Being Exceptional

Saying the big words is easy but actually being sensible enough to follow them is quite demanding. A lot of professionals talk big but seldom are big achievers. The chief reason being they are not good enough in their respective professions; it is as simple as that. A professional is someone who performs the assigned work efficiently irrespective of good or bad times.

Lot of us are not professionals but just people doing work; we are not sincere with our professions. All of us have one thing in common that we want to earn huge sum of money but we seldom try to be good in what we do -- our work, our profession. It is pertinent to note that what we do is actually going to help us achieve our long term goals and the mere short term goal of feeding us. Why not be good in what we do? Why not be outstanding in what we do? Why remain mediocre when we can be exceptional in what we do?

Excellence in our work shows how much pleasure we take in doing it and opposite holds true as well. The degrees we have and the institutes we have studied become irrelevant if we are average in what we ought to be best at. It is quite disheartening to see there are very few good barbers, tailors, shoemakers, welders, technicians, scientists, engineers, doctors, politicians. It is time that we stop mourning about our lives and start being exceptional in what we do. :)

Why Businesses Fail?

Have you ever wondered why most of the businesses fail in Pakistan? The idea behind the business was brilliant, catchy, innovative, revolutionary, out of the box, original and yet the business could not flourish. There can be infinite reasons but particularly the most common two that I have found and are mostly consistent are as follows:

1) Poor Service

The first in the list is poor service. If you have a good genuine product with weak service then consider your business days numbered. If any business wants to excel in B2B relations then it must provide state of the art services to its clients. A good service provided would encourage positive referrals. The best way to market your business is through word of mouth -- let your customers do that for you!

A particular example of poor service or business operation can be seen through the following incidents:

We needed a server for our company, so I called couple of distributors operating in Islamabad. One of the distributors after receiving the call told me to contact after an hour because they are having lunch at the moment. Yes I would wait for sixty minutes to call you again and not call your competitor the very next moment for my need.

I needed to repair my laptop's broken LCD. I personally went to different repairing shops in the town to get the best deal. Some were charging a lot relatively. One particular shop gave me the best price for repairing and even gave a warranty of one year but I refused to accept their deal. Why? Because the shop keeper communicated indifferently and without any interest. Isn't it quite simple? If you want business from me, you have to show some interest first! Well I felt comfortable with the shop offering the same price but less warranty time because the people were more cooperative and respected the potential customer.

When you are doing business you have to make your customers comfortable to work with you. Always go out of the way to make them feel at home all the time. If you make the business offering complicated for them expect them to change their business partner the next time! Why would I do further or more business with you if you are unable to provide me the service as per the agreement? Provide value to your customers and you would reap benefits out of your business!

2) Lacking Professionalism

What is professionalism? To give your best even when you are not feeling so. What is ethics? Moral correctness of the specified conduct. Many businesses forget while doing business that they have to follow some level of professionalism and ethics as well. Examples of being professionally unethical include paying your employees late or paying your business partners not at time. When you are doing business you have to follow the universal morals. Your employees sustain your business, you need to respect them with their needs. Your partners help you get the business, you need to be at your best professional behavior with them. I have seen it a lot that employers because of their ignorance do not respect their employees and have big turn over rates. What happens when you are not professional with your employees? They leave you! Employees are the main asset of any organization and experienced employees are critical to your business stability, respect and revere them.

Trust is very important between an employee and employer relationship. If the employer does not trust the employee then expect the same from the employee. Having said that businesses should not be people specific but function and process oriented. Your business processes must be so strong that even if an employee leaves there is minimal repercussion. Businesses that are people specific are prone to disaster and waiting to be kicked out of business sooner than expected.

Do you expect to retain customers or do business after business with them if you were not professionally astute in your initial point of contact? No business is lucky the next time, you have to work hard, you have to give your best, you have to be easy to do business with, you have to be empathetic, you have to be far-sighted, you have to be visionary, you have to be persistent to get business after business from the same customer. A little unprofessionalism at your end can also affect your other potential leads as well.

Conclusion:

Any idea can be turned into healthy business if followed up with great service and high professionalism. The best you can do is sell me once but to sell me twice you need to be wise. :)