Clarity cuts through clutter. Clarity brings results. Everything you do should be with a child-like clarity of thinking and clarity of purpose. We all know the Groucho Marx quote, ‘A child of five would understand this, send somebody to fetch a child of five,‘ but do you consciously aim for clarity in every communication with your clients and team?
Childlike clarity of thinking is an attribute to be found in leaders who know their goals backwards and who have distilled them down into simple, memorable, stages. These leaders have focus. And focus will do more to propel a company into the stratosphere than anything else. Search for the one thing that is working and focus the entire company behind that one thing. Communicate the mission simply and clearly to your team and then get to work.
Would you like to double your sales? Say you have five people now averaging 22 sales per month. You know that it is going to be difficult to double this figure to 44 sales per month, don’t you? Even if you do it one month, sustaining that level of sales in the long-term is going to be nigh on impossible.
But see how simple it really is: instead of doubling the number of sales…
Get another five salespeople and get them performing at the same level as the five you already have and you will double your sales.
Clarity. If you want something enough, find the simplest way to do it.
Now some leaders who read this will begin with their classic rebuttal, ‘Yeah, but…‘ No buts: if you want to become hugely successful you will find a way to achieve what you want to achieve. If you don’t want excuses from your team, begin by not accepting excuses from yourself.
Some leaders operate at dangerously low team levels. Even the most amateur of sporting teams have a reserve bench. Do you? If you have five salespeople now (some leaders with smaller teams are thinking, ‘I wish.’) if you want to sustain a high level of sales you need a bigger team to allow for holidays, slumps, illness or departure of one or a number of your existing team members.
As a great leader you cannot place your future into others’ hands. You have a business because you wanted to control your financial destiny. If you have too small a team you are placing your financial destiny into the hands of the few team members you already have. If you have a larger team you have insurance: individual downtime will have a much smaller effect on your progress toward your financial goals.
Now most leaders balk at hiring because they either don’t know how to do it, or because they aren’t happy with the performance of their present salespeople and can’t see the point in hiring more people like the ones they have now.
That’s another story. Perhaps you need a hiring program. To find out more, please click here.