Tag: Growth

Business, Leadership, Personal Management

You hired good people so let them get on with it!

As a manager or business owner, one of the biggest responsibilities you have is to assemble a team of skilled and capable employees who can work together to achieve the goals of the organization. But sometimes, as the boss, it can be tempting to micromanage and control every aspect of your team’s work. However, this can actually be counterproductive and limit the potential of your employees.

When you hire good people, it’s important to trust that they have the skills and expertise needed to do their job. By constantly checking in on them, second-guessing their decisions, and imposing unnecessary rules and restrictions, you risk sabotaging their creativity and motivation. This can lead to a decrease in productivity, disengagement, and eventually, high turnover.

So why not let your employees get on with their work and give them the space and resources they need to excel? Here are some reasons why it’s important to trust your team and let them take ownership of their work:

1. Fosters creativity and innovation: When you give your employees a sense of autonomy and ownership over their work, they are more likely to explore new ideas, take risks, and think outside the box. This can lead to innovative solutions and fresh perspectives that can help your business grow and thrive.

2. Builds trust and loyalty: By trusting your employees to do their job, you demonstrate your faith in their abilities and create a sense of mutual respect. This can build a culture of trust and loyalty that can motivate your team to go above and beyond for your company.

3. Increases job satisfaction: When employees feel like they have control over their work and are trusted to make important decisions, they are more likely to feel satisfied in their job. This can lead to higher engagement, better morale, and reduced turnover.

4. Improves productivity: Micromanaging can be a huge time-suck, taking up valuable hours and resources that could be better spent on more important tasks. By letting your employees take ownership of their work, you can free up your time to focus on bigger picture tasks and help your team become more efficient and productive.

In conclusion, hiring good people is only half the battle – you also need to give them the space and trust they need to do their job. By fostering a culture of autonomy, innovation, and mutual respect, you can build a stronger, more engaged team that is motivated to take your business to the next level. So next time you’re tempted to micromanage, remember: you hired good people, so let them get on with it! And you’re free to support the business growth 😉

Here to help you.
Business, Collaborating, Family, Leadership, partnership, Personal Management

No one is just TOO BUSY!

We hear it all the time, don’t we, and sometimes coming from our own mouths!


But what does it actually mean?

Life can be pretty hectic, with noise all around us and demands on our time and attention like never before. The digital world can become overwhelmingly distracting, with notifications pinging incessantly on our devices.

Ultimately though, we are in much greater control than we might think. It is also true that we make time for what is important to us. Or more accurately that which we believe should be important to us. After all, there is (for most of us anyway) nothing more important than our loved ones. But do we always make time for them, or do we succumb to the pings of our other attention seekers?
I often wonder if this is a self-induced state by building our importance so that we attract way more attention than is necessary. Should we instead, be ensuring that we are setting ourselves up better for getting out of the way, and reducing our personal involvement in matters that really do not need us?

It is worth asking yourself what you are currently involved in that you could easily step away from – you may just surprise yourself and your family and friends will thank you.

Business, channel, partnership

Building a reseller community – done right

You’re in an organisation that is providing solutions to address a certain business problem, and you’re seeking opportunities to grow your customer base.

You’re thinking that maybe you’ll find some resellers, as that’s a lower cost than hiring a number of new salespeople. The resellers get to sell your offer and you’ll give them a share of the revenue, or sell to them at a “dealer” price for them to invoice their customer and add a margin.

Happy days

Yet who should sell it and why aren’t folks beating down my door to sell my product?

Those that I’ve spoken to haven’t really engaged yet and haven’t heard anything back from them.

Some of them haven’t enough resources to add new products, services or take on new skills at the moment and others have none at all, so they are struggling to get started.

We have a few partners who have signed agreements but haven’t sold anything yet, and I’m not seeing any marketing activity from them.

How do I get this machine moving, as all I have managed to achieve is to divert my energy into trying to find partners and reduce my available time for what I was already doing…

This is not an unusual story, but actually, rather a common experience based on a lack of experience and knowledge. Businesses wanting to identify and develop a channel sales strategy, need to do so with eyes wide open and a good plan.

Often a business gets lured into thinking that hiring a sales partner is less costly than hiring additional sales heads, but this is simply not true. The cost model is merely different.

A sales channel definitely offers a greater opportunity to scale, and also potentially gives access to customers whom you might otherwise expend significant efforts to build a profile with, more easily. But do not think this is the cheapest way of growing sales. It simply is not.

How hard can it be?

There’s so much more to this than a vendor thinking that it’s worth giving it a try…. Because that simply will not end well. Why would a potential partner invest any of their time or effort if you’re not prepared to? If a channel partner gets the slightest whiff that you’re just “giving it a go”, you are toast and you will get nowhere. Do not expect a reseller to damage their hard-earned reputation by introducing your solution if they think you’re not here for the long term to support them, and their customers. It’s not going to happen.

Done well, the channel is beautifully symbiotic and it’s very much the way to scale your business

Need help getting figured out and getting started? Then get in touch with me and I will be able to set you on the right track – here or use the WhatsApp link below.

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Business, Leadership, Learning, Personal Management

Why the right coach is an external coach

I’m not totally sure why we struggle with the notion of embracing coaching as a tool to develop top-quality performance outcomes from key business leaders and teams. It’s my belief that the role of coaching tends to fall to the line managers who generally speaking have little time for coaching and equally have not benefited from investment in personal development to enable them to become good or great coaches.

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

My assertion is borne out from personal experiences in both large and small businesses and teams with the emphasis on management over coaching. Too often the managers are wrapped up in the day to day management and they also become too close to the teams and lack objectivity.

The basic premise for coaching is that the coached party has all of the resources available themselves but need external reflection to unlock and enable.

Recent conversations with a current manager have added to my certainty on this issue and the necessity for external coaching to be a part of the support to the manager and the team, keeping the team dynamics intact and ensuring the building of togetherness and cohesion

Need coaching support? Here to help Contact me

Business, channel, partnership, Sales, Selling

Are you a number one, or a number two?

Change or become irrelevant

As someone who gets to see a lot of new technology early, I’m often excited by the possibilities this affords our channel friends and colleagues.

How about you? Are you

1. Equally stoked by the opportunity of engaging with your customers to share an exciting new solution?

2. Not too fussed and prefer to stick to your core product or solution offer?

If you’re the second option here, then I’d urge you to consider this…

Your customers are investing in technology that you’re not providing and whilst they’re not talking to you, they’re building relationships and trust elsewhere. This carries risk for you as other suppliers are option 1 players and they’re following a LAND AND EXPAND strategy that will see them displacing you at some point.

Now let’s reconsider.. are you 1 or 2?

Business

Why “we never get asked for that” is a terrible response

Care to join the debate?

When you are considering your business operations, with a thought for your portfolio of offerings and what your prospective customers seek you out for, do you ever find yourself saying to potential suppliers “we never get asked for that”?

Do you also ever stop to consider why that might be? Could it be that it is so far away from your core business activities that it just wouldn’t happen – e.g. are customers likely to ask an IT reseller for HR assistance? Could it be that your business is seen as a very niche provider? Could it be that you seem unapproachable, or that your skillset is focussed?

Whether or not any of these reasons apply, wouldn’t you like to grow your business by helping more customers solve more business problems and you are their “go-to” person for all advice? For me, “Trusted Advisor” is an extremely aspirational position to be in where your knowledge, experience, and opinions are deemed valuable

Agree? Whats your view?

Business, Sales, Selling

Finding customers for your products, or products for your customers?

We all know that it’s smarter and easier to offer more solutions to your current customers than to seek out new clients who don’t yet know you and what you stand for.

It costs 5x as much to attract a new customer than to keep an existing one

With this in mind, I’m introducing a few ideas that you may be interested in adding to your mix….

Introducing Inovo Telecom, as a total customer experience solution to expand your customers’ customers’ engagement options in a fully integrated platform whatever channel they chose to engage in. A fully supported sales motion too from a fully engaged team. Simply introduce the idea and once your customer says go ahead and tell me more, we will appear as if by magic by your side. And the best bit – you help your customer, keep out competition and earn margin – what’s not to like

artificial intelligence to augment your customer engagement options

Adding any digital channel and orchestrating with persistence powered by AI and human agents.

Customers hate to queue and listen to tired music on hold looped around and around interspersed with your queue position – they really do. Offering them a lifeline to a digital service can be the tonic they require. Many choose this as default too (I certainly do), engaging at their preferred time and pace (perhaps whilst on a train, WhatsApp’s asynchronous sessions are a boon). Ensuring the conversation persists is critical, such that any channel movement (say to an agent) is accompanied by the entire conversation for full context and avoidance of the nauseating repetition of the same details over and over arrrggghhhh 🙄😡

The Terminator

To learn more – just drop me a note and “I’ll be back” in touch in no time

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Business

When selling isn’t selling

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have a perspective that says we are all selling at some time or other despite the fact that our role title may not have the word “sales” in it.

I have worked with a wide range of different people with differing skills and life perspectives and occasionally there was a tacit understanding that whilst the “sales team” carried a responsibility for the “number”, everyone had a responsibility as a representative of the company to present a positive external image to the World at large and in so doing increased the potential for businesses to want to work with us.

This has not always been the case, and at the other extreme, I have experienced the silos of “you are sales” we are….. etc. Whilst I am not saying that this is right or wrong, what I am intending to highlight is the fact that I believe, we all have a responsibility as a member of the business team to take the job of representing the business as positively as we can as “ambassadors” if you will. In so doing, it is my belief that this will create a wave of good-will that can only be positive. Remember of course that the reach of social media can play a big role in this and everyone in the business knows people – very often people of influence and potential customers for your business’s services or products.

Make sure you are a person of value to yourself and your business and ultimately you are contributing to the success of the organisation – PLEASE don’t just leave it to the sales team

Business, Sales

Sales – Art or science?

Selling – is it an art or a science? not giving in

In truth, it’s both. The process of a non- customer becoming a customer through their buying process, has a bucket full of potential twists and turns to arrive as a new customer to your enterprise.

The science of selling is in the planning and understanding of how to get from where you are, to where you want to be. How you reach your target audience and what will attract them to your online presence (the NEW Shop window). The art component is to do with your engagement with the potential customer.

However you consider customer acquisition, you need to attract or find new ones and take care of and nurture the ones you already have. Rest assured that someone will be trying to lure your customers away from you, just as you are attempting to encourage new customers into your care.

The one universal truth is that this does all take some time, so do not expect to have orders rolling in because you have launched your web site or because you have received 3 inquires this week. Building your business is a long game, so stay ambitious but realistic and keep trusting the process, and above all be persistent and professional.

Leadership

Can your Leadership repertoire run to coaching too?

I was watching the TV earlier in the week – Vera was the name of the programme in question and for those not acquainted, it’s a police detective drama.

There is the usual hierarchy on display with a hard working sergeant who is smart and growing in confidence in his role and adding enormous value to the case currently under investigation. What struck me about this particular episode was the fact that the Inspector, whilst valuing the sergeant’s inputs, was not particularly OPEN with him, and in fact the communication was pretty one-way traffic, apart from the issuing of instructions and orders – sound familiar?

At the end of this episode, there is a moment where the inspector and her sergeant are sitting in a car and the conversation takes a turn to matters of a more “personal” nature, and the sergeant speaks up to say that he learns a lot from her, and he needs her to share more with him to help him to develop……how true this must be for organisations around the World! The old paradigm of “knowledge is power” still rings through the corporate corridors and business “leaders” are jealously guarding their knowledge for fear that giving it away makes them somehow impotent. The reality is that this very act is holding back the success of the “group” and ultimately the business. This outdated thinking is also creating a positive reason why those very individuals being starved of help and support will most likely entertain the call from the “head-hunter” when he comes knocking.

Don’t let your fear and neurosis halt your progress, as it is through the success and development of the people you are responsible for, that you will deliver the result that you and your business are seeking.

But hey – what do I know!