How Fast Can You Achieve Results?

Success is about planning and process. Sure, there is more to it but it really boils down to knowing your goals and then planning the steps needed to achieve those goals

Did you know that 50% of a manager’s job is trying to figure out where the company is going in the next five years while the other 50% is supposed to be focused on execution. The latter seems to present a formidable challenge for most execs but the interesting thing is that know-how and technical proficiencies are not the major obstacles here.

Most managers today are burdened with issues such as a lack of time, insufficient planning, unclear communication, lack of accountability, no mentor or senior leadership to guide them, low commitment to getting a job done well, lack of determination, lack of passion for what they do, lack of focus and discipline etc. There you have it – the no holds barred – anything is possible – year 2000ish – next generation manager’s issues in one simple paragraph.

What to do… alas, what to do…

Here’s some food for thought:
1) Get organized and set some clearly defined goals for both yourself and your company.

2) Break those goals down into smaller and easier to achieve stages.

3) Create a vision of your best outcome scenario.

4) Be able to clearly communicate your outcome to others.

5) Write down a plan to accomplish the tasks involved with achieving success in each stage. Be sure to include milestones and metrics.

6) Be determined to focus the majority of your time and efforts on your goals.

7)  Remember to take a few days off each week to do other things and recharge your batteries.

8) Celebrate your success each time you achieve a milestone.

Want to take a shortcut to success?  Just drop us a line and let us know why we should help you. Five lucky winners will be chosen next month.

Meetings don’t have to Waste Our Time

In order to make sure that your meetings are both effective and efficient, here are a few suggestions that have worked well.

1. Create and distribute an agenda in advance and be sure that the meeting’s objectives are clearly stated.

2. Begin on time, end on time and stay focused to accomplish your goals.

3. Increase retention by eliminating distractions – require that email and other forms of text messaging be turned off during the meeting and do not tolerate distractions caused by mobile phones – simply turn them off and use voice mail.

4. Respect attendees time – If a person is only needed briefly – no need for them to sit through the entire session.

5. Accomplish the primary objective during the meeting’s allotted time.

6. Use technology. You have a phone, you have your agenda… set the phone to vibrate every 10 minutes so that you have a physical reminder that the meeting needs to move forward.

7. Have a person take notes and follow up with distributing the meeting protocol.

That’s it folks… it doesn’t get much easier than that.

Investing… When is it ‘the right time’?

I decided that NOW is the best time to invest…
and you can quote me on that one.

Hey, it beats the heck out of Clients calling to cancel projects because they decided to act like
blinded deer at night standing in front of a speeding truck full of ‘industrial disease’.

I don’t care what anyone says… now us the time to invest… if not in the markets, then in ourselves.

Get out there and learn something new.

shameless plug: we give exciting courses on how you can dramatically increase your sales even in slow markets – hack, we even back it up with proof from our Clients and a money back guarantee… are you brave enough to challenge yourself?

What is Lateral Thinking and Do I Need It?

Two of the services we frequently use with our Clients are Idea Generation and Problem Solving. We approach both challenges with very different, process oriented methods but there is one thing that remains constant – Our ability to think laterally and come up with novel concepts by looking at situations in new and different ways. Many of our Clients are so deeply involved in an issue such as their daily business that they find it hard to change perspective and see things from an alternative angle. This is where we come in… we tend to see things that are ‘outside the box’.

Vertical thinking, also known as logical thinking, takes an idea and carries it forward. Lateral thinking, on the other hand, provokes fresh ideas and essentially changes the frame of reference in almost any situation. Vertical thinking tries to overcome problems by dealing with them head-on, lateral thinking attempts to bypass obstacles using a variety of different approaches.

In essence, Lateral thinking is a tool that helps us change our way of thinking about something often by modifying our perceptions.

With logical thinking you start out with certain given components and boundaries wrapped in a process. This is similar to the situation in chesswhere you start out with specific pieces and are expected to play by the rules. The issue is that in most real life situations, we can not use the chess model or logical thinking to solve problems because you don’t know what the pieces are, what they represent or how many pieces actually exist… knowing the rules is almost irrelevant to solving a problem or generating new ideas.

Throughout our lives we are handed several different rulebooks (cultural, social, business oriented etc). When we get these rulebooks we just assume that the components that the rulebooks refer to, simply exist and we tend to accept that certain boundaries and limitations are present because they were mentioned in the rulebook. Lateral thinking throws out the rules and assumptions as well as the boundaries and limitations so that we are free of our social, cultural, geographic and demographic bonds.

Lateral thinking focuses on changing some element to enable a new and fresh perspective of a given situation. Lateral thinking deals primarily with perception. By using lateral thinking techniques we can organize the external world into the pieces that we can then process. Perhaps more importantly, by observing lateral thinking in others we can generate new ideas and better understand how they perceive the world around them.

The brain is a self-organizing information system that forms asymmetric patterns. In such systems there is a mathematical need for moving across patterns. The tools and processes of lateral thinking are designed to achieve such lateral movement to accomplish a given result.

A famous person once said that you can’t dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper. Think about that for a moment… If you were driving in a car on the highway but your intended destination is behind you, driving faster while keeping the car on the same heading will not get you to your intended destination.

If you were to continue thinking about a problem or a solution in a given way, this may not be as useful as changing tact and trying something completely different. Additional effort in the same direction will not necessarily help you get the results you were after but applying some proven tools designed to turn the car around, may offer you options that you never knew existed. It’s a format of thinking ‘out of the box’ and our Clients believe that we are very good at it. It may be because we do it frequently.

If you have a challenging problem or need some new ideas, please, fill out our form and allow us to get in touch with you today.

Coaching Services

I have some amazingly good news to share with you (and a small group of others – we’re not advertising this yet so please keep this to yourself for now), but first here’s a little background.

Ever since BoxOnline was launched in 1999 people have been asking us for personal one to one coaching.

I’ve had to say no hundreds of times for several reasons.
First, I did not have a trained staff of coaches.

Sure, I could have hired a professional “coaching company” to take on the task, but frankly most of these programs are pretty sub-par to say the least and I did not want to forward the calls to India.

Heck, their idea of coaching is to get someone on the phone and push play on a tape deck!

That’s not coaching – that’s highway robbery no matter how you slice it.

So, the years passed and we have been unable to service this need.

Some thought I was foolish for “leaving money on the table” and maybe they’re right, but some things are more important than money.

Giving people a high value for their dollar, taking a genuine interest in their success, honest dealing …

Not only are those wise principle to live by – they make great business sense, too.

What a lot of these companies offering coaching don’t get is that they can cut costs by offering shoddy service, but they are losing someone who is a potential lifetime Customer.

I finally found a coaching company that shares this same philosophy.

Not only is what they are teaching completely in line with the core principles we built our business upon (their coaches help you take them to the next level), but they have strict quality control
measures to ensure their coaches are actual *coaches* and not salesmen in disguise or “clock punchers.”

They have an extensive screening process for their staff and if a coach survives that, they are under constant review and provided with excellence training to keep getting better and better at
what they do (coaching you to unleash your hidden potential).

We’re only offering this as a pilot program to a few people now – not everyone will be accepted.

If you’re interested, please fill out our application form and one of our staff members will get back to you right away.

The Psychology of Sales

Sure, there are boatloads of books on this topic so I’ll do my best to keep this article brief, helpful and to the point. First, this page is dedicated to the many kind folks I meet each day who really need help selling their products and services.

Products and services are wonderful things from both the perspective of the consumer or Customer and the person or company that is offering or selling the products and services. For starters, the consumer gets some form of benefit from the products or services otherwise there would be little reason to purchase them. The seller, likewise receives a benefit in the form of compensation, usually monetary. The difference is that the consumer gets value whether perceived or real from the transaction or the receipt of the product / service.

How the consumer perceives this value is the topic of this article today.

From here on out when I mention the word ‘products’, please understand that I mean both products and services.

Here are my suggestions when you want to sell a product to a given target market.

1) Know your target market well.

That means that you need to understand who they are, how they tick, what they like and dislike etc. If you have hundreds or thousands of Customers this goes for you too – that is what databases are for!

Let’s start with something basic like Motivation Strategies.
Are your Customers motivated TOWARD something or Motivated AWAY FROM something?
If you were to ask them why they purchased your product, what would they say?
More importantly, what would you learn from their response?

If you were to ask your Customers something neutral such as “What did they do this past weekend?” and then follow up the question with “Why did you do X this past weekend?” Chances are good that you will learn something about their motivation strategy.

If they were to answer that they “went to the mountains to ski” this would indicate that the person is likely to be motivated TOWARD something and thus, they tend to know what they want and they will move toward their goal of getting what they want.

If the response to question 2 were “to get out of the city” then you might guess that this person is motivated AWAY FROM something and this sort of individual knows exactly what they don’t want.

In order to sell to these two very different types of people, you need to be able to identify their motivation strategy quickly and then apply a marketing tactic even quicker. Your first step is to create two sets of marketing tools from business cards and form letters to signs, messages and selling phrases that you will learn by heart. Your purpose is to communicate with your prospect effectively using their choice of motivation strategy so that your message is accepted with gratitude and your offer is given priority consideration.

If you wanted to sell a massage to a person that is motivated AWAY FROM something, your marketing message may be something like:

– Want to relieve stress?
Come visit our Spa on the 3rd floor right now.
(special offer limited to the first 5 people, today only)

– Need to get away from it all?
Experience our 100 minute vacation
(Hurry, we only have 4 slots left)

If you wanted to sell the very same massage to a person that is motivated TOWARD something, your marketing message may be something like:

– Are you ready to relax?
Our experienced massage therapists are waiting for you on the 3rd floor.
(special offer for first time Clients – today only)

– Would you like a treatment that is usually only offered to top athletes?
Sign up for a medical massage on the 3rd floor today – there are only a few slots left.

In addition to knowing your Client’s motivation strategy, learn all you can about them and take notes so that you can communicate in a very personal and meaningful way in the future. For example, if you do not see a Client after several weeks, why not send them a thank you note for their last visit and mention a few personal things in the note that would perhaps encourage them to get back in touch with you. When they contact you, present them an offer that they would find hard to resist.

2) Always, ALWAYS, ALWAYS include a benefit in your marketing message. Just to be clear, I am referring to a benefit that your Customer experiences when they do business with you.

3) Incorporate some form of scarcity in your offer – there may be thousands of X available but to many people, the perception of scarcity is a very powerful magnet.

4) Upsell and Cross Sell at the appropriate moment but do it as often as possible. This is a lesson learned from McDonalds and it pays off royally. Have you ever been to a restaurant where they asked you if you wanted fries with your order? That would be an example of a cross sell. If you heard someone ask a Customer if they wanted a large order of fries for only 20 cents more, that would be an example of an upsell. Do not miss out on this essential element of profit building unless you really want to leave money on the table.

5) Practice each of the above suggestions with Clients, Customers, Prospects, Friends – you have nothing to lose

6) Test variations of the above to improve your results and keep track of what works and what does not work.

7) Reserve time in your schedule for building relationships. Many of our Clients are so busy delivering products that they forget to keep relationships warm. The result is that they have to work extra hard to acquire more new business. It is much easier to keep a Client than it is to find a new one so, spend a few hours each week, keeping tabs on your Customers and going out of your way for the ones you really want to keep. The idea is to grow the business you do with your best Customers in such a way that you build a lifetime of value into the relationship. Build those relationships and they will pay off big time.

Naturally, we offer our Clients courses in the above areas with the implied benefit that knowledge will increase their sales but we do things a bit differently over here. We select our Clients very carefully, only a few applicants are accepted each time we open the doors but those that make it through have a compelling business case and a determined desire to succeed. These are the kind of folks we enjoy helping. We could guarantee that our methods will double your sales or you get your money back but instead, we often opt for a success based fee thus, we only get paid if our efforts deliver results. Have you ever worked with a company like that before? Come on, give it a try and apply for a chance to be one of our top performing, revenue generating Clients today.

Mantra Mantra Mantra

I just asked the key managers employed by my latest Client to tell me what exactly it was that their company did – the response was so shockingly bland that I decided to escalate my curiosity on a more personal level. I asked the same folks to tell me what they do at the company – After an hour I was speechless. You see, a few months ago this company hired a consultant for $20,000 to help them bond as a team and then use the synergy of the moment to draft and approve a new mission statement that would help propel them forward, somehow… magically. The statements I listened to lacked purpose, focus and cohesiveness among other things. To put it bluntly, several managers were fighting with their counterparts in other divisions – Sales was determined to place some form of blame on Engineering and Engineering had it out of the folks in Finance. This is not healthy – nor is it productive so when the CEO asked for my help I wanted to be sure that I understood what I was getting into. I’d been tasked with making a positive change in the work environment so that the team could identify and then achieve common goals yet the issue seemed to stem from something much more basic and a lot less complex.

In many ways this situation reminds me of companies that hire a consultant to conduct a two day ‘broaden your horizons’ type of company event away from the office with team building exercises leading up to a brainstorming session designed to create a mission statement, a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) or something in between. The event usually goes like this:

Day 1: A day of exercises, games and puzzles designed to improve relationships within the company and encourage trust among colleagues. One such activity includes turning your back on the group, closing your eyes and then falling backwards hopefully into the arms of your co-workers. Another one involves sticks and ropes to encourage the team to work together to achieve a common goal.

Day 2: Usually the rain day plan (an indoor activity) where the entire group assembles to create a mission statement. The room is usually too small to contain the entire team and there are pens, paper, white boards and usually a facilitator who knows nothing about your business. Everyone in a managerial position and above in the company is present and encouraged to contribute. After several hours you typically get something like:

‘The mission of Moevenpick is to deliver superior quality products and services for our customers and communities through leadership, innovation, and partnerships.’

Don’t get me wrong. I love Moevenpick, but I’ve never thought I was participating in ‘leadership, innovation, and partnerships’ when I ordered an ice cream there. The basic reason for mission statementosis is that people contributing to a company’s direction usually worked for McMinsey or Boston Consulting Group, have a MBA or some combination of all three.

These days, it is probably more helpful to have a mantra than a mission statement. A mantra contains 6 words max (the fewer the better) and if your receptionist is able to retain it for more than a day, you probably have something interesting.
A few examples:

• Domino’s Pizza “You got 30 minutes”
• YouTube “Broadcast Yourself”
• UPS “What can brown do for you?”
• McDonald’s “i’m lovin’ it”
• PHILIPS “sense and simplicity”
• M&Ms “melts in your mouth, not in your hand”
• Red Bull “Gives you wings”
• INTEL “Leap Ahead”

So, although you may have wanted to hire that consultant for $20,000 to help build some team spirit and get everyone to pitch in and create a mission statement – think instead about taking a weekend off to relax – do something you really enjoy and then on Monday, dedicate time to creating a memorable mantra for your company. If you still want to outsource this to some creative types, get in touch, we may be able to help.

As for my Client, we were able to identify the issue within two days. Our team addressed the major concerns in a consultative session called Potential Problem Analysis and created viable solutions within one day. We were then hired to implement 2 of the 6 solutions and project manage the remaining 4. The solution that seemed to make the most difference at the end of the day was the mantra. I still can’t believe it – the mantra was missing and when it was selected and put in place, 20 very different managers walked back into their arenas to fight the competition instead of each other. This case was fun, rewarding and delivered with excellent results. Does your company have a mantra yet? Tell us about it.

Successful Hiring

To build a successful team is not a magical secret nor is it an exact science but to increase your probability of success, we have collected a few suggestions from our Clients whose teams outperform their competition year after year.

Firstly, the interview…
We could dedicate an entire blog to the art of the interview so rather than delve into this topic today, we will post articles on successful interviewing techniques, top 10 questions to ask and what to look for during and immediately after the interview process. Suffice it to say that the interview is where both parties (the employer and the prospective employee) get to strut their stuff and present themselves in a positive light creating feelings of desire in a similar method to some dating rituals we witness in the western world. Should a candidate actually receive and accept a job offer, the trial period begins and this is the focus of our article today.

There are several reasons for the trial period and one of them is that it gives each party an opportunity to walk the walk – can the employee actually deliver what they claimed to be capable of delivering during the interview process? Successful companies with successful teams require existing employees to accept some HR related tasks in their workload and one of these tasks is the process of inducting new hires into the complexities of existing business processes and offering them some form of introduction to the company culture at the same time. In the top performing companies, such an induction involves up to 10 employees for each new hire with two distinct outcomes; one is to have 10 different people assess the new person over a period of 3 months and the other is to offer the new hire the opportunity to bond with a few existing employees or even model someone that has achieved the recognition or status that the new employee aspires to attain.

Many companies have decided that a one month trial period is sufficient and I argue against that view based again on the dating game analogy. It takes months to get to know someone well enough to be able to assess their performance and come to a conclusion if this person adds value to the team or not. The most successful method that we have seen in the trial period phase of assessing new employees and determining if the fit works is a review 2 to 4 weeks after the new employee starts work. Questions such as How do you feel when you’re at work? Is something missing that we can provide to help you get the job done? What might we have promised you, but haven’t yet delivered? Do you look forward to coming to work each morning? What could we improve regarding teamwork? How do we compare to other employers? etc etc etc…

The answers to these sort of questions help to remove potential road blocks that could derail an employees good intentions and positive moral so you want to ensure that the communication channels are left open and that there is a healthy dialog between the new employee, management and the existing staff. At the same time, it is often valuable to gather feedback from the entire team involved with the introduction of the new employee to collect their opinions and ensure that everyone has what they need to get the job done effectively. After all, a business oriented team is like a football team in that the players have one major goal in common and they all need to pull together to score. The issue with many new hires in companies today is that often their input is ignored during the trial period and thus the new employee learns to play ping-pong rather than football. Incidentally, the game of ping-pong relates to the process of throwing a business issue back and forth between employees rather than gathering forward momentum and getting a job done. Several of our Client’s employees decided that ping-pong was their game of choice especially when it came to Customer service and this is one of the reasons that we were hired to restructure the organization and build a strong football team.

Would you like more information on how we might be able to build a football team for you? Please tell us about your current situation and your objectives – we would be honored to help you to score the next goal.

Do You Really Need A Coach?

Ever come across a successful football team without a coach / trainer / manager?

How about a top basketball or ice hockey team?

Each player has his/her specialty, each has a training program to improve skills, abilities and experience yet the coach ties it all together for each player and then again for the entire team.

Typically, the coach has been there before – they have played on a variety of fields and can leverage their experience to benefit the whole team. Ever notice that the coach does not put on a uniform and replace a non-performing player? The coach has a different sort of job that is oriented around managing people rather than executing on a given play.

Interesting that when comparing sports to businesses, only the most successful businesses have coaches. These coaches or mentors help guide executives by providing external input and expertise so that the business person can score a goal.

Why is it that only the most successful business people have a coach?

On the one hand, you could interpret this as “in order to be successful in business, you need a coach” or “When you have achieved a certain level of success, you can get even further with a coach”. We believe that the answer is something of a combination of the above scenarios in that, an external coach or mentor is a tremendous asset to any given business. Sadly, business people today typically come to the conclusion that they need help only after they encounter an obstacle crossing their path to success.

Why not hire a coach before you run into an obstacle?

If a coach can review your strategy, your plans, tactics and team profiles, do you think you could increase your probability for success?

Given what we have learned from coaching 25 companies during the past 10 years in addition to the learning we captured from our own coaches, the definitive answer is YES, coaching makes a positive difference. Here is how we came to this conclusion.

Many companies have learned that their employees can overcome self doubt, fears and concerns created by corporate restructuring or poor leadership by hiring a coach. Today, more and more firms are looking for support by bringing in a coach rather than sending employees out for additional education. Depending on the challenge at hand, a coach often is able to deliver results to a company faster and for less investment (time and money) than sending a team to an offsite for a few days.

For a coach, there is no secret recipe that can be applied to all Clients. The coach needs to explore the needs and objectives of each Client separately and then tap into a library of experiences, tools and resources to be able to deliver results that can make the difference between missing quarterly objectives and over-performing by 20%.

Several years ago an investor came to us to help get his bank get back on track. A few areas within the bank were delivering adequately yet not enough to offset the poor performance in one key division. This division of the bank had a ‘new’ manager who apparently lacked leadership experience and as a result, was losing many key employees. This particular manager was promoted one week after the former director passed away unexpectedly, more than 10 months ago. The manager may have been a good deputy director but was not prepared for the challenges faced by his boss and thus, the team wanted out.

The knee jerk reaction would usually be to remove the new manager and reform the team however, banks don’t necessarily work this way. They are very slow and resistant to change. Removing this manager was not an option but providing him with guidance in the form of a coach was in line with the bank’s culture and objectives.

The coach observed the manager in action, took notes on the methods he used to lead his team, plan for the future, inspire others and instill a sense of belonging in typical day to day situations. In the process the coach noticed that this manager allocated very little of his time dealing with employee’s needs or even listening to his people when they had feedback for the team. There was little doubt that this was one of the most probable reasons for the mass defections and the coach found a way to get the message across to this manager that a percentage of each day needs to be allocated to the bank’s most important asset.. its people. The coach provided a few models and some guidance on active listening techniques and then participated in a few sessions with employees while the manager put his newly acquired skills to work.

The first objective was to initiate a change in the way that this manager dealt with his staff so that each staff member felt as though they were able to communicate openly with their boss and that their voice was heard. The second objective was to ensure that the manager scheduled time to resolve the issues that each employee had raised and then to report back to the employee and close the circle. Mission accomplished: company board members happy, company execs happy, employees happy – a win-win-win result.

What exactly is coaching in today’s constantly changing business environment?

During a recent restructuring project there was a component of reorganization which created not only an uneasy emotional environment but outright confusion among staffers and management alike. Managers that go through a change process like this often have no one to turn to for advice or guidance. Access to a good coach is key to the manager’s well being and success. A coach’s role in situations like these is to create a sense of security so that all involved are able to see things clearer thus bringing a sense of calm into the organization. Also, as an external observer, the coach is often able to present a totally different perspective to the Client thus encouraging each member of a team to move toward something positive rather than away from something negative – but that is an entirely different topic that we will cover later this year.

If you believe that hiring a coach might help you to:

• see things more clearly
• introduce a sense of calm to your team
• leverage experience to provide you with guidance
• motivate yourself and inspire your team
• identify obstacles in your path to success
• better prepare for your business challenges
• achieve success

you are probably right on track and we’d be delighted to hear about your needs. Who knows, perhaps our coaches might be able to help you and your company achieve your mutual objectives this quarter.

There is a real difference between managing and leading, managing ends up being the allocation of resources against tasks and projects. Leadership focuses on people. My definition of a leader is someone who helps people succeed. Is there any way we can help you succeed?

Its all about ROI or is it?

There are more than 60 years of combined healthcare experience between our senior staff consultants to date. We are fortunate to have on staff the former chairman of the board of Point Pleasant Hospital, a 20 year veteran of HP Medical and other leading healthcare organizations and a former director of General Electric Medical Services covering a broad range of healthcare process and management issues for our Clients. To be a bit more specific, they consult some of the largest and most reputable hospitals in Switzerland on a wide variety of topics to help their Clients establish, clarify and meet specific business driven objectives. These objectives are often financial related but more recently, the focus has been on softer targets such as patient comfort, duration of stay issues, architectural interior designs that make guests feel more comfortable and improvements in efficiency through implementation of technology.

A few of the hot consulting projects today relate to topics such as implementing DRG and RFID. The original objective of diagnosis related groupings (DRGs) was to develop a patient classification system that related types of patients treated to the resources they consumed. Since the introduction of DRGs in the early 1980’s, the healthcare industry has evolved and developed an increased demand for a patient classification system that can serve its original objective at a higher level of sophistication and precision. To meet those evolving needs, the objective of the DRG system had to expand in scope. Today, there are several different DRG systems that have been developed. They include:

• Medicare DRG
• Refined DRGs (RDRG)
• All Patient DRGs (APDRG)
• Severity DRGs (SDRG)
• All Patient Refined DRGs (APRDRG)
• International-Refined DRGs (IRDRG)
• German DRGs (G-DRG)

The overall purpose of such classification is to improve ROI while simplifying insurance related issues and thus, many hospitals have DRG on their agendas modeling and improving upon what has been learned in the 20+ years of US experience and applying it to European healthcare projects.

The other hot topic is RFID which stands for radio frequency identification. Among other things, this allows for easier inventory taking if each product in a given organization such as a hospital has a tiny bar code sized RFID tag on it or embedded into it. The objective is not only to reduce theft but also to track items such as medicine so that each patient gets only the medicine that has been prescribed for that specific individual. This helps to reduce the many deaths caused by human error when hospital staff mistakenly administer the wrong medicine to a patient during medicine distribution rounds.