All posts tagged: growth
You Can Take It With You
While the quote “you can’t take it with you” may apply to money and material possessions, managers must require that team members take with them their greatest asset to the job each day—responsibility. Leaders of organizations doing better than others are always insisting on consistent execution, and execution can only happen if everyone does their part, being responsible for their contribution.
For example, take two recruitment companies in the UK working on the same type of growth and improvement initiatives. One is gaining ground faster than the other as a result of a consistent requirement, enforced by leadership, of every person doing what is required each week. Both companies have smart leaders and talented people; one is simply doing better at holding people accountable for following through on what matters most, never accepting excuses and always allowing for improvement.
When it comes to personal responsibility, you not only can, but you must take it with you. This is one of the most important jobs of leaders—requiring that everyone play their part, do their part, or give up their seat to someone who will. Any leaders out there who are not doing this need to either step up or step out and let someone else take over who will do so consistently.
Who’s the Next Contestant?
Like a game show where it’s anyone’s guess who’s going to win, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to predict which companies are going to buy next. At any moment in time, only 3% of companies are buying from a staffing or recruitment firm. During that same moment, another 6% are shopping, comparing candidates, prices, or contracts.
Unless you have only one customer, no one is smart enough to accurately predict, all of the time, who’s going to give the next “yes.” That’s why achieving greater or faster growth for many branches, business units, and companies in our business is as simple as expanding the pool of contenders.
Who’s the next winning contestant in this game for talent? Actually, the better question is:
Is your sales team talking with enough of the right, qualified entrants?
Selling and Service – When Both Can Be Too Much of a Good Thing
Work-life balance is not the only equilibrium that need be of concern to business leaders. An imbalance between sales and service is the reason that most companies are not achieving their full potential. Even many of the best organizations that are growing at a rapid clip suffer from at least a slow drip of lost opportunity as a result of this asymmetry. To see a picture of this phenomenon, check out the process visual at the bottom of this post.
Strategies, tactics, and cultural factors each have an impact on the Sales Momentum or Service Momentum of a company. The good news is that momentum can be measured and rebalanced to create a sustainable system that continuously stimulates profitable growth.
Where to start? One of the five factors is the current level of effectiveness of your company. Answer the following questions or use my free online Effectiveness Audit.
- Are the revenues from any one customer more than 10% of your total revenues?
- Are your gross profits from your top ten customers more than 40% of your total gross profits?
- In the past year, did you find yourself doing less delegating when compared to the previous year?
- Do your salespeople struggle to meet or even exceed sales quotas?
- In comparing the past two years, are you spending more time on tactics versus strategy?
- Besides your sales efforts, does your company rely more on advertising and Internet marketing than on referrals?
- In comparing the past two years, have your gross profits shrunk?
- When your customers demand a rate or fee reduction, do you ever give in?
- Does technology ever interfere with efficiency?
- Do you struggle to retain at least 90% of your staff for at least five years or longer?
The more “yes” answers you have, the more that effectiveness, or lack of it, is a key factor in any imbalance in your sales and service systems. This is where to start—turning those “yes” answers into “no’s.”
Achieving Stimulative Symmetry will allow you to achieve higher profits more quickly and with less effort. What a wonderful contributor this can be to your work-life balance as you have more time to do things other than work!
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