I have often thought about where I’ve come from, why I am like I am and why I am now doing what I am doing, how much of it is nature and how much is nurture?
I have written before about my maternal Grandfather HERE, who no doubt had a significant influence on my life, I was never fortunate enough to meet my paternal Grandfather, the person I am named after Charles Bernard Pidcock. He was my father’s father, at the age of 53 (over 50 years ago) he woke up with a headache and was dead by smoko from an aneurism – tragic in so many ways. Stories from family and friends of his character are famous - his leadership, entrepreneurialism, sense of humour and drive are all legendary on the North Coast of NSW in the timber industry. This letter he wrote a few years before his death to the local council is in response to their request for a donation to a public road– it’s worth a read if you have the time. I can definitely see where I got some of my attributes though he was far more ahead of his time than I, lots of this is still a challenge for society these days. Enjoy….
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Working for yourself by yourself after nearly 30 years in organisations working for people with teams creates a variety of challenges and opportunities - some predictable others not.
One of the biggest challenges I’ve experienced has been finding and keeping operating rhythm or flow, I have tried a number of techniques and came across “Eight Before Eight” from Ben Hardy which has improved my effectiveness exponentially. Eight before Eight:
I’ve built a very simple template that helps me keep track of how I am travelling, a bit of measurement / self-accountability which all seems to be helping me. Click here if you would like a copy. **Charlie is an expert in developing external sales teams and people, particularly where relationships and solution selling are the key differentiators. www.charliepidcock.com.au I wrote a few months ago about the concept of leading and lagging indicators when measuring sales performance which you can reread by clicking here.
More recently I read “Cracking the Sales Management Code” by Jason Jordan and Michelle Vazzana called which I highly recommend if you have the time. The concept is fairly simple in theory but challenging in practice and based on AOR which stands for Activities, Objectives and Results, sounds easy right? The authors analysis of over 300 companies found that only 17% of metrics are highly manageable in terms of their activities and 24% deal with business results – it really makes you wonder what we are doing to ourselves. Good companies, who are clear about their Objectives only measure Activities that ensure these goals are met. Nothing. Else. Matters. It is critical for organisations to be clear in their objectives or they risk running around in circles in measuring themselves to a standstill, it’s like swimming against a strong current. As John E Jones said “What gets measured gets done, what gets measured and fed back gets done well, what gets rewarded gets repeated”. When your team are clear about what to measure in terms of their activities, made accountable and then managed well it they will surely achieve the results or something else is wrong…. If you would like a summary of the book please click here. **Charlie is an expert in developing external sales teams and people, particularly where relationships and solution selling are the key differentiators. www.charliepidcock.com.au In 1992 at the age of 22 I finished university; I am not sure which of those, or perhaps it was both that lead me to the thinking I knew everything, it took one day in sales to realise that wasn’t the case – ouch!!!
Thankfully, my managing director had the good sense to send me to a 3 day sales training course which changed my life. I remember thinking at the time that I could not believe that people could spend so much time at university learning (in lots of cases) useless information and something so important as practical interpersonal skills could be learned and applied with immediate effect. The sales trainer became a lifelong mentor of mine and I recall him vividly saying that day, “there is a dearth of good sales people in Australia.” It was like he planted a seed in my brain and it became my life long journey to work it why. It has taken a few years but I reckon I have got it nailed, mostly managers don’t do any of these as well as they could:
I’d love to hear thoughts and experiences. **Charlie is an expert in developing external sales teams and people, particularly where relationships and solution selling are the key differentiators. www.charliepidcock.com.au |
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