Hiring Great People

"There's something rare, something finer far, something much more scarce than ability. It's the ability to recognize ability."

- Elbert Hubbard

From Seth Godin:
Most successful (and honest) real estate agents will tell you that their business is about the listings, and that sales ability comes second. All other things being equal, the agent with a better home to sell will make a better sale.  

The same thing is true for baseball managers - if you have a better lineup you're more likely to win the game. And of course that's true for the sushi restaurant with fresher fish. And the tech company with better programmers, and the college with better professors...

If this is all so obvious, why do we spend all our time trying to find cheap average inputs and then make them special through our magnificent sales and management skills? Why do we industrialize the hiring process, spend very little time on scouting, and seek out the replicable instead of the special exception? Our ego demands that we spend all day polishing the average instead of seeking out the exceptional.

Better to invest the time and money on special people and raw materials instead.

My added input:

Look at The Container Store for example. They have proven, paying great people 50% more = 100% productivity improvement over the average employee. They conduct 30 interviews to hire one great person. Every performance indicator from store sales to profitability to market share rank #1 in their industry. They understand Seth's point above.

Voice Mail Tips

"Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Poet

 What to do when voice mail answers the phone instead of your prospect:

• Do not give your sales pitch because that needs live contact.
• Do leave your number and first name only because calls are returned in inverse proportion to the amount of data left by the caller.
• Be fun but be clean; remind the person where you met; leave a half-message such as "Your name came up in a conversation with Jane "and you can be sure the prospect will return your call to see what Jane said. 
• "I have a question and you are the only person I know that can answer it" - be sure you have a good question when they call back.  

What to do when you can't get through to your prospect:  

• Email your datebook with open dates and time circled.
• Email a certificate for a free lunch with you.
• Email a referral letter from a satisfied customer.
• Send a text message for a request to repair the prospect's voice mail, saying you've been trying to get through and can't, so it must be the voice mail at fault.  

Be different and remarkable and you will get those calls returned. 

Remarkable - Do People Remark About Your Business?

"You will get all you want in life, if you help enough other people get what they want."

- Zig Ziglar 

 

For the last 50 years businesses could thrive with an average product or service. Why? Because the demand was such that we needed many businesses just to take care of all the people that wanted to buy something. People were affluent and not as concerned about every dollar they spent.

This is no longer the case. If you look at highly successful companies today they have one thing in common:

They have great products and/or services.

Not ok, not good, not acceptable but, remarkable products and/or services.

A recent study showed 84% of purchases in the US involved "word of mouth".

Look at the word "remarkable". It means people are so happy they are remarking about something.

If your product/service is not great or remarkable, your future is suspect. How do you know?

If you are having to resort to lowering your prices, your repeat business is low and people are not referring you - you are in trouble.

What do you do? Start today asking people as they buy from you to rate your product/service on a scale of 1-10. If you don't get a 9-10 then ask "what could we do to make this a 9-10 for you"? Listen and keep improving on the things you hear frequently from them. Surprise people. Don't satisfy them - that is not remarkable. 

Conduct an NPS survey. Two questions. "On scale of 1-10 how likely would you be to refer us to friends and associates?" and "What experiences have you had with us that influenced how you answered question #1"? 

It all starts and ends here.  

Is your business Remarkable?

Is Perfect Getting in the Way of Good?

"If someone is going down the wrong road, he doesn't need motivation to speed him up. What he needs is education to turn him around."

- Jim Rohn

Do you have employees who are perfectionists? Do they have to do the work perfect and can't seem to understand that they are taking way too long and their productivity suffers because of it? They are busy, they are accountable for being busy, but are not getting the results you need to see in that position?

Or maybe I described you?

Well here is an excellent tool from Seth Godin:

Polishing perfect  

Perfect doesn't mean flawless. Perfect means it does exactly what I need it to do. A vacation can be perfect even if the nuts on the plane weren't warmed before serving.

Any project that's held up in revisions and meetings and general fear-based polishing is the victim of a crime. It's a crime because you're stealing that perfect work from a customer who will benefit from it. You're holding back the good stuff from the people who need it, afraid of what the people who don't will say.

Stop polishing and ship instead. Polished perfect isn't better than perfect, it's merely shinier. And late.