It's Not Micromanaging

Do Employees Say You're Micromanaging Them?

Ever had an employee whose inner child sets you on your heels when they say "you're micro managing me"?

Here's a basketball analogy that you can use to differentiate micromanaging from what you're really doing.

The Right Approach to Practice Optimizes Chances to Win

The best coach/manager leadership persona has vision to structure the team and design a style of play that integrates cohesive rhythm on offense with intensive continuity on defense by players who execute as a seamless unit through teamwork and communication.

The coaching staff avoids ambiguity by breaking down each play in order to transform goals into individual responsibilities and specific steps.  Multidimensional, skilled players fit this style of play each season.  They have strong fundamentals [shoot, pass, dribble, create floor balance, move the ball, move without the ball, exploit mismatches, know when to dish or shoot].

Professionals welcome the opportunity to participate in hours of film sessions listening to coaches and team mates candidly criticize their game and identify opportunities to improve their game.  Imagine if they viewed this as micromanaging?

Customers Not Responsible for Your Quota

 

"What can you do to close this sale before the end of the month?

We need this in order to make our quota."

Don't introduce incentives or pressure the customer to sign because it's in your best interest.

Bad things will result if you venture outside the boundaries of making sure that all commitments are up to date [yours, your team's and the buyer's team]. Also logical next steps to manage the opportunity to closure must be mapped out.

By interrupting the natural flow, you will reduce the profitability of the sale, mar the customer relationship and create inefficiencies for your sales reps who need to be working on other opportunities and relationships.

Leverage a sales opportunity's sales cycle. Strengthen the relationship and create an above the funnel entry for the next opportunity.  That's the essence of smart account management.

Sales Rep Optimism - Key to Winning

After watching today's 5-minute video on SellingPower.com, I thought about the psychologist's one-sided premise. I'd like to present Side B to complement his hypothesis.  He took the employer-centric view because he wants to sell candidate evaluation services.  He suggests that companies must look for people who have optimism built into their DNA because it can't be taught.  I agree, but I also believe that there are company-centric and transactionally oriented companies like Oracle, HP, EMC, Sprint, Salesforce.com and many others that cause sales reps who are naturally optimistic to suppress this trait because they just can bring themselves to opt-in.

It's likely that an innately optimistic sales person with the necessary professional and technical skills along with a natural competitive drive will produce average results if their company does not possess its own DNA traits that build employee and customer allegiance.  Otherwise, sales reps won't commit their personal resources, only their time and physical energy.  Yuck!

New Paradigm Overexposes Kodak

In the early 1990's who could have imagined that Canon Sure Shots, Blackberries, iPhones and iPads would be looming on the horizon?

Market leaders manage their dynamic product portfolios to keep pace with trends so that new paradigms aren't killers.

Kodak took its eye off the mark.  Now, it will file for Chapter 11 because there remains only small well-defined niches for its best-in-class traditional products.  In fact, in order to raise cash, there's talk about Kodak selling digital imaging patent rights.

Who is being held accountable for all those grandmothers whose shares of Kodak have dropped from $6 to $.75 per share ?  Who was in charge when the paradigm shift began?

Kodak was unwilling to respond to the paradigm shift that wrecked its dynasty.  The same fate sounded the death knell for many product-centric leaders. Polaroid is mostly in the past.  Digital Equipment didn't want to cannibalize its minicomputer business. Tektronix thought its proprietary hi-res graphics technology could never be topped.  Buggy whip manufacturers didn't recognize that they were in the transportation business.

What a great case study for innovators.

Advertisers Use Mediocre Content

If you study "product-centric" ads, you'll notice the same trite phrases and buzz words that everyone else uses. They don't do a good job of setting themselves apart from all the rest.

Most likely, the media vendor, whose end game is to run the ad [TV, Radio, Print ...], would prefer that their clients provide the content, but most of their clients don't have a content portfolio for them to draw upon.  So, the media vendor scrambles to author content that doesn't differentiate their client from others who are hoping that an undifferentiated market will "buy my stuff".

If you haven't taken the time to continually update your content portfolio to be aligned with your marketing and business development strategy, you are making a big mistake because you won't be able to create a differentiating theme for a well-defined audience and produce measurable results for the call to action you've set as your goal for every promotional campaign.

Deductive Advertising Is Better

Don't invest in inductive advertising [here's my product - figure out what you can do with it].

Instead, only invest in deductive advertising [if you have this problem or opportunity, then this solution is right for you].

Handwritten cards trump e-cards

I don't pay much attention to the growing number of holiday e-cards that I receive from companies or people that have me on their email list. This is an impersonal mass mailing by vendors that go through the motions by using a no effort approach to sending the same e-card to everyone.

However, I read every word in a personally written holiday card.

I consider other types of e-cards such as birthdays or customer anniversaries as nice to receive.  For these I know that their system differentiates me from all the rest of its list.