5 Things to Un-Learn From School

You spent a lot of time getting an education. But if you want to make it as an entrepreneur, it's time to forget some of what you learned.

You spent a lot of years in school. You learned a lot.

Some of what you learned you need to un-learn as soon as possible. Here are five key attitudes you should adopt instead:

1. If you only do what you're told, you'll excel.


I know. School was hard.

But not that hard.

If you did what you were told--go to class, do the reading, turn in assignments on time, etc.--you could get As. Initiative was not required and, in fact, was often frowned on.

Now--whether you work for someone else or run your own business--doing what you're told makes you average. Not superior, not excellent... just average.

To be above average, or to achieve better than average results, you must do two things:

1. Do what others are willing to do, and do it better, and
2. Do what others aren't willing to do

Otherwise, you're just average.

2. Being micro-managed is to be expected.

Sure, you felt overly-controlled in school: Dates, timelines, rules... not to mention the seemingly arbitrary policies and nonsensical assignments. You saw graduation as the day you would finally have more freedom.

Nope.

In school you paid people to criticize, direct, and at times micro-manage you. Now you're the one getting paid... yet you somehow don't feel it's fair that investors, partners, or customers can dictate what you do, sometimes down to the smallest detail?

Don't expect someone to trust you to perform a task or service–and give you money to perform that service–until you've proven you can be trusted to perform that service.

Then, once you've proven your skills, if you still feel micro-managed it's your responsibility to change the situation. Communicate before you are communicated to. Answer questions before questions are asked. Demonstrate your value before you are asked to prove your value.

No one wants to micro-manage you. They have better things to do with their time.

If you're being micro-managed it's probably because you need to be.

3. Your time off is the highlight of the year.

You may have forgotten your mom's birthday, but I'll bet you knew the exact day every semester ended and the start and end of Spring Break. And you lived for snow days.

So it only makes sense to see weekends and vacations as the highlight of your working year, right?

Actually, no: If you feel you endure the workweek just to get to the payoff of the weekend, you're in the wrong business. Find work you enjoy; then you won't see time off as a chance to finally do something fun but as a chance to do something else fun.

While you'll never love everything you do in your professional life, you should enjoy the majority of it.

Otherwise you're not living–you're just working.

4. Getting criticized means you failed.
Here's another pay/paid dichotomy. In college you paid professors to critique your work.

So now that you are the one getting paid, why is it unfair for someone--like a customer, investor, or key partner–to critique your work?

It's not.

When you get negative feedback, see it as an opportunity. Think, "Wow, I didn't realize I wasn't doing that right. I didn't realize I wasn't doing that as well as I could."

Criticism is a chance to learn--and this time you're getting paid to learn.

Never complain when someone pays you to learn.

5. Success is based on toeing the line.

Say you disagreed with a professor's point of view on a particular point. You may even have been right... but the only way to get an A in the class was to parrot the professor's take on the subject. Except in rare cases, confirming and following the rules was everything.

In business, conforming only ensures that you will achieve the same results as other people.
If you want to achieve different results you'll have to think and act differently. Do your homework, think critically, and don't be afraid to create your own path.

But don't be different just for the sake of being different. Be different because it's who you are and what you believe... and because it will get you where you want to go, with your integrity and your sense of self intact.

http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/entrepreneurs-5-things-to-un-learn-from-school.html

How to Build Customer Trust: 9 Rules

No one is going to buy from a person they don't trust. Here's how to build a better client relationships.

Customers don't buy from people they don't trust. Unfortunately, most sales gurus (including some that are quite famous) define selling as "convincing," "persuading," and "winning"–presumably with the customer being the convinced, persuaded loser.

No wonder so many people put up a barrier the minute somebody tries to sell them something!
Fortunately, it's easy to build trust in a business relationship. Here are the rules, based on a conversation with a true expert in trust-building Jerry Acuff, author of The Relationship Edge: The Key to Strategic Influence and Selling Success.

1. Be yourself.
Everybody on the planet has had unpleasant experiences with salespeople, and many have walked away from a sales situation feeling manipulated. So, rather than acting or sounding like a salesperson, simply act the way you would when meeting with a colleague.

2. Value the relationship.
If you want people around you to value having a relationship with you, you must truly believe that relationship building is important. You must also believe that you honestly have something of value to offer to the relationship.

3. Be curious about people.
People are drawn to those who show true interest in them. Curiosity about people is thus a crucial element of relationship building. Having an abiding fascination in others give you the opportunity to learn new things and make new connections.

4. Be consistent.
A customer's ability to trust you is dependent upon showing the customer that your behavior is consistent and persistent over time. When a customer can predict your behavior, that customer is more likely to trust you.

5. Seek the truth.
Trust emerges when you approach selling as a way of helping the customer–so make it your quest to discover the real areas where the you can work together. Never be afraid to point out that your product or company may not be the right fit.

6. Keep an open mind.
If you're absolutely convinced the customer needs your product, the customer will sense you're close-minded and become close-minded in return. Instead, be open to the idea that the customer might be better served elsewhere. In turn, customers will sense that you've got their best interests at heart.

7. Have a real dialog.
Every meeting should be a conversation, not a sales pitch. Spend at least half of every customer meeting listening. And make certain the conversation is substantive and about real business issues, not just office patter or sports chit-chat.

8. Be a professional.
Customers tend to trust individuals who are serious about what they do, and willing to take the time to achieve a deep understanding of their craft. Take the time every day to learn more about your customers, their industry and their challenges.

9. Show real integrity.
Be willing to take a stand, even when it's unpopular with your customer or your company. You don't need to be adversarial, but have the ability to make decisions based upon what you know is right. And on a related note: Never promise what you can't deliver.

Needless to say, gaining trust is only part of the equation. You must also have a product that customers want and need, and the ability to show how you're adding value, solving problems, and so forth.

However, if you don't earn the customer's trust, they'll probably buy from someone else whom they do trust–even if the offering isn't as good.

 http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/how-to-build-customer-trust-9-rules.html

How to Motivate Employees? The Best Answer Ever

Effective motivation comes down to one surprising word... which might be why so many leaders fail to do it right.

No business is better than its employees, which is why engaging and motivating employees is so important.

Too bad it's rarely done well.

Maybe that's because all the theorists and strategists and experts make motivating people seem much more complicated than it needs to be. Is it possible there's a simple and straightforward answer to the question, "How can I motivate my employees?"

It turns out there is, and Dick Cross, an eight-time turnaround CEO, founder of The Cross Partnership, founding partner of Alston Capital Partners, and the author of Just Run It!: Running an Exceptional Business is Easier Than You Think, has it.

According to Dick, motivating employees—or anyone—is based on one word.

Patience.

Say you want to instill a sense of urgency. The best way to get people to go fast is to let them know why there's a need to go fast, and then be encouraging and patient with their progress.

How many times has a boss or coach ranted and raved about what needs to happen by when, "Or else!" Probably more often than you like to remember.

And how often did the ranting and raving achieve the intended result? Probably less often than the ranters and ravers like to remember.

That shouldn't come as a surprise, because it's a pattern we learned to follow as children. People, including kids, don't like to be threatened. Threaten me and I'll resist. Spank me, ground me, reprimand me, put a letter in my file, demote me, and you'll fail to change my attitude. In fact, you'll increase my resolve not to comply.

Physically you might overpower me, but you'll never get me to do any more than the minimum required to get by.

And that's a huge problem, because minimum compliance efforts never produce great organizational accomplishments.

But if employees like how you treat them, know you believe in them, understand what needs to get accomplished and understand why it's so important... they'll generally accomplish great things.

The key lies in getting them to want to help you, which is only possible when you 1) exhibit an understanding of what is possible, 2) care about them, and 3) are willing to accept the absolute best they can deliver.

Under those conditions, most people will give you their all.

Do the opposite and they won't. There are few things more de-motivating than feeling you are trying your best but still letting someone down. You've been there. No matter what you did, it wasn't good enough. Eventually you decide hard work isn't worth it.  That's why there is little more motivating than the prospect of amazing a person who genuinely cares about us.

Who do we generally care about the most? The people we feel believe in us the most, which makes them the people we least want to disappoint: Moms, favorite teachers, best friends... and remarkable bosses.

Those are the people to whom we give our all; they believe in us... and we don't want to let them down.

And that's why motivation ultimately comes down to patience. Showing patience is an extraordinary way to let people know you care about them. By showing patience and expressing genuine confidence in them, your employees naturally will be motivated to find ways to do things that will amaze everyone—including themselves.

And how do you make motivation last?

The key is to understand that sometimes your employees must go slow in order to go fast.

A burst of speed that drains physical and emotional energy is not worth the effort because it's not sustainable. Speed that builds gradually, that forgives mistakes along the way, and that allows people to figure out for themselves how to maximize their potential—that kind of speed, and patience, creates a feeling of motivation that lasts forever.

Motivation? It's all about patience.

 http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/how-to-motivate-employees-the-best-answer-ever.html

The quickest way to get things done and make change

Not the easiest, but the quickest:
Don't demand authority.
Eagerly take responsibility.
Relentlessly give credit.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/05/the-quickest-way-to-get-things-done-and-make-change-and.html

Accountability and Integrity: The Golden Rules of Business

Deciding to do the right thing seems like a simple rule of business but often it gets lost in the day-to-day grind.

Say what you do and do what you say. Do the right things, and the right things will happen. It sounds as simple as the Golden Rule, but there is a surprising lack of accountability and integrity in the business world today.

These two attributes are central to OtterBox and our ability to continue to grow at a rate that's landed us on the Inc. 500|5000 four times. Integrity and accountability are, in fact, two of our core values.

I think most of us know what the right thing is, but being able to execute on it is another matter. Doing what's right isn't always easy. People frequently default to the simplest option as an automatic response, which often means integrity is not upheld and accountability is at stake.

An extreme example of lack of integrity and accountability can be seen in today's political landscape. No matter where they land on the spectrum, politicians are consistently promising to do the right things if elected. Lower taxes, save the environment, stimulate the economy - every election season the American public is inundated with promises.

To be fair, these politicians might actually think they can follow through on their vows, but the lack of results from any single one of them or any party as a whole has become an epidemic in and of itself.  That's where accountability comes in - you must do what you say.

Much like the American public, customers are quickly fed up with a lack of accountability. However, unlike the American public will quickly respond and take their business elsewhere.  Like Howard Beale said in the 1976 film Network, they'll be "mad as hell" and surely are "not going to take this anymore!"

Also unlike politicians, businesses can and must admit when they have fallen through on promises. Not all decisions made will be the right ones, but open and honest communication about those situations maintains integrity and accountability.

Integrity and accountability are daily decisions, not one-offs reserved for top level decisions by the CEO. Every employee must adhere to these values in all the tasks and operations they do. If a business doesn't have integrity in the small things, no one will believe it has integrity in the big things.

http://www.inc.com/curt-richardson/accountability-and-integrity-the-golden-rules-of-business.html

How to Build Customer Trust: 9 Rules

No one is going to buy from a person they don't trust. Here's how to build a better client relationships.

Customers don't buy from people they don't trust. Unfortunately, most sales gurus (including some that are quite famous) define selling as "convincing," "persuading," and "winning"–presumably with the customer being the convinced, persuaded loser.

No wonder so many people put up a barrier the minute somebody tries to sell them something!
Fortunately, it's easy to build trust in a business relationship. Here are the rules, based on a conversation with a true expert in trust-building Jerry Acuff, author of The Relationship Edge: The Key to Strategic Influence and Selling Success.

1. Be yourself.
Everybody on the planet has had unpleasant experiences with salespeople, and many have walked away from a sales situation feeling manipulated. So, rather than acting or sounding like a salesperson, simply act the way you would when meeting with a colleague.

2. Value the relationship.
If you want people around you to value having a relationship with you, you must truly believe that relationship building is important. You must also believe that you honestly have something of value to offer to the relationship.

3. Be curious about people.
People are drawn to those who show true interest in them. Curiosity about people is thus a crucial element of relationship building. Having an abiding fascination in others give you the opportunity to learn new things and make new connections.

4. Be consistent.

A customer's ability to trust you is dependent upon showing the customer that your behavior is consistent and persistent over time. When a customer can predict your behavior, that customer is more likely to trust you.

5. Seek the truth.
Trust emerges when you approach selling as a way of helping the customer–so make it your quest to discover the real areas where the you can work together. Never be afraid to point out that your product or company may not be the right fit.

6. Keep an open mind.
If you're absolutely convinced the customer needs your product, the customer will sense you're close-minded and become close-minded in return. Instead, be open to the idea that the customer might be better served elsewhere. In turn, customers will sense that you've got their best interests at heart.

7. Have a real dialog.
Every meeting should be a conversation, not a sales pitch. Spend at least half of every customer meeting listening. And make certain the conversation is substantive and about real business issues, not just office patter or sports chit-chat.

8. Be a professional.
Customers tend to trust individuals who are serious about what they do, and willing to take the time to achieve a deep understanding of their craft. Take the time every day to learn more about your customers, their industry and their challenges.

9. Show real integrity.
Be willing to take a stand, even when it's unpopular with your customer or your company. You don't need to be adversarial, but have the ability to make decisions based upon what you know is right. And on a related note: Never promise what you can't deliver.

Needless to say, gaining trust is only part of the equation. You must also have a product that customers want and need, and the ability to show how you're adding value, solving problems, and so forth.
However, if you don't earn the customer's trust, they'll probably buy from someone else whom they do trust–even if the offering isn't as good.

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/how-to-build-customer-trust-9-rules.html

Are Your Employees Waving Away Customers?

As a business owner, you go above and beyond to keep customers happy. But your employees might not feel the same.

I recently visited a local small business (a pet food store) because I wanted to get my doggie, Dwight, some kibble. It wasn't a highly trafficked joint and in a remote area, and I only wanted a small bag of food. So I got out of the car and went up to the door only to find they had just closed.

Turns out I had arrived three minutes after closing time and the person who was manning the store was still behind the register with a customer. I waved to see if he would open the place up just to get one more sale, but this employee gave me the cut-across-the-throat gesture and waved me off.
What did that tell me? That he clearly wasn't the business owner.

All of you business owners are out there clutching your proverbial pearls, right? If you were there, you would have opened the doors to get one more sale for the day. But in this case, it was an employee who wanted out after eight hours of looking at the clock and not giving a damn about poor Dwight and his lack of delicious dry food.

How do you make sure your employees aren't waving off customers and potential sales? Here are four ideas:

1. Go above and beyond.
Your employees want to feel part of a family, so make it so! Hang out with them, get to know them, do fun things like happy hours and picnics with them. Everyone wants to love where they work and who they work for, so give it to them!

2. Make them feel invested in the company.
Why not try giving them a part of your company so they feel invested? At my company, VerticalResponse, we give all of our employees stock options to let them know that if the company is successful, they will be, too. You might also try giving them a piece of the profits at the end of the year so they know that the more the cash registers ring, the more they'll get.

3. Be transparent.
Let them know what your growth is and what it needs to be. Even if it takes the old thermometer sketch to illustrate where you are in the month, it's worth it. I give my entire company a monthly update on where we are, where we need to be and what we need to do to get there.

4. Give them incentives.
Tracking their daily sales could get them more of a bonus at the end of the month. Ever have someone ask you at the register, "Who helped you with that?" They're tracking the effectiveness of their employees who make an impression.

Here's a story I love to share. Since VerticalResponse is an online company, there's not really a reason for customers to physically visit us. At the very beginning of our existence, a woman came to our offices and sat on our couch for 20 minutes (we didn't have a receptionist at the time) until an employee (there were four of us total) came out into the open area on his way to the restroom and saw her. She was there to give us $20 in cash so she could send an e-mail campaign to her list.
Instead of pushing her out the door and directing her to our website, the employee took the cash, printed out an invoice for the amount she gave us, and even gave her extra e-mail credits. She took the time to come to us, so we felt we needed to return the favor.

The bottom line is that you need to have your employees be as passionate as possible about your business. Including them on various parts of your business, even the down and dirty, and incentivizing them to do what you as the business owner would do, might work wonders. Have you tried?

Intelligence Is Overrated: What You Really Need To Succeed

Albert Einstein’s was estimated at 160, Madonna’s is 140, and John F. Kennedy’s was only 119, but as it turns out, your IQ score pales in comparison with your EQ, MQ, and BQ scores when it comes to predicting your success and professional achievement.

IQ tests are used as an indicator of logical reasoning ability and technical intelligence. A high IQ is often a prerequisite for rising to the top ranks of business today. It is necessary, but it is not adequate to predict executive competence and corporate success. By itself, a high IQ does not guarantee that you will stand out and rise above everyone else.

Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that 85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. Additionally, Nobel Prize winning Israeli-American psychologist, Daniel Kahneman, found that people would rather do business with a person they like and trust rather than someone they don’t, even if the likeable person is offering a lower quality product or service at a higher price.

With this in mind, instead of exclusively focusing on your conventional intelligence quotient, you should make an investment in strengthening your EQ (Emotional Intelligence), MQ (Moral Intelligence), and BQ (Body Intelligence). These concepts may be elusive and difficult to measure, but their significance is far greater than IQ.

Emotional Intelligence
EQ is the most well known of the three, and in brief it is about: being aware of your own feelings and those of others, regulating these feelings in yourself and others, using emotions that are appropriate to the situation, self-motivation, and building relationships.

Top Tip for Improvement: First, become aware of your inner dialogue. It helps to keep a journal of what thoughts fill your mind during the day. Stress can be a huge killer of emotional intelligence, so you also need to develop healthy coping techniques that can effectively and quickly reduce stress in a volatile situation.

Moral Intelligence
MQ directly follows EQ as it deals with your integrity, responsibility, sympathy, and forgiveness. The way you treat yourself is the way other people will treat you. Keeping commitments, maintaining your integrity, and being honest are crucial to moral intelligence.

Top Tip for Improvement: Make fewer excuses and take responsibility for your actions. Avoid little white lies. Show sympathy and communicate respect to others. Practice acceptance and show tolerance of other people’s shortcomings. Forgiveness is not just about how we relate to others; it’s also how you relate to and feel about yourself.

Body Intelligence
Lastly, there is your BQ, or body intelligence, which reflects what you know about your body, how you feel about it, and take care of it. Your body is constantly telling you things; are you listening to the signals or ignoring them? Are you eating energy-giving or energy-draining foods on a daily basis? Are you getting enough rest? Do you exercise and take care of your body? It may seem like these matters are unrelated to business performance, but your body intelligence absolutely affects your work because it largely determines your feelings, thoughts, self-confidence, state of mind, and energy level.

Top Tip For Improvement: At least once a day, listen to the messages your body is sending you about your health. Actively monitor these signals instead of going on autopilot. Good nutrition, regular exercise, and adequate rest are all key aspects of having a high BQ. Monitoring your weight, practicing moderation with alcohol, and making sure you have down time can dramatically benefit the functioning of your brain and the way you perform at work.

What You Really Need To Succeed
It doesn’t matter if you did not receive the best academic training from a top university. A person with less education who has fully developed their EQ, MQ, and BQ can be far more successful than a person with an impressive education who falls short in these other categories.

Yes, it is certainly good to be an intelligent, rational thinker and have a high IQ; this is an important asset. But you must realize that it is not enough. Your IQ will help you personally, but EQ, MQ, and BQ will benefit everyone around you as well. If you can master the complexities of these unique and often under-rated forms of intelligence, research tells us you will achieve greater success and be regarded as more professionally competent and capable.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/keldjensen/2012/04/12/intelligence-is-overrated-what-you-really-need-to-succeed

Secret Trait of Every Successful Entrepreneur

Conrad Hilton lost his hotel business during the Great Depression but was able to buy it back and build one of the world's most successful corporations. What's his secret?

One of the qualities that is most helpful in an aspiring entrepreneur is optimism.  Without it you would be foolish to attempt risk. Consider those before us who against the greatest odds managed to start and build successful businesses. What was their secret?

Conrad Hilton and I went to the same high school, N.M.M.I. He started his hotel business prior to the Great Depression and as a result found himself over extended when the depression hit. He lost his hotels but was retained as manager. By 1946 he had bought them back and formed Hilton Hotel Corporation. He was an optimist.

There is an old saying in the Army, "There's no atheist in a foxhole." That's easy to figure out and pretty self-explanatory. I'll give you a new one, "There is no pessimist in a successful start-up or turnaround."

How many people do you know that have a great idea for a business, talk about it but never do anything about it? What stops them? Is it the risk of failure? Based on my years in business I would say it isn't the risk of failure but a lack of optimism for success. Now you may think I'm splitting hairs but let me make this distinction.

You have to be a realist to recognize whether something has the potential to be a success or not. Does the product, goods or services offered in my new venture have value? Can I take this model to market and create enough distinction that differentiates me from the competition? Or if its something completely new, is there a market for it? If you are being realistic, and the answer is yes, then you have to ask yourself am I going to put myself out there? Now comes the optimism. According to Webster, the definition of optimism is an inclination to put the most favorable construction upon actions and events or to anticipate the best possible outcome. By looking at that definition, I cannot see how anyone could start a business or attempt a turnaround without being optimistic!

I have heard from many readers that they want to start their own business but just aren't ready. For many that may be true. For those that fit this description, ask yourself will you ever be ready? There probably will be no better time than right now to start one. I say this because the macro aspects of the market have hit the bottom and are coming back up. Not because the government is doing anything but because business people are. The ability to rebuild the economy rests with you and me. Our voice, optimism and ultimately the power of small business will adapt and overcome.

The cost of money is lower now than before. With interest rates so low, the risk reward parameters have shifted. Based on today's rates; something slightly better than break even will return more money than conventional savings, money market or CD rates.

So, what are you waiting for?

3 Ways to Build Trust In Your Managers

Trust is an essential part of strong leadership. Developing it requires time, patience--and coaching.

Do you trust the people who report to you?

While every leader faces this question, too often the question is framed within the context of right vs. wrong. That is, do you trust your employees to make honest and ethical decisions? In my experience the question of trust should more often be about managerial competence than personal morality.

The trust issue is even more important these days as organizations strive to grow with leaner staffs and fewer resources. The margin for error is slim to none.

Here's an example of what I mean. You notice that a team that reports to one of our direct reports is having difficulty getting a project done on time and on budget. You speak to your direct report--the team's boss--but he seems unable to spot the problem. He is too trusting of his team and lets the members do whatever they want to do. Because the team has always performed well in the past he assumes they will figure out how to get their project back on track. The boss has become too trusting, while you as his boss are losing trust in his leadership as well as the capability of the team.

There is no right and wrong in a moral sense here. It is an issue of managerial poor-performance. Too often I have seen managers let such issues slide because they do not want to confront their people or because they "trust" they will get the job done.

Neither is a good solution. A better alternative is a coaching session, and here are some recommendations for how to conduct one.

Get the whole story. Invite your direct report to tell you his side of the story. This is especially true when things go wrong. Sometimes the manager is clueless; he may be so wrapped up in details that he has lost the bigger picture. For example, he may think he is shepherding the project when it reality he is juggling details and not completing the whole task.

Make suggestions. Ask what the manager will do to rectify the situation. One executive I know makes it a point to teach his people how to ask the right questions at the right time. Such questions are those that challenge assumptions, not in a hostile manner, but in ways that encourage open and honest discussion. Such questions open the mind to alternate ways of thinking.

Gain agreement. Insist on a plan of action. Make certain that it includes specific assignments as well as metrics and milestones, where appropriate. Specificity is essential when it comes to performance improvement.

These action steps, as long as they are backed with strong follow-up, will work but your job as manager is not over. You need to remain vigilant about how your direct report is managing his team. Importantly, you need to find a way to engage this team in ways that enable them to succeed without intense supervision. This means building a value system in which people hold one another accountable for results. When teammates do this, they keep each other engaged. They reinforce their sense of purpose by getting the job done right.

Trust is a bond between individuals or between teams and their supervisors. It can never be expected, nor imposed. It is earned through example and reinforced through success as well as recognition. Vigilance to trust is an essential component of leadership.

4-Step Formula for Guaranteed Success

This amazingly simple formula drives virtually every successful business. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs and investors lose sight of these basic principles.

Success in business, especially in growing businesses, does not require an ingeniously complex solution. Often, success comes from mastering the basic fundamentals.

In short, success is about addressing a customer need better than you or your competitors currently address it. In many cases, the "new and improved" solution is surprisingly incremental, rather than revolutionary. Examples abound:

Google, one of the most valuable companies in the world, began as a slightly better search engine.
The Toyota Camry was the best-selling car in America for many years because it had better gas mileage, was fun to drive, didn't break down, and was less expensive than other sedans.
Oprah Winfrey dominated daytime TV by tapping into topics for women in more interesting ways than Phil Donahue and others had done for years.

Starbucks reinvented the concept of the coffee shop-something that had been around for generations-by consistently serving good coffee in a pleasant environment.

As we analyze the drivers of success in these and virtually all other entrepreneurial successes, we find that there is an extremely basic, and in hindsight, glaringly obvious, four-step formula common to each.

1. Develop an understanding of customer value.
What's the value equation from the customer perspective? This is defined, most simply, as benefit minus cost. Many businesses and entrepreneurs simply don't understand what would make a customer happier or better off. Often they are trying to fit their product to the customer rather than identify what product would fit the customer

2. Create a better product or solution for a specific customer.
Because each customer is different, identifying the specific customer or segment you are targeting is critical. Attempting to be all things to all people typically results in an indistinct product that benefits no one.

3. Determine how to scale the product from one customer to many customers.
Once you've mastered the value equation for one customer, you can focus on finding many customers that think and act alike. Most management teams try to scale the business before they've created a valuable product with one customer. It's similar to launching a rocket to the moon without mastering the aerodynamics. It might have the power to get there, but it's not going to make it.

4. Develop a business model that allows you to build scale while generating incremental return on Investment.  

In the end, you'll need to build a business case for investing capital to grow the business. If the customer value equation is still in flux, no amount of growth capital will fix the problem. We like Alex Osterwalder's business model canvas as a template for building a solid business model. But, it's important to calculate how the investment will create a return on capital.

Of course, execution is everything. If business success was as easy as following a few steps, everyone would be a mega-billionaire. But it's surprising how many competent entrepreneurs, corporations, and even experienced strategists develop business models that omit one or more of these basic steps.

Sales Lessons My Mom Taught Me

My mother taught me everything I really needed to know about selling. Here's her advice.

My mother was a crack sales rep for Bristol Myers, but to me she was mostly just my mom. As such, it didn't occur to me until a few years ago that her "mom advice" was also a sure-fire recipe for sales success.
Here's what I remember:

1. 'No gift until after you write the thank-you note.'
My mom was BIG on thank-you notes. In her mind, it was the height of rudeness to fail to recognize when somebody had sent you a gift.  So every Christmas, before we got to actually play with the toys our relatives sent us, we had to sit down and write our thank-you notes.

Years later, I learned that she always applied the same principles in her sales job.  Whenever a store manager cut a special order, or allowed her to rearrange the shelf layout, or did anything that made her job easier, she wrote a personal note and mailed it, on exact the same day.
As the result of this simple discipline, store managers always remembered her name, and always took her calls and positively anticipated her visits.

2. 'Always wear clean underwear.'
And, yes, she did add "in case you get in an accident," but only when she gave the advice to my sister. In my case, her advice was, I think, a reflection of her view that the only way to dress well is to dress from the inside out.

My mother observed that, rightly or wrongly, people judge you on your appearance. She also frequently pointed out that, of all the elements that make up your appearance, the one that's most under your control is what you're wearing.

She believed–and I agree with her–that a big part of how your clothes look on you is how you feel about the clothes themselves.  It's hard, maybe impossible, to look sharp if you know that you're wearing something tatty, even if other people probably aren't going to see it.

3. 'Profanity shows a lack of imagination.'
This was my mom's unique way of saying "watch your mouth!"–and it's good advice for anyone in business, especially if you work in sales.

Some people in business use profanity (or even obscenity) in an attempt to add swagger to their personas. However, because it's both common and commonplace, "colorful" language usually falls flat and frequently offends.

Unfortunately, swearing is, like most habits, easy to acquire and difficult to break. So expunge the filth from your vocabulary now, before you accidentally make customers wonder whether they want to do business with somebody who's got a potty mouth.

4. 'If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all.'
My mother didn't tolerate malicious gossip and avoided people who did. As a result, the people she worked with (including customers) shared all sorts of things that they otherwise might not have revealed.

Sales is all about trust, and people stop trusting you the minute they minute you trash-talk the competition, your management (worse), or other customers (worst of all).

When you allow venom to creep into your words, it spreads poison over everything.  So if you want strong relationships, both personal and professional, hold your tongue when you're tempted to say something unprofessional or petty.

5. 'I don't care if everyone else is doing it.'
I remember being furious at my mom when she said this. She was unfair! She was ruining my social life! She was making me uncool! (The horror, the horror...)

Of course, now that I've got two kids of my own, I know exactly where she was coming from.  More importantly, I've come to realize that, just as it's immature to let peer pressure lead you into doing something stupid, it's a losing business strategy to imitate the behavior of other firms in your industry.

That's why I'm skeptical of anyone who claims to be teaching "best practices." Every company is unique and thus must have a unique formula for success.  Going with the crowd is the fast track to mediocrity.

6. 'It's no use crying over spilt milk.'
My mom faced a lot of challenges in her life: a stillborn baby in her 20s, a scandal-ridden divorce in her 30s, breast cancer in her 40s.  She came through all of it with a (mostly) positive attitude, because she lived in the present and not the past.

I can't ever remember hearing her complain, even once, about what had happened to her.  Instead, she made the effort, and largely succeeded, in finding things to enjoy in her life at the time.

That's an incredibly valuable belief to have if your livelihood depends upon sales. No matter how talented you are, no matter how wonderful your product, some deals are going to go south. Focusing on the past is worse than useless. Learn what you can and move on.

Note: My mom died two years ago from complications resulting from reconstructive surgery. I respectfully dedicate this column to her memory.

http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/sales-lessons-my-mom-taught-me.html

The Six Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness)

The Six Enemies of Greatness (and Happiness)
These six factors can erode the grandest of plans and the noblest of intentions. They can turn visionaries into paper-pushers and wide-eyed dreamers into shivering, weeping balls of regret. Beware!


 1) Availability
We often settle for what’s available, and what’s available isn’t always great. “Because it was there,” is an okay reason to climb a mountain, but not a very good reason to take a job or a free sample at the supermarket.

 2) Ignorance
If we don’t know how to make something great, we simply won’t. If we don’t know that greatness is possible, we won’t bother attempting it. All too often, we literally do not know any better than good enough.

 3) Committees
Nothing destroys a good idea faster than a mandatory consensus. The lowest common denominator is never a high standard.

 4) Comfort
Why pursue greatness when you’ve already got 324 channels and a recliner? Pass the dip and forget about your grand designs.

5) Momentum
If you’ve been doing what you’re doing for years and it’s not-so-great, you are in a rut. Many people refer to these ruts as careers.

6) Passivity

There’s a difference between being agreeable and agreeing to everything. Trust the little internal voice that tells you, “this is a bad idea.”

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jessicahagy/2012/02/28/the-six-enemies-of-greatness-and-happiness/

Solving the problem isn't the problem

The problem is finding a vector that pays for itself as you scale.

We see a problem and we think we've "solved" it, but if there isn't a scalable go-to-market business approach behind the solution, it's not going to work.

This is where engineers and other problem solvers so often get stuck. Industries and organizations and systems aren't broken because no one knows how to solve their problem. They're broken because the difficult part is finding a scalable, profitable way to market and sell the solution.

Take textbooks, for example. The challenge here isn't that you and I can't come up with a far better, cheaper, faster and more fair way to produce and sell and use textbooks. The problem is that the people who have to approve, review and purchase textbooks are difficult to reach, time-consuming to educate and expensive to sell.

Or consider solar lanterns as a replacement for kerosene. They are safer, cheaper and far healthier. But that's not the problem. The problem is building a marketing and distribution network that permits you to rapidly educate a billion people as to why they want to buy one at a price that would permit you to make them in quantity.

Sure, you need a solution to the problem. But mostly what you need is a self-funding method to scale your solution, a way of interacting with the market that gains in strength over time so you can start small and get big, solving the problem as you go.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2012/05/solving-the-problem-isnt-the-problem.html

What a 9-Year-Old Can Teach You About Selling

If you want your conversations to have a real impact, you need to simplify your message.

I recently read a study that confirmed my suspicion that most people don't remember what we present to them in a sales call. The data suggested that the average buyer in a meeting will only remember one thing–one!–a week after your meeting.

Oh, and by the way: You don't get to choose what that one thing is. Sigh.

So what have sales professionals done about this? They have worked on "honing the message," developing a "compelling unique advantage" and, of course, the ultimate silver bullet: a surefire elevator pitch.

But here's what you're fighting: A world cluttered with information, schedules, packed with more meetings and work than a person can handle. A decision-making process with more people involved in every choice–many of whom know little about your product or service. No wonder so little is remembered; often your audience doesn't even understand much about what you're offering.

What Kids Want to Know
I have a 9-year-old daughter with spring freckles, long brown hair and blue eyes the size of silver dollars. She asks the kinds of questions that on the surface seem so simple:

• Daddy, what do you do?
• Why do people decide to hire you?
• Why don't they hire somebody else or do it themselves?

One of the great things about 9-year-olds: Like many buyers these days, they lack context. Any answer that you provide has to be in a language that they can understand.

What does a procurement specialist know about what you sell–or the IT person, or the finance person? The challenge is this: Can you answer the three questions my 9-year-old asked, for your own business?
Hint: There are right and wrong answers for both.

Daddy, What Do You Do?

• Right answer: "I help companies to grow really fast by teaching them how to sell bigger companies much larger orders."
• Wrong answer: "Our company helps develop inside of our clients a replicable and scalable process for them to land large accounts."

Why Do People Decide to Hire You?

• Right answer: "We have helped lots of companies do this before, so we are really good at it as long as they are the right type of companies."
• Wrong answer: "We have a proven process for implementation that allows organizations to tailor the model to their market, business offering and company's growth goals."

Why Don't They Do It Themselves?

• Right answer: "Just like when you learned to play the piano: Mommy and I could teach a little, but we don't know as much as your teacher, and teaching you ourselves would take a long time and be very frustrating. Daddy is a really good teacher of how to make bigger sales, and people want to learn how to do this as fast as they can."
• Wrong answer: "We are the foremost expert in this field with over $5 billion in business that our clients have closed using this system. Usually our clients have tried a number of things on their own before we work together and have wanted outside help to get better results."

In these cases, both answers are accurate, but that doesn't make them right. In a world in which more decisions are made with less information and context, our responsibility is to get to as clear and memorable an answer as possible for all of the buyers to understand.

http://www.inc.com/tom-searcy/what-a-9-year-old-can-teach-you-about-selling.html

Deliver on Deadline Every Time: 6 Tips

Don't let your project slide off the rails before it even starts. Keep your team on track and on time with these tips.

It's the Monday morning staff meeting, and the week's urgent projects are on the agenda. Plenty of assignments for everyone: some that involve a few quick phone calls, and others that will require overtime. How do you make sure you nail every deadline? Share these tips with your team.

• Start with specifics. When exactly is the deadline? Clarify whether “end of the week” means 5 p.m. Friday or first thing Friday morning. And hammer down the results: What does your client want? How will they measure your effectiveness?
• Negotiate. Better to do it now rather than later. Is the deadline realistic? Suggest alternative dates, or work out what other tasks you should put on hold in order to give the deadline the attention it deserves.
• Break the task down. “Complete big project by Friday” is not an action item. Start with the biggest tasks and break them down into individual steps that have their own deadlines.
• Build in a buffer. As you schedule individual tasks, give yourself a cushion. Mark the due date a few days ahead of the actual deadline so you have time to deal with changes or last-minute emergencies.
• Make it OK for people to ask for help. No one gets extra points for trying to be a hero. It’s far better for the team (and your client) if employees admit early on that they need more time or extra manpower. Check in often; your job as the leader is to help the team remove potential roadblocks before they become full-flown crises.
• Get started. Don’t end the first project-planning meeting without assigning everyone a next step and a deadline. This will help the team focus on the small steps in front of them and not the magnitude of the project ahead.

One of my favorite sayings is, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.” That statement has three parts: 1) the goal, which is what you want to achieve; 2) the dream, which is what you think you can do; and 3) the deadline, which means you will accomplish what you set out to do.

Deadlines aren’t bad. They help you organize your time. They help you set priorities. They make you get going when you might not feel like it. And meeting deadlines successfully is one of the best motivating factors out there.

http://www.inc.com/harvey-mackay/how-to-meet-deadlines-under-pressure.html

Jim Collins: Good to Great in 10 Steps

Management guru Jim Collins asks entrepreneurs to do 10 things that will dramatically improve their companies. What are you waiting for?

Researcher and management guru Jim Collins has authored or co-authored six books, including Good to Great and Built to Last. On his web site there are 48 articles written or co-written by him. But speaking at the Womens Presidents Organization’s annual conference last week in Atlanta, Collins boiled it all down. Do these 10 things, he said, to dramatically improve your company.

1. Download the diagnostic tool at jimcollins.com, and do the exercises with your team. Yes, I thought this was self-serving at first. Then I looked it, considered that it’s free and doesn't require you to sign up for anything, and immediately saw his point.

2. Get the right people in the key seats. This comes from Collins’ famous observation that building a company is like driving a bus. You need a driver, but you also need the right people in all the key seats. So, says Collins, figure out how many key seats you have, and make a plan that will make sure you get all the key seats filled by the end of the year.

3. Once a quarter, have a brutal facts meeting. Be careful about who you include in this meeting. You will be discussing just the brutal facts. This is not the time to express opinions or strategize. Repeat: Only discuss the brutal facts.

4. Set a 15 to 25-year big, hairy audacious goal (BHAG). This is a goal that is concrete enough, and ambitious enough, to guide your company’s progress for years. Collins writes that “With his very first dime store in 1945, Sam Walton set the BHAG to ‘make my little Newport store the best, most profitable in Arkansas within five years.’ He continued to set BHAGs, which continued to get larger and more audacious, as his company grew.

5. Commit to a “20-mile march” that you will bring you to your big hairy audacious goal. Collins makes the analogy to someone who is trying to walk across the county. The best approach, says Collins, is to attempt to travel the same distance every day. If you’re on a 2-mile march, says Collins, you don’t bolt 30 miles ahead when the weather is good. You go 20 miles. When the weather is bad, you can’t sit inside and complain – you still have make 20 miles.

What does this have to do with entrepreneurship? In his research, Collins found that companies that perform consistently do much better than those that do spectacularly one year and are feeble the next. That’s because if you overextend in good years, when opportunity appears to be everywhere, you may not have the resources to get through the lousy years. The 20-mile march is a metaphor for the milestone that you can reach day-in and day-out.

6. Place at least one really big bet in the next three years, based on having fired bullets first. No entrepreneur has unlimited resources, just as no small army has unlimited gunpowder (this metaphor may be dated, but you get the point). The best use of limited gunpowder, or resources, says Collins, is to fire bullets to ensure that your aim is calibrated properly and that you can indeed hit your target. Only when you’re sure of your ability to hit your target should you load lots of gunpowder into a cannonball and fire away. “Fire bullets to calibrate. Fire cannonballs to go big,” says Collins.

7. Practice productive paranoia. Collins says he fondly refers to his entrepreneurial subjects as PNFs, or paranoid neurotic freaks.  “Successful companies have three to ten times the cash on their balance sheets as their peers even when they are very small,” says Collins. Or as one of the CEOs he studied said to him, “We’re very proud of the fact that we’ve predicted 11 of the past three recessions.”

How exactly can one practice productive paranoia? Collins recommends making a plan that will allow you to go for an entire year with no revenues, and still survive.

8. Get a high return on your next luck event. Collins says that both great and mediocre companies encounter the same amount of luck, good and bad. What matters, he says, is how well they’re able to capitalize on it. Collins refers to this as ‘return on luck.’ “How are you doing on luck?” he asks. “Have you turned your bad-luck events into a big part of what makes your company great? Are you squandering your good-luck events?”

9. Make a to-do list. “If you have more than three priorities, you don’t have any,” says Collins. For every major ‘to-do’ on your list, you should have a corresponding item that you will stop doing. The 'stop-doing' list.

10. Commit to a set of core values that you will want to build your enterprise on, without changing them, for 100 years.

http://www.inc.com/kimberly-weisul/jim-collins-good-to-great-in-ten-steps.html

Core Values Will Create Your Success

Build some real value into your business by building your business on strong values that you determine.

The term value is often tied to a monetary measure—what something is worth in dollars and cents. Fiscal value is a moving target; however, changing with the ebb and flow of the fickle global economy. Where a business owner should focus more effort and energy is not in the value, but the values of his or her company. Those are concrete and change very little over time.

The values of an organization come from the founder. They are there from the very beginning, influencing the building blocks of vision, people and systems. The core values must not only be accepted but truly believed by all other top level executives so it becomes ingrained in each and every employee.

Values are relatively static. Who you are as a person doesn't change radically, for most, and who your company is shouldn't either. As a company evolves so will its core values. These changes should be a fine tuning rather than a complete overhaul.

OtterBox core values are concrete—not touchy-feely affirmations, but actionable attributes. We discuss our core values in terms of  business decisions, processes and systems. We've even instituted a reward program aimed at honoring employees who exhibit our core values in their daily course of business. Given the diversity of the values, that's not an easy task. Below are the OtterBox core values and abbreviated definitions:

• Passion: OtterBox is about an experience and a lifestyle. We strive to be the best at what we choose to do.
• Integrity:  We trust if we do the right things, we will get the right results.
• Innovation: Built upon entrepreneurial values, we believe everything can be innovated.
• Strategically Driven: We spend one-third of the year planning and strategizing for the future.
• Adaptable: We are eager to embrace change.
• Partner Relationships: We foster long-lasting, win-win relationships with a focus on the future.
• Systemic: We are the sum of all our parts.
• Accountability: We do what we say we will do.

These values are the basis for every decision made within the organization and have guided OtterBox through the potentially treacherous path that leads from small company to big business. We're not done with our journey yet but are confident that we're trekking in the right shoes.

http://www.inc.com/curt-richardson/core-values-will-create-your-success.html

4 Tips for Inspiring Passion in Employees

Passion is easy for an entrepreneur, but keeping that spark alive as a company grows is another story. Here are four tips for keeping the fire burning.

Entrepreneurial passion. It's the cornerstone on which a successful business must be built. As a company grows, that passion must remain intact and infiltrate the entire organization.

Passion is what really made OtterBox stand apart from my numerous other entrepreneurial flare-ups. In the early days of my serial entrepreneurship, I had purchased or started a variety of businesses in tooling and manufacturing. There were successes, but ultimately I ended up back in my garage-a helpful euphemism for not making it pass the small business bump.

It wasn't that I didn't have passion for all of those businesses. The passion was there, but it wasn't focused. The trick is to harness that passion and focus it into a vision. With OtterBox, I had decided to get out of the business of manufacturing products for other people. Instead, I focused my passion on designing and marketing a product that was of personal interest to me -waterproof, crushproof boxes. That product has evolved and changed as has the passion within the company.

Passion is one of the core values of OtterBox and one that gets special attention. OtterBox has grown from my garage to a company with more than 600 employees and offices around the globe in a 14-year span. Maintaining passion within the company, with all employees, has been of utmost importance.
These four elements have been key to keeping the spark alive:

1. From the top-down
It all starts here. The leadership team must be passionate in order for the rest of the organization to be passionate. Who wants to come to work for someone who is just going through the motions and working for the next professional advancement? When hand-picking company leaders, passion must be top-of-mind. If you can't feel it, neither will the rest of the company.

2. From the bottom-up
Just as the leaders are responsible for setting the example, every employee must be involved in fanning the flame. Employees are the frontline to business partners, the community and customers, so their passion is what bleeds through. Build passion into the hiring process. Recognize and celebrate employee acts of passion as a company.

3. To the farthest reaches
Passion doesn't start and stop at headquarters. Ensuring that remote employees are experiencing and exuding passion can be difficult. We bring all employees to the OtterBox home base of Fort Collins, Colorado for training when they are hired and bring them back for quarterly company meetings. Online meeting and training tools keep people face-to-face daily.

4. In everything we do
Passion must be injected into every part of the business: the product, the company, coworkers, community, etc. From research and development to sales to customer service to shipping, every department must show passion in what they do and how they do it. By empowering employees to get involved in strategy, showing them how their work impacts the organization as a whole and letting them get involved in making a difference in the community, passion becomes a given.

Passion is easy in the early days of a business. Everything is new and shiny. The world is your oyster. Maintaining passion, especially as an organization grows, is the tough part. It's what keeps employees engaged and business partners 'wowed.' Passion is what customers feel when they engage with the brand that makes them advocates.

http://www.inc.com/curt-richardson/4-tips-for-inspiring-passion-in-employees.html

10 Ways to Motivate Anyone

Understand the unique brain and personality types of your employees to keep them invested in work. You'll see amazing results.

I am often asked about how I keep employees inspired and productive. It's an essential question since companies today must accomplish more, with fewer people. The most successful start-ups must be lean, nimble, and fierce.

In a nutshell, you should hire bright, energetic, innovative employees. Then offer them the right incentives--the ones that will impact their personal brain and personality types--to keep them mentally and emotionally invested in doing their best.

It's impossible to talk about motivation without mentioning Drive, a book by best-selling author Daniel Pink. (His TED lecture was turned into a fabulous video.) Pink notes that people perform best when they are given autonomy, opportunity for mastery, and the belief that their task is meaningful. He says money is not the best motivator, and that employees want to be "players, not pawns."

Pink believes Google's "20% time," in which employees may spend one day a week on whatever they want is a shining example of how allowing intrinsically-based motivations (a sense of accomplishment or purpose) can flourish. Personal endeavors from "20% time" resulted in Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense. Long before Google--back in 1948--3M instituted the "15% solution" or "dream time," which yielded both Scotch Tape and Post-It Notes.

There's no question that intrinsic motivation is essential. However, I do not agree with Pink that all extrinsic motivation (raises, bonuses, commissions, awards, titles, flex time, and other perks) is harmful. A skillful entrepreneur keeps employees motivated with a combination of both.

That said, there is no cookie-cutter approach to motivating your people. What inspires one person may leave the next cold. When you understand an employee's thinking and behavioral preferences, you'll be able to maximize his or her enthusiasm. This will help you get your workforce aligned and moving in the same direction, and you'll see incredible returns.

1.   Analytical types want to know that a project is valuable, and that their work makes a difference to its success. They need a leader who excels in a particular area, and whose expertise they believe benefits the group. They prefer compensation that is commensurate with their contribution. If they have done a tremendous amount of work on their own, don't expect them to be happy if you reward the whole team.

2.   People who are "structural" by nature want to know their work aids the company's progress. They prefer a leader who is organized, competent, and good with details. They like to be rewarded in writing, in a timely manner, in a way specific to the task. An encouraging email is appropriate to communicate with them.

3.   Social people want to feel personally valued, and that what they are doing has an impact on a project. They go the extra mile for a leader who expresses faith in their abilities. They prefer to be rewarded in person with a gesture that is from the heart. If your own preference is for written communication, send a handwritten note to a particularly social employee.

4.   Innovative employees must buy into a cause. To them, the big picture matters more than the individual who is leading the charge. They prefer to be rewarded with something unconventional and imaginative, and would find a whimsical token of your esteem very meaningful.

5.   Quiet staffers don't need a lot of fanfare, but they appreciate private, one-on-one encouragement.

6.   Expressive people feel more motivated when assignments are openly discussed and an open door is available. They like public recognition, with pomp, and ceremony.

7.   Peacekeepers hope everyone will move in the same direction. They'll never demand a reward or recognition, so it's up to you to offer it.

8.   Hard-drivers are independent thinkers. If they agree with you, they'll be highly motivated. They will let you know what they'd like as an extrinsic reward, and they tend to want whatever it is right away.

9.   Those who are focused team members must have confidence in the leader and in the project, or their motivation may falter. They want know up front what kind of reward they can expect. Make sure you follow through on whatever is promised.

10.   Flexible people go along with the team, as long as a project does not contradict their morals or beliefs. They're also happy with any kind of recognition.

Watch for the weakest link among your employees. If you have a slacker who consistently does less than everyone else but seems to get away with it, this can dampen the motivation of everyone else.

http://www.inc.com/geil-browning/ten-ways-to-motivate-anyone.html