Stop Gambling when you Hire

On Tuesday, I told you that I used to absolutely hate hiring. All the time and effort and it was still just a crap shoot. It was such a crap shoot that we would keep under performing employees because the chances of getting a better one we’re less than playing craps. That all changed about 15 years ago when I meet Grant Robinson and started using him to hire properly.

I asked Grant to share some on his expertise on hiring with you. Here is his third of four articles.

In addition to reading this article and getting his free gift at the end I suggest you follow this link and watch Grant’s one minute video. www.HiringBestPractices.com.

The Final ½ a Secret (of 3 ½) to Hire the People You Need to Accomplish Your Business Goals

I hope you’ve read the past three articles and if so, here is a review of what you’ve learned:

Article 1 – Why you continue to recruit and hire poor performers even after all the things you have implemented into your selection process.

Article 2 – The #1 “talent” of the most productive individuals, teams & organizations… the talent of developing clear, written goals and objectives for not only your business and departments, but every position.

Article 3 – The advantage that virtually every small and large market leader shares (and is keeping a secret from you)… the secret of Job Matching that quadruples your odds of hiring a TOP Performer the first time.

And now, I’m going to help you discover…

Exactly What to Do if Your Employees are Currently Holding You Back

But first, let’s look at the ways that employees hold us back. At People Values, we’ve designated them into three categories: Unreliable, Unmotivated and Unproductive.

Your unreliable people are those that have attendance issues and are always tardy. Their lack of reliability leads to other members of their team having to fill in for them or work their shift.

Your unmotivated people are the lazy employees, who always seem to be complaining about something or someone. Their lack of motivation hinders their team from accomplishing goals.

Your unproductive people are the ones you spend your days micro-managing, continue to train and re-train and have to adjust their job responsibilities just to get some sort of benefit of having them on your payroll.

But here’s the thing: When you retain these unreliable, unmotivated and unproductive people and allow them to hold back your business… THEY ARE NOT the ones that are holding you back.

You are the one who has settled for the mediocrity that they bring to your business. You are the one who has continued to pay their salary robbing from your revenue and profitability.

Which leads me to…

The Final ½ a Secret of Hiring & Developing a TOP Performing Team (& Why it’s Only ½ a Secret):

When something is holding your business back and you know what it is, you must do something about it.

“Taking Action” is the final secret of TOP Performance. But you already know this and this is why it’s only ½ a secret…

The leaders of the most successful and profitable businesses continually Take Action and this is how they’ve become and how they’ll remain their market’s leader.

Making any excuse and blaming the economy, changes in your industry, the high expectations of your clients, your vendor’s quality control, the IRS and the government, your pricing, etc. is only going to detract from taking the action you must to improve. And these are all excuses the owners of struggling businesses have given me in the last week (I actually make a list and have heard 22 of them).

And these same owners have ALL also blamed their employees for their lack of success too. Even though they are the ones who fail to lead by example. They are the ones who haven’t established clear, written performance standards that their employees must meet. They are the ones who have settled for mediocrity in their business without taking action.

What is Going to Happen to Your Business (& You) if You Don’t Take Action ASAP…

You’ve had these problems for a while. They are not going to magically disappear. They never do… and usually only get worse.

Here are some of the things that will happen if you continue on with “business as usual”…

  • You’ll only find more excuses on what is holding your business back
  • Being surrounded by unreliable, unmotivated and unproductive people, your TOP Performers will eventually lose their desire to fill in for others, deal with the conflict surrounding them and stop performing too
  • Your best people will eventually lose the remaining faith they have in you, quit and go to work for your competitor
  • You’ll have to scramble and recruit / hire an employee… but without an effective recruiting or selection system, you’ll probably just pick another non-producer
  • Without the systems to develop your leaders or employees, you’ll become even less profitable
  • You’re going to lose the will to continue on and accomplish the dreams you once had (whether 2 or 20 years ago) when you started your business

If any of the trends have already started, today is the day to take action. In 17-years of helping good (and even bad) businesses become great, I’ve learned it’s never too late to take action.

I know… Sometimes You Don’t Even Know Where to Start, Right?

96% of the clients we partner with have come to us through referrals from industry experts, business coaches and our clients (though our clients never tell their direct competitors about us). Job Matching is their secret weapon.

Most of these new partners never knew there was a step-by-step, do it yourself service like ours to create a “People System” to recruit, hire, train, develop and retain TOP Performers.

But it’s exactly what they needed. And by developing one process at a time, they’ve become market leaders… and so can you. Even though right now, there are so many things you need to implement you don’t even know where to start.

If after reading these articles the past two weeks you believe that your business has more potential and it’s time to take action, let us provide some guidance on what to start with.

We usually charge $149 for our TOP Performance Consultation (up to an hour-long phone conversation) where we help you develop a three-step action plan to start moving in the right direction.

The Gift for Reading this Entire Article…

As I promised Keith, I’d give a gift just for reading each article to the end.

The gift this time is for a complimentary TOP Performance Consultation where we can talk about anything that you’d like. Whether that is how to improve your “people system” or any other aspect holding your business back from reaching it’s potential.

Here is where you can schedule your consultation right now: https://peoplevalues.com/tpconsultation/.

Do What You Do So Well
That People Can’t Help Telling Others About You

Keith Lee
Keith@KeithLee.com

Hiring the Right Person Doesn’t Need to Feel Like Playing Craps

I used to absolutely hate hiring. All the time and effort and it was still just a crap shoot. It was such a crap shoot that we would keep under performing employees because the chances of getting a better one we’re less than playing craps. That all changed about 15 years ago when I meet Grant Robinson and started using him to hire properly.

The first hire we needed to make after I decided to use Grant was in sales. Our sales manager, Gerri, didn’t like the idea of using Grant at all. She thought she could “read” people well, and compared to others playing hiring craps maybe she was better, but the odds still sucked! This was one of the rare instances that I told her she needed to do something she didn’t want to do.

Gerri went through the process with Grant, made her hire and she was sold. Since then we’ve used Grant for every hire we make in every business I own.

With this in mind, I asked Grant to write a series on articles on hiring for you. I suggest you read the first article below and then come back here, follow this link and watch Grant’s 1 minute video. www.HiringBestPractices.com.

3 ½ Secrets to Hire the People You Need to Accomplish Your Business Goals

If you haven’t realized it yet… the year is more than half over. So, have you accomplished half of your personal and business goals yet?

If not, you’re lucky to be a subscriber to this newsletter. Over the next two weeks, you’ll get a 4-part series of articles full of strategies to help you recruit, hire and improve the performance of your team and business.

Here is what you’ll discover over the next couple weeks:

Article 1 – Why you continue to recruit and hire poor performers even after all thing things you have implemented into your selection process

Article 2 – The #1 “talent” of the most productive individuals, teams & organizations (that you need to develop)

Article 3 – The advantage that virtually every small and large market leader shares… and is keeping it a secret from you

Article 4 – Exactly what to do if your employees are currently holding you back

When Keith requested these articles from me, he asked that they were educational. He also asked me to give something away to his readers.

So here’s a head’s up: just for reading each article, you’ll get a very valuable gift at the end that will help you improve your recruiting and hiring process.

The Main Reason A Lot of Organizations are Not Accomplishing Their Goals

In working with Market Leaders in all industries for the past 17+ years, we’ve learned that many of these companies are not much different than their counterparts. This is true whether they are in manufacturing, retail, construction or any other industry.

Many times, they are selling the same exact products or services, have access to the same marketing material and have similar sales processes. Also, in many cases, the market leaders we work with don’t even have a competitive advantage in their location, their websites are not the best in their industry and many don’t have the longevity or years in business that many of their counterparts have.

But what they do have are two things. The first is the “talent” you’ll learn about in the next article of this series.

The second is, they always have the most reliable, motivated and productive employees in their market. And this doesn’t happen by chance.

There is no luck involved in recruiting or hiring people that really want to serve your customers the way they expect to be served.

There is no luck involved in recruiting or hiring people that actually enjoy selling and will continually improve their performance to meet quota month after month.

And there’s no luck involved in recruiting or hiring people that are effective in training new employees and coaching team members to become (& remain) productive.

But it takes much more than posting an ad online and interviewing people to recruit and hire the people your business needs. With the internet and websites like Indeed, Craigslist and Zip Recruiter, it’s become simple and anyone in any organization can recruit and gather a stack of resumes.

But not everyone can pick the right candidate out of this stack of resumes. Here’s how I know this…

Odds of Hiring a TOP Performer (the 1st time)

Studies have shown that 84% of employees will disappoint in their first year on the job. This doesn’t mean that they will quit and you’ll be hiring for the same position because many times they just stay with a company continuing to hold them back.

So why do they stay?

Well, because many are just too lazy to search for a new job and they need the salary to pay their bills. And the other reason they stay is because you’ve allowed them to.

Perhaps you’ve done so because it takes a lot of time, effort and money to recruit, review resumes, interview, complete new hire paperwork, train, etc.

And then there is no guarantee (especially with 84% of employees disappointing) that the new hire will be any better.

So What Can You Do?

There are many things you can do. That’s the good news.

Here are just some of them:

  • Phone screen candidates
  • Email questionnaires
  • Reference Checks
  • Hire an expensive recruiter or headhunter
  • Drug Test
  • Behavioral interview questions
  • Background Check
  • Group interviews
  • Personality Tests
  • Skills Assessments
  • Consult a Psychic (yes… one of our clients did this before partnering with us)
  • And many, many more things…

But here’s the bad news: You can use ALL OF THESE STRATEGIES together and odds are (shown by even more studies) that still more than 50% of the people you hire are going to disappoint in the first year on the job.

And That Right There is the 1st Secret

What you just read is the first of the 3 ½ Secrets to Hire the People You Need to Accomplish Your Business Goals…

Everything you’ve been taught to do to assure that you hire the right people is giving you no better odds than shuffling all of the resumes you receive, randomly pulling two out of the pile and flipping a coin to make a hiring decision.

Here’s why: The traditional hiring process used by most companies and combining all of the strategies listed above do not help you determine whether the candidate has “Job Fit.” Even by using all of these strategies, you still don’t know:

  1. Competency Fit and whether the candidate can be trained quickly, be accurate in their work, process new information to increase their current skill, etc.
  2. Behavior Fit and whether they fit the team, are coachable, have critical thinking abilities to manage themselves, can multi-task, etc.
  3. Interest Fit and whether they (even though they say they are in their interview) are really motivated by serving people, leading others or doing the other important aspects of the job without external motivation from a manager.

Besides the “Culture Fit” (integrity, reliably, work-ethic, etc.) issues that lead to an employee disappointing, the three areas above are usually the issues that lead to failure in a position. And even by using all of the strategies you’ve been told will work to hire the right people, you still don’t know these things before hiring right now.

Now hopefully you have a better than 50% “Hiring Success Rate” and the majority of your employees are reliable, internally motivated and continually improve their performance. But if not, you’re lucky you are a subscriber to this newsletter. Here are three reason why:

Reason 1 – The next article is going to teach you the #1 “talent” of TOP Performing Individuals, Teams and Businesses and the quickest way to start improving the performance of your organization.

Reason 2 – In the 3rd article, you’ll discover the little-known secret of “Job Matching”.

& Reason 3 – Here’s the gift I promised for reading this entire article… Since your odds of hiring the right people increase when you recruit and attract more of the right candidates to apply, here is where you can immediately download my book “The 50 Best Strategies to Recruit TOP Performing Employees”

By reading this book, here’s what you’ll discover:

  • Exactly why you are having trouble finding qualified, quality people and how to build a “bullpen” of candidates for the next time you are hiring
  • How to write ads that attract TOP Performers… and detract incompetent, lazy people from even applying​ and wasting your time
  • The 50 Best Strategies to recruit quality, qualified candidates (without depending on websites and expensive headhunters or temporary agencies)

Here is where you can get a FREE copy of my book right now: https://peoplevalues.com/recruitingbook-kl/

Do What You Do So Well
That People Can’t Help Telling Others About You

Keith Lee
Keith@KeithLee.com

How to Hire the Right Person the First Time

I used to absolutely hate hiring. All the time and effort and it was still just a crap shoot. It was such a crap shoot that we would keep under performing employees because the chances of getting a better one we’re less than playing craps. That all changed about 15 years ago when I meet Grant Robinson and started using him to hire properly.

The first hire we needed to make after I decided to use Grant was in sales. Our sales manager, Gerri, didn’t like the idea of using Grant at all. She thought she could “read” people well, and compared to others playing hiring craps maybe she was better, but the odds still sucked! This was one of the rare instances that I told her she needed to do something she didn’t want to do.

Gerri went through the process with Grant, made her hire and she was sold. Since then we’ve used Grant for every hire we make in every business I own.

With this in mind, I asked Grant to write a series on articles on hiring for you. I suggest you read the first article below and then come back here, follow this link and watch Grant’s 1 minute video. www.HiringBestPractices.com.

3 ½ Secrets to Hire the People You Need
to Accomplish Your Business Goals

If you haven’t realized it yet… the year is more than half over. So, have you accomplished half of your personal and business goals yet?

If not, you’re lucky to be a subscriber to this newsletter. Over the next two weeks, you’ll get a 4-part series of articles full of strategies to help you recruit, hire and improve the performance of your team and business.

Here is what you’ll discover over the next couple weeks:

Article 1 – Why you continue to recruit and hire poor performers even after all thing things you have implemented into your selection process

Article 2 – The #1 “talent” of the most productive individuals, teams & organizations (that you need to develop)

Article 3 – The advantage that virtually every small and large market leader shares… and is keeping it a secret from you

Article 4 – Exactly what to do if your employees are currently holding you back

When Keith requested these articles from me, he asked that they were educational. He also asked me to give something away to his readers.

So here’s a head’s up: just for reading each article, you’ll get a very valuable gift at the end that will help you improve your recruiting and hiring process.

The Main Reason A Lot of Organizations are Not Accomplishing Their Goals

In working with Market Leaders in all industries for the past 17+ years, we’ve learned that many of these companies are not much different than their counterparts. This is true whether they are in manufacturing, retail, construction or any other industry.

Many times, they are selling the same exact products or services, have access to the same marketing material and have similar sales processes. Also, in many cases, the market leaders we work with don’t even have a competitive advantage in their location, their websites are not the best in their industry and many don’t have the longevity or years in business that many of their counterparts have.

But what they do have are two things. The first is the “talent” you’ll learn about in the next article of this series.

The second is, they always have the most reliable, motivated and productive employees in their market. And this doesn’t happen by chance.

There is no luck involved in recruiting or hiring people that really want to serve your customers the way they expect to be served.

There is no luck involved in recruiting or hiring people that actually enjoy selling and will continually improve their performance to meet quota month after month.

And there’s no luck involved in recruiting or hiring people that are effective in training new employees and coaching team members to become (& remain) productive.

But it takes much more than posting an ad online and interviewing people to recruit and hire the people your business needs. With the internet and websites like Indeed, Craigslist and Zip Recruiter, it’s become simple and anyone in any organization can recruit and gather a stack of resumes.

But not everyone can pick the right candidate out of this stack of resumes. Here’s how I know this…

Odds of Hiring a TOP Performer (the 1st time)

Studies have shown that 84% of employees will disappoint in their first year on the job. This doesn’t mean that they will quit and you’ll be hiring for the same position because many times they just stay with a company continuing to hold them back.

So why do they stay?

Well, because many are just too lazy to search for a new job and they need the salary to pay their bills. And the other reason they stay is because you’ve allowed them to.

Perhaps you’ve done so because it takes a lot of time, effort and money to recruit, review resumes, interview, complete new hire paperwork, train, etc.

And then there is no guarantee (especially with 84% of employees disappointing) that the new hire will be any better.

So What Can You Do?

There are many things you can do. That’s the good news.

Here are just some of them:

  • Phone screen candidates
  • Email questionnaires
  • Reference Checks
  • Hire an expensive recruiter or headhunter
  • Drug Test
  • Behavioral interview questions
  • Background Check
  • Group interviews
  • Personality Tests
  • Skills Assessments
  • Consult a Psychic (yes… one of our clients did this before partnering with us)
  • And many, many more things…

But here’s the bad news: You can use ALL OF THESE STRATEGIES together and odds are (shown by even more studies) that still more than 50% of the people you hire are going to disappoint in the first year on the job.

And That Right There is the 1st Secret

What you just read is the first of the 3 ½ Secrets to Hire the People You Need to Accomplish Your Business Goals…

Everything you’ve been taught to do to assure that you hire the right people is giving you no better odds than shuffling all of the resumes you receive, randomly pulling two out of the pile and flipping a coin to make a hiring decision.

Here’s why: The traditional hiring process used by most companies and combining all of the strategies listed above do not help you determine whether the candidate has “Job Fit.” Even by using all of these strategies, you still don’t know:

  1. Competency Fit and whether the candidate can be trained quickly, be accurate in their work, process new information to increase their current skill, etc.
  2. Behavior Fit and whether they fit the team, are coachable, have critical thinking abilities to manage themselves, can multi-task, etc.
  3. Interest Fit and whether they (even though they say they are in their interview) are really motivated by serving people, leading others or doing the other important aspects of the job without external motivation from a manager.

Besides the “Culture Fit” (integrity, reliably, work-ethic, etc.) issues that lead to an employee disappointing, the three areas above are usually the issues that lead to failure in a position. And even by using all of the strategies you’ve been told will work to hire the right people, you still don’t know these things before hiring right now.

Now hopefully you have a better than 50% “Hiring Success Rate” and the majority of your employees are reliable, internally motivated and continually improve their performance. But if not, you’re lucky you are a subscriber to this newsletter. Here are three reason why:

Reason 1 – The next article is going to teach you the #1 “talent” of TOP Performing Individuals, Teams and Businesses and the quickest way to start improving the performance of your organization.

Reason 2 – In the 3rd article, you’ll discover the little-known secret of “Job Matching”.

& Reason 3 – Here’s the gift I promised for reading this entire article… Since your odds of hiring the right people increase when you recruit and attract more of the right candidates to apply, here is where you can immediately download my book “The 50 Best Strategies to Recruit TOP Performing Employees”

By reading this book, here’s what you’ll discover:

  • Exactly why you are having trouble finding qualified, quality people and how to build a “bullpen” of candidates for the next time you are hiring
  • How to write ads that attract TOP Performers… and detract incompetent, lazy people from even applying​ and wasting your time
  • The 50 Best Strategies to recruit quality, qualified candidates (without depending on websites and expensive headhunters or temporary agencies)

Here is where you can get a FREE copy of my book right now: https://peoplevalues.com/recruitingbook-kl/

Do What You Do So Well
That People Can’t Help Telling Others About You

How to Empower Every Member of Your Team

I’m mostly a black and white kind of guy.  There’s good, there’s bad.  There’s right, there’s wrong.  There’s proper behavior, there’s stupid behavior.  You succeed, or you fail; and you don’t blame anyone else.

So when I heard the term “Situational Leadership” I thought, Holy cow, another feel-good, politically correct excuse for not performing. I was wrong – way wrong.

Situational Relationship Behavior is the extent to which the leader engages in 2-way communication; in other words, your interaction with people.

High relationship means you’re highly engaged.  You’re giving them additional training and support on an ongoing basis.  You’re interacting with them quite frequently.

Low relationship behavior means that you’re not as engaged in 2-way communication.

Task Behavior is the extent to which the leader is engaged in spelling out the duties and responsibilities.  High task behavior means the manager is more detailed and directive toward telling the subordinate step-by-step what to do.

Low task behavior is when the manager assigns the task, delegates the task, and is not involved with actually getting the job done.

A new employee (team member) typically starts in Q1 (see picture) and the manager does a lot of Telling (high task, low relationship).  There is a lot of instruction showing them how to do the job.  You’re not patting them on the back yet because they haven’t shown anything yet.  You’re teaching and training them, so there is not a lot of relationship behavior.

After a few months, the new employee is making some progress and it’s time to move from telling to Selling (high task, high relationship).   The manager is still directing and showing, but the communication is more 2-way.  The manager gives a lot of reinforcement while explaining, clarifying and persuading.  The manager is mining for ideas from the team member and teaching them to think on their own.  The leader still defines the roles and tasks, but seeks ideas and suggestions.  The leader pats them on the back.  The more you can guide them to thinking things out the more beneficial it is to you in the future.

As the individual grows, it’s time for the manager to move from selling to Participating (high relationship, low task).  The person understands the job and knows how to do it, but doesn’t have a lot of confidence yet.  They need reinforcement on an ongoing basis until they develop confidence.  The manager gives the individual a lot of support, pats him on the back, and stays very close.  Because the individual knows the job, there is much less directive behavior from the manager.

As the team member becomes more and more competent, he becomes a true expert at the job and the manager moves to Empowering (low relationship, low task).  The team member is doing 80% or more of the talking during the PDI.  The manager is observing, monitoring, reinforcing, and delegating.

Your goal as the manager is to get your staff to Quadrant 4, but as the arrows in the graph above show, it’s not a one-way street.  Depending on the job or task, you may move down or up a quadrant, or even two – and sometimes even three.

In one of my businesses, one of my vice presidents is fabulous at her job and my management style is almost always empowering.  But she’s not a numbers person, so when it comes to working with numbers my management style moves to Participating and sometimes to Selling or even Telling.  With her it was not uncommon for me to say, “That number doesn’t make sense, check it out.”

It’s also important to understand that you’re working with people, not machines.  We all have personal lives away from business and for all of us, our personal lives influence us at work.  Sometimes it’s critically important to move down a quadrant when a team member has personal problems.

Leaving your empathy and understanding behind, you have a lot invested in someone who’s in Q4.  Moving up on the relationship scale to Participating or even to Selling is sometimes critical to get that person back up to speed.  And, of course, if things get worse you may need to move to Telling with get this done or you’ll be fired.

For a complete discussion of Situational Leadership get my book Performance Reviews Suck for FREE. I just ask that you help with postage and handling by paying $2.97.

Click here to get the book.

Do What You Do So Well
That People Can’t Help Telling Others About You

Checking it Off My Bucket List Today!

The picture above shows my ride for the next two days.

This is a big one for me… Heli-skiing with my daughter Jenny, and son Travis.

Living your bucket list now, and not waiting, is one of the best reasons to implement The Make-You-Happy Management System in your business. The system is called the Make-You-Happy Management System because it makes your customers happy, your employees happy, your managers happy, your vendors happy and most importantly, you and your family happy.

Every once in a while when I’m on an interview in podcast, coaches call tele-seminar or webinar, I’m asked, “What accomplishment are you most proud of?” My response is, “My 42 year marriage to my high school sweat heart Patty.” Then I ask, “Can I share one more with you?” The answer, of course in always, “Yes.”

Here’s my second accomplishment that I’m most proud of. “Skiing has always been huge in our family. My wife Patty and I met on the ski bus in high school. The kids started really young and we skied a lot. Now both of our grand kids started skiing when they were two – actually Whitney was 22 months. We skied in the Cascades, about an hour from our house, and took another ski vacation most every year. Today we have a vacation home that’s 16 miles from our favorite ski area.

While it may not be an accomplishment, this represents what is most important to me. When Travis was a senior in college he asked if he and I could go on a ski vacation for his last spring break. While his friends were partying in Hawaii or Florida he wanted to go skiing with me. Then two years later when Jenny was graduating from college she also asked to go skiing with me. I knew when they both asked me to go skiing with them on their last spring break that I did it right by making sure my businesses ran properly so that I could live my bucket list while they were growing up and not miss out at being a dad.”

If you want to discover how to create a business that gets better whether you’re there or not, so you can live your bucket list now go to https://keithlee.com/freedom-for-business-owners and watch the video.

P.S. Today I own three businesses. Travis runs the biggest of the three and all of the businesses run so well that were going skiing together for three days this week; and then our entire family Travis his wife Jen, their kids Carson and Whitney, Patty my wife, and Jenny our daughter, are going to Mexico for the first week in April, and all three businesses will continue to improve while were gone.

Do What You Do So Well
That People Can’t Help Telling Others About You

Keith Lee
Keith@KeithLee.com

It Starts and Ends with Trust

How to Get Your Team to Open Up… It Starts and Ends with Trust

I learned a number of great lessons from my mentor, retired ex-partner, and founder of American Retail Supply; Dick Thompson.  One of the best was, “When you point your finger at someone, three fingers are pointing back at you.”

As I share this story with you, please understand that 3 fingers are pointing back at me.  This was one of my biggest failures as the president of our company.  In hindsight, I should have done a much better job making sure this manager understood and truly bought into the Make-You-Happy Management System and its reliance on team member participation.

Middle management can be a particular challenge with the Make-You-Happy Management System, especially when that manager has previously managed in a business that does not practice Z-theory management (participative management).  It can really be a challenge when the middle manager has previously leaned towards X Theory (authoritarian management).

It’s critical that your middle managers understand and buy into Z-Theory Management when you use The Make-You-Happy Management System.

When I owned American Retail Supply, our headquarters were in Kent, Washington, and we had distribution and sales offices in Denver, Dallas, and Honolulu.  One of our division managers asked me this question, “When facilitating a MAT, how do you get the ball rolling when you’re just staring at blank faces?  I just sometimes feel like people have enough energy to complain, but are unwilling to use their energy to help solve the problem or think of a positive/better solution.”

When he sent me this email, he had been with us for almost a year.  I had been working with him on this and other, similar issues and I knew what the problem was.

I would normally not put this type of answer in an email, but I wasn’t making much progress and I thought it was time to put our previous discussions in writing.  Maybe that would get through.  Here’s my answer: “The problem you express above is a symptom, not the disease.  The disease is they don’t believe you’re sincere when you tell them you want their input.  In other words, they don’t trust you.

Think back to us talking at the show in Las Vegas.  You said that you do this to show you’re decisive, or you do that to show that you’re understanding or fair.

That’s when we talked about a silly management philosophy that says that a new manager should come in strong and tough and you can then back off after you get respect.  That’s what I perceived that you were thinking and doing when you started managing.

I told you that was a bad idea.  A good manager should come in and be appropriate and fair to show that you are appropriate and fair.  Once you get their trust and show them that you really want to listen and be their coach, cheerleader, facilitator and nurturer of champions and not a cop, devils advocate, pronouncer and nay-sayer they will open up.

If they don’t open up, it’s because they don’t trust you.  They don’t see you as a coach, cheerleader, facilitator and nurturer of champions.  People open up to coaches, cheerleaders, facilitators and nurturers of champions.  They don’t open up to cops, devil’s advocates, pronouncers and nay-sayers.

As we’ve continued to talk since Las Vegas I still hear you saying that you said this to show you’re decisive, or you do that to show that you’re understanding or fair.  That’s being manipulative –  not being a coach, cheerleader, facilitator and nurturer of champions.

Again, you need to do what is right and appropriate because it is right and appropriate – not to be decisive, or strong or anything else.

Ask yourself this question, what have you done consistently with each and every person in your division to show that you are a coach, cheerleader, facilitator and nurturer of champions?  It is absolutely critical that you think of this from their point of view and not from the “I do this to show I’m that” point of view.

My first suggestion is to look in the index of the Team Handbook in the Make-You-Happy Management System under “meeting tools and techniques – warm-ups”.  There are ideas in there to get involvement.

Again, that’s going to be tough because if they don’t trust you they’ll just see that as a way to manipulate them.  I would still try it.

Ask them what things they think need to be improved, or what problems they have with getting their jobs done efficiently and effectively.

If you’re still getting nowhere try this.  Say, “In Kent they answer the phone the same way every time.

  • Greeting – “Thanks for calling”
  • Identification – “American Retail Supply”
  • What you can do for them – “How may I direct your call?”

They developed their greeting in Kent from watching a DVD by “The Telephone Doctor” who says, there are two reasons to have a greeting before you identify the company.

  • Often the person calling isn’t ready to listen right away
  • Sometimes when we answer the phone we start talking before we have the receiver all the way to our mouth

Keith asked us to come up with a similar greeting for us.  He also said when he calls he sometimes doesn’t know who he’s talking with and it would be good to hear your name in the greeting.

So, with that in mind, he asked us to come up with a greeting that would be the model for answering the phone in each division where we don’t have a dedicated receptionist to say “How may I direct your call?”

How should we answer the phone to include:

  • Greeting
  • Identification of the company and the individual
  • What you can do for them
  • If no one answers say, Bill, what do you think?  Then come up with a greeting everyone can agree on and implement it.

Here’s one I would love to see you discuss, “I want to come up with a dress code that everyone thinks is fair and appropriate for the job.  Who would like to help with this”?  This is what I suggested that you do right after you got flaked on the dress code you implemented without getting the team involved.

You decided that would show weakness.  I think it shows just the opposite, that you know you’re not perfect and you’re confident enough to admit it when you make a mistake.

Click here https://keithlee.com/freedom-for-business-owners to discover how to manage your entire team in one hour a week so you can spend your time on the important things in your business.

 

 

 

Keep Failing

The sign off on my email for years was, “Keep thinking, keep trying, keep failing, keep succeeding, keep growing”. I want to emphasize Keep Failing today.

I believe fear of failure is one of the biggest detriments for business people.

But let’s look at just a few historical failures.

• JFK failed the bar exam twice.

• Mark Twain, Henry Ford, P.T. Barnum, Milton Hershey, and Henry Heinz all went bankrupt.

• Walt Disney was fired because of a lack of new ideas.

• Winston Churchill flunked 8th grade.

Perhaps, one of the most famous failures that directly relates to business is Thomas Edison’s statement while attempting to create the light bulb, “I have not failed, I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work”.

One of the most important concepts in the Make-You-Happy Management System is getting lots of input and ideas on how to improve from your team. It’s really important that in coming up with ideas and input that they not be afraid to fail. That they not be afraid to suggest lots of things – things that may not be implemented. If people are afraid to fail in your business the ideas will dry up.

The following is excerpted from Fail Fast, Fail Often: How Losing Can Help You Win by Ryan Babineaux, PhD., and John Krumboltz, PhD.

“There’s something to notice about successful people: they act quickly, even if they may fail.”

In the book Art and Fear, the artists Ted Orland and David Waylon share a story about a ceramics teacher who tried an experiment with his class.

“The teacher divided the students into two groups. Those sitting on the left side of the studio were to be graded solely on the quantity of their work, while those on the right, solely on the quality. The instructor informed the students in the quantity group that a simple rule would be applied to evaluate their grades: those who produced fifty pounds of pots would get an A, those who produced forty pounds a B, and so on.

For the quality group, the instructor told the students that he would assign a course grade based on the single best piece produced over the duration of the course. So if a student created a first-rate pot on day one of the course and did nothing else for the term, he would still get an A.

When the end of the quarter arrived and it came to grading time, the instructor made an interesting discovery: the students who created the best work, as judged by technical and artistic sophistication, were the quantity group. While they were busy producing pot after pot, they were experimenting, becoming more adept at working with the clay, and learning from the mistakes on each progressive piece.

In contrast, the students in the quality group carefully planned out each pot and tried to produce refined, flawless work, and so they only worked on a few pieces over the length of the course. Because of their limited practice, they showed little improvement.”

I like this story because it points out an important principle: successful people take action as quickly as possible, even though they may perform badly.

Instead of trying to avoid making mistakes and failing, they actively seek opportunities where they can face the limits of their skills and knowledge so that they can learn quickly. They understand that feeling afraid or underprepared is a sign of being in the space for optimal growth and is all the more reason to press ahead. In contrast, when unsuccessful people feel unprepared or afraid, they interpret it as a sign that it is time to stop, readdress their plans, question their motives, or spend more time preparing and planning.”

It is also critical that you not be afraid of failure in marketing and sales. In fact, one of the characteristics of good marketing businesses is that they fail fast! The faster you fail and get on to the next idea, the faster you’ll find something that works. Even the best marketers have more failures than successes. If you are interested in this kind of marketing, you can get a FREE Gift at: kennedy.3dmailresults.com. No www before it.

Do What You Do So Well
That People Can’t Help Telling Others About You

Keith Lee
Keith@KeithLee.com

Create Customer Service Legends

“Create Customer Service Legends” 

The goal of Make-You-Happy Customer Service is to create a culture in which exceptional customer service is the norm. A culture in which indifferent customer service is simply not an option. Creating Customer Service Legends is a great way to do that and here’s a great way to create customer service legends.

We encourage every team member to send an ‘Atta Boy’ or an ‘Atta Girl’ whenever they notice another team member who has gone ‘Above and Beyond’ in providing Make-You-Happy Customer Service to another team member, or client.

When someone sees that a team member has gone above and beyond they simply send an email to the entire company with the subject line ‘Atta Boy’ or ‘Atta Girl.’ This simple idea is one of the best things we’ve ever done to create a culture of providing exceptional customer service. With no effort from management our “Atta Girls” and “Atta Boys” keep our Make-You-Happy Customer Service philosophy in the forefront continually.

Here’s an ‘Atta Boy’ from Mark Turner about our POS tech crew. Remember, this gets sent to the entire company.

“I asked the tech guys if they could answer a question (no charge) for a prospect who has RMS from another vendor in one store and is adding a second store. Her current vendor could, or would not answer and she tried the online help at Microsoft to no avail. Our guys agreed to help her, Brian called and left a message, the prospect called back and Peter took care of her.

I talked to her today and she said, ‘He was wonderful! Your quote was a few hundred more than the other guys and money is tight, but you guys are getting the business for sure.'”

Here’s another ‘Atta Girl’ from Ariane in sales about Dorothy in purchasing. See the article below for a discussion about internal customer service.

“Thank you Dorothy for helping me enter a Lozier order. This is my first one and Dorothy took the time to come sit with me to make sure I understood how to enter the order so it made sense for sales, purchasing, and the client! Way to go, Dorothy for an “..and then some attitude”

Atta Boys and Atta Girls have been a great addition for our company and I bet they will be for yours also.

Implement ‘Atta Boys’ and ‘Atta Girls’ in your business.

You can get my hardcopy book (not an e-book), The Happy Customer Handbook, 59 Secrets to Creating Happy Customers Who Come Back Time and Time Again and Enthusiastically Tell Others About You at www.TheHappyCustomerHandbook.com. Your cost is $2.97 and that includes shipping and handling.

Live Your Bucket List Now

One of the things that I’ve added to my “Live Your Bucket List Now” presentation is to make sure you have items on your bucket list that require you to stay in shape as you get older.  That way, instead of working out and eat right just to stay in shape you’ve eating right and working out to LIVE YOUR BUCKET LIST

Follow this link to discover how you can Live Your Bucket List Now

If you have items on your Bucket List that require you to stay in shape you won’t be working out and watching what you eat to just stay in shape, you’ll be doing those things to Live Your Bucket List.

My bucket list included back country skiing with my daughter Jenny. That’s where you hike up the mountain and ski down.  I’ve skied to 49 years and I’ll continue to ride the chair lift and ski in bounds, but AT skiing looked pretty darned awesome.

So, about a year ago I checked, “Become an AT skier” off my Bucket List by taking a 3-day avalanche class with Jenny.

They say a picture say a thousand words, so I’ll share some with you as I go

The Make-You-Happy Management System is about YOU
Living Your Bucket List Now… are you!

I took a 3-day avalanche training class with my daughter Jenny.  In the class we learned how to be safe in the back country and how to find someone should they become buried in an avalanche.  After the class I’m confident that I can travel in the back-country safely and have a great time skiing.

Jenny’s friend Christy joined Jenny and me in the class.

Day 1

We drove up a windy private dirt road to about the 4,000 foot level of Downing Mountain outside of Hamilton Montana.  From there we skinned up the road to Downing Mountain Lodge at 5,500 feet.  (Skinning – You attach a synthetic ‘skin’ to the bottom of your skies so you can walk up the mountain without sliding back).

We didn’t know what to expect for accommodations but it turned out great.

We got our gear settled in and started our first classroom session.  We learned how to use our rescue beacons to find someone buried in the snow.  About 2pm we went outside, skinned up about 1,000 feet and practiced finding buried beacons.  As the sun was setting we skied back to the lodge, had dinner (great lasagna) and another class room session.  We started learning how to read the terrain, weather, and other things so we could have fun and STAY OUT OF AN AVALANCHE.

Day 2

Got up, had a great breakfast and another classroom session.  Then it was time to head up the mountain, learn how to read the terrain, snow pack weather, dig our avalanche pit, test the snow and ski!

We skinned from 5,500 feet to the summit of Downing Mountain at 8,000 feet.  Oh my GOD!  I don’t know if Jenny keeps me young or not, but I was sucking air and feeling every bit of my 61 years.

But… I felt absolutely incredible as I ate lunch with Jenny at the summit.  Here I am with Jenny eating lunch at 8,000 feet.  I’m the black blob leaning on the tree to the left of Jenny.

Here is most of the group getting ready to ski down and dig our avalanche pits to test the snow.

Jenny – Taking a measurement in our pit.

After a great run down to the lodge, it was time for a little relaxation, and a shot-ski.  Get it, doing shots with holes drilled into the ski to hold the shot glasses.  Daddy-daughter bonding at its best.

Day 3

This was our (the students) day to plan the ascent and the path to ski down.  The previous day got us to the summit quickly and safely so we decided to take the same route up.  On day two we skied down the same way we went up.  Today, we wanted to see if we could safely ski the huge bowl to the south of our ascent line.

Our plan was to test the snow at the top near the bowl and if it was as stable as day 2, or better, we would go to bowl, measure the inclination of the slope, and if it was 35 degrees or less, we would ski down that way.

We found that the snow was actually more stable than the previous day and the slope was about 30 degrees.  So  YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!

Remember, one of the main reasons to implement the Make-You-Happy Management System is so you can Live Your Bucket List NOW!

Follow this link to discover how you can Live Your Bucket List Now

You can get my hardcopy book (not an e-book), How to Control Your Business and your Life, Proven Secrets to Creating Highly Productive Teams at www.HowToControlYourBusiness.com.  Your cost is $2.97 and that includes shipping and handling.

“Do What You Do So Well
That People Can’t Help Telling Others About You” 

Keith Lee
www.keithlee.com

How Would You Like an Unpaid Employee?

“You have reached the highest level in sales when your Client views you as an unpaid employee.”                                                                                           ~ Zig Ziglar

That statement has had a profound impact on my life and now that I teach customer service I change it to, “You have reached the highest level in sales when your Client views you as an unpaid employee.” 

I’m not bragging, but when I was a sales rep I did very well, and it was because I believed and practice the statement above from Zig Ziglar.

When I started at American Retail Supply (Thompson Marking Service) in 1978 the only products we sold were hand-held price marking equipment and labels.  My job was to drive, or walk, from one retail store to the next, sell price marking guns, service the guns for existing Clients, and sell them labels for their price markers.  I was paid on straight commission.

Zig’s statement of, “You have reached the highest level of sales when your Client views you as an unpaid employee” was right in line with what I learned from Dick Thompson, the founder of American Retail Supply.  Dick said, “You can only get in direct proportion to what you give.”

With Dick and Zig’s advice, along with parents who taught me the same principles, I headed out to sell price marking equipment and labels.  The Client’s in my territory hadn’t had anyone calling on them for almost three years and I found that most of them had started buying from another company who had a sales rep coming around periodically.

As I entered the Client’s store I looked at the labels on their product to determine the type of pricing equipment they used.  While I did this I looked for labels that weren’t printing properly.  In those days the price marking equipment needed periodic adjustments and the tracks needed to be cleaned for the price marker to work properly.

As I introduced myself, many of the Clients told me they didn’t buy from us any longer because we had not been around to service them and another company came in once in a while.

I had learned from my parents that what you say isn’t nearly as important as what you do, so I simply told them that’s fine, and let them know I would still love to clean and service their labelers.  If they hesitated, I would point out the labels that weren’t printing properly and almost always was able to clean and service their labelers.  Then I showed them what I did to fix the problem and often gave them a hint or two on maintaining the labelers.  Sometimes I walked out with an order.

Most of the time I thanked the Client and told them I would be back in a few months.  Most of the time when I told them I would be back in a few months they reminded me that they didn’t buy from us any longer.  I simply replied, “That’s fine.”

When I showed up a few months later I was often reminded that they no longer buy from us.  I again serviced the labelers and left with more orders.  Over the three years I was an outside sales rep almost every Client who originally told me they no longer bought from us became my Client and many are Clients today.

Zig’s lesson that, “You have reached the highest level of sales when your Client views you as an unpaid employee” served me well as a sales person, and is still our goal today at American Retail Supply.

I originally published my newsletter for my American Retail Supply in 1993 with the thought that I would research an issue and bring what I found to my customers with the hope that it would be of value and help their business thrive… which of course, meant they would need more supplies and fixtures.

“You have reached the highest level in sales when your Client views you as an unpaid employee.”                                                                                           ~ Zig Ziglar

You can learn more about Zig Ziglar at www.ZigZiglar.com

You can get my hardcopy book (not an e-book), The Happy Customer Handbook, 59 Secrets to Creating Happy Customers Who Come Back Time and Time Again and Enthusiastically Tell Others About You for free.  We just ask that you pay $2.97 to help cover shipping and handling.  Go to www.TheHappyCustomerHandbook.com.