Valhalla Business Solutions - Business Management Consultants

Sales Management Consulting Specializing In... Sales and service Systems, Managing younger generations, Management protocols Coaching effectiveness

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Delegation

Identify tasks/projects to complete

· What can be delegated

· Choose the right person

· Delegate

Delegation is rarely used as effective as it could be. Often managers are perfectionists, they prefer to take work home or work late. They will override decisions made by their team frequently. Consequently, managers teams struggle when they are absent from the office. Their teams don’t take initiative or accountability for the operations of their department. These managers when absent from the office come back to large piles in their inbox, email, etc.

If you don’t delegate, you are not a good leader. Delegating to team members provides empowerment, development and accountability to the team. Anticipate and be comfortable with mistakes, your team will display much more initiative if they feel they can learn from their mistakes.

How?

· Identify the task to complete

o Analyze your job function. What are you evaluated on? When you write down the things you do daily, weekly and monthly. Which of these things can be done by your subordinates?

o Choose the right person. Contemplate your team’s talents and hard skills. Also consider their interests and career ambitions. What exposure will my team member get? How will this improve their skills?

· Delegate

o Request help. “Chris, I need your expertise on this.”

o Communicate why. “You have the best relationships with our marketing department and design team!”

o Seek acceptance. “Would you be willing to take on the preparation for the sales teams trade show in Denver next month?”

o Describe the details. “Here is what’s involved…”

o Affirm deadlines and standards. “Design, materials and travel arrangements need to be coordinated by the Friday the 22^nd at 11:00 a.m. Please have final complete for me to review on the Wednesday the 20^th at 11am as well.”

o Discuss check in points. “This month let’s start your one on one 10 minutes early to review your progress on this specific project. How does that sound?”

o Acknowledge you are a resource. “What do you think you need from me on this? This is your show, but if you need further guidance don't hesitate to ask and I will direct you the right resource or show you how to complete.”

Labels: calendar management, career, Coaching Teams, effective manager, employees, feedback, Restaurant Management, Sales Coaching, Small Business CEO, Small Business developing your team members

posted by Valhalla Business Solutions at 10:10 AM 0 comments

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Now I am a Manager, What’s My Job?

I had numerous conversations with managers this week, so many struggling with the production of their teams, struggling with pressures from their superiors and so on. There are many common denominators to the adversity manager’s face, but one shadowed the rest this week. A manager so often believes they are brought in for their “Technical Work” strategies. This is not the case. What is “Technical Work?” Technical work would be the day to day work of a plumber or the day to day work of a sales person, realtor, and mechanic and so on.

A plumber installs piping. A sales person makes sales calls. A realtor shows houses. The mechanic changes oil.

How is a manager measured?

· Production of their team

A successful manager understands they are not measured by their great ideas or solutions, but the solutions created and implemented by their team. This statement may confuse many managers, but take a look back at how you are measured.

What does a manager do?

· Creates a learning environment

· Builds a team

· Emotionally engages their employees

· Recognizes the efforts and successes of the technical work being accomplished

· Opens the door to communication

· Welcomes ideas and solutions

· Promotes Self Discovery…

· Customer Service to employees

· Creates frequent communication forums for their teams

If a manager can immediately adopt a strategy of soliciting solutions from their team, then trust and encourage their employees to see it through. The successes will be endless.

Labels: Coaching Teams, development, employees, feedback model, internal customers, management, management expectations, small business, Small Business CEO, Small Business developing your team members

posted by Valhalla Business Solutions at 9:37 AM 0 comments

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Denver Broncos: Dear Coach McDaniel's

As an extremely avid Bronco fan, I found it very important I weighed in on what I witnessed with my team this year!! Countless management mistakes were made, but let’s focus on one.

*Earning the trust of your team

-Recognizing Individual Talents

-One on One communication

Often rookie managers have one idea in mind, "I must prove myself and my knowledge." In this case you (McDaniel’s) being a young coach this common mistake was exaggerated. New managers may have the best tactical ideas on how to perform the tasks at hand, (X's and O's) but lack the people management skills to help deliver their perfect strategy. Human nature is such that people deliver based on how they feel. A team member must be emotionally engaged to deliver.

To build the perfect team, recognizing individual strengths is one of the first tasks at hand! Although you (McDaniel’s) are absolutely correct, "No one person is bigger than the team." You went out of your way not to recognize the strengths of your people. Thus the loss of Cutler and the potential loss of other outstanding talents. Although tactically it may have made sense to rid Cutler, how it was handled was completely inappropriate. Football players or not, people need to feel special and gifted. And more importantly deserve it.

Although McDaniel’s you most likely have a great strategy for the football field. It 100% needs to be coupled with a people management strategy. This is obviously lacking!! "Why the 6-0 start then?" Well Josh, frequently when there is a need for a new leader and one is brought in, a team goes through a honeymoon period! Team members are engaged, motivated to keep their jobs, etc. The honeymoon period typically evaporates after six months, if not sooner. At this point it comes down to strong fundamentals, relationships and sound management practices. Josh over the next couple years you will make mistakes, we all do! However it is how you handle them that makes you a great leader.

McDaniel’s my advice to engage your team is know your people. Their strengths, weaknesses, desires, goals, motivators and so on. And more importantly than anything JOSH!! Confidentiality is a virtue so many managers lack. Build it into your management "system!"

Attached is an article link of one tactical management protocol you could implement into your system to know your people!!!

http://www.valhallabizsolutions.com/resources/Management-One-On-One-Meetings.pdf

Labels: calendar management, Coaching Teams, Denver Broncos, effective manager, employees, management expectations, Small Business CEO, Sports Management

posted by Valhalla Business Solutions at 9:01 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Valhalla's Effective Manager Calendar

Attached is my sample calendar to help any successful manager have the forums to communicate with their teams. I have followed this model with every team I have worked with and had beyond extraordinary results!

Effectivemanagercalendar.doc

Labels: calendar management, economic crisis, effective manager, employees, feedback, feedback model, management, management expectations, Restaurant Management, small business, Small Business CEO

posted by Valhalla Business Solutions at 9:10 AM 1 comments

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Setting Revenue Goals-Basic

Set appropriate revenue goals (net income should be considered)
Establish goals per employee

Set appropriate revenue goals (net income should be considered)

When setting revenue goals you must first look at your revenue for previous year. If you have revenue of one million dollars, this years goal must be larger. A good rule of thumb is to analyze the growth you had between your last two years. If you grew by 10% this should give you an adequate barometer of what might be feasible in the upcoming year, especially if your organization did this by accident. 10% is a great number to start with every year. It means your making a commitment to grow your business at a pace that which will outlive your competition. This does not always guarantee a significant growth in net income, however it speaks volumes about the fiscal health of the business. It also sends a message to investors that growing your business is a priority.
Net income needs to be factored, setting an expense budget is critical. Use last years growth in this category as well. For our organization we always make the gap between revenue growth and expense growth at least 10%. If we have revenue of $1,000,000 and expenses of $500,000 for 2008, our 2009 goals could look like 15% revenue growth and 5% budget growth ($1,150,000 revenue, $525,000 expenses)

Establish goals per employee

Average your expenses per employee. What does each employee cost (salary, health care, retirements, etc.) Set goals appropriately, where can you cut costs, can you add an employee? Adding a resource sometimes can be the fastest way to reach your new revenue goals. However you can run the risk of diluting your work forces effectiveness. This can't be your only strategy.
Break down how much revenue is produced per employee. How much will each revenue producing employee have to produce to make the new goals? Account for added staff. How much revenue will have to be produced per day per employee? Now analyze your most profitable products you offer, which has the highest retention and the greatest opportunity for cross sell.
For example lets take the goal from above ($1,150,000) and pretend its a printing company with 10 sales employees. Their highest profitable product is marketing consulting. The company averages $4000 of revenue for each marketing consulting project and average a cross sell of 3 prints per marketing project. How many marketing projects would each employee have to produce to make the entire revenue goal? (29 projects/year) How many is that a month? (2) Now if you set the cross sell goal of 3.5 what would you average per project? Setting these goals sets your employee to have a foundation to ensure you make your revenue goals.

Labels: employees, management, Restaurant Management, revenue, Sales Coaching, sales process, Small Business CEO

posted by Valhalla Business Solutions at 3:50 PM 0 comments

Monday, February 23, 2009

Corporate Responsibility -- Community

Community

Internal volunteer program
Support for education needs within the community
Charitable Giving
Innovative community outreach

What can this look like in your organization?

An internal volunteer program has to be encouraged and supported by the CEO all the way through each team member. Valhalla for example requires each employee to volunteer eight hours each quarter. Valhalla does not require or put expectations on where or who they can volunteer for, it is the employees responsibility to decide on their own. However Valhalla partners with a number of non profits to make the volunteer opportunities easier for each employee to fulfill. As you can imagine if you have an organization of 100 employees, it translates to 3200 volunteer hours a year. For any organization that is a considerable amount of hours in the community. This type of outreach will be great team building exercises for your team.

Make your volunteer program effective by offering support for education needs within the community. What does this mean for your organization? This is a time to analyze what services you offer. How can these services be of use to help your surrounding communities become more educated. The benefit of this often is a healthier community, better choices for hire and more educated consumers for purchase. For example at Valhalla I spend my volunteer time in high schools educating kids on how to interview well, I also educate them on how I have gotten where I am by hard work and doing the right things for people.

Be innovative in your charitable giving, this does not have to be purely monetary. Often organizations will take time during the year to establish food drives, clothing donations and giving blood. These are simple things to do and can be annual strong holds in your organization. It also can be a great development tool for someone in your organization to demonstrate their leadership skills and further their career.

Lastly innovative community outreach, is another great way for your organization to take the lead in the community. Often an organization has a lot of resources to speer head such projects. Best practices I have seen are youth education programs, conferences educating seniors on preparing for retirement. I have seen lawyers review estates for free, banks educate on how to be fiscally fit and sports teams provide exercise guidance. These are simple things to do the right thing in your community.

Labels: community outreach, corporate charity, corporate responsibility, corporations, education needs, employees, internal volunteer program, management, Small Business CEO

posted by Valhalla Business Solutions at 12:59 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Prior to Hiring an Employee, Hire a Management Consultant

Why?...

Inexpensive investment in comparison to an employee

Employees can cost 30k+
Consultant is significantly less cost
No health care costs
Tax advantages
More monetary return for your investment

Consultants bring vast experience relative to an employee
Consultants are proportionately compensated based on incentive
Sales Management Consultants bring an uncultured perspective
Consultants can bring resources that save an organization a lot of money

Often we encounter companies who refuse to hire a management consultant. One of the most common objection is cost. When in reality the cost is substantially less in comparison to an employee. Employees have training costs, benefit costs, salary costs, resource costs. (i.e., parking, travel, etc.) In our experience we have helped companies grow 40%- 500% year over year. Very rarely will an employee deliver these results. The bulk of a consultant's payment is directly driven based on the growth year over year.

Frequently business owners, high level executives and managers have an emotional objection based on ego. If hiring a consultant is an admission of inadequacy? Fact is the best and most experienced clients we work with have no strife with reaching out and resourcing the most effective ways to make their team successful. That was what they were hired to do. That's why they started their own business. A manager is hired to drive revenue, help the company grow and advance development of the organization for the future. It is extremely difficult to do on his/her own. Especially if culture change is in order.

Other innovative organizations we've worked with have well-rounded process already. They lead their team, their staffs are well coached and they are delivering double digit growth nearly every year. In these situations we are hired to evaluate the one person who doesn't receive much coaching, the CEO/Owner! This is done for the betterment of the organization. If the CEO/Owner is not being evaluated regularly than their growth becomes stagnant and as a result the company and his/her employees suffer.

Lastly a consultant brings a fresh look to a business. An outside perspective that can diagnose issues much more effectively. Consultants observe hundreds and sometimes thousands of companies in action. Sales Management Consultants will use those insights to help improve your company.

Labels: employees, hiring, human resources, interviews, management, Small Business CEO

posted by Valhalla Business Solutions at 7:48 PM 3 comments