Metric Decision Making

One thing that I've come to understand about management is that it is far too easy to get caught up in emotions and "gut feelings" and when decision making comes from those things, it's very easy to get it wrong. Take firing someone as an example. I'm a top manager and as such, I've had more than my fair share of people who have taken shots at me. I've been insulted and undermined. I've dealt with passive aggressive individuals who were smiling to my face and stabbing me in the back. I've even worked with plenty of people who I just didn't really like very much. I can't just fire everyone that I don't like or who doesn't like me. Sure, if I give a directive to someone who understands and agrees to my face, but sabatoges me or my business when I'm gone, I'm absolutely going to send that guy packing. We need our team members to act like team mates and not like enemies. I think that's pretty well understood.

It's the emotional things that I really want to focus on though. If you don't particularly like someone, you might just have to get over it. Number 1: we dont make decisions based on likes and dislikes - period. Number 2: what if you get rid of a top-performer based on something personal and/or petty? What if you don't even realize that person is a top-performer? What if you don't even know what would define a top-performer? That's a serious problem.

You need metrics to help guide your decisions. You need to know how your employees perform compared to other employees in your company and to other people in other companies within your industry. This starts by knowing how your company performs compared to other companies. Do you know how much revenue each of your employees should generate in a work day. Do you even know how much they are generating at the present time? If not, that's a problem. You need to figure this out.

What about ratios too? Do you know how many people it takes to run your operation? Well, how many customers does each of your employees help per hour? 1? 2? 10? How many dollars does each of your employees generate? How many dollars per hour? Now, what if you don't particularly like someone because your personalities seem to always clash or because that person doesn't seem to want to do things "your way"? What if that person generates $1,000 per hour compared to your average employee who's doing it "your way" and generating $750 per hour? If that's the case, I think it's just about time for you to suck it up buddy.

Your not going to make decisions based on emotions and gut feelings when you can do a little work and find out some really solid metrics to help guide you. Without those metrics, you're going to lose someone who outperforms the rest of your team by 25% when you should be looking at the guy who produces $350 per hour instead.

This way of thinking will save your butt over and over again. It will help you decide which customers to dedicate most of your time to and which customers to stop spending time with at all. It will show you which products are selling the best, even if you don't particularly like them (which won't matter with metrics). As I've clearly shown you here, it will help you make smart hiring and firing decisions so that you don't lose valuable people and poor-performers. If you use your own numbers and compare them as many ways as you reasonably can, you'll be around a lot longer to keep making those smart decisions.

Metric Decision Making > Emotions & Gut Feelings.

Relationship Marketing

Everyone has heard the saying, "If it was fun, it wouldn't be called work". Why does that need to be true? The #1 job of a business is to get new customers. That's pretty fun isn't it? It can certainly take hard work too. Relationship marketing guarantees that the job of getting new customers gets to be fun. It's fun because you begin developing a network of marketing friends to work with every day. Who doesn't want to spend every day working with their friends?

The other thing about working with your friends is that friends usually want to help each other out. I know if I have an opportunity to help a friend, I'm going to do it every time. In marketing, working with friends can and should mean being able to share business referrals and contact lists among friends. If I know 5 people (friends) that could work well with my other friends, then I'm going to introduce those 5 friends to my other friends, and all of those friends would do the same thing for me. These friends get to know those friends and I get to know the friends of those friends, and then we all figure out how we can help each other because we are all friends now and we all want to help our friends while those friends are all helping us.

I know many of you reading this are saying to yourself, "but this is just networking, it's not a new idea." I agree that it's not a new idea, but you would be shocked to find out just how many people aren't thinking about it. I've had an opportunity to present this idea to some of my friends lately and most of them had not thought about it in this way before. I'm offering to do 2 important things for them: 1. I'm offering to do business with them myself. 2. I'm offering to open up my rolodex to them so they can develop business friends with people they never knew before. The key thing here is that they aren't having to do any cold-calling. Instead, they get to pick up the phone and honestly say, "Chris Helms told me I should talk to you." And, because it's a friends of mine, the answer will just about always be YES because friends like to help friends.

In exchange, I get access to the rolodexes of all of my friends, then eventually to all of their friends' rolodexes as well. It's so much easier to do business with friends than with complete strangers. So, create friend-business relationships and do business with your friends every single day. The first step is to share this idea with your friends and get them on board. Next, exchange rolodexes and get to work.

Who are your current friends that you work with? Which of those friends could help some of your other friends? Start thinking about and referring to your current business contacts as business friends. Then, build that relationship up accordingly. Go out with your friends to do some joint marketing to your list of contacts and theirs. If we all help our friends and all of our friends help us, then we will have an exponentially greater opportunity for success.

You're Better Than That!

Most of us do way too much negative self-talk. I'm not good enough. I'm bad at math. I'm a terrible public speaker. I'm not organized. I'm not qualified. And on and on and on. So, there's this quote that basically says, "whether you think you can or you can't - you're right." You'll just continue on being unable to do whatever it is that you've convinced yourself over the years that you can't do.

So, why all of this negative self-talk? Isn't it bad enough that others are going to say bad things about you? Even those things don't need to be true. They're only true if you make them true. If not, then it's just silent noise.

A consultant once asked me what one of my worst qualities was as a manager. I told him that I had huge stacks of paper in my office that gave me anxiety over worrying that something important wasn't getting done. Now pay attention to what's next because it's so simple and so obvious. He told me to get a piece of paper and write down the exact opposite of my negative self-belief. So, I did.

I don't keep huge stacks of paper in my office and I don't have anxiety because I'm doing the important things.

Just thinking about that felt so good. What a load off! Next, he told me to write down 10 ways to make that new, positive statement 100% true - and I did.

Since then, I don't keep huge stacks of paper in my office anymore. I just work the best ideas from my original 10-point list. The beauty of this very-simple idea is that it works on just about everything. I joke that the only thing I can't make it work on is being taller. That just is what it is. But it does work on most other things.

So, every time you find yourself saying something negative about yourself, remember that you're better than that. Write down the opposite and make a 10-point list that will help you make the new truth a permanent reality.

You are good enough. You are good at math. You're a great public speaker. You are organized and you are qualified. You do not keep huge stacks of paper on your desk (and neither do I). This paradigm shift will change your life. You will find amazement in all of the things you're good at when you give yourself a chance to be great.

Build Your Marketing Machine

A lot of companies don't understand that in order to excel in business, they can't just be the company that they are. They also can't simply be a company that does marketing as a part of business. For a company to excel - NO - for it to dominate in business, it must transform itself into a MARKETING MACHINE. The marketing machine exists to generate an over-abundance of new customers. Everything that it does serves the singular purpose of creating new customers. All of its working parts need new customers in order to continue moving. New customers are the very fuel that powers the machine. The marketing machine doesn't care what industry it is in. It doesn't care what kind of widget it makes or which services it provides. It only cares about doing it in a way that creates new customers and keeps them coming back for more.

Companies who want to be marketing machines must completely change the way they view themselves and the way that they do business. These companies can no longer see themselves simply as the company that they are. Instead, they must become a marketing machine that does _____________. For example, a medical office can not simply view itself as a doctor's office. Instead, it must become a marketing machine that sales medical services. Hair salons are no longer just hair salons. They must become marketing machines that sale beauty. If you look at the top companies in any industry, you will likely find a tremendous marketing machine. Nike, Adidas, Coca-Cola, Gatorade, McDonalds, NFL, NBA - just to name a few.

As you read this list of top-tier companies, you're probably thinking, "sure, but these companies spend millions marketing their products. I can't spend that kind of money." Agreed. Maybe you can't spend that kind of money. So, let's make an agreement about spending right here. You decide how much you can afford to spend on marketing your product or service. Then, think about how much you can afford NOT to spend money on marketing. Once you have spent adequate time on the money, get past it. Marketing is not ONLY about spending money. That's small thinking. MARKETING IS ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT YOU DO. That's why you're a marketing machine.

You market your company by the way you treat customers. You do it with the packaging of your product. Your pricing structure is part of your total marketing presentation. The neatness of your uniforms and the cleanliness of your business location markets the company. The way you say things markets your company. Your company name markets your company. Your colors, designs, and logos market your company. The quality of your personnel markets your company. Marketing must be built into everything that you do in your business. In fact a marketing machine never makes a move without considering the impact on the customer, especially how it will effect the inflow of new customers.

The marketing machine has certain internal rules that it never violates:

1. Everything it does has a purpose - to create a new customer.
2. Every single piece of written (marketing) material has a killer, customer-focused headline.
3. It always answers the customer's question, "What's In It For Me?" (WIIFM)
4. It never spends money on anything that is not working to generate new customers.
5. When budget cuts must be made, it NEVER cuts the marketing budget.
6. It always knows how customers heard about it and why they chose it over the competition.
7. It always does more of everything that works to generate new customers.
8. All of its working parts (employees) are a vital part of the sales team.
9. It never forgets its historical numbers and its current targets and benchmarks.
10.It unconditionally loves its customers.

Because it is a machine, the marketing machine makes everything automatic, only auto-drive happens in over-drive. Policies have a built-in customer focus. Procedures are created in a way that saves the customer time and encourages the customer to buy from you more often, and certainly instead of the supposed competition. Training is done fanatically so that customers receive a consistently excellent experience and consistently excellent products. Customer service is more important than dollars and cents. Therefore, employees are taught and encouraged that customer satisfaction is the minimum acceptable outcome - that customer enthusiasm is the pinnacle of the customer service plan. That's right - the customer service plan because in the marketing machine, everything is written up and standardized - especially the expected enthusiastic customer experience. When the marketing machine senses or is alerted to a potential dissatisfied customer, it takes immediate action to turn that customer into a source of future fuel that will enthusiastically tell others about their excellent experience.

Finally, once the marketing machine builds up a full head of steam, it becomes a locomotive that is ready to treat illnesses, give hair cuts, repair broken pipes, replace roofs, personal train clients, make hamburgers, or whatever else it does along with marketing. The marketing machine will dominate its industry because it is first and foremost a marketing machine that exists to do just that.

Is your company a marketing machine?

Are you a Time Cyclist?

One of the hidden costs of business is the cost of doing something inefficiently. You may have a process that gets the job done, and getting the job done feels good. Most people love to complete tasks, but a successfully completed task is not the ultimate measurement for good work. No, the ultimate measurement of good work is when the task is done right with the least amount of steps, people, and other resources needed to do the job. For the purposes of this article, we will refer to efficiency as just that - using the least amount of steps, people, and other resources necessary to do the job right.

So, what is a time cyclist? This is someone who is concerned with doing everything as efficiently as possible. When a task can be done with fewer steps, it just make sense that it will take less time. Just the same, when fewer people need to be involved in any process, the total process time will be reduced because one person is more efficient that two or more. Finally - fewer other resources. These could be office supplies and other materials, software programs, computers, documents, as well as a number of other resources, depending on the particular task. If a new customer can fill out one form to obtain credit instead of two or more, wouldn't it make sense that the total time of filling out a credit application would be reduced? Doesn't it also seem to take less time by using Microsoft Outlook to send email, maintain calendar items, and organize important tasks instead of using your ISP for email, a desk calendar, and a paper to-do list?

Minimizing all of these categories of efficiency reduces the total Cycle Time of all of your company's tasks. And, considering the old adage that "time is money," doesn't it make sense that you would want to reduce the time of everything that you and everyone in your company does? Of course it does! If you're able to help more customers in a shorter amount of time, you make more money. If you're able to do more work with less employees, you make more money. If you're able to get more work done with fewer materials, you make more money. That's the idea of being a time cyclist - to make more money for your company by doing things better (more efficiently).

You should evaluate all of the processes in your organization or business unit for inefficiencies. Your aim is to reduce the total number of steps needed to do each task as well as the total number of people that need to be involved with each task. Everywhere possible, you need to consolidate tasks, remove wasteful steps, and eliminate unnecessary resources. Look at each step from the customer's perspective. How will those steps effect your customers? When your customers see you getting more efficient, they will be WOW'd because they will appreciate you taking less of their time at the same time that you are earning more of their money.

When evaluating processes, write up all of the steps, with great detail, and include the name of the job title who does each step. It's very important that each step goes in order of the person doing the task. In other words, it is very inefficient to go from one person, to another, and then back to the first person, and then to a third person, and then back to the second person, and so on. The most efficient way to do any job is to not only minimize the number of people involved with the task, but the number of times each person has to handle something as well.

Imagine that you're a customer who is calling your bank to inquire about your current savings account balance (because you haven't figured out yet that you can do this online) and the person who answers the phone transfers you to someone else, and then that person transfers you to their manager who can't access their computer, so the manager transfers you back to the original person who answered the phone because he can view his computer fine. Don't you feel like a frustrated pin ball. Wouldn't it have been so much better if the first person that answered the phone would have just answered your question? Absolutely!

And this is the job of the time cyclist - to find inefficient processes and fix them so that customers are happy and the company reduces wasteful costs that lead to greater profits. But, like I said, these are often the hidden costs of business. Don't count on employees to tell you when something can be made easier - especially if that means making their position obsolete. Also, don't expect them to take the time to speak up when something isn't working right, because they are spending too much time working around the problems (insert the "Sharpen the Saw" story here. Google "sharpen the saw" and you can read this story on efficiency.).

So, become a great Time Cyclist and you will save your company a tremendous load of money. This could even be the difference between an overall profit or loss to some companies, and it certainly will set you on a path to breaking records.