This is a good article from the folks at emyth on hiring mistakes to avoid. There is an abundance of talent out there looking for jobs currently and if you have the good fortune of needing to hire to support growth you want to consider your hiring process more closely than ever.

 

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Keep the following list of common hiring mistakes in mind as you build your hiring process. Remember, it’s never too late to build systems into your business. Even if you’re not hiring right now, by creating a hiring system, you’ll be prepared when the time comes.

1. Assuming a new hire is the answer – If you’re considering hiring a new employee the first thing to ask yourself is: “Can we achieve our desired results without hiring anyone?” In other words, force yourself to consider all of the options you have at your disposal (besides adding people) to produce the result you want. Only move forward with your recruiting and hiring systems when you’ve determined that a new employee is absolutely necessary.
2. Confusing recruiting and hiring – In an E-Myth’d business, hiring and recruiting are separate things. Recruiting involves defining the position and the ideal candidate and then communicating that recruiting message so that you attract the right candidate. The hiring process is about choosing the right candidate. By keeping these two processes clearly defined, you’ll maximize the impact of both and end up with the best qualified candidate for the job.
3. Hiring on the spot – There’s an old saying that hiring decisions are made in the first seven seconds of an interview. Seven seconds? This means that most hiring decisions are made from an emotional perspective. The candidate just “feels right,” and while trusting your instinct is good; it must be tempered with objectivity. We sometimes tell clients, “When you feel the urge to hire, don’t.” Your hiring decisions are some of the most consequential decisions you can make in your business — it’s essential to have a hiring system in place that allows you to consider all the pertinent data.
4. “Selling” the company – If you’ve done your recruiting process right, there’s no need for you to sell the company to your candidate because they already know exactly what you are about. By the time the candidate has gotten to the interview stage with you, you should be in hiring mode, focused on choosing the right candidate instead of them choosing you. If you feel like you need to convince a candidate that your company is “so great that you really should come work for us” then you’ve got a problem and it’s time to re-evaluate your recruiting process.
5. Hiring based purely on skill — Don’t hire based only on the candidate’s skill set. You should be looking for skill and attitude. Look for the right attitude because you can always train the right candidate in the skills of the job, but you can’t change anybody.

Often entrepreneurs try to run their business completely on their own. This certainly has it’s merits in the early going of any business but you are fooling yourself if you think it is scalable.

You must invest in infrastructure and administrative help and you must build these costs into your model.

I have seen more and more companies utilizing virtual assistants to help them make the transition from doing everything on their own to hiring full time help.

“A Virtual Assistant (VA) is an independent entrepreneur providing administrative, creative and/or technical services. Utilizing advanced technological modes of communication and data delivery, a professional VA assists clients in his/her area of expertise from his/her own office on a contractual basis.”

No matter what path you take the sooner you acknowledge that you cannot do everything needed to run the business yourself if you are going to have any chance of growing the sooner you will start to grow.

We are at the point where we have a number employees dedicated to running the business so that Mike can spend time working on the business as Michael Gerber says.

I would love to know how you are making the transition from doing everything to putting people in processes in place that will allow you to scale.

Josh

I often find that when I am frustrated someone is not doing what I want them to be doing or they are not doing a task how I would expect them to do it the reason is often because I have not clearly outlined my expectations for the person I have delegated the task to.

These are some good guidelines to keep in mind from the folks at e-myth:

If you keep doing all the little daily tasks that you’ve always done, then you’ll forever be trapped doing them and never free up the time to work on your business. If letting go of these tasks is a bit daunting (and sometimes it is, especially if you’ve always done it and have your particular way of doing it) then take gradual steps.

First, identify a task that you want to delegate.

Document the correct way to perform this task, step by step, including the quality control standards for each step. (At E-Myth we call this type of system document an Action Plan.)

Clearly specify the expected results of the delegated task. Give information on what, why, when, who, where and how.

Have someone follow your Action Plan. Maintain open lines of communication. Don’t micro-manage, but make sure that you are kept in the loop on progress and performance. Then revise your document until you are both comfortable with it.

Delegate the responsibility. When the new system document is ready, provide it to the employee responsible for that task, train them on how to successfully run this “system” and insert a copy of this process document into your company’s Operations Manual.

Repeat these steps on every task you wish to delegate.

Delegation is a critical component in the development of a business that is balanced and inclusive. It will help you discover the natural place for yourself, your managers and your staff.

I had a phone call with a person in our industry the other week that touched a nerve.

The call was from a person that I really respect and trust, so I really pondered it for a bit before coming to any conclusions.

He expressed to me that he thought I should be very careful about not letting our blog posts and our references to our membership site, MSP Coach, get too “salesy”; that I don’t want to be perceived as selling to our industry.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I understand his point entirely and I know he had good intentions.  If you are offering a professional service of any sort,  you want your marketing to come across as “value-added” and educational to establish credibility.  I get it – and I practice it – both at Everon and with content on the SMBITPros blog.

The reason it touched a nerve with me is that I could hear the negativity in his voice when he mentioned that I may come across as selling.  In fact, what really gets me fired up about this whole thing, is that, for a moment, I even got negative on myself for thinking I was selling too aggressively. It was as if by selling I had done something dirty, and I needed to take a hot shower to clean myself up.

Then I came to my senses.

Negative on selling?  Not me!  I am ashamed of myself for considering for even one moment that I should have any hesitation about selling myself, my ideas, or my services.  Why?  Because I know that everything I sell comes from a good place.  I only sell something if I really believe in it, believe in its value, and will stand behind it 100%.  When  you feel that way about something, you have an obligation to sell it to anyone you think it can add value to.

Do you feel that way about your managed services?  If you don’t, you need to ask yourself why and do whatever it takes to fix it.  You should be so fired up about the services that you offer that you can’t stand it when a prospect doesn’t see the value and decides not to work with you.

Tony Robbins teaches that the person in any sales situation with the most certainty and commitment will eventually influence the other people.  That’s what sales is…having so much certainty and commitment about your products and services that your prospects “inherit” your feelings and decide to work with you over your less certain and less committed competitors.

If you believe in what you have to offer, you should be shouting about it from the rooftops.  What this world needs more than anything right now is more really good, really committed salespeople that believe in what they have to offer.

Think about it.  When was the last time you went to a retail store and had someone really try to sell you?  For the most part, you’ll find young, unmotivated salespeople (if you can call them that) that won’t even give you the time of day.  Often times you’ll find them hovering around in packs talking about what other jobs they are applying for or how bad the economy is.

When was the last time you got a follow up call or a hand-written note from a salesperson to thank you after making a purchase?

The lack of strong sales skills and salespeople that are really interested in doing their best every day is probably the #1 killer of economic productivity in this country.  What would happen if everyone that was responsible for selling every day actually tried to sell?!   We wouldn’t need the $1 trillion + stimulus package we are getting (and will eventually have to pay for).

Selling makes our economy flourish.

Selling feeds your kids.

Selling creates jobs at your company.

Nothing happens until somebody sells something, as the saying goes.

So please take notice: I will be trying to sell whenever I think it makes sense for me and for my prospect; whenever I think I can add value.  And so should you.  Let’s consider it our national duty to do our part to lift the economy by selling at every opportunity.

Mike Cooch

PS – I have found some great examples of very professional salespeople recently and will share those in my next post.

PSS – We cover sales strategies and techniques in our membership site – MSP Coach.  You can join here. 

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Dan Kennedy -  you should be.  Dan is one of the leading direct marketing experts in America, and is quite the personality.  He is also a prolific writer on the subjects of entrepreneurship, sales, management of people – and just about everything he writes is worth reading.

On his blog today, he has a post about taking chances and understanding risks and what you can and can’t control.  I thought a particular section of the post was worth sharing here:

Here is what I know: The changes we make will be more important than the changes that occur around us. I know you win by focusing on what you can control. I know that money never really dries up; in different circumstances, it moves differently. There’s always plenty available. So, we’ll prosper. Period. I know that, in microcosm, Halbert was right; there’s hardly a problem that can’t be solved with a great sales letter – the macro version, most problems can be solved with better marketing. You can sell your way out of just about any set of adverse circumstances. (And a whole lot of problems persist purely because of lack of good salesmanship.) I know that we actually do have more to fear than fear itself, but that most decisions made based on fear turn out badly. I know that Pollyanna positivism, whistling in the dark graveyard is dumb, too; you have to create reasons to be optimistic, so you get to make decisions based on positive expectations. It’s foolish and dangerous to just be or act optimistic. There are a lot more things I don’t know. Like whether Gore’s right. So I focus on working with the comparatively short list of things I do know.

As you may be able to tell, Dan is all about personal accountability, and taking control of your own destiny to the greatest degree possible.

I can’t think of any more important message than this right now.  When the economy sucks, it’s easy to throw your hands up in the air and lower your expectations of yourself, your customers, and your business.

Don’t do it!

Continue to invest in yourself and your business every day – approach your day with the right attitude, try new approaches to sticky problems, put in an extra hour of prospecting each day – and you will eventually reap the fruits of your labor.

MRC

www.mspcoach.com