Checking Out Mauritius Hotels
December 9, 2011 | 
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As a major tourist destination, it is but natural for Mauritius to develop a robust tourism industry, which encompasses several other industries like the restaurant industry, airline industry, vehicle rental industry and the tourist shopping industry, among many others.
One major industry in the island is the hotel industry. It has already made a name for itself because the industry provides a wide selection of holiday hotels. All of the establishments have their own charming unique characteristics while maintaining high standards of services. Different types of accommodation are available depending on the amenities and facilities that go with each. It is really up to the guests if they want to stay in a luxurious suite or a settle comfortably in a budget room.
Here are some Mauritius hotels located in the different parts of the island:
EAST
Le Coco Beach, Le Touessrok, Ambre Hotel, Beau Rivage, Belle Mare Plage, Club Valtur, Emeraude Beach, Hotel Le Bougainville, Le Prince Maurice, Le Surcouf Village, Le Tropical, One & Only Le Saint Geran, Palmar Beach Resort, Silver Beach and The Residence.
NORTH
Anoushka, Calodyne-sur-Mer, Casuarina, Club, Coin de Mire, Colonial Beach, Colonial Coconut, Coralia Mont Choisy, Cote D Azur, Hibiscus Village Vacances, Hotel Les Cocotiers, La Plantation, Labourdonnais Waterfront, Le Canonnier, Le Grand Bleu, Laguna Resort, Mauricia, Meridien, Mervilla Beach Hotel, Saint Georges, Sakoa Hotel, Le Victoria, Legends, Les Orchidees, Marina Resort, Maritim, Paradise Cove, Paul et Virginie, Royal, Spice Garden Hotel & Spa, Tarisa Resort, Trou aux Biches, Ventura, Veranda Hotel and Villas Pointe aux Biches.
SOUTH
Blue Lagoon Beach Hotel, Le Preskil Beach Resort and Shandrani.
WEST
La Pirogue, Sofitel Imperial, Sugar Beach Resort, Berjaya Beach Resort Hotel & Casino, Dinarobin Hotel Golf & Spa, Hilton Mauritius Resort & Spa, Indian Resort, Island Sports Club Hotel, Klondike Village Vacances, Le Paradis Hotel & Golf Club, Le Pearle Beach, Tamarin, Les Pavilions, Manisa Hotel, The Sands Resort, Villas Caroline and Villas Sand n Dory.
CENTER
The Gold Crest and the Gold Nest.
Helping Customers Get From Where They Are to Where They Want to Be
Sheila is the Key Account Manager for one of those “nightmare” Key Accounts, F-Tone Corp. While F-Tone produced huge volumes in sales annually, their margins are rather thin. In addition, their Procurement Director has been squeezing Sheila for lower prices as part of their annual “cost-down” initiative, or risk having that Key Account switching to other competitors.
That’s not all. As part of Shelia’s company’s initiative, she would have to improve her service standards to enhance customer satisfaction so as to achieve greater customer loyalty. Unfortunately for Sheila, F-Tone has been quite a tough act to follow as far as service is concerned. Some of their “unreasonable” behaviors include:
• Insisting on changing product delivery dates, either by postponing deliveries, OR by bringing forward the delivery dates. As a Key Account, each F-Tone’s delivery are measured in tons, and changing those dates will cause lots of logistical nightmare for Sheila;
• Insisting on shorter lead times that are much shorter than the industry standard. Shortening those lead times might compromise product quality;
• Frequent spikes in demand resulting in either Sheila’s company trying to respond to such sudden surges in production. When Sheila’s company is not able to deliver on time, F-Tone gets the additional supplies from their back-up supplier, whose quality is poorer, etc.
The above challenges can be easily solved had F-Tone agreed to holding some buffer inventory, which their Procurement Director flatly refused whenever Sheila raised the matter due to the former’s JIT (Just-In-Time) policies. When Sheila is not able to provide what her customer wants, her management starts to perceive her as not “customer-centric” and not doing her best to improve her customer’s “experience” with the company.
Sheila is now in a tight spot. While she would like to keep the Key Account since they produced large volumes, managing their expectations is becoming somewhat impossible for her now. Sheila needs to seek creative solutions that will win her customer’s way of thinking.
Know Thyself and Thy Customer
As Sun Tzu puts it, “Know yourself and know your adversary, a hundred battles fought and not be imperiled in any”, just that in this case, the customer is now the “adversary”. Since Sun Tzu also mentioned that “the best victory is won without fighting”, customers are to be won over without fighting them.
There are 2 aspects which you might need to know about your customers:
1. The work that each contact person in your customer’s organisation does, and what is important to each of them; and
2. What are the best ways to communicate with them
As in the above fictitious scenario, most sales people and Account Managers liaise with the Purchasing or Procurement department most of the time. Generally speaking, most Purchasing departments are “gatekeepers” where their job is to ensure suppliers’ compliance to their company’s policies and regulations. They are detail-oriented and will strictly follow procedures. In Psychogeometrics® terminology, they are a “Box”.
Pls. see below for a brief explanation of the various shapes/ communication styles:
• Triangle/ Dominant. These are the high-flying hotshots who are status and power conscious. These are also people who hates to waste time, and want to get straight to the point. While different Dominant people will have different levels of intelligence, most if not all of them believe they are very smart and has the right answer to most problems;
• Box/ Analytical. These are the people who likes facts and figures as well as evidence and proof. They like to apply rigour to testing and analysing test results. Sometimes they see the trees but miss the entire forest;
• Rectangle/ Confused. When people are transiting to a different job in a different arena, or are taking on new responsibilities, they sometimes can be in a confused state as they are grasping the new rules of the new game that they are playing. They are inquisitive, fickle and are subjected to wild mood swings;
• Circle/ Social. These are the people person who likes to make friends with you. Their boss sometimes believe that they socialise too much and work too little though;
• Squiggle/ Creative. Finally, we have the oddballs who always seem to have new ideas and fresh perspectives in any given situation. They are easily bored, and are always looking for some kind of thrills and excitement in whatever they are doing
The “Box” customer seeks to make everybody comply to what he deems are his company’s policies, initiatives and objectives. Anything that does not fit into the “Box’s” perception of “standard operating procedures” will be viewed with suspicion.
When dealing with the “Box” customer, sales people will have to adapt and come prepared with supporting facts, figures and evidence. If a sales person want to get the “Box” customer hold some buffer inventory, she would have to prepare the facts of the costs of holding such inventory, and the precise calculations of the benefits of holding such buffer inventory. This is something that many sales people are not prepared to do, but if the “Box” customer is not totally convinced, you won’t be able to influence them to your way of thinking.
Getting Customers to Get to Where They Want to Be
To the seller, getting the customer to hold buffer inventory is a great way to counteract against sudden changes in their production schedules. To the buyer, however, holding excess inventory means incurring additional costs. Both are right in their opposing points-of-views. Sales people and Account Managers will have to be careful NOT to end up in arguments with customers.
When advocating customers to take actions, sales people might need to understand 2 issues:
• What are the causes of a particular customer behaviour, such as refusing to take an action that will improve their situation; and
• What are some of the objectives that the customer needs to reach, both at the personal as well as at the organisational level.
As such, here are some questions that you need to clarify, so as to know the causes of your customers’ actions and behaviours, as well as the objectives that they want to achieve:
• Have you asked the customer to do anything that deviates from their “standard operating procedures”? If yes, have you helped them to reduce their risks and clarify their benefits in doing so?
• Is the customer a Decision Maker, or is he a Decision Implementer? In most cases, the purchasing department belongs to the latter, and seek to abide by the instructions given by the Decision Maker;
• Are the things that you need the customer take action upon within control of the customer?
• Have you developed the relationship with your customer such that he trusts you enough to jointly formulate solutions that benefit both parties?
Generating Creative Solutions to Difficult Customer Situations
When faced with tough and challenging customer situations, sales people tend to rely on their instincts and past experience to resolve the situation. In most sales-related advice, it has almost always been to go directly to the Decision Maker if your customer are simply implementing other people’s decisions. In reality, it is easier said than done. The good news though, is that there are other ways to help customers get from where they are, to where they want to be.
Without jumping into any assumptions, the first thing to clarify with the customer is “where they would want to go”. In the above story, the Procurement Director’s objectives could be:
• Make sure there’s enough supplies as and when the Production department needs it;
Make sure the cost of inventory and other aspects of the Total Costs of Procurement (TCOP) remains low;
• Make sure there are no complaints from anyone in the company
Having these in mind, sales people would have to generate creative solutions to solve often-contradictory objectives, which in this case is to have on-demand supplies, yet have low costs of inventory, AND still make everyone happy.
While it may be very challenging to provide a solution to such a predicament, there have been ways to reach such solutions depending on the industry, the corporate cultures of both buyers and sellers, and the creative perseverance of the sales person. The critical steps are:
• Don’t just assume that getting past this customer and going to the Decision Maker will solve all problems. You may still be faced with the same conflicting objectives that the customer has; and
• Don’t just say it’s impossible without thinking of possible options, although thinking is a skill that most sales people can improve on.
(The case story in the article are strictly fictitious. Any resemblance to any real organisations, people or events are purely coincidental)
Los Angeles – The Largest City in California
Nicknamed the ‘City of Angels’ Los Angeles is the largest city in California. In a true representation of multiculturalism the city is home to around 13 million residents who speak close to 225 languages! Most travelers consider Los Angeles to be the grandest city in the world and no wonder: it is home to the world’s most glamorous industry, Hollywood. Upscale travelers, therefore, like to stay in the best five star hotels simply oozing with luxury.
Would you blame them for choosing a hot pick amongst Los Angeles luxury hotels like the Peninsula Beverly Hills? This king amongst Los Angeles luxury hotels exists at the core of Beverly Hills, the world’s glamour axis. Located within walking distance of the business district and shopping it is the only five star hotel in the southern part of California to have received a rating of Mobil Five-Star for 11 successive years. Elegant interiors and comeliness are decidedly the hallmarks of this five star luxury hotel. Guests who love leisurely tea should join other like-minded guests in the Living Room.
Any seasoned guest will tell you that luxury spas complete the experience of a five star luxury hotel. In this respect, the luxury spa at the Peninsula Beverly Hills delivers big time. Great body massages and revolutionary treatments render your stay truly memorable.
Exploring Beverly Hills can be great fun especially places like Marilyn Monroe’s Brentwood home in which she lived with her footballer husband Joe DiMaggio and where she breathed her last.
Guests also like to pay a visit to the Universal Studios known for some its great shows like the Waterworld Sea War Spectacular with its fireworks, jet skis, and great stunts. Next, you may drive down to the Hollywood Boulevard to Grauman’s Chinese Theater located on Hollywood’s famous ‘Walk of Fame’ designed by Oliver Weismuller, famous artist from south California. Home to Hollywood premiers and parties, the theater’s most significant feature is the set of concrete blocks bearing imprints of signatures, hand impressions et al of famous cinematic personalities from the 1920s right up to the present.
One of the landmarks of LA is its Disneyland. Divided into eight ‘theme’ sections it is full of fun rides that are constantly updated. Other fun things like fireworks, boat rides, and electric and laser parades are designed to bring out the child in you.
Your LA trip would remain incomplete without a visit to the Getty Museum featuring European paintings, sculptures, and sketches. It also has an impressive collection of Roman as well as Greek antiques. The architecture of the museum is one of the most inviting pieces in all southern California.
Do take the time to drive down to Venice Beach famous for its ocean front. The beach is a truly lively sight replete with dancers, roller skaters and bikers. Food stalls and boutiques make this place especially interesting. Walk around the canals and waterfront at night especially, and feel the cool ocean breeze on your hair and face. A true fun place it is also very relaxing.
You will always want to come back for more.
Thriving in Severe Adversity: Strategies to Overcome Insurmountable Odds and Win More Sales
Carol is on a “suicide” mission.
As part of an Oncology pharmaceutical sales team, Carol is in charge of launching a new product to a market place that has been dominated by a single competitor for 10 years. For years, customers (i.e. the hospitals) have been waiting for an alternative, and Carol’s team is about to provide this highly-anticipated alternative product.
Except that things are not as simple as it is. Carol currently faces the following challenges:
• Her main competitor Neuetische, with a 10-year lead in her market, is well-connected with the main decision makers and buying influencers;
• Neuetische sales team also outnumber Carol’s team by 5:1, and could easily deploy more manpower to specific customers to dissuade customers from buying from Carol;
• In terms of marketing budget, Neuetische also has a lot more to splurge than Carol’s company could afford;
• While customers are looking for alternatives, most are taking a wait-and-see attitude before committing to buy from Carol. Most are simply using Carol’s product as a bargaining tool to negotiate for better terms with Neuetische;
• While Carol’s products offer better healing properties for the patients, the results are not immediate. They can only be observed after using the new medication after a while. In other words, Carol’s product while being a better product, is hardly a revolutionary product in any measure;
• The Ministry of Health is tightening its regulations on to make it more stringent for hospitals to dispense medication to patients, and hence shrinking Carol’s already very competitive market.
If the above challenges are not enough, Carol’s team is young and most barely had any experience selling in tough market situations, let alone selling in such severe adverse situations.
Even in the face of such a “suicide” mission, Carol is undaunted in her quest to provide the better alternative to her market. She knows that this will be a test of both will and wits, so that she and her team can outwit, outplay and outlast the competition.
Thriving Against Insurmountable Odds
When we face adversity or any difficult situations, we generally have 2 choices: either we overcome them, or we run away from them. In most cases, we will run away from the very difficult challenges, UNLESS we have a clear reason why we MUST overcome those difficulties.
Using a goal-setting concept from Leadership IQ, if you want to get yourself or your team to be motivated to thrive against insurmountable odds, you have to do it the HARD way as follow:
1. Heartfelt. Are there any reasons why you or your team resonate with why we must overcome this adverse situation? What is the purpose for the sacrifices and hard work to achieve such goals?;
2. Animated. People hardly feel excited about achieve a target. People might feel a little more excited about “putting a dent in the universe”. Is there anything exciting that you or your team will experience while overcome those tough challenges?;
3. Required. What will happen if you DON’T overcome those challenges? What are some of the negative consequences if you don’t succeed?;
4. Difficult. Interestingly, people feel more engaged when they are given difficult, instead of easy goals to achieve. This is provided if they resonate with your purpose, and are given the required autonomy to utilise the best of their talents.
One of the greatest mistakes made by senior executives to motivate sales people is to provide more “spiffs” or bonuses if they deliver or exceed targets. While some may argue if money is a good motivator for sales people, the bigger picture of incentive-related motivation can be summarised using the following formula:
• Expected payoff, multiplied by;
• Chances of success, divided by
• The amount of effort required
In a nutshell, if you are asking someone to put in a lot of effort to achieve something that he thinks is impossible, he might not even do so for a million dollars because he does not see any chances of succeeding, despite his best efforts.
If we take a closer look at what’s happening in many sales teams, most sales people and even distributors tend to sell the products they feel most comfortable selling at, rather than the products that pay the highest commissions. If you work out the math, it’s very simple. If you pay someone twice the bonus to sell something that will take 3 times as much time and effort, he won’t do it. Period.
On the other hand, if you want someone to achieve the impossible, you probably won’t be able to motivate him or her using money or any material incentives. Achieving the impossible means putting a lot of effort to achieve something that has a close-to-zero chance of succeeding. If someone is doing such things, he must either be madly in love with what he is doing, or he’s doing it for something far more valuable than money, or both.
Outwit and Outplay the Competition
To thrive in severe adversity, it’s not enough to just have the will to overcome all odds. You need to outwit and outplay your adversaries too.
From the perspective of selling, there are 2 general ways of beating the competition:
• Either you get the customer to stop buying from the competition and start buying from you exclusively;
• Or you ask your customer to try using your products on a smaller scale as a “back-up” supplier.
Generally speaking, customers hate to change suppliers, and hence it’s relatively easier to get them to add you as a back-up/ alternative supplier. Does that mean that you will always be the back-up and not the main supplier? Of course not, and here’s why:
• According to research by Shipley, 80% of all bids are awarded to current suppliers. Being a back-up supplier means that you will get better chances to get bigger deals in future.
• If you provide better products or services, then let your customers get to experience how you can add more value than your competition for your customer. Your customer may then decide to shift more purchases to you;
• Being a supplier, even if it’s a small one, allows you access to the key decision makers and buying influencers, thereby cultivating your relationship with the customer for potential future sales.
Sometimes, even if your products and services are clearly more superior, or even when your prices are lower, it does not mean you will win the sale. In fact, lowest-priced bids win less deals than highest-priced ones, and the most technically superior proposals lose 49% of the deals to inferior ones. To win, you will have to consider multi-dimensional aspects so that you lure your competitor’s key accounts and make them buy from you instead:
• Reliability. Compared to your competitor, can you deliver your promises in ALL aspects ranging from product quality, delivery lead times, maintenance schedules etc?
• Responsiveness. Compared to your competitor, can you be more responsive? Not just service responsiveness, but also sales team’s responsiveness to the customers’ needs and concerns. This also includes sales people who are stationed on-site at the customers’ plants, offices or facilities to help customers solve problems when using your products
• Resourcefulness. Compared to your competitor, can you harness internal and external resources so as to provide customers a one-stop solution for their needs?
• Relationship. Compared to your competitor, can you seek to build relationship with everyone that has an influence over whether this customer should or should not buy from you, part from merely cultivating guanxi with some key decision makers? These buying influencers include the gatekeepers, fault-finders, end users, and just about anyone who will be affected by the products you provide, or who has some contributions with regards to how your products can be used (or not be used) in their company.
To obliterate the competition, ask yourself these lateral thinking questions:
• Why does the customer buy from their current supplier? Why they will or won’t seek alternative suppliers?;
• Why not you suggest something that the customer is not aware of? Why not approach someone else in their organisation? Why not you do the impossible for the customer?
• What if you help customers resolve some of their chronic problems and inconveniences? What if you come out with some wishful and outrageous ideas?
Give Yourself a Chance to Survive
Most tough challenges require long periods of hard work before you can overcome them. Most difficult periods will get harder before they become easier. Hence, here are 3 main reasons why many people failed in the face of tough challenges, rather than overcoming them:
1. Trying to take on too many issues in too short amount of time, with insufficient resources;
2. Giving yourself too tight a deadline, and not being patient enough to see the results after a longer period of hard work;
3. Giving up half-way or getting disheartened when things don’t work out as smoothly as planned.
When things get really bad, there are times that we can look at it from the positive points of view. In the Six Thinking Hats lingo, it’s about using the Yellow Hat in the face of many Black Hats. In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), it’s simply about shouting and thinking “That’s Good!” in the face of severe adversity.
To win in tough times, you will need to “march 1,000 miles and NOT feel tired”, so says Sun Tzu in the Art of War. When facing insurmountable odds, leaders and team members will have to really be united as one, and be willing to support one another so that the team synergises and thrive in severe adversity. As Sun Tzu puts it, if your goal and purpose is aligned from top to bottom, you win.
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Tags: Adversity, Insurmountable, Overcome, Severe, Strategies, Thriving | 
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Five Best Hotels in Amsterdam
Located in the west of the country, Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands. Accommodating around 750000 citizens makes it the largest city in the country. Having a wealth of historic sites and lots of museums and art galleries, Amsterdam attracts 4.5 million tourists each year roughly 6 times its population.
If you are planning on a trip to Amsterdam keep in mind that it is a very expensive city, in fact it is the fourteenth expensive city in the world right after Vienna and Stockholm, but this does not mean that one should either refrain himself or spend a lot. Listed here is a list of 5 carefully selected luxury hotels which not only bring comfort but are within a reasonable price range.
NH Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky
Within walking distance of Dam and Palace square, this hotel is a good place to stay and visit the central part of Amsterdam. It has 468 rooms and has been rated 4.1 out of 5 by its guests. It is near to most of attractions of the city such as National Monuments, Amsterdams Historisch Museum, Madame Tussauds and Red Light District. The hotel also has its own dock for boats.
Sofitel The Grand Amsterdam
Surrounded by two canals Sofitel The Grand provides the best place to enjoy and appreciate the famous waterways of Amsterdam. This 5-star hotel has been rated 4.3 out of 5 by its guests and although a bit expensive but is worth the expense by far. Although relatively a new hotel, it was actually built in 1926 to be a first degree marriage chamber. Some of its features are the Turkish bath and its famous Cafe Roux restaurant. The hotel has 182 rooms, a heated swimming pool and sauna.
NH Barbizon Palace
Another 5-star hotel located on Prins Hendrikkaden right across from Amsterdam’s central railway station prides itself on award-winning Vermeer restaurant and its prime location. NH Barbizon Palace is part of the NH chain which provides accommodation across 20 countries with excellent service and customer satisfaction. The Royal Palace is just a few minutes from the hotel among with many popular shops. Being near the financial centre of Amsterdam, it is the perfect place for business travellers with a high taste of comfort.
The Dylan Amsterdam
Housed in a 17 century building, the hotel opened to the public in 1999. It has 41 rooms and has been granted a 5-star rating. It has been nominated Europe’s Leading Boutique Hotel for year 2008 by the World Travel Awards. Located in the very heart of Amsterdam it gives an extraordinary view of Keizersgracht, Amsterdam’s most famous canal.
Radisson SAS Hotel Amsterdam Airport
The last but not the least, Radisson SAS Hotel Amsterdam has been impressively rated 5 out of 5 by its guests. It’s a 5-star hotel with 279 rooms located in the Business Park Schiphol-Rijk. The hotel has a top of the line fitness center equipped with sauna, Turkish/steam bath and physiotherapy treatments. If you decide to spend some time in this hotel remember not to miss the excellent Talavera restaurant and Rodolpho’s bar.
The Luxurious Halong Cruise – Ginger and Its Creators’ Story
Ha Long Bay is one of Vietnam’s top ten experiences for foreign travelers. When Ha Long Bay was recognized by UNESCO as a world cultural heritage site in 1997, tourism seemed to be bursting at the seams in this truly unique place. Hundreds of tourist companies, both domestic and international, built their tours on cruises around Ha Long Bay, providing tourists with a wide range of choices for their journeys to enjoy the unique beauty of the bay, which lies along the Hon Gai coastal town in Quang Ninh province.
Most people chose to stay one or two nights on board, with elegant food presentations and adventure options to entertain more rugged travelers. I chose to spend a night at Ha Long Bay with the the Ha Long Ginger, a large wooden ship dripping with old-world charm. I really wanted to spend more than one night on this boat after quietly chugging along through the innumerable aquatic paths created by each uninhabited island.
Cruise manager Michelle Thong stood on deck waving as the Ginger approached, her white ao dai billowing in the wind – a true vision against the blue sea and sky of Ha Long Bay in the afternoon. Then we sailed deep into the bay for about four hours, breathing in the fresh sea air the whole way. After the captain ordered his crew to set sail, new sounds and colors filled the air, giving us a truly beautiful experience.
Cruise manager Sonny Bui escorted us to our cabins and handed us keys in the shape of a fish. The air-conditioned room really won us over with large windows for viewing the scenery, a sparkling bathroom, five-star fluffy beds and all amenities. And the person whose passion attaches to traveling and cruising was open to share his story about this wonderful ship.
Ginger Cruise
Bui Cao Son, or Sonny Bui, who worked 12 years in tourism traveling to many places inside and outside Viet Nam, is the man behind the Ginger. Son said he wanted to do something on his own to capitalize and develop what he had learnt and experienced after years working as a tour guide. The 36-year-old, called Sonny Bui by his foreign friends, wanted to make something different from the tours which have been mostly designed on the same route. “Our route is wider and goes through new interesting places that others do not,” said Son. “That’s the first thing we aimed at when we started building up our tour two years ago.”
“The most discouraging thing for us is the idea that there is not a professional wooden shipbuilding company,” said Bui Cao Son, who eventually got the Ha Long Ginger built after 14 months of working with fishing boat builders.
The US$500,000 beauty, which has 10 rooms and can serve a maximum of 20 travelers, was put into operation early this year. The boat was built through the co-ordination of Huong Hai Company, which has more than 10 years of experience designing and building boats for tourists to stay on overnight. Huong Hai boats are among the first giving overnight tours at Ha Long Bay.
The Ginger blends classical beauty with modern comfort, catering to groups of between six and 20 people. Measuring 38m in length and 8m in width, it has three decks that house the elegant restaurant, a lounge, two bars, a small boutique and a library, as well as ten luxurious sleeping cabins. Fitted out with wood and bamboo, its interior is charming. The stylish decoration of the dining room – not to mention the fact that the staff change their uniforms to serve meals – is highly impressive, seemingly more suited to a five-star hotel.
“Sonny and I designed the cruise,” said Thong, a Malaysian-American who worked as a tour escort/leader in the US before coming to Viet Nam four years ago. “We worked hard together to create a design which could give the best comfort to our customers,” said Thong who has been working on the Ginger cruise for a year. “We put a lot of ideas into the blueprint with an aim to infuse Vietnamese style in western comfort,” added Thong. She did a boat project in HCM City two years ago before working with Son on the Ginger.
Thong said the cruise was designed to emphasize taking care of customers and the staffs are present to provide anything needed. Amenities on the cruise are from the same provider of Park Hyatt, ensuring guests feel they are in a world of luxury.
“To give visitors a good night of sleep, we equipped the rooms with high-quality beds,” said Son, adding that he wanted large windows (1.2m x 1.3m) to give customers the best view from their rooms. Bamboo is a major feature in the restaurant and lounge, which is associated with other kinds of wooden materials and flower designs making the whole middle deck’s ceiling into more of an artwork. The mixture of elegant decorations, food and service left lasting impressions on customers after leaving the Ginger, most of which have plans to come back for a group celebration or possible honeymoon trips.
With the expected increase in number of customers, the Ginger will be joined by sisters to meet the demand of visitors. “We are building two other cruises of such kind with the hope of giving more interesting tours to the visitors,” said Son, whose customers are mostly from five-star hotels like Metropole Ha Noi, Hilton and Sofitel Plaza. The two new ships are to be named after two kinds of flowers, Jasmine and Violet, with which Son wants to add more elegant colors to Ha Long Bay.
We’ve Been Sold a Deadly Product Again!
I started my seminary studies as a sophomore in high school in September of 1963, when I was only fifteen years old. It was a small class – only about forty students in my year. One of these was Bobby Bagnall, the son of the school’s doctor. Bobby was a very nice, quiet sort of guy; very handsome. After a couple of years, I guess Bobby decided that the ministry wasn’t for him, and, at the end of the school year, he left the seminary.
Like so many young men at the time – both before and after him – leaving ministerial studies meant being immediately classified as 1-A in the draft. In a very short time (only a matter of months), eighteen year-old Bobby was drafted, joined the Marine Corps, and was sent to Viet Nam. Life telescoped for Bobby: only about a year later, on January 13, 1968, Marine Corporal Robert Bagnall was caught in the explosion of a land mine and died while being evacuated.
His funeral was held in the seminary chapel; we were all there. Dr. Bagnall looked gray, as though his own life force had been drained out along with that of his son. It was a scene that was duplicated thousands of times across our whole nation for all those years.
Fast forward now forty years and a few months. Our friends Arthur and Keith invited us to dinner at their place so that they could tell us all about their most recent trip: their stay at the five-star Sofitel Hotel in Hanoi, their trip down the Mekong river on an art deco luxury liner. Apparently, Viet Nam is stunningly beautiful in the spring.
In the 1960′s we were sold a bill of damaged goods. The leader of North Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh, wanted America’s help in freeing his country from French colonial domination. But, the French were far closer allies to us than any of the governments in Southeast Asia. We turned a deaf ear to him and even stepped in when the French pulled out (with their tails between their legs). Our involvement sent Ho most reluctantly into the camp of his people’s traditional arch-enemy, the Chinese. When the smoke had cleared, we in this country had lost our innocence (not to mention thousands of lives) and Viet Nam settled into a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity (no thanks to us).
It’s very sad. When I heard about our invasion of Iraq, I said to my partner, Craig, “Here we go again.” Once again, we were sold a bill of damaged goods, and went rushing headlong into not only an unwinnable and disastrous war, but an insane one. Once again, we were doing the exact same thing as forty years earlier, somehow expecting a different result. Not surprisingly, the result is not different. Young people die; the people don’t want us there; we’re in it for years to come and can’t get out; when we finally do extricate ourselves, it’ll be a miserable, shameful retreat.
And for what? The first principle of marketing is that people don’t buy from logic, they buy on emotion. That means there’s a terrible responsibility on government (and corporate) leaders to make sure that when they unleash an emotion, the product they’re selling doesn’t have deadly side effects. With all the flag-waving and emotionalism that surrounded the September 11 attacks, our leaders had a solemn responsibility to assure that our emotions were directed toward a positive purpose. Instead, we got a ‘bait and switch’ deal: a summons to fight for ‘freedom’ when, instead, we went to war for oil.
What happens to government and corporate leaders who manipulate their audience’s emotionalism to sell them a deadly product? In our society, they’re quietly replaced and sent either to retire with a healthy pension or they go to work for another company. You can be sure that those who sent Bobby Bagnall to his death, and those who sent the double-width pages full of young men and women who appear in the Washington Post every week under the title “Faces of the Fallen” to their fates suffer no real consequences for their decisions.
I don’t have a good answer for this conundrum. If virtue is its own reward, what about lack of integrity? Is it somehow its own punishment? I know that evil is a corrosive force. I can see it in action all around me. Yet, the deeper corrosion is happening inside people, at a level where it can’t easily be observed. Perhaps, like the portrait of Dorian Gray, some picture of these folks is rotting away someplace else, while their own exterior stays apparently young and vibrant. And, perhaps, like Dorian Gray, someday the reality will catch up with the portrait. I can only hope.
Price Is NOT the Reason Why You Lost the Deal
Just before knocking-off from work, Tommy received a Request for Proposal (RFP) for a project that required him to bid for a project worth US$1-1.5 million. As the deadline for the project is very tight, Tommy would have to submit his bid within a week.
Tommy and his boss were very excited about the RFP. It has been a long time since they were given a chance to bid for a deal of this size. Instead of going home after work, Tommy decided to stay back and start working on the RFP immediately. In fact, Tommy spent the next 4 nights working till the wee hours just to make sure his proposal will be perfect for the bid.
Tommy submitted the proposal a week later, confident that he had proposed a solution that will deliver what the customer needs. He waited for the next 2 weeks for the good news he’s expecting. At the end of 2 weeks, he decided to call the customer’s Procurement Director to find out the news. Tommy was shocked and disappointed to hear that the project has been awarded to someone else.
“Your proposal was very good, but your price was just too high”, said the Procurement Director.
A few months later, Tommy got to know other staff working on the project in the customer’s company in a networking event. Tommy casually remarked that he had bid for the project, but was beaten by a cheaper competitor.
“Oh, we we know about your bid,” the project’s staff said, “But although your price is higher than the final winner, there were a lot of other losing bids that were a lot cheaper.”
“By the way, did you know who won the bid? The same guys who also implemented similar projects for us last year, and the year before.”
It’s Not the Price
If Tommy’s story above sounds familiar to you, then you are probably one of the many others who have worked hard for a Request for Proposal, only to be beaten at the very end by a cheaper competitor.
Until you can read the decision makers’ mind on what their real concerns are, you’ll keep thinking about price, understandably. However, if you really want to win a deal, then some of Shipley’s methodology framework may help you on some of the insights, as well as the competitive analysis and price-to-win is part of the strategy.
While your client may be telling you that price is the reason why you lost the deal, research made by Shipley (a company that helps clients winning US$200 billion worth of bids, including bids in China and Asia) shows that:
• While only 7% of the highest-priced bids are awarded the deal, ONLY 4% of the lowest-priced bids eventually win the deal;
• 80% of the bids are awarded to the incumbents, i.e. vendors who have been supplying the client on similar projects, products or services in the past;
• 52% of the technically superior bid ended up losing;
• In many cases, the buyer has already made the decision whom to buy from BEFORE the Request for Proposal, and issued RFPs just to formalise the buying process;
• The bidding criteria listed in the RFP are not all equal. Some criteria have much higher priorities than others, and those criteria may have even much more importance than price.
Many sales people will argue that their customers actually bought from someone else quoting a lower price. That could be the case in reality. However, if you were to probe further, you will find out that there will also be a number of bids that are priced even lower than the winner’s price.
Hence, while the winner might have been priced lower than yours, the fact that the customer did NOT award the bid to the lowest-priced bidder shows that price is NOT the determining factor in their buying decision criteria.
In fact, anyone with a decent purchasing/ procurement background will know that price is only but a factor in the Total Cost of Purchasing/ Ownership. Other factors that will impact overall costs in purchasing include:
• Increases in productivity;
• Decreases in downtime;
• Improvements in profitability;
• Capturing market opportunities;
• Safety;
• Environmental issues, etc.
Some of these factors are more important than others in different bids for different purposes. The question is, do you know what are the top priorities of what your customer wants, BEFORE you prepare your proposal?
The Early Bird Catches the Worm
As Sun Tzu puts it, “Know yourself and know your adversary, a hundred battles fought and not be imperiled in any”.
If you don’t know the customer before they send you the RFP, it might be a better idea NOT to bid at all. You might as well spend that time prospecting for new customers, or developing better relationships with old ones.
Your chances of winning will be much higher if you are already a supplier for the customer, even if it’s for much smaller deals.
Leveraging your knowledge of the customer, you will get to know:
• What could be some emerging large projects that the customer will be issuing an RFP soon;
• What will be the priorities for the different criteria in the RFP. If you are not able to fulfil all the customers’ buying criteria, at least you can meet the requirements of the MOST critical ones;
• Who will be the key influencers in the buying decision, what are their levels of influences and what buying criteria will each influencer be most concerned about?
You might wonder why would your customer share so much information about themselves. Well, some information are only shared with the people your customers trust. Here’s an outline of the R4 model that we can use to build trust, credibility and respect with your customers:
• Reliability. Whether you, as the seller, can deliver your promises in ALL aspects ranging from product quality, delivery lead times, maintenance schedules etc.
• Relationship. Apart from cultivating guanxi with some key decision makers, seek to build relationship with everyone that has an influence over whether this customer should or should not buy from you. Seek to build an “emotional bank” by helping them out in their work.
• Responsiveness. Not just how fast or how frequent you respond to customers’ requests, but also your responsiveness to the customers’ needs and concerns, even before they mentioned those needs and concerns.
• Resourcefulness. Can you coordinate the internal and external resources required to give customers the integrated solution they need?
In fact, your ideal situation will be to exert influence on the customer so much so that the customer “stole” your ideas and pasted them onto their RFPs!
Formatting Your Proposal
Even equipped with in-depth tacit knowledge of the customer’s buying criteria, it still does not guarantee success.
With the amount of proposals the Procurement Director receive each day, proposals that are poorly organised can be tossed out immediately. Conversely, proposals that are well-organised will stand better chances.
Well-organised proposals include the following:
• Executive summary, highlighting the key points of discussions and tentative agreements;
• Table of contents;
• Index page;
• Appropriate usage of pictures, charts and other diagrams
• Compliance to the buying criteria
• Well-illustrated logic on how you meet the buying criteria
In other words, well-organised proposals make it easy for the Procurement Director to read and reference through, and for her to understand and appreciate your distinct benefits and values.
As such, if your customer chose to buy from someone else instead of you, there are a lot more factors than simply “price”. The winning approach would encompass a sharply customer-focused strategy, employing proven processes and tools to address customers’ real concerns, and knowing how your solution fits into customer’s expectation with the right specification. You have to take into consideration of market competition, and then communicate the right language for the right value proposition via a well-positioned and planned proposal that complies with the customers’ criteria. That’s a formulated 96-step process covering the entire strategic business development cycle.
Philippine Culture Uniquely Distinct From the Rest of the World
The Philippine culture defines the unique distinctiveness of Filipinos from the rest of the world. Its richness in culture makes it highly different and more prominent from other countries. The Philippines have diverse cultural heritage, arts, traditions and spoken languages. The country has innumerable museums that take account to the wide historical and cultural evolution of its nation with churches, museums and galleries available throughout the Philippine Islands and are found in the different key cities of its provinces.
Each province has its own cultural folk dances showcasing the elegant styles of Filipino dances and the beauty of its people. They also follow their own unique traditions and have a way of celebrating their cultural practices through fiestas and events. The Filipinos naturally love arts and they can depict certain historical events through paintings, poems, songs and writings.
Historical Influence to the Philippine Culture
The culture of the Philippines is highly influenced by history and the blending of foreign influences and its indigenous civilization. The Philippines has been colonized by Spain for over three centuries. Hispanic influences are dominant in the Philippine’s folk music, foods, art, religion, language and folk dances.
The Malayo-Polynesian has influences to the Philippines during its pre-Hispanic and non-Christian era. It influenced the country’s mythology and indigenous culture along with the Buddhism, Hinduism, Islamic and Christianity traditions.
The United States also has an influence to the Philippine culture signified by the love of the Filipinos to contemporary pop music, film, basketball, music and fast foods. The Chinese and Japanese introduced martial arts, mahjong and other gambling forms. They also influenced the people’s natural preference to Asian cuisines.
The Philippine Cultural Heritage
The culture of the Philippine is diverse. About 90% of the Filipinos are Christians and 5% are Muslims. The rest practice other religions and others do not seem to have any religion at all. Despite the westernization of the country and foreign influences, many of its people remain to believe in superstitions. This cultural belief came from their ancient ancestors.
The country has beautiful traditional folk dances that showcase the elegance, beauty and grace of the Filipinos. They use flaunting Filipino dress and play Filipino music. The dances showcase the Filipino culture.
The Philippines is also a land of artists. Filipino artists are renowned in the world in the fields of music and art. They are highly respectable in these fields and brought honor and glory to their country. The Filipino people are great optimists. They always see light in the midst of darkness and always keep a positive point of view. This makes them endure the various challenges that arise in the economic, political, socio-cultural, religious and other aspects of their way of life.
There are several dialects that Filipinos can speak. They rank high as the country with most dialects spoken. The country has the most traditions to follow which continues to prevail despite its westernization. Most of these traditions are handed down in generations and continue to be practiced by majority of the Filipinos.
The diverse cultures and traditions in the Philippines make the country shine throughout the world. It has solicited fame and uniqueness to the country and its people. There is no wonder that the Filipinos are known for their warm hospitality and innumerable cultural traditions and heritage. The blend of foreign and ancient influences in Philippine culture makes the country uniquely distinct from the rest of the world.
The Conscience of a Leader: How to Stay True to Yourself and STILL Achieve Exceptional Results
Nuraini has been appointed as the Manager of a Customer Care Centre of a large multi-national company for the past 3 months. One of Nuraini’s first tasks is to improve the efficiency of the Customer Care Centre.
The main reason that the company is now focusing on improving efficiency is that many customers are making requests and demands that are in direct violation of the company’s policies and procedures. There is also requirement from the company’s management for the Customer Care Centre to share part of the sales team’s workload in servicing existing customers, so that the sales team can spend more time selling.
Hence, Nuraini’s key performance objectives will be to ensure that her team handles requests within the first phone calls as much as possible. Even when customers are upset during the call, her team will have to “educate” customers about the company’s policies, and make customers be compliant. As the same time, the Customer Care Centre will have to be self-reliant when giving answers and advice to customers, as any calls to reach out to other departments (such as Sales) will be deem as inefficient handling of customers’ issues.
After some weeks of following the company’s directives, Nuraini started to realise that her initial gut feel, while contradicting with what the company wants, might be right after all. In her years of experience working as a customer service professional, Nuraini instinctively knows that no one can reason with upset customers. When her team tried to “educate” upset customers on the company’s policies and procedures, the customers got even more upset and sometimes went off to escalate their complains with senior managers in Nuraini’s company. As her team has been told not to “bother” sales people when handling customers’ requests, a lot of such requests were actually rejected downright, causing even more customers to complain to the sales people who serviced them. Ironically, instead of relieving the sales team off their workload, sales people will now have to handle their customers’ complains with Customer Care Centre.
Not surprisingly, Nuraini is facing serious stress and pressures from all corners. Being the leader of her team, Nuraini gets complaints from the sales team that her Customer Care Centre is creating more customer complains than actually being trying to help. Her Customer Care team members are also now demoralised with the increasingly number of upset customers they face, and are frustrated by the inability of their leader to help them deal with such issues. Most importantly, Nuraini’s senior management is not happy with the Customer Care Centre at all, since the efficiency of her department has not improved at all.
At this moment, Nuraini is faced with a few choices. She could quit her job, and then bring some of her best people over to the competition. She could also force her management’s decisions down to her team, and fire anyone who does not comply. She could request for a transfer. Or she can act on her conscience and seek ways to achieve better results and satisfaction for all.
The Different Leaders We See
When it comes to leadership development, many people view it as developing senior leaders at the top levels. However, as shown in the above story, leadership development is needed at all levels to really boost performance and achieve better results at all levels in an organisation.
Based on some observations of how leaders behave, here are some ways that we can categorise leaders by their personal values:
1. The top-down Elitist Leader: the one who drive down instructions from the top, and makes sure his team executes those orders quickly and perfectly.;
2. The power-grabbing Opportunistic Leader: the one who looks into how they can optimise their personal gains, be that better career prospects, greater power or other personal gains;
3. The populist Antagonistic Leader: the one who is almost always at loggerheads with senior management, choosing to affiliate with team members regardless at all times;
4. The authentic Conscientious Leader: the one who is able to unify common goals of different groups of people by balancing the diverse needs of different groups, while staying true to her principles and values.
In most cases, most companies tend to make top-down decisions, and hence prefer to hire top-down Elitist Leaders so that such decisions, instructions and orders are being implemented effectively. The teams under these Elitist Leaders usually receive a lot of support from top management, often getting a lot of resources and having their status in the organisation raised. However, Elitist Leaders usually don’t listen to the ground, and when things don’t go as planned, Elitist Leaders tend to blame their team members for “incompetent execution of instructions” more so than reviewing if there are flaws in the planning. After some time, Elitist Leaders will find their staff disengaged and getting poorer results in spite of their best efforts in getting things done. In a fast-changing and highly-demanding world, Elitist Leaders are finding their teams a lot more difficult to manage.
The power-grabbing Opportunistic Leader is sometimes mistaken as the Elitist Leader as the former usually would want to impress top management so that he could gain better career advancement in the organisation. However, the Opportunistic Leader has other traits that Elitist Leaders don’t. The Opportunistic Leader can sometimes seek eliminate threats to his position, whether by stifling promising high-potential team members or by making decisions that favour the organisation retaining his employment. The Opportunistic Leader likes to play politics to maximise his power and influence in the organisation, and upon leaving the organisation, likes to take along his team to his new employer.
The populist Antagonistic Leader is one who is very much into building morale of the team, so much so that he neglects the needs of top management, as well as business realities. Decisions are usually made based on whether team members will like them, and management initiatives that are not popular with team members are either blocked or put on hold. Although being able to engage his team to exceptional performances, the Antagonistic Leader is sometimes being fired for not complying with company’s policies or cultures, despite delivering great results.
The authentic Conscientious Leader seeks to identify common goals of different groups and balance the diverse needs of those groups as well. She works on the basis that exceptional performances can only be sustained if everyone in the organisation buys-in and supports her plans. She seeks not just to lead her team, but also influence others to her cause. Unlike the Opportunistic Leader, the Conscientious Leader’s purpose is to achieve better results for the greater good. The Conscientious Leader has her principles, and if the organisation’s goals are irreconcilably contradicting to her principles, she will choose to leave quietly. After all, there will be other organisations who will appreciate the Conscientious Leader’s personal values, and even if it’s not intentional, the Conscientious Leader leaves a lasting legacy.
The Way of the Conscientious Leader
In the earlier story, Nuraini is stuck in a position where she faces pressure from her management, her colleagues from other departments and her team. In most cases, other leaders in her position would have chosen to leave, or simply implement management’s decisions with greater rigour.
Nuraini decides to do things a little differently. She has a deep conviction that her role is to make her Customer Care Centre the bridge between the customer with the other departments of her company. She would like her team members to be actively listen to customers’ needs and provide alternative solutions to their problems. In return, her team members will be much appreciated by customers for being willing to help, and her company will be able to use less time and resources to improve customer satisfaction. In addition, she intends to share her team’s customers’ insights with her sales colleagues, so that they could better suggest new products and services to get their customers buy more from them.
Rather than blindly obeying orders and following her performance measurement guidelines, Nuraini asks her team to:
• Make the soothing the frustrations and anxieties of customers as the top priority, even when that will mean making follow-up calls that will reduce efficiency;
• Provide alternatives and options to customers, rather than to give a down-right rejection, when customers make requests that are contradictory to the company’s policies and procedures; and
• Engage the sales team to make important decisions about customers, since upset customers may channel their frustrations on sales people, while satisfied ones may want to increase their purchases
Nuraini fully understands that her management will frown at her new ways of doing things. However, she has the courage to implement those changes, because based on her experience; she knows that in a matter of weeks, her team will help her company achieve:
• Better efficiency by having shorter calls, since customers are being pacified quickly and be able to listen to reason.
• Drastically better customer relations since customers now can get different alternatives and options to explore, while being fully supportive of the company’s policies and procedures
• Improved sales effectiveness since the sales team deems the Customer Care Centre as being actively involved to retain existing customers, and then making them buy more.
Nuraini knows that there is a possible risk that her management may not give her the chance to prove her ideas is right. However, she has faith that her management, just like the customers she handles, can be pacified and be influenced to seek alternatives that will help them achieve their goals in more effective ways.
How You Too can be True to Yourself, and Still Deliver Results
A friend used to tell me that while she definitely does not agree with some of her company policies, she has chosen to remain silent, rather than to raise issues to her management. Even when she had found a new job elsewhere, she feared repercussions even when her views might indeed help her company achieve better performances.
If you work for a management with a history of psychotic behaviour (that fired anyone with any hint of differing opinions), then it’s best to keep your job for the time being. However, while senior management may not take direct criticisms positively, they usually will appreciate if you can take gentle steps to make things better.
Unfortunately, since most people are too afraid to act for all the wrong reasons, they don’t become leaders. They are mere order takers.
To rise to increasingly tough challenges, organisations (be they companies, government bodies or even entire nations) need leaders who are willing to take actions. To create long term exceptional results, we need leaders who act with conscience.
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