Greg's Right FIT #441

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

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Trimming
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Trimming

• Think of the individuals on your team as different plants in your garden. Each one requires different light, soil, fertilizer, and water. Pruning, re-potting, and weeding. Daily and weekly touches coupled with patience pays off.
• Cicero said, "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."  
• It's hard to remove a plant you took the time to select, prepare space for, and nurtured. Remember it's not the plants you pull that make you miserable, it's the ones that need to go, but you keep. (same with employees)
• Pruning at the right time stimulates growth. You can apply this to prospect lists. Cutting prospects frees up time to find more opportunities. Split your list into top, middle, unknown. Today is the right time to prune that last group with gusto.

Being Human - Cutting for growth

"While this is sound advice to ensure maximum flower enjoyment during a single season, it completely ignores the physiology of the plant. Rather than obsess about a few blooms in one season, it’s better to consider the overall energy balance of the plant."
from Fine Gardening

I just spent some time dead-heading, pruning, and cutting my healthy plants. Some of the cuts are hard, especially if the plant is flowering, but I know if I do it at the right time the plants will respond with even more flowers. Just like sales management. 

In the book, "The Sales Momentum Mindset," I spend a minute or two on behaviors versus results. I even give a management technique to help leaders keep their focus on behaviors, Minimum Acceptable Standards. It works because it keeps our brains from making up stories. 

. . .we are going to talk about establishing and adhering to what I call “minimum acceptable standards” (MAS).

We human beings have a particular talent for finding patterns and telling stories. Therefore it’s easy for us to make excuses. If you’ve been lucky enough to spend time with small children, you can see this in action. Their eyes dart back and forth in their head as they pick out real details from events and make up connections for what happened. “How did the acorn get wedged into the fire pit control mechanism?” asks the parent. “Well,” the child said, “I don’t know how that happened.” They both stare at the seed the repair man just pulled from the firepit. “Wait. I know what must have happened,” the child continues. “I was kicking those seeds around the porch ... and one may have gone toward the firepit ... and must have gone inside there and broke it.” The parent and repair man nod their head in unison, marveling at the incredible coincidence.

Knowing this ability to make excuses is practically baked into us, when we as sellers are trying to build some momentum, we need to curb this tendency. We need to set some unimpeachable standards we won’t accept. The MAS I referred to previously.

Setting MAS is easy. Keeping them is harder. . .

This talent for stories is what keeps us from getting distracted by the flowers/results. It helps us keep the other plants healthy, continuing their momentum. 

It hurts to cut the flowers, but when done right they respond like the mythical hydra. Three more appear. 

Don't get too distracted by the flowers/results. Check on the behaviors because your overall goal is a healthy plant/firm. 

Random Stuff

"The air is like a draught of wine.
The undertaker cleans his sign,
The Hull express goes off the line,
When it's raspberry time in Runcorn."
– lyric by Noel Coward

I harvested our first raspberries this morning. It's called the double-gold-raspberry, which means new growth will give a few berries in the fall, and a lot of berries the following spring. Very exciting, as each one is a little flavor bomb, but kind of hard to harvest. A tiny treat requiring some work. 

The bush is aggressive. Little branches pop up all over the place. They're thorny and rough and not attractive. It reminds me of someone, but I can't put my finger on who. The kind of person that looks uninviting, gives little bits of sweetness, but is hard to keep contained. You know the type, generally hard to be around, but great a couple times a year.

As I harvested, a couple of sparrows are twittering nearby. I've been watching them outside my office window. The female is spending a lot of time fluffing herself up and making a sweet song. Soon a dude sparrow arrives, she lifts her tail feathers and bam, it's over. Except it's not. I guess I assumed this was a one and done thing, but they are on each other a lot. Even when I'm right there. Sparrow PDA.

Curious, I look up the mating habits of a house sparrow. Turns out they are monogamous and mate for life. And they copulate frequently, which I can confirm. As I type this, they're at it again. 

I should point this out to the raspberry bush. Maybe if it were less prickly, we could get a few more berries. They are sooooo good.