1. Find your company’s purpose.  Don’t focus too much on spreadsheets and data.  Try to figure out what your company stands for.  Most great and adaptable companies have a purpose that is larger than their products.
2. Don’t (necessarily) mess with your business model.  Struggling companies often try to revamp their business models.  If your customers still have a need for the business youre in, you may only need to re-commit to your business model rather than reinvent it.
3. It’s not just about growth; it’s all about sustainable growth.  Focus on quality growth — the kind that comes from your most valuable customers.  Companies that grow for the sake of growth rarely survive a downturn.  Growth should be driven by quality, not quantity.

There certainly is benefit in all these concepts.  I acknowledge that.  But, here is the downfall to letting time be the master of your day: it doesn’t guarantee the completeness or quality in how you use it.  It simply limits how long you’ll be focused on something before it forcibly moves you to the next thing.

Here’s a better approach.  Let your objective be your master and make time the measuring stick for how much more efficiently you can get things done.  Sounds backwards, I know, but isn’t your goal to always finish the most important things to do, not just assign them a time slot and hope for the best?

An example:

Your daily challenge is to phone prospective clients and secure sales appointments for the following week.  You know, from your business metrics, that you need a minimum of 10 sales calls each week to close three contracts.  What if a planned two hour time management slot only yields four appointments instead of ten?  Do you move on and say, “Oh, well, it just didn’t happen today.”  Do you forego the next important task by stealing its time slot to continue your client phoning?  What do you do?

Alternative:  You set the 10 appointments/day as your block and perfect your scripts and objection handling to be able to complete the objective until you can always get it done within two hours.

You manage to your skills and strengths instead of managing to time.

Another example:

Your day always leaves three afternoon hours for appointments with your team members to discuss their projects and clients.  You set your appointments in 30-minute slots because history has taught you that is how much time it takes to get through each conversation.  History also taught you that most talks do run over and slowly during the afternoon, you never seem to fit in all the meetings.  Sound familiar?  What do you do?  The clock is ticking.

Alternative:  You set a framework for how the meeting will be conducted.  Each team member learns, over time, that the most important items get addressed first; a two-minute project or client summary should be thought out in advance; take quick notes or record the conversation.  Having a quality 30 minutes is the goal.

You manage to a process that doesn’t diminish the quality of the review instead of chasing time slots in a race that you’ll never win.

Don’t manage to time.  Manage to completing the objective and use time to force creative improvements in your efficiency and effectiveness so you always have a great business day.

*****

A book entitled “Corporate Kinetics”, written by partners at Deloitte Consulting in the late 90′s, truly crystallized what corporations had previously struggled to grasp:  reorganize your customer-facing teams in a dynamic web so the right teammates step up to address each customer’s unique need or request, then relax back to the web in anticipation of the next customer.  Instead of customer-facing teams stacked in product silos or separated by P&L designations, they are positioned to maximize the customer experience and minimize the service event time.  Futuristic, you say?  Probably.

But large companies are coming closer to this model each year.  Advancing technology and demanding customers are pulling this effort forward.  Not to be left out, the  ability of smaller businesses to align their teams according to customer needs should not be ignored — you don’t need 1000′s of employees and millions of customers to make it worthwhile.

I used the term, ‘…following their customers’  above for a very good reason.  Lots of buisnesses get into difficulty, not because their customers stop coming but because they stop following their customers.   Period! 

Think about it.  When was the last time you checked in on your customers’ top-of-mind thinking about why they buy from you as well as what else & where else they’re buying similar products and services.  Can you imagine any customer being offended if you were to say, “I want to make your experience with us even better.  What else would interest you when you think of us?”  

Listen to them.  Listen to lots of them.  Stay ahead of them and anticipate what they’ll be needing before your competition does.  Most often, what they tell you will be what you need to hear.  And, best of all, the information is free! 

Listen to your customers to save your business.  It’s worth a conversation.  *****

In traditional business models, sales teams and individuals perform with one goal in mind — to maximize their compensation.  And Directors, or managers, maximize their stake by ensuring that the best mix of high-margin products and services get purchased by the target clients.  All the while, leaders, or executives, watch those sales numbers religiously, encouraging added efforts or new approaches when trends are falling short.  

But, here’s the gotcha…  Even if sales is exceeding their targets and marketing gets the message out better than expected, you still may not be achieving the profit and growth goals you had in mind.  Discounts, specials, attracting low-value clients, trade-ins, sales, selling low-margin products and services — it may all add up to bonus time for the troops but it’s a big “What’s happened?” for the owners. 

If you want the right results that support profit, market share, business brand and product awareness, you’ve got to create the right rewards.  Rewards should be tied to the company culture and brand.  They should acknowledge  what you sell and who you sell it to, the exceptional customer experiences you provide, the creative cost-cutting you employ,  the community welfare you create, the innovative customer-centered processes you deploy and on and on.  

The key is to let your team know in advance what will be rewarded and bonused so they’ll always steer toward the sales results you encourage.  To make it cultural, bonuses should be a part of as many compensation plans as you can manage.  Like a game show, telling your people what they’ve won after they’ve been exceptional is great for the company newsletter but won’t develop the culture and habits critical to long-term business health.  

Make rewards be about enhancing what you want your business to stand for so that your team can win while the business wins.

Let us help with how to make this part of your business.  It’s worth a conversation.     *****

In the retail business, especially in the apparel business, shop owners all know one very important fact: “Get to know your customers’ life styles if you want loyalty and repeat sales.”   Unless you’re a t-shirt shop on a Hawaiian beach, following life styles is critical.

The retail example goes one step further in teaching us about our high-value customers.  Boutiques, like larger stores, all now display clothing in a mix & match togetherness so customers no longer must walk throughout the store trying to mate a chosen blouse, as an example, with a desired skirt, shoes, jacket or accessories.  The merchants have taken away all that very hard work by displaying choices next to each other.  That makes it easier to shop, easier to purchase what the designer had in mind, and easier to buy more than might have been intended.  A great example of know-their-lifestyle: customers want their shopping to be easy, fun, interesting and efficient. 

Contract this with a store that displays in groups with all the dresses over here, the blouses over there, coats and scarves in the back and the shoes and accessories downstairs.  Easier for the store to manage its stock; easier for the clerks to specialize in apparel-type; and, easier for the single-piece shopper to “find it & run”.  But, none of that makes the register sing, does it? 

Service-based business, no matter the industry, is about solving customers’ needs.  Customers don’t care about your specific strengths.  They don’t even care about systems or procedures you may have in place to make your operation easier for you to control.  They do care about how you’ll be applying all of that to help them get what they need to support their lifestyle.  They don’t need to get to know you.  Are you smart enough to truly get to know them?  If you are and you can solve their needs, then, they’ll want to know you!

So, decide right now.  Are you a solution looking for a problem or are you a service targeting a need?