Craig Zuber

Validating is a fancy word that basically means reassurance. It’s simple and it works like this: you say something to me. I believe I know what you mean, but just to be sure, I ask a question to confirm that I’ve heard you correctly.

Validation is an incredibly powerful skill. Why? Because it establishes trust, courtesy, and respect. When you take the trouble to ask clarifying questions and repeat back what they just said, to make sure you got it right, people realize you’re actually listening to them. It establishes the foundation for the entire relationship.

And—validating everything you hear guarantees that you are paying attention and not missing anything important. When most people are in a conversation, they spend the entire time the other person is talking formulating what they’re going to say in reply. We all do it; we’re all guilty of it at some point. But, if you know you have to confirm what you’ve just heard and repeat the gist of it back to them out loud, you know you have to listen.

Remember the Golden Rule? “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?” Forget about it! Find out how they want to be treated and give them what THEY’RE looking for, not what YOU ASSUME they’re looking for.

Awhile back I made breakfast for my kids. I went all out and made pancakes, thinking I was giving them this great treat and they’d love the surprise and think I was the world’s best dad. By the time they got to the table, each one had a plate all dished up with pancakes, butter, and syrup. That’s how everybody eats pancakes, right? Wrong.

My daughter took one look at her plate and started crying. She only wanted butter. Instead of making her day, I made her feel like nobody cared about what she wanted. It’s mind blowing, the kind of life-changing information you can get just by asking instead of assuming.

Validation continues even after the transaction is over. Ask for your clients’ feedback with surveys or emails or a phone call. Following up shows that you’re still listening, even after you’ve finished the job. It’s crazy that more business people don’t bother to do this, because it makes a huge positive impression on customers. And that’s not the only payoff—it also gives you priceless feedback on how to make your product or service BETTER. Ask them what you did well and what you could do better next time.

The idea is to create a relationship where they’re excited to talk to you when you do call to follow up with them. Because they know you listened to them, and more importantly that you CARE. That’s what it all boils down to. This person cares. He’s not just out to make a sale.
To find out what your clients or prospects or customers want, ask them. Just ask. And when they tell you, ask another question or two to make sure you heard them right. It’s that easy.

Kick Ass, Make Money & Have Fun Doing It!

Craig Zuber

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Our purpose at Zuber Group Real Estate is to create a compelling, fulfilling real estate experience every time we serve a client. Our website is just one of the services we offer. For the most advanced MLS search in the Treasure Valley visit us @ www.zubergroup.com

Want More Lessons From The Business Battlefield?

When there is an economic shift, it’s time to rethink, restructure, refresh, re-energize and reinvent every aspect of your business that is not getting results. Go back through your business plan, your marketing plan, your budget, and your systems to see where and how you could do more with less. You might need to retool and upgrade your systems. Are there fixed costs you could change to performance-based or bonus-based compensation?

Adapting and overcoming requires holding everything and everybody accountable. You must know what you are spending money on and what you are getting for the money spent! If any expense is not providing an adequate ROI, get rid of it. You may have to do more with a bit less, but that does not mean slashing quality or service—or your prices.

Get very clear about which aspects of your business are non-negotiable—the core of your business model, your plan and your reason for being in business in the first place. Be careful not to act in desperation and undermine the principles that make you successful in the first place. That’s not adapting or overcoming, that’s RETREATING.

Your commitment to excellence doesn’t change. Your commitment to superior service doesn’t get scaled back in any way—in fact, a down market is a powerful motivator to make you service better than ever. It forces you to do things the way you should have always been doing things.

Go back to your BBB—beans, bullets, and Band-Aids. When I was on active duty as a Marine, we’d get hand-me-down gear from the Army, so stuff was broken and beat up and we had to adapt to that reality. It was a case of fix it, tie it, duct-tape it, figure it out, make it work, shut up and do what you’re here to do! No excuses!

Kick Ass, Make Money & Have Fun Doing It!

Craig Zuber

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Our purpose at Zuber Group Real Estate is to create a compelling, fulfilling real estate experience every time we serve a client. Our website is just one of the services we offer. For the most advanced MLS search in the Treasure Valley visit us @ www.zubergroup.com

Want More Lessons From The Business Battlefield?

It’s mind-blowing to see the results a great leader can get by placing a high value on people and treating them well—and that means treating them with respect! And it also means making the effort to get to know who they are as people and what’s important to them. It means paying attention and learning what they need from you to get their job done and give their best.

If you think that sounds like too much work and too much wasted time, think again. Think about how disruptive it is to you and everybody else when an employee or partner leaves. And what a pain in the ass it is to interview new people, recruit a replacement, bring them up to speed, and then find out the hard way whether they’re up to the task. Don’t forget that this all goes on during time you could have been spending selling or producing or generating new customers. When you look at how much it costs in both time and money to let people go and bring new people on board, the ROI of investing the time in keeping the good ones is HUGE.

A lot of it has to do with personality profiles, because different people have different motivations for what they do well. I know that Dennis thrives on competition, so I make sure he gets competition in his work. Nicole is motivated by appreciation; she needs to know, often, that she’s doing a great job and that we all appreciate it. Everybody is driven by something different. And it’s your job as a leader to figure out what that is.

When you’re a true leader, you take responsibility for clear, two-way communication with your team so they know exactly what you expect of them. You stand up for them and make sure they have the resources and support they need to fulfill their mission.

We all need respect. And we all need chances to learn and grow and stretch ourselves. And sometimes that means failing. A very critical part of great leadership involves trusting your people to use their own judgment, because that builds their confidence and decision-making skills. The flip side of that is that you have to give them permission to fail. Failure is an inescapable part of learning; so if they do make a mistake, treat it as a learning opportunity. Instead of ripping their head off, you talk about what they could have done differently, or what you might have done in their place to get a different result. You take on the responsibility for whatever happened, because you’re the one who gave them permission to fail. Then you go the extra mile and take responsibility for seeing it through. You help everybody learn from the mistake.

But leadership isn’t only about when things go south—team spirit grows from rewarding hard work and setting benchmarks that tell you when you’re making progress so you can celebrate! We’d all rather be congratulated than get our asses kicked, right? Small steps are worth making a fuss about. Small steps are just fine, as long as they’re going in the right direction. And celebrations must include everybody—everybody needs to be included as a team. There’s no “I” did it, there’s always “we” did it.

Kick Ass, Make Money & Have Fun Doing It!

Craig Zuber

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Our purpose at Zuber Group Real Estate is to create a compelling, fulfilling real estate experience every time we serve a client. Our website is just one of the services we offer. For the most advanced MLS search in the Treasure Valley visit us @ www.zubergroup.com

Want More Lessons From The Business Battlefield?

The military approach to business is based solidly on courage and confidence. If you are not completely confident about your product or service or your ability to deliver it—fix that now. And I mean RIGHT NOW. No excuses.

Your confidence comes from your absolute belief that what you’re offering is truly the right thing for them to do. If it isn’t, NEVER push someone into buying something they shouldn’t. Closing is supposed to be about pushing them into buying something they should.

Sometimes business people are so intimidated by the close that they project desperation, but closing doesn’t need to be like that. The trick is to create an enjoyable experience—the close should be fun. It’s supposed to be a step everyone will be celebrating about before, during, and after.

It works because of your confidence, your unshakable faith that your product or service is the best. It also works because of your sincerity. You are genuinely looking out for their best interests and they will be able to see, hear and feel that. On the other hand, if you’re only out for yourself at their expense—you’re DEAD! It will show, every time.

Here’s the bottom line: if you’re intimidated about closing—GET OVER IT. Learning to close is not optional, it is mandatory. The secret? Believe in your mind that you already have the client’s approval to proceed and act accordingly.

Kick Ass, Make Money & Have Fun Doing It!

Craig Zuber

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Our purpose at Zuber Group Real Estate is to create a compelling, fulfilling real estate experience every time we serve a client. Our website is just one of the services we offer. For the most advanced MLS search in the Treasure Valley visit us @ www.zubergroup.com

Want More Lessons From The Business Battlefield?

In business, everything starts with a plan. The plan provides a map, a direction, and the basis for well-thought out systems for getting where you’re going. What a plan does best is give you a way to proactively take responsibility for every possible factor within your control. But business is still part of life on Earth, where things don’t always go according to plan. Customer’s needs change. Markets shift. New competitors show up. Shit happens.

So what do you do then? Pack it in, close up shop, sit down and cry, go back to bed, head to the nearest bar? Do you GIVE UP? Hell no. It’s just LIFE and changes and surprises are all part of the game, so you pick yourself up and take a good look around and get creative about new tactics and a better strategy for winning. THEN you act.

The worst mistake people make in the trenches is getting that sequence backwards—they want to react first before taking time to think it through. As in, “Shoot first, ask questions later.” And that’s what gets them in trouble.

Let’s say a landscaping business is suddenly losing long-term customers. They think “Oh, no! We better start advertising, right away!” And so they start shelling out big bucks for radio and TV spots and full-color newspaper ads. Pretty soon they’re not only out of customers, they’re also out of money, and maybe even on the verge of going out of business.

When crisis strikes, the first step is always to stop and think. Before doing anything, remember to remain calm. Create a strategy. Come up with a new Plan A. In some cases, you’ll even want to come up with Plans B, C, D, and E as backups.

Even though nobody can control all the variables in any business environment, one of the best possible strategies is to be prepared, to expect the unexpected. If you’re coaching a football team, you could focus on the three plays your team performs best and drill them on just those plays until they could replicate them flawlessly, every time, no matter what.

But you wouldn’t get away with that for long before the other teams’ coaches caught on and came at you with plays calculated to surprise your guys and exploit any gaps or weaknesses in your game plan. Your team would be sitting ducks because of their predictability.

On the other hand, what if you were to train the team to master a broad range of game scenarios, so that they’d be prepared to deal with practically anything that got thrown at them? No matter what happened in a game, they’d be trained to handle it. That’s being prepared. That’s a strategy.

It’s a strategy that happens to work very, very well for the United States Marine Corps. They train soldiers for every possible scenario that could arise on the battlefield. Then they surprise you with completely new do-or-die emergency scenarios you’ve never seen before until you either get extremely good at adapting to anything and everything or you risk fatality.

And that brings us right back to the business battle plan. A key element of planning is to prepare for the worst as well as the best. That’s the reason for having a file backup system, liability insurance, and spare car keys. Go through all the possibilities you can think of with your team and explore, “What’s the worst-case scenario that could happen for us? And what’s the best way to deal with that and still come out on top?”

All hands must be on deck! Everyone must be on board. Although change is inevitable, an agile organization is always prepared and trained to act strategically, not desperately. By thinking ahead, you and your team will learn to see change as an opportunity to adapt and achieve a stronger competitive edge.

Turn any business problem into an opportunity by answering four simple questions:

What exactly is the problem?

How can I fix this problem?

Do other people have this same problem and if so, how do they handle it?

Would there be people willing to buy my solution if I fix this problem?

Kick Ass, Make Money & Have Fun Doing It!

Craig Zuber

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Our purpose at Zuber Group Real Estate is to create a compelling, fulfilling real estate experience every time we serve a client. Our website is just one of the services we offer. For the most advanced MLS search in the Treasure Valley visit us @ www.zubergroup.com

Want More Lessons From The Business Battlefield?