10 Tips for having effective boards
Customer Advisory Boards are a great source of information about your market and your business. Their advice is more valuable than any management consultant's. They provide real world counsel on what you are doing right, what you are doing wrong, and most important -how to stay competitive. After all, they're the customer. They're the one's who buy your stuff. Here's how to use your Customer Advisory Board for best results.
Make it win-win. As much as they might like to, your customers are probably too busy to be on your board as a favor. Let them know, if they haven't figured it out already, that participating on your board influences your organization to provide better product and service to theirs.
Choose the right members for the right reasons. Select your board members for qualities and values they bring. Benefit from their insight, perceptions, motivations, and ability to communicate - perhaps even their contrarian view. Avoid figureheads picked for their visibility or high positions - they are likely to skip meetings, and when they show they'll have little to contribute.
Prepare your members. Apprise members ahead of time of agenda items and provide detailed backgrounders. Prompt their thinking with questions for their consideration. When germane, ask selected advisors to prepare briefings.
Don't sell to the group. Use your advisory board for their advice. Customers will see through transparent plans to generate more sales. Increased sales will happen anyway - don't prompt for them.
Your board members are special. Treat them that way. Provide them with quality transportation, hotels, meals, refreshments, and meeting space. Make them feel highly appreciated without the sense you are wasting company money. Have your CEO or outside owners participate whenever appropriate. Acknowledge them publicly and often, and especially in print.
Reward their participation. They are giving you their time and knowledge gained from experience. What are you giving them? Dinner and theatre or sports tickets, spouse travel, club memberships, small gifts, and product or service discounts are all appropriate.
Fewer meetings the better. Keep the meetings to two or three per year. Make each meeting count with a full agenda of important issues. Have additional meetings only if you are in a crisis.
Use information technology. Members cannot make every board meeting. Use videoconferencing for virtual meetings. Teleconferencing is effective for briefer, interim meetings. Use web-conferencing tools like Webex or Placeware. Use email questionnaires to get and provide feedback. You survey tools like Zoomerang.com.
Run top-notch meetings. Appoint an effective leader, begin and end on schedule, keep to a strong agenda, review past actions and commitments, encourage total participation, keep communications open, log action items, avoid side conversations, summarize meeting results.
Act on their advice. Your advisory board will give you their best only when you act on their recommendations. That's why you got them in the first place.
Paul Lemberg, author of Faster Than the Speed of Change, troubleshoots companies and helps them increase cash, build repeat customers and invent a secure future. Paul is a business leadership coach and public speaker. He is also the President of Quantum Growth Coaching, the world's first fully systemized business coaching program designed to create More Profits and More Life for entrepreneurs. Guaranteed.
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Family owned and operated since 1970, Borcherding Buick Pontiac GMC, will partner with Ask Patty to depict an increased commitment to the female car buyers that would provide a safe and comfortable buying experience. Borcherding Buick Pontiac GMC owes this distinction to their high standard of customer service as well as to their excellent image in terms of total customer satisfaction.
For more than 35 years of having built an identity in the Tri State Area as Cincinnati's premiere Pontiac, Buick, GMC, Explorer Van and Certified Used Car Center, even more dedication lies ahead for Borcherding's full service dealership.
In a latest survey conducted to Borcherding’s customers, it was found out that the major reason for doing business with Borcherding was the fact they were trustworthy and that their depicted appeal for service was of high standard. With these findings, it can be deduced further that Borcherding lives up to their promises. And this has been a progress in a constantly changing and dynamic environment of business.
Also selling GMC spark plug wire, Borcherding Buick Pontiac GMC is accessibly located in the Kings Auto Mall off Interstate 71. They recently reinvented their entire dealership while making a commitment to continuous improvements. The reinventions include a customer café, daily newspapers together with refreshments that would complement the customers’ reading pleasure, internet connection, private work areas and the stress removing massage chairs. And for those customers who have different service wants, Borcherding also offers their courtesy shuttle and loaner vehicles. Furthermore, they have an on-site collision center with Enterprise replacement cars, too.
Kim Borcherding, the Dealer Operator of Borcherding Buick Pontiac GMC, said that Borcherding was so pleased to be associated with the Ask Patty quality Internet resource for women automobile buyers and fanatics. Also one of the newest members of Ask Patty's Automotive Expert Advisory Panel, Kim Borcherding helps answer the queries of customers - everything about automotive.
The decision to tandem with Ask Patty exudes the kind of sound thinking that is needed to provide consistent excellent results in customer satisfaction and sales growth to the women, who are part of a significant consumer segment.
Women population comprises more than 50 percent of all vehicles sold yearly in the United States with revenues reaching $80 billion annually. When Ask Patty was not yet in the industry, there has been no website that is exclusively devoted to the needs and concerns of the women.
Ask Patty Female Friendly dealers represent many brands such as Chrysler, Jeep, HUMMER, GMC, Cadillac, Pontiac, Buick, Ford, Lincoln, Mercury, Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Saab, Acura, Nissan, Kia, Hyundai, Mercedes Benz, BMW and a lot more.
Ask Patty gives women consumers the avenue where they can send queries about car buying, selling, repair and maintenance to a panel of expert automotive women. It claims that is it a safe online place to share and discuss their car buying experiences. The advisory panel of automotive expert women of Ask Patty is led by Deborah Renshaw, a professional NASCAR driver. The panel is composed of women who hold various leadership posts in the automotive industry.
In order to live a long healthy life, you must have a strong healthy body. There is no way around it. Proper dieting and exercise are a MUST. The good news is, it is not an impossible task. Like climbing a mountain, it will require some sweat equity. What a great investment of your time!
Just like building your financial strength, it is your responsibility to build your physical strength. No one can do it for you. We can encourage you and give you suggestions, but you must do it.
Two different types of exercises are required to become fit, strength training and cardio. The purpose of this article is not to go into the HOW’S, but to encourage you to get started and make exercise a part of your daily life.
My wife and I were headed down the wrong path physically. As health store owners, we knew better and had in the past been physically fit to a point. We had done it with cardio only. When we bought our business exercise stopped for several years and we became unfit.
In 2000, we heard of a fitness program called, Body for Life Challenge, by Bill Phillips. His challenge, "Do my program or go start an ant farm." We took the challenge instead of the ant farm. In three months this one event turned our lives COMPLETELY AROUND.
Allow me to brag on my wife a little. Her dress size dropped from 12 to 4 in 12 weeks. Her weight dropped from 132 lbs. to 110 lbs. You would think that with such a change in dress size, her weight lost would have been more.
This is the beauty of combining weight training and cardio (which she had never done before), fat is burned and muscle build. Muscle takes up less body space than fat so her dress size dropped more than her weight, respectively.
We encourage you to go out and buy the book, Body for Life, by Bill Phillips, read it, understand it and get started with your transformation. The book is your road map. Or you could go start an ant farm. How boring is that!
You may say, "I am already fit." Do the program and you will see that you may not be as fit as you think. If you know that you are not fit, then you most definitely need to do the program. For every mountain there is an excuse not to climb it. If you are not fit, it is those excuses that got you were you are today. We encourage you to climb this mountain. The view is worth the sweat it takes to climb it. We wish you the best!
Fred Fishburne and his wife are owners of ProHealth Nutrition, Inc., a very successful health store in McDonough, Ga. Visit at: http://prohealthnut.com
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