Business Development Training: Think Before You Spend

People in my line of work seem to think that growth strategies will be a focal point for professional services firms in the near future. Any effective growth strategy requires that at least some professionals know how to bring in clients. This involves education, whether you provide it internally or through a consultant.

Either way, it is prudent to analyze your motives for spending money and time on training or coaching. Ask your partner group the following:

1. Does your culture support consistent, long-range marketing and business development learning and efforts, as opposed to sporadic and reactive demands from individual partners?
2. If so, how?
3. If not, what are you and your partners willing to change?
4. What, exactly, will be your carrot and stick approach when it comes to business development efforts and results?
5. Will business development efforts or results affect compensation?  HINT: If business development does not at some point affect compensation, training is a waste of resources.
6. How will you handle the inevitable question: “Hmmm. Peter Partner seems to be doing fine here, and he doesn’t develop business. Why should I?”
7. How will the firm create a system of accountability for the time and expenses that go with increased business development efforts?
8. What does a successful outcome for a training or coaching program look like to you and your partners?

Finally, be sure your firm’s growth strategy is in place and known by every team member. Spending money and time to teach anyone to develop business when there is no carefully crafted or well communicated plan for the firm’s future is like shaving with a dull razor blade: often painful and rarely effective. The crucial difference, of course, is that razor blades are a whole lot cheaper.

Strategic Questions for Strategic Planning

If they aren’t planned and facilitated effectively, strategic planning meetings can easily become one or all of the following:

• Snooze fests
• A game of Liar’s Poker
• Boxing matches
• Coffee klatches

Not one of these is worth your time or money. To base your strategy session on substance and get started on a real plan, be sure you gather the following data from your partners:

• Do you want more of a specific type of work?
• Do you want stronger people to do the work?
• Do you want to rid yourselves of certain clients? Can you afford to?
• Are you content with the money you make?
• Do you want to work more or less?
• Will your current managing partner remain in that position for the foreseeable future?  Has a successor been named or even considered?

It’s critical to find out what the firm’s owners want, and then determine how those desires intersect with marketplace and operational realities. This isn’t all you need to do to chart your firm’s course, but if everyone can agree on the answers to the questions above, you’re on the right road.

Choose Discomfort

• A senior level person in your company comes to work grumpy as a crocodile one day and perfectly pleasant the next, dealing with co-workers according to his mood.
• One of your employees has trouble understanding that personal calls are just that: personal. She’s on the phone in her cubicle several times a day, sharing the details of last night’s date. Everyone within earshot gets to know, too.
• Your best business developer pitches a scathing fit in his secretary’s cubicle when things don’t go as planned.

Lucky you. As the owner of a business, you have the challenge of deciding whether and how to respond to situations like these. And they happen every day. Each situation is different; each requires its own thoughtful response. It also requires a willingness to enter into a potentially uncomfortable conversation.

It’s interesting that most business owners feel fully capable of dealing with the technicalities of running their enterprises. The internal issues, however, cause plenty of stress. Owners know through experience how costly internal drama can be, both in terms of short-term productivity and longer-term morale and turnover. Ultimately, though, business owners are just like everybody else: they avoid conflict because it’s uncomfortable. They sit on their hands and hope the situation will resolve itself.

Rarely do conflicts like these resolve themselves. In fact, it’s likely that the perpetrators don’t even realize they’re doing something wrong. Why? Because no one tells them. Sure, they might receive one of those useless emails that tries to correct everyone’s behavior while achieving nothing at all (except perhaps to irritate those who aren’t misbehaving). And they might hear something about their general attitude in an annual evaluation, if their supervisor remembers to mention it. But they don’t receive the most useful thing of all: a one on one conversation that clarifies the immediate issue and seeks a resolution. They don’t receive it because you, the business owner, don’t want to be uncomfortable.

It is well worth your discomfort to confront difficult internal issues. By having what may be an awkward conversation with an employee or partner, you help the other person become aware of his or her behavior and offer an opportunity to change it. Valuing your own comfort over clear communication and prompt action creates backlash: your challenging employees continue their inappropriate behavior, because they are unaware; productivity decreases because everyone else is dealing with the challenging employee except you; and morale drops when your best employees see that bad behavior is unacknowledged and sometimes even unintentionally rewarded when you do nothing.

The next time an internal issue arises, take a deep breath. Then have a face-to-face conversation with the employee about your expectations and how they’re not being met in a particular situation. Be specific. Make it clear that you want improved behavior and ask for their cooperation.  Tell them how much you value their good work and that you want to see them focus on doing more of it. Find a way to leave the conversation on a positive note.

Though your palms may sweat and your heart rate may increase in the knowledge that you have a situation to deal with, deal with it anyway -- sooner rather than later. It’s the best way to change things for the better.

We Need a New Clause in the Social Contract

The latest display of rage (in this case, a fed-up flight attendant) ought to stop us all in our tracks. The picture of a you-have-tap-danced-on-my-last-nerve flight attendant hurling invective over the PA system at yet another rude (not to mention uncomfortable, cramped, stressed) passenger, then escaping via the emergency evacuation chute is kind of funny. I’m sure it will be fodder for the joke writers at every late night talk show.

While it’s easy to smirk, we need to think beyond this single incident and consider that it’s only one of many acts of rudeness and incivility that occur every day. Life is more stressful, more crowded, more noisy than it was even ten years ago. Put a lousy economy on top of that, and you have a recipe for rudeness and, as Mary J. Blige so aptly describes it, hateration.

All this hateration causes pain. It hurts the person who reacts to rudeness with rudeness and it taints everyone who has to witness it. Hateration benefits no one, not even the hater. So what’s a society to do?

Instead of instituting a Politeness Police, let’s simply agree to monitor our own behavior. Let’s insert a clause into our individual social contracts that clearly defines how we will conduct ourselves – not just when things are going well, but when we’re thrust into stressful situations rife with potential rudeness and conflict.

Let’s choose civility. Let’s choose kindness. Let’s take the high road, shall we? Because the low road is awfully crowded.

Managing Millennials (and Everyone Else) in the Moment

Brittany, a twenty-something employee, received her annual evaluation. She got a pretty good review from her boss, along with a nice raise (at least in the boss' opinion).

How did Brittany react? She was disappointed at the meager raise. She felt sure she was going to get not only more money, but a promotion, and was angry when she didn’t. Brittany did not believe the boss understood her contribution to the company, so she voiced her concerns to the Big Boss (and, I suspect, to anyone inside or outside the company who would listen). Brittany left the clear impression that she would seek opportunities elsewhere if her concerns were not dealt with.

Sound familiar? It does to me. I’ve heard this from more than one client, and the scenario is increasing as the Millennial generation advances in the workplace. This group is the most confident, the most vocal, and the most open of any generation, and many Boomers aren’t coping particularly well.

Millennials are teaching us very important things about management. Here are a few suggestions, based on my own totally non-scientific research.

1. Abolish the annual or biannual employee evaluation as your primary evaluation tool. This generation has made it completely clear they want rapid feedback. Give it to them. The time you spend in providing rapid feedback (which doesn’t have to be huge) will be more than made up by the decreased drama that comes from clear, consistent communication.

2. Debrief after every major project. First, ask your Brittanys how they think they did. Then let them know what you thought of their performance. That simple sequence and interchange will give you the basis for a truly productive conversation. It is during these conversations that employees learn what it takes to get to the next level – and they’re all interested in progressing.

3. Don’t sugarcoat your information. It’s tempting to go easy on this very privileged generation, but studies tell us that they appreciate straightforwardness. Boomers often tap dance around difficult conversations. Millennials are more likely to speak plainly, and to respond better to straight talk.

4. Connect with your employees through the work itself, not through your HR and compensation processes. Have your mind and your eye on the people who work for you. Correct, teach, and praise in the moment. Feedback is needed now, not six months or a year from the moment.

5. Assume your employees will leave you. I don’t know a single Millennial who plans to stay at his or her company indefinitely. The employment picture has changed forever in this regard. Understanding and accepting this will allow you to work in the moment, focusing on what really matters.

These five suggestions apply equally well to workers from every generation. Do you remember how many times you walked out of your own evaluation when you were an employee thinking “What a load of ****?” This new generation is different in their willingness to vocalize previously unspoken thoughts.

No doubt about it: Millennials are creating all kinds of discomfort and irritation in the workplace. However, given the rates of divorce, alcoholism, obesity and drug addiction among Boomers, I wonder if the Millennial approach — for all its grandiosity and self-promotion — might be a healthier alternative.

Ten Things to Be Happy About

It’s July. Hot, sweltering, and dusty (at least in New Mexico). We’re between Independence Day and Labor Day: a long time before any freebie days off. Our jobs are stressful, our lives drive us crazy. What on earth could there possibly be to be happy about?

Glad you asked.

1. At least for today, the oil spill has stopped leaking its toxins into the beautiful gulf.

2. Our pets will always be happy to see us, no matter how rough our day has been.

3. We are not yet through this recession, but we have soldiered on in spite of it.

4. We have strong minds and mostly useful bodies.

5. We have air conditioning.

6. Even if we don’t like our jobs, we’re putting food on our tables with the money we earn.

7. We’re capable of learning from our mistakes if we choose to.

8. Some of our professional relationships give us a reason to get up and go to work each day.

9. Things are changing every minute. We cannot know what wonderful event is around the corner, but we can choose to believe it is there.

10. Someone, somewhere loves every one of us.

These are just ten things from the top of my head. I’ll bet you can come up with at least ten things of your own. And I guarantee you’ll feel better for the effort.

Civility As a Tactic

Recently I had a couple of phone conversations that started like a race horse leaving the gate. No “Hi, how are you?”. No “What’s new?”. No “Is this a good time?”. Just an immediate recitation of needs or events. What kind of response do you think the callers received? Right. I was something less than involved, because I hadn’t really been invited to be.

Civility as a daily life choice is an optimal existence. It is also an effective communication tactic. Conversational civility is so much more than small talk; it is a roadmap you can use to help you reach your desired destination. Without it, you might very well lose your way in the conversation, because half of the conversation is essentially missing. And when you lose your way, the chances decrease that you will get what you want or need from the conversation.

On the flip side, employing civility in your conversations contributes to the possibility that you will achieve your goal, whether it’s information, affirmation, or simply a lightening of your burdens. My husband always says “You never know what someone else is going through.” He counsels to communicate accordingly, and he’s right. Asking those little, seemingly perfunctory questions, is essential to getting a read on the other person’s receptivity to you at that moment.

This is civilized behavior, but it’s also tactically intelligent. If you want something from another person, even if it’s only a friendly ear, you are smart to ask small questions. By doing that, you invite the other person to be involved and thereby increase your chances of having a productive conversation.