Tuesday Takeaway Talks

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At Know+Do we understand that your business is more than just a place of work it is somewhere your talents, ambitions and passions can thrive.

As a way of supporting the Manchester business community we have teamed up with a local co-working provider, Work.Life, to create the Tuesday Take Away Talks starting on 9th July 2019.

Every second Tuesday in the month we will hold a ‘Tuesday Take Away Talk’ from 5 to 7pm in Work.Life's excellent new co-working space in the centre of Manchester. The evening includes a short inspirational talk from Know and Do on leading and managing a business and then will be open to questions and discussion from attendees.

All session are held in the ground floor lounge area of Work.Life Manchester, they are presented in an informal, relaxed and engaging style to give real value to attendees. There is no charge for attending and refreshments will be provided but as places are limited booking in advance is required. The evenings are a great way to meet other business leaders after work.

The first talk topic will be:

9th July - What is your business achieving and why?
Successful businesses can clearly articulate a purpose to their work and values that they subscribe too; this creates the space for great leadership to inspire others to work with you. In this session, we’ll share examples of clear purpose and values enabling companies to achieve success. We’ll give you a way to measure your business, your approach and how you inspire the people around you to work with you.

Future talk topics are:

• 13th August - The great, the tough and the messy of leading a team! Top tips on how to lead a team and get high performance from your colleagues.

• 10th September - Turnover is vanity, profit is sanity. Growth is not always a good thing unless it is carefully managed, so to help we will share ways to plan for a profitable business.

• 8th October - Who wants to buy your products and services? No business can sell to 'everyone', by taking the time to learn ways to segment and study your customers you can be smarter with your marketing.

• 12th November - 10 smart ways to market your business. Tonight we will map out practical ways a business leader can coordinate and measure their marketing efforts,

• 10th December - Why are we terrified of closing the deal? Sales can be a frightening phrase to many people in business. Our experienced team will explain techniques we can all use to build our confidence in selling.

Remember, you can book for one talk or sign up to come to them all!

Delegation for Directors, 17th July

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When you are leading a company, whatever its size, learning how to delegate well improves the performance of the business. Whether you are sharing tasks with colleagues, establishing a new process or outsourcing a role, clear communication of what you need done is vital. Delegation is an art and as a great leader you will want your people to reach their potential; this seminar will inspire you to continue that path.

To share techniques and ideas on delegation for directors Bernard Clarke, Know+Do will be leading a free insight workshop for the Institute of Directors on 17th July 2019 in central Manchester from 8.30-10am.

‘Delegation for Directors’ will provide practical techniques to review your delegation skills and set clear instructions for others including topics such as: great questions, clarity of expectations, effective communication and how to utilise motivation.

The seminar will be interactive and engaging, with attendees asked to share their knowledge and expertise. Using examples of great practice the session will give you templates to re-use and share in your business.

Attendance is free with advanced booking required via the IoD North West team: https://www.iod.com/events-community/events/event-details/eventdateid/15439

Are you a sales person or a sales professional?

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For the last 5 years I’ve had the pleasure of delivering regular sales masterclasses for GC Business Growth Hub aimed at Greater Manchester SME’s wanting to grow their businesses. Around 12 different businesses participate in each masterclass.

One of the key learning objectives is to help each business owner understand how ‘sales’ is viewed and more importantly, used within their business. I always start by asking a simple question “Do you like, love or loath sales?” An overwhelming majority admit to loathing sales and the sales process. One participant recently described how they viewed sales as “a bit grubby”. A statement that many others agreed with.

Further questioning reveals that as these owners describe 'sales' they tend to focus in on examples where they, or someone they know, has experienced some form of dodgy sales practice. For example: They’ve been overpromised and under delivered. The stated price had risen dramatically with additional add-ons. They been trapped in a pressured sales environment or pestered constantly with unsolicited telephone calls. This is the domain of what I call the sales person.

These less than honest or trustworthy practices sit in stark contrast to the domain of the sales professional. Here, the sales professional takes pride in their undertaking and engaging with customers to discover and serve their needs in a way which makes repeat business highly likely. The sales professional works hard at their craft and is always learning and developing their skills.

When I started my first proper sales role (selling facsimile machines) my business card carried the title - Sales Executive. The two brothers who owned the firm and trained me were described by those who met them as ‘natural born sales people’. They looked and acted the part to me as a naïve sales novice. Suited, booted and driving nice cars they seemed to have the gift of the gab and fulfilled a stereotype of what I thought sales was. However, during my 6 week long sales induction programme I realised that these two were anything but natural born sales people. They were sales professionals with a clear plan. Like good magicians or actors they worked hard at their craft behind the scenes and thus, when they performed they made it seem natural.

Every time I was with them they had a book, magazine or audio on the go. They recommended different books across a wide range of subjects to me to read in order to develop my sales skills. I learnt some important basic concepts from them about sales and the need to develop my skills, knowledge and attitude towards sales. Sales, they taught should always be a win-win situation if you want sustained customers. Sales was a worthy profession if done right and they believed in doing it right.

They taught me that profitable sales are the key to a successful business. Figuring out the difference between ‘a profitable sale’ and just ‘a sale’ required a little more effort and a different pitch. A sales professional doesn’t look for the short cut but will help the client understand their needs and wants and put a proposal in that suits the client and themselves.

When I teach sales, I ask business owners to think about building sales practices that reflect a professional approach to sales. This goes right across the business from developing and training the right skills, knowledge and sales attitude. Without this you’ll likely have sales people and not sales professionals in your business.

A knock on impact of people not loving sales is that they tend to avoid reading books or attending courses on sales. This further compounds their issue with sales as if they don’t develop their skills and knowledge they won’t be very good at the subject.  Sales is a broad subject with a huge array of books available some useful some not so. Many attendees simply don’t know where to start their sales skills journey.

Reframing ‘sales’ as a positive and core component of a business helps attendees to shift their thinking about sales. From this new perspective, it’s much easier for people to reengage with sales and develop their specific knowledge to understand how to serve their clients better. Employing professional sales practices and developing a new sales strategy helps owners and staff to love sales and enjoy a more profitable business.

I’m passionate about good sales practices and helping customers to buy the right product as often as they need. Professional sales practices will help you and your business stand out in a crowd of sales amateurs. Profitable sales helps to sustain your business and serve your clients more effectively.

If you want to develop the sales skills in your business contact Know+Do today and ask for our advice.

I’d welcome your thoughts or comments on this important area.

Does 'Why' Really Matter?

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I came across the above diagram in Simon Sinek’s book, Leaders East Last. It is a very simple picture but one that helps me explain to leaders the importance of having a ‘Why’ in their business. When my colleagues and I at Know+Do are asked to work on a problem a client has in their business - whether that is about the performance of people or their processes or strategies - we often get puzzled looks when we ask a question like:

• Tell me about the vision of the business, what is it aiming to achieve?

• What is the purpose of the company and why does it exist?

• How do your values help you achieve your mission?

The normal response is along the lines of, ‘that is not important right now, so can we get back to looking at the problem?’ However, our interest in the ‘why’ is because it is usually the best starting point to solving the problem.

In his book, Simon Sinek is referencing the challenge of bringing others with you and expanding the capacity of a business. If too few people have the authority to make the right decisions at the right time, performance will suffer; customer satisfaction will drop; employee motivation and confidence cannot rise, and so on. But if the leader sets out a vision and articulates why the company exists, they can share authority with those who are closest to the daily information in its context; they can expand their influence and empower their people within the framework of a vision.

That is why if a company has a senior management team that is not functioning as well as it should, we ask about the mission, vision and values of the business. These terms set the tone for how the business operates and provide the guide to what makes a decision appropriate or not. Knowing these gives an objective perspective to reference, which is needed to re-set a team’s goals and behaviour.

When a business is struggling to organise its key processes effectively, we ask about the core purpose of the company to ascertain what should be the common thread of motivation for all systems and procedures. Then when we look at the detail of a process, the blocks present or missing steps, we can focus everyone upon the task of achieving the bigger purpose. This puts the everyday challenges into the right perspective and gives a common language everyone can use to work together.

If a leader feels they need to micromanage their team because things are never done right or to their standards, we’d check how the leader is using the company’s goals and values to develop their team. Are they sharing and promoting a mission that enables others to deliver on the company’s goals or are they just trying to make subordinates act in their own image? The values give descriptions for behaviour and mindset that can go beyond one leader and be embraced by all if the conditions are correctly set.

Even when we run training courses and open events for leaders we start with the purpose. Get the purpose clear and a high performing business can follow. To help frame this thinking we have a tried and tested tool we use with leaders to map their company purpose and confirm how it influences their planning and performance.

This is the reason that ‘why’ does really matter. It is the foundation upon which a business can build success. Thus, to solve a problem it always starts with the question, ‘Why?’

So, my question to a business leader reading this post today is: What is your organisation’s purpose and how does it drive performance? If you know what it is that is great, well done; now try looking at how you are using it every day. Do you see the values explicitly expressed by people? If you are not sure about the purpose, then it is time to start searching for one. Either way, Know+Do enjoy sharing ideas and inspiration so contact us today to ask how we can ensure your why really does matter!