Saturday, August 29, 2009

Aligned Belief Windows

We all see the world through our personal belief window. Our beliefs come from our background, experiences and how we are wired. This can create a challenge in an organization with there is a lack of alignment between employees. Our belief window has a significant impact on our conversations, our actions and most importantly on the results we get. Much of our pain is caused by the gap between what we are achieving with what we need to be successful. For a company to turn the corner we need to value the difference between team members and get in alignment. Organizations and teams can not afford to have individuals that are in a fuzzy state when it comes to alignment. Great teams have an aligned belief window. Utilize your meetings and coaching conversations to ask great questions so that you can see where everyone is coming from and then work through discussion to insure that we have a shared belief window of where we are going and how we will get there.

Bob Coulter

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Career and Business Development

In each business, our growth and success is closely tied to having the right level of talent. To be able to attract great people, we have to start with a vision for where we want our company to be so that we can engage our people and external candidates. It is important to evaluate your current employees to see who has the ability to carry the load for your company’s future. Establish a communication strategy for existing employees and future recruits that energizes more people to have a career with your company. There is power in laying out potential career paths for individuals so individuals know what is possible for them. Through this work, we should establish development opportunities that exist in the company to prepare individuals for the next steps in their journey. We always need to find a balance between achieving our short-term goals and deliverables while we grow our skills preparing for tomorrow. Leaders need to partner with their people to insure that we are working through this in a win–win manner. The most successful companies are able to drive both business outcomes and personal development.

Bob Coulter

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Sales in Today’s World

It is crucial that we are very focused upon what we have to win in sales today. People and companies have so many choices and we are challenged to differentiate ourselves from the competition. We have to look at what we are doing to provide solutions, partnerships and integration.

We have to personalize how we sell to our client in a way that they want to be sold. Being an active listener will be crucial so that we determine the solutions that each client really needs and adds value in the relationship.

Remember that we need to create a great proposal is able to define requirements better than others have been able to. Great companies and sales people understand the clients issues so that we can frame the right solutions in a professional manner and earn trust in the relationship.

In today’s marketplace clients are looking for service providers that take away the whole problem and partner in how to make their business more effective. We should each be looking at how we are serving our customers today and what we want to do going forward.