Archive for the 'Public Relations' Category

Oct 01 2014

Healthcare Business Startups

Birthing Healthcare Business STORK Clipart

Until you’ve worked on the front lines of a medical or therapeutic group practice, a private healthcare facility, or on a pharmaceutical or medical device core management team, you’re not likely to ever appreciate that healthcare entrepreneurship is a radically different beast.

Non-healthcare business entrepreneurs—minus the excessive regulatory compliance baggage—can afford to be more freewheeling than their healthcare provider-based counterparts.

Healthcare entrepreneurial ventures can carry astronomical price-tags for R&D. The accompanying array of complicated startup legalities, convoluted tax restrictions, partner negotiations, branding and marketing (Healthcare is NOT about smiling doctor billboards!), recruiting and interviewing, position statements, community relations, and building a referral base is enough to confound many dedicated providers who lack even basic business training or experience.

So what? Who cares? You might ask.

This is not to trivialize the amount of hard work and suffering that accompanies the launch of non-healthcare entrepreneurial enterprises—particularly those ventures giving birth to non-healthcare-related hi-tech products and services. It is simply that healthcare has it harder!

Initial non-healthcare-related business investments are often from friends and family who are happy to just get their initial money back.

But healthcare investors are often professional investor outsiders with no knowledge of your business, who want unrealistic return on investment, who are not interested in your sweat equity, and who want to own controlling interest in exchange for the funding they provide.

These wealthy individuals often seek to be “part of the action” and are willing to pay for it, but who will not let business founders off the hook if things fail — and, curiously, many who fit this description seem always to appear at the moment when you most need it.

The #1 underlying message here is DON’T NEED IT! When you most need money, you can be sure you’ll be communicating it without even a word, and that’s like blowing a game-starting whistle to send in the circling sharks. You think TVs “Shark Tank” name has no basis?

Underlying message #2 is STAY FOCUSED ON MAKING YOUR CORE BUSINESS WORK INSTEAD OF LOOKING FOR A QUICK FIX BY EXPANDING OR EXTENDING IT TOO PREMATURELY . . . TRUST YOURSELF AND BE REALISTIC.

So, if you have a choice between starting up a decorator windshield wiper blades company and establishing a business that aims to produce anti-bacterial clamps for micro-surgical openings, or starting up an orthopedic group practice, avoid healthcare pros money woes and go for the wiper blades! (But don’t think a year of that qualifies you to be in the windshield business, the windshield washer fluid business, and the rearview mirror business—or to think a 500-unit order means you need to break ground for a monster manufacturing plant!)

Just in case that thought crosses your mind, go back to the #2 message above, and if you do it right, you’ll be accommodating the #1 message without even trying. Because? Because you won’t need money because you’ll be too busy building your business and blowing out the walls of your garage!

If you’re truly “locked in” to a healthcare business startup, step carefully, listen carefully, speak and write carefully, and don’t let any amount of cash infusion take control out of your hands unless you have something else ready to put your hands on, and can (and are willing to) walk away comfortably. And remember–above all else– that Healthcare Leadership can mean only one thing . . . and it’s not Obamacare or “Lean” Management!!

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Hal@BusinessWorks.US or 931.854.0474 or comment below

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

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

Make today a GREAT Day for someone!

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Aug 18 2014

CAN YOU BE TOO PREPARED?

You’re on the threshold

 

of a presentation.

 

Are you “overkill” ready?

 

 

I once worked for an “overkill” boss. It took me awhile to figure this out because he constantly gave me the impression he thought I wasn’t up to snuff with reality, until I discovered that he was simply an OCD  poster boy . . .

“Did you key up the audio so it’s loud enough for those with hearing disorders? Is it timed to come on just as I say ‘New campaign’? Is there a crisp, clean unused legal pad and new pen with keyboard access in front of every chair at the meeting table? Who’s escorting them into the room?

“You’re wearing pinstripes, right? And plain dark suit? No crazy neckties. And kill that erring! Did you check the thermostat? You’re sure the agenda board is 100% perfect and visible from every seat? Their limo is ordered? What time’s their flight? Lunch arrangements? What about lunch arrangements? “

Of course that was just the beginning of his diatribe checklist. He would go on to the exact type and amount and freshness of the tuna salad and bread and veggies and dip and chips and cheese and crackers and fruit, and juice and soda to be served. “What’s the dessert? Who’s making it? Have you tried it?” and on and on. You’d have thought our ad agency sales pitch was a White House attempt at negotiating a global war peace treaty. “WHO,” he would always ask, “is in your pocket?”

BUT WAS HE WRONG?

I’d be interested in your thoughts, but I can tell you this much: While I never became the fanatic he was, I learned to respect the value of being fully prepared ahead of every client and potential client interface — in person, on the phone, and on the computer screen. While I agree that his cage-rattling directives were often excessive, over-the-top, I have come to realize that –in fact– he had a point: You can never be TOO prepared!

And perhaps most important: being fully prepared –including having some contingency plans– helps build self-confidence as well. Why? Because it leaves your mind clear to deal with the person(s) in front of you and adapt to he/her/them and/or the circumstances. If you’re not fully prepared, you may be too preoccupied with fumbling to notice nonverbal responses or room temperature or your own agenda . Sales, remember, are made in “the here and now“!

What is business (and professional practice) all about after all? The customer/client/patient/prospect . . . RIGHT? What else could it possibly be about? So if you think on this a minute or two –or a lifetime’s worth– you will undoubtedly come to the conclusion that your entire career existence is dependent on your’s and your organization’s abilities to attract and keep, and grow your customer base. What else is there?

Even if you work for a nonprofit, and think you exist to make the world a better place, you’ll never succeed without developing a base of supporters. So how does one maximize the odds of attracting and keeping and growing a support base of any kind? With as accurate and perfect and communicative a presentation as possible at every opportunity you get to make a point. You need not become an OCD basket case or a pushy salesperson to make this happen.

You must quite simply put yourself in your audience’s (of one or one million) proverbial shoes and present information at his/her/their level wrapped around expressed needs and interests. Oh, and that can ONLY happen if you listen carefully (at least 80% of the time) to what each and all of them have to say. If you’re unsure or can’t feasibly do this, hire a firm that will do it for you with surveys or focus groups or whatever methods work for your industry or profession.

Otherwise, you’re you’ll find yourself

working inside a box 

that you’ll never learn to think out of!

 

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Hal@BusinessWorks.US or comment below

OPEN  MINDS  OPEN  DOORS

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

Make today a GREAT Day for someone!

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Jul 08 2014

BROADWAY WITHOUT LIGHTS!

“There’s no business like small business

It makes economies grow

Everything about it is revealing

 

Got everything that customers want now

Nowhere could you get that happy feeling

When you make a sale-with-service vow”

(With There’s No Business Like Show Business adaptation apologies to Irving Berlin)

 

 

Like Broadway without lights, imagine America with no small business. We have thrived as a nation because of small business. Small business employs the vast majority of workers in this country, and stimulates the U.S. economy more than all the nation’s giant corporations put together!

ALL things great that happen in business

happen first in small business.

Entrepreneurs deserve the credit for our existence as a people. They brought us (and continue to bring us) to our senses. They made (and continue to make) the freedom of our daily lives happen. Our military forces deserve the credit for keeping our existence free.

Yet neither finds favor in Washington? Or, in fact, with a great many state and local governments?

Why do you think this is?

Government people are charged with regulating business but rarely if ever have enough business experience to even understand the consequences of their regulations. If, in fact, they were entrepreneurs to begin with, they would never have ended up in stultifying government careers.

What more poignant example could there be than the U.S. Postal Service . . . dying a long, painful death since 2008 (at taxpayer expense!)?

Show me a single entrepreneur who thinks that the way to make more money and compete with Fed Ex and UPS et al is to reduce services, close down basic operations, and raise prices. Please. The Postal Service is a shameful waste and an ideal example of everything that’s wrong with our government and our economy.

They take mailboxes off the streets because they don’t know how to make them profitable.
They cut employee hours, close offices and stop Saturday delivery in many locations to save money.
BUT they spend many millions of dollars in meaningless, empty advertising campaigns run by Madison Avenue ad agencies seeking to win awards instead of making sales. Clearly an example of what your Grandmother used to say about the right hand not understanding what the left hand was doing.

What’s really discouraging is that it doesn’t take—pardon the trite expression, but it says it best—a rocket scientist to figure out that the U.S. Postal Service is in shambles and that it’s ego-maniacal ad agency is certainly not the bail-out answer. It takes an entrepreneur.

Only an entrepreneurial-spirited soul has the wherewithal to fully understand and appreciate how to transform the Postal Service into a privatized, profitable business. Think this is unimportant stuff? Guess what? America’s government from the top down is agonizingly in need of reform and innovative new approaches if it is to survive.

This kind of thinking is not forthcoming from our nation’s leaders, and never will be until they are replaced en masse. You own and operate a small business? Are you willing to step up? It’s YOUR business, and ultimately your family, that’s on the line. Please do SOMEthing. Even if that just means “Talk it up!” Without small business, there IS no America!

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 Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US        or comment below

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

 Make today a GREAT Day for someone!

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May 28 2014

LISTEN TO THE QUIET . . .

Small business owners, doctors, lawyers, accountants, consultants, and sales reps…

 

It’s all about what you DON’T say!

 

It’s what you don’t say that makes a sale, that brings in new patients and clients and customers. Try sharing this bit of wisdom with any fast-talk car dealership or mattress store (the most distrusted U.S. businesses) then step back to get laughed at… which, all by itself, should be sufficient to convince you.

It’s true that being on the sales end of the spectrum in any given conversation, presentation, meeting, or conference, carries with it the responsibility to pay attention more, listen more, and shut up more! I’m not always smart enough to DO it, but I try because I think the old axiom that we should listen 80% of the time and talk 20% is true!

Besides forcing me to listen more carefully, the 80/20 formula enables me to be more patient with others and myself. It also prompts me to be more concise, more to the point — we inevitably choose our words and examples more carefully when we do take our 20% slice of a discussion.

People buy from knowledgeable people who excel at active listening. We like to hear –or at least I do– about what we don’t know when we ask for it but, Boy! I really resent the intrusion on my time and mindset by those who flaunt it when I plain just don’t care? Talk does not cook rice!

Oh, and how about those who simply pay no attention to my verbal, facial, and body language signals? How do they miss my scowls, my squinted or rapidly-blinking eyes, my folded arms and jittery feet? Ah, then there are those who stare dumbly into space, or at my shirt collar, shoes or hair (or lack of), or their own hands or feet?

Or, yikes!… their wristwatch!

How many times have you—as a prospective customer/patient/client—been scared off by a know-it-all sales rep/ doctor/ lawyer/ accountant/ consultant? You know the type. “Everything is under control, my friend” (not a particularly ingratiating line from a friend I’ve never met). The great sales asset of genuine empathy is an entirely different matter.

Perhaps you’ve heard someone tell you: “Don’t worry. Be happy.” Worse yet, that was the song my former CPA played on his outgoing phone message. After producing an April 14th “minor” ($10,000) “IRS payment that needs to be paid with tomorrow’s taxes,” you’ll surely understand why I referred to him as “former.”

Instead of hearing and responding directly to my purchase interests and concerns, I get tons of information I don’t care about. And how much do you love token, dismissive head nods offered as pathetic attempts to pretend to be listening, but serving instead as a “yes but” lead-in to the next round of information dumping? Can you hear me now?

Oh, and to underscore the point, many in-person information overload spiels are accompanied by the spieler paying more attention to whom or whatever is going on behind me (or being more tuned into a blinking smartphone). And only heaven knows the distractions that keep telemarketers telemarketing.

Dynamics like these always make it tempting to ask:

“Uh, did you hear anything I just said?”

But I just walk away or hang up. How many of your prospective customers, clients, patients just walk away, or hang up?

C’mon, people! If you’re in sales, or healthcare, or law, or consulting, and you can’t get it together enough to listen attentively enough to prospective customers, patients, or clients, and be able to address their needs, go work for your nearby automobile or mattress dealer. You’ll fit right in.

# # #

Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US  or comment below.

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

Make today a GREAT Day for someone!

 

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Apr 22 2014

Doctors, Therapists, Practice Managers, Hosp…

 DOCTORS, THERAPISTS,

 

PRACTICE MANAGERS

 

 HOSPITAL EXECUTIVES

 

. . . ARE NOT

 

CORPORATE MUCKITY-MUCKS

 

You and your practice or facility are not likely to be a Fortune 500 corporate entity. So there’s no need to pretend being a marketing guru.

In fact, if you are feeling even a little bit over your head with marketing, you’re likely to be wasting money, time, and energy!

Maybe you’re unearthing a monster budget expense at the behest and/or persuasion of some big-time marketing company, PR firm or ad agency you’re working with or thinking of hiring? It can often feel (and be real) that such entities are simply throwing away your money to create a mumbo-jumbo branding program aimed at earning an award for themselves.

If you’re working with or considering  “experts” who are trying or promising to “position” you as the brightest star in the heavens . . . you may want to re-think it with a dose of reality.

Reality? Yes, you are a healthcare provider. That makes you an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs challenge the system. In healthcare, they use (or retain) innovative thinking to establish, re-establish and upgrade the authenticity of themselves and the “saleability” of their services, careers, investments, and reputations.

You can accomplish this with: much less expense of money, the same expense of time, and sometimes greater expense of energy. Oh, and –by the way– having and practicing a sense of entrepreneurial reality tends to get far better value and results than engaging one of the “big-time-expert” groups noted above.

Just to be sure we’re on the same page here, I’m talking about –specifically– how to increase patient volume, how to stimulate patient and patient-family loyalty, and how to strengthen referral bases, channels, and networks without having to bet the farm!. Is that what you’re looking to accomplish?

Stay with me on the next few weekly blog posts and I’ll tell you HOW… or call or email me (info below) if you can’t wait!

Let’s start with the idea that what truly “sells” people is to be entirely focused on them and not on ourselves. Chest-beating, posturing messages about how great you think you are and smiling-face billboards, ads, and Facebook pages –regardless of expense involved– make no difference whatsoever. In fact, they often do the opposite… annoy, antagonize, create doubt and distrust, and send the people you’re trying to reach galloping off to your quiet competitors.

So do you have to be “quiet”? No, but you do need to be your authentic self. You do you need to be more conscious of the training and talent and experience gifts you deliver in your vital societal role as a healer and healthcare provider. Because THAT is your best marketing!

Is that hard? Of course, especially given the volatility, misdirection, intrusiveness, and mismanagement of government agencies, insurance companies, and today’s Obamacare circus, but –in the end– difficulty (as most entrepreneurs learn) is a choice.

There is much more coming to you at this blog in the hands-on, specific-how-to-steps departments in the days ahead. So, do return for more on how to get started and how to re-start.

In the meantime . . .

CHECK THIS disarmingly true, insightful post

at www.HealthcareTalentTransformation.com  

by David Lee Scher, MD, titled:

Five Ways Physicians Can Change Patient Behavior

 

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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Apr 16 2014

HEALTHCARE PROS’ MONEY WOES

Healthcare Pros STILL

 

Flushing Money Down the Drain!

 

Thanks for your visit. We have recently relocated to Cookeville Tennessee (between Nashville and Knoxville), home of Tennessee Tech University. Return here often for new posts in this series for Doctorpreneurs©and Healthcare professionals.

 

Why not just open the window and throw your money out? Why bother spending it on meaningless, confused thinking about marketing? Why keep feeding the nonperformance of media, mobile apps, direct mail magazines and newsletters, social media and, oh yes, outdoor advertising? Can we look at this open-mindedly?

The business and sports worlds have fed your fires since childhood that you must be competitive at all costs in order to win… that’s 100% false for healthcare professionals! In fact, many healthcare pros have marketing success expectations as unrealistic as imagining that a heart attack can be treated with a BandAid®

REALITY: No one “buys” billboards with smiling doctor faces (or, even worse, the recent trend toward somber looks!). Most people are not so stupid as to think that hospital “magazines” and “newsletters” with feature (dressed-up PR) stories are interesting or meaningful enough to be worth reading. My guess is that –other than the few and far between genuine healthcare educational mailing pieces– most of these exorbitantly expensive items go straight to the recycle pail. All this nonsense came and went thirty years ago. [Interesting how America’s healthcare institutions are accelerating these feeble old-fashioned attempts at marketing. Is it some kind of knee-jerk attempt to cope with the Obamacare muddle?]

BOTTOM LINE: No one cares! The public simply doesn’t care how great hospitals, doctors, therapists (or any professionals for that matter) think they are! Healthcare consumers may have more (and more personal) issues on the line than other kinds of consumers, but they really and truly only care about the same thing that every consumer cares most about: What’s in it for me? Period.

So if you’ve read this far, perhaps it would be useful to explore and reassess your current “marketing” practices, and decide if your money could be better spent on strengthening patient, patient family, and referral network relations. If you’re looking for a role model institution, consider the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center… you’ll find no shallow representations of professional skills… “Treatment” is their specialty, and it applies to everyone who enters their doors. Oh, and guess what? The only expense is training and training maintenance time.

Marketing –if it’s done right– might sometimes succeed at building brand loyalty for some products and services in some markets and marketplaces. But when the two end-results people seek most from healthcare professionals are 1) Reassurance and 2) Trust, it’s not likely either will ever be achieved with empty images or promises.

Doctorpreneurs© Copyright Hal Alpiar, 1994. All rights reserved.
BandAid® is a Registered Trademark of the Johnson & Johnson Company

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Hal@Businessworks.US    931.854.0474

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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Mar 20 2014

MOVING – ONWARD AND UPWARD!

“Got here safe & sound, Y’all!”

 

AND STILL UNPACKING AND SETTING UP NEW OFFICES . . .

GUESS WHERE?????  Email your guess: Hal@Businessworks.US  (“New Office” in Subject Line) Winning guesses entered in drawing for a FREE first edition signed copy of HIGH TIDE fictionalized account of America’s biggest drug deal! See www.HighTideNow.com

Thank you for your visit.

If you’re new to this blog, please mark your calendar to return on April 16th for the beginning of Tax Return Recovery, and to help kickoff an exciting new series of posts you won’t find anywhere else!

If you’ve been visiting here regularly since the birth of my blog in April, 2008 (and now closing in on 1500 posts), thank you even extra!

You, especially, will want to return April 16th to see what’s in store for innovative, spirited business and healthcare professionals. You’ll get  proven new ways of thinking to boost your sales and make the most of your leadership skills — for profit and nonprofit businesses and professions alike. You’ll get coaching that works in the office and meeting room, on the phone and on paper, on the smartphone and the computer. You will get specific how-tos for building and enhancing your leadership posture in your industry, your marketplace, and your community.

When you return here April 16th, you will get the beginning of an input stream that no one else dares to share . . . on ways to feel better about your SELF (no product or service sales pitches, no lectures, no gimmicks). You’ll get ways to be encouraged, ways to make a difference with your career and family pursuits, ways to rise above the clutter.

You’ll get solid substance based on more years of experience than you probably are old. Not just passive observations, you’ll get frontline/hands-on experience with over 2,000 business consulting and return engagements AND with more than 20,000 students and management training participants. PLUS –as incredible as it’s always been–it will be free on this blog. Try it. You’ll like it. Send your friends.

In the meantime, to better serve our Entrepreneurial Clients (Including Business Startups, SalesPropreneurs©, Doctorpreneurs© and Corporate Entrepreneurs©), BUSINESSWORKS.US and TheWriterWorks.com, LLC will be in the process of relocating to another State. You’ll get the details as soon as we’re settled. In the meantime, Happy Spring!

See you the day after taxes!!!

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Hal@Businessworks.US

Open  Minds  Open  Doors

Make today a GREAT day for someone!

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Dec 09 2013

Build Your Referral Base NOW!

“Huh? Now? But it’s the holidays!”

                                                                              

“Well, Merry Christmas to you! But

                                                                         

after quality family time, remember

                                                                            

1st quarter 2014 is just hours away.”

 

Why “NOW!”? Just click here: take a quick look at this to see what’s happening this very split second —as you read this— and you’ll realize that delaying this task is simply not in your best interest.

Getting others to refer you/your business is more than a survival tactic, it’s the key to 2014 success. No sales are more important right now than those to the friends, families, associates and online connections of your existing customers, clients, and patients. Because 2014 is bringing increased competitive activity to the surface. And it cannot be sidestepped.

The harder the times, the fiercer the battle! And the easiest, most economical path to increased sales and customer/ client/ patient repeat-sales-and-visits loyalty is a strengthened referral base. Economical? You decide. It costs nothing to delight those who purchase from you.

Cease and desist all marketing? No. But don’t expand it. Instead, consider shifting gears from reliance on expensive media, to fine-tuning attitudes and cultivating a much more pronounced reputation for integrity than you probably imagined being necessary. 

THIS post will get you started with

a business or practice volume boost

agenda that you will never get from

a business or medicine world insider

~~~~~~~

“Referral Marketing” is NOT (Note: car dealerships!) flooding rented mailing lists with dumb direct mail solicitations (like “Bring this key to our car store to see if you win” while our salespeople swarm all over you . . .). Oh, and DOCTORS: Bringing popcorn, candy and subs to referring physician offices is equally dumb. It may get some Ooohs and Ahhhs from other doctors’ staffs, but effective FREE marketing, done professionally, is what will bring increased patient referrals to your door!   

Here’s what it’s really all about: marketing is both external (websites, signage, traditional and social media, direct mail and email, promotions, advertising, merchandising items, PR events and news releases), and internal.

Internal (which is free) combined with news releases and most PR events (which are free) is the most effective marketing. I refer to it as “Quiet” marketing. It includes such things as the appearance of your and your staff’s personal selves –neat, clean clothes, scrubbed look– as well as your office, vehicles, and waiting areas . . . plus the manner in which communications are conducted . . . on paper, online, in person, and on the phone.

This means active listening 80% of the time — backed by clear simple speech, using examples and diagrams, soliciting questions and feedback, and applying this attentiveness to not just patients and customers, patient and customer families, your own staff, and associates — but to others as well.

Internal Marketing includes your entire inner ring of contacts. For doctors, it includes other doctors, nurses, your professional advisors (lawyers, accountants, consultants), as well as pharmacists, insurance providers, suppliers, detail reps, and –guess what?– your office cleaning and delivery people too!

BUSINESS OWNERS need to apply this thinking to every person and organization your business does business with, from paper and cleaning supply providers to snowplow and landscaping services, and every single delivery person!

WHY? Because they are ALL prospective customers and referrers

Quiet marketing also includes paying careful attention to the frequency and quality of communications with those in your networking resource and referral systems, and to your SELF. Why? Because Quiet marketing success at any level has most of all to do with how you conduct and represent yourself to others!

This translates to how you walk, talk, sit, stand, listen, touch, gesture, and treat everyone around you every day. These actions add up to the statement you make about who you really are, and why you are trustworthy of the confidences and care of others.

Remember: It’s all about every blink you blink!

Someone is watching your every move and noting

your every word, and . . . Perceptions are facts!

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Hal@Businessworks.US

Open Minds Open Doors

   Make today a GREAT day for someone!

  God Bless You and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

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Sep 24 2013

Words Leaders Use

WANT TO BE MORE OF A LEADER?

                                                                              

TALK AND WRITE LIKE A LEADER.

 

Over 30 years of writing and training business, industry,

healthcare, and academic leadership have taught me

some important words I now share with you . . .

 

People who regularly incorporate the use of the following kinds of words in their daily conversations and written messages stand tall among the most successful of worldclass leaders.

This magic pack of words is just for openers. You need to be willing to raise your own consciousness about whether the words you use every day are helping you perform to the best of your own leadership ability. This list can, in other words,  get you started. But only you can decide what works best for you and your personal leadership comfort zone.

The point is: Take a couple of minutes to review this list, think about it and assess yourself. If you can change some words you may presently be emphasizing that are not helping you perform, change them! It’s your choice.

Opportunity. Becoming. Challenge. Team. Can. Forward. Focus. Here and Now. Let’s. How? What will it take? Go! Do I understand you correctly to mean . . .? Us. We. Our. Fun. Enjoy! Together. For example. Passion. Try. Enthusiasm. Empathy. Customer. Diagram.  Innovation. Client. Partner. Listening. Self-esteem. Service. Needs. Desires. Learning. Facts. Exciting. God. Illuminating. Choice. Value. Timing.  Self-confidence. Trust. Authenticity. Genuineness. Objectives. Goals. Strategies. Tactics. Specific.  Flexible. Realistic. Ignite. Timeline. Activate. Boost. Stimulate. Care. Compassion. Spark. Consistency. Measure. Hustle. Effort. Reward. Share. Accurate. Recognition. Implement. Respond. Energy. Responsive. Responsible. Behavior. Spirit. Assist. Invigorate. Results. Invest. Humility. Grace. Please. Thank you. Respect.  Grow. Patient. Happiness. Family.

 

# # #

Hal@TheWriterWorks.com 

Thanks for visiting. Go for your goals!

Make today a GREAT Day for someone! 

2 responses so far

Sep 02 2013

Leadership Talk

Yada, Yada, Yada,

                                                

 Blah, Blah, Blah…

 

Odds are that your best leadership response to other people’s yackity-yack is probably NOT:  yeah, yeah, yeah!

When someone who follows your lead is being busy saying nothing (hmmm, sound familiar?), try taking the person off to the side — or into a private setting — and explain that you want to share the value of some of what you’ve learned from successful sales leaders.

Start by noting that virtually EVERY exchange we have with others EVERY day –both on the job and off– constitutes an attempt to sell SOME thing.

Yes, “EVERY” and yes, “SOME.”

Think about it before jumping down my throat with some condemnation for using “ALL OR NOTHING” language. Before you throw exceptions at me, take a minute to dissect them. Odds are you’ll discover that at least one individual in every interaction has a mission to sell her or his self, or ideas, or products or services, or brands, or affections, or . . .

Here’s what the world’s most successful salespeople know and practice: LISTEN 80% of the time and TALK 20% of the time. Maybe not easy, but it IS simple. And it works! This behavior breeds success in all walks of life with all kinds of circumstances where we seek to make a sale or an impression or gain trust or show understanding.

By disciplining ourselves to listen more carefully to those we are charged with the responsibility to lead, and by being more selective and economical with what we have to say to others, we are also becoming more productive with time and energy spent.

When we can save time and energy by communicating more accurately and productively, we are getting a better handle on what others want and need and suggest, and we are saving on wasted time and energy costs and lost opportunities.

But don’t stop there!

Talking less and listening more does NOT mean talking less and HEARING more. Active listening is an acquired skill that involves open body language (no arms, legs, ankles, wrists, hands, fingers crossed and no peering over the top of your glasses), paraphrasing and asking for examples and diagrams, and nonverbal (e.g., head nodding) as well as verbal acknowledgements.

It means paying attention, staying focused, not allowing distractions. Easy stuff? No. Hardly ever is it easy. Active-listening communication is more work and it takes longer. Ah, but you simply can’t compare the success-level results you’ll get with the productivity (or lack of) that accompanies the typical 80% talking communications that surround our daily lives.

# # #

Hal@BUSINESSWORKS.US  or comment below.

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

Make today a GREAT Day for someone!

One response so far

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