Tony Galliano speaks on how personal change and personal achievement begins with you. In order to change, you have to want it.
Posts Tagged ‘Strategy’
Personal Change Begins with You!
Thursday, May 7th, 2009How to Eliminate Distractions From Your Life
Thursday, May 7th, 2009
How to effectively “Lock in on Target” when setting personal objectives
Thursday, May 7th, 2009Tony Galliano teaches: To be effective, you must effectively focus on your goals and “Lock In” on them with focus, dedication, and passion.
Success Requires Getting Smart About Your Goals
Thursday, May 7th, 2009Tony Galliano Success Workshop. To truly be successful, you need to “Get Smart” about your business, your Goals and objectives.
Strategic Planning Through Analysis & Forecasting
Thursday, May 7th, 2009Tony Galliano teaches proper strategic planning requires the ability to analyze the situation around you and the ability to consistently and effectively forecast the future of your external and internal environment.
Setting Your Strategic Plan
Thursday, May 7th, 2009Tony Galliano speaks on a critical part of strategic planning which is the ability to effectively create and set an effective, detailed strategic plan.
Getting it Done: The Key to Business Success!
Thursday, May 7th, 2009Tony Galliano speaks on the most critical part of strategic thinking and planning is the ability to implement the plan. Some of the best plans die on the vine because they are not properly implemented.
Are You Falling Into Activity Traps?
Monday, March 2nd, 2009I am a perfectionist. I really am, but I’m working on overcoming this flaw. Yes, it’s a flaw. I used to have this need for everything to be perfect in my work, which led to disastrous results. The need for perfection cased missed deadlines and projects to be killed completely because perfection could not be attained.
Worse yet, my perfection led to my refusal to delegate unimportant tasks and responsibilities. Before I started my own company, I was more willing to delegate tasks and responsibilities, but as a business owner, it became evn more difficult. Now, my reputation is on the line. If I send out a product that isn’t perfect, it is a reflection on me.
Finally, I had to just let go and let things be less than perfect. When completing my book, 60 Second Strategist, I can’t count the dozens of times I went back and forth with my editor and cover design team. I had to control everything. Everything had to be perfect. Finally I had to let go and accept the fact that it wasn’t going to be perfect and there may be an error or two. That’s was second editions are for, right?
When I was designing my website, I was wasting time with my design tem several times per week. I had to give my input on every insignificant design change on the site instead of just letting “good enough be good enough!”
I share this with you for three reasons.
1. If you see any mistakes in anything I produce, this is my excuse to fall back on.
2. Even though I teach these concepts, it’s easy to fall back into old habits and get sucked in to traps of un-productivity
3. To show that, “I feel your pain,” and we all have similar struggles. If I was perfect, you wouldn’t want to learn from me, because I would preach an impossible standard.
What activity traps do you fall into?
Is Lack of Clarity Causing Confusion?
Monday, March 2nd, 2009Recently, I talked about the need to cut non-value added activities out of your schedule. As a sales manager, every second of my time was extremely valuable.
My goal was to achieve the fastest growth in the southeastern United States and outperform the Nation in all seven product lines I promoted. That’s it. That was my goal. I really didn’t care about sales contests, motivation sessions, or any other tactical initiative unless it lead to my goal. After only six months in the territory, I achieved my goal. Incidentally, there was only one other manager who achieved this goal and he was a 30 year veteran sale manager.
Why did everyone else fail? I can tell you why. It had nothing to to with talent, drive, or managerial ability. They were distracted. Our manager was a highly incompetent person with no sense of direction or clue how to manage managers. This person was all over the place. We were give assignments that had no focus and no correlation to business growth. At the same time, we were responsible for our own sales numbers.
I remember one conversation with the manager who said, “I really need you to work harder and contribute more to our team. I need to feel like we are a team and you are making us whole. You really need to work on that.”
I said, “I don’t understand. I am a brand new sales manager. My performance is better than any other new sales manager. My numbers are through the roof and I am only staffed at 60%. What exactly do you want?”
The manager said, “Well, that’s for you to decide. I just need more from you. I need to build a team!”
Confused, I asked my managers manager what exactly was expected of me and he told me, “Just keep you numbers up and that’s all I care about.”
I asked my peers who were also dumbfounded. They spent their time trying to figure out some cryptic talk from an incompetent manager while I worked on growing my business. In the end, I knew I would be accountable for my sales numbers and not for my ability to pacify a lunatic.
When it came time for performance reviews, the only thing that mattered was performance, not manager pleasing. I refused to let anything or anyone (even my boss) stand in the way of my success. Keep in mind that bosses come and go. At the end of the day, you will have to stand by your performance and integrity, so keep that in mind as you are finding your focus.
Are You Drowning in Minutia?
Monday, March 2nd, 2009Being a field sales manager was one of the most grueling, yet rewarding experiences of my corporate career. I remember hating these guys when I worked at corporate… I wondered why they got paid ridiculous sums of money, got nice company cards, huge expense accounts. Anyone could do what they do. So, I put my money where my mouth is and did it. I can tell you one thing, these guys earn 100% of their money and then some. If you paid a sales manager $250,000 a year where I was working, I would consider him underpaid.
Let’s talk about my day as a sales manager. I would get up at 4:30 AM and run 6-9 miles. I would return home to check email before leaving and usually be out the door by 6:30 to go ride in the field with a sales rep. We would make sales calls all day while my email inbox would pile up at home. After out last sales call, I would have to de-brief the rep and complete field travel reports. On a good day, I would be home by 7:00 PM and make dinner for my kids and tuck them in bed by 8:00 PM. Once the kids were in bed, I would log on to my computer and begin my office work. I’d have to answer hundreds of emails, fill out special forms, and complete multiple reports. My company was rated as having the highest administrative load for field sales managers in the entire industry… and it showed.
If there were no major emergencies, I would be done with my office work by about 1:00 AM. I would crash in bed and wake up at 4:30 the next day to do it all over again. This was a typical “at home day, but I also had two overnight trip per week and would have to fly out of state at least once a month for a sales meeting, training conference or other such nonsense.
What’s my point in all this? I quickly learned to be extremely efficient in everything I did. When you are working more than 90 hours a week, you don’t have time to waste time. You can’t let the little things distract you. You can’t waste time with mundane tasks that don’t add any value to your work.
What are you doing in your day that’s wasting time?
If you had to cut ten hours out of your work week, how would you do it?
