Be Successful Here

Whenever you are working on developing a new product, it is important to get an understanding of the big picture or vision for the product in the marketplace. Is your product going to be only for one customer or is it expected to have broad applicability in the marketplace? Why is this so important? Management wants the greatest possible reward with the least amount of risk.

Your company’s management is challenged with the responsibility of getting the most from the dollars that are invested in the company. Without a solid understanding of the potential of your project, it can be hard for management to justify the expense of the development effort. They may choose to put more funding into another project that has done a better job of articulating the potential. Having multiple applications for your product, decreases the risk to the company that there will be no sales of your product because there are multiple applications where your product might work.

Oftentimes, the decision is to start commercialization either with a smaller market segment or with a smaller customer to get the bugs worked out of the product before a full-scale launch of the product to a larger application. It is very common that the first application that is targeted for a new product doesn’t pan out.

If there is a snag in getting the product to work in this first application, then a lot of time and effort can be poured into making it work when a better decision might be to move on to another application and use the learning to make a better product for a different application. By keeping the big picture in front of everyone, your team is more likely to move quickly to the next application, thus minimizing the costs.

Since the bigger applications are often farther down the development road, it is important to keep moving to those applications and using the smaller applications as intermediate steps on the path to the large applications and to long-term commercial success.

Without a clear understanding of the multiple possibilities for a product, communication to management of a shift to a new application for a product when the first one doesn’t pan out could appear as a desperate attempt to keep a project alive, rather than the next logical step on the development process.

For big businesses, the unknown is something to be taken seriously. Although a leap of faith in business deals and investments can be good every once in a while, it does create risks that can ruin a business’ potentials when it occurs. To avoid that, a wise entrepreneur would exert all effort to reduce the unknown and retrieve information critical to a company’s survival. And what better way to go about this task than going for telemarketing? It’s one of the most powerful tools that a marketing campaign can ever use. It can deliver excellent marketing leads that can be converted to a sale or a closed deal for a client firm.

Telemarketing, as a tool for business, unexpectedly excels in solving this type of concern. It’s unexpected, in terms of it being a very old marketing technique and the question of it still being applicable for the modern times. But that shouldn’t be the case. In terms of effectiveness, professional telemarketing services have been the best in the field. Telemarketers are known to deliver results in such a way that companies would not help but appreciate its efficiency. There are also no doubts about its power to turn the tide for a struggling business enterprise. How many cases have been cited where a company was able to maximize their business potentials with the help of marketing leads produced by telemarketers?

Marketing leads are a necessity for the growth of any business. No matter what industry they belong to, there is always a need to use marketing strategies to improve market share, as well as better the chances of entering a new market. All these can be done if the right kind of marketing leads are used by the firm. To ensure quality, it really pays to hire professional telemarketing firms that provide lead generation services. They have the knowledge, the experience, and the skill in judging whether a prospect will be profitable or not for their client. Lead generation is a task that only professional telemarketers can do.

Since there is business to business lead generation, it only stands to mention appointment setting services. What good are marketing leads, no matter how qualified these are, if no sale or closed deal would take place? This requires the skills of telemarketers with experience in appointment setting. This is the next stage in the marketing process, perhaps the most important. It’s because being able to make the sales pitch depends entirely on the willingness of a prospect to meet or listen to the firm. If the prospect says no, then it’s considered a lost opportunity. Appointment setting services of professional telemarketing firms ensure that firms get the most number of qualified appointments for their clients.

When the Bedouin ancestors of the modern Kuwaitis settled in the area in the early 18th century they adapted their nomadic way of life to include sea-faring, fishing and pearling.

At that time one of the main international trading links between India and Europe was the sea-route through the Arabian Gulf which joined the overland caravan routes to the Eastern Mediterranean. The new settlement became increasingly active in this trade and eventually the ruling elite in Kuwait consisted of highly mobile merchants who controlled camel trains and fleets of ships.

Following the Bedouin tradition, the first Al-Sabah amirs (leaders) were elected by the merchants to administer and defend the town. Later, once the Sabah family had entrenched itself politically, it chose one of its own members as the Amir provided he could obtain a pledge of allegiance from the other merchant families.

According to the Kuwaiti historian Al-Rushaid, real authority rested with the merchants and the primary duty of the Amir was to protect ‘the rights of the merchants against the greed of foreigners’.

The Amirs were certainly successful in doing so. Due to its stable administration and geographical position, early Kuwait was able to develop industries based on trading, transport by land and sea, shipbuilding, and related activities.

The country became a centre for caravans crossing from south-eastern Arabia to the Mediterranean. Kuwaiti merchants also handled most of the sea-trade that passed through Kuwait, as well as much of the trade that went through other Gulf ports. Kuwait merchant ships also sailed the Indian Ocean between East Africa and the Indian subcontinent.

Eventually these families became trading dynasties with networks that spanned the Indian Ocean and the Middle East. However they remained centred on Kuwait where they relied on the Amir to provide favourable conditions for their commercial activities.

The dominance of the merchant class only began to weaken in the 1950s when the oil wealth, which was controlled by the Amir, started to flow. However the trading ethos remains deeply embedded in the Kuwait character, and today’s Kuwaiti business men and women have well-earned reputations for mercantile astuteness and hard bargaining, which the foreign entrepreneur ignores at his peril.

Those who’ve worked with me as a coach, or have been in one my workshops, know that I tend to think in terms of “family systems theory.” What this theory suggests is that individuals can’t really be understood in isolation from one another, and that whether we’re talking about families of origin–or groups of people who work together–our behaviors can be understood in relation to the whole system.

There’s a ton that can be said about all of this, but let me just deal briefly with one aspect of how this looks.

The P.C.

Often, a workplace system has someone in it that is identified as the “problem child” (the “P.C.”); the person whose personality or behavior takes an extra measure of patience, tolerance, tooth-gritting on the parts of the other employees. Maybe you’re one of those other employees, and you dread interactions with this person, avoid them during breaks, or are secretly hoping they are looking for a job elsewhere. Maybe you don’t trust them, and you are suspicious of their motives.

You might hear people saying things like, “If P.C. weren’t here, this would be such a great place to work!” Or, “Unless P.C. gets fired, or moved, I’m outta here!”

And hey…let’s be honest…P.C. might really be an incredibly annoying, difficult, seditious, or high maintenance person, and the thought of “promoting them to customer” might feel really good! This can be the stuff of fantasies!

Systemic support

Here’s where family systems theory comes in. Systems theory says that the P.C.’s behavior can’t really be understood as continuing on its own momentum. Systems theory suggests that the only reason it continues is because it is being supported in some way by the system around them (of which you are a part, and in which you may be complicit).

“What?! There’s no way in the world I support P.C.’s behavior,” you might be wanting to retort. I hear you. That’s most likely what I’d say, too, and…by the way…have said several times in years past. However…

The responsibility thing

Every time we talk to someone else about P.C., we participate in supporting their behavior. Every time we blame P.C. for our own unhappiness, we support their behavior. Every time we ask HR, our boss, a co-worker to talk to them for us, we support their behavior. In a very real sense, firing the P.C. without having worked at more personally responsible solutions may give us temporary relief, but is a disservice to the P.C.