It’s what I ask everyone who is new— the one question to see about their commitment
“Will you promise to come to me first before you ever consider quitting?”
They all answer that they’re not going to ever quit– and they affirm they would come to me first to chat before things ever get that way.
I then tell them to remember this when things get hard, since things always do go up and down.
And ask them about their promise– to be true to their goals and our conversation, when they abruptly quit with no warning.
Even after seeing hundreds of young, eager people over the years start a new career and burn out, I feel bad at those who aren’t able to ride out the ups and downs of being in business.
Building a team is 100 times harder than doing the task itself.
I focus most of my time on processes and putting people into the process.
The big mistake I made was designing work around each person. It’s what we naturally would do, especially in a small team.
But when people leave or move up, your business gets disrupted and it’s hard to fill that exact position.
Solution: structure all your work into roles, then hire people into those roles.
If you can, always ensure you have a backup person for each function, so if you lose one, you don’t get crushed— you slot in the next person who is trained for the role.
What is your best tip for managing teams– and would you like to hear more insights like this?
Managers and entrepreneurs FAIL on projects because they don’t know how to delegate.
Tristan Parmley and I discuss the fundamentals of management from our experience running teams large and small in the new Digital CEO podcast.
Managing the execution of digital marketing is increasingly harder because the tools are more complex, the speed is faster, and there are more things to do– and you still need to manage people effectively.
We cover the most common pain points we’ve witnessed and how to solve them.
Love to hear your thoughts on this and other episodes! And subscribe if you like it.
My friends who work at Facebook gave me access to their onboarding training, since we are tuning up how we hire up new account managers.
What I’ve learned……
– Role playing is critical to being good with clients, so trainees take turns practicing as the client, account manager, and observer, grading the role play across key factors.
– They’ve left nothing to assumption— thick workbooks spell out the fundamentals of digital marketing and the steps of booking client calls— before, during, and after.
– Practice what we preach. New Facebook team members have to create a business page and know how to run ads, so they have empathy from the client’s point of view.
– Humanity is critical. It’s not enough to have product knowledge or be able to blindly follow a script with robot precision. Teach active listening skills— listening to understand instead of only to sell.
While a consultative sale does require product knowledge, more important is building empathy with the client— showing we care and being reliable with frequent, lightweight touches during the relationship.
As we hire up account managers (a lot of moms, it’s starting to look like), I’m building in soft skills to be honed via role play and testing for EQ.
I’ve found that the technical execution of driving more patients for chiropractors is far easier than finding and teaching the relationship side of things.
Thus, a successful account manager is not a call center employee, VA, or technical specialist, but an intrapreneur who cares deeply for their clients as quasi-children.
