To win in business and life, stop watching the scoreboard and start coaching or playing the game to the best of your ability! You'll be able to deal with the final score if you always give your best effort, but you won't give your best effort while watching the scoreboard.
We're living and working in a rapidly shifting world and economy so you can't just wait for a recovery or things to go back to normal. You can't produce new success by going back to good old basics. In fact, anything with 'back' in it is the wrong strategy this time around.
Selfish, short-term intentions have created poor behavior that has led us to a crisis in personal and business relationships alike. These selfish intentions cause people and businesses to look at what's in it for them, work to get more while providing less and damages the relationships that can make us rich both personally and professionally.
These selfish intentions have caused people to look only at today's scoreboard and not at the final score. We've been so busy winning the first quarter we're losing the game. Life and business are both best when built on a sustainable 'people first' culture.
Championship coaches don't spend their time focused on the scoreboard or asking the players what the score is during the game. If they did, they'd lose more often than they'd win. This behavior is what executives and sales managers have been doing for years and it's no wonder businesses are struggling because this behavior sabotages the score. In business, this behavior creates a focus on new sales, new subscribers and today's numbers instead of customers which generates diminishing, unsustainable results. Making customers makes a business healthy, profitable and sustainable.
Poor intentions are sneaky, they slip in unintended and damage the result we want. Take for example when the boss asks, “How are you doing?”, what do they mean? They are most often checking up on sales and a discussion of the company’s sales statistics ensues. Typically, right after this conversation, calls are made down the chain of command to each level until a sales manager calls a salesperson or store manager with the same conversation. This, “How are you doing?”, when we mean, “How are sales?” needs to stop. This is the coach asking the players the score during the game.
We need new conversations that will only occur from new intentions and generate a new sales engagement with consumers. We need a 'people first focus' to build relationships and generate positive results by serving people rather than trying to please them.
Watching the score and waiting for it to get better won't get it done this time. There's no recovery coming, just opportunities to begin again. This time, our best opportunity is to play the game with new thinking and intentions that can drive the attitudes, skills and actions that will produce healthy relationships with consumers and generate success!
It's so easy to slide back into the instant gratification of making new sales rather than customers. It's the comfortable old path that sabotages the possibility for your new success.
It will take 'people first leadership' to create a 'customer first company' and solid sales management to keep salespeople on track to win and generate a healthy new economy.
By Mike Moore
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