Watching the news this past week, I couldn’t help but notice
how several members of the House of Representatives were grilling Facebook
founder Mark Zuckerberg on his apparent lack of effort in policing the
political ads for truth and veracity.
You’ll find many people who are bigger fans of Facebook than
me. And, Mr. Zuckerberg as a tech titan and billionaire certainly doesn’t need
help in defending himself against any accusations. However, I do think the
questions posed so aggressively to him illuminate a greater challenge:
We often attempt to placate the situation and overlook
solving the problem.
As my friends, Mark Mayfield and George Campbell, pointed
out in their daily “FunnierU” posts, perhaps the problem here isn’t that
Facebook isn’t vetting political ads correctly. The real problem is that we
have people who are evidently depending on Facebook for their information.
We see this in businesses all the time. For example, when we
have a dissatisfied customer, we often do what it takes to make her feel
better. “We are so sorry, Ms. Smith — we’ll refund your purchase and give you
10% off your next one with us!”
Don’t get me wrong — we need to do what it takes to ensure
customers are happy they’ve chosen to do business with us. However, the real
problem isn’t the upset client — it’s that something in our process either
broke down or is inadequate to thrill the people who are buying from us. But,
typically, we placate the customer…and move on…leaving the process unaltered.
It’s easier to chastise Facebook than it is to fix the
problem of voter apathy and misinformation. It’s easier to refund or discount
than it is to analyze the process and change “the way we’ve always done it.”
However, the critical
question is: are we doing the same thing in our business?
The next time someone is dissatisfied — to any degree — with
your products or services, open yourself to going deeper. “Why,” you must ask,
“did this happen? AND, how do we fix the process that created the friction with
our customer?”
It might be that you had a policy in place that was
perfectly acceptable five years ago — and isn’t adequate today. It could be
that employees haven’t been thoroughly trained and aren’t well equipped to
serve in the manner that customers seek.
Don’t be afraid to go negative to root out the issues that
must be examined. I like to call this “positive negativity.” By that, I mean
that by being willing to go negative and seek what’s wrong, we can take the
steps that ensure everything goes right in the future.
Let’s not settle for the easy way out.
Let’s find a way to resolve the REAL issues instead of
putting Band-Aids on the symptoms.
Last week, I wrote about the upcoming Ultimate Business
Summit. Now, with the event completed this past Friday in Las Vegas, I wanted
to share some of the insights from the program:
Core values are the key to personal,
professional, and organizational success. When you get your team aligned on
the core values you have, the decisions that they must make in their respective
jobs become easier. If you haven’t defined those core values for your business
or your team yet, this is the place to start if you want to create distinction.
Most of us lack clarity. As you may know,
Clarity is the First Cornerstone of Distinction. You cannot separate yourself
from the competition until you are clear about your competitive advantages.
Thorough understanding of the customer’s
problem is more critical than presenting your solution. If the customer
isn’t convinced that you know – and feel – the challenges they are facing, they
won’t believe that the solutions you offer can achieve all that you promise.
If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t
know your business. (This is one I really need to work on, too!) Too often
we get busy in our business and fail to thoroughly study the data and the
figures. We must know everything from our balance sheets to our sales ratios to
manage our time and expenses effectively.
Coaching is fundamental to growth. Too
many of us think that because we know our business and our respective industry
that we understand what we need to grow. Instead, we need outside ideas,
inputs, and advice. Attending programs that challenge our thinking and expand
our knowledge is essential in these hyper-competitive times.
What we do now will determine our future.
Let’s face it…a recession is coming. I’m not suggesting it is right around the
corner! However, as Jim Rohn often said, “It’s like the seasons…Fall will
always follow Summer…and Winter will come after that.” Now that the economy has
been in an extended Summer, what you do NOW to create distinction will
determine your ability to stand out when times get more difficult.
It’s so rewarding and humbling to read the posts about the
Ultimate Business Summit on Facebook! For example:
“Just completed my second UBS with some of the best business mentors around! 34 + pages of notes. This event is all content based on what we ask for. Any question we have gets answered-sometimes in triplicate! I’m already signed up again for next year because I know my business will be in a different place.”
While I would naturally love to have YOU at next year’s
Ultimate Business Summit, it critical that you act NOW to do what it takes to
learn and grow.
Remember: You cannot expand
your business – or your success – without first expanding your thinking.
This coming week is one of my favorites of the year. We
start the Ultimate Business Summit with a Wednesday night reception at the
Luxor on the Strip in Las Vegas.
While the participants in the program tell us that it has
significantly enhanced their success in business and life, one of the most
surprising aspects for me has been how much that I’ve learned from the folks
who come to be taught by Larry Winget, Randy Pennington, and me.
Here’s one example: many small business leaders comment that
the available workforce is so scarce, and that there just “aren’t any good
people out there looking for work.” Yet, through our work at UBS, we’ve learned
that some entrepreneurs and sales managers are successfully finding and
recruiting the best people.
How do they do it? There are many steps they’ve outlined at
the program — here are two that really stood out for me.
First, they view recruiting as one of the aspects of their
job every single day. For example, when the entrepreneur with this perspective
meets a great barista at Starbucks, they try to hire them! Because they have a
“hire for attitude, train for skills” approach, they are always on the lookout
for good people with great attitudes.
Are you ALWAYS looking for someone with a terrific outlook
and excellent communication skills to join and improve your team?
Second, they invest (and often a significant amount) in
educating and training for both the new employee and her managers. The reason: today’s employees seek engagement
with their colleagues and their managers. Too many businesses have had an
approach of “well, just watch Ol’ Bill and you’ll learn how it’s done” approach
to training. That just doesn’t work any longer, And, employees who are well
educated and trained early in their careers become more productive throughout
the life of their engagement.
We’ve all heard the old saw about “people aren’t loyal to
companies, they’re loyal to managers.” And, as that statement is true, it begs
the question: why aren’t we doing more to teach our managers how to create
higher standards of loyalty from their teams?
That’s part of our process at the Ultimate Business Summit.
We break down problems and situations in that manner:
If having higher retention improves
profitability…
If employees are loyal to their managers
rather than our organization…
Why
don’t we teach and train managers to be better at creating employee loyalty so
we generate the results that we really desire?
PS: We have five seats (maybe fewer by the time you
read this) remaining for the Ultimate Business Summit this week in Las Vegas. What
would happen if your competition gets better and you do not?
Go to UltimateBusinessSummit.com for all the details. When you sign up, enter my first name as the coupon code and you can save
Imagine for a moment being in a large room with almost 1,500
professional speakers! Try to envision how much energy — and maybe even ego —
that you’d find in a gathering of people who talk in public for a living.
That’s what I’ve just concluded this past week: the 2019 edition of “Influence”
— the annual convention of the National Speakers Association.
First off, it’s always great to get together with such
incredible friends. Speakers, as you may know, are kind of a strange lot. We
see each other very infrequently, because we are usually on the road traveling
to our own events — which also means we seldom have the privilege of sitting in
an audience and listening to other speakers share their craft and skill. In
other words, we have great friends we see once a year.
Thank goodness for social media. Through it, I’m able to
stay in close touch with great friends — know where they are, how they’re
feeling about their careers and personal lives, and share triumphs and
tragedies — while only seeing them infrequently. I obviously wish we had more
time together.
But, it’s better now than it has ever
been.
Secondly, it’s a time of extreme learning. The best in the
business share what has worked for them in an open forum with those who compete
with them for bookings. In NSA, it’s called “the Spirit of Cavett.” The founder
of the National Speakers Association was a legendary professional named Cavett
Robert.
When I first met Cavett many years ago, he told me, “I am
hearing some great things about you. You have an amazing future and will be a
superstar in this business.” It was such an inspiring moment for me! Little did
I realize this encouraging man was also saying the same thing to every other
young professional he met in the association.
However, Cavett’s generous spirit and open-book approach to
the business set a standard that is still adhered to — rather than try to
defeat each other for bookings and sales, instead we will all seek to “grow the
pie” and create more opportunity so everyone benefits. It’s an attitude of
abundance, not scarcity. And, it’s worked — professional speakers are on stage
at more events for larger fees than at any point in history.
It’s better now than it has ever been.
So, what does this mean to you?
In this time of negativity…where people seem to be more angry and agitated, where many people have lost their sense of propriety and manners…sometimes it’s important to take stock of where we are compared to where we were.
I have tools now that keep me in better touch with friends
with whom I wish I could share more personal time, but career and commitments
interfere. It’s never been better.
I’m in a profession that is committed to lifelong learning,
where other pros willingly share what works — and what doesn’t — to enable me
to grow…and I do the same, in turn. It’s never been better.
This isn’t to sound like Pollyanna. We have challenges, obstacles, and problems.
But, it so many ways — it’s better now than it has ever been.
Perhaps we need to remind each other of that, from time to time.
