If you are a sole operator you need to get an education partner.  This person can be another business owner, trusted advisor, coach or mentor.  You meet this person at least twice a month and you ‘churn’ your learning.  You discuss ideas and topics you have read or experienced and look for ways to apply this information in your business.  For example, as a coach I have a few clients for whom I am the education partner.  While reading the Steve Jobs biography we also reviewed Multipliers by Liz Wiseman.  We churned through behavioural examples in the Jobs biography, explored the results and used Multipliers as a guide to our own behaviours.  It was a fantastic process and one in which we all learned a great deal.  We took it to another level with an overlay of an extended disc profile.  I encouraged my clients to use a journal to capture our observations and ideas.

If you are a leader in a larger business you have another option.  You may still opt to use a coach, however I recommend you ‘anoint’ a team member as the ‘Learning Leader’ or whatever name suits.  You may opt to have this role on a rotation.  Choose a person who shows a propensity for learning and discussion to get started.  You may identify some key areas of development and then set up a learning plan.  This can take all sorts of paths.  For example I have a client who initiated a learning program for Salesforce.   The team meets every fortnight (twice per month) and explores ways to use Salesforce in new ways and solidifies the knowledge of basic work-flows.  My client reports higher levels of enthusiasm for the CRM, greater utilisation and shared ownership of the information integrity.  Recently they implemented the Content Delivery tool in Salesforce with great early results. This program will continue through April and then they are moving to a learning program focused on personal and interpersonal leadership skills.

• Don’t take your learning journey alone.
• Set up a learning plan with goals.
• Appoint a ‘learning leader’/educator in your organisation
• Use a journal to capture ideas and insights
• Sustain the process with measurement

I am beginning my 2012 planning early, at least for me.  I typically use the last week of December and the first one in January as planning time.  However I have left so much in my wake this year that there is much to review, clean up and prepare so that my new 2012 plan is not cluttered with hangovers from 2011.  Doing this process has brought to the surface an interesting question, “can you count on yourself?”  If you create a plan for 2012 that is aligned with your personal and business goals, will you execute on that plan?  Will you end 2012 with a sense of satisfaction and a well used task list?  When you fail in executing to your plan you are delaying your progress but more significantly you are breaking an agreement with yourself.  If you break your personal agreements with yourself too often you lose your trustworthiness just like you do when you let other people down too many times.  When you lose your personal trustworthiness there may be spin off issues such as a diminished sense of self esteem, lack of motivation, melancholy, irritability among many other reactions.

This year I am keeping my plans realistic. I have all of my 2012 goals written down and aligned with my longer term goals and visions.  I have also added start and completion timeframes so that there is a spread of activity over the 12 months.  I will break these down to monthly and weekly work plans.  Each week I will create my daily task lists.  It is a cascade of personal and business objectives.  In addition to these  I  have begun my 2012 marketing plans as well to ensure I have an integrated view of my year ahead.  Of course there will be changes, disruptions, delays and accelerators during the year.  The key is to remain in a forward progression and not drift off into a reactive mode of activity.

If you would like to discuss this planning method or need some help creating one for yourself, your team and your business, please send me an email.

Being a business judge has been responsible for some of the most powerful insights and learning in how to improve my own business.  As a judge I also know how difficult it is to detach yourself from your business to gain a clear view of what is looks like to others, be they judges or customers.  Despite the difficulty, detachment is absolutely necessary to gain a fresh perspective to inspire new ideas and the motivation to change.  Without detachment you can often be defensive and prone to rationalize your status quo.

There are a few ways to make this process effective.  If you are a sole operator you probably have the toughest challenge but you can do your research and analysis yourself or get help from a consultant, business coach or fellow business owner.

• Establish your judging parameters.  It is hard to benchmark your financial performance against competitors but can base your judging on the health of your finances and rate of growth.
• Do your research on competitors and similar organizations.  You can do this online and in person by visiting their premises.  In my judging we look at the office layout, cleanliness, ease of access, and other elements.  You can visit websites, visit forums, look through social media (Linked In, Facebook, Twitter) for insights into the profiles of your competitors and feedback from customers.
• Set up a scoring scale and use it.  For each judging parameter use a scale and score each company you research as well as your own.  I suggest you score your own business first and last.
• Judge the business and not the product or service.  There is an inclination to rate businesses that are engaged in exciting and/or interesting products and services higher.  I remember an instance of this with a comparison between and event management firm and a robotics firm.  Many judges could not comprehend how the event management firm scored higher.  The robotics firm was not as well managed, had immature processes, could demonstrate no focus on people development among other factors that were attributes of a model business.

When you have performed your research and filled in your score cards, it is time to go and spend some time thinking and planning.  You do this part of the process away from your business and distractions.   I cannot help but give  a tip that describes all the contestants in the contest that I judge, ‘focus on the basics and the detail.’

In our next blog we will explain how to convert your business judging to creating better results in your business.

There are a number of points I would like you to consider if you feel your writing and content will not be read or dismissed.
• Your ideas, observations and comments are as valid and worthy as any other persons.
• If you really look at what is included in the avalanche of online information, there is rarely anything truly new or ground breaking. • People read online content for a number of purposes. These may include learning, confirming, questioning, innovating, and sharing. You do not need to write the ‘theory of everything’ to make an impact in the online world. • Once you begin it is important to get in the ‘flow’ of content creation. You will make an impact on others when they know you are a producer and the time spent reading your material is worthwhile for whatever purpose they are after. • Write from personal experience and you will instantly have people interested. There is nothing better than something written in first person to capture attention. We are all interested in other people’s experiences as opposed to general information or theory. • My clients are in business. If you read business blogs can you cI have a client about to begin content -marketing that expressed a sentiment that I think may be very common, “why would anybody read what I write? I have nothing new or exciting.” These feelings are not conducive to a good start at writing content. I will admit that I have often had the same feelings. There are times when I am writing a blog or article and thinking, ‘this is common sense stuff, no person will care about reading it.’ My experience and those with whom I collaborate confirm a different scenario entirely. There are a number of points I would like you to consider if you feel your writing and content will not be read or dismissed. • Your ideas, observations and comments are as valid and worthy as any other persons. • If you really look at what is included in the avalanche of online information, there is rarely anything truly new or ground breaking. • People read online content for a number of purposes. These may include learning, confirming, questioning, innovating, and sharing. You do not need to write the ‘theory of everything’ to make an impact in the online world. • Once you begin it is important to get in the ‘flow’ of content creation. You will make an impact on others when they know you are a producer and the time spent reading your material is worthwhile for whatever purpose they are after. • Write from personal experience and you will instantly have people interested. There is nothing better than something written in first person to capture attention. We are all interested in other people’s experiences as opposed to general information or theory. • My clients are in business. If you read business blogs can you count on more that one hand the numbers of time you read something truly new or earth shattering. It is the same with business books. The ideas and information are re-purposed for the audience and you can make even the most commonly understood business ideas more interesting by telling a story. If you are stuck and you need some help getting those fingers tapping on the keyboard, you are welcome to contact me and I can give you some ideas to help you get started. ount on more that one hand the numbers of time you read something truly new or earth shattering. It is the same with business books. The ideas and information are re-purposed for the audience and you can make even the most commonly understood business ideas more interesting by telling a story. If you are stuck and you need some help getting those fingers tapping on the keyboard, you are welcome to contact me and I can give you some ideas to help you get started.

The most common used method to improve sales is to provide some form of sales training.  Sales training is done online or in workshops with either a single sales team or a group comprising persons from different organisations and industries.  Sales training may be effective if it is implemented within a scaffold of useful ‘on the job‘ tools, follow up, and refresher learning opportunities.  My experience shows that in most cases sales training is an event with limited ongoing impact on performance.   Sales coaching is much different.

Effective sales coaching is one on one.  The sales coach engages with the coachee in a focused process to improve performance.  There are many tools available to delivery effective coaching.  In sales coaching it is essential that the coach ‘shadows’ the coachee on the job.  Just as a sports coach analyses technique so the sales coach analyses technique and behaviours as well as providing the tools and guidance to create change.

Other tools are available and an effective coach will use at least a few if not all of these.

• Shadowing (as mentioned above).
• 360 feedback tools.
• Self- assessment tools.
• Interviews with clients.
• Personality and psychometric assessments.
• Role play and situation rehearsal.
• Visualisation exercises
• Independent and guided external learning (including online learning).

If you are a business owner or manager you may choose to opt for an external coach.  there are reasons to use an external coach, among these are:

•   You need to remain focused on your objectives in the business.
•   You may not feel confident engaging in one on one coaching with your sales people.
•   You may not have the skills or experience to execute an effective coaching program.
•   A skilled external coach is going to be objective and may act as a great relationship     builder in the business.

What results can you expect from effective sales coaching?  There are many outcomes and some are readily apparent and others are more hidden but still impact positively on your business.  You will notice that effective coaching scores fast wins in the engagement and the benefit steadily increase.  At some point a tipping point is reached and the coachee’s performance will accelerate dramatically.

An effective professional coach will measure your return on investment.  Based on my experience these are a few of the benefits that will be achieved in a sales coaching engagement.

• Higher levels of motivation and energy.
• Clear alignment with company strategy.
• Identified measurable goals and objectives.
• Stronger sales pipeline.
• Reduced sales cycle timeframes.
• Greater innovation and continuous improvement.
• Greater trust established between sales person and management.

There are plenty more benefits that can be achieved using coaching to improve the sales performance in your business.  If you are interested in learning more or scheduling a free one- hour coaching session for yourself or one of your sales team members, please give me a call or send an email using the form on our website.

However a CRM may not be enough.  Have you considered creating a knowledge hub for your business?  A knowledge hub or portal gives you an easy way to centralise and retain information for your employees that can be translated into the performance of their roles- converting information to knowledge.  We highly recommend creating a knowledge hub that can support your sales and marketing.  For example the knowledge hub can be accessed anytime, anywhere to provide product information, presentation tools, project plans, sales tips, marketing literature, best practices, case studies among many other information types.

The knowledge hub can act as a means of individual team members contributing ideas and information to help prevent vital expertise leave your company when people depart.  In the past few months we have implemented a few knowledge hubs for sales teams using tools like Backpack, SharePoint and PB Works.  In all cases our clients are intending to enable secure access to clients and resellers as well.   I guess the key point is to avoid having your vital information left in peoples heads or hard drives.  If you are, you are missing out on leveraging key competitive advantages for your business.  If you would like to discuss this further or learn how we use our knowledge hub please get in touch.