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Ortega y Gasset y la toma de decisiones

Os invito a leer la siguiente reflexión de Ortega y Gasset, extraída de su libro "El hombre y la gente":
"De toda circunstancia, aun la extrema, cabe evasión. De lo que no cabe evasión es de tener que hacer algo y, sobre todo, de tener que hacer lo que, a la postre, es más penoso: elegir, preferir. ¿Cuántas veces no se ha dicho uno que preferiría no preferir? De donde resulta que lo que me es dado cuando me es dada la vida no es sino quehacer. La vida, bien lo sabemos todos, la vida da mucho que hacer. Y lo más grave es conseguir que el hacer elegido en cada caso sea no uno cualquiera, sino lo que hay que hacer –aquí y ahora–, que sea nuestra verdadera vocación, nuestro auténtico quehacer."
Elegir, preferir… y sentirte bien después. Qué difícil es a veces, ¿verdad? Pero parece que no tenemos elección, que hay que optar siempre por algo y, encima, encontrar bienestar interior con la decisión y sus consecuencias. Bueno, como siempre, cada uno que saque sus conclusiones, que serán sin duda las más apropiadas. Yo he tomado la decisión de enviar este email porque he considerado que es lo que tenía que hacer, y me siento bien por ello.

Benitez, las claves del talento deportivo

Interesante artículo, auque algo oportunista, en el que se repasan las habilidades de un entrenador de futbol como directivo de un equipo de alto rendimiento

Para echarle un vistazo al menos....

Download benitez_las_claves_del_talento_deportivo.jpg

Jack Welch on Winning

Jack Welch, the former president and CEO of General Electric
was in Chicago last Friday. He was the keynote speaker at the
53rd Annual Management Conference of the  University of
Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Focus on your most profitable accounts

Ellen was feeling tired. Run down. Exhausted. She was putting in
long hours - coming in early, staying late, working weekends.
The stress and strain of running a business was getting to her.

Her company ACME Widgets did about $6,000,000 in annual sales
and was barely profitable. The business wasn't growing, sales and
profits had been flat for the past few years.

She and her sales team were so busy servicing their accounts, that
they didn't have enough time to go out and look for new business.

Ellen had about 600 accounts that she serviced regularly and was
stretched to the limits.

As we talked some interesting facts came out:
   * Some customers were better than others.
   * Some customers spent much more money than others.
   * Some customers had more potential than others.
   * Some customers were much more expensive to service than others.
   * Some customers were much harder to work with than others.

Ellen was trying to be all things to all people and it wasn't working
for her or her sales team.

Her best sales people were getting frustrated. They were spending
too much of their time servicing marginal customers who 'seemed'
to have a problem with everything that was ordered.

This service work kept them from looking for more business,
closing more sales, and earning bigger commission checks.

Analyze The Customer Base
I asked Ellen to run some reports analyzing her customer base.
What she found was very enlightening.

As expected, a very large percentage of her company's sales and
profits came from a relatively small number of customers.

But instead of focusing on the good customers at the top of the list,
I asked her to study those who were at the bottom. These were the
customers that didn't do much business with her.

As she studied the report, her eyes got real big, and a large grin
came across her face, as she saw the source of her stress,
tension, and frustration. It was all of these small, unprofitable,
time-consuming accounts.

Here 200 smallest accounts spent less than $500,000 with her...
IN TOTAL. Yet these were the same accounts that needed the
most service and support.

In the blink of an eye, Ellen came to the conclusion that her sales
and support people were spending the majority of their time handling
complaints and problems from customers that didn't do much business
with her.

Ellen threw out a rhetorical question: "What would happen if I
stopped selling these 200 accounts?"

1. Sales would drop by $500,000.
2. There would be an insignificant reduction in profits.
3. There would be a substantial reduction in overhead because
     of the high costs associated with servicing these accounts.
4. Her sales team would feel better because they could spend
     more time looking for new business, closing sales, and
     earning bigger commission checks.
5. Her service and support team would have more time to look
     after the good customers, improving, enhancing and expanding
     their relationships.
6. Her business would grow - and become more profitable - because
     everybody was more focused.

Ellen implemented these changes - and more. Today she's projecting
an increase in sales of more then 50 percent and has set a sales target
of $10 million for next year. She expects profits to increase dramatically.

Look At Your Business
Take a look at your business.

   * Analyze your customer base. Who are your A, B, C, D,
      and E customers.
   * Study the profiles of your best customers.
   * Identify your most expensive customers. Those who
      are high cost / high touch.

Spend your time with the customers that have the most potential,
that require the least service, that are the most fun to work with,
that will spend the most money with you. You'll grow your business,
be much more successful, and make lots more money.

Put the Do-Not-Disturb Sign On Your Phone

Comments on last week essay:

Here are some of their comments:

"I hate being in the middle of a conversation with someone. When
their phone rings and they drop you like a hot potato. I work in a
very hierarchical organization and people are so uptight about
making the right impressions that they never sit still long enough
to talk to you at the best of times.

You don't have to answer the phone

Ever feel you've got to get something off your chest? Something
that's been bothering you? Well, this is one of those things.

Has this ever happened to you?

You call someone up, introduce yourself and the
other person says:

"I can't talk, I'm in a meeting." or

"I can't talk, I'm on a conference call." or

"I can't talk, I'm having lunch with a client." or

"I can't talk, I'm on vacation and am driving to Disneyland."

And then I think to myself, what if I had been someone else?
Would he have taken the call and interrupted his meeting,
conference call, or luncheon?

If he would have taken the call, then he's interrupting his
meeting, conference call, or luncheon and the other person's
going to sit there while he has a phone conversation.

Fighting For Victory

What do you do when you've had a great year, but all of a
sudden you realize that everything you've worked so hard
to create is going down the tubes?

You've been sailing along, everything's going smoothly but you
see disaster looming on the horizon and there doesn't appear to
be anything you can do about it?

As you go through life, you've always got choices. You
can 'accept' the inevitable.

Or you can FIGHT!

Use The Phone And Skip The Driving

"Sounds interesting, but I need to think about it."

A few weeks passed. Then we had another conversation.

John told me about the meeting he had with Pete, the
marketing director of a local retail store. Pete had been
very excited about meeting him when John called to
setup an appointment.

John thought he had a great prospect, but found out otherwise
during their meeting. After talking for 45 minutes John finally
asked how much money they've got in their advertising
budget. Pete said he doesn't handle the advertising.

"Carolyn, the company president, looks after the advertising,
but business has been quite slow for the past year and they've
stopped advertising. Period! There's no money in the budget."
Pete explained.

With that, John's meeting with Pete ended. He got into
his car for the L-O-N-G drive back to the office.

As John was telling me his story the following day I asked,
"How did spending all that time with Pete make you feel?"

"Angry and frustrated. I wasted almost three hours on that
meeting and I've nothing to show for the wasted time!"

John's been in sales for 14 years now. Today
he sells newspaper advertising.

He was trained that he should always have face to face
meetings with his customers and that the only reason he
should use the telephone was to schedule an appointment.

John called me a few weeks ago because he wanted to
take his business to the next level. Though he had been
doing well, his business seemed to have stalled. He had
hit a plateau and sales have leveled off.

"How much time do you spend looking for
new business?" I asked.

"Not very much. It seems I spend all of my time serving - and servicing - my current customers and I don't have much time to look for more business."

"How many meetings do you have each day?"

"Maybe... two or three. But not every day."

"How long is each meeting?"

"Thirty to forty-five minutes"

"Then why don't you have more meetings during your
eight to ten hour day?"

"Because of traffic. Where I live - Minneapolis - we've only two
seasons, winter and road construction. It seems to take me an
hour to drive anywhere. Even if it's only for a fifteen-minute meeting."

"Why don't you use the phone more, and skip the driving?"

John didn't answer my question. There was only silence
at the other end of the line.

"Why don't you use the phone more, and skip
the driving?" I repeated.

"Because I've always had face to face meetings. I'm not real
comfortable talking with prospects on the phone."

"If you became more comfortable using the phone do you think you could do a better job of qualifying your prospects before you hop in the car to meet them face to face."

"Why didn't you qualify Pete over the phone? We talked
about doing that a few weeks ago."

"I don't know. But I think I'm ready to discuss the
idea of using the phone a bit further."

Leverage Your Time
Time is the most important asset you've got. The goal
isn't to manage it. But to LEVERAGE it!

The telephone helps you to maximize your use of time.

From my perspective, the goal isn't to have lots of face to
face meetings with people. It's to have lots of meetings with
people who have a high probability of buying.

It's OK to ask questions to qualify your prospect. And you
can ask the questions over the phone. If you get great
answers, you've got yourself a prospect.

If you don't, then you only invested five, ten or fifteen minutes
on the phone, instead of two to three hours in the car.

John could have asked questions like:

   * How does your company use advertising
      to bring in new customers?
   * What is your most effective advertising medium?
   * How do you decide where to advertise?
   * Who all gets involved in the decision to place advertising?

These are great questions. They can be asked in
a face to face meeting, or over the phone.

Making The Phone Work For You
John's been spending more time on the phone and less time
driving to and from his prospect's offices.

He's been practicing the art of asking great questions - and
after a bit of hard work - he's gotten much better at it.
(Sometimes old habits die hard.)

He's now able to qualify his prospects in a five to ten minute
phone call. By spending more time calling prospects on the
phone - and less time driving to and from their offices - his
business has picked up dramatically because he's doing a
much better job of identifying who is and isn't a prospect.

What Questions Should You Be Asking?
Here's your homework: Make a list of the key questions you
should ask each time you meet with a prospect.

Now ask those questions when you speak with the
prospect on the phone.

Discounting Doesn't Grow Your Business

The Big 3 - GM, Ford and Chrysler - have been offering buyer incentives and zero-percent financing for the past few years, and they're still losing market share. They thought that they could grow their business by offering discounts. It's not working. Why? Because discounting and incentives don't work over the long term. Yes, you generate sales - and cash flow - today, but it comes at a H-U-G-E cost tomorrow. The Chicago Tribune wrote a recent story about this problem that I found to be very thought provoking because discounts can dramatically reduce the value of your business. " 'When you put cash on the hood, it makes your brand weak. Incentives demoralize the brand.' said Elena Ford, Ford Motor Co.'s director of product marketing." [If Ford's director of product marketing knows that incentives 'demoralize the brand' why do they continue to offer incentives? Just asking.] Sales at both GM and Ford fell in 2004 and the Big 3's share of the U.S. market dropped to an all-time low of 58.7 percent. "GM's decline came despite spending more on incentives than any other automaker in the U.S." the Tribune reported. Success in selling depends upon how you position yourself in the marketplace - and in the MINDS of your customers. "Japanese automakers market their cars and trucks on their reputation for superior design and manufacturing. "European automakers, whose cars are not cheap, focus their marketing on performance and the ephemeral concept of heritage. "General Motors, Ford, and to a lesser degree, Chrysler mostly emphasize cash-back offers or no-interest loans to lure people into showrooms, even though the quality of their vehicles has improved in recent years.. " 'The U.S. tends to advertise the deal,' said Steve Szakaly, an economist with the Center for Automotive Research, 'The Japanese sell based on quality.' "The European automakers emphasize either performance or prestige." the Tribune said. Even Hyundai, the Korean automaker, has gotten into the 'selling quality' act. In 1998 U.S. sales plunged to below 90,000 vehicles. Hyundai responded by striving to improve the quality of their cars. They began promoting quality instead of pushing discounts in their sales and put their mo.ney where their mouths are. It offered a 10-year/100,000-mile warranty, a guarantee unmatched by any other automaker at the time. "We did the warranty just to get people into the door." said Bob Cosmal, Hyundai's chief Executive Officer. "We knew quality was on the way up, but we had to get that message out." Last year Hyundai sold nearly 419,000 vehicles in the U.S. Once you've trained your customers to look for sales and discounts it's very difficult - if not impossible - to get them to purchase at full price. Learning From Experience I learned this lesson twenty years ago when I owned a men's clothing store in Chicago. When business was slow we put our sweaters, shirts, pants and suits on sale. Yes, our cash-flow increased. But only temporarily. Before we knew it, our regular customers stopped coming by. They were waiting for the 'good stuff' to go on sale. Once we started discounting, the discounts were never big enough. First it was 10 percent, then 20 percent, than 30 - 40 percent. Before we knew it, we were holding the final sale - a Going Out Of Business Sale. Though we offered great clothing, the only thing that separated us from our competition - in the minds of our customers - was price. And someone always had a lower price. For me, it was a very expensive lesson learned. Sell Value And Quality What can we learn from the Big 3 - and my short-lived retail experience ? That you've got to give your customers a reason for buying your product or service that's not based on a lower price. If you want to build customer loyalty you've got to offer    * Value,    * Service,    * Quality,    * Dependability... and more. So give your customers a great reason to do business with you. The best way to do so is to solve their problems. Find out what it is that they want... and then give it to them.

Lessons Learned From Surfing Pioneers.

Here are three lessons learned from surfing's pioneers:

1. Have Fun Doing What You Do. The surfers in the movie
loved what they did. There was nothing they would rather do.

Look at your business, career and life. Are you having the
time of your life? If not, what can you do to change it.

2. The Best Surfers Became Stars. The best surfers became
stars. Celebrities. They started companies that made surf
boards, bathing suits, clothing and other apparel.

What can you do to become a star in your business or industry?
To become a leading expert? To position yourself as the #1
person they go to when there's a problem that needs to be solved?

3. Problems Are Opportunities. With each successive generation
of surfer there were bigger, stronger and faster waves to ride.
They looked at each set of challenges and found a
way to overcome them.

What challenges, obstacles and problems are you confronting? How
will your life change if you're the one who comes up with the solution?

Don't say to yourself "It can't be done." Instead, ask yourself
this question, "What do I need to do to get it done?"