There is an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal called "Getting Fit without the Pain." Here's the link.

The article talks about how some individuals desiring to make improvements in their fitness are hiring an expert physical therapist before they get hurt, as often occurs in rigorous training. These highly trained professionals conduct a detailed needs assessment before the individual starts training for a marathon or attempting weight loss or whatever, in order to tailor a program best suited for the individual. Taking the time to learn from an expert up front greatly improves the probability of success while minimizing the possibility of injury and pain. Makes sense to me.

Business Leader Impact

I believe there are some things we can learn from this article from a business perspective.

It is easy to jump on the train of Six Sigma or outsourcing or process reengineering. There are many organizations selling one-size-fits-all approaches that force fit a "solution" into your organization, sometimes without stellar results. In my area of focus, services, I often get hired by executives who have already bought into the philosophy of transitioning their services business from free to fee, and have started taking action with minimal impact. The learning here is that what is a best practice for one organization trying to seriously sell services might be a worst practice for another. An industry pundit would know the variables that impact change and help you adjust accordingly.

So my recommendation? Whenever you are considering taking a major initiative, invest in having a qualified expert conduct a readiness review for you. Here you will learn not only your probability of success and the steps to take, but most importantly, the actions to avoid.

Tags: leadership, selling services

Anyone serious about selling services should be constantly looking for ways to improve their productivity. I have just the ticket. It's the Dragon Dictate free app for the iPhone.

I don't know about you, but I hate typing on iPhone's tiny keypad. Thanks to Dictate I no longer have to! All I need now is a relatively quiet area and to speak moderately into the iPhone. It does a great job of capturing my words almost 100%. This improves my ability to communicate at least 400% faster. Now that is a big deal.

Whether you're a seller of services, a services manager or any professional you will gain tremendously by using this handy tool.

Please let me know your thoughts and experiences with other other productivity tools like Dragon, or anything else you found, to make you more successful.

By the way I wrote this through dictation and did not have to touch the keypad at all.

Tags: selling services