Really, I mean it. Doesn’t it just make sense that if you had fewer tasks crowding your plate every day you could be more efficient at getting your most important goals accomplished? There is even a name for this strategy: Delegation. Great time managers are devoted to delegating.

Here are six delegation tips to help get you started:

1. Unpack Your Mental Baggage – Start your quest toward delegating by writing down every single task or responsibility that is rattling around in your head; work, home, civic, personal, everything.

2. Categorize – Quickly rank them as A, B, or C priorities based on the urgency or value they represent in helping you get your most important goals accomplished.

3. Analyze – Separate each of these priory groups into two categorizes based on which tasks can absolutely ONLY be done by you and the ones that could be accomplished by someone else with a little preparation. This can be tricky because we all have a slightly inflated opinion of our own indispensability. Be honest. After all, what if you were hit by a bus tomorrow? Most of what you do would eventually be done by someone else, so LET GO!

4. Identify the Projects – Find the projects under any of the priority levels that would be simplest or most helpful to delegate to someone else.

5. Identify Your Replacement — Take a moment to make a list of possible candidates you could hand each of these projects off to.

6. Follow these steps to Let Go:

1. DEFINE – spell out a clear description of the job, including the goals you want accomplished
2. INSTRUCT – meet with the person who will be taking on this task and carefully review with them all of the information about this job. Give them enough information to understand what your expectations are, but don’t dictate every detail. Allow them the latitude to create their own style and find their own solutions. True delegation involves both the responsibility to get the job done and the authority to make it happen in a way that works best for the person who has accepted the new responsibility.
3. INSPECT – agree on when and how this person will report back to you on his progress. In addition, determine for yourself when you will do quick check ins with this person to make sure things are going smoothly.

If you want to get more done, empower other people to help you do it and your organization will become more productive than ever before.

Please share any additional tips that work for you below in the comments.

By James A. Baker
Founder and CEO,
Baker Communications

A manager wears so many hats – planner, motivator, supervisor, mentor, coach, enforcer of company policy, referee of employee disputes. It is easy to wilt under all of that pressure and just resort to giving orders and hiding in your office to do paper work.

Actually, too many managers employ that type of strategy or something similar to it, and – surprisingly – a lot of companies or willing to settle for that managerial style as long as it doesn’t hurt company profits too much. However, who knows how much employee productivity and company profits could be boosted if managers were able to build effective relationships with their team members? There is no more critical relationship in your business than the relationship between manager and team members, and it all begins with a manager who knows how to build trust.

Here are some important hints to help you begin to create an effective atmosphere of trust and respect with the people under your supervision:

1. When you present ideas, always request feedback. – No one enjoys working for a dictator. Whenever it is possible – and especially when dealing with issues that will result in major changes – leave time for your team members to discuss their reaction to the ideas and to provide you with input that could help implement the changes more effectively. It always helps for your team members to actually feel like they are a part of the team.

2. Let team members know it is acceptable and appropriate for them to bring “opportunities” (read: problems) to the supervisor’s attention. – This is hard for a manager to do. No one likes to hear bad news, especially if it might reflect poorly on them. But if your people don’t feel comfortable talking to you about the problems they see, they will certainly be talking to someone. This kind of gossip poisons the atmosphere and makes the job more difficult for everyone. If you want to avoid a bigger problem later, be willing to face it now.

3. Always be sure that you take some action to address issues presented to you by employees. — Concerns of employees should feel they are taken seriously, but this can sometimes be a little tricky. The employ’s opinion may be based on inaccurate information or irrational thinking. As a manager, your job is to sort through the chaff without destroying the wheat. Not all of your employee’s concerns are valid, and the ones that are may not have simple solutions. The important thing is to take the concerns seriously, implement an appropriate response, and follow up with the employee to let him know how the issue was handled.

4. Acknowledge others’ views even if you do not agree. Discuss all ideas. Do not make an employee feel as though they should not have said anything. – This is actually an extension of the previous point. By making room for people to express their ideas, you demonstrate your respect for them. In turn, you will earn their respect.

5. Don’t forget, you are not infallible. — Even the best hitters in the Major Leagues still only get a hit about a third of their times at bat. When you are wrong, admit it. And if someone has an idea that is better than yours, embrace it and don’t worry about who gets the credit.

6. Above all, be consistent. Handle every person and every situation with the same respect and openness you would hope to receive yourself from your boss upstairs. — When the pressure is on, and your team is facing a difficult deadline, it is easy to start viewing them as means to an end. However, they are still people who have varying needs, dreams, issues and goals; people who sometimes struggle and fall short, even when they are trying to do their best. Never forget that. You will bring out the best in them only if you are willing to give your best to them.

What other ways can you incorporate building trust within your team?

Selling can be a brutal business. You have to have strength, determination, and endless optimism. If you aren’t able to survive being told “no” by customers dozens of times a day, selling may not be your game.  So how can sales managers keep people motivated and moving when the deals seem to be just out of reach?

The point is sales reps invest incredible amounts of emotional energy just to stay in the game. They believe in the product and the company or they wouldn’t keep showing up for work, but sometimes – especially in the middle of a run of bad luck or a down economy – there may be days that they aren’t sure they believe in themselves. Therefore, one of the best things that a sales manager can do for the sales team is to maximize any and every opportunity to celebrate every win, every time, for every rep.

Here are 12 ideas for sales contests that sales managers can use to create opportunities to celebrate:

1. All if total sales are above $X at a minimum of X% margin.
2. Salesperson with greatest month to month sales increase.
3. Salesperson with highest sales volume from NEW customers.
4. Salesperson who revives the most PAST customers.
5. All if each salesperson on the team meets or exceeds sales goals.
6. Salesperson with highest single sale or shipment.
7. Salesperson who sells the highest PRE-PAID order.
8. Salesperson with largest sale in a region.
9. Salesperson with the highest total Gross Margin (regardless of dollar value).
10. Salesperson with highest margin on NEW customer.
11. Salesperson with the highest average margin on an EXISTING customer.
12. Salesperson with the highest sales in a certain product line/category

One of the clear roles of the sales manager is to create contests that give everyone the opportunity to win while driving corporate objectives. What other wins do you incorporate in celebrating your team’s accomplishments? Share in the comments below.

This rule doubtless rings true to procrastinators everywhere. If a given task should take about an hour but you have two hours to complete it, somehow it always seems to end up taking two hours. If you have a whole day, it will take all day. If you have ever reached the end of a week and realized that you have only done five hours’ worth of work all week, this is where all that time went! Parkinson’s Law describes a major time management problem that many people contend with daily.

Why Parkinson’s Law Works

Parkinson’s Law relies on several very human tendencies. If you have all the time in the world to do something, there is no sense of urgency, and thus no motivation to get the job done quickly. You may put it off, get distracted, pursue sidelines, or dawdle over details. If you have the time, you will take it. There is no reason to get started immediately, to focus completely, or to finish soon. An abundance of time, essentially, gives people an excuse to slack off.

Another factor is that if more time is allocated to complete a task, the psychological approach to the task increases in complexity. A week-long project is far more daunting than a one-day project, so more time will be spent working out details, making decisions, and polishing the final product. Such a “major” undertaking also creates more stress and associated delays.

By contrast, a scarcity of time produces a sense of urgency, which generates both motivation and focus. As a deadline approaches, it is amazing what can be accomplished in a very short period! The so-called Stock-Sanford Corollary to Parkinson’s Law states that “If you wait until the last minute, it only takes a minute to do.” Just as any task can expand to fill the amount of time allowed, conversely, the amount of effort put into a task can be limited by limiting the allotted time – down to the minimum amount of time that is actually required to complete the task.

The fact is that people tend to give tasks more time than they really need. Sometimes this is to allow for a buffer in case there are problems, but usually it happens because people simply overestimate how long a task takes to complete. Their estimate is “proven” correct when Parkinson’s Law kicks in!

How To Fight The Law

The key to avoiding out-of-control expansion of work is to create a sense of urgency for yourself. Most of your tasks probably have externally imposed deadlines of one kind or another, but those deadlines may be too liberal to promote efficiency. If Parkinson’s Law is a problem for you or if you have a tendency to procrastinate, you will probably need to set different goals.

One good way to do this is to start each day by identifying your most important tasks. Try to realistically determine how much time you think it should take to complete each task. Then increase the level of urgency by allocating less time to get it done. Start by reducing the available time by a reasonable amount – perhaps 10%. This will ensure that you work in as efficient and focused a manner as possible for the entire time allotted. Work against this time limit as if you are racing against the clock. You will soon start to get an idea of how good your time estimates are. After you start testing this technique, you may find you can cut your allotted time for many tasks in half!

Another technique for increasing urgency is simply moving up your deadlines. Make it a habit to complete all tasks earlier than they are required to be done. If your boss asks you to complete a task by Friday, have it done by Thursday. If you have two weeks for a given project, set your own deadline for one week. This not only increases your sense of urgency and gets the task done faster, but creates a time cushion for handling problems, making corrections, or fine-tuning. You can also address other tasks in the time between your deadline and the external deadline.

Breaking The Law

Parkinson’s Law is simply an observation about how people tend to do things, not an unbreakable rule. If you are aware of the principles underlying Parkinson’s Law you can experiment with ways to narrow your deadlines and get your work done faster. Be cautious, however, of the line between just enough time and not enough. Keep in mind that the goal is to do a good job in less time, not to sacrifice quality for speed.

Without a doubt, there is relentless, almost unbearable, pressure wearing down on most sales organizations these days, as the ailing economy and shrinking margins make it harder and harder to retire quota and drive revenue. Sales reps – the front line first responders who carry the future profits of the company on their backs – are taking on bigger territories, facing higher quotas, and making more customer contacts than ever, and in many organizations they are still losing ground. Where does the sales rep turn to for support, revitalization, encouragement and direction in the middle of such challenging times?

The answer, of course, is the sales manager, who is charged with providing the insights, resources, accountability, and coaching the sales rep needs to succeed. Unfortunately, most sales managers have their own set of pressures to deal with. Executives want updated sales accounting data, and they want it yesterday. Meetings across departmental lines eat up huge amounts of the day without transferring any real value back into the sales process. Even meetings with the sales team seem counter-productive most of the time. And the underlying mantra that plays daily in the back of the sales manager’s mind is: produce more, produce faster, do it with less, do it now.

In the face of all this pressure, it is easy for the sales manager to become overwhelmed and distracted to such a degree that they have nothing left in the tank to deliver the kind of input to the sales team to help them succeed. Eventually, sales reps – especially those who haven’t achieved “super star” status (most of them) – start to flounder, feeling like they have been pushed into the deep end and left to sink or swim on their own. Ultimately, production – already underperforming –continues to gradually trend further down and the pressure on everyone keeps getting worse.

Evidence repeated shows that turning around a sales team starts with turning around the sales manager. Sales managers are uniquely positioned to influence and empower sales reps to greater levels of success, but sales managers sometimes become so busy and distracted that they neglect their own professional development as they get caught up trying to survive the latest fire drill. Often it only takes a little adjustment and new insight in one or two key areas to dramatically increase the positive impact the sales manager can make on the whole sales team.

As we continue to work with successful sales organizations all around the world, we have discovered that highly effective sales managers have a set of skills and characteristics in common that set them above all the rest, and which enable them to help their teams to achieve results that are also way above average. These characteristics are defined in the topics below:

1. Too many sales teams are over managed and under led, which is to say that many sales managers rely too much on metrics and deadlines to drive performance. Highly effective sales managers find numerous ways to come alongside team members to motivate and inspire them on a personal level and bring out the best in them.

2. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. This is just a way of saying that highly effective sales managers don’t rely on theoretical or arbitrary programs to drive sales team performance. Yes, every team should have a sales process and set goals and measure pipeline, but it has to be set against the sales culture we all struggle with today. The realities of current market conditions and the human limitations of individual team members will converge to shred theories into confetti. Highly effective sales managers know the importance of accounting for the real world conditions their team members face every day.

3. Building the team; finding and hiring talent. Effective sales managers are committed to hiring the best talent available. If you want the best, hire the best, and save loads of time and money on training while protecting yourself from failure six months down the road. It costs more up front, but it definitely pays off over time.

4. Cadence and Consistency: Set and manage the heart beat of the team. In just the same way that children thrive and grow in a stable family where they don’t have to guess what the rules are from one day to the next, a sales team also thrives when all the components of the sales and management process follow regular standards and schedules. Sales reps can give more energy to selling when they don’t feel a need to watch their backs at the office.

5. Key Performance Indicators: The glue of your communication strategy. An integral part of cadence and consistency is the tone and the topics of your communications with your sales team. Nothing is more important to sales makers than knowing what is expected of them and when it is expected. Effective sales managers keep their communication clear and their expectations well defined, so that team members know what to aim for, and understand what will happen if they hit it (or not).

6. Manage the Forward Pipeline: The difference between pipeline and forecasting. Most sales managers understand the necessity of communicating regularly with team members about pipeline and forecasting. However, highly effective sales managers understand that there is a difference between the two. Forecasting is focused on late stage deals. It does little to help with future quarters. Pipeline is focused on the future development of sales, which ultimately impacts later forecasts. Most managers don’t differentiate or understand the difference between the two.

7. Process: Don’t over engineer it, but don’t ignore it. Every sales team works within a standardized process which defines how to approach, qualify, work with and close the customer. This is a good thing. However, highly effective sales managers know it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Highly regimented, complex sales processes can confuse a sales rep and tie their hands, so an effective sales manager will enable and support the sales process without making it a “strait jacket”.

8. Coaching: In the day – in the moment. Coaching is the responsibility most neglected by sales managers, because it requires them to borrow time from their already busy day. Highly effective sales managers realize that placing a high priority on coaching will build confidence and drive production for their team better and faster than any other single practice. Therefore, they take advantage of every opportunity, scheduled or unscheduled, to provide feedback that will make their sales reps better

9. Herding cats: Dealing with the mavericks and high performers. It takes a special kind of person to thrive as a sales professional. The highly competitive – some might say even slightly narcissistic – profile of a successful sales rep can make them a challenge to work with. Highly effective sales managers know how to work with this unique breed of cat, to maximize performance and minimize conflict that can take a good sales professional and help them become great.

10. Leading Indicators: Worrisome patterns of behavior. Effective sales managers are always thinking ahead; they can recognize what small trends indicate before they become big problems. By noticing small changes in sales rep performance in what otherwise might look like still “reasonably” good numbers, the sales manager can be proactive with coaching before it is too late.

11. Protect their time: You can’t sell if you aren’t spending time with customers. Highly effective sales managers practice good time management habits, and they enable their sales teams to make the most of their time by eliminating demands on their time that don’t directly help drive revenue.

12. Celebrate: Winning is fun. Celebrate it! This ought to be self-explanatory, but some sales managers wait too long and then don’t celebrate enough. Effective sales managers understand that the best way to dispel some of the pressure is to spotlight wins – even small ones – as often as possible and use it as an opportunity to give everyone a little boost. A little positive energy goes a long way.

As we arrive at the 30th anniversary of the Miracle on Ice when the young, talented, and inexperienced US Olympic Men’s Hockey Team beat the vaunted team from the USSR and went on to win the gold medal against all odds, every member of that team will tell you that it wasn’t their talent that made them winners, it was the highly effective strategies of their coach, Herb Brooks. He knew how to help his team to ignore the odds and do the work that would accomplish the impossible. That is what good coaches do. Highly effective sales managers do it too, except they do it every day, 24/7/365.

Using Automated Systems Instead of People

The economy is tight, and you’re trying to save money. Thank goodness for touch-tone menus, self-checking lanes, and automated customer satisfaction surveys. You won’t have to pay people to man the phones, check out purchases or stand around with a clipboard asking questions. However, you will lose a lot of opportunities to deliver warm, personal service. You may try to sell these advances as “convenient,” but your customers know full well that when a machine answers the phone or they have to check out their own purchases, these systems have not been put in place for their convenience, but to reduce your staffing costs. This makes your customers feel undervalued.

Making Customer Support Hard to Reach

You can’t afford to pay a bunch of customer support people, so you just make customer support difficult to get. You set up your website to redirect customers to the FAQ when they look for customer support, because after all, there’s no reason to employ someone to help with problems that customers can fix themselves. Your website has no contact page, or if it does, it’s just an e-mail form with no direct address provided. The first thing your automated e-mail reply does is suggest that the customer check the FAQ on your website. If anyone actually manages to find a phone number, they will get an answering machine. It also suggests that they check the FAQ. By this time your customers have given up in frustration, and while you haven’t paid anyone to help them, they almost certainly won’t be coming back.

Making Customers Jump Through Hoops

You are oriented towards getting as much as you can from every customer, and keeping every dollar you get. Your store is built like a one-way maze to ensure that customers wend their way past every single product and through every department. Your return policies are draconian. If you’re a service provider, you lock customers into contracts and charge exorbitant fees for late payment or termination. Then you wonder why you have so much churn and so few repeat customers.

Not Rewarding Customer Loyalty

You are trying to expand, so you offer great deals for new customers – low rates, discounts, free installation, store credit. You run campaign after well-publicized campaign trying to woo people with fantastic bargains. Meanwhile, your old, loyal customers keep paying the same rates they always have – at least until they leave because someone else offered them a new customer discount. Whoops.

Using Poor Service Personnel

You’re trying to keep your overhead down, so you’ve outsourced everything you can. You have a few in-house customer service agents, but you don’t really have a training budget anymore, and they’re inexperienced, entry-level people. They were cheap to hire, but you don’t trust them to make any real decisions – they have to call in management to take any action. Untrained, outsourced, unmotivated, and unempowered service representatives don’t benefit your customers’ experience. If the people who are supposed to provide service are unwilling or unable to actually help your customers, what’s the point?

Anyone can make a bad choice, and poor decisions can be made by any size company, especially in the name of saving money or making a profit. The irony is that treating customer service like a cost to be cut actually eats into your bottom line in the long run. There is no asset like a loyal customer, and the surest road to customer loyalty is warm, personal, effective customer service – which means doing whatever you need to do to make them happy. Don’t worry – your investment in customer service will pay for itself!

Is there a linchpin that could start a domino effect that could devastate your business? Or, is there a tipping point that could start an avalanche of success like a runaway snowball?

Interesting questions, but is there an answer? My wife and I love to watch the hit TV show Castle. Recently, they had an intriguing two part episode that explored this concept of a linchpin. In the story, an economic linchpin was discovered that if put in motion would destroy the United States economy and start a downward domino effect that would lead the globe to World War III. It was a very entertaining escapade from our daily lives and in the story the bad guys almost succeeded? But, it got me thinking. Is it possible? Could one event so delude human reasoning and magnify emotions to the point of utter devastation?

I believe that there very well may be a linchpin or a tipping point for your business. Let’s explore the linchpin first. What if you had all your eggs for success in one basket and you lost the basket? Do you see where I am going with this? Brian Tracy says that “Everything Counts” when it comes to selling. What if you or one of your associates kills (accidentally of course) the business with your largest client? What if that client composed of 85% of your annual business? Could you survive…or would it be your linchpin?

So, what is the solution? We must avoid the business error so many of us are guilty of, including myself. We put most of our eggs in one basket and if we lose that business, we are headed towards economic devastation known as Chapter 11. We avoid it by spreading out our marketing. By kicking into high gear our prospecting for new and more clients.

The only way to avoid the business linchpin is to make sure that no one event or any one client so controls the life blood of your business existence. Spread it out. Market more. Do business with different size clients. That will kill the linchpin…and not you.

Now, let’s talk about the tipping point. Is there a point where all your marketing, all your sales, all your success converge into a place where it spills over to tremendous, incredible visibility and success? I believe so. Why do some products go viral?  I don’t think we can know the answer…but we know they do. In fact, this article may go viral, but why this one and not another one?

Your tipping point exists and it will find you…if you continue to practice business success. In fact, do more of it. Supercharge it. What will make you more visible? What will get you and your product or service more attention? How can you get your product or service into the hands of more people? How can you serve them more than youcurrently are? Seek the answers to these questions and take action on what you discover and before you know it, your tipping point may find you.

You’re waiting for your turn to speak, and your mouth has gone dry. You wipe your clammy hands on your pants and try to remember to smile as you ascend to the podium. As you get into the spotlight you can hear your heart thumping. Your dry mouth opens… and you start talking a mile a minute. It’s like the words are a flood that you can’t stop pouring out. You finish what should have been a twenty-minute presentation in about seven minutes, and as you sit down shaking, nobody has any idea what you said.

Does this sound familiar? This is a very common experience for people who are unused to public speaking.

Motor Mouth

The most pervasive problem, especially for inexperienced presenters, is speaking too quickly. Fast speech is a natural effect of fear or nervousness, as well as excitement. The fight-or-flight response kicks in, adrenalin starts pumping, and you turn into a motor mouth – sometimes without even realizing it. The effects of adrenalin can skew your perception and make time seem to slow down. If you are nervous, it may seem like you are talking more slowly than you really are. A good pace for the audience will probably seem very slow to you!

Speed Reading

Overly speedy speaking can also result when the presenter is reading from a script. Reading occurs at a different rate than oral communication; most people read faster than they talk. Remember that it takes longer for the audience to hear and understand your message than it takes for you to read it. Your listeners cannot absorb auditory information at the same rate that they could absorb visual input. Give them time to hear and understand what you are saying before you move on to your next point.

Mumbo Jumbo

Speaking too quickly, whether from nervousness or because you are reading your speech, often results in mumbling. When you speak too quickly, the audience will only catch about 10% of what you say; if you are also mumbling, your listeners will have to strain to figure out any of it. You need to be heard clearly for your message to come across, or your presentation will fizzle.

Practice Makes Perfect

The best way to counter the tendency to rush through your presentation is to practice doing your speech, slowly, ahead of time. Going over the presentation at a slower speed will make that pace seem more natural. You will always tend to speed up in front of an audience, so practice a bit slower than you actually want to talk. Practice the entire speech, multiple times. The more familiar you are with your material, the less nervous you will be, and the less time you will spend mumbling into your script.

Make sure to also enunciate clearly when practicing; you might even try doing some tongue twisters or other vocal exercises. Open your mouth wide enough to let sound escape effectively. Keep the size of your audience in mind; practice projecting to fill the room where you will be presenting.

As you practice your speech, you also have a good opportunity to work out where you should pause. This is part of pacing yourself; pausing will allow you to catch your breath and not rush headlong through your material. Pauses can also be used to create tension and interest or to highlight important points. Pause whenever you want the audience to take a moment to absorb what you have just said.

Pace Your Presentation

When crunch time finally arrives, do some relaxation exercises and try to keep it cool. Remember that you will have a tendency to speed up and that adrenalin may be affecting your perception of time; talk a little slower than you actually think you need to. Even if it ends up being slower than your usual speech, it will keep you from appearing nervous and rushed.

If you control the pace of your presentation, enunciate well and pause appropriately, your presentation is likely to be more successful. You will appear more confident, and your audience will be better able to understand and connect with your message