Stop exercising and start TRAINing

I’m a very straight forward guy, which is why when I was searching for a name for my company, I selected TRAIN. I really can’t even take credit for it, my good buddy Mark Ferdman actually came up with the name. He suggested it because it is a verb, showing action, activity and clearly states what I do. I liked that idea and still do. One of my goals is to create more than a classroom environment; my programs are more like TRAINing. If you’re thinking this is turning out to be one of those self-promoting blog-o-mercials, well hang on, it’s not. It is about the mindset of the attendees in my programs and how a small change in perspective can gain huge reward.

TRAINing vs. exercising
The typical mindset going into the classroom environment can be a lot like going to the gym. You show up, you go through the motions and do the exercises. The trouble with that mindset, doing the exercises, is exercises are movement without purpose, motion without direction. At the gym, exercising can be a grueling activity. In both the gym and the classroom, for real change to take effect requires a lot of discipline and obligation.

By comparison, TRAINing is fueled by a vision. Where do professional athletes go – to exercise camp or to TRAINing camp? The TRAINing mindset is compelled by a deeper goal and purpose; a motivation fueled by a want. Just going through the exercises lacks a purpose, is a lower intensity and usually ends up being boring. When you show up and you’re “in TRAINing”, you are focused on achieving a specific result, receiving feedback and acting on an intense drive and motivation.

It is up to you.

Only you determine your mind set when you arrive for a program. Which experience do you desire – exercise or TRAINing? To maximize your effort, I suggest you arrive “in TRAINing”. I can guarantee that the guy up in front of my room is inspired by a powerful vision, is passionate and feeling strong about the goals of the program. Let's get TRAINing!

Are we there yet??

I typically get the “Are we there yet?” question from my kids, Megan and Matthew, at some point on any given road trip. I recently addressed a group of global general managers about how to help our customers survive this economy. I shared a lot of the best practices I’ve seen and they likewise talked about what they were doing in their local markets. At one point, someone expressed that they have done so much to battle against the recession that it felt like they put in a whole year rather than six months. That’s when I heard the kids in the back seat saying, “Are we there yet?” Yes, we’ve all been working hard, we’ve accomplished a lot but we’re not there yet, we’re half way through – here are some steps to help us evaluate the goals we set for ourselves this year and refocus our efforts we put forth for the remainder of this year.

Re-set priorities
Take a look at your goals from the beginning of the year, do they still apply? Have new goals or objectives come up that we need to address? We have had to make course corrections and adjustments to our plans this year, make sure to re-set your priorities accordingly so your efforts will drive the results that you need to be targeting now.

Stay positive
Yeah, it’s been tough and we all have been working hard. Take a look in the review mirror for a minute – take stock of all the efforts you’ve put out. Perhaps some of those successful tactics can be re-applied in the coming months. By being positive, it will help yourself and your team to keep moving forward.

Delegate tasks
We don’t have to do everything – ask yourself who on your team can do this or that. By delegating activities to the team they become engaged in the solution and take an ownership role. This also gives you the added benefit of freeing up some time to think, focus and come up with new ideas. Don’t exhaust yourself by trying to do it all.

Get out
Take this time to get out of your office, get out on the floor. Talk to the people, your staff, your customers – by doing so, you’ll get a clear idea of what their needs are and if what you’re doing in your business is addressing those needs. They can be the best source for new, creative solutions; have those conversations.

Keep an eye on your health
Over the last six months, there most likely have been some sleepless nights, more than a fair share of stress and a lot of extra efforts that stretched us out. All this takes a toll on us physically and can impact our health and the well being of our team. By staying positive we address our spirit and mental health – do something as well to address your physical health. Besides, it’s the summer – getting the group out in the air, maybe playing a friendly softball game or just tossing a Frisbee can be a great and well needed de-stressor.

Rewards
Don’t forget to make time to reward yourself and your team for all the hard work and celebrate those victories – big and small.

When you evaluate where you are right now at this mid-way point in the year and reset your goals and priorities you’ll gain a natural, forward momentum that will re-energize you, your team and your business. Apply these six simple steps as you go forward into the remainder of the year. There is a lot we’ve already achieved and a lot more we can achieve, remember there is still time, we’re not there yet.

It's time to re-connect!

Ok, we’re just about at the half way mark for 2009. Whew! In talking with several of my clients, they are looking ahead to the October to December time period, when business naturally picks up and the economists are saying the recession will loosen its grip. Standing between that time and now is the typically slower summer season. The good news is, perhaps more people will be staying closer to home this year as we all tighten our belts – that spells opportunity. In the meantime, let’s think about another opportunity and that is getting back in touch with the customers that loved our services and might have had to go elsewhere due to the hand they were dealt with the economy. Remember, these were loyal customers, let’s reach out to them and let them know we’d love to work with them again and bring them back!

Make a list
The first step is to identify who left and make a list. If we’re going to do this, let’s really do it, go through your customer list for not just the last 6 months, how about the last two years? Who knows how many old clients are out there that would love to come back.

Make contact
Segment your list into recent clients and one who went missing further out. Clients that have recently strayed might warrant a phone call, others an email or letter. In all cases, the message is “we just want you back!” and never “why did you leave?”. You might also consider including an offer or discount when you reach out to these clients, sort of a “let’s get back together” offer.

What to do
When the customer does come back, take this opportunity to really show them what they missed out on. Don’t just slip back into the old familiar ways. Yes, you have a relationship and now you can take that relationship to the next step. Welcome them back and make them feel comfortable being back, get reacquainted and then start with them as if they were a new client. Don’t make the mistake of assuming everything is as it was the last time you worked together. If they never told you why they left, it may come out in this process and you can then put a plan together to meet their current needs.

When business is booming, many of us are so busy serving current customers that we don’t have the time - or the need - to keep up connections with former customers. Regardless of how well your business is doing right now, it's time to get back to these fundamentals. They will pay off and can potentially bring in business to offset the coming slower months. If we are successful here, we will finish this year and start 2010 strong.

Find the silver lining

Times are tough – there is no question about that. We have to remember, what we do now will determine where our business is when this economic downturn starts to turn around. Last week I was in Tampa with the sales and education team from L’Oreal Professionnel and we talked a lot about what they see their customers doing. I think it was Jeremy who commented that what he has observed are two sets of customers, the ones who are struggling and the others who are thriving. I thought about that discussion a lot and here are some ideas that companies can put into place now, to help them take advantage of the downturn, strengthen their organization and prepare for the upturn. With a little planning, we can help our customers move from the group that is struggling, to the group that is thriving.

If it’s broke – ditch it
When it’s good times, there is a tendency to accumulate things in your business that maybe aren’t working out the way you planned and that may only be producing mediocre results. These could be anything, programs, marketing campaigns, even policies or procedures. In the down market, we need to take stock of these items, clear out what isn’t performing and become more efficient.

Target your resources
Let’s pull out the old Pareto Principle – better known as the 80/20 rule. Make a commitment to focus relentlessly on the 20% of the activities likely to deliver 80% of the results. These activities are often the tried and true activities that have always worked to drive our business. In good times, we may pay less attention to these activities and in a down turn, we’ve got to re-energize our efforts. Two key words to take notice of are “focus relentlessly” – every customer, every day, every sales call.

The opportunity to help our customers has never been greater than now and our customers have never been more receptive to trying new ideas. By helping our customers strengthen their business through the downturn, we’ll be planting the seeds for growth in the upturn. I really enjoy working with the L’Oreal Pro team and always come away from a program with them feeling energized and full of great ideas. I can’t wait to hear the success stories on how they helped their customers mine the silver linings in their businesses. Talk with your customers in your next meeting about these ideas as well. Good luck.

Thinking for Success

With all the focus on surviving the current economic environment, few are thinking about thriving. In talking with business owners and key decision makers from the various organizations I work with, I’m often reminded by the more forward thinking individuals that what is happening now will not last forever. Their thoughts are focused on what their business will be like on the other side of the downturn and what they need to do now to be stronger later – they are taking steps to thrive. There are some common themes, thoughts and ways successful professionals approach their business and I’ve put together a list to share with you.

Welcome challenges - problems are opportunities for solutions. There are going to be challenges and from these challenges we can create solutions that not only deal with the issue but could lead us into new directions for growth

Follow your passions - you don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you. If you aren’t excited about what you’re doing, it is hard to live it, breath it and love it. Life is too short and work is too hard not to really LOVE what you do

Keep things interesting - lack of enthusiasm can lead to missed opportunities for you and your team. We have got to be engaged in our business and to be engaged, our business needs to be engaging! I often talk with professionals who after being in their business for five or ten years, feel they have met every challenge, faced every obstacle and are in a rut. I say that they have only scratched the surface! If we aren’t pulling new challenges our way to keep our work interesting, we’re not growing

Patience is a virtue – things take time, nothing happens overnight. I’ve heard this all through my life and the need for instant gratification has only grown. Be patient and while you’re waiting, measure and assess the action you are taking – you might be surprised how fast the results show up once we begin to measure what we are doing

Do what’s manageable – free yourself from the paralysis of trying to do it all by doing what you can manage to do. There is no use in striving for something that will always be out of reach

Always try to do better – constantly push to improve things. Focus on what’s wrong, what’s right is already money in the bank

Recognize key players – keeping your key players happy is a priority, acknowledge their support and the role they play in your success

Pick and choose the right advice – get counsel from your mentors and people you respect. Not all advice is going to be for you, ultimately you have the final say

Make the hard decisions – now is not the time to procrastinate. Making the tough decisions now will make you stronger later

Simplify – things don’t have to be complicated. The more straight forward and simple we make things, the more de-cluttered our lives will be

Think about these points and how you can adapt them into your day to day activities. Right now, we are all laser focused on dealing with the business of today due to the economy. Stepping back and applying the points above will help us and our business to be stronger when we emerge from this recession. Good luck.

Center the Needle

The first quarter of 2009 is complete and we’re halfway through the first month of Q2! It is a perfect time to stop, take a look at the goals and objectives we set for ourselves back in January, reflect on the steps we’ve taken so far to achieve these goals, evaluate our progress and take this opportunity to make some adjustments.

In January, I blogged about planning goals and not making resolutions in my post, http://traintobethebest.blogspot.com/2009/01/happy-new-year-is-it-too-late-to-keep.html, and I talked about the steps and activities we need to take to achieve these goals. The economy has had a huge impact on us so far and will continue to do so for some time. We need to center the needle on our original plans and move forward from there. By taking a quick evaluation and making adjustments, we can get back on course and drastically increase our chances of success.

Process
Every good planning process is really a series of four steps that flow in a continual, circular pattern. The initial step is to set and agree to the plan which should then be followed by the next step which is to execute the plan. In our case, this would be the activities or actions we’ve taken to achieve our goals in the first quarter. What we’re focusing on now is evaluating where we are on the path to reaching those goals and thinking through any tweaks or adjustments we need to make at this point in time.

Where are your goals?
If you can’t find your goal sheet that is the first challenge you’ve got to overcome! Our goals need to be visible and ideally we should be thinking about them every day. Post them on your wall in your office, on your car visor, on your bathroom mirror – someplace you where you’ll see them and they will be top of mind. Too often, personally and in business, we’ll put all this time and effort into planning and then proceed to ignore and forget about the document until we need to plan for the upcoming year. If you’ve done this, no worries, blow the dust off your goal sheet and get started now!

Evaluate & Adjust
This is an important step. We may discover that there are goals we totally lost focus on and that’s fine. We may also discover that we’ve made some real progress on certain goals and even tackled objectives that we didn’t list or possibly didn’t even exist when we made our plan. We can take this opportunity to review and adjust our timing, scrap goals that aren’t a priority and add new ones that are more relevant now. In today’s business environment it could be argued that we should be making adjustments daily! One point to remember, adjustments can be a two way street – feel free to adjust up – take the opportunity to make big..BIGGER. If you’ve achieved some early success, raise your goals and keep going. By increasing your goal the size of the prize will increase as well.

Celebrate all successes to date and re-engage with yourself on meeting and exceeding your plans for the year. Good luck.

Feedback

Candid feedback is a great asset to owners, managers and decisions makers in any size organization from the beauty salons I work with directly right on up to the large corporations that I support. Gaining this essential information can prove difficult unless you create an open environment that your team will feel safe in and provide the structure for the feedback to be heard and if warranted, put into action.

Encourage open dialogue
As managers or coaches, if we aren’t actively and regularly seeking input and feedback from our team, we’re not going to get it. List feedback as an agenda item in your next staff or team meeting – focus the discussion on a specific topic with a set time limit to keep it productive. Take out a team member for a quick lunch or cup of coffee and ask their opinion to gain one on one feedback. It pays to get out on the street! Remove yourself from the corporate ivory tower and find out what they are saying in the field – this is where the real information lives.

Don’t shoot the messenger
In order to have access to this information, we need to create a safe environment for our team to deliver it. Show that you value different opinions by thanking individuals who speak up. One of the best ways to acknowledge how much you value the team’s input is to show them how you’re acting on it. If someone suggests a change and you put it in place, call it out, let people know.

Cash is king
A successful technique one of my clients uses to encourage their team to speak up is to offer them cold hard cash! They hold an annual contest for the best tip on how to improve the company and employees enter by not only pointing out inefficiencies but by suggesting fresh ideas and solutions to the problem as well. This can be modified to an organization of any size, set the contest to run quarterly for faster resutls and adjust the size of the prize as necessary. What I like about the process is you don’t just end up with a lot of complaints; you end up with real solutions to improve your business.