Be Different or be dead

December 30, 2019

Simple ways to make sales a strong strategic force

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Simple ways to make sales a strong strategic force.

How do you get sales viewed more as a strategic asset than a flogger of wares?

My experience is that most organizations underutilize sales because they treat it as a traditional tactical tool rather than as a strategic asset.

Today the focus tends to be on how traditional sales can be more efficient — providing the appropriate sales tools for enabling the sales process to work more in accordance with accepted (best) sales practices.

Tools to make sales more efficient

— tactics to push products
— a sales process everyone must follow
— a bonus plan based on the number of units sold
— a sales plan that takes guidance from the marketing plan
— a focus on the short term — achieve quota fast
— a micro training emphasizing how to be more efficient at the discipline of selling

There is a HUGE opportunity cost to the organization by treating sales as a tactic where efficiency is the prime concern.

As a customer-facing function, sales has the power to make or break the client loyalty relationship and materially affect the financials of the organization.

The focus needs to change to focus on how sales can be more effective — redefine sales as a strategic asset where their role is to create long term value for the organization.

Sales strategic tools

— develop relationships
— a bonus plan based on measures of strategic value creation set by executive leadership — share of wallet, life of sale, customer perception of relationship building — shared objectives with senior team
— sales planning takes direction from the business plan of the organization as opposed to marketing
— a planning horizon that is long term — a focus on building long term value for the organization through deep sales relationships
— achieve master relationship builder status fast
— dig for client “secrets” without the constraint of their products; examine the client holistically for what they want, desire and “lust for” as a person (eg. red wine) or organization (eg. better asset management capability)

What specific actions should be taken to make sales the ultimate strategic force?

Sales leaders

— first sales leaders must redefine the sales role to add the strategic function to its role; communicate the change to the organization
— begin with introducing the strategic value element to the annual bonus plan and increase its weight over time; THEN look for ways to make the sales team more efficient in playing the new strategic role; address effectiveness before efficiency
— revise the value statement of the sales organization to include adding strategic value
— shift the recruitment strategy to acquire individuals who have the competencies required to add strategic value
— develop an internal training program to teach the new skills required to the existing sales force
— exit those sales people who either don’t have the required strategic competencies needed, or refuse to shift from the selling products regime

Individual salespeople

— personally take action to begin the shift from tactician to strategist. Take personal ownership of the need to add more of the strategic emphasis to your role
— go to ‘boot camp’ with the strategic game plan of your organization. Get to know it at a VERY detailed level. You can’t translate it to what it specifically means for sales if your knowledge of the plan is skin deep
— go “under the covers” with clients to learn what they want and desire —  the source of delivering strategic value
Knowledge represents strategic power; sales is in the best position to secure it; competitive advantage follows
— build a draft sales plan that translates the business plan of the organization into what it means specifically for you as a salesperson
Your draft should be what you think would be a perfect expression of corporate goals
And do it in sufficient granularity — avoid being general with aspirational words — so as to define what specific new behaviours and actions are required and which current ones need to be stopped
— share your draft plan with others to show them how to shift sales from tactics to strategy. Start building interest and excitement around the idea; be an agent of change

Biggest challenges

What are the biggest challenges salespeople face when trying to put their sales game to a higher strategic level?
— personally being willing to accept the role change and to commit to lead in implementing it among peers and colleagues
— ‘getting permission’ to make the shift away from tactical sales
— putting their quota at risk
— attracting leadership attention by your actions — and being shut down
— demanding and pushing for a more strategic role in the organization when efficiency product pushing forces are at play and deeply engrained in the organization — fighting an uphill battle — maintaining your eyes on the prize in the face of pushback
— developing new skill sets associated with creating strategic value through building relationships — human psychology, business acumen, financial analysis, conflict resolution, problem solving and team building

Effective sales isn’t about how many products or services you sell; it’s about how effectively you advance the long term strategy of the organization.

Some will say that unit selling IS consistent with executing strategy, but that’s just a convenient excuse for sales to not change in any meaningful way.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 12.30.19 at 04:51 am by Roy Osing
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December 16, 2019

Why executing your business plan is more important than the plan

Why executing your business plan is more important than the plan.

Too much planning

We spend far too much time planning what we intend to do as an organization and not enough time figuring out how we will get there.

The challenge is expressed a number of ways but Peter Drucker nailed it when he said “The biggest challenge for most businesses is executing well - not devising helium-filled plans for reaching the next level.”

How true. But this has been said over and over forever it seems yet organizations toil on believing the essence of their strategy will ‘deliver them from evil’; the pursuit of the perfect plan leaves little or no room to toil at implementation.

Not enough execution

The fact is, the perfect plan is worthless unless execution gets recognition as the true driver of success. And as long as the plan is given the priority we will continue to witness the underperformance businesses.

Results are a function of execution and that requires a disproportionate amount of time be spent on this element of the business planning process.

Spend 20% of your time to determining the essence of your plan and 80% of your time on the detailed implementation plan — who needs to do what by when to breathe life into what you want to achieve.

Sooner or later your brave idea must degenerate into a number of crude deeds. Make it a cultural change objective.

Execution hero

Assign a strategy hawk to lead the execution process. Select the most senior person with the most tenacity and currency in your organization to do the job.
And make sure the person you select has a high tolerance for pain because they’re going to need it!

Make it the most important item in their performance plan and hold them accountable to deliver the results expected of the strategic plan.

And communicate openly and regularly on progress made. Recognize execution heroes — find the people in the organization who are truly committed to execution; lavish praise on them. Hold them up to the rest of the organization as examples to be aspired to.

‘Head west’

Get your plan just about right and execute it with tenacity and perseverance through the hearts and souls of turned-on people.

Perfection is an illusion and heading west is a valid direction to take.

Winning is more than the brilliant idea, it’s about doing stuff and keeping your feet moving in the face of unrelenting change.

That’s change leadership.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 12.16.19 at 06:49 am by Roy Osing
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December 9, 2019

5 urgent things you need to do for career success

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5 urgent things you need to do for career success.

Over my long career, I have seen so many really talented people fall short of their goal.
Engineers who graduated top of their class; MBA’s knowledgeable on more business theory than is needed and business grads who possess a more than good understanding of how organizations function.

The problem with many of these people is that they are too controlled by the left hemisphere of their brain — logic and reasoning dominates their decision making — which generally means they take too much time making a decision and their career languishes.

Sometimes you have to act with your gut quickly and be willing to take a risk; let uncertainty guide you as opposed to relying on the time consuming illusive precision that a traditional planed approach suggests.

These 5 NOW! actions will help you shed the inertia holding you back from glorious success.

1. Declare an outrageous goal

Declare your goal out loud without knowing how you will achieve it; the more outrageous it is the better.
I’m a firm believer that if you know how to achieve something there’s not much room for innovation; creative juices start to flow when you have to struggle and figure it out.

“I intend to be VP of marketing before I am 40 years old.” was the goal I declared at age 25 in a telecommunications monopoly organization dominated by engineers.

I didn’t have a clue how I was going to achieve it but I’m convinced that it guided me over the years in terms of the career decisions I made. At age 39 I was appointed as the youngest VP marketing the company ever had.

2. Take the job

Take a job rather than evaluate every opportunity in terms of the fit it has with your long term goal.

I have known many people who would not make a decision on a particular position that presented itself because they agonized over whether it was consistent with where they wanted to end up.

They pondered and they analyzed — and did nothing.

Every job has something you can benefit from regardless of your long term goal. Although my targeted destination was a marketing executive role, I took operations jobs to help create an execution context for my marketing ambitions.

After all, marketing exists to create value for the frontline of an organization and having rich experience in the daily operations of a business makes marketing efforts more relevant and effective.

3. Figure out what makes you special

Work on your personal ONLY statement, defining how you are different from your colleagues and others who may be the competition you will face in your career journey.

People who blend in with the crowd don’t make it because they don’t get noticed; they are part of the lowest common denominator seen to be the same as every other fish in the sea.

A unique personal brand helps cut through the clutter of a noisy and complicated environment.
It gets you noticed and it presents YOU with opportunities before others.

You get the first chances and will jettison you ahead of the pack.
”I’m am the ONLY one that…” will clearly distinguish you from the hordes of other people vying for limited opportunities.

Get rid of the copying mentality. Best practises and a boilerplate résumé will only solidify your position in the common herd.

4. Find your person

Someone you trust, have confidence in and will provide the kind of advice you believe in.

This is more than a traditional mentor who you might find at work in a position related to your audacious goal or someone in the business community who many people covet for advice because of their currency and experience.

You need more than a traditional mentor. You need someone who you have known for some time; someone who really knows you, how you think and knows what motivates you.

And someone who has a history of achieving results in a complicated and uncertain environment. They don’t have to be a superstar in a high position; they just need to have been in the trenches with an up close understanding of how to get things done in the real world.

My person was my Dad who had no formal graduate degree but had years of experience as an engineering supervisor in the mining business. He worked underground with miners in wet dingy environments laying track and drilling ore drifts where the unexpected was business as usual.

He knew how to get things done and provided a perspective to me I couldn’t get elsewhere.

5. Train to fail

Get your head around failure NOW. At the start of your journey you need to think about the possibility because it will definitely happen along the way. The chances of you succeeding without setbacks is ZERO.

What separates the successful ones from everyone else is the ability to come back from a body blow and make another move.

The corollary to this is that making mistakes FAST is an essential ingredient to the success formula.

At the end of the day, it’s the number of tries you make that determine your ultimate destiny.

”I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty six times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.” — Michael Jordan on Success Through Failure

Immediacy is a critical factor for success.

Increasing your odds of success requires that you take action on day one of your journey; waiting is simply not an option.

Serendipity and luck may help you, but don’t count on it.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 12.9.19 at 04:50 am by Roy Osing
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December 2, 2019

2 easy tasks that will make you an astonishing leader

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2 easy tasks that will make you an astonishing leader.

I know it’s almost impossible to reduce all of the qualities of an amazing leader down to two, but in my 40-year leadership experience there are two actions standout leaders take to distance themselves from the herd of leaders out there.

Task #1: Stop doing stuff

Kinda goes against traditional thought but most leaders think winning is about performing the incremental miracle; introducing something new that will take people’s breath away.
And the academics and pundits add to this belief by talking about innovation as being exclusively reserved for creating something new.

“Product innovation is the creation and subsequent introduction of a good or service that is either new, or an improved version of previous goods or services.” — Wikipedia

So the common perception is that to be innovative you must deliver something new or at least a significantly improved version of something that existed before.

Value creation is missing

The problem I have is that innovation by the common definition is silent on value creation; there’s no expressed connection.
An entrepreneur could introduce a new product that flops in the market but the act would still be tagged as an innovative move.

Innovation without value creation is useless because the purpose of innovation IS to add value. Introduce a new product that sucks value from the organization — because it’s unprofitable — is not innovative by anyone’s definition.

In my experience, there is one innovative task that rarely gets mentioned. It’s a task in most organizations that isn’t treated as a high priority yet it produces amazing value.

Decrement to create space

And it’s the antithesis of doing new incremental things — it’s doing new decremental things; removing old things in an organization that no longer add value and creating space in an organization to do new things that do add value.

No organization has unlimited resources to continue adding new activities with added costs; decrementing frees up resources and cost to do something new.

Great leaders treat removing stuff as a high priority and they treat it as a core competency of their organizations that contributes vitally to their competitive advantage — most others don’t focus on it and hence are more challenged to maintain healthy cash flow margins in the face of having to innovate to offer new stuff.

And decrementing is much more difficult to achieve than motivating people to do new exciting things; it’s simply not viewed as a “sexy” thing to do and people aren’t salivating to get on with removing the grunge that everyone knows is there.

CUT the crap

Not only is it difficult to get people to sign on with cutting the crap in an organization, it’s even more tough to actually remove the activities, programs, products and systems that have outlived their usefulness.

Why? No one likes to give up anything regardless how unproductive it is. They don’t like their familiarity with anything being disrupted even though it makes perfect sense to do so.

So employees who work on products with a small unprofitable market don’t want to lose their product work and analysts who maintain an obsolescent system would like to keep doing it.

When the cut the crap champion shows up there’s not a whole lot of willingness for owners of crap to give it up easily; they fight to hold on to it.

Task #2: Stop reading books on leadership

The Unmatchables get to their lofty position by NOT following the prescriptions of others — they don’t read their sh** — they find their own way in the morass and complications of dealing with humans of all types.

It’s not that text books and pundit readings are wrong necessarily, it’s just that they’re not good enough to make a leadership difference.

There’s no formula for being an incredible leader. There are tons of things you can do to be an average one but the secret sauce to greatness has to come from the individual not parchments with ascribed opinions from “experts”.

My experience has taught me that there are many actions The Great One’s take that are rarely found in a text book.

Head west

They believe that “heading slightly west” is a valid strategy despite the fact that the experts try to get you to believe that if you follow a precise process you will create the “perfect” plan.

Rather, what is needed is an imprecise view of the direction that should be taken with modifications made based on what is learned through execution.
How many plans have you had that turned out the way you originally intended? Yup. Same.

Try a lot

They believe that the more tries you make the greater the likelihood you’ll succeed. Their mindset is that if they get lucky and hit a home run on the first try, GREAT! but don’t count on it.

The odds of getting it right the first time are too low given the uncertainty and unpredictability of the markets we serve. If you’re not ready to try something else other than your first choice in times of chaotic change you’ll be unprepared when chaos strikes and you will fail.

The Distinguishables know that the text book might be helpful in choosing a direction, but eventual success comes to those who have made more attempts than the rest of the crowd.

Do the opposite

The Look-Up To’s have the natural instinct to go in a 180 degree direction against the flow of whatever is the current trend and give it a go. They understand that momentum and trends aren’t their friends when they are trying to garner a competitive advantage.

▪️If the market trend is toward lower calorie food products they do a 180.

▪️If the trend is to exceed customer service expectations in the hostel business they do the opposite.

They don’t bet the farm on such moves but they are willing to make an investment that captures the attention of onlookers.

In my experience, these two gems were instrumental in vaulting average leaders into really successful ones. I’m thinking that if you want to be a standout leader you might want to give them a try.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 12.2.19 at 04:26 am by Roy Osing
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