Coaching | Shannon Procise

How a Consultant Can Help You Expand Your Business

June 16, 2020 By Shannon Gronich Leave a Comment

Trying to run a business in this current age is difficult. There are so many things that are required of you. Many will be tasks that are outside of your area of expertise. In these cases, it may not be worth it to hire a new employee, but it’s essential that you get someone with the right experience. These are the situations where you should turn to a consultant.

Navigate Challenges

Whenever you hit something new, there are millions of people who can give you advice on what to do. Most of these people have never faced your same challenge and have no idea what they are talking about. Consultants, on the other hand, have experienced what you’ve been through. They make a living off helping you and others get through these problems.

For example, a consultant can help you navigate the challenges that come with expanding, like financing. According to Franchise Gator, most traditional lenders will ask you to put down 20 percent for a business loan. A consultant could help you find other ways to raise the money that you need.

Create Concrete Plans

You can find a lot of great advice on how to deal with things on the internet. However, that advice is going to be very general. It’s worthwhile to read and use as guidelines, but, according to Globalization Partners, it’s going to be difficult to develop a clear plan based off of your internet education. You need a consultant that can say “been there, done that.” They will be able to help you refine your plans so that you have specific action items with deadlines. They can put you in touch with all of the different resources that you need so that you can be successful.

Apply Lean Principles

You shouldn’t just ask a consultant to help you with growth and new challenges. According to The Lean Way, you should also ask them to help take a look at your application of lean principles. Lean business is the idea of getting rid of wasteful activity. By getting an expert lean consultant to give you an outsider’s perspective on what you can do to improve your work, you could save yourself a lot of time and money. A lean consultant will identify practices in your business that are causing you to slow down and waste money. The changes they suggest won’t make life more difficult, it should make it easier.

The keys to a successful interaction with a consultant are simple. First, find one with great reviews showing their competence. Second, be humble enough to accept the advice of someone that you don’t know well. If you follow these guidelines, you can reap all the benefits that a consultant has to offer.

I can help you to get your business where you want it to be. Take a look at what services I have to offer and contact me today!

Filed Under: Business, Coaching

Nail Your Short Presentation at Work with These 5 Tips

November 22, 2018 By Shannon Gronich Leave a Comment

Making a brief presentation at work may seem like a no-brainer, but preparing one can prove to be challenging. It’s always a good idea to iron out the details of your presentation well ahead of time so you can nail it when the time comes. Here are five easy tips that can help you give an informational, inspiring and persuasive presentation in the workplace.

Keep the Audience Interested

Few things are less interesting than having to sit through a presentation that’s given in a monotone voice. Use voice inflections and intonation to emphasize important words and transitions, and pause momentarily to let important ideas sink in. If the occasion is informal or semiformal, you might address the audience directly rather than discussing the topic in third person. Use examples and details that relate to listeners so they can feel included, making references to daily life or demographics that connect with people in the audience. Also be sure to make eye contact occasionally with the audience throughout the presentation.

Resource: https://minutehack.com/guides/5-ways-to-keep-your-audience-interested

Pace Your Presentation

Rather than choosing to simply wing it and hope for the best, practice pacing your speech beforehand. Make an outline with key points and rehearse the talk smoothly from one point to the next. Keep an eye on the time to ensure your speech stays on track. A good rule of thumb for giving presentations is that every minute is roughly 125-150 words spoken, so a 5-minute speech would usually require 625 – 700 words. That being said, it’s always a good idea to plan for a few extra minutes in case audience members wish to ask questions afterward.

Resource: https://wordcounter.io/blog/how-many-words-is-a-5-minute-speech/

Incorporate a Story

Everyone loves to hear a good story, so aim to include some type of story in your talk that illustrates one of your presentation’s principles. A good choice is to draw from current events in the news that many in the audience will have heard of and perhaps identify with. You can also use personal experience or observations about the lives of others in certain situations. Using characters, real or fictitious, and a narrative format often encourages the audience to listen more attentively, and it can stoke their interest in your topic.

Resource: https://blog.slideshare.net/how-to-tell-great-stories-during-presentations

Use Humor

Like smiling, humor is a universal element that everyone can relate to. Many successful speakers start a presentation with a humorous anecdote or a comical remark about the context for the presentation. Use lighthearted humor rather than a sarcastic tone. However be sure to avoid slapstick comedy, which can dilute the seriousness of your topic and cause the audience to feel more entertained than educated. Self-deprecating humor is another easy way to start the presentation and often helps to put the speaker on par with the audience.

Resource: https://totalcommunicator.com/vol2_2/funnymeeting.html

A short talk can feel like it is over much too soon for audiences who enjoy and appreciate what they hear. Practice beforehand and give listeners fun and interesting things to consider. By following these steps you can ensure that your talk will not only be interesting to hear but also have the desired impact on your audience.

If you feel a little lost on or anxious about leading or running a business, then let Shannon Gronich help you out!

Filed Under: Business, Coaching, entrepreneurs, Events, Relationships

4 Hiring Principles Necessary to Build a Motivated Team

September 8, 2018 By Shannon Gronich Leave a Comment

The research is clear; high performing employees are the most motivated employees and out produce average employees by 4 to 1! What fundamental principles are necessary to build an effective hiring process that will staff your organization with high performers and motivated teams? The highest performing organizations have cracked this code and here is how they do it.

Determine What Capabilities Will Drive Your Company’s Success

Think about those brands that you admire. What is it that they are very good at doing? Walmart differentiates itself by their expertise in supply chain management while Nordstrom is known for their customer service. How does your company differentiate itself from the competition? What qualities do you admire in the employees you already have, and what are you going to be looking for in the new hires?

Determine What Skills are Aligned with Your Organizational Skills

Personal competencies are a person’s ability, skill, character, and knowledge that develop through life experiences. Personal competencies account for nearly 90% of successful performance on the job. A partial list of the 67 personal competencies from the Lominger organization include:

Action Oriented
Business Acumen
Organizational Agility
Customer Focus
Timely Decision Making

Determine What Technical Skills are Required for a Specific Role

Technical competencies represent the skills and knowledge necessary to perform in a specific job role. The majority of hiring is done with a focus on technical competencies. It is important to note, however, that technical skills only account for 10% of successful job performance.

Establish Objectives for Interview and Screening Processes

First off, you need to have great managers.If you don’t have great managers, you will never have a high performing, highly motivated team. Period.

Most hiring managers make hiring decisions based on:

Their “gut”
The similarity in personalities with the candidate
The degree to which they “like” the candidate

Pre-employment evaluations combined with structured interview processes are critical to the screening process as they remove the subjective human biases of the interviewers while screening all candidates using a common methodology.

High performers have the personal and technical competencies that align with the desired organizational capabilities of the company. If the screening process is built with these principles in mind, the result will be a highly successful organization. For more hiring techniques and advice, check out my blog!

Filed Under: Business, Coaching, entrepreneurs, Relationships Tagged With: business, coaching, entrepreneurs, motivation, relationship, team building

5 Ways to Improve Team Unity and Build Brand Awareness

June 9, 2018 By Shannon Gronich Leave a Comment

People are the lifeblood of your business. With the right people on your team, virtually anything is possible. Without great talent, however, you are doomed to failure. Bad employees can bring the whole company down by doing things in public that shed a bad light on your business. So be sure to have robust vetting processes in place and hire the most motivated and qualified people you can find. If you think you might need help with this, then make sure to check out coaching sessions that will help guide you in building a high performance team.

Don’t Tolerate Gossip

(Image Credit: Dreamstime)

Gossip is the worst offense of an employee outside of harassment. This is because it sows discord among your ranks. It makes everyone think that the other workers are out to get them. Eventually, the whole team will break down from a lack of trust. Don’t let this happen, cut out gossip whenever you find it to prevent it from growing.

Team Building

(Image Credit: Wrike)

Build your team up with lunches and exercises. Don’t rely on chance, either. Set aside specific groups each week, month, or quarter to have these events. Whether it is at work or outside of work, it can be useful to bond people together. Then, they’ll feel more motivated to work harder for the brand goals you have.

Daily Meetings

(Image Credit: Dreamstime)

When you have daily meetings, you have a significant advantage. Everyone can feel unified and on the same page. It is a regular way of checking in and confronting any issues that might be brewing under the surface. They will soon find ways to promote the brand in better ways as well.

Branded Apparel

(Image Credit: Elevate)

Give your employees some swag to show off. Whether they’re with friends or family, your brand will get more traction. The best part is that most apparel is customizable to your exact business. Therefore, it not only builds team unity but also acts as a secondary marketing channel for you.

In the world of entrepreneurship, the brand is what sets you apart from the rest. And without a solid team to back it up, you can’t get far. So don’t make the mistake of ignoring these two crucial aspects of your company. Instead, turn them into one of your most significant assets for a major advantage over the competition.

Filed Under: Coaching Tagged With: brand apparel, communication, meetings

The Trick to Independent Sales…is Sales

May 2, 2018 By Shannon Gronich Leave a Comment

As part of my business and career coaching, I work with many wonderful men and women who have undertaken to build a brand around selling products through independent or network marketing. These are men and women with ambition, who believe in the products their selling, and who understand the value of leveraging interpersonal networks to build their own brand. However, with all the hype surrounding this model, some believe that success comes without effort. Truthfully, there is no product on the market that sells itself, and there has never been. The people that reach colossal levels of success distributing for these organizations are expert recruiters and sales reps. If you want to succeed in this industry, you need to identify the skills and strategies from their example that can be replicated. Here are a few case studies:

Jackie Ritz

Jackie started distributing doTERRA oils in 2009. She credits initial sales success to her enthusiasm for the product. “After feeling such a difference using dōTERRA, I couldn’t stop talking about them.” But the secret to Jackie’s success was moving into recruiting and success coaching. Whereas many multi-level organizations’ compensation plans produce diminishing returns the farther down your downline you recruit, Jackie leveraged this organization’s “unilevel compensation” method to drastically increase earnings with a depth-of-roster strategy.

Takeaways: Pay attention to your organization’s compensation methodology when determining the best sales strategy. A cookie-cutter approach might not work for every commission structure or product category.

Rolf Kipp

Rolf calls Forever Living “The Most Beautiful Business on Earth.” While perhaps overly poetic, his book is retailing for over $40 on Amazon. It’s unclear what percentage of his millions has come from product sales and referrals versus the book and speaking engagements, but it’s clear from his current marketing push that the latter is not insignificant.

Takeaways: Your level of sales success in sales pays off twice; once directly, and again when it can be leveraged to sell training materials to up-and-comers in the industry. While this is a strategy that may not pay off until later in your career, it is a lucrative one.

Brian McClure

Brian receives a staggering monthly income from a company that is (technically) a multi-level, Ambit Energy. Whereas most utility companies have contracts with municipal, county, or state governments that provide them with a de facto monopoly, Ambit operates in deregulated energy markets where this disruptive model can potentially drive down the cost of energy and gas bills significantly. Because these markets are new and few, Brian’s outstanding referral bonus can be attributed to his being an early arrival to a new and lucrative opportunity.

Takeaways: Truly successful, disruptive companies operate in “blue ocean” spaces where there is minimal competition. Try to identify new ways of solving old problems, and stake out that territory before someone else does.

No matter which brand or product you’re selling, the essential skills related to success are a willingness to learn and innovate, an emotional intelligence that can fuel your recruitment efforts, and above all, a willingness to get out there and drum up leads. The independent model might be an innovation of the last thirty years, but the keys to success are as old as markets themselves. Don’t let that discourage you; these skills are replicable. But it’s never going to happen without effort, no matter how convincing the hype.

Filed Under: Business, Coaching Tagged With: business, coaching, independent sales, network sales, revenues, sales