Living the Life in Sales: Bending A Negative Response into Success

Living the Life in Sales: Bending A Negative Response into Success

The chances are high that many of my weekly news blogs will be ignored.  Some will just not have the time to read, others find my posts comfortably nestled into a recipient's Spam box out of the discomfort that my feelings may be hurt? I have no knowledge of who they are.  Usually my feedback is when someone takes the time to acknowledge that they agree or disagree with my post.  I am completely comfortable with this.

The fear of rejection is the bane of success. If rejections scare you, you will avoid making the difficult calls in life. And once the fear of rejection gets its insidious claws into you, it gets worse, creating more failure.

To be really successful (at sales or any other career), you must not just learn to cope with occasional (and even frequent) rejections. You must also learn to turn rejection into a goad that drives you towards ultimate success.

Differentiate between invalid and valid rejection

There are two types of rejections. A valid rejection is when a person doesn't do what you want because of something that you can change. Invalid rejections are when that "failure" took place because of something completely arbitrary that's outside of your control.

Here is an example of an invalid rejection:

Suppose you make a cold call and a prospect hangs up on you. While that's a textbook definition of "rejection", the truth is that the prospect's reaction has nothing to do with you. What's actually happened is that you accidentally broke the prospect's rules. You had no way of knowing that the prospect was busy and that the prospect thinks it is okay to hang up on unfamiliar callers.

Now, perhaps if you said something different or called at a different time, you might have gotten a different reaction, but that's just a fiction that you're making up in your mind. However, if you had called at a different time, the prospect might just as easily have added a expletive before hanging up and then sent a memo directing the company to never buy from you ever again.

There's no way of knowing. It's not a valid rejection, its just chance.

What's important here is that the prospect's reaction really didn't have anything to do you with personally, because anybody else taking the same action at the same time would have gotten the exact same outcome? You simply took an action that didn't work.

As soon as you realize that invalid rejections are just luck, most of so-called rejections simply become neutral events and the entire concept starts to lose its sting.

Understand why you feel rejected.

Why do you work? Is it, money, recognition, and achievement? Wrong, wrong, and wrong. All of those reasons are just outward manifestations of your real goal: you want to feel good about yourself.

For example, you think that you work because you want money? Incorrect. What you really want is what the money can buy, and I'm not talking about that new Ferrari. I'm talking about the feeling that owning a Ferrari would give you.

No matter what reason you give for being in sales, trace it back, and you'll eventually get to "it makes me feel good about myself."

Therefore, rejection "hurts" because there's something about the situation that makes you feel bad about yourself. To test this theory, imagine the biggest idiot you've ever known telling you that you're stupid. Do you care? No. The "rejection" fails to sting because it doesn't assault your sense of self. Who cares what that fool thinks?

Rejection starts to sting as the result of three qualitative and highly subjective factors:

Frequency. Everyone can deal with some rejection, but how much rejection can you experience before you start taking the negative feedback to heart? How many times can you contact a qualified prospect and get a negative response before you begin to take it personally? In other words, getting told a million times that you're stupid might make you question your intelligence, even if you didn't particularly respect the people saying it.

Emotional Involvement. How emotionally involved can you become with somebody before you feel that the other person might know you so well that criticism hurts? For example, you might be reluctant to close because you're afraid that your customer might feel "buyer's remorse" and stop liking you -- a form of rejection. In other words, if you like somebody, you'll tend to feel pretty bad if that person tells you to go take a hike.

Perceived Importance. As a sales rep, you're likely to feel most comfortable contacting people who are of a similar (or lower) social class or educational background. However, you might find yourself avoiding people whom you feel are more important than yourself, because their rejection of you might seem to carry more weight or authority.

Understanding why you feel rejected is the first step to removing the "sting." To do this, you take a different approach, depending on subjective reason that's behind you're feeling of being rejected.

Remove the Sting of Rejection.  Your job is to weaken the ability of the "rejection" situation to make you feel bad about it.

To make yourself feel less vulnerable in this area, you must first throw out all the invalid objections (as defined in the first step). Don't even count them. They're nonsense. If you still feel that you're getting a lot of rejections, then look at the norms for other professionals at your level. If you discover that you're in the ballpark for everyone else, there's no particular reason to feel bad about being rejected. If it turns out that you are getting valid rejections more frequently than your peers, then you'll need to figure out what sales skill is missing or broken in your tool kit, and then work on it. We'll get to that in the last step of this post.

Emotional involvement. The cure for this subjective ailment is to value both what you're offering AND the relationship. If you truly value both, then there is absolutely NO reason why you shouldn't want your customers to be your true friends. If it turns out your friend doesn't want or need your offering, it's not a rejection of you, but of the need for your offering, because it's not about you. If it's just a matter that your friend doesn't want or need what you've got to offer, then you can go ahead and be happy for that friend didn't buy. That's what your friend wanted and your offering is still good. And you're doing what's right by your friend.

Perceived importance. The cure for this is simply to believe in you. Here's the honest truth: if you're offering something that's crucial to the success or happiness of your customer, you are as important as the biggest VIP on the planet. Here's another big truth: most VIPs are exceedingly average people who've stumbled into their success; they are not Gods, Among Men Whose Judgment Must Be Validated. They're everyday men and women, just like you and me. So get some perspective. The opinion of some is just not all that big a deal.

The trick to bulletproofing yourself against rejection is to let people have their own emotions and beliefs, and then simply use whatever happens as either a signal to improve your skills (a valid objection) or a signal to exercise your "so what" mental muscle (an invalid one).

Reframe rejection into your path to success.  In sales, the number of rejections you get is directly proportional to how successful you will become.  The people who hit the most home runs are the one who get up to bat the most. As has been pointed out innumerable times, the person with the major league baseball record for being struck out is Reggie Jackson, one of the greatest batters of all time.

Estimate the number of times you encounter rejection in an average day. (No need to be entirely accurate). Now calculate your daily average salary/commission. Now divide the number of rejections per day by your daily salary. 

Example:

Number of times you get a valid rejection each day on average: 5

Your daily salary and commission, on average: $500

The money you make every time you get "rejected": $100

Look at that number carefully. That's how much money goes into your pocket every time you encounter a rejection. The reasoning is simple. If you're not getting rejected, you are not selling. So when you do sell, it's because you've been willing to be rejected. The rejections lead to the sales, so you actually are paid through the rejection process.

The Failure of Supply Side Economics

The Republican Party has long promoted itself as the party of business. Republicans understand the needs of business, we are told, and if the country would leave the economy in their hands business would boom. All we need to do is to give those at the very top of the income distribution – the “job creators” – more income through tax breaks, and then sit back and wait for the magic happen. Our investment in the wealthy will produce remarkable economic growth, and everyone will be better off.

The Bush tax cuts were a test of these claims about "supply side" economic policies. To justify the tax cuts the nation was, in effect, given a business prospectus from the Republican Party. We were promised that cutting taxes on the wealthy would result in much higher economic growth and broadly shared prosperity. For those who wondered how we would pay for such a large cut to the government’s revenue stream, the Republican prospectus had a remarkable claim. The tax cuts wouldn’t cost us anything. Growth would be so strong that the tax cuts would more than pay for them. Even those who admitted that the tax cuts might not be fully self-financing still made strong claims about faster economic growth offsetting much of the lost revenue from the tax cuts.

The reality, of course, has been quite different. There is no evidence (none!) that the Bush tax cuts, or any other tax cuts directed at the so-called job creators, have had a noticeable effect on economic growth. And the promise of broadly shared prosperity has not been realized. Most of the gains from economic growth in recent decades have gone to the top of the income distribution while the inflation-adjusted wages of the working class have been relatively flat. Furthermore, the tax cuts have not paid for themselves as promised, and it hasn’t even been close. The Bush tax cuts have already cost us trillions in revenue, and if they are extended for high income tax payers, they will cost us roughly another trillion dollars over the next decade.

The failure of Republicans to deliver on their promise that tax cuts would be mostly self-financing is a large factor in the deterioration in our long-run fiscal outlook, and it is putting considerable pressure on programs such as Social Security. In fact, the Bush tax cuts can be thought of as a loan from the Social Security Trust Fund that was supposed to be paid back with the revenues from higher economic growth, a loan that is presently in default.

To see this, recall that the government began intentionally collecting a surplus from the Social Security program beginning in 1983 in order to prefund the retirement needs of baby boomers. The idea was to run a surplus for several decades while the baby-boomers were still working to get ready for the deficit years the system would experience after they retired.

The revenue from Social Security over and above what was needed to fund payouts reduced the overall government debt and allowed taxes to be lower than they could have been without these surplus funds. For example, the surplus that Bush inherited from the Clinton administration was largely due to the Social Security Trust Fund, and Bush argued it would be better to give this surplus to the private sector through tax cuts than to leave it in the hands of the government. But it wasn’t better. The income of the wealthy grew as they pocketed the tax cuts, but workers experienced stagnant wages, a recession that hit working class households particularly hard, and intense pressure to cut important social programs.

Despite their failed promises, the Republican Party is asking that we extend the tax cuts for the wealthy, and some are even calling for further reductions in tax rates. However, if the Republican Party is truly the party of business, then surely it will understand that no responsible financial institution would continue to invest in a business that failed, meet, or even come close to the growth and revenue projections that justified the investment in the first place. The payoffs from tax cuts that were promised during the Bush years have not been realized, and the failed promises about growth and revenue have damaged the health, education, and retirement programs the working class depends upon in our increasingly globalized economy.

A true party of business would end our investment in the false promise of "supply side" economics. However, a party with a goal of reducing the scale of programs such as Social Security and Medicare along with delivering tax cuts to wealthy political backers would use arguments about the economic effects of tax cuts to disguise its true intentions. Which description fits best? Many Republicans still claim that tax cuts for the wealthy enhance economic growth despite the evidence to the contrary, but it’s rare to hear a Republican admit that the "supply side" policies have failed.

Business Principles from the Book of Proverbs

Business Principles from the Book of Proverbs

Republished by Request

What is the best book on business that you have ever read? 



If you visit the typical bookstore-at least in the U.S.A. you will find hundreds of volumes in the business section, each claiming to hold the ultimate secrets to business success and professional advancement. Some are biographical; others suggest multiple step "how-to's" of becoming a great business leader or high-producing salesperson. Some focus on motivation, trying to convince you that you can do whatever you set your mind to do, while others offer cute little stories in which they convey basic business truths. 



I have read dozens of these books, and I'll agree that in them I have found many worthwhile insights and principles. However, I don't think that all the books displayed in the business section can come close to the substance that is available in what I consider the greatest business book ever written-the Book of Proverbs by Solomon. In fact, there is more practical business wisdom presented in one small section of the book of Proverbs than you can find in any other book, even those written by today's foremost business leaders.

I love to read business books. Right now I am rereading King Solomon’s Book of Proverbs: I love to read the most about business ethics, positive working attitudes, sales, and management.  All this and more can be found in the Book of Proverbs. The book of Proverbs of Solomon written between 960 and 922 BC and his thoughts were remarkable and if you read today’s writers like Tracy, Rohn, and Canfield you will find traces of Solomon in their writing.

I know what you are thinking (saying)… Hey I am not a bible reader, nor do I want someone pushing me to a “churchly” dialogue.  You would be mistaken, however, if you do not investigate the wealth of information that can be found here for the 21^st century businessperson.

It behooves all of us in business to seek competent information, wherever the source.  You may be surprised just how many business coaches apply the Proverbs principles.

The Book of Proverbs may be the most practical book ever written for the modern day businessperson. It was designed to be a success manual.

Proverbs defines success far more broadly than economic success. It includes economic as one mark of a successful person. But these proverbs make it clear that economic success apart from wisdom is a snare and a delusion.

The book applies its principles to such areas of life as money, work, planning, peace, goal setting, self-discipline, and other topics. It covers the following in detail:

1. The steps to personal success

2. The standards of personal success

3. Success indicators

4. Failure indicators

5. The function of riches

6. The basis of riches

7. The concept of ownership

8. The nature of economic causation

9. The marks of an ethical economy

10. The purposes of inheritance

Whatever your persuasion, non-religious or religious, should you not at least investigate a tested resource that can aid you toward a professional and personal path toward success?

Customer Service-Respect and Appreciation

I think the greatest mistake in business is the lack of customer appreciation and attention.  After all, it is they that provide your company with the opportunity for growth and substance. This is the time most of us reflect on the past year's business, and -- if we haven't already -- firm up our plans and goals for the next 12 months. And of course, customer relationships should be high on the list of things on which to reflect. 

Here, in no particular order, are the 10 most important commitments you and your staff should make to your customers, and to yourselves, for 2013:

1. Be nice: Seemingly so easy yet, apparently for many companies, so hard. The simple quality of being nice to people makes them more receptive to any interaction, and makes all other elements of service easier and more effective.

2. Be accessible, respond quickly: Whether it's getting a real person on the phone quickly and easily, or getting a prompt and complete reply to an email or other inquiry, responsiveness and access are among the most critical determinants of customer satisfaction. In fact, according to the people who measure this stuff, accessibility and responsiveness are two of the four most common traits of the very highest-rated customer service businesses.

3. Give the benefit of the doubt: Always err on the side of the customer. Many companies, particularly when they are in "gray area" situations, fall back on policies and misguided self-protection. If you're not sure who's "right," whenever possible let it be your customer.

4. Don't lose your cool: Don't ever argue or be defensive with people -- there will always be difficult, unreasonable and angry customers, but very few of them are out to get you or your company. We all know that emotion just triggers more emotion, and it's your job as a service professional to stay above it and manage the tone of the conversation. Don't treat customer service as a competition. Odds are if you are doing things right, you won't be dealing with as many confrontational people to begin with.

5. Be generous: Whether it's with your time, tangibles or just in spirit, generosity is a quality that usually pays you back. If you can do something for someone, do it with pleasure. If you can do more, do that too. Go the extra mile.

6. Get to the point: Always get from A to B as quickly as possible. If you already know the likely outcome of a conversation, get to it sooner than later, without making the customer jump through hoops. Eliminate all steps, questions, processes and policies that aren't absolutely necessary. You, too, have presumably been a person needing service, so you know exactly what it means to want to scream, "can we get to the part where you help me now?" Don't make your customers feel that way.

7. Find the "happiest" solution: At the end of the day, all people really want is to be happy, and that's what customer service is generally about. So while you can't please everyone every time, always think in terms of what you can do to make the customer happier when she's finished dealing with you than when she started. There is usually a way.

8. Smile: Whether in person, on the phone or even when writing an email, if you're smiling chances are you'll say or write things in a way that's more likely to be well received. I'm not suggesting walking around 24/7 with a creepy grin on your face -- that just scares people. But a real smile, one that suggests you're happy to help, always makes its way through to the customer. If you're not happy to help, you're in the wrong line of work.

9. Listen: Of course, that's an important quality in all areas of life and business, except that many companies hear their customers without listening to them. Hearing only requires an ear (and maybe a headset); listening requires a brain -- and ideally a heart. Understand what they really want and need, and you're more likely to serve them well.

10. Empathize: This is what it all boils down to -- always. Genuine empathy is where all great customer service starts and ends. If you and your employees don't have it, you can never -- and I mean never -- excel at taking care of people.

If you really need a reminder of what it's all about, keep a pair of someone else's shoes next to your desk and put yourself in them once in a while. Seriously.

If you think you and your business are already hitting on all cylinders, congrats and keep up the incredible work. But much more likely, you're in the "always room for improvement" category. You might be operating at peak performance in some of these areas but not in others, or maybe you're generally great but always want to set a higher bar for your business.

Either way, take an honest look at how you fare in each of these areas. And it should go without saying that your review should include actually learning what your customers think, as well as your equally important employees.

Accounts Receivable-Getting Your Due

Even in what appears to be the best scenario for businesses, sooner or later receivables you counted on will be severely delayed, or worse, never paid.

A rapidly growing trucking company had a terrific contract with a Fortune 500 company in the oil industry. As long as they delivered on the work nothing could go wrong, right? Double wrong! Things went wrong when a new person was put in charge of the company's accounts payable department.

The new person disputed billing and the billing procedures that had always been accepted. The unilateral decision was made to stop all payments until a lengthy audit was completed.

Cole Harmonson, president and CEO of Far West Capital, a company that specializes in asset-based financing and factoring solutions, told this story. Far West stepped in and saved the day.

The trucking company was blind as to the solution, and Far West came to the rescue. As Harmonson puts it, "We don't just lend money. We partner with our clients to understand the dynamics of what can go wrong -- or, to put it another way, what must be done right."

Far West actually made the trucking company interim loans and helped them collect their money from the Fortune 500 Company within 30 days.

"If your company is growing rapidly, your business will not only have challenges with cash flow, but your internal resources as well as how you respond to your customers may need to change,” Harmonson said. The way you do business internally -- down to the very way you put out invoices -- will need to be changed. "Just because you've always used Sue or Bill to do your bookkeeping, as you grow, your business may require more sophisticated skills."

From the start, Harmonson realized that he was more than an asset-based lender. He described it this way: "I saw that people had potential beyond what they saw themselves, and I began to want to help them realize that potential."

Far West has grown from nothing to 8 billion dollars in asset management. What sets them apart is their understanding of entrepreneurs, as they are entrepreneurs themselves. They go in and help identify what you need as a growing business, and they consider their process to have three prongs. One is recognizing a client's potential. Second, being there as the resource for them to grow.

The third? Taking it to the next level by saying "if you do x, you can get y." They actually show their clients potential they may not have realized. Taking it to the next level means you have to reinvent yourself. You're going down a road that you've never been on, and any number of surprises can and will occur.

What the best asset-based lenders like Far West bring to their clients is support when difficulties come up. They also show you how to prevent difficulties that may come up in the future. They are problem-solvers that can help you with unexpected liabilities, sudden HR issues, and/or problems that are unforeseen to you.

Here's the process such lenders use to make it happen, which you can emulate:

- Evaluate the clients' customer relationship dynamics

- Understand how they manage existing customer relationships

- Analyze how growth will impact this structure

- Enhance the adequacy of the back room

What we learned from Harmonson is to not just look at the transparent credit-worthiness of your receivables. That's just the beginning. A more comprehensive due-diligence process covers the nature of your customers and your customers' customers. You will make better decisions on who you give credit to as a result of knowing this.

Far West sees themselves as that second set of eyes, evaluating whether your financial team is as top-notch as it needs to be. They drive the relationship from the perspective of the entrepreneur based on his or her goals and aspirations. They also encourage you to look at what you need to do to protect your personal net worth. They ask questions to find out what's important to you as the business owner, like "Do you want to grow or sell?" or "Do you want to grow to pass it on?" or "Do you want to grow to diversify assets?"

To summarize, Harmonson's rules for accounts receivable management are:

1. Go over contracts and make sure you have a plan on how to fulfill your contractual obligations. This will help ensure that your contracts are serviced correctly.

2. Evaluate the creditworthiness of your customers, and your customers' customers. Understand the dynamics of the cash flow.

3. Always are watching for sudden charge backs or worse.

4. How do you best ensure the customer will pay that last bill? You may have had a great relationship with a customer, but if and when the customer changes vendors, what can you do to ensure that you are paid? It's critical to know your leverage points. Can you "not" deliver a deliverable when not paid? You may find out that you have a lot more or a lot less leverage than you really do.

5. Make sure that all offices of your company handle situations with customers uniformly.

6. The last, and most critical: PAY ATTENTION TO DETAIL. Totally understand your client's Master Service Agreement, and perform according to that (otherwise you could not get paid!).

Small Business, The Debt Ceiling, and Congress' Inabilibily

Here we go again.

Just two weeks after Congress negotiated a last-minute deal to avert going over the fiscal cliff, economists say political squabbles over the nation’s borrowing limit could once again threaten to hurt the nation’s sluggish recovery.

“It’s probably the biggest headwind right now,” said Paul Ashworth, chief North America economist with Capital Economics.

President Barack Obama warned Monday that the nation could face serious consequences if Congress fails to authorize an increase of the nation’s debt ceiling.

“America cannot afford another debate with this Congress about whether or not they should pay the bills they’ve already racked up,” Obama said in a press conference Monday. 

In a separate speech later Monday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke echoed Obama's comments, arguing that Congress must raise the debt ceiling so the government can pay its bills.

Raising the borrowing limit was once seen as little more than a procedural matter, and, as Obama pointed out, an increased debt limit does not authorize Congress to spend more money. But over the past couple years it has become a focal point of Republicans’ efforts to control what they believe is runaway government spending by forcing a debate over spending cuts.

In the summer of 2011, the nation came perilously close to not paying its bills because Congress could not agree on the amount of borrowing it would authorize for the government. The debt ceiling fight roiled the stock markets. The growing political rifts also was one reason Standard and Poor’s cited when it lowered the nation’s debt rating from AAA to AA+, which threatened to raise borrowing costs for auto loans to mortgages.

This time, economists say the latest debt ceiling standoff also could be harmful because it’s yet another example of a political infighting bringing the nation to the brink of a fiscal crisis.

“It’s not so much the debt ceiling standoff itself,” Ashworth said. “It’s what the debt ceiling standoff tells you … about whether Congress is capable of dealing with the problems.”

Another protracted fight and potential crisis could cause other ratings agencies to reduce the nation’s credit rating, said Paul Edelstein, director of financial economics with IHS Global Insight.

“It’s less that these ratings agencies think the U.S. doesn’t have the resources to pay its bills the way a Greece or a Spain (does),” Edelstein said. “It’s just the uncertainty caused by the politics.”

Even if a last-minute deal is struck, economists said the ambiguity created by the fight also could hurt the economy because businesses may be cautious to hire new employees or spend money on projects while a deal was being hashed out.

“I think it’s one reason why the economy hasn’t kicked into a higher gear, and I suspect that businesses won’t take a lot of risk until this is nailed down sufficiently,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist with Moody’s Analytics. “It is a damper on growth.”

Still, Zandi and others say the really serious risk would only come if Congress actually can’t agree at all before the Treasury Department runs out of accounting tricks to keep funding going. That could mean the government wouldn’t be able to pay some of its bills, weakening the nation’s recovery and possibly even sending the country back into recession.

“If the debt ceiling actually becomes binding then the Treasury has no good options, and (it) will do a lot of damage to the economy,” Zandi said.

Republicans agree that failing to increase the debt ceiling would have serious consequences. But they also argue that government spending is a serious problem that needs a solution. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and others have argued that the debt ceiling offers a good opportunity to find ways to cut spending.

Economists say there are concerns about the nation’s long-term economic health and it is important to think of ways to cut spending and raise revenue in years to come. But many argue that requires a serious discussion about what can be done to tweak big government programs like Social Security and Medicare over the next few decades.

Laurence Ball, an economics professor at Johns Hopkins University, noted that the old method of raising the debt ceiling with little formal discussion did not solve any debt problems. But he also questioned whether pushing the nation toward a possible fiscal crisis on a tight deadline is the best way to address these issues.

“To solve the problem you’d have to make some hard choices about cutting spending or raising taxes,” Ball said. “It’s very hard work to find reasonable solutions.”

The Trademarks of a Great Leader

The Trademarks of a Great Leader

Character: Great leaders do the right thing regardless of circumstances, situational context or other influencing factors. They will not compromise their value system and personal ethics for temporary gain. Without a consistent and enduring display of sound character you’ll find it difficult to earn the trust and respect of those you lead. While your character will be tested often as a leader, great leaders know there is no substitute for the truth.

Vision: 
Great leaders possess the ability to create a vision for the organizations they lead. They have the foresight to not only create a clear and well-defined vision, but also have the ability to articulately communicate the vision. Perhaps most importantly, they have the ability to align interests and evangelize the vision unifying leadership, management, staff and external stakeholders as well.

Strategy: 
Great leaders are strategic thinkers who have the ability to translate their vision into an actionable strategy to ensure its success. Strategically inclined leaders think in terms of creating leverage, anticipating & leading change, managing risk & opportunities, being customer focused, astutely deploying resources, always insuring the business model is in alignment with current market conditions, yet fluid enough to accommodate changes in market dynamics. Strategic leaders are keenly aware of items that create an advantage or defend a weakness.

Tactics: 
Great leaders tend to be tactical geniuses and display a strong bias to action. They understand the difference between raw data and useful information. Moreover they know how to leverage information and resources to achieve their objectives. They are focused, results driven and achievement oriented.

Focus: Great leaders are focused on the mission at hand. They don’t bite-off more than they can chew by falling prey to initiative overload. Great leaders do not major in the minors and understand that the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Great leaders are committed to not losing focus and not giving-up.

Persuasiveness: Great leaders understand how to manage conflict and close positional and philosophical gaps. They tend to be contextual leaders who know which skill sets to draw upon based upon the circumstances at hand. They lead by serving as opposed to intimidating. Great leaders are masters of inspiration being able to take even the most critical skeptics and convert them into evangelists for the cause.

Likeability: 
Great leaders possess great interpersonal skills. They tend to be people-centric and understand the concept of servant leadership. People tend to like leaders who display good decision skills and high levels of integrity. While great leaders are typically very direct, they are also intuitive individuals who thrive on finesse and subtlety. They don’t expect or need to be liked to get the job done, but realize the value likeability can offer where it can be achieved without comprising trust or integrity.

Decision Ability: Great leaders possess the ability to consistently make good decisions. They thrive on making the tough call and are willing to be accountable for their actions. Great leaders also have the ability to make decisions quickly and often with incomplete data sets. Rarely do leaders have the luxury of being able to secure all of the information needed for a risk free decision. Rather they understand how to make a timely decision while managing any corresponding risks as others are still trying to connect the dots.

Team Building: Great leaders create great teams throughout the entire value chain. They understand the need for talent and are effective at recruiting, deployment, development and retention of tier-one talent. Great leaders also surround themselves with the best professional advisors possible and they openly seek the counsel of others in matters of importance. They are committed to both personal and professional growth. They tend to almost be addicted to increasing their knowledge base and sphere of influence. They are voracious learners always looking for better methods, different approaches, enhanced efficiencies, better technology and increased velocity. They are not afraid of change and growth – in fact, they tend to relish it.

Results: The proof of great leadership is ultimately found in the results being attained. Leaders can be extremely strong in any of the areas above, but if they are not leading effectively or productively, if they are not meeting performance expectations, then they have work to do. Great leaders get results…