Syntony Business Advisors, LLC

Few weeks back I wrote about my discovery of how Toastmasters helps my clients do a better job of cold calling. I also spoke of the primary reason I joined Toastmasters few years ago. My reason was to become a better speaker. What I didn’t realize was that Toastmasters was going to help me in another area where I actually needed even more help, an area which is absolutely critical to our business success and frankly success in every other area of our lives and that is effective listening.

Frequently, as part of my coaching engagements, I accompany my clients on their customer meetings. And consistently I witness their eagerness to continue a presentation and hammer down 8 more features and benefits when their customer has already asked them what’s the next step, and when we can get started, or more sadly when the customer starts talking about more serious problems that they hope my clients can help them with, and these are typically problems that if solved, not only bring more income to my client, but also turn these customers into longer term repeat business and great sources of referrals. So often we leave that extra money on the table because of our preoccupation with saying what is on mind as opposed to be fully present and responsive to what we are being told.

Now everyone, including myself, thinks we are better listeners than we really are. Are we capable of listening better? Absolutely; but just like anything else our listening muscles need exercise and here again another very important part of Toastmasters function, that is, evaluating speeches can be of enormous value in improving our listening skills. And the fact that our evaluation is also evaluated gives us timely feedback that can help us improve on this most important transferable skill.

You can now read my latest Business Alert at:

http://www.advisortobusinessowners.com/Forms%20Library/BusinessAlert-Vol10No4USA.pdf

Most people hate cold calling and that includes both those who have tried it and those who didn’t even bother. There is no question that cold calling is not the most enjoyable part of doing business but for many startups and even for mature businesses there are times when cold calling is a necessary evil and if executed properly will produce results. So you can bet I have done my share of cold calling and have trained and coached many of my clients’ employees to do it in an effective way. But what I noticed several years ago was that I actually became more comfortable and productive at cold calling after joining Toastmasters!

Now I don’t think many people at Toastmasters International are aware of this but one of the exercise we regularly do during a Toastmasters meeting is a very valuable tool for becoming more comfortable at cold calling. I am talking about table topics when without warning you are asked to stand up and talk about something you had no clue about a minute ago. I think table topics really help strengthen one’s objection handling muscles and almost everything else one learns at Toastmasters help us conduct a more effective telephone conversation.

So nowadays besides helping my clients develop a laser sharp sales plan, if its execution involves cold calling I encourage their staff to go find a Toastmasters club near them and join, have a lot of fun and get more commissions thanks to improving their skills.

One of the best investments I have made for my career was joining a Toastmasters club. So when recently I was asked by Bethesda Community Toastmasters (http://club2529.freetoasthost.org/) to help the club with their public relations efforts I jumped at the opportunity to pay back.

For those who have known me in a professional context the fact that as a younger man I was a closet introvert is hard to believe. Then the idea that I would one day stand in front of audiences and have a ball was as remote as travelling to Mars. In fact I was so introvert that from the day I was told about Toastmasters to the day I actually went for my first meeting took more than three years!

I went to Toastmasters to improve my speaking skills. What I learnt was that Toastmasters had a lot more to offer and it ended up helping me professionally in areas I could have never imagined.

You may note that I have now started to use WordPress as the content management system for my website as well.

Today my colleague Gary Banko and I presented the marketing module of the small business university at the Mid-Atlantic Federal Credit Union.

I am scheduled to present the sales module next month on Thursday 2 April.  The focus of the presentation will be on business owners who also have to perform sales functions as well as those who must hire, manage, motivate and measure the performance of salespeople who work for them.

I have now started to promote the program we have put together as Business Owners University (SM).  Furthermore I plan to engage my other colleagues at the Institute for Independent Business to participate and deliver the Business Owners University (BoU) content all across the country.

I ended the last post with the question of how the owner’s unique profile relate to the state of his or her business.

Well a business can also be broken up into 8-11 areas.  The founder of CMT, Carl Gould discovered an interesting association. He labeled Sales and Marketing into “I”ncome, Operations and HR into “S”ystems, Legal, Finance and Technology under “C”ontrols, and Planning and TLE Management into “D”irection.  Empirical data shows that individuals with a strong D in their personal preference which stands for Dominance also are stronger in their personal focus on Career and Time Management, etc. and do well with planning and TLE management.

One of CMT’s many tools is DISCoverY Diagnostics which measures a company’s performance in those 11 areas.  The Result is the business wheel which is shown here.  There are some significant observations about this wheel:

First, if we develop the owner’s personal profile using CMT’s DISCovery Behaviors, you will observe a visual correlation between the two wheels. After the earlier discussion this may now sound self evident. 

The other thing that is clearly evident is that if the following was the wheel of your car you would have a pretty bumpy ride and the same applies to your business.  In fact a healthy business needs to be measured at 5 in all the areas on this graph; that is equivalent of a fully inflated tire.  Any area which is rated below 4 requires attention and any area below 3 is in crisis. 

The gap between 5 and the actual rating in any area is the result of the owner’s response to a series of highly objective questions.  Two different companies could have the exact rating in a particular area and yet the issues that caused the gap could be different for each.

But one thing is certain; making the business thrive requires filling that gap, and in the same way that the cause of gap for two different companies could be different, the order and priority of measures to be taken could be different.

So in summary to maximize a company’s capabilities and chances to thrive in hard times first we need to develop a profile of how that business rates in various areas of business and then come up with specific strategies to fill their gap.

There is however an additional point to which we alluded earlier.  As we said earlier the current profile of the company correlates to the profile of the owner. So just setting plans and strategies may not guarantee change.  If it was that simple entrepreneurs being the smart people that they are they would have made those changes already. 

To better understand the issue here I must introduce you to another finding by Carl Gould of CMT International.  That is the concept of seven stages of a business success.  Without getting in to the details of each stage, suffice to say that as a business develops it requires a different level of emphasis on D, I, S, and C functions of business.

So the owner/entrepreneurs face two challenges; just like any other human being they have a particular DISC profile which means they naturally tend to focus on some areas of business and there is a natural tendency to neglect other areas to which they are not naturally gravitated.  Secondly, a company’s need in terms of focus on D, I, S, C varies based on the company’s stage of development.

If you have followed this blog to this point and specially if you are a business owner, then I am sure you agree with me that where a business owner sits is one of toughest and loneliest spots in business, and so many things are stacked against him.  And I have not even mentioned the “common xx reasons for a business failure”.  And that is why the role that the Institute for Independent Business and it’s Business Support Program plays in filling these gaps are so essential to business success.

Being a slow guy with no knowledge of CSS it took me a long time before I found the right template to use for this blog.   My main goal during this period was to be able to set up my blog to look as much as possible like my website www.syntony.com .

In the process I had the opportunity to be reminded of a very important lesson.  Every time we procrastinate out of the fear of unknown the best solution is to march on.  I dreaded editing these templates out of the fear of messing up the whole design.  But now that I have done it and have learnt how powerful CSS is I feel a great relief and can now focus on posting what I have been waiting for all these

You can always return to my web site by pressing this link: http://www.advisortobusinessowners.com