Daniel Lock's blog

There are probably a half dozen things in life that will ensure success. The same is true of business. Here are 5  areas of business of which to pay attention. In-fact if you can master these areas you will be a stellar success in business.

They are:

1. Self management
2. Knowing your market
3. Marketing & Sales
4. People management
5. Systemisation

SELF MANAGEMENT

Self management is the key to all success. Time will march on regardless, so managing time is a defunct concept. You can only mange yourself, and priorities in relative to time.

The key understanding is ‘know thyself’. You have to know what your priorities in life are. Commonly known as your hierarchy of values. When you know what your values are and they are linked to you purpose in business you will be able to spend your energy where it is most effective. This is how you ‘manage you time’.

The other key to self management is concentration.  In the excellent book The Power of Full Engagement, Tony Schwartz talks of getting out of the ‘grey zone’. That is doing too many things at once, and not doing any of them well.

The human minds greatest capability is the ability to concentrate on one thing for an extended period of time. Minimising distraction and refining concentration has been the philosophy of many religions such as Bhudism for thousands of years.

In an aage when we have more distracters than ever, blogs, emails and so on, it is more important o be on ‘priority’ and on ‘task’ than ever before. When interrupted it takes 20 minutes to shift back the task at hand, or to the next item.

On Tim Ferris’s Blog (author of The Four Hour Work Week), he points to a study that showed multi-tasking lowers IQ more than smoking pot.

The efficiency cost from moving from one thing to another is dramatic, so set priorities, and stay on task. Each day I plan the 7 things to do that day. At the beginning of each month I plan the month ahead, at the beginning of each quarter I plan the quarter and so on. This keeps me continuously reviewing my priorities and keeping on track.

Chunk activities, spending extended periods of time on one thing at a time with out interruption.

KNOWING YOU MARKET

Your market is essentially the products and services that you sell to people.

Almost no one thinks about the market first. Many people launch their businesses based on what they did before, thinking they will be able to do out there and do the same but for themselves.

Now rationally they may think there is a need for what they do, as after all they were being paid for it, but whoever they were working for they will now be in competition with.

The key is to look at the market and how you can divide the market, and you can serve a niche. Based on your skills set, how can you serve a particular group that is under serviced.

You need to understand if the market can meet these 3 criteria.

1. Do they have an immediate pain and urgency? or an irrational passion to buy?
2. Is the customer proactively looking for solutions?
3. Do they have few or  no perceived options?

People buy for emotional reasons. We all do. You need to make sure the above questions can be answered well.

Look for prospects that are looking for you.

MARKETING & SALES

A concept that has really taken off since the internet, but really has been the stall wart of marketing for aeons is Giving your stuff away for FREE.

This is the puppy dog trick, where you say ‘take the dog home for the weekend, if you don’t him, bring him back.’ Done deal.

A study completed in the states talks of the justice principle, where we work towards a 50/50 solution. In the study they sat two people down, who didn’t know each other, and gave them $100. They had to divide it between them in any manner they wanted. One person decided how it was to be divided and the other had veto power. So if they weren’t happy with the deal they would say no and neither would get to keep any cash.

Most people divided 50/50 or 60/40 and they both took the cash.

It reached a point where at about 70/30, the person receiving the $30, got their  back up and said no-deal!

Which is crazy, because they should have taken the cash, it was free money, and they had no relationship to the other person. People cant stand to see the other guy get a better deal.

This is the same principle in business. Your aim is to get and keep a customer. So giving away 70 or 80% of your stuff to keep 20% make sense.

If instead you turn it around start giving away information, and education about your product or service. You actually engage the ‘reciprocity effect’ and people will buy.

Or this restaurant exaple. The owner said drink as many glasses of wine as you like at the end tell us how many at the end. He knows he was being ripped off, but it doesn’t matter – look at the line up around the corner.

Give away as something worth $100, give away information to start with. Take the thing that is best and give it away, so the customers get an experience of what your about. First experience count so make it your best stuff.

Then you add higher end back end products and up-sell.

Another technique, switch the mind set to repeat sales. Prospect hasnt been completely educated. One shot sale. People want education and training.

Sign up with FREE information, which would educate them about techniques, then sell them more products and services.

PEOPLE MANAGEMENT

Growing businesses require a cast of supporters.

Number one, get the right people first.

In a book by Brad Smart,Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching and Keeping the Best People, says 75% of all people are miss hires, and that can cost up to 23 times the persons annual salary to right the wrong.

This is from lost opportunity, fraud, them suing you, money out of pocket and so on.

Look out for the C player. These are the people who are good a creating job security. People who make stuff up that only they can do. People who are interested in the work, not the outcome.

Look for one trait – people who are drivers.

C players are people want to do the work right as opposed to getting the results right. That is creating a customer and looking after them.

A driver, is constantly, proactively looking for things to do. They take personal responsibility. For getting something done, fixing problems and mistake when they happen.

How do you find these people?

Ask them about other jobs they have had and the projects they were involved. Ask them to tell the story about what happened. Ask for seven to 10 stories.

They might say, my “boss wasn’t very good, we didn’t have much money.” A driver would say “…yeah we had budget issues and my boss wasn’t so flash, but I did what it took to make it happen.”

Remember when hiring the rule of three. Interview three different people, interview three times, in three different locations. I learnt this one from Brian Tracy. I would also add to bring them on slowly over three months before taking them a permanent part of your team.  The patience of hiring slow will pay off. Remember hire slow, fire fast.

SYSTEMISATION

The most important distinction to make is to distinguish between work and results. Remember this maxim ‘work fills the available space’.

Don’t allow people to focus on the tasks or the work, only focus on the result, and the shortest route to achieving that. It follows then, the first and most important step is to define the result. This is the where the pareto principle kicks in. Spending 20% of the time planning and defining the result, will yield 80% of the value. Only 20% of the value is going through the steps of implementation.

The first system to implement is that of meeting with you staff and helping them to define their work.

When bringing on new hires for the first 3 months do this:

Technique: The daily update.
End of every work day, ask them to take 5-10min to do an update, any longer is to long doing something wrong.

1. Jobs I did today and the results I got.
2. Challenges problems that came up
3. Questions I have for you

With in 30 days you will have a good understanding how his person is working out.

The next is to follow up with one-on-one’s where you discuss performance against set objectives and talk about behaviour as well as the hard numbers of widgets cranked.

Then implement the annual review. The annual review should not be a surprise, and should take 10 minutes. Why is this? Because you held monthly one-on-one’s and discussed performance every 30 days.

Managers hate surprises. But it always surprises me that they never take the time to talk to their staff about the challenges they face, therefore leading to surprises.

BOTTOM LINE

Remember the core 5 areas of business. Eliminate the temptation to get side tracked, and focus on the disciplines of carrying them out. If you focus your priorities and continuously put off meetings with your people you will end up doing noting but fighting fires. More of the same.

Get in control, get organised.

(C) Daniel Lock. All rights reserved.