? 1 List each staff member and corresponding salary for the employee in a spreadsheet to get an idea of the total current staffing cost on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis. ? 2
Develop your staff budget in the same spreadsheet. After totaling up the expenses, establish a firm ceiling for expenditures on staff. Make adjustments to the budget expenses over time to ensure compliance with that staff spending maximum. As the business grows, you can increase the limit to hire more people as needed. ? 3
Evaluate need in the department regarding staff periodically. Ask current workers if they need assistance with their work and monitor the work process to decide if more staff is necessary. ? 4
Monitor the productivity of current staff to make further decisions regarding the budget, particularly staff cuts if required. You can keep tabs on the performance of workers using software and regular performance reviews (meetings to discuss each worker's progress). For instance, companies can keep track of the efficiency of data entry professionals with software that times and evaluated entries over a period of time. ? 5
Make additions or deletions to the current staff and corresponding budget based on your findings periodically. For instance, if you find that an employee isn't meeting productivity goals nor helping the firm operate efficiently, you might decide to eliminate that position and update the staff budget accordingly. ? 6
Set a date to adjust the staff budget each year after taking into account all factors (such as productivity and revenues) from the previous year. As staffing managers Gennie Justus and Joyce Siegele of Northside Hospital in Atlanta explain, budgeting changes are based on trends, historical numbers of employees and internal changes. Effective feedback is specific, not general. (Say, \you turned in yesterday was well-written, understandable, and made your points about the budget very effectively.\, \
Effective feedback always focuses on a specific behavior, not on a person or their intentions. (When you held competing conversations during the meeting, when Mary had the floor, you distracted the people in attendance.)
The best feedback is sincerely and honestly provided to help. Trust me, people will know if they are receiving it for any other reason.
Successful feedback describes actions or behavior that the individual can do something about.
Whenever possible, feedback that is requested is more powerful. Ask permission to provide feedback. Say, \like to give you some feedback about the presentation, is that okay with you?\
Effective feedback involves the sharing of information and observations. It does not include advice unless you have permission or advice was requested.
Effective feedback is well timed. Whether the feedback is positive or constructive provide the information as closely tied to the event as possible.
Effective feedback involves what or how something was done, not why. Asking why is asking people about their motivation and that provokes defensiveness.
Check to make sure the other person understood what you communicated by using a feedback loop, such as asking a question or observing changed behavior.
Effective feedback is as consistent as possible. If the actions are great today, they're great tomorrow. If the policy violation merits discipline, it should always merit discipline. Tips:
Feedback is communication to a person or a team of people regarding the effect their behavior is having on another person, the organization, the customer, or the team. Positive feedback involves telling someone about good performance. Make this feedback timely, specific, and frequent.
Constructive feedback alerts an individual to an area in which his performance could improve. Constructive feedback is not criticism; it is descriptive and should always be directed to the action, not the person.
The main purpose of constructive feedback is to help people understand where they stand in relation to expected and/or productive job behavior.
Recognition for effective performance is a powerful motivator. Most people want to obtain more recognition, so recognition fosters more of the appreciated
首先是Marketing，一般presentation部分考官会给三个题目供你选择，可以说必有一道是关于Marketing的，所以这方面的材料要好好准备。以下是我当时准备的一些常用材料。 I. Pricing Strategy
1. the product itself: the cost of producing plus your expecting profit
2. similar products, the rival firms: What are their prices? What are your product’s competitive advantages? In what aspect does your product superior to others? This can add extra value to your product.
3. target customer: Whether they are wealthy or not? Can they afford the price? Ex: How to ensure that price levels for new products are set appropriately?
○1 The first problem is who your target customers are. Their income, occupation, preference.
○2 Do market research to make sure whether your target customers can afford the price level. There are mainly four ways of doing market research: survey, telephone interview, observation and questionnaire.
○3 Test your product in a small region. Find out how it sells, get the feedbacks of the customers. Decide whether to make any adjustment.
II. Product Package
Ex: The importance of packaging products appropriately
○1 Traditionally, the purpose of packaging a product is to protect the product or to
make it convenient for carrying, as some products are liquid or sticky.
○2 Today, the package add value to the product, especially to the consumer goods. The package is the product’s first impression to the customer. They may judge the quality of the product by its package and decide whether to buy it or not. Sometimes, a gorgeous package is a symbol of identity, especially when the product serves as a gift or present.
○3 You have to packaging your products appropriately so that your products can stand out from the crowd and be bought by the customers.
III. Diversification
Ex: The importance of product diversification to the success of a business.
这时你可能对product diversification并不是很熟悉，可以举一些案例，比如, the case of coca-cola: despite of its regular cola, it produce diet cola for people who get diabetes or adiposity problems. 然后借以说明product diversification的作用。 ○1 Meet the needs of different customers.
○2 Increase the company’s market shares/market penetration.
○3 Marketing segmentation: the division of potential buyers according to age, sex, lifestyle, etc with the aim of designing and promoting goods and services to meet their specific need.(此定义引自《牛津英汉双解商务英语辞典》，我认为很不错的一本商务英语词典，每个词汇都有在商务方面的中英两种解释和例句)
IV. Advertising 1. Media
○1 The types of media: TV and radio commercial, newspapers and magazine, poster and bill board, direct mail, the Internet, etc
○2 Advantages and disadvantages of the major types
TV: high attention, combination of sight, sound and motion; high cost and less audience selectivity.
Newspaper: flexibility, good local market coverage, broad acceptance; short life, poor reproduction quality.
Magazine: high geographic and demographic selectivity, credibility, long life, good pass-along readership; having rivals in the same magazine.
Direct mail: audience selectivity, flexibility, no ad competition within the same medium; relatively high cost, junk mail image.
Internet: high reach of international audience, similar effect as TV commercial, interactive; the users of Internet are limited, compared with TV.
○3 Consider your target audience and your budget to make a wise decision. 2. Agency
○1 Select a suitable agency
A. Consider the reputation and past performances of the agency. Agencies provide the client with the services of highly skilled individuals who are specialists in their chosen field.
B. Same compensation philosophies. Different compensation systems may result in disagreement.
C. Stability in agency’s policies. Mergers and acquisitions may lead to policy changes. This will have negative effect on the performance of the agency. ○2 Ensure that agencies maintain a high level of effectiveness. A. Regular reviews: financial and qualitative assessments.
B. Financial audit: It is designed to verify costs and expenses, salaries for the employees, and payments to the media and outside suppliers.
C. Give detailed instructions or certain trainings to the agencies about how to represent a company.
D. Make full disclosure of any potential and existing conflict of interest. One agency cannot run two accounts which are indirect competition with each other. In some cases, even indirect competition will not be tolerated. 3. Trade fair and exhibition
○1 Types of exhibition. What are exhibited? Whether it is related to your field? Whether you can find potential customers, suppliers, or partners?
○2 Scale of exhibition. How many participants are listed? Whether it is local or national or international?
○3 Publicity of exhibition. How far is the organizer willing to increase public awareness? Whether they are able to attract public attention and the leading companies of the field?
○4 Cost of admission. Some of the exhibitions are relatively high, because they wish to attract only the professionals of their own field. Some are admission free, because their target market is the entire population.
○5 Other points: Location, transportation, accommodation and time.
Ex: The importance of selecting appropriate members of staff to attend exhibitions. ○1 The exhibition is a stage for a company to exhibit its product, capacity and credibility.
○2 The members need to know every aspect of the product and the company, and what the company wants in the exhibition.
○3 They should have eloquence to promote the product and the flexibility to adapt to the changes.
○4 Because they represent the image of the company, they should also have a good physical appearance.
V. Market Research
The definition of market research: study carried out by a company before launching a new product, into the needs, lifestyle, income, etc of potential buyers and to measure the success of similar products that are already available. It may involve interviewing people in the street or giving away sample product.
○1 Market research can be done for both a product and a company. As for a product, it is the first step when promoting a new product. It can find out whether the market accept the product or not. As for the company, market research can find out the customers’ opinion about the after-sales services and corporate image.
○2 There are generally four ways of doing market research, observation, survey, questionnaire and telephone interview.
○3 There are four procedures while doing market research. First, represent suitable questions. Second, record the customers’ feedbacks. Third, gather these statistics. Forth, analyse them and draw a conclusion.
VI. Sales
Ex: How to sell a product effectively in international markets.
○1 Advertising. Choose a media to advertise your products in a foreign country, TV commercials, magazines, bill board, or etc. Make sure it suits the local tastes. Maybe you can try to sell on the net; it will receive the world-wide attention.
○2 Do market research. Find out whether the products are accepted by foreign customers. It can be carried out as surveys, observations, and questionnaires.
○3 Adjust your product to the local tastes. Although the case of your products are the same, you can change some details. Take IKEA, the largest furniture retailer, for example, is doing well in suiting the local taste.
○4 What I want to put emphasis on is franchising. Franchising is a good way to sell your prosuct in a foreign country. As local businessmen understand their own culture best.
其次是HR Management，这一部分也很重要，而且这些材料在写作时都可以派上用场
I. Recruitment
Ex: How to ensure that the best candidate for a post is selected. How to organise an effective recruitment drive.
○1 Hiring a new employee is an investment. Getting a niche person for a niche role will add value to an organization. Organization can never be sure that they have selected the right person until he or she starts working, but an efficient recruitment and selection process can reduce the risk.
○2 Produce an accurate job description, a list of skills, experience, attitudes and so on. ○3 Choose the best recruitment method: internal recruitment, job advertisements, recruitment agencies and headhunting/executive search.
○4 A shortlist of candidates will then be draw up to be put through the company’s recruitment processes, usually interviews. This will produce the ideal candidate.
○5 Negotiate terms with this candidate. It should be both affordable for the company and attractive enough to get the ideal candidate.
II. Motivation
Ex: How to achieve and maintain high motivation among a workforce. The importance to a company of having well motivated staffs.
○1 Well motivated staffs can add value to the company. They are enthusiastic, creative and loyal. They increase the productivity and quality. ○2 Spiritual motivation.
A. Give employees guidance when they are just recruited.
B. Demonstrate a commitment to career development and promotion from within. C. Forster a sense of team spirit.