Knowing Your Value

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Knowing Your Value Women, Money, and Getting What You’re Worth
by Mika Brzezinski

About the Reference

Knowing Your Value by Mika Brzezinski is a self confession and personal growth story about how a now prominent MSNBC morning show host discovered, demanded, and won compensation more inline with that of her peers. The story is complimented by the personal value stories and insights of over a dozen other leaders.

Why You Should Not Buy This Book

StrategyDriven Contributors dislike Knowing Your Value for several reasons. First, the book lacks sufficient method for actually determining your personal worth to an organization. Its premise is that an individual’s value contribution should be based on the compensation of others in similar positions. The shortfall with this argument is that each unique individual contributes differently to the organization and so offers his/her own value proposition. Additionally, there is an underlying assumption that the comparison employees have accurately identified and won their value – a premise that is often not true. Second, the book maintains a foundational assumption that the author was treated differently because she is a woman. While this may or may not be true, the comparison employees identified were noted as contributing significantly greater intellectual and creative works to their organization; suggesting that they were rightfully compensated more. Brzezinski discounts the fact that men, minorities, and other classes of people may also be undervalued, for the reasons she presents, and that everyone should methodically seek to identify and demand their value from employers.

For its shortfalls in revealing how to calculate one’s personal value contribution and its faulted underlying logic and assumptions, StrategyDriven Contributors recommend that our readers not purchase or invest time reading Knowing Your Value.

Alternative Recommendation

StrategyDriven Contributors believe it is highly important for an individual to know his/her value and to aggressively seek it. Identifying one’s worth is not a matter of simple comparison with others or a fight against perceived discrimination but rather a deliberate methodological evaluation of the value contribution of the individual to the organization followed by the positive assertion of that value to those who can correct any imbalance. Such a methodology is presented by Larry Myler, Chief Executive Officer of By Monday, in his book, Indispensable By Monday: Learn the Profit-Producing Behaviors that will Help Your Company and Yourself.

Click here to read a review of Indispensable By Monday and listen to our StrategyDriven Podcast interview with Larry Myler on determining your organizational value.

The Four Cornerstones of a High Performance Culture, part 2

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2. Have High Performance Work Teams throughout your company.

Teams are powerful constructs, and high-performance ones do not spring up by magic. By the same token, business teams are not the answer for every performance issue.

In corporations, while the talk is about teams and working together, there is actually a focus on individual performance. For the most part, there is no formal practice designed to enhance or improve group performance.

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About the Authors

Since working for his family’s boating business to founding his company CMI (Crusading, Marauding Interveners), Bruce Hodes has dedicated himself to helping companies grow by developing executive leadership teams, business leaders and executives into powerful performers. Bruce’s adaptable Breakthrough Strategic Business Planning methodology has been specifically designed for small-to-mid-sized companies and is especially valuable for family company challenges. In February of 2012 Bruce published his first book Front Line Heroes: How to Battle the Business Tsunami by Developing Performance Oriented Cultures. With a background in psychotherapy, Hodes also has an MBA from Northwestern University and a Masters in Clinical Social Work. Contact Bruce via email at [email protected] or phone at 800-883-7995. Visit his website at www.cmiteamwork.com.

Alona Banai, CMI’s office manager, wears many hats. She works behind the scenes managing the client process. Alona is the KeyneLink System Administrator for many of CMI’s clients and manages CMI’s Online Marketing including the Company Website, Newsletter, and Social Media.

Alona has been with CMI since February 2011. She has a MS in Plant Biology and Conservation from Northwestern University and a BS in Environmental Science and Hebrew from Washington University in St. Louis. She is also an avid and enthusiastic 5K to 1/2 Marathon participant.

Budget Management Best Practice 3 – Monthly Budget Presentations

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Monthly business budget presentationBudget performance is important to the successful management of any organization and to the personal performance of individual executives and managers. Consequently, budget reviews occur on a monthly or quarterly basis; allowing enough time to pass for meaningful trends to develop but not so much time that corrective action could not be taken so to ensure a business group remains on budget.
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What’s the reason beyond BLAME? Maybe it’s YOU!

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I overheard sales dialog on the airplane this morning. “He (the customer) has never responded to one of my emails, and never calls me back. The ONLY time he calls me is when he needs something.” Then back to devouring this week’s edition of US Weekly magazine.

Sound familiar?

Why do salespeople blame other people and/or other things for their own ineptitude? Why didn’t this salesperson say, “I gotta work on my voicemails and emails. They’re not getting any traction, and they’re costing me major money. I’m going on an all-out effort to improve my writing skills, my voicemail skills, and my creativity to generate better response!”

I’ll tell you why: It’s easier to blame others for your shortcomings than it is to take responsibility for them. It’s easier to blame than admit you’re not that good. It’s easier to blame than it is to improve. It’s easier to blame than face your own reality.

And I’m certain this message applies to you.

You blame the customer when something goes wrong, something didn’t happen as planned, someone didn’t respond, or you lost a sale to a competitor – especially at a lower price. Wrong. Very wrong.

I have been helping salespeople sell more and sell better since 1976, and during the time no one has ever come to me and said, “Jeffrey, I didn’t make the sale, and it was all my fault!” Interesting statistic.

Rather than blame, I have some answers that will help you. Actually, I have some questions. Questions you MUST ask yourself BEFORE you blame. These questions will give you a brand new perspective, and they automatically shift blame to responsibility. They will bring you a new sense of reality. And they will make you a better salesperson.

Ask yourself “WHY” to get to the truth.

  • Why was my call not returned?
  • Why did they cancel my appointment?
  • Why did they delete my email?
  • Why did they not respond to my email?
  • Why did they say, “Not interested”?
  • Why did they say, “We’re happy with our present supplier”?
  • Why can’t I set an appointment?
  • Why can’t I get through to the decision maker?
  • Why are they meeting with other vendors or suppliers?
  • Why did they take the lowest bid?
  • Why did they buy from the competition?
  • Why did they tell me that my price is too high?

Why are you blaming others (especially customers) for your inability to attract, engage, connect, and create value that leads to a sale?

One of the weakest and least exposed shortcomings of salespeople is how they use time. If you’re allocating too much time to watching TV, or other nonsense activities, you’re wasting valuable career-building opportunities.

Whatever you’re doing with your non-business, non-family time, ask yourself these reality questions:

  • Will this help me double my sales?
  • Will this help me build better relationships?
  • Will this help me become better known?
  • Will this make me be perceived as a person of value?
  • Will this help me build my reputation?
  • Will this help me build my sales and personal development skills?

Work on these elements of your sales and business life:

  • Message leaving. Are your messages in any way impacting your standing and status with the customer? Is there an ounce of value or creativity, or are you just begging for some news about the proposal you sent (and calling that a follow-up)?
  • Be available. Your prospect will call you when they are free. This may be before or after business hours.
  • Be easy to do business with. Customers want everything NOW!
  • Leave value messages. Something short and sweet that they can use.
  • Study creativity. Your competitive advantage is to be perceived as different. Read a book on creativity as a starting point.
  • Be more friendly than professional. Sales is a profession, but salespeople (you) must be perceived as friendly.
  • Build your business social media presence. Are you tweeting value messages? Interacting with customers one-on-one on your business Facebook page? Looking to make new connections on LinkedIn? Creating a YouTube channel with customer testimonial videos? Or are you watching the 6 o’clock news
  • Use meals to build relationships. You’ll be amazed how much more available customers become once you get to know them personally. Breakfast or lunch prospects and customers at least three times a week.

SIMPLE SELF-EVIDENT FACT: If you want customer response, you have to EARN it.

Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.

About the Author

Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].

Introducing the StrategyDriven Mobile App

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