IT Provider Network - The Podcast for Growing IT Service Providers

In today's episode of the IT Provider Network Podcast,  I am going to share a thought process that was shared with me by my coach Alex Charften.     As you know if you have been listening to the ITPN podcast for a while,  we do a lot of forward planning in our company.   We follow the Gazelles Scaling Up methodology  Each division sets "rocks" or objectives for each quarter but there never seemed to be any congruity between these rocks and the real things that needed to be improved in our company.

Once I started looking at these 6 core functions our quarterly objectives really started to become dialed in.

The Six Core Functions in your MSP

* Lead Generation - Everything you do to generate a lead.   Getting a prospect to raise a hand

* Lead Nurturing - What you do to nurture that lead and turn them into a customer

* Conversion - After the prospect has told you they are a buyer - what you do to propose and close the deal

* Delivery - What you do after the signed contract or PO is received  - the steps you take to deliver your service

* Retention - The processes and procedure you use to keep your clients.  In an MSP this would be the work of the service and VCIO type teams

* Resell and Upsell - What are you doing to get your clients to buy more of your products and services - usually the work of your account manager.

 

Start looking at these 6 core functions in your business.   Rate them from 1-5 and revisit that rating every 90 days or so.   Start working on the lower scoring functions that are at the top of the list.  In other words, if Lead Generation and Retention are your problems work on lead generation first.

If you concentrating on any efforts in your company that don't directly help improve these core functions, you are probably floundering.

 

 

Ask your questions or share your feedback

•Comment on the shownotes below

•Email [email protected] (audio files welcome)

Get on the mailing list

Low Volume by it is THE PLACE TO BE for all of my insider information. If you're on the list, you'll be the first to know. Signup Here

Tell 'Em I Sent You

If you investigate or purchase any product or service that I have talked about, please remember to mention that I sent you. I may or may not get a small commission but more importantly I hope to spread the word about the IT Provider Network.

Please Subscribe

Please consider Subscribing to the Podcast it is the only measure of listenership I have.

Give me a Review

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast.

If you appreciate the information you are learning from the IT Provider Network then please do me a HUGE FAVOR and write a review on iTunes or on Stitcher!

Connect with Me

On the socials as @TerryRossi or @ITProviderNet

Help a Brother Out

* Sign up for Coinbase

* Buy something from Amazon with my Affiliate Link

I put these down here in case you are looking for anything from Amazon, I get a small commission if you click-thru from this site. You don't have to buy these items just click through from this page. Thanks in advance!

In this episode of the IT Provider Network Podcast, I am going to share an exercise with did to determine where our Purple Ocean lies.     Join me as I talk about through the process of finding your USP or Unique Selling Position and how it can help you get more deals.

The strategy I talk about in this podcast is from the book Blue Ocean Strategy available on Amazon.

Ask your questions or share your feedback

•Comment on the shownotes below

•Email [email protected] (audio files welcome)

Get on the mailing list

Low Volume by it is THE PLACE TO BE for all of my insider information. If you're on the list, you'll be the first to know. Signup Here

Tell 'Em I Sent You

If you investigate or purchase any product or service that I have talked about, please remember to mention that I sent you. I may or may not get a small commission but more importantly I hope to spread the word about the IT Provider Network.

Please Subscribe

Please consider Subscribing to the Podcast it is the only measure of listenership I have.

Give me a Review

Your written iTunes reviews encourage me and they help other people find the podcast.

If you appreciate the information you are learning from the IT Provider Network then please do me a HUGE FAVOR and write a review on iTunes or on Stitcher!

Connect with Me

On the socials as @TerryRossi or @ITProviderNet

Help a Brother Out

* Sign up for Coinbase

* Buy something from Amazon with my Affiliate Link

I put these down here in case you are looking for anything from Amazon, I get a small commission if you click-thru from this site. You don't have to buy these items just click through from this page. Thanks in advance!

 

In today's episode of the IT Provider Network, I want to talk about one of our most important assets and one that is often neglected.

I would bet that many of you are like me in your business, you sell hardware and software to your clients when they have needs.   They call or write to you when they have a new user and need a new computer.  You might even have your VCIO call on them to drum up hardware refreshes or new technology initiatives but I’ll bet that you can’t tell me all your clients know about all your offerings.

Today I want to talk about some ways that you can market to and capitalize on our greatest assets – our clients.

Your Best Prospects Are Your Existing Clients

Your best prospects are your existing client.  If you have been marketing only to cold or warm prospects then you are missing a big segment of buyers that are already buying from you.

Take some of your marketing efforts and work on reselling, upselling and cross-selling into your existing client base.

I know that I have not done a great job having a formal, consistent marketing plan for our installed base.   I just realized that not only do our clients not know about all of our offerings but all of our team members don’t either!

Heres some new strategies to try get your hands around this often overlooked segment of your business.

 

Try This

 

* Keep in Touch – It’s important to have regular communication with your clients, and I think it should be a multi-faceted approach to outreach. The owner, the sales team and the service team should all have regularly scheduled outreach to the base.   The medium for these touches can and probably should be varied.   For example, the VCIO might send out a monthly email,  The service manager might have a quarterly call with the power users and the owner to owner communications might be face to face meetings or a lunch along with regular calls or letters.

* Reassure Them on their Purchases – Every time a client purchases something from you, follow up with them after the purchase to reassure them of the purchase. This is also a great time to make sure there are service related issues.    If your terms are Net 30 make this call about 15 days in to make sure the client is happy and the product or service you delivered and the invoice is top of mind.

* Give your Clients the Best Deals – Doesn’t make you crazy when you hear your cable TV provider offering great new customer deals on TV. Doesn’t it make you question why they don’t value your business,  you know the customer that has been with them for 5 years?   Well, your clients feel this way too.

* Let them have it First - Extend your best offers to your existing clients and do it before you announce it to the world.  People want to be valued and they always want to be let in on a secret or a private sale.

* Remember the Golden Rule – Always work to build rapport and continued trust with your base. This is where some of the multi-faceted communication can come into play.     Remember people do business with people they know and trust.  If you want some tips on building rapport I recommend you listen to Building Rapport with Employees, Prospects and Customers – ITPN-EP003

 

Be Real and Consistent

 

Be real and consistent and start doing this right after the sale.   As part of your onboarding procedure make sure you include a follow-up to their first purchase

 

* Make sure you thank them for the purchase

* Re-affirm the value of your company

* Reassure them that signing up for your service was the right move,

Visioning Update

I wanted to give you an update on the visioning process that my company went through two weeks ago when we met on the tail end of the Gazelles spring summit in New Orleans.   I detailed what visioning is and why you need it in episode 33 of the IT Provider Network but in case you missed it here is a quick overview.

Visioning is looking into to the future and describing what success looks like then. At that point in time.   It’s now the how to; it’s the motivation and the direction. It is what success then looks and feels like in the future.

A successful visioning document should be

• Inspiring. To everyone that will be involved in implementing it.

• Strategically sound. That is, we have a decent shot at making it happen.

• Documented. You need to write your vision down to make it work.

• Communicated. Not only do you have record your vision but if you want it to be effective, you have to tell people about it too.

So we set out to create our first vision for the company 24 years after we started it.

Our senior management team is made up of 7 people, so the way we started the process was by deciding on a time frame,  for us it was 2022 and that we were going to be visioning for the whole company, not any single division or department.

Then we all went off and wrote.

I encouraged people to think positive about what was possible and to be free with their ideas.    We all handed them in anonymously to our coach who compiled them and sent them back to us combined to review before we met in New Orleans.

Once we all got together for our onsite meeting, we put the combined document up in a google doc.   We read each visioning entry and highlighted parts and pieces that really resonated with us.

It was awesome to see how seven different people, most of who have been with our company for 10+ years had different desires and direction for the company.   Some addressed specific product directions,  others staff size, and what the office space looked like in 2022.   It was fascinating to get everyone's viewpoint, and we were able to pull some great things out of every person's document.

So once we had a bunch of highlighted sections, we tasked three people to craft them into three parts of a new document.   The first part about overall company vision highlights,  the second for our software development division and the third for visioning specific to the managed services division.   Once we have this combined document, we will hone it and redraft it then share it with our staff.

To give you an idea, here are some of the highlighted phrases that'll  be shaped into the next draft.

"We have created a culture and work environment that has attracted some of the best developers and network engineers in the area and have continued to build upon our mission of being our clients “Partner in Technology."

"Education is a key part of our culture and our business - it comes to life through ongoing internal and external training for our staff, customers and business partners."

"We have worked hard to build multipliers in the organization and that is paying off in large dividends, by having an empowered workforce."

"MRR is our life blood, the LTV of our clients allows us to spend quite a bit of time, money and effort to keep a client."

"Our recurring revenue stream has increased 400% since 2018 with the addition of the new service offerings sold as an annual subscription."

"The management team, regardless of their location, still follows its roots and meets daily to make sure that PICS is always growing and evolving."

Visioning and the Deli Man

If you’re on the IT Provider Network mailing list you know that tomorrow at 5 am I am heading out to New Orleans for some team building and to soak in some fresh ideas at the Gazelles Summit.

Come Together

Because my management team is in 4 different states and three different time zones it’s going to take the better part of Monday to get everyone down south. We’ll get settled in then on Tuesday and Wednesday, the team along with our Gazelles Coach Doug Diamond will be at the summit.

The Gazelles Scaling Up Summit

The summit, or more formally, the Scaling Up Summit is tailored to business owners interested in growing their companies. Over the course of two days, we will learn from award-winning authors. Soak up some techniques and methods for building better leadership, strategy, marketing, sales, operations, and finance.

We will be in a room full of mid-market firms representing a variety of industries ($5 million to $500 million), for great interactive learning, networking, and idea-generation. This summit will be my second Gazelles event, and I am looking forward to it. I encourage you to attend events that are outside of the IT Industry to keep growing your company.

Then on Thursday, we have rented a private conference room, and the eight of us are going to go heads down into a visioning exercise. So that’s what I want to talk with you about today. Visioning, why you would want to do this and how you can do it in your company.

About Ari Weinzweig

At my first Gazelles Summit in 2016, I met Ari Weinzweig. He spoke on Leadership, and I purchased all his books. Ari is one of the co-founders of the Zimmerman Community of Businesses, some food-centric businesses in the Ann Arbor Michigan area of the united states. What started as a 1300 square foot deli in 1982 is now a 60 million dollar business with the deli still at the heart of it. For more information on Zingermans check out their About Us page. The Zingermans Community of Business or ZCOB employees over 600 people and now is over ten different food-related businesses.

You don’t grow a deli into a 60 million dollar business like that without visioning.

About My Grandson

Visioning is kind of like Walt Disney’s Imagineering, or for a better everyday example, it is what every young child does when they daydream. They never think about what’s NOT possible only what is possible. When my grandson Liam, who just turned four, is visioning he is building massive Lego cities, and waging battles with Batman and Joker. He doesn’t question batman's superpowers he assumes that he has them.

Visioning works the same way. It’s looking to the future and describing what success looks like then. It’s now the how to; it’s the motivation and the direction. It is what success then looks and feels like in the future.

Ari describes a successful vision as

• Inspiring. To everyone that will be involved in implementing it.

• Strategically sound. That is, we have a decent shot at making it happen.

• Documented. You e need to write your vision down to make it work.

• Communicated. Not only do you have record your vision but if you want it to be effective, you actually have to tell people about it too.

This is the How not the Why

Step 1: Pick your Visioning Topic

Because visioning can be used for just about anything, it's important to start by being clear about what you're working on. Next week the PICS Team is looking out to 2022, and we are visioning on the whole company. If you start using visioning for your company you could do visioning on the company, a division or department, a project or even a smaller event. The process is the same; you want to see what success looks like before you execute.

For most MSP’s, visioning should probably start at the organization or company level.

Yeah...maybe it does.

Are you having problems landing new clients or converting your break-fix clients to managed services?  If that’s the case, maybe you should step back and look at how you're positioning your products and services in the market.   Maybe just maybe your offer sucks?

In this episode of the IT Provider Network, I am going to share with you a new way of looking at how you communicate with your prospects and clients and how you can close more business.

I’ve spent the last year or so really studying online marketing, and marketing and selling in general.  I’ve attended a ton of conferences, availed myself to some of the best thought leaders, and I’ve come to realize that I should have started studied the phycology of marketing and selling a lot sooner in my career.

So much of what we do and say can influence the minds of the buyer.  I have talked about the belief of the sales team in recent episodes, but today I want to talk about the beliefs of the buyer and how what you offer and how you offer it is a big part of their buying decision.

First, let's talk about your offering.

What are you offering?  How are you pitching managed services to your clients?  If you like many of us, you are pitching some form of the four blocks that Gary Pica has traveled the world telling us about at conference after conference.   With all due respect to Gary, it’s old news, and there were probably three other managed services providers that already walked into your prospect and pitched the same thing.

The Four Blocks

If you haven’t heard of the four blocks, here's a quick introduction.  They consist of four distinct service groups.

* Centralized Services – This is everything you can do with your RMM tool. Patching, Disk Cleanups, Anti-Virus, Anti-Malware and all of the other stuff that you can leverage to your client base.

* Network Administration – This is what Gary calls you “Superpower”. Personally, it has never been for my company, but Network Administration consists of everything that you do for your clients to standardize them.  Network Administration is documentation, standards adoption, server maintenance and things like that.

* Helpdesk – This one is pretty self-explanatory and probably the bulk what most full-service MSP’s are really delivering regardless of what they are selling.

* Technical Consulting or VCIO - This is the part of your service delivery where your technical consultant which may be you meets with the client and helps them make a technology budget, strategize on future direction, and utilize technology in a way that moves them forward.

If that looks a lot like your offering, congratulations, you have a commodity offering.   Except perhaps the last one, technical consulting, your prospect doesn’t really care.

Unless they have had a significant security breach or some regulatory body is pressuring them,  they don’t care.  Patching, Spam, Virus,  they don’t care,  believe me, I’ve seen their eyes glaze over many many times.

So how should you define your offering?  If you need to include more,  your offering needs to include things that fulfill THEIR desires and alleviates THEIR fears.

Here’s a couple of tips on really zeroing in on what they want.   Remembers buyers don’t buy what they need; they buy what they want.

What your prospect wants

So what do they want... they want the same things you want as a business owner.

* To attract more business

* To be more competitive

* To have a more efficient workforce

* To put more money to the bottom line

In the last episode of the IT Provider Network, Episode 30, we talked about building an inside/outside sales organization within your company. In today's episode, I want to share with you my recent experiences outsourcing telemarketing and appointment to a 3rd party.

INTRO

Episode 31 has taken quite a while to get recorded. I have had a crazy end to the winter. I attended three different conferences and launched the beginnings of another business. My first conference was PodFest 2018 in Orlando. Podfest is an excellent niche event for independent podcasters. Over the last two years, it has really exploded as more and more people are becoming aware of podcasts.

Companies like NPR and podcasts like Serial have done a lot to bring podcasts more mainstream.

The second conference I attended was Traffic and Conversion in San Diego. I have to tell you it's nice to go to sunny California in the middle of a noreaster back east. Traffic and Conversion is a large conference focusing on the latest tips and tricks to get more people to your website and convert more of those visitors to buyers. I learned a lot, but when I was done, I thought my head was going to explore. I put a couple of videos on Instagram with some good takeaways, if you're interested you can follow me @TerryRossi on Instagram. Drop me a DM and let me know you're a podcast listener and I will follow you back.

Last weekend I was at a conference for my new business. Before I tell you what it is, you have to promise not to judge. I am going into the Specialty Coffee business. I have a roaster, and my business partner and I are building a cafe'.

I am like a madman learning the art and skills required to one day make great coffee and some tasty treats. Right now the coffee I am roasting tastes like crap, but it is getting better with every roast.

Like the computer business, there is SO MUCH to learn. I am really enjoying it.

I know this sounds bizarre, but I have been involved in the hospitality industry since I was 13 so it's not that far off base... ok maybe a little.

So CoffeeFest in Baltimore was the third conference I attended just last week.

And now I am down in Orlando again for Funnel Hackers Live, Russell Brunson's event learning about sales funnels and all the people that make millions selling weight loss and supplements and dreams!

Why? Because I can, and I am genuinely interested. I heard a quote today from Gary Vaynerchuk. He said, and I am paraphrasing, without the f-bombs, our smartphones are like the TV sets of the 1960's, and he's right. We have built-in distribution, built-in networks and all we need to do is build shows and create audiences. I encourage all of you to build your audiences and figure out how to keep selling to them. And most importantly do what floats your boat. This isn't a dress rehearsal.

So make a long story short, that's what has taken me so long to get this podcast out the door.

About Outsourcing your Appointment Setting

So back to the business at hand. Should you outsource your appointment setting or built it up in-house. Well, I'll cut to the chase, and tell you, I don't know.

As I mentioned in Episode 30 of the IT Provider Network podcast, I had an inside sales, telemarketer, appointment setter for almost ten years. He was heads down, nose to the grindstone, dialing for dollars all day every day BUT I think I was really lucky. I had one guy for ten years making 80 dials a day. I think that's an anomaly.

I think it is more typical that you would be hiring someone almost continuously. They are a different breed, and if you are a small business with one caller, it will be hard to keep and motivate that person.

Inside Sales and Appointment Setting

Build or Buy

One of the questions I hear the most is how can we get more leads so we can build our business. Well, there are a few ways you can do it, and today I want to share with you my experiences with telemarketing or appointment setting. At our MSP we have experience in both building an in-house inside sales program and more recently outsourcing it to an industry-specific appointment setting service.

In the next two episodes of the IT Provider Network Podcast, I'm going to be talking about the ugly truth behind appointment setting, inside sales or telemarketing or what every term you use for dialing for dollars.

Today lets talk about building an inside sales operation.

Building your Team

As I am recording this February is coming to a close. We have had a wild two months so far this year at our MSP. We have two new people on our sales team, and my a-number-one closer has been promoted to our chief revenue officer.

It's always great to promote from within, but it presents some level of risk as well. What if your best salesperson is not a great leader? Have you just simultaneously lost your best salesperson and made a bad hire? It happens all the time. Like any hire, you want to do your best to make sure the candidate you're considering is the best candidate for the job.

Lucky for us, this internal promotion is working out great. He is building a team and doing his best to do what he always does take care of our customers and help us build the company.

My First Salesperson

If I flash back to 2008, I hired my first salesperson for the MSP side of our business. It was an older guy that was seasoned in sales or though I thought. It's hard to remember the details now, but I know my thought process was "let's bring on a sales guy" and build an MSP. One guy can handle everything, cold calling, networking, proposal generating, and closing.

In reality, he wasn't a great salesperson, and I was nuts to think that any one person could be truly proficient in all those sales activities. Luckily both of us knew we needed some help and this "older guy" and I say this in quotes, recruited one of his former co-workers. This former co-worker was now out CRO and in late 2008 my inside/outside sales team was born.

That's what I called it inside and outside sales. Inside sales were responsible for two main things cold calling and database maintenance. Outside sales were responsible for everything else. Everything after the 1st appointment was scheduled, that was the responsibility of outside sales.

Building an Inside-Outside Sales Process

There were a bunch of things we had to do to get this inside-outside sales process to work, and I guess it started with finding and buying a cold list. Back in 2008, we decided on using Hoovers for our list purchase because they had an offering that was pretty unique at the time. Instead of just buying a list with some defined criteria, we could use a data selection form and just export records from Hoovers into our PSA. In our case, this was ConnectWise Manage. As our needs changed we could change our export criteria.

Hoovers is now part of D&B, and they seem to offer the same type of service. I haven't purchased anything from D&B Hoovers since 2016, but back then it was about $5000 a year for 10,000 downloads.

About two bucks a record if you manage to extract all 10,000 leads. For the 5k you were able to have up to 3 users and use more functionality. For me though all I wanted was the data extract.

We also have bought "lists" from places like the local chamber of commerce, the local TIP club, and other vendors but the bulk of our original list which we still mine today is from Hoovers.

Hello Again!

Hi before we get started on Employee Success Plans I wanted to take a minute to re-introduce myself. My name is Terry Rossi and I am the co-founder of an award-winning Company (I always wanted to say that, in the 23 years we have been in business I never have).   We are a company with two halves.   We develop, sell and implement an enterprise document management solution to manufacturers all over the world and we are an MSP, we provide outsourced IT services to companies in the New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York City area.

I started this podcast about one year ago, this week I think, as a way to help others that are either just starting out, or stuck crossing the chasm in growing or scaling their company. My business partner and I have weathered many storms since we started and through it all we have always been profitable, we have always been able to pay our people.

 

We’ve done a lot of things right but we’ve also made a lot of mistakes. It’s from those mistakes I hope you can learn something that you can bring back to your business. Something that will help you, build, grow or scale your business.

About PICS ITech

Our MSP, PICS Itech,  is HQ’ed in Mt. Holly NJ in a building that we own.   At this time we are employing just under 30 people and we have many employees that have surpassed 10, even 20 years with the company.   I am proud of that fact, and it is sound like I bragging, I might be a little but really I am trying to impress on you that you can grow and scale your business and compete with the best in the world.   We are currently working in over 17 countries for some of the largest company names in the world and we are a small little technology company in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

My role in the company is basically to head up the MSP division and act as the COO for the company. I have my hands in everything from IT, service delivery, marketing, sales, finance, vendor relations, and unclogging the sink when it needs it.

If this is your first time listening to the IT Provider Network podcast, thank you for tuning in.   The podcast is the first part of the IT Provider Network. Later this year I will be announcing some exciting community and collaborations announcements, online courses that I am working on and other in-depth ways the IT Provider Network can help you.   I have several coaching clients now but my schedule is such that I won’t be able to work with all of you one-on-one so figuring out some group offerings is high on my list.

So without Further ado, here's episode 29 of the IT Provider Network Podcast.

 

Employee Success Plans

 

As you know in our company we do a lot of planning and goal setting.   Each year we sit down in Q4 and plan the annual initiatives for the next year. We plan these at the company level but as soon as we have decided on what the company is going to focus on for the next 12 months we immediately start to break those initiatives down to smaller more manageable chunks.

How we do it is that we break them down by division.  If you remember we have two distinct divisions on our company, a software development division that sells a product to manufacturers worldwide and a managed services division that provides outsourced IT services in our regional area.   So we start by breaking down the initiatives by division.   Then by quarter. We have found that 90 days is the right amount of time to get our “rocks” or goals down.

What I want to talk to you today is how we break these rocks down to each and every employee that works at PICS.   We do this with something we call our Employee Success Plans or ...

Taking a good hard look at your team

If you have listened to the IT Provider Network for any amount of time, and thank you for doing that, you will know that I am a big fan of outside coaches.   Mostly to help me do better at things that I am not good at, like taking a good hard look at my team and helping my find A Players.

Oh before I forget,  one of my favorite coaching teams is Chris Brogan and Rob Hatch.  I am a member of their Owner Insiders group and I just received notice that the pricing is going up.   If you listened to this podcast you know that by using this link RIGHT AWAY you might be able to still get the old pricing and save yourself about a grand a year.  Either way, it is a great value but signup now to get the grandfathered pricing that I have.

Owner Insider Group Signup

In this episode of the IT Provider Network podcast, I am going to share with you some of the strategies we have implemented when looking at the number one resource in our company; our team members.

Q1 is almost over - Is Time Flying or Standing Still

Here we are almost two months into the new year and two third through the first quarter. Time really flies when you’re having fun.   It also crawls when you’re not.   Dealing with personnel issues is when time stands still for me. I despise it.

The Land of Misfit Toys

I can’t comment on your business but sometimes in mine, it seems like the land of misfit toys. If I am being honest we have some great people but we have some less than great people too. I haven’t always been the best at hiring, and sometimes my hiring choices were based on an immediate need, not a well thought out process.   You know what I'm talking about when your ONLY engineer quits and you are forced to do all the work. Those kinds of hires. Been there done that.

But I digress.

I’ve grown since then and thankfully so has our company.  I have built resilience in my team, processes, and documentation so that our company is not so reliant on one person Rest assured,  that wasn’t always the case. Even though this episode is not about hiring I will tell you that you need to strive to remove as much of the emotion from your hiring process, be as objective as possible and think carefully about your hires. Look for A Players to fill every role.   Chances are you will be living with your decisions for a long time.

It's in the way we communicate

I have a new thought and it is my mantra for 2018. What separates us from the competition is NOT our team but the way we communicate with our clients. Every company in the world brags that they have the best people, or the best team and most of them really believe that they do but the truth of the matter is that we all can’t have the best people.   We just can’t.   Even though we all can't have the best team we can do everything possible to make ours better.

So what can you do to continually improve your team and leverage the most expensive, most important resource in your company?  What can you do to improve your team?   What can you do to continually raise the performance bar of your company so that you can achieve WORLD DOMINATION?

 

Well in the next two episodes of the IT Provider Network I am going to present two techniques that we have implemented in our company. In this episode, I am going to talk about ABC Rankings and in Episode 29 I’ll be telling you how we use ESP’s or Employee Success Plans.   Using these techniques together I think go a long way to build excellent teams.

ABC Ranking -  Not your grandfathers forced ranking

First, let’s talk about ABC ranking. This is the process of ranking your team into A players, B players and C players.   It’s highly controversial mostly from what is referred to as “forced ranking” or “st...