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How to Spot Vendors Who Are “Drivers”
Outsourcing is one of the best ways to increase your productivity as an entrepreneur. But the type of vendor you choose can make or break the gain you realize. The wrong vendors may save time in performing certain tasks, but require you to invest additional time in supervising and motivating them.
For best results, I look for vendors who are “drivers.” The fastest way to describe a driver is to borrow a definition I once saw on Wikipedia for entrepreneur: “Someone who boosts productivity from a lower to a higher level.”
Here are four ways to spot a driver when evaluating vendors:
- Drivers initiate. They self-start without extra supervision. In fact, they don’t have any supervision. They just drive. If they can’t contact you in phone or by person, they don’t get discouraged. They just keep driving.
- Drivers don’t get discouraged if other team members – in other words, their own colleagues – fail to meet their deadlines. It doesn’t matter to them. They just keep driving.
- Drivers report, question, and update you on their current progress, and they (more…)
Choose Deadline-Sensitive Vendors When Outsourcing
When choosing vendors, many people think that the most important attribute to look for is accountability. But I believe that deadline sensitivity is more important, because it protects your business and automatically guarantees a higher-quality vendor.
If someone is deadline sensitive, they’re not only reliable, but they’re also accountable.
For example, imagine that you are meeting someone for lunch, and the person is late. If he’s accountable, he’ll own up to his mistake and say, “Sorry, my bad.” If he’s late again, he says, “Oh, sorry. My fault.” When he’s late a third time, he’ll say, “You know what, I just can’t seem to meet the deadline.”
When the deadline is a lunch meeting, you may be inconvenienced and irritated. But what if the deadline is for delivering sales copy, putting up a web page, or shipping your product? The result may be (more…)
Outsource to the Right Team
When outsourcing your weaknesses, it’s obviously important to assemble the right team of vendors and/or employees. But what many entrepreneurs don’t realize is that timing is key.
As Jim Collins explained in his international best-seller, Good to Great, the executives who ignited transformations from good to great did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. Instead, they first got the right people on the bus – and the wrong people off the bus – and then figured out where to drive it.
They said in essence, “Look, I don’t really know where we should take this bus. but I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we’ll figure out how to take it someplace great.”
So before you figure out where your company is going or who will do what, you need to first get the (more…)
Boost Productivity by Outsourcing Weaknesses
When trying to increase productivity and improve results, most people mistakenly try to improve their weaknesses. A better, easier and more reliable approach is to strengthen your strengths and outsource your weaknesses.
Trying to strengthen weaknesses only results in a lot of strong weaknesses, which is not the way to have a world-class company. It puts your focus on what you are not good at or don’t enjoy, and a universal truth is “What you focus on expands.”
It’s OK to have weaknesses; everyone does. By the time you were three years old, your brain had all of the synaptic connections it will ever have. Where you’re most densely connected, those are your strengths. Where you’re not densely connected, those are your weaknesses. You are who you are, so don’t try to fix you.
Instead, fix the role you are trying to live into. Take an inventory of (more…)