3 Key Components To Succeeding In Today's Economy

Ray was a former Sales Manager of mine when I sold radio commercial time. Although I had been in radio for some sixteen years to that point, I had never formally been a sales representative. We had, as sales reps, monthly quotas to achieve. The numbers seemed daunting in a relatively new territory which I was taking over. I had also never actually sold radio airtime before. I just couldn’t figure out how I was going to achieve the monthly quotas that were expected of me.

Ray, in his wisdom from years on the street, simply focused me this way: “Kevin, if you look after the weeks, the months will look after themselves.”

Ray refocused me by showing me how to break down the monthly totals into four weekly performances – small manageable steps.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: This is good advice at any time in the economy, especially today. But there are three key components that you will need to consider to succeed in a resetting economy. Perhaps you may have overlooked these in the past few years.

1. Get rid of the need for record-breaking performance. Not every year is a record-breaking year. An organization can still do well in today’s economy if they are prepared to commit to creating relationships based on value with their clients and staff. Relationships based on money only will seriously be undermined and loyalty becomes non-existent. When you teach your clients and staff to buy based on price, then the guy with the best price wins. What are you offering as far as solutions go? People will pay a fair price for something they get tremendous value from. Sell your “value-proposition” and not your need to have a record-breaking sales year. What has that got to do with your staff’s and customer’s needs anyway?
2. Stop comparing to last year’s performance. Last year and the year before were boom-years. If you want a fair comparison, compare to 2002 just prior to the boom. (If we could only teach the media how to do this when they tell us how bad our economy is today.) But in relative terms, comparing apples to apples (2009 to 2002) we are about the same – perhaps a little better today. Make a fair comparison. Measure yourselves by the quality of your work and not the finances. Money is a lousy way to keep score. Customer satisfaction is a better way to check how you’re doing. Keep customers satisfied and they keep coming back. Look after the customers and staff and the dollars look after themselves.
3. Chop the deadwood. When times are good, you get fat. You get bloated. You feast at the table of the never-ending supply of money. You gorge yourselves and treat your lives like a drunken orgy of delights. Now is the time to get lean, to lose weight, to trim the fat. Because times were so good you had to hire people who were not necessarily the right fit for your organization. But you needed warm bodies and any body would do. But now is the time to eliminate waste. Companies are getting rid of programs that don't positively impact the bottom-line directly. Feel-good motivational stuff doesn't make people better salespeople, better workers or better managers. But change an attitude, a perspective or point of view and you can make a difference in the day-to-day functioning and results of any organization.

Now is the time for personal and professional leadership - not being paralyzed by the scare-mongering of the media. Now is the time to strike while a company's competitors are sitting on their hands waiting out the storm. Now is the time to create relationships with customers - not to agree that the sky is falling. Now is the time to bring value to the market - not just price. Now is the time to be bold while everyone else is being conservative. Now is the time to change minds - not agree with the media-induced perspective. (Even the media is in trouble - having spent the better part of the past year telling people that times are hard. It has come back to bite them in lower ad revenues. It's the old adage of what you think about, you bring about.)

People want to believe that there is something positive coming out of all of this and they want something to look forward to. People want a reason to believe that what they do matters and that they are valued. People want believe that they can still succeed in this economy. And I believe that they can. Anyone can. And I will argue to the death with anyone who believes anything to the contrary.

Look Who’s Talking

There is one very powerful voice today that is speaking to your staff, your customers and the customers of your customers. That voice is shaping purchasing decisions, growth strategies, corporate training, hiring practices, customer service models and your corporate culture. Left unchecked and unchallenged, that voice will continue to chip away at your bottom-line.

I’m not speaking of that one big dissenter within your organization that the rest of the staff wish would just go away or get fired. This one voice doesn’t even work for your company. It stands outside of your organization like a lone protester carrying a “The World Is Ending” picket sign and creates havoc and warns people that they had better not spend their money with you because tomorrow, there won’t be any money left. That voice is like a single mosquito in a tent at 2:00 a.m. – incredibly annoying until it has been squashed. But people are listening to that voice and they are making decisions about doing business with your organization based on that single voice.

Why are people listening to that voice? Because you’re not challenging that voice. You’re not engaging in the same public forum to reassure your customers and your staff that doing business with you is a good thing to do. That voice is doing huge damage to your organization right now because it is being allowed to singlehandedly make a lot of noise, disrupt your business, scare your staff and sully your customers.

That voice is the voice of the media who look for evidence every single day to justify the “Sky Is Falling” headline in their stories. And since there are very few opposite opinions telling their “good news” stories, that one voice is allowed to continue to dominate the discussion with your clients and staff. People are listening to the only one voice that seems to be talking. And since you’re not talking to your customers and staff, since you’ve decided to suspend training until the “recession” is over, that voice is allowed to dominate the market and potentially bring about the dire consequences it is predicting. Say something enough times and people start to believe it.

Had your decision to pull back training, or have a hiring freeze or take a “wait-and-see” attitude been done during a Boom-time, your decision would have been interpreted as a corporate strategy. People applaud corporate strategy. Most time corporate strategy makes an organization stronger at the end. During this time, however, any of those same decisions are perceived to be a reaction to the marketplace and makes each organization look like a follower and not a leader. It makes customers nervous. It makes staff nervous. And when customers and staff are nervous, you will see the evidence on your bottom-line.

ATTITUDE ADJUSTMENT: Yesterday, in the Edmonton Journal, read the following headline in 72 pt font: “City Economy Will Shrink In '09.” The truth is, in Edmonton, this year’s growth is expected to be down 0.2%. That’s zero point two percent folks – for a city. Is that even news? Of course it is – if your mandate is to sell newspapers. Make it loud. Make it scary. Make it a must-read and people will buy the paper. More papers sold means more advertisers attracted.

The story went on to explain that Edmonton’s growth will bounce back to 3.1% growth in 2010, and 3.8% in 2011 to 2013. But the headline doesn’t indicate that the 0.2% decline is short-lived. So, you, your customers and your staff read headlines like this (since virtually no one reads the whole story anymore) and start to pull in your horns a little. Everyone gets nervous and the nervousness spreads like a virus. Sorry, but to the average organization, a 0.2% decline in growth would only seem like a small correction in the market – not the basis for an outlandish headline.

I challenge you today, to find a good news headline in your organization and either call a meeting or send a company-wide memo telling your people about your positive growth story and do it every day. Ask your people to pass it on to your customers. Let’s start talking about what’s good in your organization and let’s start drowning out the voices of the dissenters. Those dissenting voices are not good for your business. Why are you allowing someone outside of your company to dictate the success of your organization? Speak up. Where’s your Leadership Attitude?