How To Spot A Winner

February 13, 2012 By

Vietnam is wars ago on the American landscape. Nobody associates it with winning, yet it offered one of the best and most perceptive stories about winning I’ve ever heard. It seems General William Westmoreland was once reviewing a platoon of paratroopers in Vietnam. As he went down the line, he asked them a question: “How do you like jumping, son?” “Love it, sir!” was the first answer. “How do you like jumping?” he asked the next. “The greatest experience in my life, sir!” exclaimed the paratrooper. “How do you like jumping?” he asked the third. “I hate it, sir,” he replied. “Then why do you do it?” “Because I wanted to be around guys who love to jump.”

Dennis Connor, the man who put the blocks to Australia and won back the America’s Cup in four straight races, explained in a few words how he did it: “I surround myself with quality people that make me look good.” Winners also know how to bounce back after a hard hit. Connor’s crewman John Grant put it this way: “Dennis likes to know he has people who will make the right moves when things go wrong.” And that’s the right management instinct if you’re at the helm of a twelve-meter yacht or a billion dollar business.

Winners surround themselves with other winners.

A winner knows he’s a winner. He doesn’t need second-raters and yes-men around to feed his ego. He knows he’ll win more, and go farther, with associates who not only can keep up with him but who also are capable of teaching him something.

If you’re about to form a new business connection, whether it’s a job or a joint venture, don’t just look at your opposite number. Look at his subordinates.

Does he trust them? Does he delegate to them? Do they complement his talents by being strong managers while he’s an entrepreneur?

Or are they just his clones? If they’re weak, you have a problem. You’ll not only have your hands full getting anything done your way, you’ll also be completely dependent on your new associate’s personal capabilities and energy. There won’t be quality staff backup. Not a good situation in which to find yourself.

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He Who Burns Bridges Better Be A Damn Good Swimmer

January 30, 2012 By

Real-estate operators are legendary for slow-pay practices, but I know one who hangs them all out to dry. This gentleman–we’ll call him “Bob”–was the son of a milkman. He made a fortune in the trucking business and wound up owning major-league sports franchises on both coasts. To give you an idea of how nimble he was, after he bought his first sports franchise in the Midwest, he also bought– quietly and cheaply–an obscure FM radio station on the West Coast. In a big surprise move, he then shifted the franchise to the Coast and scheduled the game broadcasts exclusively on his new station. Moving not only revived the failing franchise, it also multiplied the value of the station. One move. Two profits.

Bob also owned a chain of hotels. A large, sophisticated New York insurance company held the mortgage on his flagship hotel. One Friday, the insurance company n question, exasperated over years of delayed payments or no payments, sent their man to see Bob. The intrepid rep marched into Bob’s office, threw down a sheaf of legal papers, and announced that as of Monday, the insurance company would take over and operate the hotel.

“That’s fine,” said Bob, “but where will you park the guest’ cars?”

“Why, in the parking lot behind the hotel,” said the insurance company’s man.

“No,” said he, “you won’t be parking them there. I own that parking lot. The minute you take over the hotel, an eight-foot chain-link fence goes around that lot, and in case you haven’t noticed, there isn’t another adequate parking facility you can use within a three-block radius.”

The New York insurance company decided it could live with Bob’s payment practices.
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You Can't Solve A Problem Unless You First Admit You Have One

January 23, 2012 By

The Same Goes For Business Problems

Alcoholics Anonymous has used that principle as a starting point to reclaim thousands and thousands of lives. Thousands more are never reclaimed because it’s so hard to change.

Sheer stubbornness has destroyed a lot more bottom lines than new technologies.

There were just as many mean spirited jibes at Coca-Cola for abandoning its original formulas as there were at Ford when it unveiled the Edsel. The difference was that Ford decided it was going to prove the marketplace was wrong and stuck with its mistake far too long. Coca-Cola realized early that while humiliation was inescapable, horrendous losses need not be. It cut its losses, and its mistake cost it a lot less money than stubborn pride cost Ford.

Campbell’s spent years developing a new offering in what’s called the “functional food” category. Named Intelligent Quisine (IQ), marketing consultant Sangita Joshi describes it as ” a frozen food line that would help older Americans” needing to modify their diets. It had “great endorsements from the medical fraternity; many trials…and yet it bombed due to poor taste.” Campbell’s acted quickly and regrouped.

Product withdrawals these days don’t have to be just timely. Sometimes they are real time. Bill Gates was demonstrating the introduction of an improved Windows 98 program in front of a slew of journalists and live TV cameras. As the demonstrator touted the program’s virtues, Windows crashed in front of GOD… and Gates! On the monitor appeared the infamous “blue screen of death” and its white-typed error message. The ever quick-witted Bill intervened in a nanosecond with: “That must be why we’re not shipping Windows 98 yet.”

One thing professional stock and commodity traders learn early is that they don’t give away medals for courage in the marketplace. There is only one reward the marketplace has to offer: money.If you’re not making any, bail out. Quickly

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What's The Best Way To Save Time?

October 25, 2011 By

Spend more time on time management. You’re in as good a position to save time as your richest and most powerful competitors. Over a lifetime, it’s incredible how much time you can save, and the advantages you can achieve, while you’re sitting on your duff in your car. For example:

1. Use a cell phone… but do it with respect for the posted rules, or you can alienate important people. Investigate smart phones that give you constant access to your e-mail and contact lists.

2. Always phone ahead when you make a call on a customer or a prospect. And, make sure you have both the customer’s landline and cel phone numbers, as well as their e-mail address.

3. Always park your car in a getaway position.

4. Use your drive time to listen to audio books or informational recordings instead of tuning in to the usual babble on the radio.

5. Never travel without a way to keep track of your thoughts. Whether it’s an Ipad or pen and paper, make sure you always have something with you to write things down.

6. Never have coffee with another salesperson, only with a customer. (Make sure you know which sort of latte they’re nuts about.)

7. Just for the hell of it–for an entire week–switch your reading plan. Dumb the sports section or gossip scoop and read the hometown newspapers of your major customers…or trade journals of your key customers or suppliers, so that you can learn what they’re worried about.

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Never Be Your Own Hatchet Man

September 20, 2011 By

Ike had Nixon; George W. Bush has Rumsfeld; every ball club has the manager of the moment.  You have to get someone who can make the tough, mean, unpopular decisions–and can take the fall when they get too tough, mean, and unpopular.  You are the peerless leader. You couldn’t really know what a meanie old Frogface is or you wouldn’t let him treat people that way. Of course you know. That’s why you hired him. If you’re out there on a shoeshine and a smile, serving on community boards, making new business presentations, being quoted in the paper on the future of the widget industry, you don’t want to be known around town as the guy who lays off employees at Christmas, dislikes labor unions, and shortens the coffee breaks. Your public performance won’t fly if you’re the one who has to crack the whip at home.

How do you run a business? You understand the strengths and weaknesses of the people you’re dealing with and exploit them–in the best sense of the word–to build strong personal loyalties and to make sure everyone plays his or her proper role. Even though that sounds like a bad B-school text, doesn’t it make a little more sense?

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Agreements Prevent Disagreements

September 13, 2011 By

Every now and then you’ll find yourself dealing with one of those country cousin types who says he doesn’t want a contract and “your word is good enough.” Maybe yours is, but his usually isn’t.

One of those arrangements taught me a lesson I’ll never forget.  I had a handshake deal with a man I hired. He agreed that he would not seek other employment for two years. After a year, a better offer came along, and he was gone.  He said that he remembered that we had agreed on only one year. How could I prove he was wrong? I couldn’t. Now what I do when I make a deal with one of these country cousins is send a letter that same day in which I:

1. thank him profusely for his courtesy and

2. set out the terms of the deal: “As I understand in our agreement, I have agreed to …”

I don’t usually ask for any acknowledgment (though you could just to be on the safe side–to make sure the letter arrived.) It’s just a nice, friendly little letter–and a useful record if there should be any misunderstandings later.

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Knowing Something About Your Customer Is Just as Important as Knowing Everything About Your Product

August 23, 2011 By

Take politicians, for example.  A politician will support your proposition only as long as it is politically popular or uncommonly rewarding.

That isn’t to say that pols are any less honest or reliable than the rest of us.   it;s just that politicians must shift positions constantly to keep up with the people they are supposed to be leading.  Legislators, particularly in faraway places such as Washington, tend to be a little less reliable than governors, who are under closer local scrutiny, but the same principle holds.  It is the duty of someone who wants something from a politician either to (a) create the public climate that makes supporting that position attractive, or (b) do whatever is necessary so that a politico will return a favor from time to time–like fundraising or even organizational work.

Before you choose one tactic or the other, you had better be certain with whom you are dealing.  In this case, the governor was the type of politician who thought he had something his constituents would truly want.  The Ghermezians and the governor both went to public together, and when it became rapidly apparent that the brothers had not created the proper climate of public opinion, the governor backed off.

To the Ghermezian’s credit, they finally got the message, hired local lobbyists, and put the pieces back together.  After having asked for several hundred million dollars at the legislature and getting completely skunked, they got help at the municipal level.  The current scaled-down version–call it a mini mega-mall–could have been even bigger.  In fact, the Ghermezians created the 5.3-million-square-foot West Edmonton Mall in Alberta, Canada, the largest shopping center in the world, starting in 1981.

Identifying the customer does not mean that you make your pitch directly to that customer.  Selling the governor in this case was easy…too easy.  What the Ghermezians should have done was first build a support structure of “influencers” around that governor–the press, the unions, popular opinion, his own party, and so on–before pitching the main man.  That involves a professional PR effort: stories extolling their already successful mall; leaks about competing cities plotting to sweep the Ghermezians into their fold; orchestrated demand for the product from leading opinion-makers.  None of this groundwork was laid.  Unfortunately (for the Brothers Ghermezian), once the governor discovered he had no crew, it was time to abandon ship.

At Mackay Mitchell Envelope Company, you wouldn’t believe how much we know about our customers.  The IRS wouldn’t believe how much we know about our customers.  All our salespeople on staff fill out a 66-question profile of each one of their customers.  We’re not talking about the customer’s taste in envelopes, either.  We want to know, based on observation and routine conversation, what our customer is like as a human being, what he feels strongly about, what he’s most proud of having achieved, and what status symbols are in his office.

When you know your customers, some of their special interests or characteristics, you always have a basis for contacting and talking to them.  I have a customer who’s a devoted Chicago Cubs baseball fan.  The Cubs’ failure to make it to the top continues.  That’s usually good for at least half a dozen condolence messages a year.  I don’t sit there scribbling notes about the latest fashions in envelopes.

Knowing your customer means knowing what your customer really wants.  Maybe it is your product, but maybe there’s something else, too: recognition, respect, reliability, concern, service, a feeling of self-importance, friendship, help–things all of us care more about as human beings than we care about malls or envelopes.

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Get Bored Easily

August 17, 2011 By

Professional managers can repeat the same task over and over, but most successful entrepreneurs can’t handle boredom.  The difference in these two familiar types runs so deeply that, if you’re a manager, it’s unlikely you’ll succeed in the role of entrepreneur, just as entrepreneurs tend not to make very good managers. There’s a place in the world for each.  The message here is to entrepreneurs.

McKinsey & Company did a study of the members of the American Business Conference, which grew 20 percent per year over the five-year period prior to the publication of the report.  There is one common thread running through these operations: The people who run them tend to be entrepreneurs who just can’t stand corporate bureaucracy, organization charts, and manuals for operating procedures.

Entrepreneurs share a common trait with good salespeople: Both are able to communicate a sense of self-confidence and importance about their mission that is contagious to all around them. Entrepreneurs scratch before they itch.  They dare to fix things before they break because it is part of their makeup to seek out fresh challenged.

They determine the agenda; they set the pace; they dominate the field of play.  Pit an entrepreneur against a manager, and the entrepreneur is constantly forcing the manager to abandon his own plans and react to the entrepreneur’s initiative.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you know it.  And if you are, your competitors have a reason to dread it when you feel the onset of restlessness.  It means you’re ready to make another move.  Don’t fight it–it’s the entrepreneur’s greatest strength.  At the same time, recognize your greatest weakness: an eye for detail, which all too often translates into an inability to manage the financial end of the business.

If you’re an entrepreneur, be frank enough about your own limitations to get yourself a George Wilson to handle the day-to-day operations.  Thirty-five years ago, when Wilson was stewing over whether to take on the commitment of moving the Billy graham offices to a newer building, he called Graham and asked his advice.  ”I don’t call and ask you what I should preach,” said Billy.  ”Don’t call me about what you should do with buildings.”

I want to thank you for reading and I would greatly appreciate it if you would take the time to share your thoughts and input with me on Facebook and Twitter.

Harvey

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It Isn't Practice That Makes Perfect...

August 1, 2011 By

Lombardi again, but let me try to put a new wrinkle on it.  You can practice all day long, but if you don’t really know what you’re doing, no matter how much talent you have, you’re only perfecting an error.

Look at the great athletes and musicians.  There are no walk-ons at the Super Bowl or Carnegie Hall… or in corporate boardrooms, for that matter.  The level of performance in those exalted places is only partially a reflection of talent.  There are two other qualities that are indispensable in making to the top: expert coaching and iron determination.  Let’s start with coaching.  Only we’ll call it teaching.

A teacher is not there just to acquaint you with the tools of your trade; a teacher is a tool of your trade, no matter what the trade is. You never stop needing teachers.  The great musicians never stop taking lessons, never stop trying to improve.  Arthur Rubinstein used to say that if he missed a day of practice, he noticed it in the quality of his performance.  If he missed two days, the critics noticed.  And if he missed three days, the audience noticed.

Whatever it is you do, you can be better at it if you just keep on learning.  I certainly have not mastered the art of making envelopes, selling envelopes, or developing new envelopes.

The minute I persuade myself that I have, that I have learned all there is to learn about the subject and can relax, that’s the moment my competition will find a way to do any or all of the above better than I can and will hand me my head.  The annals of business are filled with stories of companies that thought they had it made and could milk their enterprises as cash cows without having to bother about improving their products or service.  It’s amazing how fast they found their markets disappearing.

Thanks for reading!  I want to personally invite you to connect with me on Facebook and Twitter as well.

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