Don’t just think about it—do something!
“Change leads to insight more than insight leads to change” ~Milton H. Erickson Sometimes you just have to give things a try. I’ve spent many hours with clients trying to help them to understand a new or different concept that I’m confident will help their business. I want clients to “understand” the concept. Understanding a new concept helps them to accept it; and can also give them the resilience to persist even if the early results aren’t what they expect. I’m happy to put in that time. But I’ve been doing some reflecting on when I’ve made the biggest changes in my life; and they mostly weren’t driven by great insights, or sudden new awareness or information. The greatest changes … [Read more...]
PROPOSALS…HUNH! YEAH! What are they good for?
(ACTUALLY? Not a whole lot.) I work with a lot of service firm owners and there’s one thing they all hate, and that’s writing proposals. They love meeting with prospects, identifying the problems the prospects are having, and talking about how they can help. But then they get back to their office and the work of actually writing the proposal is a grind. And it’s easy to see why when you look at the proposals themselves; they are (truly) works of ART! My clients will craft unique descriptions of the problem, then outline (step-by-painful-step) how their unique process™ will produce the solution their prospect is looking for. Then they add to that team bios, case studies, and all kinds of … [Read more...]
So you think your agency needs a salesperson…
As the business owner, the job of business development for your creative agency has been yours—from the beginning. But the thing is, you don’t like it. Maybe you don’t feel good at it, or successful as a salesperson, or maybe it just feels icky. But none of that matters now, because there’s a solution. You’re going to hire a salesperson, and that’s going to fix everything. It makes perfect sense. A skilled and experienced salesperson would (likely) know exactly what to do in order to increase sales. A skilled and experienced salesperson would handle the clients better, write better proposals, and close more of them…You’re asking yourself “Why didn’t I do this sooner?” before you even have … [Read more...]
Regular business success beats heroic efforts every time.
“Oooh, I LOVE that,” one of my clients said to me, “She worked half the night to finish that project. She’s a superhero! How do I find more people like her?” The only thing small business owners love more than telling stories about how hard they are working, is to tell stories about how hard their team is working. Get them started and you’ll hear about all-nighters, about 100 hour work weeks, and travel stories that go on and on—and they’ll be bursting with pride the whole time. I have a different reaction to those stories. Sure, it feels great when someone delivers 150% effort on your business’ behalf; but at what cost? When I hear about someone who worked all night, or who took a … [Read more...]
How to make a business decision
It could be said that business leaders have one job, and that’s to make decisions. The decisions we make affect people’s livelihoods, their careers – not just our employees – but our customers, our vendors, our community. I wonder how often any of us sit down and think about how we make business decisions – is our process any good? What could we do to improve it? It’s in that spirit that I offer you Brad’s guide to business decision making! (I’m sure books have been written about this, there’s lots to say, so consider this an incomplete summary…) To help us to walk through this I’m going to illustrate how to decide if we need to expand our account management team by hiring someone … [Read more...]
Looking back on 2017. Looking forward to 2018.
The turning of the year is, for many of us, a time of reflection. What happened in 2017? What was good? What was not so good? And what do we WANT to happen in 2018? It also just so happens to be the time when most business owners are planning and budgeting. It makes sense to take that exercise a little deeper and to really take stock of a company’s progress and decide on some direction for the following year. In that spirit of reflection, I’d like to call your attention to 4 trends I saw in 2017, and 5 that I’m tracking for 2018. 2017: AKA, Shooting the rapids. Although 2017 was a year with lots of political turmoil—both in the US and around the world—legislative uncertainty and … [Read more...]
The easy way (and the hard way) to get leads and sell your services
“I’ve tried that, it didn’t work…” I was having a discussion with an owner of a B2B creative services firm about his business development process. He had a strong business that he’d built by leveraging his personal network, but he wanted to see more growth. This is a business owner who’s aggressive and isn’t afraid to take a risk and try something, but sales tactic or process he’s tried ever got any traction. His business sort of sputtered along from year to year — one year it’s up 15% the next year down 10%. He wanted me to give him the answer, the one method or trick that was going to create an endless stream of leads, that didn’t cost him too much money so he could sell more creative … [Read more...]
Who’s your “teacher”? Who’s your mentor?
When I was a young executive in a corporate job I met a woman named Marylin Dyer Blair. Marylin had a PhD in Industrial Psychology that she had earned in the 70’s. She was barely five-feet tall, with short gray hair—the kind of person that it’s easy to underestimate. But to do so would be a mistake! Marylin had great wisdom and insight into people, communication, and culture. She was a tremendous advisor to me in those days. At that time I had a lot of opinions about—well, everything. But the ones I had (and couldn’t help sharing) about how the business should be run were getting me into trouble. Marylin helped me to tame my mouth. She helped me to make some tough calls and face up to my … [Read more...]
The power of slow
We live in a world obsessed by action and success. And in a world hooked on action, the only way to be different is to stop. ~ @thelazyguru Hi, my name’s Brad. And I’m a workaholic. For a significant portion of my career I lived my life with my foot on the gas—and the pedal pushed to the floor. I wanted to get IT ALL done. So I got up early, and stayed up late. I made the most of every minute. I was an early adopter of portable computing devices so that I could work anytime, anywhere. When I started my own business I took that work ethic up a notch and did even more. While there are definitely parts of me that drove this behavior, I also absorbed a lot of messages about how business … [Read more...]
Small Business Hiring Success: Build a house you want to live in
Nothing ruins a business owner’s day more than having one of their key employees quit. Even if they are quitting for a good reason, it feels like a failure. Putting a team together is hard work, and this is a tear in the fabric of that team. As soon as we get over the loss of that key person, the reality sets in: who is going to do their work? Most likely me. UGH. So now I have extra work to do, I have a team to knit back together, and I have to conduct a hiring process too. It’s no wonder that I see business owners try to short cut the hiring process (again, and again, and…) It’s painful. We want it to be over. Who wants to take time to think about the job and searching for the right … [Read more...]
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