5 Essential Reasons You MUST Train Your People To Think, Act And Make Decisions Like Business Owners
Dear Reader,
For the past five years, I've been privately meeting with some of the UK's greatest entrepreneurs, business leaders, multi-millionaires and even billionaires.
I've been asking questions, probing deeper and wider to really get to the bottom of why these entrepreneurs achieve the extraordinary results they do.
What Iíve learnt about how they think and act I'm going to share with you here in this article, so that you can apply their methods, principles and techniques in your own business today.
I'm going to explain the principles and methods revealed in the Enterprise Leader Development Programme.
This programme, which has been built from the ground up from thousands of hours of research, analysis, fine tuning and testing -- brings the thinking, attitude and mindset of high-achieving entrepreneurs and business leaders to every one of your employees.
But before I tell you more about how Enterprise Leadership can dramatically increase your company's profitability, innovation, employee motivation, customer-delight and overall growth, let me first share with you five essential reasons you should train, develop and mentor your people to think like YOU -- a customer-focused business-owner/leader.
Essential Reason One: Your company's success is built on belief. You need everyone in your company to BELIEVE.
It became very evident to me from looking at entrepreneurs and their companies that belief is a central theme which runs through the whole of their businesses.
Let me explain a little more.
At the heart of great entrepreneurs is the belief they have in themselves.
Critically, they're able to pass their self-belief and confidence on to their team, so that their team collectively shares the entrepreneur's confidence and belief.
When their team shares this, they're able to pass that confidence and belief on to their customers.
And when their customers are filled with confidence and belief, THEY BUY!
When you align these three key elements of belief (i.e. the leadership, the team and the customers) you create an environment where profits can be maximised and the growth of your company can be assured.
Why?
Because ultimately, when people believe in you, they do something for you.
When banks believe in you, they lend you money.
When employees believe in you, they go further for you.
When suppliers believe in you, they give you better lines of credit.
And when customers believe in you, they buy... and getting customers to buy is the name of the game in business!
Just imagine if your employees had unshakable levels of belief in themselves, and in your products and services. Imagine if they were able to pass this belief on to your customers. What would that do for the growth of your company? What would it do for your customers desire to buy from you? I'm sure you'd agree it would give your customers many more reasons (and much higher levels of confidence) to buy from you.
Enterprise Leadership has been created to instil belief and confidence in your employees.
At the heart of the course are three core subjects: leadership, teams and customers.
These are referred to in the programme as I BELIEVE (the leader), WE BELIEVE (the team) and THEY BELIEVE (the customer).
Module 1 of the course starts by looking at the subject of THEY BELIEVE (the customer), because if you canít make customers believe, you can't make them buy. And if you haven't got customers who buy from you -- you haven't got a business!
Essential Reason Two: Regardless of how great you are as an entrepreneur or leader, the success or failure of your business ultimately rests in the hands of your employees.
On my travels, I met with a vast range of self-made entrepreneurs and business leaders.
I met with entrepreneurs who had just made their first million and employed small teams of 10 to 20 people, all the way up to a business leader who employed over 25,000 people and had recently sold his privately-held company for a massive $11 billion.
But regardless of the size of the entrepreneurs team, one fundamental truth remained the same for them, just as it does for you.
Your ability to reach your goals and your ability to create an extraordinarily profitable and valuable business comes down to the motivation, passion, desire and belief of the people you employ.
If your people love what they do, are passionate, are motivated and believe, it shows in everything they do. They become alive, they become creative, innovative and flowing with ideas. Critically, their belief and passion is picked up by your customers which gives them more reasons to buy from you.
On the other hand, if your employees lack motivation, have negative morale and would sooner be elsewhere -- that is also picked up by your customers, who in turn lack the desire and confidence to buy from you, preferring instead to buy from your competitors.
In your company, do ALL your employees share this passion, desire and belief, or is morale a regular challenge? Do you sometimes suffer from negative morale, or internal politics?
What you must always realise is that your success (or failure) in business is dependent on your employees and it's your job as a leader to bring out the best in them.
Bringing out the best of your employees is exactly what the Enterprise Leader Development Programme has been designed to do.
It unlocks in your people their inner passion, it sparks in them new energy and gives them fresh new ways of looking at their work and your business. It teaches them to see business the way YOU and every other high-achieving business leader see it.
Train, develop and mentor your people and they will reward you with a profitable, highly valued business.
Ignore them, fail to invest in them, and you will pay the ultimate price with your poor results.
Essential Reason Three: You need great leaders at ALL LEVELS in your company.
FACT: Great leadership grows companies.
The greatest companies in the world understand this and constantly develop and train their leaders.
The greatest of the great companies take this a step further still.
They understand the need to have great leaders, not just at the top, but AT ALL LEVELS.
When you have powerful leaders deep within your company who can inspire the rest of your team, who can be an example for others to follow and who can be the people you (and others) look to, you give yourself the greatest possible advantage to grow your business.
In Essential Reason Four, you'll read about the type of leaders you need in your company, but you should first know the importance of leaders at all levels.
We call leaders who infiltrate your company Enterprise Leaders.
Enterprise Leaders are the natural extension of you, the business owner/leader.
They are people who demonstrate outstanding personal leadership ability. They have an exceptional grasp of business, and have an inner confidence and belief in themselves (just as you do).
Because of their Enterprise Leadership ability, they are able to inspire and motivate the people around them.
We suggest that you train and develop at least one Enterprise Leader in your company for every five people you have.
This way, you can be confident that the rest of your team will be influenced and inspired by your new Enterprise Leaders.
Ask yourself this. Do you currently have people in your company who have this enterprising spirit AND are purposefully infusing it into every one around them?
What are you doing to constantly create positive morale and an innovative enterprising environment?
Essential Reason Four: You must train and develop your people to think like you (i.e. a business owner/leader).
When your people think, act and make decisions like you (a business owner/leader), then you can be sure of the results that will come.
You can be sure that:
1. Your people make the right decisions for your customers..
Business has everything to do with your customer, and very little to do with you! Most companies get this the wrong way round, but Enterprise Leaders understand and practice this fundamental truth.
2. Your people share your higher levels of passion, belief and determination.
As a business owner/leader your passion pours out of you. Because of this, you can inspire your team and convince your customers to buy.
BUT, there is only one of you. The secret is to duplicate yourself so that just about everybody else in your company thinks and acts like you, therefore filling your entire company with passion and confidence.
3. Your employees have higher levels of creativity and innovation, and see opportunities (just as you do) for improving your products, services and processes.
Your business is ultimately about ideas and your ability to turn ideas into products and services and ultimately into revenue and profits.
But to start with you need ideas.
Ideas are NOT just the sole responsibility of you and your fellow managers, but they can come from anywhere. The best ideas without doubt will come from the people who are closest to your customers -- i.e. your employees.
You must create an environment where your employees ideas, creativity and innovation can flourishóand then execute on them for the greatest results. Do you currently have a structure in place to encourage your employees to generate new business growth ideas and how do you capture them?
4. Your people go the extra mile for your customers.
When you train, develop and mentor your people to think like you (a business owner/leader), they understand the need to go the extra mile for your customers.
But more importantly, they WANT to go the extra mile, as they feel connected to your business in a way they've never felt before.
By bringing business-owner-thinking to your company (through the Enterprise Leader Development Programme) you dramatically change how your company does business, and how your customers see you.
Because your employees have the confidence which comes with business-owner-thinking, they have the confidence to do the right thing for your customers, and so make it easy for your customers to buy from you.
Essential Reason Five: The success and growth of your company is all about your customers -- not about you!
This is a fact that is forgotten by too many companies and their employees.
In fact, most companies appear to put the needs of themselves and their employees ahead of their customers, seemingly forgetting that if you haven't got a customer, you haven't got a business!
Let me ask you, how often have you:
- Contacted a company and never got a response from them?
- Received confusing and conflicting information when making an enquiry to a company?
- Received an automatic email response which doesn't answer your question?
- Stood in a shop and had to wait for the sales assistant to finish their conversation?
- Called a call centre only to be passed from pillar to post?
This frustrated customer experience would never happen in a company where employees thought like business owners.
As a business owner/leader, I'm sure you'd personally never let your customers leave your company with a negative experience.
I'm sure you'd never let a customer go feeling confused and preferring to go to your competitor.
And I'm sure you'd never miss an opportunity to encourage your customer to come back and buy from you time and time again.
Thatís because you know how hard (and expensive) it is to get a customer in the first place -- and you know exactly why you have to look after your customers for life.
In the Enterprise Leader Development Programme we talk about the pyramid concept.
In most companies the organisation structure is one where the leader is at the top, the team underneath, and by definition, customers are at the bottom.
In high-performing entrepreneurial companies, they invert the pyramid and put customers at the top -- understanding that business is all about the customer.
Which is it in your company? Are YOU at the top, or are your customers at the top?
When every member of your team lives and breathes the principles of Enterprise Leadership (including the inverted pyramid) you truly unlock the door to hyper growth and profitability -- which only comes from having happy customers who believe in you and want to buy from you time and time again.
Bring the power of Enterprise Leadership and business-owner-thinking to your company today and prove to yourself the results you will achieve with the breakthrough Enterprise Leader Development Programme.
