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Category: Management

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Don’t Hurt the Leader’s Position

“A leader is someone that possesses the ability to successfully lead others from the front or the rear. Always know the position of your leader.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

When someone is serving as the leader of your team and you’ve agreed to give them your support, follow their lead; don’t hurt them or your team by engaging in intended or unintended subterfuge.

In the daily activities of everyone’s life, everyone follows someone. Thus, those that you follow have influence by the fact that you anoint them as someone to lead you. You embolden them with that privilege by the fact that you follow their edict/mandate/suggestions. That being the case, don’t undermine the leader by:

  1. Going off-point per a strategy that has been discussed and agreed upon (e.g. going around the leader to gain attention for yourself, etc.)

 

  1. Engaging with outside sources that have not been agreed upon – make sure the leader knows what you’re planning to do

 

  1. Creating ad-hoc strategies when you’re in the midst of interactions with those that are not on your team/group

When you subvert the direction of the lead that you’ve granted to someone, you forgo potential opportunities, and diminish your team’s ability to implement the plan that’s been agreed upon; that can be costly in time and opportunities. You may also be cloaking into darkness the light of opportunities that may have shown themselves to you in the future (i.e. if you prove not to be a team player, no one will want you on their team.)

If you’re going to be a team player, play follow the leader by supporting the person that you’ve chosen to follow. Do so to the degree that such returns are beneficial to you and the team. Once you decide that you no longer wish to engage, inform the leader of your intent and disengage. Don’t just drop out without any communication. If you restrict the flow of communications, you don’t know what potential door(s) you’ll close that might have offered opportunities that could lead you to higher heights.

As long as you’ve decided to follow the leader, don’t hurt her. You’ve made a conscious decision to allow her to lead. So, follow her lead as long as it serves you and her … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

In a team negotiation environment, the leader of the team can position and pose as any of its members; it doesn’t have to be the person that projects the image of a leader at the negotiation table. Depending on the strategy chosen by the team, the leader may pose as someone that’s in a strategic position for a particular negotiation. He may also be positioned as someone that a senior person on the team can replace once the negotiation has reached a certain point.

The point is, once you have a strategy in place, don’t undermine it by undermining the person that’s the lead for the negotiation. Not only will you be weakening her, you’ll also be weakening your team’s negotiation position and the perspective beneficial outcome of the negotiation for all of you.

 

What are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free 5-minute video on reading body language or to  sign up for the “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

#HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #Leadership

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Best Practices Growth Management Personal Development Technology

Security is Not an IT Problem

Over the past 12 + years working as an Information Security (now known as Cyber Security) consultant, I saw too many situations where security was not implemented because the business thought that the IT department or Information Security (InfoSec) department could and would take care of it for them.

Before we go further let me define two things; 1) InfoSec is often a separate department from IT, especially in larger organizations, and 2) when I say “the business” I mean any part of the organization that is not IT or InfoSec.

The business is typically the groups that are directly related to the product you sell or the service you offer (sales, marketing, the call center, business users, etc.). They handle customer or sensitive data to do their job, they talk directly with the customer or client, or they directly support the organization (HR and accounting for example). These are the folks I am calling “the business.”

If you are a non-technical executive or business leader you might think that implementing security is the job of IT or InfoSec, however what we are going to talk about today is that if you want your organization to be secure and your data to remain your data, it’s time to look at this very differently.

It is very common for the business to think about security or bring the project to InfoSec right before they are ready to deploy a new system. Sometimes only because security got a “whiff” of the project or the project team looked at a security checklist and said “oh we should run this by security” and then ask, “Is this secure?” or “Can you make it secure?”

The problem with the scenario I just described is that it puts the cart before the horse. The cart being the business project or system that has been built and the horse being security.

It would be like building a bank and the week before it opens saying, “We should put in a vault, some locks, cameras, and ensure that we don’t get robbed, can we do that now?”

In my experience many business projects are implemented to automate a process or make something easier, faster, or better for the business user or customers. A call center rep looking up information for a customer or processing a transaction, providing customers the ability to pay online, or an automated time and attendance systems are all examples of a business initiated project that deals with a lot of sensitive data that needs to be protected.

Without security, these new systems might lead you to hand over the crown jewels of your organization, whether it is intellectual property or customer data, without you realizing it. Therefore let’s look at why security must start with the business and the reason IT or even the Information Security department can’t do it for you.

First and foremost, the business decides what data they need – if you are collecting information from customers, suppliers, partners, the government, or anyone for that matter; it is the business who determines what and how much data they need to get the job done and/or provide a service. IT or InfoSec never dictate the type of data a business user collects or how long it must be retained. The IT department supports the collection and storage of the data after the business determines what they need. IT can support security requirements through technical mechanisms to protect the data, but only if they know where the data is that needs to be secured.

It is the business who decides how they collect the data – do they want it to come in via website, call center, fax, mail, etc. The business determines the process flow to collect the data. IT or InfoSec does not say how data should be collected. IT can enable the data to be collected via technical means, but it is the business who makes the ultimate decision on how they want to collect it. IT cannot help secure a business process they don’t know about or have not been told contains sensitive data.

It is even the business that decides who has access to the data – which employees need to access the data in order to process orders, fulfill customer requests, service contracts, etc., and what level of access they need to do that job. IT may create the accounts, but they do not dictate who gets access to which types of data. Limiting access to data and administrative permissions is a key in basic security, which IT will gladly support.

The business also decides how long they need access to the data. Often what we see when there is a data breach is that there was a great amount of data available to the hacker because the business decided to keep sensitive data much longer than necessary. IT can help purge and remove data when they are told by the business what the data retention requirements are.

Lastly it is the business who decides what data is shared with external third parties and often the security of the third parties is not known or checked. InfoSec is a great resource for helping to validate the security of a third party, but they can only do this when they know who the business is sending sensitive data to.

All of these business decisions get fleshed out when they are developing their business and user requirements, often times in a vacuum without any insight or consulting by IT or InfoSec. Then they create system requirements for the developers who make their vision a reality, but if they have not included security requirements in their system requirements they will often get missed. That is because developers and IT staff who make all of the technical stuff possible are not often security professionals, they are IT professionals.

Just because someone is in IT does not mean they think about security. It’s like going to a general practitioner doctor and assume they are thinking about nutrition, you often need a specialist to discuss what to eat for your specific goals. The IT department is responsible for keeping servers and desktops running, making sure there are no network outages, that databases are available and connected to applications, that systems are developed to work as requested by the business, and that the technology is available when a user needs it.

Security is different because in many cases good security makes access harder and impedes the business and the IT users. It often means the IT folks have to document more and it can take longer to implement server configurations. Security is done by security professionals, who often have IT backgrounds, but are not typically your IT staff.

All of this shows you why discussing security has to start with the business and why the executives making business decisions need to include IT and InfoSec in the discussion from the very beginning. Security must be included throughout the lifecycle of any business or IT project, but all too often is left out of the planning and the cart is ready to go with no horse in sight.

If you have questions or don’t have a Chief Information Security Officer to help bridge the discussions between the business and IT with a security perspective, email sharon@c-suiteresults.com to discuss your challenges and virtual CISO services that are designed to help small and medium size organizations maintain their security posture.

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Best Practices Management Marketing Personal Development

Don’t Just Sell Value. Live It.

Selling value is more widespread than most think…and at the same time, more narrowly practiced than it should be.

“Selling Value” isn’t just the domain of sales methodologies with variations of that term in a sales training course title. Most selling methodologies I’ve ever come across implicitly sell value whether they use that term or not.  All of those in the “needs satisfaction” family, and even some in the “tricky conversational box-building” school of selling, help sellers to connect aspects of their offer to a gap experienced by a customer. Full disclosure:  I work with Miller Heiman Group, whose skills and methodology offerings build a value connection with a customer’s solution image extremely effectively throughout the selling process.

As pervasive as a seller-centric emphasis on value is, it falls short.  I was exposed to the concept of creating customer value before I’d even heard before I started carrying a bag and was coached to “sell the value”.  As a Product Manager, I developed new products to provide specific unique value to customers.  I certainly collaborated with my company’s sales professionals.  I, and everyone who contacted a customer — even many who didn’t –maintained our primary focus on what each customer valued, then worked hard to provide it.

Here’s the Mind Shift

When I say that selling value is almost always performed too narrowly, I mean:

Stop selling value only as a sales methodology

Especially in today’s complex B2B world, the arc of the customer experience is slivered into contacts with a multitude of organizations/roles in your company:  Marketing, sales development, inside sales, outside sales, application engineering,/technical sales, underwriting, account management, implementation teams, customer success managers, account managers, customer service, technical support, billing/accounts receivable…and more, I’m sure. Every touchpoint with your customer represents a human connection with some aspect of customer value.  As a sales performance professional, I can guarantee you that your sellers have only a tunnel-vision view into the full arc of customer value that your company creates with any customer.

Knowing this, how crazy is it to assume that the only group whose job it is to gather information on value..and then sell it.. is your sales force?

It gets worse.  How crazy is it to use customer value only to sell?  A huge resource goes untapped when (only) sales fails to carry value insights back to those in product/service design, product management, shipping, servicing, manufacturing, logistics, purchasing, scheduling, etc.  I have lived a corporate culture where customer-perceived value is the pervasive mantra.

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Growth Management Operations Personal Development

Apple Has a "Bad Spot" That Damaged Trust

We in the USA are so fortunate when we grocery shop. Our grocery stores have excellent quality and amazing selection.  Thank you “capitalism”.  Choice and a combination of competition and cooperation (capitalism) have provided this.  So, when we choose fruit, we can afford to be picky. If we want apples, we can afford to choose only “perfect” apples.  There is no reason to choose an apple with a bad spot, correct?

Apple just created their own bad spot and it caused me to pause and ask if perhaps I should pick a different “apple”.  They purposely slowed the iPhone processing on the older phones.  That decision alone is not the reason for my concern.  I am concerned because they didn’t communicate.  They didn’t ask.  They just did it and they damaged my trust in them.  I saw a bad spot.

Apple management claimed the positive intentions of saving battery life and avoiding unwanted sudden shut downs.  Class action suits were filed, and Apple management was forced to apologize. Some customers believed Apple intentions were not so positive.  These customers are upset because they believe the slowdown was timed immediately after a new product release to encourage upgrades.

There is no doubt the iPhone is an impressive product with very high standards and very high quality.  But, high quality and innovative technology does not cause people to disregard disrespectful communication or a lack of timely communication.  Apple’s lack of communication about this change was part of the reason their customers interpreted these decisions as manipulative in nature.

For us leaders, this is a great lesson.  There are basic leadership qualities people expect in all interactions. They expect to be treated like adults.  They expect to be treated with respect and integrity.  Customers are unwilling to compromise these.  They are especially less likely to forgive and forget when they are missing at the same time.

What could Apple have done?  Perhaps communicate respectfully before acting?  Even better, perhaps provide the opportunity for feedback, e.g. allow customers to take a survey or provide their opinions about viable solutions for the older batteries degrading? It doesn’t matter how great a product or service is.  If the company treats customers with disrespect and/or breaks in promises, loyalty will be damaged.

We can extrapolate this to employees.  No matter how brilliant an individual leader is, if he/she can’t treat constituents with respect and integrity, their willingness to trust that leader will be damaged.  Their willingness to follow the leader will suffer in ways that cannot be measured.

The actions by Apple management show a weakness in emotional intelligence skills. Technical skills are important, and Apple has an abundance.  But if they can’t predict how their customers will feel when they make major decisions, those technical skills will not save them from the damage to loyalty.

When shopping for apples, there is no reason to choose the one with the bad spot.

Check out the interview on C-Suite Best Seller TV to learn more about how to stop leadership malpractice and replace the typical performance review: https://www.c-suitetv.com/video/best-seller-tv-wally-hauck-stop-the-leadership-malpractice/

 

Wally Hauck, PhD has a cure for the “deadly disease” known as the typical performance appraisal.  Wally holds a doctorate in organizational leadership from Warren National University, a Master of Business Administration in finance from Iona College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania.   Wally is a Certified Speaking Professional or CSP.  Wally has a passion for helping leaders let go of the old and embrace new thinking to improve leadership skills, employee engagement, and performance.

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Growth Management Operations Personal Development

7 Skills Your Staff Needs to Deliver Consistently Excellent Customer Service

Take a moment right now and think about a company that’s known for providing an exceptional customer experience.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

When I pose this question to my audiences, a handful of names are shared repeatedly: Disney; The Ritz Carlton; Zappos; Chick-fil-a; Nordstrom’s.  One of the keys to their success is Consistency.  Regardless of which location you visit, or whom you speak with, your experience is consistently excellent. Every team member is striving to deliver red carpet customer service, to every customer, at every touch-point, every single time.

If you want to create this level of consistent service excellence within your organization, there are a few strategies that can help you reach that goal.

  1. Create a picture of what service excellence looks like in every area of your company. The senior leaders of each company named above created and communicate a very clear vision they are 100% committed to, and expect everyone on their team to be just as dedicated to carrying it out.

 

  1. Align all the pieces of your organization with that vision. In other words, the way you hire people, onboard and orient them, train them, treat them, reward and coach them must be in alignment with those expectations.

 

  1. Empower your team members at every level with the tools and training they need to deliver on those expectations.

While hiring people who have the innate qualities that are in alignment with your vision for customer service excellence, it’s still important to provide training. Good training will ensure the kind of consistency that will enable your company to become known for a red carpet experience. Remember, each employee a customer interacts with, makes an impression that formulates their total opinion of your entire organization. You want to make sure everyone is on the same page, and has had an opportunity to practice their skills in a safe setting.

As you create or search for the right customer service training for your staff,  here are seven skills that must be addressed in that curriculum. When it comes to interacting with customers, your team members must know how to:

  1. Make Red Carpet First and Last Impressions. When a customer interacts with any team member, are they made to feel welcomed and wanted? Soft-skills such as smiling, making eye contact and calling people by name may seem simple, but when every team member genuinely seems happy to serve the customers, it makes a huge impression! When your customers are acknowledged, remembered and thanked it’s a first step in gaining their trust and loyalty. You may have innately friendly people on your team. However, they may need the confidence that skills-practice can provide to pro-actively show that friendly personality to your customers.

 

  1. Use Confidence-Building Words and Phrases. While scripting can sometimes come across as fake and forced, teaching your team to improve their language skills can help them make a better impression. Words like “Yeah,” “Ok” and “Hang On,” can be replaced by “Absolutely,” “I’d be delighted to help,” and “Sally is the perfect person to answer that question for you. Would you mind holding for two minutes while I get her on the line?” Like anything else, getting comfortable using confidence-building phrases takes practice.

 

  1. Adjust their Approach when necessary. If there is one thing you can count on, it’s that every person is different. It takes flexibility to address the needs of your many customers. Your staff, however, may suffer from black-and-white thinking. It’s not their fault. They want to make sure they are following the rules and may not feel empowered to think for themselves when it comes to assisting a customer. Good customer service training will help your team members know how and when to adjust their approach for each customers, and when to check with a manager before going any further.

 

  1. Be Responsive, Speedy and Efficient. In a world where the answer to almost everything is at your fingertips, responsiveness is key. Your customers will quickly move on if they aren’t acknowledged and assisted in record time. Learning to be efficient and deliver goods and services quickly while, at the same time, allowing the customer the space they need to have a relaxed and happy experience is a skill that must be developed in every service professional to succeed in today’s marketplace.

 

  1. Handle and Turn Around Upset Customers. Remember the first few times you were faced with an angry customer? It wasn’t fun, was it? Especially if you weren’t equipped with the knowledge or skills to turn the situation around. Well, guess what? Your direct-line team members will undoubtedly face a disgruntled customer at some point in time. While that’s never a fun circumstance to be in, it becomes easier with tools and practice in a safe training setting.

 

  1. Be More Knowledgeable about your Products & Services. The fewer people your customers have to go through to get the answers to their questions they better. It follows that the more your direct-line team members know about your products and services, the happier your customers will be. Incorporate product knowledge into your customer service training and your on-going communication with your entire team.

 

  1. Personalize, Surprise and Delight. This is where the “red carpet service” comes in. Empower your team with a process for learning and noting customer preferences and train them to use that information to create memorable moments that will result in rave reviews online and elsewhere. These are the stories that get told and when everyone on your team is focused on created them, your customers will start telling them

When it comes to becoming known for customer service excellence, consistency is key. Have a clear vision, align your strategies with that vision and give everyone on your team time to practice these seven skills. You may find that when others are asked for the name of a company “known for exceptional customer service,” the name they give is yours.

Donna Cutting is the Founder & CEO of www.RedCarpetLearning.com., and the author of two books about customer service including her most recent, “501 Ways to Roll Out the Red Carpet for Your Customers. Follow her on Twitter at @donnacutting, and Subscribe to www.theRedCarpetWay.tv

 

 

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Growth Management Personal Development Women In Business

It’s Not You, It’s Your Personality: Understanding EI and Personalities at Work

I always enjoy when I get to interview successful leaders on my C-Suite radio show.  However, it was a nice change to be on the other end of the interview for a change.  I was recently showcased on The Leadership Coaching Group’s show with Liz Roney.  We discussed emotional intelligence based on my research for my book It’s Not You, It’s Your Personality.

To listen to the interview, you can go to: https://play.google.com/music/listen#/ps/I4z2wcanddij3spem5crsgabdfu and click the play button on the top right.

The following are highlights of what he discussed in our interview:

  • What is emotional intelligence
  • Why emotional intelligence is important
  • The value of self-assessment
  • Emotional intelligence, DiSC, and Myers-Briggs MBTI
  • Can EQ be developed
  • The importance of communication
  • Kissing up and kicking down
  • The importance of corporate culture
  • The importance of engagement
  • Surviving in a toxic environment
  • Ways to improve engagement
  • Advice for younger or mid-level leaders
  • Self-assessing EQ
  • Taking the EQ-i
  • Daniel Goleman’s work
  • Generational myths
  • EI skills that helped professionally
  • Our concern for impact or how we come across to others
  • Representing the organization
  • It’s Not You, It’s Your Personality book

 

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Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Management Women In Business

Distractions Decay. Attention Pays

Everywhere I look there are people staring at their phones – walking down the street and through airports, at restaurants and coffee shops, networking events and family gatherings. I believe we are so distracted that we are losing the ability to connect with each other and our surroundings.

We go through the motions of day-to-day life while failing to invest any real concentrated effort into any of it. We drive from place to place, often not remembering how we got there because we are tuned out, lost in our heads, distracted with technology and suffering from mental fatigue. We finish the workday exhausted while feeling we’ve accomplish nothing of any real value. We participate in conversations and fail to remember more than a quarter of it.

Our society is overlooking what important and failing to honor what matters most. We sacrifice time with our families and friends to answer emails and messages. We give up necessary sleep to check alerts and texts. We lose lives because drivers focus their attention on a screen and not on the road.

When do we say enough?

We do we recognize technology as a tool, not as a life source?

At what point do we commit to changing our habits and realize our distractions decay and attention pays?

I believe when we commit to focusing our attention on what matters most, everything in our lives flourish. Relationships are fed, tasks are completed, profits are boosted, productivity increases and accountability is restored.  When organizational leaders commit to avoiding interruptions in order to engage in a conversation and truly connect with their employees, morale increases and profits soar. When coworkers remove daily distractions, they have time to focus on important tasks and achieve deadlines. When families commit to each other, their relationships grow and their need for superficial technological fulfillment decreases. When we as individuals realize we cannot operate in a 24×7 world and that we require rest and recovery to be our best selves, our productivity improves.

Are you ready to make a change? Are you ready to admit you’re distracted? Are you ready to recognize it’s time to pay attention to what matters most? Join me as I embark on an #AttentionRevolution where we change our habits and behaviors so our distractions no longer decay and our attention pays.

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Accounting Best Practices Economics Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Human Resources Investing Management Marketing News and Politics Skills Taxes Technology Women In Business

How to Really Overcome a Bully Before Negotiating

“A bully is a misguided person with perceived power. Extinguish his sources of power and you extinguish the bully.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

Do you know how to really overcome a bully before negotiating with him? There you are. You’re negotiating against a bully! He’s someone that’s willing to lie, cheat, and steal to come out ahead in the negotiation. You think to yourself, ‘what can I do? This son-of-a-gun is not playing fair and I don’t know how to overcome him!’ The answer to, ‘what can I do’ was hidden in what occurred before the negotiation began.

The following insights will allow you to position yourself better to overcome a bully’s ploys before you negotiate with him.

Positioning:

In every negotiation, positioning occurs. It’s shown in the way the negotiators perceive each other and themselves. Thus, positioning is important because it determines how negotiators will interact with one another.

If you know you’ll be negotiating against someone that has bullied others in the past, before entering into the negotiation, attempt to discover the demeanor of those individuals. In particular seek to define whether they were perceived to be weak by your opponent due to their short-comings, or if your opponent felt empowered due to some other factor(s) he had going for himself at the time of the negotiation(s). That information will allow you to best position yourself from a position of strength. A bully’s loathing for weakness is the reason he only picks on targets that he perceives to be weak.

Leverage: (ploys you can employ when negotiating with a bully)

  • Using Other people
    • All bullies look up to someone. If you can find a way to curry favor with the bully’s icon, you can supplant his bullying efforts against you. After all, the bully wants an easy target. If the bully’s icon has favored you, that makes you less of a target to the bully.
  • Bully’s weakness
    • All bullies have an Achilles heel. It may be how they wish to be perceived by others. It may also appear in the form of the bully being perceived in one light versus another. Whatever it is, discover it and be prepared to exploit it during the negotiation if such is called for.
  • Bully’s Persona (his vanity)
    • If you’re aware of the pride a bully takes in having himself perceived in a certain light, attempt to alter that light; have it shine on someone or somewhere else. You will have taken away his source of motivation. Hold it hostage until he dismantles his bullying ways. The point is, hit him where you’ll get the most attention and where it will hurt him the most. Remember, he despises weakness and applauds strength.

Be Stealthy:

Every good negotiator gathers information about the opposing negotiator. When you know you’ll be negotiating against a bully, drip misinformation into places that he seeks to gather information about you. The better you can use such information to misguide him, the more difficult it’ll be for him to assess the type of negotiator you are; always be willing to display a different negotiation demeanor based on the opposing negotiator.

When engaging a bully in a negotiation, there are all kinds of mind games that occur. Utilize the insights above and you’ll be in a better mental state than the bully. The better you play the game, the greater the chance that you’ll be able to overcome a bully when negotiating … and everything will be right with the world.

What are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free 5-minute video on reading body language or to sign up for the “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

Remember, you’re always negotiating.

#HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #Bully

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Growth Management Operations Personal Development

Customers Matter… All of Them

I love jokes, and there’s one that is quite well-known, especially in the dental world. A client walks into the office and sits in the chair. As he is getting his teach cleaned, he asks his dentist, “Which teeth should I floss?” The dentist replies to him, “Only the ones you want to keep.”

You should look at your customers in the exact same way. 

There’s no such thing as a bad customer. They’re all good. Well, maybe not each and every customer is good. But for argument’s sake, and for this article, we are going to act as though every customer who wants to do business with you is a customer you would like to do business with. Let’s pretend this is a perfect world.

In this perfect world, all customers are good. However, there are still certain customers who are better than others. The reasons behind this vary, but it could be because they visit us more regularly, or because they spend more money each time they come in. Perhaps they are just more pleasant. Whatever the reason, some are simply a bit better than the average “good” customer.

When we use the teeth metaphor, it almost sounds ridiculous. Would you rather keep the front teeth, which are seen by everyone? Or would you like to keep the ones in the back that help you chew your food? Obviously, you want to keep them all. The same can be said of your customers. They are all valuable, they are all needed, and we should want to keep them all.

Your loyal customers are most likely the ones who are connected emotionally. Perhaps they feel like the employees treat them like friends. Maybe they feel comforted knowing they will receive a predictable and consistent experience, every single time. Many things beyond product and price connect customers to a company.

On the opposite end, we all have those customers we don’t see or hear form very often. Maybe when they do give us a sale, it’s a small one. But, they still come back from time to time. That makes them good customers, just as much as the ones who come more regularly and spend more money.

I once bought a dress shirt from a salesman at a men’s clothing store. It was on sale. Realizing my purchase was small, I commented, “Maybe next time I’ll see a sport coat or suit I like.” The salesperson smiled and said, “If I had 500 customers just like you, I’d be the happiest salesperson in the store.” He told me that he likes customers who walk out of the store happy, regardless of how much they spend, because he knows they will come back. He was right. I did go back, and I bought a suit. And, I’ve been buying clothes from him ever since.

The exact lesson that I am trying to teach, this guy had figured out and mastered. It didn’t matter how much money I had spent that first time. It was that I represented one of his customers. The point here is that you should be taking care of all of your customers. The small ones matter just as much as the big ones. Everyone, regardless of how much they spend, should feel happy, respected, and appreciated.

And, remember, be sure to floss your teeth. All of them!

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Growth Management Skills Technology

Great Leaders Are Always Transitioning

As I moved from company to company throughout my career, I rarely had a gap in between roles.  So when I was recruiting a candidate that had recently been laid off, my internal recruiter had to explain the term “in transition” to me.    I was not a big fan of the term.  Couldn’t we just say that someone was between jobs?  Transitioning has much broader and open-ended connotations.

In my current role as a social media advisor and coach to C-Suite Executives, I work with a few Executives that are between jobs.  But most of my clients are fully employed Executives who are constantly looking ahead and thinking about their future.  Those in new roles hope to transition from new kid on the block to established rock star.   And almost every executive worth their salt is thinking about what’s next, both in their current role and beyond.

C-Suite tenures average around four years, so Executives have to think about their future, whether that be another C-Suite role, a Board position, philanthropic endeavors, etc.  Don’t wait until you are between jobs to set yourself up to be considered for desirable future roles.  You will have much less leverage and influence than you do now.

Do your own internal assessment.  If a merger or reorganization were to eliminate your current role in the next few months, are you ready for the transition to your next role?  Are you successful in your current role?  Are your skills up to date?  Are you perceived as having good executive presence? Are you well networked?  These are some of the questions forward thinking executives ask themselves. A good Executive Coach can help.  Having an outside perspective can identify blind spots and help you create and execute an action plan to build on strengths and address deficiencies.

Also, take an objective look at your social media presence; your Coach can provide objectivity.  A purposeful and active social media presence can help address many of the deficiencies Executives identify in their self-assessment.   While elements of executive presence have historically been in the physical world, increasingly elements must carry over into the digital and social space as well.  A powerful social presence is often viewed as a proxy for “getting digital.”  It also gives you a platform to show off your current success and demonstrate ongoing subject matter expertise and thought leadership.  Finally, it strengthens and extends your already strong network.

Supposedly, it is easier to find a job when you have a job.  Like job hunting, the time to prepare for your transition and build a strong social presence is now.  By virtue of your current C-Suite position, you command attention that translates into building a stronger presence much faster than when you are between jobs.

Now is the time to start thinking about your transition.