A survey of human resources professionals recently found a surprisingly high number of them lacked confidence in the effectiveness of their company’s performance-management system. Though 91% of respondents said their organization evaluates performance, only 47% said the process is effective.

It gets worse. Only 47% of respondents said their appraisal system helps their organization achieve strategic objectives, while 30% said employees do not trust the system. An even smaller number – 28% – said their managers regarded the appraisal process primarily as an administrative headache.

Numbers like these from Sibson Consulting help explain why performance appraisal is at a train wreck at so many companies around the world. The study, conducted in mid-2010 with the HR association WorldatWork, queried executives at hundreds of companies of all sizes from every corner of the planet. No place on Earth is immune from performance-evaluation angst.

Let’s explore the reasons why and start at the top – with senior management. The survey found widespread support for performance evaluations from senior management. In fact, 74% said executives at their organization support the system. Still, that leaves 26% of all organizations with non-supportive top-level executives. Those, however, do not fully explain all the problems with performance-management systems today.

Something is getting in the way of the widespread support of senior management. The answer, it turns out, may very well be the performance-management system itself. According to the survey, a full third of senior executives “strongly” or “mostly consider” the evaluation system to be business-critical. And a third of the respondents reported their leadership viewed employee appraisals as an exercise in pencil-pushing.

We’re now at the heart of the problem.

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Performance-management systems are broken at the majority of companies in every corner in the world. By teasing apart results of a recent worldwide survey of HR professionals, we’ve seen how evaluations are viewed as a joke by employees, a waste of time by many managers and a non-actionable talking point by some senior executives.

Even HR managers, who in most companies lead the performance-review charge, see formidable roadblocks in the way of successful evaluations. Here are the top three, based on Sibson Consulting’s mid-2010 survey of HR professionals:

1. Managers are reluctant to have difficult conversations about performance with employees. (63%)
2. Evaluations are seen as an HR-driven process rather than something that’s critical to the business. (47%)
3. The appraisal cycle begins with little or no goal setting. (36%)

Let’s start at the beginning of the appraisal process. In order to make progress, an employee needs to know what his or her goals are. Yet only half the respondents to the survey said their organization uses any kind of goal setting in the appraisal process. And only half of those use quantitative measures. Is there any mystery as to why employees see the appraisal process as subjective and unpredictable? It’s also not too hard to figure out why respondents estimate only a third of employees actually trust the evaluation system.

In the 50% of companies where goals are part of the evaluation process, the connection between individual and organizational goals weakens with decreasing employee seniority. Senior managers, for instance, are “completely” or “largely” aligned 70% of the time. Middle managers? 45%. Frontline employees? 17%. It’s no surprise why the majority of the latter group sees appraisals as a waste of time.

Then there’s the issue of participation.

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Performance appraisals are hated by employees, largely dreaded by managers and often described as ineffective by HR professionals. So why do organizations still engage in this annual exercise?

The primary objective, cited by 66% of respondents to a survey by Sibson Consulting, is to distribute rewards based on individual performance. By comparison, just over half (54%) said greater individual accountability is a primary objective. Only 46% identified talent development as the biggest factor.

Rewards distribution is key in other ways, too: It’s the biggest reason why employee-appraisal systems are failing to meet expectations. Proponents of tying rewards to appraisals argue that the overall organization will benefit if the best and the brightest see their pay or bonuses increase more than their average or below-average co-workers.

But what if the appraisal system itself is too subjective, untrusted and flawed? The linkage between rewards and appraisals would then only serve to magnify other problems with the performance-management system. And just as the overall organization was supposed to benefit when the evaluation system works, the entire organization suffers when the evaluation system fails.

And that’s exactly what is happening. The Sibson Consulting survey, which was conducted in mid-2010 with the HR association WorldAtWork, found rampant mistrust in performance management. The results weren’t limited to one country, industry or company. Some 750 people responded, representing a broad swath of industries and organizations around the world. Headcounts of respondents’ organizations ranged from fewer than 100 employees to more than 500,000.

Nine out of 10 respondents reported that their organizations have formal systems to rate the performance of individual employees, shape behaviors and, in theory, provide some sort of benefit to the organization as a whole.

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In the past, not everyone used or owned a computer, so when someone came in contact with one, they had to be taught everything, starting from the basics.

The same is true for elearning courses. When these started appearing, logically people had to be told how to use them, because they hadn’t been in contact with something like it before. Nevertheless, today it is a different story.

Almost everyone today owns a computer and knows the meaning of the symbols and icons, and also, most e-learning courses have a similar structure, making it easy to know what to do. So, it seems kind of a waste of time to include a fast course on how to navigate the course you created.

Most courses though, have this fast navigation course included; however, it could be easily removed or shortened. In many cases, the navigation is obvious, and you can make the learners’ experience a lot smoother by taking advantage of these 6 tips to get rid of an unnecessary fast course:

1. Remove navigation directions

Do you think you would have problems figuring out how to play a video on your computer? Could it be hard to find the ‘play’ button or forward arrow?

No, right? Everyone knows how to do this; you don’t have to teach people what they already know.

2. Respect the standards

You don’t have to make everything different on every course you create. You can be creative with the look and feel, but respect the structure standards that everyone knows.

In this way, your learners will know where everything is and how to look for help, and it allows them to center on the content of the course.

3. Offer clear directions if your navigation is different

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What do people do with their computers nowadays?

They basically check email, surf the Internet, and post on Facebook.

With this in mind, why don’t you think about creating an online training course that imitates these actions?

Most e-learning courses have a typical structure, are centered on communicating data, and lack interactive features… sometimes this is OK; it is what’s needed and expected; however, you can always go a step beyond and communicate things in a creative way familiar to the learner.

How about if instead of clicking the ‘next’ button to access more data, the learner found himself inside an imitation of Outlook and had to click on an email to open a “message”, or in a Facebook page full of the data you want to share?

Much more interesting and fun, right? You can create a story to unify the information you are providing in a relevant and amusing way.

Here we show you 3 ways in which you can put your creativity to the test:

Imitate an instant messaging scenario

Everyone uses instant messaging, whether it is through Messenger, Skype, Yahoo, etc.; so, it would be interesting to make it look like two people are chatting.

How do you do this?

• Create two or three people that will be chatting. Each one of them will symbolize a specific part of the information.
• Create a reason why they are chatting. Maybe one of them is having a problem and is asking for help, or they are discussing the final details of a project.
• Adapt the information to a dialogue.
• Create a ‘forward’ button learners will click to advance the conversation.

Imitate an inbox

Most everyone checks email daily today. It would be a lot of fun to find yourself in someone’s inbox and having to open email messages to get to the information.

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There are as many e-learning alternatives today as there are products in a supermarket. You go grocery shopping and find 15 different brands of teas, 10 brands of salad dressing, and 50 brands of soap… it is the same in the virtual arena of online training and development.

How do you know the e-learning platform you are currently using is the best for your needs? How do you evaluate a course?

Here we give you 5 hints that will tell you if it is time to look for a new e-learning platform:

1. Wrong information in the materials

It doesn’t matter how small the error is, if there is wrong information in any of the materials provided by your e-learning platform, change it ASAP.

You are providing training for your people to make them better and more knowledgeable employees, the last thing you want is to teach them the wrong information.

2.  Unprofessional instructors

A professional instructor will make sure the information he is teaching is updated and exact. They know how to create dynamic classes capable of stimulating all sorts of students.

A professional understands that different people learn in different ways; so, he can make sure the course he is teaching reaches everyone in an effective way.

If your personnel is bored and is not advancing, you are probably dealing with an unprofessional instructor.

3.  Complicated navigation

How easy… or difficult… is it to navigate the platform and the course?

A good platform will have a clean graphic layout capable of guiding the users in a clear way during all three phases: before beginning the course, while taking the course, and after completing it.

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“Needs Improvement”
“Below Expectations”
“Unacceptable”

As an employee, you would be mortified to see these ratings on your performance evaluation. Yet year after year, those are the words often used to describe performance reviews at organizations around the world. Any employee with such ratings would have “managed out” long ago.

How badly are employee performance evaluations failing? Take a look at the conclusions of a global survey conducted by Sibson Consulting:

● Less than 50% of HR professionals see performance reviews as helping their organizations achieve their strategic objectives. These are the people who are often driving the process.

● Only 46% of respondents see talent development as a goal of appraisals, while 54% identified greater “individual accountability.” Two-thirds (67%) identified the distribution of pay raises and other rewards as the goal of their appraisal system.

● Only half of the respondents say their companies use goal setting in their performance evaluations, and only half of those use quantitative metrics in evaluations.

● Only 56% of respondents said their organizations train managers to use the performance-management system.

● 55% reported delivering appraisals on time.

● More than a quarter of respondents (28%) felt that performance evaluations were an exercise in filling out forms rather than an opportunity to have quality conversations with employees.

These results aren’t limited to a single industry or a single country. The survey, conducted in mid-2010 with the HR association WorldatWork, drew more than 750 responses from a variety of industries and countries. Responding organizations ranged in size from fewer than 100 employees to more than 500,000.

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Sports teams play hard to win, and so does your business. The desire to take a victory lap, however, isn’t the only similarity. Business owners and sports teams watch rivals closely, strategize at every turn and work together to reach the final goal, whether it’s the trophy, a customer win or the successful deployment of a long-running project.

In business, we often look at our competitors to better understand what we’re doing right and wrong. I believe there’s similar value in looking outside the business world for examples. As a basketball fan, I often look at teams and how they succeed or fail. Not surprisingly, the best teams engage in certain practices that make them winners. Apply these practices to your business and you can come out on top, too.

Practice Point No. 1: Remember the Name of the Game
Basketball players who strive for home runs or touchdowns don’t get far. Their goal is to land the ball in the basket at either side of the court. Knowing what game you’re playing is the obvious first step to scoring more points than the other team and eventually winning the game.

Business Application: A surprising number of employees have no idea what game they’re playing and only a foggy notion of what it means to win. As they aim for home runs on the hardwood, their performance will be unsatisfactory, and their chance of success will be nil. As the coach of your business, discuss with every player/employee the game you’re in and define what success is. The big picture might be obvious to you, but it’s not necessarily clear to them.

Practice Point No. 2: Understand Your Position
A power forward knows he’s in the game to catch rebounds. A point guard knows he’s the team’s best handler and passer. A shooting guard knows his job is to get the ball in the hoop.

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As the most important goal in any organisation, striving to achieve continuous improvement should be at the forefront of all management processes, regardless of the size of the organisation or the nature of work produced. Effective processes are required to achieve this goal, and also assist in quality management. Processes should not only be developed and implemented, but they should also be visible in order to achieve optimal results. In this regard, process visibility plays a vital role in every improvement strategy within the organisation.

Many managers make the assumption that the design and application of an improvement process is enough to enable a better level of quality in all areas of the organisation. In order to make sure that these processes are followed efficiently however, processes need to be visible to all levels of staff and management, as each staff member’s role to implement processes is required for effectiveness.

Factors that are needed to ensure process visibility include the following:

• Documentation – document control is by far the most efficient and straight-forward way to document and distribute all processes within the company. Whether it is a formal process manual or a basic list of tasks that are to be carried out, documentation is essential to keep all relevant persons informed. Process documentation can then be shared amongst all staff and key decision makers who will be involved in applying the processes. This documentation is also kept on record, which allows the document to be updated as changes are made.

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During the last 16 years I have worked with many great salespeople and they all do one thing more consistently than their colleagues … they ask. If you want to increase your sales and grow your business you need to develop the ability and skill to ask for a variety of things.

Ask more qualifying questions
I know you probably think you ask enough questions but I’ll challenge you on this because most of the sales people I encounter don’t ask nearly enough good qualifying questions. Most of the sales conversation I listen to start with one or two questions before the sales person launches into his or her pitch.

Ask better qualifying questions
Stop asking weak feeble questions and start asking tough penetrating ones. Questions that make your prospect or customer think. Questions that separate you from your competition. Questions that make you feel slightly uncomfortable…at first.

Ask for the decision maker
If the person you are speaking to is not the sole decision maker you must ask to be connected with the real decision maker. You can accomplish this without alienating your first contact person by saying, “My experience has taught me that everyone has a different perspective on this issue. To avoid confusion, I have found that a conversation with all the key stakeholders saves time for everyone involved. Can you arrange that?”

Ask for the meeting
If you’re making a prospecting call you need to ask for that meeting or appointment. You can’t expect the other person to jump out of their chair and exclaim, “We have to meet!” You need to take the initiative to make that happen.

Ask for an introduction
When you come across an ideal prospect through your network, reach out and ask someone who knows that contact to make an introduction.

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Prospecting is a key selling skill and a critical skill to develop if you want to increase your sales and achieve long-term success in sales. Yet, most sales people don’t invest enough time to this integral sales strategy. Part of the problem is that very few companies teach sales reps how to prospect. Here are five prospecting best practices for you to consider.

Allot a specific amount of time every day/week or month.
When my wife first started her software training business, our accountant said, “Devote a certain amount of time every week looking for new business.”

Prospecting is not a fun activity, at least not for most people. However, the more time you consistently invest prospecting for new business the more likely it is that you will never suffer from a sales slump. That’s why it is imperative that you block time in your calendar each and every week to prospect for new business.

Do you schedule prospecting time into your calendar every week?

Use a variety of methods to prospect for new business.
Too many sales people take the same approach week after week. Although they may generate good results it is critical that you use multiple methods and approach to uncover new business leads. Here are a few strategies you should consider:

- Cold calling via telephone
- Door to door cold calling
- Asking for referrals
- Networking
- Speaking at conferences
- Writing articles
- Trade shows
- Conferences

Are you using enough prospecting methods to generate ample sales leads for your business?

Develop a powerful introduction.
The majority of sales people fail miserably at this.

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Over the years, I’ve worked with many small business owners who are often put off from doing a task because they feel they need to have everything in place before they can move forward. 

Take one client who wanted to run some workshops for her business. Sounded like a great plan, but she didn’t want to do any marketing for them until she had completely planned out the workshop and knew exactly what the presentation would look like. 

Another contact didn’t want to do any marketing for their business until their website was in place – even though it could potentially take months to do. 

If you find yourself stuck on a project because certain things are not in place, there is one piece of advice I’m going to offer you… 

Think Backwards 

You see, while our client could have spent a great deal of time on getting the presentation looking perfect or our contact could have taken months on his website, none of this is going to help you get any business through the door. 

Instead, my plan taking the workshops as an example, would be to concentrate my time, energy and focus on filling the seats for the workshop. Why? Well, you could have the best presentation ever but if you have no-one to deliver it to, then there is very little point spending a lot of time on it.

Believe me, if you know you’ve got a room full of people to deliver that training too, there is no greater incentive to get your presentation up to scratch before the event. 

With the website example, yes I can see that the website is important, but it’s more important to start getting your marketing messages out there as quickly as possible. A website can always be put in place later or worked on slowly over time and is not an excuse for not getting on with things. 

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Workplace coaching can come in a variety of forms. It can exist to enhance technical, professional, business or leadership skills. Its purpose may be to help with immediate skill application in the employee’s current role, or it can be used to develop the employee for a future role. The latter purpose is more usually described as “mentoring”. In setting up a coaching program, other than agreeing the purpose of the program, your key question that you will need to answer is who will play the role of coach. Your options here include the employee’s manager, a trainer, a technical expert and a professional coach, amongst others. Which is right for your program will depend on your particular circumstances. In this article, I will look at each of these options in turn.

Manager

I include in this option anyone with a supervisory or management responsibility that sits in the organizational hierarchy in a position above that of the employee. So, this option includes:
• immediate team leader, foreman, supervisor, manager, etcetera
• manager’s manager
• immediate manager’s peer
• three levels or above manager
• three levels or above manager’s peer
• executive or director

Here, I will refer to all of these positions simply as “manager”. The immediate manager is mostly used for assisting with the application of technical skills. Where the manager actually possesses the skills in question, this can be a prudent choice for three reasons. Firstly, it can serve to strengthen the personal bond between the manager and their direct report. Secondly, it allows the manager to provide up-to-date information on their work objectives and to give accurate and timely feedback on the employee’s job performance.

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Time Management is Bogus! We really don’t understand the problem. In fact, time is unmanageable – it just keeps tickin’ along. And there’s nothing we can do about it. Time should be manageable, but it’s not! Thousands and thousands of pages have been written about “time management.” The trick, of course, is not reading but doing. This little piece may include all the direction necessary.

The problem: We can’t manage time. Smashing the timepiece won’t help. We can manage ourselves, providing we agree that “we have met the enemy, and they is us!” Have a look at this “enemy.” You will manage him, or you will not. You can.

Also:
1. You never have enough time. Or,
2. You have all the time there is.
If you recognize that you actually have this second item as a personal choice, you can move forward.

When we look at how we manage our own time, most of us see a mess.
a. Endless do-lists
b. Broken agreements with others
c. Broken agreements with ourselves.
d. Frustration, anger and a sense of helplessness.

Anonymous: “Time is the currency of our lives. How we spend it tells much about us!” One answer – action.

This quote from Conrad Hilton: “Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.”

So, what can we do to stop thinking and get into action?
1. Bag the endless do-lists. The alternative- some guidelines I’ve cribbed from Peter Allen and his book on Getting Things Done. Remembering what you need to do is critical- obsessing about it is deadly. Yes, I coach on the topic.

2. Identify one thing which is important but not urgent in your world – around your business, your relationships, whatever. Make a space for this opportunity, in time, in your day, on your calendar. One hour a day, 5 days a week.

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Step back for a minute, and let’s look at sales. A small business can survive missing a number of important ingredients. But not Sales! There are as many different ways to do sales as there are salespeople! And plenty of knowledgeable opinions – pointing in different directions. Here’s mine.

The Presence Of The Guru
There’s a guru named Robert Middleton, who has a program called Action Plan Marketing which I highly recommend. And he has a powerful model which uses a Baseball diamond as a structure. Simply put, when you get to first base with a client, the client now knows you exist. Second base is understanding – client understands that you offer X benefits, which could have Y importance. A proposal, which probably includes cost, gets you to third base. Closing gets you home – and you score! According to Middleton, the biggest fault in sales (or baseball) is trying to score from first base! Yer out! In baseball, that’s just ignorant. In sales, perhaps the same!

You’ve been taught your A.B.C.s – Always Be Closing! But consider, in this day and age, wouldn’t you want a potential vendor to assist you in looking at your issues in the context of his capability and need? Doesn’t it put you off when he tries to close you before you are anywhere near ready? If you don’t ask, you don’t get. But if you try to close too early, you not only close the door on a productive conversation with your prospective client, you close it on your own opportunity!

In fact, there’s a four-step selling process which can be your guide. It helps the salesperson avoid short-cutting the process out of hurry, anxiety or greed, (some of the more common problems) and it allows the customer to consider the upcoming decision fully and correctly..

Process.

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For many of us, it could be triple the value of what it is now. Meaning: Your company could be earning 3 x as much money. (We’ll assume your compensation stays the same!)

Ask a CEO or Small Business owner how he divides his time between CEO work, Managing work and “Chief Employee” work (where he actually does work an employee could do.) Most will say “10%, 40%, 50%..” It’s likely that many of us spend even more than half our time on work we could and should delegate. But, taken at face value, in a 10 hour day, many spend:
1 hour on CEO Time (planning, thinking ahead, etc.)
4 hours on Managing – asking/telling others what to do.
5 hours on “Chief Employee” work – doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it.”

If you’re a sole proprietor, then, of course, you have an excuse. Or do you???
• “It would take me twice as long to train someone to do it as to do it myself!”
• “No-one can do it as well as I do!”
• “No-one seems to get how big a job this is!”
Right. And how are you going to grow your business?

Let’s suppose that the value of CEO work to the company is $300 an hour, you could hire a manager for $50 an hour, and an employee for $15 an hour. Another CEO does the opposite – spends 50% of his time as a CEO and 40% as a Manager, only 10% doing employee work.. Hires others to do work he doesn’t have time for. Which one brings the most value to his company and himself? And which one are you?

How CEO’s use their time each day!

CEO #1
% Time Day Hours $/hr. Delivered Value
CEO work 10% 1 300 300
Manager work 40% 4 50 200
Employee work 50% 5 15 75
Total 100% 10 575

CEO #2
% Time Day Hours $/hr.

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Time is our greatest asset! Time is a bitch! Many entrepreneurs have a love/hate relationship with their clocks and calendars. Consider the possibility that there are two kinds of time – fast time and slow time.

Fast time: You have a lot to do, you’re multi-tasking, you’re on deadline or beyond, you are responding to many demands, too many demands!

Michael Gerber, of E-Myth fame, calls this “doin’ it , doin’ it, doin’ it.” We’ve all been there. We all live there. But Gerber suggests that when you’re “doin’ it , doin’ it, doin’ it,” you’re acting more as Chief Employee than Chief Executive.

Some call it “multi-tasking” and revel in their skill in managing multiple concurrent tasks. A recent book from David Rock on the anatomy and function of the brain suggests that multi-tasking is a trap. David suggests that when we segment our mental processing power to managing several things at once, we degrade available intellect from MBA level to 8th Grade level. (It’s even worse if you (or I) didn’t start out at the MBA level.) Summary: If you divide your time, you divide your intellect.

Slow time: Consider the possibility that if you were working in SLOW time, you could get your whole brain in play. Imagine that it’s a new low gear for your brain.

Try this. Surprises coming. Right now. Stop what you are doing, stare straight ahead, and turn your head slowly to the right, so slowly that if someone came in the room, they wouldn’t see your head move. Spend 2 minutes turning, then bring your head back regularly. Go!

What was that like? Didn’t time slow up for you? In a demonstration at F.I.T. in NY last week , dancer and teacher Cathy Salit put us through these paces. Several people had surprising difficulty, most got interested, some very excited.  But what happened for you?

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Executive time!??? Five neuroscientists went rafting on a river for a week. The purpose: to find out whether the experience – separation from the internet, the telephone, and daily emergencies – made a difference. As reported in the NY Times, They spent a week in late May in this remote area of southern Utah, rafting the San Juan River, camping on the soft banks and hiking the tributary canyons. It was a primitive trip with a sophisticated goal: to understand how heavy use of digital devices and other technology changes how we think and behave, and how a retreat into nature might reverse those effects. What they wanted to learn more about was how “attention” works. How we learn, how we understand, how we forget. And how that’s impacted by the 24/7 impact of technological stimuli. It is a debate that has become increasingly common as technology has redefined the notion of what is “urgent.” How soon do people need to get information and respond to it? The believers in the group say the drumbeat of incoming data has created a false sense of urgency that can affect people’s ability to focus. A seminal study from the University of Michigan that showed people can better learn after walking in the woods than after walking a busy street. The study indicates that learning centers in the brain become taxed when asked to process information, even during the relatively passive experience of taking in an urban setting. By extension, some scientists believe heavy multitasking fatigues the brain, draining it of the ability to focus. Mr. Strayer, the trip leader, argues that nature can refresh the brain. “Our senses change. They kind of recalibrate — you notice sounds, like these crickets chirping; you hear the river, the sounds, the smells, you become more connected to the physical environment, the earth, rather than the artificial environment.

Behavioral studies have shown that performance suffers when people multitask.

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In a cocktail party the other day, a man complained – “I’m going to change my career – I’ve been a financial advisor for 10 years and they’ve changed the bonuses in the program (he last worked for AIG!) so I refuse to work for less money.” Change of direction can be a good idea, but somehow, I heard him positioning himself as a victim. If you are positioning yourself as a victim, or think you might be, that’s a recipe for disaster. Have a conversation with me or someone you trust – the only success you can have as a victim is to increase the amount of self-pity you accord yourself. Not a winning strategy. And you might have a look at this no-nonsense quote from Robert Kiyosaki: (author of Poor Dad, Rich Dad.)

“Today, people are asking, ‘Is the crisis over? Is the economy coming back?’ My (Kiyosaki’s) reply is, ‘No, the economy is not coming back. The economy has moved on, and the people asking if it’s coming back are being left behind.’” Another quotation (this time from me!) “If you go with the flow right now you’re likely to go down the drain!” A third quote: Jack Kennedy observed: “A rising tide floats all boats.” And when the tide goes out?

What’s Going On?
F.D.R. remarked. some 75 years ago: “The Only Thing We Have To Fear Is Fear Itself!” He was right about the “Great Depression” and he may be on the money with “The Not-So-Great Recession” as well. Right now, it seems that fear rules. There’s an abundance of blaming, and anger. And American families are saving $6.00 for every dollar they saved 3-4 years ago. Banks aren’t lending. Economists wish that the public would spend and the banks would lend. We’re all hunkered down, waiting for things to get better. At times like this, consider:

1. The old ways probably aren’t working.
2.

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Referrals – we love to get them, we hate to ask for them! And yet, almost nothing can be more beneficial to the entrepreneur or small businessman. Referrals provide new business at almost no cost, and frequently provide a new customer who’s pre-sold. A referral strategy, regularly executed, can make a colossal difference to your bottom line.

7 Steps To Profit Without Expense
This document focuses on the value of referrals, and some methods for avoiding the stops we encounter around asking. Bob Burg wrote an excellent book called Endless Referrals, from which much of this material is taken. Burg’s book goes deeply into networking practice, and is a great advisor. In this newsletter, we’ll narrow our focus to the specific practice of getting an abundance of referrals for your small business.

1. Isn’t it true that our good friends and customers are the best informed and probably the most enthusiastic support groups we have? I’m assuming that most of us need training on seeking referrals in order to train your customers and colleagues. It’s not hard to do, they’ll love you for it, and you’ll really love the results.

Small business owners usually describe their advertising as “word-of-mouth.” They occasionally get a referral from a friend or client, and occasionally turn it into business. These are wonderful moments – a customer has affirmed you, and you have a new client as well. When he tells you about it, he’s proud to proclaim that it was unplanned. Note to the CEO – “unplanned” is not necessarily a good thing!

If a large business needs a seasonal emphasis on sales, they revert to advertising to simulate sales activity. A car manufacturer has too much inventory when the new models are coming out. What does he do?

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