig:



Confirmed wrong info ooo.

This one sounds more like wonder bank ooo.

Which bank will pay you 35k on 500k for 60days, haba naaa

The information is not entirely wrong, it's the computation that is wrong. Ednut1 already clarified that.