ep-6.mp3

[00:00:00] Thanks for listening to the slow selling podcast with helpful tips on how to slow down and do things right for your customers.

[00:00:08] Hi, it’s Guy Arnold, and welcome to the slow sowing podcast, talking about the one tool that all winners used. And the podcast is called How to Cope with the Day to Day and Continually Improve. And this podcast is for leaders and managers in independent businesses to help you do things that will help you stand out and compete against bigger and better funded competition. It’s a tough world out there, which I’m sure you know, and I’m sure your busy, busy, busy everyday with just getting through what needs to be done. But the idea here is to help you with one step at a time to work on your business, to work on your people, to work on your team, to help you just continually take steps forward, continue to get a little better. Inch by inch, and continually be more effective so that you can sell more without sacrificing principles or profits. So without any further ado, what are we going to talk about here today? Well, as a leader or a manager in an independent business, you know, the buck is going to stop with you usually. And that’s very often hard to deal with. And sometimes you feel like you’re out there on your own and life keeps on beating you up just as you about, just about to go up. Life beats you down again. It’s like a bit like being on on a beach in a storm where they’re trying to sort of get into the sea.

[00:01:29] But the waves keep beating you back. You can’t get into the sea to still work on your business and improve your systems and coach your people and hold them accountable and get them moving forward at their maximum effectiveness, because you keep on getting beaten back and beaten back and beaten back. And one of the other things is that the moment the Internet is awash with what I would call snake oil salesmen continually knocking at your door, both online and in-person, to offer you the latest quick fix or amazing solution or marketing wiz tool to solve all your solutions. And, you know, you’ve probably tried one or two of them in the past and found that best. They’re disappointing. And at worst, you rue the day you ever got involved with them. So, you know, everyone’s trying to sell you stuff. Everyone’s trying to communicate with you. And it’s not easy to to get her to care for her to move forward and do the right things. So the key is to learn how to cope with this on a day to day basis and keep self disciplined to stick. What really matters with what really matters and to focus and ignore the trivial and find the time and space to keep things moving forward.

[00:02:42] So. We suggest that maybe you could find an answer in applying the same question to any competitive situation.

[00:02:50] So if we could move away from business, perhaps we have a look at other competitive situations and say, well, how do they cope? How do they move forward? How do they stay disciplined? So if we look, for example, at top athletes, how how do they keep focused, measured and improving? And how do artists set honest feedback and ideas and inspiration? And I think the secret probably lies in having a set of principles to stick to through thick and thin, continually remembering that progress by the inch is key and most importantly, having a trusted person or people to give you feedback and hold you accountable. So, you know, all top athletes have coaches and training systems, training teams, sorry, all that artists have communities and trusted colleagues. So perhaps one of the key secrets in business to help you as an independent business owner or manager, to help you cope with the day to day and continually improve and focus on moving things forward is to have a good support network. Now, it could be formal or informal, so it could be a force support network that you pay for as a support network. And never those sort of things are like a virtual board. And those things are very good. And I would highly recommend them or it could be informal. It could be friends or other business owners holding you accountable and they can be useful. But the problem with those is that they are informal and unstructured. And you’re not necessarily getting the greatest great advice because you’re only getting the advice of what that person thinks that you could or should do in this situation.

[00:04:26] And that’ll be limited to their informal information and ability. So it could be in formal or informal. It could be direct or indirect. So directors, people directly holding you accountable, directly working with you like a like a coach or indirect could be like, again, like an informal board or an informal group of people indirectly holding you accountable. Or a training system or a course or a coaching system off-line online. Sorry, that is going to hold you accountable step by step. So there’s lots and lots of examples, lots of ideas, and you can easily find a coach to work with you. But the question is, how much will it cost and how certain are you of their abilities, their principles and their tools? So you can you can join a group. You can have a coach. But how how helpful will these people be? And that’s one of the real key issues. As an independent business manager and owner, you need to make the right decision. But it’s very hard to make it because you don’t know what you’re going to get until you start getting it. So, of course, these are yet more and more questions and issues to make a decision on. And once you found a great system and found a great group of people, an individual like a trust, you will have a huge advantage as well as, of course, the fantastic benefit of having confidence and peace of mind in that you have a support system.

[00:05:56] So to cut to the point, here is a four step checklist to help you make a sound decision and find the right people and systems to help you going forward. Point number one. Make sure of the principles you want to stick to. This is crucially important to be crystal clear on, as this will guide everything going forward. And we suggest the slow selling principles. Point number to learn and commit to the. Go the extra inch principle as your key driver of success. Daily. Weekly, monthly. And project by project number three. Find a person or group that supports these principles. And this go the extra inch process. And we’ll hold you accountable on a weekly and monthly basis. And of course, we will be suggesting the Slow Sellers Association will be able to help you with this. It’s not complete yet, but you please can you can join the weekly Top Tips list and suggestions by clicking on the links around this podcast. There’s a free service we offer every week. A top tip by email. And we will inform you when the Slow Sales Association is up and running. And lastly, is probably a good idea to make sure that whatever system you use, it won’t cost you a small fortune, because I guess you’ve probably got enough pressure on costs and time already. And I’m assuming you don’t want to make it worse. So we suggest for now sign up to the weekly free tips from the So Sellers Association. You’ll see the links around you. And, you know, there will be then a more bespoke version available which will come out. And we will we’ll help you get involved in that. If you would like to. So as a leader or an independent owner of an independent business, you know, you’re always up against it. But you may not know the key principles to employ to ensure you get the help you need to compete and stay sane and continually improve.

[00:07:49] So those are the four principles, you know, have a set of principles. Number one. Number two, commit to small steps. Number three, know where you get is going to be hard to get some help continually, systematically, weekly or monthly. And then before make sure you’re keeping your costs down, because it’s really important, obviously, to make sure that everything is done in a cost cost effective way. So we have on our podcast already talked about the idea of the principles, the four bad principles, beliefs, emotions, actions and results. And we have already talked in our podcast about taking one step at a time that go the extra inch principle. And this is the third key principle, the third key secret of slow selling of when you are busy, busy, busy, you are bombarded all day. You’ve got hype and rubbish all around you. You’ve got stress, you’ve got work overload, blah, blah, blah. You need a calm, focused support system to give you peace of mind. And that’s exactly, of course, what we have designed. So selling and the so sellers around.

[00:08:52] So.

[00:08:53] Well, the key to the third secret is if you know what to do and have a few tools to do it. You need a tool, then you need a tool that you trust like and is not worrying you. From the point you have cost, there’s going to help you stick at it, get whatever support you need at whatever time and keep improving. So, for example, we worked a few years ago with a small company in the Southwest and they were manufacturing wholesale spare parts for machines. Quite unusual business for the Southwest. And there was one person who was the owner and three people working with him and he was rushed and stressed and couldn’t expand the business. And just just just just tearing his hair out. Getting from day to day. And the people around him were frustrated because they weren’t being fulfilled and they weren’t being able to be used to their full potential. And I’m sure you recognize that story to a certain extent. I am sure every leader or manager in an independent business will will have that from time to time. And so we sat down with him and worked out all of the key things. We went through, all the principles we talked about, the go the extra inch process, and we put some of the slow selling tools to work in his business. And then we stuck to it with coaching him every month, continually, continually, continually for about a year, a year and a quarter. And at the end of that, the whole business had been transferred, transformed. The people were excited and interested.

[00:10:21] There were a whole lot of new systems driving business forward, making business more more fun, more importantly. And our client felt so much more fulfilled and happy and relaxed. And we’ve kept in contact with him and we visit him once a year on average, just for an hour, just to see how he’s doing and see if we can help move things forward. One more step as as as he goes on. So a nice, simple example of it’s very small business doing a really valuable thing.

[00:10:52] It had had customers who who loved him but wasn’t able to get out of the rut of the day to day. Busy, busy, busy chasing his tail, tearing his hair out, his people also frustrated. And, you know, the customer experience being suboptimal, helped by doing a few small things linked with one specific, clear, principle driven system, the bare principles B.A. are. And that helped him clear away the fog, clear away the rubbish and move forward and get things sorted out inch by inch. So what can you do in your business? Well, of course, we always suggest stick with us. Stick with slow selling. We will help you inch by inch, step by step. And when the slow seller’s association is launched, please give it a try and see how it can help you.

[00:11:42] Because this is all about the. This is one tool is one secret. It’s one idea is all about the word accountability. Somebody holding someone accountable. So someone holding you accountable, be it you or your people or your systems and someone holding your people accountable before you, their colleagues or the systems, because without accountability, then action is really hard to take. And people tend to be drifting at sea and not absolutely driving themselves forward. So generally, the best way to be held accountable and to move these things forward is to have some sort of coaching system so you can you can self coach. So you can you can perhaps have your weekly compass tool, your weekly compass plan, and you will get a weekly compass plan in the Slow Sellers Association. You can have goals that you set and that you review either weekly or monthly. You can have a daily journal that keeps you on track with your key desires and wishes and tiny steps on a daily basis. And, you know, you can you can have your colleagues coach you and you can have your system coach you, your colleagues and your system is going to be more like you making sure that you use win agreements. So make sure you have a look at our material on women agreements, win win agreements where there is accountability built into the win win agreement and the consequences are agreed of success and or failure before anyone starts doing anything. And of course, the other thing that will definitely build in accountability into your with your colleagues, your system is to go the extra inch process and the go the extra inch session.

[00:13:29] So have a look. I’ll go the extra inch material that was that’s about keeping people moving forward inch by inch on a weekly basis or a monthly basis or on a project by project basis. You could, of course, have specific really everything. So the other thing you could have, of course, is specific agreements. You can set out specific agreements for people to cross coach each other and you can, of course, get trained in a few key coaching principles to hold each other accountable. But of course, we recommend the most important thing that all of this stuff, whatever you do, is to have one joined up system that drives everything and everything is linked to. And of course, we would suggest that system could be the slow selling system. Lastly, of course, you can have a player coach, you can have a professional paid coach. That will be a more expensive option. But it’s very, very valuable and. Or, you know, maybe a few hundred pounds a month could be a massive way forward to help you drive things forward to having a one person who you really connect with, who absolutely drives the same principles. Inch by inch and helps you as a as a listening and gives you peace of mind and and integrity and knowledge to help you and support you and help you move forward could be a massive tool. So all of those tools are available for you. The one thing, of course, one more thing to mention here is that it’s really important in order to move forwards and to know where you’re trying to get to is to make sure you have feedback.

[00:15:02] So have feedback from your colleagues. Have feedback from your customers, have feedback from your suppliers, have feedback from your community, and make sure that your coach is empowered to give you feedback as well. So welcome the feedback and actively try and find it and see our other material on how to gather feedback effectively, particularly from your customers. So feedback is the the food that will drive the improvement and the coaching system is what will hold you accountable to continually improving. So lastly, in this podcast, here are seven things to consider. A little checklist for you for coaching. Number one, you need to desire to be coached. Okay, so if if you don’t want to be coach, you don’t want to be move forward, then of course, coaching isn’t going to work for you. So you need to say, actually, I’m struggling to cope. I’m pushed around, feel pushed around. I don’t feel I’m achieving what I want to achieve. I don’t feel confident that I feel calm. How how can I get some help? Who can help me? How can I move this forward? So no one is the desire to be coached. Number two is principles. Make sure that whatever coaching system you use, whether you like slow selling or not, you use some key principles because key principles are what binds everything together. They are the structure that makes everything fit together. So number two is make sure that you have some key principles that you follow and you make sure that your coach is also committed to because you don’t want your coach wherever they are, to be taking you in different fundamental directions.

[00:16:41] Number three is feedback we’ve just discussed. This is, of course, the are of the better system, the results. Make sure you have feedback systems to give you the food and the knowledge you need to help you move forward. Number four is systems. Now, systems are what gets things done. Systems are make things happen. A McDonald’s do not do not rely on people being good at cooking burgers. They have systems to make sure everything works exactly as it should do. So make sure that your coaching, your continual improvement is a system. It’s a system designed. Step number, five inch by inch. So number four is make sure you have systems. Number five is make sure that they are continually driving you forward inch by inch. So so number six is accountability. Make sure that you have someone or some system to continually hold you accountable and keep you improving. And number seven is cost or investment. Make sure that you have the ability to keep it reasonable. Invest little by little, and then you can build on this as and when needed. It’s much better to start off small. Find systems and ideas that you really like and then build on it as you see fit. So you want a system that you really like that you can put into your day to day activities. And then if you need extra, more expensive paid support, you can tack that on confident in you in the fact that you know what your principles and your systems are and how the whatever you’re looking for will fit into that, because this whatever coaching you choose must fit into your principles and systems.

[00:18:25] Today you are. You’re seven steps checklist. The desire to be coached. The principles, number two. Number three is feedback. Number four is systems. Number five is inch by inch. Number six is accountability and continuous improvement. And number seven is keeping the cost reasonable. So we hope that’s been helpful to you. We hope that’s a valuable. Learning a valuable help to you as a leader or manager in an independent business, because, you know, it’s tough out there. And of course, we’d love you to stay with us and to use our slow selling systems and make sure that you are on our slow selling weekly Top Tips list that will keep you updated and informed of what’s going on, as well as giving you this weekly top tip from slow selling. So make sure you’re on that list and make sure that you are aware of the principles and systems of whatever you get into. And good luck to you with your your coaching, your continual improvement system. But that is the third secret, a slow setting. The one tool that all winners use is they have some system and some person, some way of systematically helping them hold themselves accountable and moving them forward step by step, linked into the key system that drives everything.

[00:19:43] Thanks for listening. Tune in next time for more Top Tips.