Business Toolkit – Page 65 – thoughtLEADERS, LLC: Leadership Training for the Real World

How successful are you at getting business cases approved?

January 11, 2018/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Poll /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: How successful are you at getting business cases approved?

– Extremely – My business cases always get approved. 8.3%
– Very – I get most of my business cases approved. 66.9%
– Somewhat – I occasionally get business cases approved. 20.3%
– Not very – It’s not often I get a business case approved. 2.3%
– Not at all – My business cases never get approved. 2.3%

Getting to “yes” requires focus. Business cases are the heart of investment decisions. While many of you get most of your cases approved, there are likely opportunities to make your cases more effective. Three key components of your business case — defining the problem, explaining your idea, and articulating the benefits — do more to get your case approved than anything else. The more clearly you can spell out these three sections, the higher the likelihood of idea approval. Reflect on cases that weren’t approved. Look for flaws or weaknesses in these three areas. Understanding what you missed in a disapproved case can help you craft a more effective case the next time around.

Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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The Importance of Setting Quantitative and Qualitative Goals

January 10, 2018/2 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Entrepreneur, Leadership, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

When you set goals, there’s commonly two types: quantitative and qualitative. By setting both types of goals for your organization, you can achieve a balance of results driven by people focusing on the behaviors that matter.

Quantitative Goals and Driver Metrics

When you set quantitative goals, they’re going to focus on things like financial results, operational metrics, customer dynamics, or quality. You can typically track these types of goals pretty easily. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to be thoughtful about these metrics. A focused set of critical driver metrics is more valuable than a broad set of less relevant metrics that your team can’t affect. Let me share an example.

Let’s imagine you have a sales team. The overall goal for the division is to grow revenue. The driver metrics that affect revenue are price and volume. We’re talking about the sales team here. They have no control over product price. If you just give this team a revenue goal for their business unit, it won’t focus their efforts appropriately. It could lead them to argue or complain about pricing policy. That’s just not productive. The business unit also doesn’t control customer service. Using total revenue for this team’s goal isn’t fair because they don’t control all of it.

When you set the sales team’s goal, focus their goals on what they can control. In this case, it’s new sales volume. Think about that sales team going out and trying to get more customers. The driver metrics, for their ability to acquire customers are things like the number of prospects they talk to, the number of sales calls they conduct, and the conversion rate from a prospect to a paying customer. By focusing on these driver metrics for this sales team and focusing it on what they can control, you’re going to get better results.

When you think through your metrics for your business unit, think through the drivers. Consider the team’s ability to control those drivers. And make sure the goals you allocate to them are only focused on that which they can control. If you build your goals this way, you’re going to get a more concrete set of goals that your team feels empowered to actually drive.

Qualitative Goals

In addition to setting quantitative goals, which are pretty easy to set, a lot of times you’ll have to set qualitative goals. You can look at things like major project completion or milestones in completing that project. Milestone goals are relatively easy to measure and focus your team on driving a specific outcome. Just be sure you have counterbalancing goals like quality to prevent the team from cutting corners to hit a time-based milestone goal.

Sometimes, you want to measure things that are difficult to measure. You’ll have to infer from indirect quantitative metrics whether or not you’re making progress on that desired outcome. Things like culture are hard to measure, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to measure it. You can construct a set of indicators that let you know if you’re moving culture in the right direction. You can look at things that’ll tell you if you’re succeeding in reaching that higher-level end goal.

Let me offer a couple of examples:

How do you allocate your time and energy across your team members?

December 21, 2017/0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Business Toolkit, Leadership, Poll /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: How do you allocate your time and energy across your team members?

– I give everyone equal amounts of time and energy. 30.6%
– I spend my time and energy on the biggest crisis at hand. 30.2%
– I spend most of my time and energy with my high performers. 28.1%
– I spend most of my time and energy on poor performers. 11.1%

Increase your leadership ROI. Time is one of the most valuable resources we have, but we don’t think about investing it with the same rigor we think about investing money. Simply spreading your time evenly across all team members or being reactive to crises won’t get you a great return on your time investment. Instead, consider how you invest your “leadership capital” differentially and deliberately. For team members who need less time because they’re high performers, give them less time. Reinvest that time in your lower performers before their poor performance becomes a crisis. A more deliberate approach to investing your time requires focus, but the rewards of doing so can be tremendous.

Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

A Simple Way to be More Professional

December 20, 2017/1 Comment/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

When salespeople call you to explore working with you, a simple technique can help you appear much more professional. If you’re not interested, just say so. Immediately.

Over the 14 years I’ve run my firm, I’ve heard a polite “no, thank you” more times than I can count. That’s fine. Rejection, especially when it’s quick, enables me and my team to spend our time on more fruitful conversations.

It’s the silence that kills me. And I know I’m not alone in this. I’ve spoken with countless executives, entrepreneurs, and salespeople over the years and there’s a common pet peeve – people who simply don’t respond to your messages.

It’s unprofessional folks. It’s discourteous. And if you were the one being ignored, you’d see how unpleasant and frustrating it can be.

“But Mike, I get so many sales calls and some of them are so pushy and I’m so busy so I don’t have time to respond.”

Yes, there are idiot salespeople who don’t know how to take “no” for an answer. That’s not what I’m talking about here.

What I’m talking about are the respectful salespeople and entrepreneurs who legitimately believe their product or service is a fit for you and your organization. They draft a polite email or leave a courteous voicemail. Then they wait patiently for a reply.

And they wait.

Eventually they’ll follow up a couple of months later to check in. And again, they get no response.

Here’s the important thing to realize – you’re wasting their time and coming across as unprofessional. And those salespeople and entrepreneurs have long memories. By ignoring them rather than being candid that they’re not a fit, you’re taking a risk without even realizing it.

How Writing a Book Builds Your Credibility as a Thought Leader

December 18, 2017/3 Comments/in Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Guest Blogger /by Mike Figliuolo

Writing a book is the best thing a thought leader can do to raise their authority in their field. Here is a step-by-step guide to making your book a reality.

Today’s post is by Zach Obront, co-founder of Scribe Media.

Melissa Gonzalez was frustrated.

As an expert in the field of pop-up retail, she worked with companies like Marc Jacobs, Chanel, and Google to create incredible short-term retail experiences.

Those in the industry — including the companies she worked with, her competitors, and her colleagues — knew she was the the person in the field. She was the industry expert.

But when the media was looking for someone to interview on the growing pop-up retail trend, Melissa was rarely the one they called on. In fact, it wasn’t even her top competitor who would be quoted in the media.

It was the people who had written books on the topic.

Melissa decided she needed to write a book. She had the knowledge and the wisdom, but she had one problem: she didn’t have the time.

This is a challenge many thought leaders face. As the experts in their fields, staying on the cutting edge by living in the trenches every day, they don’t have time to write and publish their work.

I worked with Melissa to help her take her ideas and turn them into a book in less time. I’d like to share the process we used with you, in hopes that you use it to take action and create a great book.

Step 1: Positioning

The first step in writing a book, and the most often neglected is to get as clear as possible on your book’s positioning.

Too many authors decide to write a book, and their first action is to sit down and start writing. This is totally wrong, and is a major factor that leads to hundreds of hours of edits and revision.

Instead, before you put pen to paper, spend some time answering these questions:

Best of thoughtLEADERS 2017: Our 9th Year of Badassed Blogging

December 13, 2017/0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Books, Business Toolkit, Career, Communications, Entrepreneur, Innovation, Leadership, Sales, Social Media, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

It’s time again for our annual year in review list of the BEST posts we’ve published over the last 12 months. Welcome to the 2017 edition of The Figgies (our NINTH YEAR of em! Wow!) which are the awards we give ourselves for writing awesome blog content (here are the 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016 editions of those awards).

This is an annual event at the thoughtLEADERS Blog. This list is comprised of our most viewed, most forwarded, quirkiest, most provocative work. Enjoy. Share. We’ve loved writing them. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading them. I don’t ask a lot of you folks so I have two small requests as your holiday gift to me (you are getting me something, right?):

1. Invite all your coworkers, friends, and family to come check out the blog and become readers. The only way we all get better is by raising everyone’s game. I’m not asking a lot here. If you found this blog helpful at all this year, here’s your chance to return the favor for all our hard work. Just email folks and tell ’em to come take a look.

2. Pick up a copy of my books. They make great holiday gifts for the professionals in your life. The titles include:

One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful Personal Leadership. In the words of Roland Smith (former CEO of Wendy’s/Arby’s) “This book could change your life.” To get a sense for what the book is about, read this free ChangeThis Leadership Manifesto which is based on the book. If you like the manifesto, you’ll love the book.

Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results. “Finally, a leadership book that cuts through all of the noise. This book needs to be on every leader’s desk!” – Andrea Procaccino, Chief Learning Officer, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.

The Elegant Pitch: Create a Compelling Recommendation, Build Broad Support, and Get it Approved. If you’re looking to get to “yes” for your idea, this book will give you the method for doing so in an efficient and effective way.

Thanks for your incredible support in ’17 and best wishes for ’18! We hope to be a part of your future success! Now on to the best of list!

The Power of Critical Thinking

December 6, 2017/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Entrepreneur, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Critical thinking is becoming increasingly important as the world moves faster and faster. Take some time to learn how to improve your critical thinking skills.

With all the information streaming at you every day and the increased speed of decision making, critical thinking becomes more important every day.

Recently I had occasion to speak with Pete Mockaitis of the How to be Awesome at Your Job podcast. We discussed critical thinking and some of the techniques successful people use to solve their most complex problems. We discussed:

– Why slowing down will help you better solve problems
– How to differentiate facts from judgments
– How to use the 5 “whys” and the 7 “so whats” to think more clearly about causes and effects

Listen to the podcast here:

5 Questions You Must Answer to Measure Your Business Well

November 29, 2017/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Customer Service, Entrepreneur, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

Focusing on metrics is key to achieving your desired business results—but it can be difficult to determine which metrics actually matter. There are five major questions you need to answer to ensure the metrics you’re measuring matter and you can take action based upon what they tell you.

Some metrics are easy to put numbers to. Revenue, inventory levels, and customer retention are solid numbers. Knowing those quantitative measures is essential to understanding your business. That said, you also need to measure qualitative aspects of your business like associate engagement and customer satisfaction.

Regardless of the measurement you need to answer five things about it:

1. What’s the measurement’s purpose? Know the significance of the metric and what you’ll change in your business based on the numbers you measure.

2. What data source will you use? Different sources of data can yield different results.

3. How will you calculate the metric? Define a formula, especially for complex measures.

4. How frequently will you measure? Measuring takes effort. Be efficient and only measure as frequently as you need to.

5. Who will review the measure? Define the stakeholders who are going to receive the reports.

For qualitative measures, the data gathering method is critical. Use a simple and standard method wherever possible. Consistency matters over time so you can get true trend data. Put thought into the measures up front so you’re not changing them frequently and invalidating data you’ve already collected.

My firm conducts classroom training. At the end of each course, we’ve asked the same 14 qualitative questions for the last 13 years. Regardless of the class we’re teaching, the instructor teaching it, or which client we’re teaching it for, it’s always the same 14 questions. What that enables me to do is get a true sense of trend data and compare instructors, clients, and courses over time. I can look at a course that I just taught yesterday and see how it stacks up versus something I taught last year or even last decade. That consistency gives me a richness of data to analyze.

As you think about the measures for your organization think about both the quantitative and qualitative ones and apply those five questions to everything you’re going to measure.

Sometimes you’ll want to create your own measure in order to capture a unique aspect of your business or to drive a specific behavior. When building these unconventional measures, articulate the purpose of measuring it, and specify how long you’ll measure it, especially if it’s being used to drive short-term performance.

Balancing Risk and Empowerment in Decision Making

November 15, 2017/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Leadership, Training /by Mike Figliuolo

Decision making is a trade-off between risk and time. As leaders, we need to create an environment where our people feel free to make decisions but that we don’t let them create too much risk.

As leaders, we say we want our people to be empowered and to go out and make decisions. We say we’re okay with them making mistakes and we’ll still support them making decisions on their own.

But not really.

I’m lucky to have a huge leadership lab in the form of the SmartBrief on Leadership weekly pulse poll. Every week I ask a leadership-related question and thousands of people respond to those polls. Sometimes I get a little sneaky and conduct my own experiments over the period of a few weeks. I conducted one of these experiments recently.

First I asked “Would you rather have a team member make decisions and make mistakes or make no decisions and leave that up to you?”

Unsurprisingly, all us empowering leaders were eager to give our team members the latitude to make decisions and make mistakes. 96% of respondents said they’d rather have a team member make a decision even if they make mistakes. A measly 4% of respondents wanted the team to leave all decisions up to them.

I observed we want our team members to take the initiative, take action and move things forward, even if they make mistakes. It is incumbent upon us as leaders to ensure that, when they do make mistakes, we realize we gave them the latitude to take action — handling the mistakes in that context accordingly. While we need to hold them accountable for the mistake, we also need to ensure they learn from it and do so in a way that we don’t make them afraid to make more mistakes in the future. Heck, I believe so strongly in this notion of decision making and empowerment that I dedicated a whole chapter of One Piece of Paper to the topic (grab a copy here and check out Chapter 13).

The following week I conducted the second part of my experiment.

How rigorous is your approach to pricing your products or services?

November 9, 2017/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Poll, Sales /by Mike Figliuolo

Our reader poll today asks: How rigorous is your approach to pricing your products or services?

– Very — we’re pretty analytical and rigorous about it: 58%
– Somewhat — we do some analysis and occasionally focus on it: 29%
– Not very — we infrequently analyze and focus on pricing: 8%
– Not at all — we slap a price tag on it and sell, sell, sell!: 4%

The Power of Pricing. An occasional focus on pricing isn’t enough. It’s perhaps one of the biggest improvement levers you have at your disposal. For traditional businesses, a 1% pricing improvement can yield a 10% profit improvement. How can you afford not to be rigorous about pricing? Not only should you evaluate how much you’re pricing – you should also consider your pricing model. The way you price your products could be less than effective. Invest the time in looking at your pricing model and the actual prices themselves. You (and your shareholders) will be happy you did!

Do you agree with these poll results? Let us know in the comments below!

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

Did you enjoy this post? If so, I highly encourage you to take about 30 seconds to become a regular subscriber to this blog. It’s free, fun, practical, and only a few emails a week (I promise!). SIGN UP HERE to get the thoughtLEADERS blog conveniently delivered right to your inbox!

Protecting Yourself from Fraud and Identity Theft

November 8, 2017/0 Comments/in Balanced Lifestyle, Business Toolkit, Leadership /by Mike Figliuolo

You’re facing a much larger risk right now than you might be aware of. The odds of having your identity stolen and facing fraud committed in your name is at an all-time high. But you can do something about it if you act quickly

If I told you someone was stealing money and harming your company’s reputation, you would take action pretty quickly, right?

Why don’t you do the same thing with your own money and reputation?

“Oh, fraud and identity theft won’t affect me. There are so many people out there to steal from.”

Wrong.

I don’t often write on “personal” topics but this is one that can affect your reputation, your job prospects, and it can drain your time and energy which will affect your job performance. This is serious stuff. Pay attention and take action.

For context, I used to work in the credit card industry. I understand fraud, credit scores, credit bureaus, and identity theft. I know how it happens and I know what the impact can be. And right now, you’re at risk of having your identity stolen.

Recently Equifax reported that 143 MILLION personal records had been stolen. That includes social security numbers, addresses, driver’s license numbers, and who knows what else. With only 300 million people in the US, there’s a pretty high probability your personal information was compromised. Mine was. My parents’ was. My daughter’s was. This is real folks.

The people who stole that information fully intend on using it to take out new lines of credit in someone else’s name, max that credit out, and walk away from the mess having stolen money and goods from the credit card companies and banks.

“I don’t care. It’s not my money.” you might think. No. It’s not. But it’s your name.

Those bad debts will show up on your credit report. They’ll tarnish your credit rating. They’ll increase the cost of getting a loan or credit card or mortgage. They’ll harm your job search. They’ll be a nightmare to clear up because you will have to prove it wasn’t you who incurred the debt. That takes time and effort on your part. Do I have your attention yet?

You can do something about this though. You need to take three actions immediately:

Getting Paid to Execute Your Strategy

November 1, 2017/0 Comments/in Business Toolkit, Communications, Leadership, Strategy /by Mike Figliuolo

If incentives aren’t aligned with your strategy, the likelihood of you reaching your objectives is pretty low. Be sure you clearly link your incentive plan to the strategic outcomes you’re trying to achieve.

People do what they get paid to do. If incentives aren’t aligned with your goals and strategic outcomes, you’re not going to get the results you want.

After you’ve defined the initiatives you want to pursue, laid out the priorities for the organization, and set goals, you have to link individual and team incentives to the successful completion of those activities. This may require changing compensation plans or offering bonuses contingent upon execution of strategic objectives.

I had one client that was trying to make a massive culture shift. They were moving from a mindset where it was great to drive sales to one where they wanted to improve margin.

Everyone’s incentive plan was tied to sales. The organization realized no matter how badly they wanted their sales reps to focus on selling more profitable business, they would never get there if they didn’t change the sales compensation plan. So they did.

They said “No longer will you get incentive only based on sales. We’re also going to measure the profitability of the products and contracts that you sell.”

Behavior changed pretty fast, and they achieved that strategic objective of expanding their margins.

Using Incentives to Drive the Right Behaviors

One organization I worked for had a bunch of field technicians. Those technicians were measured on their daily production. The incentive was based upon how much work the tech got done in an eight hour period.

Our organization had a strategic shift where we realized production matters, but we really needed to focus more on retention. We were losing too many customers. We knew the way our technicians interacted with customers drove whether a person stayed with us as a customer or not.

We realized we had to change the incentive plan. So, we layered on retention on top of technician production. We created an entirely new metric called “retention adjusted production.” The way that worked was a tech could do a great job and do a lot of production, but if they had really high attrition, their production score would get decreased. Their incentive went down too if they had too much attrition on their route.

Guess what?