The Masthead

They say that one excuse is as good as another. “I forgot” to: take out the trash, make the bed, return the call or message to a loved one may be an excuse for inattention. In our work, when one remembers to accept the pay check or direct deposit, but forgets or makes excuses for not giving their best effort or reaching a goal begs a deeper question. If one is not getting the results needed or desired and yet they aren’t reaching out for solutions and resources to resolve the challenge, well what excuse works for that scenario?

To the one making the excuse, any will do…ranging from “I forgot (perhaps, to care enough),” to the unspoken “My ego got in the way,” to “I’m stuck in my rut (what Zig Ziglar called an open-ended grave)” and of course “I was just too busy (doing things that weren’t meeting the goal or resolving the real issues, but man-oh-man, I sure am busy)”.

As even this brief – somewhat tongue in cheek – review reminds us is that inaction or the wrong action all have their excuses. One might observe that the excuse is there to protect the ego or projected image of the excuse-maker! But the excuse doesn’t change the need, and before you think – ‘Yeah, this reminds me of so and so!,‘ let’s be candid and admit we’ve all given an excuse to justify ourselves.

Okay, it isn’t even New Year’s, so why am I reading this pep talk on excuses that sounds like a message to make and keep resolutions? Because waiting until New Year’s is just another excuse! “But it’s the holiday season…” will sadly ring out more often this time of year than a Salvation Army bell!

Is your business, your team’s or your personal performance all that it could be? If you try to answer yes, go talk to the people closest to you, and ask them to tell you what they think or whisper to others! If we were doing our best, and working at getting better, shipments of new homes would be climbing!

To reverse declining sales trends, there are two levels of activity needed; one personal, the second our firm and the broader industry.

In a future post, we’ll talk about the incredible impact one more sale per location would have on our industry. I doubt there is a location in the nation that couldn’t close at least one more contract on a home a month. Clearly more than one is that much better! But the point is even a baby step towards growth is better than the excuses that are permitting constant declines!

Take the Baby Steps to Improvement. First, admit you need and WANT to IMPROVE!

Take 10-15 minutes a day for improvement. Look at what’s busy work and use that time more effectively to move you towards improved performance, or start a bit earlier daily. Catch up on industry news here at http://www.mhmarketingsalesmanagement.com/housing-news/44-housing-news. Read a feature article, blog or go into the archives. Ask yourself, “How can this idea or principle be successfully applied by me or our team?”

Next, “pass it on!” emailing, tweeting or Facebooking a joke or some cutsie thing is fine. But if more people in our firm and the industry start buying into the need for positive change, guess what? Positive changes will take place! At first it may be modest, but by losing the excuses, it’s like taking the breaks off enhanced performance!

Winners don’t make excuses.

Winners do what it takes.

So who wants to make excuses?

For those who are squirming a bit, that’s okay. Inside, the signals are coming that admit the need for change. Now, just follow the inner craving to grow! Take those daily baby steps!

Conventions and meetings are valuable. such as the Southeast Symposium II December 15-17, 2009  posted at  http://www.mhmarketingsalesmanagement.com/calendar-of-events. Beyond participating in meetings, just remember, you don’t have to wait for improvement! You can start today, in fact, you already have because you read this far! Combine conventions, meetings or other training with what you can get from resources – including free ones like www.MHMSM.com – by just taking the next step…

…daily. Make a new habit of daily growth, break out of the death trap of the busy work rut!

Looking ahead, we’ll offer features in our Manufactured Home Trade Journal Ezine on managing change, time analysis and effective use and the incredible value of teaming up and strategic alliances. For now, let’s conclude by saying this:

• Learn, apply and share a few minutes daily. Remember, “when you are green, you grow, when you are ripe, you rot.”
• For the many talented and successful pros out there, those who have ideas and solutions to share, jump on board and provide an article or column here with our rapidly growing numbers of industry readers! Email me at latonyk@gmail.com with your concept or article brief bio, you and your firm’s contact information and web address.  Be an every growing part of the Industry’s SOLUTION!
• Don’t let the ego or any other excuse get in your way. Do what it takes, 10-15 minutes a day. Manage towards the enhanced goal you have or will set.

You’ll find free tips and business building resources here, or if you have more money than time, you can hire someone to help you manage towards your goal. People are buying homes, millions of Americans need what we have! So lose the excuses! As Nike says in their slogan;

JUST DO IT!##

==> Why not send this link onto the people who need to lose their excuses or who manage others who need to lose their excuses <=

http://www.mhmarketingsalesmanagement.com/blogs/tonykovach/excuses/

=====> If you haven’t already read, the blog posted below, please do! <=====

 http://www.mhmarketingsalesmanagement.com/blogs/tonykovach/optimist-vs-pessimist/

Industry pros are invited to connect with Tony Kovach on Linkedin at

http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach

=====> Thank YOU for posting your feedback below! <=====

We really can’t imagine what it was like for those first incredibly hearty souls on that first Thanksgiving day. They had cross the ocean on a rickety sailing ship that would strike fear into our hearts, back in a time when disease was more common and harder to treat. They boarded with vermin and rodents; sharing their wretched meals with them too. They traveled through storm tossed waters, with the boat creaking and groaning all around them. Even good days and ‘smooth sailing’ has to be set in the context of their ‘sanitation’ – or a lack thereof – that would be unimaginable for us today. Surviving that harrowing passage, when they arrived on the New World’s shores, of course they knelt on the ground, thankful to have survived the journey. Later they would be thankful to learn how to catch and grow food from Native people whom they couldn’t communicate so readily with as you or I would. Surviving the wet, the cold, the heat, the travel, the sicknesses and the strangers with whom they’d build bonds stronger than modern steel. They survived the building of what to us would be primitive hut-like structures – thankful to be alive, thankful for even that shelter – because some they’d traveled with had doubtlessly failed to survive…

…fast forward to our own day.

We look forward to a sumptuous meal shared with family and friends, laughing and talking in warmth and comfort. Whatever we have will be a feast indeed compared to what those souls endured more than four centuries ago! Perhaps we will raise a glass in a toast, where they would have raised some rough-hewn cup. We will sit ‘round a table where smiles and laughter can rule, with electric lights to brighten our day compared to the dim candles or smelly lamps they used to grope about with in their darkness.

Yet those souls can teach us, yes, teach us about thankfulness! They – those who survived – taking those first intrepid steps of building a society that would yield what we enjoy today…yes, we can be thankful to them! Then, strengthened by ye olde thoughts and images, let us give thanks with a gusto so pure as we have never given before for our family, our friends, our fellows at work, in our associations and among our many contacts and connections, near and far!

Let us give thanks too for those who secure our borders and streets, and to those who clean those streets, who keep fires and fears at bay, who tend to our medical needs and provide us with the warmth of showers and baths, the comforts of our home and transportation, and for the many who made the delicious smells of baking, cooking and the camaraderie we’ll encounter – a reality!

It is in the context of darkness that we experience the joy of light!

Without the negatives in our lives, we can’t appreciate the positives with which we are privileged!

We naturally tend to lean toward the positives poles – those positive comments – but it is a law of physics that without the positive AND the negative pole in electricity, there would be no POWER! It is the LACKS in our firm, the vacuums in the marketplace and the ‘negative’ lacks in our society that yields up the positive OPPORTUNITIES that we are blessed with TODAY!

Yes, as we look back at a day and time that to even the most humble among us would seem unimaginable, we can and should give thanks. We can be thankful, and then re-energized, re-newed by feasts, family and friends, we can face the challenges that we do and realize they are nothing compared to what they – the thankful! – endured centuries ago! If those pilgrims overcame the winds and the seas…surviving the harshness and hunger, what is it that WE can’t overcome! We must simply clear and renew our minds, redouble our efforts and boldly move ahead to make good things so!

For those of you connected in some form or fashion with the factory-built home industry, let us re-think all that we have, consider all that we offer and raise a glass in a new toast, for Today! For TOMORROW! Let’s remember, some are successful…today. By learning from them, by sharing sound ideas, by teaming up with other enterprising, solution-oriented souls, what is it that we can’t do?!

We can text and tweet, transmit online or televise, telephone and talk about the technological triumphs in housing that we offer! We provide the places where MILLIONS today live, and we can and should provide for MILLIONS more the ever-better hearths and homes that should make those who jig-saw puzzle a house together on site tremble with fear over what we can do!

In time, as populations grow and demand for affordability with style and quality grows with it, we could be producing homes in numbers some may only faintly wish for now. So as we ‘get our act together’ – there shall be months when our industry will produce what it now takes a year to build.

Indeed, since we who have survived the storms of our days, we must already have many if not most of the elements of ‘what it takes’ to move our sales ahead not someday, but TO->DAY!

If you are getting this message directly from me, it is because I’m truly thankful for having learned good things from you.  Happy Thanksgiving.

If you are getting this message from another, it is because someone is thankful for you, and someone wants to encourage you, inspire you, embolden you to be thankful and yes to press on! Learn from those who can teach by their example or words! Use your own gifts to inspire and teach others. Share boldly and confidently with those customers who need what you have! Sure, we must admit our weaknesses. But having done the reality check of that ‘negative’ pole, we should press on with the positive energy of all that we CAN do and all that we have to Offer!

Reach out to those who can be raised up! Feel a courage and confidence rise in your mind and heart that you’ve not felt in years! Tackle the challenges, knowing that it can be done!

Together, in our firms, associations and in our markets, we can make it happen! Thanks to each of you who have taught, shared and inspired me, and thanks for sharing these moments with me that let us boldly look ahead and shout…

Tallyho!

—— > Please post replies and/or your own thoughts of thanksgiving below, and kindly pass this on to those you care about. Thank you and happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! < ———-

If you haven’t already done so, Please consider reading the post: Optimist vs. Pessimist
http://www.mhmarketingsalesmanagement.com/blogs/tonykovach/optimist-vs-pessimist/
don’t forget to check out all the proven sales and marketing strategies found linked from our home page at www.MHMSM.com

For those looking to broaden their professional industry connections, please consider linking up with me on Linkedin – my profile is at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach