By MollyandLaney
Has your assistant ever received the dreaded call from a client, “Do you know when your office will send me that information I discussed with the attorney last week?” Having no idea what the client (let’s call him Mr. Smith) is referring to, she asks you about it. You gasp! No one ever sent Mr. Smith the information on asset protection you discussed with them? This is a potentially HUGE plan for one of our best clients? How can this be?
Remembering back to when you met with Mr. Smith, you begin to recall the blur of that week. Your meeting was late in the day, squeezed in between the normal work day and an evening workshop you were teaching. The next morning you hit the ground running at a breakfast meeting with a Power Partner and proceeded into one of “those” days full of back to back meetings. Somewhere in the grind, you never relayed to your assistant the conversation you had with your best client about asset protection and the information you promised to send him.
So much effort is put into marketing and meeting with clients. It’s amazing to think you can increase the results of those meetings tenfold with one simple, but powerful question.
What if the morning after you met with Mr. Smith, you did hit the ground running with a breakfast meeting…You still had a back to back day of meetings…BUT, on your drive to the office after breakfast, you and your assistant have your pre-scheduled “5 Minute drive Huddle”. During this intentional, predetermined, proactive time she asks you “Is there anything you promised Mr. Smith?” What a simple, but powerful (and lucrative) question!
You would be present to your discussion about asset protection. You would have replied “Yes, please send Mr. Smith our asset protection questionnaire and the article I wrote about asset protection trusts and then please schedule time on my calendar to call him in a week to discuss further.” Envision this as an alternative to Mr. Smith calling a few weeks later (or going somewhere else) to inquire about the missing materials from a place of frustration and anger. He may still hire you, but he most likely will have lost confidence in your firm and always waiting for you to drop the ball, again. Not to mention the danger of lost revenue, missed client expectations, lost future client referrals and damaged reputation in the marketplace.
Avoid this predicament completely by providing your assistant this technique:
Assistant: After EVERY meeting or teleconference your attorney has, ask them “What did you promise? And by when?” This will allow the attorney to focus for a quick moment and download the follow up needed to avoid the ball being dropped. Yes, it is one more thing for you to do. However, you’re going to be doing it anyways, just in a reactive, disempowering way. The “work” will come in the form of disturbing calls from people asking you for things that you promised and never delivered. And then the vicious cycle of he said, you said begins. Or you can create a scenario where you have a complete list of action items with the who, what and by when. This in all honesty, CAN be done in half the time. And what’s in it for the assistant is his/her day will be more organized with control of your follow up actions versus you popping up unexpectedly and blowing up your assistants day and getting resistance, and possibly attitude.
Actually, there are five quick, simple questions that if asked, can fully maximize the results of your client and Power Partner meetings while creating a pipeline of pre-qualified referrals. To request a complimentary copy of “The 5 Questions to Avoid Anything Falling through the Cracks™”, email us.
Champions of your continued success,
Molly and Laney
By MollyandLaney
Overwhelm is a state-of-mind and a way of being. It is NOT a set of circumstances. It is resistance to what is. It is NOT loving what is going on. The distinct difference of how to stop overwhelm is what you are willing to do about it and taking the responsibility for it.
Lingering in a state of overwhelm can
• Increase your risk of burnout
• Reduce productivity and effectiveness
• Add unnecessary stress on your team and staff
• Decrease your overall happiness and well-being
• Increase your work hours and
• Cloud focus, clarity, insight, and ability to make critical decisions
So how can you move from overwhelmed to overjoyed? It requires a little attention and a different mindset.
First recognizing that while you could try to do it all on your own, actually doing everything yourself is practically killing you. Step one is acknowledging all the assets that exist within your team and staff and then utilizing those assets to the fullest. That means you stop delegating your tasks, and start giving out ownership for assignments.
Second, you need to ensure that you have the right people in the right positions. Sure, your office manager knows how to handle just about every thing in the office, but it doesn’t mean she’s the right person to do it.
The next part is trust, training, and team. Working together as a team, and learning to trust and depend on one another for tasks – when the right person has the right assignment – it means the work will get done. And it won’t just get completed, it’ll be done right.
You see it all boils down to people. The people who support you, who are on your team, and who are there to help grow, sustain, and maintain the business for you – so you can work in the role you enjoy and do so well.
If you are curious as to HOW this can happen, it starts here. Molly Hall and Laney Lyons have been team members for business owners who were just like you.
Now, they are sharing all their dirt in how you can:
• Turn Your Key Team Member into a Consistent Star Player
• Create More Value for Your Business with Proactive Employees
• Generate More Profit with Increased Bottom-line Thinking
• Eliminate Time Wasters, Energy Vampires, and Other Destructive Time Thievery
In their book, Don’t Be a Yes Chick!, Molly and Laney teach your employees how to:
• Get Your Team to Love Their Jobs, Feel Respected, and Improve Productivity
• Understand What Your Boss Really Wants & Needs
• Do More of the Work You Love and Are Good At
• Build Your Dream Team of Talented and Proactive Team Members
This book isn’t just for YOU, the business owner to read, this book is for your TEAM to adapt, implement, and finally gain the courage and the skills to lead like you’ve always dreamed they would.
Move out of overwhelm and into overjoyed when you grab your copy of Don’t Be a Yes Chick today at http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Yes-Chick-Babysitting-Transform/dp/0615478956/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1308745801&sr=8-2
By MollyandLaney
Giving up control can be scary. I mean, who can do that job better than you? What if someone makes a mistake? And how will you ever teach someone everything you know? But just like so many other decisions, giving up control for the sake of growth is simply a choice.
The choice is clear:
Option One: Keep control = stay small.
Option Two: Give up control = go big.
What is your choice?
If you’ve made the choice to go big, keep reading.
Here are the steps to giving up control, while still loving what you do, ensuring maximum results, and growing at the same time.
Step One: Smart Hires and Smart Fires. It’s essential to your company’s growth that you hire slow and fire fast. This means ensuring that each of your team members is in the right role for them, not just filling in what you need around the office.
Step Two: Enlist a Team Environment. Is your team working together or against each other? How are you working with your team to ensure they are working at their highest level? Are you rewarding the kind of behaviors you want to see more of, or do you only notice employees when they’ve done something wrong?
Step Three: Never Delegate – Give Ownership. Employees like to be valued and feel like an integral part of the team. As soon as you act like they don’t matter, they stop caring about their role. The key to growth is giving away ownership of tasks, not delegating what you or someone else doesn’t want to do.
Step Four: Create Intrapreneurs. Intrapreneurs are those employees that act as an entrepreneur would. They have bottom-line thinking, and are always watching out for how the company can grow. The more you trust and pass on ownership, the more you’ll create these dynamic team players in your company. And you can be sure they’ll take the bull by the horns… but only as long as you let them.
Remember, growth starts with a choice. If you are ready to make that choice starting today – then you must grab a copy of this book for everyone on your team and staff.
When your team reads Don’t Be a Yes Chick you’ll:
• Turn Your Key Team Member into a Consistent Star Player
• Create More Value for Your Business with Proactive Employees
• Generate More Profit with Increased Bottom-line Thinking
• Eliminate Time Wasters, Energy Vampires, and Other Destructive Time Thievery
This book isn’t just for YOU, the business owner to read, this book is for your TEAM to adapt, implement, and finally gain the courage and the skills to lead like you’ve always dreamed they would.
Visit www.yeschick.com to find out more and get your copy (copies) today!
Champions of your continued success,
Molly and Laney
By MollyandLaney
One of the biggest buzz words in our industry, or any industry for that matter, is “delegate“. In today’s world it’s all about efficiency, effectiveness and getting rid of that which doesn’t serve you any longer. Bravo, Bravo! We are not only in total support but constantly on the soapbox to get attorneys to STOP working on their non-revenue producing activities. All the rage in the past decade, side by side with the terminology of “Entrepreneur”, has been about “delegation“. Conduct a Google search and quite promptly you will receive roughly 28,500,000 useful tips, techniques and worksheets on effective delegation.
According to Wikipedia; Delegation (also called deputation) is the assignment of authority and responsibility to another person (normally from a manager to a subordinate) to carry out specific activities. We invite you to sit with that for a moment; “Manager to a SUBORDINATE”.
Now that is empowering and inspiring for the “subordinate”, huh? Just the definition alone has so many underlying demeaning tones; assignment, authority, responsibility but no authority, manager, subordinate….the bottom-line, this does not show up as an opportunity for team. Over the past 12 years we have worked with over 300 firms. When we conduct our Intake Interview with the support team (staff) the very first question we ask is “What role do you serve in the firm”, 90% of the time the response is fired back with “whatever needs to get dumped on me that day.” You speak “delegate” they hear “dumped on me“.
Today, we are inviting you to speak in an empowering language with you team and see how quickly you achieve the results you want. It’s easy, it just requires you speak the same language as your team. We’re not splitting hairs, rather merely noting there is no empowerment, enrollment or ownership in the language of “delegation“. If we’ve heard it once, we’ve heard it 300+ times. Delegation shows up like “dumped on me” to those on the receiving end. So maybe try on an empowering possibility. Imagine, you FINALLY decide you are ready to “give up” trust drafting (word processing) to your client services coordinator. Option one is to tell her that you are “delegating” trust drafting to her because you need more time to market and meet with new clients. While true, this lands like what you have to do is “more important” so you are “dumping” the least desirable task on her. It doesn’t show that you think she is smart, capable and up to the task, just that you need somewhere to dump a task to free up your time and she’s it. Instead, try option two. Talk to her about her new “opportunity” – learning and managing the trust drafting in your office. Rather than how new tasks are usually “delegated”… you scurry out of the office to a synergy meeting and on your way place the design templates on her desk and inform her you are now “turning” drafting over to her. Instead imagine this, you invite your team member to sit through every meeting involved in the client Estate Planning process; vision, design and signing. You then debrief with her and check in on what showed up for her during those meetings and if she saw the difference your firm made in the life’s of America’s aging population. Then proceed to talk about the powerful process of making sure all the family’s “stuff” is protected and how important their documents are to ensure everything is protected. You then move into a conversation about the art of drafting and bring up your document creation software and how the software exactly matches your trusty design templates. Now she can see how the documents she drafts plays a huge part in the difference your firm makes for clients. It’s not just paperwork or data entry now…..you see the difference? Delegation vs. empower. It’s the same amount of work on your part either way, but one produces results. And I think we all know oh too well where delegation leads us, to a place of “I can’t get my employees to do what I need them to do.”
Contact us at info@theultimatesmartsolution.com to receive a complimentary copy of “The 8 Keys to Empowerment” Workbook and start empowering your team today.
“The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it”. Theodore Roosevelt
