Courses

Do you sometimes have the feeling that you have accomplished nothing for a whole week? The week before lt I attended so many courses to the extent that I felt I had gone back to university days. Very imaginative of Knowlege Village (KV) of course, they asked every training company that is based in it to provide a course for the partner, this was run over three days, I cannot say that the rooms were full, not every one takes advantage of this opportunity, unfortunate of course as the amount of learning and networking that happens during these courses or meetings, is unbelievable. Anyway, the one that I liked was titled "The Customer is the King" which is true, without the customer all businesses will fail, imagine a world of companies with no buyers? They will not survive in any shape or form, hence, we must find the customers, and once we did so, keep them, and have them return for more goods or services. Of course, not sure if you all had noticed this, in our world we the customers do not mean anything. I can count the number of times I have been mistreated, cheated upon, shouted upon, money robbed, bought clothes made from bad materials, attended hospitals that created in me more deceases than cures, went to dentists that pulled good tooth out of my mouth without having a Conscience, banks that stole my money in fraudulent products, auditors that have no idea how to audit, etc etc

I am not saying here that I am a classic case of dumbness? I am just saying that all of us have been subjected to bad consumerism. Every company in this world, apart from a few, is trying to lure us into buying, you cannot even watch a movie without having it preludes with umpteen advertisements. It is fine to advertise, and fine to spend money on that, theres no problem with that what so ever, but it is not fine to pollute the magazines, newspapers, fliers, TV, radio, cinema houses, roads, and everything that these companies can pit their hands on with adverts. What we want is selective advertising, in the time that we choose to see them, we press a button to see them. Also what we need is a fulfilment of a promise, can the companies spend less on advertising and more on after sale service? Or pay back to the customer if there is repeat business rather than continuously dragging new customers to buy. I myself wouldn't mind getting back some money from Etisalat, rather than them spending trillions on re-branding exercise, Or working on keeping me as a client rather than pushing me to find an alternative?? Like DU for example.

Anyway, this was one of the courses. The second course we attended was so funny, it is sort of a continuation of the first one, it's about advertising and how the folks are using neuromarketing to reach into the old brain of us the suckers to compel us into buying. Apparently nowadays most companies use gadgets to check if we really like the product, or we were just kidding and answering the surveys without thinking? Imagine that a company does their adverts on the basis of left and right brain? For example if you put the photo on the left and the writing on the right, people will see the photo better than vice versa. Science is very strange really.

The last event was called SME builder. KV brings in mentors for every part of the business (finance, marketing, HR, sales, advertising, customer service, etc), I chose two tables only, finance and sales. I liked the second one but not the first one. The finance guy was a director of a group of angel investors, telling us all the tricks of how to attain finance. He said to me that I will never get approved for finance (surprise, surprise) as my existing business doesn't make money (oh did I mention that we do not make money, however we sustained ourselves since 2003), and the second person talked in such a nice manner, to the extent that I felt like becoming a sales person. Here is his list:

1. Sales people have too much ego. They need to have client relationship (empathy) 
2. We must have a balance between ego and empathy. Just increasing numbers is not good. 
3. Sell the benefits not the feature. 
4. Listen more than talk.
5. Customer is the king, but the company is the emperor
6. Sell business partnerships.
7. Put yourself in your clients shoes

Basically , no matter how much money a company spends on advertising, or customer service, the sales person is the catalyst, so he must be ethical.

At the end of the day, I won a resort stay for two including dinner. My kids and I are going soon.