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Four Ways You’re Paying for Training . . . Whether You Know It or Not

Every company pays for training. You can either pay for it up front or you pay for it through poor results at many times the cost of doing it right. People don’t think about it this way, but they should. Let me tell you a story about a company where a lack of training was costing $1.68 million a year.

I once directed a team that took over the operations of a chain of nine floor covering stores, a business that was doing $12 million in annual sales. Our overall goal was to show that our training and merchandising tools could increase profits. We noticed was that the average profit margin on products sold was 34%. We knew we could improve that with the right kind of training.

We used a two-part strategy. First, we introduced a more sophisticated merchandising program that included a pricing model, supported by a new store design that communicated the message, “lower pricing” to customers. Second, we trained salespeople to use the tools, communicate that message to customers and focus on solving their problems by focusing more on their needs and helping them find real value vs. simply a low price.

As a result, we increased the margin from 34% to 48% – a 14% improvement. In that $12 million company, the result was a $1.68 million increase in gross profit dollars plus increased sales. The improvement in profit was demonstrable. The reality is that the true differentiator was the training. If we’d simply changed out the merchandising without doing the training, we would have had a much smaller impact.

Another way to look at it is that for years, a failure to train was costing that company $1.68 million a year in gross profit. The cost of training for this company was in essence $1.8 million a per year because they didn’t spend any money on training.   You see, every company pays for training. You can either pay for it upfront or you pay for it through poor results at many times the cost of doing it right

Are you too paying for training without knowing it? Let’s take a close look at just how that could be happening to you.

Lost Opportunity: You Can Train Staff to Close More Sales

Let’s say that your staff should be closing 40% of sales, but currently they are only closing 30%. That means you are losing 25% of potential sales; if your company is doing $10 million in annual sales, you are losing $3,333,333 in sales.

With training, increasing a close rate from 30% to 40% is a reasonable expectation. It can mean training staff how to be more polite, listen better, present products more effectively – and ask for the order. It is very, very doable. And if you are not doing it, you are paying for training without even realizing it.

Which is more costly, losing $3 million in sales or investing in training?

Lost Opportunity: You Can Train to Improve Employee Retention

Losing employees is costly. According to a study by the Center for American Progress, the cost of replacing a worker who earns between $30,000 and $50,000 a year is 20% of annual salary, or about $10,000. (If you’re losing employees who earn more than $50,000, replacing each of them will cost you even more.)

Let’s assume that you have 250 employees and that your annual turnover rate is 30%. So you’re losing 75 employees a year and spending $750,000 to replace them.

(You’ll also be losing money by paying unemployment benefits, losing sales during the time their jobs are not covered, and more, but let’s not figure that in.)

What if you did a better job of training employees and cut your turnover rate by 5%, from 30% to 25%? That is also very doable. That 5% improvement will pay you back more than you expect. If you have 250 employees, you will be losing only about 60 workers a year, not 70, a saving of about $100,000 a year.

Incidentally, the link between training and retention is well documented. Well-trained employees are happier and therefore less likely to leave. And because they do their jobs better, you will have to fire and replace fewer of them.

Which is cheaper – having a high turnover rate that costs you $100,000 a year, or investing in training?

Lost Opportunity: You Can Train Salespeople to Sell Just a Little More on the Average Ticket

Let’s assume that your average customer spends $25 on each visit to one of your locations. Through training, you can increase that average ticket to $28. Your staff can learn to refer customers to other products, upsell, and apply other simple strategies.

Let’s further assume that you have 400,000 customer transactions a year. If you can train your salespeople to increase ticket size from $25 to $28, you will increase annual sales from $10 million to $11,200,000.

Which is cheaper, losing a $1,200,000 in sales or investing in training?

Lost Opportunity: You Can Train to Improve Customer Retention

If your company does that same $10 million in annual sales and your customer retention rate drops five percentage points, that means you have lost $500,000 in sales. Yet the right kind of training in areas likes sales and customer service has been shown to retain many more customers. Again, it is “doable.” And the result can be a big improvement in profitability.

Which is cheaper, losing $500,000 worth of customers a year or training?

Let’s Review

You pay for training, one way or another. Every company pays for training. You can either pay for it upfront or you pay for it through poor results at many times the cost of doing it right.

Your company results are affected by the quality of the training your company provides. Investing in training upfront is going to provide you a 10x or greater return on your dollar.

Additionally, training is the safest investment you can make. If you spend more money in advertising, it may or may not be effective in bringing customers to your business. Training is about improving results with the customers you already have coming to your business.

Every business is different, but how much is poor training costing you? How could investing in training upfront improve your profits?

Those are critical questions to ask in our highly competitive world of business.

 

 

 

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Investing Management Marketing Personal Development Sales

The Seven “Power Components” of Elite Funnel Management

Companies must excel in managing their sales funnel at all levels, from salesperson self-diagnosis, to sales management one-on-ones, to executive funnel reviews. Funnel management is key to understanding the health of any business.  Ultimately, high-performing sales organizations are great funnel management organizations.

In this article, I’ll go over some of the principles I share with my clients. We build a regular cadence around the aspects below.

  • Some indicate sales behavior gaps. That is, the areas below identify gaps in how sellers manage their businesses, and point sales managers to productive coaching conversations.
  • Some indicate dysfunctional management behavior.  Yes, some problems come about because management puts inappropriate incentives in place.

1.    Does the Funnel Reflect Your Business?

Your process probably doesn’t reflect your business if it’s the process that came with your CRM “out of the box”. Instead, take the time to make your funnel yours, instead of your CRM vendor’s.

Does your funnel reflect how your customers buy, and align your sales process to that?Simple process steps or full-on playbooks which incorporate all selling resources and roles are all fine, depending on your business, but:

One simple guideline: build your process around your typical customer journey. Remember, as process detail builds, make sure nothing clouds the view of your customer’s buying process.

2.    Does Your Funnel Give Full Visibility?

Basically, if a seller spends time on an opportunity, it should appear on the funnel. Sellers can’t work effectively “maintaining two sets of books”, especially when one is in their heads.  Worse, companies can’t resource properly.

Unfortunately, dysfunctional incentives often drive lack of visibility. Sellers sandbag when management harangues indiscriminately on early stage deals. Sellers logically avoid busywork when documentation/data entry burden on early stage deals is excessive (as judged by the sales person). Leaders, if you want full visibility, you need to welcome it…and minimize the pain of disclosure.

  • For example, I recently worked with a sales force whose standard operating procedure was to “enter-into-CRM-when-won”. The company’s close rate was 90+%, but opportunities appeared in the CRM minutes to days before being won (actual sales cycle could be 5 quarters). As a manufacturing company, lead times stretched because operations had no advance notice, and couldn’t order materials. While sales people hated dealing with long lead times, they obviously hated dysfunctional funnel conversations even more.

3.    Is There Enough Business In Your Funnel? 

The bigger the funnel, the better, right? Unfortunately, this area spawns unintended consequences.  Some sales leaders gravitate toward oversized funnels. Predictably, mere minutes after an edict for 3x or 5x the sales goal goes out, sales people begin entering “manager repellant” deals into their funnels. Then, everyone from sellers to managers, CRM admins, executives, operations leaders, etc. gets sucked into the extra work of touching, monitoring and handling hundreds of “dead man walking” opportunities. While a funnel must contain sufficient volume of opportunities to retire sales goal, “multiples” aren’t fixed, but depend on individual seller ratios, seasonality, fit, industry, and more.

Whenever I work with clients on “funnel sufficiency”, we combine volume with quality scoring for fit/winnability. Removing low-probability opportunities from the funnel increases predictability.  More importantly, clients de-resource time-wasting opportunities, reallocating effort more productively.

Bottom line: put only good deals into your funnel.  If there aren’t enough of those, the cure isn’t adding garbage opportunities.

4.    Is the Funnel a Healthy Shape?

One level deeper than overall funnel sufficiency is volume at each stage.  I refer to this as funnel shape.  A healthy funnel is shaped like…well…a funnel.  A variety of selling behavior problems show up simply by examining volume in each stage.  For instance, if a seller’s funnel is dominated by top-of-funnel deals (with almost no opportunities in the middle and late stages), that seller is either a new rep or might have a hard time qualifying opportunities.  Similarly, different deformations signal a need for a helpful coaching interaction.  These conversations are targeted; guided by the funnel shape.  Even better, coaching interventions occur in time to rescue opportunities…and sales careers.

5.     Are Opportunities Progressing Well?

By itself, how quickly opportunities progress is an indicator of winnability.  “Time kills all deals” is a truism.  Once funnel stages corresponding to a customer’s buying processare identified and incorporated in your system, we develop an expected time for each stage.  CRM systems can easily measure time-in-stage, which doesn’t have to trigger panic, but should trigger an alert to sales people and front-line managers to diagnose the reason for the holdup.

The metrics-savvy manager could deduce that a higher number of sales stages might yield shorter stage durations, and thus a faster trouble indicator.  Maybe; it depends on a couple things.  1) The precision of defined customer actions for advancing to the following stage; poor definitions lead to lots of false triggering, which causes everyone to ignore alarms.  2) Your sales team’s willingness to put up with the workload of more frequent updates; the more detail a CRM asks for, the less accurate the CRM tends to be.

6.    Can You Immediately See Opportunity Quality? 

What would you think about a funnel view that shows deal size and expected close date, but also displays quality/fit/winnability?  Your view of your business would go from a flat, two-dimensional representation to a full-depth view.  You would have greater confidence and could make better decisions, couldn’t you? This is true for the salesperson looking at their own business all the way to the CEO preparing for an investor call.

In my practice, I see a good-better-best continuum of opportunity quality:

  • Basic level: Stages are assigned a standard win probablility, perhaps validated historically. Alternately, sellers can override standard probabilities, using personal estimates (or some overall guidelines).
  • High Level: when sales stages incorporate customer actions (item 5 above), zombie deals (no customer buying activity happening, but opportunities keep walking along) are excluded. Additionally, opportunities get scored with criteria specific to the business and customer fit.
  • Elite Level: Sales forces quantify customer-perceived value throughout an opportunity pursuit. When incorporated into the opportunity scoring system above, sellers and executives alike have a direct line-of-sight into the customer’s case for change and preference for the seller’s solution. Forecasts with this level of customer insight are highly reliable. Won-lost reviews are precision events. This also builds a foundation for profitable, win-win pricing.

7.    Does the Funnel Show a Desirable Business Mix?

Does the funnel show healthy prospecting and early qualification activity? Looking at new opportunity entries, is there enough, and is initial qualification activity taking place?  Are quality value conversations taking place from the outset?  That is, is value quantified early and widely?

Is the right emphasis given to large opportunities? Big numbers attract disproportionate resources. Is there a solid value assessment in place to justify those resources?  When appropriate, is there a co-created customer “plan-to-go-live” (the customer-centric twin of the “win plan”) in place?

Are stuck deals – those languishing too long in a given stage — identified in timely manner and are interventions compelling?  Looking at customer-perceived value assessments gives insight into the customer motivation/internal case for change.

Is the right product-mix represented?  If not, is a seller gravitating toward a certain kind of business, leaving other opportunities untended?  This could point to a product training issue, a misaligned incentives issue, or a seller issue.  Figure out which and intervene accordingly.

Rinse. Repeat. Have Regular Cadence

None of these guidelines matter if they stay on the shelf.  Hold your leaders accountable for a regular cadence.  Make it a priority.  Incentivize cadence properly and track it, because sales leaders aren’t any different than anyone else.

I hope this helps.  Contact me or ask questions below if I can add any more detail.  If you’d like to go into more detail on your specific situation, reach out.

To your success!

Categories
Body Language Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Negotiations Sales Women In Business

“How To Display Massive Confidence By Your Body Language“ – Negotiation Insight

 

Click here to get the book!

 “How To Display Massive Confidence By Your Body Language“

“Confidence is perceived. And body language is its deliverer.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (Click to Tweet)

Your body speaks. It does so through the body language you display to others. Through that, they assess the degree of confidence you possess.

He walked painfully slow and hunched over – people gaped at him as soon as he entered the room. His pace suggested that he wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere fast. When he spoke, he did so in a low tone that caused others to lean in to hear what he was saying. After he departed, one individual in the room to whom he was attempting to sell his company’s latest product said, “and that’s the sale’s rep they sent to represent their company – they must be having serious problems.”

I’m willing to bet that you didn’t think our slow-walking, slow-talking person was a sales rep. You most likely have an image of salespeople being full of vigor. When your body language doesn’t match expectations, your intent can become misperceived. Worse, others might assume you lack confidence.

 

The following are ways that you can convey more confidence in the way you use your body language.

 

Walking Taller:

When you feel threatened, your body contracts. That’s the body’s way of making itself a smaller target. Thus, when you walk hunched over, you’re signaling that you feel unsafe.

To project more confidence, walk erect. Hold your head high and your shoulders back. That’ll signal fearlessness. You’ll become perceived as possessing more physical and mental strength. At that moment, others will be less likely to challenge you and more open to listening to you.

Walking Fast:

Through their pace, fast walking people indicate that they have someplace to be. They’re on the move. Their gesture suggests that they possess energy – energy is something others sense. It’s something that attracts attention.

When walking into a room, walk at a quickened pace – you’ll command attention. Movement attracts our eye. The faster that movement, the more riveting our attention will become to that motion.

Firm Handshake:

The receiver of a handshake makes assumptions about its deliverer. That’s due to the nonverbal information dispatched through handshakes. With a weak handshake, the receiver might assume the deliverer is weak of will. He might also assume that he can manhandle the deliverer.

When shaking hands, consider the message you’re sending. Based on the nonverbal message you wish to transmit, consider shaking someone’s hand based on the firmness of their handshake.

When people meet for the first time, a handshake will usually last for three up-and-down movements. If it’s longer, that may suggest that there’s a powerplay at hand. That means, the person holding the other person’s hand the longest is attempting to exude control. Most likely, he’ll attempt to maintain that control throughout the engagement.

Strong Voice:

An unintended weak voice suggests that the speaker lacks commitment or possesses insecurities. Whenever you wish to sound convincing, use a louder and stronger voice. Raise it a few octaves above your normal speaking voice. That’ll be enough to convey commitment about what you’re saying. You can also add a deeper tone on words you wish to emphasize. That will give those words more meaning. It’ll also enhance the perception of your gravitas.

Smiles and Frowns:

A smile displayed at the appropriate time adds additional meaning to your words. It can turn a sarcastic remark into one of puzzlement (i.e. what did she mean by that). A smile can also deepen a relationship through the warmth of conveyance.

A frown can be very potent. If you wish to display dissatisfaction with someone’s words, let a frown represent your thoughts. By not using words, that person will wonder to what degree you’re dissatisfied with his pronouncements. If he’s not astute, he’ll begin giving you unexpected information.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

Knowing how to read and use body language will give you an advantage in a negotiation. Being able to read and use body language accurately will extend that advantage … and everything will be right with the world.

 

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

 

Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://anchor.fm/themasternegotiator

 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

 

Categories
Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Leadership

You Didn’t Get Married for This…

 

Guys,

Be honest a moment…

You didn’t get married to not sleep with your wife.

You didn’t get married to not be happy.

You didn’t get married to not have an awesome marriage.

You didn’t get married to have just an average marriage either.

You didn’t get married to not be in love.

You didn’t get married to not be attracted to your wife. Or, vice versa.

You didn’t get married to be bored in your marriage.

Somewhere in your past, you had a dream/goal/vision of having a great marriage.

And, sadly, for too many men, that’s not our reality.

As a friend of mine said to me, a fires tendency is to go out.

You have to fan the flames. You have to keep the fire going.

And before you know it, the fire has slowly faded to not much more than a flame…a flicker.

How’d you get there?

Most likely it happened very subtly. Slowly.

Like a pinhole leak in a balloon.

It’s not bad enough to get all of your attention…it just fades away.

Then one day, you wake up in a place you didn’t believe existed when you were dating and first married.

No matter.

When you get there, your mind gets busy in the wrong ways.

Rather than getting back to the fire, you allow your mind to drift away.

To become more negative than positive.

And, if not careful, you drift even further.

We were there.

I stood on a beach with my wife about 13 years ago and we talked about where we had gotten to.

Only we didn’t do anything about it at the time.

Then, when all hell broke loose, we had to figure out how to not only have a great marriage BUT how to rebuild a crumbled marriage first.

And we did.

Now, after 33 years of marriage, we have the best marriage we have ever had.

We know exactly what is required to keep the flame burning bright.

We know the complexity of love and how to build it in all areas. (Yes, there’s a complexity to love that is multifaceted.)

We love our journey together and if/when the flame dwindles at all – we know what to do about it…together.

If you’re not happily married, you should be.

Chances are your wife is no happier than you are.

Time is far too short to not have an awesome marriage.

If you’re ready to take your marriage to the highest level ever and have the best marriage you’ve ever had…

Let’s talk.

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Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

“How To Be A Better Solution Versus Issue Negotiator” – Negotiation Tip of the Week

 

“The difference between issue versus solution-based individuals is the degree they seek solutions to their issues.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert (Click to Tweet)

 

 

Click here to get the book!

“How To Be A Better Solution Versus Issue Negotiator”

 

As a negotiator, do you consider the perspective of the other person? Do you assess to what degree he’s an issue versus solution-based negotiator? You should consider those questions. Because it will determine how he and you negotiate and the points he’ll stick to. Negotiators that are issue-based negotiate differently than solution-based negotiators.

In this article, you’ll discover why there are different styles of negotiations based on the issue versus solution sought outcomes. You’ll also gain insight to identify one style versus the other – and how to deal with either.

 

Issue Negotiator:

An issue-based negotiator is primarily concerned with promoting a cause that he’s defending. That makes him less likely to be open to logic or reasoning. And he’s usually the front-person for a larger entity that’s backing him. Example – as of this writing 97% of Americans would like to see more stringent gun background checks, measures to address that are blocked in the U.S. Senate by the gun lobby. Why? Because the gun lobby spends millions of dollars in campaign contributions to ensure politicians prevent such measures from becoming laws. Thus, to negotiate effectively, an entity needs to amass a force that’s equally as strong as the gun lobby – and one that’s willing to make equal monetary contributions. That’s how you’d offset the power of the gun lobby.

Therefore, when negotiating against an issue-based negotiator, consider looking for the weakness that lies in his supporters. They’re the source of his power and the power that you must address first. The negotiation strategies you use to do so will depend on the tenacity displayed by them to maintain their position. Your goal is to unseat them from their position.

 

Solution Negotiator:

Solution-based negotiators are a different breed from their issue-based counterparts. The former enters the negotiation genuinely seeking a solution. That’s not to say that the issue-based negotiator doesn’t seek a solution. He’s more zealous about getting you to agree with his position and less yielding. The solution-based negotiator is more flexible in his give-and-take to unearth solutions.

When negotiating with a solution-based individual, expose as much of your desires as you deem appropriate. Encourage him to do the same. Convey a genuine ambition to seek a mutually beneficial outcome. And display an openness that allows him to sense that he’s in a safe space. You want him to recognize that you won’t take advantage of him. The more secure he feels, the more information he’ll disclose about his position. To enhance this process, if you encounter misunderstandings, consider excepting the blame for it. Again, you should gear your efforts towards making him feel safe. Allowing him to experience blamelessness will enhance those efforts.

There is a point of caution to interject. If you sense your opponent views your willingness to be accommodating as weakness, stiffen your position. Become less tolerant and less forgiving. Throughout every negotiation, one is constantly positioning oneself. Make sure you’re constantly monitoring how you’re perceived and the adjustment the other negotiator makes. In turn, observe how he’s constantly repositioning himself per how he wishes you to perceive him.

 

Conclusion:

Good negotiators attempt to advantage their position before they enter a negotiation. Less knowledgeable negotiators don’t seek such advantages. They become prey as a result of their haphazard negotiation ways. To gain an advantage in future negotiations, take into consideration whether you’ll be negotiating against an issue or solution-based negotiator. Doing so will give you insight into the type of plans to develop for the negotiation. That will give you a real advantage … and everything will be right with the world.

 

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

 

Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://anchor.fm/themasternegotiator

 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

 

#Issue #Solution #Negotiate #Process #Business #Progress #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #Negotiator #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #BodyLanguageExpert #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions #GregWilliams

 

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Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Human Resources Industries Management Skills Technology

Time Travel Audit: Find Success Now and in the Future

You don’t need a DeLorean for time travel. For example, you can visit remote parts of the Amazon River and meet people who live just as they did a thousand years ago, using blowguns and spears as their current technology.

Even here in the U.S., you can visit Amish towns in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where people live just as they did merely a hundred years ago, getting their water from a well and using oil lanterns for light. For them, a horse and buggy is their Tesla Model X.

This same kind of time travel also occurs in business. You can time travel at organizations in your hometown that use legacy technology and antiquated techniques. These legacy systems may keep such businesses alive and well in the rapidly vanishing past, but surviving the present will become an impossible task.

Time travel is also possible between divisions within an organization. For example, the engineering department may be equipped with the latest technologies while HR is still using paper files and longhand forms. Today, you can even go from person to person and be time traveling, as some people are so past-oriented that the past is all that matters — to them, and the future is foreboding  … and therefore inferior.

Fortunately, you can also travel to the future. The individuals in your organization who buy the latest gadgets with their own money in order to experiment with and learn from them are already living in the future.

Some organizations are more future-oriented than others, even in same or related industries. For example, the manufacturing industry has moved into Industry 4.0, while its construction counterpart has been slower to adapt and change. And some leaders in every industry — Apple being the most notable — roll out products and services consumers never knew they wanted, yet find to be indispensable once they have them in hand.

This mindset is what I discuss in my best-selling book The Anticipatory Organization. By paying attention to Hard Trends that will happen, savvy organizations like Apple are able to become more anticipatory and to turn disruption and change into opportunity and advantage.

If you are ready to become an Anticipatory Leader at your organization and help lead it into the future, consider taking these three steps:

  1.   Do a time travel audit of yourself and your colleagues. Where in time do you and your colleagues live? Who is future-oriented, present-oriented, or past-oriented —  and how are those outlooks serving the company? Remember, while you can look at the past and learn from it, it should not hold you back. Your windshield is larger than your rearview mirror for a reason. To drive safely, you need to keep your eyes focused on the big picture in front of you and only occasionally look back.
  2.   Turn past thinkers into Anticipatory Leaders. Some people in your organization may be past-oriented and dread the future — but their experience and wisdom are still incredibly valuable. You can either choose to let such people go and lose the valuable assets they possess or turn them into Anticipatory Leaders by placing them in roles that suit their personalities. Encourage them to enrich their perspectives by asking them what they believe is vital for the organization to keep as it moves forward in order to thrive. This question forces them to consider both the core capabilities that got the company to where it is today and the Hard Trends that are shaping the future of the industry. Overall, this approach positions your past thinkers strategically based on what they like doing and helps them become more anticipatory.
  3.   Relate to others at their point in time. Do a time travel audit on the people you interact with. If you have a new product or service that is future-oriented but are talking to someone who is past-oriented, leading with your future perspective will frighten him or her. You can’t force individuals into the future; you must transition them into the future. Relate to their position in the past; acknowledge why they are comforted by where they are, the technologies they use, and the principles they’re working under. Help them understand the Hard Trends that are the undeniable truths about the future, and in this way walk them slowly into that future instead of trying to shove them into it. Remember that many people are naturally timid about stepping out of their comfort zone, so be careful not to place blame. You’ll be more likely to succeed if you can help them see that change is the only constant and that we all must adapt in order to thrive.

The Future Is Yours

Years ago, it was possible to have a past or present mindset and still do quite well, because the pace of change was relatively slow. But now, technology is moving at the speed of light, transforming everything we’ve come to know. As an Anticipatory Leader, you must migrate your people and your organization to become anticipatory as well. Remember, time doesn’t move in reverse; it is always moving forward. Help everyone in your organization to see the future, embrace it, and thrive in it to ensure long-term success.

Think about the actions you can take today to personally or professionally move toward the future. Read more about performing Time Travel Audits to Elevate Communications in my latest book The Anticipatory Organization

Categories
Body Language Health and Wellness Leadership

As a Man, Do These Describe You?

Guys

Here are a few things that are true for most of us:

  •  We suck at talking about things that truly matter. So, we end up in personal and private battles that affect our entire world.
  •  We confuse the word vulnerable with the word weakness. So, we end up not being close to our spouses and feel underappreciated accordingly. 
  •  We do what we’re most confident in and avoid what we’re least confident in. Typically, the area we are least confident in deals with how to be closer to our wife and our kids. 
  •  Our private and personal world is directly tied to our professional world. When one is off – so are the others. 
  • We don’t know who to trust so we trust nobody with the deeper things of life. So, we end up isolated and struggling in ways nobody knows about – including our wife. 
  •  We all fear loss of some sort. Whether it’s loss of income, career, company, marriage or whatever…we all have fear within. Even so, we fake strength and it’s costing us every day! 
  • We all have blind spots. The only way to see them is with someone else’s help. However, most of us don’t have a person who can be honest with us without us getting defensive. 
  • Our metrics for success are often tied to our income and toys more than they are to our life and legacy. When we leave this planet, the only things that really matter are our faith, family and friends. If we major in the wrong things…it’s a sad ending. 
  • When we are hit with reality, instead of dealing with it, we turn up the noise and get back to the rat race. 
  • Our excuses are actually truths wrapped in lies. Until we own our $@*% we can’t be helped & we will find someone, or something, to blame.

If you’re still reading, then obviously something (or a few things) hit home.

MY greater focus for men is helping men who are secretly struggling, escape their fears.

If that’s you, let’s talk.

I can help!

PS – If that’s you – what’s it costing you to not do something about it AND how much life is getting away from you? I know for a fact, you will not wish you waited longer to get it together.

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Personal Development Sales

Russian Students at the Russian River!

Recently, we had the pleasure of hosting 40 Skolkovo Moscow School of Management entrepreneurship graduate students. They were in the area to visit Silicon Valley and learn from the temples of American Entrepreneurship. Once their tech tour finished, we asked them to join us in Russian River wine country. They got to experience some time basking in nature, had a few discussions about entrepreneurship, enjoyed lunch outdoors, and of course, had a wine tasting after learning about Sonoma County wine.

Skolkovo is among the top universities around the globe and is affiliated with MIT. These students were already in their 30s, many of them with their own businesses. Other students were either considering the idea of entrepreneurship or just wanted to learn.

Familiarizing These Russian Students with Soft Skills

We knew that they already learned a lot about hard technology during their time in the Valley. Between all the VCs and the tales of lucky tech success, we thought a more natural environment and a different type of discussion would be refreshing. So we gave them our course on “How Soft Skills Earn Hard Cash.”

We guided them through the three foundational soft skills (Acknowledgement, Appreciation, and Communication), and how they relate to the three foundational business relationships (Vendors, Buyers, and Employees).

Even though you need much more than soft skills to find success, their absence can lead to cripplingly expensive turnover, loss of credit, higher operational costs, and worst of all—a loss of customers. In short, you must be able to balance soft skills and tech skills in order to be successful.

The students’ genuine interest in achieving business success was impressive. We started our discussion by identifying what we had in common—a need for extended terms and credit, a desire for loyal and enthusiastic employees, and a need for continuously increasing business.

Yes, there are many cultural differences between our societies, but business is business. People are people. How they are treated can make a monumental difference in their decisions regarding your goods and services. As a businessperson, possibly the most important consideration you can pay to others is respect for their concerns.

If they are your employee, do you have their best interests at heart?

And do you show it? For example, are your people able to enhance their careers within your company? Do you give them the recognition, security, compensation, education, and vacation time they need to stay loyal to you?

If they’re your buyer, are you servicing what you’re selling?

Do you stand by your warranties? Do you provide the support they need in order to do business with you, promote their products, and increase their purchases? Do you address buyers on every level, from your warehouse to your end-buyer, so your products can navigate freely through all channels?

If they’re your vendor, do you respect their salespeople?

If you know you’ll be late on a payment, do you call in advance with a plan to bring your account current? Have you developed a long-term contract so they can confidently extend the credit and terms you need to support your business?

This all comes down to one thing—being able to put yourself in the other guy’s shoes. Understand that by getting them what they want, you get what you want. Our friend Ivan Misner likes to say, “Take off the bib and put on the apron!” Or, as we say, “If you’re going to be a jerk, get out your wallet! It’s going to cost you more.”

These lessons cross all cultural boundaries and have withstood the test of time. Anybody that can change the world with a great idea will benefit by practicing these soft skills. They can make or break your success.

When we initially got into business, we were under the misconception that our products would sell themselves—they were Gold Medal winners at less than $6 per piece! We didn’t understand why people weren’t breaking down doors to get to us. It cost us a whole bunch of money, time, and frustration to finally develop and understand these crucial skills that ultimately brought us to success.

We were ecstatic to share the real benefits of applying soft skills in business with the extraordinary Skolkovo students. We wish them nothing but the best in their own endeavors and we’d love for them to visit their “Outdoor Classroom in the Wine Country” again! Надеюсь увидеть тебя снова в ближайшее время!

For more, read on: http://c-suitenetworkadvisors.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

 

 

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Best Practices Economics Investing Management Marketing Personal Development

Economic Storm Coming? What to Do Now.

I get it.  I’ve managed P & Ls through recessions and I understand the options and the challenges.  If you’re not ready for it, sometimes the best you can do during a business downturn is simply play to survive.  This article discusses what you can do before hard times hit in order to expand your choices during.

The Cost of Cost-cutting

Make no mistake:  times sometimes get hard.  For example, if you sold capital equipment into the oil & gas industry during the oil price slide of 2016-2017, you know that there is sometimes no alternative but to “right-size” in response to an uncontrollable market dynamic. Companies need to step up the spending discipline during down cycles.

Cost control is good corporate practice, but it has limits.  Cost control, what one of my first bosses called “frugaling” takes energy and management focus.  Cost-cutting your way to profitability is one of the hardest ways to increase net income. Combining cost-control and growth is even harder:

You can’t shrink your way to growth.

When you start cost-cutting, it’s difficult to maintain customer service and responsiveness levels.  Your people find it harder to be that helpful cheerful voice for your customers.  It’s harder to invest in innovation.  It’s harder to get face-to-face with customers. You are at significant risk of trading customer satisfaction for cost improvement.

As you struggle through needing to “frugal”, don’t mistake right-sizing for a growth plan.

More importantly, don’t mistake a cost-cutting project for a guiding business principle.  It’s a tactical coping mechanism, not a strategy, or a path to long-term success.

Let’s Start With What You Shouldn’t Do

Don’t get taken by surprise.  That company who sells into oil & gas should know that an oil price dip is coming.  One of those is always coming.  Always. Leaders in that industry have absolutely no right to be surprised by the fact that oil prices fluctuate.  It’s just a question of when.  If you aren’t preparing your company for it, you don’t deserve to lead a company.

Don’t start feeling superior to some specific industry, people.  A recession is always coming, too.  Always. Go back and read the paragraph above as if it’s directed at you and your industry, because it is.

You Can Prepare the Hard Way…

Some preparations are really difficult.

  • For instance, you could try to manage your fixed costs down.
  • You could reorganize your financing, trading debt for equity…preferably, patient money. At a minimum, it might be worth it to ask your impatient money to be less impatient.
  • Perhaps you can aggressively build cash during good times. Perhaps you should step up your expense control now so that it doesn’t become need to become dysfunctional later.

These preparations can keep your frugaling from being the kind that damages your company’s long-term health. Keen awareness of customer value (awareness I help clients develop and sharpen) can guide you through prudent cost-cutting.

…Or You Can Prepare a Simpler Way.

Some preparations are more doable (perhaps still challenging, depending on your culture and leadership) but set you up for success – during and after challenging times. I can help with these, by the way.

  • Radically rethink who “sells”. Expand the mission of every customer-facing role in your company. Go beyond current “customer experience” (CX) theory.  Where CX trains your people to “delight”, go further: every person trained in value discovery.  I teach three simple questions and a mindset shift that turn every person into an extension of your sales discovery process.
  • Radically rethink who buys. Typically, one silo at your customer holds budget, but many silos benefit. Get to all of the silos who benefit, and help them realize maximum value from your product or service.
  • Radically re-shape your most important customer relationships. There are specific strategic planning systems that shift key account management from “what all can we sell to this customer”, to “how can we add even more to our customer’s business?”
  • Radically reshape your customer’s perception of the value you deliver. Your customers don’t buy your products or services, they buy business and personal outcomes.  What they are willing to pay for those outcomes can increase if you help them perceive outcomes’ value more clearly.  While you might be able to add new products/services in the medium to long term, your salespeople can add to the value of your existing offerings right now. It just takes the right kind of conversational skills and a little additional business acumen.

Start now.  If the economy tightens, your customers will be distracted, and these will get harder. Also, your competitors will be struggling to take your customers – some will try to buy your customer’s business away from you.

Of Course, You Could Just Not Prepare at All…

You could wing it when the time comes, right? What could go wrong?

Contact me if you would like to discuss what you could do in your business. If you know somebody who might benefit from this article, please share.

To your success!

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Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

“Danger: Are You Being Easily Stopped By Your Thoughts” – Negotiation Insight

 

 

“The danger of thoughts can sometimes lie in not knowing what action to take.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

 

He looked around and had a sense of foreboding. He wasn’t sure why the feeling existed nor its source. But he felt the grip of danger – as he became paralyzed by immobility. Suddenly, the alarm clock sounded. It was then that he realized he was having a bad dream – or was he? He wondered what the thoughts of his dream meant.

Thoughts can move you to action – they can also stop you. How then might you know when to act and when to allow inactivity to be supreme? This article gives you insights about that. It highlights when to stop and when to move forward on your thoughts.

 

Perception of Thoughts:

Some thoughts are more profound than others – they secrete an inner sense of urgency. You may not be able to identify why you have a sensation, but don’t ignore it. More than likely, you’re sensing some form of motivation that’s beckoning your attention. Attempt to hone the source of those signals. Once identified, the hidden message may reveal itself. If you can’t identify it, let it rest – if it subsides and doesn’t return, it may lack importance – if it resurrects itself, there may be more substance to it. Once again, seek to understand its summoning trigger – this time give it more credence in your attempt to identify its meaning. There’s a reason it’s calling you – identify it.

 

Intuition:

“I knew that was going to happen. I had a sense of Déjà vu.” Have you had such sensations – whereby you felt like you were reliving an experience that you were encountering for the first time? If so, that was most likely your intuition motioning to you.

When you’re unaware of a sensational experience, it may reside at a subconscious level – it doesn’t register within your state of consciousness. Nevertheless, when such emotional signals reach for your attention, take note – like motion, your attention seeks to assess potential danger – your body wants to be in a state of comfort.

Once you make an assessment and determine that you’re in a safe space, resume your normal activities. Do so only if your actions are moving towards your goals. If they’re not, question why your thoughts were drawn to what you’re contemplating – was there a message that you overlooked? Before dismissing the thought, make sure you’re not dismissing a call to action. If you identify that call, you will have identified the intent of your intuition.

 

Action History:

You can also gain insight from your past actions – they should be based on your prior emotional queues. Just remember that previous circumstances may not lead to the same outcomes in the future. In observing your past action history, note similarities in your previous thought process and how they might align with your present thoughts. The real purpose of assessing your action history is to have it assist in raising your dominant thought to prominence. They’ll be points as to which direction to take in your assessment.

 

In every aspect of your life, your thoughts are what leads you upon one path versus another. As you learn to control your thoughts, you’ll discover new ways to put yourself on a better path … and everything will be right with the world.

 

 

What does this have to do with negotiations?

 

In a negotiation, your thought process causes you to conflate past occurrences with present situations. Thus, based on the outcome sought in the current negotiation, your assessment will cause you to adopt one action versus another. Therefore, by quickly making an assessment about the danger or lack of in a situation, you become more adaptable in the negotiation. And that will give you an edge in every negotiation you’re in.

 

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

 

Listen to Greg’s podcast at https://anchor.fm/themasternegotiator

 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

 

 

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