5 Business Lessons Learned on an Inner City Police Ride-Along.
Filed under: Business Growth, Pittsburgh, Profitable Growth, Uncategorized
When Leadership Pittsburgh offered me the chance to witness live police work, I jumped at the chance and chose Pittsburgh’s highest crime zone on a Saturday night, graveyard shift. Arriving at midnight just hours after two murders in the precinct was jarring, but the sergeant’s calm, terse orders gave me no time to reflect. After roll call, I was introduced to my officer and we drove off in response to nonstop calls about gunshots, domestic violence, armed intruders, crack-addict beatings, 
fugitive surveillance and after-hour gang hangouts. Amid the adrenaline, false alarms, driving into forbidding alleys and criminal behaviors, I was struck at the incredible judgment an officer must have just to stay safe and work effectively. Here are 5 lessons I learned that apply to all our businesses.
1. Confidence is survival. Watching all the officers in action is a primer on courage. Every stop is dangerous, and one cop remarked that he feels there is a 60% chance he will be hurt or worse each shift. “You can’t show fear or you will be hurt on the job,” he said. “But you can be afraid and then you can confront it.” As business owners operating in risky times we all need to balance confidence and conviction with objectivity and perspective.
2. Fighting insurmountable odds means setting boundaries. When working as a team, officers must prioritize which 911 calls to cover first. Covering a horseshoe-shaped territory requires coordinating who’s first, second and third on the scene. This maximizes officer safety, response time, situation assessment and quick reassignment to the next call. How can and should your business respond to challenges and opportunities?
3. Errors of omission mean life or death. Errors of commission mean punishment. Forgetting which gangs, after-hours bars and meth labs are “running hot” spells certain trouble for an officer. Misjudging a domestic disturbance call can mean disciplinary action. Experience on the job enables an officer to categorize mistakes and make fewer and fewer of them. How does your staff make mistakes and react to your rules?
4. Work with what you have. Officers don’t let their lack of resources compromise their abilities. Old vehicles and communications technology are facts of life but texting and personal cell phones provide adequate work-arounds. As business owners, all of us are used to working without all that we need. Are you aware of all the ways your staff gets their jobs done?
5. Communicate, communicate, communicate! You can manage adrenaline and fear by checking with your teammates. It takes only ten seconds to get a second opinion or plan a better response from a trusted peer. How much trust has your staff built with and without you?
Police work in a crime zone is a study in watching expert human beings react and respond to symptoms of dangerous, intractable problems. Without the resources to resolve the root causes, these fine men and women learn how to rely on each other and stay alive so they can help whom they are able to as much as they can. Passing judgement on their performance without understanding the context for the decisions they make is impossible from a distance. As a business owner, the biggest lesson I took away from this unforgettable night is how critical it is to always gain and respect field knowledge from those who have it.
Thank you, Pittsburgh’s finest!
After WikiLeaks, Are Your Secrets Sacred?
Filed under: Business Growth, Profitable Growth, Top Line Growth, Uncategorized
Just as Coca Cola has its formula for Coke®, we business owners have our own “secret sauce.” Whether it’s our patents, trade secrets or unique methods, we have tricks of the trade we’ve perfected and protected after years of trial and error. After all it’s how we charge and justify the higher margins we need to survive and thrive.
But now, after WikiLeaks, if Bank of America is worried, certainly someone can steal and share your secrets. Just for a moment, assume the worst; that your product, service, or technology has just been published on the Internet (and your lawyer says you can’t sue and win.) What can or should you do?
If you have just seen your best-kept secrets published on-line, ask yourself:
- Are they really my secrets?
- How can/will others leverage the information?
- How can I exploit the situation?
Are they really my secrets? Have others discovered the same thing? In an on-line world where knowledge is doubling every ten years, chances another one of your six billion virtual neighbors may have come up with the same idea. Between vendors, employees and customers, any number of individuals could have enabled someone else to stumble on to a similar concept. Perhaps your idea isn’t that new or different any more (which is why patents expire after 17 years.)
How can/will others leverage my information? They probably can’t. Having the same information rarely enables someone else to use it as well as you do. Remember that what makes you special and different as a small business owner is your Best and Highest Use®. What your business is good at, likes doing and has been valued for doing is unique and no one can do anything as well or just like you do it. You are probably pretty safe and sound for the time being.
How can I exploit the situation? You can snatch victory from defeat if you can turn your problem into an opportunity. Remember, imitation is the best form of flattery. First of all if you see that your idea is gaining traction, put your energy into making sure everyone knows it was your idea and then:
1. Market your business as the original and authentic provider of the product or service. The more companies knock off Apple’s products, the more valuable Apple’s are.
2. Re-brand some of your products as scarce if your original ones are commodities. Airlines now sell “extra legroom seats” after seeing that frequent flyers chose bulkhead rows when they couldn’t get upgraded to first class.
3. Re-version your services to meet current and evolving needs. When will restaurants feature “take-home food services in microwavable, servable and green packaging?” After creating special “curbside” parking spaces, isn’t this the next logical step?
Let’s face it; sooner or later we are all going to be “Wikileaked.” Just as the US State Department will survive their breach, so can you. The key is to be ready when it happens and exploit and leverage your thief’s actions to your own advantage!
Next Year Will Be Different, You Promise?
Filed under: Business Growth, Profitable Growth, Top Line Growth, Uncategorized
Just as predictably as the Times Square ball will drop, on New Year’s Eve, both consumers and business owners will make resolutions. Consumers will resolve to diet and exercise and business owners to hunker down and work on their business, wealth and lifestyle. Too often, the results for both consumers and business owners turn out the same:
January – March: Consumers starts personal regimen. Owner pushes him/herself and staff to work harder in the business to get better results.
April-June: Consumer loses some weight and prepares for warm weather. Business owner gets frustrated as current level of activity isn’t generating better results. Feels like Groundhog Day.
July-September: Distractions of summer vacations and increased activity distract both the consumer and business owner alike from their missions of getting in better shape.
October-December: Consumers get very busy going back to work, school and preparing for the holidays. Business works even harder to “save the year” by having a great 4th Quarter.
And then it’s New Year’s Eve again! Time for new resolutions!
I am no role model for fixing consumer behavior, but I have seen the following work for business owners who are ready to break out of their cycles:
Whenever your recession (and your customers’) started and regardless of whether your business is a leading or lagging indicator of a recession, it doesn’t matter when you’re in the middle of one. For many of us coping with this recession has been a lot like going through the four phases of loss namely denial, anger, self pity and acceptance. In this era, many of us are moving into acceptance of our new reality and are ready to take steps to make the best of our gifts and blessings. The more we reflect on the last few decades, the more we realize how much better and smarter we could have been when times were easier and now know that getting ever better and smarter is the difference between success and failure. In our recession there seems to be a fine line between success and failure. Success may be defined as not failing. And failure can come from simply or deviating from success. As we consider our circumstances and recognize that our business lives must go on, what can we do to grow and save our businesses during these times?
Here are three areas you need to triage, four areas where you should respond and three strategies on how to profit during these times.
Three Areas You Need To Triage.
Triage, when ER doctors and nurses determine who lives, who dies and who will be healed later, is exactly the right approach to take in your business as do in their jobs. Instead of patients you will be triaging your customers, projects and cash.
1. Triage your customer relationships.
o It’s going to be critical to decide which customers you can keep, which ones you need to renegotiate terms with.
o Fire your unprofitable or difficult customers now and use great discretion in choosing the prospects to pursue. Someone else may have fired them first.
o Most companies start first by providing extra value and service to their incumbent customers. During these times, their loyalty and fear of switching will keep them close to you if you stay close to them.
2. Reevaluate ongoing projects.
o Take a hard look at what you’re working on. Kill any project with an unclear payback or one, which will consume more resources than will plausibly make in the next 36 months.
o Restructure any project that’s critical but has no clear payback, accountabilities or resources.
o Prioritize and focus on completing any project with the ability to enhance revenue, reduce costs or protect wealth.
3. Manage your cash.
o With liquidity likely to be scarce at best, hoard what you have. Use cash as a reward for vendors, employees and others who are sacrificing for you or your goals.
o Use your cash or lack of it as a weapon in dealing with companies and customers who rely on you and previously expected you to finance receivables.
Four areas where you should respond.
Once you have triaged your customers, projects and cash, look to four areas where you can respond to your new reality. These are:
1. Price for profit and to avoid loss.
o Price your products and services in terms of the value they not only provide to your customers but how they help your customer’s customers profit. Learn where and how your products make others money and align your pricing with theirs.
o Where you must make sizable investments in raw materials, ensure your pricing terms allow you to recoup your investment as soon as you’ve made it.
o Reward your customer’s liquidity with favorable pricing. Those who can pay you up front deserve discounts.
o Finally, use your pricing to protect yourself from those who exploit you. Immediately raise prices on customers who pay slowly. Create collection terms for poor payment just as you would offer good terms for fast payment.
2. Manage your credit furiously.
o Do what you can to get more credit. If you can open a second line or other source of credit, do so even at a price you would not normally pay, especially if these are from confidential or “angel” sources.
o Use your credit prudently. Don’t assume you need to finance everything yourself. Get creative and aggressive in what you ask others to carry and fund.
o Thirdly, use other people’s money wherever possible. Many aggressive sellers and bargain hunters may have credit you can use in the course of doing business with them.
3. Lead decisively.
o Show your confidence in all you say and do. While you may not feel it, your optimism, confidence and conviction will be a beacon of hope for those who are more scared than you are.
o Motivate your vendors, staff and customers to stay committed, keep their promises and take the same risks you are in an anticipation of better times and the promise of deferred rewards.
o When times are tough, show your stoicism in the face of bad news and inevitable hiccups.
o Demonstrate balance in your short-term pursuit of survival and your long-term perspective for better times and deferred rewards.
4. Reinforce your Best and Highest Use®.
o Ensure that you and your company are focused on what you like doing, you are good at doing and your marketplace values you for doing.
o Bring as much value and enthusiasm to getting better and doing better at what you focus on.
o Take heart in knowing you are very good at what you do and this is a true advantage in these times where impostors are exposed, pretenders prove incapable and amateurs just give up.
Three strategies on how to profit.
After you have triaged your business and responded in four areas, turn your focus to new strategies to profit now and over time:
1. Take market share.
o Understand switching costs for the prospects you are trying to close. Make it easy for them to move their business to you and your superior value.
o Buy up your rivals for pennies on the dollar. Many companies today do not have enough sales to cover their overhead. Better yet, just buy the companies’ customers without the overhead of their failed companies.
o Grow your share of your existing customers. If you are trusted and invaluable, then ask for more of their business. Be quick to respond if another supplier stumbles, or is on the ropes.
2. Sell new value.
o Instead of selling just your product or service, take responsibility for your customer’s success and outcomes. Offer to warranty or insure that their success will come from your product or service.
o Recast your value proposition if your customers’ needs are changing. If so, rethink how you get paid, how you package your services and how you price your products.
o Realize you are going to work harder, spend more time, and possibly get paid less for serving the same customers. Consider it an investment in the future.
3. Invest for the recovery.
o Now is a great time for buying services and raw materials at a discount. If you can, invest now at a fraction of what it may cost to buy what you need when the economy picks up.
o With sales down, you probably can find extra time to work on the future. Take advantage of not being busy and get busy building your next success.
o Finally, as you come out of denial and self pity, push yourself into actions that will ensure your success and preserve your survival. Work harder and more decisively while your competitors are whining and paralyzed.
Our next year will continue to be hard as credit remains tight, new sectors of the economy are impacted, and the country adjusts to our new reality. You can grow your business during this recession if you triage, respond and develop strategies to profit. As the small guys in a world of goliaths, the recovery is largely in our hands as it always has been and will surely be again.
The Three Biggest Mistakes Businesses Owners Make
As businesses struggle to succeed in our economy, mistakes are often deadly. And we see many businesses making deadly ones all the time.
Too often, insufficient capital, poor controls or inadequate customers are blamed as the main reasons a business flounders or fails. While these reasons are obvious, I believe they are symptoms, not root causes of business failure. The root cause of most business failures is the owner’s reaction to adverse events. Long before a business sinks, its owner has likely become distracted, detached or depressed. Why?
Business owners are still about the most independent citizens in the world. They act on their free will and build companies by pursuing their irrational dreams to deliver a product or service to customers who will pay for it. If you see an owner making one of the following three mistakes, admonish them to change their ways as soon as possible if they are:
1. Not exhibiting confidence and conviction in their actions to “Get There,” wherever “There” is for them.
Owners are excellent at implementing plans within their comfort zones but in tougher times often develop ambivalence or apprehension about what works or what to do. They
a) Don’t take quick and decisive action,
b) Straddle between multiple goals and
c) Implement tactics half-heartedly.
Lack of confidence and conviction saps their money, their energy and eventually their passion for business. The easiest remedy is to force or create a defining point in the business to rekindle confidence and conviction. Terminating a problem customer or employee, changing pricing or replacing vendors all can force a defining point. These shocks to the system open a business owner’s eyes to new possibilities.
2. Not refocusing on their Best and Highest Use (BHU) which is:
a) What they and their business are good at doing,
b) What they and their business like doing and
c) What has been valued by the market for what they do.
Businesses often get complacent and distracted from BHU. What would a detached, unbiased, outsider with “fresh eyes” learn from talking to your customers? Is your company still selling the same things your customers say they want to buy? After interviewing over 5,000 customers of my 450 clients, I have never seen a company who can’t better align what it offers to meet the needs of customers.
3. Not recognizing when their personal goals and actions are diverging from goals and objectives of the business.
When asked, “What are your goals?” fulfilled owners always list business goals alongside personal ones. When an owner gets bored or disheartened, his or her personal goals often diverge from their business passion.
If an owner admits he or she has lost their mojo, they have three opportunities to regain it fast by:
a) Reconciling their personal goals with those of their business,
b) Outsourcing their responsibilities to a president or
c) Selling their firm.
As long as a company is run by its owner-operator, he or she still plays the most critical role in its failure or success. Before their company fails or succeeds, that owner repeatedly faces (and hopefully overcomes) their own crises of confidence. If they are acting focused, engaged and optimistic, their firms will succeed. If not, they must confront and eliminate their doubts. For our economy to return to profitable growth, we need every business and their owners to hire more people, introduce new value and expand their capabilities. And that’s no mistake!
Three Ways To Ensure Your Social Media Efforts Create Profitable Growth
Recently, I ranted about how blogging and tweeting are often incompatible with generating qualified leads or closed sales (“To Tweet or to Sell”).
But if you run a business, how do you know if your tweeting and blogging are making you money?
To read the rest go HERE.
This article is published on the AMERICAN EXPRESS OPEN Small Business Forum.
Achieving Your Best and Highest Use®
Best and Highest Use® is when you look at your company and its impact on your customers. Is it still helping resolve their pain, achieve their opportunities, and succeed as much as it used to?
Or despite continuing to deliver more and more are your customers paying you less and less?
Watch my video on Achieving Your Best and Highest Use®
