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Peaceful Management

10/22/2010

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Peaceful Management
Conway Daily Sun
October 20, 2010

By Michael Kline
With all the talk about bullying in our schools, and stress in our lives, this term "peaceful management" really caught my attention. My friend John G. Vincent, a consultant and trainer who specializes in work place issues, wrote about the term as a training tool, after a student coined the phrase in a workshop. Since it is a phrase in its infancy, we can play with its meaning and decide if it has a meaning to us and if we can help make it a movement. Let's explore together. What is peaceful management?


Coming from the Greek root words meaning to manage peacefully - ok, I don't know a root-word from a root vegetable - let's take another route!  If we were to paint a picture of peaceful management, we might envision a staff meeting in our conference room by the lake. It's a sunny day, everyone is dressed casually, smiling and happy with all the good news being reported. Everyone knows exactly what they need to do, how to do it, and the enormous reward waiting for them at the finish line, and success feels absolutely certain. Giant butterflies float by. The next big worry is picking a theme for the company picnic! In contrast, sometimes it's easier to define what something is not - certainly peaceful management does not involve yelling at employees or pounding the table with a fist. A stressful work environment, where workers are frustrated they don't know what the boss wants, they get in trouble no matter what they do, they're not appreciated, they lack purpose and feel unsecure about their future does not contribute to a peaceful work environment. Supervisors are frustrated that workers don't think for themselves, owners are trying to make decisions while living in fear of a double-dip recession; certainly none of this sounds like it leads to peaceful management.

I talk a great deal about goal setting, so we won't go into more of that today, but suffice it to say, no one will really work in peace unless they know what they're doing and why they're doing it. If you don't have a written, shared and achievable goal that you're targeting, measuring and tracking with your team, call your entreprenologist immediately.

For owners or staff to make good decisions, they need to be thinking about the purpose - not the just a task.  Rather than teach people to memorize a method or system, teach them the purpose and history behind why this is your system. When the system breaks, everyone is better equipped to think of a solution on the fly. When people are expected to work in a "process" environment, rather than a "results" environment, they are stripped of personal value, and of having any stake in the outcome. If you want to take total responsibility for every aspect of every outcome, then you set the process. Staff that has involvement in processes and an orientation toward results, not just processing, then they get ownership of the entire experience and can own the thinking and share in the credit or blame for the outcome. So don't blame employees for the outcome if it's your process and you're simply asking them to be another you. You own that outcome, good or bad.  Mind you, this is not a judgment; it's just a decision - fast food giants are successful as a result of processes and the boss is happy to "own" the outcome. This would not work as well for a salesperson or a medical professional, would it?

Every organization needs a management system. Generally, the more involvement the team has in every step of the way, the more peaceful will be the management of the organization. Think about each step from the beginning - goal setting, a strategic plan of what has to happen to reach those goals, systems and processes created to do everything on the strategic plan, checklists and monitoring of the execution of those systems and processes, communications to constantly improve best practices, team-wide training in social skills as well as technical skills and teambuilding that keeps everyone focused and in alignment on a daily basis. We teach that your plan is written annually, modified quarterly, monitored weekly and pulsed daily. The professional teaching of running an organization sometimes forgets the importance of the human element - that modern, liberal thinking that people matter, feelings matter, respect matters, having fun matters, contributing to personal goals matters, giving matters, intent matters, and that all of this is good for your business. As I see it, peaceful management is simply the realization of running an organization in just such a manner.

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Three Free Sales Tips

10/22/2010

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Three Sales Tips:
Service, Service, Service

Conway Daily Sun

By Michael Kline

If you’ve ever tried to convince your mate to agree with you on anything, or to get your children to do what you want, you know something about sales. Let me point out some not-so-subtle differences when helping a prospect become a customer. Neither your mate nor your children want to be sold, nor do they want to buy what you’re selling. Your customer doesn’t want to be sold either, but at least they want and/or need your help.

Like most people, I avoid sales people like a politician avoiding responsibility. I’m so bad, I’ll browse areas of a store I have no interest in, waiting for sales people to leave the area I really want to browse. I just want a clean shot at my product without talking to anyone. Also like many people, I research online before calling or visiting a business, so I can be a more knowledgeable consumer. And, while I’ve come to rely more on myself and less on sales people, I still like to complain when I can’t find a salesperson to help me when I’m finally ready for them. There’s just no pleasing some people, and I’m one of them. So as a sales person, manager or business owner, how do you train yourself and your team to increase sales by being as helpful as possible to prospects who don’t want to be sold?

One funny story, then I’ll get on to my lesson of the day. Working an art booth at a recent festival, we only had one sale for the day. A visitor looked at a picture and said it would be great over their sofa – I looked up and said “then buy it, damit”.  After everyone stopped laughing, we wrote up the only sale of the day!  While this may be a little funny to anyone who’s spent a day in a booth selling nothing, it’s rude, sarcastic and risky at best. I don’t think I’ll try it again – working once is more than one can expect for that particular sales script, so there’s no point in pushing it. Let’s talk about being more useful.

Tip #1. How to deal with browsers who have no interest in buying anything.   We love them! Honor the “be-backs”.  Rare is the customer who buys on impulse anymore. Today’s browsers are tomorrow’s buyers. Your goal is to be of service - period. Let them fall in love with you, your company, your product or service, your reputation, or just the notion that you eventually want their business. I like to offer them something of value in exchange for getting their contact information to promote to them in the future. You’ll still want their business next year, so you want to make a great impression, and find a way to stay top of mind until they need you. For example, if you are a hotel, you want to help your prospect make a booking decision, so offer to email information about the area or attractions to help them plan their trip, while giving you their contact information and becoming their friendly helper.

Tip #2. Speak their language. The world is full or strange and varies personalities and some people who seem to have no personality whatsoever. Since the ancient Greeks, it has been widely taught that all personality styles can be boiled down to four broad categories, each speaking a different language, if you will. Once mastered, you can pretty easily “read” people to know what language you should be speaking - if they want to be helped or left alone, how much or little information they want, etc.  You can’t be of service if you don’t speak the same language, so every sales person should be trained in the professional “reading” of people. Kline Seminars puts some focus on this aspect of sales training.

Tip #3. Getting referrals.  Advertising for new prospects is expensive. Asking for referrals is free and more credible than advertising. Surely, you ask your customers for referrals – don’t you?  If not, that’s easy, and mostly just requires awareness to get yourself and your team to do it. What about your prospects that don’t buy from you? Are you providing enough service to them that you can ask if they know anyone who would benefit from your service? Do you give out coupons or cards or literature or (when communicating electronically), links to be passed on to others? Work with your Entreprenologist to create new ways of getting referral business from not only your customers, but your non-customers too.

The idea behind most of excellent sales training is that if you put service first, sales will take care of themselves. If you try selling from the position that you need that sale more than you need the relationship, you are at a huge disadvantage.

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