The Marketers’ Senate

I was on a flight from Los Angeles to Houston and the Chairman of Continental Airlines at the time, Frank Lorenzo, sat next to me.

We had a nice chat, and after the flight, shortly after he had scooted off, as I was making my way through the terminal, two flight attendants who served us, strode up to me and demanded: “How can you talk with him?”

They were upset that I was having what appeared to be a pleasant give and take with such an anti-labor guy, even if he was their boss at the time.

Of course, Chairman Lorenzo may have been well beyond his outer boundary of effectiveness as a leader of that organization, but my sense is that he was the last to know it.

Maybe you recall with fondness that line uttered by Clint Eastwood in one of his “Dirty Harry” flicks:

“A man must know his limitations.”

Frank didn’t.

Do you?

I don’t ask this as a way of implying that your popularity is, or could be nearly as low as the airline chief’s. In fact, there are lots of ways in which you may have peaked, without knowing it.

If you’re responsible for sales and marketing, maybe you aren’t in touch with a new generation of employees who seem to value independence above raises, promotions, and perks.

How do you deal with them, motivate them, and above all, make them WANT to perform and to outdo their personal bests? After all, that which kept your nose to the grindstone may be way too Neanderthal for these hotshots.

Or, you may have reached the outer limit of your company’s growth, without beefing up its skeletal system through more formalized and elaborated management systems.

Perhaps it’s time to get around to having somebody from the outside gather all of those tidbits of wisdom and miscellaneous do’s and don’ts and regulations into employee handbooks, so your already over-tasked people won’t have to punt or improvise every time they need to train new folks.

The problem with reaching limits is you only know it, indirectly. It’s harder to make incremental gains, otherwise chipper employees seem dour and cynical way too often, and you’re too busy working IN your business to invest any time working ON it.

Unless you have a consultant or coach aboard who is used to detecting the signs, you may just keep spinning your wheels.

So, bring one aboard for an assessment and a chat. Believe me, it’s a much better way to get feedback than to have your staff griping to customers in airports, and elsewhere!

Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of http://www.Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service, and the audio program, “The Law of Large Numbers: How To Make Success Inevitable,” published by Nightingale-Conant. He is a frequent guest on radio and television, worldwide. A Ph.D. from USC’s Annenberg School, a Loyola lawyer, and an MBA from the Peter F. Drucker School at Claremont Graduate University, Gary offers programs through UCLA Extension and numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations from Santa Monica to South Africa. He holds the rank of Shodan, 1st Degree Black Belt in Kenpo Karate. He is headquartered in Glendale, California, and he can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com

For information about coaching, consulting, training, books, videos and audios, please go to http://www.customersatisfaction.com