My friend and colleague, Phil Symchych, President of Symco & Co., recently gave these words of advice on finding a great accountant in his weekly business blog, Business Success for Life.

A great accountant:

1. Provides you with proactive business advice, not just historical financial statements and compliance tax returns.

2. Makes introductions to his or her professional network, such as a banker, lawyer, insurance agent, and others who can help you with your business.

3. Gives you a structured accounting system that shows your gross profit by product and service line.

4. Is highly accessible to take your calls, responds quickly, and isn’t overwhelmed with a high volume of low value personal tax returns.

5. Educates you on the importance of cash flow, profit, and building equity.

6. Explains how to use your financial statements as a monthly management tool.

7. Doesn’t minimize your taxes at the expense of building equity to fund future growth, because increasing profit is more important than decreasing taxes.

8. Asks you questions instead of just answering your questions.

9. Shares ideas from other industries and businesses.

10. Doesn’t charge by the hour or the minute.

11. Doesn’t have files piled all over the floor.

12. Focuses on maximizing your profit and after-tax cash flow.

13. Practices what he or she preaches, is happy, treats staff members well, and has a thriving business.

14. Has happy, profitable clients who are growing their businesses, paying their taxes, and building wealth.

Here’s Phil’s bottom line: a great accountant will work proactively to structure your business for long-term success. Like any important relationship, however, this success is based on two-way communication and mutual respect.

The same is true in the world of business, but with a twist. Today’s savvy buyers are not attracted to bigger ads or bigger billboards or bigger claims of bigger savings. They see through that self-serving bravado. Today’s buyers are looking for value, pure, unadulterated value, and will reward the companies that provide it with a lifetime of loyalty. Just look at Apple, Starbucks, or Ikea as stellar examples of this phenomenon.

How can you provide value? Stop running frantically around in your business for just a few minutes and think about your customer, your core customer. The person at the center your marketing target. Got them in mind? Now ask yourself, what are their pressing needs? What do they really want from you?

My core customers are busy entrepreneurs, and what they want is to be able to build a thriving, successful business and still have a life. Helping them do that is my life’s work, and the value I bring to the marketplace.

People who work with me have answered the core customer question in the following ways:

• A home that they truly love and love coming home to after a busy day
• A sense of security and peace about their financial future
• A web site they are proud of that powerfully reflects their business identity
• A physical body that’s healthy and strong

Understanding your customer is critical because it tells you how to create value that will attract them to you. Start meeting these pressing needs, simply, with no strings attached, for free. That’s why I write this blog and send it out by email. I have dozens of worksheets and whitepapers on my web site and host the occasional workshop, all for free.

My clients have formed books clubs on topics related to their services and conducted hands-on training classes featuring their products. Others offer an up-front assessment, a personality profile, and even an energy audit. All of these things work like gravity. First, a potential customer comes into closer proximity to you and, then, having experienced real, authentic value, is pulled into your world.

What we must do, then, is rethink marketing at every level and reengineer it around value. We must drop our silly slogans and delete our puffed-up promises, and replace the noise with generous help that meets real needs. This is the way forward in our brave new marketing world

Why? Because the title is all wrong.

A title is the 6-9 word headline that summarizes a particular piece in a way that grabs the attention of even the most casual prospect. Why 6-9 words? Because all you’ve got is five seconds to capture someone’s attention when you’re marketing. Once that is achieved, however, people will actually consume your content, rather than ignore it, and be influenced to take action.

Here are five sure-fire ways to title to your content with eleven attention-getting headlines for this one blog post.

1. Give a command

Stop Using Bad Titles for Good Content

Get Your Newsletter Read Every Time You Send It

2. Ask a question

Why is No One Reading Your Blog? (Or, Why is No One Watching Your Video?)

What’s the Five-Second Rule? Are You Following It?

3. Make a provocative statement

Nobody Gives a Damn Until You’ve Got Their Attention

Writing a Blog Is an Utter Waste of Time Unless You Do This One Thing

Yes, I know the last title is more than nine words long, but that’s a rule you can break sometimes.

4. Turn a phrase

If You Write It, They Won’t Come (Or, again, If You Film It, They Won’t Watch)

Bad Blog Titles and the Writers Who Love Them

What’s in a Name? Everything!

5. Create a list

5 Sure-Fire Ways to Title Your Content

11 Attention-Getting Headlines

Content marketing has become more important than ever to build credibility and influence buying decisions. But none of your content will be consumed unless you have a headline hook to get people’s attention. Give as much time and energy to the title of your work as to the work itself. It’s that important.

1. Define Roles

As simple as it sounds, role definition is often ignored in organizations. Sure, you may give people a job title that’s placed on their desk and printed on their business card, but that’s not enough. Your people need to know how their role relates to the other roles within the organization and what lines, direct and dotted, impact communication. And, most importantly, these roles need to be reinforced in the actual day-to-day interactions in the company.

2. Outline Responsibilities

Again, we think we’ve done this when we write a job description for the people we hire. But most job descriptions after being written don’t ever see the light of day. I prefer a different approach, a simple one sentence summary of each of the 4-6 core responsibilities for every job. This simplicity results in crystal clear clarity about what’s being asked of each person in your company, and can actually be remembered (Gasp!) by the people who need to do them.

3. Measure Results

With roles and responsibilities in place, the next execution essential is simply this: results. Every person in your company must know exactly what they are accountable for producing. Simply stated, what gets measured gets done. So measure outcomes, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Create a scorecard for each job, keep track of progress, and celebrate success.

4. Document Routines

For every job role there are certain tasks that are done over and over again. And that’s a problem, because the details of routine tasks can easily be overlooked. For example, there’s a step by step process I need to go through in writing and posting this blog so that it goes up on my web site and is distributed by email at exactly the day and time I want it to. It’s not a complex task, but it has specific things that must be done in a precise order. I don’t try to keep all this stuff in my head, because if I forget one thing, it messes up my blog. So I have a list with about a dozen times on it and I check off each item on the list as I post a blog article. You must do the same for the routine tasks in your organization so the details get done without fail.

5. Review Regularly

Finally, nothing in business is static. What works today may not work tomorrow. In fact, it probably won’t. The marketplace is a dynamic, constantly changing entity, which is why all the previous four items must be reviewed regularly and constantly updated and improved. No less than once a year comb through the roles, responsibilities, results, and routines in your company. The pay off will be consistent execution and robust revenue growth.

I downloaded Evernote a year or so ago, but hadn’t used it very much. Then a colleague of mine showed me how he uses it, and the lights went on. Since that time I’ve become a raving Evernote fan. Here are 13 ways I use this app:

1. Blog ideas

As you know, I write a weekly business blog for busy entrepreneurs, and I’m always on the prowl for new ideas and provocative content. When I find something that arouses my imagination, I save it to Evernote via the handy clip tool. Re-reading a clipped note never fails to spark a new way of looking at the world.

2. Books to read

What goes for my blog, goes for the books I want to buy. A quick picture from my iPhone or a clip from a web site, and it’s saved for future reference. Evernote’s annotation capability even allows me to quickly summarize and review the book right in a clipped note, perfect fodder for a top ten book list blog post.

3. Receipts

Speaking of buying things, whenever I purchase something online, I never know what to do with the receipt. I don’t want it cluttering up my email inbox, but I don’t want to lose it either. This is especially true when I’m told to print a receipt and keep it in a safe place when I’m nowhere near a printer. With every Evernote account comes a personal Evernote email address to which you can forward your receipts and print if you want (but why bother?). Don’t worry, Evernote’s security encryption is the best in the business, so your secrets are safe.

4. Travel itineraries

For those of us who travel for business, keeping track of all the details related to a trip can be a nightmare. Not with Evernote. I create a notebook for each trip and collect my airplane tickets, boarding passes, hotel and car reservations, schedules, maps, and contact information in it. And because Evernote syncs with all my devices, I have this critical information at my fingertips whenever I travel.

5. Articles

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been reading something riveting, but couldn’t finish the article or wanted to refer to it later. Just send it to Evernote. This works really well with my favorite online article app, Zite. Upgrade from the free version of Evernote for $5 a month and these articles (and everything else on Evernote) will be available for offline viewing as well so you can even read them while you’re in the air on your next business trip.

6. The view from 30,000 feet

I’m a big believer in having all the details of one’s day in a central location, and there are plenty of terrific task management systems available to do that. My absolute favorite is Things by Cultured Code. All of these systems, however, have one major flaw: the big picture. What’s the point of greater efficiency if you’re headed in the wrong direction? Enter Evernote. In it I’ve placed my long term vision, annual goals, and quarterly milestones, reviewing them regularly before making weekly plans. I can even place goal deadline dates from Evernote into iCal and check-off items in Evernote as progress is made achieving them.

7. Client files

A great feature of Evernote is its ability to share notes and notebooks with other Evernote users. I get my coaching and consulting clients set up in the system, and, instead of sending them email with attachments that get lost, I place documents in our shared Evernote notebook. Not only does this give them quick, easy access to these tools, but they also get an historical record of our work together. For me it eliminates the frantic email request late at night for the worksheet a client has to have immediately but can’t find anywhere.

8. Going social

Not only can you save things on Evernote, you can send them as well. Providing great content to your community is critical for building your brand. Evernote allows you to quickly post a note on Facebook or tweet it on Twitter. There’s also a outbound email feature to send the less social media savvy your latest discoveries.

9. Checklists

Evernote is great for creating a series of tasks that you check off as you do them. I use this feature to remember the things I need to pack for a business trip or for keeping track of the details of hosting a marketing breakfast. It also works for shopping lists (see below), all of these syncing well with both my iPad and my iPhone so they’re readily available.

10. Key word search

Perhaps one of the most useful features of Evernote is its ability to search all of the content you’ve placed in it, even your pictures, PDF’s, and handwritten notes. Just enter a key word or phrase in the search bar and you’ll get the notes with that word or phrase in it highlighted in yellow. If you need to perform the same search over and over again, just save that search for future reference.

11. Meeting management

Have you ever written something down in an important meeting and later couldn’t read what you wrote or couldn’t remember where you put what you wrote (or both?). Evernote is a great place to jot down important points from a meeting. And, unlike handwritten notes, you can read them later and search for key words in them as outlined above. I also use Evernote to store meeting minutes and agendas for the boards I serve on, taking my notes from these meetings in Evernote and bringing only my iPad to the meeting instead of a bulky binder or tattered folder.

12. Epicurean delights

Foodies love Evernote because you can take pictures of your latest feast, savor it later electronically (or brag about it to jealous friends), and pin it on a Google map. You can also create pictorial shopping lists and write colorful restaurant reviews, pinning them, too, on a Google map. Or you can clip a recipe that arouses your imagination, shop for its ingredients, make it, take a picture of what you made, include your personal adjustments to the recipe, and share it with other foodies, all through Evernote. There’s even a special add-on for Evernote called Evernote Food.

13. Vacation planning

I’m the planner in our family. So when it comes to vacation, there’s always some crazy trip I’m trying to get my wife to go on with me. I have a vacation notebook in Evernote where I save hotel and sightseeing options, complete with a budget created using an Evernote table. When the moment is right, often involving a nice bottle of wine, I’ll pull out my iPad and make the case for our next trip. And then there’s the plans for the backyard fire pit I want to build that I’ve saved in Evernote, but, alas, that might involve two bottles of wine.

And you would be right. You can’t tell from merely weighing someone how healthy they are. You would want to know how tall they are and what their pulse is at resting. You would ask about their blood pressure, how often they exercise, and, perhaps, their family’s medical history. These are called vital signs. They don’t tell us everything about a person’s physical condition, but they tell us enough.

If there’s an irregularity with any vital sign, a doctor can dig deeper with more extensive tests. Vital signs are easily attained. It’s not hard to measure one’s height and weight, to take one’s blood pressure and determine pulse at resting.

Every business must know its vital signs and track them on a regular basis. Too many businesses step on a scale to see if they’re healthy, that scale being gross revenue, number of employees, amount of store locations, or whatever. But, as in the world of physical health, that’s not enough. Other essentials like net profit per project, productivity per employee, and the forecast of future sales must also be tracked.

Numbers are the language of business. Apart from knowing your numbers, you really aren’t in business, you’re gambling. Every business has a set of numbers unique to itself that measure the health of that business. Select a handful—that is, three, at the most, five—for your business that are easy to understand, quick to calculate, and predictive of success. Create a dashboard and keep track of them on a weekly basis.

Oh, by the way, I weigh 225 pounds. How much do you weigh?

Person A, completely oblivious to what he/she has done, now has four people mad at him/her. So he/she tells three coworkers about the terrible things that Person B (and friends) are doing to him/her, and these four people are now mad at the other four people.

Meanwhile, instead of important business getting done at your company, internal resources and precious time are wasted on employees being upset at each other. And that’s just one sour relationship. Multiply this by the series of offenses that can occur in a normal business week, and you’ll find enormous amounts of emotional energy squandered on interpersonal conflict.

What’s the solution?

What happens when Person B talks directly to Person A when he/she is offended? And when Person A listens and responds positively to the concerns of Person B? What happens to Person B’s three coworkers? They disappear from the conflict and go back to work. What about Person A’s coworkers? They too disappear from the conflict and also go back to work.

Mastering the principles of conflict resolution, then, is critically important for organizational effectiveness. Teach them, model them, and reinforce them at every level of your business, and your business will be strong and robust.

The best resource I have found for this is a book entitled, Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking when Stakes Are High. Here’s what they have to say on the subject, “Our research has shown that strong relationships, careers, organizations, and communities all draw from the same source of power—the ability to talk openly about high-stakes, emotional, controversial topics. So here’s the audacious claim. Master your crucial conversations and you’ll kick-start your career, strengthen your relationships, and improve your health. As you and others master high-stakes discussions, you’ll also vitalize your organization and community.”

In other words, control conflict or it will control you.

The last time an unassisted triple play occurred was on August 23, 2009. Philadelphia Phillies second baseman Eric Bruntlett caught a hard-hit line drive, quickly touched second base, and tagged the runner that was sprinting from first. It took mere seconds to complete and ended the game in stunning fashion. The last time an unassisted triple play ended a major league baseball game was 82 years earlier in 1927.

In business, as in baseball, individual feats like this are truly rare. Yes, they happen, but they are not the norm. With both the unassisted triple play and the perfect game, they require generous amounts of luck to accomplish and other teammates on the field contributing to the cause.

In spite of what the latest business headlines may lead us to believe, to win on a consistent basis takes more that one star athlete. And it takes more that one amazing play. It takes a team, working together, committed to excellence, and giving their all every day. For in business as in baseball–a season with 162 games–a stroke of luck is gone the next day, replaced by the reality of having to succeed in a challenging marketplace against word-class competition.

No one, no matter how talented (or lucky), can do that on their own. Not even you. It’s time to build your team.

Entropy affects the business world as well, especially entrepreneurs. The first flash of a creative idea or the start of a new business brings a surge of energy and excitement, but that same idea and that same business over time can become a prison of one’s own making. This is a phenomenon I call entrepreneurial entropy. Here are its danger signs:

1. Physical Exhaustion

Sure starting and running a business is hard work. But it’s fulfilling work. And when you place your head on the pillow at night; you may be bone-tired, but your sleep is sound. When entropy sets in, however, your sleep is not sound at all. You toss and turn, wake up in a cold sweat and ache all over.

Having not slept at night, all you feel like doing during in the day is going back to bed. When you finally do, however, you repeat the process all over again. This is a sign of physical exhaustion. The irony of being over-tired is that you can’t rest at all. The adrenaline you’re using to get through the day keeps your body from experiencing rest and renewal at night.

2. Emotional Anxiety

Winston Churchill once said, “Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” He was right. Physical exhaustion erodes our emotional equilibrium and a sense of nervousness, even dread, seeps into our soul. These feelings may be completely illogical, but they’re present just the same, gnawing away at us. We find it hard to sit still, to enjoy a nice meal, to watch a movie, or–God forbid–be alone with ourselves in silence. Due to this lack of emotional equilibrium, we’re impatient with most everyone, including ourselves, and spin pressing issues into a whirlpool of subjectivity.

3. Relational Distance

Physical exhaustion and emotional anxiety begins to take its toll on our interpersonal relationships. We alienate the very people who can help us with entrepreneurial entropy. We avoid colleagues and coworkers and snap at family and friends. So they avoid us as well and snap back. Like saving fish from drowning, these actions achieve the exact opposite of what’s needed. For people of faith, relational distance extends even to our view of God, as feelings of spiritual abandonment begin to overwhelm us.

Okay, that’s the bad news. What’s the good news?

Entrepreneurial entropy is reversible. Here’s what works for me. When I exercise, and exercise intensely on a consistent basis, two things happen. First, I’m actually tired when I go to bed and sleep well. More importantly, however, exercise gives me perspective. The emotional anxieties of being in business today melt away in the sweat and toil of the last mile of a five mile run. Without fail.

Additionally, when I take time to be with the people in my life I love the most, it, too, provides perspective. Play with your children, go on a date night with your spouse, have beers with friends, serve meals at a homeless shelter. If you haven’t done these things in a while, it will feel strange and awkward. Do them anyway and do them regularly.

Turn off your phone and tune into relationship. Life is not meant to be lived alone. We are our best selves living in community, and a loving, supporting community reverses the impact of entrepreneurial entropy.

How did they do it?

One word: culture. Quite simply this company is a great place to work. Not just the so-called “soft skills” of camaraderie and teamwork, but also the “hard skills” of market penetration and profit sharing. Not to mention a reputation of unquestioned integrity.

If you’re familiar with my work in any way, you would know that I believe one of the most important investments you can make in your company is an investment in changing its culture. The most brilliant strategy and the most inspired plan is dead on arrival if it’s delivered to a company whose culture is broken. Culture is the context that determines the quality of all actions within an organization. Culture trumps everything.

And here’s another reason why culture is so important. Hiring. When a company has a culture that’s vibrant and alive; when the business is truly a great place to work, great people want to work there. Culture becomes a magnet for talent. Talent that will come readily and willingly, and often at a lower price.

If you’re having a hard time hiring good people, or keeping them once your hire them, look in the mirror. The answer lies within the kind of culture you’re creating at your company. It’s as simple, and as challenging, as that.

For these daring souls I offer the following advice. Build your business from the inside out. Pay just as much attention to personal character as you would to market conditions. In doing so you’ll build your business on a solid foundation and ensure that this business will not destroy your soul in the process.

Here, then, are three character qualities, or virtues as I have called them, to attend to as an entrepreneur.

1. The Entrepreneurial Ethic: Integrity

Building one’s business from the inside out begins here: basic human decency and fundamental honesty. Integrity has been defined as what you do when no one is watching. And, for most entrepreneurs, no one is watching. So do what’s right for its own sake. When you don’t, for whatever reason, take responsibility for it, apologize, and make things right. For integrity is not perfection–that state is unattainable this side of eternity–it’s the commitment to act in another’s best interests. Always.

2. The Entrepreneurial Mind: Wisdom

Nothing is more challenging than the ever changing demands of the marketplace. Meeting these demands well requires immense amounts of wisdom. I define this virtue as the intersection of knowledge and insight. Knowledge provides me with the information I need to address the issues at hand, and insight provides me with the best ways to apply that information to the issues at hand. One without the other is useless. A successful entrepreneur, then, constantly seeks to expand their mind in both theoretical and practical domains. Embracing both makes one wise.

3. The Entrepreneurial Heart: Courage

This third virtue has to do with action. Action, however, in the face of opposition and in the headwinds of adversity. The entrepreneurial path is not an easy one, for it always seems to lead uphill. Or, when it leads downhill, it’s usually into dark valley. And that’s where courage comes in. The rock solid belief in oneself and the unwavering determination to persevere no matter the obstacles in the way. Courage is not the lack of fear, as integrity is not the lack of making mistakes, it’s the acknowledgment of one’s fears and moving forward anyway.

I’m sure there are more virtues that could be added to this list. But here are three that should be at the very top. Without strength of character at the center of one’s business efforts, those efforts will ultimately collapse like a sinkhole in Florida. And that’s not very entrepreneurial.

I’ve turned this phrase over and over in my head since hearing it and suggest the following ways we can lose to win in business and in life:

1. Time

Yes, we all live crazy-busy lives with an endlessly long list of things to do. Losing to win with our time involves pruning that list of everything that doesn’t contribute to bearing fruit. This means making as much use of a “stop doing” list as a “to do” list and investing our limited resources in only those things that are our highest priorities, both personally and professionally.

2. Media

Along with our endlessly long task list, we have an equally expanding list of media options: from TV, to video, to books, to magazines, to apps, to email, to text, to Facebook, to Twitter, to Yelp, to whatever the next big thing will be. And all of this stuff is great, except. Except when we treat them like an all-you-can-eat buffet and ingest every item in aisle. Losing to win means going on a media diet and consuming those few alternatives that allow us to stay informed, eliminating the rest from our lives.

3. Customers

A common problem I address with the business leaders I coach is their trying to be all things to all people. These well-intentioned entrepreneurs do one thing for one kind of customer one day and an entirely different thing for an entirely different kind of customer the next. This inch-deep, mile-wide approach to the marketplace never works. Losing to win here means finding your focus (inch-wide, mile-deep) by knowing exactly who your core customer is and exactly how to meet their needs with the depth and intensity that builds a lifelong stream of business.

4. Pride

There’s a short proverb that’s repeated in the Christian scriptures, “God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Losing to win spiritually means recognizing him as the author and sustainer of human life. Humility lives with the constant awareness that someone greater and wiser than oneself is at the center of the universe. Simply stated, humility understands its place in the world. From that understanding, then, flows acts of love, service, and generosity.

There’s something I’d like to see in someone running for president from either party. Wouldn’t you?

We face our own walls personally and professionally. A sales goal we never seem to be able to break. A product that has a seemingly insurmountable flaw. A relationship that has reached an impasse. And the same choice faces us: break through the wall or have the wall break us.

Here’s how to do the former and not the latter.

First, become utterly convinced that the accomplishment on the other side of the wall is worth the work. Embrace the vision of finishing the race and pursue that vision with abandon. Second, keep moving forward. When that inner voice screams at you to quit, take the next step anyway. Then take the next step. And the next.

It’s the combination of these two things, a powerful vision for the future and consistent progress in the present, that breaks through the wall. The one keeping your eyes on the horizon and the other keeping your feet moving no matter the obstacles in your way. This makes persistence one of the most prized possessions you can have in business (and in life), fueled by passion and forged in adversity.

Human beings at their core seek to extract meaning from the things that happen to them. We are sapient creatures and do this instinctively. When an event takes place in our life, we try to understand why it happened and explain its existence in some way.

When we do this with a belief system that sees adversity as a negative development, we slide into discouragement and despair. The opposite brings hope and opportunity. This is the fundamental difference between optimism and pessimism. Not the denial that bad things happen, but the rock solid belief that even when bad things happen, good things can come from them and that every problem has a solution.

And this is the fundamental difference between moving on in business in the face of opposition and giving up. What we believe about it determines how we act, and, ultimately, how we feel. In this way, adversity doesn’t define us but our response to it. Overcoming obstacles, then, begins between our ears with an inner conviction that no matter what we face, a better future awaits us. Positive action and new opportunity flow from that central belief, and so does a successful business.

Super Bowl Blunder One: The Big Splash

Even though a 30-second commercial in this year’s Super Bowl broadcast cost $3.5 million–an obscene amount of money–we cling to the myth that successful marketing is about making a big splash. Those of us who can’t afford $3.5 million, try to make our own big splash by buying a full page ad in the local newspaper or by sponsoring a big event.

Here’s the truth: the big splash doesn’t work.

Why? Because people forget even the biggest of splashes and move on with their lives. Remember any of last year’s Super Bowl commercials? I didn’t think so. Repetition is the key to marketing success. Especially today in the crazy-busy world in which we live, marketing that works takes place over time with an ongoing series of personal connections. Instead of making a big splash, today’s successful marketers are building real relationships with real people.

Super Bowl Blunder Two: The Power of Persuasion

For years marketing and sales has been about persuasion. Marketers have tried to be as powerful as possible, presenting their point of view in bold, even brazen tones. With the rise of the internet and social media, a seismic shift has taken place from the power of persuasion to the power of conversation.

People don’t want to to be shouted at any more with gotta-get-it-now deals and lower-than-low discount pricing. They want to be talked to. And they just don’t want to talk to you. They want to talk to your customers about you in a open and honest way. So create a forum for people to freely share their opinions and don’t scrub your bad reviews. The public is smart enough to know when someone’s begin a crank; but if you remove the crank’s posts, you look deceptive.

Super Bowl Blunder Three: Selling Too Soon

And then there’s the mistake of selling too soon. A, B, C: Always Be Closing is just a pile of foolish nonsense. People don’t like being closed, they like buying and want to do it on their own terms. Which means we can actually teach our prospects to say no to us by pushing hard to close. We push too hard to close, of course, when we spend a lot of money making a big splash (and want to get that money back in sales) and ply the old-school media powers of persuasion.

When we take our time to build relationships and have authentic conversations, trust emerges. From that basis of trust, agreements are reached that benefit both the buyer and the seller. Agreements that result in increased sales with decreased cost of client acquisition. That’s a recipe for success in marketing, and in business, today.

It’s a common misconception that the trajectory of goal fulfillment travels in a straight line. People are actually surprised when the cause they believe in so deeply and the targets they thought through so keenly meet repeated frustration and delay. But that’s not the way goals work.

Here’s the truth about goal fulfillment: it doesn’t really happen on the mountaintop, but in the valley. It doesn’t take place in the light, but in the darkness. It’s forged in adversity. To fulfill any worthwhile, meaningful goal one must possess a drive and determination to overcome obstacles in the way.

In short, you must have grit.

Not the grit of a gunslinger that the young Mattie Ross found in an aging “Rooster” Cogburn in the recent Coen brothers’ re-make, True Grit. But the grit that researcher Dr. Angela Duckworth defines as “perseverance and passion for long-term goals.” According to her research, this kind of grit outperforms both talent and intelligence in activities as diverse as graduating from military school and competing in the National Spelling Bee.

So here’s a series of questions for you, an eight-point gut-check for grit. Honesty answer each:

1. Do you seek out greater and greater challenges, always pressing the edges of the envelope?

2. Do you welcome adversity as a way to make you stronger? Do you “embrace the beast” as ultra-marathoner Lisa Smith-Batchen would put it?

3. Do you declare your goals to family and friends, colleagues and coworkers, creating public accountability for your actions?

4. Do you maintain internal emotional equilibrium in spite of the external circumstances of your life?

5. Do you look within for the solutions to pressing problems, refusing to blame those problems on others?

6. Do you keep yourself from always starting new things, changing goals before you’ve had a chance to see them through?

7. Do you remind yourself of the meaningful cause, the deeper purpose that fuels the passion for each goal you’re pursuing?

8. Do you celebrate, and celebrate well, when a challenging goal has been fulfilled?

Every question in this list is important, and every question should have an affirmative answer. Work on the no’s until they become yeses. It’s then that grit, true grit, will take root in your soul and the goals you’ve set for this year will actually get done.

We make them matter most by doing this: Instead of asking ourselves what kind of year we want, we first ask ourselves what kind of life we want. Our days must be an extension of our drive to achieve what matters most.

The problem we have as human beings is that we assume because we are so busy that we are getting things done. That would be like assuming that if we are driving a car at 100 miles per hour that we are headed in the right direction. Not a very safe assumption. Never confuse activity with accomplishment.

“The consequence of living our lives at warp speed,” write John Loehr and Tony Schwartz in The Power of Full Engagement, “is that we rarely take time to reflect on what we value most deeply or to keep these priorities front and center. Most of us spend more time reacting to immediate crises and responding to the expectations of others than we do making considered choices guided by a clear sense of what matters most.”

Take the time to complete this exercise before the week is up. Write a one sentence answer to each of the following questions:

1. What kind of person do you want to be? How are you staying healthy and strong mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually?
2. What kind of relationships do you want to have? How are you investing in the lives of those whom you love the most?
3. What kind of work do you want to do? What’s the best use of the gifts and abilities that God has given you?
4. How are you giving back? What causes are you supporting with your time, talent, and treasure?

This is how you can measure this year differently.

But let me ask you, why do airlines tell passengers traveling with children to put their oxygen mask on first in the event of an emergency? Because they want parents in a crisis to be supremely selfish? No. They do it because if a parent gets the oxygen they need to breathe, they’ll be able to ensure the same for the child traveling with them. In this way, their oxygen is top priority.

And so is your oxygen. If you don’t attend to the very important task of being healthy physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, you’ll have nothing to give to those who are traveling with you: from colleagues to coworkers, family to friends.

This is not to say, of course, that you are your only priority. That would be like putting an oxygen mask on yourself and not the child traveling with you. Not only is that selfish, it’s criminal. Our own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health, then, is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. The end being to care for the other priorities of our life, both personally and professionally.

So let me ask you these questions:

• Are you taking care of your body, eating right, exercising regularly, and sleeping well?
• Are you taking care of you mind, learning new things, keeping it sharp and alert?
• Are you maintaining emotional equilibrium, leaving enough margin in your days to rest and relax?
• Are you attending to the deeper things in life, honestly seeking God in faith?

If you’re lax in any of these areas, not only will you pay a personal price, those traveling with you will pay a price as well, because, ultimately, you’ll have nothing to give them. You can’t pump water from an empty well. And if your well is empty, or nearly empty, it’s time to take care of a top priority: yourself. “Watch over your heart with all diligence,” the ancient proverb advises, “for from it flow the springs of life.”

So I’m on the alert. Anyone who can give me useful information on how to successfully build my consulting practice, to turn my house into the home of my dreams without having to move, and to get in shape without mortally wounding myself has my attention. My undivided attention.

Why?

Because they’re addressing the pressing needs of the tribes I belong to. They’re talking to me about the things I care about most deeply right now. And the more they do that well, the more I’ll follow them, trust them, spend money with them, and recommend my friends do the same.

This is the key to marketing today in the fragmented media world in which we live: narrowcasting versus broadcasting. Before there were hundreds of television stations, before there was satellite and internet radio, and before newspapers were killed by the web and the Yellow Pages by Google, all a person had to do to get new business was place an ad. The bigger the ad or the longer the run (or both), the more business you got. Those days are long gone. Gone, too, are the days of building a web site or starting a blog and having customers flock to you. Welcome to the post-web world.

To market effectively today you must first find your focus. You must know exactly who want to reach, you must know what tribe they belong to. Then you must know exactly what’s going on in that tribe. You must be able to answer this question with absolute clarity, “What does your tribe care about most deeply?” And finally, you must repeatedly address the things your tribe cares about most deeply, building a relationship where they begin to know, then like, then trust you.

To thine own tribe be true means this: consistently talk to your community in a way that meets their pressing needs, and your community will follow you anywhere. And that includes buying your products and services and recommending others do the same.

1. The Perils of Jumping to Confusions

2. Got Grit? True Grit?

3. Value, Added Value, and Unexpected Value

4. All Tasks are NOT Created Equal

5. 7 Ways I use my iPad for Business

As a special gift, I’ve put my top 10 blog posts of 2011 in a document for you to download for free. Here is it: Best of Bill’s Blog 2011.

Merry Christmas!

But there’s a price to be paid for this urgency: moment by moment adrenaline spikes that leave us in a state of perpetual emergency. The problem with adrenaline, a chemical produced involuntarily in the human body, is that it’s not intended for daily use. It should be reserved for actual emergencies. Under the influence of adrenaline blood rushes from our brains to our bodies. Our heart beats faster, our blood pressure rises, our muscles tense in the face of a perceived threat. A very real physiological alarm system is set off. But no alarm should ring all day, that’s just exhausting.

The second problem with adrenaline is that it’s addictive. The constant state of urgency it creates becomes a way of life we can’t get enough of. We crave the rush of excitement it brings as much as the alcoholic craves his next drink, the junkie his next hit. That’s why we feel the irresistible urge to check our email on vacation. This addiction results in emotional and physical burn out. We’re running on rocket fuel, but we’re designed for regular unleaded. The occasional emergency is fine, but the state of crisis most of us live in, not only makes us less effective, it also makes us profoundly unhealthy.

Here’s the cost of continuous partial attention to your business. No one does their best thinking in a crisis. We think we do, but that’s just our adrenaline talking. Remember, under the influence of adrenaline, blood rushes from our brain not to it. Constant urgency keeps us from giving full, concentrated attention to our work. And our work suffers.

I regularly hear from my executive coaching clients that their most productive work times are in the evening at home before they go to bed or on the weekend. Why? Because all their distractions are turned off (or at least minimized). But who wants to live that way? Do you really want to work an 8-10 hour day and then do your real work after hours and on Saturday and Sunday?

Not that I want to live off the grid. I love all things digital. It’s just that technology must serve us, not the other way around. We must learn, as the ancient proverb advises, how to slow down to move faster. As you enter a new year, make that proverb your mantra. Your work, your family, and your body will thank you.

Building community requires two key dynamics working in concert together. The first is a commitment to a common cause. The root of the word community refers to people sharing resources in common with each other. Not just physical resources, however, but spiritual and emotional: shared mission and shared ideals. This is what creates community.

Community is also about relationship. Healthy communities are not only committed to a common cause, but are committed to each other. They care for each other and treat each other with dignity and respect. Without this dynamic, a community implodes. Businesses do this and political movements, sports teams and religious institutions. The relational foundation doesn’t exist to bear the weight of the movement, and it collapses on itself.

An opposite phenomenon occurs, however, when a group of people is committed to each other but not to a common cause. The organization becomes ingrown, self-serving, and hopelessly insulated to the realities of the marketplace. One of the worst examples I’ve experienced of this was when my wife and I went out to a local pizzeria for dinner, and the large screen television was angled away from the dining area so that the employees could watch Dancing with the Stars, customers be damned. We didn’t go back.

To unleash the power of community in your business, get everyone on the same page when in comes to the values you uphold and the vision you pursue. Take the time to build these in a collaborative way so that everyone owns their measurable outcomes. Then treat your employees at every level of the organization with dignity and respect. Believe in your people and celebrate their achievements–large and small, personal and professional–and they’ll give you 100% effort 100% of the time. And that, too, impacts the bottom line. Big time.

Here were his concluding words of advice:

1.  Be prepared. The current financial downturn is likely to last for the next two years, failing to prepare for it is truly preparing to fail.

2.  Prepare for the future by creating a strategic business plan. Businesses with a strategic plan have a rudder to navigate through the rough waters ahead, instead of being blown back and forth by the wind and the rain.

3.  What a slow economy means, however, is that we will have two more years of low interest rates. Use low interest rate money to advance your strategic business plan. Today’s low fixed rates are a great tool you can use to invest in your company’s long-term growth.

4.  Improve business efficiencies. Many companies have discovered in the last few years that they can do much more than they ever thought possible with less. You probably can too. In fact, you must because for the next few years the cost of capital and operating expenses is only going to rise and revenue growth will still be slow.

5.  Plan for even more consolidation in your industry as bigger companies continue to buy smaller companies. This means you must sharpen the focus of your business to maintain its competitive edge. In other words, know what drives your core franchise value.

6.  Get your financial house in order: clean up your balance sheet, reduce your long term debt, reduce your fixed expenses, converting as much of them as possible into variable expenses. 

7.  Know exactly what it costs to deliver your products and services. If you are doing business at a loss, or nearly so, you can’t make it up on volume. Ever.

8.  Focus on your most profitable customer relationships. Unless you are a charity, it makes no sense to continue serving clients who drain you of time, money, and energy. Know who your ideal clients are and serve them to the greatest degree.

True vision is shared vision. Yes, it may begin with you, but it must also involve your people so that everyone fully owns it. It’s like two overlapping circles:

The first circle is what excites you about your work. It’s your passion, your  motivation, your cause. The second circle is what excites your employees about their work. Their passion, their motivation, their cause. What both of you share, the overlap, is the shared vision for your company and high-octane fuel for the future.

Your vision alone may drive people forward, but it won’t truly engage them or keep them motivated over the long haul. After all, it’s your vision not theirs. Their vision alone may create engagement, but democratizes the process so that the plan has no real edge to it. A camel, a wise soul once quipped, is a horse designed by a committee.

True vision is a synergy between leaders and their people, found in the shared ownership of a dream for a better future. It’s forged through the process of robust dialogue and intense discussion, iron sharpening iron. As a result, it’s owned by all the members of the group, and, not surprisingly, it also gets accomplished. And that’s the point of vision. Not to have a pretty plaque on the wall but to have real things getting done by real people in real time.

“Talent wins games,” Michael Jordan once said, “but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.”

FREE WORKSHOP: Tools for Two in Business

Marriage, family, AND business. Couples working in business together face unique communication challenges that few are equipped to face. Tools for Two in Business is a starting point for any marriage looking for healthy ways to meet the demands of the marketplace and the demands of home and family at the same time.

WHEN? Saturday, December 3 from 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM

WHERE? TNT Builders, 35897 Bryant Drive SW, Albany

WHO? Facilitated by Ken and Mary Himes from Friends of the Family Ministries and hosted by Bill Zipp and Trish and Trent Irwin

HOW MUCH? Workshop facilitation, materials, Continental breakfast, and lunch is FREE

Yes, this is a free workshop on interpersonal communication for couples in business together. Spaces are limited, however, and registration is required. Call Bill at 541-752-5323 to reserve your spot today. MORE INFORMATION

1. Weekly Thanks-giving

No week should go by without the people who work for you being praised in some way. Private compliments, thoughtful notes, public accolades at staff meetings, and personalized voice mail messages must all become part of your leadership repertoire. Like anything else in life, it’s a habit that must be learned. Put three poker chips in your right pocket at the beginning of every day and move a chip to your left pocket when you thank someone for their good work. Make sure that at the end of every business day all the poker chips have been moved to your left pocket.

2. Quarterly Thanks-giving

Break down your yearly goals into quarterly sprints. Create finish lines, specific measurable targets, that people can hit each quarter, or every month of each quarter. Post these targets prominently on the wall and keep track of people’s progress. When finish lines are crossed, celebrate. A sales team I work with does this every month, and it injects our meetings with energy and enthusiasm. For more information on this subject, read: The Genius of Quarterly Sprints.

3. Annual Thanks-giving

There’s a place for a big Thanksgiving Day event in your company as well. Annual reward and recognition allows you to celebrate major milestones and rally the entire company. Create a fun, meaningful yearly event where you publicly recognize excellence and reward years of service. Here’s a warning, however. If you don’t do steps one and two, an event like this will feel hollow and quickly become the company joke.

Your business budget for these three things should be around 1% of total compensation. For weekly rhythms, get nice stationary or note cards and drop in the occasional gift certificate to a local coffee shop, spending $5 – $10 per person per month. For quarterly recognition and reward, spend a bit more, $50 – $100 per person per quarter, and tie it into achieving certain goals for that period of time. Finally, invest $100 – $500 per person in annual career recognition.

Bottom line: when it comes to saying “Thank you!”, once a year is not enough. Happy Thanks-giving!

FREE WORKSHOP: Tools for Two in Business

Marriage, family, AND business. Couples working in business together face unique communication challenges that few are equipped to face. Tools for Two in Business is a starting point for any marriage looking for healthy ways to meet the demands of the marketplace and the demands of home and family at the same time.

WHEN? Saturday, December 3 from 8:30 AM – 12:30 PM

WHERE? TNT Builders, 35897 Bryant Drive SW, Albany

WHO? Facilitated by Ken and Mary Himes from Friends of the Family Ministries and hosted by Bill Zipp and Trish and Trent Irwin

HOW MUCH? Workshop facilitation, materials, Continental breakfast, and lunch is FREE

Yes, this is a free workshop on interpersonal communication for couples in business together. Spaces are limited, however, and registration is required. Call Bill at 541-752-5323 to reserve your spot today. MORE INFORMATION

So let’s say it aloud, boldly and brazenly, traditional time management is broken. Focus, not efficiency, is the key to managing our time.

I once owned a house on six acres of land under the grand delusion that I was a gentleman farmer. Year after year I had the most beautiful grapevines with long flowing branches, big beautiful leaves, and no grapes. One day a nosey neighbor came over and growled at me, “You gotta prune dem things!”

And he was right, because when I did, magically grapes appeared on the vines. Wonderful, juicy, delicious grapes. I learned that for grapevines to produce grapes, the energy of the plant needs to be spent on growing grapes, not branches and leaves. To achieve that objective, grapevines need to be rigorously pruned so the plant can do that which is essential to its purpose, bearing fruit.

In business and in life, pruning is cutting back what is secondary so that which is primary can thrive. It’s going through our endlessly long lists of things to do, identifying the few things that are vitally important, and doing them, letting everything else go. Pruning is, fundamentally, a counterintuitive yet liberating concept: doing more by doing less. In short, focus.

The prophetic words of Peter Drucker written over four decades ago declare, “Concentration—that is, the courage to impose what really matters most and comes first—is the executive’s only hope of mastering time and events instead of being their whipping boy.”

Concentration and courage. Words to live by in today’s crazy busy world. So farewell time management. I really won’t miss you that much. Hello focus. Let’s do business (and life) together.

I call this phenomenon “accidental leadership,” and again, it’s one of the most common occurrences I encounter in my practice. If you’re an accidental leader, here are four keys to success:

1. Embrace your role with vigor and resolve.

Frankly, it doesn’t really matter how you came to be a leader in your company. The fact is, you’re a leader now. What are you going to do about it? If the truth were told, most people’s path to leadership is accidental in some way, so forget about the past–it’s irrelevant–and focus on the present and the future. Make the decision right now to be the very best leader you can be.

2. Understand that the essence of leadership is trust.

This is where leadership begins. You cannot lead others if they don’t have a sense that you’re a person they can trust. Trust means doing what you say you’re going to do, no exceptions. Trust means not asking anyone to do something you wouldn’t do yourself, no exceptions. Trust means giving open and honest answers to the open and honest questions your people ask, no exceptions. And trust means, when you don’t do these things, you apologize, simply and humbly. No exceptions.

3. Be true to your own style of leadership.

Effective leadership is not a one-size-fits-all affair. There are extremely effective leaders who are quiet and reserved, and others who are bold and brash. There is no right and wrong here. History is filled with stories of amazing leaders, from Mother Theresa to Winston Churchill, who differed vastly in leadership style. Know who you are and be true to your own voice.

4. Take the time to rest and refuel.

The pressures of leadership are draining in ways that are utterly unlike being an individual contributor. As with the heat of the summer sun, slowly and imperceptibly your inner resources evaporate under its penetrating rays. If you don’t take the time to rest and refuel, you’ll wake up one day completely exhausted with no idea why.

As a consultant, I take at least four weeks of vacation every year and rarely work on the weekends. Not because consulting is a cushy job, but because the demands of my job are such that I need significant time to rest, reflect, and re-fill my inner resources. No one wants a burned-out consultant advising them on their business. And no one want a burned-out leader leading them. Don’t be a martyr in this regard. Take care of yourself, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Tom, the owner of a busy retail store, was working in his office when his desk chair broke. Quickly, before running off to an important vendor meeting, Tom bought a new chair at the office warehouse down the street. He drug the box in from the car and asked his staff to put it together while he was out. When he returned a few hours later, the chair sat in his office, partially assembled and painfully crooked.The box it came in lay empty on the floor with a collection of plastic wrapping and unused parts surrounding it.

Randy, the president of a local media company, informed his staff in passing at their weekly meeting that, due to the pressures of the economic downturn, a much needed exterior painting of their tired-looking office building would be put off for another year. As a surprise to the entire team, a front-line employee, his family, and some of his friends power-washed the facility, taped off the windows and doors, and painted the entire building in one marathon weekend. They paid for entire project, including the materials, themselves.

What’s the difference between these two businesses? In a word, culture.

Culture trumps everything. The most brilliant strategy and the most inspired plan is dead on arrival if it’s delivered to a company whose culture is broken. Culture is the context that determines the quality of all actions within an organization. As outsiders we see the frail branches, pick the tasteless fruit, and blame the plant. The issue is usually deeper though, unseen in the roots that feed the plant and affect its health. Culture.

What kind of culture are you creating in your company?

1.Your team is just a committee because the people on it don’t really know each other

Team effectiveness is based on trust. Everything flows from there. Committees don’t take the time to build that trust, they jump right into agendas and action items, irrespective of the people in the room. As a result the relationships at the table remain superficial and trust virtually nonexistent.

If a group of people is going to engage in solving serious problems–be they commercial, social, or even spiritual–that group must know each other, and know each other well. Depth of relationship forms the foundation for the building that will be built upon it. The taller the building, the deeper the foundation must be. To forge real teamwork, you must take the time to forge real relationship. There is no shortcut to trust.

2. Your team is just a committee because it doesn’t fight fair (or at all)

When team members trust each other, they talk openly and frankly. Committee members passively listen to one or two people drone on and on, disagreeing with decisions made behind their backs. That’s not fighting fair. True teams actively participate in dialogue, discussion, and even debate without incrimination. Not really fighting, per se, but iron sharpening iron. By default, committees protect the status quo. Teams change the world.

3. Your team is just a committee because it’s overly dependent on the formal leader

Committees have chairmen, and women, whose job it is to schedule a meeting, call it to order, direct the agenda, and follow-up on decisions made. A committee is entirely dependent on the chair for its success. Teams may start in the same way, but very quickly transform themselves into something quite different, a dynamic small group that’s mutually accountable to one another for results. The formal leader, while present, does not drive the agenda, but all the members of the team take full responsibly for success. In fact, the formal leader could step aside and the team would keep functioning at high levels of productivity. Not so with a committee.

That’s why Patrick Lencioni has made this audacious claim about true teams, “Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare. A friend of mine, the founder of a company that grew to a billion dollars in annual revenue, best expressed the power of teamwork when he once told me, ‘If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction, you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competition, any time.’”

When you build community, you gather together a group of people who are loyal to your business. Because of this loyalty, they return to use your products and services again and again and again. They also recommend your products and services to people just like themselves (again and again and again). And they defend you to other misinformed souls who aren’t loyal to your brand. That’s the power of community.

Every marketing method you use, from traditional media to the latest technology, must be rigorously measured against this question. Does it build community? If it doesn’t, don’t use it, no matter how cutting-edge it may be. The goal of marketing is not to win style points, but to bring a constant flow of well-qualified prospects into your sales pipeline. Building community is the best, and–given the proliferation of media options today–the only way to do that.

What builds community? It’s as simple and profound as this. If you and I went out for beers after work, we would talk about the things going on in our life. We’d talk about our kids and our family, our work and our favorite teams, and maybe the latest political rumblings. After a few pints and too many buffalo wings and fries, we would feel better connected. That’s the exact thing you must do with your customers. What do they care about related to the products and services you provide? Platforms like Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Yelp make this easy to do. So do webinars, tele-seminars, blogging and good old-fashioned breakfast meetings.

Bottom line: Building community means having ongoing conversations with your core customers around the things they care about related to the products and services you provide. To do this you must, first, know exactly who your core customer is, and then what they really care about. In other words, who is your who and what do they want? Now go talk to them about it!

It’s the one reaction I’ve heard in my consulting practice more than any other. These words are uttered in horror by my clients, with images of slick talking, socially inept idiots dancing in their head.

The picture most of us have of the sales profession is Ned Ryerson, the irritating insurance agent in the movie Groundhog Day, who relentlessly bothers Bill Murray to buy a policy he doesn’t need. And, along with Bill Murray, we just want to slug the guy. A career in sales usually lands at the top of everyone’s list of jobs most despised, alongside lawyers, politicians, and tele-evangelists.

So the horror is understandable. But I’ve got news for you, the brutal reality of business today is this: nothing happens in it until someone sells something. Let me be even more precise, nothing happens in your business until someone sells something. And that someone is you.

Qualified customers don’t magically appear at your door ready to buy, interest needs to be sparked and trust built. Competitors don’t magically decide to leave your marketplace, differentiation needs to be made and loyalty won. Objections don’t magically answer themselves, engagement with the heart and mind of your prospects needs to occur.

All this, and more, is sales. When done with class and integrity, it’s a noble calling and an honorable profession.

And it’s the key to succeeding in business. From accountant to web designer, contractor to software engineer the day you chose you start your own firm, whether you realized it or not, was the day you chose to be a salesperson. Not only that, given the intensity of competition in the marketplace today and the flattening of organizational barriers, every employee in every business needs to understand that every touch with a customer can move that customer forward–or backward–in the sales process, generating revenue for your company or losing revenue.

The question, therefore, we should be asking ourselves is not, “Am I a salesperson?” but rather, “What kind of salesperson will I be?”

And that’s the genius of quarterly sprints. One year is too long a period of time to sustain people’s attention and enthusiasm, one month too short a period of time to make progress on meaningful goals. So I encourage the clients I work with to break the year into a series of three-month sprints. By having four starting gates and four finish lines in your year instead of just one, you harness the enthusiasm of starting something new and the energy of finishing something significant all throughout the year, instead of just at the beginning and the end. This sustained intensity assures the completion of goals that are critical to your success.

I just finished writing my third book a result of a quarterly sprint. Completing this project was one of my goals for the year, but I scheduled it as a summer sprint with a Labor Day deadline. This tight, twelve-week time frame gave me an intensity of focus that a whole year couldn’t. The sprint was most useful about halfway through the project. I got distracted, derailed by a family vacation and a bit stuck creatively. But because the finish line was literally a few weeks away, I sat myself down and got back to the business of writing. Sure enough, my juices began to flow again, and I hit the deadline as planned.

Most business leaders I’ve met have no lack of meaningful goals they want to achieve in any given year. They don’t achieve those goals, however, because they fail to execute on them. I’ve found that the rhythm of a 12-week sprint with a 1-week rest (13 weeks equaling one quarter) is a more effective way to get things done than one long 52-week marathon. I’m pretty sure you will too.

I just returned from Boston where, as a member of Alan Weiss’ Million Dollar Consultant community, I attended an extensive training program on conducting an event like this. Here are the high points I learned from Alan:

• Know your target audience. If your event’s for everyone, it’s for no one. You’re looking to gather the very best of your core customers for a high-content, 60-90 minute presentation.
• Attendance should range from 12-20 people. Less than 12 and the group is too small for quality interaction, more than 20 and the group is too big for quality interaction.
• To get 12-20 people in attendance, you’ll have to invite at least 50 prospects to your event.
• High quality printed invitations should go out 6-8 weeks before the event with clear instructions on how to register. Use email and the phone to follow-up your printed invites.
• Make sure one existing client for every six prospective clients are present at the event. Highlight the testimonial of an exiting client in your invitation.
• Promise compelling content. Address the burning issues that your customers are facing today. This is the only reason people will give up their valuable time to come to an event.
• Deliver compelling content. Give your ideas away generously, and attendees will say, “If that’s what I get for free, imagine what I’d get when I pay for it!”
• Make your event exclusive. A secret to success in using this approach is counterintuitive: there must be a strong sense that it’s for your core customer and your core customer only. No vendors. No surrogates.
• The venue is critical. It must be high quality and offer an excellent light meal, either breakfast or lunch.
• Start on time and end on time. No exceptions.
• Follow-up with those who came. Ask for business cards and note those who are responsive in the session. Set follow-up appointments for further discussion.
• Follow-up with those who didn’t come. Offer a private review of the issues discussed and send all invitees an executive summary of the event.

According to Alan, there are two ways to rapidly gain new business in this economy. The first is asking past clients and trusted friends for referrals, and the second is conducting an event like this every quarter. Put one on the calendar today and make it happen.

What rules do you need to break to get the attention of your customers? Break them, if only for a good laugh.

Here’s why.

A car is supposed to get you from Point A to Point B. When it does, it burns gas. Enough trips from Point A to Point B, and a car runs out of gas. People are the same. Yes, they’re supposed to do their job; but when they do, they burn internal emotional resources. Those resources need to be replenished. Exceptional leaders understand this dynamic and make it a top priority to put gas back in the tank. Recognition and reward is one way of doing that.

Unlike a car, however, people slow down when their gas tank approaches empty. They can run on fumes for months, even years. Not doing their best work, mind you, but just getting by. Surviving. In other words, if your employees are not giving 100 percent effort 100 percent of the time, the first place to look is in the mirror. Are you doing everything you can do to keep their emotional gas tank filled?

This is especially true with salespeople because so much of their work life takes place in an adversarial environment. Even the very best sales people hear the word “no” repeatedly. It’s like they’re always driving a car uphill. As a result, their gas tanks need to be filled on a more regular basis. That’s the reason why sales meetings should be fun and entertaining, filled with meaningful recognition and reward.

Is this what it’s like working for you?

Jan, eager to get ahead and look good in front of her boss, accepts the job, even though she has no idea what the job entails. The more time goes by, the more frustrated and confused Jan gets, but manages to actually get something done.

Unfortunately, the work Jan does in no way resembles what Jan’s boss had in mind, and, instead of giving Jan another chance with better instructions, Jan’s boss takes the job away from her, fiercely determined to never delegate anything again. A least not to Jan!

This story happens thousand of times every day and in no way reflects the nature of true delegation. When a leader delegates something and doesn’t spend any time on clarifying the expectations of that something, that leader abdicates their leadership role. Delegation like this feels more like a drive-by shooting, where an employee is riddled with a long list of things do while their manager speeds away to the next victim.

How do you clarify the expectations of a delegated task and improve your leadership effectiveness? By using three W’s, Who is going to do What by When?

Asking “Who and What?”

By asking “Who?” the specific people related to the project are clearly identified. Other people who could help Jan, in addition to her boss, are also identified. By asking “What?”, the task at hand is defined. So many times what a manager has in mind for a project and what his associate has in mind are two totally different things. This is what happened to Jan, her boss expected her to read his mind and abdicated leadership.

Asking “What?” allows everyone to clearly understand the things that need to get done in very concrete terms. Ironically, most bosses, when they delegate a task, haven’t thought through what actually need to get done. Asking “What?” solves this problem. Who is going to do what seems so elementary, but endless confusion exists in the workplace around these two simple questions.

“I thought you were doing that!” a surprised employee exclaims.

“No, I was assigned this, you were assigned that,” comes the reply.

“No, Jan was assigned this. You were supposed to do the other thing.”

Have you ever had a conversation like this? A lack of clarity is what caused it.

Asking “By When?”

Added to these first two questions is a third question, “By When?” That is, what are the specific dates and deadlines for the task?

“Get it done sometime!” is not good enough because sometime will magically become now in a matter of days. When sometime becomes now, we drop everything to do it, leaving other things that are perhaps more important undone. Do you see the vicious cycle that emerges when we don’t ask the “By When?” question? Clarity about timing is critical to world-class performance.

“By When?” must be asked regarding two things: the ultimate deadline and intermediate deadlines. The ultimate deadline is the date when the project needs to be completed in its entirety. Intermediate deadlines, also known as milestones, are simple checkpoints along the way that ensure a project is kept on track. These dates must be achievable; unrealistic deadlines are as bad as no deadlines at all. But when the realism of the timeline is established, the targets must be placed in everyone’s calendar and adhered to rigorously.

Who is going to what by when? It’s time to lead!