One of the most common challenges we hear from business owners is successfully hiring good employees. One would think with the national unemployment rate still over 8%, the available talent pool would be well stocked with highly quality candidates eager to be the next superstar in your company. But the unfortunate reality is there are still a lot of people being hired that end up not being a good fit and often it means both the company and the employee end up back at square one.

The good news is there are a number of ways to improve this. Following are what I found to be the top six drivers to increase the chances of having a successful hire.

1) Job Description:

Have a clear description of the position you are seeking to fill. Make sure you clearly explain the role and what is expected. Be as specific as you can be and don’t sugarcoat things – if you need someone who can make hard decisions, say that.  Being upfront about this will right away will create a clear picture and  immediately narrow the audience.

2) Who to interview?

Create a list of minimum criteria that must be met to be considered for a formal interview. The list for this will vary with the position but it could include: Experience, Education, # of jobs, etc. Run their name through the search engines. What is the content of their social media pages? If someone doesn’t meet a criteria they simply are not eligible and move on.

3) Attitude:

Hire attitudes! I have always believed this to be paramount. There may be no other attribute more critical to the success of the hire than getting people in place with good positive attitudes. You can teach a lot of procedures, processes, and policies, but positive attitudes come from inside your candidate. Your business environment can only foster it.

4) Interview Process:

Interview multiple times, the higher the position the more you will interview. Clearly communicate the vision and mission statement of your company. Does the candidate align with it? Ask open ended questions and do a lot of listening. The only way you will learn if they truly align is by doing a lot of listening. Ask thought provoking questions, then shut up and listen. My favorite questions have always been ones that show how they handle adversity,  do they tend to show heart and character?

When you get a gut feeling there isn’t a match, trust your gut it is usually right. If there is a management or teams involved, get them involved in the process. Their conversations may uncover something previously missed.

5) Personality Profiles:

Have your potential hire (or at least your short list) complete a personality profile such as DISC. They are amazingly accurate in showing if the person’s personality is a good fit for the position you are seeking to fill.

6) References:

If you make it to this point with a green light, check references. Talk to as many people as you can; previous employers, co-workers, friends. At an absolute minimum, talk to 3. I know you’re busy, but this is the best way to really get a read outside of the interview.  Great questions for past employers are, “If you had the opportunity to hire “Mr. Smith” again would you hire him? If the answer is “Yes”, follow it with “Why?”. Listen to the answer closely, it will speak volumes.

At this point, if your potential new employee still looks like the perfect match there is a great chance you have found someone who is going to impact your team in a very positive way. Get them on board, give them the tools they need to succeed, and get out of their way!

Do you have a hiring process, when it’s time to hire? What have you found to be beneficial? Please share your thoughts in the space below.

Chris Steinlage   Kansas City Business Coach.

Photo by Photologue_np

Business (and the world in general) is getting more and more complicated all the time.  It often feels like it’s too much and we all want to hide someplace clean and quiet.  From a practical standpoint, if you want to get more done you need to start thinking about doing less.  It’s not as counter-intuitive as it sounds.  Because of the external (and often internal) complexity business owners face, it’s easy to fall into a situation where you feel like you have to be doing a hundred different things every single day just to keep up.

At that point, feeling overwhelmed and become less productive is right around the corner.

The alternative?  Start doing less.  This isn’t a new idea – in fact I wrote about Doing Less almost 3 years ago.  Things are even more complex today but there are some new resources that can help you navigate becoming more productive by doing less.

Specifically you should check out The Power of Less a book by Leo Babauta.  Leo is also the author of Zen Habits, a blog on simplicity, focus and creating a different kind of life.  Leo’s an interesting story (you can learn a lot more on the blog) – I don’t think most of us can completely embrace the life that he’s built for himself, but I definitely think everyone can benefit from his ideas.

Here are 3 key ideas that business owners should embrace from The Power of Less:

Set Limitations –> Choose the Essential

I guess that’s actually 2 ideas, but they are really 2 sides of the same coin.  The idea is simple in theory, but it can be very challenging in practice.  If you want to be more effective and you have limited resources, then you need to set limitations on where you spend your time and efforts and focus only on what’s essential for success.

There are a lot of implications here – first of all, do you know what success looks like?  If not, it’s pretty hard to narrow down what’s most likely to get you there.  Secondly even if you have a clear vision / destination it’s not always obvious what’s going to have the most impact on your success (what’s essential).  And finally – in order for this to be useful, these limitations have to be solid…it’s not about setting soft priorities, it’s about dropping things that aren’t non-essential – brutally saying no to the less important.

If you can address all of those implications and narrow your focus down to a handful of things that will really make a difference in your progress, you will be amazed at how much you can get done (either as an individual or as a team)!

Develop new habits 1 at a time

Another strong insight out of The Power of Less is a process to help you adopt new habits…and habits are critical if you want to sustain effectiveness.

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words.- Watch your words, for they become actions.- Watch your actions, for they become habits.- Watch your habits, for they become character.- Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.”      – Charles Reade

The key (according to Babauta’s experience) is to only make 1 change, adopt 1 new habit at a time.  Pick the change that you’re most excited about and only focus on that 1 thing for the next month.  If your new personal focus is the idea to start exercising, find an exercise that you can do easily every day, make it easy and commit to it for a month to establish a habit.  As an example he suggests starting with 5 to 10 minutes of walking a day and slowly ramping up from there.

Simplify

The last key idea that I think business owners need to adopt is embracing simplicity.  Is there an easier way to do routine tasks?  What can you automate or outsource effectively?  Often businesses do things a certain way because that’s the way it’s always been done.  With the advent of apps and technology there is likely a better alternative for a lot of the time consuming things you’re doing today.

Finally the easiest way to simplify is to get better at saying ‘No’.  How many things are you spending time and energy on that you should be saying no to?

The Power of Less is a quick and easy read (as you might expect) and although it’s unlikely that many will completely embrace all of the ideas, business owners will pick up at least a few things that could make a big difference and help them get more of the right things done.

Have you purposely tried doing less?  Have you read the book?  I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments – share them below.

Shawn Kinkade   Kansas City Business Coach

Photo courtesy of Monk – USA Network

In today’s world of technology and social media coming at you from every angle, it  can be easy to mistakenly think that a great Facebook page, a twitter account, a few videos or blog post are all that you need to close sales.

However I was at two different events recently and reaffirmed that an old adage is still true – People buy from other People. At both events the discussion was around what business owners are doing today to attract customers? How do you follow up with your prospects? How are you incorporating Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, drip marketing, Groupons, Google Ads, and all the other social media tools into your marketing? The list is virtually endless…and taken as a whole, it creates a lot of noise.

Considering today’s crazy environment, the question came up, “What marketing works on you when you are a possible buyer?” The answer from many people that I talked with is they have so much noise coming in, they are starting to tune is all out.  Technology and social media aren’t working.

A quick look at my Recent Updates on my mobile Linked In app shows enough information posted in the last 24 hours that I would be reading for 12 hours non-stop if I wanted to read every posted article. Obviously, you pick and choose what interests you, but the point is there’s a lot of information to digest.

If it’s all turning into white noise, what ultimately becomes the differentiator? What stands out to you…and how does your message stand out to others? Is there still something to be said about the human connection aspect of selling your product or service?

I was getting a clear answer when visiting with people at these events. Personal referrals and references can be very convincing, but they are still marketing. However when someone engages in a real dialogue with you (including asking questions) they can help you get to the real value of their product or service as it pertains to your situation. When a real person engages with you…as a real person, it cuts through the white noise and creates credibility and confidence that simply can’t be matched by any other source.

I’m not suggesting you shut down your social media marketing program. Social media marketing will continue to be a very important tool to get your message out.  Let’s face it, the exact time you want your product or service in front of someone eyes is when they’re ready to buy. Your consistent social presence will help keep you top of mind. And, for some selling a boxed product or service on-line…if it’s simple enough…you can almost remove the human interaction with an effective marketing message and online sales funnel.

However for most businesses, your product or service is going to require human interaction – which is your opportunity to make sure you are actively engaging with your potential clients. Don’t fall into a trap of thinking your social message is going to completely replace real human interaction and dialogue. In other words, social media and other market presence can help get you in the door, but you still need to have real conversations, ask questions and develop a relationship if you want to make the sale.

I had the pleasure of hearing Mike Bayly – owner of Bayly Presentations speak this week on the importance of engaging your audience so your presentations produce the results you desire. His clients are often people wanting to improve their ability to speak to larger groups of people, but his message is just as applicable in a one-on-one discussion where you are selling a product or service. The bottom line is if your product or service involves any form of human dialogue you better be fully engaged with your prospect and you need to be genuinely interested because…People still buy from People.

If your competitor embraces this and you don’t, you will lose.

If you have read this far without bumping this into your “white noise” category, I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic in the comments below.

Chris Steinlage Kansas City Business Coach

Photo by Stuck in Customs

How would you like your business to perform 259% better than your competitors?  What if there was one thing (albeit a major thing) that you, as a business owner, could do that would create this huge competitive advantage?  Would you do it?

Surprisingly, you probably wouldn’t.  Most business owners don’t view this approach as a real ‘competitive advantage’ – instead writing it off as touchy feely and not important.

The advantage I’m talking about is employee engagement…or being a great place to work and it’s illustrated by the performance of Fortune’s Top 100 Great Places to Work business versus their peers in the Russell 3000 stock index.  Granted small businesses don’t trade on a stock exchange, but it’s not a stretch to assume those results reflect the underlying performance of the companies.  Check out the performance comparisons below:

Equally impressive, Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For experience less than 50% of turnover compared to their peers…across all industries!

Of course it’s one thing to appreciate how engaged employees…and being a Great Place to Work could  make a difference in results, but the real challenge is figuring how to build that kind of environment for your own business.

One place to look might be what’s going on at Zappos – a hugely successful company built around a company culture of service and delivering ‘wow!’.  Zappos went from almost going under after the Dot-Com bust in 2001 / 2002 to generating over a $1 Billion in revenue less than 8 years later.  Since that time, they’ve been purchased by Amazon for $1.2 Billion – primarily as a model on how to really implement an amazing company culture.

According to Tony Hsieh – the CEO of Zappos and the author of the best selling Delivering Happiness, the essence of what it takes to be happy in general boils down to 4 things:

• Perceived Control (ability to make things happen)
• Perceived Progress (ability to get better)
• Connectedness (the number and depth of your relationships)
• Being part of something bigger than yourself

This ties in well with Daniel Pink’s Motivation 3.0 Model that he outlines in the book ‘Drive’.  The Motivation 3.0 model uses 3 key components as the drivers for motivation:

• Autonomy (ability to make things happen, decision making control)
• Mastery (ability to get better, develop skills that are important to me)
• Purpose (opportunity to work on something exciting that’s bigger than just me)

The underlying assumption here is that happy employees are motivated employees are engaged employees who have a great place to work.  In other words, all of these things tie together.

How do you apply this to your business?

For most business owners, adopting this new motivation model or building a strong company culture around things that will make employees happy seems almost impossible.  It’s definitely hard to make major changes, but the good news is that you don’t have to change everything at once, you can make incremental changes at your own pace.

Here are few things you should consider doing to get started:

Get to know your employees!

Do an employee survey that will help you learn more about what your employees think, what makes them tick, where they want to go and what kinds of things would motivate them.  In a smaller business you have the ability to really get to know everyone on a more personal basis – you still need to keep a professional distance, but the more you build a real relationship the more you will be able to engage them and find out what makes them go.

Delegate authority!

This is something you have to do anyway if you want to grow your business, but for the purposes of motivating your employees, you should brainstorm decisions that your employees should be making without you.  In a call center environment that might mean giving your call center representatives the ability to ‘make the customer happy’ with whatever means are necessary…up to a certain dollar amount. 

For other employees, identify ongoing decisions that have historically been escalated to management and ownership and figure out how to push those decisions down to the working level as much as possible.  Obviously you can’t just hope everything works out, so you’ll want controls and reporting in place, but your employees can and want to own more responsibility (and if they don’t you should get rid of them).

Involve employees in planning!

A big part of engagement is having everyone buy into where the company is going and how they’re going to get there.  As the owner you have the responsibility to lead the way, but that shouldn’t translate to a command and control approach, rather you should be leveraging your employees skills and experience to help you come up with great ideas.  Hold regular planning and status meetings with employees – done right these are very empowering and productive…and critical to keeping everyone engaged.

Consider flexible work arrangements!

If you’re like most business owners I know, you work a ton of hours but you would be very unlikely to go back to taking a job…even for good money.  Why?  A big part of the reason is the flexibility you have as the owner.  You work a lot of hours, but you (generally) have complete control over what hours you work.  Guess what – your employees would love that kind of flexibility as well!  Obviously different industries and different businesses will require different hours of operations, but there’s likely a lot more flexibility that’s possible than what you’re currently doing.  Brainstorm how you could pass along some of that to your employees.

It’s not easy, but it’s worth it!

Clearly rolling out significant changes on how you operate your business is not an easy thing to do, but the upside is clearly there.  If you have a business where every employee is engaged, on the same page and helping to make things happen, you will routinely be blowing your competitors out of the water…which will translate directly to the bottom line!

What changes could you roll out in your business in the next few months?  Which of these ideas resonated with you and made you think ‘hmmm…’?  What ideas did I miss?  I’d love to hear your thoughts and feedback – share them in the comments below.

Shawn Kinkade  Kansas City Business Coach