Category: Leadership

Leadership, Personal Management, productivity, Social

Will you reach your full potential?

I was showering this morning and began thinking about the year just gone and the coming year ahead. I was thinking about all the well wishes I was receiving and sending and I started to think about some of the language we use and ended up thinking about reaching our full potential. Further thought on this had me delving deeper and asking myself some questions which I would like to pose to you here now- Firstly what exactly is your full potential? How do you measure it and where is the ‘limit’?
I’m still pondering on that one and hope to hear some alternative perspectives and thoughts.
I hope you reach yours and achieve fulfilment 🙂

Business, Leadership, Personal Management, Social

What did you learn in 2009?

I guess we’ve all felt the recession in some form and have felt some pain or seen some benefit, depending upon the business we are in, or the state of our personal finances. Whatever our position, we have seen impact. Often we have no ability to influence what happens to us, but we can absolutely choose how we respond to what happens to us. So I decided to share an abridged version of my 2009.
I left long term employment in October 2008 as a result of taking a redundancy package, and immediately began a consulting assignment. At the start of 2009 I decided to press on and see what business I could become involved in and although not consciously, something far from what I had been doing (it was only later that this realisation came to me).
I became involved in publishing and assessing sales people’s capabilities and fit for specific roles and spread myself so thinly that I found it difficult to explain when asked, what business I was in. During this time I also began to network extensively and learnt much about social media and social networking. I read significantly too and took the opportunity to invest in personal development- training with Delta TCC and completing three INLPTA diplomas: Leadership, Coaching and Sales all were delivered using NLP techniques which provide a platform for enhanced communication with people.

After the summer I came to a realisation that I had much invested in my experiences to date and expertise gained from more than 20 years in the Telecom market place and so I made a decision to return and subsequently found my self a great role to immerse myself in, and am delighted to be doing so.

So what have I learnt? I learnt a huge amount about myself, a lot about people generally, and about human nature, as well as behaviour. I learnt much more about business generally too – certainly more than I would ever have expected to. Overall an invaluable life lesson and absolutely unmissable. I am most definitely a better person, and more heavily armed to take on business than I could ever have hoped to be – PRICELESS

Business, Leadership, Personal Management, Social, training

Vitamins for the Mind : Jim Rohn International

Vitamins for the Mind – Jim Rohn an INSPIRATION

via Vitamins for the Mind : Jim Rohn International.

Leadership, Personal Management, Social

Are you taking the turn?

There’s a great motivational poster that deals with CHANGE. It says that a bend in the road is not the end of the road UNLESS you fail to make the turn! And boy are there some bends in the road just now! If you are a difference person and therefore change oriented, then all is well, but what about the poor sameness person who likes things pretty much the way they’ve always been? It can be tough, but I offer this for those facing change. It’s not what happens to us, but what you do about it…watch this inspiring video and you’ll see what I mean ...W Mitchell

Business, Leadership, Sales, Selling

Gerry’s big decision

I watched C4’s Gerry’s Big Decision last week and was hooked – for the uninitiated Sir Gerry Robinson takes a detailed look at failing businesses around the country with a view to potentially investing his own money and helping the business to survive and thrive. The two businesses Gerry looked at last week were an old family furniture business in Lancashire that was on its knees and a small pie making business in the south west. The interesting thing for me was that both businesses were suffering the same issue – NOT ENOUGH SALES. The furniture business had issues with poor communication and relationship between the owner and the Managing Director, and I observed a lack of sales focus generally – for example there was no incentive in place for the sales people to grow/develop the business.

Both businesses appeared to have good products which were saleable, yet as we all know nothing will happen until a sale is made. I don’t believe for a minute that this is in any way unique, and indeed why there is a need to ensure that you have an effective (and integrated) sales and marketing plan that covers the basics such as

  • Having the right sales people in the team representing you
  • An effective customer segmentation map
  • A clear customer contact strategy
  • A clear “value proposition” for the product – a good example of this was the furniture manufacturer was not crisp about the product guarantees which could be deal maker/breakers

Finally the only sales people we saw was the one representing the pie manufacturer, who to be blunt was a square peg in a round hole and had very little idea what his approach should be and who his customers would be and I guess sales in general. His approach was at best parochial and he was not considering where the product could be sold. As Donald Trump says – “If you’re going to be thinking, you may as well think big.”