Archive for the 'Best Practices' Category

Jun 14 2010

PLAYING WITH PORCUPINES

The more you

                          

“power-play” 

                                              

the more business

                                 

you lose!

                                                                                                

     Customers, employees, suppliers, investors, referrers, service people . . . your trade, profession, industry, community, neighborhood, and environment, your family. Your SELF! These are your bread-and-butter individuals, groups, attributes, supporters, and biggest fans.  

     They alone determine if your business  sinks or swims. They will not stand around any longer these days (compared to past patience practices) waiting for your other shoe to drop. If you don’t feel you can be respectful and genuine in all of your dealings with others every day of the week, take a government job! (You’ll thrive there!)

     But if making your business work is what’s really important to you, if your associations, integrity, accomplishments, and reputation all play important roles, if your family is the end of your rainbow, you need to make sure that your business is not over-indulging in brute-force power play struggles with those who support your business and life interests . . . or even with competitors.

    Power plays may work in sports, but they don’t have a place in business or family life. The harder you push others or the marketplace, the greater the odds that you’ll be breeding porcupines. No one likes being in a corner. Hard-nosed billing policies and collection tactics that leave no room for reality will agitate a great many quill-throwers.

     A major propane gas company in Delaware makes a practice of tip-toe backyard visits, to slap padlocks on gas pipe feeders when they think they haven’t been paid on time. They don’t bother to tell families that wake up to no heat or hot water that there is no grace period for late payments, and they don’t even have the courtesy to inform them of the shutoff.

     The company is often wrong. But, when they are, they simply send someone back out to unlock the lock when they discover their error. That’s it. No apology. No anything. After all, they’re practically a monopoly. And they’ve already legalized deals that require changeovers to other suppliers carry forced removal expenses for existing underground storage that they struck deals with long-gone developers on years ago. Why should they care? 

     Because customers talk. And many are in the process of finding alternative power sources, even with storage tank removal expenses. And one day, down the road a piece, they’re going to find out the hard way that this is not how reputable people and companies do business . . . that power plays don’t work.

     Acting unnecessarily tough with employee benefit cutback explanations or time-off requests can make you a bad guy overnight. People (especially people who feel disenfranchised) talk. Words you may think you tossed off innocently can come back to haunt you quicker than you can even remember saying them. Sound familiar? You may want to step back long enough to reassess your present policies and re-set your meter (before it runs out!).

www.TWWsells.com or call 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless Our Troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

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Jun 13 2010

NOISE ANNOYS

Hey!

                                

Ease up on the ears

                                                   

a little, will ya please?

                                                                                        

     Where is it written that business and professional sports success must hinge no longer on performance, but on the tumult and hoopla that surrounds them?

     How did it ever get to be that attending a professional football, basketball, or baseball game meant giving up one’s sense of hearing for a week?

     I am nor referring to the yeas, boos, chants, whistles, claps, and songs of enthusiastic well-meaning fans. With or without cheerleaders, those natural outbursts of energetic support — together with the crack of a bat, the swoosh of a net, and the thud of a tackle — are the real true sounds of sports.

     I’m talking about the machine-generated, artificial bombardments of drum-banging, hand-clapping, bugle-blowing, spiral-buzzing racket that has absolutely nothing to do with the sport-at-hand, nor the performers, and which is a genuinely disruptive insult to our respective brains.

     No I’m not turning into a grouchy, out-of-touch, old guy. I am simply resentful of how noise has risen to the top of the consciousness disruption charts, and literally taken over what it was originally designed to merely support.  

     I was reminded of this again today as I went to see my favorite NY Mets play the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards. I’m not singling out any team or stadium here because it’s ALL of them; today was simply an example.

     And just like in business— some know-it-all marketing whiz-kids have literally commandeered every professional, semi-pro and college stadium and gymnasium, and forced each venue into becoming a catch-all of suffocating, obnoxious, insulting, decibel-threatening sound effects.

     How stupid is sports top management to have been sold on the idea that blasting noise (and even, but to a less annoying extent, music) through seat-and-building vibrating speaker systems will contribute to successful team status?

     In fact, it seems to me to be doing the reverse. I see many more fans staying home to watch sports on TV and not subjecting themselves to this deafening fun for the feeble-minded.  

     In business, educational and entertaining market-ing approaches seem universally preferable to those parts of the population that I’m exposed to, than the screaming in-your-face, sleazy fast-talk of car dealership advertising and many late night info-mercials. Yet the audio clutter continues.

     Greedy pro sports management convictions that noise sells . . . and that the way to an enthusiast’s heart and wallet is by prompting pounding headaches . . . is serving to set the stage for other businesses to follow suit. Does it all originate in Hollywood? Well, let’s see: how many movies can you name that haven’t wrapped their messages in earth-shattering sounds? (Oh, sorry, “Special audio effects.”)

     No matter what your business message is and no matter how you say it, when you surround it with too much noise, you will suffer the consequences of lost trust and lost credibility. People who really mean what they have to say don’t need to wrap it up in fireworks, sirens, explosions, and other deafening audio garbage.

     Just say it like it is.

If a certain sound is part of what’s being sold or sets a receptive stage, use it.

If not, don’t.

www.TWWsells.com or call 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless Our Troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

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Jun 12 2010

GET VOCABULATED!

Can we learn and use

                           

more words that

                                                                            

are more simple?

                                                                                                      

     Could be that nobody’s getting our message, but maybe it’s because we’re just talking to ourselves?

     We need to educate ourselves to think and communicate in simpler terms. Fancy industrial and professional jargon gets us nowhere, except as the old expression goes, tangled up in our own underwear. Our central business messages must be so simple we could recite them to our grandparents and –in a flash– they would “get it.”

     We have to stop trying to impress people with how much we know, and start trying to explain how our product or service can provide them with the solutions and benefits they seek . . . in simple, easy-to-understand words and steps. Tossing off a string of tech talk when we’re not communicating with other geeks is an increasingly common happening. 

     Frankly, I’m convinced that even talking geek-talk to geeks is not necessarily the best way to go! Why? Because “GEEKS ARE PEOPLE TOO!”

     Do we trust a doctor who dumbfounds us with her anatomical references, or one who explains an ailment in ache-and-pain terms we can understand?

     This simplification process is something I call getting vocabulated (actually a word I stole from my inventive granddaughter — thank you, Talley — to use in this blog!). My meaning is to describe an attitude we all need to put into practice with our paid advertising and websites, and then remember not to then leave it (simplicity) standing alone outside the door of meeting and presentation rooms. 

     Do we just rely on public messages to carry simplistic terms, but get down on the heavy duty industry, trade and professional verbiage when we write an email or business plan or ebook or news release?

     Do we use “proximity” for “area”? Do we “mitigate” or “lessen” (or “ease”)? Are we in pursuit of “opulence” or “wealth” (or even more simply, “money”)? Does “SEO” get any simpler when we’re talking to a non-website person (roughly half the business population!) about “Search Engine Optimization”? How about just saying “Help to increase search window rankings”? 

     Are we perhaps afraid of peers looking down their noses (or critics looking over their glasses) at us if we use words that sound too childish? What’s “too childish” if what we have to say makes sense?

     Do we think underlings won’t be sufficiently impressed when we (again with a doctor example) tell a patient’s family that their son has a broken bone in his hand below his pinkie finger instead of informing the parents that he has a fractured fifth metacarpal? 

     When we’re talking with others in our industry and refer to “sustainable manufacturing processes,” we will no doubt be understood, but the general public (and probably 95% of our target markets) will not need to shake their heads in wonderment if instead we talk about “not using dangerous chemicals like lead and mercury to make our products.” 

     The simpler we can explain ourselves and the benefits of what we have to offer, the more others will gravitate toward us, and the more sales we’ll make. Now, there’re a couple of vocabulated goals. Y’think? 

www.TWWsells.com or call 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless Our Troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

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Jun 10 2010

2011 ECONOMIC COLLAPSE

Should You

                                                              

Be Paralyzed? 

                                                                                                                                       

     Today’s news ushered in a bombardment of reliably-sourced economic reports that 2011 will bring complete economic collapse to the US and other nations. Why? Reports suggest the cause is  Obama administration insistence on tax increases being put in place to cover the costs of the federal government’s rampantly out-of-control spending policies.

     Who knows? I don’t pretend to be an economist. I hear the same things that you do. The talk is about major corporations jamming up their income and packing it into 2010 so that increased taxes can be sidestepped in 2011.

     Without getting into the details of how this triggers other tax-rate-related events, and what this represents, the results are expected to be a fully collapsed economy with unemployment possibly reaching even 2-3 times the present level, which as all of us know is already unacceptable. 

     If you’re looking for answers (beyond taking a correction course in the next two major elections), you might as well click off to another blog; I have nothing to offer as a quick-fix. If you’re feeling panicky about all these rumblings, I am here to tell you that you will produce what you breed.

     Freezing in your path, becoming catatonic, and paralyzing your business are not choices that are going to get you anywhere, and will in fact foreclose even the remotest possibility of survival. Recognizing that the future is fantasy; it is not here now, and it may never actually come (or may certainly never come as you expect it to) is an awareness that can carry your business successfully through the projected storm.

     Start out with the conviction that you can in fact make some things happen with your own business that will help protect it should times, in fact, get even tougher than they are right now. And begin taking steps now.

     People in the 50’s were ridiculed for building bomb shelters, but the peace of mind that these fortifications produced served to provide a level of renewed vigor and confidence for moving forward.

     This is not to suggest you run out and start constructing bunkers. It IS to suggest that you begin taking careful inventory of what’s essential to making your business run — what can you do without? How can you consolidate and collaborate and combine efforts to save expenses and maximize productivity. You already went through this exercise a year or two ago. Do it again.

     9/11 changed the world. In the same fashion that carry-on luggage regulations and examinations have correspondingly changed, you may need to once again reassess, downsize, adjust, compress, consolidate, and tighten your business controls. You cannot afford to wait until a bomb hits before building a bomb shelter. Prepare your business now. 

     You cannot continue day-to-day business operations without contingency plans. Set your goals. Adjust your goals, Go for your goals. But don’t focus on the finish line. Stay with the journey! And don’t choose for worry to get in your way!  

www.TWWsells.com or 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless:  You, America, and Our Troops. “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

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Jun 09 2010

Perceptions Are Facts!

What we perceive 

                                        

is what we believe! 

 

Leadership transparency is more than just another fancy management training term. Most employees haven’t a clue about what you really do. Sure, they see you in meetings and hear you on the phone and pay attention to your messages and emails.

Certainly, your people notice your interactions with customers, suppliers and service providers . . . with the community-at-large. But odds are pretty good that if you ask around, you’ll find that very few if any really know or understand how you spend your days.

  So? So the more your employees are in the dark about your comings and goings, the less visibility you afford them, the more likely they are to doubt and mistrust your leadership. It’s human nature to be suspicious of other’s actions when those actions are intentionally hidden or even inadvertently not apparent on the surface.

The harder it is to see and hear what’s happening at the top of an organization, the greater the tendency for organization members to see what they want to see and hear what they want to hear. Imagination creates perceptions. Perceptions trigger rumors. Rumors readily result in perceptions becoming beliefs.

And beliefs become facts! 

So-called “facts” evolve from beliefs which come from perceptions that are triggered by rumors. Rumors are routinely given birth by insecure followers based on their observations of leaders who insist on “playing everything close to the vest” or who frequent the use of “hidden agendas” in their daily routines.

These kinds of rumors have toppled whole companies, whole governments, whole nations. You don’t need those examples listed here; you already know them. A quick check on industry, regional. national, and global news will provide plenty more.

What you may not know is that employees never stop sizing you up — in the workspace, out of the workspace, in the parking lot, on the sidewalk, at community events, in restaurants and stores, at schools and church. It comes with the territory. Business owners and managers are in the spotlight even when they think the lights are out.

The challenge is to gracefully and consistently walk the thin line between A) being totally open and honest with everyone all the time and B) seeking refuge or over-socializing within the ranks.

  In other words, you must always be willing to freely give up information, but — unless company security is at stake — keep your personal opinions to yourself, and always conduct yourself like the example you want to set for others . . . because everything you do and say is an example to others . . .

 . . . and because perceptions are, in the minds of the perceivers, facts. That’s a fact.

Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You. 
“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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Jun 08 2010

The Soft Side of Business

Helping the needy 

                                              

doesn’t mean

                                         

competitors will 

                                            

eat you for dinner

 

 

  In fact, quite the contrary. When you slow down or stop your business-wheels long enough to reach off your merry-go-round and help some of those who can only afford to stand off to the side and watch you calliope-music your way around in circles, you are investing in your community . . . and ultimately in your own business, if you’re smart enough to make it newsworthy.

“Charity starts at home” isn’t just a sarcastic jab at humor.

But most businesses either fail at trying to make newsworthiness out of nothing, or at thinking that efforts to proclaim newsworthiness out of acts of generosity somehow taints the integrity of the charitable offerings. Both are wrong. First of all, the public is not stupid. People can see through thinly-veiled acts of self-proclaimed greatness with one eye shut and both hands behind their backs.

Don’t invent situations in order to gain favorable news exposure and publicity. Editors typically reject such self-serving efforts, and even when something does manage to slide by and end up getting attention, the public sees it for what it is.

But when your business does something heartfelt to help someone or group of someones, don’t be overly timid about spreading the word. Why? Isn’t that too much like bragging? Doesn’t that rub people the wrong way to be tooting your own horn?

The truth, since you asked (okay I asked for you) is that the more exposure your business gets for having sponsored an employee fundraising for some worthy organization or situation, the more you will have primed the pump to prompt others to follow suit. Then what? Then you will have shoe-horned (have you ever seen a shoehorn?) in even more helpful acts than your own.

The soft side of business — whether it’s charitable fundraising, or giving an employee or supplier or community family the support it needs to get through a crisis, or sponsoring a neighborhood clean-up project, or donating products or services or time, or providing technical or administrative back-up to a local or regional nonprofit organization — can work wonders for business reputation.

People (your customers, clients, patients, and prospects) BUY reputation! Connect the dots.

You haven’t time for all the solicitations at your doorstep? That’s like saying you haven’t enough time to learn time management. Ask for someone in your organization to follow a criteria list you hand off to screen applicants and make periodic recommendations for situations that fit inside the annual or semi-annual or quarterly budget you set and insist on.

When the tax-deductible budget is spent, solicitors go on a waiting list, or apply again next year. Make sure arrangements are made for news release announcements before and after (at least) every event, with content that’s always focused on the benefiting individual or organization, and always urging others to get on the bandwagon (or your merry-go-round!).  Soft is good.

 Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

God Bless America, and God Bless Our Troops 

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

No responses yet

Jun 07 2010

Unresponsiveness is Bad Business

“Like talkin’ to

                                       

  a brick wall!”

                                                                                                                                 

     Remind you of anyone? No, not your teenager or your grandfather. How about that one unresponsive boss, customer, prospect, investor, referrer, supplier, associate, employee? You know. The one who specializes in unanswered calls, unanswered emails, unanswered questions, unanswered charges, and unansdtxtmsgs. 

     Besides that these inactions ring out unprofessional and unbusinesslike behaviors, they just don’t cut it! They insult, frustrate, and aggravate those on the delivery end of the questions that cry out for answers, and the messages that call for some form of acknowledgement.

     Thank heaven most entrepreneurs maintain a sense of urgency in most of what they do. They may be a little rough around the edges by elementary schoolteacher standards (typically measured with “warm and fuzzy” yardsticks) or too gruff or brusk for many country-clubbers (who expect at all costs to be treated like royalty; “Thank you, dawlink!”), but at least they respect the need to get things done.

     What stands in the way of most entrepreneurial instincts to act (instead of just talk about acting, ala America’s empty suit sea of politicians) is the modus operandi of those who choose to think that no response is the best response, and that avoidance makes things go away. These folks, by the way, absolutely hate when someone doesn’t disappear, and continues to pursue an answer.

     Do those who practice shutting down and standing still for a living think they could possibly be cultivating business or making friends by sitting on their thumbs? Do they harbor some idiotic belief that others will gravitate to their aloofness? Probably, they just don’t care, or they’re just plain ignorant. 

     For the benefit of those who may be thinking about printing out this post and are leaving an unsigned copy conspicuously exposed on some unsuspecting culprit’s desk, or dashboard, or nightstand, you may want to save ink and paper and just use the following bulletpoints:

  • Your lethargic, uncaring, ambivalence is a disruption to life and work . . . and so beneath the integrity of those around you . . . If you don’t plan to respond to someone, say so! If you don’t have or know the answer to something, say so! If you need or want more time to reply to a request or question or message, say so!

  • Here’s why. In case it hasn’t occurred to you, most of the world operates in some kind of time zone, and most people will at least nod their heads when spoken to. The fact that you receive a message in writing or voice recording doesn’t mean that it is any less important to acknowledge than face-to-face deliveries.

  • Oh, and if you are, by some miraculous conception, some type of business executive or representative, you may want to give some thought to the fact that “outsiders” (which cer-tainly includes endless prospective customers, clients, or patients) will instantly identify your business attachment as THE business itself.

  • In other words, to the outside world, you ARE your business. Do you really want potential customers, employees, suppliers, investors, referrers to think your business is unresponsive? Of course they will. Don’t even go there. Instead, step up to the plate and start acting like a human being. It’s called respect.

     Trainers, coaches, consultants and creative types can do wonders for businesses by tweaking one thing or another, but tweaking bricks (even for those from Brick, New Jersey) can be a painful process. Let the bulletpoints do the job for you. If you still seek a tweak, however, you may want to explore more of how to . . .

Get TWEAKED at www.TWWsells.com or call 302.933.0116 or Hal@BusinessWorks.US  
Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless Our Troops “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson]  Make today a GREAT Day!

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Jun 06 2010

The Missing Business Spark . . .

Been Tweaked? 

     If  you haven’t had a professional examine the words you’re using for your business — to communicate, explain, describe, sell, plan, promote, publicize, print, email, broadcast, and blast across the Internet — you’re missing great potential sales, revenues, and profits.

     And you may be adding untold hidden expenses every day, even every hour.

     You could very well be the best at what you do, but if you’re not trained and experienced as a skilled professional business marketing writer, it won’t matter.

      It takes only one slightly wrong word to UNdo all your years of hard work, to UNdo the strength or promise of your customer or investor bases, to UNdo your employee, supplier, and community relations.

     But here’s the best kept secret of successful businesses and practices in your industry and profession:

They’ve all been tweaked! 

     Every highly profitable revenue-charged business and professional practice is measured by its leadership, reputation, productivity, and the words it uses.

Research proves time and again that what your business says (and the ways that your business says what it says) makes the difference between success and failure

. . . on the Internet; in emails, news releases; promotional, ad, branding and marketing campaigns; mission and vision statements; employee and sales training; supplier, investor, and referrer motivational programs

. . . on the front lines and telephone lines with customers, clients, patients, and prospects.

     How does one get her or his business “tweaked”? Where do you start? You start by submitting rough or revised drafts for professional review and input. The finished product is the revised return of a polished document, ad, release, web page, branding theme line, business plan narrative, layman translation from technical material, ebook, training outline, whatever.

It’s a process that raises your ideas up a notch

and puts you ahead of the competition!

     The good news is you need NOTspend a fortune to get tweaked. Many mid and large size companies that use internal Tweakers, also hire outside firms to tweak and prepare their messages (often at outrageous fees of $10,000 to $20,000 a month!). But this is SMALL business. And no one else can represent your business ideas as well as you.

     You don’t need high-priced outside service firms to tell you what to say. You need a budget-conscious, experienced, professional Tweaker who can take what you’ve done and put it in the right language and context for the market you want to target.

     Some, like having preventive maintenance visits, get a “Tweak Cleaning” twice a year. Some are happy with an annual “Tweak Insurance” Review. Still others want “On-Call Tweakability.” Oh, and if you’ve read this far, you must be interested. So yes, I tweak.

# # #

Hal@BusinessWorks.US  

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You!

Make today a GREAT Day for someone!

One response so far

Jun 05 2010

CALLING ALL REALTORS

When the going

                                               

gets tough,

                                                                                

many Realtors grasp

                                            

at straws!

                                                                                                       

     A post on yesterday’s edition of the vibrant and proactive leading newsletter for Realtor professionals, the ActiveRain Daily Drop was entitled “How To Brand Yourself an Expert and Build a Six-Figure Real Estate Business.” The heading alone represents much of what is  wrong with many Realtors today who seek to quick-fix instead of innovate.

     And the guts of the article drag us deeper into a state of malaise.

     First of all, the posted article was nothing more than a thinly-veiled sales pitch to urge our nation’s poor beaten-upon real estate agents and brokers to rise from the rubble of a collapsed housing market by signing up for and attending a “virtual class” starring a TV “Apprentice show winner.”

    Though favored by Donald Trump himself, this winner may indeed have the “commanding knowledge of investment real estate” that the article proclaims, but my best guess is that this individual doesn’t know any more than anyone else who has ever bought, sold, or brokered real estate.

     Clearly, the enrollment spiel is clueless about branding. Those who understand branding know that you can’t “brand yourself an expert.”

     Branding is all about earning a reputation for authenticity. Self-aggrandizement hardly captures that flavor of genuineness.

     Being viewed and respected as an “expert” is something that comes from others, not from yourself.

     Granted that real estate as a business may host a fair share of egocentric types, but offering self-declarations of expertise is not a practice that most people find to be particularly endearing . . . certainly not property buyers and sellers who I’m quite sure prefer humility and low-profile sales attitudes. Assertiveness does not require aggressiveness. 

     Oh, the fantasy TV show winner also apparently has a book for sale (tell me you’re surprised!) which would seem likely to be implausibly unrealistic if it cornerstones the thinking that what sells best — and makes the most money — is for Realtors to (as my father used to warn against) “toot their own horns.”

     If you’re in real estate sales, and you’ve been fighting to survive this sucky economy, the last thing you need to do is follow some self-serving, self-proclaimed expert into the arena of thinking that you can do the same thing and make untold fortunes. All you’ll make are enemies, and enemies don’t help you make sales.  

     Those who succeed at making a living in real estate sales are those who recognize and appreciate the opportunities they hold in their hands to make a difference in this life by nurturing their matchmaking abilities. They are catalysts of change. Realtors are the entrepreneurial leaders of American small business precisely because they DON’T run around telling everyone how great they are.

     They let their people talents, and their communication and organizational skills speak for themselves. Satisfied clients who brand these real estate pros as experts will advance their reputations light years beyond the kinds of competitors who beat their chests, shout their names from the rooftops, and sign up for quick-fix seminars run by questionably-qualified people seeking to sell books!

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals! God Bless You! God Bless America, and God Bless Our Troops (“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!”- Thomas Jefferson)  Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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Jun 02 2010

HIRING “Outside Experts”

Pay for Performance 

 . . . Not for Promises!

 

     The best business consultants, advisors, coaches, trainers, and counselors base their fees on what they’re able to accomplish, not on how great they tell you it’s going to be.

 YOU’RE PAYING TOO MUCH IF:  

1)  You’re paying ongoing fees and can’t see any ongoing results.

2)  You’re paying any kind of “retainer” fee, and you’re not sure of what it is that you’re “retaining.” 

3)  You’re paying for dead-end training, coaching, or counseling support that assures you of new and improved leadership/team-work . . . or communications, or customer relations, or sales . . . but that doesn’t produce noticeable change in 21 days, and that doesn’t then keep it going with meaningful, targeted, personal follow-up long after scheduled sessions are completed.

4)  You’re paying for outside services that continuously blame your inside services for stalling/blocking/obstructing/interfering or foot-dragging and/or lack of commitment.

5)  You’re paying for professional expertise exclusively because of long-term relationships and because that individual or group has maintained all your records for a long time. Would you not go to a medical or legal or financial expert you know has the ability to heal you just because your present advisor was hired by your father (or grandfather) and has your complete history in his files?  

6)  You get billed for every breath taken on your behalf. Outside experts unwilling to invest a little extra time and effort on your behalf as an expression of their customer / client relationship management are not worth the invoice postage or email review time. They are easily (and happily) replaced.

     There are a gazillion qualified groups and individuals out there who will deliver ongoing attention and ongoing results. In case you think you haven’t enough time to go shopping for the kinds of outside experts who breed authenticity, consider how much money you’ve been (or are presently) wasting  by not finding more honorable replacements.

     Even hiring someone else to shop for you – with your criteria of course – will probably still end up being a financially-smarter and more performance-rewarding move than avoiding the issue.

     The hardest thing any of us have to do in life – and consequently the hardest thing any business owner or manager has also to do – is to let go.

     Letting go of anything that we own, command, raise, invent, enhance, fix, inherit, create, design, develop, build, or even just think about, is like giving up a piece of our existence. How big of a piece determines the amount of anguish and reluctance and hesitation and whining and complaining that is sure to surface.

     And you’ve already been around long enough to realize that the total of all the upset added together multiplies according to how much time, money, and effort has been invested. So, the time to act is now. Clean house. Find experts who are willing to roll up their sleeves and work with you, who will act like partners, not leeches.   

 

# # #

                                                   

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Hal@Businessworks.US or 302.933.0116

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!” [Thomas Jefferson] 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals. God Bless You.

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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