better business – Page 3

Manage Well: Reasonable Price and Trusted Service

If I can do this for a reasonable price, will you do the business with me?

The executive and manager establish thought pattern and policy among service and sales and customer. Go for reasonable price business. The bid mentality prevalent in many industries is predicated on being short changed in a transaction. Reasonable price is predicated on trust, loyalty, and commitment to the good of the customer. Over time, a reasonable price relationship delivers the best product for a customer at the best price. Excess people time, unwanted and mismatched goods and services and mistakes decrease. Major cost savings are engaged.

Meet A Need: Ask this question when working with “bid” mentality buyers before you haggle on pennies. The question digs to the real trust involved in the transaction. The question reveals your heart to do the best work for the client at a reasonable cost according to their needs.

Ask this question when working with a trusted client, who has come to you with a bid.

Rule of Respect: Ask this question as a rule of respect and many clients will engage business with you based on trust and your commitment to reasonable pricing and exceptional service. Both of you will save money as trust is a faster transaction, requires less people involved on both ends, and over time ends up in a continuing lowering of cost based on watching out for the good of your client.

Are You Being Real? Are you coming to me with this business in order to justify an action with someone else on which you have already decided? Are you bringing this to me as an honest opportunity with a fair chance for me to do the business? Do I have a chance to establish a trusted relationship with you for other business?

Are You Still With Me? For the existing client, this could lead to other questions. Maybe they have lost some trust due to a miscommunication. Maybe someone has opened a question in their mind about you and your team that needs answered. Maybe they are just feeling a little neglected or want to express some freedom. It is worth asking.

Engage The Heart of Service: Many internal organization providers look to get “right of first refusal” or “right to do business within a fixed percentage”. It amounts to the same question only if your heart of service is fully engaged. If you are looking to force someone to do business with you through top down edict, they will mistrust you and find an alternate path. Frustration and lack of liberty in decision making breeds corruption and creative means of policy avoidance.

Reality Check: One client continually asked for pricing. This habit was costing us and them. The cost of estimating many times was more than the total price of the transaction. They were losing money bidding the items and we were losing money estimating minute work orders. Our customer service team engaged the “reasonable price” approach. Since the customer was familiar with our pricing through many transactions, they began to say yes. This alone cut four or five phone calls out of each transaction. Then they just moved to ordering with reasonable price expectation. This cut hours of their time and our time out of each order and moved orders into the production queue many days faster as approvals accompanied the initial request. People focused on quality and clarity and exactness in delivery instead of pennies. This customer is a customer for life in a trusted relationship based on reasonable price.

Build business better. Let me help you. Phil 405-388-8037 phil@shepherdok.com

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Presence Communicates Production Priority

Managers and leaders communicate priority by where they spend their time. Production teams make America happen. A walk through a production press room tells the workers they are important and what they do is important. Stopping by the front desk in the morning and looking the receptionist in the eye followed by a specific word of appreciation tells the company that guests are important. Openly discussing decisions and gaining feedback from the team along the way gives them a stake. Presence communicates production priority.

30 years of overseeing production teams 24/7 leaves me with a little insight on helping a shift through their day. Every shift is a day in itself. Each one needs right attention and priority.

Every meeting you attend, every walk down the hallway, every lunch in public communicates your deepest heart. You are being watched. An encouraging word, a kind action, opening a door for someone else, or a playful interchange all communicate compassion and priority.

An ancient proverb tells us to not muzzle the oxen as they tread grain. One visual picture we draw is of an ox pulling along in a field being harvested. He needs to munch a little every once in a while. He needs to gain benefit while working, not just at the end of the season. Your presence and encouragement is one of the daily benefits you can give with little cost and great results. Corporate parties, big meetings and bonuses help. They can never replace personal attention and involvement. Presence communicates production priority every day and communicates concern for the people.

Early In The Day Sets A Tone
A manager starts the day for work teams. A little whistle up the hallway in the morning tells the team it is a bright day. P lesant greetings communicate positive expectation and confidence. It is not just physical presence but emotional engagement that builds a productive team of individuals bound by mission.

Middle Of The Day Stimulates
By mid day in a production crew, sales team, customer service group, or any other set of individuals bound by mission, there have been problems. Opportunity to turn dour has come many times by noon. This is one perfect moment to inspire and prioritized. Where you spend the last minutes before lunch tells the team where to focus.

A purposeful and thoughtful communication to key team members on priority projects can keep problems from dominating. Customer service needs to keep moving while issues are resolved. Down equipment needs attended. Production schedules may need adjusted considering current availability. Sales teams may need a pep talk to overcome any weight of complaints.

End Of The Day Rules Over Tides
By the end of a good day, there have been powerful moments and struggling moments. Tides have pressed against the team attempting to bring them to defeat. They need presence. They need reinforcement that the customer is king and the team is in your heart. You need to let them know you are one their side. Before you go home, visit the oncoming team and give them the same whistling start you gave the first team.

Summary: Presence communicates production priority. Production is the ox of your company. Sales must happen. Production must run seamless. An ancient proverb tells us to not muzzle the ox as he treads the grain. Consider your time and attention and presence as unmuzzling the oxen. Invest in your people. They are the strength of the company.

Be Busy Building Better Business. Have a Great Day!

Phil

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You can join for golf afterwards, if you would like. But, I need you to join me for lunch.

You can sponsor more, but, I need you to join me for lunch.

Fix The Plumbing

Don’t hand your customer toilet paper for a messy problem. Fix the plumbing.

Creative managers create solutions alongside staff. Duct tape and WD40 and vise grips may be all that is needed to do small jobs around the house. That won’t do in a productive and viable business. You need to fix the plumbing. You need to eliminate the repeating problem. You need to take responsibility instead of putting the issue in the customer’s hands. Don’t make them clean it up.

Good service management attends to a few items. There are incidents and service requests, problems and changes. Keep clarity between items. Address appropriately.

Incidents and Service Requests: These two items make up the bulk of customer service.

A service request is what we live to do. A customer asks for a product or service to be delivered. So do it. Do it with excellence and alacrity. Do it with pizzazz and punctuality. Do it. A service request may ask for an altered product or service or a new product or service. That means we have to jump into the area of change and that is another manage well article.

An incident is what we wish would never happen. While delivering a product or service, something is not right. Color is too light. The size is too big. The pizza came with pepperoni instead of black olives. The customer wanted 250 and we delivered 1000. While working with a client, every other email returned an error. My service provider was experiencing incidents. Thankfully they cleared the issue, but not before my customer had to wait extra minutes waiting on reports to be delivered as I had promised. Incidents need to be restored to proper service levels immediately and product or service delivered.

Problems and Changes: Confuse these and your customers will suffer unreasonable delays and constant delivery disruption.

Problems are incidents that won’t go away until a change is installed or a fix applied. A fix is just a fancy name for a change. When the plumbing backed up into my house through the shower drain, it impressed me something was tragically wrong. All the paper towels and mop buckets would not resolve this. When a problems occurs you need to look for root cause of the issue and determine a resolution or change to be made to stop the incidents from coming back. The sewer main had collapsed at the saddle in my back yard blocking all drainage from the house. The city came, sent cameras down the lines, and claimed it was an incident, it was my incident, and they were going home. I don’t think so. A friend and I dug seven foot deep in my back yard until we found the collapsed connection leading to the major collapsed connection. The city came back and repaired at much expense and then paid to restore my house to right order. Their paper towel and toilet paper solution was not going to fix my backhoe and major plumbing problem. Full repair and restoration was needed. The root cause had to be determined and a change made to get us back on track.

Changes move the nature of the service into a different order. Replacing the main saddle in my back yard not only restored right water flow out of the house, it took care of a sinkhole that could have swallowed one of my children. No one knew the sink hole existed until we dug up the yard. There were bigger problems looming that the change repaired. Changes fix things for good. Not necessarily forever, but for good. And they have potential to adjust the nature of the product or service. By handing me a toilet paper solution the city was setting us all up for some major pain.

Kudos for the city. The next time I had a city potential issue, the service manager came out, inspected, found a crack in the line feeding water to my house, repaired it, installed a new meter, and made me a happy man. It was a different experience and one for which I am grateful. Oh, they also reversed charges on my water bill even though the leak appeared to be in my pipe not the city pipe. That is service. They took responsibility for a debatable item and went an extra step. I love my city’s service.
Summary: Get your customer back to service as rapidly as possible. And then look deeper to determine if a problem exists that will cause service to be impacted again. Find the root and fix the plumbing. Work on your shop processes. Look for machine malfunctions. Examine reporting routines. Do whatever it takes to eliminate repeating incidents. Your customer will appreciate. Your business will grow.

Be Busy Building Better Business Have a Great Day!

Phil

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I need your help. Looking for plumbers. We are building a great team at the National Association for Family Ministries. Fathers.com and grandkidsmatter.com are building a side hustle team that love people and love team. You will love the product. It is exciting and all profits go to support families. Your commissions are ample and more. Lifetime residuals. No license required. I and the national team are your trainers.

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The Three Hats Of A Mature Manager – Syncing Yourself For The Next Step

Don’t read this if you are under 35. It won’t make much sense. Then again, if you read and understand it, you can improve your ability to work well with mature managers.

Professionals are intentionally developed. Through involvement in projects and initiatives and departments through your career, the best of who you are is evident. There is a skill to gaining enjoyment and value out of who you are. There is an art to applying that value to your daily business endeavors. You can be the best you, doing the most fit assignments and have a great amount of fun. Or not. Choose. Make sure you consider your Three Hats before you choose. Be you.

A friend reminded me that people focus on your weaknesses because they struggle with allowing your strengths. People are like that. They pick at what they don’t understand in the most negative ways. But you don’t have to let pickiness impact your confidence and connection. You just need to work on your Three Hats.

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day,Thou canst not then be false to any man

William Shakespeare

Three Fields of Play

First, let’s take a look at three fields of play. Then we can talk about the Three Hats.

Play to your strength. You know this. Do what you do best. But, you need to really know what that is. Strength can be as limiting as weakness if not tamed. A hard-nosed, goal-driven executive can find herself isolated by dwelling too strong on this strength. Soften the edges of your game. Don’t dominate the play, just lead with excellence. People can mistake strength for rigidity. That won’t help you or others.

Cover your weakness. Of course you have them. You’ve found them haunting you every turn of your career. Six courses of style management can’t change these core items of who you are. As a manager, I’ve always had to focus hard on listening. Why? I’m 50+% deaf since birth. So, I arrange my office for optimum face to face contact and limit noise interference. People are usually amazed when I tell them about my limitation as I’ve mastered masking through sitting in middle spots in conferences and making sure I get directly across from those I expect to be key stakeholders in any meeting. What is yours? Find a cover. Bad note taker? Make sure a good one gets that assignment in every meeting. Take double notes. Find a cover.

Build disciplines. There are some skills that just have to be at a good level whether they are a weakness or not in your specific regimen. Know what they are and find a way to strengthen them. It is not an option to be weak in an area that must be strong. Sorry, it is tough, but you need to fix it. If promptness is hard for you, you must repair. If attentiveness is hard for you, you must repair. You must.

Three Hats

So what the heck am I talking about, Three Hats? Each of us over time discovers from 3-5 core areas of expertise. For me it is operational excellence, communication, and people development. After working multiple companies in multiple industries, these items just keep coming back on top. Sure, I have many skills and abilities like project management and administration and meeting management and facilitating brainstorming,, and marketing, and sales, and, and, and… But what are the Three Hats that never come off no matter what I am doing? Find yours. Know them. Develop.

Hat One: This is your core passion. When you get up in the morning, what gets you started? At the end of the day, what are you thinking? What is that core? For me? People development. I love to see people grow.

Hat Two: This is your core performance. Okay, when you example “velocity”, where does it happen. Velocity is the ability to do the right thing at the right time that advances you and everyone around you and the business. For me? Operational excellence. Seeing how to adjust an operation to perform the charter is a natural for me and advances the organization.

Hat Three: This is the core producer. This is the trait that makes the other two shine. What is it that you do so well that enables core performance and passion to be energized? This is all about ‘vitality’. This puts energy into the performance and keeps you engaged long after others would give up. This secret brings it all together for you. I love encouraging with communication and clarifying with communication and setting vision with communication. Communication enables my passion and let’s others walk along with operations.

When your Three Hats are working well they become one hat. The brim, the bill, and the band form one unit for others to see and appreciate. That maturity developed and seen in you can be applied to your next career steps in the position you have or the one you are getting ready to have. Just make sure the hat fits before you engage.

Want To Develop Yourself and Your Business?

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Busting Barriers: Two Tips To Activate Leadership In Others

Phil Larson, Director Shepherd Consulting and Community Transformation Initiative

Every leader is challenged to develop leadership in key followers. It is frustrating to look out and yearn for true leadership in our team. Yet, we find that people today don’t stay with any company for any length of time. Leadership takes time. You can get long term commitment. It is possible. You have to do things differently.

One of the greatest managers of all history, Solomon, put it this way in his comprehensive book on managing life, relationships, business, and government, Proverbs:

To know wisdom and instruction,
To perceive the words of understanding,

To receive the instruction of wisdom,
Justice, judgment, and equity;
To give prudence to the simple,
To the young man knowledge and discretion—

Good Goals: Seems like a good objective. For centuries others have read Solomon’s snippets of wisdom. Solomon transmitted what he knew to others that were managing his affairs.

Sun Tzu attempted the same objective from the Chinese war lord perspective and penned, The Art of War. It really is much more about living than dying. It is about managing and relationships in a turbulent society. He was intent in training others.

Others have done the same. My bookshelf is full of snippet books from great managers and leaders. The lessons of great men and women can give us guidance in tough situations.

Time Counts: But, if no one stays the task to work out the wisdom and be developed in the fine nuances, you simply lose your investment. They move on and build another business that may in fact take away from your business. Astute business managers are not happy when they lose the value of an investment in either people or property. People are not property. They have wills and emotions and desires and must be treated differently.

Tip One:

Be Loyal: Handle Conflict Up Front and Fast The common business practice of today is to demand loyalty from staff, yet make decisions without being loyal to them and their families and lives. Making the legal decision is not always a loyal decision. Listening to accusations and gossip concerning staff without direct clarification and consultation is not a position of loyalty but fear and low self-confidence and politicking of the negative kind.

“The first job of a leader—at work or at home—is to inspire trust. It’s to bring out the best in people by entrusting them with meaningful stewardships, and to create an environment in which high-trust interaction inspires creativity and possibility.” ― Stephen M.R. Covey, The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything

Greatness: A great leader for whom I worked early in my career came into my office with an anonymous letter. It accused me of some indiscretions. The letter had gone to the president of the company. We had been in a turnaround organization situation where hard decisions were being made daily. Of course people were not in 100% agreement. Of course people are people. The prior management of the company had been prone to politics and finger pointing. Everyone knew that and knew how to trip the wires to get what they wanted. This new management had better integrity; otherwise, I would not be working for them.

Openers: The leader’s opening comment set the stage. “Phil, before you read the letter you need to know that both the CFO and I told the president that this does not sound like you.” He started from a position of loyalty and honesty and open communication. We discussed the contents, who might have sent it, why they might have sent it, was there anything I needed to adjust in managing, and moved on. The company came out of a chapter 11 situation in record time and we all enjoyed our time together. Loyalty and trust were the words of the day and the owners received great benefit. I would go to work beside this man again in a minute if the opportunity arose that was mutually beneficial.

Dear Failure, I am writing today…. Failure on this point costs dearly. Typical management style would have been to have secreted the letter into the unofficial personnel file, brooded over the contents, discussed it with others, and promoted politics. That is how most organizations roll. Yes, you do. Admit it and quit it. Little birds leak that style into the hallways and the entire organization suffers loss of key staff at the most inopportune moments. Disloyal behavior in the board room promotes disloyal behavior at the point of customer contact. It is not a secret. Get real and get honest.

Tip Two:

Go Ahead And Share Insights: All of us have insights gained in leadership. Most of us hold them close to the chest and make upcoming leaders dig them out like some buried treasure. Why are you leaving leadership undeveloped by forcing them to guess? Are you afraid you are wrong about what you know is right? Take a few minutes every day to intentionally leak leadership.

An Amazing Gift: Last year my team brought me an amazing gift. It was thirty-one leadership wisdoms they had learned from me over the course of the prior three years. They could repeat them and could apply them. They made them into a flip calendar. I was amazed and humbled. It shocked me that they had discerned so willingly tips of leadership and management and relationship and had integrated them into their work and home habits. Somehow, great leaders had taught me to be open with wisdom and it was building other leaders. Pass it on.

Starting Right: My mind goes back to my first assistant supervisor position. One day I went into the manager’s office somewhat nonchalantly for a meeting. He looked me direct in the eye from across his desk. “Phil, go get a pen and paper and come back. Don’t ever go into a meeting with a leader without expectation of receiving instruction, noting it, and being responsible to follow up.” Now, he probably said something different, but that is what he communicated. Wow! I listened and have repeated that wisdom hundreds of times to those for whom I’ve had responsibility to develop as leaders. Leak leadership. Do it intentionally.

To Work, Two Work: Do these two and you’ll increase your leadership impact. These are core items. They can guide you and prevent major mishaps. Sure, I can tell you stories of when I’ve violated them or seen others violate them and the destruction it caused. You know those stories. None of us are perfect. But perfect practice might just result in better performance as a leader, longer relationships with other leaders, and some real fun and satisfaction watching development of trusted leadership and sustained organizational progress.

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