Sell yourself

If you are in small business, then you need to sell to survive.  If you are selling services, then don’t sell the services, sell yourself.  Every prospect expects that the service on offer is fair, equitable and to a level of expertise that they can buy from anyone.  So when they make buying decisions concerning services, they will make the majority of the decision based on the person.  Whether it is either the person doing the selling or the person who will be doing the doing, it will be the person who closes the sale. Now when you are selling yourself, don’t fall into the trap of making the conversation all about you.  It is still a sales call, sales meeting, you still need to show what is in it for them and in this case, will the person fill their need.
So present yourself as you are.  Don’t change your style to suit a perception of what you think they want.  Be truthful, factual and give glimpses of you the person.  Be punctual, dress correctly, make commitments, deliver and follow up.  And once you have all that down, then there’s that little inconvenience of showing them the service and getting on with the sale.  Good luck.

previous blogs;
http://johnmasonstuff.blogspot.com
http://john-mason-stuff.blogspot.com/

What do auditors audit – Part 1

This is a brief overview of the 4 stages of certification and what the auditors will audit.

Documentation review; just the documentation you supply them.  Normally a desk top review scenario.  The auditors are looking for a policy, a quality manual (or similar), the six mandatory procedures, your own procedures, associated forms, records, an interrelationship document explaining the processes of the company.

Pre-certification review; assessing the implementation of the quality management system.  They will focus on management review meetings / minutes, records of internal audits, corrective actions, nonconformance, document management, records management, training / competency records, the level of understanding by employees and the overall assessment of operational procedures and how they interrelate.

Certification review; they will audit everything.  However, their sample plan is quite shallow and if they can find conformance quickly, they will tick the box and move on.

Surveillance reviews; every time they visit, they will audit the following.  Previous findings from previous audit, management reviews, internal audits, corrective actions.  Once they are happy with that then they carve up the rest of the standard into roughly thirds and audit.  Easy.  More details next post.

previous blogs;
http://johnmasonstuff.blogspot.com
http://john-mason-stuff.blogspot.com/

Quality Objectives – part 3

“Finally” I hear you think.  Yes, I am finally going to tell you what are the minimum quality objectives needed for certification or at least to meet the requirements of the standard.  We have explored quality objectives from the standard (8/8/11) and then the mechanics and the metrics (5/9/11), now we need to go to the requirements of the standard for ‘quality policy’  And these are;

5.3 Quality policy.  Top management ensures the quality policy.  a)is appropriate to the purpose of the Company Name,  b)includes a commitment to comply with requirements and continually improve the effectiveness of the quality management system,  c)provides a framework for establishing and reviewing quality objectives,  d) is communicated and understood within Company Name, and e) is reviewed for continuing suitability.

So from this we have two quality objectives; 1) comply with the qms and 2) continually improve the qms.  Both can be measured via internal quality audit results and the corrective / preventive action processes.  You also use the certification process to measure compliance.  Have you noticed there has not been any mention of the customer or even focus on the customer or satisfaction.  Well there is none, but you try getting that passed any auditor and I will bid you good luck.  There is an expectation that at least one quality objective structured around the customer, so have one and you then won’t have to debate it with our certification fraternity.

Now that you have your objectives you just need to word them correctly, set a target for each, measure them, report them, resource them and demonstrate that you can do all that and still react to any adverse trends within them.  Happy objectifying.

previous blogs;
http://johnmasonstuff.blogspot.com/
http://john-mason-stuff.blogspot.com/

The blame game

In business (and in life), don’t put the blame on others.  Keep to this principle and all will be well.  As Mr Miyagi said in the ‘Karate Kid’, “There are no bad students, just bad teachers!”, meaning that if a colleague, client, supplier gets it wrong, was it in fact your fault for not communicating your needs more clearly.  Was it not your fault that you left it too late.  Was it not your fault….and so on and so on.  Take each ‘fault’ (I prefer the word variation) and try to analyse what happened and try and get to the root cause of the situation (yes, I am a quality guy).  It is far too easy just to blame someone else, and hey, they may have contributed to or escalated a variation, but at the end of the day was it not you that could have done something different to mitigate the variation.  And if you keep that attitude, and you will still make mistakes, still cause variation but you take the steps to stop them recurring, then haven’t you taken the responsibility to make things better?

On the flip side do not take on all blame and responsibility, especially for those situations out of your control.  Shit does happen and there are things that no matter what you do, could have done, will do, etc, the circumstance just won’t change.  Don’t beat yourself up.  Just don’t blame and get on with the next situation.

previous blogs;
http://johnmasonstuff.blogspot.com/
http://john-mason-stuff.blogspot.com/

How long for certification audits

Third party certification audits are planned at a frequency and duration to meet the requirements of JAS-ANZ.  Notice, that statement did not mention your needs, when in fact if there is only one; certification, .  then you must play by JAS-ANZ rules. 

Now the overarching guideline for planning frequency and duration is whether the entire quality management system of your organisation (or more importantly, those sites and activities within the scope of your certification) can be audited over the course of 3 years.

The physicality of the above statement is based on geographic and demographic considerations and then just many auditor days or hours it will take.  Now I have blogged before about demographics and the numbers game between FTEs, how many people are doing the same job, etc.  But they all impact on the final number.

Once the gross number of days or hours are determined, then it is a matter of choice but mostly your certification body’s.  The end result might be for a 12 auditor day certification, you might end up with this scenario; 3 days for certification audit (2 auditors for 1 day, 1 auditor for the 3rd), then 1 auditor for 1 day every 6 months (or 2 auditors for one day every 12 months) plus in the second year, the sample plan for your multi-site system, may need all branches to be audited at half a day per site, per year, totalling 5 auditor days that year and the balance made up of annual events, more branch events, etc, etc, etc.  My heads hurts just typing this stuff, so imagine what it is like to convince the CB to meet your needs as they balance their JAS-ANZ requirements.

The best thing to do is to keep the dialog open, keep the planning process fluid and to keep your options open with other CBs ready to give you the customer service you deserve.

previous blogs; http://johnmasonstuff.blogspot.com/
http://john-mason-stuff.blogspot.com/

Quality Objectives – Part 2

OK, so now we know what they are (or perhaps more importantly what they are not).  The next is to link them from your quality policy, structure them and communicate them.  You need all three to be compliant with the standard.  And so having your quality objectives buried in your strategic or business plans is OK so long as they are linked from the policy, but can they be effectively communicated to all levels of the organisation?  Are they relevant to the person / function they are being delivered to.  So get over this point in a real hurry.  They must be communicated and if they are in a commercially sensitive document than they won’t.  You may need different tiers of documentation and or accessibility, just keep the reader in mind.

Noticed we haven’t spelt out what the objectives are yet.  Well it won’t happen this blog (maybe next).  Once you have your objectives, you need to structure them along these lines.  Clearly state the objective.  Develop a program or process to manage the objective.  Assign a measurable target or set of targets.  And last and by no means the least, assign resources to ensure that objectives can be met.  It is no good having an objective that says 100% inspection of all 300,000 welds per year if you don’t have the means, the people, the know-how to do such a thing.  But if you can keep these four things in focus (objective, program, target, resource) when developing quality objectives, you might just make things certifiable, perhaps even useful!

previous blogs;
http://johnmasonstuff.blogspot.com
http://john-mason-stuff.blogspot.com/

When should you sell?

Ask any stock market guru and they will tell you buy stock when the bottom is falling out of the market (in fact, I did recently with some resource shares and made a tidy paper profit when the market bounced last month.  Sweet!).

I was at a chamber function recently and I was wearing a tie.  Someone asked me ‘hey, what’s with the tie?  didn’t you give up on ties a few years ago?’.  Yes I did was my reply.  But now that everyone is going casual and not wearing ties, I started wearing them again.  In scenarios, I stand out because there is a difference.

And so why am I telling you this??  Yes, there is a point.  When should you be selling?  The answer is – when you are busy and don’t have much time for it.  Most businesses only start to focus on sales when things are slow.  When time allows because they don’t have customers or work.  So they sit there and say, hey, no customers I should sell and they do, and do it well.  Then they become busy and they stop selling and before long, they aren’t busy and then they decide to sell again.  The sales cycle is insidious and the only way to stop it is to keep selling and / or sell when you are busy.  You know if you do that, you will always be busy and if you can’t find the time because you too busy with customers or delivering service, then all you need to do is employ / subcontract that work or employ / subcontract the sales stuff and then you have a very busy, very sustainable business model.  Go on, sell when you are busy.
previous blogs;
http://johnmasonstuff.blogspot.com
http://john-mason-stuff.blogspot.com/