When You Hear No, Keep Going Strong

Leo was a sales rep for a furniture company. Every day, he would visit different stores to offer his products. He covered a huge geographical distance, but always visited the same places – as regular as clockwork.

There was one particular store that always said no. They already had a furniture distributor and there was no need to even have a meeting with Leo. The floor staff always sent him away before he could even meet the buyer to describe how his service and products were different.

But Leo kept the store on his route, and every time he was in the area, he dropped by the store. After all, it only took him a moment to drive down the street, park the car, and ask for the meeting.

One time, just before Leo’s visit, the buyer at the furniture store had a falling out with their distributor. When Leo showed up, the buyer (via the gatekeeper) said, “Sure, let’s talk!”

The buyer discovered that Leo was a really great guy. And he gave exceptional service. He asked about what wasn’t working with the store’s regular distributor, and went above and beyond to solve that problem – and for less money. In fact, he provided some options for free – options the buyer wouldn’t have ever asked for because no one had ever provided them before.

So how can a professional services firm like yours follow Leo’s lead?

● Never give up, even when you keep hearing no – be accountable to your firm by being patient and persistent, and not giving in to your personal ego
● Weigh out your time – be accountable to your firm by making sure you’re not spending too much time when there seems like there will be little return on that investment – if you’re in the area anyway…
● When you do get to sit down with a prospective client, find out what his or her problems are – be accountable to your firm by confidently matching up your solutions to the client’s problems
● Solve those problems – be accountable to your new client by following through and doing what you’ve said you would do
● Go above and beyond to create new solutions the client never even knew existed – be accountable to your firm by constantly striving to innovate and create new services that will help current and future clients

What other valuable marketing lessons could you learn by studying examples from other industries? Alan M. Dobzinski has extensive experience with all types of businesses and professional services firms. He’ll bring it all to the table when he facilitates your next meeting. Contact him now to get started.

The Consequences of Being Overbooked

From the minute you come in the door, your workday calendar is filled – there are internal meetings, client meetings, project lists and other commitments. One leads right into the next, with no break in between.

Sound familiar? You’re overbooked!

In today’s culture, if you’re not doing something at all times, you’re perceived – by others as well as yourself – as being unproductive. So you schedule back-to-back-to-back meetings that have you doing, running, running, running, doing, doing, doing, from one activity to the next.

Here are three major consequences of being overbooked:

1) You’re not available to people. The people at work (let alone your spouse or kids!) will have trouble getting time with you. They’re missing out on the coaching and development they need, and you’re missing out on having an engaged workforce of people who are working to their full potential.

2) You’ve got no time to think. When you’re running, rushing, acting and doing, there’s no value placed on contemplation or planning – the first things that fall off the calendar when leaders are rushing to meetings or putting out fires.

I always teach my clients the importance of “think, plan, act.” Thinking and planning aren’t leftover activities that you do when (or if) you have time. They’re essential business practices that will make or break your success. But if you’re running around all day, you’ll be too worn out for the real strategic type of thinking you need to be doing.

3) You’re missing things. One meeting goes overtime, so you’re rushing to the next one. Your work time gets bumped, and you’re not able to live up to all of your commitments. Then someone catches you in the hallway with an urgent issue, and throws your schedule further out of whack.

If you’re overbooked with no room in between, you can’t do the problem solving that’s required in the course of a business day. You’ll either have to ignore the fire that’s just cropped up, or tend to it and drop one of your other commitments. It’s one or the other.

To do something really right takes time, and if you’re overbooked, you don’t have that time. That means you’re only doing things half right. Doing things half right means you’re going to have to go back and fix them, and that’s just going to take more time.

If you take a look underneath the hood, I suspect that the reason you’re overbooked is because you’re doing other people’s work for them, you’re making their decisions for them, and you’re picking up the slack instead of holding them accountable to do what they said they would do.

You need to be spending your time doing the strategic thinking, and developing your people to do the doing jobs. Yes, that will take time. And no, you can’t afford to skip this step.

The more responsibility you take on, the busier your day will become, and the less time you’ll have for your most important high-level tasks. It’s a real Catch-22, and one that will only stop when you stop it.

Start by looking at tomorrow’s appointments. Where can you add in some gaps? If you’re looking for something to take out or move, consider which tasks really belong to someone else – and give them back.

Need help wrangling your schedule and making your people accountable for doing their own work? Alan M. Dobzinski is a masterful meeting facilitator who can pull your team together and get you back on top. Contact him online or call 1-800-489-6980.

Accountable Leaders Show That They Care

Hospitals and funerals are two places we rarely want to go. Even when we feel genuine love and concern for the person involved or his/her family, we’re distracted by how going to those places makes us feel – awkward, afraid for our own health or mortality, guilty, sad or a whole host of other emotions that may arise.

This situation has come up for two of my clients – both leaders in their organization. In Jim’s case, a former employee died and Jim was the only one at the company who didn’t attend the funeral.

When I asked why, he said he has a hard time going to funerals. The man who died had a huge family and so the funeral would be chaotic. “It was just too much.”

Jim then went on to tell me how he was going to do something much more meaningful; he was going to the grave site to have a personal visit with the deceased.

That reminded me of my other client who ran into this situation, and so I told Jim the story:

My client Bob was running a department of 40+ people when one of his staff got sick and was hospitalized. Everyone in the department went to visit this person in the hospital. Except for Bob. He just couldn’t, he said, because going to hospitals made him sick. And then the worst happened; his employee died.

Months later, Bob had hired me as an executive consultant, and we did a 360-degree assessment to find out what his staff thought of him. One of the questions rated how much Bob cared for his people. On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the greatest, Bob rated himself at a 4.5. The average rating from his people? 1.8.

When I dug a little deeper and finally heard the story about the sick employee, I was able to show Bob that by not visiting the sick employee in the hospital, he was sending a message to his staff that he didn’t care. They couldn’t see the love in his heart, and it really didn’t matter to them how hard it may have been for him to visit that hospital.

After I finished telling Jim this story, I commented that his former staff’s family wouldn’t see him at the grave site. They wouldn’t hear, see or feel his support and comfort. I encouraged him to go ahead with his personal visit at the grave site, but to also find a way to reach out to this man’s family.

In The SPEED of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything, Stephen Covey writes, “We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.”

What’s in your heart is real to you, but that may not be what the other person is seeing or believing. If your intention is to show your people that you care, your actions have to back that up.

What would your team members say about how much you care about them? Do you think you’d have the same answer? If you want to bring the two ratings closer together, Alan M. Dobzinski is a masterful meeting facilitator who can bring everyone together. Contact him today to get started.

Where’s your drawer money?

My client Joe is in the real estate business. During one of our meetings, he mentioned that he had some unsold properties “in the drawer,” as he called it.

“How many unsold properties are you sitting on?” I asked.

“Three,” he said.

“And how much are they worth to you?” I asked. Meaning his profit.

“You mean, how much money would I make if I sold them?”

“I guess I’d make about $220,000 altogether,” he said. “I just need to make a few repairs and get them on the market. Even in this market, I think they’d sell pretty quickly.”

My eyebrows jumped. “So what you’re saying is that you’ve got $220,000 sitting in your desk drawer (there’s the recap), and you’re not doing anything about it?”

“Well, uh, I guess you could look at it that way.”

I did. So I paused, waiting for Joe to see what I saw.

He didn’t comment, and didn’t seem motivated to take any particular action.

“Let me send you my address,” I said. “Since you’re not very interested in that $220,000, go ahead and send it to me. I can think of a few things to do with it.”

Finally, Joe laughed. Together, we devised an action plan that would help him take the steps necessary to convert that “drawer money” into real money.

The sales didn’t happen overnight. We met in regularly scheduled accountability sessions to review his plans, assess the factors that continued to block his progress, remove the barriers and achieve results. Because we had a clear understanding about our relationship and expectations, I was able to continue gently challenging Joe until he sold all three properties.

I can’t take any credit for these profitable deals. This is an accountability success story, and I share it as a way to remind you of what your people could be achieving, once you learn how to hold them accountable.

They, too, have “drawer money” that they’re not converting to cash, new customers, new ideas, or whatever their responsibilities entail. But they haven’t done it yet because they’re distracted, stuck, don’t know what to do, or are otherwise unable to achieve certain things without some accountability structure.

That’s okay. That’s where you come in as the leader. They need you. With your willingness, their willingness, plus a few accountability tools, you can cash in together. It all begins with stepping up to the plate and saying “yes” to becoming an accountable leader.

What’s in your drawer? Cash? New clients? New ideas?

What are you willing to do today to create the time to meet with your people and develop them for a sustainable future.

This article was adapted from my book, The Accountability Factor: The Buck Starts Here.

If you want to cash in your drawer money and help your people do the same, Alan M. Dobzinski is a master meeting facilitator who can get to the bottom of what’s stopping or blocking your profitability and success. Contact him today to get started.

The REAL Time Cost of Skipping Regular Accountability Meetings

Instead of focusing only on a task — “When will the ABC project be completed?” — an accountable leader also focuses on the person: “How are you doing with the ABC project? What sort of resources do you need? How can I support you?”

Do you see the difference?

Can you imagine how it feels to hear a question about a project, versus a question about you?

This is a big change for many leaders, who protest: “I don’t have time to ask how people are doing, I just need them to get things done!”

I understand. Regularly scheduled accountability meetings do take time. But so does:

1. Complaining about poor performance
2. Taking on tasks yourself because your people aren’t following through
3. Getting done your strategic tasks that you weren’t doing while you were taking over those tactical tasks
4. Firing people
5. Recruiting new people
6. Hiring new people
7. Training new people
8. Retaining people
9. Re-building the team with new people
10. Restoring confidence of the team

Let’s address your lack of time for a moment, because this is something I hear all the time from leaders who are resisting implementing my proven accountability strategies.

Yet whenever I drill down to what’s really going on, the issue is never really about time.

The actual fact is that lack of time is only a perception. The only resource we all receive equally is time. Each one of us has the same 24 hours to work with. So how is it that some people get so much more done than others?

Here’s what I’ve noticed: when something is truly important, we find the time to do it, whether it’s finding time to exercise, or read a good book or improve our golf game.

So “I don’t have time” is not a very good reason. What it really means is, “I don’t really want to, because I don’t see the value and therefore, it hasn’t yet become important to me.”

Ultimately, accountability meetings will save you time. And this time that you invest in your people will pay off exponentially. Here’s what one client had to say about this:

“Because of accountability coaching, I’ve actually created more time in my work life. I’ve learned how to use the resources and people I have more effectively than in the past. I’ve been able to let go, delegate more and be less controlling.”

When you don’t develop your people for the long-run, your success will not be sustainable. You’ll always be playing catch-up or starting from scratch. And this just compounds the feeling of not having enough time.

Once your people see that you care about them, they will become more autonomous, productive and yes, more accountable. Isn’t that worth a few minutes of your time?

Some of this material was adapted from my book, The Accountability Factor: The Buck Starts Here. You can get your own copy at: http://accountabilityexperts.com/resources/alans-book-accountability-factor/

Accountability Turns Your Monday Blahs Into Monday WOWs

A client came to me with a candid confession. While he prided himself on his work ethic and overall ability to be a motivated self-starter, he often had a difficult time getting started on Mondays. It was hard to acknowledge and even more difficult to share.

To his amazement and relief, I revealed that he was not alone in this. These Mondays blahs are more common than people realize.

“Alan helped me to see that my Monday Blahs were actually started on Sunday night, which was typically restless and often resulted in a very sleepless night. As I lay in bed on Sunday nights I would contemplate all the stuff I needed to organize and plan for Monday morning.”

So how do you fix the Monday Blahs and Sunday Blues? It’s simple – prepare for Monday on Friday afternoon.

• Schedule a dedicated time on Friday afternoons to carefully plan out your Monday. Stay accountable and treat this like any other important appointment in your calendar.
• Get away from your office for this task, if you can.
• Gather any supporting materials you’ll need on Monday.
• Schedule meetings for Monday mornings to help get your day started with action.

Did it work for my client? I’ll let him tell you:

“The simplicity of this seemed too easy, but when I put it into action the results have been amazing. No longer am I thinking about what Monday will bring, no longer am I worried about doing something for a Monday meeting or task – I prep on Friday and sleep on Sunday.

Now I actually start my Monday off by relaxing with the paper and a good cup of coffee – and the knowledge that I have already planned out my day and have everything I need to execute that plan. Plus I am no longer blaming my sleepless Sunday nights on my Mother-in-law’s cooking!”

By doing your prep work on Friday you can leave your briefcase in the car over the weekend – no more working at home. As any good coach knows – no one can succeed without a good game plan. So go into Mondays with a good game plan.

If you’re ready to bring your game plan to the next level, Alan M. Dobzinski can turn your Monday Blahs into Monday WOWs. Contact him today to get started.

Accountability Secrets Your Business Wants to Tell You

As you may or may not know, I’m really into health and fitness, and I recently attended a health and wellness retreat in Costa Rica. During one exercise, the facilitator led us through a set of questions that gave our bodies a voice and taught us how to listen to it.

At the end she asked, “If your body could talk to you about how you’re treating it, what would it say?” It was a powerful question, and it had a lot of impact.

Guess what? Your business is talking to you, too! To help you listen, I’ve prepared the following questions. Answering them will take you to a new level of understanding of what may be stopping or blocking your business from achieving profitably and success.

If you’re going to establish a culture of accountability in your workplace, you need to be ready and willing to ask these questions and listen to the answers – even if some of them are tough to hear.

1. Which aspect of your business is strongest? Which is most prone to breakdown?
2. Which part of your business do people notice first? Which part holds your own attention?
3. Which parts of your business are you most comfortable with? Which are you least comfortable with?
4. If you were selling your business to a new owner, what instructions would you leave about how to care for it?
5. What are the natural rhythms of your business (daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal)?
6. What gives your business a boost when it’s tired?
7. If your business could talk, what do you think it would ask you to do differently?

Did these questions give you any sparks of insight about your business? Imagine the power of taking your whole team through the same exercise under the guidance of an expert facilitator and executive consultant. Contact info@accountabilityexperts.com now to book Alan Dobzinski for your next workshop, seminar or retreat.

$114 (and a half) Million Dollar Story

According to a global study commissioned by the International Coach Federation and carried out by independent research firms PricewaterhouseCoopers and Association Resource Centre Inc., it’s official:

Companies that use or have used professional coaching for business reasons have seen a median return on investment of seven times their initial investment.

The ROI was obvious for Jon Heisler, Vice President at Bernstein Global Wealth Management. When we started working together, Jon identified the goal of generating $100 million dollars in new clients (managed assets). By October, he had surpassed that with $114.5 million.

Looking back on our work together, I’ve identified his top three million-dollar accountability strategies. Maybe you should try them, too!

1) Focus on the desired outcome – If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll wind up somewhere else. I worked with my client to choose a specific goal that was out of reach, but not out of sight. We checked in every two weeks about his progress, measuring the goal that was most important to him. In between, he just kept showing up.

2) Enlist a partner – “It’s lonely at the top” no longer just applies to those just at the top. It’s just plain lonely out there right now period, isn’t it? It doesn’t have to be that way! As his coach and partner, I held my client accountable, but I didn’t make him accountable. Rather, I helped him identify and handle whatever was getting in the way of success.

3) Use help effectively – I could see from the start that my client was wasting time doing things that other people could do. One of the most important things we did was equip him with some coaching techniques that would help him improve his interactions with other people. By learning simple techniques such as asking open-ended questions, listening (really listening) and then recapping what he heard, he helped them to help him.

Of course there was a lot more to this $114-million dollar story. You can click here to read what Jon had to say about his experience with coaching and accountability.

There will be more to your story, too. What might be different in your business tomorrow if you were to start applying even one of these accountability strategies today?

If you would like to discuss the other 5 million-dollar accountability strategies Jon used, please call me at 800 489-6980 or email me.