Greg's Right FIT #480

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

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Growth
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Growth

• Behind on this year's growth projections already? Start troubleshooting by looking at the number of new leads identified this year. Solutions to problems hide in the issue's origin, so instead of checking proposals, look at how well the team is developing new leads. There's still time to fix it. 
• Hearing others' success stories creates tension. We hear the story and think, "Why aren't we doing that?" Remember, it's a story. Next time you read or hear a success story, mentally tack on, "The preceding was based on a true story." It helps release the tension.
• Technology that promises growth never delivers that growth by itself. The promise of adding a tool and instantly growing is attractive because we want the outcome. The vision the tech company is selling may not match the processes you have in place to get there. Keep your vision and processes in mind when shopping for new tools.
• Your salespeople's intent matters more than their technique. In fly-fishing, a tiny kink in the leader is all it takes to spook a fish, even hungry ones. In finding new business, questionable intent is all it takes to spook a prospect. Remind your people to check their intent. 

Being Human - Fixing your way to growth

This week I'm revisiting an old article because I had déjà vu in a conversation today. Someone telling me about the good old days in his business. Things have changed and he doesn't like it. Especially with the latest economic indicators swinging all over the place. 

It felt like I had this exact conversation, years earlier. Me saying fixing your way to growth isn't going to happen. That's when I found this article. (and a few others I forgot about!) I didn't need to change much here, because, it turns out, I'm remarkably consistent. I said same thing this week, even using the same scribbles. 

Let's go back to June 2013. . .

You Can't Fix Your Way To Growth

Excuse the blatant anonymizing here, but to protect the innocent I must generalize!

"Slim" and I were discussing business development efforts at his “dude ranch” and I thought he sounded suspiciously like he wasn’t talking about growth. He was talking about fixing an old problem. Trying to get back to “where things were” a few years ago.

You know. Before the economy went all to heck.

Slim is feeling like his group is not executing like they used to, so he wants my help to grow.

My issue is this: what Slim is talking about. . .it’s not growth.

What ensued was a classic “definition of terms” exchange. It is predicated on these two pictures I sent to Slim. ( the best cowboy name ever, btw)

Slim thinks that this delta (where my arrow is pointing) represents “growth” or “new business development”. I say it's really a “fix” that he’s talking about. He is still holding on to the trend line that was there before the hiccup. He is thinking about ways to get back to where he was, not growth.

So I sent this to him:

You may have seen this before, and right away you can tell it's not the same thing, right? The reason it’s not the same is that it’s built on the assumption that today is Slim's “new normal”, his plateau. It’s an analysis of Slim’s existing business development processes and isn’t imagining where Slim expected to be.

This topic is where we spent the most time.

When I think about growth, it’s based on what’s happening right now. Not back when. Not the best performing quarters from the last two years. Right now. I learned this working in the bank. They are experts at “re-forecasting” based on current results. It’s unsafe to ignore the past, but pretending like the future should be happening today, despite evidence things have changed, is equally unsafe. What Slim was prescribing for his group were “fixes” designed to get back to some previous results he planned for.

Things change. That stinks. The better we are at dealing with change, the better chance we have at growth.

Back to Slim. What seemed to get us on the same page was my statement that “you don’t fix your way to growth.” It broke him from holding on to his previously planned results. In reality, the dude ranch is simply different from 6 years ago. Lots of things are different. Facebook just opened to the public months before 2007. The iPhone came out in June 2007. Mad Gringo came online in 2007.

(note: I wrote this in 2013, those references seemed relevant)

My point is, if you’re not happy with current projections, start by looking carefully at where you are today. Be as exact as you can get. Then, in a separate exercise on a separate day, go to work on re-defining where the world will be, where your customers will be, and where you want to be in the next 5–7 years. 

Slim has done an excellent job of reducing his fixed expenses while subtly changing his customer experience to fit into his new cost structure. His net is strong. Close to pre-recession levels. In my high-level view, Slim is already back. Fixed. 

With this in mind, we got off Slim’s solutions for fixing the gap, and started talking about re-imagining outcomes. I think it's best if he centers on building on his team’s strengths.* Finding growth by focusing on what Slim’s team is good at.

A successful re-framing of expectations lets you get on with improving processes to set up the next period of growth. It happens. Swear.

*confirmation this idea was in my head years before "The Human Being's Guide to Business Growth" came out. 

Random Stuff

“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
– Mark Twain

Sometimes I write these notes to you while sitting in a coffee shop. Today I picked one full of windows, and I'm sitting here facing the street. A small truck seems to be having problems. It hasn't moved since I arrived. It's in the first spot at the stoplight, so cars pull up behind it for a while before figuring out it's stalled. The hazards are on, but the sun is shining brightly so they must not see it. One after another after another.

The occupants in the last car pull up behind him, talking, gesturing, and don't seem to notice he's stalled. A cop with flashing lights pulls up behind them. I am watching their confusion. I can't see for sure, but I think they're trying to wave the cop around. After a minute, they pull around the stalled truck and the officer gets out to help the poor person. 

The first time I was ticketed for a moving violation was in a truck. My first vehicle was a 1977 Datsun pickup. Orange. It was my dad's work truck and had a camper shell. The tiny orange truck was embarrassing enough by itself, but with a camper shell it would have been unbearable, so we took it off. It had a little cassette deck. 4-speed stick shift. Could hold 2 comfortably, 3 uncomfortably, in the cab, another 5 in the bed of the truck. It turned out to be a great first car. 

My run-in with the police happened on my route to and from my job at the oil refinery. To get to the refinery, I drove up and down Monaco street. Every day. Around 30 minutes each way. One day, after my shift, I had the windows down, the cassette cranked up, and I got caught speeding. I can remember the feeling. Just seeing this officer's flashing lights makes my palms sweat. I was making $9 an hour. Gas was under $1. The speeding ticket took a serious dent out of my day's earnings. 

The tow truck is here for the gentleman and traffic is back to flowing freely. A car full of pugs is looking at me as their owner checks her phone. Happy little faces.

Not for nothing, I'm almost positive the black Nissan Sentra that just blew through the intersection was speeding. Probably on their way to work.

I hope they don't get caught.