Successful leaders- people with great business acumen, great teams and great vision- are moving along, growing their companies when, all of a sudden, they fall flat on their faces.
Their businesses start hemorrhaging money. Their best people start jumping ship. Their families start falling apart.
And they sit at their desks with their heads in their hands wondering, “How did this happen?”
I’ll tell you how it happened. They were blown up by a problem they never saw coming.
I call these problems “leadership landmines” because unless you’re consciously looking for them, they’re nearly impossible to spot. They’re buried in the grind of daily life, quietly waiting to injure and perhaps even destroy the next unsuspecting leader who steps on them.
Before I go on, I need to tell you that what I’m writing is based on personal experience. At one time or another in my career, I’ve stepped on landmines like the ones I’m about to describe. In some cases, I even have the scars to prove it.
If you’re moving and active, you’re bound to have a painful encounter with a landmine every now and then. It’s just the nature of leadership. But there are certain landmines that will absolutely wipe you out if you’re not careful, and those are the ones that really deserve our attention.
A friend once told me, “If I could kick the person most responsible for most of my problems, I would not be able to sit down for a week.” From my own life and the lives of the leaders I’ve observed over the years, I have found that to be absolutely right. Most leaders I watch don’t need to worry about the competition beating them. Instead, they need to be concerned about doing something stupid in the race and disqualifying themselves.
If you are in outside sales in what is known as a hunter position, you are either a water bucket carrying salesperson, or you are a pipeline building salesperson. Find out why you need to identify which one you are, and which one you want to be!
Robert Kyosaki tells a great story about a village that had a serious water issue. They did not receive enough rainfall to provide water for the villages daily needs, and the river was a couple of miles away and highly inconvenient for the village people to go to every day. The mayor decided once and for all to put an end to the problem. He would put the job of bringing water from the river to the village up for bid, and they would outsource the project to the winning bidder.
Well, as luck would have it, two men put in their bid, and they were both awarded the project. The mayor figured a little competition never hurt anyone, and they would also always be sure that they would have enough water. Immediately, man number one went out, bought two water buckets, and started carrying buckets of fresh water early in the morning back and forth from the river to the village 6 days a week. He took Sundays off, so on that day the village did not have water.
Man number two did not buy buckets or start carrying water at all. In fact, no one was sure what he was up to. This made man number one quite happy, as he was earning all of the money as the sole source of water for the village. It was terrific! Man number one continued to carry buckets day after day, all day long under the hot summer sun, and he made a darn decent living doing so.
Meanwhile, man number two had gone to work gathering investors, developing a business plan, and received permits to build a stainless steel pipeline from the river to the village. Once complete, he was able to offer an endless supply of water to the village 7 days a week that was cleaner than what man number one was able to provide for 10% of man number ones price! Competition had arrived with a fury!
The example was told to Kyosaki by his rich dad to illustrate a point on work and investing, but doesn’t it also apply to you in the world of competitive sales? In the past 10 years, anyone in sales can tell you the games rules have changed, and they have changed with a fury!
If you are mindlessly cold calling day after day, with no long range plan on how to put your prospecting on auto-pilot, how are you any different than the guy carrying two buckets back and forth every day from the river? How can you continue to compete with a stainless steel pipeline with your two buckets as you get older and your back starts to ache from the unending physical toil? As the odds of you succeeding against those with a long range plan become slimmer and slimmer, how do you get out of bucket carrying mode and make your own pipeline before it’s too late? How can you possibly avoid burnout? How will you continue to compete in the new digital age with ancient methods of water transfer?
You can’t. And, you won’t. If you do continue on the road of carrying buckets day after day, the inevitable end will be sales burnout, ending up broke, bitter, and completely confused as to what happened. Even as you work right now, some of your competition is in the process of building stainless steel pipelines of new clients. And some of those customers used to be yours. How do they do it? What are they doing? How did they know? But perhaps most importantly, how can you do it?
The answer to the last question is different for every field and every industry, but yet the answer is the same in concept. It’s the power of leverage. How does the pipeline carry more water than the individual? It is a structure that took a lot of time and effort to build, that works 24 hours a day even when you dont, required a vision for the future, and it fulfilled a need. You need to repeat that exact same process in order to create your own pipeline. If you are not in an industry where that is possible, you may consider finding one where it is. Carrying buckets long term will almost guarantee sales burnout.
When you take a look at your industry, there is already someone who is building a better mousetrap and is in process of building their own stainless steel pipeline for finding qualified customers. It is never too late to catch up. But do not be fooled, there is no shortcut in the process. There are hours of hard work involved, tremendous amounts of planning to fulfill a market need, and a long range view of where you want to be. When you decide to become a pipeline builder instead of a bucket carrier, your mind will explode with creative ways to make it so, but it will still require a ton of hard work to get there. The sooner you can identify where you are in the process, the sooner you can begin to work towards where you want to be. Eventually, you should be able to put your prospecting on auto-pilot. Best wishes in your pipeline building!
About the Author:
Steve Norris is a Texas based Energy Efficient Electrical Contractor and Telecommunications Broker for over 80 carriers nationwide. He specializes in hardware solution for multi-location business with advanced infrastructure needs. Over 90% of his clients are able to implement a new technology infrastructure with Dallas VOIP solutions without increasing their budget with TeleTAP.
1. Expanding awareness is the master-key. A Business doesn’t generate $1M, $5M, $10M, or whatever it generates because that’s all they want to generate. It’s all they are aware of how to generate. By expanding awareness within the business, revenue can be increased. As long as employees only know A, B, & C, they can only produce C-level results; they can only recognize C-level opportunities. But, the moment employee’s awareness is expanded to understand D, E, & F, now they can produce F-level results; they can recognize F-level opportunities.
2. If a business is doing business the same way they were 5 years ago, they’re going out of business. For some, the “going out of business” process may be only a few months while for others it may take years. But it’s happening nevertheless. In simple and plain terms, business owners and executives must either maintain a constant drive to get better or they better figure out how to liquidate and get out before they and the other people in the business get hurt.
3. Mental laziness, paradigms, habit patterns, conditioning, the pull to be like others, the ego and arrogance of success – these are the enemies of every person and every business and they must be overcome on a continual basis. The determining factor for a business is whether or not the folks at the top of the business overcome in these areas. If the thinking and attitude of the folks at the top is “soured”, then the really good employees will move on to a better environment while all the remaining employees simply conform to what they see at the top.
1. Be aware of what your competition is doing but don’t “compete” with them. To do so results in a game of “leapfrog” – this year your product’s a little better, next year, theirs is a little better, etc. This is a tough way to do business. This is the way to stay at breakeven or less. Instead, keep your focus on your customers and on how to “create” a better world for them. You’ll soon be so far ahead of the competition that it will just be you and your customers in the game. Where does one start in getting out of this game of leapfrog? That leads us to the next tip…
2. Start the ball rolling with strategy. Developing a strategy – a plan of action to reach a certain destination or goal – is the start. Think of all the most successful businesses that you know of or have heard of. What is their strategy? They all have one. Some have referred to this as a big, hairy, audacious goal. This is how a business moves away from reactive mode and into proactive mode. This is how you “energize” your employees – they become a part of something that is bigger than themselves – really turning them on. Here are some questions to ask. What opportunities already exist that match and align with your strategy and will move you closer to its fruition? What new opportunities can be created to get you closer to the realization of your strategy? Now, apply massive action on ALL of these opportunities to win – and win BIG! Strategy is the start. But, to really bring it on home, you must remember…
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