Be Different or be dead

November 21, 2020

4 proven ways business chaos can be made into an exciting opportunity

4 proven ways business chaos can be made into an exciting opportunity.

Many people would probably think that the metaphor ‘thinking out of the box’ is a cliche. But it actually sums up why chaos breeds new ideas and opportunities. There is nothing more out of the box than being thrown out of whack.

For example, the chaos of the last World Wars we encountered brought about an industrial revolution, unlike any other. The example may be extreme, but it does make the point.

Currently, the world is experiencing an event that threw the word ‘normal’ out of the door. The Covid-19 pandemic has re-arranged our way of life in a matter of months, and only now are we starting to cope. While the epidemic has negatively affected traditional businesses, it did also open up new opportunities. This global health crisis has, in a way, became an equaliser in the business sense.

What is happening now is chaotic, and once again, opportunities abound at every turn. Tragic as it may seem, these current events are also hotbeds of new ideas to take advantage of.

You can see younger people, those who weren’t really concerned about the future before, are now opening up savings accounts for various purposes including retirement. People who usually don’t give a thought about saving or starting a business are now actively gearing up to handle the unknown future.

Using the chaos to your benefit

When you are comfortable, the tendency is to be complacent. Being relaxed is good and not a bad thing in itself, but comfort can lead to stagnation.

Upsetting the balance and veering away from the norm will usually lead to new and better things, depending on the person. When a person becomes uncomfortable, that is the only time that they will move. This is the same thing in the world of business.

Disruptions, particularly chaotic ones, are significant catalysts of reforms in the business world. One either gets overwhelmed by them or puts them to use.

Experiencing hardship is nothing new to entrepreneurs because they have been dealing with this from the moment they started their businesses.

Whether it is launching a new product, dealing with employee problems, generating more sales, and even budget problems, real business owners know that obstacles are normal and they help the company innovate.

Not everyone is ready to handle these obstacles, but there are ways on how we can deal with hardships. There are strategic frameworks that anyone can follow to flip the situation from a debilitating one in a vessel for improvement.

Here are some of the best ways to turn any crisis into opportunities:

1. Be calm and keep a cool head

Panic never did anyone any good, and keeping a cool head has never been more appropriate or applicable in a chaotic situation in any business.
Companies are living in turbulent times all the time to varying degrees, and CEOs who keep a calm head survive and even thrive.

Leaders are often already equipped with the basics of handling a crisis, but having a crisis management team can ensure that you can minimise the impact of chaos on your business.

Keep a list of employees or build a team who you can go to when the mess hits the fan. Your crisis management team should be able to help you assess how problems can be used as the stepping stone to success.

We have many examples, but just take a look at Microsoft. It is one of the biggest companies in the world and it was founded at a time of economic crisis. Take a look at its success now to measure how chaos has been turned into a great opportunity.

2. Shift your mindset

Not everyone will be able to do this in a pinch, but if one wants to survive chaos in their business or workplace, you have to shift your mindset.

This translates to making an effort and forcing your perception to see the good and see the opportunities in the developing scenario. When you can do this, you stop being rooted and immobile and instead, you begin to act.

As part of conquering the mindset, acceptance has a lot to do with making the right decisions. Along with approval comes the clarity to make the right choices and decisions. With acceptance, the tendency to be angry and clouded is minimal, and therefore the flow of decisions to better counteract the situation is more straightforward.

3. Think negatively

Seems counterproductive, right? It would seem so, but it is an advantageous trait when it comes to planning. By thinking about all the things that can go wrong, you and your team can better manage it when it happens.

By considering all the angles that can go wrong, there would be minimal to no surprises. This idea is not a new one but goes way back in history where all the evils are premeditated in battle.

This idea is often referred to as the premortem, and people in the business widely use it.

The idea is to practice hindsight in advance so as not to be caught by surprise. The chaotic event will not render you immobile by applying this, having anticipated it, and imagined it coming.

4. Get help from others

Most entrepreneurs fail to recognise that they can seek help from others. By others, we mean peers in the business, those who have been doing it, and those who have been in the business for far longer than you have.

Friends and relatives are no exception because they may provide a unique perspective to your business problem.

You can also reach out in a professional capacity, meaning hiring a coach or a mentor to help guide you along the way. Be open to being influenced by outside sources of your choosing.

The point is to acknowledge that you are never alone. Recognise the importance of inputs from people with more experience or those who have a different perspective to you.

Wrapping this up

Acceptance, the proper mindset, and preparation for the worst can be applied to all aspects of life, and not just in business. The ability to turn something negative into an opportunity is not an inherent one, but it can be learned by practicing and never giving up.

— Angeline Licerio is a content writer for Elevate Corporate Training, a team of corporate trainers committed to improving performance of individuals and teams within organisations.

• Posted 11.21.20 at 04:15 am by Roy Osing
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November 16, 2020

3 easy ways to avoid being a one-sale wonder

Source: Pexels

3 easy ways to avoid being a one-sale wonder.

How many salespeople would consciously put their sale at risk in order to protect a long term customer relationship?

How many would continue to put time in with the customer even though they realize the probability of making the immediate sale is low?

How many would put their yearly quota in jeopardy in favour of securing an account for the benefits they will realize over the long term?

I suspect there would be an extremely small number of salespeople who would put up their hand and fess up to sacrificing the short term for the long term; and that is sad, unfortunate and just plain bad business.

The flogger is bad business

The fact is, an unrelenting focus on the immediate sale increases the chance that the salesperson will be a ‘one-sale wonder’, a ‘flogger extraordinaire’ who will be unable to offer any long term value to their organization.

Long term value creation in sales is all about building strong intimate customer relationships that will yield a relatively stable and healthy cash flow over future periods; it’s not about making the sale today.

The role of sales must change from the flogger of products and services to the ‘gatherer of friends’

Relationships are all there are in sales and it is absolutely critical that they be protected, nurtured and strengthened in every moment a salesperson has with their customer.

The absolute worst thing that can be done is to erode the friendship by maintaining a short term product sale focus.

It’s all very well that sales leaders espouse the building relationships vision; it’s quite another when sales is confronted in the field with a situation where the organization’s products and services don’t meet the customer’s requirement.

Square peg in a round hole

This is the moment of truth. It’s that moment when the intent and action collide to discover if the organization is really serious about building long term relationships or whether it’s merely an aspiration with no substance.

Let’s face it, there are times when there isn’t the right fit between what the customer wants and what the organization supplies. It’s not a catastrophic situation; it’s impossible for an organization to expect to have a solution portfolio to match every problem their customers experience.

Your solution perhaps doesn’t have the right functionality to do what the customer specifically wants, or it might not be available when the customer wants it, or it might not meet their price expectations and there’s little to be done to satisfy them by adding value to the solution and selling at a premium price.

When this happens, the wrong thing to do is to try and force fit the organization’s solution into the customer’s problem in order to try and make a sale — again, it’s product flogging behaviour that will punish friendship building and long term performance.

Not only that, it’s more than likely to fail. Customers generally don’t like to get bullied into a sale and if a salesperson is into the force fitting mode, the customer will know it and will not buy. And two negative results occur. Not only is a sale not made, the friendship is diluted by the flogging behaviour.

The right thing to do is to walk away from trying to satisfy the customer with the organization’s solutions and refocus the energy on determining what can be done to ensure the relationship is deepened.

These 3 principles should govern what a salesperson should do in this situation.

Sales Principle #1 — Own the customer forever

What does ‘owning the customer forever’ mean when the right solution for your client is not available from your company? If it’s not spelled out in detail, the salesperson won’t know what to do and how to behave and could risk the relationship ‘going south’.

Every action taken by the salesperson must be through a long term lens and leadership must draw a line of sight from this lofty goal down to the specific actions a salesperson must take when confronted with the challenge of a product or service misfit.

‘Owning the customer’ is a long term investment, not a quick buy-and-sell transaction

You cannot leave it to the salesperson to decide how to respond; they will behave the way they traditionally have: bail on the friendship because there’s no quota payback from hanging around.

Sales Principle #2 — Do whatever it takes to protect Sales Principle #1

Every action sales takes must serve the purpose of solving the customer’s problem with whatever solution is available and from whatever organization supplies it.

Owning the relationship is a caveat-free goal without the constraint of solving the customer’s problem only with the organization’s solution set.
Rather, it’s an empowering notion that says to the salesperson “Go wherever you have to and do whatever is necessary to solve the customer’s problem. Period.”

It’s a narrative that needs to be an automatic response to a product or service deficiency — if this, then that.

It’s about you!

If you’re looking for a silver bullet to blow your customer away, this strategy is it. It basically subordinates the short term needs of the organization to the immediate needs of the customer; it says emphatically to them “It’s all about you.”
As a loyalty building behaviour it’s probably the most powerful thing a salesperson could do.

Sales Principle #3 — Pay for the behaviour you want

If you want sales to behave a certain way, you must pay them for it. That’s the way salespeople are.

If it ain’t in the sales compensation plan it doesn’t get done

Declaring the customer ownership goal and defining the specific behaviour sales must exhibit in order to achieve the goal is not sufficient; a measurement and reward system must be in place to ensure the right behaviour is constantly being practiced.

The measurement tool is simple: ask the customer if their salesperson offered other company’s solutions. If you don’t have a customer perception survey — the sales Report Card — in place, you should, because it’s the only way to get a handle on sales behaviour.

Owning the customer is more than sales revenue performance, it’s doing the right things today that will enhance the chances of maintaining a healthy revenue stream from the customer over the long term.

The rewards system is equally straightforward: include a compensation component in each salesperson’s annual performance plan for this practice. If 20% of their annual bonus is related to ‘selling someone else’s solution’, it will get done.

Building a long term friendship requires a great deal of emotional energy relentlessly applied day in and day out. And it involves sometimes taking a step back from our needs to put the other person first.

This is such a time in the world of sales, and those organizations who make the practice matter are the long term winners.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead book series

• Posted 11.16.20 at 04:02 am by Roy Osing
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November 11, 2020

12 powerful ways to tell if you’re a great leader

12 powerful ways to tell if you’re a great leader.

There are no qualms that leaders shape nations, communities, and businesses.

You cannot be a great leader merely with theory and tactics. Great leaders believe in leadership development and find the balance between business foresight and performance.

They have vision, courage and integrity, which enable them to plan strategically and catalyze teamwork. The main intent of leadership development is to upgrade the capacity for individuals to be effective in leadership roles and processes.

Leadership descends from social influence and not from rigid hierarchy or seniority. Anyone with the right skills, regardless of their position in a company or organization, can be a leader.

Identifying yourself as a different leader merely is understanding common leadership styles and aligning them to your strengths and weaknesses.

Here are a few of the qualities that set you apart and make you a great leader…

Understand your leadership style — Understanding your leadership style is crucial in manifesting your path as a leader.
Identifying leadership style helps supplement overall effectiveness and satisfaction. It reflects on how a leader can achieve full potential through calculated intention.

Never wander from the vision — Great leaders always have a vision. They have a unique, exciting idea of where they are going and what they are trying to accomplish and are sublime at strategic planning.

Show confidence when others cannot — Confidence is the fundamental principle of leadership. Staying confident and making your team member’s confidence is crucial for a leader.
To increase your team’s confidence, you have to help them improve, upgrade and learn skills, so they contribute fiercely to the project.

Effective time management is imperative — Effective time management influences effective Leadership. The best leaders are proactive, ambitious and motivated about their day.
It enables them to use their caliber to the best, thus ensuring interactions with the team are positive and productive.

Showcase your strengths and everyone else’s — Successful leaders spend most of their time developing and capitalizing their strengths and applying them in the workplace.

Leaders are also able to use this skill to identify strengths in others.

Optimism and communication go a long way — Good leaders possess the quality of openly and smartly interacting with people in a way that feels genuine.
They demonstrate empathy, engage in active listening, and enhance meaningful working relationships, whether they are peers or direct reports.

Always hold employees in high esteem — Good leaders are always unbiased to the employees and the organization’s processes. They acknowledge good work and always make room for everyone to blossom together.

They understand the importance of recognizing and rewarding employees, thus creating mutual respect and proficiency within the organization. They work towards giving them an environment where everyone can flourish.

Lead by example, always — Leaders don’t simply lead by being authoritative and dominating. They lead by guiding others on what to do and by setting a good example themselves.

If you demand a lot of your team, you should also be mindful of offsetting high standards for yourself. Aligning your words and actions guarantee win trust of the team

Encourage creativity> — Creativity drives excitement, and excitement drives efficiency. By encouraging creative problem solving, leaders challenge their teams in new and exciting ways.
This enthusiasm catalyses idea generation or the creative stages of projects into those repetitively daily tasks that they can’t help be tired of.

Serve as a role model — Successful role models work hard and pitch in when their team needs assistance or orchestration and are always demonstrating responsibility to company goals. Role models take accountability for their actions and inspire others to do the same.

Encourage people to make contributions — A great leader allows and welcomes the inflow of ideas from the members of their teams. They let team members share recommendations and thus contribute significantly with confidence.

Offer rewards and recognition — Frequently and consistently recognizing achievement is one of the most powerful habits that differentiate leaders. This motivates team members to stretch themselves and contribute their best efforts knowing that their work will be valued and appreciated.

Leadership is an attitude built over time. These habits can help you create and strengthen your own brand of leadership.

What can you do to embrace these valued leadership qualities and become a ‘different’ leader?

— Liliana Chitnis is a former HR professional who now works as a content marketing executive at Naman HR, an organization that offers end-to-end HR solutions to help companies build a strong human capital base. She writes about various topics related to human resources and shares trends, techniques, and tips with her readers. She loves to read and practice yoga regularly, and occasionally binge on Netflix.

• Posted 11.11.20 at 06:44 am by Roy Osing
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November 9, 2020

How to be a standout leader in a COVID world

I have written a great deal on what it takes to be a standout leader; to rise above the leader crowd and practice their craft in a way that no one else does.

In brief, standout leaders:
— ‘serve around’ their work environment looking for ways to help people do their jobs more effectively;
— cleanse their internal world of rules, procedures and policies that don’t make any sense to customers;
— believe in speed over perfection;
— spend most of their time (80%) executing rather than building their strategy;
— communicate in person with their teams; they use email and other forms of one-way electronic engagement to a lesser degree;
— use ‘tries’ as a key metric of innovation activity.

So what do standouts do when a pandemic strikes and organizations have to pivot to survive?

Standout leaders don’t change their philosophy just because of COVID. They stick to their game plan of doing the things that separate them from the average ones because being a standout works in any environment.
They hold their leadership values even closer to their heart and recognize if anything, they must be practiced with more energy, passion and tenacity.

Here are some specific actions standout leaders take during these pandemic times.

Employee connection — They make a priority to personally connect regularly with each of their employees on a one-on-one basis. They make this a priority notwithstanding the other demands made of their leadership role.

Since most people will not be returning to the workplace in large numbers any time soon, it’s critical that the leader finds a virtual way to connect with each of their team members regularly.

The imperative to lead by ‘serving around’ has never been as critical as it is when people are out of the office and are working remotely. They are isolated and for the most part cut off from the organization so the leader must reach out to them and keep them close.

You don’t have to be face-to-face to ask ‘How can I help?’, the signature of the standout leader.
They schedule regular ZOOM (or whatever your favourite conferencing flavour is) calls with each member of their team to find out what they need to make their job easier.

Team meetings — They schedule regular meetings with their entire team.

It’s vital to maintain team dynamics, so they schedule regular virtual meetings as they would in non-pandemic times. It’s critical to carry on business ‘as usual’ as much as possible.

Team members need to be kept updated on what’s happening in the company: sales results, customer service issues and other operations matters need to be the focus.

In these times, filling in the communications void that is created by people working remotely is vital to keep workforce spirits (and performance) up as much as possible.

Technology — They make sure everyone has the best technology available to do their job.

Every remote employee must be equipped with the latest, most productive technology in the market. You don’t want people to ‘fight the technology’ from their home in order to do their job.
You can’t cheap out on this; invest in the best technology and you’ll reap the greatest rewards; don’t make the needed investment and watch your survival challenged.

Operations pivot — They bear down on their operations role; other responsibilities take second place.

Flawlessly executing current plans and programs is the priority.

Survival isn’t contingent on the efficacy of the plan, rather it’s dependent on how well sales are earned each and every day COVID has its ugly claws in your sides.
So issues like speed of delivery and streamlined processes to increase the rate of transactions and order fulfillment every day are emphasized.

‘Follow the customer’ is the mantra; fighting for and winning business everyday is the COVID culture and behaviour the standout wants to encourage.

Customer service problems are solved with immediacy; serving customers in an exemplary way (e.g. not making them wait for 1 hour in a call center queue to get a rep) demands more attention.

If you don’t know what your customer service choke points are, you’re not prepared to take on COVID.

Short term thinking — They look to the next 24 hours for opportunities.

The focus on execution renders longer planning an unnecessary use of scarce resources; it is all but ignored during COVID chaos.

Survival requires cash flow which comes from short term performance, so any opportunity evaluations are concentrated on the extremely short term.
Leveraging existing skills, competencies and underused assets are the new drivers of potential opportunities.

Bonus pay — They change the bonus plan to reward performance more frequently.

The bonus plan is re-examined with a view to making more frequent payouts to make it easier on employees during these difficult times.
Most plans pay annually; standouts make quarterly (or more frequent) payments based on performance results.
It’s important when people are ‘in pain’ to recognize their contributions more frequently.

Performance — They measure results more frequently.

As mentioned previously, the new ‘planning period’ is literally a month or shorter due to the chaotic impacts COVID is having on organizations.

“How’d we do today?” is the operative question in this new normal if survival is the end game. Standouts revector their systems to give them real time feedback on their performance.

Line of sight — They keep reminding people what their role is.

It’s even more important in a pandemic for people to know exactly what they have to do to deliver results than it is in normal times.

Inasmuch as the strategy gets downplayed in a ‘follow-the-customer-to-survive’ environment, it’s important that roles be aligned with a common purpose.

So the leader articulates precisely what each remote worker must do to multiply the number of successfully consummated customer transactions achieved so they collectively can survive.

The team must be ‘joined at the hip’ for a new purpose; the standout must translate the short term goal and provide the guidance necessary for people to execute.

Standout leaders flex to the changes in the environment around them; they turn from dreaming to hanging on in whatever form that takes.

Myopia plays a positive and useful role and COVID is sponsoring it.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 11.9.20 at 03:38 am by Roy Osing
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