Category: People & Relationships

If you picked the San Francisco Giants to return to the World Series this year, the odds might have been in your favor based on their last 5 years’ performance.

But who would have picked the Kansas City Royals?

Really?

With all of the fat contracts and top-heavy payrolls of other American League teams like the LA Angels and the NY Yankees, who would pick a mid-market, under-capitalized team who hasn’t been to the World Series in 29 years?

So how did the Royals do it?

And what can you discover from their success about how you and your team can succeed?

Here are three Royal strategies to build your team around today as you create a championship-winning, Work Positive team:

Be Humble

Remember: It’s not about you. It’s about you and the team.

Play your role on the team. Try to be “a person” not “the person,” and know that it’s enough.

Before the post-season, other than rabid Royal fans, who knew the names of the starting line-up players? Or the bullpen trio?

It’s amazing how much company sales increase and team productivity soars when you pay little attention to the accumulation of personal accolades and more to growing a championship-winning team.

Be humble. Be about the team.

Ask yourself as you Work Positive today, “Why am I doing what I’m doing? To be ‘a player’ on the team? Or, ‘the player’?”

Play for Mutual Benefit

Team is primary. There’s a Gestalt to team that defies understanding by those who bend inward to their ego, who insist on economic navel gazing—“I got mine. You get yours.”

The whole team really is greater than the sum of its parts. Sports writers talk about teams of destiny; teams that achieve greatness without the typically recognized player profiles.

An orientation to mutual benefit drives achievement beyond individual accomplishment. Kansas City made it to the World Series by playing “small ball,” i.e., with singles and stolen bases that depend on each player doing his part instead of the “sultan of swat” dominating the game with home runs.

Think of it this way in your work team: So what if you’re leading the company in sales if it still shows a significant loss each quarter?

Ask yourself as you Work Positive today, “How will my actions benefit the team? How will the company achieve its goals because of my unique contribution?”

Work the Golden Rule

Regard team members as highly as you do yourself.

In this day of celebrity-status, multimillion-dollar contract players sending signed baseballs with cell numbers to female fans during a game, it’s positively refreshing for an organization to clarify vision as “be a teammate.” You can’t buy that core value.

Brian Tracy says, “Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others.”

The Golden Rule works. Work the Golden Rule.

Ask yourself as you Work Positive today, “What golden help do I share with my teammates?”

Want to build a championship team that consistently wins at increasing sales with greater productivity and more time with family and friends?

Be a humble, mutual benefiting, Golden Rule-guided teammate as you Work Positive today.

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), coach, and speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they get out of the office earlier. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.

There may be only one day a year devoted to giving thanks, but expressing thanks year round and doing it well is one of the most profitable business strategies you can have.

Numerous studies reveal that when you thank your customers, they spend more money and tell their friends about the exceptional service and products you deliver, increasing your profits. Volumes chronicle how employee productivity zooms when appreciation is expressed, raising your margins. Vendors go the extra mile to extend credit and deliver “just in time” when they hear gratitude regularly, and keep your cash flowing. Giving thanks works in business.

But you’re already doing more with less and the last thing you want is another item on your to-do list. What are the most effective and efficient ways to express gratitude to these important players in your positive business success?

Start today implementing these 4 tips to develop the profitable habit of saying “Thank you” to your customers, employees, and vendors year-round:

Be specific in your thanks. It’s one thing to say, “I appreciate you. Thanks a lot.” That’s a soap-bubble comment. Pretty while it lasts, but gone in seconds. When you thank them for something specific, that’s Velcro. That’s a thanks they remember because it sticks. You hook your gratitude to something the employee did. For instance, an employee just handled a difficult phone call with a customer really well. Thank them for that specific activity.

Appreciate the process. Target your appreciation at what the person did. Let’s go back to the worker who took the phone call. Avoid telling the employee, “Thanks for helping me keep that customer.” That’s just an outcome that benefits you. Say, “I like how you hung in there when that customer was being difficult. You were really patient and respectful.” The same type of strategy goes for vendors. Give thanks for their doing something that was an extra-mile effort. Recognize the above-and-beyond work.

It’s about them, not you. Showing that you know something about them is incredibly valuable. Connect your gift-giving with life beyond the business walls. If a vendor became a Grandpa, give him a copy of “Goodnight, Moon” to read to the little one. If an employee’s mother died of breast cancer this year, make an end-of -the-year donation to the American Cancer Society in her name. Such intimacy breaks the relationship ice in a transformational, not just transactional, direction which is the game-changing pathway to greater profits.

Go old school with your thanks. In this pixelated world of emails and texts, Facebook and Twitter, the simple and quick act of writing a handwritten expression of gratitude goes a long way. There’s something special today about a handwritten note. I keep a stack of cards and envelopes with me to write thank you notes in flight when returning from a workshop or coaching session. It takes about three minutes per card. You create return business when you take pen in hand and write, “Thank you,” to your customers. Just say, “I know you could do business with others, but you chose us. Thank you! We treasure our relationship.”

Implement these tips, and your business says “Thank you” back to you as you positively increase your profits year-round.

(This article originally appeared on Entrepreneur.com)

About the Author

Dr. Joey Faucette is the #1 Amazon best-selling author of Work Positive in a Negative World (Entrepreneur Press), coach, and speaker who helps business professionals increase sales with greater productivity so they get out of the office earlier. Discover more at www.ListentoLife.org.

Article Contributed by Lori Wagoner

There are all kinds of cults in this world and most have a purpose. It doesn’t matter if the rest of the world agrees, disagrees, joins, or disowns cults. That, by itself, forms the cult in the first place. Cults are defined by their monomaniacal obsession to a cause (no matter how ridiculous some causes can be).

While startup communities aren’t exactly cults – in the sense that everyone within the community isn’t chanting the same mantra, taking the same path, or doing things blinded by the communal energy – it’s hard to escape from the “cult like” feeling you get. Most startups, of course, work a lot like cults according to Peter Thiel.

The startup cult sways and swoons over a few things – such as validating ideas, raising funds, pivoting at critical moments, scaling, growing, exiting, and pretty much everything else. Each of these points is debatable. A few startups repeatedly go against the grain.

Among the many hard nuggets of advice that the startup communities preach is this: never go alone at a startup. Work with a team.

Of course, not everyone works for startups. Even if some people did, they are not the best hires. Plus, startups have issues with cash flow, profits, and branding. Yet, you need the best talent you can find. You’ll need people more committed to the startup compared to doing things for their own sake.

Here are the kinds of people you must actually seek – and beg, if needed – to pull them in to work for you:

The Visionary

Maybe it’s you, or maybe you aren’t. The owner/founder’s skills should perfectly complement the skills of the team. Since we are working rats anyway, it’s easy to get lost in operations, get caught up with everyday “to do” lists and fighting fires.

But startups need boost powers, plus a long-term trajectory. Only visionaries can get you this. You’ll find them dreaming, contesting normalcy, and questioning everything. You’ll need their “looking into their crystal ball” ability. Your startup can benefit from their sheer confidence, tenacity, and leadership skills.

The Missionary

It’s a startup you are running, so whom are you kidding? The world’s best talent won’t beat the line to your door. They aren’t interested. They have plenty of options. So, stop selling that recruitment story. No one’s listening. Anything you promise about the future, is well into the future.

I can’t see. I won’t know. I won’t believe.

You could, however, communicate your compelling mission. Guess who’d be attracted to your job ad then?

The missionary – you know, the guy or gal who goes at it either because they get a kick out of it or because they totally agree with the idea of whatever it is you’re building.

The Enthusiastic Advocate

You don’t want drones working the aisles at your startup. You want passionate committed, hardworking, and dedicated people.

Even more importantly, you want people who don’t mind wearing your company branded tees all day long and also sport funny hats (with your logos on those hats).

You want to hire them for the raw energy, undying hope that wells up within them, the love they exhibit for the mini-community that your startup is, and the pride they carry while they sit out the battle.

Because the nerds can code and the creative can dream, you need enthusiasts who can turn code into apps and dreams into reality.

As a startup, you’d do well with energy, hope, love, and more.

The Sales Guy

Contrary to what you might think is right or wrong, necessary or unnecessary, you need people with raw passion and the execution prowess that today’s marketing demands. You need the sales guys. Without them, you aren’t getting customers.

Getting customers is probably the only thing you should focus on for your startup. Dan Norris, in his 7 Day Startup, writes about how startups do everything possible like hunting for VCs, hiring, attending events to do networking, validating, testing, etc. They do everything they can. Only, they don’t do marketing and sales.

That’s why you need those guys.

The Veteran

Somewhere along the line, you’ll need someone who’s been there and done that. You’ll need someone to give attention to detail. To keep the train on the right track. A lot of things have to work together to keep your startup in one piece and experience goes a long way to help make that happen.

Call these people “veterans,” “serial entrepreneurs,” or whatever, but you’d have to literally put everything on the line to get them to work for you.

It takes the “immersion” of a veteran – understanding marketing, PR, competition, and the industry as a whole, for long periods of time – for the startup to keep running, according to Bernd Schoner, author of The Tech Entrepreneur’s Survival Guide.

There are endless things you simply cannot pull off without experience.

The Execution Specialist

Trouble with running a startup today is that there are too many things vying for attention. While running on all cylinders, with the frenetic pace that a startup usually thrives in, you’d need someone who has the head to the ground and doesn’t get involved in all the talking, the dreaming, and the “I’ll fly, I’ll soar, and I’ll dominate” mentality on the office floors.

You’d need someone built for one thing only: execution. Getting things done. Shifting in-trays to out-trays faster than anyone else can.

Over to You

How do you hire for your startup? What are your shortlisting criteria? What the kinds of people are you desperately seeking? Tell us about your hiring journey!

About the Author

Lori Wagoner is an independent content strategist who gives online marketing advice to small businesses. Lori has blogged at Tweak Your Biz, The Social Media Hat and many other business and tech blogs. You can reach her @LoriDWagoner on Twitter.

Article Contributed by Amber Ludeman

I have read a lot of sales and marketing tips and articles. Many of them left me wishing I had the last three minutes of my life back. But every now and then, you find one that incites emotion inside of you, whether that emotion be complete disagreement that builds to anger and fury, or happiness that leaves you feeling elated. (Or the third, scarier option, which is that I’m the only person who gets this worked up over the written opinions of others.)

This article is one that incited mainly the former. It proposed that the “we don’t need more relationships” from salespeople. It was important to talk business first to your potential customers. After all, they don’t want a buncha jaw-jackin’ messing up their schedules.

And that’s where I think they went adrift. It’s obvious to everyone (especially salespeople) that no one wants to be sold to. But everyone has an issue they need to be solved. Not everyone needs an outside force to help them solve it, but many do. If it was an easy solution, after all, it probably would have been dealt with. And that’s why salespeople are a necessary evil (no offense, salespeople; I am one myself).  That said, I believe relationship-building is not only a great way to sell, but perhaps the only one you should consider.

What are you providing when you only talk business? Straight numbers, facts and hopefully some case studies. But let’s be honest, we live in an era of exponentially saturated markets. Your competition doesn’t live on the other side of town anymore. The Internet has made everything possible with the click of a mouse; you’re competing with people outside of your time zone or country. We can’t all afford to be the cheapest option and we can’t all afford to be the most robust option. So how do we get customers to do business with us? Relationships. 

What should a salesperson do if they are only to talk business? Identify the problem, propose a solution. But how does a company know when to purchase? How does a company know that the salesperson isn’t pulling their proverbial chain? That, my friends, is what is called trust. And you don’t trust damn-near strangers that are talking straight business. You trust people that are forthcoming with you, that champion transparency in their own company values; you trust people who aren’t robots. Why do you think social media brand pages have hinged so much on customer service? Why do you think start-ups are Gen Y’s obsession? Because the corporate machine that spits out factoids isn’t what people want anymore. They want to interact and to trust companies. If you don’t elicit trust in your customers, they’re going to go somewhere else. 

Need more proof?

How about all of the organic and natural products that are so popular? Sure, they come with a higher price tag, but they elicit something in the consumer—that wonderful feeling that says, “you’re doing the right thing by choosing this product” and “your chicken was given a vacation option by being cage-free.” We like to feel better about our purchasing habits, even if only for a minute.

The way you give people reasons to do business with you matters.

Just talking business is also going to lead you down a path of solely numbers. And then it becomes a game of outworking or outdoing the next company. Let’s say that a salesperson promises a company a sales increase of 4% in the first six months. That’s great! But the next salesperson only has to say that he’ll increase it by 5% to get that customer’s ear. But if they have a rapport, a great relationship and open dialogue, the customer is probably going to ignore that 5% person because he or she understands that taking a risk with another company could mean working with a jerk for 1% extra sales, and it’s just not worth it. In short, a relationship is going to keep you in business for longer.

So how might one establish a relationship before talking business? It’s easy. Give away some advice for free, share resources, start conversations and don’t be all about yourself, your company and the cash. Respect the fact that people have more options now than ever before and be a resource for those in need instead of trying to hard-sell those in need.

With that said, check out the matchstick social blog for all the latest social media news, tips, advice and snark to boot. No eyeroll-inducing sign-up required.

Many business owners face the problem of putting out regular newsletter/ezine. They think in order to communicate with their subscribers and potential clients they need to write a full-on article … and so many get stuck.

If you’re struggling with this problem, don’t think of it as a newsletter; instead, think of it as a stay-in-touch strategy. There are many different options available so that you can stay in touch with your audience without having to write a 400+ word article each week.