John Chambers - What I Look for In Leaders

John Chambers, CEO of Cisco, looks at three things when thinking about the leaders in his company. Here they are:

• Results
• Quality of the team
• Communication

The results is obvious. Almost everyone in business has a set of goals or a set of outcomes that are measurable. Quality of the team and communication are a little different and maybe not on the top of all lists.

He also talked about how you learn about people during times of failure or during times of challenge. This past week has been full of challenge for the team I work with . We have added three major accounts to our company at the same time which can be challenging. Normally a great opportunity comes along in singles so this has been a stressful time. Some of the best in people has come out and has been enjoyable to see.

John talked about what keeps him up at night and he mentioned that when Cisco lets down a customer it can cause him to loose sleep. This may be why he has been so successful over time and has been able to be a tech CEO for so long.

It's a short video but it has some great insights.

How to Hold Meetings

How can you have a better meeting? Many of us find ourselves in more meetings than we want. Since some of these meetings are outside of our control and we have to be there anyway, why not make the best of the situation.

Steven Sinofsky, a major player at Microsoft in the development of Office and Windows 7 has written a long blog on how to have better meetings. Here are three of the keys from that blog post.

Define success. Make sure everyone knows what the outcome or goal of the meeting should be. To come out of a meeting after an hour and not be sure if it was beneficial is a letdown. Our job is to make sure everyone in a meeting gets something worth while and that a meeting can be judged as successful.

Know the details. If your manager or your team is interested in a certain metric - make sure you have the numbers and that you understand and can defend the numbers. It is a waste of time to be in a meeting and then have someone say that s/he will get back to you later with the number. Be prepared.

Brevity. Start on time and end on time. A meeting that wanders with no end point drives energy out of a meeting. When a group of people don't know when a meeting will end they are not sure what they can get done later and that causes anxiety. Having an end point forces the meeting to stay on point and stay meaningful.

One other thing. Below is a chart from Steven's blog that shows how meetings can be successful or not successful.


Meetings are a part of business and will happen. You may as well make them meaningful and effective.

Say yes more. Connect people more. Get up early more. Expand your network. Take better care of your family. Great advice.

Become A Customer Company

The title to this blog seems obvious and even a little silly. Isn't every company becoming a customer company? Isn't every company company focused on the customer? Surprisingly, they are not. How often do you work with a company that seems to hate the customer? The service is awful and the people are unhappy.

If that describes your company - watch out! The world is changing and it's changing faster than you may think. Below is a video from Salesforce.com that addresses some critical thoughts. If you watch this video and feel great about what you are doing - congrats! Most likely you will find areas to improve. Two of my favorite lines from the video are "this is a trust revolution" and "you need to become a customer company". Enjoy and learn.

Three Ways to Improve Your Odds of a Sale

Who is interested in selling more? Who is interested in doing more business? How many companies are out in the market trying to sell more products or services? I think almost all people and companies want to grow and do more.

Tom Searcy has written an article for Inc magazine that gives three ways to improve sales. These are only three of hundreds of ideas but they are good for the world we live in today.

One way is to get good at doing small transactions. It is easy to just focus on the big fish and the big sales but with the right amount of smaller transactions a company can diversify business. When you care for the entire list of needs of a customer you can do a better job as a supplier. Just like Amazon has automated the small transaction and has done it well - any person or company can do the same. Our company uses storefront technology similar to Amazon to manage and process small orders. This has allowed us to take care of a full range of offerings to clients. Think about how you can do this in your world and get going.

The other two ideas from the article are worth reading. Whatever you do - do something, try new ideas and make this a year of improvement and growth.

The First Commandment: Know Thy Customer

According to David Edelman of McKinsey - the first commandment of good marketing is to know your customer. David recently wrote an article about the importance of really knowing your customer in order to get the best return on your marketing dollar. The more a company knows about a customer as an individual the better the marketing message can be tailored to fit a specific person. David talks in the article about senior managers touting the importance of spending time with and getting to know the customer, but that is not the norm.

David wrote the following, "The reason to unlock your data is so that you can be more relevant to your customers by sending them messages, offers, and products they really want. Research shows that personalization can deliver five to eight times the ROI on marketing spend and lift sales 10% or more." This was, for me, the key to the entire article. I find that when I look at our customer base as a whole, by segment, by sales person or by individual account, I see a much different picture. We are fortunate that we only have about thirty customers per rep, so we are able to get a much more personal view of the customer. When there is a personal view of the customer, then a tightly focused personal message can be sent and a much better ROI can be achieved.

 

Our company can, with digital printing, create direct mail that is unique to each person when we have the right data. This is something we are promoting to our customers because it is a way to cut through the clutter of the generic market. If you are looking at your customers, spend some time to get to know them on a personal basis and then reach out with your marketing in a 1to1 way to get the best impact.

3 Types of Leaders Who Never Succeed

At our company, Hopkins Printing, we have gone through many iterations with strategic planning. We have seen some systems that don't work well and some that work incredibly well. One thing we believe now is that having more focus and limiting the big goals allows us to get more done. Recently I came across an Inc magazine article 3 Types of Leaders Who Never Succeed that talks to this in one of the points.

One of the three points is to not be "The Strategy Yanker" which means changing the strategy on a whim. This would be starting the year with a strategy to grow 30% and then in month three changing the strategy to improving customer service. When we set our three main goals for the year, we go through days of debate over what goals will make the biggest difference. These are not quick or easy decisions because we know that they will last for an entire year. When a member of the management team knows s/he will be held to a goal 12 months later, the decision is much tougher. Once we go through this process we then roll the goals out to develop departmental goals and then personal goals for each person in the company. It isn't an easy or quick process but we have seen some incredible benefits from this process.

The article also gives two others points that are worth reading and then if they apply to you, stop doing those things. Being a leader is a big responsibility so take some time, learn something and improve.