Like Nobody's Business

I remember seeing the Beatles' movie, Help! when I was a kid. Love the lyrics, which are so brilliant: (Help) I need somebody (Help) Not just anybody (Help) You know I need someone (Help) When I was younger, so much younger than today I never needed anybody's help in any way But now these days are gone I'm not so self assured Now I find I've changed my mind I've opened up the doors Help me if you can, I'm feeling down And I do appreciate you being 'round Help me get my feet back on the ground Won't you please, please help me I can almost hear the strains of this song on the phone when prospects call me to ask, sometimes convolutedly, for help ("I really don't need help, but if I did, what could you do for me?"). Where I see businesses get into trouble is knowing when to ask for information and when to pay for it. According to the SBA, businesses fail for several reasons, chief of which are lack of planning, capital and other resources. In this biz environment, operating without the key in

This week, we cover ways to think your way through quitting. Knowing the answers to the key questions for your business or accountability, you can figure out pretty quickly what you should be saying "yes" or "no" to. To remind you, in Seth Godin's book, The Dip, he describes three key conditions when we get stopped: The dip: where the break in your action is so deep and wide that you can't move out of it with the resources you're expending. Kind of like the straight-A highschooler who never really had to expend herself...until she got a snootful of Calculus 115. The cul de sac (or dead-end): staying here will keep you from doing something that will work for you and it will never, ever change. His suggestion? Get out as quickly as possible. Remember, the analogy of the kid on the Big Wheel? It was cute the first few times around, and then it never seemed to stop. The cliff: you can keep this going for quite a while, but it runs out of gas and leaves you on the side of the road with no options. Kind of like

Marketing guru, Seth Godin's book, The Dip, forms the basis for this podcast (and several more to come). Seth describes three key conditions when we get stopped: The dip: where the break in your action is so deep and wide that you can't move out of it with the resources you're expending. Kind of like the straight-A highschooler who never really had to expend herself...until she got a snootful of Calculus 115. The cul de sac (or dead-end): staying here will keep you from doing something that will work for you and it will never, ever change. His suggestion? Get out as quickly as possible. Remember, the analogy of the kid on the Big Wheel? It was cute the first few times around, and then it never seemed to stop. The cliff: you can keep this going for quite a while, but it runs out of gas and leaves you on the side of the road with no options. Kind of like smoking, that doesn't seem to really hurt anything--that is, until the doc gives you That Look, you know the one. Be sure to grab a copy of this little boo

Leverage... Cutting edge... Scalable... ...and the list goes on. When did our business communication stop being authentic and start being a frantic race to leverage robust world-class business intel that offers flexible, yet scalable, capabilities to help achieve (I really wanted to say "leverage" again) potential and future stakeholder value? Use language that is clear and check in to make sure that your intended meaning is coming across. _____________ FOR MORE INFORMATION, TO JOIN THE DISCUSSION FORUM, LISTEN AGAIN OR READ SHOW NOTES Lalita Amos http://www.TotalTeamSolutions.com/podcast/podcasting.htm http://totalteam.blogspot.com 214 615 6505, 3895 for questions or comments

This is a short work week due to the Labor Day Holiday. People are slammed, trying to get work done and the children back to school...and everything else. Someone said their short week felt more like a punishment requiring them to work even longer hours. Conversations have turned to the mythic Work-Life Balance. Where did this come from? This term was coined around 1986. Men and women of color and white women had begun making serious inroads into the professional workforce. The country had been experiencing a depressed economy and people were working longer hours to try to get ahead. Added to this, workforce reductions caused people to work even longer hours. Workers balked at complaining over the extended work weeks for fear that they'd wind up on the chopping block. There was a heady mix of increased worker productivity, advances in technology, stepped-up globalization, and more people in the workplace that went into the RIF brew. I remember taking a group of managers off into the "wilderness" (Oconomo

No. Nein. Nyet. Non. Little words in whatever language we speak. Big mischief if we don't use them when we should. We end up half-committed to projects and other decisions we know we really don't support, taking precious time away from other priorities, working without the focus that comes from commitment. Resentfully wasting time. Search Amazon.com and you'll find a staggering amount of books in getting to "yes" but nary a one on getting to a "no" or saying "no" for that matter. Curiously, most of the ones on saying "no" were written with children in mind. Truthfully, some of those books purport to be sales manuals, but are little more than cheap verbal manipulations designed to satisfy us. Funny enough, I can't tell you how many salesfolk I've met who hate being "sold to." They hate when someone doesn't take "no" for an answer. We all do. And still their bookshelves are lined with books that keep spreading the magic. In this business 2.0 world of relationships we find ourselves on a collision course

Just say "no?" Seems like this has energized many of you (ticking off some) and gotten you into action. Being one who thinks when it gets tough one should dig deeper (as opposed to scarpering away), we're going to look some more at this ugly topic. We've discussed the bloated lifestyle that has us say "yes" to everything without limitation...and then giving up sleep, family life and sanity to try to make it all work. We've talked about the fact that our actions (including what we say) is given by our belief systems: If you're worried about your image and want to look good, you may find yourself a slave to it, saying "yes" to things that will raise you in the esteem of others, while your find yourself filled with resentment (or copping out, running late or other tactics to make the pain go away). Here, we're looking at what we say "yes" to. We discussed that by not knowing the answers to several key questions about our business (business unit or department), we wind up at a loss about what we should be sayi

Face it. We suck at "yes" and "no" to the extent that we're doing work that isn't meaningful, takes up lots or time (or keeps us from the social lives we though our buisnsses woulc give us access to), we don't go on vacations and when we do, we can't unplug. Some of you have asked me: OK, Amos, how do I say "no"? When do I drop the n-bomb? How do I deal with the consequences? I've rolled over so many times, if I said "no" it would speed up global warming How do I deal with pressure...potential loss of business....loss of image? We're going to cover most of these questions in this podcast series. Problemmatic, is the fact our business training (particularly sales) is teaching us not to take "no" for an answer and "getting to a yes" even if that means pressure, manupulation or down-right lying. Any wonder that our college campuses will see a spike in date rape cases in August as students return to school. Women with a weak "no" and men who misinterpret a weak "no" as a "maybe." Truth is, there's a conne

Let's face it: We're tapped out. We work longer than ever with less return. We spend more to get the lifestyle and wind up working longer and harder (notice I didn't say "more effectively"). How do we get off the treadmill? A HISTORY LESSON In the 1940's and 50's, the post-war business climate was booming (as was the population). By the 70's anti-discrimination laws were gaining ground, opening the workforce to women and men of color and white women. At the same time, the economy contracted and prices climbed. Then the 80's and 90's heralded the unthinkable: reductions in force among salaried workers. Now, people are becoming too afraid not to work late. Late in the 90's and into this century, we've seen an explosion in technology, which should have made our lives easier and our businesses more productive. However, that just hasn't been the case. People just can't shut down. As businesses start up, we bring all of this (and other) baggage onto the mix. As our businesses grow, so go the bad habits.

Only in our fevered imaginations. While on vacation, I observed my expensive (but not very bright) purebred cat checking out her temporary new digs. She touched everything in the hotel room and got poleaxed at the full-length mirror. Believing it to be a doorway to a magical new world, she began frantically digging for gold on the face of the mirror. Every few minutes all through the evening, she'd stop and gaze longingly at that mirror, expecting it to become something else. Don't giggle at my simple beast: we do this all the time. Expecting that mirror to really be a doorway, we... Try to retain problem employees (when we know they'll never work out), Pretend that our horrible jobs will be wonderful tomorrow (with exactly the same boss and business culture as before), Expect that a flawed business partnership will turn itself around (when we know that a little more pressure should set off even more pyrotechnics). Why do we keep doing this to ourselves? Several reasons. We find it hard to

"We're committed to excellent customer service." Interesting idea. However, I'm not sure that we really are. Most of the time, I assert, we're too busy listening to the little voices inside our heads. I mean the voices that are constantly filtering our experiences--judging and assessing, telling us that we agree/don't agree/like it/don't like it/seen it before/trust you/don't trust you and on and on and on. With our little voices giving us the blow by blow from Radio Free Saigon, it gets a little tough to hear much of anything else. So, are we really listening to our customers, vendors, suppliers, employees and business partners? Probably not. Setting up listening posts, routine ways to listen to our customers, can be a daunting undertaking. We face loss of management control, changing the fundamentals of the business, reliability of information and scalability. We tend to contact people only when there's a problem we're trying to solve--not to learn about how to improve services that are already great.

We're not in business the same way we were in the PE (pre-email) days before 1987. Small businesses are proliferating in a curious way. Non-micro enterprise businesses with between 11 and 499 staffers have declined from 12% in 1997 to 9%. Micro enterprise business, however, has grown by 95%, with 76% of that growth coming from firms with no employees at all. Over half of those new businesses are being operated out of people's homes, lofts and garages. Yup. The business horizon has changed! Along with that, people are challenging their thinking behind choices for administrative and office services. Intelligent Office locales like the one here in Indy, are helping firms get all of the flexibility and prestige of the bigger, bricks-and-mortar dogs while staying lean like their other flourishing clicks-and-mortar brethren. People who use Intelligent Office, tend to be forward-thinking firms who consider: - Ways to get more out of their scheduling system (even if they're firms of one) - The real need for office

OK. You’ve started lining up your raving fans—people who know, like, understand and trust you. You’ve begun meeting with them, but are concerned that your relationships are starting to feel the chill. Consider these two broad mindsets when meeting with your raving fans and the prospects they bring you. Sales Mindset (Referral Mindset concepts in parentheses): * People who may need to be "sold to" (Raving fans find people who are ready to be buy. Need established by your raving fans who can ask more and better questions than you can based on their relationship) * Convinced of your competency (Prospects found by your raving fans are predisposed to be believe in you by their business/personal associate. They already trust Jane and come to you believing that you'll be trustworthy as well) * The sales rep is responsible for moving the prospect through the sales prospect (Your raving fan moves the prospect through the sales funnel) * Lower level of repeat business (Raving fans generate more business with

RESOURCES At www.totalteamsolutions.com's whitepapers page, you can find the whitepaper "Create Your Kitchen Cabinet," which details how to create an advisory council. Use it to help you find additional customers and key business contacts. Find and read "Raving Fans" for more information on how to use the power of people who know, like and trust you to more easily generate new business. FIND HIM AND CONGRATULATE HIM Scott Forgey's the gentleman I was referring to on today's show. He's a former attorney and lead large group format workshops on personal and organizational transformation. He's started a new consulting concern, Corporate Training Professionals.com. Send him an email to wish him well. _____________ FOR MORE INFORMATION, TO JOIN THE DISCUSSION FORUM, LISTEN AGAIN OR READ SHOW NOTES Lalita Amos http://www.TotalTeamSolutions.com/podcast/podcasting.htm http://totalteam.blogspot.com 214 615 6505, 3895 for questions or comments

Starting your own consulting firm is not for the timid. One must think like an entrepreneur. Here are a few key areas of your business you should concern yourself with: * Administration: As I said, the tedious bits of your business that include your phone system, your location, your clerical support, your relationships with bankers, insurance firms, attorneys and accountants * Research & Development: How you develop your new offerings * Marketing: Key demographic information about your customers (or proposed customers). What they want, who they are, where they are, how they want to get it and how much they want to pay for it. Includes web, referral and other marketing systems. * $ (sales, sales support and product/service delivery): What you'll do to close the sale and delivery of the product or service is needed Some very helpful books: * Consulting for Dummies by Bob Nelson and Peter Economy: Helps with a general picture of your business endeavor. * Consulting on the Side: How to Start a Part-Tim

Do you have a disaster plan? Given that we in the Northern Hemisphere are just entering hurricane and tornado season, we would do well to know what to do. Write a brief (you know how much I love working from one page) plan, including medical other disasters, give it to a trusted party and then practice. However, there are those disasters that are entirely personal, like a very sick parent, partner or child. Do you know how to keep your business running or will your business run out of gas? ------------ For more info: Question Line: 214 615 6505, pin #3895 Comment Line: 214 615 6505, pin #3386 www.totalteamsolutions.com/podcast/podcasting.htm totalteam.blogspot.com

Neatness is overrated. More relevant are questions of productivity and effectiveness rather than how pristine your office space is. CONSIDERATIONS: Are you a serial (single thought processes) or a parallel (multiple trains of thought) thinker? Do you have separate private thinking spaces (which you can keep in whatever way works for you) and public meeting spaces (which you can keep in pristine condition for meetings with prospects or clients)? RESOURCES: * Intelligent Office: http://www.ioindy.com * Abrahamson and Freedman's book, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder--How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place DON'T FORGET: Stop Selling Like a Man Teleclass: 27 February, 9 Pacific/12 Central. Check back here or at Toni’s welsite for more details. HOW TO REACH TONI NELL http://www.springboardconsulting.biz/ FOR MORE INFORMATION Lalita Amos http://www.TotalTeamSolutions.com/podcast/podcasting.htm http://totalteam.blogspot.com 214 615 6505, 389

This episode includes an interview with the fabulous Toni Nell of Springboard Consulting. Focusing on one of the key steps in her "Stop Selling Like a Man" program, she helps us understand the importance of truth-telling while selling. Toni Nell of Springboard Consulting is a player. She’s worked with A-List clients (like Morgan Stanley) and been the go-to-gal for such business luminaries as Jim Horan (One Page Business Plan) and Michael Gerber (The E-Myth Revisited). In her own right, she’s seen and done about everything in a sales context. What she’s learned is that selling is truly about understanding and moving into the world of your prospect or client – lock, stock and teardrop. Your PowerPoint presentations and glossy brochures be damned. Key steps to being your ever-so-wonderful, authentic selling self include 1. Relaxing At a sales call, there may be nothing for you to DO, except be fully competent and ask, “So why am I here?” Your curiosity makes you powerful. 2. Show up 3. Listen without agenda 4

We spend more time picking an Ob/Gyn that will birth our babies than we do building the business partnerships that provide the income we need to take care of said babes. We know that one out of nine new businesses experience a five year failure rate and that the survivors may not be fairing all that well. For partnerships, more attention is spent on the legal and financial positioning of the partnership - whether it was a limited partnership. S or C Corporation, whether it was taxed like a partnership or a corporation and how the partners would get money from the partnership. Little information exists out there on how to have an effective partnership -- one where you don't continually fantasize about pitching one or all partners under the bus. Once the structure is in place, where do we go to work? Smaller firms tend to stay more tactical and, unfortunately, have a harder time getting and staying strategic. Business planning is a single event, usually tied to getting start-up funding needed to open the

This episode is NOT about women. What it’s about is selling in such a way that in bringing your A-Game you bring yourselves. Toni Nell of Springboard Consulting is a player. She’s worked with A-List clients (like Morgan Stanley) and been the go-to-gal for such business luminaries as Jim Horan (One Page Business Plan) and Michael Gerber (The E-Myth Revisited). In her own right, she’s seen and done about everything in a sales context. What she’s learned is that selling is truly about understanding and moving into the world of your prospect or client – lock, stock and teardrop. Your PowerPoint presentations and glossy brochures be damned. Key steps to being your ever-so-wonderful, authentic selling self include 1. Relaxing At a sales call, there may be nothing for you to DO, except be fully competent and ask, “So why am I here?” Your curiosity makes you powerful. 2. Show up 3. Listen without agenda 4. Tell the truth 5. Let go of the outcome ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Stop Selling Like a Man Teleclass: 13 February,