3 Spring Cleaning Tips for Your Sauna

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Enjoy your sauna for much longer when you start properly maintaining it. Don’t forget to give the following areas some much needed attention:

Floor
The warm, moist environment of many saunas can foster the growth of bacteria on the floor and other surfaces of the sauna. These bacteria include tinea pedis, more commonly known as athlete’s foot, states the Mayo Clinic. Public saunas can also spread the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, which can cause serious skin staph infections, including the deadly methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus–MRSA–according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To prevent these infections from spreading, regularly sweep and mop the sauna floor using a household floor cleaner or a water and bleach solution. Let the floor dry and the sauna air out before continuing use. Source: OurEverydayLife

Benches
Don’t use harsh or abrasive chemicals on benches, as these can bleach and warp the wood, ruining the grain and turning it grey. Specialist sauna cleaners are commercially available too. These are designed to be gentle on the wood, and will also give your sauna a pleasing fragrance. Source: Build

Heater
Depending on what type of heater you possess in your sauna there are different ways of cleaning it.

If you heat with a wood burner, than you will have to remove the ash build up constantly.

If you have an electric heater, all you need to do is use a nonabrasive cleaner and sponge to wipe off any fingerprints, dust, grime, and debris that may be present.

If you have suana stones that produces your sauna heat, than you will want to make sure you are soaking your rocks in a mild detergent and water solution about once a month, and also replacing any cracked stones as soon as you notice that they are cracked. Source: DoItYourself

Infrared saunas are more convenient and efficient to use compared to traditional saunas. If you don’t have one yet, don’t miss out! Call us today and get yours.

 

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Leadership Is Not About “Monitoring”

Too often when I speak to sales managers, they focus on “monitoring” their sales people. They constantly focus on:

• Where they are on MTD, QTD, YTD numbers?
• Do their pipelines have the right volume/velocity of opportunities?
• Are the sales people hitting their goals on prospecting calls, customer meetings, and so forth?
• Are they keeping CRM and other systems updated?
• …….and on and on.

When they see someone not hitting those goals or not “complying” with the standards, they take corrective action, which usually is manifested by:

• You aren’t hitting your numbers, you need to get going!
• You need more deals in your pipeline!
• You need to up your prospecting calls hitting our daily call goals!
• You need to keep CRM updated! If it isn’t in CRM, it isn’t real!
• …….and on and on.

Monitoring provides no value to anyone. Technology provides a better job of monitoring than most managers can. Tools can tell me that I’m behind on certain commitments, that I haven’t paid attention to certain opportunities for a while, that my pipeline velocity is slowing down, that I have a meeting in 30 minutes.

We don’t need managers wasting their time on monitoring and wasting sales people’s time on telling them what most tools are already telling them.

Monitoring, in this fashion, provides no value to anyone! Monitoring changes nothing! Yet too often, this is the behavior we see managers focusing on.

The manager’s job is to maximize the performance of every person on their team and of the team as a whole. It goes beyond monitoring to understanding what’s happening, why, what’s standing in the way of people achieving their goals. The job is to coach sales people, helping them understand how they are performing, helping them learn what, why and how they might change to improve performance.

Get our from behind your computer screens and reports. Talk to your people, understand where they need help, help them learn how to be better. Visit customers with them, understand barriers and roadblocks to their performance and remove them.

You are most impactful when you help them learn how to improve their performance and achieve their goals.

Related Posts:

• Don’t Get Distracted By The Numbers
• Pipeline Coverage Models
• Sales Manager—Business Manager Or Coach?
• Performance Management Friday — It’s Not…
• What The Numbers Mean, Hints For Coaching!

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Strikeout Wednesday

In the eight games completed so far on Wednesday, ten of the sixteen teams struck out at least ten times. The record for a day since the mound was lowered in 1969 is 17, set last year on June 2, 2018. It’s happened eight times that 16 teams recorded at least ten K, and six of those happened in 2018. With six games left on the day, there might be a shot at the record.

The Yankees struck out 18 times against the Tigers, 13 times against starter Matthew Boyd. Boyd isn’t exactly a strikeout pitcher. He’s never pitched a season at the major league level in which his strikeouts exceeded his innings. This year, however, he now recorded 23 K in 11 1/3 innings. Based on his first start, he appears to have de-emphasized his sinker and change up in favor of his four-seam fastball. We’ll see if that holds up when FanGraphs updates tomorrow morning.

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“I won’t pay more than $X!”

We were doing a deal review. It was a big deal with a prestigious customer. Procurement was involved. As we discussed the deal, the sales person said:

“Procurement thinks this is a good solution, but they aren’t willing to pay more than $X and we are a whole lot more at Y.”

“Have you presented the business case to the procurement folks?” I asked.

“We’ve talked about how much this improves productivity and reduces costs, we’ve provided some industry data….” replied the sales person.

“But have you provided a specific business case to them?” I asked.

“No, they’re stuck on the huge price difference…..the deal is stalled!” the frustrated sales person replied.

Sound familiar? I hear the same thing in too many deal reviews. In this case it was procurement, but any customer will raise the price objection–and they should.

And it becomes the showstopper for the deal. Sales people come back pleading for a discount to match the customer expectations.

We will seldom win if we compete on price! (I know I sound like a broken record, but you can’t imagine the number of deals I review where this is the only basis of competing.

But what really matters is the business case…..

Back to the original example. We chatted about the customer’s situation, “Does the customer understand how this solution will increase reduce costs and increase productivity?”

“They understand the concepts and they’ve read the case studies,” replies the sales person, “They think they should achieve savings in the same range as our case studies.”

“Have you developed a specific business case for them? Are you using their numbers to show how much it will increase productivity and reduce costs?” I asked.

“Well, no, they understand the principles, but we still have the pricing problem,” the sales person replies, “beside, they should be able to look at the business case themselves.”

“Clearly, they haven’t, otherwise they wouldn’t be arguing about price!” I reply.

After doing a back of the envelope calculation, we found the net savings to be several million, productivity improvements would add another couple of million.

The sales person says, “I get this, but they don’t like our price!”

“Can they get these savings from any other solution?” I ask.

“No, we are in a good position, we are the only solution that can give them these savings….” replies the sales person.

“So you are telling me this customer will walk away from millions in savings and productivity improvement, just because they don’t like our price?” I reply, getting a little impatient.

At this point, the sales person lapsed into silence.

We talked further, he defended himself, saying the customer understood the value proposition and what they would achieve. But he and they never translated this into a specific business case for the customer.

The customer doesn’t have to like our price! They can scream and shout about how unreasonable it is. As long as we have a business case that shows a superior return for them, price is absolutely irrelevant.

The customer would be insane not to select a solution that provides millions in improvement, regardless of the price of the solution.

I wish I made this up, but it is too common. We sell on price, we lose on price. We sell on business value, we sell on the fact the customer can’t get these outcomes unless the pay what we are charging, we focus on their business return, not the price of our products.

Thanks for indulging me, I’m off my soapbox, but can’t help getting impatient with the number of opportunities I see where the focus is on defending our price, rather than focusing on business outcomes!

Related Posts:

• Price Is Meaningless Until You Establish Business Value
• “We Can’t Justify Your…
• Why Are They Buying?
• “But That’s More Than We Planned To Pay!”
• Price Is NEVER The Only Decision Criteria!

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Games of the Day

German Marquez is the latest pitcher to sign a big extension. He faces the Rays and Charlie Morton.

Starter Germán Márquez and the Colorado Rockies agreed Tuesday on a five-year, $43 million contract extension, pending a physical, locking up the right-hander whose breakout second half helped fuel the Rockies to the 2018 postseason, league sources familiar with the deal told ESPN.

Márquez, 24, capped off one of the best seasons ever by a Rockies starter. He struck out 230 in 196 innings and finished with a 3.77 ERA, building on a solid 2017, his first full season.

Acquired in a 2016 trade from the Tampa Bay Rays for outfielder Corey Dickerson, Márquez parlayed an increased use of his slider after the All-Star break to smashing success. Over 14 starts, he punched out 124 in 93 innings with a 2.61 ERA and six double-digit strikeout games — including four 11-strikeout games in September.

ESPN.com

Marquez is off to a good start in 2019, allowing two hits and striking out seven in six innings, allowing just one run. Morton struck out 372 batters in 318 2/3 innings since returning from an injury filled 2016.

The Orioles and Blue Jays send 0.00 ERA pitchers to the mound as Nate Karns faces Matt Shoemaker. Karns only went two innings in his first start of the year, and managed to not allow a run despite three walks and one hit. Shoemaker was more impressive, going seven shutout innings with two hits allowed and seven strikeouts.

Finally, Jon Lester leads the Cubs against Julio Teheran and the Braves. Lester pitched well against the Braves in his career, 6-2 in nine starts with a 2.47 ERA. He walked just 13 batters in 58 1/3 innings. Teheran pitched mostly well against the Cubs, 3-1 with a 3.44 ERA in eight starts.

Enjoy!

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Beat the Streak Picks

For the past two years Baseball Musings tried to help with playing Beat the Streak. The Day by Day Database keeps track of hit streak of at least five games. In addition, two programs produce top ten lists of players with a high probability of a hit. If you find this useful, please support Baseball Musings with a donation.

Here are the top picks my programs produced for use in Beat the Streak. This post mostly explains the ideas behind the calculations. In addition, this post shows tests on the Neural Network (NN). This post discusses an NN that includes the ballpark. I updated the models, and the results of those tests are here.

For 2019, I am just going to publish the Log5 hit averages and the NN probabilities with parks factored in. I am keeping track of the results here. I added a graph that gives a visual representation of the probability and success each day.

First, the Log5 Method picks:

• 0.277 — Eddie Rosario batting against Homer Bailey.
• 0.277 — Jorge Polanco batting against Homer Bailey.
• 0.272 — Nelson Cruz batting against Homer Bailey.
• 0.272 — Willians Astudillo batting against Homer Bailey.
• 0.269 — Jonathan Schoop batting against Homer Bailey.
• 0.268 — C.J. Cron batting against Homer Bailey.
• 0.267 — David Peralta batting against Joey Lucchesi.
• 0.266 — J.D. Martinez batting against Marco Estrada.
• 0.265 — Jake Cave batting against Homer Bailey.
• 0.262 — Marwin Gonzalez batting against Homer Bailey.
• 0.262 — Jean Segura batting against Anibal Sanchez.
• 0.262 — Ehire Adrianza batting against Homer Bailey.

It’s early in the season, and Homer Bailey suffers from a small (0) sample size for 2019 and a poor track record in prior years. Rosario is off to a poor start this season, but his three-year average pulls him up.

Here are the neural network picks:

• 0.266, 0.693 — J.D. Martinez batting against Marco Estrada.
• 0.267, 0.689 — David Peralta batting against Joey Lucchesi.
• 0.262, 0.688 — Jean Segura batting against Anibal Sanchez.
• 0.277, 0.686 — Eddie Rosario batting against Homer Bailey.
• 0.261, 0.685 — Wilson Ramos batting against Trevor Richards.
• 0.260, 0.680 — Adam Jones batting against Joey Lucchesi.
• 0.261, 0.680 — Freddie Freeman batting against Jon Lester.
• 0.277, 0.678 — Jorge Polanco batting against Homer Bailey.
• 0.261, 0.677 — Jose Martinez batting against Jameson Taillon.
• 0.246, 0.674 — Jose Altuve batting against Mike Minor.

In the cases of small sample sizes, the NN does a better job of discerning the data that matters. So this list is not dominated by Twins, but Bailey is bad enough to pull two Twins onto the list.

Rosario is the consensus first choice, David Peralta the consensus second choice. J.D. Martinez is usually a good choice on any given night.

I do not guarantee results. Your best pick is going to have a 25% chance of not getting a hit. Good luck!

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Mound Mashers

Tuesday night saw a show by power hitting pitchers out west as Madison Bumgarner hit his 18th career home run in the Giants. Despite the hurler home run, the Giants fell to the Dodgers 6-5. Zack Greinke went deep twice, and the Diamondbacks beat the Padres 8-5. Greinke had hit six home runs in his career up to that point. It’s the first time pitchers produced three home runs in a game since June 2, 2002. My positional stats go back to 1974, and those are the only two days with pitchers hitting three home runs.

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