Greg's Right FIT #461

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

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Planning
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Planning

• Didn't grow as much as planned in 2024? Start troubleshooting by looking at the number of leads your team identified this year. Solutions to problems are found in the past (data), so quantify how well the team found new opportunities. With that number in hand, look at who your people spend time with? Start ranking, scoring, & grading.
• Sales teams spend 80% of their marketing budget on producing leads, the rest on follow-up. Buyer research, on the other hand, shows most buyers will make a purchasing decision, "eventually." Next week, think about how to increase your investment in follow-up. 
• George Bernard Shaw famously said, “He who can does; he who cannot, teaches.” What gets lost in this saying is how hard it is to teach. Identifying great trainers and extracting their best practices turbocharges knowledge transfer in your organization. Many can teach, few can teach well. 
• The best way to start a day is to finish it on paper before it begins, says Ziglar. The best way to beat growth targets in 2025 is to finish the year on paper before it begins. (Me) 

Being Human - Somebody is going to win

“If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."
– John von Neumann

Somebody Is Going To Win

Part of my fast strategy for growth approach is developing a common Future Story that everyone on your team can turn to when they are faced with decisions. This Future Story speeds up results because if your people know the destination, it's easy for them to make corrections to the course along the way. 

The easiest way I've found to make a Future Story is to paint a landscape and put yourself in it. 

• Describe the economic, social, and technological trends that the future holds in store for everyone. 
• Describe the value your company will add to customers when this future happens. 
• Talk about the immediate next steps that need to happen to start making progress. 

Some leaders find this a little unnatural at first, but get excited after working on the exercise and practicing their Future Story. It's a natural, human way to build emotion in a story which leads to better decision making, and action. (Momentum!)

What are the chances of this Future Story and your firm's ability to make it happen? Better than you think.  

How can you say that, Greg? You don't know. 

True, but I know the power of repetition. The way I teach you to construct the Future Story, and the way we will adjust/change it from year to year, we almost make it a mathematical certainty. 

In Texas, there is a fantastic story about a woman who won the lottery four times. The first was a lottery for $5.4 million in 1993. A decade later, she won $2 million, then two years later $3 million. In the summer of 2010, she hit a $10 million jackpot. What are the odds, right? 

Turns out she was a mathematician. The odds of her winning get better when you consider there were two winners each week she played. Once she won the first lottery, she had the means to play more lotteries. Winning the second lottery gave her even more fuel to play more lotteries. 

Somebody has to win, but you can't win if you don't play. I'm not saying play the lottery (she had the advantage of some since expired lottery rules to work with) but I am saying you can improve the odds of your Future Story coming true if you follow my guidance. 

Before starting on 2025's plan, work on the Future Story Year 2030. Teaching your leadership team to use it to answer your company's "Why." A Future Story repeated daily will get your people excited about the future. Most important, it will help them, help you, get there.

Random Stuff

“I imagine Saltines will have a comeback. If there are gourmet doughnuts, there might as well be gourmet Saltines."
― Jim Gaffigan

I have mixed feelings about soup. When it's served to me, I enjoy it, but I don't order it. My lovely bride, on the other hand, loves a good soup. She makes great soups, being careful to alter the recipes to avoid my allergens, and I enjoy everything she makes. 

As a boy, when served soup I learned to cool it down using crackers. Not just a few. I used a handful and delighted in crunching them into a piping hot bowl of whatever. I used enough to turn it into a porridge. A sludge. Insantly cooled, ready to eat. I never thought twice about this behavior until I went to school. In the cafeteria, I would crunch handfuls of crackers into my chili, looking up to see a table full of peers staring. I learned to leave the handfuls of crackers for private dining, and use other methods to cool piping hot soup. 

The most tried and true method is blowing on a spoonful before shoving it in my pie-hole. One evening, at a cozy dinner for two with my bride, she served soup. With no crackers in the house, I started cooling a spoonful in my socially acceptable way. I looked up mid-blow, and she was glaring at me, covering her bowl. I understood immediately. It seems I blow a little too vigorously and this causes hurricane-force dirty air activity around my bride's meal. I get it. I apologize and try again. 

Fast-forward a month or so and we're souping again. I do a low and slow blow over my spoon, making sure to keep the winds in check. I look up for approval. She said, "What?"

I didn't blow my dirty air all over your food. Aren't you proud? I say with a smile. 

"Yes," she said. "Thank you. It's not my favorite thing you do."

We get back to eating. Her to piping hot liquid, me to a new thought. Favorite thing? How many of my behaviors is she secretly tracking? And are they all ranked?