Fast Decision Making

Fast Decision Making

I recently put my finger on one other thing that has been making us grow quickly. Have you ever had to go to court? The lawyers are happy to put off for next month all that could have been done today. You have to endure at least a whole morning if you go to court. Nobody is motivated to make anything move faster. These people get paid more, the longer they take. Is anyone happy there? Can you see the frustration of a bloated system that has no corporate motivation to be profitable? They are cursed with too much money from a government source so they don’t require efficiency. If a new company were to operate like that, would they succeed?

Bureaucracy Decision Making

A government institution or an old company with lots of money has the luxury of bureaucracy. My company did not have that luxury and I thank God every day for it. We had no money. We had to make money. So we had to make fast decisions and stay light on the long winded discussion panels. It has made us sleek and profitable.

There are 3 partners at CIBN. We all are free agents with the ability to make decisions in our own area of expertise. If it falls into the area of one of the others we hook up that process immediately and let it go. I don’t second guess Zechariah’s decision to reject a potential member to one of his groups, or to place a member in a new group, or to book an event that will help the group grow. He is free to make a decision. He needs to be able to do what needs to be done to get a sale and he doesn’t need my permission to succeed. He already has it. Bob is a relationship builder. If a club needs a little more love, we send in Bob. Bob also works on processes behind the scenes. He handles banking and coordinates with the bookkeepers and he is free to make decisions. We communicate as a team every day and talk about the decisions we are making. We share why we feel we need to make those decisions and often we are asking each other for feedback but we never have to worry about emotional responses, manipulation, or dragging feet. We get things done.

Healthy Decision Making

I am the CEO of the CIBN. That means I have the power to decide. I oversee the marketing and give out the assignments to the printers, the writers, Loyal2U and I final edit the publications. I decide who goes into what spot and why. I meet with most of the sponsors of the network. We have packages which were put into place after research, but research was gathered, advisors were polled and a decision was made. If something does not work, I change it. I monitor it. I decide to try something else. I don’t need someone’s permission to do so. I don’t need someone’s permission to negotiate a deal or make a sale. We determined what the boundaries are for those things as a team and as long as I stay within those boundaries I don’t need to even discuss it. However, out of respect for my team I often do discuss it, or at least bring them up to date.

At CIBN we believe this is healthy decision making. Sometimes we do make a mistake and then we have to pay for it, but it is a known fact that leaders make decisions quickly and stick to their decisions. They only change course after a significant test trial. If prices are set and then we make sales, there is no point in changing the price, but we know that 100 people need to be approached before we can say with any certainty that the price point does not work. We make decisions based on facts but we decide quickly.

Disturbing Decision Making

In business though I see some disturbing things. I see sole proprietors that can’t make up their mind. Fear and indecision keeps them from moving forward. I see people quitting a project before they gave it a real chance. I see salesmen claiming their product is no good when they have not even had 20 appointments to present it. They are swayed by the decisions of a couple of naysayers. I have seen new members buy a membership, come twice and then not show up anymore because networking did not produce a referral in two meetings. They made a decision and now they don’t stick to it. They have no sense of delayed gratification so they miss the long term results. I see corporations with engineers and IT people as the CEO and that seldom works because they want to examine every decision and make it a month or six month process before they get all in. I see companies that are old or that have too much money tying the hands of their decision makers and slowing down what needs to be done to keep business coming in. I see salesmen that don’t know how to sell, or close. They can’t ask for a decision from their prospect. Sometimes it is because their company has not given them any wiggle room to negotiate so they make a decision to spice up the offer on the spot. They can’t get a quick decision from their potential client who would buy immediately if it could be done right now. Sometimes these sales people are uncomfortable in making their own decisions so they are even more uncomfortable “selling” or asking for a decision from their prospects.

Long and lean is the sales machine – one must be able to make a decision, or nothing gets done.

We did make some mistakes making quick decisions. So then we had to decide how to fix it. We made that decision and moved on rapidly. We are able to make decisions so we succeed faster than some who get bogged down in the long line of discussion.

Slow And Nasty Decision Making

Trying to work with companies that have no decision making processes or slow decision making processes is a frustrating endeavour. The fact is that some salesmen will recognize the long process of this sales cycle and invest in it, but a smart salesman gets a few of these in the funnel and then goes and looks for real business people who can make a real decision. A salesman will starve if he waits for the big one that might someday make a decision based on all the accumulated data that went through the repeated board meetings covering the same things over and over again. These processes hurt people. They cost money. They starve unsuspecting sales people who try to do business with them. They cost the money of the decision makers too because they could be spending that time more productively. It is just plain nasty.

A company that makes decisions this way is also sowing a dangerous seed. What we sow is what we grow. If you take six months to pay for something you could have paid for today others will do this to you. It is Karma or the law of attraction, or what comes around – goes around, or whatever you want to call it. I once had an engineer tell me that his company would pay me every 90 days. I responded that we would then begin the work in 90 days from now. We pay as quickly as we can. We move fast. Others move fast with us. That is the seed we sowed. It is making a really nice crop.

This week I had a discussion with a handful of entrepreneurs about this subject. Their viewpoint was enlightening. Each of them also make quick decisions that they typically stick with. Each of them expressed frustration with those who do not make quick decisions. Each of them acknowledged that they consider such drawn out behavior unprofessional. They compared it to government inefficiency. Each of them spoke of their longest termed business relationships as being with corporations that had a clear leader who had the ability to make a decision or who at least had a defined process to get an answer quickly. Some of them shared stories of firing CEOs that tied up the decision making process and how turn around happened immediately after someone had the courage to make a decision.

So I have added one more thing to what has caused us to have quicker than average success. We have the ability to make a decision and we decided to be successful.

If you need more facts, great... Ask more questions, gather more data, and then pool it together in a strategy meeting and make a decision. Learn to make decisions and feel comfortable with them, and if you cannot decide quickly, step down from the "ownership of decisions." Hire a CEO and let them lead, because in today's world everything is changing fast. Dinosaurs die because they move too slow. Social media changes daily. Being engaged is being ready to respond to situations but also to prepare in advance for what is coming. A decision maker is ahead of the curve, not continually responding to it in a knee jerk reaction.

Controlling Decision Making

If you have to feel like you are in control of every decision, I have a newsflash for you. YOU ARE NOT IN CONTROL ANYWAY! Life, natural disasters, God, your spouse, your kids, your competition, your health and several other factors continually rebel against your control. Get over it. You have as much chance using a Magic 8 ball to make a healthy decision as you do from operating well out of a spirit of control. If you feel like you need to be in control, you are totally out of control and even worse oblivious to your own demise. Learn to overcome that by making decisions and allowing others on your team to make decisions. You will be glad that you did!

Always Loyal2U,

Kerry George

Kerry George is the CEO of the Canadian Imperial Business Network and the Calgary Business Network and she is a happy capitalist! Kerry works tirelessly bringing new value to the CIBN members and is always looking for methods to increase their bottom line. She is a speaker at many member events sharing knowledge about online marketing, sales techniques, motivation, LinkedIn, networking, entrepreneurship, and more. Kerry is a serial entrepreneur so she knows how to be a happy capitalist and how to create other happy capitalists in the CIBN!

 

5 Things I Learned From Arnold Schwarzenegger

Maybe it is my fascination with big, strong, muscular men but I have always liked Arnold Schwarzenegger. As a young woman fresh out of the military I used to read body building magazines and his articles on making muscles react to disciplined exercise were fascinating. And who did not love all of the great one liners from the movies?

On boxing day I noticed his $40 book was on sale at Chapters for only $10 so I scooped one up, and I have been intoxicated ever since, but not for the reasons you would think. Sure there are the great photos and the life story of a star but there is a much more complex human being that we would never have guessed. For instance: did you know that Arnold Schwarzenegger is an entrepreneur first before anything?

Arnold made his first million before he made his first Conan movie. It’s true. Here are 5 tips that I got from his book Total Recall that are good tips for any entrepreneur:

1. Focus On What You Want

When Arnold was fourteen he had photos made by taking pictures of the pages of magazines and then enlarging them so he could keep the image of his success in front of him. As a teenager he already knew he wanted to be the top body builder, an American entrepreneur, a leading man in the movies, and a politician. He stayed focused on that over the next forty years until all was accomplished and more.

2. Turn Away From Distractions

Arnold learned quickly that the wrong relationship would hurt his chances for success so he made hard choices in the early years. He would not take employment that would take him away from his goals, and he also refused movie parts that were not going to cast him as a leading man to protect his acting career. Turning away from good ideas is a hard thing to learn and it is something that many never perfect. Distraction from the end goal can come in many wonderful forms and they need to be avoided for the end result.

3. Invest In Yourself

Arnold invested in himself first because in the beginning he was his only asset and he knew it. So he trained for hours, he got tips from the experts, he traveled to meet his heroes  he spent money on equipment. Many business people never truly become entrepreneurs because they don't invest in themselves or their operations. They get busy on the day to day survival and focus on being "in" their business, instead of being "on" it. Arnold started "on" it and he stayed "on" it making his own personal growth to learn a language, understand finance and real estate, and even gourmet foods and wine a high priority because he knew it would matter later.

4. Multiply Your Earnings

He put the hours into building his own body, then he put the hours into training programs, booklets that he sold through mail order, videos about exercise and other things that he could control the multiplication on. He then invested some of his earnings into real estate and when more profit was made he reinvested again. That gave him the financial stability to weather the other storms of life that are inevitable.

5. Live Like You Already Have It

Arnold fit in with Maria Schriver and her Kennedy family because he already saw himself as a successful actor and a politician long before he was either of those things. He had the confidence to become because he practiced being those things in his mind long before the day came. He knew he would do well on the big screen because he envisioned himself there since he was a youth. His friends were well known personalities before he ever made a film because he was already comfortable in that role.

Early in life Arnold Schwarzenegger decided that he did not want to think like the average person around him nor accept the average life. This is a great lesson for all of us because there are no limits once we realize we are the masters of our own destiny by what we accept about ourselves.

ext month the Calgary Business Network will offer a course about this subject on the 25th. Attitude ForAltitude. Check it out and book your seat.

Ok, ok, ok
We can't talk about Arny without a video of his greatest movie lines...

Tell The Truth - It Is Good For Business!

Recently I had someone tell me that they liked the fact that I was honest with them about projections for the success of a marketing campaign that they were inquiring about. Social media and online marketing companies have been becoming more and more prevalent these last few years. Anyone with a Facebook account can call themselves a marketing guru. “Real marketing experts” that were trained in schools more than two years ago are floundering trying to figure out how the newest tools are working. There are so many methods that include Google Adwords, blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, webinars, YouTube and more. How they were working last year is different than how it is working today. B2B and B2C techniques are totally different. Some industries are capitalizing on it well, others have not even tried so there is not a real great trail marked out. So now I just tell the truth. If I have done a campaign similar to the one you are asking about I can say so. If not, I have only guess work and theory unless we do some research before we begin. I can also say that research is in your best interest. Costly yes, but better than just shooting in the dark hoping to hit something...

I didn't start out that way in marketing. In the beginning we wanted the client so bad and we believed our own crap. So we made lavish promises and then worked like crazy to try to make them a reality for our client. Sometimes it worked and the client was really happy. Sometimes though the client wanted to reach a market that we were really not that skilled in reaching and it took so many resources to get any action happening that we lost money trying to perform to their expectations. Eventually we got smart enough to charge extra for some of that work and we got really good at certain markets and we could confidently make measured projections.

These days I just tell the truth. I don’t actually need a client that bad anyway. We are not looking for new clients because the process of looking is costly and time consuming and my other business interests are lucrative so it has not been the best timing to pursue. Strangely though that attracts more clients. Tell them you are too busy for them and they want you. Odd people we are…

So there I was talking to a gentleman about the CalgaryBusiness Network and he was saying he wanted Loyal2U to take him on as a client, and why? Because I told him I could not promise him lavish results. He informed me that he had been sold marketing packages of exorbitant prices and got nothing from the experience but the “turn off” was not the result. The “turn off” was the fact that they lied to him. They had said that it would bring him new clients. He did not get new clients.

I like being honest as a selling feature. Why not just be truthful? It is easier to sell the truth. It feels good. Just say, “I can’t make that promise. I feel it should work this way based on these experiences but honestly your industry is tough. It may take planning and time and some consistency to see any results. I feel that a long term plan would bring the best results but I am not making any guarantees.”

I know that if you are in sales you are thinking I am nuts about now. How could one land the sale with that attitude? Recently I was listening to Kevin Trudeau who was quoting a mentor in his life. The man said, “You need to care, but not that much.” It is good advice.

We do need to care about the sale. We need to care about the client. We need to care about getting the contract or the sign up or whatever we are trying to get. We need to care that we can deliver what we say we can deliver. We need to care about being true to ourselves and being an honest and authentic person. Some will like that, but if they say “no” it shouldn't ruin our day anyway. There are other sales. There are those that are not impressed with bragging. There are smart clients that realize that just because we have had great success with Velda’s Grower Direct we may not know anything about the financial industry. So why fake it? It is like a marriage relationship. If you lie about little things or expectations and then your partner finds out, they are angry. They feel they can’t trust you. If you care, then care enough to tell the truth. Isn't that what happens in healthy relationships?

So why not tell the truth and then the ones who actually say “yes” we can go forward with and we don’t have to pretend at every meeting that we are achieving things that we are not. We don’t have to try to act like we understand things that we don’t. We can instead explore options together as a team asking questions and seeking real answers with all of our cards out on the table. Together we can be open looking for answers and bringing in other professionals when we need more information. We can say I don’t know the numbers on that. I believe that it may be this, but that is a gut feeling not an accurate market report or a study. Let’s find some of those and get them onto the table before we make our next move here. We can then brainstorm more effectively and real results are more likely.

If a potential client comes to me and says, “I am trying to achieve X,”  I now say, “I know nothing about X.” I have full confidence to say so. If I have a competitor that specializes in X I refer them immediately, as I realize that the learning process is going to be expensive for both me and my client. If I know that my competitors know nothing about X then I simply tell this potential client that really nobody is having much luck with X (that I am aware of.) I can offer to brainstorm with them on ways to achieve X and possibly we can come up with a workable plan but then they are paying for work effort, planning, research and content building based on the findings - not results. Together with some hard work we may hit on something profitable and if they are willing to take the chance with somebody who admittedly knows nothing about their challenge then we can start an honest relationship and move forward. In many cases I would be their best hope anyway in this market because others don’t know either, although they may not have the moxy to say so…

Isn't it better to tell the truth?

Always Loyal2U

Kerry George

I thought this was cute. The truth about internet dating. Not a good way to present yourself. Definitely leads to false expectations!

Being Connected

One of the best things about doing business in Calgary is the way that people do business in Calgary. I don’t know what your experience has been but mine has been truly awesome.

I spent 12 years in ministry and entered into the business realm with fear and trepidation about a year and a half ago. I was unfamiliar with business practices and really green in operational procedures. I had some ideas of how to do some modern marketing based on some experiences that I had and some great results that I had been able to achieve on a few projects. I felt that I could learn what I needed to, hire some experts and see some good things happen. It was not really a planned entrance into the marketplace so it is with great pleasure that I can announce that we are around and doing well at this time. We are beating the odds and seeing growth every month, hiring new employees and making a major impact in the marketplace.

Loyal2U is growing and with the acquisition of the Calgary Business Network we are in a very exciting place indeed. We are showing with the two companies an increase in profits each month and we are quickly establishing a market niche and seeing real results for those who choose to do business with us. This last month we took on beautiful office space in Douglasdale at the Destiny Business Centre. It has got to be some of the top lease property in the city. The whole building is absolutely gorgeous with floor to ceiling hardwood doors, glass and tastefully colored walls. There is a foyer, a marvelous boardroom and a great kitchen. If that is not enough the owner even provides coffee, tea and bottled water for us and our clients (There is space available if you need some 403-809-3146 and the address is 105, 11500 29 Street SE).

On top of all of that one of our clients for Loyal2U Jim Pescott has adorned the walls with his world renowned paintings. Jim is a pointillist who travels to Italy, New York and Toronto regularly. He has been written up in major third party magazines as a Master Pointillist and it is an honor to showcase his work here for personal and corporate viewing.

Things are looking very rosy for Loyal2U and The Calgary Business Network but did we do it all ourselves. It is true that over the last few months we have brought on some exceptional team players. We have a sales team that is absolutely gifted at relationship marketing making the customers interest the highest priority. We have some very competent people working behind the scenes as well getting out the message for ourselves and for our clients online. These are all good. However, our team is much larger than those that make the payroll.

I believe our increasing success has less to do with us and more to do with those that we have connected with. It has to do with people like Jim Messner who was the founder of the Calgary Business Network who took a chance on us when nobody even knew who Loyal2U was. It has to do with Velda Paynter who owns Velda’s Grower Direct and has become a friend and a contributor in many ways. It has to do with many of the business people that I met personally over the last year and people who have sown into my life and the lives of my staff through personal mentorship.  Guys like Pepsi Fortin and Alex Privalov who took a deep interest in the training and mentoring of our sales staff and personal mentors like Kathleen Mailer of Today’s Business Woman Magazine and Doug Tibben who have aided us with advice and service. I could list many more here as there have been dozens that have contributed and I am sure there will be dozens more in this next year.

In business there are many twists and turns. Connections to others that care and that know things that you don’t know are very important. The right connections connect you with more right connections. The right connections refer you. The right connections are easy for you to promote as well.

I recently re-read “The Go-Giver”by Bob Burg. I love that he left the connector until last. The connector was the link in the net that made networking so profitable for everyone else in the story. The connector made everything else possible. I hope to be a great connector when I grow up. How about you?

It is not what you know, but who you know that matters. And it really matters how well you know them and that they know you too. Really know you...

Always Loyal2U,

Kerry George

Addendum 

This is a video on how NOT to network. I had to chuckled at some of methods and catch phrases...

Put Your Cowboy Hat On!

The Calgary Stampede means different things for different people. It is a time for Calgarians to show their heritage and get out their cowclothes complete with buckles, belts, boots and hats. Gentlemen are more likely to open a door and say “Mam” as they pass by and then there is the good ol’ hospitality of lots of free breakfasts, barbeques and beef on a bun.

Those of you in the tourist or retail industry are very likely pretty excited. After all this is a big time of year for you. If you are in the sales industry may be more or less excited depending on what you sell. In our industry of social media and online footprinting we are in a huge upturn. Every time of year is good right now. Everyone needs us.

Being part of the Calgary Business Network puts our team at Loyal2U around all kinds of business people within a variety of industries. I have had some professionals tell me that during the Stampede they send everyone on vacation because no sales can be made because everyone is stampeding this month.

Personally I am more of an optimist than that. I feel that every day is a good day for making a sale and that there are no bad times of the year, just bad attitudes that hold us back. 

So here are a few of my personal tips for making the most out of Stampede Week. I hope that you like them:

• Get out your cowboy hat and jeans and make contacts at the Stampede Tradeshow and book them all for the week after.
• Take potential clients with you to the rodeo.
• Take advantage of all the free pancake breakfasts by meeting clients there, taking sales staff there, making new contacts there. Use http://flapjackfinder.com/ to find out where they are.
• Get back on LinkedIn and see who you can do business with in another city where there is no Stampede going on.
• Take your camera along and get great shots of potential clients and put them on a Send Out Card with a note about getting together for coffee the week after the Stampede. (If you go to the link I have arranged a free one just for you.)

Got any other ideas? Send them to me at Loyal2Uinfo@gmail.com and I may post them for you.