So many times companies will set a goal for a month, and they’ll go through three weeks and all of a sudden they realize they’re behind, they’re not gonna hit the revenue goal. Maybe their unit goal, or whatever type of product they’re selling is falling short, and all of a sudden they move to panic. They call an emergency meeting. They go in the phone booth, they put on their Superman cape. They come out and all of a sudden they push and push, and drive and drive to try to make their month the last week of the month.
On today’s episode of Simple Strategies for a Complex World, Paul Cummings explains why this happens and how defining winning every seven days can solve this problem.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION
Hi, this is Paul Cummings. Welcome to Simple Strategies for a Complex World. Well, I hope you’re having a fantastic week this week, a level 10 type of week. We’re certainly excited about the opportunity to talk about leadership today. As I travel and speak all over the world, one of the things that I talk to people about all the time is how healthy it is in a business to create a winning competitive environment. But you know, it’s up to the head coach, it’s up to the leader, it’s up to the manager of any department to define winning for their team members. So I have a question for you today. Have you defined for every single person that works for you what they need to do this week to get their W?
So many times companies will set a goal for a month, and they’ll go through three weeks and all of a sudden they realize they’re behind, they’re not gonna hit the revenue goal. Maybe their unit goal, or whatever type of product they’re selling is falling short, and all of a sudden they move to panic. They call an emergency meeting. They go in the phone booth, they put on their Superman cape. They come out and all of a sudden they push and push, and drive and drive to try to make their month the last week of the month. Well, let me tell you why that happens. It happens because we’re defining winning in 4.2 weeks when we ought to be defining winning every seven days.
When you shorten the timeframe, when you give your people a more focused target, when you let them know this week this is what winning means to our organization, at that moment you have greatly amplified your opportunity to produced great results. Let’s talk about your people a little bit. I believe inside of every one of us beats the heart of a champion. I think that every person I’ve ever met in my life has this keen desire to feel validated, to feel like they contribute, to feel like they are making a difference. But many times I see leaders that fail to give people that proper reinforcement they need. To define for them, listen, if you do A, B and C this week, if you produce this, you’re going to get a W on your scoreboard.
There is nothing like winning to build energy in a company, to build enthusiasm in a company, to build excitement in a company, to unleash a special brand of passion inside of an organization. You know what I think the difference is in teams that win? The teams that really win decided really early on that they were gonna operate with a special brand of championship mentality. That they weren’t gonna settle for second or third, or finishing middle of the pack. They truly desire to be number one. They have a different mindset. Well for you as a leader, this is what I want for you out of this week. When you finish, when this program is over, I want you to go sit down with your team, with your other managers in your departments, and I want you to ask that question.
Are we defining winning for everybody that works here? Do our people know how to get their W? Have we given them the tools they need, the instruction they need, the support they need, the guidance they need? And are you managing the scoreboard? How does Paul know Paul is winning? Because at the end of the day, I don’t know anybody that says, “Well, Boss, you know that really doesn’t matter to me. Just give me a big L, I want to lose. I really don’t care if we win in our market.” Let me tell you, great people do care. Great people are passionate about the opportunity to win. At the end of the day, though, it’s up to the coach, it’s up to the leader. You’re the driver of the business, you’re the person that’s got to set that competitive zest within your organization, and then you have to relentlessly drive your people towards the result that you want.
I can tell you, I believe you’ll get a 10 to 15% push in your business, just implementing this strategy. Every place we go, every company we work with, when we get them to truly, truly define winning in seven day periods of time where they’re looking at a quarter as 13 weeks, and saying, “What’s our record gonna be? Are we gonna be 11 and 2 this quarter? Are we gonna be 10 and 3? Are we gonna be 12 and 1? 13 and 0? 7 and 6?” If you don’t set a target, if you don’t define a goal, if you don’t let your people know what it means to win, you’re never, ever, ever gonna get everything you can out of the people that work for your organization.
My leadership tip for you, define winning for your people in seven day periods of time, give them the tools and support they need, and you’re gonna unleash a huge competitive advantage in your organization.
One of the things I love about what I do is I have this unique opportunity as I travel and speak, as I work on programs like this, to impart wisdom, to share knowledge that I’ve collected over the course of my lifetime, that might impact someone. You know, my goal, my mission’s always been just to leave it better than I found it. Well, today I want to share a great life lesson with you. This came about as a result of being in the business of sales. You know, activity is what leads to productivity. But so many times I see sales professionals that really don’t like the activity side of their business. I’ll tell you why I think that happens.
Until you have a shift in mindset and tie the smallest of activity … Every phone call, thank you note, everything you’re doing on social media, when you’re getting up early, you’re visualizing your goals, you’re thinking about your dream, you’re planning your day … When you tie those activities to your big dream, they feel different. And when you do that they’re no longer that work you don’t want to do, they’re those small steps you know you need to take to have everything you truly desire in life. As a leadership person, you have to help your people make that transition. They have to be able to say, “Hey, when I do this, that’s taking me closer to what I want.”
See, because if we can take that thing where they go, “Man, that’s the hard work,” and get them to say, “That’s the valuable work,” if we can get them to see value in every phone call, value in every contact, value in every presentation, value in the early mornings, the late nights, the hard push, the dealing with adversity, it’s literally life changing. So your lesson today is tie the smallest of activities, the work that you have to do, to the big dream you truly want to pursue and see happen.
Hey everybody, let me ask you a question today. Do you love being a part of the business of sales? Do you love the relationship aspect of working with a customer and helping them achieve their objective? Well guess what? I absolutely love that part of the business. What I want to talk to you about today, I want to give you a tip that I think will really help you. You know what makes the business of sales a lot more fun? It’s when you go to work every day with a well-defined action plan that details the activities you need to complete in order to reach your daily objective. The majority of the people in the business of sales show up to work every day without a plan of action.
It’s unfortunate, but it’s true. The one thing that I want to make sure you know on Simple Strategies is, we’re gonna keep it real. We’re gonna keep it real like rain. When you walk through it, you’re gonna get wet. Ask yourself this question, when you left home today, did you leave with a detailed plan of action that had the activities you needed to complete written down? Did you set a timeline for those activities? Have you backed those activities up with effort and work and execution and a positive winning attitude? There’s five things that I can tell you. If you show up ever day with a well-defined plan of action, detailed by activities and timelines, you’re committed to it, you’re willing to hustle and execute, and you do that with a positive winning attitude, you’re gonna beat 90% of the competition 100% of the time.
Show up with a plan of action, detailed by activity. If you do that every day, every time, without fail, no exception, you’re gonna become more efficient, you’re gonna execute at a higher lever, you’re gonna produce more dynamic results, convert more sales, and you’re gonna make a ton more money. And you know what they say, everything’s funny with a pocket full of money.
Hey everyone, listen. One of the things that I love about affirmations is, you know, when you program your mind we proceed towards our dominant thought. So this week’s affirmation is really important, especially with the topics we’ve been talking about. I will praise proper performance every day. I want you to think about this from a leadership perspective. If we truly are defining our week’s scoreboard, if we’re saying, “This is how you get your W,” don’t you think it makes good common sense that every day as we see the proper performance, as we see our people doing the things we’ve asked them to do to get the W, that we reinforce that performance in real time?
I can tell you as a dad of five that proper performance recognized is likely to be repeated. So if you will get up every day as a leader and say, “I will praise proper performance every day, I will praise it,” one of the things about a praise culture, people like a pat on the back. That’s always been true. Go back, watch the content again this week, think about defining your scoreboard, think about tying your activities to the biggest of dreams, as we talked about. Think about the sales tip that we talked about, and go have a remarkable level 10 week.
