Succession Secrets

Selling is critical to the growth of any business. 

Selling has to be ethical, as only ethical and fair behavior will give you the conviction, the confidence and the care for the client and customer that is required for you to be an all-in salesperson.

You can only be a super-salesperson, if you believe in what you are selling.

Listen to my stories of selling with belief and what happened when I lost belief in my product.

Story 1: I was a rookie investment banking entrepreneur when belief  helped me sign up the owners of a construction company to hire me as their investment banker and sell their business.  They had been unsuccessful finding a strategic buyer, given the many issues the business had.  I developed strong belief that a management buy-in could succeed.  It was a long shot, but it eventually worked and the deal was a success.  Nevertheless, my experience of how hard the deal was to pull off prevented  to pitch that kind of deal in later similar circumstances.

Story 2: This is about losing my belief in my product and how I could not sell it any more.  Fortunately my associates still believed for a whole and helped my company, but I eventually decided to pull out of the business and sell the company to younger entrepreneurs who still had the belief in the market. 

Click on the link to listen to my story. 

Question of the Day: How important is belief in sales?

I just had a session with a client, who is aggravated for having to fire a couple of her employees.

Firing is tough, but it is required for high-performing teams.

1.  It weeds out non-performers

 Jack Welch instituted the 20:70:10 firing policy for each GE departments.  It served GE well.

 Firing is healthy even for high-performing teams

• It keeps the leader engaged

Firing is often good for both employer and employee.  The former can maintain a vigorous workforce, the latter can move on to a fresh start sooner, armed with lessons.

Firing doesn’t have to be negative, if it is done with COMPASSION.

I have shared on the show my own personal stories of having to fire people and having been fired myself and how positively it turned out in each case.

It is OK to fire of you CARE about your employees and help them find a positive path.

Question of the Day:  What is your positive firing story?

Entrepreneurship, building a business is not a linear process.

It is made up of periods of experimentation, followed by failures, successes and more failures.

Often the failures are more frequent, but if kept controlled, the occasional successes can create growth and progress.

Building a business is a process of evolution. If you keep pushing the envelope in a forward direction, then you will eventually achieve results.  The key is CONSISTENCY.

The BIG CAVEAT: You have to stay in the game. You must control your downside, so that you are still around when fortune eventually smiles on you.

Listen to my story of survival of the2008-2009 financial crisis with my business. How I stayed in the game to live to see a successful 2010.

Question of the Day:  What is your story of persistence to move forward?

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

In leadership, fear is not helpful. Leadership means doing something first. In other words: being comfortable with discomfort.  COURAGE. 

Churchill said: “Courage is the foremost oft he virtues, for upon it all others depend.” 

Listen to the story of a leading tax attorney, who has recently been promoted to head the tax section of her law firm.  She is an excellent tax lawyer, but is apprehensive about whether she would succeed in her new role as leader, rather than doer. 

She was promoted for a reason and her fears are probably unfounded.  She enjoys a splendid reputation as a business developer and has great support staff.  Listen to how she is dealing with the challenge of putting herself in vulnerable situations and stretching her resources to help her staff succeed in her path. 

Question of the Day:  What is your stretch situation that would allow you to grow?

If you want to be a leader, you have to develop your own confidence to run with the job.  It is uncomfortable to step up and lead, but you have to want it more to be a leader than your pain of discomfort in grabbing the helm.

There are several reasons why leadership should not be bestowed upon anyone:

• It is costly to “appoint” a leader, if they don’t turn out to be one. Both financially and to the reputation of the owner / principal decision makers.

A leader should start leading first and will be recognized as such later.

Listen to my own story about stepping down as a leader when I sold my company and how the experience felt.

Question of the Day: What would it take for you to assume a higher leadership position?

This episode is about the mindset of taking responsibility for whatever hand we are dealt and making the most of it.

If you are in a privileged position in life, it only increases your responsibility to do and give.  You however will do best to embrace that privilege and try to make the most of it. 

It is your responsibility.  It is no good to try about how much the world demands of you.   Make the most of it.

Listen to my own story of the privilege I found myself blessed (and cursed) with and how I woke up to my responsibility to embrace it after a stint of being mugged in Barcelona and working at a construction site thereafter.

Question of the day:  What is your privilege that you ought to embrace?

Andy Grove, CEO of Intel wrote a book titled: Only the Paranoid Survive.

I have found degree of “healthy paranoia”very useful in my own life.  Listen to my story about a leveraged buyout deal that almost tanked, was it not for my paranoia, which saved it.

My paranoia often caused me to wake up at 3am in the morning, in a pool of sweat, thinking of a client I had not talked with for a while and having a hunch that they may not be happy.

Healthy Paranoia includes expecting the best, but preparing for the worst.

George Soros and Warren Buffet both taught me that as long as we protect our downside, our upside would take care of itself.  Paranoia helps you protect your downside.

Question of the Day:  How do you protect your downside?

Most of us try to grow our work output or business by:

• Working harder and more hours

• Trying to do everything ourselves

• Focusing on efficiency, rather than effectiveness

·     The way to win, however, is to do more of what we are good at, rather than to do more of everything.

I am personally good at creating a vision, strategizing, writing, inspiring and getting better at speaking.  In the same time, I suck at: paying bills,bookkeeping, administrative tasks and responding to emails, among many, many other things.

My way of growing is to try and avoid doing things that I don’t enjoy and not good at and focus on my strengths.

Listen to my story of how I am trying to leverage myself, and how could you be doing the same.

Question of the Day:  What are you good at and how can you do more of it?

The original interpretation of a “Partner” in a business is literally a “business partner”, also called as an active co-owner.   An active business owner is in many cases an entrepreneur too. 

An Entrepreneur is defined as a person who organizes and operates a business, assuming greater than normal financial risk in the process.

In most professional services firms, such as accountants,attorneys, advisors, etc. partners are shareholders, but in some cases there are “salaried partners”, who do not own shares. Typically “salaried status is an overture to full partnership, however.

Listen to this episode to find out about partners in professional service firms that are partners in name only and how a real partner should be defined and selected to make these firms more entrepreneurial and dynamically growing.  (Hint: real partnership requires hassling and bringing in the bacon.)

Your Succession is Success.

Delegation is tricky. Some people are unable to delegate. Others delegate too slowly, so that it doesn’t allow them to grow their organization at a reasonable pace.

Yet others delegate too quickly, before they have figured out the process and delegation results in confusion.

Less obvious, but equally deadly variety is when someone delegates the wrong things and their business stagnates and loses money as a result.  Listen to this podcast episode to find out how to choose what to delegate and what tasks to keep for yourself to achieve the best results.

Your Succession is Success.