This is How You KNOW You have Made it!!! Really Made it!
#1 Way you KNOW Your Business is Having an Impact!
You get copied.
That is RIGHT!
When your competitors start to copy what you are doing… you have made it!
Celebrate!
This is no time to get hung up on being copied. Don’t sweat the copies… remember, they are cheap copies at best.
Do your thing.
Keep going.
It is WORKING. Only the best are copied.
When I had a brick-and-mortar business our team would create products and services that really delivered value to our customers.
Once word was out in our market.
BOOM! We would be copied. Worse, competitors would offer the cheap
copy at half the price.
Initially this frustrated my team and me. We spent months developing programming and services only to have it offered at a lower price down the road.
Prospects and leads went down the road for the cheap copy. Then something interesting started too happy. They were back, eager to pay more money for the real deal.
Being copied confirms you are having an impact and creates a competitive advantage… once customers have had the cheap knock off… they are HAPPY to pay MORE for the real deal!
Let them copy you, it is the #1 Way you KNOW Your Business is Having an Impact!
You have to have Trust to work from home. Trust is the top concern for employers that find their work force now working remotely.
This is a legitimate concern. What are they paying for? Is the staff working? Are they doing other things while getting paid?
Putting the employer at ease is simple. Just demonstrate you can be trusted to work from home.
A good employer will communicate what is expected of you. They will indicate how your progress will be measured. As long as you are “taking care of business” there should be no issue.
Deliver what is expected and there is reason for them to trust you.
Not everyone will be able to work from home. Some will break the trust.
The temptation of EVERYTHING at home will prevent any work to ever get done.
Streaming the next trendy series, scrolling the internet, sitting in the yard with the neighbor (also working from home) and gaming are all PITFALLS.
Pitfalls can cost your job in the short-term. Long-term as things return to normal you may never be allowed to work occasionally form home.
Build the trust by doing and avoid the pitfalls and you will be trusted to work from home.
Ergoteknix Incorporated provides business development consulting to small businesses so they can scale from 6-7 and 7-8 figures in annual sales.
Your job is to lead the team. The team is looking for you for direction.
For most this telecommuting and working from home is new unchartered territory.
The team is nervous, unsure of things and outright scared.
It is your job to lead. Quality leadership will drive business in the right direction.
Leadership Rule 1
Trust. You have to trust the employees. Give them a chance. This working from home thing is new for them. They are not going to take a check and sit on the couch all day…and if they do you failed by letting them on the team a long time ago.
Leadership Rule 2
Recognize the stress and challenge working from home presents to your team. Some are balancing, juggling and managing work, kids, e learning, pets and their household all while trying to get their work done.
Leadership Rule 3
Employees must have a clear understanding of what is expected of them. Shared with them the goals and objectives they need to accomplish while working from home. No surprises for the leader or the team.
Leadership Rule 4
Performance needs to be measured. All parties need to understand how this measurement is going to be done. What are the key performance indicators, metrics and the performance ruler that will be used to measure Team Performance?
Leadership Rule 5
Productive over busy, always! As a leader do NOT make the mistake of creating a culture where you team is at home being busy. Instead create a culture where the team at home is PRODUCTIVE! Busy does NOT equal productive.
EPIC Failure is looking for your team to be busy. Busy does not drive the business forward. Period!
Leadership Rule 6
If you are constantly looking for activity for the sake of activity by your team online…. You failed. Don’t get lost and hung up what the team is doing every hour of the workday. Focus instead on Number 5 above.
Leadership Rule 7
Communicate. Schedule times to communicate one on one and as a group or department with your team. Thanks to technology you can leverage one of the video communication platforms and hold group meetings. Schedule times pro-actively and hold them consistently. For example, every Wednesday at 1:00 PM. Have an agenda, open with each team member sharing something positive, cover the progress to goals, ask for feedback and input and THANK YOUR TEAM!
These 7 Rules will help you be an effective leader. The result, a positive impact on business performance. Everything from profits, to total revenue and to MORAL of your TEAM will improve!
Ergoteknix Incorporated provides business development consulting to small businesses so they can scale from 6-7 and 7-8 figures in annual sales.
9 Tips to Keep Your Employer Happy and Successfully Work from Home
Many are finding themselves working from home. Sounds great and even easy. It can be but it can also be a chaotic disaster.
Dogs will bark, kids will interrupt, doorbells will ring, the wash will need to be moved to the dryer and there will be days you mindlessly stare at the TV in the living room instead of working in your office. Chaos like this will happen when you work from home.
Here are 9 tips that will allow you to keep your employer happy and do a great job working from home. Plus, they will help you mange some of the chaos.
Number 1
Maintain a daily routine. If you got up early, went to the gym and showered then went to work. Keep the same routine. Set the alarm, wake up and start working at the same time every day.
Number 2
Get up shower and dress the part…. Start to work at your scheduled time ready to work like a professional. Compare and contrast this to rolling out of bed grabbing coffee and starting to work…. What quality of work are you likely to do if you just rolled out of bed? I assure you dressing the part means you will play the part as a work from home professional.
Number 3
Schedule a time for lunch and keep to it. Limit the lunch time to 30-60 minutes.
Number 4
Stay OUT of the fridge. If you are not constantly eating while physically at work, you should not be doing so at home.
Number 5
Avoid the traps of laundry, TV, social media, cleaning…. If you cannot multi-ask and do these things from the office or your place of employment you should be doing working from home. There are exceptions but be careful or you can quickly fall into the trap of losing the workday to doing things around the house day.
Number 6
Set boundaries for family and pets…. Yes, even pets. Make sure everyone understands that even though you are home you are working. Tend to pets when you are on breaks, at lunch and before/after you start working.
Number 7
Make sure you have a clear understanding of what your employer not only expects of you. This includes how performance and results will be measured.
Number 8
Execute and produce. Show up every day and get the job done.
Number 9
Your employer has to be able to trust you. As long as you are doing your job this will not be an issue.
Working from home will not be perfect. It does not have to be. As long as you get the job done your employer will be happy.
Plus, at some point this craziness will end and you may be able to continue to work from home part time or even full time.
Following and implementing these tips will help you be successful working from home.
Good luck…
Sometime ask me about working from home with a new puppy while on a sales call.
Ergoteknix Incorporated provides business development consulting to small businesses so they can scale from 6-7 and 7-8 figures in annual sales.
Leverage technology in the Sales Process and Scale Your Business Exponentially.
You can NOT rely on the phone to just ring!
In the past sales, marketing and advertising were different. Build a sales team. Have them make cold calls, set up booths at trade shows and attend a few golf outings. Very 1970 ish.
Schedule a “swing” every month or calendar quarter for a specific region. Get in the car and visits customers in that region. Pray for seat time in front of a decision maker and hope for a sale.
Make enough contacts, phone calls and customer visits and sales will be made. Even a small percentage of the cold calls will lead to sales.
Sales has always been a number game, and it always will be! Technology has evolved and changed the sales process and the sales cycle. Few companies have embraced this change.
Confirmation
At a recent industry trade show at McCormick Place in Chicago conversations with sales executives at large companies confirmed this.
More than one director of sales or executive said they wait for the phone to ring.
…“Wait for the phone to ring.” This company does over $100M in sales and that is the answer?
The phone does not just ring. If it did how do you scale? You can’t. If you can’t scale you cannot grow.
There is an opportunity for companies to leverage technology in their sales process. Early adopters will be able to scale their business development and will dominate their market.
“Old school” sales processes should not be discarded. They should be complimented with current technology.
Leveraging Technology
.com Analytics
Retargeting and Remarketing ads
In coming leads tracked, how many and how often
Contact info entered into a minable data base
Automated voice, SMS and email contact and follow up
Social Platforms
And more!
Systematically applying technology to the sales process drives sales and profits. It makes business development scalable.
Leverage technology in the Sales Process and Scale Your Business Exponentially.
You can NOT rely on the phone to just ring!
