How’s your service?

More sales does not equal better service.  But better service always equals more sales.

How’s your service?

Experience?

You’re supposed to be learning from your experience and working smarter and more effectively.

Do you have 20 (or “X”) years experience. Or one year experience 20 (“X”) times?

Shareholders come last

Only if customers and employees win, can shareholders win.

A smart shareholder knows that.

Are your employees and customers winning in your organization?

Culture

It’s when your people (and you) know what you need to do when you get up in the morning without having to be told what to do.

And to establish the culture, a leader must communicate what needs to be accomplished – over and over.

What is your company culture?

Master the Basics

A good strategy perfectly executed will beat a great strategy poorly executed every time.

Are your people executing well?

Survival of the Flexible

It’s not the strongest or most intelligent who survive, but the ones who best adapt to change.

How are you doing?

Acquisitions – Acquiring Problems?

If you can’t give great service to your own customers and earn more business from them, why would you expect to be able to do that for someone else’s customers?

Attracting customers

Is your organization any good at getting people to call or come in to see you?

Is it great?  How do you know what great is?

Would you know what to do if it wasn’t?

Ok then, what should you do?

What does it take to sell well?

The ability of your sales team to turn leads into business is the most important function in many businesses. 

What’s going on?  Is it great?  How do you know what’s great?

And would you know what to say or change or direct if it wasn’t good?

Work IN it

We’ve all heard that leaders should work ON their business instead of IN it. But that advice is for those of us that grew a business from the time we were the only employee – when we slaved away for 65 hours weeks trying to get things done ourselves.

But many leaders of giant organizations, and ones where the leader has long since made the jump from worker to “owner” or “boss”, need to do the opposite. We need to spend some time working IN the business.

The differences between a great business and a poor one can be strategy, positioning and allocation of resources – “leader stuff”. But often they are small distinctions that go on everyday – things that a leader takes for granted.

By understanding exactly what high and low performance is in each department or function, what or who the bottlenecks are, and what it takes to get key functions performing at a high level – the leader can work ON it to make it happen.

Without a deep understanding of the distinctions that comes from experiencing it, a leader is a mere poser in the tower – bound to get it wrong.

Some need to work (be) IN it more, and some need to work ON it more. Which are you?