Posts Tagged ‘time management’7 Business Coaching Tips You Can’t Afford to NeglectOctober 24th, 2010Hi All! Over the past 20+ years, I have presented to, met with, mentored, coached and observed hundreds (probably thousands) of businesspeople. And I am still always amazed at the lack of professionalism many of them display. Highly successful small business owners strive to be perceived in the highest regard by prospects, clients, colleagues, vendors and employees. And as a certified Success Coach, I see many of my clients struggle because they neglect these tips. Sure, some of these may come naturally to you, but there may be one or two that will benefit your business building efforts. I hope so! 7 Business coaching TIPS You Can’t Afford to Neglect: 1. Be prepared and do your homework. If you tell a client or prospect you’ll have info to them (e.g. a proposal) by a certain day/time, do it. And prior to meeting, have all of your information organized and review it carefully so that you can easily explain it to them. Note: I have personally had people pitch me (for things like insurance plans, printing services, etc.), and they were a mess. Things like: Their information was incomplete, they were late to the meeting, they spelled my name wrong on the proposal, they didn’t present the info I asked for, typos in the doc, etc. Why would I invest my money in someone like that? 2. Each morning start by determining the most difficult task facing you, and do it first. Is it making follow-up calls to prospects? Asking clients for referrals? Putting together a complex proposal for a prospect? Whatever it is, do it FIRST! It gives you an edge over the competition…chances are they are avoiding the task! And if it’s a task that will benefit a hot prospect (or client) you will impress them with your initiative and speediness. 3. Don’t be late for phone or in-person appointments. It tells the prospect or client you do not value or respect their time. Successful business owners arrive to in-person meetings 10-15 minutes early and use the time to “get grounded” for the meeting. Also, this time cushion comes in handy if you get lost trying to reach your destination. It always sounds really unprofessional when you’re late and you say, “I’m sorry. I got lost.” The time cushion (normally) gives you enough time to find your way and still arrive on time. Being 15 minutes early for an in-person meeting is WAY better than being 15 minutes late! 4. Never pull a “no show”. If you cannot make an in-person or phone appointment, call the person BEFORE (not after the time) and reschedule. A good friend of mine works for a loan leads company. They screen people looking for a loan, determine the “hot leads”, and then schedule a meeting/phone appointment WITH A LOAN AGENT (the loan agents pays for these pre-screened leads). She told me that loan agents blow-off these prescheduled meetings all the time! Can you even believe that??? Here are qualified leads that the loan agent is paying the lead service for, and he/she basically throws the hot lead away by pulling a no-show! This flaky behavior costs these loan agents thousands of dollars in commission… money that could have been theirs (not to mention all the referral business they lost)! 5. Successful business owners act confident (NOT cocky!). Here’s a simple concept that I see many business owners neglect: BEING NICE! You don’t need to be a tyrant to succeed. Be genuine, be kind and be caring. Note: When I owned my ad agency for 20 years, I sometimes had client contacts that were junior-level marketing coordinators and they went on to become VP’s of Marketing. If I had been rude to them when they were “junior”, they wouldn’t have kept hiring my firm as they climbed the ladder. By being nice and sincere, I not only received millions of dollars in business (and referrals) from them over the years, but they also grew to become great friends of mine. 6. Successful business owners greet people with a firm handshake. There is nothing worse than a weak, limp handshake. It irritates me to no end. When you greet someone, immediately extend your hand, offer a firm (not crushing!) handshake, smile and make eye contact. Successful business owners make people feel comfortable and build trust right away through their confident, friendly greetings! Note: I have actually made my clients practice this. If they had a wimpy handshake, I fixed it! 7. Being organized is BIG amongst successful business owners. You must be able to keep your client/prospect files organized and your schedule organized. Successful business owners use a schedule book or electronic device (e.g. PDA) to keep track of appointments, phone calls, follow-up, to-do lists, etc. If you are scattered and disorganized, you will be less effective and sell less. And you are more apt to make mistakes. Good luck getting repeat business or referrals from a client if you miss a critical deadline or constantly have to apologize because YOU keep losing or forgetting things! Note: There are VERY successful people who are totally disorganized, but they have a personal assistant that keeps them on-track. However if you can’t afford an assistant, then it’s UP TO YOU to create a system! You can even hire an expert to create a process for you. Someone I highly recommend is Stacey Vulakh, a Time Management Expert & Coach. She helps her clients create a time management system, customized for their needs, so that they are more effective and productive – personally and professionally. Yes, hiring someone like Stacey will cost you money, but it will cost you more money in the long run without an organized system! Okay! There are your 7 tips…please don’t neglect ANY of them! Cheers & Happy Marketing! Lisa Interview With Author and Expert on How to Work Less And Do MoreSeptember 21st, 2010Hi All! Stever Robbins has just released his new book, Get-It-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More. It is a playful, yet serious guide to working less and doing more. In other words, creating a more productive life. Yes, it’s about getting more done at work. It’s also about getting more done in life. It lays out nine skills that apply anywhere you want to get greater results with less work. Sounds good to me!! And here is an interview with Stever loaded with tips and insights you’re sure to benefit from: 1. Why do we procrastinate? What are some simple tips for beating procrastination? Thinking causes procrastination. No, really. We build up tasks in our mind, thinking they’ll be huge, unachievable,or unpleasant. The remedy is to stop thinking and just start acting. Your brain will still get in your way, however. While you’re filling out your procrastinated expense reports, your brain will distract you with worries that you’re making no progress on the novel you’ve been procrastinating. As I mention in my book, you can make your brain happy by speed-dating your tasks. List what you’re procrastinating. Start at the top and work on each task for exactly five minutes, then move to the next task. Use a timer to be precise. When you’re done, take a 5-10 minute break and do it again. Five minutes is short; your brain will let you do it. Since you’re hitting several of your procrastinated tasks, your brain knows you’ll get to your other tasks just five minutes from now. It frees you to focus completely on the task in front of you, yet guarantees you’ll go on to make progress on everything that’s important.
Don’t get me wrong; some technology really delivers on its promise. But often, technology saves effort in one place while adding effort in others. For example, each new gadget packs more capability into each device. What makes it attractive and fun also makes it distracting and kills our productivity. Technology is a tool, nothing more, and nothing less. When a carpenter uses a screwdriver, she picks it up, uses it, and puts it down again. That’s how you use tools. Treat your technology the same way. Instead of being married to it everywhere you go, divorce your technology. Have it around, just not in front of you. Do your thinking on paper. Decide what you need to do. Then get out the tools to do it. If you need to do something on computer—like send email—get up, walk over to your computer, open the email program, send the email, close the program, and walk back to your main work area. By keeping each task distinct, you’ll learn to use your computer as a tool. Instead of being a distraction, it becomes a superb way of amplifying your focus. In that Step 3 of the book, I explained how I evaluate all of my gadgets to make sure they are delivering on their work-less-do-more promise; I suggest everyone do the as me. 3. Does being organized automatically mean you’re getting more done? Being organized means you have a place for everything and everything goes in its place. When you’re disorganized, everything you do has the added burden of your having to search for the tools need to do it. For example, when you’re disorganized, writing a Thank You card is an adventure. You have to brave your Supply Pile. You hunt for 5 minutes to find the crumpled paper bag where you stuffed those Thank You cards. You start writing … only to find you’re out of stamps. A 10-minute trip to the Post Office, later your cards are ready to go. If you’re organized, you get out your Thank You cards and stamps. You write the Thank You card, stamp the envelope, and toss it in mailbox. Elapsed time: 30 seconds, instead of 15 minutes and 30 seconds. If you use the 15 minutes you saved to get more done, then being organized helps you get more done in the same amount of time. Otherwise, you’re getting the same done in less time, freeing up the extra time to do something awesome. Like eat Oreo Ice Cream Cake. That’s one way being physically organized can help you be more productive. I also offer advice on how to organize your days and brain better in the book too. We love choice! We believe more choice means more happiness and more movement towards our goals! The research on choice refutes this, however. Give us more than two or three choices and we become less likely to act and more likely to regret any choice we take. By limiting our options, we limit the research needed for the choice, and we’re more likely to keep moving forward. My example is buying a digital camera. I’ve needed one for three years now, but there are too many to choose from. If I simply limit my options to the first ten cameras that appear on the Consumer Reports web site, the decision becomes much easier. Will I get the best camera possible? Probably not. But I will get a camera and start doing the photography I need to get done. Without limiting my choices, I stay paralyzed and stressed. 5. Leverage is usually a term applied to finance? The final step of your 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More is called “Leverage”. What do you mean when you use the term? Leverage is a physics term. A lever is a simple machine. You put in a small force on the long end of a lever and get a strong force out. In finance, leverage means using a small amount of your own money to borrow a much greater amount, so you get huge financial effects using only a small amount of money. In Get-it-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More, I use leverage to mean doing a small amount of work and getting a huge result. Choose ways of working where you work less and get outsized results. For example, most of us scribble down a to-do list as a way of keeping track of what we have to do today. You can get leverage by jotting down that list in a format that someone else can understand. Then you can hire an assistant, give them your old to-do lists, and they can hit the ground running. You are doing a little more work by writing neater and maybe elaborating each item a bit. Your return is immense, though, because your to-do list enables you to free up time by delegating. 6. What is an action day? Shouldn’t every day be an action day? An action day is one of my favorite tips in the book and a great way to get things done while bonding with a friend. Call a friend who wants to have a super-productive day. Get together in person or by phone, each bringing a list of things you want to get done. Commit to making progress and start working. Check in at the top of each hour, report your last hour’s progress, and declare your next hour’s plan. Your promise to each other gets you started, and the hourly check-ins keep you on track. I find in-person or phone works best for action days. Every day can be an action day if you have people willing to play. I wrote the final draft of my book by holding five action days a week. The action days kept me going through the rough patches, and a couple of the regular attendees became friends! An action day is pretty intense, though, and I found that two each week was a good number. I hold regular action days. If you’d like to be on the announcement list, visit http://www.SteverRobbins.com/actiondays. I send out announcements of new action days once or twice a month. 7. What is the biggest hindrance to your personal productivity? How do you deal with it? The internet. The web and email are a large part of my job, and they’re both distraction machines. The moment I open an email or visit a web site to do research, I risk hours of distraction. Its siren song is extremely seductive and hard to resist… My solution is to divorce my technology as I described earlier. Rather than thinking of my computer as “my computer,” I think of it as a different tools, depending on my task. Sometimes it’s my typewriter, sometimes it’s my reference book, and sometimes it’s my newspaper. When I think of it in terms of the tool I need at the moment, it helps me stay focused on the current task. … and when that fails, I use a freeware program called Freedom on my Mac to shut down my internet connection for a couple of hours. 8. If a person can make just one change to make themselves more productive, what would you recommend they change? Definitely Step 1, which is Live on Purpose. Regularly stop and ask yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing. Then make sure what you’re doing is really the best way to reach that goal. I do this a dozen times a day. “Why am I surfing Facebook?” “I dunno. Habit.” “Ok, self, get back to work!” Living on Purpose goes far beyond your moment-to-moment tasks, however. I used to go to four or five business conferences each year. Why? “I’m doing important business development,” was my answer. Year, right. When reviewing my client list, I realized not a single clienthad come from attending a conference. My clients had only come from my public speaking at conferences. Now, I only attend conferences where I’m speaking, or if there’s some other compelling reason to be there. 9. You recommend that people schedule interruptions. How is this possible? You schedule interruptions by setting aside a time block each day for dealing with interruptions. If you’re interrupted, quickly decide if it’s a show-stopping emergency. If not, jot it down on your “Interruptions” list. Wait until your scheduled interruption time and work on it then. If Bernice drops by, asking you to review a memo she’s written, just say, “I would be happy to. I’m busy right now. How about if I get back to you a little after 4 p.m.?” When your interruption time arrives, her memo will be on your list and you can handle it then. Often if the interruption is someone with a problem, they’ll solve it themselves when you make yourself their convenient rescue service. Interruptions will take your time one way or another. If you schedule them, at least you can get work done in the meantime. Thanks, Stever! Great information and a truly terrific book. Cheers & Happy Marketing! Lisa |