We support leading agents via training and consultancy and one common denominator is the discipline of generating market appraisals. This is the constant discussion point and most focussed upon target of all.

The science of assessing desired income to be generated from residential sales, then working back to what that translates into completions, agreed sales, instructions and ultimately appraisals – is vital.

Each stage is targeted according to typical ratios. Crucially the first stage of ‘The Cascade Process’ – the number of appraisals carried out weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually, is calculated and the business knows how many appraisals will lead to the necessary income. It is bizarre that agents target sales and completions without targeting appraisals, given the former will not happen without the latter.

Communicate with the team

Once the numbers are worked out, they need to be communicated to those who convert the opportunities. With a collective understanding of and responsibility for the number of booked appraisals in any given period, there is a massive increase in the likelihood of that number being achieved.

Some companies target each individual person on the number of appraisals they book and to reward those who hit those numbers. This is a clear reflection of just how important this target is regarded.

However, targeting without training is a waste of time. There is a skill gap in many agencies between valuers and non-valuers in how to persuade a client to choose the agency. This is not because the valuers are brighter. It’s because they have more opportunity to develop techniques that convince clients to instruct them.

The goal is to persuade the potential client that your firm is the best equipped to get the property sold for the best price.

Conversely, when an office-based agent deals with someone looking to move locally with a property to sell that is an instruction opportunity, it should lead to an attempt to secure an appraisal. The client may have earmarked the agent to instruct. In these cases, their perception will be that they don’t need any further advice.

Eyes on the ball

The goal is to persuade that potential client that your firm is the best equipped to get the property sold for the best price, in the shortest time, with minimum stress, to a committed buyer. To do this effectively, there are essential ingredients. Diligent knowledge of their own estate agency’s services and their competitors’ services to an equally detailed level are key assets.

A grasp of the difference between features and benefits, with recognising that a potential client is certain to be convinced only by the latter rather that the former. The feature that your agency is open seven days a week is unlikely to inspire anyone to think “Wow. That’s the agent for me then”, whereas if you explain the benefit of those features – that you will not miss viewing and enquiry opportunities while other agents are shut meaning you are far more likely to sell the property quickly, there is a far higher likelihood that the client will see why they should opt for your agency.

Score!

One of the absolute musts that will prove a quick win is to ensure that anyone in your business who is responsible for securing appraisal appointments is taken on a few – by the valuers.

They will immediately become more skilled at the duty in question by absorbing and adopting snippets of conversation and phrases that they can employ.

Given that the first rule of estate agency is that “If you have the best stock of property, the buyers will find you”, it follows that there is nothing more important than achieving target on booked appraisals – the aforementioned principles will ensure that target is not only achieved but actually comfortably exceeded.

Julian O’Dell, TM Training & Development 07718 634235

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Managing people is harder than most new managers ever imagine, in particular how to get a consistently high level of performance from every member of the team.

Managers can find it difficult to improve underperforming staff and quickly run out of energy before taking the culprits down an appropriate departure route whilst reactively seeking a replacement. However, a manager must think hard before embarking on such a course of action – giving up on an employee in such a fashion is irreversible and there is no guarantee that the new recruit will fare any better, particularly in the short term while they learn the job role and company culture.

Handling poor performance effectively falls into three key areas – spotting that there is a problem, understanding the reasons for that problem and attempting a remedy.

The first is relatively straightforward in an estate agency environment as there is a plethora of performance criteria to measure employees against. Should a member of staff fail to achieve targets in any areas then action must be taken. Lack of addressing underperformance is a common failing among weaker managers, allowing staff to perceive an unspoken acceptance of such a state of affairs.

Identify the issues

The second stage of understanding the causes of underachievement is key to success.

There are usually good reasons why an employee is not performing well – often the most difficult part of the manager’s role in this area is to identify those reasons swiftly and accurately. It can help to have an awareness of the specific attitude the worker has to towards their job.

Broadly speaking, staff have one of four prevailing attitudes to work – ‘can do/will do’, ‘can’t do/will do’, ‘can do/won’t do’ and ‘can’t do/won’t do’.

The first of these is displayed by the employee who constantly demonstrates standards of behaviour that meet or exceed the manager’s expectations.

If an employee is not performing well, the difficult part of the manager’s role is to identify the reason.

The second aforementioned attitude is typically observed in newer staff who have the desire to do well but lack the knowledge or skills to achieve excellence.

The third ‘can do/won’t do’ approach is a trickier one to handle as there is probably a lack of motivation at the root. The employee adopting this approach to their job may be finding the workload too easy or repetitive and therefore experiencing a lack of challenge and variety. They may feel neglected or detached from the team. There may be outside influences in their personal life affecting their concentration or energy levels. Whatever the cause, the manager must quickly identify it prior to taking action to address it. Likewise, the ‘can’t do/won’t do’ worker has to have some managerial support and time invested before a decision is taken to release them.

Patience is important

The underlying reasons for these last two types of behaviour may not reveal themselves immediately and discussions with the employee involved must be tactful and thorough. Establishing the reasons for the shortfall in results is not a question of apportioning blame, but rather a joint discussion including factual analysis.

The manager should also consider key questions to try to establish what has gone wrong. Was the task misunderstood? Was the task understood by the employee, but the objectives or targets inappropriately set? Was the failure to meet the objectives wholly down to circumstances within the person’s control? It is an important principle to grasp that poor performance can be a direct result of poor leadership, where a manager has failed to specify the results expected or the levels of skills and competence required.

The third and final stage of managing underperformance – attempting a remedy – involves deciding and agreeing the course of action required.

Good management

A necessary improvement in skills could be achieved by training courses or in-house coaching. Behavioural change is less straightforward as staff will often fail to change just because their manager tells them to! They must understand the benefits to themselves and the company of the suggested changes. Attitudinal change is the most tricky to secure, however improvements in performance as a result of behavioural change may engender a new way of thinking, particularly if combined with an increased investment of time on the manager’s part spent helping develop abilities, skills and knowledge through guidance and support.

As ever with effective management, to complete the third stage successfully requires monitoring and checking prior to revisiting stage one.

The manager may find it difficult for to find in an already busy schedule, but the pay off in terms of overall team performance will make it well worth it and will save huge amounts of time in the long run.

Julian O’Dell, TM Training & Development 01480 405583

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JULIAN SAYS:

Any professional salesperson outside the estate agency industry will have been trained in closing skills, yet I witness an alarming amount of selling situations where the agent fails to close – including some where they fail to try! Too often business flies out of the window due to a valuer or negotiator bringing a conversation to an end by a throwaway “I’ll leave it with you” or “Give me a call when you’ve had a think”. This is not closing. This is bottling it.

I’ll leave it with you,” or, “Give me a call when you’ve had a think.” This is not closing. This is bottling it.

Conversely, pushing people into decisions they are not ready to make never ends well. It leads to clients reflecting on the outcome and changing their mind and pulling out. Pushy salespeople rarely have sustained success– the most successful practitioners will adopt a much more ‘pull’ approach. This however, takes more skill and subtlety.

Closing is not about coercion at the end of an appointment or conversation, but rather about gaining agreement throughout.

Julian O’Dell is Founder of TM Training & Development

Naturally some clients will do the closing for you – if you’ve done a great job at registering an applicant, offer a couple of possible properties, they may ask to view them before you need to suggest it. Similarly, a potential vendor in front of a valuer as the appraisal appointment nears an end, thinking how brilliant that valuer has been and how impressive they are compared to others they’ve met, could bring things to a conclusion, asking, “So how quickly can you get our house on the market then?” In short, the higher the standard of everything you have done up to the point of closing has been, the less likely you are to have to rely on closing techniques.

Techniques in your locker

However, it is still crucial to have a few closing techniques in your locker for when necessary. There are hundreds of recognised approaches but many don’t suit the unique nature of the estate agency industry.

Ones that should be part of an agent’s skill set include the ‘summary staircase’. This technique comes towards the end of a sales conversation and, as the name suggests, involves the technique of summarising back to the person you are selling to before seeking a final positive response. A valuer might summarise as follows:

• Valuer: “So before I leave, can I check that we’ve covered everything we set out to do today… we discussed the suggested marketing price of your property and the evidence points to £300,000. You’re happy with that?”
• Client: “Yes.”
• Valuer: “We talked about how we get you the best price for your property. Are you happy that our services are geared to getting you the result you’re looking for?”
• Client: “Yes.”
• Agent: “And we agreed a fee of 1.5 per cent plus vat on a no sale, no fee basis?”
• Client: “Yes.”
• Agent: “I wanted to answer all your questions about the market, the selling process and our company. Have I done that?”
• Client: “Yes.”
• Agent: “So with that in mind, I hope you’re happy to go ahead?”
• Client: “Actually, yes.”

Confidence and rejection

Of course, nothing works 100 per cent of the time but the summary staircase is extremely effective in most cases. The ‘disarm close’ is another great technique, particularly useful for salespeople who are not natural closers.

“I know you’re not necessarily looking to make a decision today, but if you were, would it be us you’d be choosing to instruct?”

Anything less than a positive response will mean you have an issue that needs dealing with – a simple, “You don’t seem 100 per cent sure…” can tease out the client’s concern and give you a chance to address it face to face rather than on the phone later, when the potential instruction is slipping away towards a competitor.

An ‘assumptive close’ is a statement rather than a question – “let’s get viewing appointments lined up on those three properties then…” or “right, I’ve got everything I need to get your property on the market for the weekend…let’s get things up and running…”

An assertive salesperson will use this approach to great effect with the right people in the right situations to nudge them in the direction they want.

I suspect some agents simply don’t close for fear of rejection. Though it might seem harsh, Zig Ziglar’s quote should be borne in mind: “Timid salespeople have skinny kids”.

Julian O’Dell TM Training & Development 07718 634235

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JULIAN SAYS:

I was recently reminded of the critical nature of ‘professionalism’ in business when I won a big training contract. I was advised by the client that the largest factor in winning the contract was my ‘professionalism’. Nice to hear, but it is a word banded about often without true understanding. To display it, one first needs to understand it…

Julian O’Dell is Founder of TM Training & Development

Professionalism can be defined as, “the combination of qualities connected with trained and skilled people”. Its origin relates to ‘the professions’ – careers that require education and relatively strict entry criteria; however ‘professionalism’ is now more broadly applied to a worker’s general conduct in jobs. Thus admin staff, junior employees, manual workers and waiters/ waitresses can still be ‘professional’ despite the fact that some occupations require only training.

Estate agency remains an easy career to get into, yet a tough one to excel at in the longer term. Conversely, people who might be assumed to be ‘professionals’ – teachers, architects, lawyers and engineers are not necessarily always shining examples of ‘professionalism’. So how can you and your staff display professionalism?

Professionalism is not a label you give yourself – it is a description that you hope others will apply to you.

A few golden rules:

Be great at what you do. Obvious, but the true professional will always deliver on their promises, go above client expectations, constantly seek ways to develop skills and knowledge, whether through training, online materials or simply reading the right books.

Look the part. Always take pride in your appearance. Stick to the type of clothing your employer prefers. Customer facing staff should always adopt a risk-free approach to appearance to minimise any likelihood of being seen as less than professional from the clients’ perspective. I see agents look like a bag of washing despite wearing supposedly appropriate business attire, ill-fitting, unclean or un-ironed. Footwear is a giveaway – grubby old shoes reflect a potential lack of care and pride in yourself and the work you do. A simple mantra might be to dress for the job to the same standard as you did for your interview.

Be cheerful and positive. Problems at home should stay there! If you feel below par, it’s not an issue to share with colleagues and customers. People want to do business with enthusiastic folk. Enjoy what you do or do something else. Moaning brings everybody down and erodes morale and team spirit. If things are not right in the workplace, approach your boss tactfully with positive potential solutions.

Be punctual. Lack of punctuality for work-related activities – meetings or just the start of the working day, shows lack of self-organisation and lack of respect for others.

Mind your language. The subject of swearing and bad language provides an interesting point. Many say that such habits are taboo. It is, of course, tough not to utter (or occasionally roar) an expletive when a buyer pulls out the day before exchange or a potential vendor instructs your rival. If you wouldn’t say it to your mother, don’t say it in the workplace.

Further to this, addressing clients and customers as ‘mate’ or ‘buddy’ is not advisable and should be replaced by using their title and surname until you are invited to address them otherwise.

Be a great teammate. A genuine professional will spot when a colleague is struggling to meet a deadline for a task and will assist their teammates accordingly. He or she is happy to share superior experience and knowledge, or just give time for the greater good of the team.

Be honest. We have all worked alongside people who we sense are not being completely truthful, whether they have engineered a meeting close to home at 4pm on a Friday or “tried to phone a client without success” when in reality they forgot to. Perceived lack of honesty does you no favours if you are seeking to be considered as professional. In my experience, folk who lie are nowhere near as good at it as they believe and are seen through quite easily. So, those are seven golden rules to follow on the path to professionalism. Share them with your staff. You might also want to remind them of the words of David Maister, who said “Professionalism is not a label you give yourself – it is a description that you hope others will apply to you”.

Julian O’Dell
TM Training & Development
07718 634235

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Just a few weeks ago, it was widely reported that estate agency branches have been the fourth largest sector this year for closures after fashion, food and footwear across 500 High Street locations in a PWC/LDC survey. On my training and consultancy travels around the UK, I witness more and more agencies facing challenging times.

There will be survivors, there will be victims – so what needs to be done to ensure you are in the former category?

Adapt or die!

Dramatic though it may sound, ‘Adapt or Die’ needs to be the company mantra. ‘Old market’ habits will not generate sufficient business in current conditions, but habits are notoriously difficult to break.

The first step to take is to review the working processes in place for your listing and selling operations and assess your team’s effectiveness at each stage. The listing operation comprises six key stages to focus on – generating appointments, preparation for the valuation, the appointment itself, follow up and finally client management.

Seize the day!

Survival may hinge on seizing the lion’s share of good quality available stock and to ensure you are an appropriate choice of agent for local vendors. How effective is your team at generating appointments? Social media activity, brand awareness, marketing, reputation, reviews, online presence, targeted messages on your website, leaflets, letters, diligent levels of quality contact with local ‘win-to-sell’ applicants have all led to an increase in valuations elsewhere.

You must be exceptional!

Some agents are not experiencing a reduction in valuations so the second stage of the process – booking appointments – becomes their initial priority. When valuation enquiries are taken, are the staff handling that stage in an exceptional manner – have they been trained in building real rapport with these potential clients by establishing their true underlying reason for the move and prioritising the quality appointments according to motivation and saleability? Do they know how to control the timing of the valuation in your favour and ensure your valuer meets decision makers? Does the client perceive your agency as better than and different from other agents at the point of booking their appointments?

Julian O’Dell is Founder of TM Training & Development

The other stages of the listing operation – including the appointment itself – all play a part in your success and merit an overhaul if you are falling short of an exceptional standard. Have you accompanied your valuers on appointments and coached them on their weaknesses?

Many agents recognise the necessity to increase fees, but such ambition will only be realised by being seen as the best option. The good news is that behavioural difference costs no money – just energy and effort.

There will be survivors, there will be victims; so what needs to be done to ensure you are in the former category?

Love your clients!

The final stage of the listing operation – vendor management – is absolutely critical to success. What is the system and standard of ongoing client care and contact? Have the staff been trained how to persuade vendors to improve the saleability of the instruction? Senior staff visiting these clients has a far greater success rate than a sporadic telephone call from an inexperienced employee carrying out a task in which they have little expertise or confidence.

As far as the selling operation is concerned, again there are six processes that must be reviewed. Knowledge/preparation, creating the right first impression, accurate applicant qualification, matching/benefit selling, gaining commitment, obtaining/ negotiating offers – effectiveness in all these disciplines is critical. Yet our mystery shopper exercises reveal that many ‘negotiators’ do not warrant that job title as they merely fulfil the role of polite dispensers of information and then hope that something will happen!

Check out / chuck out old habits!

What are your front line staff’s sales habits? One estate agency branch upon whom we conducted a mystery shopper exercise has emailed the high quality applicant in excess of thirty times to advise of new instructions but not made a single phone call to them. A glaring example of a dangerous ‘spray and pray’ habit…I fear for that company’s existence if that habit is not changed.

Are the team highly skilled at identifying the ‘make you money’ customers through higher level questioning skills? Have they been given support and guidance on maximising income streams through referrals?

An objective review of the selling and listing processes coupled with the necessary resultant coaching/training will dramatically improve the chances of winning an increased percentage of available instructions and sales. The role of managers, directors and owners must include a significant slice of time to coach the teams towards exceptional performance – good is no longer good enough.

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“One major area of support that I provide to agents is how to achieve more instructions on the right terms. Whatever the market conditions, however effective your business is in key activities, acquiring quality stock is the start of the process and the most important.”

I find it bewildering that so many agents fail to devote sufficient resources in terms of time and money to this essential objective – a remarkable number of agents don’t even understand the science of how many valuations/appraisals they need to do each month to drive sufficient income. If no key target is understood, shared with the team, nor monitored daily to ensure keeping on track, it is not surprising agents fall short of necessary stock levels. I urge you to incorporate this element if you are not already doing so.

Train the troops!

Obviously one cannot simply target staff to spot and convert valuation/appraisal opportunities without providing them with appropriate training and coaching, particularly around enabling them to convince a potential client who is about to instruct a competitor (or has already done so) to consider your firm instead. This is a real area of weakness in many firms as has been witnessed by me when posing the question on a training course “Why should I instruct your estate agency rather than your competitors?” to be met by a sea of blank faces. Get your troops trained in this critical skill area immediately!

Julian O’Dell is Founder of TM Training & Development

So the areas aforementioned must be addressed but beyond that, there are some real basic practices where agents let themselves down and which will cost them hugely in terms of lost business.

One of my favourite quotes is airline boss Jan Carlzon’s, “Coffee stains on the flip tray suggest to our customers that we do not service our engines properly,” – suggesting that getting small things wrong in your business betrays you significantly as customers and clients will consciously or subconsciously assume you are bound to be lousy at the bigger stuff too. It is straightforward to apply that principle to sales and lettings agents.

Atten…tion!

Lack of attention to detail will potentially dissuade a client from using your firm. A recent survey stated that 59 per cent of people were put off businesses guilty of bad spelling and poor grammar. This could be on social media platforms, the quality of property presentation on portals and an agent’s website. Other statistics from another survey include the fact that 40 per cent of people who are not currently thinking of moving have already a clear impression of who is the most effective agent in their area; while there are various ways they could deduce this, the most likely is the quality of their internet presence.

Lack of attention to detail may dissuade a client from using your firm. One survey found that 59% of people were put off businesses guilty of bad spelling and poor grammar.

If one accepts that the way an agent displays property online is a factor in whether potential vendors and landlords are attracted to or dissuaded from using that agent – and it seems that this is the case – then it is vital to get it right. It is important also to respond to research and shape your approach accordingly – for example, a sizeable majority of landlords consider floor plans on rental properties to be a great idea. An open goal for lettings agents whose competitors don’t use floor plans – but one spurned by so many. On the assumption that the easiest way for a potential vendor or landlord to investigate, research and judge an agent’s effectiveness in promoting properties and the overall quality of their business is on the internet, it’s clear to me that all agents should get their act together in the way they portray themselves online.

Worthy of a flogging

Sadly, many just don’t get it. There are some horrendous examples. I must confess that I keep them to use on courses on how not to do it!

Some of my recent personal lowlights that I’ve come across by pottering about on portals and agents’ websites include countless “dinning rooms”, a few “dinging rooms” (a campanologist’s dream), a “fully fitted kitten”, several “insulted” lofts and even a rear garden with “newly laid turd” and following a similar theme, a bathroom with a “shite suite”. And last time I checked, “shutters” was definitely spelt with a “u” not an “i”…

Chuckle-inducing these examples may be, but they suggest the agents involved take limited pride in their output, have no checking mechanism within their processes and lack attention to detail in even the most basic of tasks.

The first step to cracking the stock acquisition conundrum is to recognise that the process hinges on the success at the first stage of “generating valuations/ appraisals”. If you are guilty of any of the aforementioned shortcomings, though they may seem trivial, they must be addressed without delay.

And it may be advisable to remember Mother Theresa’s mantra: “Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.”

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JULIAN SAYS:

It is a happy coincidence that you raise this issue as just yesterday I had a very interesting conversation with an acquaintance who is a ‘small landlord’. She is on the lookout for a couple of properties to add to her portfolio and, to use her words, is “absolutely gobsmacked” at the service, or rather lack of service, that she has received from the agents she has contacted.

Julian O’Dell is Founder of TM Training & Development

Not all investment buyers want, or necessarily deserve, exactly the same treatment and it is obviously critical to qualify all applicants thoroughly to assess how good a prospect they are. In this case, the investment buyer is reasonably motivated if the right property was available, capable in terms of finance and realistic as far as her property requirements are concerned.

On establishing her frustration at how agents had dealt with her, I couldn’t help but use it as a learning exercise to get a ‘from the horse’s mouth’ guide on how agents might treat such people.

Expectations

“I don’t expect too much,” she said. “But it seems the basics of politeness, being interested, listening to what I say and good all round knowledge are not boxes that many agents tick. With many I sensed that they hadn’t seen the properties I was enquiring about which didn’t fill me with confidence. To ask about what work might be needed on a property to ensure it rents quickly doesn’t strike me as a particularly challenging question but it was one that met a blank response from the agent, as did queries relating to yields and specific levels of tenant demand. It became clear to me that in many cases the agents responsible for selling properties had little or no knowledge nor particular interest in the rental side of the business.

I want someone I can trust to help me find the right property and then look after it, bearing in mind I’m buying in an area I don’t know well but which has been recommended.

“I want someone I can trust to help me find the right property and then look after it on an ongoing basis, bearing in mind I’m buying in an area I don’t know well but which has been recommended. Not one agent actually had a proper conversation with me or built any degree of rapport.

“I didn’t feel listened to or valued. Perhaps the agents have so many buyers like me that I’m of no significance.” I then asked her what else she had hoped for:

“After that first conversation, I want somebody to be proactive in helping me find me the right property. As I said, trust is the key. I can’t believe the advice or suggestions of someone I don’t trust. So, listen to me – repeat things back so I know you’ve got things clear. It’s no different to when I order a meal in a restaurant – read it back and I can relax in the knowledge that you ‘get me’.”

Disappointment and frustration

“I know I can self-select off Rightmove and that’s all well and good, in fact it seems to be what agents would prefer me to do. But I’d really appreciate agents broadening my horizons and telling me about other options, ones I maybe glossed over when searching on the internet, ones which might be coming on the market in the near future and so on. One of my existing portfolio that I bought three years ago is a property that the agent had valued but which wasn’t due to come onto the market until the owner finished off some bits and pieces. The agent persuaded him to accept me as a one-off viewer and I persuaded him that I’d be happy to buy the property as it stood. That strikes me as an ‘everyone’s a winner’ scenario but I’ve not got close to that sort of situation this time around.

“From start to finish I’ve been disappointed and frustrated with the vast majority of agents. Maybe I’m expecting too much?”

Your dilemma

That final question really is the key to your dilemma and indeed for any other agent looking to do business now and in the future with investors. If yours had been one of the agents in this buyer had contacted, what would have been the quality of her experience during that initial point of contact and going forward?

If it would have been anything less than exceptional, it is time to raise your game and train your troops to deliver above expectations. Those agents who fail to do so will inevitably regret it.

julianodell@live.co.uk
www.tmtraininganddevelopment.co.uk

The post Doing business with investors appeared first on The Negotiator.

I am often contacted by business owners for my opinion on decisions they are making within their estate agencies, whether it be to expand their business, change their staff commission scheme or which software provider I would recommend.

I recall one client seeking advice as to whether he should grant an employee’s request to leave work 45 minutes early every Tuesday to go and watch his son play football. We talked it through and discussed in particular how he might respond to the request. I advised him to follow a recognised decision making process which has stood me – and others in good stead – the 5 Cs.

The five Cs

The first C is Consideration
This is a time to reflect and contemplate a whole range of issues relating to the scenario about which a decision needs to be made. Comprehensive knowledge of all the facts must be in place. Consideration as to all the options and the potential range of outcomes and reactions must be exercised. Previous decisions on similar scenarios and their success or failure should be reviewed. Level of authority, legalities, company procedure and culture all need to be taken into account.

The second C is Consultation
It is best practice and etiquette to consult all appropriate parties. Anybody likely to be affected by the decision should be consulted beforehand as they may see consequences that the decision maker might have missed. Further to this, consulting other managers/owners who have found themselves in similar situations may prove fruitful – particularly how their decisions actually fared. Legal and technical experts would be worth involving too.

The third C is Crunch
This is the point at which the decision has to be made. In fairness, it is possible that at this point, the manager/owner may actually decide that they are not yet able to make a decision and therefore have to resort to further consideration and consultation. Weak managers will tend to procrastinate or perhaps take the easiest option while stronger leaders adopt the philosophy “Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same.”

The fourth C is Communicate
Following on from the first three Cs, the decision must be communicated to all affected parties. In the case of the aforementioned request to watch his son play football, communication with the employee himself, his colleagues and out of courtesy the people with whom the decision maker had consulted should all be undertaken. Should there be other offices or departments within the company, communication by email or phone call will always prove to be safer and more effective than the somewhat hit and miss method of Chinese whispers via the company grapevine.

And finally

As with the vast majority of management responsibilities, there needs to be a Checking mechanism in place. At a predetermined specific time and date, the decision must be reviewed in detail to include the following questions:

• What was the outcome?
• Had all consequences been anticipated?
• Were those consequences positive?
• Was it the right decision?

If the answer to the final question is in the negative, then it is back to the first C and another journey through the decision making process.

Julian O’Dell

As for the football request, after applying the 5 Cs, the manager declined the employee’s wish, citing the potential disruption to the office and the potentially damaging precedent it would set as the reasons for that decision. He did agree that the team should structure the office diary each Tuesday to allow the employee in question to leave bang on closing time to see the second half of his son’s matches. The employee seemed to respect and accept this decision.

Weak managers may procrastinate or take the easiest option while the stronger leaders adopt the philosophy Sometimes the hardest thing and the right thing are the same.

Whilst the decisions you may have to make to help your business navigate choppy waters over the next few months are far more serious and weighty than the example that has been included above, the process will need to be the same.

The 5 Cs are an essential item in the management tool box.and will massively increase your chances of success in the key area of decision making. Even so, not every decision you make may prove to be the right one. But keep in mind the age-old mantra “Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.”

Julianodell@live.co.uk
www.tmtraininganddevelopment.co.uk

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