Ever get that sinking feeling? That pit-of-the-stomach sensation while you recognize something’s long past incorrect. Business proprietors know what I’m speaking about. We get it whilst that purchaser calls to whinge about a process. Or whilst a provider’s key shipment does not arrive on time. You’re an enterprise owner. You know this sense. When is it the absolute worst? When it is a generation aid difficulty. You come to work, and your PC display is not how you left it the night time before. When you arrive at your office this morning, you are now not greeted through the standard desktop. Instead, the display screen is frozen at “Windows is starting.” A replace that routinely downloaded the remaining night screwed something up. Your display screen is black. And now so is your mood.
You watch the display screen for a few minutes, awaiting something to occur, but nothing will. Finally, you restart the laptop. Twice. The same result. Now you have that sinking feeling. You see your morning slipping away: This PC isn’t going to begin. And neither is your day. Until you get some help, you will have to call technical help. But halt your hyperventilation. There’s no need to worry in any respect. As a fellow commercial enterprise proprietor, I’m going to help you. Because I’ve learned a way to cope with technical help with some guidelines for people like us.
Rule One: Don’t Get Angry.
You can get indignant if you stay in a metropolis wherein it snows half of the year and your team starts the season zero-4. You can get irritated whenever you hear that Jennifer Lopez is paid $12 million to choose American Idol. But this time, getting irritated might not help everybody. And it might not help you get your difficulty resolved any quicker. If you are running your personal, commercial enterprise, the final aspect you need is in your personnel to see you storming around your office, wildly swinging a golf club over your head like a tomahawk whilst you kick over your chair and repeatedly yell, “Why, why, why!” It’s enough that your family’s visible this behavior. You have to deliver personnel the impact that the entirety is in control. That YOU are in control. You are a businessman. You are Don Draper. So do what he might do at 8 a.M.-have a bourbon and smoke. Microsoft (MSFT) Windows never rattled Don Draper, proper? So be calm.
Rule Two: Be Nice to the Technician
Of direction, it is annoying that you need to wait on the preserve. And all of us realize how nerve-racking it may be when you have to punch for your “consumer ID,” ZIP code, mother’s maiden call, favorite holiday spot, and social security range into the automated gadget 3 instances, handiest to be asked for that identical information again the minute a stay person comes on the phone. It’s now not his fault. The technician is just doing his process. He’s going to be fine. It would help if you were great, too. You’re a business owner. How could you want it if a few clients changed into being a jerk to one of your employees? You’re no longer going to get on his good aspect using being a jerk to him. At excellent, you will earn the proper to be placed on hold 5 more times than important or be pressured to sit down and wait in silence for plenty extra mins, questioning what he’s virtually doing as he’s clicking away on his keyboard.
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Rule Three: Be Patient
You recognize from running your personal business that sometimes the solutions can’t be brought right now. Don’t you desire your clients to be a bit more affected once they call with a hassle? Of route you do. So take a deep breath. Don’t fear approximately the long silences on the line whilst you assume you’ve been disconnected. He’s there. He’s probably simply mulling things over. Or speak approximately the difficulty with his colleagues. Whatever. Be patient. Answer the questions. Take this time to arrange your timetable. This hassle will, in the end, get resolved. It’s going to take a bit of time, that’s all. Don’t even take into account grabbing the golf club again and knocking that image of your spouse and kids at Disney (DIS) off your table.
Rule Four: Cede Control
As an enterprise owner, you’re in all likelihood a manipulate freak. Like me, you hate different people doing stuff you do not apprehend. That’s why you don’t like paintings for everybody anymore. But to get your hassle fixed, you are going to need to relinquish that manage… As a minimum for a few minutes. When the technician asks to take over your gadget to do his troubleshooting remotely, allow him. Don’t worry about security. Try not to think of something malicious he might be doing. Don’t be troubled that he’s going to go looking at the websites you recently visited. Remember, he does not care approximately all that. He has others for your state of affairs he needs to assist, too. Let him take over your computer and run all those complex scripts and packages that most effective the technical help guys understand the way to run. Could you not ask what he is doing? In fact, don’t even watch what he is doing. Look over a few office work alternatively. Try to look busy. Walk around the office as if you’re lost for your mind, conjuring up some notable plan to take your commercial enterprise to new heights. The tech guy will quickly finish.
Rule Five: The Most Important Rule… Delegate
Haven’t you learned whatever over the last twenty years running your own commercial enterprise? You’re the boss. So act like one! with the aid of now, you will find the handiest screw things up using doing the provider yourself to have someone else do it. You realize by now that you will lose that client if you call him and scream approximately his past due to invoice, so you have a person else do it. And you need to recognize with the aid of now that you will in no way be the technical wizard that you once idea you may be while you bought your first Windows 3.1 PC-so you need to delegate this, too. The minute you spot something is wrong, have every other man in your office or your tech guy address the problem. And as a substitute, choose up the cellphone and call a customer. Check on an order. Walk across the warehouse—order lunch for the personnel. Just do something else extra useful. And more suitable for the owner of an enterprise.
See? It becomes only an easy restoration. Your computer is up and walking. Life can go back to ordinary-simply in time for lunch. Gene Marks, CPA, is the proprietor of the Marks Group, which sells customer dating, career, and monetary management tools to small and midsize organizations. Marks is the writer of 4 exceptional-promoting small business books and writes the popular “Penny Pincher’s Almanac” syndicated column. He often speaks to business corporations on penny-pinching topics.
