I love the spring. What a great time of year! It is warming up and the birds are moving north … at least in Texas. Baseball players are showing up for Spring Training, getting ready for the next 162 games. I can almost hear the fans in the stands cheering the Rangers back to the World Series.

Forty players are invited to come to spring training trying to make a final roster of 24. Some of them will go back down to the minors, still hoping to make it to “the show” later in the year. Others simply are knocking the rust off their spikes and looking forward to a banner year. There is no doubt about it – only the best survive. Those who aren’t in shape might not make the club – regardless of who they are or their stats last year.

John Kruk once said, “I ain’t no athlete; I’m a professional baseball player.” His self-effacing personality made him a fan favorite. So did his ability to be a lifetime .300 hitter and a three-time all-star.

Do you have players on your team who think they don’t have to perform year after year? Techs who say, “I have put in my time, so I deserve to get the easier jobs and not have to work so hard,” or “I have experience and I don’t need to show that I can produce?” It doesn’t work that way in the big leagues, does it? The best hitters face the best pitchers every day. One will win and one will lose. Like sports, only techs and companies that produce at a high level can/should be compensated at a high level.

Here is where good coaching can come into play. Superstars still need coaching and understand they need to continue to get better to stay at the top of their game. There are pitching coaches, batting coaches, fielding coaches and the head coach.

The glass business needs to be the same. Even the best techs need coaching. So do the best glass business owners. Some might need a financial coach. Others might need a technical coach. Still others need a customer service coach.

At Glass Doctor® we have a regional staff of franchisee consultants (coaches). As coaches, our franchise consultants support our franchisees with a goal of helping them increase their bottom line and become more profitable.

For the last nine years I’ve had the opportunity to be a franchise consultant. Sometimes I had to challenge franchisees to live up to their potential. Other times I’ve had the opportunity to watch franchisees blossom and become more successful than they ever imagined.

Abraham Lincoln said, “Always bear in mind that our own resolution to succeed is more important than any other thing.” Unfortunately Honest Abe never had a chance to go to spring training, but he sure knew how to coach our country, didn’t he?

I challenge you to remember those words. If you have the resolution to succeed you WILL find the right coach to help you, knowing that you have the drive inside yourself to do it. It starts by having the resolve, then surrounding yourself with the right players and coaches.

This summer – play ball! Your customers will be the fans that tell you how you and your team really are doing!

Welcome to the last month of 2010. Hard to believe 2010 is almost history. How did you do with your 2010 New Year’s resolutions? More importantly, how did your business do this year?

Unfortunately many business owners open the checkbook and look to see how much money they have left. It seems the financial end of the business is one of the toughest for most business owners, especially those in business without an accountant.

The most successful business owners look at several Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to see how they are doing. Some of these may include:

1. Pofit and loss (P&L) statements;

2. Year-over-year sales comparisons (increase or decrease of market share);

3. Staffing – did you keep the good ones and free up the future of those who didn’t contribute?;

4. How this year’s advertising is working (ROI of each type of advertising);

5. Productivity of each one of your staff members;

6. Training Needs for everyone on your staff – including you; and

7. Fill-in-the-blank for your particular need.

December is the IDEAL time to come up with the 2011 plan. It also is a good time to evaluate your personnel and make a comparison of how they see themselves versus how you see their performance. We just did a similar project at the office and it was interesting to see how people graded themselves versus how their bosses graded them.

Evaluating and communicating the differences might be eye opening for you … and them!

The book “Whale Done” by Ken Blanchard revolves around how killer whales are trained at Sea World. (It is a great book and I highly recommend it.) The main premise in the book is that if you acknowledge good behavior and ignore bad, typically everyone will move toward the good. Interesting, isn’t it?

Think about how a baby learns to walk. The parents don’t remind the child how often the infant falls down. Parents simply keep encouraging the child to take the steps necessary until they walk, then run, safely. Parents do this with constant positive motivation. This mirrors how killer whales are trained at Sea World.

Now compare this to how you manage your staff. Do you focus on the positives and ignore many of the negatives? If you had a tech cut a 12-inch gash in a customer’s dash, I am not sure how you ignore it. (In fact, I don’t even recommend ignoring it!) Conversely, though, the main thought of the book is right on. We always are quick to jump on a person for what he/she is doing wrong, but rarely do we say even a simple thank you for a job well done.

During the year leaders should recognize the good and focus on positive motivation daily. When we want people on our staff to learn other parts of the business to make them even more valuable to our operations, we need to challenge them and then positively reward them.

Next year should be our best one in business if we get a good jump on it by putting our plan together, and if we focus on how we make our employees better at what they do. By doing this, you will find that your employees will feel better about what YOU do!

Only you can change your outcome this next year. It isn’t just a dream or a goal. Make it happen and have a whale of a 2011.

The great athletes – Woods, Jordan, Manning, and others – love to practice. It was the famed coach Vince Lombardi who said, “Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect.” Which kind of practice do you think is more effective?

• Shooting 200 free throw attempts; or
• Shooting free throws until you make 20 in a row?

Practicing is important to reduce mistakes or unwanted variables. It is the same for role-playing a phone call to help automate responses that get the wanted result – a sale. But we never seem to take the time to practice, and all the while we accept the results we are getting – lost sales. We just don’t have the time.

That excuse doesn’t work in professional sports, does it? They make time to practice every day. Why? Because they realize that perfect practice makes a difference in the games. Better results come from better training and more practice time – or should I say perfect practicing time?

What are we going to practice, though? The one trap that is very easy to fall into is allowing our employees to create their own ways of operating. I am sure we all have chosen some person to work for us and they come in and put in place “their” way of answering the phone, or “their” way of running the office. Do you really think they are showing you the best practices in the entire glass service industry?

How do you think McDonald’s can keep minimum-wage high school students running their stores, and yet still make the same Big Mac? Take pickle placement on that Big Mac, for instance. I don’t think it was Ray Kroc who said, “Two pickles—dating not mating!” It might have been a high school kid who came up with the line. When you analyze it, however, it is simple, effective and yields a product that is consistent from store to store, worldwide.

One reason I love franchising is it has a system to practice, even for answering the phone. It sounds silly to have to practice answering the phone. In a tough economy, we keep looking for more ways to make the phones ring more. Maybe you should start practicing how you answer the phone. Then when it’s game time – when the phone actually rings – you’ll be ready to earn the sale. You’ll increase your business without having to spend more ad dollars. Sounds like good business practice to me.