Greg's Right FIT #405

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on a Momentum Lens
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on a Momentum Lens

• If motivation relies on internal mechanisms, in contrast, momentum relies on environmental ones. Managers spending time on their team's environment experience longer periods of success than focusing on personalities. 
• Your people's intent counts more than their technique. In fly-fishing, a tiny kink in the leader is all it takes to spook a fish, even the hungry ones. In growing your business, questionable intent is all it takes to spook a prospect. 
• Hiring processes and algorithms work best when the team is looking for behaviors the position needs for success. Like "persistence despite setbacks" or "accuracy under pressure." Sticking to a process gives you new insights.
• Have patience. Successful living is produced not so much from lightning bolt moments of luck, but little edges gained from effort toward the goal every day. 

Being Human - From motivation to momentum

"Check yourself before you wreck yourself.” – sign from my safety job at the oil refinery

Catching up with a client he brings up his sales rep. It isn't the first time she's come up. I was there for the hiring, heard about her about six months later, and now her name comes up as another year passes. She's the only official business development person, but she brings years of selling experience to the table. New business before her arrival came from everyone and anyone, primarily from the owner/CEO. 

The problem, he tells me, is most of the new business she brings in is still coming from the same employee/owner sources. Since she is involved in all business development activities, she works on everything from referrals to trade show leads. Most of the leads are still originating from him and his people. He feels like she isn't bringing in enough new business on her own. 

When I ask what he was doing about it, he lists what sounds to me like motivation related actions. 

• Discussing results vs expectations
• Coming up with a plan of action to improve results
• Changing the comp plan to reward finding new, new clients

I label these as motivation actions because I just happened to have finished writing a book about focusing on momentum vs. motivation! These actions suggest the answer to the production problem lies inside her, where we imagine motivation resides. I point this out and ask if he can think of any environmental factors contributing to her lack of production. He shrugs. 

I suggest we take a look at her world and look for some indicators that show she's on track for finding the kind of new business he expects. From my point of view, she faces environmental challenges that have nothing to do with her motivation.

• She's never built a sales process. Her previous experience was working inside an existing team.
• She's not done this inside a small company where she is both the marketer and the sales person, plus it's a new industry.
• There is no road map. It's a highly technical business and dedicated business development people are rare. 
• The staff is happy to hand off opportunities that need work, while they get back to their billable hours.

To her credit, she shows up every day, ready to work, so I argue she's motivated enough. I suggest they'll both be better served by focusing on building momentum, ignoring results for a while. 

I describe them looking at one those "days without an accident" signs in workplaces, but the metric tracked is a useful new client prospecting activity. Each afternoon they take a minute and reflect on this question: did she do her best that day to make contact with a new prospect to the company? Yes or no. No digging into the details, just a simple "yep, tried my best," or "no, didn't get to it today." Track those days like the factory floor tracks accidents. How many days in a row can we get?

Focus on momentum. 

Like most ideas, it's not an instant fix, but it's a start. Focusing on momentum and ignoring motivation, or changing the lens from motivation to momentum, will allow her to figure things out. 

It's a process, not an event. 

Random Stuff

"Stuck somewhere between try-harder, and why-bother."

I'm plodding through a big book. It's incredibly well written, but man, it's dense. Lucky for me, each chapter is an event unto itself. The author explains the important event by giving a full background of the issue, then a blow-by-blow account of what happened. I feel smarter every time I knock a chapter down.

In this last one I learned about a feud that started when two men were starting their careers. It escalated to a messy episode where one tried to ruin the other. A President of the US and a New York power broker. Powerful people gotta flex.

I don't have such feuds in my world, but it reminded me of a time when I was raising funds for my startup. An investment group told me they wanted to invest a significant amount in the company. Great news. We used this promised investment to raise more money, which came in quickly. However, the investment group's timeline moved once, twice, then a third time. At this point my little company was running full speed ahead because we had seasonal deadlines to meet. This led to us getting over our skis and needing some bridge funding.

After many months, when I had given up on the investment group, they showed up with a check. The problem was the business had changed. What was an idea was now a going concern. This meant an original investor, one who had bridged money, wanted to renegotiate. Not an unreasonable request.

What I didn't know then, but soon found out, was that my investor and some of the investment group had a history. You could say they had a feud from early in their careers, one that wasn't resolved. I was privy to the grievances of both sides. Some of the insults were hilarious. My problem was I needed to get work done. Work requiring financing. Not watching rich guys bicker.

I'm not saying I understand what it's like to be caught in a battle between POTUS and a power hungry New Yorker, but I kind of know how Mayor LaGuardia felt. Michael Lewis, in "Liar's Poker" called these conceited types of alpha-males "Big Swinging Dicks." I'm guessing the mayor would agree when I say, whether in the 30's or early 00's, stuck between BSDs is no place to be.