• Ten hot jobs right now
• How to get training to push you career to the next level
• Top 10 Business Trends for 2010
• The blogging CEO
• South Africa is exploding as a market for
sms banking or mobile payments
• Avoiding clichés and untruths in
business and life
• Protecting intellectual property
• Taking responsibility for corporate
governance
• 2007 was a year of success for
AstroTech
• Self development
• Complaint management and Customer
Service
• Management Must Innovate, or Die
• Words to inspire: The art of
speechwriting
• Planning, Writing and Delivering a Speech
• Ensuring Executive Success
• Executive Success
• Succesful Business Executive
• Ten Hot Tips
• South African Micro Finance Apex Fund
• General Product & Safety Regulations
• SARS Small Business Tax Amnesty
• World Watch Vital Stats 2006
• Career Management and Self
Development
• Masters Degree in Power Engineering
• DTI Codes of Good Practice
• National Credit Regulator
• Corporate Governance
• Principles of Management
• Testing Software Systems
• Finance for Non-Financial Managers

AstroTech’s Valentine’s Month - Ten Hot Tips for the Successful Executive

• Being able to read not only balance sheets but the messages contained within a set of accounts can mean the difference between a business booming – or failing. Being able to effectively read, analyse and critically interpret company accounts can be incredibly helpful in managing your business, but also in deciding whether to work with other businesses as suppliers, customers or partners. AstroTech’s Finance for NonFinancial Managers and its Strategic Management courses can help you evade some accounting potholes.

• Few enjoy collecting debts, but without effective debt collection or cash flow monitoring a company stands to lose significant amounts to bad debt each year. Threatening legal action is often enough to get many debtors to pay up, but negotiating payment terms often gets you a better return than being inflexible.

• To reduce bad debt in the business then knowing how to properly assess credit limits is a key skill. Offer too much and you risk losing money. Offer too little and clients will shun you.

• Are you listening or have you formed an answer before the question is complete? The brain has capacity for approximately 800 words per minute and, on average people speak 200 words per minute. When communicating with others, our brain will try to use up the remaining capacity by thinking of our response, rather than focusing on what the other person has to say or how they are responding to us. To improve our communication skills, we need to focus on listening to understand what the other person is saying, thinking or believes in, rather than just listening to respond.

• Tip from radio broadcasters - if you smile while on the phone your voice comes across as friendlier and more credible. Your trust rating is higher.

• Thinking about the problem for longer, and trying to see it from more than one perspective may lead you to really innovative and successful solutions.

• Negotiation is an art. It is not about ego it is about achieving a solution.

• Effective negotiation needs good planning and preparation. If you invest just 10% more time in planning and preparation, you can achieve up to 25% better than expected results.

• Asking the right questions in a positive and assertive manner, with a smile or a positive inflection in your voice will generate more and better information when working with others.

• A perfect business anagram? Listen = Silent: to get the best out of others.