The Data Checklist For Creating A High Performing Sales Organisation

When in the diagnostic phase of improving sales performance for clients we need to gather certain data sets together. The sales management will often ask if we can provide a checklist to help organise the assembling of the critical data. We thought it might be interesting to publish our checklist below:

1. An up to date organisation chart of the sales organisation.
2. Role profiles, candidate profiles and performance contract examples for all in scope positions.
3. Examples of agendas and actions points from recent sales meetings.
4. A copy of the sales strategy.
5. An understanding about decision rights to do with pricing, margin control, discounts and any other (sales) controllable variables.
6. An understanding of the current CRM and how effectively it’s integrated into the sales work flow.
7. Sales pipeline/funnel data showing the critical stages of the sales process and the current conversion ratios – by individual and averages.
8. An extract of customer visit reports and account reviews, with examples of customer account plans.
9. How customers are segmented.
10. How prospects are targeted and qualified.
11. Sales collateral around the Customer Value Proposition, and supporting promotional materials.
12. Current incentive schemes, how they are calibrated and aligned to the required outcomes.
13. The performance management system including how effective the consequences framework is covering the spectrum of outcomes, high performance through average to under performance.
14. Personal development plans, succession and career planning.
15. The market intelligence system including competitor differentiation.
16. Any competitive/market PESTLE and SWOT analysis [link to POD glossary] data.

With this data a real understanding can be gained about the maturity of the sales organisation and an insight into its strengths and weaknesses. Often the act of data gathering becomes a catalyst for understanding root cause problems that further inform the work, sometimes taking it to a different direction. For instance, we were asked to design a sales academy but from the data gathering phase quickly realised that issues around the design of the sales organisation was significantly inhibiting growth, so this was addressed quickly and effectively.

If you would like to talk about what a best practice example of the above list looks like for your market sector please contact us.

The Difference Between Organisational Competences and Distinctiveness Competences

If you are serious about increasing your organisation’s competitive advantage you will need to understand if you have clarity around the strength of your distinctive competences. The basics first:

• A competence is something the organisation does. Every organisation has competences, fewer ones have distinctive competences. A distinctive competence is something the organisation does materially better than its competitors.
• It is distinctive competences that deliver competitive advantage.
• Distinctive competences derive from organisational capabilities e.g. to be lowest cost provider you would expect to find deep, applied expertise around: cost and margin management, procurement, supply chain, outsourcing, resource management, MI etc.
• Many organisations have little conscious understanding of their capabilities or how to organise or prioritise their development into distinctive competences.
• It is the lack of distinctive competences that creates a (sometimes fatal) weakness in an organisations’ ability to survive through difficult times. Woolworths is a classic example. It did several things quite well (like sweets) but nothing brilliantly well.
• The major benefit from working this out is that it forces any strategy to have focus, to discriminate around what you will and won’t do. BMW’s quite clear in its distinctive competence, sports focused cars and motorbikes. It has deep capability in understanding what makes a car drive really well. Their strapline the ultimate driving machine is no accident.
• The more capabilities you focus on developing, the less likely any will have the depth to become distinctive. You can’t be materially better in many things. A nascent capability you can see Tesco consciously working on, to become world beating in data mining. Using its loyalty card information to create a much more personalised and tailored experience for its customers.

SalesPathways helps organisations to understand its capabilities and develop strategies based on building real competitive advantage. It has its own proprietary model covering 11 different dimensions of possible competitive advantage and a process for establishing how an organisation could focus on them most effectively.

Preparing For The Upturn – What Kind Of Salespeople Do You Have?

The upturn in 2010 will be shallow and slow, very much two steps forward, one step back. Business will still have to be won; contracts fought over and price sensitivity ever present. Although things will have improved they won’t return to pre-credit crunch levels for a long time.
Salespeople love responding to market demand. When customers are calling them it’s easy to work hard and do a good job. But what about when customers are more elusive, when they not only don’t make contact, but avoid all sales callers?

It won’t be quite as bad next year, but customers will still have to be mobilised and marshalled into giving up their POs. The ability of salespeople to be pro-active will still carry a huge premium. The problem is we still meet salespeople who are still in survival mode, who believe by hunkering down and waiting business will return. There are three major behavioural giveaways to this mind-set:

1. Any prospecting activity is seen by them as remedial, negative work. They only do it under duress and when management are paying them, and it, attention.
2. They try to keep as a low a profile as possible. Survivors try to become invisible.
3. They are expert in explaining why the business is difficult, they will quote market data that shows things are difficult and slow to improve. They constantly try to rationalise away their poor performance.

The salesperson who is more positive about next year whilst still recognising the necessary role they have to play in making it happen will exhibit three different types of behaviour:

1. They will construct an activity profile that when pushed through their current ratio analysis delivers the numbers they need.
2. Rather than waiting for ‘bluebird’ business to fly in and land on their computer they treat that kind of business as surplus to their target. All their business plans are built up from the activity they are going to put in to the job.
3. They will make a much more active contribution to the development of new ways of working.

This high ownership mind-set will deliver growth next year above whatever the economy or market-place delivers. Growth that delivers a double sweetness; not only will it deliver greater profits but it will also take market share from the competition.

SalesPathways specialise in helping to create high ownership sales cultures. For more information contact us.

Why Culture Change Is Not Understood – With A Short Guide To Greater Understanding

The recent past has forced many organisations to confront a painful truth. There was something amiss in their culture which meant either they didn’t see the problems coming as the clouds of recession gathered and/or their culture is inhibiting their ability to respond effectively to the new economic realities. Hence the need for culture change.

The problem is that for many organisations they seem not to understand what they are trying to do. Their terms of reference are ill defined and their ability to articulate the cultural current and desired states is poor. There is also confusion over timescales. Often you will hear managers talk about cultural change taking ‘many years’ which its tantamount to saying the culture can’t be changed, whilst others will talk about a three month culture change project.

This is why culture change fails.

To help organisations approach culture change more productively we have prepared a prompt guide to at least try to organise your thinking and process of examining culture change more productively:

1. Firstly a definition. Culture is expressed as a set of behaviours that are viewed by the organisation as normal and expected - what is often referred to as ‘the way we do things round here’.
2. Next, values are not a synonym for culture. Values (what you believe in and stand for) inform the way you behave, when those behaviours normalise you have an expressed culture.
3. So if you wish to change your culture you need to think about what your current values are. By values we don’t mean the laminated 6 phrases on the back of a company swipe card, but the things the company really believes in.
4. By proper examination of the values you can begin to decide on their appropriateness and think about changing them but you need another compass bearing before you can set a new direction.
5. The organisation’s vision. What is the organisation’s purpose? Again a real vision isn’t a marketing strap-line on a business card, but a much more fundamental expression of what you are trying to achieve.
6. As these two concepts start to germinate and synthesise (don’t worry about also needing a mission- we’ve never seen an organisation satisfactorily manage a vision and mission in any added value sense at all) you can focus on the catalyst for cultural change - the organisation’s and individuals’ behaviours.
7. Behaviours are the visible manifestation of values. By focusing on behaviours which are both definable and controllable you can start to shape a new culture.
8. This is where we can answer the timing point. Many behaviours can be changed in the very short term which will give you a quick win but they won’t (yet) be unconscious; they will easily revert unless the process is vigilant. This is the longer term perspective.
9. To affect permanent behavioural change a key component is an organisation’s consequences model. There has to be consequences, both good, bad and indifferent, for a person’s behaviour to permanently change; and this must be separated from their performance. If good performance creates license for bad behaviour any culture change stops right there.
10. Finally, never call it a programme, project or campaign, and never use the word launch. Culture change is a process, a journey, not a destination, it is organic and constantly present.

Difficult Questions That Effective HR Functions Are STILL Trying To Answer

A lot has changed recently in organisations, whether they are public, private or voluntary sector. HR teams have often found themselves dealing with issues they hadn’t expected, yet some of the key questions that faced HR people have hardly changed at all. We posed these questions 18 months ago, how many have you found a satisfactory answer to?

1. How do we retain the trust of our people when we are constantly re-organising, restructuring and removing people from the payroll? How do we ‘value our people’ whilst in a permanent state of change?
2. Skills shortages are getting worse, meaningful price increases are out of the question, and the cost to serve our customers is rising faster than revenue growth. How do we increase productivity, without adding further to our costs?
3. The legislative framework for employment best practice is increasing in scope all the time. What are the most effective ways of maintaining flexibility in our payroll (often one of our biggest expense lines) allowing us to grow, shrink and change shape as required?
4. People are becoming more complex in their motivational needs and wants. Whether that’s generational or life stage driven, as an organisation we have to offer attractive, innovative employment practices and benefits, how do we do it affordably?
5. What are our policies on diversity, equality, grievance, discrimination (in all forms), how to we effect ‘trade-off’ compliance with agility?
6. The role of HR needs to become one of catalytic agent of change as well as (instead of?) a writer of policies, procedures and people related administration. How do we effectively make that transition?
7. How do we put leadership at the centre of our organisation’s development agenda?
8. What is the most effective way in engaging employees in taking part in difficult change processes where a possible outcome of which might put their own job at risk?
9. How do we build an effective integrated ROI model for our people development, compliance and people administration expenditures?
10. How do we resolve the paradoxes and seeming contradictions in much of the inter-related nature of the previous 9 questions?

Whilst Predaptive don’t claim to have a set of neat, simple answers to these questions, we are working in various ways on helping client organisations to answer them, and where that is impossible, to at least work up a meaningful response.

Badwill And The Shovel Ready Foxtrot Economy

The recession has launched its own share of buzzwords, here’s a few we’ve been hearing lately. If there are any you’re noticing trending, let us know.

Badwill:
The opposite of goodwill, the negative effect on sales and share price (or electoral chances) experienced when the public learns about unacceptable personal or business practices.

Dead Cat Bounce:
A temporary up turn in markets following a swift decline in sales followed by a further fall.

Decremental:
The opposite of incremental, a state of steady decrease.

Foxtrot Economy:
A state in which the economic figures released indicate fast-fast growth, but are followed by further quarters of slow-slow growth.

Funemployment:
A self descriptor for people who find themselves out of work and enjoying spending time doing other things that a full time job didn’t allow, usually only used by people without pressing financial obligations.

Shovel Ready:
Descriptor of a project that is ready to start just as soon as financial resources are made available.

Zombie Company:
A business usually in financial services which is not financially viable without government loans and guarantees.

Motivation – The First Principles A Manager Should Never Forget

Being a poor motivator is something no manager will admit to, so why is it when we survey participants on our training courses the poor quality of their managers motivation techniques is always in the top three of ‘my manger’s weaknesses’’?

What is also interesting, most experienced managers say they know about some theory around motivation, but what seems to be lacking is any practical application (assuming the basic understanding has been achieved).

Below we have pulled together what we consider to be the key principles that a manager needs to really understand and be able to apply in their interactions if they want to win the label of being a good motivator.

• Motivation is achieved by the promise of satisfaction of individual Needs, Wants and Desires (NWD).
• Everybody is motivated differently (because of their unique NWD profile).
• Each persons’ NWD is made up of a unique blend of Intrinsic motivators (things that satisfy an internal requirement like job satisfaction) and Extrinsic motivators (things that satisfy an external requirement like having a big boat). These two types of motivation can act on each other in dynamic ways. A large Extrinsic reward can displace an Intrinsic motivation.
• Each individual will demonstrate different levels of drive depending on their NWD profile.
• To be a motivator it must relate to the acquiring of something in the future.
• To motivate someone you must first remove any causes of demotivation. If someone is frustrated and angry with the poor work tools they have they are not going to be motivated to take part in winning a top prize in any incentive scheme.
• Removing the causes of demotivation does not motivate someone. When you have achieved an unmotivated state, a person becomes suggestible to being motivated.
• When someone’s NWD is satisfied their motivation will decrease.
• Money itself is rarely a motivator, think of it as mechanism for satisfying a person’s particular NWD. Someone with a highly aspirational or expensive lifestyle will be more money motivated than someone who has enough money to meet all their present and future lifestyle requirements.
• There is a level beyond which any further motivation won’t work.

You will notice a key underlying requirement. Knowledge and empathy of, and for, the people you are looking to motivate. The key to effective motivation is about understanding a person’s NWD profile. Without this you will see ‘one size fits all’ motivation attempts and money being used in very clunky (and expensive) ways. What is the key attribute of manager’s who can do that? - a high level of self awareness and insight into their own NWD. You cannot sensibly and sustainably motivate others if you don’t understand what motivates yourself.

Effective motivation is covered on all Structured Training’s Open Management Courses and is often designed as an in-company tailored programme.

Click here for more details on our open programmes or contact Claudine McClean to have an informal chat about how we can help your organisation’s mangers became better motivators.

Generating New Business

How do top sales people generate new business in a tough economic market?

In all the conversations we have with sales people recently their biggest challenge is winning new customers. So much so that many simply don’t do it and purely focus on their existing customers and hope they have built enough relationship equity for when the market picks up again. It’s a strategy – of sorts – but it’s dodging the real issue. The uncomfortable issue of ‘cold calling’. In a market where most customers are risk averse, and focused on reducing their costs, how do sellers break through this cycle?

And therein lies the rub. Whilst ever sales people see the market as ‘difficult’ and making those dreaded ‘cold calls’ there will always be something more ‘important’ to focus on. Sales people are by their nature resourceful and can always find ways of not doing the ‘unpleasant’ bits of their job.

However, given that customers are cutting back on their spending, it is those sales people who are pro-actively generating new business who will be in the most advantageous position as the market recovers. So what are those pro-active sales people doing to win new customers?

• Stop ‘cold calling’ - this is a mind-set problem; top sales people don’t do cold calling, they have conversations with people they’ve not spoken to before to establish whether they are customers who would benefit from doing business with them.
• Have a vision - top sales people have a very clear idea about what they have to offer and how it benefits their customers. They can articulate their value proposition in compelling terms. They know where they want to take their business in the long-term and which customers they want to be working with.
• Have a plan - it is essential that they have a strategic focus to whom they’re targeting; why do they want to work with this customer? Is this an organisation that is known to use their type of product/service? How would this organisation benefit by working with them?
• Have a reason for contacting them - top sales people do their research first and ensure that when they do make that first contact with a new customer; that they have something of interest to talk about, something that the customer will see as ‘insightful’ and a benefit to them.
• Use the tools available – what did sales people do before computers, spreadsheets and databases? They used index cards and diaries – that’s what! There are now many excellent tools to help sales people plan and track their activity and help to manage their pipeline. There really is no excuse now for not getting organised.

For further ideas on generating new business see our Selling...The Essentials For Success course.
For further information, or to book your place, please contact us.

Rotting Or Growing?

At this time of year, when the gardens are closing down for winter and the roses are being dressed with compost, it's worth reflecting on the similarities between a refreshing dose of well rotted vegetable matter and the resources of businesses looking to emerge from tough times!

After a spell of healthy growth and blooming results, things can turn a little flat; making use of well developed people, changing their utilisation a little and applying them liberally to the roots of success can give us a spur which energises and refreshes the product for the next season. Which of your staff are rooted in the business and would you ideally not wish to lose? How adaptable are they to the changing environment and different approaches that you find you need? How might you inspire them, put them in a slightly changed role and see their raw power give a kick start to the business?

To see how we can help you lead people through the change process, inspiring and motivating them to commit to your business performance, please contact us.

Book Review: Talent Is Overrated by Geoff Colvin - an important book, particularly for salespeople

This is a book that has been around for a while and has picked up some very good reviews. We agree, this is an excellent, thought provoking read, and deserves a higher profile.

Talent not being a major part of somebody’s performance make-up seems counter-intuitive. Naturally talented is a phrase we might all use about someone who can do things to an extraordinary standard. But it’s not so.

As long as you have the minimum requirement of capability to perform the task you can develop to the top decile of that particular discipline. But how you achieve that requires a very specific approach.

Firstly be prepared to put in lots of practice, at least 10,000 hours. This figure has cropped up in other research and seems to hold good. Two hours a day for (say) 360 days a year will take you over 13 years. And most world class performers have practiced a lot longer than that.

If that isn’t daunting enough the next key element is based on doing the right kind of practice. Not the typical golf practice you might do at the driving range, hitting a basket of balls for half an hour and thinking you may have improved slightly. No, this kind of practice follows five criteria:

1. It is designed specifically to improve performance - and is measured accordingly
2. It can be repeated a lot
3. Feedback on results is continuously available
4. It is highly demanding mentally
5. It isn't much fun - because it’s so relentless

What happens with a child prodigy? They start their 10,000 hours early and they apply this intensive regime - what Colvin calls deliberate practice.

What stands out when you read the book is how little deliberate practice goes on in the business world. You realise how threadbare the term performance coaching is.

For salespeople this is central. What is the available development stimulus for salespeople? Customer sales meetings, a few joint visits with their manager (if they’re lucky), a ragbag of sales meetings and the occasional training course are the most obvious environments. How much deliberate practice is going on here?

SalesPathways is developing solutions that include this latest thinking. If you would like to talk about being part of that process with your team please contact us.

Potential Is For Life – Not Just For Career Launches

When a person starts out on their career they have more unused potential than performance track record. As they become more competent their performance should meet their potential, but it will never exceed it for any sustainable period. Potential limits performance.

Can you increase potential? Firstly there are two kinds of potential to work with - Raw Potential and Developed Potential.

Raw Potential is sometimes used as a proxy for talent. Evidence is increasingly showing this is wrong. See Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers or our book review of Talent Is Overrated for evidence that shows that all Raw Potential does is act as a kind of ‘permission to play’. You need only the minimum requirements to compete, perform and express yourself.

It seems Developed Potential is much more a significant factor. For a physical sport, age will act as an inhibitor, the body can only cheat time for so long. But in a (largely) non physical role like selling, age shouldn’t be a factor.

How does one maintain an upward curve of Developed Potential?

The first thing is the recognition of just that point. Potential is a wasting, not a growing asset. Unless it is managed, focused and worked on it will convert into the graveyard phrase of unsuccessful middle-aged salespeople ‘I have extensive experience’. Experience is the fuel for driving increased Developed Potential. But fuel that isn’t converted into energy becomes a dead weight. It’s what you do with experience that matters. Experience that increases your forward vision and momentum rather than just creating a larger rear view mirror is what we talking about. This is not down to the type of experiences you have but the way you leverage them.

A sales role is (or should be) a particularly experience rich environment, but only if a learning approach is adopted. If not, all the experiences do is confirm prejudices and pre-conceived views.
If you have the right mind-set you can focus on personal development objectives, not just connected to the narrow criterion of sales results but on broader factors linked to improving and extending your own capabilities.

The effort you put into constantly developing your potential will always pay you back. Never outsource the responsibility to your employer, or to leave it to chance, or think that as you gain experience you are developing your potential.

Turing potential into performance should be a conscious, focused activity.

Some Common Errors Of Thought Process When Completing Account Plan Reviews

When account managers are running account reviews it’s important to make sure certain patterns of behaviour are not being (unconsciously) followed. When we are helping customers to understand why their account reviews are not working well these are the most common examples of cognitive problems:

• “The customer said the decision has been postponed until next month” - displacement. I am not responsible for the delay, someone else is.
• “If we do the things we usually do, everything will be OK” - the optimism bias. Salespeople are very susceptible to optimism, this is a good thing, but it can lead to avoiding confronting reality.
• “We just got a big order from them last week, so things are turning” - the availability heuristic.Basing the future on rule of thumb, intuitive perceptions. Because this happened this will follow.
• “This is what happened with Acme Services; this account will get going in the same way eventually”—an anchoring error. Making false connections.
• “We all think the deal will come through this quarter”—the bandwagon effect. Dangerous to disagree with a strong prevailing view. Closely associated with Groupthink.
• “Three different stakeholders in the account have suggested to us things will soon be looking up”—the confirmation bias. This happens often, when salespeople are looking for a particular response, they find it, sometimes even when it is barely there.
• “We need more data before we decide next steps”—the information bias. ‘We need more data’ is often a proxy for delaying making a decision, or doing something – anything.
• “I thought the filled in account plan was what you were looking for” – gaming the system. Rather than dealing with the real issues a tendency to try to move the goalposts, game the system by ticking boxes etc.

It’s unusual to see all these in evidence in the same meeting, but it’s common to see 3-5 being used. When this happens it constricts the dialogue and increases frustration. The meeting starts to feel inauthentic.

If you would like to improve your account planning processes and behaviours please contact us.

A Call To Arms For A Dying Form Of Communication

Here is the current list of ways you can choose to communicate:

• Phone - Mobiles and Landlines (direct, home and company)
• Email (work and personal addressees)
• Twitter
• Blogs
• Texts
• Fax
• LinkedIn
• Facebook (plus several others social networking flavours)
• and Web Forums/Postings.

Far too many and the choice is increasing. There is one form of communication missing. Spotted it yet? Hand written communication as in Letters, Cards and Notes etc. It’s being squeezed into extinction.

Have a look around your desk area, office privacy screens, notice boards etc. What is most proudly (apart from photos) pinned/stood on display? It’s letters of congratulation, well done cards and thank you notes.

The letter or card still carries a power other forms of communication cannot match. Why? It’s original, a one off, it can’t be duplicated. It's permanent, it can’t be deleted or manipulated. Somebody made a deliberate effort to create it, with careful thought as to the medium (bought or homemade card) and its appropriateness. Next, effort has had to go into the writing of it, especially a handwritten (the Rolls Royce) version. This is all before the content is absorbed.
All this significance is without also considering what additional intrigue and excitement is bought to the table by the envelope!

Do you keep a memory box? How many emails or texts have you printed out and put in? None to not very many.

The use of hand written communication is dying out, it is becoming rarer to receive, which is why it is even more highly valued.

If you are interested in being an effective manager then the use of recognition and praise will feature in your tools of choice. Written praise, for all the previously stated reasons turbo-charges any verbal praise. It creates a record (which is why some misguided managers say they don’t use it), because people will never throw these things away, not because they wish to use it against their employer but because they value it so highly.

Look round your office see how people value personally written things and think when you last sent someone a handwritten letter or note.

Predaptive work in helping organisations improve their levels of employee engagement by creating more effective management practices. For an informal discussion contact us.

How Would Your Party Conference Go?

We’re reaching the end of the main political party conference season, and whilst conferences may lack the cut and thrust of yesteryear, they are still really interesting to observers of organisations in action.

Purists bemoan the lack of free speech and the careful co-ordination of messages, lessons politicians took from the corporate world, yet if your organisation were to run its own party conference how would it go? Let’s take a look at a couple of components.

The keynote speech – always fun to watch, not so much for the content, but for the body language and reactions of the rest of the top team. How would your top team react? Would they be on board with the content? Would they feel that the leader was fairly representing all views? Would they take joint responsibility for the success (or failure) of the speech? Or would they shuffle uncomfortably, thinking the leader was unworthy of their respect and attention? Would they pull faces and snigger, hoping for failure? A strong top team who work together for success and can disagree passionately in private whilst retaining respect for each others contributions makes a big difference to success.

The fringe – if your next organisation wide conference allowed fringe events what would they be like? Would there be events calling for new leadership because of lack of faith in the existing leader? Would there be bitter arguments about the future direction of the organisation with no-one taking responsibility for outlining a coherent vision? Or would there be small teams championing exciting ideas ready to lead projects in the future? Fringe events give a real idea about how engaged the ‘workforce’ is, and how much ownership they’re taking for the success of the organisation, both in the past and for the future.

If you’d like to talk about how your organisation can make sure its top team is functional and its employees are engaged contact us.

The Confidence Of Tigers

The regular season for American baseball has come to an end and the post season build up to the ‘World Series’ has begun. The season finished a little late this year, as despite playing over 150 games, the American League Central had to go to a tiebreaker game at Minnesota.

The tiebreaker wasn’t expected. At the beginning of September the Detroit Tigers looked a safe shoo-in having led the league for some time, and with a seven game advantage at the beginning of September. The collapse was momentous, with the Tigers becoming the first team in Major League history to fail to reach the playoffs having had a three game lead with only four games to play.

Watching the collapse has been instructive not only for baseball fans, but for anyone interested in managing performance. The Tigers don’t have a great recent history, their League win was in 1987 and it’s 25 years since they’ve won the World Series, so this was a huge opportunity for them and one which they seem to have worked hard to lose.

So what can organisations learn from the disintegration of such a high performing team? Strategists will point to the rotation of players, wearing out the most successful pitcher too early in the closing games of the season, leaving him unable to contribute at the critical moment. Commentators will point to some unnecessary showboating as some players opted for riskily aggressive plays that would showcase their skills rather than more conservative actions that protected the team. Coaches will ponder whether they were too tolerant of the down time actions of big name players who may have performed well on field but brought unwelcome attention to the team through late night partying and fracas.

All of these elements damaged the confidence and self belief of the team, and they made enough mistakes in the last month to last a whole season; an expensive collapse for the franchise holder. Freezing at key moments affects teams in far less high profile situations and the ability to trust each others’ contribution, challenge damaging behaviours and building each others confidence, is key to consistent team success. To talk more about how you can develop high performing teams in your organisation contact us.

A recent project revealed some interesting perspectives which we share with you below. We looked to profile a wide range of executives, both managers and senior specialists, across the whole performance spectrum and looked at six approaches they use to inform their work style.


As you can see the differences are quite marked. The High Performer (HP) has a very different perspective compared to the Average Performer (AP). Our summary came down to three major conclusions:

1. The HP puts themselves at the centre of things. They are prepared to own their circumstances and then seek to influence them. The AP seems to be more controlled by their circumstances.
2. The HP has an agenda, not simply to survive in the role but to achieve something more. We found this a more complex issue than simply calling it career ambition. Many HPs don’t seem to be overtly interested in that definition. It seemed to be more about wanting to transcend their environment in some way, to make it better, more productive, more enjoyable, more something; but never to just accept it. Changing not maintaining their environment was a key driver.
3. The HP was more self confident about their ignorance and lack of understanding. The AP either tried to disguise it or to hold up their lack of knowing something as a badge of honour.

What is interesting, is when these differences are articulated, indentifying people by these approaches can become a predictor of performance as much as reflection.

If you would like to find our more about Structured Training’s work on developing high performers contact us on 01789 734300.

University of Life (UoL) – Does It Mean Anything?

This is often talked about as either a defensive statement made by people who didn’t attend university, or as a slightly pejorative term by people who did attend. In our work we meet many successful people who did and didn’t go to university, we thought it would be interesting to see if we could indentify any connecting traits or differences. You might like to cross reference this with the sister article in this newsletter here.

1. If people use the UoL phrase about themselves it’s usually a bad sign for the reason covered in the intro paragraph.
2. What is interesting about education is how it connects (or not) to learning. From our experience there is no correlation between how much formal education somebody has received and how much learning they continue to absorb and apply.
3. Next up is experience. Does the experience of going to university beat the experience of not going to university? Given how many students also hold a job down to help fund their degree this distinction is blurring. Also, a lot of people who are 18+ and not at university are unemployed which is not an experience rich environment.
4. The UoL track is supposed to be more character building. Again that depends on what people do. If you travel the world striving for world peace I guess character is being built, but if the time is spent working (or not) whilst living at home the character is not being necessarily built.
5. A circumstance where UoL wins hands down is where someone who has been to university thinks and acts in a superior manner simply because that is what they did. They believe they don’t have to learn anything else, or as one of these types put it recently on a workshop “I’ve done with learning, I now want to earn some serious money”. What is interesting is whether they would make such stupid statements anyway, university being a non-contributing factor.

In summary, we could find no general factors that supported the idea that the UoL route made someone a more successful person. In fact, all the data shows is someone who has a degree has much greater earnings potential over their career, but we could find no evidence it made them a better or more successful person in teams where both cohorts existed.

Our (perhaps not very profound) conclusion is University of Life is an empty phrase.

Structured Training Open Courses 2010

Structured Training have released their 2010 Open Courses calendar, allowing you to schedule your training for the upcoming year. When budgets are tight it pays to make the most of them and by selecting the right open course for each individual you can make sure your training budget delivers against its objectives.

To view the 2010 calendar click here, where you’ll see all the courses and the available dates. Don’t forget if you have a group of participants all looking for the same course we can run an in-house version for you.

2009 dates are still available and can be found here. We currently have a special offer on Operational Sales Management running in November, and if you book now, quoting the ST Newsletter, you’ll receive a 20% discount on your booking. To reserve your place call 01789 734300.

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Six Business Areas You Wish You Were Involved With

We are familiar with the idea of sunrise and sunset industries, but what about sunburst sectors ones that catch the moment or happen to be in the right place at the right time?

Below we try to indentify ones that should be doing very well at present.

1. Let’s start with the obvious – anti bacterial hand wash and face mask sellers.
   With swine flu due a comeback when the weather gets colder, we’ll see even more of this stuff in receptions and lavatories. We’ve recently even seen it on people’s desks with passers by encouraged to have a squirt.
2. Recruitment businesses.
   This sounds counter intuitive, they should be doing badly at present, and relative to two years ago many are, but what is interesting is the ones who are quietly meeting the returning market with a more compelling value proposition. They’ve realised that simple job filling is no longer good enough, they need to offer more; real depth in sector specialisms, consultants who have insight into the market, client and candidate management processes that are professional and service orientated that create memorable user experiences. The better ones also are working on the transformational possibilities of technology.
3. Internet start ups.
   As the computer becomes more like a phone (or vice versa), digital TV switchover gets closer, touch screen technology enfranchises the computer illiterate and bandwidth becomes larger generating faster speeds, we will see a new wave of internet business ideas and applications. Communication convergence is going to be massive, with new users using new services and the savvy providers extending and reinventing their offerings.
4. Celebrity driven businesses/brands.
   This is more than famous people endorsing things, but them taking real control over what they are doing and creating real new businesses. Victoria Beckham’s fashion label is growing at a phenomenal rate, created from scratch less than two years ago. Have a look at www.sarahbeeny.com; first there was the TV programme, then the 'mysinglefriend' dating web site, and now there is 'tepilo', a house selling web site, combining her celebrity reputation with internet cleverness and her property development background.
5. Renewable energy.
   This sector has already had some false starts, whether (pun intended) caused by fluctuating government policy or the cost of fossil fuels, the UK has had an inauspicious first decade. This will change. As the climate data gets worse and more compelling/scary depending on your point of view, consumer behaviour will reach a tipping point. We all will realise we live in the age of consequences and will need to construct real lifestyle changes.
6. Finally……the next big thing , it's obvious isn’t it?

What Do You Think Will Happen?

Six real time business plays that in a few years time, with hindsight, will look like obvious successes or failures.

1. Digital books. Will the Amazon Kindle (still to arrive in the UK) dominate? Or will Sony’s Reader do the business? Or will the iphone make (another) category jump and redefine a market category?
2. iphone. If ever a product has disrupted a whole market this juicy Apple has. It has taken the smart phone away from its dowdy business image and created something completely different. It has forced Dell to enter the phone market, shaken Nokia up and forced Blackberry to accelerate its innovation pipeline. The interesting future speculation isn’t around whether iphone will win, but who else will be left standing.
3. When will Tesco run out of steam? The challenges for any dominant incumbent are significant. Tesco is not growing at the pace of its main rivals in the UK and its dominance is creating some local backlash. Will it be able in reinvent itself again or will it become vulnerable to be split up?
4. The entry of Best Buy into the UK consumer electronics market through its partnership with Carphone Warehouse will be interesting. Will it work? Will it force Currys/Dixons to make the required radical improvements to their propositions?
5. The English Premier League business model. The amount of debt carried by the major clubs is not sustainable if they cannot qualify for the Champions League every season. Also, as UEFA develop new policies to attempt to level the playing field, these plutocratic owners will not be able to automatically buy advantage.
6. Newspapers. Dead trees or bits and bytes? The historic cash cow of Classified and Display advertising is either disappearing or under real threat. People under the age of 28 are neither prepared to pay for a paper e.g. The Metro, or prefer to receive their news electronically. Newspapers are having to search for a new business model, and they are struggling to see it on-line. Rupert Murdoch has changed strategic direction again, giving notice that all News International on-line offerings must have a paid for component. Freemium content anyone?

As part of our Business Leader development we sometimes ask executives to develop their own market scoping ideas. This develops their point of view to inform their own business' future direction. How developed is your 3-5 year view of your market-place? To discuss further, please contact us.

How To Improve Your Future Thinking

Below are some random thoughts and ideas to help with developing your point of view about your business(es) future.

• As markets mature they commoditise and the race to the bottom begins. Choose a different race, build new sorts of value and differentiation.
• There is a new psychological contract forming between customers and suppliers, one that will have a profound impact in the way new value propositions are developed. A partner organisation of SalesPathways, livework, is doing some groundbreaking work for clients is this area, check them out.
• What is happening in China? (standing agenda item).
• We increasingly live in a world of discontinuous, not linear change. The future cannot be extrapolated from the past. This creates huge opportunities for the insightful.
• Your ability to generate insight is directly proportionate to the number of connections you can make in a given space.
• The ability to aggregate, mine and personalise customer data will become a major source of competitive advantage.
• Google stats are a great place to find something striking, interesting or just plain thought provoking.
• It’s much easier to keep up with technology than catch up.
• Why are some people able to mobilise large groups around a future change agenda? Because they have two things in abundance: a coherent point of view about what the future could look like, and influence beyond their sphere of control. These two qualities act in dynamic combination in motivating people to buy-in to change.
• Culture defeats strategy.
• The engaged employee is a significant enabler of growth. Definition of an engaged person: someone who freely gives their emotional commitment to creating mutual success.
• Most organisations seem to have no idea how to engage people. Speak to Predaptive if you want to build an engaged organisation.
• Finally, Arthur C Clarke’s three laws of prediction are still very pertinant:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.