By Joyce Hanin
Truly, that common phrase is not a cliché in this specific circumstance. When you get back to basics and take a look at what is actually driving your business (aside from the obvious you!), it is your staff. Yes, those people you see everyday, who see your vision (or at least are trying to), or who are looking for that vision which you are supposed to provide, so that they can succeed.
Unfortunately, in the world of sales (or anywhere else, for that matter), too often and sadly so, that vision is not forthcoming from the bosses or leaders. And those who may actually see that path to glorious success – the employees – are not even recognized for their perceptions, let alone their abilities to have them, or their efforts to make them happen.
So, in planting these initial seeds for a truly prosperous outcome, there are three critical ingredients in this recipe for success:
1) Really take time to know your employees thinking – especially their strengths – and adapting or expanding these. Their past achievements are what affects how they view their job with you and how they are likely to perform with you and tackle any problems that may arise. Take heed if they have something to say, and how they say it. Expression through communication is your best guide to understanding what makes them tick.
2) Allow your staff the freedom to do what they do best – after all, they are doing it for you. So sometimes at least, take ideas and thoughts from them. If they keep giving you ideas and suggestions that just aren’t feasible, then either they don’t understand their job, their role, or your vision. So re-explain it. Or, perhaps, you did not really understand them enough at the outset to make your hiring effective, or the use of their talents effective. It is not enough to know they are talented; learn to perceive how they put those talents and skills into motion.
3) Compensate them for what they are worth. Nothing creates success more than recognition of someone who has been successful and who wants to be successful again – for you! Good pay means appreciation and creates an atmosphere of dedication to the job – the job they are doing for you.
So just like a garden, when you are sowing the seeds and you commit to ensuring your plant grows well, don’t renege on your commitment to your employees – or you won’t have any. And don’t just go by the gardening book either; add to it your own instincts – obey them because they come from the other most important element in success – your heart. Combine a good heart with belief in yourself, your product or your service and your employees (with those three important elements) and you cannot do anything else but SUCCEED.
Joyce Hanin is a Subscription Sales and Fundraising Consultant for the Arts who has earned her reputation in the Industry for her remarkable and unique training techniques.
A person who acts as a martyr is really a victim who through guilt appears heroic. This is dysfunction by design.