Strategic Discipline Blog

I promised to provide nineteen questions your sales people should be asking to qualify prospects.  These questions are provided to me through our Gazelles partnership association with Objective Management Group.  When I first started selling I recall being excited anytime I got someone who wanted to speak to me about my service.   Radio sales was a tough business to start a sales career, and someone who would actually speak to you generated a lot of enthusiasm.  As time evolved I recognized that my time was as valuable as my prospects and I learned that if I spent time with someone who wasn’t qualified it meant I had less time to invest in a good prospect.  I can recall having a great debate with another coach, who was my mentor, over the value of qualifying for price.  In his opinion you shouldn’t qualify for price at the outset because the prospect wouldn’t be able to appreciate the value our service provides until after we discovered their frustration.  My view wasn’t it didn’t do any good to explain value if the prospect didn’t have enough money to pay for our services. 

Do you have trouble anticipating what your sales will be from month to month?  Do your sales people have difficulty giving you an accurate forecast on what they will produce each month? 

A weekend ago I was in Port Washington spending time with my oldest son, his wife and my grandchild, Sophia Daniela .   I’m a grandfather for the first time, with two sons at home twelve and fifteen.  Watching my two youngest boys, my wife, my oldest son, and his wife enthralled with this young darling of 6 weeks was amazing.  It brought back emotional memories of when my three sons were all little and how important they were to me at that time.  For my oldest and his wife Kim, Sophia was all they could talk about.  If you’ve had children you know a baby completely changes your life, not only your schedule but how you prioritize.  Can you remember how children changed your life?  Chances are you can’t now.  Become a grandfather, and you’ll suddenly be enlightened again.  It was what this visit was about.  To meet her.  To get to know her.  To give her our love.

Who helps our children to make good choices?  Every one of us is touched by a story of a young person who’s been involved with a tragedy caused by texting or using a phone while driving, alcohol abuse, teen pregnancy, or drug dependency.  Young people, especially middle school and high school students, are impacted by so much in the world today that the impression we as parents or adults can make on them is more limited than ever.  How do we reach these young minds about the importance of making good decisions in their lives?

Good is the enemy of great.  That’s the first chapter of Good to Great.  So what’s the problem with being good?  Nothing.  Except it limits us.  Except that it means we are vulnerable to others that decide to be great.  Except that it means we are okay with mediocre.  Do you want to be okay with being mediocre, or simply just good?  I don’t. 

A recent article from Gallup Management Journal on What Really Drives Financial Success?  reminded me how valuable the book First Break All the Rules is for determining strength in the workplace.  If you employ five or more employees I strongly recommend you pick up the book or its more recent version 12: The Elements of Great Managing.  It reveals the following 12 rules as being critical to having a well engaged and performing workplace:

Employee Engagement is a critical factor in getting maximum performance.  I’ve pointed to this before and the work Gallup has down developing their Q12 [12 questions from the book First Break All the Rules that gauge engagement in the workforce] and how Best Buy uses these questions for their Core Score.  You can read more on how just a 2% increase in employee engagement at Best Buy resulted in an additional $70 million in profitability here. 

One of Michael Gerber’s [E-Myth Revisited author]precepts for building a business was that the business should serve the owner.  In order to do that Michael preached that you had to build the business to sell it one day.  Until now I haven’t seen a good test that could accurately offer whether or not your business is ready to market and sell.  Our Rockefeller Habits Checklist provides a good list of activities that when followed put your business in position where your executive team will consistently work strategically on the business, concentrating on the right things and not to be interrupted by the day to day operations.  That puts the business in a position to be sellable. 

Balance is extremely important in life and running a business.  When we set goals we can concentrate so much in one direction that something extremely important gets lost or eroded in the process.  At one time Delta Airlines worked hard to get their planes to arrive on time. The consequence of their focus on delivering this outcome resulted in countless passenger bags not reaching their destination on time.  One obsession hurt performance in another aspect of the business, customer service.  It’s like a tug of war.  If there’s no one resisting on the other side there’s a loss of balance. 

There is no more important place for business to balance then subjectivity and objectivity in operating your company.  You need both to run a successful business, yet too frequently the business is off balance, relying on one over the other.  It’s a high level aspect of business that I feel too frequently business owners and managers overlook or simply don’t recognize.

Subjectivity is the emotional aspect of your business.  It’s the squishy part that propels you forward.  It’s your commitment to a cause, quality, production, BHAG, Brand Promise, the reasons you are in business, including your core values and purpose. 

It was before FM radio had taken the lead in listenership from AM.  That’s how long ago this story is.  I was the sales manager for a 3000 watt FM radio station in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.  My first year as a sales manager had been difficult.  We hadn’t managed to meet the previous year’s sales numbers and I was challenged to meet the new projections or the outcome would be back to a sales position.