Have You Shifted Gears?

Has your company shifted gears, to take advantage of these 4 developments in the economy?

• GDP growth 4.1% in June
• Unemployment 3.9%
• American workers received largest pay raise in 10 years
• Corporate taxes driving profits

Simply put, if your company is not seeing gross revenue and profit growth of 8-10%, you need to speak with us. There are either structural problems with your organization preventing you from taking part in this economic boom, or you have people unable or unwilling to ramp up their performance.

During times of economic hardship, many employees slide comfortably into a mode where they coast along, secure in the fact that no one seems to be doing any better than they are. These are precisely the people you need to retrain, re-motivate, or replace today. Many have found comfort in mediocre performance and are loathe to gear up and run fast again; they will curtail your revenue while poisoning your new personnel.

If your staff is ready to go and free from the malaise described above, but you are still not performing better than last year – see us about structure. Many companies make the necessary changes to save on costs (usually payroll) during the down times, only to be caught unprepared for the influx of capital and opportunity in a booming economy. Processes and staffing changes that made sense a few years ago could well be hampering your progress now – don’t let any more time elapse without talking to someone who can analyze your company and point out opportunities.

We offer a 1-hour free consultation that can help you determine where you stand, but whether you speak to us or someone else – look at your company critically and determine if you’re keeping up with your competitors and taking full advantage of the current economic trends. Remember – inflation is coming, as sure as night follows day. How are you going to afford higher costs when your income has remained flat?

Sticking your head in the sand only ensures you will be eaten without warning.

As I watch a company I once knew fall apart, losing manager after manager, I cannot help but wonder how the C – Suite occupants failed to see it coming. Gone are the days when district and regional management came up to the front lines to help out; it’s now a conference call, distribution of blame, and threats – with the inevitable comp plan changes designed to elicit more dedication from the managers.

This story is all too common.

So often the establishment of KPIs results in a false sense of security amongst lazy executives; they think they can manage performance from their easy chair. Countless conference calls to go over the numbers, the assignment of blame without any first-hand knowledge of what is going on in a market – this is so common it would be laughable, if not for the deleterious effect it has on managers.

KPIs are meant to raise awareness of particular problems; these problems cannot be solved by a phone call. When you are too lazy or inept to actually go teach, train and inspire, your people will simply manipulate the reporting until they get caught. The ensuing response from the C – Suite is usually to install more reporting, designed to catch people cheating on their numbers when the simple solution is staring at them the whole time.

Get out of your office and go help them. Travel to markets or locations where managers are underperforming; they will appreciate the fact that you care enough to try to help. If you cannot actually perform the task you are asking them to do, you’re in the wrong job to begin with and are probably terrified they’ll find out. This is common in companies who hire upper management from the outside. It’s the old philosophical problem of infinite regress – I need better people because mine aren’t ready, and mine aren’t ready because I need better people.

When we consult with companies, we embed ourselves with their people as well as their systems. If this sounds interesting to you, please contact us for a free 1-hour consultation.

Countless articles have been written regarding the “elevator pitch’; a quick google search lists over 3.3 million results. Despite all this information, most of the ones we hear are woefully inadequate. Just ask your co-worker to recite his or hers – you’ll likely be subjected a stammering, inarticulate description of what they do, or what their product offers in terms of features and benefits. Many business persons try to “product dump” everything they can in the span of 30 seconds, hoping one of the items catches your interest.

This is the worst possible way to grab someone’s attention, for a number of reasons:

• Due to the daily barrage of information, business professionals have trained their brains to look for exclusions rather than opportunities. In other words, they are seeking to disqualify what you offer rather than find something they would like to discuss. This is simply due to the lack of time and energy available for each new day; it is a protective reflex to prevent their time from being wasted.

• As soon as they hear you say “systems”, “training”, or any other item they can align with something they already have or do, you are tuned out.  You are offering them something they don’t need.

• Excitedly dumping a bunch of products or services denotes desperation and a lack of confidence, not value. Your competitors are selling the same thing you are, so a list of these items does not differentiate you from the masses.

You have about 10 seconds to make an impression. Remember, people do not buy what you do – they buy into why you do it, and what you believe in. If at the end of your first statement, they aren’t asking “How do you do that”, you have lost them. Your job is to get their brain to question, not eliminate. I will use my own experience with this as an example:

When I first started this company, I was excited to enumerate all the great ways in which we could help businesses. Upon being asked what I “do”, I would tell them all about the exciting ways in which we install revenue systems, staff training, reporting to gauge results, P & L analysis, etc. – you could literally see their eyes glaze over during my 30 second, rambling description. They heard staff training and thought “we have that already”. Perhaps they heard me say, “reporting systems” and again disqualified me, since all companies have reporting systems. Nothing I said was inspirational, nor did I tell them who I was or what I believed in – I just bored them with my process, and my elevator pitch crashed as if a cable had snapped.

Compare this with the way we describe our company now:

“Everything we do is predicated on the belief that small to medium sized companies should be able to compete toe to toe with large ones”. How do we do this? (thank you for asking!) “We do this by enabling these companies to leverage the strengths of larger organizations without incurring the costs associated with layers of payroll and bureaucracy”.

This new method invariably leads to questions and further discussion, which is all you set out to obtain in the first place.  Start thinking of why you do what you do, and what you believe in.  You will be proud to describe it, and that is a very inspirational presentation – one that people can buy into.

For a free one-hour consultation on this or any other business question, please contact us today.