ZThree,Z3,Joe Zente,The Alternative Board,TAB,Derek Jeter,role model,leadership,perserverance

Last week, an amazing career came to an end. Derek Jeter, one of the premier players in the history of baseball, played his final game in Yankee Stadium. He is 40 years old.

The storybook game ended a storybook career. If you are one of the few people who hasn’t heard about Derek Jeter or his final game, you can find highlights all over YouTube or learn anything you’d like in any one of thousands of Google links.

You can also learn about Derek in Fortune Magazine. Earlier this year, Fortune published its list of the World’s Best Leaders. Derek Jeter ranked number 11, right there next to Pope Francis, Warren Buffett, the Dalai Lama, and Jeff Bezos. One may ask, “how can a baseball player earn such an honor?” For anyone who has watched Derek over the years, the answer is obvious.

I’ve always been a baseball fan, but this article is not about baseball. It is about the lessons we can all learn from Derek Jeter. It is about lessons of leadership, integrity, perseverance, discipline, respect, and achievement. Lessons of Walking the Talk. Lessons of Greatness. Derek is certainly a skilled athlete, but his greatness far exceeded his skill in baseball. In short, Derek Jeter is a winner. While he has always been an outstanding individual performer, his leadership has resulted in an unmatched level of team success.

Derek Jeter played for the Yankees, the most prolific team in the history of sports. His career spanned 20 years, playing (and working) in New York City, the media capital of the world. Derek played in an era when steroid-use ran rampant, where a huge percentage of his competitors were juiced up, gaining unfair advantages in speed and strength.

His career unfolded in a pressure-packed fishbowl during the age of the Internet, smartphones, 24-hour news cycles, and social media. Derek Jeter was under a microscope each and every day for two full decades, competing against the most skilled opponents in the world. In an era filled with controversy, substance abuse, free-agency, scandal, media hype, social media, and paparazzi, Derek rose above it all and simply, humbly did his job. 

Most players, even highly talented ones, are unable to survive the pressures and temptations of playing in New York City. Legions of “stars” have flamed out under the Big Apple’s hot lights. If you think Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and a continuous barrage of emails, and texts distract you from completing your important work, consider the discipline and focus required to perform under the continuous scrutiny and non-stop distractions of being a superstar in NYC.

Many have described Derek’s accomplishments as miraculous. I disagree. I believe his accomplishments are primarily formulaic. Like many great over-achievers, Derek was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time during certain times in his career, but he also created his own luck by doing the right things at all times. 

In many of his years with the Yankees, Derek was not the most skilled or the “best” player on the team. He rarely had the highest batting average and never had the most home runs. He was never the biggest or the strongest, and usually not the fastest. However, he was always considered the undisputed leader of the team. Derek was elected Yankee Team Captain at the early age of 29.  Most of his competitors consider him the Captain of Baseball. Leadership oozed from this man.

Derek always led by example. He expected greatness of himself and others, treated everyone with respect, and commanded respect in return. His practice routines, discipline, humility, work ethic, and pursuit of continuous improvement are legendary.  He relished accountability, especially for himself. As a consequence, everyone on his team became a better player. A rising tide floats all boats. His teammates followed him with awe.

Derek’s beliefs, behavior, and mindset, and the remarkable, continuous series of achievements that followed, serve as a model for success in any pursuit. Derek Jeter was the consummate professional. As a professional, he did his job, each and every day. 

Teammates who had a chance to experience Derek Jeter felt fortunate to play on his team.  Competitors felt fortunate to play against him. Fans, writers, and others who witnessed Derek’s consistency and leadership admired him.

Few people achieve their dream. Derek Jeter did. From a very young age, he wanted to do one thing, to play for the Yankees. He did what he loved, and people loved him for it. His desire, commitment, responsibility and outlook were unprecedented. 

Throughout his two-decade career, Derek was not perfect. He failed many times and overcame many injuries and obstacles, but his attitude never wavered.  No matter the setback, he always elected to quickly jump back on the horse to execute his routines and do his job, day after day. And his teammates followed.

As a fan of baseball and student of human behavior and achievement, I feel very fortunate to have witnessed Derek Jeter’s career. He has been a model of consistency, humility, discipline, grace, and performance, demonstrating daily on the world stage how to lead by example, inspire others, and win.

Many articles, and several books, have been written about Derek Jeter. Now that his baseball career has concluded in a spectacular crescendo of glory, I’m sure many more will follow. Unlike 99.9% of major league ball players, Derek Jeter will be elected immediately into the Hall of Fame on his very first ballot election, but his greatness transcends his statistics.  

Derek is finished playing baseball, but I believe his career is just getting started. He does not enoy publicity and does not relish the spotlight, but I think we’ll be hearing tons more about his future accomplishments. Derek Jeter is not only a great player; he is a great man and a great leader.

Every professional, leader, CEO, salesperson, entrepreneur, civic leader, man, woman, and child can learn lessons in leadership, success, and winning by studying Derek Jeter’s career. He is an excellent role model for anyone. Stay tuned and soak it in.

Joe 

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2014.   All Rights Reserved.

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In a few moments, I will share a secret that will allow you to grow your sales and double your profit in less than one year. I am consistently amazed at the incredibly small percentage of people that know this secret. The secret is simple to execute, requires no financial investment and will save you tons of time. 

For most people, the easiest (and most comfortable) parts of selling are:

• Giving Presentations

• Creating Proposals

• Offering Product Demos

• Talking about your Company Benefits and Advantages

• Attempting to Demonstrate Value

• Providing References

• Lunches, Happy-hours and Golfing with Prospects

• Research, email and other electronic communication

• Visiting with Peers

Some salespeople also love to hang out at networking, aka: not working, events.

Although these comfortable activities are preferred and enjoyable for most people, they are also the least important, differentiated and effective part of selling. In the minds of Buyers, these activities are also the most boring. They are commodities.

In order to talk, present, and demonstrate, one requires knowledge - knowledge of your company, product, industry, competition and more. Companies invest billions every year training their salespeople to become experts on their products, benefits, and industry.  Training takes time. Talking takes time. Demos take time. Creating proposals takes time. 

Time = Money. Expensive money. Goodbye Profit.

I’m not disparaging training. In fact, I’m a huge fan of training, the right kind of training.  I’m simply sharing some obvious observations regarding proportionality. Product training, client training, demos and presentations are highly over-rated; they create ineffective behavior and cost companies dearly.

If you could create the same volume of sales in half the time, what would happen to your margins? Also, how much additional (high margin) revenue could you create with the additional time you saved?

Over the course of my career, I’ve managed, trained and coached many thousands of salespeople and business owners, and I meet many new ones each week. When we meet and discuss their selling approach, I quickly learn that some use a selling process, but most don’t. I also quickly learn that just about every one spends 2 to 5 times as much time and money on generating a sale than is necessary. By focusing on the activities they know and like, versus the effective activities that create trust, credibility, differentiation and results, they dramatically diminish their sales growth and profit.

I promised to share the profit secret, so here goes…

When it comes to selling: Stop Being the Expert and Shut-Up.  

If you want to grow your sales and keep more profit, focus on this Effective Selling List:

• Stop being the expert. Start making the prospect the expert.

• Stop talking. Start listening.

• Stop convincing. Start learning.

• Stop visiting with peers. Start visiting with decision makers.

• Stop presenting. Start understanding.

Great salespeople and owners understand that these are key activities that lead to effective selling and superior performance.

Please notice that nothing on this list requires product knowledge or experience. Every one of these activities requires less time, less training, and fewer resources than the previous, comfortable list of ineffective activities.

Challenge each person on your team to place their fears and ego aside and to replace expertise and convincing with child-like curiosity, integrity and sincerity. Start today!

Less time, more sales, increased profit.

Happy Hunting,

Joe 

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2014.   All Rights Reserved.

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Every one of us has preferences. There are activities we enjoy doing, and ones we do not.  Some activities are comfortable for us. Others are not.

Within any particular job or role, there are aspects that energize us, and aspects that don’t.  Some activities, like public speaking or cold calling, may even scare us. 

And we are all different. Just because a particular activity lives inside my Comfort Zone, does not mean that it lives inside yours.

As business owners, most of us would prefer to work ON, versus IN, our businesses. 

Most owners understand that they should spend significant time in areas like strategy, planning, identifying new opportunities, innovating, and leadership, yet find themselves getting pulled into crisis management, fire-fighting, financial details, and legal matters. While many owners enjoy working on their business, other owners actually have a preference for the more tactical parts of their business, like baking a cake or developing software.

Organizations have a Comfort Zone. Some companies attempt to hire employees with a diverse range of Comfort Zones in order to cover the varied aspects of their business. Others have a culture that attracts courageous employees and continually inspires them to leave their personal Comfort Zones.   Some owners don’t give much thought to their organizational Comfort Zone. This can be a very costly mistake. 

Independent of industry or size, every great company is effective in executing the key activities critical to their success of their business, whether these activities lie inside their Comfort Zone or not. 

Many individuals hate to leave their Comfort Zone. Highly successful people know that the majority of growth and performance happens outside of their Zone.

As business owners, we would like to think that our employees will do their jobs effectively and efficiently. We want to believe that our people will prioritize their time and activities in order of importance, with an eye on accomplishing the key results they are being paid to accomplish. While we want our employees to love their jobs, we would also like them to consistently grow and leave their comfort zones whenever necessary in order to do the things that they should do, versus staying inside their happy-place doing the things that feel most comfortable. When your entire team is working on activities that they should do, your company will produce great results.  Alternatively, if your employees choose to do the things they could do or want to do in lieu of the things they should do, results will suffer, sometimes badly.

• How big is the Comfort Zone inside your company?

• Do you have a strategy to continually expand it?

• What percentage of time do your employees spend working on things they should do, versus working on things they could do or want to do?

• When hiring, do you evaluate a potential employee’s willingness to leave his or her Zone?

• Does your company culture incentivize and reward Courage (or Comfort)?

Remember, the magic happens outside of your Comfort Zone. I hope you leave it often.

Enjoy the journey!

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2013.   All Rights Reserved.

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All great teams possess certain characteristics.

It does not matter if we are talking about sports, music, sales, military, or business teams.  The ingredients that produce great teams are identical.

All World-Class Teams have:

Great Players:  A Great Team must start with great people.  You would be hard-pressed to go to the Super Bowl without great athletes or to produce a Broadway hit without great performers. All great players have a sense of Personal Responsibility.  When something goes wrong on the Team, they always point the finger at themselves first.  When the Team does well or when they receive personal accolades, they always look to congratulate others (not themselves) in a spirit of gratitude.  Great players don’t only set goals and plan to win, they expect to win.

Great Leadership:  Great leaders are multipliers.  They understand that leadership applies to people and that management applies to things.  Multipliers know how to inspire vigorous debate and understand that “all of us are smarter than any one of us”.  They are confident in their ability to lead, but they do not believe that they are the smartest person in the room.  They inspire their team to place “the elephants on the table” and to disagree without being disagreeable.  They are self-aware and always Walk their Talk.  Great leaders are trustworthy and know how to trust others. They are happy to admit when they are wrong or if they have made a mistake.  They understand that vigorous debate trumps false agreement every time.   Multipliers get people to perform far beyond their wildest imagination, attain new heights, and accomplish things they have never accomplished before. Success breeds success and belief breeds belief.  They understand how to create and maintain momentum.  Soon, everyone performs better.  A rising tide floats all boats.

Great Culture:  Great teams possess a culture of abundance, leadership development, discipline, and accountability. The leader and all of the teammates of a world-class team seek to grow their slice of the pie by growing the entire pie. The leader World-class team members have no tolerance for any form of zero-sum mentality, politicking, spin, or CYA.  Great cultures understand that the goals, mission and values of the team are always more important than those of any one of its players.  In no way does this philosophy imply a lack of loyalty.  Great teammates are extremely loyal, but will not allow any member to give anything less than their best, because poor effort by any player can do harm to the overall team mission. If a fellow teammate is dogging it, they will call them out respectfully, but directly.  Players in world-class culture possess optimism, but they never sugar-coat.  They always face the brutal facts and deal with them head on, even if the facts don’t support their pre-determined hopes and conclusions.

Great Focus:  Focus is a hallmark of performance, on both an individual and team basis.  Great Teams work hard to keep their goals, objectives, and KPIs to a minimum, permitting intense focus on only those most critical items that will produce the highest return on time and energy and the greatest overall results.  They create strategies and success recipes based upon this small set of objectives, then focus intensely upon execution.  Everyone understands effectiveness and efficiency.   All members are constantly asking themselves the question “What ONE THING should I focus on now to provide the greatest value to the mission and produce the greatest result.”  There is absolutely no tolerance for time-wasters or distractions.

Great Commitment to Continuous Improvement:  Great Team leaders and players never rest on their laurels.  They are happy to celebrate their great achievements, but are never satisfied and are constantly looking to improve.  They are masterful at overcoming adversity and obstacles.  They recover quickly and know how to quickly get back on the horse whenever they fall off.

Even the best teams in the world don’t win all the time.  Perfection is unattainable; the pursuit of perfection is golden.  You will rarely, if ever, see a professional or college sports team go undefeated in a season.  However, there are programs and leaders that seem to consistently make it to the championship or finish in the top 10% year after year.  World-class, consistent performers and teams understand that in most cases success is a marathon, not a sprint - a journey, not a destination.  As such, players and leaders on great teams are highly committed to continuous training, coaching and development.

How does your team measure up?

Copyright ©   Joe Zente  2013.   All Rights Reserved.

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Two-thirds of Americans make New Year’s resolutions each year.

Approximately 5% of those who make resolutions actually keep them.

In other word… 19 out of 20 fail!

But we are obviously talking about others. As a business owner, we all know that you are one of those special people who always exceed your goals. Right?

Independent of whether or not you make resolutions, most results-oriented people do set goals and view December as a time of renewal and optimism.

“This year is going to be different.  We are REALLY going to achieve our KPIs THIS year.”

Business owners are planning to achieve new growth and profit targets. Salespeople are going to exceed their quotas.

“This year, we are going to stay focused and blow away our numbers.”

For many CEOs, it isn’t long before reality sets in.   By springtime, many businesses have already fallen behind their plan and are strategizing about ways to close the execution gap and playing catch-up.  Also, many salespeople and sales managers are formulating creative excuses for mediocre performance and forecasts.

The fact that 95% of resolutions are consistently broken and that most businesses consistently fall short of their goals all stem from the same set of fundamentals.

The universal language of business owners is PROFIT.   The following five tips will improve your chances of achieving your 2013 profit goals.

1. Change your Self Talk:  All transformation begins with self-dialogue.   The conversation that you have with yourself is more important than the conversations that you will have with your Team.  Self-talk dictates one’s beliefs, behavior, and communication and effectiveness.  Organizational transformation begins with highly committed, future-based, assertive dialogue from the leader. Make a Declaration and Unconditionally Commit.  DECLARE to yourself (and to your Team) that you have decided and committed to transform your business and to exceed your (crystal clear) goal.  Failure is NOT an option.  Make it clear that you are All-In.  Write it down, and make it big and bright to everyone.  Then expect to succeed.
2. Create a Compelling “WHY”:  Human beings can achieve practically miraculous feats if they have a compelling reason to do so.  Humans also behave the way they are currently behaving because they CHOOSE to do so.  Most people HATE to leave their Comfort Zone.  They will NOT leave their happy place unless they have a highly compelling reason to leave it.  In most cases, financial incentives (especially small or moderate ones) are NOT compelling.  Your hope (or their hope) that an employee will change and leave their comfort zone is even less compelling.  Hope is a pathetic strategy.
3. Eliminate the word “try” from your company’s vocabulary:  Prohibit its use.  “Trying” is less than All-In.  Far less.  In fact, trying is a built-in excuse and will almost guarantee failure.  It provides unbridled permission for an employee to return to their Comfort Zone.  Given this permission, they will be back there in a heartbeat.  Say goodbye to accountability.
4. Remove the Past from the Future:  I often ask business owners what they want.  They often answer by telling me what they are currently doing or have done in the past.  The past does NOT equal the future, but human beings have a highly self-limiting tendency to super-impose last year on next year.  This tendency destroys creativity, productivity, innovation, effectiveness and profit.  You can certainly learn from the mistakes or successes of the past, but make sure to plan the future on a blank slate.
5. Don’t Fly Solo:  And don’t re-invent the wheel.  Help is everywhere.  Mentors, business coaches, profit-partners and experts are abundant.  Whatever your challenges or goals, there are many highly successful people out there that would love to help.   Set a personal goal (with a deadline) to create a success team.  Choose carefully.  Find people who have been there, who walk their talk, and who have achieved a great deal of success.   An Accountability Partner and Business Owner Peer Group can help immensely.  Investing in yourself and your leadership development in this way will have a huge impact on your organization, your growth, your business valuation and your profit.

By following these simple steps, your journey can be as rewarding as your destination. I’d love to hear about your new goals, your successes and your challenges, so feel free to email me as you continue to explore from outside your own comfort zone in order to achieve new heights.

Best wishes for abundant success, peace, happiness and prosperity in 2013.

Happy New Year!

Copyright © Joe Zente 2012. All Rights Reserved.