Change – the word we hate but need for success is really less than a minute a day of change

The late legendary coach Herb Brooks said in essence “change is something nearly everyone hates, fails to embrace but it is mandatory for success”.  I find that daily I find in both our great employees or valued clients, we are always faced with that conversation: “What do we need to change? Will it be successful? Do I want to do it?”

Well I see change a lot differently than most. If you break down your day and the decisions we make, they likely account for less than 60 seconds of our time daily. Whether we decide what to eat, when to sleep or awake, exercise, work, work smart, work hard, screw off, blow off a new process, try a new route home, listen intently to our spouses, etc., the list is very likely very long. But the amount of time spent processing the go left or right is a fraction of a second.  And this is where you as a leader, employee, spouse or aspiring “let’s get in better shape” adult succeed or don’t. 

We all know that if we wanted to have a utopia life, whatever that utopia is defined as for your individual life, it comes down to our current life is a summation of our prior decisions and our future will be determined by the sum of decisions made starting RIGHT NOW.  If you read the next sentence you purposely or subconsciously decided “I want read on – this is good stuff” or “I am going to read this as this guy is full of hot air and I want more humor”, or the last option, someone stopped reading this. 

The reality is if you want to change your path in life, you are given infinite opportunities to start changing every day.  You want to be in better shape and it is the middle of the work day?  Decide you want water right now versus Diet Coke.  Decide to stretch your legs right now and every 30 minutes so that when you get home you are ready to go for a walk rather than crash on the couch.  Want to be more productive, decide not to check Facebook right now versus making that next critical sales call.  

Reality is that there are infinite paths to walk on daily.  Your daily resting point in the journey of life tonight is controlled by you.  Don’t like your health, change it – if you have cancer that isn’t in your control but if you are out of shape, that is all you.  You don’t like your boss, look in the mirror first and ask if he/she is the problem or does your attitude have something to do it.  More specifically, is the choices you are making leading to poor performance that your “prick of a boss” is really doing you a favor? Or, is your boss or his/her boss simply an ass clown and it is time to be happy and pursue success elsewhere?  A Harvard Business School study found 54% of the time someone doesn’t succeed at a job has zero to do with the employer: it resided solely on the poor attitude and attitude skills one brought to the job. Is the boss an idiot or are you?

The reality, if you are lacking success in any aspect of your life or business or job, the opportunity to change is immediate. And when your break it all down, if you can improve the 60 seconds a day of decisions you make, you will see immediate improvement. 

Last, you may ask, how do I improve my decisions and make the change happen?

1) Slow down and breathe.  Notice I said breathe, not think.  Many bad decisions are made because people are not of a calm mindset to even think. Decisions made in this state are often influenced by anger, fatigue, being hungry or just being lazy.  So, take a deep breath first and prepare to think and analyze. 

2) Know the opposite effect of what you are about to decide. If you are seeking change, than your reality is the opposite effect you are seeking – what is the opposite of that? Know both, then make the decision based upon the desired outcome.  Case in point: You are working on growing your sales but have had a lousy day in sales.  Yet, you know your results have been slacking because you have spent more time on Facebook and fantasy football picks than working your lead management system.  So no one has answered after 24 calls: you can hit Facebook or you can make the next call.  You are at the intersection of success and not.  You can stick with your current results and Facebook routing and enjoy your current paycheck or you can knuckle down and go after the next prospect?  

The reality, achieving success and not is that simple.  60 seconds of change is not hard – make simple yet disciplined changes and you will see the results.  

Create success today at every opportunity.  

Patrick 

Our Theory When It Comes to Presentations – Whether to Say or Ask Something….or Not?

Many of you ask “how do I present this product?” when it comes to markets.  At 32M, we will provide you all of the tools and training required to be successful at selling locations.  But often, the difference maker in whether or not you nail that new account or upgrade that location to a market is how you present.  This includes asking the right questions or making bold statements, especially asking the hard questions.

So, the fair question is: “How do you know the line between asking a question or saying something that is out of bounds and not?”  Here is my theory and I call it “The Say It Triangle”.  Let me be more specific by first defining the three sides of the triangle.

1. Side One – Professional: Is the question professional?  Specifically, is it a professional topic or not and is it asked in a professional manner?
2. Side Two – Ethical:  Does the topic put anyone in a situation to have to consider their moral compass?
3. Side Three – Factual:  Is the question completely true or is seeking an answer or addressing a subject that is truthful?

So, how does it work?  If the statement or question is professional and ethical, it is factual.  If it is factual and ethical, it is professional.  If it is professional and factual, it is ethical.  If it meets this model, ASK the question or make the statement.

What is the opposite of this?  Let me give you some examples:

1. Tip toeing around issues.
2. Hiding the truth.
3. Not getting all the facts.
4. Losing the sale.
5. Losing confidence of your customer.
6. Not capturing the impulse they had when they said “come see me”.
7. The customer can’t wait for you to leave because they are bored in your presentation.

So let’s address point #7.  Based upon what I have outlined here in the Say It Triangle, would I ask the question “Sir, you don’t seem interested today thus it tells me that I have not captured what you are interested in.  Why did first want to meet with me?”  Would I say this?  YES.  Why, because the sale is not going anywhere and last I looked, zero times anything is zero.  Now, if it was a current client, I may change a word or two but the reality is, it would be no less than “We have been servicing you for a long time and to ensure I always provide you with the best solutions, I felt it was best for me to come in and show you how I can improve your work place and my solution to it.  Have you found any part of this upgrade proposal of interest?”  Failure to means that at some point, a competitor will come in and get their attention that you failed to.

You may say “I don’t want to be pushy or aggressive?”  Being truthful, factual and ethical is not being pushy or aggressive.  It is clarity, thorough, complete, decisive, etc.  Last I looked, sales often isn’t comfortable.  If you are comfortable in sales, you likely are not pushing yourself or your customers and your results reflect that.   The previous sentence is an exact example of the Say It Triangle:  It is factual – it is ethical – so those of you questioning whether or not it is professional, take note.  By failing to to either push yourself or your customers, you likely do not create value or urgency around you or your product.  And failure to create measured value or urgency, where the customer says “I want to move ahead today” means no sales.

In selling markets, to be specific, a lack of creating value means the locations say “I will stick with vending” or “I will stick with my current provider – they have done a good job”.  Vending, I stress, is not a bad business or solution….in locations that dictates vending should be the solution.  But don’t let that be pre-determined. And certainly don’t let the location say “we should only do vending”.   If there is interest, it can be a great location when presented the right way.  And the right way often includes coming in and asking tough questions to elicit the true needs of the organization so you create value around your product providing solutions to those needs.

So, ask yourself, in the last few presentations, have you created value or urgency for your market solution? Your company?  Your SELF?  If not, meaning you are not having success in selling markets, I would suggest  you look long and hard at your presentation skills and ask yourself “am I saying what needs to be said or asking what needs to be asked?”.

Make it a great day and create success at every opportunity.

Patrick

Perfection – what else are you striving for

As a continuation of our Blog on Principles of our company, Perfection is next.  We are big believers in Jim Collins book, Good to Great.  He says as one of his principles “are you good at it?”  We took it a step further: can we perfect it?

While perfection is something rarely achieved, seeking it should be a constant in your life, let alone the product you produce and sell. Failure to means you are accepting average.  Seeking it means you are constantly looking to improve it, how you service it, how to stay ahead of your competitors and more.  Failure to think this way means simply that, you are likely to fail, whether sooner or later.  

As part of seeking perfection, we seek like minded business owners who strive for the same.  People who want to be the best.  Business owners who can sort through the smoke screens of marketing gimmicks and fancy displays for hard core performance facts and profit measurements.  In having like minds, we can together, seek the best avenues to provide a superior end product.  In return, we achieve jointly our profit goals, the core of each business’ ability to thrive. 

We look forward to seeing our clients in Vegas at NAMA next week in our market business.  Until then, have a great business today. Today is 20% of your work week….make it count. 

Patrick 

Passion – do we like to do it

As the second part of our principles, Passion is pretty simple, either we love what we do or we don’t do it.  Weekly, we are approached with ideas to grow our business. From kiosks that sell “legal” pot to fumigating sports equipment, we have seen it….and said no. We aren’t passionate about those things, we are about what we do today.  

Being passionate means we also work passionately with people and expect the same in return.  For our products to flourish, we need partners who are as passionate as we are in being successful.  Thus, if you sense we push, we do. Because as I described in last blog, we want you to be successful otherwise, we are not.  

Go get it today, because we are.  

Patrick

Principles, Who We Stand For

Over the next few weeks I am going to post blogs about the Principles we stand for.  While these are the standards we live by, we welcome the chance to learn about yours and your feedback on ours.  The term “mutual” is something we believe that these principles to be – our #1 Principle is Profits.  Some at first may say “whoa” if you are…..stop.  What it means without our business partners being profitable we don’t exist.  So, in that spirit, we have Ten Principles and our first starts with you.  

When we all started in business, we started  with a mindset we need to make money to survive.  We need to pay bills, fund babysitters, a car payment, the mortgage, and as time grew, dreams.  Making dreams become reality starts with having a bottom line number that you need to hit whether it be grow your business, add that second delivery truck, build a new bulding, buy a competitor, let alone expand, fund your retirement, provide improved benefits for your employees, build a bigger home, the list is endless.  

This starts with profit and we must provide you the impact on your business to grow it.  We stress to our staff daily we need to ensure what we do daily helps our business partners, the people and companies who buy and employ our products can deliver a profit to themselves.  Doing so ensures they continue to be our client, expand their business and more. 

We must provide you the value added service and bottom line reliability you need in daily performance of our product.  We need to deliver world class technology, service and guidance so that each penny adds to profit whether it be in incremental growth due to an enhancement, process improvement that equates to expense savings that when multiplied, equates to record profits for the client. 

In return we EARN our price that in the end funds our bottom line and allows us to continue to provide World Class products.  Our price funds our product development, employee growth and every facet of our company so that we continue to provide the best product that our clients buy again and again.  

So, we all know what we need to do to be mutually profitable and know from the get go our #1 principle starts with ensuring you reach your profit goals so that you are our client for decades to come.  

Stay tuned….more to come.  Let me know how we can help you improve your bottom line.  

Patrick 

Know the opposite of success to have success

Know the opposite of your goals? It’s called lack of success, frustration, regret, missed opportunities and more adjectives that have nothing positive associated with them. Want to hit your goals for 2015? Not only have your goals written down but also have written the opposite down so you can see which path you are on.

Change is hard. Success isn’t comfortable. And listing your self defined opposite of success will immediately tell you if you are taking the right actions every minute, hour, day, week, month and quarter.

A Success Anthem – Go Achieve in 2015!

I read this tonight and thought it was right on to what we are all looking to do as operators, distributors and at 32M, if we are growing our businesses.  The difference between success and other results centers upon this anthem:

All people have the same desire to succeed.  Even if all have the same desire to succeed and do similar things, is the ones with the proper mindsets who succeed the most.  Their minds can deal with any obstacle.  The ones who kick ass are the ones who can see themselves kicking ass, who truly believe in themselves, what they are selling, remind themselves how much they want to kick ass and helps others kick ass, makes themselves better and more.  These elite folks are excited about being compensated for selling and have no limitations other than doing something unethical, and certainly have no limiting or subconscious beliefs holding them back.  The ones who feel weird or who worry that pushing for a sale or a successful outcome of their efforts, are potentially annoying someone, or believe they shouldn’t succeed, WON’T.

Which path are you on?  Think about it.  It is one or the other and there are no but’s.  I always said to my kids when they were young “I don’t know who But Dad is”….. there are no if’s, can’ts or but’s on the way to success.  Believe as the anthem above says and you will kick your goals for 2015 in to high gear.

Go get it.

Patrick

Setting Goals for ’15? Have a Simple Plan That Allows You To Achieve Them

Goals are great. Without them, where is your business and life headed. But many people start out on conquering their goals with little planning on how to hit them let alone a realistic plan to achieve success. Change that. And use possible the best example in business to follow to give yourself the best chance at success, Southwest Airlines, SWA.

SWA should be called Simple We Are Airlines. They fly only one model of airplane, the Boeing 737. Mechanics look at the same airplane every day thus there is very little grey area on what it takes to ensure a pilot has an airworthy aircraft. They board their planes the exact same way. They stock their planes the exact same way. Their luggage is put the exact same process airport to airport. Their routines do not deviate.

Thus, by making the routine the exact same every single time, it is like clockwork for every employee in their roles thus making each task to the point of mundane because they do the same thing over and over and over …. and over ….. and over again tomorrow and every day. By making each employees job easy (within reason), the SWA execution is untouched in the industry. There isn’t a courier world wide that can touch their profitability since 9/11, they are the only airline that has never seen a bankruptcy court let alone numbers in the red on their balance sheet and profit and loss. Their customer satisfaction rating by independent agencies routinely crush the competition and nearly every quarter they are #1 in being on time, luggage execution and more.

And, by making their jobs easy, SWA has employees who can focus on what matters most, customer satisfaction. Rarely will you find a SWA employee with a scowl and ask a SWA employee if they like their job and I have found my personal inspection of asking this question to be nearly 99%. And in the end, SWA is the ONLY carrier world wide to have never have a major accident. See any coincidence?

Many airlines now are borrowing and stealing SWA ideas but none of them can afford to match their simple model. Many can’t because their lack of profits forever don’t allow it. They are saddled with debt and archaic practices and systems and the legacy of buying another competitor who has a closet full of problems in every facet, they couldn’t begin to undue the mess to simply execute at the SWA level.

Thus, the point being, if you are struggling in your job, leading your department, running your division or leading your company, look at your processes and tasks. If they are so complex, archaic, lack automation, undisciplined, undefined, and don’t match anything I just described, then you need to start NOW to do this.

It is great that I outline this but unless I give you a tool to fix it, this is a worthless post. So here it is: Start with 4-5 items you MUST do every day to make yourself successful. If you have a staff, identify the same for your staff and get their input. Then micro manage the s*** out of this. Demand it and don’t be nice about accepting anything else. NOTHING. Ask yourself this question, if you did this, where would you or your business, division, branch, or LIFE for that matter, be, if you did this for the next 30 days? 60 days? And as you got those initial 4-5 actions engrained as the norm, you can begin to take on 2-3 more tasks done daily at the same intensity, some you do once or twice weekly, some even once monthly. But you again, micro manage the s*** out of this and you will change everything to where it becomes automatic and done at the highest level.

Start today. Define it and then execute it at the highest level whatever the scope may be, and what your routines spell is SUCCESS!

Let me know if I can help you plan 2015 and set your sites high.

Patrick