In a country like Guatemala, where it is obvious that education is the path out of poverty for so many people, it can sometimes be difficult to balance a sense of social responsibility with the need to make a profit. As a company, we want to help but I also have employees and rent to pay. And I’m sure this is the same for many others in the business of education. So how do we reconcile the two objectives?

We can start by looking at the psychology of selling education.

Why do sales people scare us?

You have probably had this experience before:

You walk into a clothing store to buy a pair of jeans; the sales person approaches you as soon as you enter and immediately asks, “Can I help you?” What is your immediate, instinctual response?

If you are like most people, your response is most likely “No” or “I’m just looking”. Why does the salesperson fail to achieve a positive result? How can you avoid a similar outcome with your customers?

In order to understand how our psychology towards selling our educational services is impacting results, we first need to be aware of two things: our personal attitudes towards sales and the customer’s attitude towards sales.

1. Personal attitudes towards sales: Many sales people working in the education business have unresolved issues about their jobs: they feel that sales is somehow dishonest or unimportant and that we should be giving knowledge away for free for the betterment of humankind. This actually isn’t that surprising, given that many of them have had their own bad experiences with sales people in the past. But it is absolutely untrue: sales can be an important and meaningful job if  we have the right attitude.

What is the right attitude to have about sales? First, stop thinking that it is our job to sell something to everyone; instead realize that it is our job to create relationships with people. The number one reason a sales person fails is because the client doesn’t trust them. When an individual approaches our businesses, we need to see it first as an opportunity to help another person: if we have done our market research then we know we have a product or service that public either wants or needs, something that we believe in, and that is something of which to be proud.

2. The customer’s attitude towards sales: When you walk into a store as a customer, how do you feel? Are you comfortable, or do you feel like a hunted animal? Do you trust the sales people, or do you feel like they are only after your money? When people approach our businesses they are carrying these same preconceptions about us and our sales staff.

Especially today, people are afraid of spending their hard earned money: they’re afraid that they’ll buy a product or service that will fail them, a product or service that doesn’t really meet their needs, a product or service that they’re stuck with once the salesperson has their money. These doubts and fears are multiplied if the person is dependent on our services to help them advance in his or her life and achieve a new level of professional success.  Think of a recently laid-off worker who needs retraining and is relying on you to help him get a new job. Or a worker that has been told by her superiors that she needs to learn English or her job security is gone.

The only way to overcome this obstacle is to establish a relationship with the customer, one that is built on mutual respect and trust.  In his article, Green says, “The best way to sell is to care. People judge caring by how well they feel listened to.” I couldn’t agree more. If we approach the selling of our products and services as caring educators first, and sales people second, we will start finding the success we, and our clients, want.

In the next, I want to explore how we can shape our message to build these relationships. How do you shape your message to achieve positive results for your business and your client? What questions do you ask people interested in your services?

Now, it is worth taking a moment to discuss the Guatemalan culture surrounding pregnancy and babies. Since we found out that my wife was pregnant back in October, the most common question has been, “What do you want?”

My response? A healthy human.

Needless to say this has not been sufficient. The correct answer of course is, “A boy.” And I am very happy to be having a boy; but I’m even happier that it is a healthy human. Still, this cultural obsession with having a male child has had its amusing moments.

“And may their first child be a masculine child.”

Luca Brasi, The Godfather

We went for the 3D ultrasound and I have to say the doctor who worked with us did an amazing job. This guy explored every millimeter of the baby; I mean every millimeter. We checked bone length, brain, spine, heart and of course, the most important part. As he focused in, there they were on the screen, our son’s block and tackle, and with a cry of joy he announced, “150% chico!” Now, I can’t say for sure if the reaction would have been different it was a girl, but there is one last piece of telling evidence.

After the ultrasound was finished, the Doctor had 20+ pictures to choose from: face, spine, brain, full body. And what two does he chose to give us?

In case there were any doubts ...

the white arrows prove all!

So, it’s a boy, which is apparently a good thing where I live. It was the least I could do, seeing as poor Ian is going to spend the rest of his life trying to get Spanish speakers to pronounce “Glasgow”.

Mr. Cloutier’s position can be summed up in the following quote:

“Of course you have every right to a life, if you don’t care about making money that is. You have your priorities, and I understand that. If you don’t want to put your business before all other considerations, then prepare yourself for a life of financial mediocrity.”

Sorry, but I have to disagree. I think there several things you can do that allow you to love your business and your family.

1. Plan: Set your company’s vision and mission. What is the purpose of your business? What do you need to do to reach your goals? What can potentially lead you off your path? Personally, I plan for 3 months, 6 months, 1 year and 2 years. And the 2 year plan is pretty general. But I do have a good idea of how much time I’m going to need to spend at my business at any given time in order to meet my goals, and I can plan my time with my family accordingly.

2. Design Processes: In every business owner’s life their are a hundred things we do that are repetitive: filling out forms, sending quotes, production tasks, monthly accounting and billing. So ask yourself: What in my business can be systemized or  automated?  Then create clear process maps for these tasks so even a monkey could follow them. This exercise also helps show you where your skills are needed in the business: when your creative abilities are absolute necessary or what decisions you absolutely must be a part of.

3. Delegate: Nobody knows your business better than you; but there are plenty of people who know how to do things essential to your business better than you. Very few business owners are certified accountants, logistics geniuses, marketing and sales masters and creative wunderkinds. As soon as possible, hire the best people you can afford to staff your business in the positions where you need them. Then start delegating the processes and responsibilities. I think the hardest lesson for a new business owner is learning to trust his or her hires. It helps if you keep two things in mind: first, you hired these people for their brains, so let your team use their intelligence; second, the original owners of McDonald’s would never have gotten anywhere if they had insisted on cooking every burger themselves.

4. Remember, your business is NOT your family:

“My heart’s for my family, Joe. My brains and my balls are for business.“

Bruce McGill as Jimmy Johnston, Cinderella Man

I believe that creating a positive working environment is vital to attracting and retaining great talent, so heart and compassion need to have a place in your business. But nothing is going to suck up more of your valuable time (time you could be spending with your family) than obsolete or bad employees. So when push comes to shove. put your heart in a box and make the tough decision: get rid of them. This visualization may help: if you are paying an employee $10.00 an hour, and that employee is not producing results, imagine him or her walking into your house and taking a plate of food away from your child. Because at the end of the day, that’s what they’re doing.

5. Realize that time with your family is not a business waste: As entrepreneurs, probably our most valuable asset is our creativity and vision. And nobody can be creative and visionary 100% of the time. Time away from your business (both physically and mentally) gives you time to reflect, plan and recharge. I had my most creative period after a 1 month vacation to Europe, and my business is much the better for it now. I wrote about this here.

For this to work (and here I agree with Mr. Cloutier) you need keep business time for business. Yes, this means emergency phone calls only from the spouse and children during working hours, and sacrifices will have to made at times (more often than you or I would like) that need to be explained to the family. But Mr Cloutier takes it to the extreme; the idea of “focus(ing) on the financial future of your business and work all day, every day” is a sure path to burnout.

6. Understand that financial success alone is not equal to quality of life: It is on this point that I have the biggest disagreement with the author’s point of view:

“When you’re retired, wealthy, and able to spend Valentine’s Day and other special occasions with your kids and grandkids at your winter home in Hilton Head, you’ll be glad you devoted so much of your time to your first love: your business.”

Make no mistake, I do believe that financial security is an important component of a high quality of life, profit is very important to me, and I love the idea of leaving behind a strong business that my children and grandchildren will one day take to heights I never imagined. But I have a very simple question for Mr. Cloutier: if I severely restrict my time with my family, when will I teach my children and grandchildren the life skills, knowledge and values that helped me make the business successful in the first place? Time with my family is an investment in the future of my business, and as such deserves as much, if not more, consideration than a spreadsheet.

For a different view on this, it is worth looking at Bo Burlingham’s Small Giants (you can read my review here) and Doug Tatum’s No Man’s Land.

Agree? Disagree? How do prioritize your business and family responsibilities?

]]> http://jkglasgow.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/love-your-business-more-than-your-family/feed/ 5 jkglasgow http://jkglasgow.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/using-social-media-in-education-part-6/ http://jkglasgow.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/using-social-media-in-education-part-6/#comments Mon, 25 Jan 2010 04:21:54 +0000 jkglasgow http://jkglasgow.wordpress.com/?p=87 ]]> You can read Part 1 of the series here, Part 2 here, Part 3 here, Part 4 here, and Part 5 here.

Why do we need to embrace social media in education?

Students are already using social media ... are you?

In his 1999 book The Disciplined Mind, Howard Gardner writes:

“…Literacy should come as a result of probing important issues and learning how to think about them in a disciplined way – not as a consequence of mastering fifty or five hundred predetermined topics each year.”

While I don’t agree with everything in the book, I do believe it is hard to argue with one theme that runs throughout: students today have access to more information than at any other time in our history. And I would add: in the fight to deliver the most meaningful information to students we, as educators, are losing.So who is our competition in this fight? Take your pick: Facebook, video games, websites, texting, Twitter, blogs, forums, in addition to the usual suspects of  friends, family, advertising and popular media (television and music). What we are failing to come to terms with is the fact that students perceive each of these channels as being as important as or more important than the channels we use in the classroom, and the information being delivered through these channels as being more valuable. Notice the way that the abbreviated writing style used in texting is making its way into student essays? Just a sample of things to come.

Our obsolete model of the classroom, the teacher and the channels we can use to communicate with students is preventing us from even competing on a level playing field. We are stuck with this model for various reasons: a lack of time to plan, ever increasing class sizes, requirements to deliver a curriculum that is little more than a list of facts, and school administrations that don’t like change.

I would ask: why fight in the first place? If students are so enamored with social media channels, why can’t we as educators embrace them as another way of reaching our students? What are we afraid of?

I see one big, scary thing: Accepting these new resources and channels will require a paradigm shift. If a student can draw information from infinite sources using infinite channels, as Gardner suggests, we as educators can no longer be the “experts” or “information authorities” in the student’s life; it’s just no longer a credible stance. Why does a student need to memorize “fifty or five hundred” topics when that information is just a couple of mouse clicks away? You can be sure the student is asking himself that very question.

Instead we must see ourselves as guides. We set the objectives and then show the student the myriad of  ways he or she can achieve them. We can show them how to look for information, teach them how to determine the value of information from different sources, and find interesting ways to deliver meaningful content to them. We can create opportunities for students to demonstrate their knowledge and skills in ways that they can relate to. I don’t know about you but this sounds like a lot more fun than lecturing to a group of glassy eyed 12 year olds.

In the end, what we must embrace is this simple fact: students may have access to channels of information that extend far beyond the classroom, but so do we! And most of them are free, easy to learn and easy to understand. I encourage you to explore and experiment. Not sure where to start? Ask the students for guidance! Involve them in the process and watch how their motivation grows.

Do you think the education industry needs to experience a paradigm shift to overcome the current problems? How would you change the classroom experience using new technologies?