They are your greatest asset and the ambassadors of your vision – the men and women who work for you.  Managing and inspiring them isn’t for the faint-hearted, but can be a business owner’s or manager’s most rewarding responsibilities.

Supervisors, seeking harmony and desiring to be liked by all their employees, are often timid to address, confront and deal with an employee who demonstrates mediocre effort, is ineffective in their role or is letting down your team.  But failing to tackle matters demoralizes your best employees and does nothing to improve the performance of the offending employee.  Facing issues head-on with consistent fairness enhances and encourages excellence.  The employee needing guidance has an opportunity to step it up and all your employees will be motivated, not out of fear, but increased respect for your leadership.

Additionally, managers make a mistake when they don’t acknowledge exceptional achievement. Supervisors frequently neglect to recognize outstanding performance, fearing it may appear as favoritism to others.  Instead, impartial public and private tangible expressions of recognition (awards, bonuses, perks, thank you notes, gifts, titles, etc.) for a job well done communicates volumes to all your employees about desired results of their efforts within your organization.

Another common error businesses make is giving equal pay increases to all employees.  Doing so sends a message that mediocrity is expected and rewarded.  Employees view their compensation as a reflection of how your business perceives the contribution they’re making to your enterprise. Salary increases based on performance provide powerful motivation deep within, not just for the money, but what the money says about their extra effort toward fulfilling your vision.

Helping employees become maximum performers takes a lot of effort and carries risks, but the risk of failing to do so is much higher.  To summarize: 1) addressing issues of poor performance puts fuel in the tank of your best and most industrious employees; 2) recognizing extraordinary accomplishment sets the stage for greater contributions by more employees; 3) merit pay increases help create a culture of vision-centered productivity.

If you don’t believe TimeClockpro can save you time and money, you’re not likely to be interested in any of our three deployment options.  That’s why we included our “one minute challenge” to demonstrate how much you save per employee.  One company president still lies awake at night realizing just how much money his 7 state, 100 Employee Company could have saved with any of our 3 options deployed as the timekeeper he could trust….

He said, “We had operations spread out from Chicago to Salt Lake.  Some locations had mechanical time clocks, others simply had manual forms that needed to be faxed to headquarters.  We processed payroll weekly, so it took my human resource director nearly one full day sorting through nearly 60 individual timecards and 40 faxed or FedEx mailed manual payroll forms.  Time spent on the phone verifying straight time/overtime/vacation/etc, making judgments on time printed outside the lines from malfunctioning time clocks, handwritten non-legible times, and wrong addition (obviously not in company’s favor) still makes me cringe.  Was there dishonestly – hard to prove from over a thousand miles away.  Was there padding – what’s 10 minutes rounding going to hurt anything?  Did my human resource professional sometimes make errors adding nearly illegible manual cards – probably.  What I do know is that it cost her majority of a day’s work per week – plus a lot of stress.”

He continued, “I’d have slept a lot better at night if I had taken the “one minute challenge” a few years ago and thought it was only costing our company $9,000 a year.  I now realize that conservatively, the labor costs I could have saved our company by using TimeClockpro would have been several hundred thousand dollars – ouch!”

So if you’re a business owner, or in charge of timekeeping at your company, choosing TimeClockpro could be one of the best decisions you’ll ever make. Click the “Try Now” button and take TimeClockpro for a free test drive for 30-days.  You can purchase a License Key anytime during the 30 days or after to continue using it.

When you discuss your business, how do you describe it?  Like most small business owners, we tend to lead with what services we provide our customers.  Do any of these sound familiar when you meet someone at a network function for the first time:  I sell property and casualty insurance; I own a flower shop; I do taxes; I install heating and air conditioning; I coach small business owners;  I do, I sell, I specialize in, I, I, I…..get the point.

Are you ready for a real hard marketing reality?  Your prospect doesn’t care what you do.  They may care for you because you are a fellow human being, but they really don’t care what you do.  They only care WHAT YOU CAN DO FOR THEM.  Use this test.  If you are approaching a prospect, just assume that they have the radio station WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) tattooed on their forehead.  Then, and only then, will you redirect your marketing message to what is important for your target (prospect).  So the new first lines for the property and casualty insurance agent could be “I protect families from financial disaster and help secure their futures”;  from the flower shop owner “I help husbands and boyfriends get out of jams and turn them into sweethearts”; for the heating and air conditioning professional “I make the summer heat enjoyable and the winter chill cozy” and for the business coach (me) “ I help business owners make more money while working less time”.  In all these cases, the prospect may still not know exactly what you do, but they sure understand what you can do for them and want to know more.

This is called your “Overt Benefits” and is only part one in a three part marketing message that will increase your effectiveness in prospecting exponentionally.  Your prospect desiring to know more is contained in part two.

Stay tuned for part two.