035: When Your Team Doesn’t Produce How You’d Like
Dec 14, 2023Episode 35
Shannon Stone
Got someone to take on a task or area of your business and it just wasn’t working out the way you’d hope? Do you put up with it? Take the task back? Try your hand at it? Let me help…
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
A method to the madness; three ways to delegate
Why we sometimes need to work things out before delegating
How to find a happy medium between your way vs. your teams way
Got someone to take on a task or area of your business and it just wasn’t working out the way you’d hope? Do you put up with it? Take the task back? Try your hand at it? Let me help…
By listening [and taking notes], you’ll learn:
A method to the madness; three ways to delegate
Why we sometimes need to work things out before delegating
How to find a happy medium between your way vs. your teams way
If you’d like to work together with me as your 1:1 business and marketing consultant, book a call here.
Shannon Stone:
H ey guys. Welcome to the podcast, super excited to jump into this episode today.
Shannon Stone:
Today we are talking about what to do when your team doesn't produce the way you would like them to. So you might have a team now, or you've hired some form of team in your business journey. This can look like lots of different things. It can be team members, employees, it could be contractors or subcontractors, it could be virtual assistants. It could be all sorts of different ways of team. But quite often, the reason small businesses stay small and I love small businesses, I love everything about small businesses, but I mean this from the angle of small businesses staying smaller than they would like is because they end up doing way too much themselves, even if they do have a team. Even if you have a team, even if you're a solopreneur, whatever the situation is, if you are trying to do or not even trying to do everything you tried to hire, but for whatever reason, you are still doing way too much. This is one of the biggest reasons that you will stay smaller than you would like to stay in business. The contrast of this is, say, a uber successful business owner like Richard Branson Does it get any greater than that? Someone like that is always looking for how can they do less tactical things in the business so they can do more strategic things in the business or on the business? For example, how can he get someone to and it would have been in the early days how can he fly a plane? Not him fly a plane, but how can he get someone else to fly the plane? Someone else to do the marketing, someone else to do the admin? The exact same thing. You can layer this down and bring it right back down to small business world, where the exact same thing applies. How can you be focusing on doing less tactical things, doing your marketing, doing your admin updating your website, posting content? How can you be doing less tactical things so you can shift that new time into more strategic things If you've tried to hire people and it just hasn't quite worked out?
Shannon Stone:
Say you hired, for example, an email marketer to do some of your email marketing and you really wanted them to just run with it, take it on as their thing, so that you can get leads out of your email marketing. You can put in a different example, but we'll run with this one for today's conversation. Say you have someone or had someone doing your email marketing and it just wasn't working out the way that you wanted it to. Maybe the emails just didn't sound the way that you wanted it to, or you didn't like the style, or you didn't like what they were promoting in there. Whatever the things were. You didn't like the tool they were using active campaign over flow desk, whatever the thing is. Then you end up taking this back internally and maybe you start doing the email marketing again, or you stop the engagement with the email marketer and you just stop things altogether. You don't end up continuing doing the email marketing. This happens in so many different scenarios for small businesses and it really does hold them back.
Shannon Stone:
I want to talk about how you hurts those people. Well, a few things what you can really shift so that it really does work out for you, for your business, and it really does go somewhere. And one of the big things that I find is that we often have to work out the way that we want things done before we delegate. Or maybe you have delegated something, say your email marketing, and it hasn't it hasn't really worked out the way that you wanted it to. You can still look at, okay, well, maybe I need to figure out what's the way that I would like it done, so I can then communicate this to that person, so they can still take this tactical thing off my plate and they can really run with it. So really, I find there's three ways to figuring out how your team can really produce the way that you would like them to.
Shannon Stone:
So the method number one is that you explain to say the email marketer this is how I want things done, this is how I want the email structured. Here's the tone of voice that I want. Here's how often I want you to email them. I want you to send me the emails before they get sent out, so I can approve it. You really work out the way that you want it done, and that person that you've hired has to follow suit. That is one way to do it. Is it the right way? Yes or no? It really depends, but it's not the only way. That's the most important thing to know. So number one is that everyone can do it your way. The second way is that you can say, hi, this email marketer. And you can just say I will do it. However, you suggest that we will do it.
Shannon Stone:
So they might say, okay, look, I've looked at everything as far as email marketing goes in your business. I've kind of looked at what you've been doing so far. Here's my proposed plan and I'm going to be doing it this way. I'm going to segment it. I'm going to send emails on this frequency. I'm going to retarget these people based on open rates. So you're really leaning on their expertise or their way of doing things and you really just let go that. Hold on the fact that I am deciding that I'm going to go and follow their way, especially in a results based situation, if you really want to get results out of something that you've hired someone to do, say leads, by hiring someone in email marketing, maybe for three or six months. You really want to just purely do it their way, and then you will assess after those three to six months and then you can decide what to do. So the first way is that everyone does it your way. The second way is that you completely do it the way that someone else is suggesting to get it done.
Shannon Stone:
The third way is a collaboration in between. So and this doesn't mean 50-50. We do it like half my way, half your way. It's really just figuring out what would be the best way, fusing together your skills, my skills and, most importantly I think, for small business owners, the way I like things done, because, remember, this is your business. So how would you like things done? So if you do have an email marketer, for example, how can you fuse the skills and the expertise and your business together so that what they are producing is a collaboration between the two of you? So it's got a little bit of your input, it's got a little bit of their input and the final product, what is going out there you are happy with. So that is a third way. There's a collaboration between the two of you.
Shannon Stone:
So I've got a few questions here to share with you, but before we jump into those, it's really about recognizing that sometimes, and a lot of the time, I would say, you have to really work out the way you want things done before you delegate or be open to once you've delegated it and you've gone through that experience of I just don't like the way they're producing, say, email marketing or whatever it might be. I'm not going to write this all off altogether. I'm going to work out or reflect on how do I like things done, which will come down to a point that I've got later on around continuous improvement. But we'll jump into the questions before we get there. So a couple of questions to ask as you're really thinking through this is what, when, say, someone's doing your email marketing and you just don't like it, you need to review and think what about this do I not like? So what is it that I do not like? Is it how they're sending it, the way they're sending it? Is it you have to really dissect and really look at, because have you ever had feedback from someone and they're like I just don't like it? Well, what is it that you don't like? I don't know, I just don't like it. You have to actually get really clear, because how can someone take on any feedback if you're not quite sure? So you need to work out what is it that you do not like?
Shannon Stone:
The second question is and this is focused on the specific area, so in this case, email marketing how important is email marketing to you? So you, as the business owner, you have to recognize how important is email marketing to you. The third question is how important is email marketing to the business? And I skip to these questions because you could say email marketing is really important to the business because we get five or 10 leads per month coming through our email list, for example. So it's really important to the business. We must be doing Email marketing. But the second question how important is email marketing to you?
Shannon Stone:
You could say I have no concern about email marketing. I really am not. I don't care about it in any kind of way. Or you might say look, I don't entirely care for email marketing, otherwise I would have been an email marketer. But you might say what Does matter to me as the business owner, is what gets communicated to what is essentially your audience. It's not the email market is audience, because it's not their business. This is your business, so this can help you to work out as well. What is it about? What the person is producing your team member? What is it that you do not like about it? So it could be, maybe just not doesn't sound like you, or maybe you want it to be a little bit more creative, or maybe whatever the thing is. But the combination of these three questions helps you to then realize and come to the conclusion of do you want people to do things your way? Do you want to then do things their way, or do you want it to be a collaboration in between?
Shannon Stone:
The last point I will leave you with before we jump into the action steps is to know, especially with team members of any kind, it really is about continuous improvement. So people are not going to get it right the first time, they're not going to get it right the fifth time, or maybe even the 10th time. It really doesn't matter. What matters is continuous improvement. So if you give someone feedback and this is what people will often do without going through this process I've described here they will get someone to say do that email marketing, they'll give them a bit of feedback and then the email market will continue to give a bit more feedback. You know they'll kind of go back and forth of feedback and then continuing it back and forth and then ultimately they just say you know it's not working, without doing any kind of consideration of well, let me figure out the way that I would like it done, or let's work out how it can be a collaboration between the two of us so I'm ultimately happy with what is being produced out there.
Shannon Stone:
So the continuous improvement is always about knowing we're always going to continuously be improving and there might be, especially in the early days, you're going to be improving a whole lot, a lot more than if you're working with that person, for, you know, months and years down the line. But the thing is it's always going to be a continuous improvement. And when it comes to team, I think, if you can really recognize that, that when you're hiring people for different parts of your business, it is like it's a whole department to like. There should be a department called continuous improvement in small business, because it always is a continuous improvement. And I think when people can settle that idea that it's not always going to be perfect and maybe I do need to check the emails before they go out or whatever it might be. It is just going to be continuous improvement. I can accept the fact that I'm probably quite often going to be giving feedback on a continual basis, but maybe instead of it being weekly basis, it ends up being fortnightly basis feedback, then monthly, then quarterly, whatever it might be, and then you know, you might just be happy with that person's completely confident in that area in doing my emails, and they can just simply run with it. Now because we've built a lot of trust, we've gone through the kinks in the beginning and now we're at a really happy place with just a minor continuous improvement to see how we can make things go from good to being great.
Shannon Stone:
Okay, action steps, so action. Step number one is to have a look at an area of delegation that you are maybe not quite happy with and maybe someone's still doing it, maybe they've stopped doing it, maybe you hide someone a few months ago, even a few years ago, but you stopped doing it all together. I want you to really just start to identify what is an area of delegation that you haven't been happy with before. That's step number one. Step number two is to go through the process of that one, two and three. Number one is how do you, how do you like things done and would you like people to do it your way? Number two is that do you want people to do it their way and you want to start really relying on their expertise? Because you recognize this is really important to the business. I've got to get someone in to do it. I'm happy to not be the expert at email marketing and I'm going to remove my attachment to it and let them run with it All. The third was that collaboration in between.
Shannon Stone:
So action step number one was to just identify an area of delegation you're not happy with. Number two is to look at that. One, two and three. Do you want it your way? Do you want it their way, or a collaboration in between?
Shannon Stone:
And action step number three is really to commit to continuous improvement forever. It's always going to be continuous improvement and just think about this. It's like it's almost like a dynamic shift. You are no longer having to do the email marketing, for example. But if you are having to just monitor the email marketing, you're not. You're not the one in the trenches writing the emails, writing the subject line, testing it, segmenting it. You're not doing that side of work, but what you are doing is more overseeing, so you're not letting it go completely. That's how you can still help to monitor results and things like that, but you're focused on continuous improvement. So just knowing that the shift is subtle, but it's still there.
Shannon Stone:
So I think another small business thing that people will often think is well, once I just get someone to do this, I don't have to think about it anymore.
Shannon Stone:
You know, you might be someone who who really doesn't like emails, or you don't like social media you don't like emails or you don't like social, or you just don't like marketing altogether.
Shannon Stone:
Well, as a business owner, at least for the time being, you have to keep your finger on the pulse around that, especially if you want to see success. So hopefully you found this episode useful. If you did, definitely share it with someone or feel free to reach out if you have any questions, but best of luck when it comes to your team. It's a very exciting step forward to help you to grow your business and I hope you found this useful. I would chat to you very, very soon.