Leading During The Economic Crisis – Part Thirteen
ByThis is the thirteenth in a series of posts about leading/managing during the economic crisis.
The content of these posts will include unedited transcriptions from a recent webinar addressing “How to Optimize Teams’ Effectiveness in Difficult Economic Times”. The webinar contained questions from the attendees. The questions are answered by the following five management and leadership experts:
Jerry Houston, Carol Bergmann, A.J. Hiltenbrand, Ed Oakley and See Luan Foo.
The rest of this post contains an unedited transcription of one of the questions asked and answered during the webinar:
Ed: This is from Cindy. This is an interesting one and maybe the last one we have time for. Wow, I think this is more marketing one again. But I start this so we’re going to keep going. “What can we do to help reduce the cancellations of a product because of the economic environment and how do we handle this when the product cannot be refunded?”
I’m going to take a stab on that and her product is reservations to give you some sense. For instance resort kind of reservations and maybe people are saying “Gosh, I was planning this since Christmas in a major ski resort with my family but with economic situation I think I want to cancel this,” Is that kind of thing?”
So one thought I have on that and it’s probably not in the leadership arena but I’ll take a quick stab at that. I would look for something you could do now that cost very little. The real cost are very little that you could extend to the people who are already have reservations that who have not canceled yet that would might make the difference for them. A thought comes to mind. Let’s say they have a reservation for a ski resort, you send them a letter or an e-mail or whatever the way you that communicate with them, say “Hey, we look forward to seeing you on December 22nd and you and your family and we have a very special gift for you. We’re including five days of skiing at no additional cost. We recognize the economic times have changed and we want to honor you and make sure you’ll have the best possible vacation you could have.” So that’s the thought on that. Anybody else want to comment on that at all?
A.J.: Hi this is AJ, I would jump in on that and I would say that if it’s a ski resort, she contacts some local restaurant in the area and send coupon for dinner appetizer or something in addition and those restaurants will be happy to join that effort because that means that they get the business versus the other tenant down.
Ed: And by the way you are welcome to send those coupons to A.J. and I too because we’ll use some skiing.
A.J.: I was thinking about this question and I wrote down on the side. If you really have some that have come more than once and you have records that they do, a telephone call should then saying “Welcome back and we expect to see you” and do a little coupon thing or something too, I mean you could really strong on that too.
Ed: Alright.
Jerry: I think that goes to her question too about the top three things that team or company didn’t focus on and that is to focus on being unique and different as you pointed out before, and trying to find things that you can do that are unexpected that will delight your customers, and assure them that they can still move forward with their plans.
Ed: Alright yes very good. Thank you for that. Okay we are going to be forced to wrap up here. And to me I want to try to wrap this up in just a few thoughts at the end here. Is to me the people side is more important than ever. The importance of honoring people for where they are before asking them to do more to the extent we as leaders truly acknowledge people, honor them, listen to them, hear them, feel for what they are going through, empathize with them to the extent we go out of our way to really understand each of the people that we’re working with as well as a team overall. That gives us the right and also understanding of the timing to invite them to do what needs to be done, and of course that what needs to be done is our new found clarity on what are the goals right now that we can achieve, that we can make a difference with, that we can feel as a personal satisfaction for achieving that they’re realistic. And so for me there is a hard side of the business and there is the soft side of the business, that soft side of the business is more important than it ever has been and to me this is a tremendous opportunity for each one of us managers to grow and develop into more effective leaders. And so I want to honor you for having registered and being on this call or listening to it on a replay and I wish you the very best and we are out of time, would you guys like to just say goodbye in your own ways?
See Luan: Thank you and hope to see you again.
Ed: Okay anybody else like to just say goodbye?
Jerry: This is Jerry. I’d just like to say that it’s stopping one guy running down the field is not so hard stopping hundreds and others so work hard with your teams.
Ed: Yeah.
Carol: This is Carol. I’m just honor to participate today so thank you.
A.J.: This is AJ and so long and I hope to hear from you again.
Ed: Alright. Now, and the last thing I will say is that if you’re not already you should be on leadershipmadesimple.com because we will use that as a way to respond to some of the questions, we look at this as a sort of a survey of the challenges on that block. We’ll address some of those. And if you are a member of makingmanagersintoleaders.com, we absolutely will directly address your questions that did not get answered, so please send us an e-mail with that question so that we will know it did not get answered and if you are a member, we will address that through the membership side etc.
Alright the replay will be available in by early next week and feel free to share it with anyone that you think it will help make a difference for. It has been an honor and privilege. I thank each of the panelists. You have made have this fun for me and easy. So have a wonderful rest of the week and as See Luan says hope to see you again soon.
That was the end of one of the questions and answers in the webinar.
You can find more leadership ideas at my web site:
http://www.enleadership.com/cm/
Best Regards,
Ed Oakley
