The Daly News October/November 2008 Volume 29
NEW GRANDPOP AND THE BROKEN ARM
Since so many of this newsletter’s readers are considered my friends, I wanted to share some really big news with you all. I will try to be brief. On October 8 my wife Bonnie and I officially became first time grandparents, as our daughter Melissa and husband Nathan brought into this world a healthy 8 pounds 5 ounces baby boy named Malcolm. As you can see, he is one handsome guy with a great life disposition! At the precise time that Malcolm was making his world premiere in Virginia, I took a pretty serious spill on my racing bike and ended up with road rash, bruised ribs, black/blue thighs, dislocated bones in my arm and a broken elbow requiring 4 permanent pins. I knew this “Grandpop” role was going to be traumatic for me, but this was truly over the top. I’m now full in to recovery and looking forward to getting back on my bike, in the pool and on the run, as I have many more marathons and Ironman triathlons to go!
TEN DO’S AND DON’TS IN GOOD TIMES AND BAD
As a business leader, here’s a quick look at key areas of
focus for the success of your business.
1. Magnetic Vision– It’s the role of the leader to ensure our associates understand where we are headed and are regularly reminded of their role in making the successful journey. The successful vision is one that gets everyone excited each day to be a part of it, looking forward to coming in and making a difference. “Making it up as we go along” isn’t going to cut it!
2. Winning Culture– we’ve talked about this in previous newsletters, but as a reminder, what we want to create is an environment in the company where the people who work there don’t get up and feel like they “have to” go to work, but rather that they “want to” go to work. We get this by winning over their hearts. So, the great challenge of a question is “what are you doing to win over the hearts of your associates?”
3. Key People in Key Spots – a Sales Leaders job is NOT TO GROW SALES, it is to grow salespeople. Do that, and they will grow your sales. So, who is actively and regularly growing the sales force in quantity and quality? I don’t believe it to be effective if the CEO is also the Sales Leader. As well, promoting the best sales producer rarely results in a solid Sales Leader. And, the worst is where we make the best sales producer the Sales Leader and expect them to continue with their book of business. If you seriously want to grow your sales, invest in a top performing Sales Leader.
4. Cash and KPI’s- CASH is KING. The CEO needs to stay on top of this critical number and should have daily/weekly actual and rolling 60 day forecasts available for review. As well, attention must be paid to the current ratio, particularly in these times of the financial and banking crisis. The lines of credit you “think you have” just might be an illusion when you really need them. A daily review of a quality financial “dashboard” is highly recommended- see Verne Harnish’ “Mastering the Rockefeller Habits” for a good model.
5. Change Agent– Take it from Jack Welch: “If the change inside your company is slower than the change outside, the end is in sight.” It’s the responsibility of the leader to “sell” change throughout the organization as not just a needed thing but as a good thing.
6. Winning is in the Preparation– All too often in challenging business environments, we see a cutback in the training and practice areas. The best sales people are “canned”, saying the same things each time they encounter similar situations. We need to ensure all on the team are prepared, practiced and not out there “winging it”.
7. Systems and Processes– There’s hardly anything that goes on in a sales call that couldn’t be anticipated before your arrival. As such, most everything can be designed and built into a system and process. The largest sales force I led was 2600. Clearly there are not 2600 “best ways” to sell. So, our opportunity is to discover what those “best ways” are and build the needed systems and processes.
8. Key Relationships– Identify your key relationships by category: for example, bankers, centers of influence, key clients, government officials, etc. Go “deep”. Example: If you are working with 3 banks, you should ID 1-2 more prospect banks and nurture them, along with nurturing the existing 3 with about 4-5 bank executives in each. Set up a schedule of “touches” with personal visits and email/phone calls to ensure the relationship is leveraged.
9. Continuous Education– there are a myriad of organizations of CEO’s, entrepreneurs and “C” level positions designed for idea sharing, high level business education and mentorship. These organizations can bring insightful solutions and support for your business challenges and opportunities, comprised of business leaders from all matter of industries. As well, we recommend active involvement in your industry trade groups. Never stop learning!
10. Have Fun! If you as the leader aren’t, it will be reflected throughout your organization. Companies enjoying what they do typically outperform those that don’t. Besides, do you really want to wake up and decide to not have fun?
The “Don’ts”? Just relook the list and play out the opposite!
Good Hunting!
TAKING ACTION
As a catalyst to encouraging others to “take action”, we will feature what others are doing and experiencing with their initiatives following our training sessions. Hopefully these will prompt each of us to take action!
Hi Jack,
It was great to see you in San Francisco. We spoke briefly on Tuesday night in the exhibit hall. I had mentioned that I had attended a Vistage (TEC; Joe Fife’s group) meeting in Chicago in which you presented on culture and challenged each of us in the group to design our culture. The one story that really resonated with us was the one about the firm the takes about 15 minutes each day to connect with employees in a town hall type manner. We wanted to achieve the same level of connection with our employees but our challenge was that 80% of our employees are remote (working out of their home) when not at a client site. They rarely see each other let alone come into the corporate office in Chicago. We weren’t sure how to create more of a connected feel for our employees so we took your advice and asked them.
We executed a series of electronic surveys followed by one on one discussions with as many employees as we could. We found out that they felt proud to say that they worked for CARE but when we asked about their sense of feeling connected it was a different story. On scale of 1 to 5, 1 being no sense of connection and 5 being intimately connected we scored just below a 3. Not good enough, we wanted to be over a 4.5 to 5.0. We then asked them what they would need to experience to help them feel more connected. They responded with a number of requests some of which were;
· periodic town hall meetings with leadership via web to
o better understand company objectives, goals, and accomplishments
o learn how our customers rated us
o get answers to questions about financial performance of competitive threats
o share information on new emerging opportunities
· create a bi-weekly company e-newsletter to reinforce town hall meetings and create an opportunity to employees to share with each other
· create an updated incentive plan to reward all employee for profitable company growth
· provide an IT helpdesk that employees can call for any technology issue
· create an online toolbox that contains project tools and outcomes
· create a web portal just for employees allowing access to necessary company forms but also to post pictures, bio’s and blogs to allow employees who rarely see each other the opportunity to stay in touch
We have made great progress with implementing many of these and others not mentioned. We resurvey our employee population approx 10 months after the initial survey and found that 9 out of 10 employees ranked their sense of feeling connected greater than the initial survey. We were thrilled and we felt it put us on track for achieving our goal but we still need to do more.
Additionally as a wonderful sidelight we have had a twice the number of new business leads from internal staff than last year and as a company we are having a record year for growth. We will be surveying our customers in November and I am excited to see if our customer satisfaction has also improved…I think it has since our customer retention is up.
Thanks Jack. Taking the time to reconnect with our employees not only made coming into work a lot more fun but it helped us grow our company and I believe raise our clients satisfaction levels.
Hal
Harold G. Walsh
Senior Vice President, Sales and Marketing
Care Communications, Inc.
For years I have been underscoring the importance of regularly “touching” your prospects, customers and clients. In my training Workshops, I share examples of many ways to do this activity that will ensure you stand out from the competition. One of the more effective tools I’ve used for years has been taking photos on my calls and other occasions and quickly turning them into photo cards with my own personalized messages. These simple cards have generated me several hundreds of thousands of dollars in business over the past couple years, and the momentum continues to grow. Up until just recently, my card examples have been generated through www.shutterfly.com at a card + postage cost of about $3, which I’ve found to be a terrific investment.
I’m excited to share with you that I’ve now found an alternative in SendOutCards and if you have an interest, I’ve arranged a free trial for the first 500 people just so you can test drive a card for yourself. I suggest you send the card to yourself so you can see the quality and how it works from start to finish. There are extensive features available in SendOutCards that I feel apply more to such a business touch system compared with Shutterfly which is more for the non-business user. And get this; cards + postage cost about $1 versus the $3 at Shutterfly!
These are full color greeting cards sent right from your computer keyboard – the system does all the work of printing, stuffing envelopes, adding a stamp, and mailing. Fully automated campaigns of touches can be built and saved at the click of a button. You have 13,000 cards in 300 categories that you can choose from, which can all be customized with your own signature and handwriting at no additional charge. You can even upload your own photos for a truly personal, and custom designed card. Birthdays and anniversaries can be stored for annual reminders. Additionally, there are gifts that one can choose from – motivational books, magazines, gift cards, or gourmet gifts of brownies, cookies, etc. to tag along with your card if you would like–all done on-line with a click of the mouse.
P.S. This is a great tool to go “wide and deep” with your existing clients as discussed earlier in this newsletter. If you’d like to take a free test-drive with a card for yourself, just visitwww.sendoutcards.com/jackdaly and “Click Here to Send A Free Card”. I’ve arranged for the first 500 people that want to try it to send a card on me for free. An audio tutorial will begin to walk you through the simple process of sending a card. It’s fun, it’s easy, and I believe you’ll be able to see the many uses for your own business. Enjoy!
Where in the World….Is Jack Daly?
Here’s the schedule of cities I will be conducting programs in over the next 3 months (some for clients, others are open workshops. I may have flexibility with my scheduling for lunch, dinner or more, should someone have an interest. If you see I’m headed to your part of the world, feel free to email or phone our office with your interest and Jennifer will do her best to accommodate.
Nov-Florida, Las Vegas, Buenos Aries
Dec-Phoenix, Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis
Jan-Orange County, DC, Chicago, Houston
Feb- Sacramento, San Antonio
AUSTRALIA March 2009-If you are interested in having Jack work with your team we still have a few dates left. Email jennifer@jackdaly.net with any questions!
ANNOUNCING INDIA MAY 2009
Jack will be returning to India 4-13 May 2009 for several open seat workshops sponsored by Knowledge Capital. Stay tuned for additional information as the workshop dates and locations are confirmed. If you would like Jack to work with your team individually, please contact Jennifer at jennifer@jackdaly.net for details.
IN THE NEWS
This from USA Today: About 80% of small-business owners believe the U.S. economic climate is poor, but 65% say the health of their own business is good, a survey of 500 small-business owners in late September and early October by Opinion Research Corporation found. On a monthly basis I get the opportunity to speak to hundreds of CEO’s and business owners and am finding the same to be true. Again, there is no doubt about a financial crisis and pocketed industries with their challenges. However, don’t buy into all the negativity the press is distributing out there. They are all about sensationalism.
Along the lines of maintaining the positive attitude, I share my good friend Simon Sinek’s “Why Dreams Die” and would recommend you visit his blog regularly at www.simonsinek.com .
“If you don’t read the newspaper you are uniformed; if you read the newspaper
you are misinformed.” by Mark Twain
WHY DREAMS DIE
For passion to survive it needs structure. But for structure to grow, it needs passion.
90% of all new businesses fail. And most of the companies that don’t fail won’t become billion dollar businesses or change the world. Why is that?
Ask those who didn’t make it and the most common answers you’ll get are: under capitalized, didn’t have the right people, bad market conditions or a combination of all those things.
Every single new business has something in common: they all started with an idea. An idea fueled by passion. This passion drove the excitement, the feelings of invincibility. This passion and the feelings of world domination motivated “irrational” behavior like quitting a perfectly stable job with steady pay and benefits to set up a business in your basement. The passion of the founder/s is intoxicating to some. It encourages others to also quit their good jobs or pass up better paying ones to join up. In itself, this is not a bad thing. The problem is that though companies may be born of passion, “a company” in practice is a structure. A collection of systems and processes, good companies run like well oiled machines. Though they may have all the passion in the world, if someone doesn’t know how to build those structures and manage those processes (the stuff that will ensure income, the ability to navigate all market conditions and hire the best people (see excuses above)), then the company will likely struggle to stay afloat, survive only with continued infusions of money or just fail (remember the dot-com boom: lots of passion, not so much structure and processes).
For those passionate few who also have the ability to build the structure and implement the processes, for those that defy “the statistic,” they face another challenge: success.
Success can be the biggest challenge for a small business. With success, focus can shift to managing the structure at the expense of managing the passion. There are many owners of successful small and medium sized businesses that will say that the energy in their businesses is “not like it used to be.” They reminisce about the times of old. It’s a paradox – so many successful business owners may be financially successful, but they don’t feel successful. Whereas when the business was young, they felt successful even though they were broke.
Perhaps this explains why so many small businesses cap out at (if we’re really generous) between $50-$150 million. Yes a company is nothing but a structure, a machine, and money may fuel the machine itself, but the company is also filled with people. It is the people who drive the business. And though financial incentives may help for the short term, it is passion and inspiration that fuels people. If that runs out – growth is much harder to attain. Structure is essential for a company to survive, but sustainable passion is essential for the company to enjoy sustainable growth.
No matter the size of the organization, fixation on the structure alone and failure to manage the passion, the inspiration within, will mean that that perfect machine won’t have any fuel to go.
2008-2009 WORKSHOPS AND SUMMITS
Take any sport and visualize a 20 game season. A team starts out losing its first 7 games. Yet, the team has a history of playing well and winning its share of games. What do you suspect the Coach would do: practice more or practice less? How about more training or less training? What about more specialized coaching in the areas of weakness?
I’m sure you would see more coaching, practice and training.
Many companies and sales forces are being confronted with increased economic challenges in a tight market. The irony of it all is how all too many companies react to such challenges. For example, most salespeople would be better served calling on less people, more often, to build trust. Most salespeople would be better served getting more business from their existing customers thru selling wide, selling deep and leveraging referrals. Yet, all too often companies are sending their salespeople out to call on more prospects to combat a tighter economy. A similar reaction is often seen in training. Tighter times should have salespeople doing more practicing, more training and being coached to be more effective.
We would expect the sports team to do so, and we encourage salespeople to do the same.
Send your salespeople to spend a day with me, Jack Daly.
Here are just a few testimonials from others who have done so, enabling them to be more effective in these tight times:
Hi Jack- Wanted to drop you a line personally to say a very big thank you for all the knowledge you imparted today………I am fairly new at my organisation and have a number of challenges ahead structuring the team and changing the culture, what I’ve taken away today is going to be a fantastic help!
Gareth Gordon
Head of Retail Sales
Jack- Fantastic seminar yesterday. Outstanding! Best I’ve attended. Love your energy, your message & your passion. It’s contagious! Came away with so many ideas and takeaways to implement into our corporation (Already written 17 action steps this morning to start implementing Monday). Exactly what I needed to fuel the energy to exceed our previous year growth performance of (Rev +67% / Net Profits + 270%)….and apply for the INC 500 list.
Thank you for helping us stay great!
Shane M. Breaux,
Jack- I just walked out of your seminar, with a great sense of inspiration to try some new things…the money bag, the touch system, the use of the ready reference guide, wearing my company logo and more! Thank you — you are awesome!
Barbara Nelson
Hi Jack-Just wanted to drop you a quick note to say thanks for the Sales Seminar yesterday – I have had a chance to really digest the information and I have to say it was one of the best presented courses I have had the pleasure of attending.
Hope you enjoy the rest of your stay in Australia and get to have a good look around. Oh – and yes changed the voicemail again today – I feel a bit like a goof but looked at the middle finger and thought “You know – Who Cares”
Kind Regards
Evan Judd
SMART SELLING WORKSHOPS
This six hour, sales based session is designed to teach you what you need to know to get to the top of your game. Jack will show you how to apply street tested techniques that make the difference as well as reinforce and provide accountability to ensure that things are getting done! This session is fast paced, content rich and filled with take-away value. Take the pulse of your business today and make the adjustment that will change your business tomorrow!
December 5, 2008-Birmingham,AL-Vancouver, BC December 19, 2008- St. Louis, IL
January 30, 2009-Houston, TX
February 5, 2009- Sacramento, CA
May 22, 2009-San Diego, CA
June 18, 2009- Cleveland, OH
June 26, 2009-Los Angeles, CA
July 24, 2009- Winnipeg
October 1, 2009-Orange County, CA
November 20, 2009- Chicago
Sales and Management Summits
Join Jack Daly for a jam-packed workshop program and national idea exchange. Listening to our customers, we have heard loud and clear the cry for an open-seat workshop on Sales Management. Combine a day of rigorous learning in the Sales Management arena, followed by a day intently focused on Sales with guest subject matter experts and you get a high-value few days of working on the business so that working in the business results in greater productivity and bottom-line results.
January 15 & 16, 2009- Washington DC
April 23 & 24, 2009-Orange County, CA
September 17 & 18- Toronto, Canada
BRAND NEW!
SALES MANAGEMENT + NETWORKING + GOLF
January 23-24, 2009, mark it on your calendars. Better yet, contact jennifer at jennifer@jackdaly.net or 888-298-6868 today for details and registration. Ideal timing- beginning of the new year. Ideal location- La Quinta Palm Springs, California. Ideal weather- sunny and warm. Ideal golf-100+ courses to choose from.
Here’s the plan. Early morning golf (optional) on Friday January 23. After the round, a quick lunch and on to the one-day Sales Management Workshop, beginning at 1:30pm and running through 8pm, followed by a networking dinner. Saturday there will be an optional second round of golf. Discover how to best grow your sales force in quantity and quality. How to increase sales productivity; how to motivate the team to greater sales results; and how to create an environment that breeds success. The bonus is the golf, where I hope to uncover many funny anecdotes to share with my audiences throughout the year!
Coaches Corner
PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS THAT MAKE MONEY
by Dan Larson & Dave Wilens
In today’s economy it’s never been more important to strengthen your “systems and processes” to drive greater results. It’s a big part of making continuous advances in your business to earn higher revenues and profits. Below are two case studies that illustrate the impact of what can be accomplished in process improvement that drive continuing results in a marketing-to-sales system.
A good question to kick-start your thinking…
What will occur in the upcoming 12 months to drive the results you desire?
And what “internal things” can you do with your company right now that will boost results?
Case History #1: Sales process improvement and lead generation
I began coaching a marine equipment manufacturing company 2+ yrs ago based in Vancouver, BC. Their website then was a couple dozen pictures and contact info. No educate info, no product differentiation, no Core Message that speaks directly to the target market(s) in a relevant meaningful way. I re-engineered this site – did the strategy, architecting and writing. We hired an exceptional web builder to build it and program.
This website has been making money since the second month after it launched in June 2006. It IS a marketing AND sales tool. For the last 2+ yrs it has produced millions of dollars of new “Fast Track Quotes” – of which, they close 10% or more in a greatly reduced and streamlined sales process. The rest become leads in the pipeline that either eventually close as the project materializes – or not.
Key points here are:
1) (skepticism) The Sales Mgr said – “Dan, I don’t think you understand… NO ONE is going to buy a $20,000 to $60,000 crane off a website. I spend 60-90 minutes with a lead before I can generate a quote to send to them!”… Meanwhile we nailed down 5 key questions needed to generate a quote and AUTOMATED the process – then equipped the website to support it.
Six weeks after the site launched, the Sales Mgr called me back and said, “I’ll be darned, we sold our first crane off the website to a guy in Malaysia for $40,000 that I barely had to talk to!!!” Since then the site has produced a consistent stream of new leads every month.
2) The Sales Process – After some laborious extracting, I learned their existing mktg-to-sales process had 15 distinct steps to take a prospect all the way to a sale completed. The Sales Mgr was the busiest guy in the place – and he was doing most of the steps himself. NOT his highest and best use of time. We streamlined the process – eliminated 3 unnecessary steps – and delegated 4 steps to a newly trained sales asst. The process became much clearer, more focused and more effective. The Sales Mgr gained found time of 32-40 extra hrs every month! Since he is the most effective seller in the company, we refocused this time on the Top 10 target OEM accounts and boosted his productivity immensely.
3) Their Results: This company has doubled new sales revenue yr-over-yr and has now become the dominating force in their industry. They are taking away sizeable chunks of large OEM contract business and “retail” business from their older, more entrenched, “name brand” competition. They are tripling the size of their factory to be able to keep up with demand. We’re now re-gearing to expand into Europe and the Mid-East after the larger “mega” category of business. This illustrates in real terms what can be accomplished in systems and processes that drive results and profits in an improved marketing-to-sales system.
Case History #2: Targeting, positioning, selling message and lead generation
It may help to see a “snapshot” of activity and “immediate” results gained by a new client in their first 3 months as a result a 1-day Strategy Session and a 90-day coaching action plan.
Focus on a specific end results, defined in the 1-day Strategy Session. It works very well when the priorities are clear and the action items are very focused.
New client results during a 1-day Strategy Session and a 90-day coaching action plan
Priority NOW Action Items implemented in their first 3 months:
1) Target Market Segments – defined clear target customer segments
2) Positioning Strategy – developed a more precise “position” against competition that clarifies their advantages and sets them apart as different and better
3) Value Proposition to Buyers – Core Message articulated in a PPOD (Positive Perception of Difference) that is relevant, meaningful and benefit-oriented to their target market segments
4) Revenue Streams – immediate action to improve their best income producing opportunities
5) Lead Generation – re-tooled & strengthened existing mktg vehicles to produce 20-50% more leads (that are also better qualified) for same money invested
6) Comparison Tool to the Competition – created an easy way for buyers to compare and assess the advantages for themselves
7) Prospect/Client Question Path – created a stronger Question Path for initial contacts and to grow share of business with existing clients
· Their results in the first 90 days:
o Month #1 new sales growth rate was a 200% increase above their avg growth rate
o Month #2 new sales growth rate was a 175% increase above their avg growth rate
o Month #3 new sales growth rate is just finishing now with at least a 700% increase above their avg growth rate; it may be higher
o We produced immediate results as a direct result of a focus on improving their critical processes, their go-to-market message and on their highest payoff activities. They already have a much stronger track for their team to build on – and the early results are already paying to do more and creating a much larger profit.
The economy has tightened up. Now more than ever you’ve got to be sure you’re getting the most you can out of all you’ve got. If you’re interested in learning more or have questions about the ideas here, give us a call. We’re experienced sales coaches in the “Jack Daly Way”. If you want to talk over your situation to see what could be done to get things producing at a higher level or to find out more about our coaching, call Jennifer at (888) 298-6868.
CONTINUOUS SELF DEVELOPMENT
Here’s this month’s recommended book- THE WORLD IS CURVED – by David Smick. A few years ago Thomas Friedman penned the classic THE WORLD IS FLAT. Here’s what Murray Weidenbaum of Washington University had to say: “A worthy successor to Tom Friedman’s “Flat”….takes up where Friedman left off, lucidly explaining the vital but poorly understood role of the financial system that provides the essential underpinnings of the world economy.” Complex, scary and chock full of opportunities, that’s our global financial system.
So, here are some “teases”, but I strongly recommend you devouring this one.
-The playing field is bigger, the stakes are higher, and the system, because of its size and complexity, is unbelievably fragile.
-From 1980 to the present, the value of all global financial assets has jumped from $12 trillion to $140 trillion. The bad news is that today’s spectacular global economy is both unstable and unsettling.
-Every three months, seven to eight million U.S. jobs disappear and roughly an equal or greater number are created.
-The survival of the world financial system depends on an elaborate global game of confidence. Governments themselves cannot by edict restore order. They can only project to the markets a sense that they know what they are doing.
-Today’s financial system is fragile precisely because the countries that are experiencing the largest amounts of excess savings-again, the oil producers, China, and the rest of Asia- will likely accumulate even greater amounts of excess savings over the next decade.
Bottom line, take a few hours and read this soon to be classic.
JACK DALY BUSINESS TOOLS
Visit our website at www.jackdaly.net and find the culture, sales management and sales tools that will best help you in these tumultuous times. Then, call Jennifer at 888-298-6868, place your order stating you are a newsletter reader and she will process your order at a 30% DISCOUNT. Consider it my gift to you to more effectively compete, as well as a celebration of me being a first time Grandpop!!
If any article in this newsletter would be of interest to your co-workers, customers or clients we would appreciate having you forward it along.
