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Practice Management > Building Your Business

Why Would Great People Want to Work for You?

By Staff Writer

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Most marketing efforts involve finding the right clients, but to do so, you need the right staff members to attract and retain those clients. In his latest words of wisdom, Dan Sullivan addresses the issue of finding the right people to work for you.–Editor

Every entrepreneur has a vision of being surrounded by “great people.” These are individuals on their team– actual or wished for–who provide extraordinary support and are always growing in their ability to take on new challenges and responsibility.

Yet one of the biggest complaints from many entrepreneurs is, “I just can’t get great people.” Or, “There aren’t any great people in my area.” These comments point to the fact that something is missing in these entrepreneurs’ approach to their support teams.

The five qualities of a “great” entrepreneurial organization

At The Strategic Coach*, we have a rule when it comes to starting and growing a support team: “Great people only want to work for entrepreneurs who make things greater.” By “greater,” we mean five things:

  1. The entrepreneur has a vision for the business that is much greater than what exists right now.
  2. The entrepreneur will continually delegate what he or she is doing right now in order to move on to activities that produce greater revenues, profits, and opportunities for the business.
  3. The challenges, responsibilities, and rewards of the offered position are greater than what the person has right now.
  4. These will continue becoming greater in the future.
  5. His or her “ownership”–that is, authority for decision-making and creativity–will continually be greater as the company grows.

When you can confidently offer these five things, great people will be attracted. If you can’t make these things greater, they will stay away.

An exercise in attracting greatness

Here’s an exercise to help you see what quality of people you’re attracting:

  1. Write down all the characteristics and qualities that make up your definition of a great support person on your team.
  2. Pick the five qualities that are most important to you.
  3. Look at the five “greater” organizational characteristics above, and write down the things you’re doing in your business that have these qualities.
  4. Identify the five most impressive ones from this list.

Now, ask yourself: Are the five things you’re doing impressive enough to attract people who have all five of the characteristics you want?

Identifying ways to make your company “greater”

After thinking about this, take another look at each of the five qualities your organization offers. For each one, write an improvement or change you need to implement to make your company a greater place that will attract and keep great people.

As you make these improvements, you’ll notice three changes: You’ll be more humble, you’ll be more confident, and you’ll immediately begin attracting great people.

*TM & (C) 2006 The Strategic Coach Inc. All rights reserved. Article reprinted with written permission of The Strategic Coach Inc. Dan Sullivan’s Strategic Coach Program outfits successful entrepreneurs with the direction, confidence, capability, and focus to get to the next level in their business. For more information, call 800-387-3206, or e-mail [email protected].

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