Tag Archives: Goal Setting

June 22, 2011

Selecting Vendors

By Chris LoCurto
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Excellent requests by Chris Johnston sent to me on Twitter. Team goal setting was actually a common request so I answered it in…wait for it…Setting Team Goals. If you have a team, team goal setting is a great way of getting everybody headed in the same direction. Without it, you’re kinda herding cats. You can do it, but it’s difficult, and sometimes it gives you hives.

So how do you select suppliers/vendors? In EntreLeadership I teach a lesson called The Art of Outsourcing, and in it I talk about how selecting vendors really depends on the size of your business. If you’re just getting started, you don’t have a lot of options. In fact, you’re probably purchasing in such small quantities that you may be limited to only one company. Well, one local company.

Nowadays, the internet provides so many more options for you. Don’t like the printer in your town? Great! Find one three states over that will give you a great product, price and shipping. It happens all the time now. You just have to do some research to make sure they can deliver what you expect.

No matter your company’s size, there are four things you need to establish before you work with a vendor:

  • Integrity – Whether you use a vendor in town or out, the number one thing you always want to look for is integrity. I don’t care how much you like a vendor, if you can’t trust them, drop ‘em like 3rd period French. Don’t allow yourself to become emotionally captive to any vendor! The bigger your company is, the more important this becomes. Why? Eventually you will do so much volume that vendors will almost become part of the family.
  • Capacity – They have to know more about it than you, do something you can’t and do it cheaper than you can. You don’t want to reinvent the wheel with each project you work on. Find someone who is able to perform the task on your schedule. It doesn’t matter if you get the best price on the planet if you don’t actually get your product on time. Or when you get it, it’s not good enough.
  • Price – A lot of companies think price is the most important factor. It’s not. But, with all things equal, it is the determining one. Be sure you always negotiate with your vendors to get the best deal. You have not ’cause you ask not. So ask. You would be surprised how many vendors are willing to drop their prices to get your business. Especially if you have a great reputation in the community for paying cash…on time!
  • Quality – I can’t beat it into people enough that you can’t be a vendor pleaser. Way too many times I see people accept less than quality products. Worse than that is the vendor who tries to make the customer, circle the word customer, feel bad about complaining. Multiple times I have contacted a vendor to tell them their product wasn’t good enough, only for them to tell me that it was the best they could do. Or they had an issue with a machine. I DON’T CARE! I paid you for a specific product! Get it fixed…now!

As you focus on each of these points, it will become easier to select the right vendors. Better than that, as you build a reputation in the community as a fair, honest and paying customer, vendors will come looking for you.

Question: What experiences have you had dealing with vendors?

This Friday, be sure to check out my guest post on Michael Hyatt’s blog!

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5 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in EntreLeadership, Leadership, Small Business

June 16, 2011

Setting Team Goals

By Chris LoCurto
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I received this great question on Twitter from Tom Brichacek:

@tbric Tom Brichacek
@CLoCurto Can you write a bit about team goal setting? The posts on profit-sharing were AWESOME! Thanks!

To set team goals, you have to start by understanding what it is to do true goal-setting. In Goals? In June? Crazy Talk! I showed you the basics of real goal setting. Not the junk you read in so many books. Instead, I laid out a real, simple way to set goals that work. So if you’ve never had a system that worked, start there. Even if you have, check this out and see if it isn’t better.

So, what do we do with team goals? Well, they aren’t much different from individual goals. Except you’re trying to get a group of people at different levels, characteristics, ages and abilities to agree on what they can accomplish together. Some will want to shoot for the moon while others will want to sandbag as much as possible. So how do you put something in place that works for the team?

You have to start by understanding that goals that aren’t mine are nothing more than tasks that have been delegated to me. Therefore, I’m missing the most important element, ownership! Without it, I will do the tasks, but the outcome will be less important to me than if I came up with those goals on my own. So you have to work with the team to develop their goals together as a team.

List out what it is you want to set goals on before you present it/them to the team. Once you have that list, pull your team together and ask them to come up with potential goals for the team. What do they feel like the team could do together. Again, some will sandbag, so I’m more likely to land in between the average and the most ambitious goals. That way your team is always shooting to be better than average.

Now that you have the goals, ask the team what it will take to make sure those goals are accomplished. What are the simple details and steps that they need to take to succeed? If your team’s goal is to sell $200,000 worth of product in July, then what will it take to make that happen? How many calls, contacts, conversations, emails per day? How many promotional pieces will need to be mailed out? (If the goal is 10 sales a day, and we know that it takes 50 calls to get 15 conversations, and 15 conversations will lead to 7 sales, then 50 calls isn’t enough.) List out the “goals” so the team knows what it takes to win.

Then confirm that the entire team has buy-in. If not, then you will get dissention in the ranks. Gossip will brew among those who can’t cut it. Don’t allow that to happen. As the team sets the goals together, you will be able to single out those who don’t want to push hard to make this happen. As the team succeeds, they should as well. If not, you need to micromanage the team members who aren’t pulling their weight to see if there is anything you can do to help them be successful. In You Light Up My….Eyes? I talk about how I believe that it is your job to make your team successful. Don’t shoot your wounded. Get in there and see if you can make them strong!

With the team setting the goals, you should be able to guide and direct them to winning. If not, dissect to see what’s not working. Make your adjustments with your team’s input and let them go again.

Question: What tips do you have to help teams to set goals?

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8 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , | posted in Leadership, Small Business

June 15, 2011

Goals? In June? Crazy Talk!

By Chris LoCurto
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If you’re anything like me, you have read a dozen books on goal setting and still don’t have a good process. Most people think goal setting is done in December by taking out a sheet of paper, writing down all of the things they want to accomplish, getting a big grin on their face because it’s big stuff, and then putting the list in a drawer somewhere. Long about November of the following year, they pull it out, dust it off, and say, “Huh. We accomplished 7 of the 21 items. Not bad.”

That, my friends, is not goal setting! Crumple that up and throw it away. It’s amazing how something that seems so simple can be so complicated. Well, it doesn’t have to be. For me, goal setting is as easy naming the goal and then putting together a list of things that must be done to accomplish that goal. Without the list, you will struggle to reach the goal. In EntreLeadership we teach that goals need to be five things:

They must:

  1. Be Specific
  2. Be measurable
  3. Be yours
  4. Have a time limit
  5. Be in writing

So, let’s break it down with an extremely simple example. Let’s say we are in your office and your goal is to take me to Ruth’s Chris to be eating dinner by 5:30 p.m.. (I like this example.) What would need to happen? First, we would need to get up, walk to the door, open the door, walk out to the already fueled-up car, open the door and get in, start it up and drive following the already printed-out directions to the restaurant, park the car, open the door and get out, walk to the door, open it and walk in, be seated and order from the waiter. Whew! Now everything is in the restaurant’s hands.

Now, were the goals specific? Absolutely. Were they measurable? Of course. If it takes 20 minutes to get to Ruth’s Chris, and at 5:10 p.m. we’re still in your office, there’s a problem. What if we get in the car and we don’t know where we’re going, or it doesn’t have enough gas to get us there? Our example includes each thing that must happen, so it makes the goal easier to attain. But what we tend to do in our busy lives is have an idea, call in our team, discuss and delegate it, but never set actual goals for it, and then wonder why it didn’t work out as we “planned.”

I know that is way super-simple, but imagine if you did that with your projects. What if you used this style of goal setting for your next product launch? What if you used it to get yourself in shape? No matter what the situation, spend some time on the front-end writing down actual  goals so you can be more successful on the back-end. When you do that, the only thing left out of the equation is the unexpected. When you don’t have the goals outlined, the unexpected becomes a crisis on top of all you need to accomplish. When you do have your goals in place, it’s just an inconvenience.

Questions: How well have you done with your goal setting? Will this help you to make your life easier? What other things would you like to see?

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19 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in EntreLeadership, Leadership, Small Business

May 16, 2011

What Are You Dreaming?

By Chris LoCurto
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Last night we kicked off EntreLeadership Master Series in Orlando. This is our week-long version at a resort…someone has to suffer. Today we started Entre with the lesson “Dreams, Visions & Goal Setting.”

It’s a lesson about taking your dreams from the 30,000-foot view, turning them into a vision that is doable, and finally tearing that vision into pieces that are actual goals you can accomplish. As you complete each well planned and thought-out goal, you are able to implement your dream.

Now that was a very brief explanation of the lesson. I really want to focus on one part — dreaming. As leaders — heck — as people who want more than the same ole same ole, we all need to be dreamers. And I’m not talking about playing video games all day long and dreaming of what it would be like to live in a fantasy world. I mean spending some time focused on what the future could be like. Start by asking the question “What if?”

What if you spend time dreaming about what your business could be? What if you create a new product line? What if you expand into new territories? What if you concentrate on helping your business as if it belonged to someone else? What if you spend time creating a list of what is going wrong in your business and figured out how to fix it…all?

Find a spot in your calendar to get away from everything — work, team members, family, CELL PHONE — everything but God. And then open your mind. Don’t critique what’s popping up in your head. Just take the opportunity to simply…dream. Then write it all down. Even the stuff you think is bad.

Now that you have it on paper…or…iPad, list your ideas according to importance. If you implement this one, what kind of affect will that have on your business? Don’t list them by difficulty of implementation, or you’ll never do them. Which is the most important dream to implement first? Then attack it by setting goals. List out everything it would take to accomplish that dream. Think through every possible step needed to complete the process. Once you’ve done that, you will then have in front of you the perfect to-do list.

Some of you will read this and get fired up and lock down that time on your calendar right away. If that’s you, you will be successful with your implementation. Unfortunately, some of you have taken so many knocks that when you read this you’ll think, “That’s nice, if I had the time.” Or, “That’s nice, for someone else.” As long as that is your thought process, you will stay living the same life, situation and problems that you live in every day. You have to make a choice to dream. You have to allow it to be OK. Now go do it!

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January 13, 2011

Wow, Look What I Did!

By Chris LoCurto
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Goal Setting

Image by angietorres via Flickr

It’s that time of year when people set goals. Well, attempt to set goals. I actually don’t find many people who really know how to set actual goals. Usually what I find are people who sit down, write out all the things they want to accomplish during the next year, then put that piece of paper in a drawer somewhere. Long about November, they pull it out, blow the dust off, and comment on how well they did completing three of the fifteen things they wrote down. This is not goal setting people!

Whether you’re a leader or a team member, to truly learn how to do goal setting, you have to understand that it’s not about the “dream” of doing something, it’s about the breakdown of individual tasks that it takes to accomplish the “dream”. I always use the following example in “Dreams, Visions, and Goal Setting” in EntreLeadership: “If we said that we were going to have dinner tonight at 6:30 PM at a specific restaurant, what would need to happen? First, this guy on stage would have to stop talking, then you would get up from your chair, walk over to the door, open the door, walk out to the bus that should have already been set up to take us, get on the bus, sit down, the driver needs to drive to the restaurant, you get up, walk off the bus, walk to the restaurant, open the door, find your seat, sit down, order, the cook cooks it, and the server brings your food.” WHEW!!

Now, that seems overly simplistic, but the truth is, that’s how you need to break down your goals. When you write them down, and then break them down, you can actually see the steps you need to take to complete them. And doing it to this extreme, allows you to see where you’ve fallen behind, are ahead of schedule, missing pieces of the goal, etc.

In that same lesson we say that for goals to work they need to be five things:

  • Specific – not just a lofty idea, what exactly do you want to do?
  • Measurable – how do you know what success looks like?
  • Have a time limit – when should each individual part be accomplished?
  • Must be yours – If not, it’s just a delegated task.
  • Must be in writing – Otherwise it stays a dream that will be forgotten soon.

So, if you’ve already started your process, hopefully this will help you to revisit if you’re missing some of these elements. If you haven’t started yet, then first: find some time to dream, sit down, take out a piece of paper or use your computer, write down the main ideas of what you want to accomplish, then spend time breaking down exactly what needs to happen to accomplish those goals. Put time limits in place of when each thing should be done. Then AT LEAST once a month go back and see where you are. I prefer no more than every two weeks.

I promise, you will do more for your goals than dusting them off in November to see where you are.

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