New Business #327 – This week: Service, Guarantees, Decisions

GREG’S BUSINESS GROWTH NEWSLETTER #327
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Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week.

In this issue:

– Techniques for FIT
– Being Human
– Random Stuff

Techniques for FIT
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• For shortcuts to work it helps to be in love with your process first. When you have process that works well, like in sales or hiring, and you’re committed to it, short-cuts tend to appear. It’s rarely the other way around.
• There is a goldmine inside your existing customer base. The number of opportunities your team can uncover by being aggressively customer service oriented is mind-boggling.

• “Talk to me about initiatives your company is implementing in the next year or two,” is a basic question, but it serves a sophisticated purpose. It gives direction, orientation, and suggests speed. How can you help them get there?
• Algorithms make mistakes. Human judgement make more mistakes. Over time who are we to trust?

Being Human – What will make you more confident?
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“Nothing is as seductive as the assurance of success.”
– Gertrude Himmelfarb

When I’m brought in for help hitting a sales target, improving reports, or to work on some other result it’s usually for one underlying reason. Confidence is low.

Growth is business you don’t have yet and the future is always shifting. It’s hard to make predictions happen. And the predictions that do come true rarely follow the path we predicted. I used to tell one of my bankers the stories of how our growing company ended up where we were and one day he said, “don’t tell me these stories anymore. It makes me nervous.” I get it. His job is to make sure the bank doesn’t lose money, so pay him back, keep your mouth shut. Save the war stories for someone else.

If you need confidence or affirmation your growth plans will happen, let’s talk. I’m just as happy to shoot ideas down as I am to cheer you on. It’s what I do.

Random stuff

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“The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.”
– C.S. Lewis

We’ve successfully torn up the back of the house. The animals are surviving and things went well until they didn’t. I’m sure we’ll be back on track soon. The hiccup is self-inflicted because I’m not doing the work, so I get to be picky. Particular even.

As the walls come down and the floor is removed the contractor shakes his head. I see this because I stop in to check progress. I can’t resist looking into what the latest big noise is all about. He asks me what the previous owners were thinking because blah, blah, blah, something technical, something important, and I have to shrug my shoulders and make tsk-tsk noises.

When we first moved in I went around and changed light fixtures. It’s one of the things I can do without much drama, but in one room there was a lot of drama. We were hanging an adorable chandelier in my daughter’s room and, well, something was sub-standard, or not uniform, or something. I was livid, but did what it took to get the light up and move on to the next project. I distinctly remember thinking, and may have even said out loud, “I feel sorry for the idiot who has to replace this,” or something like that.

It certainly wasn’t going to be me because this house was our starter house. We didn’t plan on staying.

We stayed. The idiot turned out to be me. During lockdown everything had to be changed out, including the chandelier. It’s now in the garage awaiting its new home in the garden.

I feel sorry for the idiot who has to figure out how to hang it next to the bird feeder. Though I’m sure it will be adorable.

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