Entrepreneurs are Salespeople

As I mentioned, in the last post, I will be talking more and more about entrepreneurship. And, let's keep it real, any honest discussion about entrepreneurship is largely a discussion about sales.

I am sure you have seen the television show Shark Tank. And, what you have probably recognized is that the sharks ask every contestant about their sales. Because, like Gary Vaynerchuk says, “Ideas are shit and…execution is the game.” People have gone into the shark tank with great ideas. But, if those great ideas are not selling, the sharks are not going to bite. Marketing/selling is the unique function of business. Otherwise you just have a hobby.

Peter Drucker famously said that a business exists for one reason, to create a customer. As such, the two entrepreneurial functions are innovation and marketing.

Innovation is for everybody, not just businesses. Simply put, innovation is about improvement. It is about making things better. Which means that personal development is a form of innovation. Provided the improvement helps you to contribute more and perform better. It is something I wrote about in this post.

Getting a suntan could be considered a form of personal improvement. But, does it really help you better serve people? Some might argue that a tan increases a person's confidence which would then help that person perform better. However, that strikes me as a bit of a stretch. There are much more effective ways to improve confidence, having nothing to do with ultraviolet radiation.

Real, personal innovations are things like listening and communication skills. Leadership skills and empathy. It has been said that we were given two ears and one mouth, and we should use them proportionally. A decent sentiment, I will agree. But it is an overly simplistic piece of advice. You cannot just set there, silently, and proclaim to be an effective listening. Effective listening is a discipline and it is really about asking quality questions. And, the development of the ability to ask good questions is innovation par excellence.

Again, innovation is a task we should all engage in, regardless of whether or not we are in business. I like to think of innovation as organized/intentional evolution. That said let's talk about marketing. As I have stated above, marketing is the unique function of business. If you are in business, and this includes non-profits and NGO's, you must market your organization and its products.

Time does not permit me to get into a deep and nuanced discussion about marketing. For now, I will simply use the terms marketing and selling interchangeably. I fully realize there are some differences between the two functions, but not much.

If you are a small business owner, you need to be a good salesperson. The big boys have the resources to engage in brand awareness (pull) marketing. You do not. You need to push yourself, your organization, and your products into the marketplace. You need to promote yourself

Truth be told, even companies that engage in pull marketing are smart to utilize push techniques as well. Tom Watson understood this. Watson knew that selling was the key to business success. He knew IBM technology was not the best in the world. It did not need to be because no computer company had a better sales force than IBM. History has repeated itself, of course, in the form of Microsoft. I think we all know Microsoft might not have the best technology in the world. But they sure have one hell of a sales department.

As you can see, I am making the case for the importance of selling. Because it is so important, selling is a concept I will continuously expound upon. As it stands, right now, there exists a far amount of disdain for the sales profession. If you dislike selling you have three choices: (1) change your perspective (2) give up your hopes of ever having freedom through entrepreneurship (3) latch onto someone who is good at sales and does not have such a negative bias. But remember, that last choice will require you to give away virtually all of the power. A better idea is to embrace selling and get good at it yourself. That is some serious innovation!

I will leave you with this. I think we all know how Bill Gates acquired the DOS operating system. It was not some great idea he invented. The Gates genius, and the Microsoft empire, was built on promotion. Bill Gates is a hell of a salesman. Remember that.

This Blog is Changing....Slightly

I have long been thinking about becoming more focused with this blog. Previously, I had titled this blog, “On work, emotions, and paradoxes.” Ideas I am interested in because they are so complicated and sticky.

My problem is that the old title was a bit too confusing. Emotions run the gamut and do not tell the reader what to expect. And paradoxes, while fascinating and important, are not something people generally relate to.

Do not get me wrong, I will still talk about emotions and paradoxes, because they are an integral part of effectiveness and business. However, at least for now, I do want to focus on effectiveness and entrepreneurship.

I do not talk about “success” because it is dependent on a very subjective value judgment. In other words, success means different things to different people. I do, however, talk about effectiveness because effectiveness is about achieving your goals, whatever those goals may be.

Also, I talk about sales, and the profession of selling, because to be an entrepreneur means to be a salesperson. A fair number of people resist is this fact. To those people I quote author Dan Pink, “A world of entrepreneurs is a world of salespeople.”

Additionally, I am a big-time student of Tom Peters. If you do not know who Peters is, he's a pretty big bleepin' deal. He is the author of numerous books including In Search of Excellence and Thriving on Chaos. Because Peters is so great I have made a quote of his the sub-headline to this blog.

As you can see, Tom says, “All of life is sales. If you ain’t interested in sales, you ain't interested in getting things done. Period!” Part of what I love about that quote is how it succinctly illustrates the inseparable nature of selling and effectiveness.

As you may already know, a lot of my thinking, about effectiveness, is built on the teachings of Peter Drucker. So, Drucker will continue to feature prominently in this blog. That said, I am also a believer in drawing on genius wherever it may be found. So, many and diverse disciplines will be brought to bare on the beautifully deep topics of entrepreneurship, selling, and effectiveness. As Drucker himself said, business is a liberal art.

Thanks for sticking around, and please let me know what you think of the new focus.

A Lesson from "The Voice"

Do you ever watch that television show The Voice? I do. Actually, I tend to watch the blind auditions and ignore the rest. I am not sure why, I just think "the blinds” are just so compelling. But, that is neither here nor there.

If you are not familiar with The Voice, the blind auditions are at the beginning of the season. The blinds are a big part of what first made the show so popular. During the blinds, singers perform a 90 second song while four judges have their backs turned. The idea, of course, is to have the contestants judged solely on their voice.

Though I usually do not, this season I decided to watch a little bit after the blind auditions. And I am glad I did. I was reminded of a great lesson.

This season there is a contestant named Ashley Morgan. Ashley is a 27 year old gal, from my neck of the woods, in Costa Mesa, California. So I guess, in that sense, I am kind of partial. Nonetheless, all of the judges agree that she has a fantastic voice.

For her blind audition, Ms. Morgan performed “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” by Whitney Houston and got two chairs to turn. Meaning, two of the four judge (Pharrell Williams and Blake Shelton) pushed their button indicating that they want Ashley on their team.

This is another great part of the show. If more than one judge turns around, for any given contestant, the judges are each obliged to make a sales pitch. The judge must sell the singer as to why said contestant should choose them to be on their team. I do not think any of them sell harder than Adam Levine. But, in this case, Adam was not in the running.

After Pharrell and Blake explained their positions, it was time for Ashley to choose. A choice I cannot imagine is very simple. As it turned out, Ashley selected Pharrell to be her coach. Now, after the blind auditions come the battle rounds. This is where the coaches pair-up two of their team members, to battle it out, by singing a duet.

In order to practice for the battle, each coach brings in another artist to help them prepare the contestants. Pharrell's assistant was none other than Lionel Richie. And, for Ashley's battle, Pharrell selected the song “Put the Gun Down” by ZZ Ward.

As the contestants were practicing we learn that Ms. Morgan is a studio vocalist who has been taking singing lessons since she was 5 years old. Her opponent was Mia Z a 16 year old girl who, apparently, has no formal training.

During the rehearsal Ashley was obviously nervous and uptight. Something Williams and Richie picked up on right away. While Morgan's execution was flawless, it lacked color. Pharrell stopped the rehearsal to instruct Ashley to loosen up and let her personality show through.

In order to show her individuality, and personality, Ashley would need to allow herself to be less technical and more imperfect. As a matter of fact, Lionel Richie told her to, “Throw away your training.”

To throw away her training, and let her guard down, would require opening up and being vulnerable. An idea that Ashley said is, “A terrifying thing to me.”

And, herein lies the beautiful lesson. Ashley Morgan is a highly trained vocalist who can execute songs with perfect pitch and tonality. But perfection is not the goal. Two of the worlds greatest music artists (Williams and Richie) were both telling a singer to stop being so perfect. At first glance, kind of a strange idea. Wouldn't you say?

As we grow up with are indoctrinated with the idea of not making mistakes. In school we are tested, and then punished, for the mistakes we make. However, in the real world, perfection is not the goal.

As we all know, the music business is big business. And, Pharrell Williams and Lionel Richie take it very seriously. What they were clearly telling Ashley Morgan was that the most serious thing she could do was stop being so serious. Maybe we could call it the Richie Paradox.

As The Voice has shown, over the years, perfection does not win. There have been numerous singers who have been flawless in their execution. Some were trained at places like the Berklee College of Music and UCLA. And, if my memory serves me right, not one of them has ever won.

Who knows what will happen to Ms. Morgan. But one thing is clear. If she hopes to win she will need to stop hiding behind her singing technique and show the world who she really is. Because the goal is personality not perfection. Remember that next time you are tempted to demand zero mistakes from yourself.

Post #100 or Why We All Should Be Engineers

This is the one-hundredth post added to this blog. And it got me thinking about milestones. Why do people care so much about milestones?

I think the short answer is that we like the accomplishment associated with a given milestone. Agreeably, 100 blog posts is not the greatest achievement in history. But I think that is exactly why we should do it. Let me explain.

It sure seems to be the case that humans love to accomplish things. As mentioned, I believe achievement is a big part of why we pay so much attention to milestones. People like David McClelland have taught us about The Achieving Society. But, for a moment, I will speak about accomplish by revisiting Martin Seligman and his lovely theory on flourishing.

If you do not know, Seligman is a professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. In the year 2000, professor Seligman, along with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, launched a branch of psychology known as positive psychology. Here is a link to their seminal paper.

These days, some people refer to positive psychology as “happiness research,” a phrase Seligman does not support. Seligman thinks the word “happiness” has been so overused as to become virtually meaningless. Seligman prefers to use the word “flourish.” Indeed, that is the name of his most recent book.

When you read Flourish you will discover a wonderful acronym. To help us remember the path to flourishing, Seligman came up with the acronym PERMA. If you wish to learn a little more about PERMA, click here and read this post.

As you can see, from that post, the A in PERMA stands for “accomplishment.” We humans are hard-wired, to feel joy, when we accomplish things. And, what we need to remember, is that the accomplishment need not big astronomical. The A, in PERMA, is not reserved for winning an election, getting married, or being inducted into the Hall of Fame. Indeed, if we pay attention, we accomplish things every single day.

Accomplishment is what we make of it. It is for this reason that I have written this specific post. As I have already stated, one hundred blog posts will not win me a Nobel Prize. But it is an accomplishment. And, I believe, it is worth celebrating. The reality is, it is highly unlikely that I will ever win a Nobel Prize. And so, what I think we all know, is that accomplishment is where we find it.

In as much as accomplishment is subjective, I believe we all need to be engineers of sorts. Knowing that accomplishment is such an integral part of happiness behooves us to engineer a life of achievement.

Too many of us wait for a “real” accomplishment, something genuinely worth celebrating. As a result, we rarely make that trip to the party store. This is unfortunate. It causes us to miss out on a lot of opportunities to feel good and to do good work.

I am certainly not advocating naivety or that we all become pollyanna. I am more revealing the fact that my thinking has been influenced, lately, by Steven Kramer and Teresa Amabile. Amabile and Kramer wrote the book The Progress Principle and it is based on rather rigorous science. The findings of the book are well summarized by a descriptive subtitle which says, “Using small wins to ignite joy, engagement, and creativity at work.” Though they happened to mention work, I believe the conclusions are equally applicable to life in general.

Now, while I do believe you should read Amabile and Kramer's book, I will give you one short cut. What the authors are saying, in The Progress Principle, is what I am saying in this blog post. Namely, it takes a little bit of effort to intentionally design a life of accomplish, of small wins. But, doing so will pay off with big psychological rewards.

I will end with the title. To repeat, I believe we should all be something of engineers. With just a little bit of effort with can engineers opportunities to achieve. Thus experiencing one of life's great joys.

The Keys to Productivity

Do you ever read about productivity? Do you ever try to learn ways to become more productive? I know I do. And, I have become pretty fed-up with a lot of the advice out there.

For this reason I wanted to pass along Peter Drucker's Six Keys to Productivity. Before I do I must clarify one point. The six keys pertain to knowledge work. As the name suggests, knowledge work is work largely done with your mind. Meaning, it is not manual labor. And, if you are reading this blog, chances are, you are a knowledge-worker.

That said, here are the six major factors that determine knowledge-worker productivity:

First, Knowledge-Worker productivity demands that we ask the question: “What is the task?” 

Second, It demands that we impose the responsibility for their productivity on the individual knowledge workers themselves. Knowledge-Workers have to manage themselves. They have to have autonomy.

Third, Continuing innovation has to be part of the work, the task and the responsibility of knowledge workers.

Fourth, Knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of the knowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of the knowledge worker.

Fifth, Productivity of the knowledge worker is not–at least not primarily–a matter of quantity of output. Quality is at least as important.

And sixth, knowledge-worker productivity requires that the knowledge worker is both seen and treated as an “asset” rather than a “cost.” It requires that knowledge workers want to work for the organization in preference to all other opportunities.

The wording may be a little strange but, if you review, you will eventually get it. In fact, I would commit the six keys to memory. I know I have. I just use single words. For #2 I think of autonomy. For #3 I remember to always innovate, etcetera.

For the time being, let's elaborate on just the first factor, because it is the most important piece. In order to be productive we must ask the question, “What is the task?” This may seem like an easy question. However, I can assure you, the answer is usually anything but obvious (until you get it, then it's a no-brainer.)

A little background. For the majority of human existence, the answer to the question, “What is the task?” was pretty straightforward. Answers would include things like plants seeds in the spring, or harvest in the fall, or clean the house. But, in the age of knowledge work, determining what the task is has become anything but obvious.

If I were to ask you what is your task. Would you be able to answer it? If you were completely honest with me, I bet your answer would be lacking. I am not trying to be rude. I am just being honest. Again, the question is a difficult one. For this reason, I encourage you to spend some time on it.

To help you, I will offer my own situation as an example. I am no genius but I can tell you that I have spent a very long time trying to answer Drucker's question. Let me give you my answer.

I own an MLM business. To be a successful MLM representative, one way to characterize the task is the following three words, “Collect informed decisions.” The more I do that task, and the more I teach that task, the more success I achieve.

A three word task is a pretty good description of what needs to be done. It is simple and understandable. And, because it is simple and understandable, it is actionable. If your job is to collect informed decisions, it tells you what must be done. You have to talk to people. Lots of people. It is not a good idea to sit around, hoping and praying.

There is, of course, more to my job than that. But, not much more. And, as I hope you can see, knowing what the task is illuminates the paths upon which we must travel. It is not easy to accurately identify the task, but it is worth it.

The real key to productivity is to properly answer the question, “What is the task?” Hopefully you can see how this question is connected to last week's post.

Quit Trying to Be Successful

Who does not want to be successful? I think everybody wants to be successful. In America, when we say the word successful, we usually think of financial success. But, as I am sure you know, success has many dimensions. One way to construe success is to say that success means achieving your goals. Whatever those goals may be.

The paradox is the following, the best way to succeed is by not trying to succeed. How can that be? At least when it comes to work, and working, the best way to succeed is to focus on contribution. Instead of asking, “How can I be successful?” it is better to ask, “What should my contribution be?”

"What should my contribution be?" is an excellent question. And, in order to answer it well, you should know your own strengths. To learn more about your unique strengths, go here.