Grant Stanley Consulting

Selling can be sleazy when it’s manipulative. “Let me convince you to do something so I’ll get what I want.” If you want to grow your business, and feel good about yourself at the same time, it’s necessary to change the way you think about “selling.” Everyone buys things. If you provide a product or service that has real value and helps people solve real problems, there is someone who will want to buy it. That someone is struggling with the problem you’re prepared to solve. They wouldn’t want a solution if solving the problem wasn’t important to them. So if you can help them solve their problem and do a good job of it, you have become their new best friend. They not only will want to buy what you have to sell, they will want to buy from you again and again because now they have begun to trust that you are someone who can help them solve their problems. When you are able to shift your thinking from “I’m selling something” to “I’m serving someone by helping them solve a probl...

I will probably incur the wrath of many a Project Manager with this post but hey I have had that happen to me many times when working with them on various change initiatives. Anyway here we go … It never ceases to amaze me how the words Project Management and Change Management can be used in the same breath. In my experience (and this is not a criticism of PMs) Project Managers cannot execute Change Management because the two disciplines require a whole different set of skills and competencies. Unfortunately this seems to be something that is on the rise and it makes me wonder whether this contributes to so many change failures. Both disciplines aim for totally different outcomes: •Project Management is about installation. It focuses on a plan built around events and timelines with the aim of getting from a current state (no installation) to a future state (installation achieved). •Change Management is about adoption. It focuses on the people aspects of the change with...

You might have noticed a lot of recent complaints about what’s known as “page view journalism.” Thanks to the way online advertising works, many online publishers push out tons of daily content, most of it filler. Or it’s overtly controversial — not on its merits — but for the sake of controversy (and page views). Many attribute this approach to greed. I attribute it to a marginal revenue model. Online advertising has grown by leaps and bounds since its collapse at the dot-com implosion. And yet it’s still not the best way to monetise content and run an online business in 2015. Here’s why: 1. You Need Lots of Traffic. Lots! A general rule of thumb is that you’ll need a million monthly page views before online advertising will begin to pay off. You’ll need more in highly general niches (like celebrity), and less in highly specialised ones where advertisers will pay a premium to reach certain people (like mesothelioma). Regardless, you need a lot of traffic . And...

In days gone by small business advertising was a simple task. You would call up either the local newspaper or the Yellow Pages, get a borderline-extortionate quote and then pay it. Advertising was expensive, but it was simple and, when done well, it worked. Today the opportunities for small businesses have proliferated and become much more targeted thanks to the internet, but with so many options available it can be difficult to decide which the best fit is for you. Ultimately, advertising is only worth the money if it drives people to buy your company’s products or services. So here’s a run through of the main opportunities you should consider investing your advertising budget in, in order to reach your target audience and generate leads for your small business: Google Adwords Adwords is the single biggest system for small business advertising. Google will display your website’s ad above results generated from particular searches. Choosing to display your ads against the r...

Innovators or Sheep? Have you ever notice that so many companies want to be visionary? Able to predict future products and services you need; but yet they also say they respond to market demand by being market-driven . Seems to me that’s an oxymoron. Can you be both market-driving and market-driven? To disruptively break free from reactive business strategy and accelerate the agile and pivot-able strategy, we need to understand the difference between market-driving and market-driven companies. In his 2004 book, “Marketing as Strategy,” Nurmalya Kumar characterised these two types of strategies. Market-driving companies rule the future – they push the envelope of possibility and consistently surprise customers by introducing unique value in exceptional brand new products and services. Market driven companies are doomed to fall increasingly further behind as they react to customer needs that will surely change by the time they deliver the ultimately out of date p...

10 Reasons Why your Boss shouldn’t be Your Friend Is it ever OK for a manager to be friends with their employees? Believe me, this isn’t just a question brand new manager’s struggle with (and most of them do). It’s an issue a lot of experienced managers are questioned about as well, and many of them don’t think it’s a problem at all. The issue of “buddy to boss” might not be as black and white as you might think. Conventional management and HR 101 wisdom would tell you it’s absolutely not OK. In fact, some companies might even try to outlaw it through “cronyism” policies. However, in the real world of work, emotions and relationships can’t be governed by policy. Workplace relationships are can be extremely tricky, just as personal or family relationships can be. Managers are not robots – they have feelings and emotions. Sometimes you can’t help but like one employee more than another. Sometimes workplace romances blossom between managers and employees (that’s a whol...

Between 2002 and 2008 I was employed by British Telecom as the Central Regional Sales Director.   This afforded me the ability to influence, coach, mentor and deliver results through a staff of over 300; across 2 call centres and Field based consultants.   I wrote this article a few years ago but never published it, but I feel it is relevant now as the increase in the economy generally increases attrition rates. Just to set the scene, my call centres had an attrition rate of almost 37% when I took responsibility in 2006, but following the following principles below, I was able to reduce my annual attrition to below 15% with less than 4% annual absence records.   This may sound high to some but for a Call centre environment this is fantastic! Recruitment – getting it right from the start It is essential when recruiting that the correct competencies and behaviours are defined in order to deliver your business’s requirements.  Once the potential applicant’s...