Grow Your Business Exhibition

The Emotional Bank Account

We can all make mistakes from time to time.  But when we do, how can we ensure that there is enough trust built up that those affected can be confident that things will right themselves?  When dealing with employees, clients or suppliers we need to build up enough of a relationship to cover for these eventualities.  But how?

Stephen Covey in 'The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People' uses the metaphor of the Emotional Bank Account to describe "the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship". 

This account begins on a neutral balance. And just as with any bank account, we can make deposits and withdrawals. However, instead of dealing with units of monetary value, we deal with emotional units.

If you make enough deposits with others through courtesy, kindness, honesty and keeping your commitments to them, you build up a reserve.  Others trust in you becomes higher and you can call upon that trust if you need to.  When the trust is high, communication is easy, instant and effective.  When you are kind, honest, caring and friendly to another person, you make deposits on an Emotional Bank Account.

However, if you are unkind, disrespectful, uncaring and mean, you draw from this account. And when we make withdrawals and our balance becomes low or even overdrawn, bitterness, mistrust and discord develops. If we are to salvage the relationship, we must make a conscious effort to make regular deposits.

There are six major deposits we can make to the emotional bank account:

Understanding the individual

One person's mission is another person's minutia.  To make a deposit, what is important to another person must be as important to you as the other person is to you. 

 

Attending to the seemingly insignificant

Kindnesses and courtesies are so important.  Forms of disrespect make large withdrawals.  In relationships, the things that can seem insignificant to you can count for others.

 

Keeping commitments

Keeping a commitment is a major deposit; breaking one is a major withdrawal.  In fact there's probably no larger withdrawal than to make a promise that's important to someone and then not to come through.

 

Clarifying expectations

The cause of many relationship difficulties is often rooted in conflicting or ambiguous expectations around roles and goals.  Unclear expectations will lead to misunderstanding, disappointment and withdrawals of trust.  Many expectations are implicit and the deposit is to make the expectations clear and explicit in the beginning.  This takes a real investment of time and effort up front, but saves great amounts of time and effort in the long run.  When expectations are not clear and shared, simple misunderstandings become compounded, turning into personality clashes and communication breakdowns.   It does, however, take courage.

 

Showing personal integrity

Lack of integrity can undermine almost any other effort to create high trust accounts.  It goes beyond honesty.  Integrity is conforming to the reality of our words - keeping promises and fulfilling expectations.  One way of manifesting integrity is to be loyal to those who are not present.

 

Apologising sincerely when you make a withdrawal

Great deposits come in the sincere words - “I was wrong”, “I showed you no respect”, “I'm sorry”.  It takes a great deal of character strength to apologise.  A person must have a deep sense of security to genuinely apologise.  It is one thing to make a mistake, and quite another not to admit it.

 

We don’t need money to make a deposit on the Emotional Bank Account of any relationship, and won’t feel richer if we withdrew from it. Nevertheless, it is so easy to waste and erode the level of trust by being thoughtless and critical.

 

Caroline runs Zeal Coaching and she will be speaking on Motivating your team at the Grow Your Business event on 13^th May.  To subscribe to her newsletter visit www.zealcoaching.com

 

Cost Effective PR Tips

Chas Brooks, President of the Surrey Chambers of Commerce and director of CBC shares his essential cost-effective PR Tips.

Firstly, make your website as effective and professional as your budget allows. Use a recommended local web designer who knows about search engine optimisation. Make sure you keep your website simple and clear and include PDFs of key pages, so that they can double up as marketing collateral and allow you to save on printing costs. 

Link your website to a daily blog that has chatty topical comment. Have a section on the website that you can easily update yourself, latest news etc, and do this often - or just link this section to your blog and update your blog often. If you are reading this blog, that's proof of the pudding!

 

Concentrate on your key words and phrases for the search engines and do searches on what your customers would use if looking with your service

to see how easy you are to find. All of this should result in a user and search engine friendly website   - a great basis for any budget marketing and PR campaign.

 

Having made the website as user friendly and as search engine visible as possible, offer free industry advice. For example, we offer free PR Fact Sheets. We get regularly requests for these and they lead to interest in our company and to signing new customers. We are happy to share ideas here for marketing and PR on a shoe string :-) www.chazb.com 

 

Other cost effective PR and Marketing approaches to think about could be to link up with suppliers and customers when planning any seminars, events etc so as to share the cost, and to work with industry bodies and local Chamber of Commerce to maximise low cost marketing opportunities

Chazbrooks Communications (CBC) is a Surrey-based PR and marketing communications agency.  By offering a targeted service to companies spread across a wide variety of industries, our innovative, creative and highly personalised approach ensures that our clients’ interests are promoted through strategic planning, highly effective PR campaigns, and consistent press coverage within their target media.

Thoughts on opportunities in a recession and the role of PR

Mandy Brooks, MD of , Chazbrooks Communications (CBC) shares her insights into the role of PR in a recession. Over to you Mandy!

When times are tough, people need more help than ever with marketing and selling their goods and services but they are faced with the dilemma of needing to cut costs at the same time. Therefore, they need a Marketing and PR campaign that is creative, measurable and shows the value that it will add to the business - it needs to pay for itself plus add agreed value. People also need a team of suppliers supporting them who are of a similar mindset. 

 

At Chazbrooks Communications (CBC), we are working hard to make sure that we actively add value to our clients' businesses every day so that our clients know that they are getting a measured return on their investment when they use us. 

 

I actually have a note in front of me that says... 'does it save money or bring in income - if not I don't need it.'  So every day,  I am thinking of this in terms of my suppliers and in terms of the service that we offer to our clients.

 

Any business that focuses on measurables and can offer measurable proof that it actively increases income or reduces costs for its customers will do especially well in tough times.

Chazbrooks Communications (CBC) is a Surrey-based PR and marketing communications agency.  By offering a targeted service to companies spread across a wide variety of industries, our innovative, creative and highly personalised approach ensures that our clients’ interests are promoted through strategic planning, highly effective PR campaigns, and consistent press coverage within their target media. 

Positive Steps You Can Take to Increase Your Cash Flow

Claire Freer of FCM Solutions shares her top tips for making sure you get paid for the work you do! Over to you Claire...

By following a few simple steps you could recession proof your credit control and reduce the incidence of bad debts and increase cash flow:

1.    Make a list of every invoice outstanding whether it is due or overdue and flag all invoices that have reached 20 days old from the date of invoice. We recommend using a spreadsheet package to do this.

2.    Include columns such as Invoice Number, invoice date, invoice balance, contact details, a due date and a comments column.

3.   Ensure there are no credits or payments to be allocated and that the customer hasn't been given different payment terms to your standard terms.  

4.  Work through the list dealing with the largest balances first.  

5.    Send a statement out to every customer at day 15 of your 30 day credit terms ensuring your statement shows a due date. You could even print a copy of your terms of business on the reverse of the statement. Statements can often generate an influx of payments before the invoice is due.

6.    Have a copy of the invoice(s) in front of you when you make your first call. Does your invoice show a due by date and how your customer can pay? Do they have multiple invoices that you could be chasing even if they aren't yet due?

7.    Start calling your customers from day 20 of your 30 day credit terms to ensure they are in safe receipt of your invoice and that it is query free.

8.    Be courteous but firm and ask the question, when can we expect to receive payment? You won't know without asking.

9.    Keep all notes updated with as much information as possible and add an extra column with the date of your next contact.

10.  When your customer confirms a payment date, follow it up 3 days later to allow time for finances to clear.

11.  If your customer has a query, log the query on your spreadsheet and pass to the relevant person within your company. Put a date in your spreadsheet of no more than 5 working days before you chase to resolve the query. A query is only resolved when the customer is happy to pay.

12.  At day 30, if you have not received a response from your customer send a strongly worded yet courteous letter reiterating your payment terms and that payment should be made immediately.

13.  If a promised payment does not arrive on the date expected or at least 3 days after the date, call your customer again for an update.

14.  If all else fails and your invoice becomes seriously overdue, take further action by sending a final reminder letter giving your customer 7 days to make a payment before legal action is taken.

Claire Freer runs credit control agency FCM Solutions. You can contact her on 01256 462816 or email claire@fcmsolutions.co.uk