by Ronald Shapiro, Crown Business, 2008.
One of the things that can make or break everything you do is preparation. The better prepared you are the better chance you will get the outcome you want most.
Ronald Shapiro covers nine preparation principles he teaches to clients to help them become better preparers. They are: 1. Understand your objectives and define your endgame, 2. Plan with precedents, 3. Know your alternatives, 4. Define the interests of the other party, 5. Set your strategy, 6. Do a timeline, 7. Pick your team, 8. Write your script and 9. Adjust and learn from your mistakes.
If you know what you really want from all encounters you will have a much better chance of communicating with others. You must discover what precedents have been set in the past and use these examples to reinforce your position. If you are able to articulate all of the potential alternatives that are available, you can help others work toward an outcome that is beneficial to all; this also ties into knowing the other side’s interests so that you can address how they can best benefit from your suggested outcomes. By setting a strategy and timeline you can learn to better focus on the outcomes you are trying to achieve and by stating these you can show your leadership in accomplishing these goals. Pick your team of people by who can best help you achieve your goals and write a script and practice it so that you can anticipate all potential obstacles. By using what didn’t work for you and others in the past you can constantly move forward and help to accomplish many things.
The three most common excuses as to why people fail to plan are: 1. I don’t have time, 2. I’ve done it before and 3. I know how to do this. These all assume that you know so much that you don’t need to plan to prepare because you already know how to win and get what you want. By making these assumptions you will often fail to get what you want and you will lose the respect of others because you will actually show how unprepared you really are.
Use the preparation checklist at the end of this book to make sure you know what you are after and how you will address the concerns and questions of others. The benefits you will gain by being prepared are self confidence, effectiveness and satisfaction.
by Diana Fitzpatrick and Stephen Fishman, Nolo, 2008.
12.4 million employees (roughly 8% of the American workforce) work from home at least one day a week. Diana Fitzpatrick and Stephen Fishman’s book details how you can become one of them. If you have any reason; time lost in long commutes, price of gas, family needs or getting more done working alone you can develop a plan to approach your employer to show why you should become one of them. Some people telecommute or telework one day a week from home, but many work mainly or exclusively from home today because of employer needs and geography issues. If you don’t live where the home office is, it is often cheaper to allow you to work from home than maintain a second office location.
This book details the information you will need to make your case to your current employer, find a new opportunity to telework for someone else or become a freelancer who works out of your home. The pros and cons of working this way are addressed to help you see if this is an opportunity for you. It covers equipment needs, tax issues and employment and work related expenses. If you have ever considered becoming one of the millions who work from home, this book can help you decide if it is right for you.
Much of the information was originally researched as articles for USA Today and this is a composite of stories and facts relating to the hugh teleworking community. It is becoming more and more a way of life for many people, because it addresses the issues of flexibility, better time usage and cost savings to both the employer and the employee. It has many sidebars with statistics and lists of resources in print, online and associations that can help you make telework a way of life for you.
by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever, Bantam Dell, 2008.
Negotiation is not a topic many women excel at. Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever developed a four phase program for women to use to become experts at it. They start their book with a number of case studies about how negotiating can really impact one’s life. One of the studies quoted details a case study where two new graduates apply for and accept a position at a company. The salary offered is $25,000. She accepts it, but he negotiates for a starting salary of $30,000. If he deposited the difference in an account at only a 3% return every year he would have $784,192 when he retired at age 65. This telling example shows just how much of an impact not negotiating can have on you long term.
Examples of women who have successfully negotiated to get what they want; whether it is salaries, job titles, responsibilities or other perks are given throughout the book. Linda teaches classes in college to both men and women on negotiation and during the class she has them implement the four phase process she helped develop.
Phase one teaches participants to recognize that everything is negotiable and she has them role play negotiating for minor things that they don’t really care about to help them see that they can successfully negotiate for anything.
Phase two teaches you how to lay the groundwork and reviews the skills and concepts necessary for basic negotiation strategy. Information is power and learning all they can about all viewpoints of all participants in the negotiations is paramount. Students and other are taught how to strengthen their bargaining position.
Phase three is the get ready phase and during this segment you learn to determine your worth compared to others in your field, you learn what logrolling or tradeoffs you need to learn to get past jams and build value for yourself and others, you learn collective bargaining and how and when to make the first offer in the negotiations.
The final phase, four, is putting it all together and during this you learn how to role play so you can anticipate all of the potential responses and needed answers of those you negotiate with. You also learn how to avoid making concessions too early and how to create the right impressions with all others at the bargaining table. The last step is learning to properly close the deal. When everyone wins people are more apt to continue to negotiate with you and help you advance your goals.
If you use these four phases you will learn to develop a comprehensive plan for your future goals, become an expert at role playing and learn to anticipate potential outcomes to negotiations and have answers prepared to get what you really need and want. The final step is learning to develop incentives to help you try to negotiate for things that are important to you, but that you may not be able to negotiate for. The incentives guarantee that you will have something to show for the risks you take when you decide to try and negotiate.
by Scott Ventrella, Recorded Books, 2007. Book on CD
Motivational speaker Scott Ventrella uses the best business practices of the best companies, but he teaches you to use them on yourself to develop the life and career you really want. Each milestone addresses a different aspect of your life and includes activities to help you decide what is really important to you and how much of your time you want to devote to each aspect of your life. He helps you identify all of the customers or ”clients” in your life and helps you determine what kind on relationship you want to have with each. Me Inc. includes the ten time tested principles that define the most successful companies and shows you how to apply them to your life.
You will develop a plan that will help you achieve your goals by understanding the twelve milestones and applying them to your life through the defined activities. Many questions provided help you to drill down to what is most important to you and what plan or guideline you need to develop to achieve your exceptional life. Because the answers to the questions asked are quite unique your plan will not look like someone else’s. This will be something you want to develop and then revisit as circumstances change in your life. Becoming the person you want to be is easier when you have the motivation and experience shared by Scott Ventrella to guide you.
by Dave Lakhani, Recorded Books, 2007.
Dave Lakhani covers how to gain more effective use of your day by teaching a concept he calls “Fearsome Focus.” Fearsome focus allows you to focus on one specific task at a time for a period of one hour. You can not allow any interruptions during this time period. Lakhani found during his research that many of us spend six to eight hours a day fighting crises or fielding interruptions in our day. If we learn to plan for time to address crises that come up (the average time spent is two hours a day) and learn to stop or slow down the interruptions that try to control our day we can accomplish much more than we do today. By planning an hour a week (or more) and focusing on making the best use of that hour we can slowly make our to-do list go away and find ourselves with many tasks successfully accomplished.
Lakhani addresses how to focus, think creatively, set the stage and identify and destroy the blocks to getting tasks done. We can use this fearsome focus hour to accomplish the wanted task and by changing the way we choose to address our time constraints we can learn to focus on specific tasks and learn how to accomplish more in our day.
Topics covered include management, time management, customer experience, sales and marketing, making connections, mentoring and giving something back. Examples of successful use of the fearsome focus hour are included by Lakhani.
by Michael Fullan, Jossey-Bass, 2008.
Some experts tell you to take bits and pieces of their advice and use only the parts that you want. Michael Fullan calls his six secrets ones that travel, but he recommends that they are used together and does not recommend implementing only one or two of the secrets. He feels that they all fit together and work best when they are all used to make changes in your organization. Fullan feels that his six secrets can be used in any organization or industry and that is what he means by traveling.
The six secrets are:
1. Love your employees
2. Connect peers with purpose
3. Capacity building prevails
4. Learning is the work
5. Transparency rules
6. Systems learn.
Fullan uses examples from health industries, education and manufacturing to show those organizations that have successfully implemented these six secrets. He references many other books to show how others support his theories and to also show how although many companies have tried many ways to succeed they often times are not successful in maintaining their successes. Companies profiled in Good to Great are not all doing well today.
Michael Fullan maintains that if you implement his secrets your organization will succeed long term as Toyota has. Organizations that have successfully implemented the six secrets not only take care of their employees, customers and stockholders they also take care of society by having a postitive impact on those who interact with them. Twenty eight companies/organizations have qualified as Firms of Endearment (FoEs.) Among them are Toyota, Johnson and Johnson, IDEO, UPS and Costco.
Each secret builds on the other as secret one, love your employees covers three factors in motivating your employees: fair treatment, enabling achievement and camaraderie and this builds into secret two, connect peers with purpose. When employees feel empowered and valued as individuals they work together to build everyone up into being the best they can be. From here you become a cohesive organization that helps all to be part of the culture that succeeds.
by Nido Qubein, Recorded Books, 2008.
Motivational speaker Nido Qubein shares 12 proven strategies to succeed in business. We all have different talents and the trick is to identify yours and develop them to their fullest potential. Qubein shares his strategies through real life stories and situations.
The strategies include:
Create your own success system
Focus on differential advantage
Turn problems into opportunities
Turn stress into creative energy
Boost your impact with people along with seven others.
Every time you interact with others you have an opportunity to advance your business and theirs. You need to define what success means to you and develop a system that works for your personality, your system will probably not look like someone else’s. Once you have developed this system you can then focus on your differential advantage. This will help you define the similarities and differences between your product or service and that of your competitors. Once you have this you can look for problems that potential clients are facing and show them how your products or services can be a new opportunity for them. Using your products they can address their problems and turn them into opportunities for their companies to grow.
All of us suffer from various forms of stress and the strategy shared for turning your stress into creative energy will help you deal with the stress while advancing your business. Although we don’t always realize it we impact all of the people we interact with. Using this strategy you will realize more of the impact you have on others. You will become aware of the actual effects you have on others. By following these strategies and others you will learn to better understand yourself and your business.
by Carmine Gallo, John Wiley and Sons, 2007.
Carmine Gallo divides this book into two parts; first he defines and illustrates with stories the 7 Simple Secrets and then he tells you how to live them. Many of the companies that have successfully implemented these secrets will be very familiar to you. Some people/companies use multiple secrets all of the time and some pick and choose the ones that work best for them and are known for adhering to these principles. People you will recognize include Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs and companies showcased include: Intel, Gymboree, Cold Stone Creamery and Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company.
The 7 secrets are:
1. Ignite Your Enthusiasm
2. Navigate the Way
3. Sell the Benefit
4. Paint a Picture
5. Invite Participation
6. Reinforce an Optimistic Outlook
7. Encourage Their Potential.
Many stories are given that show exactly how these aforementioned individuals and companies inspire us to learn and use these secrets. Your passion and commitment can help others around you provide the same level of service and commitment that you do to all of your customers.
If you want to light a fire under your company and get everyone’s buy in to grow the company and succeed you only need to emulate the guidelines shown here to succeed. The energy and passion shown by these individuals and companies will give you the inspiration you need to develop your own game plan and to put it to use.
by Ram Charan, Penguin Group, 2007.
Sales is getter harder and harder to do as more options for obtaining needed supplies and services expands. In the past, many times there were only one or two potential vendors for your needs and now there can be an overwhelming number of vendors.
Ram Charan builds his sales on creating value for your customers and their customers. You need to not only sell items they need at prices they want, but you need to give them value added services. Knowing what your customers really need and developing ways using your products and services to deliver this and ideas on cost savings, new product bundling and other ideas to develop more business for your customer is how the successful sales companies are now doing business.
The sale starts with a sales person who has built a team around him to sell to the customer. It must be done company wide and must have buy in from everyone in the company. This method can not be started overnight and become a hugh income builder. Doing Value Account Plans take time and understanding. The salesperson must get to people within his customers’ company who make the decisions or have any impact on how they are made. This means that a plan must be built for every potential customer and it must be constantly updated as the economy and the customers’ needs change.
The internal team is lead by the salesperson, but will include finance, legal, manufacturing and marketing personnel as well as those departments identified as necessary to the success for the sales to this particular customer.
Ram Charan shares how some companies have made VAP plans work and how they can work for you, but he also shares that it means a complete change in how companies sell and can take years to become a habit and a way of doing business. Intensive training is needed on many fronts and you must at some point get your customers to see the potential value to them, because the more you know about them the better you will be able to develop the right products and services to allow both of you to grow. With all of the competition for business out there Ram Charan believes that this is the way of doing sales in the future for those companies that survive and thrive.
I have talked to a number of people lately who are looking at either starting a business or expanding the one they currently own. One of the first things you should do when contemplating either of these possibilities is write a business plan. A business plan will help you determine exactly what you need to do to succeed in your endeavors. It will help you focus on understanding the competition, the industry outlook, the target market you are after and much more.
There are many resources available locally to help you develop your plan. SCORE (Service Corp of Retired Executives) offers a free class called Should You Start Your Own Business. This workshop addresses many issues you will want to consider before launching a business. We talk about the rewards of starting a small business, attributes of a successful entrepreneur, business planning including how to determine your cash requirements, the legal form of your business entity, and more. The next workshop will be held Monday, June 16, 2008 6:30 to 8:30 PM at the Penrose Library in the Carnegie Reading Room.
The Pikes Peak Library District teaches a free class called Minding Your Business, which teaches you all of the resources you need to write a business plan. The next class will be held Tuesday, June 24, 2008, 8:30 to 10 AM at the Penrose Library. This class includes sample business plans you can use as a guideline in developing your own. For more information please call 531-6333 x2308.
The Small Business Development Center offers many low cost classes on learning specific aspects of developing your business including accounting, websites, marketing and more. By taking these classes you can enhance the skills you already have to use in your business.
All of these classes and many others that can assist you in starting or expanding a business can be found at Colorado Springs Small Business Resource Guide. All of these classes will help you take your business to the next level.
