Why Business Teams Fail & How to Avoid It : Strong Leadership Skills For Employee Engagement & High Performance

How Robust are your Execution and Delivery Processes? If you’re following along with my “bike as a business” metaphor, then you will recognize that today we’re focusing on the BACK WHEEL of your bike – Serving Your Customers. Once you make a commitment to deliver a certain level of quality or fill the order with an agreed-upon speed, or achieve a specific level of benefit or respond in a defined t...

How do You Handle Price-Sensitive Customers? It seems that no matter how we position our products or services, from time to time, we have to face this particularly difficult sales situation.  The prospect or customer whose singular motive is to find a way to get your cheapest price. Let’s see if we can unpack what we need to do to “convert” at least some of our price-sensitive prospects into custo...

How do You Show “Strong Leadership” to Your Team? No matter who is at the top of your list, the bigger question today is WHY are they on your list of Strong Leaders?  What is it that MAKES someone a strong leader?

What is the Secret Sauce that Sets You Apart from Your Competition? Now, I don’t know about you, but when I read the definition of "secret sauce", it makes me want to “double down” on my “secret sauce”.  How about you?  Are you wanting to “increase the chances of your success”?  Do you want to be successful or distinctive”?  My bet is the answer is an absolute YES! We're going to dive into this to...

How Effectively Do You Ask Your Current Customers for Referrals? Today I want to talk with you about asking for referrals.  Asking for a referral is a powerful strategy that we should all be using to help us grow our business.  But I’m not talking about asking anyone for a referral.  I want to specifically address asking your current customers for referrals. Getting referrals from your best custom...

How Do You Handle Team Members Who Do Not Live Up To Your Performance Standards? When someone acts “out of character” in front of a customer, or when someone shows up late and your customer is left questioning your integrity, or when someone doesn’t put enough effort or attention to detail into your product or service and your customer is disappointed with the end product?  How do you handle that...

How High Have You Set Your Delivery Standards? You see, it’s CRITICALLY important that everyone in your business knows EXACTLY what you expect from them with regards to delivering on the promise you made to your customers when you first started doing business with them. It all starts with defining your delivery standard in terms that sets it apart from everyone else in your industry.  They break i...

How Frequently Do You Grade Your Current Customers? This week I’d like to turn the tables a bit and ask you to shine a spotlight on your customers. There’s no reason why you can’t grade and select the customers you want to work with – just as customers are grading and selecting you as a business to work with.

How Well Do You and Your Leaders Model Your Desired Behaviors? The first question that needs to be addressed is probably – How well does your “culture” fit the expectations, needs and desires of your ideal customer?” Let’s start this new year by making a commitment to NEVER allow a leader (including yourself) to fall short of your desired behaviors.  You’ll be shocked at the impact that will have...

Does Your Sales Process Consistently Result in Securing Your Ideal Customer? When I think about making this next year BETTER than this last year, my mind immediately goes to the part of your business that probably needs the most attention – your ability to WIN NEW CUSTOMERS.  If you follow this advice your new year will start off STRONG and by next year-end you’ll be sharing stories about how AWES...

How do you Make Things Right when you screw up with a Customer? Our topic this week is one that no one enjoys or looks forward to, but one that all of us have to deal with from time to time.  It’s the reality that no matter how good we are at serving our customers, inevitably there will be situations where our customer is disappointed with us – with our product or our service or how they were trea...

What Makes Your Business a SPECIAL Place to Work? This week I want to talk about your “insider secrets”.  You know, those things that only someone who is on the “inside” would know about your business. Done right, these kinds of insider secrets can set your business apart from any other in the mind of your team members.  It will make them feel super special and will make them want to stay with you...

How do you Decide Which Marketing Strategies are the RIGHT ONES for Your Business? This week I want to spend a bit more time on that front wheel – and specifically, I want to spend our time focused on the SPOKES of the front wheel – your Marketing Strategies.

Are You CONSISTENTLY Performing Better Than Your Toughest Competition? TODAY I want to shift our focus and look OUTWARD – to our competition.  And not just to any competitor, but to our TOUGHEST competition. You see, beating your toughest competitor requires you to do some serious thinking and planning in advance of the race itself.  It doesn’t just happen on race-day.

Are Your Employees Thinking Seriously About Their FUTURE Role with Your Business? This week I want to focus our attention on a topic that doesn’t come up in normal business conversation very often – that is - getting your current employees to think of and focus on the expectations of their FUTURE position with your company. Your team members WANT to be able to see their future – and most of them w...

How Robust is your Set of Processes for Winning New Customers? This week I want to focus on the front wheel of your bicycle – the processes necessary to consistently and confidently Win New Customers. It turns out that there are also three main elements that must fit tightly together for you to be able to consistently and confidently win new customers for your business.  In today's episode, we're...

What Process are you using to Consistently Review and Improve Your Critical Business Processes? Our topic this week is one that I consider to be a “silver bullet” when it comes to beating your toughest competition – implementing a process to consistently and regularly review and improve your critical business processes.  I can assure you, if you get this right, your team members would not only emb...

How active are you and your team in your community? This week I want to encourage you to be intentional about using your talents and resources to make a positive impact on your community. If you’re sitting there thinking that SOMEDAY we SHOULD get more engaged in our community – quit waiting around!  I'm going to show you how in this episode.

What are You Doing to Encourage EVERYONE on your Team to Take Personal Responsibility for their Performance? This week I want to challenge your thinking and ask you drop your defenses as we discuss creating an organization based on OWNERSHIP rather than trying to hold people ACCOUNTABLE.  I can assure you that if you adopt these concepts in your business, not only will your business results improv...

What Have You Done Recently to Get CREATIVE with Your Customer Engagement? This week I want us to focus on CREATIVE customer engagement strategies. And I want to do this by using the model that we learned from the new kings of baseball – The Savannah Bananas! I’m not asking for a huge effort – just small incremental improvements that will build upon one another to make your customer experience the...

What are You Doing to Create a GREAT Team Culture? Today’s topic is – CREATING A GREAT TEAM CULTURE. Don’t hide behind the culture of the world around us. Put in the effort necessary to create the culture that YOU want and your CUSTOMERS deserve! Today's episode will help you get started.

Does Everyone On Your Team Know What is Expected Of Them? Today I want to discuss a topic that is often overlooked or assumed, but rarely crystal clear – THE EXPECTATIONS YOU HAVE FOR YOUR TEAM MEMBERS. If you want your team members to be 100% in alignment with your expectations and desires for them, this position agreement approach will do the trick nicely. I’ve never had anyone balk at the idea....

How Often do you Share your Customer Wins? Our topic today is one that we can all agree is fun, energizing and uplifting  – SHARING CUSTOMER WINS. Honestly, this may be the easiest and best way for us to tell our story and make others feel great in the process.  But far too often, we are too focused on OUR situation and we totally forget about the wins of those who are keeping us in business – our...

Are Your Employees Fired Up About You Making More Profit? Our topic today is one that often creates anxiety, confusion and uncertainty for business owners  – SHARING YOUR PROFITS.  I saw first-hand how powerful a motivator this is when I was running a manufacturing business.  So I thought that rather than walk you through a step-by-step how-to discussion, I would share the story that I lived out i...

Does Your Organization Structure Inspire Your Team to Grow and Stay With You Long Term? Our topic today is one that you may think is boring or unimportant – YOUR ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE.  But before you tune out, I want you to know THIS topic may be the biggest missed opportunity you have to energize and inspire your team! In this episode, I want to give you a few very practical thoughts on how you...