Sales tips, leadership communication skills insight and more from Steve Giglio, sales training professional for more than 25 years.

Five 2nd Quarter Questions Every Leader Should Answer

question-mark-1019820_960_720Q2 of 2016 is at hand. We’re all working hard…let’s work smart too. As I coach executives, I remind them it’s not OK to only check-in with their associates and provide feedback. They need to check themselves, too. Here are five questions every leader should be asking, and answering, so that the rest of year is productive and their teams continue on their developmental paths.

Five Questions to Ask Yourself Now

What are my organization’s three mission-critical goals?

You established goals at the beginning of the year. Remember that? Seems like a long time ago. Things change. Did your company’s goals? Determine what they are now, and once you’ve pinpointed them, the next step is to have a clear plan to achieve them. It’s also important to assess the team you’ve got behind you.

  • Is this the “A” team?
  • What barriers are there?

Presenting these three goals to your organization is empowering and puts you in a leadership position.

How often do I speak with and learn from clients?

Reports are important but hearing and discerning a pattern of desires from clients is priceless. How fleet of foot is your organization in tailoring solutions for these important partnerships?
Meeting with clients keeps you sharp. It sends a great message…you’re in the fight with them. Right now…check your calendar…how many client meetings do you have in the new few weeks? How many have you had recently? If some of your clients haven’t heard from you much or at all this year, now is the time!

How well do I listen?

Assess how well you listen to your team and to your clients. Do you jump into a conversation too quickly with your own direction? Or, do you listen to affirm people? Listening is one of the most important skills a leader can possess. It is also one that gets ignored all-too frequently. Do you tend to want to be THE voice in the room? Perhaps your staff has taken note and holds back their contributions, which could be missed opportunities.

How am I stretching my “A” Players?

You must stretch your “A” Players. This act acknowledges their ability. Never let an “A” Player become complacent. They want challenges…they hunger for them (that’s how they got to be “A” players in the first place, right?).

What must I strengthen in my own comportment?

This answer takes courage to determine. Ask your top managers for their opinion. Taking stock of what you can strengthen and acting on it is highly motivating.

Asking these questions now will help you avoid issues when you wrap up 2016 later on. You will know that you kept yourself moving in a positive direction towards the companies goals, bringing your team along with you.

Which question is the hardest for you to answer? Let me know in the comments. And my advice is…tackle that one first! – SG

Coach? I Don’t Need a Coach!

1508In the 1980’s the Army had a great slogan I often use when introducing a coaching program to an executive; “Be all you can be.” That’s the essence of an executive development program…if you want it. The problem is, many think of coaching as a punishment or a sign that management is not happy with their performance. Most times, it’s quite the opposite!

There Is Honor in Being Coached

There is a great “badge of honor” associated with a coaching program. Your management team is saying, “You’re important to our business. We are going to invest in you so that you become all you can be.”

It is NOT a scarlet letter.
It is not the penalty box.
It is not a demotion.

Executives who worry about the above three labels are too worried about their image and not about growing in their leadership/management ability. What they should accept is that their manager is holding up a mirror so that the executive can get a good look at what’s working and what’s not. A coach will see behaviors in that mirror that perhaps the executive doesn’t want to admit are there and, instead of criticizing, will create a plan that helps eliminate them.

Why Do Leaders Need a Coach? from Stephen A. Giglio on Vimeo.

How to Succeed Through Coaching

To succeed though, requires TRUST:

  • in yourself, that you don’t have all the answers;
  • in your coach, that he/she wants only the best for you and will only stretch you in the places where they know you can stretch;
  • in the process, IT’S THE JOURNEY, NOT THE ARRIVAL.

Coaching is an exciting inquiry into who you are NOW and IDEALLY who you want to become, because YOU said so. Think about how many executives never get the opportunity to put the mirror in front of them and assess their behavior to their teams, public or shareholders. There are many reasons for this but one is simply that their direct superior either doesn’t see your potential and/or doesn’t want to offer it to you.

I’d rather have someone see my potential and say; “I believe in you. I believe that you can evolve into a top flight executive. There a few behaviors that are preventing you from fully succeeding here and I’m going to invest in a program that will develop you.”

Listed below are a brief set of behaviors that can be addressed and rectified:

  • Tuning people out when listening
  • Holding to only your POV
  • Not crediting people when they deserve it
  • Micromanaging
  • Being verbose, lecturing people
  • Not tailoring your ideas & recommendations to your listeners
  • Not fostering an open environment
  • Not having or delivering the vision of your organization
  • Inability to coach/develop people
  • Lack of self confidence

Helen Keller once said; “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”

Take the daring adventure.

If you have reservations about working with a coach, or just want to learn more about what coaching can be for you, give me a call. – SG

The Seven Secret Wants

yellow-seven-1144677-640x640I often talk, and write, about how important it is to know your clients’ goals and objectives. You can’t offer an effective recommendation without doing so. However, most of the discussions around this focus on company or department goals. For you really to be effective, you have to get beyond that and find out what motivates your client contact. You need to understand their “secret wants.”

What is the Secret?

Everybody has secret wants…from the barista at your local coffee shop to the office manager to the company CEO to YOU! These wants motivate and inspire. Sometimes they cause fear.

Your job is to discover your client’s wants, understand them and respond to them. The easiest way to know if you are successful in this endeavor is if you’ve got somebody lamenting about their problem, providing detail about how it is affecting them. Now you’ve got them beyond the numbers, spreadsheets and plans to the heart of what motivates them. This is your opportunity to shine!

The Seven Secret Wants

Though they take many forms, most of the secret wants of your clients fall under one of seven simple categories:

  1. Looking Good: How people are perceived by their peers and superiors is important. Your recommendations, if implemented, should have the potential to make them “heroes” within their organization.
  2. Easing a Burden: Your clients face significant pressure to deliver favorable results to their customers, shareholders and management teams. You and your teams should deliver solutions that significantly ease one or more of these burdens for them. If they don’t, perhaps you are making the wrong recommendation, which does not make them look good (see #1 above!).
  3. Avoiding Embarrassment: If you’ve been effective, you now have a relationship with your client that goes beyond simple selling/buying. They trust you. One way to bolster that trust is to stay ahead of their issues, providing recommendations that prevent problems, rather than just solving them. For example, a few years ago I worked with a Fortune 100 company that was about to put a sales executive in front of an important customer. I worked with the person and quickly determined he was not the right person for this assignment. To my client contact, I recommended another course of action. This helped avoid his (and the sales exec’s) embarrassment and likely a whole chain of events that could have been unpleasant.
  4. Solving a Problem: Everyone has problems that need solving. Clients don’t see you because they want another friend. They see you because they believe you might help them solve at least one of their problems. It’s your job to find out what that problem is and make a recommendation that directly addresses it.
  5. Working Painlessly: People have enough headaches, they don’t need you creating more! If you are acting as a partner, staying ahead of their issues, keeping them on track and delivering on the promises you make, you will come to be someone on whom they can rely. They will know you’ve got your stuff handled and thus, can focus on the other issues creating their headaches!
  6. Generating Positive Results: We all want to achieve something. And we need some kind of proof that we’ve achieved it. Want to get healthy? Losing weight might be a goal and it comes with a simple metric….pounds! When you make a recommendation, does it come with a metric to prove it worked? It should. Your client can then take that result and show it to their supervisors, thereby looking good (again…see #1 above).
  7. Time Saving: Who has an abundance of time these days? Scant few. So, if you bring forth a solution that requires your client put in a lot of hours analyzing it, considering it, weighing it against other options…all of sudden, you’ve created a burden (see #5 above). Make sure what you bring to the table is easily implemented. Create timelines, goals, success metrics…and then keep your client informed. Don’t let them waste one moment of time worrying about what your company is doing for them. Peace of mind!

Take a look back at this list and personalize it. If you were the client, how important are these seven wants for you? How would you prioritize them? This kind of advanced thinking will help immensely as you engage with your clients. Let me know how it goes in the comments below. – SG

 

Change the Person, Not the Job

words NOW (in red) and Hiring (in black)Filling open positions on your team usually boils down to this: find the right person for the job. But what about the people already ON your team. Do they meet this basic qualification? Perhaps they did at first, but the job has changed. How well do they match up now?

Too many times I see leadership change a job’s requirements to match the skills of the person doing the work. So I ask, how can you expect to achieve the team/company goals in that situation?

What Do They Think the Job Is?

As you study the business landscape, it’s essential to notice what each direct report believes their job to be. Contrast that with what you know the job needs to be NOW. Often direct reports believe they are doing what needs to be done but are basing it on old information. Is it their job to anticipate what the new requirements are?  Perhaps but, how can you be sure they make that leap correctly? That’s your responsibility.

The closer my clients look into the business behaviors their direct reports/leaders need, the more they discover that many of them have been operating at a sub-par level to the vision and direction they want their organization heading. A new job description is needed.

Let Them Know What You Know

You’re the leader. What this presumes is that you understand what needs to occur to bring the organization to a level of prosperity that your board has deemed desirable. You are more aware than your team is about how the company’s goals have changed due to market conditions, customer needs, the competitive landscape and product/service development. Make your team aware of it, too. That way, you will know they are attacking their work like green berets, armed with intelligence that allows them to adapt.

But what happens if someone doesn’t, or can’t, adapt?

Changing the Job Can Require Someone New

Many times I coach leaders who have a direct who isn’t “getting with the program.” However, instead of doing something about the person, they simply adapt the job around that person’s skill level, thereby diluting the effectiveness of the whole team.

As an example, you may have a COO whom you’ve noticed is reticent to engage and cannot ask tough questions of others while remaining objective. You need this done, otherwise it falls to you. Do you have time to do your job and his?

This skill is now a requirement of the job. A strong leader will detail what is expected to the direct and create a development plan that gives him/her the chance to succeed. However, you must create a timeline that establishes a deadline beyond which you are not willing to accept sub-par performance in this area. And, you must be ready and willing to replace that direct with someone who possess the skills needed for the new job description.

In other words, a new job description may require a new person to fill the position. Right person for the job!

Successful completion of the development plan or the hiring of someone who has the sought-after skills accomplishes three important goals:

  1. Ensuring that a position’s required skills are aligned with the experience each direct has.
  2. Demonstrating a commitment to current employees if they are willing to adapt and learn.
  3. Consistent adapting of your team’s objectives so that they always map back to the company’s goals.

The more you pinpoint the essential behaviors of your directs and coach them to develop these skills, the quicker and easier it will be to lead your organization. Directs will also be grateful that you’ve taken the time to study them, contribute to their success and raise their development bar. They will also know that the new expectations of the position require developing new skills. If they can’t/won’t develop those skills, the job will not be adapted to their skill level.

When was the last time you redeveloped your directs’ job descriptions? Do you have the right people in the right positions? Post a comment below to tell me about it. 

The Importance of Resolutions

one page of a calendarI’m writing this at the end of December 2015 and sitting outside determining 2016 Resolutions I’d like to share with you. I believe in resolutions as a way to give you a benchmark upon which to start things off right. Whether your resolutions are 100% kept or not, it’s important to make them.

Why Have Resolutions?

Resolutions declare a new way of being and acting. They say to the world, “this is how I’ll operate this year, this is my intention.” To strengthen your adherence to them, share them with your family/friends. Make them public, so to speak. Ask friends, family and associates for their support. It’s good for you and it inspires others.

To that end, here are my resolutions for 2016.

Listen First, Speak Second

I’ve often blogged about the importance of listening. I’m always amazed at how forthcoming people are when I forge a climate of interest in them. The more they share, the more I’m able to offer coaching that’s in-line with their desires.

Be Grateful

I start my day thinking of twenty people/aspects of my life I’m grateful for. This transforms my energy and prepares me for my day. Being grateful for what you have and for those with whom you share it is a great character trait. So, I will continue my daily practice of consciously being grateful.

Make Lemonade Out of Lemons

I’ve learned from my wife, Ellen, that life often serves you lemons. The miracle is turning these foibles/challenges into lemonade. It starts with your declaration to do this, once you’ve declared it you can then manage the challenge in a positive-solution way. I’ll focus this year even more on how to take those challenges and make them work for me and my clients. Let’s all raise a glass of lemonade. Cheers!

Over-communicate with Clients

Over communicating says I’m committed to partnering with you. The more you edify your client/stakeholder, the more receptive they’ll be to your ideas/recommendations.

If you wish to, please share you top resolutions with me so that I can support you in your goals. In the meantime, I wish you the best of success, prosperity and fulfillment in 2016!

Time for Giving and Acknowledging

christmas-star-1420864-639x953In this blessed holiday season there is a lot to be grateful for as I’ve blogged about in the past. It’s also the time to acknowledge people.

Assess Your Relationships

From clients to associates, take a moment to assess this year’s relationships with people you’re close to professionally. Assess their importance to you, how your year has been helped by them and how you’ve grown by associating with them.

Personally Acknowledge

Then, formulate a specific, personalized acknowledgement to them. It can be as simple as “thanks for all our work together this year, especially on the X project. It’s been a lot of fun and very successful,’ to “thanks for all your trust and confidence, our work together developing your value proposition has been very fulfilling; we’ve made a great difference together.”

These acknowledgements make-a-difference. They say to someone; “you’re important to me, and here’s why.”

Remember the expression; “Turns go around.” This applies here. The goodwill you’re providing will come back to you so, it’s smart to seed the clouds now.

Thank You!

And with that, I want to thank you for reading my blog this year. I wish I could thank you individually, as I’ve suggested above. But for now, let it suffice that the feedback you’ve provided has helped me stay focused on providing useful content to help you navigate the intricacies of your career and leadership. I wish you a very happy holiday season!

Navigating the Labyrinth of Success

front of small sailboat heading towards land in distanceThe great Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset once said:

“We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, “here and now,” without any postponement. Life is fired at us point blank.”

Understanding this truism, the challenge for all of us is to remain effective, confident and grounded sailing through the labyrinth of life. This can most readily be applied to when challenges interrupt or derail our success.

Step Away to Gain Clarity

One way to do this is to maintain perspective with life’s crosswinds. A good captain not only feels the wind as it’s blowing but, sees the wind as it is approaching, reading a multitude of signals.

When you find yourself in a stressful situation, put yourself in another boat, so to speak. Look at what you are doing, and that of your crew, from an outside perspective. Are your righting the ship or getting it further off course? Is it your course that needs adjusting? Perhaps a crew member is not pulling his/her weight. Maybe outside forces are creating obstacles that could be sending you towards the rocks.

When you can step out of your role as leader and see the whole picture, you’ll gain “choice” in how you comport yourself to resolve the situation versus reacting to it involuntarily.

After taking a step back, what is a situation you can now see more clearly? Share it in the comments. Thanks! – sg

Giving Thanks at Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!

With so much occurring in our world today, I am finding that this is a special year to take stock for all the things for which I am thankful. Call it putting the “thanks” back in Thanksgiving.

Most mornings begin for me with giving thanks for twenty things in my life that I’m grateful for. I do this to set my energy for the day, try it!

This process alters my “come-from” each morning. Rather than focusing on things I’m concerned about, I shift my focus to what I’m grateful for.

Here’s my Grateful List for today:

  • My health
  • My family’s health
  • Ellen’s love
  • My career
  • My friends who stand by me and support me
  • Constantly learning
  • Growing with clients
  • The honor of shaping executive’s behavior
  • Laughing and learning simultaneously
  • Our vacations
  • My clients candor
  • My clients trust in my coaching
  • My business associates that streamlined my business
  • My coaches that keep me clear of mind
  • My trainer who keeps me fit
  • Being referred by clients
  • Acknowledgement from my blogging efforts
  • Setting and keeping my goals in life
  • Listening without any bias
  • Being approachable and curious with people

In keeping with the season, take a few minutes and list the things in your life for which you are grateful. I bet you will easily come up with more than 20. It’s a great way to celebrate life and re-engage with the world around you.

Oh…one last one for me…I’m truly grateful that you have taken the time to read this post. Happy Thanksgiving!

Be Smart: Plan NOW for 2016!

Smart companies look to the future long before it arrives. Now is the time to do that for 2016.

I have the unique pleasure of coaching forward-thinking CEOs and COOs as they lead their respective organizations. They are seizing this time of the year to ultra-focus on 2016. We are discussing how to marshal their teams to be consummately effective and strategic in there business development/selling efforts. Are you having those conversations yet?

At this time of year, it’s important to remember and heed the great selling adage: “Nothing happens in life until someone sells something to someone.” Leaders who know this, act on it with expedience. They realize they need to have their management teams as focused on 2016 as they are, it takes a village.

Planning Questions to Ask for 2016

Planning for the new year starts with asking some key questions. Answer these questions with your leadership teams to gain a clear picture of where they are, and where they need to be in 2016.

  • Where are we now relative to our competitive set?
  • What culture must we forge in 2016?
  • How effect have we been in our internal communication efforts?/What must we strengthen?
  • What must we measure to produce the goals we’ve established?
  • How will we remain a team throughout 2016?
  • What must our constituents embrace with our value propositions?

There is nothing more productive than talking through these important questions and establishing tactical action plans to achieve them. It’s not too late…start now to get a jump on 2016. Make it a great year by being in control and focused. It makes a big difference!

What’s your #1 goal for 2016? Share it in the comments below. Thanks! 

Five Steps for Introducing Yourself

number-five-redYou might be surprised to realize that how you introduce yourself makes a big difference with people. In my coaching assignments, I’ve observed executives either going through the motions introducing themselves to people/clients or meaning it and linking their introduction to the excitement of the meeting.

Setting the Tone

As we’ve spoken about before; people buy people first, product second. What this means during one’s introduction is that HOW you introduce yourself and WHY you’re jazzed to be there can make all the difference in the world. You get to set the “tone” for the meeting.

That’s why its important. Lets break this down a bit.

Five Steps for Introducing Yourself

Step #1: Do your homework
Know who’s attending the meeting. Having a little knowledge about who you are introducing yourself to will give you confidence in your initial contact with them.

Step #2: Understand why is the meeting important to the attendees
Yes, be clear on the importance of the meeting to you but, simultaneously know what’s important to your attendees. What’s keeping them up at night? What are their challenges?

Step #3: Find the Value for Them
Genuinely link the value of the meeting for yourself. Hint: If you’re not excited about it, your attendees won’t be either.

Step #4: Be Clear and Direct
Write out your introduction to be confident and clear. Name, background, relationship to the subject at hand and why your excited to part of the meeting. Remember, you are setting the tone and you are establishing a level of trust right from the start.

Step #5: Be Engaging
Deliver it like you mean it, as a host in a welcoming fashion. It makes a difference and credentials you as a professional. Sure, maybe they aren’t completely engaged yet but if YOU aren’t, you have no chance of succeeding in your encounter with them.

Try these steps at the next meeting you host. Let me know how it goes!