759 words. Abstract: Salespeople have a blind side, just like quarterbacks. A simple 3-step approach allows catastrophes to be avoided before your sales are sacked.

Are you prepared for what’s going to “get you” tomorrow? I’m not suggesting you live in fear or continually look over your shoulder. Yet I’m puzzled why people, especially salespeople, don’t invest in preparing for what they KNOW is bound to happen.

The movie The Blind Side starring Sandra Bullock made people aware of the value of the left tackle. Most people might correctly assume that the quarterback would be the highest-paid member of a football team. What fewer people know is that the left tackle is often the second highest-paid member. Their job is to protect the right-handed quarterback from the rusher they know is coming from their left — their blind side. Football teams pay for protection — insurance, if you will — to prevent predictable problems before they happen. They know it pays to take the long view.

Tackle the Investment
Not taking a longer view is costly. You’ll waste important opportunities, and experience frustration, stress, and unneeded expense. Conversely, when you prepare to protect your blind side, you’ll gain confidence, make better use of your time, and enjoy more money and other rewards. You’ll find yourself long on success and short on failures.

Yet few people invest in protecting their blind side. Although they know specific problems will likely happen, they’re content to deal with them when they arrive. It’s hard not to fall into that mind-set today. Our fast-paced lifestyle makes it hard to do everything we know we should do, and fewer resources (“doing more with less”) further exacerbate these situations. Yet many times we erroneously choose to do the conveniently urgent instead of the strategically important work that will deliver consistently powerful performance.

If you’d like to avoid getting blindsided (again), consider using this three step approach.

I. Get Real
When you consider all of the places that problems can come from, it’s easy to be overwhelmed. Gain some control by evaluating the threats; then you can focus on the ones with catastrophic consequences.

The odds are exceptionally high that the money you recently spent on your life insurance premium will be wasted today, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have invested in that payment because, if you did die today, the consequences could be catastrophic for your family.

While most of your business decisions don’t include death as a consequence, some are pretty serious. For instance:

• Have you been selling to the “wrong” decision maker?
• Does your new client really have the ability to pay you?
• Will the objection you’re not prepared for tank your sale in the 11th hour?

Get real about your potential problems by evaluating their threat levels and then making sure you have prepared to pre-empt catastrophe.

II. Get Records
Once you’re aware of the potential catastrophes coming from your blind side, make plans in advance of them happening to avert them. By “get records”, I mean to write your plans down. Put every action plan into permanent media, a record of what will happen. Like records on a turntable, you want them to be repeatable and accessible. You want to be able to get your hands on the plans you want to use and the tactics you’ll employ at a moment’s notice.

III. Get Ready
Once you’ve evaluated potential threats and isolated the plans and tactics in the form of records that will help you avert them, it’s time to prepare. Review the records on a regular basis to ensure you’ll know how to foil impending catastrophe. Practice those tactics that will help you handle that objection you know is coming, or confirm you are indeed talking to the decision maker. Play your records over and over again so you don’t have to think about them.

Be Comfortable, Not Stupid
If you find yourself blindsided more often than you deem comfortable, you probably haven’t taken time to objectively assess impending threats. We all have too much to do, but don’t let that excuse doom you. When you take time to sit down and assess potential threats, you’ll discover that relatively few carry catastrophic consequences. Once you get clear on what those consequences are, you’ll find yourself motivated to address them… in advance.

If you want to be the highest-paid member of your sales team, you can’t do it if your blind side isn’t protected. Your company can’t hire you a left tackle, so you’ll need to put your own plans in place. If you’re ready to bring more power to your selling game, it’s time to Get Real, Get Records, and Get Ready.

Click to learn more.

© 2010 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson is an expert on ConsultativeSelling and co-author of the new Top Dog Recession-Busting Sales Secrets; get it at http://tinyurl.com/recessionbust. Learn about Consultative Selling at http://consultativeselling.com

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

A Question for your Comments: When did your preparation pay off when a potential catastrophe came knocking on your door?

1,365 words. Abstract: When you face a potentially life-changing decision, what’s your plan? Using the health care reform topic as an example, we’ll explore methods for managing our ignorance and making better decisions.

I’m betting you have an opinion about the U.S. health care reform legislation. It’s one of those big issues that can polarize the nation. I’m curious how you came by your opinion, how you decided which side to take. And I’m betting you decided wrong.

I challenge you to think about how you think. Your thinking leads you to decisions throughout your life. Some decisions are small, and some are large, like where you live, where you work, and who you marry. How you come to these larger decisions can have a serious affect on your future success and happiness. I fear your decision system is causing you to miss great opportunities because you don’t have a method for sorting past the confusion.

I could approach this topic from the seller’s side as I often do. Understanding human nature and how to deal with it can make us more effective sales people. However, this article will more directly benefit you if we look at from the buyer’s side. Specifically, how you buy into ideas that are presented to you. Once you are clear on how to help yourself, you’ll be in a better position to help those to whom you sell.

Mistaken Beliefs
Let me assume you believe that the 2010 U.S. health-care reform package is either good, or bad. Let me also assume you have not fully read (and understood!) the legislation. Therefore, you have come to your beliefs and taken your position based on information from other sources. Do you think that might be a problem? I confess… I have the same problem.

Everyday you and I make decisions that will affect our futures. Many of these decisions may be based on mistaken beliefs, and these beliefs can sabotage your success. Let’s take a few minutes to question where these beliefs come from so we can gain a clear vision of our future. By doing so, we can eliminate the paralysis (when we make no decision), the lost opportunities, the bad decisions, and the expensive mistakes that are keeping us from the progress and improved quality of life we seek.

Thoughtless Thinking

The Homestead Act of 1862. Click for a larger image.

Thinking today has its challenges. Life has grown more complex over time. The U.S. Census once mandated a simple headcount; now some lucky recipients get to answer a 14-page questionnaire. The health care reform package is well over a thousand pages. In contrast, the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave away 430 million acres of U.S. land to its citizens, fit on two handwritten pages. Then there’s the tangle called the U.S. Tax Code and the IRS 1040 form. Today we’re faced with many challenging decisions, some of them time consuming. Getting comprehensive information about the topic isn’t always the solution. We need something else.

We need to plan how we think, as it seems we don’t actually do this very often. It’s easier to default to a familiar decision system regardless of the potential impact of the decision. Instead, we need to stretch our critical thinking skills. We need to make time to decide how we’re going to decide.

Truthful Consequences
Begin by considering the consequences and the rewards associated with the decision and let that influence how you will think about it and how much time you’ll take to think about it. For instance, before committing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a home with a mortgage, should you take time to read the paperwork before you sign it? I believe the potential consequences merit that level of attention. What about terms for a new credit card? What about the list of ingredients on packages of processed food?

Many of us choose to ignore the ingredients list, because the worst that can happen for most of us is we ingest a few extra calories and a little too much salt. However, if you’re allergic to peanuts, the consequences of eating blindly can make you sick.

Conjoined Questions
To determine how you want to think about a decision and how much time you want to devote to that thinking, ask yourself these three questions:

• What is the potential impact on me?
• How much can I affect the decision?
• What else at this priority level is competing for my time?

You must consider your answers to those three questions holistically, and then choose. Using U.S. health care reform as our example (let’s imagine there’s still a choice to be made), the impact on you will likely be significant and long-lasting. Those are good reasons to invest time in understanding it. However, your ability to affect that decision (should it become law or not) is somewhat limited, as we are depending on the representatives we elected to vote for us. Therefore, our ultimate decision would be to determine if we want to attempt to affect their decision. Whether you do that not will largely depend on your answer to the third question regarding competing priorities. Issues at home or at work may be consuming you to the point where you can’t justify diverting time and energy to persuading your Senate and Congressional representatives.

Ignorance Management
I suspect most Americans opted not to get deeply involved in affecting the health care reform process, but instead chose to figuratively shout from the sidelines. We often come to the beliefs that affect our decisions using four common methods:

• Become An Expert. Actually, this isn’t terribly common because of the time starvation we face and the competing priorities we juggle. But in some areas of your life you are indeed an expert and can take confidence in your beliefs and the decisions that result.

• Let Others Think For Me. This method falls at the other end of the involvement scale. In theory, this is what our elected government representatives are supposed to do for us. They’re supposed to be experts who will make good decisions for us (if we trust them to do that). As another example, I haven’t filled out a tax return in decades. I chose a CPA to help me decide how to best file my tax return. I give him some input, and he thinks for me.

• Use A Litmus Test. You latch onto one issue for your deciding factor and ignore all else. For instance, when confused about voting for political candidates, it’s easy to pick one issue that you care about, such as abortion, gun-control, or immigration, then base your decision on that and ignore all else. Sellers often force buyers to resort to a litmus test. If the seller confuses the buyer with their sales approach, the buyer will frequently resort to the litmus test of lowest price, if they make a purchase at all; a confused mind says, “No!”

• Validate Key Drivers. I recommend identifying the key drivers that will likely be associated with a successful decision outcome, and then testing the validity of those drivers.

For example, when choosing a mortgage the key drivers to investigate might include:
- the interest rate calculation method
- the terms should you default
- early repayment options and penalties

If these three key drivers meet with your approval and don’t raise any red flags, you may feel comfortable deciding to go ahead without studying the entire agreement.

If you sell, help your buyers work through this ignorance management process. It will allow them to make better decisions faster, and that can lead to a healthier wallet for you.

Decision Satisfaction
Ultimately, you want to plan how you’re going to decide important issues. You want to like your answer to, “Why do I BELIEVE the way I do?”

We know we’re starved for time, that we can’t be expert on everything. Not every decision can be about information and logic. Yet we can get clear on why we believe what we believe. Decisions based on untested beliefs are prone to failure. Make time for critical thinking. Consider the consequences and rewards. Decide how much you’re willing to invest in the decision, and then choose a decision process that will enable you to believe in your decision. Make time to learn, make time to think, and you’ll enjoy more opportunities for success.

© 2010 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson is vice president at ConsultativeSelling. He works with great sales organizations like ADP, Nortel Networks and AutoNation. Discover the definition, application, and resources of Consultative Selling at http://consultativeselling.com/.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

A Question for your Comments: How did you make a great decision when you didn’t have all the information?

For instance, it might be a trap for me to write on this topic myself. Why? Because somebody else has already written about it so well. Allow me to introduce you to Garold Markle, who is an expert at performance improvement in the workplace. We’ve been friends for a long time, and I am glad to see his book, Catalytic Coaching: The End of the Performance Review, continue to do so well. As you’ll see, one of his strengths is writing. Now I turn the “pen” over to him, so he can share with you…

THE WEAKNESS TRAP

By Garold L. Markle

What is the best thing to do with a weakness? According to the Gallup Poll data, the most successful managers don’t normally try to fix an employee’s weakness. Instead, they work around it. Ignore it, if possible. While this sounds counter intuitive to some, it actually agrees with what most of us have noticed in life. Consider coaching.

What would a football coach do with a short but fast player who has quick hands? Try to fatten him up and make him stronger? Of course not. The coach would place him in the defensive backfield where speed and agility are key. He would charge the small, fast guy with getting faster. Meanwhile, he’d take his biggest, strongest player and challenge him to become bigger and stronger.

“Markle! Don’t put the ball on the floor!!” That’s what my basketball coach used to scream at me. 40 years later, the words still echo in my ears. At six foot seven inches tall, I was not a very adept dribbler. When I tried to dribble, the ball would hit one of my feet almost as often as it hit the floor. On the other hand, I could rebound with the best of them. So what did the coach do with me? He asked me to stand under the basket and retrieve missed shots. Did he ask me to work on my dribbling? Are you kidding? He actually forbade me from doing it. I got benched if I dribbled the ball, even if I did it successfully. The coach made it clear that my playing time would be determined by my ability to rebound. If I wanted to maximize my contribution to the team, I would not attempt to become some kind of well rounded version of Michael Jordan. I would emulate Dennis Rodman – the ultimate rebounding specialist.

In Catalytic Coaching we ask managers to select four “Areas for Improvement” that they want a direct report to focus on for the upcoming year. Since we compel them to do this immediately after discussing “Strengths” it‘s quite natural that people draw the wrong conclusions. Their mind thinks in parallel structure. They select four things that form the person’s competitive advantage and call those Strengths. They assume then that the next section is where they “write him up” for his shortcomings. If they follow this instinctual path, however, they will greatly reduce the effectiveness of the coaching process. They’ll fall quickly into The Weakness Trap spending good energy on a bad idea.

For a fully functioning employee, Areas for Improvement are more productively focused on Strengths that a coach would like to see more of. I can recall several years ago praising an executive assistant for her “Organization Skills” under the Strengths section only to request that she use these abilities more aggressively as an Area for Improvement. Rather than smile with bemusement at how I muddled my complicated travel plans, I challenged her to take them on as one of her responsibilities. Was she deficient in travel planning? Absolutely not. She had never been asked to do it. It was, however, a wonderful way for her to enhance her contribution.

No matter what I say to managers and supervisors in coaching training sessions, people seem to miss this point. When I work with them one on one (in a ritual we call “In-Flight Training”) it is often their biggest revelation. “I didn’t know we could ask her to do more of what she’s good at,” they’ll say, despite the fact that I made this point several times in class. Once they have this experience, however, the light comes on and they advance to a different level of coaching effectiveness.

When people tell me that coaching becomes redundant over the years, often the reason is that they’ve fallen into a rut of treating Areas for Improvement like Weaknesses. Here’s what someone told me recently. “I’ve written Thomas up as needing to work on his Analytical Skills for the last three years. I can do it again, but I don’t really think he’s going to improve.” When I asked if Thomas was worth keeping, the answer was both quick and unequivocal. “Absolutely! He produces a high volume of work.” The only thing needed here was for the coach to refocus his employee’s improvement efforts on things that were more realistic and valuable. Challenge Thomas to do more heavy lifting, just don’t assign him tasks that require heavy analysis.

The same ideas apply at home. When a child walks through the door with a report card showing five As, two Bs and one D, what do we always talk to her about? The low grade, of course. We tell her how the subpar subject matter is critical to proper growth and development and force her to spend more time focused on areas in which she’s potentially ill equipped to excel. Instead of lecturing our mathematically-inclined daughter on the merits of mastering English and Geography, if that’s where she’s behind, perhaps we’d be better served to encourage her to focus the bulk of her attention on Physics and Calculus, where she sits at the head of her class. After all, who cares whether the nuclear physicist that designs the first truly viable electric car can write creatively or explain haiku? And her computer or secretary can clean up her misspelled words.

So how do we avoid The Weakness Trap? Consider taking the following actions:

1. Design Around Weaknesses. Whenever possible shift roles and responsibilities to give those who work for you a chance to focus on what they’re good at and what they enjoy. Fit the job to the people and the people to the job. Not all accountants have to have identical responsibilities. The same goes for supervisors, managers and executive assistants. Few of us are universally talented. It is more important to create a team that wins through working together than to mandate that all jobs with similar titles are carbon copies.
2. Shorten Improvement Cycles. If you’ve got a direct report that has a weakness that you can’t build out of her position (for example, a manager who can’t delegate), give her a limited amount of focused attention to make the improvement. In general, if she can’t start making demonstrable progress in a one to three month period, she is not worth spending additional time on. Great sports coaches move quickly when they determine that a player’s aptitude is insufficient for a given role. Remember that “Catalytic” means speeding the pace of significant change. In business, time is money. Repurposing or replacing usually beat rewiring.
3. Focus on Strengths. Do your homework to determine what people are good at. Things they have a competitive advantage at. Identify activities that give them energy. Knowing someone’s weaknesses is valuable information for selection and placement decisions. If they’re not tall enough, fast enough, agile enough (in other words, a poor match for the position), consider making a change. If you’re going to coach them where they’re at, however, the key is to take what they’re good at and make it better. Do that and someday the Gallup Poll researchers will be writing stories about you.

About the Author of The Weakness Trap:
Garold Markle is author of Catalytic Coaching: The End of the Performance Review and No More Performance Evaluations! Gary is also founder and CEO of Energage, Inc. For more of his teachings go to www.energage.com.

This article was first published in Catalytic Connection in August of 2009. Copyright 2009 by Energage, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Garold L. Markle, glmarkle@energage.com.

893 words. Abstract: All new sales hires are chosen for their talent and expected to succeed, yet the frustration as to why some fail to produce goes on and on. Before you have to cut more underperformers loose, consider the potential impact of sales operations.

Some salespeople do well in your organization, and some don’t. Why the difference? The more important question may be what can you do about the ones who are limping along? Could Sales Operations make a difference?

Not just sales managers, but all company executives want a smooth running sales operation. When revenue is unpredictable and fluctuates from month to month, management is hard for everybody. Frustration, poor decisions, finger-pointing, and waste are often the result. With steady sales, operations gains productivity and efficiency. The whole company gains stability, growth, and profits.

An Important Meating
In departments other than sales, operations are often process-driven and focused. The result is lean and efficient production. I was struck by the power of strong operations during a ride-along with a sales rep.

We arrived for our early afternoon appointment at a meat packing plant near Green Bay Wisconsin. As we pulled past the gate and approached the visitor parking area, we passed a long line of semi trucks hauling cattle up to the loading docks. A few semis passed us going in the other direction, pulling their empty trailers out through the gate.

Once inside, we met with the controller. As he began describing their operation, he casually mentioned “We process 2,800 head a day.” I didn’t hear what he said for the next several minutes because I was doing math. 2,800 a day… that’s about 115 cattle “processed” each hour. That seemed like a really big number to me. And tons of work — literally. They must have developed great processes for each employee in the back to use. And the director of operations would make sure each production employee used the SAME process. That’s where their productivity, efficiency and profits come from.

Divide and Conquer
I didn’t get to see what went on back there, but I’m pretty sure no one employee did everything. In other words, there was a team of people, each with different roles, who did specific parts of the process from the time the cattle arrived at the loading dock until the time the “finished goods” were loaded into refrigeration trucks at the other side of the building. A process is involved, but no one person handles every part of the process.

The concept of a process for selling is nothing new. However, it may be a mistake to expect the salesperson to handle every part of the sales process.

Many companies expect to hire the Swiss Army knife salesperson who can find the lead, respond to the RFP, create the presentation, do the demonstration, close the sale, and train the customer on use of the product. Sales Operations enables selling to be treated more like a multi-part production operation, where one person — the salesperson — is not expected to do three or more jobs. Instead, Sales Operations supports many functions of the selling process so that salespeople they can focus on what they do best: manage customer interactions.

Avoiding Sales Productivity Killers
It’s the distractions and job corruption that kill sales productivity. For example, new products are often released to the salespeople with the requisite brochures and spec sheets and some training from the product manager. From there, each salesperson is often left to figure out how to succeed in selling it. If you have 50 salespeople, there may be 50 different approaches taken in the field. Some of these approaches will succeed, and others will fail.

We were launching a powerful and complex ERP software system that would enable our customers to better run their businesses. Before turning the product over to the salespeople, we asked ourselves, “How can we make this product…

• easy to present,
• simple to understand,
• memorable for customers
• and compelling to buy?”

We developed a day-in-the-life scenario of how a business would use this software in their daily operation, and wrote a storyline that was brought to life through demonstration of the software. This would make it easy for buyers to understand how our software would help them solve their real-world problems. To make the presentation even more memorable, we grouped the software’s capabilities into seven primary functions and created a visual icon for each. After this approach was prototyped by the Sales Operations Group and proven to convert customers, it was rolled out to the Sales team.

As a result, this winning demo format was easy for the salespeople to learn and deliver in a powerful, memorable and compelling way. More importantly, it was easy for buyers to understand and remember why our software stood head and shoulders above our competition. Instead of each salesperson having to come up with their own presentation formula, the results of the work of a few in Sales Operations was multiplied across the entire sales department.

The Surgical Suggestion
If you have talented salespeople that fail to produce, they may not be broken. It’s more likely that you’re just asking them to do too many things. Consider how top talent in other arenas has support:

• Musicians have roadies
• Race car drivers have pit crews
• Doctors have nurses

If you’re looking for more consistent and efficient production from your salespeople, cut away some of their duties and hand them over to a Sales Operations group. Even your top talent will be more productive if they don’t have to go it alone.

© 2010 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson is an award-winning sales manager who explains the six competencies of the sales operations manager at http://salesoperations.us. He has gotten great results for some big players like Siebel Systems (Oracle), ADP and Akzo Nobel and works with medium to large corporate sales teams.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

A Question for your Comments: When did dividing a project or process into separate components cause everyone to be more productive?

598 words. Abstract: Work-life balance is elusive. Maybe you could benefit from going back to something as basic as your definition of success. Do you have one?

It’s the time of year to celebrate, and our culture celebrates success. What successes of the past year do you have to celebrate? What did you DO with your life this year?

Sometimes it can seem that one year looks just like any other. You spend five days of every week at your job, and then jam chores, family, and friends into the weekends. You mix in a few holidays and take a vacation or two (yet one-third of Americans don’t take all their vacation days, forfeiting 4 of them). If this seems too familiar, I’m betting you’ve accepted someone else’s definition of success instead of creating your own. Perhaps it’s time to challenge the idea of what success looks like for you, and then make going for it your business in 2010.

Need ideas? Here are some ways others have defined success.

• Success is a journey, not a destination.
• Success is the achievement of something planned, desired or attempted.
• Success is… making a difference, loving your work, financial freedom, independence, contentment (pick one).

When England was facing its darkest days during World War II, Winston Churchill redefined success so he and the British people could keep their spirits up and press on to victory. His definition: “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.”

And then there’s this one: “He who dies with the most toys wins.”

The late Earl Nightingale notes this: “Everything that’s free to us we place little value on. Everything we have to pay for we value. The paradox is that the exact opposite is true. Everything that’s really worthwhile in life came to us free. Our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our intelligence, our love of family, children, and friends, our country – all these priceless possessions are free. But the things that cost us money are actually very cheap and can be replaced at any time. A good man can be completely wiped out and make another fortune. He can do that several times. Even if a home burns down, we can rebuild it, but the things we get for nothing we can never replace.”

Do we really need a bigger house, a newer car, a higher-status title on our business card? Or would we prefer to know that we have helped another, that we have been kind to our planet Earth, that we gave reasons to be remembered after we’re gone?

Maybe we make success too complicated and expensive. My son spent several weeks in Kenya living among people whose homes were made of dung, who found it futile to shoo flies away from their eyes and lips because their homes have no windows, and whose monthly income for the family was much less than $100. Yet my son remarked that these people were the happiest, most carefree people he’d ever met. It’s hard to imagine that a family living in a dung hut might have succeeded in being happier than you or I.

Perhaps success isn’t a measure of how much we have, but of how little we need.

Take an active approach in defining what success means for you, and then work toward that in the coming year. Stop letting others define success for you. Who cares if the Jones’ DO live next door? The business of living is your own business. A year from now I’d like you to be able to look back on 2010 knowing that you succeeded in taking care of some really important business: your life.

© 2009 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson is the keynote speaker who gives teams the courage, motivation, and insight to overcome obstacles and create breakthrough growth opportunities at http://TroubleBreaker.com. Learn about business growth topics at http://Paul-Johnson.com.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

A Question for your Comments: What have you gotten for free that you now regard as priceless?

1,190 words. Abstract: Performance improvement can be easy when you avoid your uphill battles. Get past the three myths that are thwarting the success of you and your team.

Who doesn’t get frustrated once in awhile? Either we’re disappointed with our own failure to achieve a goal, or with the failure of someone else we were counting on to perform.

• We work hard and achieve a deadline, but we know the quality of our work has fallen short.
• We’re counting on someone to hit their sales target, but revenues will fall short… again.
• We’ve shown someone over and over how to do something new, but they just don’t “get it.”

Many of us are challenged with the performance improvement of someone, whether that someone is someone else or ourselves. If you’re frustrated in your efforts to reach goals, perhaps you need a better plan for achieving results.

While many factors affect performance improvement, one subtle aspect is often overlooked. By recognizing and managing this aspect, you have an opportunity to avoid the frustration and wasted effort that otherwise occurs. This may be your chance to avoid repeating the same failure-inducing mistake over and over again.

Stop Mything Out

Three myths stand in the way of recognizing and applying a solution. The first myth is the common promotion of the idea that education and skill-building results in success. While those factors are important, we need to accept that learning a topic does not mean you’re assured of applying it successfully, especially in a competitive environment. Going to a training class will help you gain additional skills, but at some point performance improvement plateaus regardless of how much training is received. Yes, education and training support success, but there is more.

The second myth is that hard work is necessary for success. Instead, I contend that most people work too hard but don’t practice enough. If the work is hard, I suggest you may be wasting your efforts on the wrong work. On the other hand, when you find work that is fun and easy for you, continual practice will lead to higher and higher levels of performance improvement. Your practice must be focused on work that is right for you. Work easy and practice hard.

The third myth is that people assume that people who succeed in one area know how to succeed in them all. We see this all the time when people get promoted. Those that fail to achieve in their new roles are scrutinized for their failures. We wonder what’s wrong with them, when there may be nothing wrong with them at all. It’s silly to assume anyone can be good at everything we ask of them. I can tell you from first-hand experience that it IS hard to say “no” when presented with an “opportunity.”

Picture the Perfect Pachyderm

One key insight can help us resolve all these myths and help us understand where and how performance improvement is truly possible. I wish I could take credit for this idea, but it really comes from nature. I guess we could call it a big idea, because I learned it from studying elephants.

These days you rarely hear the words “war” and “elephant” in the same sentence. Yet War Elephants were an important combat tool in Asia and the Mediterranean centuries ago. Armies would enlist elephants to participate in the charge against the enemy to instill fear and breakup their lines. And fearful the enemy should be. Unlike horses, elephants have no reservations about trampling humans. Their thick skins made them relatively difficult to wound with common weapons of the time, and their strength allowed them to carry armor to make that possibility even more remote. Then, to literally top things off, soldiers would strap a mini-fort, called a howdah, to the top of the elephant. Here, a handful of archers could reside with a birds-eye view of their opponents.

Many of us have heard of the Carthaginian general Hannibal. He is noted for taking his army over the Alps to attack the Roman Empire from the north in a surprise attack. In addition to 40,000 troops, Hannibal brought several dozen War Elephants to Europe to traverse the Alps. Unfortunately, Hannibal wasn’t aware of a significant shortcoming of elephants.

Find the Fate-ful Flaw

We can’t really blame Hannibal for this knowledge shortfall, because he never had a chance to meet Professor Fritz Vollrath from Oxford University. Professor Vollrath’s research team did a study on African elephants, using global positioning system (GPS) devices to track elephants crossing the savannas. They discovered that elephants “don’t do hills.” Elephants routinely avoid any types of slopes and hills, as even minor hills make them really hungry. Elephants only eat vegetation, and they need lots of it. Climbing hills requires a significant boost in calorie consumption and that means finding lots more to eat. The researchers reported, “Climbing 100 meters [@300 ft] would burn [2,500 calories] which would have to be either replenished by an extra half hour of foraging or paid for by using up body reserves.”

Now imagine you’re Hannibal, trying to get dozens of elephants over mountains not hundreds, but thousands of feet high. The elephants see the slopes and their instincts tell them not to climb them, but their human handlers drive them forward. Then they get hungry because there’s not enough food growing on the mountain slopes. And a ticked-off elephant has no reservations about trampling people. THAT must have been a fun journey. Sadly, all but a handful of elephants died crossing the Alps.

Role with the Flow

The lesson that elephants (and other animals) can teach us is this: humans are versatile, but no one is good at everything. Performance improvement comes easiest when a human who is “wired” to succeed in a specific endeavor is placed in that role.

• We know Michael Jordan as a phenomenal performer in basketball, yet he was much less impressive in a baseball uniform no matter how much hard work and practice he was willing to perform.
• We saw Susan Boyle become an “overnight success” at the age of 47 on the “Britain’s Got Talent” contest. She owned the stage once given the opportunity to demonstrate the gifts and abilities she has owned all her life.
• I bet we can all name our own examples of people who have taken advantage of every education and training opportunity presented to them, yet are still identified with mediocre performance and lackluster results.

Hopefully that’s not you. Or maybe it is.

Don’t Do Hills

Your uphill battle may not be going literally uphill as it is for elephants. Yet we each face our own challenges. Some of these challenges we were never designed to overcome. When a task seems like an uphill battle to you, consider that maybe, just maybe, you were never intended to do it. Instead, find those tasks which come easy to you, where learning is easy and practice is fun. Aim for performance improvement in those areas where you are “wired” to do well.

We each have our own unique set of gifts, talents and abilities. It may be hard to find them in yourself and in other people but, when you do, results will come fast and success will be easy.

© 2009 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About the author
Paul Johnson is the keynote speaker who describes his approach to transformational leadership at http://TroubleBreaker.com. He enables companies to achieve breakthrough growth and team performance improvement at http://ShortcutsToResults.com.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

A Question for your Comments: When did you say “Yes” to an “opportunity” when later you discovered you should have said “No, thanks”?

1,289 words. Abstract: The A-players in business don’t appear out of thin air. A lot goes into their development as winners. And parents have a lot to do with where the core of their development comes from.

You and I both probably had painful childhood experiences that involved winning and losing. I was always picked last when choosing teams for pick-up basketball games. Perhaps you had YOUR heart set on making a team or winning a contest, and it just didn’t happen. You can still remember the hurt to this day.

Today I’m concerned for our children. Both as a parent and as a member of society, I’m interested in the raising of psychologically healthy and strong children who will one day (sooner than we might like to think) be contributing to society, running our businesses and leading our country. I’m concerned that parents are letting the pain from their past corrupt the children of the present.

Who’s a Loser?
I was listening to a radio talk show this morning when the on-their personalities tossed this controversy into the air: should children be labeled winners and losers? They cited several news stories to fan the flames.

• One was about children’s sporting events where no score was kept; because no team could be defeated, there could be no losers.

• Another was about a trend at children’s birthday parties, where everyone got a prize. Playing games like Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey would be done for entertainment, but no specific price would be awarded because it would be wrong to declare a winner, thus making all the other children losers.

• Finally, mention was made of the grading scale used in schools, which stratifies students into categories of winners and losers.

As you might imagine, many called into the radio station. A sustained debate ensued about whether children should be allowed to compete when the outcome apparently risks labeling many as losers.

Unfortunately, there was no clear winner. I’d like to change that.

Worth the Debate
I applaud all parents who care enough to have an opinion on this topic, because it’s important. We want to avoid sending ill-equipped offspring into careers where they will fail to reach optimum levels of satisfaction and reward. Parents seem happiest when their children are productive, happy, satisfied, and eventually living purposeful lives as adults. Yet this ongoing debate about whether children should compete seems to leave parents unhappy if not angered.

I happen to agree with both sides of the argument. The points I’ll offer shortly should clarify that apparent contradiction. Now for the disclaimer; I am not a psychologist. I only have two qualifications that qualify me to address this issue: I was once a child (duh), and I also am fortunate to be the parent of several children who are now adults. Hopefully my insights will serve you.

Put the Ending First
I am opposed to labeling anyone, young or old, losers. I’m not really in favor of labeling people at all, but if there must be labels, let them be positive ones like the term “winner.” So how could there be winners but no losers? Because there’s a big difference between winners and losers, and winning and losing.

Losing a game does not automatically earn anyone the label of loser. The term “losing” is simply the reflection of the score of a particular event that took place at a specific instance in time. In other words, winning and losing have nothing to do with being a winner or loser. Sometimes we win, and sometimes we lose. Except in basketball; I always lose. But that doesn’t make me a loser. I can win, and do win at lots of other things. And so do our children. It’s the -ING, not the -ER, that we should be concerned with and should be the focus in our use of language.

Winning Requires Luck
We tend to associate the terms winning and losing with all games. However, I contend there is a better word than winning to use in some instances.

Games generally require some combination of luck and skill. Some games are almost pure luck, others almost pure skill. Choosing the winning number on a roulette wheel is almost pure luck. Winning at Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey is also a rather lucky endeavor. However, where sports are concerned, the emphasis shifts to skill. Players in these games can most certainly influence the outcome of the game based on how skillfully they execute the requirements of the game. Where skill is not only encouraged but required, it’s an insult to the players to conclude that one team “won” the game. While we might be able to point to a few exceptions, the reality is that players usually earn the victory.

I made this distinction some years back when I heard my wife talking to one of her friends. I was in sales at the time, and had just qualified for our annual President’s Club incentive trip. She was explaining to her friend how I had won a trip to Hawaii. After she hung up the phone, I explained that I didn’t win anything. After working like a dog and skillfully applying the expertise I had developed over the years, I earned that trip as a reward. Clearly I was winning in my job, and I felt like a winner, but make no mistake about it; it was clear to me and my bosses that I had earned that reward.

Make sure your children can tell the difference between winning and earning. No one can afford to live their lives dependent on luck. If we want our children to develop their skills and learning, we should separate winning from earning.

Born to Earn
It’s obvious that winning is more fun than losing. Success is better than failure. Ideally, we would like to win at everything. But we can’t. We’re each born with a different set of gifts, a different set of strengths. We can develop these into useful and productive skills that will help us earn opportunities to win.

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Dr. Howard Gardner explains in his 1983 book titled Frames of Mind that there are at least seven different forms of human intelligence. In this initial book, he labeled them:

• Linguistic (spoken and written language)
• Logical-Mathematical
• Musical
• Bodily-Kinesthetic
• Spatial (patterns of space)
• Intrapersonal
• Interpersonal

This means that some will be more inclined to win at music while others are inclined to win at math. Or running. Or writing. Or shearing sheep.

I like to see people playing games that they CAN win, even though sometimes they won’t. I get excited when I see young people figure out that they’re really good at something they also really like to do. That is usually the kernel for a productive and satisfying career.

The Business of Growing Winners
So what can parents do to raise happy, healthy children who will become satisfied, productive contributors to the world? First of all, forget about saving your child from pain. They’re going to fall down. They’re going to be disappointed. There will be many unhappy moments. Get over it, because they will. Let your child try stuff. Give them opportunities to discover their strengths and to sample the things that they might be good at.

Even more important, let them figure out how THEY have fun. Not everyone enjoys spelling bees, but some people do. Not everyone enjoys practicing music, but some people do. Not everyone enjoys standing in the outfield when there are no dandelions to pick, but some people do.

Let’s give our children opportunities to try winning and losing; that will make them winners. Let’s help them understand that some games are won, and some victories are earned. Let’s help children explore their gifts and discover their strengths so they will confidently know how they can win in this game of life. One day they may be working in the next office over from you.

© 2009 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson is the keynote speaker who gives teams the courage, motivation, and insight to overcome obstacles and create breakthrough growth opportunities at http://TroubleBreaker.com. Learn about business growth topics at http://Paul-Johnson.com.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

A Question for your Comments: What game did you win that was really earned?

1,500 words. Abstract: Perhaps you’re frustrated because your hard work to create a better life seems thwarted at every turn. Use this approach to win against the people and problems blocking the paths to the results you desire.

Despite all our efforts at work, sometimes it seems we make little economic progress. Over the years, many metaphors have been used to describe our despair. “I am…

• running in place.”
• a hamster on a wheel.”
• stuck on a treadmill.”

My favorite is, “I feel like a dog on linoleum.” When we’re not getting ahead, who is cheating us out of the rewards we deserve for our efforts? Many are potentially to blame:

• Bosses that show favoritism at work.
• Unfair labor practices.
• Oppressive decisions inflicted as a result of greed, jealousy or ego.

While it may be true that these events cheat you out of rewards and opportunities you deserve, these events are not the ones you should worry about or even attempt to fix.

The Waste of Life
When we’re feeling stuck and not making the progress we want, frustration is often the symptom. We’re frustrated with our failure to achieve, our failure to earn, and our failure to attain a position of comfort and stability. By escaping the tyranny that is holding us back, our liberation will give us the ability to enjoy steady progress and enjoy more of the fruits of our labors.

My inspiration for this article came from Chris Anderson and his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price (Chris is also author of the best seller, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, published in 2006). In Free, Chris Anderson explores the concept of waste. He points out that in the animal kingdom, mammals (including humans) have an unusual attitude toward waste. In short, we have an unhealthy aversion to it.

It’s actually bred into us because of our procreation patterns. He points out that the Bluefin tuna releases up to 10 million fertilized eggs in a single spawning season. Of those, maybe 10 will make it to adulthood. That means one in a million survives, and the rest are wasted. While the numbers are smaller, the story is pretty much the same for insects, reptiles, amphibians and birds. Only mammals attempt to preserve every life.

I was watching the Discovery Channel and learned that hundreds of sea turtles hatch from a single nest in the sand and then scamper down the beach into the ocean. The camera showed how one of them didn’t make it; a crab caught it and was going to eat it for dinner. Admit it; don’t you feel terrible about that? While we can rationalize that that’s the way nature is supposed to work, we still don’t like it. Our nature tells us not to waste anything, even the life of a single baby sea turtle.

Waste Not, Want More
This means that, deep down, we believe we live in a world of scarcity. Resources are limited. The number of jobs is finite. Energy is expensive. And for every problem, there is only one right solution.

That last statement is the myth that is cheating you out of the progress you desire. In our search for the perfect answer to our problem, we continually seek more information, spend more time, and consume more resources. Why? Because we want to find the perfect risk-free approach. Why does risk repulse us? Because we are genetically programmed to avoid waste.

Perhaps your progress has been limited because you’ve been trying to engineer the perfect risk-free solution to each of your problems. Perhaps you should start considering that there may be a million answers to your problem. Pick one. Try it. Repeat as necessary.

This simple approach allowed Thomas Edison to bring us the light bulb. He “wasted” 999 versions so he could produce the one that worked. None of us care about those 999, yet they were critical to the process that eventually produced success. Understand that none of your failed efforts are ever really wasted as long as you don’t neglect one little thing.

While this may seem like a simple concept to understand, overcoming millions of years of evolution is no easy task for us. Let’s break this down into three distinct components that can make this concept easier for you to internalize.

I. Choose to Waste
See? You’re already feeling guilty. Here we are, living in an age when we’re trying to preserve our planet and the daily news is filled with reports of our dwindling oil reserves, food shortages and unemployment statistics. Yet there are many things you could choose to waste with little consequence to you or anyone else.

• Long-distance minutes.
• Space on your hard drive.
• The fuzzy leftovers in the back of your fridge.
• The clothes in your closet you’re really never going to wear again.

Sometimes I waste air-conditioning. On days that are warm, but not too warm, I turn on the air conditioning in my car and roll down the windows. I want the fresh air, the breeze and the connection to the outside, but it’s a little too warm to rely on just a breeze to keep me comfortable. I decided that once the air conditioning is running, having the windows up or down has negligible impact on my fuel consumption but major impact on my comfort.

Choosing to waste like this makes it easier when it comes time to face a problem and you have to make a choice. More often than not, the choices available are not mutually exclusive. Just pick one and get going. As long as you don’t neglect to learn something from each attempt — like Edison did — none are really wasted.

II. Take a Second Chance
After you’ve made a choice and tried it, you’ll often find that it doesn’t work. Be kind to yourself and give yourself a second chance (and a third and fourth as well). I routinely try new things. When they work, I keep doing them. If they don’t work, I try something else. Thomas J. Watson, former president of IBM had this to say: “The way to succeed is to double your error rate.” He understood the value of learning from mistakes, and as a result built IBM into a huge business.

I’ve spent the better part of my career in sales, and have frequently needed to take a second chance. In one case, a customer got a little aggressive deep in the negotiation phase. When I wouldn’t acquiesce to his demands, he threw me out of his office. I never saw or spoke to him again. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t get the order. I took a second chance and figured out a different way to “close the deal” and earn the commission.

III. Let Possessions Flow
At an early age, we all learn the word, “Mine!” We tend to get attached to and protective of our possessions like our houses, cars, and the money in our bank account. Instead of being a collector of possessions, I’m suggesting you accept that they will ebb and flow during your life like the tides of the oceans. Sometimes you’ll have to give something up for the opportunity to make progress.

In baseball, base runners know that they have to take their foot off first base to have any hope of attaining second base. They are vulnerable to being called out whenever they are not safely standing on a base (the only totally risk-free way of attaining second base is by hitting an out-of-the-park home run). Letting go is the key to achieving more.

Unfortunately, letting go is another form of waste to us mammals. This innate behavior was supposedly used successfully to hunt monkeys. A hole was cut in a coconut just large enough for a monkey’s open hand to enter. The coconut would be tethered to a nearby tree, and then some nuts would be placed inside. A passing monkey would discover the nuts, reach in and grab them, but couldn’t remove their hand because their closed fist was too large to fit through the opening. There they remained, unwilling to let go of the nuts even as the hunters returned to kill them.

Let Go and Get Going
Sometimes we need to be willing to release what’s already in our grasp so we can move on to something better. When you’re feeling stuck and yet afraid to let go of the familiar, consider that the worst case scenario is seldom the most probable scenario. The things we most fear rarely materialize. You CAN work around the obstacles that are making it difficult for you to achieve the progress and gain the rewards you desire and deserve. Always begin by believing that there is more than one “right” answer to the problem you’d like to solve. Pick one and get going. Don’t cheat yourself out of the better life you’re searching for.

© 2009 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:
Paul Johnson is the keynote speaker who gives teams the courage, motivation, and insight to overcome obstacles and create breakthrough growth opportunities at http://TroubleBreaker.com. Learn about business growth topics at http://Paul-Johnson.com.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

A Question for your Comments: When has taking a second chance paid off for you?

714 Words. Abstract:  Sales promotions are with us to stay, but you might do better if you make coupons go away. Learn about the right and wrong ways to promote your business through coupons and special pricing offers.

Every shopper wants to feel like they’re getting a good deal. Merchants often attempt to capitalize on this desire through coupon offers, rebates, and “special discounts.” Coupons have become the promotional drug of choice to woo more business from new and old customers alike. Unfortunately, coupons can destroy customer relationships almost as fast as they are made.

The worst coupon abusers are merchants who set a relatively high list price compared to the competition, and then use coupons or other incentive plans to discount it so buyers feel like they’re getting a good deal. I had a fabulous customer service experience derailed by such a pricing blunder.

A Hitch in the Pitch
I was looking for a new dry cleaner and discovered FC Cleaners (not their real name). When I walked in, they discovered I was a new customer, handed me a “Passport” book, and explained to me that I would routinely receive a significant discount whenever I presented the book with incoming dry cleaning orders.

I wasn’t impressed until I picked up my order. All of my shirts now had bar code labels. The computer-printed labels attached to the neatly hangered and bagged clothes described each article in detail, right down to my neck size. They truly knew how to use technology to manage a relationship! I also knew I could go to any FC Cleaners in Atlanta and be instantly identified by my bar code labels.

Soon I returned to have more cleaning done. I dropped off the clothes, and then remembered I had forgotten my Passport. Oh well, I’ll just bring it with me when I pick them up. As planned, I returned in a few days with my Passport. My enthusiasm for our relationship disappeared when they explained, “Sorry, you’ll have to pay stupid people prices since you failed to present your passport when you dropped off your order.”

Of course, they didn’t explain it that way. They cordially explained that their “policy” prevented them from giving me a discount. As Dr. Martha Rogers of Peppers and Rogers Group says, “Policies treat everybody like nobody”, and that’s exactly how I felt. When I dropped off the clothes, their computer could tell them who I was, where I lived, the details of all my garments, and my complete transaction history. But it couldn’t — or is it wouldn’t? — tell them that I was a Passport discount buyer. As a result, I was forced to pay retail and fork over an extra ten spot. From a goodwill perspective, they would have been much better off without a list price discounting program.

Bait and Snitch
Sometimes I’ll be in line at a store when the person ahead of me presents a coupon to the cashier and immediately gets a discount. I have no such coupon. It looks like I’ll be paying stupid-people prices again.

On occasion a friendly cashier has offered to give me a coupon on-the-spot. Very thoughtful — but maybe not.

• Does this mean their merchandise is really overpriced?
• Do they really have a consistent pricing policy?
• Does this store have any integrity?

My assumption is that, for some reason, I don’t look like a sucker today.

Switch to Enrich
If you want to use coupons for promotion, consider making them an integral part of your pricing strategy. I recommend to my clients that they only offer discounts, including coupons, for one-time irregular (preferably non-repeating) events. Examples might be first-time orders, year-end closeout of a particular model, or cleaning off shelves in preparation for inventory. A new product launch would qualify. However, end of the month discounts don’t hold water, nor does the lame excuse, “I need another deal to make quota.”

Coupons are useful to get people in the door and give you a try, but you need to have a way to track repeat buyers. Don’t train customers to never show up without a coupon. I won’t buy a pizza without one. Instead, honor them with a “frequent buyer” program that rewards them with lower prices or — better yet — additional services when they come back time and again. Show them you know they’re not stupid, and they’ll know how smart you are. The goodwill you generate will result in good business for you.

© 2005, 2009 Paul Johnson. All rights reserved.

About The Author:

Paul Johnson of Shortcuts to Results LLC collects business shortcuts and shows people how to find and apply them for performance improvement at http://ShortcutsToResults.com. Learn how to become a niche marketing expert at http://NicheExpert.com.

Note: This article is available for reprint at no charge. We only ask that you include our copyright notice in your reprint, along with the About the Author information we provide at the end of the article.

A Question for your Comments: When has a coupon been a costly experience for you?

If you’ve ever had the first 2 tunes stuck in your head, you won’t be able to let go of the third, either, after you watch the video below.

Dave Carroll is not happy with the ways United Airlines baggage handlers treated his tools of the trade (he has a band called Sons of Maxwell). His guitar was broken and, when United’s “policies” failed to satisfy him, he decided to take his complaint to the court of public opinion.

Dave was inspired to use his talents (and time, and friends) to produce a 4-minute music video with a great hook, “United Breaks Guitars.” It’s good; I watched all of it. And I’m sharing it with you, while I tap my foot.

United Airlines has a multi-million dollar advertising budget. Dave’s carries his in his wallet. It didn’t take Dave Carroll gobs of money to make his point, and he seems to have succeeded in generating lots of attention with his backyard budget flick. The video has already been viewed over one million times.

True, the customer is not always right. Maybe there was no placating Mr. Carroll (but is sure easy for me to believe him). With the ability for anyone to broadcast their thoughts as he did, your company better be careful that your policies err on the side of your customer. It will cost United Airlines a lot more to “undo” the impact of the video than Dave Carroll had to expend to create and distribute it.