BEHIND THE SCENE

I've seen through the facades of our faces.those guises hidden in our innocent compliments,curtsies and smiles.like everything is fair and life has always embraced us with her endearing warm coat of many colours and petals of roses.

No tears,no regrets,no remorses,like Jesus had written our lives' scripts with a dimpled smile,not putting such moments of tears,struggles,challenges or regrets as some artificial us will term 'abundant life'.

Such hypocrisy that i've only seen Pharisees exude with saintly dexterity has found its way into our normal lives at an optimal peak.

I've seen and counselled ladies,men who have out of their getting sincere with themselves,put aside those castles of their super-man and superwoman manliness and accept their frailties,weaknesses,struggles,yearnings,desires.

Evoking and expressing such emotion with soft-salty-tears.such that translates the words their hearts and lips cant find expressions for.
I have at such moment seen the child in them and the desire that wishes they were still kids.wrapped in the security of our parents,sucking through their mothers breast of love.

I have learnt thro' all these that we all need to face a reality of what happens to us behind the scenes and such sincerity will help us find succour in the hands of people who truly love and care especially such that have been through what we have.

For me,far beyond the smiles of my face,there are plenitudes of the behind the scene contents in the pages of my life.

For the warmth that i need,i still need God to hug me with His embrace of love..behind the scenes of my life

THE SECRET I REFUSED TO SHARE

Business Guide

The Universal Lawof Keeping Customers

The challenge of the contemporary business world today is,getting the right-prospective customers and keeping such customers, as thisultimately determines how the organization’s profit are generated andmaintained in such a way that the flow is consistent and unending.

Whatever industry, the elementary ethics to gettingcustomers are like universal laws and are applicable to every sort of business.Much like the fundamental law of gravitational force, it is applicable anywhereon earth at the same degree and with the same fidelity. Successfulbusinesses have thrived and survived on this and they have kept this age-longsecret so much that they have built empires of wealth from it.

Once these laws or rules are properly learnt and totallyinternalized to be applied both as an individual and organizational code ofconduct, one could positively set ones’ eyes towards getting potential andprospective customers to create a long lasting business relationship that willbe both of a mutual and economic benefit to the parties involved.

One of the misconception of this rule of getting customersis that most times, we concentrate this relationship on profit alone, and whenwe don’t make profits from them, we tend to change from a customer to anotherbetter one and end-up using profit-making as our measuring scale of who is acustomer or not. This, over the years has caused organisations to lose greatpotential customers and it has as well led to the collapse of many flourishingorganisations. In business, though profit is the thriving tool that makes thebusiness be, but on the scale of preference and priority scale, the customerscome before profit. Why? It is the customers that create the profit, and whenthe customers are not given the fair atmosphere to feel that they can invest inyour business or trade with your organization, they eventually opt for optionsthat can serve that purpose.

As much as adverts help sell an organization, however, whereits strength to influence customers stops, good customer relationship goes wayfurther, if and when properly channeled. There is a theory that I believe is aproduct of the rules that I will share with you, it is called themonopolizing customers theory. Themonopolizing customer theory helps create a chain of loyal members based oncertain things they enjoy from your organization, such as:

·        Comfort

·        Efficiency

·        Attention

·        Quality

Customers naturally recommend organisations to people oncethey enjoy the CEAQ concept. Theywant to step into your company even when it is their first time of having abusiness transaction with your organization and feel like they have been doingbusiness with you for years. They want to be comfortable and feel an atmosphere that is truly comfortable for business. Yes,organisations do have shortcomings, places where they need to get better, butprospective and long-time customers always want to come in and feel you haveeverything handled; they want to feel you are achieving even the most demandingtask with dexterity and ease (the morereason it becomes expedient for organisations to employ smart, efficientgoal-driven workers). They want to be sure you can do the job, that you cangive that exact building design of their dream, that they can leave the projectof managing that estate without having to fear, they want to rest assured thatyou can efficiently handle theirjobs for them.

This might seem like a baby attitude, but very much like theneed of a child to always find joy and satisfaction in the attention they get form their mother. Business partners,organisations or let me rather say, prospective and potential customers alwayswant to have that feel that you are attentiveto their needs. They want to come up and complain of an advert that they placedin your papers or magazine that didnt come through and see you react quickly toit like it is the only to-do youhave. They want to complain about a brick on their building that was notproperly placed, a design that didn’t meet their taste and see you attend to itwith all devotion. To simply put, they want to be sure you are interested inthem and their jobs other than their money. Don’t forget, ‘customers first,then profit. If they go, they go with your profits’.

Quality may seemto be the last in the list but it is as sacrosanct as attention, efficiency andcomfort. As much as they want to see otherthings as earlier discussed, they equally expect to see quality in what you do,they want to be able to show others the value in your products, in yourservices. Basically, if there is no quality in your goods or services, thenwhat exactly are you selling? Quality attracts your customers in the firstplace, and then comfort, attention and efficiency get your customers sold outto you for a life-long relationship of loyalty. With that you can build a vast customer-loyalty-base.

Organisations when recruiting their staff should as wellengraft the following business culture in their staff:

·        Be informally formal with your greetings- staff should always carry an air, a sortof presence that both seems formal and can equally allow clients flow well withthem. This could be a mild form of greeting, a smile that eases the seriousnessof business, while still maintaining formalities. Either in stakeholdersmeeting, in the banking all, on the field as a business executive or atcorporate gatherings like, exhibition, conferences etc. this helps to aidagreement on so many things, like business proposals and foster mutual bonding.

Howeverit is better to wear the smile better than the outfit.

·        Be formal with your business content-Even while trying to be informal; itbecomes expedient for the staff to be able to draw the lines betweeninformality in greetings and to ease the air. It is important that this mustnot change the formality of the business content. The lines are always there,business is business. Make it blend.

·        Be gorgeous- most times since it becomes important to dress tocreate an appeal and create a prestige for the organisation you represent, itis many a time overdone. Sometimes it is preferable the organisation as a dresscode that is literally okay for every form of official business. Theorganisation can as well brand the staff’s outfit-the tie, shirts and suits.This should equally look formally. Going to the extent of branding shoes mighteventually look unserious, so that should not in any way be done. Moderation isimportant, be gorgeous but do not be loud.

·        Smell nice-it is equallygood to smell nice; this goes a long way in creating good reception. A businessexecutive who goes out to meet a client probably to give a business proposal orseal a deal might have hitches with winning the heart of the prospective clientif such emits odour, and that is why it is good to smell nice, but do notchoke.

Conclusively, it becomes expedientalso for organisations to value and appreciate their staff- a good workingenvironment that as a low level of stress makes work easier for the staff andas a result they can as well relate well with customers.

SOULFUL THOUGHTS

I HAVE LOVED MORE THAN A WOMAN A MILLION TIMES

Yes, I really have sought and sort out the dialogue thatwill not just appeal to the heart but that will relatively show the strugglesof the human heart… little wonder I hearthe Christian Bible say, ‘once as theLord spoken, twice have I heard’. This equally is metaphorical to theheart, there are ways our hearts do resonate truths to us-successively like thecadence of an orchestra, whispering ciphered messages that only our hearts canonly understand.

Sure most of you know that I still board commercial buses (wetin man go do now). It is in atraffic jam where I have to continuously inhale smokes from variousvehicle-silencers that I chose to write this. I feel at times we should notblame people with bad breath. Perhaps, they had woken up and were unable to usemc cleans or close-up, probably because theycould not afford buying it. (Oh God! DidI just mention some brands? I just hope this is not cheap advert for…) tobrush and have either used salt or ‘pako’(Yoruba native chewingstick for the teeth), or perhaps they opted for some of these toothpastethat I will choose not to mention their names to save me from comments on mybias and the toothpaste industry from a scandal that can make me notorious. ButI know you know them… the ones you use are more like that. (I just wish I will be paid for this publicity, ‘cause in advertisingthere is no cheap publicity). I had better tag close-up and mccleans so I get a…nope not brownenvelopes o!

Yes! I speak as a seasoned media-person!

That’s a by-the-way though. But imagine brushing your mouthand teeth with such… adding up to that, you still have to inhale the exhaustsmoke of different vehicles on Lagos road with different degree, texture andcontent of smoke. The ‘molues’, trailers, tippers,old-rickety-private cars, commercial buses and ‘saliva(s)’ of angry conductors. Why won’t they have badbreath?

Still in the bus with the frustrated passengers, tryingto  teach the driver how to drive, when ahost of them do not even know how to start a car… (enu dun roof)Lagosians!I tried taking my mind away from the noise to relate with my inner thoughts andin the heat of the traffic, thoughts flowed spontaneously into my mind…thoughts of things that I have refused to let go. I do not know if it is mymind, my feelings or my heart (find the difference) that does this but my heartas had to learn that some things we hold as truths today may as well be flawedby tomorrow’s enlightenment.

History has revealed that there were assumptions that theearth was flat not until Galileo cameand flawed that assumption with his discovery that the earth is spherical, buttressing the fact thatassumption is the lowest form of knowledge. For this, he almost died, I thinkhe was killed (if my facts are correct-I equally ask you to go goggle it abeg), yet I hope that the religioussect will not crucify me for the statements I fear to say…

I have had to ask myself if one can only love just a man orjust a woman… really I do not have concrete answers to this, but I have seenwomen whose husbands were deceased, men whose wives were deceased get marriedto another, or perhaps it is a divorce case. So, do we say they build new lovefor their new spouses or perhaps one could love more than one person?

I believe that love isn’t monopolized, it is shared. I had better explain myself beforesomeone uses this as a criterion for promiscuity. Let me safely state that wesure can love more than one person or let me rather state as a fact andemphatically…  I have loved more than oneand I still do, I am not saying this on the grounds of my experience, but askyourself if that’s true. (Oops! I just hope this won’t cost me…). You couldfill in the ellipsis, but the truth is as much as that is true, we still haveto choose who we want to liveour foreverwith… This, if I need to say is the part where our senses of responsibility is tested,if truly we can make a choice out of our plethora of love-choices and sincerelystick to being committed to such as a spouse.

Yes! At this point there are a lot of compromises to make,for definitely there will be one exceling feature in one that you won’t find inthe other. I suppose God chose this method so that no man can have it all, neithercan a woman have it all, probably so we can learn contentment that way. Chooseone and stick to it. But, if we choose to make our decisions on the qualitiesthat one has that excels the other we will only end up hurting ourselves, wewill end up asking the man or the woman inside us if he or she could go backinto the pages of his past and re-make our decisions… some of us might end upthinking, ‘what if I had married Smith, what if I had Victor…what if I had married Essence, what if I had narried Victoria or..’.  and we will end up concluding that thingswould have been better if we had made a choice to accept his proposal or tohave proposed to her, (I bet married menand women understand this better, if they won’t lie like they always do-as ifthey don’t have doubts, or wish for a rewind in their lives’ pages- I know thatone of the hardest in the world is to get the church people to tell the truth).But… wait a minute, let no lady think I am striking this note on the men’sorchestra-personality, I am also striking the cord on the guitars of thewomen’s heart.

I know this seems like preaching that men are superior, butI have never said so and I have never thought so, I don’t even believe that… Ihave always loved women so much that I know that there is something about themthat controls the man’s mind, that can stir the heart of even the vilest ofmen… and if this power youbeautifulclan of eves have can be properly harnessed, maximized and tilted tohelping men understand you more, so sure am I that our men will stay at homethan peep through those houses and those car windows and even if they do,ensure you are the one standing out there for him to see. At this point I willsay you should overwhelm him in different versions but don’t choke him withwrappers tied from your legs up to your head like you want to marry Jesus theanointed… can I warn that, this I just said is for the married but I will askthe single ladies to steal a read, though… if you have gotten to this line Isuppose I shouldn’t sound this warning again.

What have I been saying?

Oops! This wasn’t my topic, I just played around… now to thematters of my heart…

There was a time I was so drenched in a relationship that Ifelt if she lets go of me I won’t love again, not one though and (please don’t think me as someone whochanges from one Eve to another for,Iaint not what you think) that if she leaves me I will like Tony Braxtonpromise that ‘…I shall never breatheagain…’. I had felt like Don Williams in my heart that, ‘some broken hearts never mend’, I hadthought like he equally said in one of his songs, ‘…till the sun falls from the sky I’ll be needing you…’.

For those who had just a relationship and got married (better for you, ‘cause I wish I did-I amnot saying I am feeling bad about that though… so don’t get all righteous onme) all I wrote in the preceding paragraph could be un-tenable, well that’san opinion just like mine. But I know too well that I have cried like a babywho doesn’t want to be left alone, holding on to my mother’s wrapper andweeping my fears of not wanting to be left alone on that same precious wrapper.Like that I have wept on some Eve daughters’ shoulders and wept same subtlylisping inaudible words to tell her the fears bottled in my mind,‘please don’t let go’. I said it not asthe en-vogue group sang it. It wasmore like a yearning in my heart ‘cause I so said them sincerely. I have aswell in my heart felt then that I can’t just live if living is without them. But time tells, today here I am,like brother Marvin Sapp will say, ‘I’m still standing’, not like my heartdoesn’t love them again… the truth us I have loved and I have never regrettedone(I’m sorry I just said that). Forme, I have had to learn during those times, save that now my heart is made on…(It is my ellipsis).

 But I should lay my pen to rest now, yetI need to reiterate this, even if we love more than one, our hearts can equallychoose one. As for those of us whose hearts have been broken, maybe people whohave professed to have loved us and have eventually made us feel that there issomeone out there that is better than us, and that is why they have to leaveus. You should know now that they could not have been the best for you.Somehow, somewhere in a place, in this world, at a place in this world, at apoint in our lives, someone will come whose colour of love is also your colourof love and sure fortuitously or strategically, such will come and tell you, ‘the colour of love is you’ because youare his one.

It is still me…

Alabi Olamide Victor