Category Archives: How to…

Breaking new ground

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It can be very tempting to start something new in order to improve an area of your life, like getting fit, eating better or working smarter. The thought process goes something like this:

“I’m fed up with being (out of shape, overweight, tired all the time, late home from work every day, etc). I’m going to read up on the topic and try and make some changes that will help me to change things. Easy!”

But rarely is it easy to make these kind of changes. There have been many times in my life when I’ve got down on myself for not being great at something and it can be a huge frustration – “everyone else is good at (getting up early and exercising, writing blog posts every day, etc). Why can’t I do the same?” – making you feel even worse.

Good intentions are one thing, but turning them into habits or rituals is the key to making lasting changes. I have a few bad habits, the worst of all being an addiction to biting my finger nails that I’ve had for as long as I can remember, but the way this habit works acts as an indicator of the power and strength of habits. If you can make an action or activity a habit you are very likely to continue with it and deliver on it every day. 

Try setting some realistic goals for a start. It can help to set some targets that you have a really good chance of achieving that will also act as milestones on the journey to something even bigger. Saying today that you’re going to read a new book every week for the next 12 months is great but very hard to achieve and your confidence would be seriously knocked if you gave up after a few weeks. But aiming for a more achievable target – two books in the next month, for example – can give you something to aim for that will help the habit to form and you can then set a slightly bigger target once that one has been knocked off.

Once you’ve set a realistic goal and achieved it, give yourself a reward. It doesn’t have to be chocolate or a whole new wardrobe, but a small and simple token to say you are on your way and you’ve made the first step is enough to keep you on track. Small rewards can also increase your motivation as the challenges come along so as you set another new target, also set think up another reward.

And finally, don’t be too hard on yourself. Life is short and time spent harming yourself or running yourself down with constantly negative thoughts about how bad you are for having three glasses of wine instead of the one you were aiming for is negative energy that will stop you from making a positive impact in your life. Give yourself a chance to start afresh and set another goal as quickly as you can. Believe that you can achieve whatever target you have set and give yourself every chance possible of making it happen – such as not going to the pub for a few days.

Ian Mountford is a Strategy Coach providing motivation and guidance to entrepreneurs, wannabe or fully-fledged. He draws from his own experience of building businesses from the ground up and spending many years helping clients to consistently achieve their goals and aspirations. Ian works with clients face-to-face and internationally.

Everyday negotiation basics anyone can master

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Negotiation – it’s an art, not a science

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We are all negotiators. Some of us are more adept at it than others and some of us have a lot more practice and experience of it than others. Some of us are classified as professional negotiators based on the fact that we get paid for doing it and some of us will never be paid to negotiate but do it all the time. It’s a critical skill and one where a little bit of practical knowledge and preparation can go a long way to helping you get better results, whether it’s in a salary negotiation with your boss or in a purchase of something as valuable as a house or a car, but how often do we take the time to prepare for a negotiation or put a strategy together in advance? No matter how big or small the scenario, it can make a huge difference if you know what is going on within the overall negotiation.

I bought a used car from a dealership a few years ago and got some advice in advance from friends who are professional negotiators on how to get the best deal possible. The salespeople at car dealerships are spending their whole lives doing deals so I knew I was going to need some guidance in order to come away with the car I wanted at the right price (and definitely not have that horrible experience of shaking hands on a deal and feeling that I’d been fleeced). The results were simply brilliant and the understanding I had of what was going on as the negotiation was taking place was invaluable. It was as if I was in the head of the salesman as he was bashing away on his calculator and running off to speak to his manager!

Here are the three most important things I have learned:

Prepare to win – don’t prepare and you will be relying on luck

Go into a negotiation with a positive mindset having prepared as thoroughly as you can and make sure you have all the information you need to get the deal you want. Find out as much as you can about the person you are negotiating with and their position in this deal. Are they the person who can say yes or no, or do they have to ask for permission from someone else to make a decision? On a salary negotiation, this can sometimes be an important factor – the person you are talking to may have to make a case to someone else for your raise to be agreed, so you may have to change your approach if they are not the boss holding the purse strings.

Lose the emotion – most negotiations are not life or death deals.

You must be prepared to walk away if you don’t get the deal you want. This can be really hard if you’ve made an emotional bond with whatever it is you are negotiating over, such as a new house or a piece of jewellery, so do your level best to avoid it. Walking away is a strategic move and can be the best thing you ever do in a negotiation as it can force the other party into action, but if you then have a change of heart and go back to the table, don’t expect the same deal to be available! There will always be another deal to be done and another (enter purchase here) to buy when the time, or, more crucially, the deal, is right.

Body language and voice tone – it’s a critical thing and can make or break a deal without a word being said.

There is a ton of information out there on using body language and in my job as a recruiter I have to be aware of what different signals mean. If your emotions are under control, this will also help you to control your body language and avoid giving off signals that you don’t want the other side in a negotiation to see and act upon. You can also use body language and shock tactics, such as acting really unusually or out-of-character, to mislead people and this can be very powerful in negotiation. Showing huge amounts of anger and frustration in order to force a weaker party to give way on a price when the numbers in play are not that far apart is quite common, and the opposite can also apply. Hand movements, eye twitches and all types of ‘tells’ as used in poker are also worth paying attention to. If it gives you an edge, it will be worth using.

Ian Mountford is a Strategy Coach providing motivation and guidance to entrepreneurs, wannabe or fully-fledged. He draws from his own experience of building businesses from the ground up and spending many years helping clients to consistently achieve their goals and aspirations. Ian works with clients face-to-face and internationally.

Follow the numbers

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It’s very easy to just go for it when posting, blogging, tweeting, etc for business, but it does pay to follow the numbers and become less random. Timing of posts, quality of content, selection of the right message on the right platform – I want to get a better handle on this and hit it much harder from here on. 

Where/who are the best sources of information to help with strategising this stuff? If you are able to help me out with some suggestions this would be much appreciated.

Graduates, switch your approach to job search

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It seems that there are a lot more roles available for graduates this year and that’s a really positive sign. The big names are out and pushing hard as they always do – banks, consulting firms, accountancy firms and the usual suspects such as Unilever, P&G, Aldi and the like. But my shout out to graduates would be this: go a bit below the surface and find the really golden opportunities within smaller firms.

In a twitter chat with nu-recruit.co.uk yesterday it turns out they have a fabulous IT role and I’m pushing hard also to fill a couple of jobs for graduates. I ran a presentation at the University of Liverpool yesterday and had three attendees, compared to the PwC session on interview skills in the room next door than had a full house of about 80. I gave the three chaps who turned up to hear me speak as much as I could in terms of advice, guidance and hints to pass the application process and I am certain that the PwC crowd will not have got anything like as much information. 

Use the search functions of tools like Twitter and you will see a huge array of opportunities. Make contact with people who you meet through social media, too. I have talked to a lot of graduates at fairs and events this season and am looking forward to one of them connecting with me and having a conversation. Lots of roles are also being advertised only through social channels so get to work and the results might just surprise you.

Pursuing growth

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Making things happen in business and getting ideas off the ground is something that takes courage, effort and a decent level of ability no matter what you are doing. But pursuing and actually achieving growth is another step requiring a few different skills.
I attended a dinner this week where creative agency leaders discussed how to get more business from existing clients as one method and the ideas generated were very interesting. The talk was led by Louisa Pau – built and ran her own creative agency with a partner and sold it a few years back – and her insights were extremely useful.
The first was to create the actual/notional role of Head of Retention – this is a role that anyone can take but be sure that someone fulfills the requirement and delivers the goods in this area. Client visits, listening to their needs and ensuring that the basic question – can we help you in any other areas? – is always asked.
The importance of positive marketing messages and attention to detail in this area came next. Does your own website match those that you produce for your clients? Maybe not in the case of all creative agencies and in the rush to deliver this can often be forgotten – be sure to get it up to scratch.
And finally, construct contracts that consider not only the financial terms but the terms of the overall relationship with your client. Keep these updated regularly and it will keep you front of mind when new projects are on the table.

The opportunity in getting a better understanding of why people do what they do

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I attended an event this week on conversion/optimisation that really got me thinking about this topic. The talk gave examples of subtle changes applied to web pages that seriously affected engagement, click-through rates and, very importantly in many cases, sales. My thoughts have extrapolated this out into the wider world, not just the one on the screen in front of us or in our hands. The power in getting better information on the decision making of others and understanding the behaviour of people – users, clients, customers, whoever – should never be underestimated.

It doesn’t matter what you do for a living or what market you are in. You might also be in no market at all and just want to find ways to improve your everyday existence. To me, the key here is to listen, learn and collect data, then use it to make better decisions. Way back when social media began the focus was very much on listening to what was going on – who’s saying what on the subjects you care about, who needs help, who are the key thinkers and influencers, etc. The biggest players are now spending mountains of money on this and reaping the rewards by jumping into conversations and unleashing their brand power all over the place, but we can all get better at this and use the results to be better at everything we do. Have better conversations, help people out, show we care, we understand and we give a shit. If it only has a little bit of a positive effect on the life you lead, it’s worth it.

Be straight about your career aims

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I had a conversation with someone yesterday about their career goals and the target for their next role. I read their CV in advance of the call and the divergence between the two positions was just massive. It transpires they have been leading a double life in fear of their current employer finding out as they try to develop a new set of skills in another area that they now want to spend more time working on.

After talking this over it seems that the reality is they have nothing to fear by being more open about what they really want to do. Sometimes these crossroads come to us when we are not expecting them and it is clear this person has reached a huge one. I also felt very sad that this person felt that they had to suppress their real desire and motivation to be X instead of Y and it cannot be doing them any good at all holding all this negative energy inside.

My opinion is that you should make your goals and aims clear in the simplest way possible when it comes to your career. Make sure you have good reasons for your choices and be able to demonstrate why this new path is the right one for you. If your current employer cannot work with you to help the change happen it’s a sure sign that it is time to move on, too. A good employer should realise that people change direction every now and again and assist where they can – it’s a big step to take for an individual. Keep everything simple and really go for whatever it is you are trying to achieve. Make it happen!

Still digging their heels in

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At dinner a while back I sat next to a very smart professional person who is a friend but not one that I’ve spent a great deal of time with. We got onto the ‘do you/don’t you’ discussion re social media as the night wore on and it turns out that they use no social media tools at all. The actual fear of the tools was huge and the negative things that ‘could’ or ‘might’ happen rolled off their tongue as easily as a shopping list.

I understand and appreciate social media isn’t for everyone and there are also professions where communication of what’s going on in your life, work-wise or otherwise, can be misinterpreted – my friend is a doctor, for example. But there is still a stigma around using the web for things like personal branding and sharing interesting articles using social media and I find this a problem.

Our lives today are very different to the way they were in previous decades and the lives of those in Generation Y will be different by even greater degrees year-on-year from here on in. The way we communicate is different. The way we work is different, too. It does seem that many in my age group (40+) ‘want things they way they were’ but are also very quick to whip out their smartphone and send emails from anywhere when it seems like the right thing to do.

I think it’s even more important to cement your own personal brand online now, no matter who you are and what you do. Embrace technology rather than just knowing about it or trying it out to see if you like it. You don’t need to become so hell-bent on self-promotion that you dilute the quality of your own story, but you have a story and you have the means and power to get it out there in the digital world of today. Your personal circumstances could change in a flash (as they have for many over the last few years of financial turmoil) and the time you need to start to promote yourself could be closer than you can even imagine right now. If you’re also in the market for a new job and you’re ‘digitally invisible’, you are missing out on opportunities and this is a situation that’s easily avoidable.

Those of all ages and backgrounds that I meet that don’t have any kind of social media presence are now standing out as the minority. Most have made a move or are at least taking a watching brief before launching their own new profiles. The tabloid press will always push out horror stories of those who have suffered/caused loss or damage as a result of a facebook post or misguided tweet but no system is perfect and common sense has to always be applied. Please, don’t fall for the negative hype and get yourself moving. Create a profile or two, start following your friends and let us all know who you are.

What would you do if you weren’t afraid?

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What would you do if you weren’t afraid? This was a quote I read recently (and forget where from and sadly cannot give the proper credit for – sorry). Lists are useless for a question like this, and the answers to the question are inside us all, but we are, in the majority of cases, too weak or frightened to look in the mirror and answer with the truth. The fear of knowing the truth takes us away from a great number of things, but the one time that we take the truth head-on, roll up our sleeves and start an all-in, testosterone-fuelled, no-holes-barred brawl with it is the time that everything begins to take shape. We feel a form of ‘release’, and we challenge what we knew and what we now know. The release is from the metaphorical anchor that we all have inside us that keeps us in the life to which we have become accustomed, but, in the same way that a ship pulls it up to get moving, we need to do the same with ours, too. And right now…
 
I look at the answer as lying within a journey, with a start and an end, and a middle bit that takes us somewhere. Anywhere really. But the point is that it takes us somewhere new. We get to see a whole new world that, right now, we have no idea of what it’s like. Taste it, smell it, feel an atmospheric change when we step into it and open our eyes.
 
So, what can you do? What’s going to be your answer? Stop what you’re doing now for five minutes and think about it. Make some space in your world for just five minutes and really have a think about your plan of attack. It might be the most important thing you ever do.
(Written in 2011)

Getting back to the old ways

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I’ve seen some really bad examples of service and communication this year, in many areas from day-to-day retail banking (an area I have worked in) through car dealerships and restaurants and many more. It has moved me to write a few notes on this and I feel it’s an area that needs some attention. My own area of focus is HR and recruitment and I feel that this is also a sector that needs to stop and take stock of how it does in this area.

The basic statement I am making is that we need to ‘get back to the old ways’ and I’m going to try and sum it all up below and add a few things to think about:

Quality
It’s a highly used word but does it really mean anything any more? What does it stand for now? Who’s accountable? It starts with us all. Get some standards. Define it for yourself, seek it out, cherish it, support it.
Meaning
Bigger, faster, stronger, more expensive, wilder, more extravagant, more… Give your life some meaning and purpose – does it have any now? Relationships, work, experiences, evidence. Originality – thoughts, plans, new friendships… Define it for you.
Relationships
Very easy to make, very easy to break. Longevity is key. Sharing is good. Embrace the differences. Show you care. Give and receive.
Service/services
The basics are the only things that matter. Simplicity over ‘empty’ promises. Be thankful for the opportunity. Build relationships and give value. Treat those who serve you like gold. MASSIVE opportunity in getting it right.
Say what you mean
No bullshit, ever.
Be a communications ‘pro’ – listening and speaking.
The time before email and phones
People spoke face to face a LOT more. Communication was formed upon civility. Messages were written and a lot of time taken in making sure they were right. Reading and writing mattered. The world still moved forwards and the pace was acceptable to us all.