Lesson Learned – Kick It!
I recently wrote an article for the Johnson County Business Leader http://www.businessleader.bz/images/jccover.pdf called Lesson Learned – Kick It! It was published in the Feb 2010 edition. The body of the article is below.
Lesson Learned – Kick It!
This past year has been tough on most all of us. About this time last year I wanted to crawl in a hole since our business had dropped 40% in a six week span. I was going into the first of the year wondering what the future was going to bring. How could I plan? How do I know how to set budgets and set goals? What do I tell my team to expect?
This was when a good friend helped me see that I was thinking about things all wrong. He gave me some “tough love” that I needed to hear. It was time to Kick It and I was playing ostrich by putting my head in the sand. He told me to get over it, get my buns in gear, lead my team and make 2009 a great year. The line was now drawn in the sand – recession was no longer a word that was allowed to be used as an excuse for failure.
We met as a team and I discovered my team was as excited as I was to move forward. We started with the basics – Selling! We had been so busy the past year with the business we had, we had moved away from spending the necessary time required to prospect new business. We talked about what we needed to do to develop new business when unemployment was rising, most had no plans to hire and business was very uncertain. We looked at all the reasons that our clients and prospects would want to use our services, even in the economy that looked dismal at best. This lead to getting back to planning, training, budgeting and staying very focused on our sales efforts.
We started having conversations with our clients and looking for ways we could help them. We found that they were also hurting, often as much if not more than we were. We started learning a great deal about our current clients. We started finding that even in the down economy we could help our clients and that helped us learn how to help prospective clients.
Now – have things been all roses since that time. No way, but I can tell you we are far better to move into the future now that we have learned a few lessons along the way. We are a better trained and close knit team that knows how to deal with adversity.
Here is my summary of lessons learned from Oh Nine! We are ready to Kick It into 2010.
1.) Never stop selling!
2.) Listen to your customers – in order to listen, you have to ask.
3.) Have a consistent training plan for your employees
4.) Include your employees in your planning process
5.) Don’t let the negativity of others bring you down
6.) Set short and long term goals – then keep score
7.) Value your employees – celebrate all your successes, even the little ones
8.) Visit your mission, vision and values often – its why you exist
9.) Manage your money and watch your costs
10.) Be flexible – willing to try and do things you didn’t think possible.
Article written by Mike Heffner, local owner of Express Employment Professionals in Greenwood.
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