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Is This The Right Kind of Magical Thinking?

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Haven’t you been warned to avoid magical thinking? The kind of thinking where you make up the story you prefer, and then believe it; as in “My expense report is due but I won’t fill it out tonight.  Rick the Boss will understand why I’m late again when he sees what I worked on instead.”  or  “It’s my business if I raise my voice behind my closed office door.  I don’t care what my supervisor said; he’ll understand when he finds out what Accounting did.”

Your Brain Is Listening

The danger of course is not only that your magical thoughts aren’t true and will likely get you into trouble, but by announcing your magical thought to yourself, your brain accepts it as true, and acts like it’s true. Your brain will tend to call similar thoughts true, if they’re consistent with the one you made up.  The entire scenario slips farther away from what’s true, and you allow yourself to behave in ways and defend statements you make that have no basis in truth.  Magical thinking can seriously harm you, and all the time you think you’re right.  It can be tough to pull back from.

Recognize Magical Thinking

You must train yourself to recognize and root out this kind of magical thinking.  I teach my clients to avoid magical thinking like this: “List the things in this situation you can independently prove are true. Say to yourself: ‘This list alone is the truth. I agree this alone is real.  I do not believe anything not on this list and I discard it.’ ”  Try it; I promise it works.

But There’s Another Kind

But there is another kind of magical thinking.  The right kind.  Like the other kind, it ignores reality, but still, I recommend it.

My desk was lost under a snowdrift of books and papers. I felt I should take an hour to clean it up before I could hope to get any work done.  I couldn’t afford an hour, I didn’t want to do it, and I knew that trying to straighten my desk was like entering a black hole of time-wasting.

Magical Thinking To The Rescue

So I decided to use magical thinking. I told myself my desk was clean and I had all the space I needed to get right down to work and get a lot done.  So I did.  I got right down to work and got a lot done.

As we already know, starting a task and keeping at it is the hardest part and is most of the battle. I used magical thinking to take away my excuse for not starting the task. I used magical thinking to prevent procrastination. I shoved the pile aside and got a carload of stuff done.

Later I felt so good I cleaned off my desk.

What do you think?  Can you see a use for this kind of magical thinking in your life?  Please comment – I’d like to hear about it.

How To Motivate and Engage Your Team

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This is the story of how I did it wrong.  I was a Program Manager and Business Developer, selling engineering projects right and left, choosing Task Managers and task teams, and having kick-off meetings.  I opened kick-off meetings explaining the project and its importance to the client.  I thought that motivated my team members.

You Can’t Motivate That Way

I also thought they were motivated by the same thing I was, namely, the business of our business:  find and develop clients, develop and sell projects, do high-quality work, provide high-quality solutions, make profits, grow the company and its teams, everyone gets promoted and paid.  Repeat.  I thought they knew that as intimately as I did and that it motivated them, as it did me.  But I don’t know for sure that it motivated them; I never asked them.

It Gets Worse

What I was doing was insufficient for motivating my team.  Journal articles told me I was doing a bad job, but work was coming in so fast, times were so exciting, that I hoped time and the amount of work would make everyone happy and would cure everything.  Or that I would figure it out later, when there was more time.

Lessons Learned About Motivating

I’ll cut right to the chase and tell you what I have learned, what I know now for sure.

#1 – I should have asked them individually what would motivate them to do their best work.  I couldn’t guarantee I would deliver everything they wanted in every project, but my record with them would have been a lot better than it was.

#2 – On any individual project, may I recommend that you tailor the project work so that it delivers one or more of the following benefits to your task team members.  Be sure and express the project work in the terms below.  In broad strokes then, and in order from “probably not that motivating to me as a person, but it’s sort of cool” to “very motivating to me”, explain at the kick-off meeting how their work on the project:

  1. Solves a crucial problem for the client
  2. Provides them job security if that’s what they wish; profitable work secures their job and allows them to be promoted
  3. Solves a problem that hasn’t been solved before
  4. Solves a problem that is so difficult  it will require their very, very best work; it will seriously stretch them
  5. Gives them the chance to lead task-level work now, and lead large programs sooner
  6. Gives them the chance to work one-on-one with you, in a mentor-mentee relationship
  7. Creates new, portable, resume-building knowledge and accomplishments for them
  8. Provides them collaboration they’ll enjoy and learn from
  9. Allows them to be part of something larger than they are, that they can be proud of, and that they could not have produced on their own

Motivate Them By What’s In It For Them

We know now that generational differences dictate some of what motivates our teammates, and my list reflects some generational differences you can choose from.  After your interviews with your individual teammates, you can point out to them what other benefits to them the project offers.  Look at Item 2 and Items 4 – 9; unlike in decades past, we are motivating some employees entirely by what’s in it for them.   There’s nothing wrong with that; the motivation still brings out their best work and leads to successful project outcomes.

On Their Own Terms

I don’t have to tell you how important it is to engage our teammates on their own terms.  I don’t have to tell you that most of them are undaunted by the prospect of finding work at other firms if you fail to engage them.

Engaging them on their own terms, especially when it’s exciting material like Items 4 – 9 in the list above, is exciting for us too.  A lot more exciting than the boring stuff I used to try that didn’t work anyway.

Communicate On Their Own Terms Too

Engage your teammates on their own terms, and have conversations with them on their own terms too.  I have my friend L.L. to thank for tutoring me to not mind it when I only see the tops of my colleagues’ heads when I speak with them.  She reminds me that people now find it correct and efficient, not rude, to interrupt me to answer my question from their phone data before I finish speaking.  She says I should welcome the answers, and I’ve decided to.

You Decide

Have you decided to motivate and communicate with your team only in ways meaningful to them, even if the style is very different from your own?

What’s your best tip about motivating or communicating with your teammates? 

Please comment above and tell the rest of us.  We can sure use the help!

 

 

 

I Blew It – I Omitted Two important “P’s”

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I blew it in my recent post The 16 P’s of Becoming a Leader in Marketing and Selling.  I defined the 16 essential tasks in the job description of a Large Account Manager or Client Account Manager.  It’s a good list.  The list made me successful.  But it’s incomplete.  I omitted the two most important “P’s”.

I Took It For Granted

My excuse is that these two “P’s” are so intrinsic and crucial to our success as Marketers, Sellers, or Account Managers and have been accepted as crucial for so long, they’re so much at the core of what we do and must do as Seller-Doers and as leaders, that I took it for granted that I didn’t have to put them in the list.  A client corrected me.

“Personal Relationship” Is New #7 On The List

Most Client Account Managers in professional services firms practice Relationship Selling.  Relationship Selling begins with and can’t succeed without relationship building.  The first “P” I omitted was to have a Personal relationship with your client.  Get to know your client personally, as much as is appropriate.  Make it clear that you want to be of service to the client and her firm, that you want to be useful over a very long term, and that you want to build a relationship.   Ask earnest questions.

Earn The Client’s Trust

Earn credibility and the client’s trust by asking earnest questions about their company and their situation, not for the purposes of making a sale but for relationship building.  Asking questions, earnestly inquiring of the other person, makes anyone feel valued and valid.  Inquiring of the client and her firm makes you seem friendlier, more knowledgeable, more understanding.  As Stephen Covey told us, “Seek first to understand.”

The Most Important Part Of Your Questions

The most important part of your questions?  Leave lots of time for the client’s answers.  When she’s done speaking, let a couple of beats go by before you speak.  Maybe she will enlarge on her answers.  Your questions are no good without her answers.

My Journey

I recently wrote about my journey to building a client’s trust.  Never forget that the client has loaned you the time to meet with her.  You must use it to prove your genuine desire to help her personally.

 “Pain” Is New #8 On The List

Now that you know your client and her situation better, we come to the most important “P”:  you must discover – and deliver the cure for – the client’s Pain.  There is the slimmest chance that the only problem or pain the client wants a solution for is the common problem occurring in her industry right now, or the current problem that brought you together at that convention.   But if that is the only pain she’s telling you about, then one of these is true:

  1. All the other salespeople know her problem too, so you’re in a large crowd of competitors with nothing special to offer; i.e., you’re wasting your time, or
  2. You haven’t looked hard enough, your questions aren’t phrased well enough, or you’re not listening well enough to the answers.

Your Client’s Deepest Need

“Discovering the Pain” is what I call knowing your client’s deepest need.  You’ll see it called that in my Relationship Selling posts.  It appears all over those posts, so intrinsic to what we do that I didn’t put it on the “P’s” list initially.  Discover your client’s pain through your presence and your patient earnest questions.

Skillful Questions to Discover the Deepest Need

  • Make sure your questions don’t sound self-seeking.
  • Stop short of wearing your client out with your questions; if you don’t stop early enough, she’ll feel manipulated.
  • To keep her from feeling like she’s under a microscope, offer some insights and possible solutions along the way.  Offer them graciously and make them brief.
  • If you don’t know any solutions, say so, and ask her if she’d like to brainstorm.  Try to make this a real conversation.
  • Just make sure that you’re not just parroting the solutions you came there to “sell”.

So that’s new “P” #8 – discover and develop the cure for your client’s Personal Pain.  Thank you to my client for asking me for this new post.

That brings the list to 18 P’s.  Sounds long, but you can do it because it’s systematized.  And you can teach the system to others too.  Just stick with me, stick with us here.  You can do this.

Please click “Comment” and join in the discussion.

 

 

The 16 P’s of Being a Leader in Marketing or Selling

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When I first became a Program Manager and Client Account Manager (CAM) years ago, I was daunted by how much work there was, and how many facets there are to the work.

What If You’re Not In Marketing or in Sales?

If you’re not in Marketing or in Sales, but you would like to be a strong leader in your company, then you should study these tasks, help out or lead an effort every single time you can, and become a valued contributor in one or more of these areas.  The absolute quickest way to the top in most professional services firms is to be a strong contributor in these areas.

I Thought Someone Was Kidding Me

Frankly, I thought someone was spoofing me that I was expected to perform well at all the tasks and duties.  But the CAMs at engineering companies – and at other professional services firms – are usually “Seller-Do-ers” and these are their tasks.  I made the list so I wouldn’t forget anything, and I regularly monitored my performance against the list.

I Didn’t Do It All Myself

I didn’t do all the work myself; I was a small part of an extremely smooth-running and cooperative team (you know who you are).  But on my client account, I was responsible for our results.  The amount of work was daunting.  The enormous effort required caused me to break out in nervous laughter.  I loved it.

The Customer Journey

To be a leader in marketing or selling, everything we do must be absolutely centered on the customer’s needs, the customer’s point-of-view, the quality of the customer’s journey with us.  This list gives the CAM’s duties, but above all, the experience the customer is having with us that day comes first.

The 16 P’s of Being a Leader in Marketing or Selling

These are not all the tasks of a Client Account Manager (CAM); I’m sure I’ve forgotten some from my original list long ago.  Here they are in no particular order.  Please tell me what “P’s” you would add.

1.  Product – the CAM’s job is to be thoroughly knowledgeable about her firm’s products/services/offerings, to understand how they can be tailored to fulfill her client’s needs and desires, and how the offerings can be improved to please the client and can best be delivered.

2.  Positioning – the CAM’s understands her firm’s position in the field of competitors, her firm’s strengths and weaknesses in that field of competitors; she understands and knows how to improve her firm’s position as a provider and a competitor in her client’s eyes.

3.  Promoting – the CAM stays aware of how the firm is promoting itself in the marketplace, what special skills and benefits are being touted, aligning her efforts with those efforts, and contributing data about marketplace and client needs and trends.

4.  Pitching – this “P” is about speaking in a public setting.  From networking events to convention crowds to business lunches to one-on-one meetings, the CAM’s job is to speak in an attractive, intriguing way about her firm and its services, positioning the firm well in the minds of listeners and prospective clients.  But the CAM is always gracious, brief, and concise when speaking publicly.  She leaves lots of time for the second and equally important part of this task:  listening to the clients.

5.  Prospecting – the CAM’s job is to prospect for clients, that is, to search out and discover potential clients for her firm’s services and products, either within industry sectors targeted by her firm, or by suggesting and supporting why new sectors and new types of clients should be pursued.

6.  “Pairing” – the CAM “pairs up” the best potential clients with the elements of her Sales Funnel; that is, she qualifies the prospects, identifies the prospects that meet her requirements for “ideal client” and develops a marketing, sales, and resources plan to turn the qualified prospect into a client.

7.  “Proposaling” – the CAM knows how to write a winning proposal.  Writing entirely from the client’s point-of-view, she re-states the client’s true need as the Problem Definition and states her team’s solution to the problem.  She describes the benefits of the particular solution, the technical team and resources she’s assembled to solve the problem, and states a winning price.  She has taken all the risks of the proposal and the project into consideration, and makes the proposal brief and compelling.

8.  Pricing – the CAM and her team know the intricacies of constructing a winning bid/price for the project.  She has taken into account the client’s true, often unspoken, needs and schedule demands and the team has written a fair price, amply defended by the rest of the proposal.  She has pointed out the savings and advantages built into her team’s solution to the problem.

9.  (Party! – crucial task #9 does not appear on most CAM job descriptions!  After winning the work, the CAM throws a celebration to thank her proposal team and welcome the project team.)

10.  Production –  the CAM and her team swing into action on the project and produce results.  The Project Managers who report to the CAM set up Project Instructions, task leaders, task teams, schedules, task budgets, etc.

11.  Performing and Pleasing – everyone on the team is accountable for performing the project and pleasing the client, but it is the CAM’s responsibility to regularly and honestly ask whether the client is pleased, discover the cause when the client is not pleased and make the necessary changes, while keeping the program on budget and on schedule.

12.  Profit – the CAM approved the price and scope-of-work in the proposal and now it is her job to bring the project in on budget, making the percentage of profit agreed to with her management.  Project monitoring and meetings with project managers are required; changes in staff may be required.  The CAM or Program Manager foresees changes in the project scope or price and, if necessary, takes the requested change order to the client, together with work-around plans and solutions.  All these efforts are directed at pleasing the client while bringing the project in at the agreed-to profit.

13.  Paperwork – each of the tasks has its own, sometimes enormous, “paperwork” requirements, everything from Sales Funnel updates to reviewing job-cost-and-profit reports to authoring sector growth plans. The CAM knows there is no more sure route to failure and loss of support in her company than being late on her paperwork requirements.  Some can be delegated but the CAM is accountable for accuracy and for knowing and meeting her “numbers”.  She knows that accurate, on-time paperwork is her ticket to the show; that her boss can cover her back more easily if her paperwork’s done.

14.  Propagation/Scaling – a successful CAM knows how to repeat her success and propagate the winning formula into more project wins, revenue, and profit.  She knows it saves time, energy, and resources to identify the winning patterns in her prospecting, proposaling, and building client relationships.  She takes it as a challenge to scale those patterns into systems, and scale those systems into methods for her team and other Seller-Do-ers.

15.  People and Appraisals – in addition to the other 15 duties listed here, the CAM has no more important duty than training and developing her team and her people.  Her firm’s product is the imagination and problem-solving of its people; all the proposals and project wins come solely from the initiative and problem-solving of the team.  The CAM takes care to give prompt, brief, encouraging feedback; she looks for opportunities that will let her teammates dare themselves to get better; she welcomes training opportunities for her team and makes sure the overhead time is available; she prepares hard to give fair and balanced appraisals.  She thanks her team, defends her team, keeps her team out of trouble, and goes to bat to see they are recognized and rewarded.

16.  Programs – the CAM contributes her findings, plans, and her creativity to corporate programs for growing the firm, growing its people and teams, growing its customer base, and growing the community.  She knows that the programs and the other 15 P’s add up to all-important employee engagement and customer engagement.

You Seller-Do-ers out there will recognize that “Sales Funnel” management is covered by the first 8 P’s.  Other P’s – priority-setting, productivity, problem-solving – are just as important but they apply to everyone, not just CAMs.

How do you like the list?   What did I leave out?  Please join in the discussion.

If you’re not a Client Account Manager or a leader in your company and you’d like to be, this list is a terrific place to start assessing and growing your skills.  If you need any help, just click “Comment” and ask.

 

Which Tools To Solve This Problem Are Right In Front of You?

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Recently I mentioned I didn’t like Dan Brown’s book Angels and Demons. The plot was a little too repetitive for my taste.

Problem solving

The female hero did have two strong problem-solving techniques. I covered one in that recent post; here’s the other. As her situation becomes more dangerous, she “was starting to come unhinged…feeling terrible frustration with no tools to handle it. You have tools, she told herself, you always have tools. What tools are right here in front of me in this room? What data are right here?”

You have the data

You have plenty of data around you that you can plug right into tools you already know how to use. You usually have ample data, tools, and therefore, answers.  You have tools, tell yourself, what tools are right here in front of me?

Be still

You just have to be still enough, for long enough, to tell yourself:  I have the tools and the answers.

I know this works because I’ve used it.

Do you think it will work for you too?  Please share your thoughts.  I look forward to hearing from you.

One Simple Way To Get The Loyalty Of Your Team

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I used to tell my project teammates, “Tell me bad news quickly. Bad news does not improve with age. Just tell me. There’s nothing you can get into that, together, you and I can’t get out of.” I liked that. I liked being that manager. I liked showing solidarity with my team, and I liked going to bat for them. I liked knowing that I’d hear bad news from them in plenty of time to minimize bad results.

They weren’t going to get into very bad trouble because they WOULD tell me in time. See how that works? It’s kind of circular, but boy, did it work. Try it.

Please join in and describe the way you get your team out of a bad spot, or you increase teamwork.  Click “comment” above.

Do You Think “Done” Is Better Than “Perfect”?

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Are you familiar with this saying?  In movie-making, when a scene’s been shot and it’s good, but some minor detail is off that can be fixed later in editing, the director says “Cut and print!  We’ll fix that in post-production” meaning it’ll be fixed in editing.   “We’ll fix it in post” is the director’s second chance to get just one or two last details done.  For now, everyone gets to celebrate the 99+% that’s really good.  And really done.

It’s done.  Go celebrate.

It is so important to be able to recognize when 99+% is done and you can say “Cut and print! We’ll fix the rest in post” knowing that the work’s done and moments away from being ready to publish or put in the envelope.  You got it finished!  You can say out loud, “We’ll fix the rest in post.”

Now, take a breather, have a coffee, go home and celebrate.  Celebrate that you’re done. Come in tomorrow and fix the rest in post.

I’ve said “We’ll fix the rest in post” a hundred times and felt great every time.  Do you think it would work for you?

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