Leadership in tough times

By Ian A Williams

The current challenging economic climate is a great time to test the strength of your leadership in business. It really does sort out the capable and resilient from those who simply give up or hide in their shell. Where are you today? Are you in your shell or out there fighting for your future?

Leadership is defined as a journey, a course that is set – and every journey has its challenges. By nature, leadership involves everyone. While those who own, run and manage organisations are the ones who are called or appointed to be in a leadership position, everyone in an organisation has a leadership role to play, simply in leading themselves in doing their best in the team, and in enabling others to do their job well too. Just being efficient and effective in your own role means you are part of leading – if only leading by example! Recent UK research suggests that leadership has two distinct aspects: developing recognised leaders as individuals, and developing leadership as culture and practice in the whole organisation.

So when the times get tough it’s a great opportunity for you as the owner to get all the help you can from those around you in leading your business to continuing success. When the pressure is on, your choice is to visualise and lead growth, or to survive and tread water. That choice will be very apparent to those around you. A downturn is the time for vision and growth in bringing all the creative skills of your team together to plan for the future. So let's look at some key leadership characteristics as defined by John Adair. Sometimes these qualities don't sound very businesslike, but they are really the heart of your business and your leadership if you want to achieve to achieve success:

1. Enthusiasm - passion and zest
2. Integrity - the bedrock of good leadership
3. Toughness and fairness – demanding, but no favourites
4. Warmth - cold fish do not make good leaders
5. Moral courage - to face and confront unpleasant situations
6. Resilience - the ability to bounce back after setbacks
7. Humility - lack of arrogance, being on the same level as others

How do you measure up? Ask those you trust. In his action-centred leadership model, John Adair defines leadership into three simple key elements which distinguish task, team and individual needs.

Task needs
Task relates to the purpose of your business. It's not just about what you do, it's about why you're in business and what you want to achieve. A downturn may be a great time to review this, getting clear on what industry you're in, what you want to provide for whom, and what results you're aiming at. In getting this clear you will need to get ideas from people in your business about a more efficient ways of working, new initiatives, and a renewed enthusiasm for what you do. After all, as the old saying goes, if you do what you always do you'll get what you always got.

Team needs
Meeting the needs of people around you is essential to achieving what you need to achieve. It sounds obvious but this gets amazingly low priority in most businesses. Having the right mix of people with the right skills, having their roles clear, maintaining good communication, confidence, integrity and humour is invaluable. We are social beings and we need to work effectively with other people.

Individual needs
People need to feel valued, not only by you as the leader, but by the whole team. They need to feel that their time, energy, skills, talents and resources are being well used in the team and adding value to the task in hand. From you as the leader, this requires tact, fairness, compassion, consistency, honesty and humility.


TM – John Adair


The three circle model of action-centred leadership is about keeping these three needs in balance, and of equal priority. Sometimes of course one of these aspects may require more of your time attention and energy, but the important thing is to keep them all maintained.

The seven key leadership characteristics need to be role-modelled by you as the leader personally, and also be part of the leadership culture that permeates everyone in the organisation. That’s the kind of culture that will get you through any downturn, maintain productivity, encourage people to bring in their ideas and energy, and ensure that you have a really engaged workforce, enjoying what they do and the people they do it with. After all, as the old Japanese proverb says, ‘No man will find the best way to do a thing unless he loves to do that thing.’

John Adair is the author of action-centred leadership, and the world’s first professor of leadership.
johnadair.co.uk

IAN A WILLIAMS
Adair leadership coach, author and speaker
kairology.com

Kairology® ian@kairology.com

©Kairos Development Ltd 2008 – All Rights Reserved

The Five Secrets To Writing Killer Prospecting Scripts

Article By Mike Brooks

I've written, tested, re-written, tweaked, copy edited, composed, marketed, reviewed, and used thousands of telemarketing scripts over the last 26 years.

I've written and used opening scripts, closing scripts, prospecting cold calling scripts, warm inbound scripts, closing scripts, rebuttal scripts, trial close scripts, initial resistance scripts, blow off scripts, qualifying scripts, etc....

Bottom line? Nobody writes better scripts than yours truly, Mr. Inside Sales. Heck, I wrote the book on scripts The Complete Book of Phone Scripts.

When companies and sales reps hire me to write or review or tweak their prospecting scripts, almost always I find they are saying or doing the same things wrong. In today's article, I'm going to give you The 5 Secrets to writing Killer Prospecting Scripts.

Secret #1: Stop asking, “How are you today?” Believe it or not, 80% of your competition still advertise themselves as lame sales reps making cold calls by asking this over used and insincere question. Nothing identifies you more as a pesky telemarketer than opening your call with that question.

Instead, try: “Hi _________, how’s your (day of the week) going?”

Or, “Well hi _________, happy (day of the week) to you!”

These may not sound that impressive, but believe me, they work! Try it and see for yourself.

Secret #2: Stop talking at your prospect and instead ask a question so you can connect early on. Again, believe it or not, 80% of your competition start pitching as soon as they get their prospect on the phone. Compare your own script to this and ask yourself how long your first opening paragraph is. Three sentences? Four? Way too long!

You must engage your prospect right away and begin a conversation. That means asking them a question early on! Try something like (after you’ve wished them a happy Tuesday):

“__________ the reason for the call is to let you know about the service we provide with regards to your accounting procedures. Who’s handling that for you now?”

Or, “__________ briefly, the reason I’m calling is to show you how we could perhaps save you money and time with your widget process. I was told that you handle that, is that correct?”

See how that goes? It’s imperative that you connect right away, and the best way to do that is by asking a question.

Secret #3: Listen and Think B-4 You Respond Next: Asking a question in the beginning not only allows you to connect with your prospect, but it also allows you to gauge their reaction. The reason 80% of your competition is afraid to ask a question is they are afraid their prospect might not be interested. That’s OK!!

The Top 20% are anxious to find out who is, who isn’t, and how much someone might be. And they do that by carefully listening to their prospect’s response to this question, and then they Listen and Think B-4 Responding. You need to as well.

In other words, don’t just start pitching again here, but rather, be prepared to vary your response based on what and how your prospect responds. In other words, listen and react to what they say.

Secret #4: Make sure you have a list of questions to ask your prospect so you can gather all the information you’ll need to fully qualify or disqualify them. You need to know the six areas I’ve written on before, but basically you need to know:

Why they’ll buy (their hot buttons)

Why they won’t buy (possible deal killing objections)

Who makes the decision (how many people are involved)

What the decision process is all about – how long, etc.

What other companies they are looking at (who your competition is)

Their budget

If you don’t know all of these things before you send out your demo or information or quote, then I’ll bet you’re closing less than 3 out of 10 leads sent out.

Secret #5: Make an exact appointment time to get back with your prospect.
You’d be amazed by how many sales reps are not doing this! Instead, 80% of sales reps are chasing and chasing unqualified leads they can never reach again (and who never close).

Making an appointment gives you SO much information. First, if they won’t commit it tells you how uncontrollable your prospect is. And remember, “Leads never get better!” Also, if your prospect misses your appointment, what does that say about them? And, of course, when your prospect is there and waiting for your call, what does that tell you?

Start setting a definite time with ALL your prospects and watch your closing rate start to climb…

So there you have it – the five secrets of writing killer prospecting scripts. You can instantly improve your prospecting script by incorporating any or all of these techniques.

Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales, works with business owners and inside sales reps throughout the US teaching them the skills, strategies and techniques of top 20% performance.

www.mrinsidesales.com/

Training Games

I don't often get excited about new products (if I did I'd be exhausted, I'm getting fantastic new products every day) but this one has really tickled me. Though sometimes I am wary of US products perhaps not quite hitting the mark with the UK or European market, I think these absolutely will.

Trainers have their favourite games, don't they? You get the 'tried and trusted' attitude, but what if you are going in to a client again and again? There's only so many times they'll wear the same activity, or a variation on it, or maybe even they are such a good client that all your games get used up!

So when I received Tom Heck's 3 DVD set of training games I was delighted to find not only lots of games on each DVD, but simple, clear instructions and timings/space requirements. Many of the games are suitable for young people too, so this is a great resource for teachers as well as trainers (which is handy as we have a new Teachers section on the website).

If I can work out how to do it (and with Tom's consent of course) I'll see if I can include a sample on here.

If you are looking for some new ideas for training games, warm ups, icebreakers etc, then check it out on the CT website. I would love for someone to buy the Training Games here and give me feedback.

Beware the scammers

Have you been phoned and told 'your advert has been published on (then something nice and emotive, like a child protection wallchart or diary) and your payment is now due'?

The old statistic that 50% of businesses will pay an invoice without challenging it has led, in the past, to many scammers making a tidy fortune out of corporate 'system' ... invoices being paid just because they were received. I don't think that statistic holds true today.

Now, however, the scammers are getting more creative. I had a call the other day about a wallchart that my colleague had advertised in. Oh no they hadn't! No one in my organisation would have placed an ad on a wallchart (a personal pet hate of mine anyway, sorry Chambers of Commerce!), or in a diary, or anywhere else that wasn't strictly industry related.

Then I saw a thread on the UKBusinessForum ... exactly this subject! The part that particularly caught my attention, and prompted my posting on here, was a useful site called Adscams. Mind you, Adscams do warn us to watch out for 'rouge' scammers. I didn't know they came in different colours.

Better resources are to visit industry related or Government sites, such as CAP or the Trading Standards Office who are, in fact, promoting a Scams Awareness month for February.

Any business, small or large, can fall prey to scammers, so I have no compunction whatsoever in dedicating a post on this blog to warning others about the potential traps that the increasingly clever scammers lay.

Trainer dating - whatever next!

When we launched http://www.trainerdate.com/ last month, we had a mixed reaction. Overall the response was positive with a great 'click through' (people visiting the site) and some really nice emails back too.

One or two people were less happy, feeling that offering a dating site was inappropriate. We felt there was no conflict of interest or anything inappropriate in offering this service. We were even very specific that our contacts would only every get one mailing about the site.

But what about internet dating on the whole? We hear nightmare stories abductions, deception, fraud...

Well the internet is a medium open to abuse like any other, but let's face it, 'happy ever after' stories aren't really what 'sell' the news. So we only ever hear the 'dark side'. Here's an example of one of the happier stories:

I used to work in a hospital. One of the staff nurses was divorced and had young children. She found it hard to go out and meet people (other than colleagues). She joined an internet dating site and rapidly made friends. She could go on line and leave messages or chat with people who shared unusual shift hours as she did, or who had the same problems with managing young children and a job, like she did. She met a nice man on the site. He was widowed and had kids too. Her first visit with him was chaperoned. They met a few times and found they got on very well. Last I heard, they were happily married!

One of my friends that I have known for over 30 years split from her husband five years ago. She now has a boyfriend that shares her love of walking and he has introduced her to the joys of motorbiking. Not something she may have taken up on her own, but now she has driven through France and Spain and they have a great time when they get together, even though they live 120 miles apart.

Every day millions of people make friends on the internet, through forums, dating sites and other social networking sites.

Trainerdate is aimed at professionals who share a common interest. Internet dating is, potentially, a great medium for the single trainer. An independent trainer's life can often involve lots of travelling, perhaps even different 'employer' every week. The internet can be a good place to meet people and make new friends. Just be careful and follow sensible internet safety rules (there's a useful article on the Onlindatingmagazine site).

If you have any questions about Trainerdate.com (or our partner site, www.teacherdate.co.uk), you are welcome to email us. Have I signed up? I'm not telling...

Happy Valentine's Day

Leaders are Readers

At a conference a few weekends ago, the jazzy speaker (the VP of an American networking company) said 'leaders are readers'. He talked about how in his 29 mile commute to work along one of the busiest highways in LA, he would have audio books on in his car.

He was an excellent speaker and the company he runs (Xocai)- with his family - very successful. During the conference, which was about network marketing, he continued to return to the theme that leaders are readers. Today I received a newsletter from an NLP training company, and their opener was a quotation from Mark L Fox:

“Rich men tend to have large libraries… Poor men tend to have large… TV’s"

I love reading and also find audio books extremely handy for long car journeys. I have listened to Max Maltz on Psycho-Cybernetics (forerunner of NLP in many ways) and listened to many of Chris Cardell's marekting CDs too.

If you don't have the time to read a book, consider the time you spend in the car and, if you can find it, buy an audio book. Leaders are readers, but they are listeners too.

One for the girls?

I recently came across coach and author Lynette Allen. She has written three books:

Behind with the marking and plagued by nits(for teachers)

Behind with the mortgage and living off plastic (for women)

Behind with the laundry and living off chocolate (for women)

What brilliant titles! And she is running a great site that focuses on women and their skills too (http://www.pinkexpertise.co.uk She has identified a niche market and gone for it, full swing!

I have, of course, a vested interest in mentioning Lynette. I sell her books on Complete Trainer and she has been kind enough to feature me on her site.

But it brings me back to this concept of approaching business/training/development for women differently to men. There was a hugely active thread on the UKBusinessForum about whether women should have separate business initiatives with varying reponses from 'Yes, we have different needs', to 'no, I don't want to be treated any differently to men' right up to 'why should women get all the breaks?'.

And it is a question worth examination. Should we have separate training for women? For people of a particular religion, or sexual orientation, or taste in music?

There are boundaries, and these boundaries are being set not by society but by behaviour. There are certainly examples where training or interaction with people should be separated out. I am sure a room full of men would rather not be taught how to examine for testicular cancer by a woman, likewise a room full of women not be taught self-examination for breast cancer by a man. OK, obvious choices, but very clear examples.

We embrace diversity! It is what makes this planet so hugely successful. Keith Patching, formerly a Director at Cranfield School of Management, says:

"Even though we recognise that people who are different from ourselves can be hard to understand or value, we have made great strides in learning tolerance and understanding. Attitudes to ethnicity, religion, gender, age and sexual orientation have changed, supported by legislation that makes it illegal to discriminate against people on these grounds. Many enlightened organisations devote a significant amount of attention to inclusion – the means of ensuring that each individual can feel and be included irrespective of whether he or she is a member of any kind of minority.

There is still more to be done to deal with conflicts that may emerge as a result of diversity, but progress is being made."

Back to the issue of training just for women. Should we have it? Yes, it has a place, just as books aimed at women and clothes designed for women have their place too.

Copyright is sexy!

For reasons which will remain obscure, I attended a two day training programme at the Music Publishers Association in London this week. One of the main subjects, unsurprisingly, was copyright.

With the digital age causing a complete revolution in the copying of music, how do writers retain their intellectual property and get paid for the hard work they did in writing and creating a song or music?

Almost every presentation, from the PRS, MPA, MusicUK and from international publishers, focused on this issue of copyright. And the issues that face the music industry surely face other industries too (including training) as books turn into ebooks, models and resources become easily available on websites and can be shared amongst people very easily. There has been a huge issue in the US with a major search engine scanning books and making them available on line - with no payment to the authors! (Oh yes, and Myspace are not interested in paying any royalties whatsoever...)

'Copyright is sexy' said Florian, from UK Music (the lobbying body which brings together all the disparate parts of the music business to present a single voice to Government. Feargul Sharkey's mostly). Sexy? How is copyright sexy? Well, I guess it's whatever turns you on as they say, but copyright is certainly intriguing.


Richard Taylor, a copyright lawyer with Michael Simkins, explained the first time copyright law appeared - in 1709. Printers were copying other people's books and works, paying no royalty to the original authors or to the first printers. So, a law was passed regarding the 'right to copy'.

Unauthorised copying has been an issue for centuries. But one speaker at our conference was our Devil's advocate. He described how music customers (he didn't like the word users, said it made music listeners and consumers sound like druggies) have a completely different attitude. They believe music should be easily accessible, free and that paying additionally for using something more than once is wrong.

If you pay for a CD of a band, you have in fact just paid a single licence to use that CD. You have not paid to have any copies made, so loading it on to your computer, MP3 player or phone is illegal. Now, if you uploaded that material on to the internet and made it available to others - that is in fact criminal.

As more and more material becomes available in digital format, then this problem of unauthorised copying (which is turning the music industry on its head) is going to spread. Whether it's an audio CD of sales training, or the downloadable materials of a training programme - if you have received them in digital format, then copying and distributing them (even for your own use) is easy! And abuse of copyright equally so.

Asserting copyright is not difficult. As soon as you have completed an original work (music, writing, etc) you own it. Proving ownership is slightly more complex. They still recommend that you post something to yourself in a registered envelope; by so doing you establish a date of creation (and in the rare cases where copyright is contested, the date can be a crucial factor).

Needless to say the issues of copyright are a minefield but something you must consider in your professional capacity. Is the material you are using yours to use freely? Are you infringing anyone's copyright? Have you sought appropriate permissions for materials?

Have you scanned something out of a book? Copied something verbatim from the internet to include in your programme? Have you used a questionnaire or assessment tool that you don't know where it came from? Remember, ignorance is often used as an excuse, but legally it is no defence.

And what about protecting your own intellectual property? Have you written a book, programme or article that is your copyright and is in digital format? If so, think carefully about how you can protect your rights.

As I think I have mentioned, copyright is a complex issue. If you have any doubts about what you are using, then check it - especially if you are going into a large organisation. They will want to know that anything you are providing has appropriate copyright licences or they too may be liable for any prosecutions arising from copyright infringement.

The immediate concern is that this would add costs to your training and potentially lose you business. But those concerns must be balanced with the implications of you getting prosecuted for breaching copyright.

Copyright is sexy? I say copyright is scary! But as a composer of original works (literary and musical) I darn well want my rights protected! Wouldn't you?

Snow Day!

A little frivolity, the Herts countryside and the road into Ware.

For lots more pictures of the quaint market town of Ware in the snow, visit my Flickr site.