When you have the right people in place, you can achieve your business goals and reach new milestones as your organisation grows. However, employing the wrong people can negatively impact your business — which is why it’s crucial to take the time to find the right staff members.

In today’s competitive job market, acquiring and retaining skilled and motivated staff can be a real challenge for businesses of all sizes. As an employer, you might often find yourself in a situation where you can’t seem to attract the right individuals to join your team. 

What’s even worse is hiring employees out of urgency, even if they don’t necessarily fit your requirements for a staff member. This can result in a clash of values, work ethic or even standards of excellence.

If you’re having trouble with this, you’re not alone. There are several factors behind your struggle to find good staff. In this article, we’ll explore these reasons and provide actionable solutions to overcome them.

5 reasons you can’t find good staff and how to overcome them

We’ve shortlisted five key reasons why you may be having a hard time finding good staff members, and how you can address these potential issues.

1. Limited opportunities for growth

According to Gartner, the average employee is in the same role 50% longer than before the financial crisis in 2008. This created negative feelings within the employees for staying longer even if they were no longer growing in their respective roles. The lack of career development opportunities and increased compensation can lead to employee attrition, leading employees either to actively seek new job openings or passively be open to job opportunities that come their way. 

Skilled professionals are often seeking opportunities for growth and advancement. If your company lacks a clear career progression path or fails to invest in employee development, you may struggle to retain talented individuals. 

Solution

If increased compensation is not feasible for your company right now, then you need to find other ways to show that you are committed to your employees’ professional development.

There are several ways you can do this:

• Create a well-defined career development plan for your employees, outlining potential paths for advancement within your company. 
• Invest in training programs, workshops, and mentorship opportunities to help your staff enhance their skills and stay up-to-date in their respective fields. 
• When advertising job openings, emphasise the potential for career growth within your organisation.

2. Weak employer branding

In the digital age, your company’s online presence and reputation play a crucial role in attracting talent. Like your customers, your potential candidates also check your social media pages and website before deciding whether to apply for your job openings. 

If your online presence leaves much to be desired, and your company’s reputation is not positively perceived, you’ll have difficulty enticing top-notch candidates to apply to your organisation.

Solution

You can build a strong employer brand by creating and showcasing your company culture, values, and success stories on all your official channels. This will help you attract candidates who have similar values and give them a clear idea of what they can expect from the organisation should they become your employees.

Once you establish your brand identity as an employer, you can develop an employer branding strategy, which can help you understand your ideal employee, identify your unique value proposition and create messaging and visuals that align with your company culture and values. A branding strategy ensures that your initiatives, especially promoting job openings, are focused and targeted to reach the right audience.

Having social proof of your employer branding is crucial to gaining the trust of your potential candidates. Encourage satisfied employees to leave positive reviews on job sites and engage in industry events to boost your company’s visibility and credibility. 

3. Unappealing company culture

Your organisational culture is what sets you apart from other companies. Company culture plays a significant role in attracting and retaining employees. A healthy company culture enables organisations to adapt to change and is correlated to boosting employee performance.

If your workplace environment is toxic, lacks diversity and inclusion, or doesn’t provide a sense of belonging to employees, potential candidates will be hesitant to join your team, especially if negative feedback reaches them through word of mouth. 

Solution

Cultivate a positive, inclusive company culture that values diversity, open communication, and employee well-being. Showcase your company’s values and culture in your job postings and on your website, enabling candidates to have a clear understanding of how your organisation works and the driving purpose that motivates your current employees. 

It’s also important to promote employee testimonials and success stories that demonstrate your commitment to a healthy work environment. This serves as social proof that your company has a healthy organisational culture that positively impacts employees.

4. Inefficient recruitment process

A lengthy and convoluted recruitment process can turn off qualified candidates. If your hiring process involves too many rounds of interviews, redundant assessments, or slow communication, top candidates may lose interest or accept offers from other companies.

Solution

There are several ways you can create an efficient recruitment process: 

• Streamline your recruitment process while still ensuring a thorough evaluation of candidates. 
• Use technology to automate repetitive tasks, like initial resume screenings. 
• Communicate clearly and promptly with candidates at every stage of the process. 
• Implement efficient interview techniques, such as panel interviews or skills assessments, to make informed decisions faster.
• Enhance the overall candidate experience by shortening the application process and reducing the number of touchpoints that recruiters have to handle for every new employee.

5. Absence of work-life balance

Modern employees value a healthy work-life balance. Suppose your company culture leans heavily toward overwork and burnout. In that case, you’ll find it challenging to attract and retain skilled staff who seek a harmonious balance between their professional and personal lives.

Solution

Business leaders and their team members need to have good time management skills, ensuring that they maximise their time for each day. Promote a healthy work-life balance by offering flexible work arrangements, remote work options, and clear boundaries between work and personal time. Highlight these benefits in your job postings to appeal to candidates who prioritise their well-being. 

While finding and retaining quality staff can be challenging, addressing these common issues can significantly improve your chances of attracting the right talent to your team. Clear job descriptions, competitive compensation, a positive company culture, an efficient recruitment process, and growth opportunities are all essential components of a successful staffing strategy. By focusing on these areas, you can position your business as an attractive employer and build a team of motivated and skilled individuals who contribute to your company’s success.

Ready to build your A-team? Contact us and we’ll help you find the right people for your organisation.

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In a highly competitive business landscape, you must prioritise building and maintaining high-performing teams in your organisation. 

A high-performing team isn’t just a group of talented individuals; it’s a unit that collaborates seamlessly, communicates effectively and consistently delivers exceptional results. 

But how can you create such a team? 

That’s where this blog can help you. We will delve into five strategies you can use to nurture high-performing teams that drive innovation and excellence.

5 tips to build high-performing teams in your organisation

There are many ways you can build a highly effective team in your business, but we’ve shortlisted the top five strategies you should consider incorporating into your team-building initiatives.

1. Foster open communication

Effective communication serves as the foundation of any successful team. Encouraging open dialogue among team members promotes transparency, minimises misunderstandings and boosts trust. When team members feel at ease sharing their ideas, concerns, and feedback, it fosters a collaborative environment where different perspectives can flourish.

Here are some tips to encourage effective and open communication in the workplace:

• Prioritise two-way communication – Embracing feedback and practising active listening is just as important as expressing ideas and sharing opinions. You need to create an environment where everyone feels heard and valued.
• Schedule one-on-one interactions – Having scheduled meetings with every individual team member will allow you to forge closer relationships with them. It will also give you a clear idea of how to connect with them personally, especially when there are different personalities in the team. For example, extroverted staff members will have different communication preferences than introverted employees. 
• Establish regular team meetings –  Having a scheduled meeting can encourage members to come together and discuss progress, challenges and ideas. 
• Implement communication tools – Instant messaging platforms such as Slack or Whatsapp and project management software such as Notion and ClickUp can facilitate real-time interaction and keep team members apprised of each other’s progress in their respective tasks.
• Organise communication training sessions – Invest in training sessions where team leaders and staff members can learn fundamental communication skills, which can help them in the workplace.

2. Cultivate strong leadership

Leadership plays a pivotal role in shaping team dynamics. A skilled leader sets the tone for the team’s culture, provides clear direction and supports individual growth. Effective leaders lead by example, showcasing dedication, accountability and a strong work ethic.

There are a lot of common misconceptions about leadership that can trip business leaders. You might have senior executives who think that only you, their boss, can lead. Or you may have high-potential introverted staff members who think that only their extroverted counterparts can be leaders. This is why it’s important to establish strong foundations from the get-go. By providing strong leadership that is limitless and inclusive, you can set a great example for your staff members. 

A great leader acknowledges and celebrates team achievements, fostering a sense of camaraderie and motivation. Investing in leadership development programs equips managers and team leaders with the necessary skills to guide their teams successfully.  

3. Embrace diversity

Diversity acts as a catalyst for creativity and innovation. Teams comprising members with varied backgrounds, skills, and perspectives are more likely to develop groundbreaking solutions and ideas. Embracing diversity also cultivates a culture of inclusion and respect, making team members feel valued for their unique contributions.

You can use these strategies to infuse diversity and inclusion (D&I) initiatives into your organisation: 

• Ensure that the CEO and senior executives are the champions of D&I initiatives. As the leaders of the organisation, the CEO and the senior management team need to embed diversity into the organisation’s purpose and exemplify the culture they want to encourage in the workplace.
• Hold executives accountable for driving D&I outcomes. Give leaders formal accountability for achieving two sets of results in their respective parts of the business: diversity results and inclusion results. The former focuses on representation and includes hiring, promotion and mobility outcomes. While the latter focuses on daily work experiences, such as employee engagement and equity.
• Seek candidates from diverse backgrounds during the recruitment process. It’s crucial to embed D&I strategies in your recruitment process to ensure that you build a diverse workforce.
• Encourage cross-functional collaboration to expose team members to different viewpoints. Cross-functional collaborations among employees can encourage inclusivity and prevent insulation, allowing team members to expand their perspectives.
• Implement diversity training to create awareness – Strong D&I training sessions can teach team members how to be more inclusive while mitigating unconscious biases that could hinder team cohesion. 

4. Establish clear goals

A high-performing team must have a clear sense of purpose. Setting well-defined goals helps team members understand their roles, responsibilities, and the overall mission of the team. Well-articulated goals also serve as benchmarks for measuring progress and success.

Business leaders can help their staff members set well-defined goals by:

• Implement the SMART method. Work collaboratively with the team to establish both short-term and long-term goals. Ensure that your staff’s goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). Regularly revisit and evaluate these goals to ensure alignment with the team’s evolving priorities.
• Document these goals. Recording these goals can help you keep track of your team’s progress and serve as a reminder for your staff to stay motivated.
• Visualise success. Your team may be worried about failing to achieve these goals, so it’s important to keep them focused by helping them visualise success instead.

5. Prioritise feedback and continuous improvement

Feedback is a powerful tool for growth. Encourage a culture of giving and receiving constructive feedback within the team. Regular feedback sessions help team members identify strengths, address weaknesses, and refine their skills. Constructive criticism should always be focused on actions and outcomes rather than personal attributes.

There are different ways you can effectively give feedback to your staff. It’s important to handle your staff with empathy and implement a feedback mechanism that is both formal and informal. 

Conduct regular performance reviews, but also encourage ongoing discussions about projects and tasks. Recognise and reward efforts to improve, fostering a culture of continuous learning and development.

Focusing on continuous improvement can encourage your staff members to grow and develop in their respective fields. This positively impacts the overall performance of your team, allowing them to maintain their high performance.

Building high-performing teams is a journey that demands dedication, strategy, and adaptability. By fostering open communication, cultivating strong leadership, embracing diversity, establishing clear goals, and prioritising feedback, you can create a team that not only excels in its performance but also thrives in a collaborative and innovative environment. 

The investment in creating a high-performing team is an investment in the success of your organisation as a whole. With these five essential tips in your toolkit, you’re well on your way to building a team that sets new standards of excellence in the business world.

Contact us and will guide you in building high-performing teams for your organisation.

The post Building high-performing teams: 5 essential tips for success appeared first on Business Cut Through.

These problems can range from small issues to major crises, and they can be time-consuming and stressful, affecting your business’s bottom line. This can include:

• Acquiring the necessary digital tools to accelerate efficiency
• Strengthening and maintaining customer relationships
• Adapting to external global conditions 

While addressing these issues is important to the continuity of your business, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you should be the one to handle them. As a business owner, your focus should be on fulfilling your organisation’s vision and future growth. 

So it’s important to understand why you keep getting pulled into these problems and what you can do to prevent that from happening.

Why you keep getting dragged into business problems

The business problems you and your management team deal with are often just symptoms of deeper issues that need to be addressed.

There are several reasons why you may be constantly dragged into business problems, such as:

• Hiring the wrong people: When you hire the right people your business becomes much easier to manage. Spend time understanding your growth plans and what roles will be needed in the future. Start looking for these people now so you can court them for these future roles. 
• Lack of delegation: As your business grows, it’s important to assign different areas for each member of your management team. Doing everything yourself can make you feel overwhelmed and prevent you from focusing on the bigger picture of your organisation’s future. 
• Poor communication: Lack of communication can result in ineffective solutions for problems, which can encourage these issues to continue recurring. Ineffective communication can also lead to misunderstandings among your team members, which can lead to errors and even bigger business issues. 
• Micromanagement: Similar to a lack of delegating, micromanagement will prevent your team members from having the opportunity to learn and grow in their roles, lacking the confidence and decision-making skills to put out fires by themselves. 
• Underdeveloped team: Establishing a strong leadership team is crucial to the continuity and growth of your business. They should be able to lead in your place when necessary. If they’re not capable of making major business decisions, you’ll be the one who has to deal with all the problems that arise.

Underperforming staff members can shift many problem-solving tasks to the business owner or manager. You can uplift your underperforming staff members and encourage them to be more involved in the organisation, particularly in preventing and addressing business problems.

How to avoid being dragged into problems in your business

Once you’ve identified the factors that are dragging you and your business down and hindering you from focusing on your growth, you can develop strategies to ensure that future business problems can be effectively addressed by your team.

1. Hire the right people

Finding the right people for your business is the first step to ensuring that you don’t have to work on every problem that pops up, because you will have capable people to handle these issues. 

Make sure your hiring process is robust and targeted at finding high-calibre candidates. Having a great brand and vision will attract quality people who have the same values and ethos.

Aside from the current positions you need to fill, you also need to identify key future roles that will become essential in your business growth. Doing this will help you assess a candidate’s potential growth and development to see if it aligns with your business trajectory.

Head-hunting the right people and building relationships with them now can also give you a network of contacts that can become useful in the future as you develop more roles for your organisation.

2. Delegate tasks

Identify tasks that can be delegated and assign them to team members who have the skills and knowledge to handle them. 

By assigning staff members specific business areas to oversee, they can be the ones to handle any issues that crop up in those respective departments. This will free up your time to focus on more important tasks. 

Here are tips you and your managers can use to delegate tasks effectively:

• Identify the tasks to be assigned: By reviewing pending and recurring tasks in your organisation, you can identify which ones can be delegated and which ones genuinely need your attention. 
• Leverage your staff’s strengths: Assigning tasks based on your employees’ strengths and specialisations will ensure that every project will be completed effectively. 
• Provide the right resources and level of authority: There will be some tasks that will need special training, resources and tools. It’s important to provide these to your employees so that they can accomplish their assignments without any issues.

3. Communicate effectively

You and your team must communicate clearly and regularly, as this encourages your staff to brainstorm potential solutions and improvements, which can prevent current business issues from happening again in the future. 

You can improve your communication skills, and by extension, help your staff become better communicators by doing the following:

• Prepare your message in advance: Knowing what you want to say, even writing it down beforehand, will ensure that you effectively express your message and that it’s interpreted correctly by your staff. 
• Observe nonverbal cues: When you have an important message to be discussed, it’s better to do it personally, or at least through video conferencing, so that you can take note of your staff’s reactions and expressions. This will help you ask relevant follow-up questions about what they think of your message.
• Practise active listening: Effective communication means encouraging your employees to express their ideas and opinions, making sure that you’re completely focused on what they’re saying and that you don’t interrupt them. This can build stronger relationships between you and your team while also improving your communication with them.

4. Trust your team

Trust your team members to make decisions and take responsibility for their work. This will empower them and allow them to grow. The first step to developing trust between you and your team is by being transparent with them. 

When your business is encountering a problem, it’s important to inform your employees, especially your management team. Communicating this to your team will help them prepare and address the issue while also demonstrating your trust in them.

Scheduling regular check-ins with your team can also strengthen your relationship with them, allowing you to know them on a personal level. 

5. Build a strong team

Invest in building a strong team by providing training and development. A strong team will be capable of identifying and addressing business problems as soon as they arise. 

You can build a strong leadership team by assessing the needs of your organisation and ensuring that you hire the right managers with the appropriate skill sets and specialisations. Fostering inclusivity and equity can also help you build a harmonious and diverse team.

6. Manage your time efficiently

Learning how to prioritise and manage your time can help you identify if a business problem needs your specific attention or if it’s something that can be assigned to one of your team members. 

It’s a knee-jerk reaction to think of any business challenge as “your problem” but that isn’t always the case, especially if you know how to prioritise properly.  You can use templates or guides, such as the Eisenhower Matrix, to help you prioritise and manage your time more effectively. 

Key time management strategies that you can incorporate into your routine include setting S.M.A.R.T. goals and time constraints for your tasks. The former will allow you to develop realistic objectives while the latter will ensure that you stay focused and efficient in accomplishing your to-do list.

As a business owner, your priority should be to increase growth and profitability for your organisation. Constantly putting fires out can prevent you from reaching your overall business objectives, so it’s important to develop strategies that will help you and your team efficiently address recurring and unexpected challenges when they arise.
We understand how precious your time and energy are as a business owner. Book a call with us and we will help you identify the best ways to reclaim your time while making sure that the business problems you’re facing are solved.

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Your management team sets the tone for your company’s culture. As the senior leaders within your organisation, they need to set an example for their respective departments, especially for the junior staff in their team. Your management team must embody the values and principles your organisation upholds to successfully create a dynamic and thriving company culture.

An efficient management team should also be able to oversee the organisation’s day-to-day operations. You can trust them to handle important areas within your business, and they should be confident in their decision-making processes as they work on their tasks and oversee others’ work. They know the short-term and long-term business goals that must be accomplished, and they drive your company’s growth and success. 

In this blog post, we’ll discuss the key steps to building a successful management team, from assessing your needs to fostering a culture of diversity and inclusion.

5 steps to building a successful management team

We’ve created a step-by-step guide that will help you in creating a diverse and high-performing team that will support you in growing your business. 

1. Assess your needs

Before you start hiring managers, it’s important to assess your needs. 

Determine the roles and responsibilities of your management team, and identify the skills and qualifications required for each position. This will help you create job descriptions and identify the best candidates for each role.

It’s important to define the roles and responsibilities within your management team, as this will help you in pinpointing the ideal candidates once you start the hiring process. 

The first step is to identify the tasks that need to be accomplished within your organisation. This will give you a clear idea of the skillsets your team members must have, especially if they have specific specialisations. 

2. Hire the right managers 

Once you’ve identified your needs, it’s time to start hiring managers. You need to streamline your hiring process to ensure that they get the right candidates. 

After you develop a job description for each position and post the job listing on your website and job boards, you can start screening your candidates. 

It’s important to conduct interviews to determine their skills, qualifications, and fit for your team. There are three categories of questions you should ask to create an effective interview process:

• For preparation – You need to ask questions such as “What do you think our company does?” and “What are your expectations for the role?” Your candidate’s answers will indicate how thoroughly they’ve researched the organisation beforehand.
• For critical thinking and tech savviness – You can test your candidate’s creativity and problem-solving skills by asking them open-ended questions showcasing their expertise. For example, you can ask salesperson candidates how they use a particular software to streamline their prospect’s experience and demonstrate it to you.
• For listening and communication skills – Format these questions as directions so that the candidate knows exactly what you want while allowing you to see whether they can deliver. For example, you can say, “Teach us about one of your passions, something that you’d be considered an expert in.” This will help you measure the candidate’s ability to communicate effectively. 

The interview process is equally important (if not more than) as a candidate’s achievements and experience on paper. 

By speaking to potential candidates, you can assess how well they can work with you, and if their attitude and values align with the culture you’re building in your company. Once you’ve identified the best candidate for each role, make a final decision and extend an offer.

3. Develop your team

Building a successful management team isn’t just about hiring the right people – it’s also about developing their skills and abilities. 

Provide ongoing training and development opportunities for your management team, such as leadership development programs, workshops, and coaching sessions. 

Your management team should also get access to professional coaching especially since they have leadership roles within your organisation. A business coach can help your management team become better leaders, allowing them to improve their self-awareness, be adaptable to change and break through personal barriers.

Foster a culture of continuous learning and growth by encouraging your team to seek out new challenges and learn from their mistakes. It’s also important to encourage open communication and feedback so that your team can learn from each other and continuously improve.

4. Build a high-performing team

Setting clear goals and expectations is essential for building a high-performing management team. Once you have your team members in place, you can start taking steps in building a long-lasting team within your organisation. 

You need to build relationships with each individual in your management team while making sure that they are cultivating strong bonds with each other. Creating opportunities for collaboration can also build trust amongst your team members.

You must also establish metrics for measuring success, and provide regular feedback and recognition to your team members. This will help keep everyone on track and motivated to achieve their goals. 

It’s important to create a culture of accountability, where team members take responsibility for their actions and are motivated to work together to achieve shared objectives.

5. Foster diversity and inclusion 

A diverse management team can bring a wide range of perspectives and ideas to the table, which can drive innovation and creativity. 

There are different ways you can promote diversity, equity and inclusivity within the workplace. The first step is prioritising diversity and inclusion in the hiring process. Create job listings that are welcoming to people of all backgrounds, and actively recruit candidates from diverse communities. 

Once you’ve built a diverse team, it’s important to create an inclusive culture that values and respects differences. Regularly review and assess your efforts to promote diversity and inclusion, and make changes as needed to ensure that everyone feels valued and supported.

Building a successful management team is an ongoing process that requires careful planning, attention to detail, and a commitment to ongoing learning and growth. 

By assessing your needs, hiring the right managers, developing your team’s skills, fostering a culture of accountability, and promoting diversity and inclusion, you can build a management team that drives your organisation’s success.

We can support you in your journey of building your A-team. Contact us and schedule a 15-minute, no-obligation strategy call so we can help you create your kick-ass management team.

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A great leader can lead an average team to victory, even against superior competition, because they know how to inspire the very best from their players, even in impossible situations. It’s the same for business; knowing how to build a team that’s strong and loyal is essential for your success.

To achieve the pinnacle of leadership, a true leader knows they have to do the work to bring the team with them. A team that’s either strong or efficient is not enough: You need both. You can’t expect both to naturally be there during recruitment, it’s up to you to hire staff with potential and the desire to learn and create an environment where strength and efficiency can thrive.

Many leaders get confused between leadership and authority of power, but your way or the highway isn’t going to inspire your workers to stay with you, in fact, it will inspire them to find the door pretty fast, costing you time and money in recruitment and training. You need to evaluate how you lead and figure out where you can be a better leader. Make sure that your leadership style is accepted by the team and helps them feel comfortable. 

Cultivating these relationships, understanding your staff and ensuring their comfort can help you provide a happy workspace they are invested in emotionally, giving you years of loyalty and dedicated work. 

Why being an inspiring leader helps keep a team together

Look to inspire a culture of growth and camaraderie through team building—and not just through those casual Fridays or treating your team to drinks, but daily interactions. Doing this encourages your team, creates a sense of trust and belonging and allows them to build bonds and care about the business, its values and goals and how crucial their continued presence will be.

Lead by example and your staff will naturally mirror you. If you are working cooperatively, with passion and enthusiasm, so will they.

While it might be easy to wield, fear is never a sustainable driving force. Teams are enlivened by environments where they don’t feel under constant pressure. If an employee feels permanently on the edge of criticism, they’re not going to feel valued by the business, they may want to resign or jump ship to a company with better team culture and less stress.  

To make sure everyone’s comfortable, you can be an inspiring leader, rather than just another boss. Show genuine concern for your staff and focus on team-building efforts which will yield better results compared to intimidating your employees, micromanaging and focusing only on deliverables. 

Instead of micromanaging, give the floor to your team. Be more social and join your staff flocking to the water cooler for mid-break banter where you can unwind. Being more socially generous with your time and listening to your employees instead of waiting to rebut their points will make all the difference. 

8 ways to create an effective team that’s built to last

In order to put together a team that stays with you and excels, follow these eight easy steps to build and shape a team of absolute champions.

1. Know how you lead 

There are a lot of leadership styles, each with pros and cons. Are you more directive, collaborative, influential, social, factual, conservative or entrepreneurial?

Understanding your natural leadership style allows you to adapt to align with your team more effectively by merging the benefits across different styles to be more approachable, direct or understanding of others. 

Also, look at your communication style preferences. Do you prefer to engage directly in person and group meetings, or indirectly through texts, emails and messages?

Make sure you get 360-degree feedback from others you work with. It can be difficult to stay objective when assessing yourself so insights from others can be surprising. If you get stuck you might like to hire a business coach who can give you feedback on your leadership strengths and weaknesses as well as strategies for improvement. 

2. Establish trust and understand each of your team members

Learning about what makes your staff tick, their strengths and weaknesses, goals and motivations can help you figure out what tasks to assign them, what kind of assignments they’ll execute well and where and how they can improve. You don’t need to know their entire life story, but it helps to get to know them to a degree.

Consider knowing your staff’s individual:

• Goals
• Motivations for success
• Workplace strengths and weaknesses
• Preferred communication style and work personality 

Rather than gaining these answers through direct questions, spend time getting to know your team each day and make gentle observations. 

As you get to know your team and build their trust, the benefits will keep on giving. They’ll be less apprehensive about approaching you for any concerns they have, so you can give advice and suggestions without micromanaging. Collaboration will also help them become more open to feedback and will be willing to take changes onboard knowing you have their best interest at heart.

Make sure you follow through on your open-door policy. Don’t say they can come to you but are unapproachable when they do. Take the initiative to talk to them, ask them how they are and where they’re going for their next vacation. They’ll appreciate you going the extra mile and feel like a valued part of the big picture. 

3. Develop your team vision, purpose, values and goals

Sharing your business mission, vision, purpose, values and goals is critical because this is what outlines what you and your team are aiming for. Great communication around these ensures everyone is motivated in the same direction, putting real energy behind getting your goal outcomes met. 

As well as helping with deliverables, there are intrinsic goals to be discussed as well. These are critical for building culture and sharing information as well as knowing performance expectations and creating trust within the team. When it comes to team culture, rules will need to be in place to establish what behaviours are acceptable and non-acceptable. 

4. Have clearly defined functional roles and responsibilities

Make sure everyone knows their place in the team and what roles and tasks are required of them. Although this sounds obvious, it’s very common for team members to accidentally have overlapping roles which cause confusion and even anxiety about where they stand and what they are responsible for. 

Mapping out responsibilities is also a great time for teams to review their processes and develop better strategies and systems.

5. Promote trust and collaboration within your team

Collaboration is far more effective than micromanaging. It encourages independence and confidence in individuals and also encourages them to ask for help within the team and upper management for better problem-solving skills and bigger personal and team growth.

Effective delegation starts with knowing each individual’s strengths and allocating work tasks to suit. Listen to your team members and their ideas and avoid micromanaging, instead let them immerse themselves in overseeing their part of the project and trust they will come to you if they need anything. Take note of how team members work together so you can understand their dynamic and integrate yourself into it. Cooperation and mutual respect is something that you can promote by living it yourself.

6. Provide ongoing feedback and encourage improvement

Giving effective feedback is an important key to raising the performance level of your staff. Making mistakes and developing improvements is all part of skill development and growth. How that feedback is delivered makes every bit of difference to how it is received. 

Understand how each of your team members likes to receive feedback and tailor your suggestions accordingly. It helps to provide positive feedback first, then any areas for improvements and finish with another positive.

Make sure the feedback (positive and negative) is linked to actual outcomes or behaviour so related to their work, not to them personally, which also allows a measurable area of improvement. If you don’t see results and improvements, it might be time to find a different way to encourage them.

7. Acknowledge and reward your staff for excellent work

Praising your staff for a job well done is just as important as highlighting improvements. 

Being commended feels good and can boost a staff member’s confidence and morale and entice them to repeat the behaviour. Acknowledgement builds loyalty with your team and shows you care about their efforts. 

8. Celebrate team wins 

Everyone likes to be a part of a successful team and is great for team building and culture. Celebrations bond the team together and are a great way to have fun in your business. 

Don’t make mundanity and the idea that, “it’s all just part of the job” the norm, being able to achieve a goal together is big in itself. Being able to celebrate a team win helps the staff bond, deepen culture and build the team. 

Team sustainability comes from healthy working relationships with managers and co-workers. When it comes to building a strong team, don’t stop at hiring key players. It’s up to you to create an environment that is collaborative, encouraging and rewarding so your staff want to keep working and growing with you.

A leader who cares about their team, inspires by leading through example and sets the tone by being a part of the culture, helps build their team to become more efficient, independent and productive. Remember it’s not just about team outings and games played at retreats, it’s about fostering a good environment and strengthening bonds with your employees.

When your staff have reasons to love clocking in every day you will see them flourish and rise to any challenge that your business may face in the future. 

Business Cut Through can show you how to keep your employees happy and loyal to your business, to learn how, give us a call. 

The post 8 proven ways to build a successful, long-lasting team appeared first on Business Cut Through.

However, with the tumultuous business climate and state border lockdowns, labour shortages caused people to jump ship to other businesses with more relaxed policies and staff were being poached in promises of sexier roles and bigger pay. Many experienced staff were lured by these opportunities and resigned, leaving others to pick up the slack and work twice as hard and with twice as much pressure.

Teams are now working double time to meet client and regulatory demands, causing burnout. Burnout can affect more than just a day’s work, it can cause problems mentally, physically and emotionally both your employees’ professional and personal lives.

In order to stop team burnout, you need to be able to recognise the signs and take action before your team becomes unproductive and stress themselves out to the point of wanting to resign, as well. You want good employee morale and to cultivate an uplifting team culture that promotes health and camaraderie. 

What is burnout?

Recently, workplace burnout has been recognised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as an “occupational phenomenon” that arises out of constant stress from the workplace that isn’t being successfully managed. Some of the signs of burnout include:

• Exhaustion
• Negative feelings towards one’s job
• Reduced productivity and efficacy 
• Physical aches and pains
• Emotional exhaustion
• Avoiding work-related activities

Burnout is a state where your employees don’t perform at their best nor do they look forward to clocking in and spending eight or nine hours in the office. They don’t feel motivated and are stressed out to the point of not performing to standard. 

Herbert Freudenberger, in his book “Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement,” defined burnout officially as “the extinction of motivation or incentive, especially where one’s devotion to a cause or relationship fails to produce the desired results.” 

Beyond just affecting your employees’ work and their productivity, burnout can cause long-term health problems that can be fatal. High amounts of stress can affect your employees by exacerbating mental illness, affecting memory and even causing heart problems. Burnout can have lifelong consequences, so it’s best to identify signs of it as soon as possible. 

What causes burnout?

More often than not, it’s an employee’s work environment that causes burnout. It’s not simply that some people are more susceptible to it than others (although that is true to a degree, a good workplace has a more positive impact on someone’s tolerance for stress). Even the most effective and healthy employee can feel burnt out in a bad environment while a stress-prone employee working in a calm and conducive environment might thrive. 

There are plenty of causes of burnout, such as:

• Unclear job expectations or succession planning – When an employee is unsure of what’s expected of them and if they don’t know whether or not they’ll be stuck in the same position without an opportunity to grow or be promoted, they may grow very unhappy and burn out. 
• Micromanaging – A lack of control can drive anyone up the wall but when schedules and even the way an employee has to carry things out is being micromanaged by supervisors, they’ll be more prone to burnout. 
• Dysfunctional team culture – A team that doesn’t get along and is hard or uncomfortable to be around can make for a high stress environment. 
• Intimidation – An employee that’s intimidated by their supervisors can feel extra pressure and fear. 
• Lack of work-life balance – Not being able to delineate between one’s work life and personal life can cause them to overlap the two and feel stressed constantly. 

7 ways to stop team burnout

Here you need to segue into the seven ways that a business leader can stop team burnout. 

1. Talk to your client and reset their deadline expectations

In order to ease the burden off your employees, approach from the other side. Negotiate a different deadline with your client and be honest with them about the capacity of the team and how much they’re taking on. Appeal to their sympathy and remind them that your business is going through some tough changes at the moment as well. 

2. Make sure all client information is received before tasks are started

Eliminate inefficiency for your team by ensuring that your client has sent over everything you need for them before starting the job. Instead of going back and forth and having to pick up and put down, your team will be able to plow through their work without interruption. 

3. Prioritise the right people with the right skills for the right jobs

Making sure you run clear workflow and capacity meetings to priorities jobs. By evaluating your employees well and understanding their strengths, you can assign the right people to carry out jobs best suited to them. This is especially important in pooled resource environments where there are no teams. Without establishing strong relationships with your employees and not knowing where their strengths lie, you could have a really good employee miserable in a cubicle all day because they are not working on more challenging jobs and they’ll become totally disengaged.

You want to be able to maximise your employees’ unique assets and strong points. 

4. Encourage partners and staff to take mini breaks during the day

Working continuously and without any sort of respite can be exhausting and drain your employees of energy and motivation. Breaks are great for them to re-energise and reset themselves mentally and physically. 

5. Be more flexible with work hours

Not every staff member operates optimally at the same time. Some staff may find they work better earlier in the morning whilst others might prefer later in the morning or even after lunch because they’re at their most productive at that time. Not all of them have to be in the office for the same eight hours when they could have turned in better work had they been allowed to clock in earlier or later. 

6. Acknowledge & reward hard work 

Without being acknowledged for their work, staff can feel unmotivated and like their work isn’t valuable. Show them that what they do is very important and provide incentives for those who do exceptionally well. Incentives can be massages or spa treatments, yoga, meditation that they can use to recharge their batteries. If you show them that what they do has value and they can get something in return, they won’t feel sluggish or burnt out because they’re working towards something. 

7. Encourage work life balance

Ensure your staff clock out when they’re supposed to, take their holidays and that they don’t take work home with them. Having a relationship with your staff is important so they feel they can talk to you about their lives and how they’re faring. Checking in with your staff to see if they’re doing okay is key to a healthy business. 

Burnout can be deadly not just for your business, but for your individual employees as well. It’s no joke that it can cause both short-term and long-term health problems if not dealt with immediately. A lot of people tend to overlook burnout and see it as temporary, but if it’s not addressed, it can make even the most productive staff members sluggish, unmotivated and unhealthy.

By being on the lookout for signs of burnout and preventing it altogether, you ensure a happier, healthier team.
Think your team might be suffering from burnout? Let’s work together to assess the signs. 

The post 7 ways to stop team burnout appeared first on Business Cut Through.

However, when you avoid giving feedback, you only aggravate the situation. Without the criticism that will ultimately improve a staff member’s performance and productivity, they’ll continue to make the same mistake or display the same behaviour. You’re actually doing them a bigger disservice by keeping it from them. Beyond that, you’re also hampering business growth.

Feedback is necessary to develop your staff and to correct any mistakes so that they can avoid making them in the future. It’s a great way to sharpen your leadership skills, show that you’re attentive to your staff and passionate about their growth, and it opens up conversations about how they can perform better. 

By giving consistent, constructive, and well-timed feedback, you can run your business with more confidence and trust in your staff.

Why is giving feedback difficult?

Many CEOs and managing partners find that giving feedback is sometimes even more difficult than letting an employee go. Sure, it’s hard, but then it passes after that. But when it comes to criticism, they have to encounter that staff member again and feel their palpable discomfort if the feedback is given or received in a less than palatable way. And while it might just be some leftover tension, it can be difficult to navigate. 

There’s also the anxiety that your staff member might lash out or become overly defensive. This kind of confrontation can be confusing, especially if handling staff is not your forte. A lot of CEOs and managing partners are equipped with skills that help them successfully run their business, but not always at handling their staff and their responses to criticism.

As human beings, avoiding pain, conflict, and negative feelings is instinctive. When we encounter them, our fight or flight responses are triggered and we try to protect ourselves. Sometimes this shows in how people defend their actions and become angry when someone else says they’re doing something incorrectly. 

The same goes for the other way around. It can be painful to deliver any sort of negative assessment because feelings of guilt are associated with hurting another person. Being the bearer of bad news can weigh heavily on your shoulders.

But by packaging that feedback in a clear manner with good intentions and a blueprint on how they can improve, it can be less of a burden and more of a way to help your staff grow. 

10 ways to give feedback to your staff

In order to best communicate with your staff on how they can improve, these ten things need to be kept front of mind to deliver any criticism you might have in a productive, uplifting way. 

1. Praise in public, criticise in private

By celebrating your staff members’ wins, you show that you appreciate them and want to give them recognition amidst their peers. It boosts team morale and allows them to feel good about themselves for a job well done. Although it’s still best to ask your staff in advance how they want to be recognised for their achievements (some may feel awkward about being praised in public), the general rule of thumb is that success can be celebrated together.

On the other hand, when someone fumbles and makes an error, it’s better to confront them privately. They may feel embarrassed if they’re called out in front of their colleagues, making everyone in the room feel uncomfortable. No matter how well-intentioned, criticising an employee in public can demoralise them and make them self-conscious about what the team thinks of them. 

2. Empathise

Handling your staff with empathy is the best thing you can do as a leader. Each member is different and being attentive to their sensibilities can help with your approach. By putting yourself in their shoes, you can have a better understanding of how they’ll respond.

Being criticised is difficult so by seeing it from their perspective, you can construct your feedback around how you believe they’ll take it. It can be a blow to their self-esteem to learn that they’ve made a mistake or aren’t performing up to par, especially if they believe that they’re doing well or carrying out their tasks effectively. That gap between what they think they’re doing right and what they’ve actually done wrong can make them question themselves.

Be empathic and give them the time and space to collect themselves and their thoughts. Communicate and listen actively to their concerns and respond accordingly.

3. Describe actions over interpretations

A lot of the time, feedback is boiled down to how we perceive an action rather than the action itself. Which is why people who are told that they’re being rude or being inattentive become defensive—they don’t intend to be rude, so of course they weren’t. 

But if you pinpoint their actions instead, it can be hard for them to argue the facts. Instead of saying “you were being rude at the meeting,” you can point out that they interrupted their colleague while they were speaking. This is less likely to warrant an angry response and, instead, helps them reflect on what they did and how it’s seen by others. 

By being specific with positive feedback you can reinforce the same actions and behaviour to get repeated success. Telling your employee that they produced a great report won’t have the same impact as saying, “I appreciate how thorough you were with the facts and figures on your last report, congratulations.” They know now to do the same thing they did to earn approval.

4. Tell staff what they can do to improve

It’s not enough to tell an employee what they did wrong, you also have to supply them with pointers on how to improve and how to avoid those mistakes in the future.

By giving them a blueprint on how to approach their mistake, you immediately give them a way to redeem themselves instead of letting them flounder and try to figure out what to do by themselves. It also shows that you’re invested in them and want them to grow and succeed. 

5. Bin the sandwich approach

The famous sandwich approach has been exhausted by managers and leaders. By bordering a thick slab of criticism with two positive statements (that may or may not have been conjured up just to soften the blow), you dilute what you want to say and send a mixed message. The sandwich method undermines your critical feedback and makes poor use of positive affirmations.

It has good intentions, but it ultimately muddles what you’re trying to get across. It’s a confusing way to tell someone that they can improve on something. Instead, be clear with your feedback and explain how their behaviour or actions impact their performance and, on a larger scale, the business. 

6. Don’t let feedback pile up

If you wait too long to correct or reinforce behaviour and it all piles up into a list of things that you’ve noticed about your employee, you’re not doing them any favours. Not only will it feel worse on their part because they’re suddenly receiving an entire catalogue of their mistakes, but the urgency of each evaluation will also wane. Instead of seeing each piece of feedback as an individual avenue for improvement, it becomes an overwhelming wall of mistakes that they might not know how to overcome. 

By delivering it right away instead of waiting for performance reviews, you can put a stop to any errors.

In terms of positive feedback, it’s good to praise your staff as soon as they succeed in something. Compounding the joy they feel in the moment can make them feel more valued, which encourages them to seek the same result and bring in more success. 

7. Be specific about your feedback

Avoid vague statements as they don’t allow for actionable improvement. Instead, you’ll be discouraging your staff because they won’t know what exactly they need to do to turn things around. 

By opting to say that a report they turned in lacks attention to detail and fact-checking (by showing them the specific parts), you’re being infinitely more helpful than just saying that their report is terrible. They know what they have to tweak and can get to it immediately rather than cluelessly scrutinising their entire work.

If you offer guidance and give them the option to talk to you if they still need more direction, you also show that you’re paying attention and working with them as part of the team.  

8. Make feedback conversational

Don’t take up all the air in the room, make sure that you give them the chance to ask questions or present their side of the story, as well. You might learn that they’re having some trouble in their personal life or even figure out that they didn’t intend to come off a certain way. And by listening to them, you can both figure out a way to move forward.

And don’t stop at just the one feedback session. Make sure you follow up with them and allow them to air out any concerns they may still have. By making it a two-way conversation, you open up communication and can put them at ease about your relationship. 

9. When possible, give feedback in person

Criticising someone over text or email can be tricky as your tone can be misconstrued. Even if you mean well, an employee can still take it differently. By relying on nonverbal cues, a comforting environment, and welcoming body language, your feedback won’t come off as harsh.

The way you say something is just as important as what’s being said. So make it clear that no hostility is meant by your words by softening your tone and showing that you’re open to any questions and to having a conversation about it. 

10. Encourage staff members to give you feedback too

Leading by example is one of the most effective ways to run your business. By showing that you are also open to feedback and criticism (and receiving it well), your employees will be more receptive to it, too. 

If you show a willingness to change and improve your ways, your staff may feel less resistance to doing the same.

While it can be an intimidating task to give feedback to your staff in hopes that they’ll receive it well, you can relieve some of the pressure from yourself by being mindful of your words, the way you deliver them, and by keeping your staff’s growth a priority. If you genuinely want them to develop and, by extension, the business to succeed, you can overcome the hesitation that comes with giving feedback and properly communicate with your team when necessary.

If you have any more questions about how to give your staff some constructive feedback, feel free to give us a call. 

The post 10 effective ideas on giving feedback to your staff appeared first on Business Cut Through.

Unfortunately though, many managing partners and CEOs aren’t able to stay on top of the trends because of all the work they handle. Constantly juggling competing responsibilities at an internal level leaves limited time to focus on the big picture. 

If you’re unsure of what to prioritise this year, we’ve curated five areas that we believe take precedence in the digital age. Through these five areas, you’ll definitely see your business in a new light and open up opportunities to grow in 2021. 

Priority areas of focus for professional services in 2021

These points will touch on the five areas a managing partner or CEO should focus on in order to evolve. Each is crucial to growth and, when done all together, will bring you closer to an appropriate response to the changing times. 

1. Driving people growth, capability, and culture

Younger employees and company hopefuls are very different from your contemporaries. Millennials (and soon, Gen Z) make up a huge chunk of the workforce now and they’re more outspoken and driven by the need for a meaningful career. 

Because of this, creating a welcoming environment with a great team culture is crucial. Being able to trust this younger generation and leaving them to make their own leadership decisions (while still ensuring they’re prepared for the results of these decisions) empowers them, keeps them happy and increases retention rates as motivated and committed staff are more likely to stay. 

Invest in your employees. Make sure they feel they’re in an environment where they can grow, not one of pressure and constriction. Encourage them to be honest with how they feel about their work environment and make the changes you, as the managing partner or CEO, see fit. Building this kind of team culture ensures contentment and boosts productivity—after all, an inspired employee is a productive employee.

Once team culture is in place, you’ll be in a position to look to the long term and develop and implement strategies to identify important lateral hires and find acquisitions to bolster team skills, capacity and new business opportunities.

2. New product and service development

As business changes, so do the products and services that people find relevant and necessary. Use this time to reflect on what’s out there now and how you can either change your product or service, innovate or create new ones to satisfy demand. 

Create a strategy to sharpen your products or services to be more convenient, quicker, or even better-designed to overtake your competitors. Anything that makes your product or service more enticing will bring about a higher likelihood of sales as you’ll have an edge over your competitors. 

Just think of Apple. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak set out to design something simple for those who weren’t used to computers and now, Apple has become synonymous with high-quality design that people trust. Apple doesn’t just stop the design process when manufacturing starts, they take the product, review it, and then build it all over again. They try to dissect how they can make their product more valuable in the eyes of their customers. 

3. Building and maintaining key strategic partnerships

More often than not, creating and maintaining a relationship with other businesses can be tricky but, if done right, it can be mutually beneficial. Business to business (or B2B) partnerships, when strategic, can enrich your company while opening doors to another customer base or market. Strategic referral partnerships work by referring your company’s customers to your partner company’s and vice versa. But how do you ensure you can create a good alliance?

To gain strategic alliances, you must be able to identify exactly what the other business is offering you and why. Politely pepper them with questions about their product or service, what they’re looking for in a partnership, if they’ve had them before, etc. Review and assess their answers and see if you align with their values. 

And while you’re getting to know them and what they can offer, don’t forget they’re waiting for the same thing from you. They want to know you, what your unique selling point is, and what you can give them. It’s reciprocal. 

Encourage your team to network, as well, and to create meaningful relationships. Trust is the bedrock of cooperation. And, like with all leadership roles, make sure you take the initiative to network so your team can look to you as an example. Create strategic referral partnerships with companies that can benefit yours and help generate more leads. 

4. Building brand, positioning and communication

A big part of business coaching is telling our clients that they need to know their brand inside and out—even the parts that are often more conceptual. Company values are one of these things, people tend to brush over them because it’s difficult to tangibly experience them or harness them while working. But they’re crucial as they’re the pillars on which your company will operate.

Identifying your company values is the first step. Translating them into actions is the next. Have everyone come together and really dissect what your values are and what kind of behaviours are embedded into them. Is one of your core values being responsive to feedback? Discuss what actions meet that value head on. And when all is said and done ensure that these values and the behaviours you’ve extracted from them are accessible to everybody so that they adhere to them. 

Clients and staff are looking far beyond the money transaction. They’re looking for deeper social responsibility and ethics behind your brand. 

You must make sure your brand aligns with your positioning of your products and services in the marketplace. This is the key thing that differentiates your business delivery to that of your competitors. To make sure this happens effectively, the right communication channels are required at all levels throughout your business. This extends both internally through team communication right through to external marketing and client communication. 

5. Technology advancements and opportunities to innovate

We’re hurtling further and further into this technological age with breakthroughs happening left and right. There’s no point running from how it’s affecting how everything operates—even business. Instead of shying away from it, we encourage you to embrace these new tech developments and strategically use them to your advantage.

Study other industries and see how they’re employing technology in their day-to-day operations. Have they transformed anything to automation? Have they used it to better understand the digital landscape? How can your company do the same—or even better?

Find new technological advancements that quicken processes and make things more efficient, especially for finances. Finance can be very tricky as it requires accuracy and precision. Technology can help achieve said precision and even interpret that very data so your company can infer if you or your clients are doing well financially at a glance. It’s quick, efficient, and it is less likely to be errant because of the automated processes that go into them. 

These five areas of focus may be intimidating to go through all by yourself but with the right business advisor, we know you’ll be able to move forward. Business advisory and coaching is all about helping you expand your vision and helping you make the best of your business. 

We’ve been business advisors for more than 20 years in the professional services industry and we’d love to help you with these five areas if you’d like to change focus in 2021. Reach out to us to learn how you can implement these five things this year.

The post Top 5 things a professional services firm must focus on in 2021 appeared first on Business Cut Through.

The suggestion is, the more people you meet, the higher your chances of pulling in new customers and growing your business. But this rarely works in reality. 

There’s no shortage of business networking events and meet-and-greet groups, but all that seems to happen is an attendee takes your business card and teases you with a promise to refer you to somebody in their network that might need what you do.

Apart from a dodgy sales email months later, did you ever hear from that person again? Probably not. 

And if you meet, the conversation often becomes one-sided, and you spend the next hour listening to how good the person you invited for coffee is (according to them, of course). 

These situations are all too familiar and it’s no wonder that referral partnerships (or strategic alliances) have an up to 70% chance of failing. There are many reasons why referrals don’t blossom, and some common ones include:  

1. Not dealing with the right referral partner, to begin with.
2. You didn’t see the signs that the person you’re dealing with was ‘all talk, no action.’
3. No clear agenda was set to guide your referral relationship from the outset.

That’s why you need to have a proven system to separate the ‘wheat from the chaff’ and start by creating a value-driven referral partnership.

What is a referral partnership (or strategic alliance)?

A referral partnership or strategic alliance is when two (or more) businesses or individuals enter into an arrangement to mutually benefit each other by referring potential customers to the other when a need has been identified within somebody’s network. 

The reasons for developing a referral partnership vary and can include the opportunity to enter into an emerging market, increase the value of a product or service, gain an edge over competitors, or simply build a consistent funnel of new leads flowing into a business. 

As an example, an accounting firm might look to bookkeepers and financial planners to form referral partnerships. Macquarie’s 2015/16 AFS Benchmarking Report states, “44% of accounting and financial services practices believe increasing referral partner activity is an effective strategy to improve profitability.”

How to develop the skills to build strategic referral partnerships

With a decent percentage of accounting and financial services believing referral partnerships are important, why is there such a high failure rate? 

Chances are, it’s the process (or lack of it) leading into and during the referral building stage that’s contributing to up to 70% of wasted opportunities. 

As Facebook founder and CEO once said, nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend (or referral). That’s why turning your referrals into intentional relationships is paramount to your success in business. 

So, before you being just randomly sipping lattes with a new referral ‘prospect’ each week, make sure you have a process in place first: 

1. Review and assess each referral prospect 

If time is money, you’re wasting on including people within your referral partnerships if they don’t have a strong network they can refer you to. To find out, you need to ask them: 

• What industries do most of their network come from? 

If you’re an Accountant and most of their network are Accountants, it’s going to have limited results. 

• Are the people within their network predominantly decision-makers in the business they work for/with? 

It would help if you got in front of the right people who were prepared to take action.

• How many businesses do your referral prospect refer work to? 

While there are no right or wrong answers here, you at least need to know and make a judgment if their answer will work in your favour. Referring to lots of other businesses might indicate your referral prospect is either good at what they do or untargeted in firing off referrals. 

2. Concisely understand your referral prospect 

As mentioned earlier, referral partnerships can become lopsided if it’s not “give and take.” Nobody wants to deal with somebody who abuses the arrangement without reciprocating. 

If they’re making 60% of the effort and you’re only putting in 40% (or vise versa), the partnership is doomed to fail. 

That’s why you need to understand your referral prospect first to build a relationship that benefits both parties. 

The best way to do this is to pepper them with questions politely: 

• Who are they, and what drew them to their business/career? 
• What product or service do they offer? 
• What problem does it solve? 
• How can they prove it? 
• Who are they looking to connect with? 
• Have they had referral relationships that didn’t work. If so, why didn’t they work?

While these three steps take the fun out of meeting for a piccolo and almond croissant, it will be the difference between a consistent and successful referral partnership or one that fails to deliver results.  

But a referral partnership is only as good as your ability to convert referrals into customers. 

3. Explain what you can offer (and point out your unique selling point) 

How many times have you run into somebody in business that does the same thing as somebody else? Chances are, your potential referral partner will think the same. 

Early on, they don’t know why you’re different (and probably don’t care) unless you educate them. Don’t just fall back on the “I’m professional and passionate about what I do” line and hope for the best. 

Business success sometimes comes down to being memorable, so make sure your referral prospect leaves with a compelling reason to remember you and a willingness to refer you on. 

Don’t be egotistical about your successes, but make sure your value and point of difference is understood. 

Implementing a sales framework to turn leads into customers 

If you have a solution to market demand and you’re an honest person to deal with, your referral partners will refer leads to you. 

But the breakdown is often caused by an inability to ‘sell’ your solution to a lead who, while being referred by someone they trust, still isn’t completely convinced of you just yet.  

If your initial meeting lacks structure or you can’t convert, word will circulate back to your referral partner, and they will be less likely to funnel you leads – they don’t want to burn their network after all. 

That’s why having a proven and easy to follow sales framework in place is vital to ensure leads drop into your sales pipe (not off the face of the earth). 

What is a sales process? 

A sales process is simply a system of repeatable steps that guide a lead into a potential buyer and then a loyal customer. 

Research by the Sales Management Association concluded that 90% of all companies that use a formal, guided sales process were ranked as the highest performing and also enable sales teams (or individuals) to be top performers. 

7 key elements to a sales framework

Generally, six steps need to be followed when executing a sales framework to drive growth: 

1. Identifying prospects 

When working with a referral partner, referrals should just come through without much effort on your behalf. But that doesn’t mean you can chalk-up the win. 

Now more than ever, potential leads are doing their due diligence on you (whether they have been referred or not), and will be judging you against others who offer a similar solution. 

It would help if you investigated who they are and know how you can benefit them and use it when in conversation. Throwing in casual comments directly relevant to their situation shows you’re already invested in their journey. 

2. Prequalify your prospect and book in your meeting

There’s no point conducting a lead or sales meeting with somebody who is simply window shopping of fishing for information. 

That’s why you need to pre-qualify your prospects and assess whether they are an ideal customer at the beginning before locking in a meeting with them. 

While business is much more than just making money, as a business owner or sales manager, there’s nothing more annoying or counterproductive than investing your time, energy and resources into people who will never buy from you anyway.

Be excited by genuine leads and respectfully decline those that are not. 

3. Start your appointment by establishing rapport, setting an agenda and positioning the sale

Just like an athlete before a race, you need to be calm and focused heading into a sales meeting. Take at least 10 minutes beforehand to ground your emotional state and boost your energy so you can confidently work towards a successful outcome. 

In the meeting, make sure you build rapport by asking your potential customer warm questions and create a friendly environment (but not too casual) so your prospect feels at ease. 

Find some common ground and use it to your advantage:

• Do you know what football team they support? 
• Do they have kids? 
• Have they just come back from a holiday? 

Aside from asking questions (and genuinely taking an interest), you can also connect through body language and tonality too. 

A good sales meeting requires more than just polite questions, it needs an agenda to guide the sales meeting. By setting an agenda and adhering to it, all parties know what to expect and it allows your prospect to feel comfortable talking about their motivations for being in the meeting and will give you a clear indication of what they want to achieve. 

Finally, you need to position the sale to identify if your business is pre-sold (i.e. your prospect is ready to buy right now) or not pre-sold (i.e. they still need more convincing). This will flag how much credibility you need to build to influence the sale by reducing buyer resistance. 

4. Listen and diagnose their pain points 

Nobody wants to be spoken over or be sold to. That’s why when it comes to a sales framework, one of the best practices is to listen to what your potential customer is telling you. 

If you allow them to talk, they will mention what pain point/s they’re currently experiencing that you have a solution for. Ask lots of open ended questions here to understand what their current situation is and what their desired state they want to achieve looks like. What is getting in their way?

5. Present your value/solution  

Once you know your potential customer’s problem, you can subtly introduce the value you can add to their circumstance by explaining your solution. 

Don’t just go for the hard sell here. Make sure you use (i.e., refer to) what you’ve learnt from your potential customer until this point when presenting your solution. You want to take your prospect on a journey that engages their thinking and feeling.

Focus on things like: 

• Using visuals to get your message across and engage them in the process
• Examples from working with other customers on a similar problem 
• How your solution will benefit your potential customer (i.e., will save them 15 hours per week or $20,000 per year).
•  Outline your service offering and how you work with clients

6. Clarify your offer 

Now it’s time to discuss the next steps in your customer engagement process and how it works. 

It’s important to be transparent around your pricing and payment terms. It’s also a good idea to be ready to handle objections confidently on things like: 

• Costs
• The implementation of your solution 
• Delivery timelines
• Increases to your prospects workload (if any)  

The better equipped you are to counteract objections, the higher the chance of a successful sale. 

7. Gain commitments  

Now that you’ve handled any objections like a boss, you need to close out the sale (i.e., sign the agreements, pay the fee to proceed etc.) and inform your new customer what to expect from you moving forward (there are a number of techniques to ensure gaining a seamless commitment and we’ll explain them in a future blog). 

As a customer, there’s nothing worse than parting with your money only to have the company/business you gave it to go missing in action. Make sure your new customer is stepped through the next stages of the solution you will provide for them. 

With the emergence of digital marketing and people spending more time online, the importance of having solid referral partners can get overlooked in business.   

But that’s doing a disservice to your operation – people still trust people, and a referral from somebody you respect speaks volumes. 

The challenge is finding the right referral partners who can help organically grow your business (and allow you to help grow theirs). 

Over the last 20 years, we’ve been developing and implementing referral partnerships and sales frameworks that are proven to work. 

So, if you want to learn how referral partnerships can deliver consistent and profitable customers and grow your company, please get in touch.

The post Why implementing the correct referral partnerships and sales framework is key to business growth appeared first on Business Cut Through.

It is also a great place to find tips, advice and great resources on different personality types and how they work with others.

Keeping in mind you won’t be able to solve all your staff management problems once you understand their personalities, but it will support you in having a better understanding as to why they may behave and respond in certain ways and how you can manage that for better results.

The post Personality Testing Tools appeared first on Business Cut Through.