It might look good, but you lose performance when you spin the wheels

A Coaching trend has appeared where it’s OK failing, so long as you partly succeed. Is this strategy in the Client’s or Coach’s best interest?

The majority of people will have come across the mnemonic SMART, when it comes to setting goals. Referring to Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-sensitive.

Great goals, reached through individual centric conversations, meet all these criteria. Studies have concluded, time and time again, that clarity of purpose and single mindedness are key reasons why successful people succeed which is why Coaching mimics this.

The Coach’s challenge, is to help clients set goals that really do stretch them i.e. they are just about attainable, with much effort. What you don’t want are goals so simple everyone will achieve them or so difficult that 99% of people will fail.

Because our society tends to measure success/failure in black and white, this creates a dilemma for Coaches. If goals aren’t 100% achieved, unpicking the reasons why can be very de-motivational. It also questions the Coach’s competency too, so the temptation is to arrive at less challenging goals.

Add to this the, “Get out of jail free card”, that it’s OK to achieve 75% (for example) of your goal and you sow the seed that everything is just fine, which it isn’t.

What this approach fails to do is explore the dynamics of the journey, so a clearer line is needed. I prefer adding ER, (Evaluate and Reevaluate) to create SMARTER, rather than SMART Goals. This way you can acknowledge how circumstances change and how reflection and learning are crucial to effective Coaching.

It also means that with appropriate effort, the Client really gets to grip with the challenge, so they sprint off the line reaching their goal in the fastest possible time!

Jonathan Wainwright enables organisations to create commercial success through digital marketing, traditional communications and team development.

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Mentoring means different things to different people; what does it mean to you?

There’s no right way or wrong way to approach Mentoring, Coaching or Critical Friends – other than helping clients identify and achieve goals more efficiently. Or is there? How does this work for us all in the real world…….

Click Photo to take survey

I can think of many examples where Mentoring has been of great benefit to clients, particularly in the field of talent management.

Here are two. Entrepreneur magazine found that strong Mentor programmes helped small-business owners attract and retain employees and a Fortune 500 company was able to reduce the turnover rate of its employees, with fewer than three years experience, from 50 to 20 percent through investment in a Mentor programme.

So how does Mentoring impact on smaller organisations? That’s what I want to explore. For example, would you find it useful to have a Mentor to:

• Bounce ideas off?
• Help you identify the right direction for your organisation?
• Keep you focussed on the key issues?
• Provide a confidential sounding board?
• Work ‘on’, rather than ‘in’ your business?
• Encourage and motivate you in these stressful and challenging times?
• Help you identify and achieve your business goals?

So, what’s important to you – what works and what doesn’t?

To find out, click HERE to complete my brief survey.

When you do, I will share the results with you through my report, ‘Mentoring in the East Anglia Business Community’ which will be published in the Spring.

Jonathan Wainwright enables organisations to create commercial success through digital marketing, traditional communications and team development.

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The telephone is still the best way to achieve business to business sales

At a recent buyers seminar one buyer commented that he was receiving less and less sales phone calls, yet his email ‘in’ box was jam packed with ‘Dear sir’ selling emails, most of which he deleted without reading.

Email is seductive. At the touch of a button with an e-marketing system, Sales people can blitz hundreds of emails within seconds.

It makes them look productive as the numbers are big. However, unless emails are personalised, targeted and specific, the chances of success are minimal.

So why the switch? The cynical, myself included, will already know that some sales people making a career out of avoiding using the phone to sell and email marketing provides the perfect smoke screen for an excuse to stop phoning prospects.

However, the reality is that, in business to business sales the telephone is an even more powerful selling tool today, than in the past. The Direct Marketing Association’s response rate report, has established that cold calling customers yields the highest response rate. 6.16% achieved, higher than response rates for direct mail, email, paid search and internet displays.

With the market getting tougher, volume of sales calls being made down combined with the chances of getting through higher, opportunity for success increases. But it is essential to communicate the right message, what you say has to be relevant.

These 5 top tips will make sure you get a great start.

1. Time the call to avoid the gatekeeper. Call before 9.00am, lunchtime or late afternoon and you will have a very good chance of avoiding the gatekeeper, speaking directly with the person you wish to speak with.
2. Always carefully research and plan the call. Be clear about your objective; sale, meeting, harvest details/information etc. Pitch your opening statement so that the listener can instantly see the benefit of a conversation with you. Know the interests of the person for the human touch. Make accurate follow-up notes.
3. Keep to the point. Don’t wander of topic or start to waffle. Ever.
4. Use Psychology. Empathise, build rapport, listen carefully to what is being said and take a genuine interest in the conversation so that you answer questions in a relevant manner.
5. Act. At the appropriate point ask for the sale, appointment or information you need don’t procrastinate.

It’s not easy, which is why telephone selling is a highly sought after skill. If you are looking to improve this aspect of your business, I would be happy to share my knowledge with you.

Jonathan Wainwright enables organisations to create commercial success through digital marketing, traditional communications and team development.

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Why is the use of Coaching increasing?

The simple answer is because it achieves results; even for the most gifted. It would be unheard of for any of today’s top sports champions preparing without one, such is the value that a Coach brings. The same is becoming true within the business world.

So, how can it help?

In today’s market, the challenge is to achieve more with less resource and the timeframes that we have to work within are being compressed too. Keeping up, let alone getting ahead of the game is becoming more and more demanding.

That’s why a study of Fortune 500 Companies found that nearly 40% use Executive Coaching as part of their Leadership development process to help people become more productive.

Unlike Training, Coaching directly translates into doing activity that is directly relevant and this translates into business impact. And this is achieved regardless of the size of organisation.

Coaching is an excellent way of improving leadership and management skills, orientating staff to a new role or job task and generally improving staff interactions, as it can help individuals align themselves to colleagues working styles.

CIPD research has identified that the nine drivers that create a need for Coaching are:

– Rapidly evolving markets
– Individual responsibility for development
– Financial impact of poor performance
– Development strategy
– Supports other learning
– Requested by employees
– Need for lifelong learning
– Improves decision making
– Targeted, just in time development

The Manchester Group reported that moving from Training to a combination of Training and Coaching increased productivity from 22 to 88%.

Is that the kind of result you would like to achieve? Then let’s discuss.

Call me on 07971 006 446 or join me on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Succeed in 2011 – KIS and get on

Business doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact the basics are very simple, so keep it that way, why complicate things. It’s all about keeping it simple and on track – that’s the challenge most of us face.

So, my 5 Mantra’s for 2011 would be:

– Create a business plan and work it (and it might just be one page)
– Remember, cash flow is king
– Profitability rather than the vanity of turnover should be the goal
– From day one, have an exit route that leverages on what you are doing
– If you don’t love your business, do something else.

If you can manage to do all that you won’t go far wrong.

And if it’s a struggle, executive coaching is a great way to gain clarity, objectivity and focus.

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Just what is a ‘Critical Friend’?

Someone asked me about this, as they thought that criticism and friendship didn’t really go together. And in the cosy world of chatting with your mates, they are right!

However, in the tough commercial world these two aspects go together hand in glove. It’s a powerful mix too, a cross between Coach, Mentor and Critic.

What I’m talking about here is adding a kind of ruthless positiveness to your agenda, one that really helps fine tune plans by providing a sounding board and reality check.

There’s an element of tough love, as an outsider I can question and challenge in a way that people working within your organisation never could.

It’s quite possible to be critical and constructive at the same time.

It’s about adding lots of fresh thinking to the mix, in a manner that really assists the decision making process. And this is one of the areas of consultancy that I love, as ideas from different industries can be highly transferable.

Something that never ceases to amaze me is how organisations often organise customer support around their own needs rather than those of their customers. They wouldn’t do this if they had a Critical Friend.

A Critical Friend can also introduce new ideas into difficult discussion areas, and help you take a 360 degree walk around the issues you face. This will help you really think deeply about all the possible solutions, hence becoming more confident with the decisions you are making.

So being a Critical Friend is a mixture of tough love, acting as a sounding board and about injecting new ways of thinking to help organisations?

Yes it is. But above all it’s about being honest and open providing realistic and reflective support so that those you are working with, achieve their goals faster and more efficiently.

If you would like me to be your Critical Friend, please call me for an informal chat on 07971 006 446.

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How to create winning business ideas – part two

If you followed my idea from last week, you will have added a new dimension to Brainstorming, to make it more productive. Now that you have gathered information specific to your market and the issue you want to solve, what do you do next?

I’m going to describe the next stage in the process, but before I do click here if you want to read part one .

The next challenge, after the information gathering, is to mentally chew over and digest all this information. It is difficult to describe a type of thought process that goes on inside someone’s head, so bear with me.

Minutely examine each piece of information, from as many perspectives and contexts as you can. Really get to know it inside out; just like the character of a good friend. Then lay the bits of information out in your mind, like the pieces of a jigsaw on a table, and start to bring different pieces next to each other.

Explore their relationship with each other. Where are the connections? Can you somehow get them to fit together?

At this point you are not looking for solutions, simply to bring facts together that seem to have some sort of a relationship with each other, however vague.

Don’t try to examine this information too literally or directly. It’s like listening to music, rather than working out from the score what it will sound like.

Two things will now start to happen.

Firstly, you will get fragments of half ideas. However incomplete or crazy they sound, write them down – it helps the mental digestion process.

Secondly, when you start to get mentally tired – work through this and keep going – you will soon get your second layer of mental energy.

Once you get your second layer of mental energy, keep going, don’t stop too soon. Only stop when everything has become a completely hopeless jumble in your mind. No clear insights, no answers – everything just seems to be spinning about. When you have reached this point the second stage of the process is complete.

Next week I’ll describe what to do next, the last part of the process. If you click on the subscribe link, top right, the post will be sent to you automatically.

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How to create winning business ideas

Brainstorming can be very one dimensional. Minds go blank and participants can feel awkward about contributing. So just how can you and the team create winning ideas, to inspire and motivate, in these difficult times?

The good news is that creativity and ideas generation can be approached as a process. This means that anybody with an interest in exploring new ways of doing things, who cares to apply themselves, can do it.

And you don’t have to be creative or free thinking. The art of producing ideas is down to two things; principles and method. James Webb Young is the inventor of the process, described in his book, “A Technique for Producing Ideas”.

The principle is straightforward. That a new idea is simply discovering a new combination of existing elements and that the ability to make these connections arises from the way people view relationships.

There are five stages to the process and for it to work, each stage must be completed methodically, conscientiously and in the correct order.

Today, I’m going to describe the first stage. Let’s take a hypothetical problem, albeit a very common one in the current market place.

“Client buying patterns have changed. Their purchase decisions are now much more price sensitive and have you started to lose sales to competitors?”

You need to come up with ways of preventing this.

The first stage is conceptually simple, yet a real challenge to achieve. You and your team need to explore and collect the raw data surrounding this problem.

The challenge is to establish the minutiae of what’s specifically going on – putting the problem under the electron microscope to examine the detail from every angle. You also need to gather general information about what’s happening in the market place too.

Most of us start to find this irksome after a while and the temptation is to stop gathering and start looking for the solution. Don’t, the more diligent you are with the gathering task, the better your chances of success later.

Next week I’ll describe what to do next with the information you have gathered. If you click on the subscribe link, top right, the post will be sent to you automatically.

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How can you keep your staff motivated in difficult times?

Downturn, redundancy, pay freezes, recession are not words that inspire and motivate staff. So in times such as we have now, here are some ideas to help you keep your staff focussed, positive and getting a buzz out of working for your organisation.

The CIPD, in a survey of 2000 workers in 2007, established that 43% of employees are dissatisfied with the relationship they have with their line Manager. I doubt that this situation has improved.

The reasons for this are also strikingly clear:

– Poor Work/Life balance.
– Poor acknowledgement of their performance.
– Poor prospects, stuck in the same role for too long.
– Poor communication from the top.

So here are four ways to stop this happening?

1. Start a Talent Management Programme – encourage individual’s to develop their talents and skills within a blame free culture.
2. Communicate your organisation’s vision and strategy. Clearly show how decisions are reached and the direction the organisation is going. Make this a priority and make it precise.
3. Create a Coaching and Learning Culture. Encourage staff to work outside of their comfort zones to provide a challenge and help with their self development.
4. Introduce a 360 degree evaluation process, so that any Manager/Staff issues can be identified and worked through.

These activities will all help reduce staff turnover, motivate staff and help them achieve better performance for your organisation.

When you consider the disruption that staff leaving causes and the cost of recruitment and initial training, this type of activity is one of the best investments you can make in today’s challenging times.

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Marketing on a Shoestring for SME’s

When you are an SME with limited financial resources, you may have a huge passion and belief that you need to commit time to marketing. So what can you do to make your business really fly?

I gave a presentation about this, yesterday, at a Chamber of Commerce Safari event and these are my thoughts on the topic.

The first challenge is to be very clear about what your competitive advantage is and the second, to have processes in place that make sure you can measure the response to each marketing campaign that you run.

Fail to do either of these and you are potentially wasting both time and money. You won’t know what works and what doesn’t; and you will never get to the heart of why customers buy from you.

Here are my top ten tips for successful marketing on a shoestring.

1. Look at your business using a fresh pair of eyes. Act like a customer and take a long hard critical look at every aspect; from phone answering to the impression your Reception first gives. Get help with this from your employees, suppliers and advisers, record what you find so that you can make future comparisons

2. Identify the key benefits of buying from your organisation, really get under the skin of your product or service. And remember, a benefit is something that directly gives the customer something; saves money, saves time, provides emotional satisfaction etc

3 Check that the key benefits you have identified are actually ones that customers want! Now you can establish your competitive advantage. Compare your key benefits with those offered by your competitors. Your competitive advantage lies where you provide benefits that they don’t. This should form the heart of your marketing message

4 Become a customer in your own market place, buy something from two or three competitors and document the pros and cons of the process. If you can’t do this because they know you, get someone else to be the ‘Mystery Shopper’ on your behalf

5 Visit the MD of five customers on a ‘Boss to Boss’ basis, without any of your sales people. Ask them about their business and find ways you can work together to help them (and don’t make this a sales pitch)

6 Look for projects where you can work together at an early stage and give real ‘Added Value’ to your customers. This way you can ‘freeze’ out the competition

7 Understand and analyse how to create unique marketing ‘Hooks’ that will give enquirers a strong ‘Call to Action’. Get ideas from the networking events you attend and research what are your competitors are up to. Explore other markets to find transferable ideas

8 Create a variety of ‘Hooks’ that you can test through the different marketing channels you use. These might be price, buy one get one free; extended warranty; bundled product; extended warranty; free technical back-up; discount off next order or low rate finance. Alternatively purchase could be linked with a promotion or competition. Link these ‘Hooks’ with a Social Networking Strategy to build advocates for your organisation

9 Measure enquiries generated and conversion ratio to sales achieved from each channel you use. Stop anything that doesn’t perform until you can identify the reasons why

10 Remember that all of this is a continuous cycle that constantly needs updating, so make sure that you allocate the appropriate time on a monthly basis. This way you will get better and better at the marketing you do

These are all ideas that I have used to build my business.

They worked for me, so I know that they can work for you too.

Good luck!

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