Achievement – Success – Legacy

Achievement is when you do good things.

Success is when you get others to do good things for you.

Legacy is when you get others to do good things without you.

We start with achievement, but in the end, what will your legacy be?

Flying on instruments

You can’t see success yet, but watch your instruments. 

Generate sufficient leads at or below your allowable cost.

Convert each lead/prospect into an acceptable average level of sales.

Deliver within your allowable time/cost/quality.

Keep overhead to an acceptable percentage of total sales.

What are your “instruments” and are you watching them?

If you keep traveling in the right direction, eventually you’ll get where you want to go, even if you couldn’t see the destination when you started.

Be a player

Are you watching competitors eat your lunch because they are playing a game that you aren’t even in?

Get in there!  Be a player!

What went right yesterday…

Just because your company’s output was good last month or last year, doesn’t mean things haven’t changed.  Left unchecked, untrained and unmotivated your people will begin to make their own standards to fill the vacuum.  You can’t assume quality yesterday means quality today.

Inspect what you expect; and keep the expectations conversation alive – even if the expectations are the same as they were last year.

Structural problems

Sometimes our employees are not in a position to succeed.  When this happens, a leader shouldn’t put all the pressure on the employee(s) to make it work out.  A good leader discerns when it’s not the employee’s fault and fixes it at the source instead.

An employee who feels they cannot succeed at their job will leave.

A leader is better off fixing the real problem: how he/she set it up for the employee.

Big shot

Some business owners think “leader” means “big shot,” and they act that way.  But when you pull your attention away from what’s happening on the front lines of your business while you’re doing “more important things,” bad things have a way of creeping in.

Leadership is not a privilege.  It’s a responsibility.  

If you want to be a big shot, hire a great leader to relieve you of that responsibility first.  Then, do what you want.

Home of Successful Careers?

It’s hard to build a great business when people are leaving all the time, and you spend lots of time recruiting and training and overseeing inexperienced people.

Is your business a place where quality people can see themselves building a successful long-term career?

Multipliers in your business

If you got 15% more prospects, sold just 15% more of them, and had an average sale of just 15% more, what would that do to your business?

Answer: it would double it.

Can you get 15% better in all areas?

Bad news travels fast – real fast.

When something bad happens, you had better run to the problem and get in front of it – faster.

The Fall of Great Businesses

If your business is at the top of its game – the market leader – beware of your greatest enemy.

It’s you.

Execute every day.  Nobody cares how good you were yesterday.