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Today, I read a episode on ESLPOD about micromanaging, so I want to talk about my opinion regarding micromanaging in my experience.

As a team player or team leader, you must master some tools of team management, but the most important is how much you know about your employees. Wherever you go, you could not establish a team with those employees who meet your requirement, even they can meet your requirement; each employee has his character as their background are so different, such as education background, work experience, etc.,. Therefore, you must understand or study the character which your employees had before you chose the management tools.

There is no a common tool in the team management as the reason mentioned above. Of course, micromanagement is also not the best way to manage all of your employees. If you’re always observing your employee’s work, they will resentful of being monitored all the time, it will discourage your employees and they could not contribute their ideas to the tasks. For those employees who are mature and capable enough, you must find some ways to encourage and channel them to contribute to the goals of the team.

Obviously, Micromanaging is not bad tactic, it can help you master or know the progress of the task by keeping track of the work which your employees are doing and also help your employees improve their skills. For those employees who are just newcomers to the team or the company, micromanaging is like a OJT – On Job Training, will help them understand the procedure of work and understand the culture of your company in no time.

I believe that the most important in the team management is to establish a rule or a system which you can make sure that the task’s progress in real time or in no time. In my last company, I established the daily meeting rule in which my employees can report the progress of his task and discuss the difficulty of the task. In this meeting, the employee can not only report his progress and difficulty but also receive my order or advices from his colleagues. He also can improve his skill of presentation, communication, discussion, etc. but you must remember that you must control the issue or progress of the meeting and make sure that the meeting is discussing the current topic.

Team management is very important, if we do right, it will produce the synergy and it also help the company to increase the benefit and reduce the cost.

P.S. Finally, I want to say to my readers, I know some of my topics are not so interesting to you, but it comes from my experience. I hope you not only read and enjoy them but also leave me some advices on them, so that I can improve my topics and my English.

It's so long time to write something in this blog as I opened a new blog on the other site.

In this article, I want to talk about the ESL sources on the internet.

Though iPod is very popular in the young people(I’m also young ), I just get to know the Podcast. The podcast is an audio file that you can download from the internet. In recent days, it greatly helps me to improve my English. Like MP3, you can listen it on your iPod or iTune, the difference is that Podcast has the transcripts of each file and you can read on your iPod or iTune.

There are many ESL Podcast sources you can download from the internet, hereon I listed some which I’m favorite.

www.eslpod.com

This site is running by Dr.Jeff and his colleagues, they provide the Podcast at a slower speed(sometimes it sounds unnatural) and contains the sentence used in American everyday life. They also explain what the expressions mean and how to use them. It’s very helpful to them who just began to learn English or want to improve the English listening.

http://thewordnerds.org

it’s running by three persons who are the teachers and also have the native tone. In the Podcast, they talk about some topics interesting with the normal speed. So it’s a little difficult to understand for the Enlgish beginner. The shortage of this site is they did not provide the transcripts of those topics.

www.china232.com

Andrew and Addison are running this site in SHANGHAI, they discuss some topics in the Podcast and explain what the expressions mean and how to use them. it’s just same to www.eslpod.com, but it’s faster than ESLPOD, using nearly the native speaking. They also provide the transcripts for every conversationin their Podcast.

Maybe there are so many sources on the internet, which contain the ESL Podcast, Hereon, What I want to suggest is don’t seek any more sources, if you find some suiting for you. it’s most important to you to insist on studying those everyday.

In this article, I want to talk about the first meeting with a purchasing representative.

Having been working in the purchasing position for 8 years, I am well-known about the mind of a purchasing representative. In general, a purchasing representative does not to change the current supply channel to new one, because he or she must risk of the new supplier’s delivery and quality problem. Also, in the manufacturing company, the procedure of qualifying a new supplier is very strict and takes so much time. So, when a new supplier comes to visit him, he has a negative mind at first generally.

But as a salesman, if you want to sell your products, you would get over this. Hereon I will write something from my experience for reference.

Firstly, appointment for the first meeting is very important.

Normally, many salesmen in China go to the client without appointment. (I mean many local suppliers, not the international companies). I believe many of purchasing representatives don’t like the meeting which is out of his schedule. As a purchasing representative, he is busy to do his current job which will be effect to the production lines. If you visit your client without appointment, I am sure that you would not meet the person or you would not enough time to present your company and products. So you must call your client or send a e-mail to him that you will visit him for what kinds of purposes. Like me, if I get an e-mail of appointment, I will reply to them that I can or not. And then, I will prepare for the meeting, such as company profile, the business needs, some information about our products etc. Even I have no free time for prepare, I make the appointment in my mind, so I will leave a free time for it. The reason that the appointment is so important is that the appointment will ask both of the purchasing representative and the supplier take out a free time to the meeting, so that they can have enough time to exchange the information they had.

Secondly, Preparation for the first meeting is also very important.

If say an appointment will create a free time to both of us, the preparation for the meeting will provide the material for discussing. Like me, I will prepare the first meeting with a new supplier through several sources. Firstly, I will search the information about this supplier via internet, such as Google, yahoo, Baidu, Sina etc. The internet would provide the site of this supplier(if he has), some articles or news contain the name of this supplier. It will help you to figure out of this supplier. Secondly, I will call some friends in this field and ask them provide some information about this supplier. In every industry, there are some people having the extensive information about the industry generally. They will tell you good news or bad news about this supplier, which must be confirmed with this supplier at the meeting. Thirdly, I often send a vendor check list to those suppliers who visits our company firstly. In this list, they must provide the detail information about their companies, such as the capacity of production, No. employee, sales amount, current clients, facilities etc. The salesmen also make the reference to the method which I mentioned above, such as internet, market survey via some industry channels etc. Sometimes, you can arrive the appointment early and you can ask the receptionist who must know the key person from low to up level. (Because she must transfer the calls to everyone in her company), so you can pump her for information, sometime you will get the inside scoop on your client.

Thirdly, what I want to say is the next appointment with the purchasing representative.

Whatever the result of the first meeting, you must make the next appointment with the person who interviewed you when the meeting finished. If you think there is an opportunity with this client, you must do it, furthermore, the next appointment would not be so later than 3 weeks, because the person will forget you after 3 weeks.

And last, I want to say that you should write a letter for thank to the person who interviewed you. It’s important to the person remember you.