Take Notice then Take Notes

In your work, what do you know about your peers, your boss or your team? Do you have any information on them personally? Do you actively look for ways to build relationship and enhance your daily work experience? So often people say, well when someone takes an interest in me then I'll take an interest in them. Unfortunately, if you want an interest taken in you, you need to go out and take an interest first. Give to get. Want to create value so that your job, your department or your company are so valuable that you can never be fired, downsized or fail? Go after all the relationships you can. Internally and externally. Sure performance is still important but when combined with strong relationship it is unbreakable. Your clients, co-workers and employees will go the extra mile only when they know you, like you and share with you.

Try this. Take time each week and call a client and talk to them. Not about the product/service but about them. Sure, it will seem strange the first week but you will get it soon enough. Just call and talk. Start with the weather and have 5 other generic topics to cover. Now go do the same things with someone in your office. Just go to their office and talk - about them!! Not for 2 hours but for 10 minutes. Learn something new about that person. Finally, log the information in a database or on a notepad. Why? Because we can't keep all the details about every person in our head! Yes, cheat a little. Cheat with the notes but be sincere in expanding your work relationships every week.

BUSY-NESS IS NOT GOOD BUSINESS

Too many people in too many companies judge someone’s performance based on how busy they appear to be. I have worked in offices where someone’s job appeared to be filling up the 8 hours with whatever they could. Stay busy, your head down and no one gets hurt. It is a crazy way to operate but its more common than it should be.

Strong organizations realize that busy doesn’t count for much. They take steps to establish other ways to judge performance. They evaluate and measure actual outputs or impact on clients to see where value is being created. As an entrepreneur, what is your company measuring?

As an individual, how are you finding a balance between busy and effective at work? How are you maximizing your impact? Let me offer some ideas:

Start your day with what is important. This means look at what is important for you to do and start with it first. No! Not after you check voicemail and emails. Before you do anything else, get to what is important to you and your company or client. The major pitfall of most people at work is starting with items that appear urgent or are easy to tackle like emails. But email is rarely the most important thing. People get working on miscellaneous items and suddenly its 4pm and they never got to the work they needed to.

Secondly, most people think their time is dictated by others. Actually there is only one person that controls your time, you. When the phone rings, you pick it up. When someone walks into your office, you allow them in or to stay. You have the ability to choose where you start, how long you work on something, what your priority is. Owning your time and explaining to others around you how you are going to be spending it is critical.

Start your day with what is important and watch your productivity rise. Your new focus will make you a stand-out in the crowd of busy-ness.

SPEAK UP!

In my experience with corporate environments, often the loudest voice is really just the biggest opinion and not always the facts. In your workplace, if you have an idea, an ambition or a passion you need to pursue it. You may run into people who don’t see the same opportunity or vision but that doesn’t mean yours is wrong. In fact, often the more innovative you are the less others will adopt your ideas … initially. Watch out for the voice of experience, the voice of reason, the voice of “I’ve been in this business for …” All of these voice stifle real breakthroughs.

In your company you need to be the one coming up with fresh ideas and fresh ways to tackle the work. That is really what the boss will value. So how often are you quietly seeing opportunity and then allowing an internal voice or the one in the next cubicle to tell you otherwise.

As a great exercise, start to come up with 5 solutions for every one of the problems you have in front of you today. The first 1 or 2 are easy. Then 3 pops up and then you really start to hit some new territory when you find 4 and 5. Maybe it’s a hybrid of 3 and 5 that you present in the next meeting. Maybe you float your new idea quietly over a coffee … but get it out there. The best ideas come from the people in the business every day. The same people often thinking, no one will listen to my ideas. Are you saying them out loud?!

Business owners and managers love people that are creative, innovative and always working to solve a problem. They won’t take all your ideas and implement them but they will appreciate and remember your voice and efforts. So speak up.

Step Up & Stand Out

One of the worst expressions from any staff member or service person is, that’s not my job. It appears people are so quick to push off responsibility and do the bare minimum in their jobs. When was the last time you had the chance to go further for a client or for a project and stopped, using the idea that it wasn’t really your issue or responsibility to improve it.

Every employer I have ever worked with has wanted more from their staff; more initiative, more effort and more responsibility to solve the issues at hand. Contrary to that popular quote, you DO get paid to think. Most of your income and value comes from your thinking and solving problems. So own it. Initially you get paid to do a certain function or role. So own that and be responsible for everything in it. If its in charge of admin supplies then make sure everything is stocked, inventoried, you’ve asked about everyone’s needs, you’ve compared prices. When you take full responsibility for your area (no matter how small) it demonstrates you can do more. It demonstrates all those great qualities all companies want to showcase – pride in work, organization, initiative and, of course, personal responsibility.

You want to get paid more? Then demonstrate your level of personal responsibility to your tasks and your area of the business. Take whatever you are supposed to be doing as the most important thing in your life. Oh sure, maybe its not but do your customers or your employer want to know that?! No.

When you stop making excuses for your job, things change. It’s no longer the traffic, the bad customers, the desk you use, the lack of sales materials, the old computer, the bad boss. It is you that makes the job great. You can overcome any surrounding circumstance to stand out. So do it.

Think BIG Every Day at Work

Most of us start each work day off with the same routine ... coffee, voicemail and email. Before we know it, its lunch time and we have more emails and voicemails than we did at the beginning of the day. We show up at meetings with a passive participation and sometimes look to kill that last hour before we head home.

So how do we move from that work existence to one that breathes more life into us and also produces results that get noticed?

First off, what are you working for? Most people have a vision for their work that ends at a paycheck. If all you are working for is a payday then your chances of growth, challenge and opportunity are limited. If it's your company, you had better really be focused on something larger.

Here are my suggestions for bigger and better ...

1. Have a career path for yourself within that company and also for the long term. Lets say you want to be the creative director and you are currently a designer, then know the roles you will need to fill to get there. MOST important is to let people know what you goals are and to discuss how you could move towards your ideal role - leaders want to know which of their people are ambitious and focused.

2. What is it about being the boss that seems better than your current job? Often it can be achieved without changing roles. A friend of mine liked that the boss got to take days off to be with his kids. Rick approached the boss and made a case for working flexible hours to be with his kids and in exchange would work an extra 2.5 hours a week. The boss jumped at the offer and Rick got the freedom he wanted; the freedom he thought was outside his reach.

3. With each day you need to make an impact not just be present. When you start your day, look at what needs to be done and start with the item you can see will make an impact. Start with most important when everyone else starts with most urgent and you will stand out (if you are not sure, ask. Just having a team member who is thinking about impact makes a difference with most owners/managers).

4. Go the extra mile - it is an old clique from Napoleon Hill but going the extra mile and demonstrating that you are thinking about the business beyond just your role makes a huge impact on the boss and the organization. When my marketing manager came to me last month and said she had been thinking about online marketing and had create a report for me with a suggestion of sites, ad ideas and alliances, I was thrilled.

5. Create value and all the opportunity you want can be yours. At the end of the day, your compensation is a result of your work. The result. You want more, create more. Not sure how, ask someone. Brainstorm with a co-worker. If you are the owner then your role is to create more value for your team and your clients. Big value starts with big thinking and ends with the big reward.

Leadership is not Reserved for Anyone

In most companies, there are owners and managers - yet sometimes the leaders of the business aren't in either one of those groups. Sometimes they are the person who leads the weekly revolt against management. Sometimes they are the person who isn't in management but can get a message across, and can get the team organized to execute.

If people wait for their title to suggest they're a leader or they look for some authority to be given, then they will undoubtedly miss opportunities each day. Leaders in your company can be at any level. This is because leadership is about inspiring, guiding, supporting and directing. It is something that can be delivered and offered by many people in any company. People like you.

Here is the start of my list on how leadership can be shared in a business. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but it may get you or the people in your organization started down the path to being better leaders, which will create a better organization to work with and for:

1. Give people the chance to be president for a week
2. Have rotating chairs for meetings so that everyone gets the chance to run a meeting
3. Everyone has to organize and offer a "Lunch and Learn" to the entire office once a year
4. Every team member gets to vounteer time in the community where they are a leader (the life skills and experience give confidence back in the office)
5. Create mini-departments that every one gets to run
6. Become a deadline, timeline and metrics driven organization - it forces pressure and teaches leadership under pressure.

I Need a Leader, Not a Salesman

Have you ever bought something or had to shop for something where all you wanted was some guidance to the best product to fit your needs? Let me guess... it was probably just last weekend!

When we bought new computers for our office, we needed to know what was going to work best to suit our office, our staff and our plans for growth. What configuration, what features, what software, etc. What I needed was not so much a salesman as a leader to guide me through my decision. I needed someone with solid experience and expertise in office computing solutions to efficiently and effectively get me a solution. A sales leader! That is what I want most of the time - and that is what most clients want. Someone who really can find me MY SOLUTION easily.

How often are you letting a prospect determine what they need to solve their problem? They don't know! Sure, sometimes they have a general idea, but it's more likely that they don't. Men like to appear knowledgeable so they can save face, but when presented with numerous possibilities, they often don't have all of the details required to choose the best option. This is where an effective sales leader comes in. So how do you quickly become a sales leader and not a salesperson? Easy. Follow these steps ..

1. Approach your prospect and see if you can ask them some questions in order to serve them better (no one ever says no). This allows you to start controlling the conversation and guiding them to the best solution.
2. Ask questions about their needs. Forget features and benefits! Ask them questions with all the different variables that might impact the solution you recommend. Will you use product ABC indoors, at night, with friends, with headphones, in the car, in matching colors, for how long, etc. These questions demonstrate your knowledge as well as your interest in them.
3. When you finally have a recommendation (or maybe two) give them all the reasons that product matches their needs.
   
4. Tell them what the next steps are. This is key. Most people wait for a prospect to tell the salesperson how they want to proceed. Often, people want to buy but don't know what's next in the process. So tell them and guide them to the next step, nice and relaxed.

For more information on Leadership Selling, email us at resources@evolvebusinessgroup.com.

Service Leaders Anticipate Needs

After being in the hospitality industry for 9 years, I have a pretty good sense of what makes great service people. Most often it's a combination of caring and leadership. If your business or job is in customer service (which one isn't?) then proactively developing a program or process to anticipate the needs of clients is critical.

Great leadership in service is about recognizing what a customer would likely need next and suggesting it to them in advance of them having to ask. Ever stay at a hotel where you have had to call down to the front desk repeatedly? Have you ever been to a restaurant where you are constantly asking for attention with a Miss? or Sir? It is the norm more often than the exception.

So what is the solution? Start to look at how you interact with your customers every day and build a list of moments or steps where you can anticipate their needs.

1. Start simple by making a list of what your clients are asking for everyday - just observe and document.
2. Review each of the major steps in your customer's interaction with you and your business - what are the logical peripheral needs at each step? For example, when a customer gets a proposal that is quite technical, it should come with a glossary of technical terms and links to sites they may want to reference.
3. Get creative by asking clients and brainstorming with others about what else you could offer. Clients come to the office and you offer coffee or water - what attention is paid to other choices, the mugs, the condiments, the details of each step?
4. Most importantly, start to implement these things! Evaluate the cost of each new idea first. Then look at bringing one new idea into the program each month - you need to manage how much change clients and staff can incorporate into their routines comfortably. Build that extra service into the process so it's standardized.
5. Ask for feedback on each new step and ensure people are loving it.

Creating Innovation at Work

According the Hippocrates, every living system is either growing or dying. If that is the case, your living, breathing business (or career) is either growing and improving ... or not. Too often, companies reach a certain size or level of success and innovation stops. One of the key secrets of companies that consistently grow and improve is the willingness to try new things, to nurture innovation in their product, service, or process. Getting adventurous with your business can be external or internal. Externally it may mean a new product line, a new sales approach, or a new marketing campaign. Or, it can be as simple as a new paint job for your company vehicles. Think of cutting edge companies ... they are typically companies that looked a their industry and said "we are going to do it differently." These are businesses that looked for new, adventurous ways to approach an old problem. Internally, companies can be innovative and adventurous with their staff, their workspaces, their hours, their social options. I worked at a company with a foosball table and the Friday afternoon tournaments made it more interesting than most offices. Beer fridays (just 1) made the end of the week enjoyable. Being able to decorate your cubicle is easy and impacting (as a rule people don't like plain cubicles, or cubicles in general). Looking for more concrete steps to get adventurous in your business? Watch for the release of my newest program, "Creating Adventure to Create Results." I will be hosting a free teleseminar to help you nurture change and innovation. Coming this June! In the meantime, here is my tip this month: Each month look for at least 1 innovation to bring to your business (or your job) both externally and internally. Start a list of items from the team on innovations and adventurous changes they want to see. What is going to make people laugh more, buy more, cheer more and brag about the place they work?! A great way to improve the morale of a team is to take their innovations or new ideas and select a 1-2 month term to implement them. This shows that you listen and support them, it gives them what they want, it creates accountability by involving them in decision-making, and it usually helps the productivity and bottom line of the business.

7 Signs That You Need Outside Help

Many business owners and staff members ask how they can know when it's the right time for training, coaching or external support. The easy answer is, right now! The more correct answer is based on where in the marketplace your business is found , the time of year, the level of innovation and the clarity of your goals. It is also based directly on your team's skills, attitude, openness and time commitment.

Here are some great ways to know when you need to get outside help from a coach, trainer or consultant ...

1. When you look at the problems in your business and the solutions are always the same.
2. When you think of your last innovation and you need to flip to last year's calendar.
3. Your internal process is the same as it was in the first year of the business, or on your first day of work.
4. There is no focus put on new tools, information or innovation for your people. Either that, or they don't take advantage of what is offered.
5. The limits of the business match the limits of the owner or managers.
6. The team or owner needs a fresh set of ideas, new approaches or insights into the industry.
7. Apathy has become one of your key culture words.

Evolve Business Group offers coaching and training programs for performance and growth. We will help to transform your performance, grow your business and take ownership of your marketplace. We focus on growth areas of each client's business: strategy, leadership and innovation for ownership and management; sales, customer service and personal development for teams.

Email us for a questionnaire on what your business might need and we'll send it to you right away. Don't wait to grow your team, your business or your personal performance!

Where does Training fit in?

We have likely all been on training courses - good ones and bad ones. Training is typically designed to give new ideas, processes or tools to people at any level of an organization. At Evolve, we typically use coaching with the owner or the executives. Training services are used with the team.

Training is effective when you need to get a consistent message or program out to multiple people - like a sales team or a customer service department. Training is also great for interaction with a group - when you want people to share, collaborate and learn from each other.

Keys to good training programs:

1. One of the keys with good training programs is the type of follow-up they implement. It has been proven time and again that, when placed in a classroom-style training program for a day or more, people retain a very limited amount of information. This means it is essential for the follow-up component of the training to be extensive and to reinforce the content repeatedly.

2. Good training also impacts the processes of a business so that people can use their new information easily. Ensure that the new information works with the business policy and process so that integration is smooth and immediate.

3. Pre-work is another great training tool. With every training program, it quickly becomes apparent that not all participants are in the same place or posess the same skills. Knowing the starting point of each person can make training dramatically more effective and interesting. Knowing the audience creates a chance to really engage them - personally and directly.

4. Measurable results - if you haven't figured out, in advance, how the training should impact your team, the biggest opportunity is being missed. Choose metrics in advance that can be monitored for results and upswings from your training program.

Consulting versus Coaching

Having been in the coaching industry for the past 8 years, I still run into people that were consultants yesterday and are coaches today. Does that make them the same thing? Not in my experience. Let me outline my definition and the distinct characteristics of both.

Keep in mind that this is my simple list of the most distinguishing features I have found. This may not represent ALL consultants or coaches.

1. Traditionally, consultants come into your business or office to solve a problem for you. They are hired as an outsourced solution provider. They roll up their sleeves and get working (usually on an hourly basis). A coach, on the other hand, typically has the client do the work. The coach provides guidance and ideas but has the client work on the solution directly, so they know what is being done, they learn through participation and they can take pride in their results.

2. Consultants tend to be shorter-term engagements. Much like my accountant, they come in during a specific season or for a particular project. Once it is done, they send a bill and move on. Coaches tend to be longer-term participants and will often oversee a variety of projects. Consultants could be on a two week project while coaches are often with a client anywhere from 2 months to 2 years or more.

3. Consultants often come in to solve a problem, but don't necessarily share every step of the solution with a client. They may give an overview of the process, but knowledge transfer is limited. Coaching tends to be more of a knowledge transfer to the client, perhaps because there is more time and interaction in coaching. The coach often walks a client through each step, so that the client ends up with full working knowledge of what they need to do when they are faced with future challenges.

Both consultants and coaches have their place and effective use.