Dodo Loves Marketing

Most people cringe at the thought of giving a speech or chairing a meeting. The limelight is on you and everyone is watching and listening. Who wouldn’t feel at least a bit on edge under these circumstances? While many can muster their courage to get through these events, there are some who find their limbs shaking and their foreheads perspiring at the very thought of the next public speaking occasion. ..more

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Shyness affects just about everyone under certain situations. While most people cope reasonably well with occasional shyness, there are some who live in a personal prison, unable to reach out and make friends or relate positively to others. Being shy at work can severely limit work effectiveness, unless of course, you work generally on your own with little or no contact with others.

Shy people present themselves at work in many varied ways. There is the quiet wallflower who fades into the background and is not often noticed. At the opposite extreme, there is the raging extrovert who can be loud, aggressive and abrasive, but who finds it difficult to relate on an intimate level to others. In between, there are many other people, such as the knocker, the person who knocks or degrades others. ..more

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Market research is also invaluable in pricing your product or service. Ron Flounders, of Hertfordshire Business Link, which offers free advice to start-up businesses, says that all too often people work out their pricing ‘back-to-front’. They ask themselves how much they need to earn, what their costs are, and then price the product accordingly — regardless of what the market will pay. In fact, what you need to do is market research to establish what price the market will pay, then work out your costs and from that see whether it is worth going into business at all.’ ..more

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Once you’ve done your market research and worked out if you can make a profit from the business, the next step is to take advice. This will not only confirm whether your calculations are realistic, but can take a lot of the pain out of setting up. The good news is that there’s lots of advice available - and much of it is free. What’s more, experts on small businesses reckon that over 60 per cent of small business failures could be avoided if only people took advice in three areas - money, management and marketing.

1 TECs/LECs A good place to start is your local Training and Enterprise Council (TEC), or Local Enterprise Council (LEC) . These can also put you in touch with other helpful agencies; such as your local Enterprise Agency and Business Link. You can find them through your telephone book, Yellow Pages or local library. The Department of Trade and Industry also has a hotline. ..more

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It is a sad fact of life that most small businesses require capital to start up. There are a few businesses which require only the minimum of equipment and stationery (journalism, PR and teaching, for instance), but most will require some form of outlay either for equipment, for stock or both. Then there are other considerations. You may need a budget for advertising, for accountancy and legal fees, or even for adapting your living room.

Before you even try to raise money, it is well worth thinking about the minimum amount needed. If the business is in the fledgling stage, try to keep only to the bare essentials — there will be time for a mahogany desk and state-of-the-art printer at a later, more successful stage. ..more

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There are thousands of grants and low interest loans available for small businesses. The problem is finding out what they are and whether your business qualifies. Some fields are more liberally provided with grants than others. For instance, the Crafts Council has a setting-up scheme which allows selected craftspeople to receive a grant of £2,500 for maintenance and up to £5,000 for equipment (they pay half of equipment costs), provided they apply within two years of setting up. While this would not cover your start-up costs entirely, it could certainly be a very useful addition. Other areas where grants may be forthcoming include : ..more

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• First, do your homework. Find out if anyone else in the organization is working — or has worked — from home. Your union as well as the personnel department may know. If so, arrange to have a drink or meeting with them, to find out how they tackled the subject, how the arrangement works or, if it has stopped, why it ended.

• When I decided to move to the Isle of Bute, in Scotland, I thought I’d have to leave the bank,’ says Kevin Attwood, Strategic Planning Development Officer for Nat West who now works two days from home, and three in London. ‘In fact, I kept the move so quiet that when I told my boss I’d moved to Scotland over the weekend, he was flabbergasted. When we had lunch I said flippantly, that if I’d got my act together I would have come up with a strategic plan for teleworking. He told me to come up with a proposal. I rung up people in the bank who were already working from home some of the time and talked to them extensively before coming up with my plans. Listening to their experiences helped me make a convincing proposal.’ ..more
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Homeworkers also need to work especially hard at ensuring they know what is going on within the office and avoiding isolation.. When BT conducted a teleworking experiment, allowing some of its Inverness operators to work from home, they found that one of the main grumbles was that the operators felt they were not kept up to date with company news the way they had been in an office. For those who work only a couple of days at home, this can still be a problem. It pays to phone in on your days out and to take part in any social events in the office. When you are in the office, make sure everyone knows that you are there — and keep your wits about you. ‘I make sure that when I’m in the office, I listen very carefully to what’s going on,’ says Helene Hook of the computer firm ICL. Kevin Attwood of Nat West Bank has formalized the process by having an updating meeting with his boss every week. ..more

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Congratulations ! Now you will have to consider the nitty-gritty of arrangements necessary for your new working style to develop smoothly. The union for skilled and professional workers MSF have introduced some guidelines for homeworkers to ensure their health and safety at work. They may be a counsel of perfection — particularly if you are only working at home on a very part-time or informal basis — but they are worth bearing in mind. They include : ..more

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Even if you know that your job is 100 per cent suited to working from home, you still need to ask yourself some hard questions about whether your personality is suitable for homeworking. See the quiz or ask yourself briefly :

How suitable am I for homeworking? If you get a buzz from being with people, love to be in the thick of things and can remember just who’s dating who in which department, homeworking may not be right for you. The same applies if much of your social life is based around the office or your place in the hierarchy is very important to you. On the other hand, if you are a self-starter, enjoy your own company in limited doses and find it easy to concentrate, you may be well placed to work from home. Confidence in your ability, self-discipline, a good network of local social contacts and enough space to work are all vital for a homeworker. ‘I thought that I would spend more time working at home than I actually did,’ says Ken Davey, who initiated Mercury Communications flexible work project. ‘I used it for writing reports and initiating strategy, but I came to realize how much of my job depended on interacting with colleagues.’ ..more

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1 Is where you work an important part of the job?

If clients always expect to see you at your place of work, it may be difficult to transfer to homeworking. A doctor working in a casualty department, for instance, is unlikely to be able to work outside the hospital for any length of time, since patients expect to be treated at the hospital and that is also where support staff are based. On the other hand, if much of your work is location independent, i.e. can be done anywhere, you are much more likely to be able to work from home for some of the time. ..more

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If you are fully employed by a company or on a contract, this will not be an issue for you apart from the initial negotiation of your terms and conditions. However, if you are self-employed, there is no doubt that lack of security is a major issue and it may be one that will never be completely resolved. This is because however successful you become, there will always be good times and mediocre - if not bad - times, and as the owner of the business, you will take the brunt of this. However, there are ways you can minimize the lack of security experienced by self-employed homeworkers : ..more

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Motivation is perhaps the single biggest factor in making the difference between success and failure in any business venture. Surveys have shown that poorly motivated employees, however hard they are worked, consistently produce poorer work than those who may work less hours but have better motivation.

But what gives us our motivation differs with our personalities. For some people, motivation is largely external. They work hard because they have external rewards to motivate them — a pay cheque, the approval of colleagues, or a boss breathing down their neck. However, when you work at home, you are largely out of sight — and possibly out of mind — of your boss. (This is the major reason cited by managers for their opposition to teleworking. In a recent Department of Trade and Industry study, many managers said that they did not approve of teleworking, because without a boss to manage employees their work would invariably decline.) Even more challenging, you may actually be your own boss. If you have been the sort of person who regards the boss’s holiday as a good reason to down tools yourself, you may well have problems working from home. ..more

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Practical confrontation skills

Being able to stand up to people and speak firmly and constructively to them, is a valuable skill in handling problem people. If you tend to fume and walk away from a confrontation muttering to yourself, ‘I wish I had said . . . !! to that*O#!’, then you need confrontation skills.

Constructively confronting people is a communication strategy which allows you to speak your mind and represent your feelings in a direct way. It is not a strategy of name calling or aggressive outbursts. ..more

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With reference to a particular person X at work, do you frequently

• Wake up in the morning and immediately think ‘Oh no, I’ve got to face X again today’?
• Store anger throughout the day about X?
• Find yourself frequently in conflict with X?
• Experience jealousy about others‘ ability to get on with X?
• Back away from confrontations with X and then get angry at
  yourself because of your inability to act appropriately?

• Disagree or have arguments with your boss, who unfortunately is X? ..more
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Problem people frequently create turmoil and dissension in the work group. Being able to stand aside from strong emotions and think logically and creatively is a most critical skill, but one which will require preparation and practice. Let’s look at a series of steps which you might try to sort out a problem with a person at your workplace.

1 Treat the person with respect

Just as it often takes two people to make a problem, frequently requires participation of the same two to reach mutually agreeable solution. Threat and intimidation can hinder problem solving, so be certain to approach the person with sort out a very sticky and difficult work problem by approaching the other party firmly and positively. Jennifer’s opening words were particularly impressive: ‘There seems to be a spot of bother in this matter and I’m calling to ask for your assistance in sorting out the problem.’ By asking for the other person’s help and assistance, there was little or no threat and a mutually agreeable solution was readily negotiated. ..more

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Harmonious and productive working relationships exist primarily because the needs of the individuals in the work team are being met. For some, there may be a need to remain quiet and removed so that they can get on with their work. For others, however, there may be a need to forge closer ties and warmer relationships with workmates. As long as the aims of the employing body are being met, then these varying needs of the work team members can be tolerated.

Problems occur, however, when this reciprocating system of need/satisfaction gets unbalanced. If one or more people want to satisfy needs which are outside the aims of the employing body or antagonistic to the other work team members, then problems occur. For example, if one person wants to manipulate the work schedule to ensure more flexitime at the expense of the others, then that person can expect some resultant turmoil in the group. As work team members often spend more time with each other than they do with their own family members, it is important to maintain positive and effective work relationships. Let’s look at several ways relationships at work can be enhanced and made more harmonious and productive. ..more

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At risk of dwelling upon the negativities of relationships, it is important to consider two very strong and most upsetting emotional states—hate and jealousy.

Most of us have experienced hate (many loving relationships have a subtle or not-so-subtle hate component). As for jealousy, you will most probably know someone, if not yourself, who is predisposed to this strong emotional state.

Let me briefly mention the case of Michael, an architectural draughtsman who is married to Lisa. Michael comes from a close-knit Southern European family and married Lisa, an attractive Australian lass, when they were both in their early twenties and when both were socially and sexually inexperienced. Even though Michael is bright, well-qualified and successful in his job, he nevertheless is pathologically jealous of his wife and any association she might have with other men. ..more

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The end of a relationship can be accompanied by despair, despondency and even depression. You will probably know at least one person whose work performance plummeted after a relationship breakup—if you haven’t experienced this misfortune yourself.

William, a product manager with a large manufacturing firm had been seeing Caroline on a steady basis for nine months when she told him one evening that there just wasn’t enough in their relationship to warrant any further contact. This news came suddenly and unexpectedly and William was devastated. He did not arrive at work the next day and rang in to say he was sick and would not be at work for a week. When he did return, his colleagues remarked about how ill he still looked. William said he had a severe case of influenza and hoped to bounce back quickly. In reality, it took William months to overcome the trauma of his severed relationship. During that period, his work performance was most decidedly down. His confidence and general outlook on life were also at low ebb. Fortunately, he had the good sense to see a professional about his emotional state, a move which facilitated his recovery. ..more

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Love and hate are potent feelings which can overwhelm you, often just when your emotions can least afford the upset. For example, how often have you experienced the following situations?

• Feelings of love interfere with your concentration at work.
• You love (and sometimes hate) a person who doesn’t love you.
• You hate your boss or a colleague.
• You’re jealous of the attention given to a person you love.
• You love a person working nearby, but fear acting upon your feelings.
• You were in a relationship until yesterday when your partner said, Enough! ..more
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