Clients and their COMMENTS

" I don't know. Just get it done! "

" We love your work, but we have a budget of only $100."

" Can you please fix my code and make it work. It should be easy for you! "

" Superb! Great work! Its beautiful. Please marry me "

" Don't worry about the first point, just do the third and second one.I am
planning to give you bulk work can you give discount? "

" Look I donot know what I want..I just know, this is not it "

" I need a 5 page website by tomorrow. That won't be a problem, will it? "

" Well, I like it but my wife thinks it should be magenta"

" I understand its the 10th Mockup, but its still not what I am looking for "

" I needed this done like yesterday. "

" I am okai with the quote, but I need to discuss it with my partner"

Good Client Vs Bad Client

Everyone of us has experienced the Hell of working with a Bad Client. My company has been around for 3+ years and we had our share of bad clients. We have been lucky to have faced more good clients than bad ones. But one bad one washes away the happiness which 100 good clients give you.

Many successful business heads say that "Don't hire Bad Clients!" . However, being a small company, we need to embrace everyone who comes our way. Hence, we end up having bad clients on the go most of the time so we can hit targets and pay salaries. Not to mention that the knock on effect makes it harder to meet the targets for the next few months as you deal with the nightmare... and the vicious cycle continues.

Secondly, even if I decide to not hire bad clients, how do you know its one? Almost all the times everything adds up in the beginning, but then somewhere along the line, suddenly and drastically everything changes?

Here I am putting together from my experience identifiers of a bad client and good client.

GOOD CLIENT - A good client is one who ---

• Knows what he wants.Is focused on the big picture
• Fills the web project questionnaire in clear and detailed manner
• Provides an RFP, or clear outline of the scopeof project
• Understands the Web development process
• Gives final sign-off and approvalIs in agreement on deliverables,schedule and budget
• Is responsive to email and phone callsProvides content on time
• Provides feedback and approval promptly.

BAD CLIENT - To be aware of has ---

• "Need it right now" attitude, unrealistic project delivery requests
• Has no clue of what the content of the website should be, but wants it to“look awesome”
• Cannot give final approval on anything.Doesn’t have time to fill out the website questionnaire
• Has Small budget but needs faster turnaround time
• Non-responsive, cannot make decisions, does not email or call back in a timely manner
• Indecisive, changes mind frequently
• You provide the client with the 10th website mockup, and they still feel its not what they are looking for.
• Four weeks ago you were working with James who quit, last week you were working with Andre who was fired, and now you’re working with Jeremy who doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but gives feedback that we have done a bad job.
• Always threatening to sue you for some reason or another.

Please feel free to add-on to this list.

Unleash the Power of Enthusiasm

If you are not fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm in every aspect of our life, every moment of our life is a must. Enthusiasm makes the simple mundane tasks special and rewarding.

Enthusiasm at work motivates employees to go that extra mile to accomplish their tasks and shoulder more responsibilities without feeling the stress. But still one finds that enthusiasm is so scarce and rare to find.

To get people around you to be more enthusiastic, we need to be enthusiastic and active ourselves. Results always come in proportion to the enthusiasm applied. Enthusiasm is contagious, so be a carrier.

Below are 5 tips to unleash the power of enthusiasm within you

1. To become enthusiastic, start by learning more about the things you are not enthusiastic about. Study deeply about the things that don't interest you but are a part of you life. Knowledge about the thing will create interest in it.
   
2. Pep it up: Add life, vigor in to everything you do. When you shake hands with anyone, just do it with a big smile and say "Good to see you". You will make his day more brighter for sure.
   
3. Do not hang out with unenthusiastic and negative people. Unenthusiasm is also contagious, stay away from it.
4. Don't just like what you do, love it. Add that extra bit of care, affection and personal touch in everything you do.
5. Be in the company of enthusiastic people. Participate in
   

Happiness at work is my responsibility !

Happiness in work place is not something which you feel when you are getting paid well or you have a posh office, its a matter of choice. You need to choose to be happy at work. When you are happy at work, the same happiness radiates ion to your family and social life. The impact of happiness at work is more, because we spend most of our waking hours at work.

So from today lets repeat the below everyday till it becomes our nature -

1. I choose to be happy at work
2. Will spread happiness: I will be the carrier of happiness and infect others. Unhappiness is also infectious, but I choose not to spread that virus.
3. I will create happiness today: Not tomorrow, Not next week or next month. Its Now.
4. I will learn to say "NO"
5. Letting my BOSS know what makes me happy at work is my responsibility.
6. Letting my colleagues know what makes me happy at work is my responsibility.
7. Happiness at work makes me more healthy, happier and completely stress free.
8. I understand its OK to have a BAD WORK DAY.
9. I will share my knowledge with others and appreciate others work as well.
10. I am my BEST when I am Happy! Happiness makes me be creative, productive and successful.

Lets pledge from today at the start of the waking hour that- I choose to be HAPPY AT WORK !

Implementing Simplicity in daily life, not easy at all!

Implementing simplicity in life is not an easy task.

Today evening, I saw a beautiful, mesmerizing, necklace which I wanted to own badly and flaunt it at a family ceremony. The price tag was a little steep, but subconsciously I made it worth peanuts to me. I booked the piece of temptation with a small advance and fixed the timing to pay the balance & collect it after a day.

At home, I shared my new purchase wish with my hubby. He asked me "why do you want to buy it more for - because you liked it or you want to flaunt it?". Hmmm..., now this was surely a bouncer, I replied for both reasons. I went to look for jewelry in the first place, because, I wanted to flaunt it.

He promptly replied,what happened about your Simplicity band wagon, did the bubble burst in just a week.

My speeding dreamy car came to an abrupt halt. He was right! I felt so ashamed of my behavior. It took me an hour to realize my folly, but I thank God that he brought me back on track.

Its really very easy to get deviated and get entangled in to the clutter. Its very easy to be a part of the maddening race to look good and show-off something which you are not.

Now, I am damn sure, I will be more happy and more free without it. I will live for myself, and enhance my inner beauty with accessories which will be with me till eternity than exterior diminishing ones.

Today, was a very important milestone for me.

Hidden cost of Workplace Complexity

Real problem is not more volume but extra complexity.

When we have more work volume from existing customers, we have to adapt to increase in volume which in turn adds to the resource cost. However, when the customer is new, their is recruiting cost and since their needs are different from the existing customers, the complexity and cost increases.

Even though the new customer is only slightly different than the existing customer, costs go up because the small change also breaks the routine and requires the manager intervention to handle the new requirements.

Stopping the work and starting it again incurs cost. Communication and miscommunication between extra people incurs time drain and hence cost. The gap and cost increases further when the work is put aside for someone else's instructions or for more clarity on customer feedback. All these costs are steep and shocking because most of the time they go unaccounted.

If this communication is across departments, offices and timezones, the result is unimaginably bad.

Increase in work volume, leads to marginal new customers and profit, but add significantly to the managerial complexity.

Management and managers both get a high from increased complexity as it interests and challenges their intellect. Hence, management and managers keep managing and encouraging complexity till it becomes unmanageable and goes completely out of control.

Alas, the cost of complexity is far more than the benefits of increased volume.

Business Volume is not all bad

Business volume and market share are important and valuable. Extra volume also helps us to spread the fixed costs. Volume also helps us in making a good sales pitch and creates confidence to approach big customers.

Business volume changes the way the world perceives your business. There is more acceptance and feel good environment. More people are hired to handle the extra volume. And the moral of the existing employees is high to see the company in the growing gear. You become a part of the preferred employer list for a lot of good talent, who earlier wouldn't even consider you worth sending their profile.

Its a feel-good environment everywhere, till the balance sheet is presented.

The bottom line still doesn't change why does high volume fail to translate in to high profits.

Why do businesses have to pay the price of shrinking margins when targeting more business volume or market share.

What can be the cause of increasing costs? More business should be more profits and the cost to profit ratio should remain the same, ideally. Converse is true though.

Real problem is not more volume but extra complexity.

Sweating the small stuff

The simple week was anything away from being simple. As one of the steps, I decided to investigate the roots of the unending list of unfinished, incomplete things. With a little push from my better half, I decided to look at the last 6 months sales reports and what was revealed was no less than a jolt for me.

The analysis put forth an alarming fact that 80% of our sales were coming from 30% of our projects. The remaining 70% of our projects were bringing the 20% sales.

70% of our projects were significantly small in revenue. They helped us gain a long list of customers and enhance our portfolio, but they were also a big time drain. They expected and received the same service like our big project customers.

Our service to our cream customers (80% sales) always suffered owing to the chaos created by the huge number of small customers.

The chaos which was result of the pressure put by huge number of small customers was building frustration with the team members, management and customers equally. At the end of a hard day, uncompleted work, annoyed customers was nothing than a nail in the coffin.

We kept on adding people to complete the unfinished work and ease the pressures, but they inturn ate our profit margins by inflating our cost. Their was no change in the situation of customer satisfaction or growth in sales , only a dry pocket.

It is high time to rethink our strategy towards sales.

Simple Week

Last entire week, I focussed on bringing clarity to each and every facet of my work life. Believe me, it was a long hard week, with very little to brag about.

In the pursuit of simplifying the environment of my office, I have focussed my attention this week on various areas:

1. Simplifying the work allocation to team members. Seeing to it that my managers do not keep shuffling their duties based on management and customer pressure. Simplifying the instructions and duties assigned to my designers and developers. Bring more clarity in making them understand our and customers' expectations from them.
   
2. Working with my marketing team to simplify and reduce the long list of pending quotations. Leads get generated and keep piling each day in the inbox of my marketing team as they do not get cleared the same day. Training sessions were scheduled with them on how to attend to leads and send initial quotes to their requests.
   
3. Studying the last 6 months sales data to assess the trend of business. More on this in the next post.
4. Working with the each individual and helping and making him focus on his work and make him use the free time to sharpen his/her skill. Average age of my team is 24-25, making them to focus and realize the importance of enhancing their skill requires sheer persistence.

Wake Up Call ! Embrace Simplicity

Lets assume that Work Complexity is wasting about 2 hrs per day per person. With a team size of 25, I am already losing 50 valuable hours a day, i.e; around 250 hrs a week. Whow!

This is a huge cost for not paying attention to simplicity. We cannot afford this for sure!!

Embracing simplicity is the only ultimate development opportunity, we have in our hands to keep the growth happening, to survive and face this chaotic world of information overdose.

So, to fight the demon of "CONFUSION", which is making such catastrophic damage, I need to get the Angel "SIMPLICITY" in to my work floor.

My first step towards, bringing "SIMPLICITY" to my floor would be to think how to stop time abuse of everyone in this organization including mine.

Choice overload is creating an opposing force. Every customer, every project, every task, every request is bartering for time and attention of me and my team members. Resulting in project delays, flawed work, unhappy clients, frustrated and drained team members.

I plan to begin using the 5 building blocks before starting any project. 5 building blocks which will be the first step towards simplicity.

The 5 Building Blocks:

KNOW - Identify the most important things of the project. Understand the project.
FEEL - Understanding what the team feels about the project. Clarify how I want them to feel about the project.
USE - Are the tools and training required for the project present.
DO - Each team member should know clearly what is expected out of him. Expectation list of project should be clear and simple.
SUCCEED - Clearly list the milestones, project completion expectation, benefits to the company and team on project success.




Photo courtesy mackz

Simplicity - need of today's world.

Everything around us is changing at a fast pace. Continuously demanding from us more, faster and better actions/reactions/results.

What's needed to survive and prosper in a chaos world in which reason no longer applies, in which you must focus on outcome, not process.

However, taxing it becomes, we cannot run away from the infinite choices thrown at us in this information age. Neither can we overlook it. Then how can we deal with this chaos around us with insufficient time at hand. There is never enough TIME to do everything. However fast you run, you still will be far behind the finish line; you will always end up having too much to cope with, too much to cover.

In our company, our worst competitor is the day-to-day confusion. Every individual takes so much time to figure out what to do and what not to do. Whose orders to follow and whose not. However, detailed we become, it only adds up to the chaos and at the end of the day we are confused about why things are not done as scheduled or as expected.Nothing works like it is supposed to, and at the end of the day makes all of us hunger for simplicity to some degree.

Its the time for all of us belonging to the age of information overload, to stop and think about our APPROACH.

Focusing on what matters most and not waste time on the rest. Simplifying Everything around us.

SIMPLICITY is a complex topic that has no single, simple answer.

In wikipedia, Simplicity is defined as the property, condition, or quality of being simple or un-combined. It often denotes beauty, purity or clarity. Simple things are usually easier to explain and understand than complicated ones. Simplicity can mean freedom from hardship, effort or confusion.

By being not clear enough, we are actually abusing others as well as our own time. We need to kill the demon of "CONFUSION" to bring "SIMPLICITY" in our lives.

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.