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.