Excerpt from The Human Beings Guide to Business Growth

Effort and Results
One of the promises I make in The Human Being’s Guide to Business Growth is your people will expend half the effort and get twice the results with this process. To illustrate what I mean, let me tell you a story about an early experience with gambling. For years, I traveled to Las Vegas for trade shows. I’ve wandered through the casinos and played the games and have lost money like it was my job. I’m pretty good at that.
On my first extended trip to Vegas, a week-long training conference, we were at a hotel a mile or so off the strip. Each morning, someone in our training class would start the day by bringing up their big wins from the night before. It wasn’t long before I noticed a pattern. The winning people were different each day, but they all had one thing in common. It wasn’t that they were playing the same game. It wasn’t that they had large sums of cash to blow. Half the time, they weren’t even in the same groups.
What they had in common was that they were going to this little casino across the street with an island theme.
As you can guess, by the evening of day four, I find myself in a smoky, rundown, 1980s Miami Vice set turned casino looking for a table or machine to win big on. I settle into a row of slot machines and put in a crisp $20 bill, watching it get sucked up into the green-lit opening.
I punch the button, watch the wheels spinning and lights flashing, and the first wheel comes to a stop. BAR. The second wheel comes to a stop. BAR. My hands start to sweat as the third wheel comes to a stop. BAR. I’m not sure what it means but there are three matching BAR things right in front of me. All in a row.
Lights go off, bells sound, the theme from Rocky starts playing and I can feel people coming up behind me to share in my good fortune. “None for you,” I think, “This is all for daddy.”
I scan the legend on top of the machine to figure out what I’m winning. Is this going to be a taxable event? Will they give it to me in cash?
It’s big. I see $2,500 in big print and get a little lightheaded.
Behind me a raspy voice says, “Too bad you didn’t play all your credits, hon.”
Wait, what?
“I didn’t win $2,500?” I say, looking around.
“Oh no, sweetie,” says the rough-looking woman about my mother’s age. “You have the flat BARs, not the double BARs. And you played one credit instead of three,” she’s now almost in my lap pointing at the machine. “So,” she does some calculating, “it looks like you won eighty dollars. Not bad!”
“And if I had played all three credits?”
“Two-hundred fifty dollars. Plus, you would have hit the progressive...” her voice trails off as she explains the real big bucks I am missing out on.
The Human Being’s Guide to Business Growth Has That Same Multiplier Effect
That story is a microcosm of what happens when your entire team isn’t engaged in the selling process. You can still win, but when you win, the gains aren’t as big as they are when you have all your resources working together on one focused outcome.
That’s what my book is about. Showing you how to utilize a pattern that consistently gets all your resources aligned and maximizes your payout.
With practice and focused effort, using this pattern will get the best results from your people, and here’s the best part. These results come with the least amount of effort. It sounds crazy, but it works because you’re going to help them design sales and marketing practices that they can live with. You, dear leader, will construct business practices that are a natural fit for your company’s resources and disposition.
|