“Hi there, I’ve come to see Steve”, I said brightly.

As a man they returned their gaze to their computer screens.

They all had the hunched and dejected look of a team that resides at the bottom of the bottom league who are beaten every week they play.

One of them got up, slowly, so slowly I wondered what he was doing at first.

“I’ll take you”, he said and proceeded to walk through a connecting door that led into a cold, musty corridor with a staircase squirreled away at the bottom.

I followed, introducing myself and getting the grunted reply, “Dave Smith, Sales".

Dave didn’t look like any sales person I’ve ever seen. He was wearing a rather dull grey tank top over a white shirt with sleeves rolled to the elbows. His ensemble was completed by a pair of badly creased blue chinos and scruffy brown shoes.

We got to the top of the steep flight of stairs and Dave took me into a cramped room dominated by the biggest desk I’d ever seen. The large, comfy looking leather chair contained a young woman who was completely surrounded by piles of paper and with a mobile ringing for her attention.

“Hold on”, she said and scrabbled through the papers before locating the errant phone.

“Sally will sort you out”, Dave said and wandered out of the room and back down the stairs.

Sally finished her conversation and switched her attention to me. “Sorry about that”, she said, “we’ve got the auditors coming next week and I’d forgotten you were coming”.

Which was strange as Sally had only arranged the meeting with me the previous week, less than 6 days ago.

I made a non-committal noise and said, “So where’s Steve?”

She got out of her chair and shook my hand, almost as an afterthought and then asked me to follow her.

We walked down the corridor and she stopped halfway down and looked over the frosting to see whether anyone was in. Then she opened the door and ushered me to Steve’s office.

Steve got up from his seat.

“Thanks for coming Jim we thought it would be useful to get an outside view of the company”, he said.

I looked round his office as I sat down and noticed the lovely picture of his family and also the dusty model of a sailing ship on a large bookcase containing just two books.

Sally closed the door for us and I could hear her shoes briskly tapping down the hall as she went back to her office.

Steve began to tell me everything that was wrong with the current economy and the reasons why they just weren’t getting sales. The reasons simply tripped from his tongue. He claimed that Dave had an impossible job to do because he knew the prospects too well! That meant he didn’t push them to  make any decision. And unfortunately as Dave was also a highly skilled programmer he tended to let himself get sucked into helping on client projects. Which meant the sales force was often down by one man.

In addition two years ago Steve had taken on a saleswoman called Jean who had been bubbling with ideas at her interview but since then had made one small sale.

Now what thing(s) had given me a clue regarding the state of the company? Oh, and don’t worry the people and this company is pure fiction, however every element has happened in at least one company I’ve coached!

People like Brian Tracy and Jack Canfield and authors like Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill must have benefited from the massive rise in Internet searches for their name.

And the increase business guru searches is evident from a table Paul Simister published in 2008. I  created a similar table in  a post for business coaches, business mentors and the like in 2009 and now I’ve updated it for 2010.

The most interesting thing to see is the massive increase in searches for many of the gurus, business coaches or business management consultants.

The table below is based on that created by Paul but has increased to show a few more online business coaches for 2010 as well.

Business Management Consultants and “Gurus”

Last time I did think of adding Richard Branson (60,500 searches in 2009, 110,000 in 2010) but excluded him as he wasn’t offering advice to other companies.

And again Tony Robbins is a winner in the searches for his name. Although he’s equal winner with Robert Kiyosaki.

One point to note that I didn’t include other searches that included the name and some other word. So Brian Tracy would have had many more searches, as would Tony Robbins and Richard Branson.

Dead Business Guru Searches

Interestingly enough there are dead people with more searches than most of the experts and gurus we’ve looked at here. For example:

	Search Count Sept 2010	Search Count April 2009	Search Count July 2008
Dale Carnegie	90,500	6,600	N/A
Napoleon Hill	49,500	8,100	N/A
Jim Rohn	33,100	N/A	N/A

Key Business Consultant Related Searches

If you look at the searches made for generic business phrases  then there are many more than for each business consultant or guru we listed earlier.

The only thing to bear in mind with some of the broader terms, like “coach” or “coaching” is that they often refer to sports coaches, or something that doesn’t relate to business.

	Search Content Sept 2010	Search Count April 2009	Search Count July 2008
Business coaching	74,000	14,800	N/A
Business Coach	135,000	N/A	N/A
Business consultant	135,000	40,500	N/A
Sales coaching	14,800	1,900	N/A
Personal coach	33,100	N/A	N/A
coach	7,480,000	1,830,000	N/A
coaching	0	550,000	N/A
Life coaching	165,000	N/A	N/A
business coaching	74,000	12,100	N/A
Executive coaching	74,000	12,100	N/A
coaching and mentoring	27,100	8,100	N/A
executive coach	33,100	5,400	N/A
leadership training	135,000	14,800	N/A
Management coaching	18,100	N/A	N/A
management training	450,000	90,500	N/A
it training	165,000	49,500	N/A
training	24,900,000	9,140,000	N/A
Leadership development	165,000	N/A	N/A
sales training	246,000	40,500	N/A

The conclusions I drew in 2009 were that people were more interested in finding someone who could give them specific advice or help. Regardless of whether they were well know gurus.

Looking at these figures in 2010 it’s evident that there are a lot of people searching for business consultants and gurus by name. However, the numbers searching for generic key phrases is still massively bigger than those searching by name.

So yet again I wonder of people are looking for specific advice from people who can do the business but don’t cost huge wads of cash

And yet, we’re only human, we need someone to talk these worries through with.

Someone we can trust to not dig the knife or start to stir up a worry with the intention of undermining us.

What about when we “know” in our water we should be in a new market and everyone else around us has their own agenda and doesn’t want to “chance” it?

Maybe they’re worried it could affect their own shareholding, or make it harder for them to jump ship if they need to. Or it might entail a lot of hard work that they don’t want to do!

Different Viewpoints Are OK Too

And there’s actually nothing wrong with different viewpoints. However, it’s better for the chief executive to be able to use a sounding board who has no company agenda and simply wants to help the business grow.

And as I’ve been going round doing my executive coaching I’ve noticed there are CEOs who are looking for the opportunity to sound out what they’re thinking, without it being a career limiting move.

In reality that sort of confidential sharing can’t happen until the CEO and mentor have reached the right level of trust. And of course the CEO must know that those confidences are held strictly against the chest of the mentor and never divulged.

CEOs Are People Too!

I’ve discovered that the managing directors or CEOs who’ve used me as a sounding board or as “old and wise counsel” (hopefully wise!) have really come up with very interesting points of view. And they themselves can be very different to the perceptions of them held by others in their own company.

So, my recommendation, is for you to look out for someone who you can unburden yourself to, someone who won’t share the confidence with anyone and who has a good understanding of business. That way you can thrash out ideas and worries before they become too entrenched or bothersome and before fellow directors, or owners, are presented with them.

Sometimes because of the way her clients try and dig their heels in to avoid change. And sometimes because you can’t believe that people are just ignoring what she says when they’d have to pay a fortune to get such advice from anywhere else!

Over the last few weeks her programs have been a departure from the go into a shop, motivate the owner(s) and revive the shop.

Mary Portas Does It For Charity

In this series we’ve had a concerted campaign to improve the profits of a charity shop. And it proves more awkward than you might expect as volunteers who run it are perfectly capable of saying “forget it, I’m off!” which doesn’t really make for a stable work force.

However, despite the difficulties of working in the charity sector Mary duly helps the shop to double their profits, and at the same time justify employing a full time manager.

And the result is that Mary’s way of handling a charity shop is rolled out to the rest of the charity’s chain of shops across the UK.

Mary also helped other charities by putting on a retailing boot camp where shop managers and volunteers could learn how to sell and position their shops for their customers.

And during the screening I’m sure other charities have taken notes to apply in their own shops.

Mary Portas Saves Tewkesbury Town Centre

The Tewkesbury townsfolk get together and invite Mary Portas to help them “Save Our Shops.”

First she makes sure that she gets thoroughly despondent by checking out how another town is even worse off and how landlords don’t really help themselves by allowing vast swathes of town centres to lie fallow. Unfortunately shops that are not used reduces the footfall to the remaining shops. Some of those shops close which reduces footfall to those that are left and it becomes a vicious circle.

The Mary Portas solution at Tewkesbury is to get as many of the retailers as possible involved in working out possible solutions, rather than simply listening to them whining about what wont work.

This is quite a creative thing to do. However, Mary makes the point during this show that department stores run events all the time. It’s something none of the retailers seemed to latch onto.

A town centre event every month would really help the shopkeepers by increasing footfall into the town centre.

Examples would be: Country fair (which to be fair Tewkesbury ran and the retailers attended); Easter parade; a Tewkesbury raft building weekend; what about a German market, or a Christmas market?; vintage car rally, fun run, run for charity, fashion show or fashion parade…

The list goes on. Anyone can see that there’s a wide variety of inexpensive but interesting events they can hold. 

The good ones really can make a difference to a business. Often however, it does require that the business take action on what the coach is helping them with. After all ideas with no action is like trying to drink your soup without making it first – impossible!

This post is prompted by one that Paul Simister did in July 2008. And I wondered whether the expert ratings had changed at all. So I used the same Adwords search tool that Paul used and found the following:

Business Expert Searches

I added in a few more people to Paul’s original list, including myself, just to see who else was getting reasonable searches.

I did also consider Richard Branson (60,500 searches) but discounted him as his main aim is to run his businesses rather than give external business advice, coaching or training.

And again, Brian Tracy is well out front of the pack, if you discount Tony Robbins.

However, Tony Robbins helps a massive number of businesses so he really should be added in. Therefore, this year I think there can be no dispute that Tony Robbins wins in the search for the expert with the most searches!

Dead Business Expert Searches

Interestingly enough there are dead people with more searches than most of the experts and gurus we’ve looked at here. For example:

I suspect this is because many of the experts we’ve listed refer to both Napoleon Hill’s “Think And Grow Rich” and Dale Carnegie’s “How To Win Friends And Influence People” as two of the key books any business leader must read.

Business Advice Related Searches

Now compare those figures to these generic keyword searches. And remember these searches are made every month and for subjects that the gurus are famous for:

What does this show?

I wonder if people are as aware of the gurus as people who know them are? After all it’s pretty impossible to “know what you don’t know” isn’t it? Or to paraphrase – “you can’t know who you don’t know.”

The other likelihood is that people don’t want to pay the guru price and would rather have someone else a little less expensive but still great value for money. What do you think?

And realistically how many entrepreneurs feel they have enough time to read any books anyway?

Luckily when I got Jonathan Yates’ “All-Time Essentials For Entrepreneurs” I quickly discovered that it was a very quick read (about 2 hours max) and that I could dip into it at any time I was at a loose end. And I was pleased I’d had the opportunity to grab it.

It’s easy to carry with you too as it’s half A5 size and simply fits straight into your jacket pocket.

So entrepreneurs get reading!

The Books Format

As Jonathan writes in his introduction this is an ideas book. It’s format is very straight forward and really lends itself to dipping into it for ideas. On the left hand page there’s a really relevant quote on the other side a suggestion, tip, advice or some encouragement.

Some of the quotes you’ll have heard before. However, seeing them again in the context of the suggestion is most helpful.

These 100 ideas are split into the following sections:

1. Start
2. Ideas
3. Motivation
4. Opportunity
5. Challenges
6. Money
7. Strategy
8. Marketing
9. Sales
10. Success

These are ideas and thoughts that you can use each week. And unlike some books like this because it’s so short it’s easy to keep at hand.

One of the quotes I loved was from WS Gilbert (the other half of my favourite light opera creators Gilbert & Sullivan). He said,

“Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success.”

Although this book is aimed squarely at entrepreneurs it’s a good read for anyone who has an interest in business.  People like sales staff, company directors or consultants of all breeds.

For example, "We want to grow our business and make 25% more profit next year."

That’s the wrong way to go about it. After all if you haven’t done some investigation how do you know whether your business can grow by 25% or 200%?

It would seem a shame not to grow 200% if you could by spending the same time and money you would growing by 25%.

Business Growth Requires Focus

Every business can improve the way they do business and deliver their products and services to their clients and services to the people inside their own firm.

All it takes is some commitment, a few goals to aim for and someone to keep you focused on those goals when business life just assumes a life of its own and keeps you working hard in it, rather than on it.

Improving a business easily falls by the wayside when there are "more important business issues" such as making payroll.

Business Growth Lacks Ego

The reason why people are wary about employing a mentor or business coach is for two reasons:

1. They’ve got their business going, it’s their baby and no one can know what they know or do what they do or offer advice that’s convincing or useful
2. They’re afraid that a mentor will uncover the skeletons in the closet and everyone will find out that the business isn’t as solid as they represent to the world

Both these views are understandable. However, don’t let them stop you from growing. Firstly you should choose a mentor you can trust. Secondly remember by avoiding coaching you you don’t know what your business is really capable of.

Business Growth Needs Help

You may really know everything there is to know in your industry and you may be making the most profit in your industry and you may be best business in your industry.

However, what if a mentor could improve your business massively simply by getting you to focus on what you need to do to grow your business by 200%? Because if you could already do it by yourself you would already have achieved  massive and continual growth by now.

What I’m saying is you need to make a New Year’s resolution to get someone from outside your company to help you build your business. Someone who isn’t afraid to tell you they don’t agree, someone who’s willing to be a devil’s advocate and someone who really wants to help your business grow.

They don’t need to live next door to you as the phone and Skype have shrunk the globe as far as communications is concerned!

Certainly when I coach companies I find the biggest issue now is making sure that we know which time zones I and the client really mean and whether it’s summer time or not!

Think about it for a second…

If you recruit people and they perform to the best of their ability they will reach a plateau.

That plateau will allow them to continue to do the job. However, there can be no further improvement without training.

Because if you already knew what you had to do the likelihood is that you’d be doing it.

So training is the key element that grows an organisation.

There are two extremes in training, and I’ve been in company’s that practice one or the other.

Throw Training At Them And Hope It Sticks

This type of approach involves either the Human Resources department assessing all the training that everyone in the company would benefit from and then simply sending everyone on it.

Or the company employing a consultant to say the same thing and the net result is the same thing.

This is never a good way of running training.

For example I was in a company that sent everyone to time management over a period of a few months. However, when the initial batch of trained employees returned to base they had to deal with people who hadn’t been trained and so didn’t really implement the time management process effectively.

Then when subsequent batches of course attendees returned they already “knew” that the time management process didn’t work! An expensive waste of time and money.

Also sending someone on a course well before they use the new skill means they’ll lose most of the skill. So again a waste of time and money.

I also worked at a company who tried to implement a vast library of training courses that could be accessed online. People could choose their own courses. The only problem?

Employees didn’t really look upon them as a set of proper courses and didn’t give them the attention they deserved.

So simply throwing unfocused training at an organisation is not the way forward.

Let Them Learn From Nellie

At the other end of the scale is the unwillingness for a company to invest in training their staff. The reason may not be financial, they may believe they’re unable to manage without the member of staff for the duration of the course.

So the next best thing to training is to stick the employee with Nellie, who “knows” all the ropes and can train them in what to do.

The problem with this approach is that Nellie may not give all the information required to do the job. Or Nellie might not even have discovered the best way to do the job herself. Remember she’s unlikely to have had training herself. Or Nellie, without even knowing, may send someone in completely the wrong direction for the company’s purpose.

So the problem for the organisation is that Nellie becomes a focus for everyone who isn’t sure about what to do and her productivity declines until the skill has been transferred. Even when it’s been transferred she may still get further queries from time to time.

How Does Training Work For Leaders?

You’re a leader.

How often have you been on a course that you identified you should go on?

What about the executives that work with you? When did you sit down with them all and identify what aspects of their skill set should be built up with training?

How often have you put a new manager, or executive with “Nellie” to learn the ropes, rather than take the time your self – because you’re too busy?

And yet there are 12 key skills that I’ve talked about before in this blog that really make an enormous difference. Improving just those 12 skills will power a business forward. And applying them to the leaders to begin with is the best strategy for a company.

Once the leaders have begun to practice the core skills they need to be mentored by an outside agent who can be trusted to hold them responsible for improvement.  Then the skills improvement can be applied to the other employees in the organisation.

Whatever you do formalise the improvement of those 12 key skills to take you business to the next level.

You do want to get your business to the next level?

Campbell is an ex football coach who also ran Intuit (they made money program Quicken).

In Silicon valley Campbell is a legend. He’s had a finger in so many pies and there’s no doubt that he’s had massive impact.  For a more in depth look at Coach’s involvement and background see this Fortune article

And the way he works with and assesses people is very important. As far as he’s concerned a manager who only achieves his financial goals is missing some important elements. Focus on financial goals can lead to short-term thinking. Instead Campbell gives the same weight to following areas:

• performing against expectations
• management skills
• working with peers
• innovating

And yet he specialises in start-ups, for example Google was still growing when he was brought in.  And companies as they grow need focus, discipline and accountability from everyone, right up to the CEO.

When I coach people I find that focus is one thing many people let drift. They have so much to do in a growing organisation. And yet if they sat down for a few minutes and thought it through there’s only one thing at a time that is moving their company forward.

Accountability is not just desirable it’s the most important element of all. Can you imagine the state of the company if a CEO failed to deliver on expectations and nobody held them accountable? People would get upset that their hard work is not being used to best effect by the CEO. A coach means that the CEO is held responsible in delivering results. Just like everyone else should be.

Have you ever felt you weren’t accountable? Where there times when you didn’t do the best you could, or work on the most important job? Without a coach you may not even realise!

However, the carpers, the doubters and the envious we can do without.

Ex-president Theodore Roosevelt said it best,

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

And that is exactly what business is about. To succeed in business, life or anything you need to “DO.” For without action there’s no forward momentum that powers through the obstacles that life occasionally throws in our paths.

In all the time I’ve been in business there’s no doubt that I meet people in one of two mindsets:

• Those who know they know everything about business
• Those who remain open minded and are willing to try new things

And often the ones who think they know all about business, or have friends who can point them in the right direction don’t understand the value of learning things they don’t know yet. Or of having a coach who holds their feet to the fire when they don’t deliver on agreements.

The other thing they fail to realise is that if you pay for advice you pay attention to it! That means you improve your business. If you don’t pay you put what’s said to the back of your mind and nothing changes.

The open-minded try lots of new things, some work, some don’t. However, if you’ve implemented a new sales strategy that gets in an extra 10% of new sales isn’t that better than just staying as you were?

So when people criticise you for taking positive action refer them to the quote from Teddy Roosevelt.