Fine In The Past

Great Advice From My Friend David Kale    Copyright MMXI

I call it FIP. Fine in the Past. It refers to all the sales and marketing efforts, ideas, policies, principles, techniques, and strategies that worked well in the past, but are no longer effective. The past is everything that’s pre-2010.

I still recall a poignant moment with an attendee at one of my seminars. During the break he came up to me and said this: “I’ve been in business for seventeen years. And we’ve done well. But now, it seems like everything is changing, and I don’t know what to do.”

He went on to explain that he had built his formerly thriving tool and die business on certain core principles: Quality workmanship, competitive prices, and good service. Those principles, adhered to with discipline and conviction, had brought him word-of-mouth business consistently over the years. But they were no longer working, and his business was floundering. The pain and confusion were written all over his face as he contemplated the prospect of seeing his business wither away.

Those principles are some of the most common examples of FIP: Business principles and policies that were sufficient on which to build a business, but today are not. At one time, you could distinguish your business from others on the basis of these and other FIP principles. Now, however, the bar has risen. Because there is so much churn in our marketplace and the competition is so fierce, the kinds of service and quality that were sufficient to distinguish yourself from your competition are no longer sufficient. Your customers expect previously outstanding levels of service and quality from every supplier. What was sufficient a few years ago is still necessary today, but no longer sufficient.

That reliance on quality service and word-of-mouth marketing is an FIP principle. When viewed from the perspective of effective sales and marketing approaches, these principles are passive. They rely on your customer’s coming to you, recognizing the superiority of your product or service, and then talking about you to others. Your job is to create an attractive operation that will pull customers to you and then keep them coming back.

When everyone else operated in similar fashion, that was FIP. But when more and more competitors appear, and they make the same claims as you do, your reliance on passive marketing methods relegates you to second choice.

I’ve seen literally hundreds of businesses of all sizes who never reached their potential because of an inability to do sales well. They were perfectly capable of rendering outstanding service at competitive prices but struggled to survive. These FIP principles were so deeply ingrained in their mindsets that they never learned to do sales as well as they could, and their businesses never reached the level of prosperity and success that they could have reached. The economic landscape is littered with the remains of businesses who were excellent in providing their product or service, but mediocre in selling it.
Here are some other FIP practices. See if they apply to you.


FIP # 1: Creating sales by relying totally on outside sales people.


It was OK to hire a number of sales people, give them some basic training, and then charge them with “Go forth and sell a lot." Sales territories were geographically based and each sales person was a clone of the other. Accountability was a nasty word that no one repeated.


Alas, this FIP practice is a prescription for inefficient sales practices. The better approach is a variety of sales methodologies, based on the potential and dynamics of the customer.


FIP # 2: Sales management by pay plan.


In other words, pay them straight commission and everything will take care of itself.


There was a generation for whom this worked. Unfortunately, today’s work force is rarely motivated by just money.


FIP # 3: Reliance on "on-the-job" training.


Everyone can learn how to be an effective sales person. Just put them out there in a sales territory, and sooner or later they will figure out how to do the job well.


When the job of the sales person was simpler, and the customer less sophisticated, this was OK. Today, of course, it positions your sales force as the less educated, less competent one in the market.


FIP # 4: Hiring by “feel.”


When it comes time to hire a new sales person, find someone who has some experience in the industry and about whom you “feel” good.


This is a prescription for a group of clones who please the boss but are rarely what the job demands. There are far more sophisticated and effective hiring criteria and practices than this one.


The list of FIP positions can go on for quite a while. These are the most common. If they apply to you, it is time to rethink your position and move your sales and marketing efforts into the 21st Century.

Why You Aren’t Happy, and How to Make Things Better

as reported in BNET: the CBS Interactive Business Network

By Kelly Goldsmith and Marshall Goldsmith | March 24, 2011

Perhaps it’s no surprise to you that survey after survey finds many people are dissatisfied with their jobs. A Conference Board survey last year reported that only 49% were satisfied with their jobs, the lowest level in 22 years since they began their survey.

But let’s think about that 49%: what made this group satisfied? How do people attain contentment at work?

As we noted in a previous post, we’ve undertaken a survey to find the answer to this question. The way we’ve tackled it is by asking people what gives them short-term gratification (happiness) and long-term benefits (meaning)–at work, and at home. Our respondents–some 3000 of them– are highly educated professionals, with 60% having graduate degrees. (You can look at our survey here.)

We are still analyzing the data, but among our preliminary findings:

Compartmentalizing doesn’t work. People who are dissatisfied with their work also tend to be unhappy at home, and vice versa. There is a very high correlation between people’s happiness and meaning at work and at home.

The company you keep matters. Spending time with people we love, both at work and at home, is highly correlated with overall satisfaction.

What gives people fun and meaning is highly variable. There is nothing inherently satisfying in an activity. Some people see gardening as a sacrifice that brings them some long-term benefit; others think it is light fun–but essentially meaningless. So if you’re dissatisfied with your job, the reasons have as much to do with you as they do with the actual responsibilities.

You can’t achieve overall life satisfaction by being a sacrificing workhorse, or by being “fun loving.” Just being engaged in stimulating activities doesn’t make people satisfied. Likewise, sacrificing to achieve meaning also doesn’t make people content. Those who were satisfied felt both short-term gratification and deep meaning from their work and home lives.

Nobody can define happiness for you. Every company has a plaque on a wall, which eloquently expresses the corporate values. This finding is based on the ground-breaking research by Jim Kouzes. It simply doesn’t matter if individual employees believe in the company’s corporate values. What matters is if their work in the company reflects their own values. You must feel you are living your own values.

But what about all those people who toil long hours? Doesn’t overwork lead to unhappiness? No, we didn’t find the hours spent working correlated to happiness or meaning, or lack thereof. Nor did we find more hours spent outside of work in “fun” activities produced higher levels of satisfaction.

In other words, if you want to discover how to be more satisfied with work and home life, look nowhere else than within. You are the key to your own happiness and meaning, no one else.

Are you happy at work? What do you think is the reason for your happiness–or unhappiness?


Marshall Goldsmith is an executive educator, coach and author. His books include What Got You Here Won't Get You There and Mojo. His specialty is helping successful leaders achieve positive, lasting change in behavior. ..
Kelly Goldsmith is a recent Ph.D. graduate from the Yale School of Management and a member of the faculty at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. Her specialty is research in consumer decision making.

The Art Of Negotiating Price

The Art of Negotiation

Here’s an interesting article on the art of negotiation from The Wallstreet Journal by Mike Michalowicz. It may seem unnatural to put your quote out first, but it can anchor a negotiation and set the stage for all future discussions.
At what point in a negotiation do you show your hand? Most people believe if they know what their prospective client is thinking it will give them an advantage. So they wait to quote a price. They do their homework. They look for clues. Sometimes they just come right out and ask: “What’s your budget? Are you looking for great quality, a fast turnaround, or do you plan to go with the cheapest option? What number are you thinking of?”
Big mistake.
If you want to come out on top, use this simple shortcut: Be first. No dancing around the issue. No hemming and hawing. Just give them a number right off the bat. In doing so, you’ll set the starting point for the discussion, from which all further discussions will stem.
If you quote, say, $8,000 to complete a project, your prospective client may want to negotiate the price or other parameters of the deal, but all negotiations will start at $8,000. You may come down a bit in price, or agree to different payment or delivery terms, but if she hires you, you’ll get a number close to $8,000. On the other hand, if you wait for her to tell you she expects to pay $2,000 for a project, you may be able to negotiate an extra thousand or two, but you’re never going to get the $8,000 you feel you deserve.
Divergence is a huge time waster. If a prospect can’t—or won’t—pay a fair price, why would you spend one more second trying to land her as a client? Even if you lose the deal because your price is too high, you still come out on top because you haven’t invested much time trying to win her business.
How many times have you entered into a deal that you later regretted? When you try to read a prospect’s mind or wait for the person to reveal what he or she expects, you invariably end up doing more work at a discounted rate. How are you going to make it using this old negotiation strategy? (Hint: You won’t.)
Be first. When I started applying this negotiation shortcut, I was able to increase my prices by nearly 50% and filter out prospects who were not a good fit. No more laboring over proposals for people who couldn’t afford my services. No more playing guessing games with myself, trying to figure out what my prospects wanted. No more saying yes to low-ball deals that kept me working 100-hour weeks just to get by.
When it comes to successful negotiations, the single most important matter isn’t what your prospect is thinking. It’s how fast can you get your number on the table. The person who goes first wins. Period.

Mike Michalowicz is the author of "The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur." He is an advocate of a business philosophy by the same name, believing the greatest business successes come from underfunded, inexperienced entrepreneurs. His website is www.ToiletPaperEntrepreneur.com

Things you should know about Gen Y......

Taken from an award-winning DVD-based program titled "Awesome!" - http://bpgrp.com/training_products/preview.
• There is no consensus on the exact birth dates that define Generation Y, but the years between 1980 and 2000 are most often cited. Any way you measure, they are one of the largest generations in history accounting for about 30% of the global population.
• Although they are just now entering the workforce, they will account for almost half of all employees in the next few years.
• Gen Y is more comfortable with diversity than previous generations. They have grown up with people of many races and nationalities, speaking a multitude of languages, coming from traditional and nontraditional families.
• They are smart spenders and account for billions of dollars in purchasing power. They will soon be the dominant consumers driving the economy.
• They are the first generation in history that knows more about the technologies that are central to the economy than their parents – and many of their employers.
• They have been exposed to a wide range of activities and resources at a young age including sports, travel, music, dance, academic enrichment programs, media production tools, and advanced technologies.
• They were raised to speak their minds and don’t automatically defer to people who are older and more experienced. They expect to be judged by what they know, not how long they have known it.
• They want to make a big impact on the world and demand to be taken seriously.
• They expect balance in their lives between work and other activities. They are less likely than their elders to put career ahead of family.
• They have always lived in a world that is constantly changing. They don’t fear change – they welcome it.

Return to what I love

As the year 2009 was ending and it was harshly evident to us all that 2010 might not be any better, economy wise, I accepted a full time position with a client to weather the storm, so they say. My engagement is now over and I am back in the training, coaching and consulting arena. I'm excited to be back, and I hope you are too.

While we are not over the hump, I think the tide is finally turning on this recession. Now is an ideal time to put in place the essential educational and coaching plans that will give you and your team a head start getting out of the gate in 2011. In light of the times, and to make myself more available, more often, I have revised at my fee structure to fit your tight budgets.

I am looking forward to getting back together with you and your team to tackle the issues you face today, or to continue on paths we interrupted when the recession hit. I know that you face many more challenges, some different than in 2008. But I also know there is ongoing need for building your teams, your systems and your processes.

With most of you, our work sessions have been customized to address people development and succession planning, sales development, and business development, such as open book management. I do have available many more half and full day employee training modules. We can plan either half or full day sessions, depending on your needs.

Please drop me a note or call me to see how we might work together to make 2011 a successful year. I look forward to working with you to bring your business to the next level.

Ask yourself: "Do I have the right bus and are the right people on that bus?"

10 Ways to Stretch The 167-Hour Week

by Laura Vanderkam

Yes, we are springing forward this Sunday. That means that this week is a wee bit shorter than most. But there’s no reason it has to feel like it. Here are a few ways to get that hour back:


1.Watch an hour less of TV. Commit this week to watching only shows you love and absolutely nothing else.

2.Do one thing at a time. When you try to check email while writing an essay, it can take 15 minutes or more to get back into the swing of things. Multi-tasking eats hours. Focus until you finish and then move on.

3.Eat sandwiches for dinner. Or leftovers, or a frozen pizza, or eggs, or a quick salad. The point of family dinners is to be together, not channel Julia Child.

4.Run one less errand. You’ll survive without that extra light bulb for a few more days.

5.Lower your housekeeping standards. The house will just get dirty again, but you’ll never get that hour back. The laundry can wait another day or two.

6.Aim for good enough. The vast majority of our work doesn’t have to be done to perfection, it just has to be done.

7.Give things a home. Time spent hunting for shoes and cell phones isn’t helping anyone.

8.Realize you look great already. The difference between a 45-minute personal care routine and a 30-minute one is more than an hour per workweek.

9.If it’s possible, negotiate to work from home one day per week. Ditching the commute (and the suit) easily buys back an hour.

10.Practice saying “no.” When you don’t volunteer for something, that doesn’t mean that thing isn’t important. Indeed, it could be so important that you know you can’t give it the attention it deserves. Suggest someone who could.

How do you free up time in your schedule?

Why Boomers should listen to Gen Y

Posted by: Julia Kinslow on: September 11, 2009 http://juliakinslow.wordpress.com/
Yesterday, waiting for my lunch appointment to arrive, I watched a young man behind the counter texting to a friend between customers. My first reaction was dismay. Shortly after, I realized it is his generation who will be teaching our generation about customer relationships. A little scary? Maybe.
Reverse mentoring
It only seems scary because we’re used to an older generation assuming the mentor role in work environments. Traditionally, it’s the high-seniority professionals showing the younger, less experienced mentees the ropes.
However, if you’re of the Baby Boom Generation, you’ve probably noticed a reverse mentoring trend happening in the workplace. It’s essentially Gen Y (also known as Millennials) mentoring the well-established, more experienced workforce, as opposed to the other way around. The trend is most noticeable in professional fields where technology is an integral part of the work environment.
What Gen Y is telling us
Although no one seems to agree exactly where Gen Y starts and stops (late 1970s – late 1990s), it is a fact that it is the largest generation (approximately 80 million) to hit the American market since the Baby Boomers.
Gen Y are digital natives, meaning digital technology already existed when they were born. They can easily multi-task between searching the Internet, listening to music on their MP3, texting on their mobile phone, while TV is playing in the background.

Growing up amid a high-speed bombardment of information has produced a generation with short attention spans, no doubt. But, it has also produced a sharp generation who understand how to effectively market themselves and products using social networks.
Why Boomers should listen
Because of the emerging influence of Gen Y, it’s important we understand how they’re different in order to monetize marketing strategies in a Web 2.0 environment. When marketing to them, remember that:
1. Mobile phones are like an extension of their arm
2. They don’t care about ads, but what their friends think
3. Television is background noise; Internet TV is better
4. Social media networks equal relationship building
5. They expect work tools to mirror Web tools
6. They value work-life balance; flex-time, an ability to work from anywhere in a “fun” work environment; a need to “buy in” to an idea (aka “Generation Why?”)
An environment where everyone wins
If we can embrace the concept of reverse mentoring, and recognize the positive changes Gen Y brings to business, everyone can benefit. Boomers can learn from Gen Y’s ability to adapt quickly to changing work environments, and at how easily they give and receive feedback. Having grown up during the Enron era, they are skeptical about concepts such as company loyalty, and appear to have an almost built in expectation of company layoffs.
It’s Gen Y’s time to challenge outdated norms and create real change in an environment so everyone can win.