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2010-12-23T11:30:00.001Z

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Five Common Failures In KAM Training

2010-12-16T13:25:00.001Z

Any sales organisation worth its salt soon wrestles with the problem of key account management (KAM). Many invest money in KAM training, which is often little more than “advanced sales training”. As long as KAM training is seen only as ‘development’ for senior sales people, it is likely to fail. Five important dynamics contribute to this failure:

Poor targeting. KAM involves a lot of work and by definition, not every account can be a key account. First and foremost, it is a resource prioritisation exercise. Having clear criteria for accounts to be on the list is a sine qua non.
Key to both partners. Do your customers see the relationship as key? Looking through their eyes is highly illuminative. Our biggest account may still be an insignificant part of our customer’s business operations and all the effort in the world on our part is likely to be met with indifference on theirs.
It’s an organisational NOT individual activity. KAM invariably involves alignment of internal processes and teams to follow a plan. KAM is therefore a team development exercise NOT solely an individual one – paying attention to internal co-ordination is a more significant challenge than training the KAM.
Salesperson or Facilitator? The co-ordination of longer term programmes places the key account manager in the role of change agent, facilitator, internal champion. These skills are often missed in KAM training, which has a heavy customer orientated perspective.
Wrong Measurement. KAM initiatives are often stillborn because measurement is short term and based on existing sales targeting. Defining a staged plan with clear milestones is often vital in key account development, which in the short term brings no immediate revenue gain. Having the skill to make a good plan and the discipline to execute and measure progress against plan is indispensible.

Good KAM development is therefore a mix of training and organisational development. If KAM programmes are on your agenda, contact SalesPathways for an intelligent approach tailored to your organisation.

Four Sales Challenges That Will Only Get Worse In 2011

2010-12-16T13:23:00.000Z

This year has been another challenging year for most B2B sales organisations. In SalesPathways work we have seen several patterns emerge which have risen to the top of the ‘issues’ list. See how many of them your sales organisation is dealing with (hopefully not everyone!).

Sluggish Sales Growth
Still the major issue for many businesses. This problem has several forms, inability to raise retail prices, demand not picking up, and extreme volatility in the sale pipeline are the three most common symptoms. The softness in sales numbers has encouraged some Sales Directors to use Sales Promotions to increase demand – to in effect buy business through cutting prices, increasing discounts, putting packages together etc. The danger with this approach is of course creating a new (lower) market price which is difficult to then move away from if demand doesn’t pick up

Rising Sales Costs
Regardless of what is happening to your top line sales costs will rise, usually at a faster rate than inflation. The Internet was supposed to reduce sales costs but unless you are completely on-line it has added to them, because the web has become either an additional sales channel or a straight marketing cost.

Continuing Creeping Commoditisation
Value chains continue to commoditise, especially at the lower end. Unless salespeople can move up the value chain to a place of greater value add, they become very expensive communication conduits of price and delivery information.

Increasing Transparency Being Demanded
If your margins rely on opaqueness you will struggle to maintain them. If a cost plus margin is added with no demonstrable value add customers start to ask questions. Open book pricing, and co-creating value is where real partnerships can be built.

Getting In The Minds Of Salespeople

2010-12-16T13:20:00.001Z

A Sales Director asked Father Christmas for the ability to really understand sales people. Having Santa as a strategic partner has allowed us a sneak preview of the Sales Director’s present.

All salespeople believe that when they succeed its all down to them, and when they fail it’s down to factors beyond their control.
The best salespeople are secure enough to cope with rejection, but insecure enough to need the constant reassurance of success.
Sale people have learnt it’s not how confident they feel that matters, but how confident they appear.
Technicians/engineers who sell dislike salespeople or even being thought of as ‘in sales’.
Sales people live, and are encouraged to think, in the world of the possible; so don’t be surprised (or too critical) when they apply the same thinking to their sales forecast.
Sales people are hugely conflicted when they think of customers. They love them and hate them - at the same time.
The worse a salesperson is doing the less they think about how to improve things. They often need to be pushed in front of difficult customers by someone else.
Top performing, high earning salespeople are hated by the rest of the organisation.
Salespeople love anything that signifies differentiated status.
More salespeople than you might think don’t like other people very much.
Because field based salespeople are dislocated from the physical organisation their rumour/gossip dial is turned to 11. If you want to find something out, ask a sales person.
If you want to upset a sales person, change something. Regular changing of their incentive scheme is a guaranteed hostility generator.
Sales people love a short training course where they learn something genuinely new and implementable. They hate training based on old ideas wrapped up in new language.
Sales people aren’t negative about company policy, simply misunderstood.
All sales people under the age of 30 believe they are immortal and can only fail if their employer gets in their way.
All sales people over 50 have developed hugely finessed ways of working that they are reluctant to reveal to anyone else.
A sales person will offer to mother/father your children if you deliver them a reliable, easy to use, sales generating, non-time consuming CRM system.
Only being as successful as their last set of numbers eats into salespeople’ souls to varying degrees.
Sales conferences are attended for the craic, the rest is management propaganda.
Having to sometimes bend the truth, suspend disbelief, deal in misinformation or give the briefest of detail creates a kind of interpersonal hysteria, which can lead to odd behaviour.
Leaving a customer with a big order/contract that smashes their target and wins their favourite incentive is the daydream of choice.
Salespeople love a manager who knows when to get out the way and when to pile in and save them, and then pretends they didn’t (save them).
The words role-play make sales people die a little.
The best sales team contain both men and women.
Sales peoples’ biggest fear is that they will be found out.

It will be really interesting to see what this Sales Director does with this information.

Focusing On Developing Your Competitive Advantage

2010-11-25T14:17:00.001Z

As the old truism has it; ‘Give the people what they want and they will buy’; if you do that successfully and you do it better than other businesses making a similar offer you have competitive advantage. Let’s look at this a bit more scientifically. There are five major sources of competitive advantage:

Distinctive Competence
Simply put, you do something materially better than anyone else. The competence (or capability) of designing and delivering a fantastic Graphical User Interface (GUI) is an Apple distinctive competence. The user experience with other products is compared to the Apple standard.

Better Insight/Foresight
Can you call the market? Are you able to get inside the customers’ head? Do you constantly try to envision the future market landscape? Businesses that do this well lead the market place. Amazon (led by the visionary Jeff Bezos) do this well. First to on-line books, first to fulfilment excellence, first to running a competitive market-place, and first to leverage their technology as a platform others can use. We’ll see whether they win the e-reader battle, but they’re doing well so far.

Inside Track Access to Suppliers or Customers or Talent
You have relationships others simply can’t compete with. Metro newspapers in stations is a great example. Tesco Clubcard, giving direct access to customer behaviour, which even customers might not be conscious of. Holding the only Rolex concession is a large town will make you the local go to jeweller for that watch brand. Employers of Choice brands have the pick of the best people; Google, McKinsey, Apple.

Unique Links
You build your own eco-system of offerings. Microsoft Office running on Windows offering very high interoperability. Gillette razors need Gillette blades, end of story. Geography can be important; links into China either for export potential or product sourcing can provide significant advantage.

Culture
Your way of doing things outperforms the competition. The John Lewis retail experience is different because of its peoples’ service and product knowledge skills. GE has a very strong earnings performance culture. Interestingly this form of competitive advantage can be the hardest to replicate.

SalesPathways can help you develop a strategy for increasing your competitive advantage. for further information contact us.

Ten Ways To Improve Your Call Centre Customer Service Scores

2010-11-25T14:15:00.000Z

We all have to use the phone to talk to our bank, broadband provider, support service etc. How many of us do it with a glad heart? When you have a good experience it's easy to deconstruct why. Here we collect the common sense top 10 ways to improve your telephone handling:

Make it easy to locate the number. Label the number clearly if there is a choice and don’t hide it away in the third level menu of your web site.
Answer the phone quickly, goodwill evaporates as the phone continues to ring out.
DON’T have it answered by a machine. Period. IVR, Interactive Voice Response is a curse that is all about cost reduction and nothing about the customer experience.
Waiting music should be avoided. There is no such thing as good waiting music, because you’re WAITING.
Have a clear line with good volume. Make sure the person has a good clear strong speaking voice. Many overseas call centres fail on this point. Just ask anybody over 70 if they like dealing with an overseas call centre.
The person must not speak too quickly especially at the beginning of the call.
Avoid over scripting, screen prompts can be just as bad.
Deal with the call effectively and as quickly as possible.
Design the process and train the people sufficiently to handle as many calls on the first bounce (the call doesn’t have to be transferred). This is most significant factor in getting a positive customer reaction. ‘I made the call and the first person I spoke to dealt with it really well’
Allow your call centre people to be human; gve them the space and time to express their personality.

This list doesn’t look difficult is but it is very rare to find. Take a bow First Direct for inspiring this article - an organisation that really gets it.

Revisiting A Classic Work Problem -Not Enough Time: How Successful Salespeople Are Great Time Managers

2010-11-25T14:13:00.001Z

Time management is a perennial personal development need. Here in a couple of lines is the training remedy distilled; the difference between urgent and important, reactive from pro-active tasks, things to do lists, delegation and work–life balance.

We’ve recently been doing some work with a group of high-performing salespeople who seem to manage their time very well. It was instructive to see how much of what they did came from the orthodox time management toolbox.

The first most obvious thing is how well organised they were. They avoided building up a any kind of back-log of work. As far as possible they operated a clean day working model, beginning the next working day ‘clean’ with no overhang of work.

They were voracious users of the entire technology going. No double entry, or multiple systems. They updated CRM in as real a time as possible.

They are selfish. They said no to things if they got in the way of their primary objectives. They focused obsessively on value adding activities and tried to avoid those that weren’t.

They kept on top of their email and only sent email that was strictly necessary. One said the fewer emails I send the fewer emails in my in box. There was a general preference for using the phone, more direct, more personal and more likely to deal with the issue in one go.

They work intensively. Some worked long hours, but not everybody. What they all did though was work productively. They didn’t waste time (none of our group had time for Twitter or Facebook). They liked to multi-task on trains and planes.

And finally they all hated meetings, even effective ones which were described as ‘a necessary evil’.

If you want to improve the productivity of your sales organisation contact us.

Career Segmentation (Part One)

2010-11-04T15:48:00.003Z

Marketers are familiar with life stage segmentation in trying to understand buying motivations and decisions. For some time we have been interested in how the same technique might be applied to looking at career phases.

Below we have developed our own tool that we believe identifies the key phases of the career focused working life:

These age ranges are not exact, for some they happen slightly earlier or later, but we believe for most people these are the key phases that need to be paid attention to:

The Seeker
It’s in childhood that much of how people approach their working life is formed. A person’s approach to leadership, responsibility, authority, conflict, motivation, material acquisition and ambition all are shaped in this phase. Formal learning plays only a part in the process.

The Student Protégé
How focused is the person? A university degree is now much more than a lifestyle choice or a deferment of work decisions. The financial cost means choices have to be conscious and considered. It’s in this phase that people experiment, test early passions, and reject options. If they’re lucky they will find good advice and a mentor. They should be laying down deep layers of learning.

The Young Gun

This is a short, key phase. It’s where ‘early form’ needs to be demonstrated. The person gets noticed through early achievement. By leveraging all they have learnt so far this phase has the potential to be a real career ‘kicker’.

The Bet Placer

Here the person should be succeeding with real achievements. Through the generation of insight they position themselves to take advantage of opportunities. They become an important member of the ‘go to’ cohort when things need to be done.

The Rain Maker

In this phase the person has real power (and uses it) to change and transform things. They see more angles, more opportunities and more risks than others. They make things bigger and they put interesting things together. They can, and do, make things happen.

The Safe Habour

Here judgement is everything. Because they have seen a lot, they call things right and they call them early. They can be relied on to say something sensible (not the same as being conservative) and to come up with solutions.

The Counsel

Wise words said by people who have no further career ambition and probably no financial incentive either. This makes their opinion valuable.

Next month we will explore how Career Segmentation can be used, both by organisations and individuals.

Seven Things Every New Sales Person Should Know

2010-11-04T15:45:00.001Z

If you are planning to go into a sales role for the first time there are a number of key things you should be clear about before taking the plunge. Or if you are the one who is recruiting new sales people then it’s doubly important that you have taken the right steps to identify these areas of knowledge and skills and that you can support your new sales person to make the grade.

We list our top seven things every person that is new to sales should know:

It’s tough out there: non sales people get the idea that sales-folk swan about in a company car with an expense account only communicating when they want to moan about something. In reality the sales-person has to develop a level of resilience and coping skills higher than most other professions.
Their market: sales people need to know what is happening in their sector not just at the local level, but if they are to succeed, also at the macro level too – what are the major change drivers in their market? – who are the movers and shakers?
How to find meaningful ‘insight’: customers want to deal with sales people only if the sales person can provide some sort of clear focus on critical factors that the customer hadn’t thought of themselves.
The commercials: high turnover is fine but what about the margins? Where are the real, long-term, profitable relationships to be had? Which customers’ corporate strategy aligns best with their sales organisation’s strategy? Which customers are going to be worth all the hard work and focus in the long haul?
How to say ‘No’: not only to all those colleagues and co-workers who make unreasonable demands on the sales person’s valuable time, but also having the confidence to say to ‘No’ to customers who make unreasonable demands.
Their company: the organisation’s corporate strategy, its vision, values and goals, its history and background, its current market position and competitors as well as all its relevant products and services.
How to provide excellent customer service: the difference between ‘good’ profits and ‘bad’ profits is about the customer’s experience of the service they received – ‘good’ profits come from customers who rate the service they experienced 10 out of 10 and therefore become loyal promoters!

If you are new to sales or you are recruiting new sales people and want help with any of these seven key areas, please contact us.

Would You ‘Lunch & Learn’?

2010-11-04T15:43:00.001Z

What if you know your people desperately need some development in a key area of their role, and supposing you even had the budget to pay for it, can you really afford to let them out of the office long enough for it to happen?

It seems that even during these cash-strapped times, often the biggest obstacle to getting people trained up is the impact that their absence has on the day-to-day operations. The lost opportunity costs added to the costs of training, travel, accommodation etc are just too much to contemplate when people are under so much pressure just keeping their heads above the water.

What if you could do your people development in bite-sized chunks during your lunch time, say between 12:00pm and 2:00pm? Minimum down-time, minimum disruption to normal service, maximum impact without any fuss!

So what can you do in 90 minutes that will make a real difference to your people over lunch?

Business Simulation - a high-impact, practical activity (with a little underpinning theory for good measure) on a single, critical task such as:

Managers: The Selection Interview, The Performance Appraisal, The ‘Difficult’ Conversation, Motivating Individuals etc.

Sales People: Getting Past the Gatekeeper, Selling to the Difficult Buyer, Handling Complaints, Overcoming Objections, Tough Negotiations etc.

The activity would be completed at your place of work whilst participants enjoyed a ‘free’ lunch (what better incentive do you need?) along with receiving valuable techniques and strategies that actually make a difference.

The activities would be based on real-life examples prepared with information supplied by the organisation beforehand. Briefs would be sent out to participants prior to the session and all attendees would be encouraged to play a part in the Business Simulation with everyone receiving personalised advice and feedback.

'Lunch & Learn' saves you the money, time and hassle of normal training whilst you maintain business as usual and your people are getting the added motivational benefit of learning new skills or refreshing old ones without the added pressure of having to catch up on their work-load afterwards!

If you would like to find out how 'Lunch & Learn' could benefit your organisation, please contact us.

How Good Is Your Succession Planning?

2010-10-26T14:19:00.001+01:00

Many organisations talk about succession planning (SP), a large majority simply work to an annual appraisal with added ‘widgets’.

Below we provide a best practice guide to real succession planning:

Effective SP cannot operate in a people development vacuum. Make sure you have effective performance management and appraisals, people development plans and effective feedback loops.
You will also need coherent transparency around role classification practices; including job descriptions, competency profiles aligned to grading, pay scales etc.
The previous two points create an SP platform on which to build career structures. The old metaphor of career ladders we believe now doesn’t apply. A ladder implies linear progression, hopefully upwards. Careers aren’t like that anymore, they are more like crazy paved mazes going sideways, often moving in a discontinuous fashion.
Good SP reflects this, not developing people for fixed, hierarchically determined roles, but developing capabilities and experience to meet strategic requirements.
Coaching cultures are better at SP than didactic, command and control ones because there is an open, learning relationship between boss and subordinate. This facilitates higher quality conversations about the future peoples’ real ambitions.
A clear transparent taxonomy needs to be created that, as neutrally as possible, positions people not relative to each other but in relation to the required (high) standard. Someone who is labelled as ‘one to watch’ needs to really understand what that means, what they did to earn that label and what they have to do to keep it. The same needs to apply in the opposite way to someone who didn’t achieve the distinction.
Remember the first thing someone will want to do on acquiring an SP classification is seek affirmation through relative comparison. Who else has the same label? Who has achieved a better/worse label? For the process to have credibility and ‘bite’ it has to really mean something. If there is little or no differentiation, if ‘face fitting’ or experience moves you faster, if there is any form of inappropriate discrimination then SP will be viewed with contempt. It can’t please everyone, but it can be seen to have integrity and be fair minded.
Make it a closed loop feedback system. People need regular progress updates to stay informed. People need to know they are off track as much as on track.
Set clear objectives linked to a clear milestone plan.

Why Are Some Organisations Still Struggling With CRM Adoption?

2010-10-26T14:15:00.002+01:00

Given database ubiquity and technology literacy you would think sales organisations are now fully up to speed with their CRM. Below we give the most common reasons why some sales organisations are still behind the curve.

History: Under previous management decisions were made that have either been difficult to unwind or have taken the organisation down a blind alley.
Legacy systems: This can be to do with point 1 although there are still businesses in autumn 2010 that are still making legacy based decisions that will give them problems of functionality and scalability in the near future.
Cost: Might be connected to the previous point, but sometimes simply driven by a lack of understanding in the profound and structural change technology is having on the customer/sales interface.
Make not buy: Do not build your own unique thing. It is unsustainable and too expensive to change. Those that have are now scratching their heads.
Previous bad choices: Selecting something that didn’t work very well that has killed the small amount of motivation and goodwill that was there beforehand.
Salespeople are highly adaptive: In the absence of anything they will create something. Their own database, spreadsheet or diary system. At the single user level these can be quite sophisticated. They don’t want to give them up, they complain bitterly about how the new system isn’t as good as their own.
Ignoring the holy trinity of field force technology adoption:
- Connectivity first. People have to be able to log on easily, quickly and from anywhere.
- Reliability second. The connection has to be robust, reasonably fast and always on.
- Functionality third. It has to do what is says on the tin.
It doesn’t matter how good it is in theory. If people can’t use it or stay on it without any effort they simply won’t use it.
The CRM has to align with the sales process and workflow: Single entry inputting, real time, single view of the customer, and data integrity. All critical not optional requirements.
Proper training with follow up coaching supported by the right hardware.
Mandatory usage requirement: No double running systems, opt outs or discretion. Negative consequences for those that don’t align with the new ways of working.

Note: This isn’t a 'majority will do' list. All need to be present for take up to work.

We Are At A Personal Technology Inflection Point – The Future Has Arrived (Again)

2010-10-26T14:14:00.001+01:00

We have arrived at something of a Strategic Inflection Point. The internet now delivers sufficient bandwidth and ease of access to provide the web content we really want. Netflix, the US film rental business, has just announced it is now a film streaming business. It’s already responsible for 26% of used bandwidth in the US. And now Internet TV is about to explode with Sony launching Google TV before Christmas.

We are now encouraged to have only ‘immersive experiences’ through 3D TV and full body gaming led by the Wii, now being taken forward by Microsoft and Sony with their own Xbox and PS3 versions.

Facebook growth shows its commercial potential is several years ahead of where Google was at the same time in its journey, suggesting Facebook could be bigger than Google. We have only just begun to understand what Mr Zuckerberg plans to do with all our personal data.
LinkedIn has become the business network for many organisations and individuals. Some people use it as their primary career move tool.

Generation Y adults, those who can’t remember a pre-Internet world, are using communication in new ways, younger members now viewing email as the ‘old persons’ preferred choice. They would rather not eat than lose connectivity.

The old ‘dead trees’ print media has realised it has got to be more creative than just replicate its newspapers on-line. Murdoch is trying to sell premium content behind a pay wall, early evidence is not encouraging. The Guardian is committed to providing free access to a much wider and deeper resource than the newspaper, which is increasingly looking like a daily printed digest of yesterday’s best stuff. The Daily Mail web site is going gangbusters since it morphed into a celebrity gossip column with lots of papped pics.

Three very different positioning models, all searching for the post printed future
At the other end of the scale McKinsey, the strategy consultancy, announced last week they are scrapping premium membership of their Quarterly print book, replacing it with a simple registration model. They believe getting their ‘intellectual capital out there’ is more important than protecting a relatively small revenue stream.

Amazon announces the Kindle e-reader is their biggest selling product with analysts predicting it making more than a $1.5bn contribution next year. Bet your house the McKinsey Quarterly will be purchasable on Kindle.

The other obvious ‘A’ listed organisation shaking things up is Apple. Through inventing whole new device categories and reinventing others, they have become more valuable than Microsoft. They brilliantly connect with our unarticulated needs, tapping into brand new revenue streams.

This brings us to the mobile phone. Smart phones are taking the world by storm, following exactly the same adoption pattern as the phone itself, which started as a converted business tool, twenty years later being more ubiquitous than any other electronic device. Smart phones will be the same. Small powerful computers, with location based services, linked in real time to several personal networks, used for communication, (voice, visual and written), entertainment, payments and access control.

The business opportunities are significant; however the chance of your business model being ripped away from you is also significant!

Moving Motivational Ability Up The Agenda

2010-10-18T12:14:00.002+01:00

These days most managers say they are familiar with the seminal motivation models, whether that’s Maslow or Herzberg, Expectancy Theory or Intrinsic Motivation.

That being the case why is it common to find a large minority of people in any organisation below even an average level of motivation? Is that just a standard distribution curve no organisation can escape from or is it more a comment on the quality of motivation application from the majority of managers?

When we work on designing a Management Development Centre we always include something to bring out motivational ability (or not). Being a bad motivator is something no self respecting manager would admit to, so it’s interesting to see how many managers don’t have any vocabulary for talking about how they go about doing it. When we ask the question the most common reaction is to drag up some half remembered theory (see top of article) from a training course long ago attended. Practical application seems rare. And it’s very unusual to see motivation on a management meeting agenda apart from when approached financially with something about incentive schemes.

Here’s our quick check list to get motivation properly focused on:

Make sure you (really) understand the theory. Recap, relearn to study from scratch.
Nail the difference between needs and drives. Its needs that stimulate drives, not the other way round. (Needs being a proxy for wants, hopes and desires as well as real needs).
Think about what motivates you. There is a connection here, the more self aware you are, the more sensitive you become in understanding other peoples’ motivation.
Don’t be reductive. Motivation is more complicated than just applying a carrot or stick.
Personalise. The most effective motivation strategies are designed for individuals not teams or functions.
Don’t ask people what motivates them, because either they don’t know, or they’ll make something up, or they will try to intuit the answer you’re looking for. Work out what motivates people by taking the time to get to know them. Remember all behaviour is goal directed at the conscious or unconscious level. People reveal so much through how they behave. Become a great observer of people.
Motivation is highly situational, the more context you have the more informed your insights will be.
Run a session on motivation at your next meeting, talk about how improvement strategies could be adopted.

If you would like to work with Predaptive on improving the overall quality of your mangers’ motivation skills contact us.

Why Family Is Bad For Business

2010-10-18T12:12:00.001+01:00

What descriptor do you use to describe the people who work in your organisation? Employees, workers, staff, group, team, family? Or do you stick with the literal, neutral term and call them – people?

The term that is most dangerous to use is family, and not because of its alliterative relation, happy. When an organisation talks about its people as a family it thinks its doing the right thing, focusing on being inclusive and supportive through demonstrating a collective set of cultural norms. We think it’s an incorrect metaphor for two reasons:

Family membership (by blood) is never a choice and family membership by marriage can be fraught with difficulties. You cannot appoint family members, nor can you withdraw family status. Trying saying to a sibling we cannot afford you must leave the family, never to return. Or explaining how the families changing vision means a particular family members’ skills are now ‘non-core’
The other reason is one of hierarchy. One of the pleasures of being in a functional family is everybody knows their place. Who is in charge, where we all go for Christmas, who makes key decisions etc. That’s why the opposite of a functional family is so awful; when families fight for position, try to usurp someone’s position, not make allowances for a tradition that has become the norm. This kind of ritualised behaviour in organisations can be really dangerous.

Here is a word to try on your organisation. Describe the people as a community. A high-functioning organisation will be effective in delivering the three dimensions of community:

Place - This is likely to be physical space(s), and certainly will be different virtual spaces (email, phones, web etc)
Interests - People who engage in similar work with similar skills and expertise. People who work with the same customers and get passionate about the same products and who want to achieve similar standards of excellence.
Belonging - Shared corporate values a common vision and some close personal relationships.

Membership of this community is highly conditional. There are standards of performance and behaviour that are non- negotiable, people are allowed in but it takes a while for them to become fully accepted. The community will fight to support someone who remains true to the community ethos but will expel people who let the community down.

How credible would you sound in describing (in an organisational-wide session) that we are a community?

Predaptive works on building employee engagement (which bolsters community spirit). For more information contact us.

Using Appreciative Inquiry- The Positive Way To Deal With Difficult Change

2010-10-18T12:05:00.001+01:00

How do you get a group working in a high functioning state without going into the common spiral of overdosing on problem diagnosis and failing to get to any agreed resolution?

One way might be to use the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) approach. This whole system approach came out of the US in the 1980s, becoming an effective organisational tool that focuses on what works and making better rather than what is failing.

AI is a constructive method for understanding what we can take from the existing organisation/working practice that’s good/works well, and how we can build on it with our version of what we are trying to achieve, what the architecture looks like and finally, how we might make it happen? The four stages are:

DISCOVERING: Identifying the organisational processes that work well.
DREAMING: Envisioning processes and practices that would work well in the future.
DESIGNING: Planning and prioritizing those processes in a workable form.
DELIVERING: Implementation of the new proposed design.

By focusing on what works, and by creasing conscious competence, teams and organisations can build real momentum around scalable new ways of working. It also works well for developing best practice norms and standards.

A challenge for AI can be engaging with people who are locked into a remedial, negative approach to problem solving. People who believe there is little or any merit their organisation or team does that can be modelled positively; they simply want to have reductive, whinging conversations. In really serious cases this mental model can have solidified into a cultural norm, sometimes infecting large teams, even whole divisions.

We use a concept we call breakthrough AI – where if we can get a senior team thinking differently, who can view the future positively, who can show (at least) a little leadership can be a breath of fresh air and can quickly start to change the collective mind-set.

If you would like to find out more about using AI techniques in your organisation please contact us.

Why Working With Demanding Customers Is The Best Thing You Can Do

2010-10-07T14:12:00.000+01:00

Think about your most important customers; think about the ones you enjoy working most with. Think about why you enjoy working with them – they're nice people, you make good money from them, they pay up on time, they are low maintenance, they’re compliant. Sound familiar?

All the above reasons are perfectly valid in terms of why you might like working with particular key customers, but the most important reason isn’t in the list. We enjoy working with them because they are very demanding, they stretch and develop us in ways no other customer does.

There is a lot on evidence that shows why working with demanding customers pays off:
They drive your product development to go at a faster pace
They force you into making difficult choices and tough decisions
They improve your customer service levels
They increase your peoples’ confidence when they achieve “the impossible”
They ‘prove’ new value propositions you can sell elsewhere
They get you thinking why, not, why not.....
They encourage new thinking and challenge your company’s self-imposed orthodoxies
They improve your selling/negotiation/key account skills
They act as a reference site for you to leverage new work from
Their early adopter status creates a pull-though momentum that more conservative companies follow.

Not having any demanding, challenging customers is as dangerous as having some is beneficial. This isn’t about size, a large undemanding customer can create a real sense of complacency, and the smaller customer that puts you under pressure to constantly come up with something better/different keeps your thinking sharp and your reflexes sharper.

In some organisations we see people complain about having a demanding customer, they are ‘hard work, difficult, never satisfied’. Give this person a talking to; reorientate them to understand this might be the customer that delivers this person’s future.

Structured Training helps organisations create account and engagement strategies for the most demanding customers. To find out more talk to us.

Role-plays – Love Them Or Loathe Them?

2010-10-07T14:07:00.001+01:00

Are role-plays still a valid part of the learning process?

The dreaded role-play! When most people find out that they’re required to do a role-play as part of a training course they groan ‘oh no, do we have to?’ especially when it’s in front of their peers. Most would willingly trade the role-play for a five thousand word essay which is arguably more arduous and less beneficial. Why does the thought of doing a role-play have this effect?

They’re artificial – not like real life, so you don’t behave the same way and don’t give a true account of yourself
The high probability that you will make a mistake under pressure and look foolish or incompetent in front of your colleagues
The embarrassment of being put ‘on the spot’ and not knowing how to respond or ‘freezing’ at the crucial moment
Knowing that you are going to get ‘feedback’ which will inevitably include some criticism or areas that ‘require improvement’

Having been on both sides of innumerable role-plays over the last 25 years – we know they can play a vital part in the learning process. We get surprising feedback ourselves from people who, afterwards say that the role-play was the highlight of the session and the section from which they learnt the most important lessons about themselves.

So how do we ensure that use of role-play has maximum benefit for the participant with minimum cringe factor?

Make them Realistic - do research on the background and context for the role-play; include appropriate technical details, style of language and genuine issues.

Make them Relevant - take examples of activities the participant will face in their job role – and get their input on the context e.g. Handling Complaints, Conducting Performance Reviews, Dealing With Objections, Making Presentations, Selection Interviews etc.

Make them Safe - talk about the methodology you are going to use, and that they can stop, rewind, and try again at any stage, it’s a chance to learn from their mistakes; after all, it’s better to make mistakes amongst your peers than in front of your customers.

Make them Structured - provide a framework with some kind of rationale or logic to the order of events and enough flexibility to adapt to the individual; and explain the criteria for the feedback and how it is designed to help.

Role-plays can be challenging, thought-provoking and fun ways to draw out and develop participants’ interpersonal skills – for further information on how to design and deliver successful role-plays contact us.

Course Of The Month - Winning Business By Telephone

2010-10-07T13:58:00.002+01:00

Sales teams are under pressure to deliver strong results in a patchy economy. At times like this every customer contact counts, and every opportunity needs to be capitalised upon. Internal sales teams, sales support teams and customer service teams can make a real difference to the sales effort.

With some additional skills, techniques and confidence internal teams can make a major contribution, uncovering new opportunities, arranging customer meetings and maximising customer spend as well as ensuring satisfaction and loyalty.

Structured Training’s course, Winning Business By Telephone, is a cost effective way to boost your sales, enhance team morale and improve retention. For a team of twelve the per head training rate falls well below £200 and with just one day away from the office your internal team can be delivering better results immediately.

Winning Business By Telephone

In-Company Course Overview

This course is also delivered as an open course. Click here for details.

This telephone selling skills course uses interactive tutorials and role plays to develop the self confidence, skills and belief required to proactively sell products or services over the telephone. It will develop an understanding of the sales process, how to deal with objections and then gain commitment to buy. Participants will leave the course having the confidence and skills required to deal with complaints and difficult situations.

Who Should Attend
People who need to develop their sales skills on the telephone, build better relationships with customers, and more effectively promote products or services by telephone. This course will also prove valuable to experienced salespeople who wish to improve their telephone selling skills. It is appropriate for people dealing with in-bound and out-bound telephone calls.

Course Objectives
After attending this sales training course, participants will have the ability to:

Transmit to the customer a feeling of interest and attentiveness
Be confident when dealing with price and delivery enquiries
Build rapport with customers, so the customers keep phoning back
Keep control of the conversation
Handle complaints and difficult situations professionally
Make and take effective sales calls
Handle objections and gain commitment to proceed
Structure a sales call for maximum results
Enhance the reputation of their organisation through the application of successful telephone techniques.

Course Programme

Essential Telephone Skills
Conveying enthusiasm and commitment
Using your voice as a business builder
Transmitting a 'can-do' attitude

Understanding What Motivates Customers To Buy
Viewing your product or service from the customers' perspective
Adapting your style to meet the customers' needs
Making the most of E-mail enquiries

Controlling An Inbound Call
Asking questions to understand your customer
Understanding what gets in the way of communication
Utilising complaints as an opportunity to build loyalty

Making An Outbound Call
Planning - preparing to succeed
Structuring the call to gain attention and meet your objectives
Making the most of switchboards, assistants and voicemail

Managing The Sale
Selling benefits - putting products and services into customers' language
Handling objections and obstacles professionally
Gaining customer commitment

Building New Business
Targeting new sales opportunities
Sourcing prospect information on the Internet
Making appointments for yourself and others

Staying Sharp On The Telephone
How to identify 'performance lag'
Keeping yourself motivated
Asking for and using feedback to improve your performance

To see how this sales training course can help you to proactively sell products or services over the telephone or to talk through your requirements, including tailoring this course to suit your exact needs, please contact us.

All In The Family

2010-10-07T13:56:00.000+01:00

The political pages are full of talk of sibling rivalry, inter-family conflict and the psychological damage that family members can do to each other in work situations. Ed winning the Labour Party leadership over his older brother David looked unlikely back in the spring, but it’s a reality now.

The big decision the brothers’ face now is whether David will stay on as a cabinet member and support his brother using his experience, influence and intellect on his behalf, or step back from the shadow cabinet to defuse any speculation about conflict and set about developing a new career of his own away from that particular limelight.

Thousands of miles away Kim Jong-il has just appointed his son Kim Jong-un as a general, a move that’s probably designed to signpost a transfer of power. There are other disappointed (and possibly embittered) sons, sisters and brothers-in-law in the background, but without a free press we won’t see hundreds of pictures of them and be invited to interpret their facial expressions.

When family members work together there’s plenty more going on psychologically than in ordinary working relationships. The emotions in play can be far more intense and the stakes are different.

One family member who maybe doesn’t work as hard as others is no big deal in a family who have different professions in different organisations, there may be some grumblings about a lazy kid sister but it has no major impact on the day to day lives of all the family members. If one sister is focused on amassing a fortune ready for an early retirement to a Florida villa, whilst another is busy creating a nice nest egg to help her children gain a good education and get on the housing ladder, and a brother is busy spending everything he earns (and a little more) to enjoy the life he has right now then there may be a few snide remarks at Christmas, but they’ll likely get along fine.

When those different objectives exist within a family business, and family members have varying visions of where that business is going and what the key objective is, then emotions tend to run high and the resultant conflict is just as likely to be destructive as positive.

Predaptive has worked with a wide range of family businesses over the last decade, helping them to be clear about the business goals and work more effectively together as a committed team as well as a functional family. If you’d like to learn more about how Predaptive could help your family business to succeed on its own terms then contact us.

What Is The Most Effective Learning Style – ‘One To One’ Or In Groups?

2010-10-07T13:52:00.001+01:00

Surely the answer to this is the same as the answer to any other complex issue – ‘it depends’. Historically we view learning from our experience of childhood education and classrooms of thirty or so children with varying abilities and backgrounds miraculously taking on-board literacy, numeracy, science, the arts and plenty more. This can be either incredibly stimulating or a complete nightmare for us as students in the preparation for our lives ahead in work and at play.

Most of us have had limited experience of one-to-one teaching; where we’ve been ‘singled’ out for attention or for ‘special’ requirements like learning a musical instrument. These can be very trying circumstances; intensive focus on very specific requirements with no-one else to share the attention and nowhere to hide!

Today, however, more people are looking at one-to-one coaching, for example, as a way to get specific skills honed in a style that is bespoke to our individual requirements. We all remember some words of wisdom we received from someone we looked up to as a mentor or role model that gave us that individual focus and helped at a crucial stage in our development.

There are more opportunities today to look at different learning methodologies and chose those that best suit our needs. Here are some of the key areas that should be considered when choosing between Group or One-to-One learning:

Specific or Generic
How widely spread is the skills and knowledge required? How similar is the application to other related work environments? How easily transferable are the techniques needed?

Tailored or Off-the-Peg
To what extent does the learning and material need to be adapted for its application? How bespoke does the ‘fit’ need to be for the desired effect? Is there a ready-made solution available?

Simple, Complex or Subtle
Even complex subjects can be learnt in groups but sometimes where the distinctions are more subtle than complicated, a one-to-one approach ensures better understanding.

Learning Styles
Some individuals thrive in group activities whilst others find it easier to take on information without distractions or the need to compete for attention.

Cost v Investment
What is the budget available? Does it include the costs of premises, equipment, travel and accommodation? How much time is ‘lost’? What is the ROI expected and what is the most effective way to achieve it?

For more guidance on tailoring your personal development plans speak to us.

What We’re Watching: The Wire

2010-10-07T13:50:00.000+01:00

Management consultants and leadership gurus often spend a lot of time looking for inspirational leaders and models of managerial success with which they can inspire people.

It’s become almost a cliché to draw examples from the military and sports. Those examples are often filled with products of private education and great universities, excluding individuals from more diverse backgrounds, or adding them in as ‘exceptions that prove the rule’.

The Wire offers up a variety of perspectives on leadership, management, vision, values and goals. None of them are particularly attractive, but the contrasts between them are instructive.

The show focuses largely on the drug trade in Baltimore. We’re introduced to the harsh realities of life in a criminal gang, with strong leadership, high risks and rewards, brutal performance management and a focus on delivering financial results. Yet even in this world we see conflicts around values and goals – Is market share as important as sustainable profitability? Is some competition healthy? Does co-operation with competitors create long term security of income? These conflicts tend to lead to murder rather than a board room spat, which does draw them into sharp focus.

More interesting challenges appear when the drug trade intersects with law enforcement, the school system, local politics and the media. The need to produce quick results and TV friendly statistics pulls against the need to actually make things better for the long term. Every Sales Director can relate to the struggle between working to produce solid, sustainable revenue, and having something good in the forecast for next quarter.

We don’t recommend that you adopt the leadership and management practices you’ll see in The Wire, but it is a great way to explore how different approaches work and the benefits and limitations of each.

Great leaders and ruthlessly effective management don’t always put their efforts into the greater good.

How To Hard Wire Improved Sales Performance Into Your Organisation

2010-09-16T13:59:00.002+01:00

Every business would like to improve its sales performance. That being the case, why do most sales organisations struggle to do anything more than just exhort their sales people to do better? The fundamental problem lies with a lack of rigour and understanding around the relationship of cause and effect.

What are the inputs that directly correlate to achieving the desired output? It’s not effective to say ‘we want more sales’, or ‘go out and close more orders’, or mandating sales people to make a minimum number of visits/phone calls etc. These kinds of actions make sales managers feel better because they are direct and action orientated, but have limited performance impact.
What about really changing your sales organisation to create a significant, sustainable and appropriate performance uplift?

To do that you need answers around five key, inter-related questions:

What are the key buying motives/decision points of our target customer group?
What are the compelling points of difference in our sales offer?
What are the sales Critical Success Factors?
How motivated are our salespeople to perform?
Do we have a high ownership sales culture?

When these five questions can be aligned around a set of compelling answers you will see sales performance improve. The sales organisation moves from being a passive reactor to events and circumstance and begins to drive its own performance agenda.

To find out more about how you can build your understanding of these five key themes SalesPathways is holding a short, free seminar. From it you will learn how Optimi5ed™ uses a simple, structured process for focusing on the levers of performance improvement.

Sales performance is not something that should be left to individuals to deliver or not, based on their personality and extrinsic motivations (monetary reward). It can be designed and managed. It can be developed and improved. Optimi5ed™ will show you how.

15 Ways To Identify A Mis-Managed Sales Organisation

2010-09-16T13:56:00.001+01:00

Keeping a mediocre sales person in post who does not have the capability to improve because it’s easier than firing them and finding a better replacement.
Seeing sales managers spending more time at head office than in the field with sales people and key customers.
Operating a bonus scheme that does not motivate sales people to perform at a higher level than they otherwise would.
Not having any sales targets in place well before the start of the next financial year.
Leaving product/application/technical training to chance, or ‘when we have time’.
Having no effective account management process in place.
Inaccurate sales forecasting, where gaming the system and surviving the process is more important than producing real and meaningful data.
Having an unfit for purpose CRM system.
Seeing one or two senior experienced, long serving salespeople set cultural and performance standards, with their managers not prepared to take them on.
Having only ‘winner takes all’ incentive schemes that create an inwards looking competitive perspective, rather than competing against individual targets.
Having a finance director who sees a prime function of their role to minimise the amount of money the salespeople earn.
Firing sales people for poor performance, but ignoring/rewarding poor behaviour.
Promoting the best sales people into management positions with no regard for first indentifying whether they have any managerial capability.
No understanding, or development, of sales best practice.
An over-managed under-led directive approach.

All the above have been identified by low scoring organisations completing our Optimi5ed™ sales evaluation questionnaire. If you would like to test your organisation for its sales effectiveness and learn how implement some practical, sales improvement ideas come to our free Optimi5ed™ seminar. Click here for more details or contact us.

How Companies Are Forming Up, Two Years After The Recession Began

2010-09-16T13:53:00.002+01:00

We thought this was an opportune time to look at the current market-place, two years after Lehman Brothers collapsed and we entered near economic meltdown.

The businesses that are still here have grouped around three different realities.

Group 1 – The Going Gangbusters Group
These companies (and there are more than you might think) are doing great business and making more profit than ever before. They have found a particular sweet spot, sometimes by circumstance sometimes by making some very clever decisions. In working with some of these businesses the reasons for their success are down to one or more of the following:

Competitors have either gone bust or exited the market, creating a demand bubble.
They are selling something that is distinctive and compelling and great value for money, which lots of consumers/businesses want to buy.
They have gone deep rather than wide, really specialising in a particular field, which competitors can’t easily replicate.
They are lucky to be selling into overseas markets that are in growth mode.
Their strong relationships with a small group of customers have strengthened during the recession and as those customer markets have picked up so their preferred suppliers have benefited.
They are unburdened with debt or/and have access to growth capital.
They have a visionary leadership team who have been prepared to call the market and make some brave decisions.

Group 2 - The Buried Talents Group
These companies are basically waiting. They are waiting for the market to come back so their customers can ‘get going’ again. Their profits are at best flat or at worst none existent. Instead of using their resources and intellectual capital, like the lazy servant from the parable, they have taken the ‘risk free’ option. Except this is where the analogy breaks down. Waiting decreases their competitive advantage. The business environment is dynamic; it changes, adapts, reforms and moves on. Going defensive for the first six months of the recession was probably OK, but given the occluded horizon, there are no clear signals of recovery, only businesses that either do something or have something (see above), and those that don’t.

Group 3 – The Deeply Conflicted Group
These companies are doing OK, not great, but OK. Things look fine, however when you get behind reception and into the Boardroom you find something different; a battle for the future direction of the company. Sometimes it’s between individuals; sometimes it’s going on privately in the mind of the CEO, his/her directors perhaps being part of the problem/challenge. It is an argument, constructive or otherwise, about risk, investment, diversifying, their offering, the strategic direction of the company. And because of the lack of clear market signals (see Group 2) it’s tempting to procrastinate, to postpone, to rationalise and to justify (to themselves) why now is not the right time.

Which group is your company a member of?

What Kind Of Leader Was Tony Blair?

2010-09-02T15:05:00.001+01:00

With Tony Blair’s book just published there has been renewed focus on what kind of leader he was. We thought it was timely to allow you to judge Blair as a leader against our 4SL™ model of leadership. Have a read through the overview of the four dimensions below and make your own judgement.

4SL™ examines 16 success input drivers grouped under the four headings of:

'Point of View', 'Drive', 'Integrity' and 'Empathy'

Point of View
Effective leaders know what they are trying to do and can contextualise the environment in which they are trying to do it. This gives others a compass bearing in deciding whether their leader is offering them a compelling sense of direction.

Drive
Effective leaders make things happen. They cause movement through their energy and focus in getting things done.

Integrity
Effective leaders are trusted. They behave consistently and are values driven. They have clear ‘lines in the sand’ which they will not cross. They are reliable in their support and clear about what they stand for.

Empathy
Effective leaders connect with people. They give people time and communicate in ways that others can relate to. They have a genuine interest in others views and are good listeners.

What do you think? How many out of ten would you give Tony Blair on each of the four criteria?

Often we find when looking at famous leaders they do well on one dimension but less well on others. Or they have three out of four but have a fundamental weakness on one dimension which really undermines their efficacy as a leader.

How would you compare Brown to Blair on the four dimensions?

Another conviction politician was Margaret Thatcher, how would she rate on against the four criteria and what about more pragmatic Prime Ministers like John Major or David Cameron?

If you are able to put your political/personal preferences to one side, the rating of them relative to each other is a really interesting pub or dinner table discussion.

If you would like to find out more about how 4SL™ and its 16 success drivers can be used to develop higher levels of effective leadership in your organisation please contact us.

How To Use The ‘Networking Compass’ For Successful Sales Activity Planning

2010-09-02T15:02:00.001+01:00

Which is most important for sales people today; is it What you know – or Who you know? Knowledge = Power has always been a critical maxim in the world of selling; but in which direction should sales people invest their efforts and energy towards more effective knowledge acquisition?

We use the ‘Networking Compass’ to ensure sales people build and maintain an appropriately balanced network to maximise the potentially insightful connections that need to be made for profitable business relationships:

Upwards and Downwards: some sales people find it much easier to build customer connections with ‘users’ and ‘technical’ people because they have a background in those sorts of roles themselves or only deal with those levels on a daily basis. As a consequence they neglect to build relationships with the decision makers; senior managers, purchasers/buyers – who may appear distant or intimidating – and then they wonder why they can’t get a decision made.

Forwards and Backwards: past contacts and historical relationships need just as much attention as newly-developed connections. Sometimes the new opportunities seem more exciting than the on-going ones which can get taken for granted. Focusing on future prospects and target customers is vital for sales activity but not at the cost of allowing old relationships to become stale and unproductive.

Outwards and Inwards: there are so many external network opportunities today both on-line (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook plus the specialist/technical groups and forums etc) and off-line (conferences, exhibitions, trade-fairs, professional/industry bodies etc) – that many sales people neglect their internal networking opportunities across their own organisation. This is where real service delivery happens. Building and maintaining the right connections within your own company; ensuring that internal customer (and supplier) relationships have been nurtured and developed with as much care and attention as is invested in external customer relationships. When was the last time you conducted an internal customer satisfaction survey – as compared with your external customers?

Improve your network equity and build more profitable connections with the ‘Networking Compass’ – for more information contact us.

Management Development Priorities

2010-09-02T14:58:00.001+01:00

Take a minute to consider how many of the following pain points relate to your management population:

Managers are promoted on their technical rather than managerial ability
Some managers become irrelevant with people working around rather than through them
Some are great people managers, some really deliver results, but few managers actually do both, consistently
The management team offers very little creativity to the organisation
Managers are great in the day to day but don’t seem capable of communicating and contributing to the overall vision.

Addressing these issues leads to greater success, helps you to retain and develop better people, ensures that poor performance is tackled promptly and does not become endemic, and increases overall motivation and contribution.

Your organisation needs a management population which will really support your business aspirations. Our solutions are based around a range of tried and proven interventions. To help you to make the most of your management team we are currently offering 20% off the following management courses:

Fundamentals of Management, 20-22 September 2010
Operational Sales Management, 11-13 October 2010
From Management To Leadership, 15-16 November 2010
High Performance Sales Management, 22-23 November 2010

For further information please contact us.

Is Didactic Sales Development Relevant In The 21st Century?

2010-08-26T16:05:00.004+01:00

Use Our 10-Point Checklist To Determine Your Sales Orientation

In our fast-changing age of diversity, technology and talent management, can a sales organisation continue with traditional didactic sales development “this is how you do it” style of training and gain any competitive advantage? As sales people increasingly aspire to be seen as business professionals, does the didactic approach have any relevance today?

Which side of the table is your sales organisation on?

In case you haven’t spotted the obvious; we believe that the traits described on the left-hand side of the table belong to the sort of organisation that favours the ‘didactic’ school of training and development for its sales people. The biggest problem with the didactic approach is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy – the more of it you do – the more of it you need to do.

The characteristics in the right, we believe, are exactly those which will enable sales organisations to position themselves for the challenges of the 21st Century and lead the way in defining what a successful sales team can look like in a rapidly-evolving, increasingly competitive world. Talk to us about how you can build more of these capabilities into your sales organisation.

How Transferable Are Sales Processes Across Culture Barriers?

2010-08-26T16:02:00.001+01:00

If you are part of a global or multi-national sales organisation, or simply work for a sales team that export around the world, you will have noticed that a sales process that works well in one culture may not be nearly as effective in a different culture. Why is it that different national cultures can have such a profound impact on which sales strategies are successful whilst others fall by the wayside?

In some work we have been doing recently with an international sales group, they are attempting to ‘import’ their highly successful sales methodology from overseas. There appeared, on the surface, to be some perfectly obvious reasons why this straight-forward, step-by-step sales process could easily be ‘lifted’ from the country in which it works so well and ‘installed’ in to the local sales effort. However, it soon became apparent that this wasn’t going to be as straight forward as was first assumed. There are a number of dimensions to culture which may get over-looked in the urgency of capturing a new market opportunity or keeping up with the competition.

From Hofstede’s seminal work on understanding and measuring cultural indicators it starts to become clearer why some dimensions – if ignored – can play a critical part in the success/failure of cross-cultural sales strategies.

Hofstede described four main indicators, later adding a fifth to provide a more comprehensive guide:

PDI – Power Distance Index: the degree of inequality generally accepted as the norm, e.g. Denmark and Sweden score low

IND – Individualism Index: the tendency or preference for acting alone or belonging to groups, e.g. USA, Britain and Australia score high

MAS – Masculinity Index: prevalence of such traits as status, assertiveness, competition rather than quality of life, nurturing, stabilising etc., e.g. Japan, Italy and Mexico score high

UAI – Uncertainty Avoidance Index: preference for structure and order over chaos, e.g. Greece, Portugal and France score high

LTO – Long-Term Orientation: the degree to which actions are driven by long-term goals rather than immediate gratification, e.g. China and Japan score high

By using these factors as starting points; firstly, we can see where there may be differences between the originating culture and the receiving culture, and secondly, we can do something pro-actively about tailoring our sales methodology to account for these differences. It is, after all, what makes us all so interesting in the first place!

For further information on how to tailor your sales process to fit your target culture contact us.

IQ, EQ or CQ – What Is The Best Predictor For Sales Success?

2010-08-26T15:58:00.001+01:00

Most of us have heard about the debate between IQ and EQ and their relative importance for successful sales leaders. Yes we know that strong leaders need the smarts to figure stuff out, but we don’t want leaders who can’t relate to the very people they’re aiming to inspire; hence the equal or some would say superior, importance of EQ (the ability to understand emotional factors and the roles they play in your self as well as others). However there is now a growing body of evidence that suggests a strong correlation between successful leaders and CQ (Creativity Quotient).

In the post-war years professor E Paul Torrance devised a test to examine and score creativity in school children. He suggested that creativity requires two key processes; divergent thinking – the ability to come up with random, previously un-connected ideas (what De Bono called lateral thinking aka ‘blue-sky’ or ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking) and secondly; convergent thinking – the skill of pulling together and combining the best ideas into solutions.

What is really fascinating is how incredibly well Torrance’s creativity index predicted those school children’s creative accomplishments as adults. Those who came up with more good ideas on Torrance’s tasks grew up to be entrepreneurs, inventors, authors, doctors, diplomats and software developers. Jonathan Plucker of Indiana University recently re-analysed Torrance’s data. The correlation to lifetime creative accomplishment was more than three times stronger for childhood creativity than childhood IQ. A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future.

Bizarrely many people still believe that creativity is a ‘gift’ that you’re born with and that it is usually associated with ‘creative types’; artists, musicians, writers, etc. Certainly, in formal education, creativity is more commonly associated with the arts than other areas of the curriculum.

We believe that you can learn to be more creative. Just like learning a foreign language or playing a new sport, you may not be the next winner of Wimbledon but you can significantly improve your game with the right coaching. There are some basic principles behind the creative process and with regular practice individuals and whole organisations can learn to be more creative:

Fact Finding – do the research and collect information/data, aim to know more about the background and to understand the context.

Problem Finding – explore the issues and difficulties; strive to fully understand the nature of the problems that arise.

Idea Finding – brainstorm as many apparently random ideas freely and without prejudice no matter how irrelevant or unconnected they may seem.

Solution Finding – combine previously unconnected ideas in original permutations looking for innovative syntheses.

By developing a structured approach to creative practice and systematically embedding creative exercises into your sales activities you can also reap the benefits of CQ. For more support in improving your sales organisation’s creativity contact us.

7 Core Organisational Development Capabilities

2010-08-05T16:28:00.001+01:00

How effective is your organisational capability? Below we list the current top 7 taken from our recent work with clients. Organisations and people that can add-value in these areas seem to make a real difference.

Can you change the behaviour of your people?
It starts and finishes here. A behavioural change will lead to different activities which will deliver better results.
Engaging people through giving them meaning and direction in their work
Employers can no longer guarantee job security. What they can guarantee is a place where people feel valued and their contribution can be shown to make a real difference.
Placing leadership at the centre of your management approach
Too many organisations are still over-managed and under-led. These turbulent business times require people at all levels of be able to motivate their teams and deliver effective change. Good management practice is still critical but it needs to become a servant to strategic leadership.
Improving the design and effectiveness of your people related processes
Today people are more demanding, more expensive and more complicated to employ and manage than ever before. Legal compliance is only part of it. All people processes (appraisals, induction, succession, performance management etc.) need to be audited for the value add they should bring. If they don’t make a difference, reinvent or scrap them.
Increasing and building new performance capabilities
The recession looks like being L shaped. OD needs to be help people transcend tough trading conditions and believe they can grow the business and their own performance. This isn’t a time for explaining (again) why the market is difficult, but for doing something about it.
Energising and changing your culture
Culture is expressed values. Its though values you can a change the culture. Indentify the behavioural indicators that make the values explicit and you will move the culture. Connect to point 1
Creating high ownership and accountability throughout the organisation
Our litmus test for whether teams are fully engaged depends on if they have management imposed activity targets. If somebody is only doing something because they are being told to (and wouldn’t do it otherwise), you find a low ownership culture. High performers own their activity, they set their own quality and quantity targets to achieve the outcome they require.

How did you score? If you would like to talk about Predaptive help organisations embed these OD capabilities please contact:

How Do You Approach People Development/Training In Your Organisation?

2010-08-05T16:24:00.002+01:00

It’s critical to get the right approach to how you develop your people. We have developed our own taxonomy for helping understand how mature an organisation’s Learning and Development approach really is.

One of the most common situations we find is how an organisation will promote the rhetoric of the right hand side but in reality have a mind-set more focused to the left.

To achieve the high impact people development of the Organisation Focused column requires a critical process to be followed.

Line management have to take ownership for, and be capable of, articulating the development gap for their people.

The required solution has to be validated and integrated with the organisations’ strategic imperatives.

The delivery phase meets the highest quality standards

Line management stay engaged with the process taking responsibility for making sure the new learning is embedded in the workplace and the success metrics are robustly pursued.

There is a clear learning loop applied where legacy practice is tested against new, current practice and emerging best practice is captured and codified.

Predaptive, in conjunction with its sister organisation Structured Training can design the most effective, high impact learning environments, including facilitating the transition your Learning and Development culture across to the right hand side of our model. For more information contact us.

Can You Predict Business Success?

2010-08-05T16:21:00.001+01:00

Why is Google the Number 1 search business?

Why is Amazon dominant in bookselling?

Why is Rolls Royce one of the world’s top two aero engine businesses?

Why is Apple now more valuable than Microsoft?

Superficially, these questions look easy to answer; Google because they wrote a great algorithm, Amazon because they did on-line books first, Rolls Royce because they adopted/refined world class design and manufacturing techniques and then applied them with discipline over many years, and finally Apple because they have imac, ipod, iphone and now ipad.

But it's much more complicated than that. These success criteria seem so obvious now, but why only with hindsight and not at the time?

You could have bought Google shares at $85 a share when they went public, they are now worth around $485 a share (they’ve been over $650). Easy money?

Remember all the snarking at Amazon about being the world’s best internet bet but never made (and for many never would) a profit? During the 2001 dotcom crash Amazon shares could be bought for $0.08c, today they are around $1.15 and $800m profits forecast this year.

How many people thought Rolls Royce would survive their near collapse in the 1970’s, only pulling through with Government assistance to become the powerhouse they are now?

And Apple; now worth more than Google, Dell and Nokia combined. Remember when Steve Jobs was absent, there were no new products and it looked like they were sliding into irrelevance?

For organisations to thrive over the long term they need a coherent and mobilising vision, a way of looking at the market-place that others haven’t seen, and the obsessive application and pursuit of their strategic goals.

Who are the companies today that might be the Apple’s etc of the future?

Will Ocado come to dominate home delivery shopping? Can HMV avoid becoming a sunset business and reinvent themselves as an entertainment portal? - their results this week look encouraging. Will Ford complete their escape act from possible oblivion? Again the signs look promising.

All businesses trying to shape their future, how does your business’s over the horizon position look?

Project Management – Making A Difference Or Getting In The Way?

2010-08-05T16:03:00.001+01:00

With the amount of change and restructuring happening currently; it seems to us that a large number of projects are being set up – to fail. Driven by the need to cut costs, work more efficiently or cope with increasingly more demanding workloads – well-intentioned projects are often not delivering the goods. From our recent work we have seen a number of reasons why this is happening: poor leadership, lack of commitment, technical problems, insufficient resources, to name but a few – so how can we make sure Project Management really delivers results?

In reality Project Management is as much an art as it is a science. There are some excellent key principles that must be applied to ensure the fundamental elements all work effectively. And then there’s the deep, genuine understanding of the Project Manager around the nature of change and the ability to lead others through the essentially messy process of getting from A to B that only comes with insight born of meaningful experience.

The Project Manager plays such a crucial role in the efficacy of projects it should go without saying that they have the prerequisite competences – the skills, knowledge and mind-set – that produce successful project outcomes.

What makes a great Project Manager?

Project Mangers must ensure there is real clarity around the key objectives of the Project in order to build commitment and engagement
They must be energetic and able to demonstrate enthusiasm to motivate stakeholders at all levels – consistently throughout the project
Project Managers need to resourceful and creative in generating solutions to problems and getting others to contribute as well
Diplomacy is vital as they are often dealing with stakeholders from diverse functions at different levels from operations right through to the C-suite, sometimes involving external stakeholders too
They have to be able to communicate as effectively upwards and side-ways as they do to their direct reports and colleagues, both technical and non-technical
Project Managers must be organised themselves and able to devise and follow plans whilst remaining flexible to respond to the inevitable curve-balls
Determination and the drive to keep up momentum when hurdles get in the way, without bull-dozing through everything regardless
And most importantly the desire (and ability) to learn – both from their mistakes as well as from their successes – and share this learning with others

To learn more about how you can develop these competences contact us.

Managing For Success

2010-08-05T16:02:00.000+01:00

Managers today face more complex challenges than at any time in the past. With downsizing and de-layering there’s no room for passengers and the pressure comes from all angles. There’s plenty of literature out there on how to be a great manager, and TV programmes give us all kinds of perspectives on what it takes to succeed in business, from May Queen of Shops through Dragon’s Den to The Apprentice people get some interesting insights into how businesses are run, how ideas are developed and how projects can go horribly wrong.

Good managers make great companies, translating the corporate objectives into meaningful messages that help people to understand what they need to contribute, managing performance and building motivated teams. That kind of uncommon good sense rarely makes it into popular or even business media and role models can be hard to come by.

Yet management training is often reserved for those who have years of management experience. Giving solid, practical management skills to first line managers and supervisors is perhaps the most robust investment an organisation can make in its future.

Structured Training’s Fundamentals of Management Open Course is designed around a core set of management competencies and is tried and tested, constantly updated to meet the needs of the modern manager.

Summer Reading Brought To You By Our Twitter Feed

2010-08-05T16:01:00.000+01:00

Below we’ve pulled together some Tweets of ours that have either made us think, opened our eyes/ears, or just made us smile. We hope you find them as enjoyable.

If you would like to follow us on twitter it’s dead easy to do, just click here.

Thought provoking lecture on one possible internet future

What kind of writer are you? Austin or Collins Proust or Archer

Provoking (for the West) piece by Andy Grove on how the separation of invention & production is affecting employment

Creativity is declining, fascinating Newsweek article explaining why, and what can be done

Every organisations' culture has a political dimension. See hear just how (damagingly?) political the Vatican's is

Uplifting story from Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO - really intelligent people take note

Great graphic that shows how Google works, simplicity is very complex

See London Underground trains in real time moving across London - a further glimpse of our technology future

BP oil spill coming to an office near you

Great evening listening. Music manipulation, everything swings!! - White Rabbit is brilliant

Students of CEO guru nonsense look no further. Ray Dalio Bridgewater Hedge fund legend has 200 principles. A taste here.

What About Starting Your Own Business? A Way Back To Employment Or To Escape A Job You Don’t Like

2010-07-22T14:28:00.000+01:00

After dreaming about winning the lottery the next most popular lifestyle dream is working for yourself. Just last week the Government minister, David Willets, suggested graduates should think about starting up their own business last week as an alternative to struggling in the current job market.

Often SalesPathways’ work involves working for clients who started their own business or through circumstance have ended up working for themselves. We’ve also seen a few people/businesses struggle and fail. Below we’ve put together a list of some of the key criteria that seem to make the difference between being a wage slave and being in charge of your own density:

Working for yourself doing the same job as you did as an employee is not the same thing. We see a lot of internal consultants and trainers who think they will just do the same role, but as a free-lancer. Not understanding EVERYTHING is different; the psychological contract, the success criteria, the value equation, the feedback mechanism, everything.
Your idea has to be different enough in an overcrowded market. It’s no good having a quite good idea, or something like something else. Your idea has to be better. It has to have something that meets either an unmet need/want, or activates an unarticulated need/want in the mind of your prospective customers. Key possible variables to consider are; price, location, functionality, quality, practicality, brand, service, & novelty.
A poor business idea won’t come good if you give it time. Indifferent offerings (think of your local high street) don’t improve when the market does; they just go bust at a slightly slower pace. Grants and subsidies are no substitute for a strong value proposition.
It’s all about cash not profit. Free (unspoken for) cash is what drives successful businesses. That unencumbered cash can be turned into profit, dividends, reinvestment, acquisitions or lifestyle. NEVER borrow money (after the initial start up phase) to fund running expenses or your own wages. More businesses/people fail not because they are unprofitable but because they run out of cash.
Technology can be your BIG idea or your downfall. Technology can deliver fantastic opportunities - Facebook, iphone, etc. Can you exploit these new technologies in some way? Equally, many business models are being threatened by the internet, make sure you test your (off-line) idea against an online alternative. Try to look at least 5 years out.
You could be the problem. Some people can’t work for themselves; they haven’t the discipline, the work ethic, the resilience, the right approach to risk, or the personal support. Make sure you develop enough self-awareness to understand YOU, before making an expensive mistake.
Pay attention to everything. Planning, attention to detail, checking and analysis should all be key activities in the pre and launch phases. If this isn’t your bag, find a partner or some hired resource you trust, who loves sweating the small stuff.
Create a good business plan. One that covers all the bases; finance, sales, marketing, operations, people and compliance.
Desire always beats ability. Nothing more to add here.

If you think you’ve got our checklist covered, go for it, you’ll have a great (and sometimes scary) time!

Can You Future Proof Your Business By Making The Right Strategic Decisions?

2010-07-22T14:11:00.001+01:00

In our work it’s fascinating to see where businesses have ended up and where they are thinking, or not thinking, of going. All businesses need to periodically reinvent themselves, to find a new direction; if they don’t, they wither and die.

Iron Mountain is a world leader in Data storage. You may remember the fantastic free publicity they received when Lehman Bros went bust and ex-employees were photographed carrying out their belongings in Iron Mountain boxes. This business grew out of a mushroom farm in 1920s East Coast America. Herman Knaust needed to expand his business so he bought a dilapidated iron ore mine to grow more mushrooms. By the 1950s this idea had run its course so used his ‘Iron Mountain’ to securely store public and private records. The rest is history.

Nokia began life as a 19th century paper and wood mill. It then moved into rubber and, through circumstance, got involved in early telecommunication in the 1960s. It finally made a strategic shift into becoming a pure telco business in the 1990s.

Some would argue Nokia is at another inflection point in its long history. Unless it calls the Smartphone market correctly it could become an also ran as it continues to lose market share and brand leadership to Apple, Samsung and other Far East competitors.

Today, many other organisations are at their own strategic inflection points. Do they carry on as before, trying to optimise further their existing business model? Or do they take a radical departure away from what got them here, to something that might get them to a viable, more profitable future?

What are the two business obstacles in making a strategic shift?

One is a people issue. A lack of vision, combined with being in denial is a fatal C-suite combination. Having two feet firmly in the past, means you are not moving forward. Unless someone has the courage to firstly challenge the current business orthodoxy, and then drive their point of view through to big decisions being taken, the business will continue to drift.

The other is an economic issue. There are two common financial symptoms of businesses that are at their strategic inflection point. The first is that they may be very profitable. Often a mature marketplace with a highly evolved operating model, with fully written down investment is highly cash generative, and the Board have got used to turning that cash into profits, bonuses and dividends. When the heretic makes the cry ‘We need to (expensively) change’ the answer comes back ‘Why? We’re doing great!’

The second is the death of a thousand cuts problem. The business keeps having bites taken out of them by (often) new, upstart competitors, none of them fatal, and no one competitor takes them head on, but slowly the business is drained of its future health. Short termism becomes the natural order, the occasional serendipitous win promoted as a ’turning point. ’

One of our favourite jokes is ‘When you come to a fork in the road, the best decision is always to take it’ .

SalesPathways run workshops for senior teams around how to firstly indentify if they are at a strategic inflection point and secondly, how to develop the organisational smarts to respond. For more information, contact us.

Two Views Of Facebook – Would You Be A Buyer Or Seller Based On What You Read Below?

2010-07-22T14:07:00.003+01:00

We all know about how Facebook is occupying a larger space in many peoples’ lives. If you were still unconvinced, have a look at the figures below:

What is really interesting is not the member growth but the intensity of use. People are unloading more, updating more, just being on Facebook a lot more. As the network has grown so has the value of being connected to it.

BUT - has Facebook peaked? Have a read of this article from Wired Magazine earlier this month. If Facebook has reached all the people who are interested in joining what they have got to do pretty quickly is find a way of monetising all those members, to find a way of commercially binding them in to becoming customers. If not, this fantastic rise could turn out to be just as a spectacular fall.

How Is Your Point Of View? - A Critical Requirement Of Today’s Manager

2010-07-22T14:05:00.000+01:00

One of the most revealing ways of indentifying someone who can influence beyond their level of authority and control (which is a simple, but effective definition of leadership) is to really listen for the person’s point of view. How often (and perceptively) do you hear them talk about their industry’s future, what the change dynamics facing their customers really are? How will their own role need to evolve to stay relevant? How will technology change their value chain? How will the new macro-economic environment evolve? Etc. etc.

Recently we’ve been working with an organisation that asked us to unpack the Point of View issue and turn it into something that their managers could develop for themselves. A word of caution, we found two issues that demonstrate an anti point of view, ways of behaving that masquerade as a point of view but in fact demonstrate the opposite:

Having strong opinions about what won’t happen, what won’t work and what people are mistakenly focusing on. This is saying rather than envisioning the future.
Having fixed views that don’t change. A Point of View is about passion and belief, but it’s not about dogmatism.

We found a strong correlation between having a coherent point of view and being someone others listened to as well. The person was influential, often beyond his or her own functional area and several levels higher up the hierarchy than their formal position warranted.

They were viewed as being interesting, ‘go to’ people who really know stuff, but equally they are not intimidated by not knowing stuff. Their learning curve constantly sits at a steep angle. This of course makes them interesting and valuable to clients as well. We found if these people were market facing their impact was significant. A point of view is not only good for the quality of conversation; it’s also very good for business.

The culmination of our work was the development of a point of view workshop that showed people the requirements of how to develop this (we believe) critical capability.

If you would like us to develop a point of view workshop for your managers/salespeople/potential leaders please contact Claudine McClean for an informal conversation

Seeing Into The Future - Five Business Strategy Questions People Will Pay Large Sums For Insight Into The Most Likely Outcome

2010-07-22T14:02:00.001+01:00

We’ve always lived in interesting times, but mid 2010, there are some fascinating questions exercising people with the brains the size of planets in working out the best strategic response. What do you think will happen?

Will putting up a pay wall around the Times newspapers work? Can generic news content, laced with a few star columnists, persuade people to pay up? Will a cross-subscription model using Sky and other parts of News Corp. be used to entice people to sign-up? Many industry watchers credibility depends on the outcome happening in the way they have predicated. Most think it will fail, but has Murdoch again had a visionary moment linked to his strong business sense?
Has the airline industry fractured into different operating models? Short haul= low cost, long haul=full service, or can a long haul, low cost operator work? Will we see a different split of airline offerings; leisure either only low cost economy or private jet luxury, and business full service with all the extras? Many airlines are playing with these offerings already and, with further consolidation happening, more experimentation will happen. How will things change with the Middle East airlines operating the largest hubs in the world (they already are the largest purchasers of new jets), and what will the increasing environmental considerations do to air travel and its already shaky economic model?
Are book, music and video stores finished? Are we seeing the last 10 years of the physical product, be it a book, CD or DVD? Can your local store transition into something new, which not only offers a purchasing point but can also offer a compelling customer experience connected to that purchase, which cannot be replicated on-line?
How will BP emerge from its Gulf catastrophe? Certainly weaker, but temporarily or more permanently? Can it survive? What will be the long-term impact on deep-water exploration? Does it change the peak oil calculation? How will UK pension funds be affected?
The demographic time bomb. We all know the economic challenges of this shift in the UK population, with an unaffordable pay-as-you-go national pension scheme; but what about the business opportunities? These retiring baby boomers have disposable income, are asset rich and very discerning consumers. What will they do with this economic (and political?) leverage.

These issues might not directly affect you, but if you had to pose the five biggest strategic issues for your own organisation, what would they be? How coherently could you frame the questions and how insightfully could you answer them?

Where Are The Cassandras In Your Organisation?

2010-07-22T14:00:00.000+01:00

If you thought Cassandra was a Greek myth long ago consigned to classical history with little to teach us about today you’d be wrong.

Simply told, Cassandra, because of her beauty, was granted the gift of prophecy by Apollo. But because she didn’t return his love he placed a curse on her so that no one would believe her predictions.

This combination of real insight and powerlessness is one of the most frustrating positions someone can be in.

Every organisations has their Cassandras, we find they fall into two types.

Reductive Cassandra
These Cassandras focus on explaining why the world will fail, why things don’t work and why new ideas are dangerous.

These people in influential positions can be very damaging. Their power of argument can be highly developed, the problem is they don’t put it to constructive use.
Passive people give up the fight of taking their arguments on so an atmosphere of negativity and helplessness takes hold.

Constructive Cassandra
These Cassandras foresight needs to be given an outlet. Some of what they say will be genuinely visionary, some will be wrong. Often the most common mistake is one of timing. They turn out to be correct but get the year or the speed wrong. Remember Apple’s 1990s Newton PDA, a visionary product without the technology to deliver it. iPad is the Newton realised.

These are exciting people to be around, they are full of ideas, some that can be heretical, challenging the orthodoxies of the day. We call this process of evaluating these ideas, risk calibration, allowing enough of the creative flow to turn into something worthwhile.

Organisations that find a way of giving the best of these ideas traction are the ones that control their futures.

Can you indentify your Cassandras?

Getting Behind Sales Results – How Data Interrogation Can Lead To Insight

2010-07-22T13:47:00.004+01:00

Did you see the Wimbledon mens final on Sunday? Raffa Nadal won in straight sets - 6-3, 7-5, 6-4. Imagine not seeing the game and just having the result, how insightful could you be about how he won?

For many sales managers, that is exactly the position they are in. They have the sales results or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), but don’t have any meaningful or accurate Critical Success Factor (CSF) data. Consequently their capacity to interpret the results is very limited.

Have a look at Nadal’s data sheet below:

Once you know he won the match, notice how uninteresting the KPI data becomes and how your interest is drawn to the CSF data. The next striking thing is how close the Service battle was, on many of the factors Nadal did worse than Berdych. Several of these CSFs don’t seem that critical when they are delivered to a minimum quality level.

Have a look at the last CSF, if you want to understand in an instant how Berdych lost, there it is. He didn’t win a single break point whilst Nadal won 67% of his opportunities.

Apart from that huge differential another, almost contradictory theme is how Nadal won through being consistently better around other variables. The number of winners hit - 2 more, first serves in - 10% better, first serves won - 1% better, second serves won - 6% better, unforced errors - 4 fewer, but it’s the compound effect of these small differentials that creates this winning performance.

Finally look at his aggression. Nadal came to the net almost 20% more frequently than Berdych, putting additional pressure on his opponent, taking the game to him, being more pro-active.

Imagine having an accurate data set like this, correlating all the CSFs of your sales process to the KPIs achieved, split by individual. It would give you a laser like focus on where both the quality and quantity of activity needs to improve. It would also show you where potential best practice exists for you to model and disseminate across the whole team.

Speed To Competence

2010-07-22T13:44:00.001+01:00

If you are recruiting you will need to think about inducting/onboarding your highly motivated, keen to learn, potential sales stars of the future. However, within three months your new recruits will have become institutionalised, demonstrating the standard distribution of performance - 20% doing really well, 20% doing really badly and 60% contributing to the existing average by being, well, average. What happened?

Odds are the induction didn’t align with the ‘advertised’ interview rhetoric or the reality people found when they joined their new front line colleagues. Typical induction processes do not engender fast delivery of the required performance - what we call 'Speed To Competence'. New sales people joining an organisation actually want the same thing as their leaders – to become as successful as possible as quickly as possible, and to be effective and happy in their work. The right induction process harnesses the new recruits’ high levels of motivation, their willingness to learn and their desire to impress, and then channels it through a high impact, experiential learning environment. This creates not only improved profitability in the short term, but also accelerates employee engagement and motivation over the longer term.

Key Questions:

How quickly do you expect new recruits to recoup their full recruitment and ongoing employment costs?
How quickly do you expect them to reach the average performance standards?
How long does it take them to be in the top 20% - doing really well?
How quickly do you expect new recruits to set new sales performance/productivity standards

What Does Structured Training’s Speed To Competence Deliver?

Integrate your organisation’s purpose and culture into the required working practices, creating a real seam of consistency from the board-room to the frontline.
Embed sales best practice from day one. The right things being done in the right way.
Establish a high ownership, high accountability norm. Salespeople doing what it takes, not just doing what they’re told.
Create a value-adding, pro-active, high-performing work tempo
Give people the confidence to challenge the status quo but always from the credible position of being a significant contributorIncrease engagement and motivation through clear expectations and commitment to common objectives
Equip sales managers and sales directors to be effective role-models and coaches, creating a sales culture as obsessed about Critical Success Factors (inputs) as Key Performance Indicators (outputs)

To find out how you can supercharge your induction process, please contact us.

Adding Value

2010-07-22T13:36:00.004+01:00

We’re seeing an increasing demand from sales leaders to develop their sales teams into value adding Key Account Managers. It’s a logical step, but for many salespeople it’s a big one which requires a better understanding of how customers buy and how their competitors sell as well as an increase in their account management skills.Given the market pressures and demands exerted on customers by:

Their direct and indirect competitors
Potential or new market entrants
Their channel partners or distributors
The ultimate customer or consumer

the Key Account Manager is, potentially at least, in a unique position to seize the opportunity to add value to the relationship with key customers at a time when competition has never been tougher. This is predicated on the ability of the Key Account Manager to understand the pressures specific to each customer and to qualify and quantify what each major customer means by “added value”.

Value Ladder

The potential relationship levels can be characterised as:

Achieving the position of at least preferred supplier status and then building a reputation which allows the customer to perceive suppliers as partners in the total business process is the ultimate purpose of Key Account Management.

To help you keep ahead of the competition and make sure you are making a real impact in developing long-term relationships with your clients why not attend our Key Account Management Open Course. If you attend on 26-27 July you’ll qualify for a 25% discount on the course fees, to claim your discount, simply quote ‘newsletter’ when booking.

For further information or to book a course please contact us.

What Does Success Look Like?

2010-06-23T12:17:00.002+01:00

We’re frequently asked if there are any recurring characteristics that act as a ‘lightning conductor’ to revealing a company’s likely success. Well, we’ve thought about it and come up with the following list. Note they apply to companies that have been successful over the long not short term, and are in no particular order:

An Effective Purpose Framework
They have a clear vision, articulated and demonstrable values and a set of strategic objectives that inform all tactical operating plans. Relatively high engagement levels around the purpose.

A Leadership Driven Sense Of Urgency
This is a high-energy, can do environment, with an impatience about the present and a hunger to make the future happen. Fools are not suffered gladly and achievement is widely recognised.

A Strong, Forthright, Value Adding Senior Management Team
The team is driven by the corporate values, not by dominant personalities. They are effective behavioural role models and vision champions.

A Compelling Value Proposition
Whatever is being sold has the potential for real growth over at least the mid-term. The offer stands out from the crowd.

A Strong Balance Sheet
A respecter of cash and the building of meaningful asset value; they pay the same attention to the BS as they do the P&L

A Profit Not Sales Focus
The old saw ‘profit is sanity turnover is vanity’ could have been written for these organisations.
Smart, Dedicated PeopleThe quality of the people is patent. Strong succession planning, people development and capability building are all core activities. Real strength in depth.

A Dynamic And Growing Customer Base
They are working with the right customers, ones that push them and are prepared to partner with them, finding new ways of working together and finding new solutions to intractable problems.

A Focus On Excellence
They are constantly seeking to improve through both incremental and transformational innovation. Also, very receptive to change.

How does your organisation measure up?

Rediscovering The SWOT Analysis

2010-06-23T12:08:00.005+01:00

One on the tools that every budding business management student thinks they are familiar with is the SWOT analysis. Below we take a fresh look at its potential and how it's misused.

Strengths - Weaknesses - Opportunities - Threats

Familiarity with SWOT has bred misuse. We often see it being used to simply capture obvious statements that are no use in driving a new strategy conversation or a new direction for the organisation. And if we were given £1 for every time we saw “Our people” in the Strengths box we would have enough to buy our every own iPad. Equally, we’ve never seen “Our people” in the Weaknesses box. These kind of trite statements waste everybody’s time.

First principle of a good SWOT is about data organisation. Strengths and Weaknesses should focus on Internal factors, Opportunities and Threats focused on External factors.

Second principle is about motivation. SWOT should never be done to make a team feel good about itself. An effective process should be provocative, stimulating, even controversial. The best ones contain real insight that makes for exciting/painful reading.

The next thing that makes a SWOT really come alive is how the data is used to drive decisions. We use a couple of additional boxes to help facilitate that process as shown below:

Used in this way the SWOT becomes much more dynamic. The External Environment is forced to interact with the Organisational Capabilities which produce a synthesis of Critical Issues and Promising Potential. It's these two dimensions, when brought together, that begin to form some interesting strategic/competitive ideas.

SalesPathways assist with strategic development. If you would like to find out more please contact us.

Be Careful, Your Sales Attitude Can Seriously Damage Your Prospects

2010-06-23T12:05:00.001+01:00

We all know about glass half empty, glass half full kind of people. By definition salespeople have to demonstrate half full approach, optimism being the fuel that drives sales reliance.

What we are finding mid 2010 is that for many salespeople remaining positive is becoming a real challenge. The economy is not recovering in any meaningful way and, for many new businesses, is still hard to come by with customers just as likely to procrastinate as to purchase.

This creates a difficulty for salespeople. All the reasons/excuses they gave for business being poor are long used up. Being behind target is the norm, the high watermark of 2007 figures being a distant memory. Many have not earned meaningful bonus for some time and don’t see much prospect in the near future either.

We are seeing increasing evidence of salespeople becoming resigned to this low performance, under achieving state. This is very dangerous because it creates a self-fulfilling prophesy. Underperformance leads to pessimism, which encourages down-grading personal expectations, which creates negativity, which affects behaviour, which reduces effectiveness, which sends the whole loop replaying again.

This was brought home in an organisation where a new recruit (and new to selling) had no memory of the good times, had never met customers rolling over to give themselves up. She had only known post 2007 trading conditions. She began in her sales role early in 2008, that year she came in the top 5 salespeople and this year she is currently number 1.

What’s going on? A rookie salesperson out performing her more experienced colleagues? Sure, her numbers are not beating 2007 levels, but at current growth rates, they will be by mid 2011. She has no mental baggage holding up her sales performance.

If you have a sales team struggling to believe they can ever replicate their previous performance, you need to act; this is not a problem that will be solved by a returning buoyant market-place.SalesPathways can help reinvigorate your sales team, in a meaningful, credible and lasting way. To have an informal discussion contact us.

How To Identify People With Low Ownership Issues

2010-06-11T11:30:00.001+01:00

Ownership is mind-set determined – see how many of the following you recognise:

Yes I agree with you , you’re right I need to change - soon
These numbers are not good enough, they will improve - soon
I’m going to sign up for an MBA, its time for me to improve my business education – when I get the time
I nearly told her/him what I really thought of them. I was that close to losing it.
Next month/quarter/year I will deliver a better performance
Factors beyond my control were to blame for missing the numbers (select from a long list – the wrong weather a favourite amongst some company chairmen)
It’s a personality clash, there’s nothing I can do
It's good in theory but won’t work in practice (then it’s a bad theory)
My boss is a nightmare
I don’t have the resources, or its evergreen predecessor
I don’t have the time
We can’t fire them, it's too difficult (not if done correctly)
Better ongoing mediocre performance, than a vacancy (this breeds mediocrity)
People need time to come to terms with changing their behaviour (no they don’t, people need time to change their attitudes not their behaviour)
The other department/person/division is to blame.
We are incompatible star signs (true – said a manager earning £60K plus a year)
Where can you get good people these days?
People these days are more disloyal
I have an addictive personality
I have a low metabolic rate

The issue with this list is not to test them for truth, they might be, that’s not the point. People with a high ownership mind-set seek to transcend issues not use them as excuses as to why something has not been achieved/done/actioned.

What’s good fun (or depressing if they work close to you) is, once you spot someone with a low ownership mind-set, how often these excuses crop up.

Predaptive help organisations create high ownership cultures, to find out more contact us.

How Do You Measure Up As A Team Manager?

2010-06-11T11:27:00.001+01:00

Over the last 6 months Predaptive have been working on a competency project that has indentified certain characteristics of the successful team manager. We have summarised those behavioural indicators into the following list:

They seek to add value to what the team are trying to achieve, rather than simply ‘manage’ them.
They balance the task-team-individual requirements as best they can.
They seek to work on connecting their personal goals with the organisational requirements.
They maintain the appropriate emotional distance between them and their team. Close, but not too close. Distant but not that distant.
They remember where their credibility should come from (contribution and expertise – not from position or hierarchical status).
They work to make their people smarter.
They constantly focus on increasing their motivation.
They try to make their day as productive, and their work environment as stimulating, as possible.
They make time for people, offering praise and encouragement.
They avoid the team becoming emotionally dependent on them and vice versa.
They seek to remain objective in all decision making.
They deal with the tough stuff quickly, decisively, fairly and consistently.
They hold themselves to the highest personal standards.
They work hard at championing the organisation’s vision and values. They see themselves as needing to demonstrate real role-model behaviour.
They are always confidential and discreet with information about their team. They don’t gossip about personal matters.
They focus on coaching and supporting rather than checking and policing.
They look to show they trust their people.
They offer praise and recognition where it's warranted.
They don’t seek to impose their personal views or work style on others. They allow people to be themselves.
They connect with people at the human level, not hiding behind titles or position.

Staying Power

2010-06-11T11:25:00.000+01:00

Sir Terry Leahy has announced he’s leaving Tesco after 14 years in charge. During that time the business has seen turnover rise by 310% and profit rise even more. Tesco has moved from being an also-ran in the UK supermarket field to the dominant player, overtaking Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer in profitability.

Tesco is unusual amongst its rivals in having long standing Chief Executives. 14 years gives a person time to see their vision turned into reality, passing through painful times of change as part of a strategy that shareholders, customers and employees know is likely to be given the opportunity to make it to fruition, making them more likely to stick with it.

It’s not just Leahy who has been given the chance to succeed. Despite being formed in 1919, Tesco has only ever had five CEO’s. One was Jack Cohen, the founder, the following two were his son-in-laws, followed by Lord MacLaurin. Lord MacLaurin was plain old Ian when he took over, his remarkable achievements at Tesco gave him the profile that led to a peerage. He claims his most important decision whilst at Tesco was appointing his successor, rather than turning Tesco into the UK’s largest retailer.

During the 14 years that Sir Terry Leahy has been with Tesco, Marks & Spencer have had five Chief Executives, the same number that Tesco has had in the last century. Marks & Spencer has not enjoyed the steady good fortunes of Tesco over that period.
Whilst it may be wise to replace a Chief Executive who isn’t deliv
ering the goods, or an Executive at any level who isn’t performing, it’s worth reflecting on whether giving people time to execute their vision and invest in selecting and mentoring a successor can produce better long term results for all stakeholders.

To talk through how you can develop a vision led strategy, or to discuss your talent management plan contact us.

What Kind Of Salesperson Works Most Effectively? Specialist Or Generalist? Hunter Or Farmer? Sales Animal Or Technician?

2010-05-20T12:44:00.002+01:00

These different perspectives often inform recruitment and selection issues. Below we offer our perspective on how these stereotypes have evolved.

Specialist or Generalist?
If you have territory focused salespeople selling a range of products/services you have a generalist salesforce. This type of selling is becoming increasingly difficult to deliver effectively. Customers want to speak to people who know stuff they don’t, who understand their world and their pain points. They want to engage with sales people who have insight into the current and emerging change drivers, not just listen to someone who focuses only on benefits and price/delivery negotiations.

Whether the specialist focuses on product/service line, market vertical or key customers, the principle is the same. They bring a level of expertise to the interaction the generalist cannot
match.

Hunter or Farmer?
This is an increasingly redundant stereotype. The only way hunters will still work is if:

a) it’s a one off sale where the customer requires no further support and there are no more downstream sales opportunities; or

b) there are lots of new customers to find who can replace the alienated ones left behind by the hunter.

Employing farmers implies customers ‘just’ need looking after. This ignores the huge opportunity of increasing wallet share through the dynamic process of account development.

It’s true that some salespeople don’t like to find new sales opportunities, whilst others prefer to only build business with existing customers. But in today’s more complex and demanding marketplace sales people who can network to find new customers plus who are business builders, will always outperform unilateral hunters/farmers.

Sales Animal Or Technician?
This one still has currency as an important decision. Can you take the non-sales experience of say a scientist and train them to sell? Or is it better to take the sales animal and intensively train them to be able to talk about a technical product? Firstly, look at the market place. Sometimes technical/professional qualifications are a critical credibility requirement. Next, look at the person concerned. Some scientists, nurses, teachers, accountants make suburb salespeople. Why? Because of their mind-set. We have found there are three critical mind-set components required.

Self image. They need to be comfortable in their own skin, transitioning into being perceived as a salesperson.
Inter-personal receptiveness. They have to enjoy other peoples’ company and be happy leading conversations.
Finally drive, they have to be self starters. Effective sales people do what it takes rather just than what they’re told.

If you would like to talk more about the composition of your sales team please contact us.

Book Review: Innocent Drinks – Smoothie’s Done With Style

2010-05-20T12:40:00.001+01:00

You know a company has got under (literally) the skin of its customers when they have a tattoo of the brand on their arm 'a la Harley Davidson'. Let me give a much more British version. Sitting in a coffee shop on the way to a client with a colleague, we get up to leave but not before she has completely read the label on the Smoothie bottle. I mean completely read the label, looking for the typical jokes and trademark irreverence. You will have guessed the company to be Innocent Drinks. This business autobiography tells their story in their typically quirky way.

If you don’t do cute, you won’t like some of the tone. The authors have made a good attempt to replicate their culture in the way the book is put together. The authorial voice is the Innocent culture. Particularly vivid is how the business was founded, being at a festival with some samples and asking anybody who would try one to throw the empty bottle in one of two bins labelled 'YES start a business', or 'NO keep the day job'.

There are strong chapters on their values development, people management and some original marketing ideas. They downplay their obvious professional training in high octane consulting with McKinsey and Bain and useful experience in marketing. It’s all very English, studied amateurism hiding a real flair for business and objective decision making.

Witness their recent decision (post this book) to sell a majority of their stake to Coca Cola, giving the US giant 58% of the equity being testament to their lack of sentimentality.

The best idea in the book isn’t their own (they are very good on giving others credit where it’s due) it comes from Michael Wolff the advertising legend. They recount his 4 rooms idea as follows:

The first ‘room’ is the ‘room of great work’. Exposure yourself to the best the world has to offer in ideas. Literally visit the art galleries of the world. Spend time in design museums. Read the magazines and reviews and experience the finest of every art form. Track down what is regarded the best of its kind; be it architecture, technology or the world’s greatest teapot. Revel in them. Be inspired by them. But don’t do your work in this ‘room’ as you will find yourself dominated by their greatness, creating a lesser version of what has come before.

Next, visit the ‘room of understanding’. Whatever industry you work in, make sure you understand how it works; the fundamental drivers of the way things are. If you are trying to come up with an idea for a new pair of trousers make sure you fully understand the process by which trousers are made – where the material comes from, how it is produced, how tailors cut the cloth, why they might choose a button over a zip. Gain a true understanding of how it all works but never do your thinking in this ‘room’ as you will feel too constrained by existing rules.

Third, visit the ‘room of precedent’, where you should study all that has gone before in the sector that you operate within. If you are writing an advert for a car company, look at all the ads for car companies that have ever been written. Do this to learn what has come before, what was successful and what was less so. But don’t do your work in this room as you will end up plagiarizing.

The ‘final’ room is where you should do the work. It is the ‘room of creativity’. It is dark and the only person in that room is you. You should go in that room naked and it is here where you should start to think of ideas.

This book is a perfect representation of their culture, just like that bottle we have to keep reading as well as drinking from.Predaptive can help with your Culture building or changing, contact us.

A Rave From The Grave – When Closing Techniques Were Almost An Art Form

2010-05-20T12:19:00.001+01:00

The kind of pressure selling styles that came out of post war America took some time to take hold in the UK, but when they did, closing techniques became a specialist subject in themselves, reaching a zenith in the 1980s.

The principle of closing will always be valid. After engaging with, even stimulating, the customers buying motivations it’s critical to bring the process to some sort of conclusion, otherwise the customers’ heightened awareness could be captured by a competitor. Trial closes and indentifying buying/interest signal s should always be part of a sales professional’s end of sale focus.

But what about those actual closing techniques? Below we give a quick tour of the 1980s finest, best to worst:

The Direct Close:
Just ask directly for the business, the worst response you can get is a no.

The Alternative Choice Close:
Offer two equally attractive (to you) choices, red or yellow, the decision is not whether to buy, but which version

The Assumptive Close:
Proceed as if the business is already won; ask for the necessary logistical next steps, order number, delivery address, detailed spec etc.

False Negative Close:
Reveal to the customer something that your product/service can’t do that you know the customer doesn’t want or need. This implies that what you offer does everything the customer does require.

The Benjamin Franklin Close:
Make a list of positives and negatives with the customer, making clear the plus side is much more heavily weighted. This is sometimes also called the Balance Sheet close for obvious reasons. You can also choose your famous person to taste – Winston Churchill used to be quite popular.

The Cautionary Tale Close:
This can be delivered either way round. An example of someone who didn’t buy from you and lived to regret it; or someone who did buy to their huge benefit, the caution being your prospective customer will miss the same opportunities.

The Fear Close:
A more extreme version of the previous one. In life insurance this was sometimes known as ‘Reverse the hearse up to the door and let them smell the lilies close’. Buy our insurance, you might die tomorrow.

The False Concession Close:
Give something away that doesn’t cost you anything, or you were going to give anyway, in return for the customers’ commitment.

The Lost Sale Or Hat Stand Close:
First seen in a 1930s sales manual. The sale having been ‘lost’, the salesman (in those days) would reach for his hat and make to leave. The customer begins to relax, the difficult situation now over as the losing salesperson leaves. However, the salesperson uses this as an opportunity to come back with a final attempt. The modern equivalent might be the shut the briefcase close.

Taking Over A New Senior Role – The First 100 Days

2010-05-20T12:12:00.002+01:00

When taking over a role that puts you in charge of a business it's critical you use the first 100 days wisely. Much of the success you have in the first 2-3 years in the role will be determined by how effectively you use these 100 days. It’s surprising how many people think this early period is one for reflection and review rather than for action and change. As Napoleon observed when appointing a new general, you can do nothing to them in the immediate days after they are appointed, they can do what they will, because to criticise them would make the appointment look a mistake. Senior managers/directors should use this time accordingly.

Below we’ve put together a checklist developed from our senior executive coaching work. Doing these things more or less in parallel fashion will use those 100 days to real purpose.

Engage With The People

Informally meet all staff you are responsible for face to face ASAP. This can be onerous and arduous if you cover a lot of territory but it needs to be done. Town hall style is fine if a lot of people are involved.
Communicate a high level ‘impressions’ based overview of what your leadership will mean and what people can expect to see from you in the first few months. Communicate a date 120 days after you have started where you will talk about what you have learned and what your first year plans are going to include. This will inject a sense of pace and purpose into your approach. Stick to the timetable.
Conduct a 1-2-1 interview with all direct reports. Get them to present their KPIs and plans for the relevant period.
Meet all second line reports 1-2-1. Informal discussion to get their views establishes another line of communication without undermining their bosses (your direct reports).
Hold a team building workshop with your direct reports team. Focus on developing/reviewing/inventing a Purpose Framework of Vision, Values and Strategic Goals.
Start to form a view around the shape and composition of your direct reports team.
Set up a regular meeting process with your boss. Drive the agenda, make it your own. Spend time getting to know them and what pushes their buttons.
Network like mad across the organisation and in key adjacencies.
Begin gathering your key team; you need people you can really trust and relay on. If you are going to bring in people from a previous organisation try to balance their appointments with some incumbent promotions.
Key early relationships if you are at MD/CEO level will need to be with your Chairman, FD/CFO and HRD.

Think About Your Personal Leadership Style

Decide what kind of leader you want (and don’t want) to be.
Correlate that to the immediate needs of the business. Does it require transformation, remedial action, a steady hand, shaking up???
Be prepared to make clear statements about your management/leadership style, what you won’t tolerate and what you really like to see in others. Clarity here will send out clear signals of intent and begin the important early process of expectation management.
If relevant, make sure people you have managed previously recognise that things need to change; old relationships cannot necessarily carry on as before.
Change things. Symbolic change can be hugely significant in setting out a new style, a new way of doing things. Never say "I’m not going to change things until I’ve had a good look at things". Do not begin with a strategic review, this creates a period of stasis and anxiety at the same time

Getting Your Hands On The Things That Matter

Get your arms around and understanding of the key data sets with the three requirements of
- Full disclosure
- Absolutely correct
- Available in a timely fashion
These data sets will be:
- Financial, including; cash, profit and loss and the balance sheet. Make sure you understand the balance sheet as well as the FD. Go through the overhead line by line to understand what the business spends its money on.
- Operational, including all key functional metrics especially those relating to customers, margins, input and output costs. Test the effectiveness of the Board/Management Report. Improve/change as required.
- Compliance, all issues to do with risk, regulation, health and safety, HR policies etc.
In these early weeks is more critical to understand problems/issues than to blame people for poor data. Openness is more important than quality (for now).
Planned decisions. Capture all decisions that are in the pipeline. Understand those that are legally binding, those that are committed, those that reversible.
Reputational Risk. Make sure all currently known issues are known to you. Be very clear with your DRs that for you, surprise (not bad news) is the worst sin of all, and will be very negatively received.

Engaging With Stakeholders

Map all key stakeholder groups.
Develop clear views around stakeholder risks, where power resides and think about where you need to quickly build relationship equity.
Develop engagement plans for individuals and groups.

Getting Your Strategic Point Of View Organised

Become the expert in understanding the current strategy and why it exists (or not) in the form it does.
Ramp your learning on understanding the market context, competitive pressures and major change drivers ASAP.
Get out and meet key customers, use it as an opportunity to evaluate the Sales Director.
Keep testing the organisation against the critical capability - Do we have the people, processes and proposition to GROW this business? Make this a standing agenda item.
If you need additional resource/focus to make this happen – do it.
Use the emerging Purpose Framework development to inform the major strategic themes.
To begin with remain as open and neutral as possible, opinions and decisions are a next stage.
Look for quick, small wins, improving the figures is a short cut to increasing your credibility, licence to operate. Do not become a ‘jam tomorrow’ leader.

Activate Real Performance Management

Understand all key performance drivers. Make sure accountabilities are clear and the reporting line from top to bottom is transparent and understood.
Validate current practice and improve where necessary around the right things being focused on by the right people in the right way at the right time
Review performance management system, develop as required (tactical). In the first year make a more strategic appraisal and to its effectiveness.
Focus on accountability, responsibility and ownership. Evaluate how expectations are set and met.
Review and reset consequences model (positive and negative).

Remember, you’re going back to the organisation after 120 days. This is as much to show what you have been doing as what you are going to do more/less/differently.

Predaptive work with CEOs or other Directors in an executive coaching capacity and on top team development. To find out more contact us.

The Job Interview

2010-05-20T11:58:00.001+01:00

If you’re reading this whilst out of work or you know someone (especially a young person) who is looking for work please pass it on. In our outplacement work we have found these to be significant drivers in peoples’ success rate when attending the job interview*.

Use These Phrases At The Appropriate Time

I am very aware of what your organisation does.
Make sure you can back this up. Talk compellingly about their products and services, who are their major customers, what might their pain points be, how are they using social networking. Demonstrate you have done proper homework. Going to their web site is compulsory, but try to see behind the content every other candidate will have done the same.

I am a hard worker and always try to be a positive influence.
Employers want people who will make an effort, not just to do the job but who make a difference to those around them. Make sure you cover being a team player. Don’t be somebody who just does what they’re told, be someone who does what it takes. Have evidence ready.

I like change.
You are implicitly saying you are flexible, but explicitly showing that you can adapt even help implement change. Have examples ready to talk about.

I have the experience/skills/mind-set you are looking for.
This shows you have read the advertisement/job profile/application form and explored what it is the employer requires. Depending on your own background and age emphasise accordingly, i.e. the younger you are focus more on skills and mind-set, the older focus on all three.

I understand what motivates me and (if relevant) how to effectively motivate others.
Can you make a difference to your own and to others performance? When talking on this subject the person interviewing you will be hooked on to what you say. Make sure it’s interesting.

I’m passionate about my learning and increasing my expertise.
This one is tricky if it isn’t true, because you can’t swot up in advance. You are going to have to show how you keep your learning curve as vertical as you can.

I will be successful in this job because.....
Try to prep this answer because you don’t want to be making this up from scratch. Don’t waffle, stay focused.

* Usual rules still apply about demonstrating professionalism etc.

Mercenaries Or Stakeholders? How Engaged Are Your Employees?

2010-05-20T11:54:00.001+01:00

Charles Handy rather famously suggested that nearly all organisations are made up to some extent of both mercenaries and stakeholders. If this sounds a little over-simplistic it still helps us to look at how this split affects employee engagement in organisations across the spectrum from global businesses to local family firms and from national public sector bodies to small not-for-profit organisations.

Many of our clients say they feel as though they have more mercenaries in their organisations than stakeholders and that seems to be a growing trend. Now they are trying to tackle this by improving their employee engagement for better performance/productivity all round.

First of all it helps to define what we mean by the terms ‘mercenary’ and ‘stakeholder’:

Mercenary: literally this is someone who’s in it for the money. For our purposes this is someone who is looking out for themselves and feels little or no loyalty for the organisation that employs them. They are motivated by personal things; reward, recognition, status, achievement, even glory – and if they don’t get it from their current employer they will up sticks and move without shedding a tear.

Stakeholder: this person is deeply attached to the organisation – their whole being is associated with the central core values of the organisation. They care passionately about its history and its future goals. They may grumble from time to time but will always go the extra mile, without being asked, in order to meet their shared goals and objectives. They are like a stick of rock and have the organisation’s values running all the way through them – they couldn’t conceive of working for anyone else.

Between these two extremes most people have some of the qualities from both of these sets. The thing with these ‘in-betweeners’ is that they are persuadable one way or the other.

So how do we ensure we have the right balance of mercenaries and stakeholders in our organisation? And more importantly how do we convert more of the right people to become stakeholders when and where we need them?

Attraction: it’s all about attraction. Most organisations go to a lot of trouble to attract the right people through their recruitment and selection process. And then once they’ve got them on board they then start managing them and stop attracting them. All organisations must strive to continually attract the right people no matter how long they’ve been on board.

Attraction works at three levels:

the role must be attractive to that individual
their manager must be someone they want to work with
the organisation must be one where they feel in-tune with the core values.

And if you do all this, you would probably spend less time managing people and more time taking the organisation where it’s aiming to go.

For more thoughts on attracting and keeping good people contact us.

How Are Your Negotiation Skills?

2010-05-20T11:52:00.000+01:00

As we write this newsletter a hung parliament looks to be the most likely outcome of the UK General Election. For a country unused to coalition government there will likely be a lot of negotiation going on in the background to ensure favoured policies get on to the agenda.

Meanwhile out in the workplace negotiation is a key part of the salesperson’s toolbox. Many people feel that they can sell well, they have confidence in the products and services they are selling, and they know they can demonstrate to customers that their solutions are better than their competitors. What they feel less confident in doing is defending the price of their offer.After years of low inflation, customers are more likely to expect price decreases rather than price increases, and discounts are increasingly common.

Managers also spend much of their time negotiating, whether they see this as a key element of their role or not. Whether it’s agreeing project timescales, planning work schedules, or even agreeing the holiday timetable, negotiations of differing sizes and different levels of importance take place in the workplace everyday.

Mastering the art of negotiation can give you a real edge, leading to more productive outcomes, whilst ensuring that your colleagues and customers feel that they are achieving great outcomes too.

We know that starting on the journey to better negotiations is tough, so we’re happy to offer you a 20% discount off our May Negotiation Skills course, you don’t even have to negotiate with us for it, just quote this newsletter and start being more effective this month. To book your place contact us.

Designing A Speed To Competence Process For New Sales People

2010-04-22T14:55:00.002+01:00

Recruiting effective new salespeople is a difficult, expensive, time consuming process. Many sales managers are so pleased they filled a post they don’t realise the real work still hasn’t been completed.

Even before the salary meter starts ticking, your new salesperson will have cost you money, they have to start earning quickly.

The onboarding process is critical to get right. A minimum of a 12 week programme should be designed with the single objective of accelerating as fast as possible the salesperson to the minimum level of required contribution.

Below we list the key components of a 12 week induction plan:

Cultural orientation. Critical to set the right expectations, the cultural norms that are excepted to be upheld and perhaps the ones that should be challenged.
Logistical support. Where everything is, how the organisation works, how to find things out.
Market context. How the market works, including the major customers and competitors. What are the major change drivers? Trends etc?
Your value proposition. This should be much more than features and benefits. What are your competitive differentiators? The relationship between value and cost? Your service bundle?
our market position? Pricing strategy? Negotiable variables?
Customer knowledge – you can never know, or have, enough background. History, motivations, stakeholders, pain points, financials, contracts etc.
Customer CRM, don’t scrimp on the time to really get them to understand how to use your system.
The transition from desk learning, to observation visiting, to joint visits, to going solo. This process needs to be fully integrated with the knowledge and awareness building of the previous 6 points.
Speed to competence needs to be validated. Your new salesperson’s new knowledge needs testing, role–plays observed, and potential scenarios explored.
Create a detailed timetable with weekly milestones.
The icing on the cake is when you discover the person you recruited is motivated enough to read around the subject and wants to lever in and test their own experience/ expertise.

If you’re lucky and you design a great onboarding process, your next sales person will break your existing speed to competence record and quickly become a major revenue generator.

We can help design your own speed to competence process, contact SalesPathways.

Why Is A Great Innovating Company, In Reality, More Of An Also Ran?

2010-04-22T14:53:00.001+01:00

If you had a 60 year history of producing electronics, had produced many segment defining products, some backed with proprietary technology you licensed to competitors and then, to protect your supply chain, you bought a film studio and a record company you would think you had a real chance of future proofing your business. Wrong.

The company is Sony and for all its assets, track record, great marketing, economies of scale and international reach it still keeps missing the technology zeitgeist, and perhaps that’s its issue, it doesn’t really get technology. To see its dominant share of the mobile music market destroyed in 5 years by a competitor with few of the capabilities previously described takes some doing. It’s not iPod that killed Walkman, but iTunes. Technology as distribution, not just as devices.

Don’t misunderstand the argument, Sony produce some great products; its Bravia (and before that Trinitron) TVs, cameras, phones, Playstations, Hi-fi, VCR’s, Vaio computers, the list goes on. But what it doesn’t win plaudits for is its propriety software, its user interfaces, the way its products can be networked etc. Its Playstation console is arguably better than Microsoft’s Xbox 360, with its built in Blue-ray player (again it invented it) and none of the Xbox's red ring of death problems, but it still hasn’t dominated. Why? Not innovative enough around supporting game design and not developing the on-line offering fast or effectively enough.

The CEO, Howard Stringer, is on a mission to make Sony “cool”. To do that he’s got to change the cultural mind-set, away from the slinky, sliver Sony products, to something that might not even be product focused at all. What about creating memorable, immersive user experiences? Or taking their hardware excellence and linking it with some really innovative software and showing how that (app style) might link into social networks.

Sony doesn’t need better products, they need a different kind of imagination.

SalesPathways help organisations with developing their value propositions. If you would like to talk about how you can improve your offerings please contact us.

Transportation Service Levels

2010-04-22T14:44:00.002+01:00

It seems appropriate this week to look at how travel organisations handle service and communication issues.

Putting The Customer First

Any organisation that ramps its prices this week to exploit demand needs to be called out. It is perfectly acceptable to stop discounting but not to double prices. There is already evidence of some hire car companies and hotels doing this.
Ones that put themselves in the customers shoes, what concerns are they going to have and can they be predicted? Compliments (again) go to First Direct Bank, all holders of their Directory product which includes travel insurance were sent an email assuring customers that the policy covers flight and accommodation related issues.
Airlines are going to have an interesting challenge as the restrictions lift, how well organised are their rebooking procedures?

Removing Unnecessary Complications

A common experience on Virgin trains is watching foreign passengers try to make sense of the ticketing policy. The train manager often takes 5 minutes over the pre-departure announcements explaining all the ticket restrictions and then has to tell someone that although they’ve bought a ticket they need to buy another (full price) one.

Communication

In all these examples the critical susses factor is communication. Many organisations work under the delusion that if they have nothing to communicate that’s what they should do, nothing.

The amount of communication should be in direct proportion to the level of anxiety the customer is suffering. With extremely stressed customers it's very difficult to over communicate; through making regular, timely updates expectations can be managed much more effectively.

One of the most difficult things to get right is the balance between procedure and initiative on the part of the front line person. Do they simply say they have no news and act as ignorant as the passengers or do they try to work out some form of coping strategy? Remember, what initiative is – appropriate disobedience.

If you want to improve your service levels we can help with both delivering service improvement and service training. For more information please contact SalesPathways.

Vision Building – What It Is And Isn’t

2010-04-14T17:00:00.002+01:00

From our work we’ve gleaned the following do and don’ts around Vision Building:

Don’t have a Vision and a Mission. We’ve never seen an organisation successfully communicate both of these and show how they can function interdependently. Also when you ask people to quote one they often quote the other. A good vision will do all you need it too.
No numbers or dates. Something that states £100m by 2015 is a goal not a vision.
Visions are aspirational and as much about the journey as the destination. They are for the long term, something that needs changing or can be achieved in 5 years is probably not long term enough.
Creating a future that a vision captures is where the real benefit is. There is nothing more motivating for someone than to have a future articulated to them that they would like to become part of.
Don’t confuse visions with marketing strap lines, clever word play or alliterative statements. Sure, you’ll want to distil it down to a short phrase, but start with the long version, otherwise it’s just a word-smithing exercise.
Where does a good vision come from? It comes from a passionate point of view of what someone or some team wants to create. Vision building is not a technical, tick the box exercise, it should come from the heart, a clear expression of a future state which is different from the current state.
If it’s done as in point 6 it becomes a statement of intent. It should be directional, broad enough not to be restrictive, specific enough to allow options to be discriminated for and against.
Finally, the most important point, vision building is a deep act of leadership, you're offering people an opportunity to take part in taking others (customers and employees) on an exciting journey together.

See Values and Goals for the other two components of an effective Purpose Framework.

Predaptive help organisations build and implement effective Purpose Frameworks; for more information please contact us.

Values – How They Underpin Everything An Organisation Does

2010-04-14T16:56:00.002+01:00

In building an effective Purpose Framework how you approach Values is critical to get right. Below we summarise the main points:

Culture is expressed values. Values are the basic building block of what it feels like to work in a particular organisation. If you want to change the culture, change the values.
A values driven organisation needs fewer rules, its values act as a touchstone for guiding peoples' actions and behaviours.
Values are not ‘common sense’, or ‘unnecessary because we all have values’. An organisation without clear values will not be able to offer any kind of ethical, contextual or behavioural framework. Whilst your personal values may be obvious to you they are not obvious to me. See MPs expenses for more context.
Distilling them down into five or six maximum is a good idea. Ten or more values is too many for people to carry round in their heads.
The whole focus should be on the behavioural expression of those values. You are not making a personal comment on an individual’s values, but on their visible behaviour - either positively or negative, as it relates to your values. The key here is to develop behavioural indicators.
You are not asking people to leave their personality at reception and become an organisational clone, indeed one of your values might speak to originality or creativity. An organisation does not have dominion over what people think or feel, but it can motivate people to behave in certain ways and proscribe behaviours it deems unhelpful or antipathetic to building its vision.
Values must always be viewed as a set. Never allow selective quoting, and never play ‘top trumps’ where one value is viewed as being superior to another.
A values-driven organisation feels inclusive, people are more positive about giving their discretionary effort, customers notice the difference.

See Vision and Goals for the other two components of an effective Purpose Framework.

Predaptive help organisations build and implement effective Purpose Frameworks; for more information please contact us.

Securing Your Future - Setting Strategic Goals That Deliver

2010-04-14T16:42:00.004+01:00

Given your organisation has its Vision, it now needs a set of Strategic goals that will drive its activities, priorities and decisions towards making that vision a reality. It’s in the Goals you find out how serious the organisation is about creating a future that is more than just a larger set of financial numbers than it's currently achieving.

Strategic Goals don’t normally number more than 10.
They will be clearly articulated, easily passing the ‘water cooler’ test of being understood by everybody.
Although simply stated, they will have significant detail underneath with a clear plan of how they will be achieved, with milestones and accountabilities clearly labelled. Strategy is essentially the mechanism for delivering the Strategic Goals.
Strategic Goals need to be masters (not servants) of, and integrated with, the current year’s business plans.
They should be more than just about financial growth. Profit is an output of doing something, so making more profit is a function of doing different things. The most effective sets may cover such things as:
- What it is you are selling?
- How you intend to engage differently with customers?
- Expansion, where, how, when?
- Solo or by making new partnership or alliances?
- Organic or acquisition?
- How you intend to use and develop your people capital?
- Technology, a disruptive focus or just a condition of play?
- Intellectual property development?
- Innovation?
- New markets and/or new segments?
- Challenging existing orthodoxies?
- New/emerging value chains?
- New costing models?
- New routes to market?
- Optimising or transforming – or both?
Leadership is critical to the process of developing effective and mobilising Strategic Goals. Without a point of view about the future, linked to the vision of what your organisation isto become, your Strategic Goals will not drive anything.
The best time frame is 4-7 years.

See Vision and Values for the other two components of an effective Purpose Framework.

Predaptive help organisations build and implement effective Purpose Frameworks; for more information please contact us.

Taking The Knocks – Sales And Handling Rejection

2010-04-01T10:50:00.002+01:00

There is no doubt that selling and sales management is tough work. In our experience almost half of new sales people give up within their first year and we believe this is mainly due to the high amount of rejections they receive when starting out, and their unrealistic expectations of success/fail rates.

It is always upsetting to see good, keen, able people come into sales roles only to find in their first few months that it takes a lot longer than they anticipated for their first successes to arrive and that it’s incredibly hard work getting there. Just as sports people have learned a great deal from the world of business in professionalising their activity; so do business people learn some vital lessons from the sports field.

In a broadsheet last week, Jonny Wilkinson commented on his performance in the recent Six Nations tournament under the heading ‘My Goal Is To Take The Knocks And Improve’. He went on to say how he expects to take the knocks during the games and to be such a target because of his skills and the threat he poses to the opposition. But he has to take the knocks from the media as well and anyone else who wants to have a go; that also goes with the territory.

There was something else he said that is potentially very powerful; “I just play the game to enjoy it, to try to help my team to win and to improve as a player and as a person” Of all the tips and techniques out there to help you take the knocks and handle rejection, these three elements are quite profound:

Enjoy what you do – find the thing that you enjoy most about what you do (your reason for doing it hopefully) and keep your focus on that, then taking the rejection is part of the action and not something to be avoided
Make your contribution count – look for ways where you can add to the overall success of your team, handling rejection as part of your role enables you to position yourself to add real value to your organisation – like Wilkinson looking for that drop-goal opportunity
Strive to continually improve – realise that it’s only through taking the knocks that you actually develop your skills and ability, this is where you really learn your craft; if you can pick your self up each time and ask yourself ‘ what have I learned that will help me next time’

Structured Training can help new sales people to discover their potential and to use their activity wisely to enhance their chances both of succeeding and of enjoying doing so. If you have a salesperson who is ready to improve we’re ready to help with 20% off the price of our Selling … The Essentials For Success course in May 2010.

For more information on improving sales performance contact us.

Spring Into Action

2010-04-01T10:50:00.001+01:00

Spring is a traditional time of renewal, both at home and at work. So you may have spent the weekend clearing up the house and joining the queue at the recycling centre, or decorating to freshen up a room, or tidying up the garden and planting for the summer. What are you doing to prepare for a brighter season at work? Clearing out old paperwork, filing all your old emails and drawing up fresh plans for the new financial year are all great jobs for this month.

Getting your mind and your skills honed for a more successful 2010/11 is just as important, so to help you make the most of your spring enthusiasm, Structured Training are offering 20% off all open courses for May 2010. To view the open courses calendar click here. Or to talk through your requirements call 01789 734300.

Viral Learning – A Future For Getting Ideas Across?

2010-04-01T10:46:00.002+01:00

Why do some ideas stick and others fall by the way-side?

E-learning has been a natural progression for training provision. Leading on from classroom sessions to distance learning, from one-to-one coaching to self-help manuals, the next step was to make learning available electronically either online or offline.

E-learning has had mixed results. Where it has been employed as part of a blended learning programme alongside other more practical and interactive methods – it works well. Also where the subject matter and the style of the individual’s learning preferences suit – it does a good job. But it’s not a perfect solution.

What of the future? What about the next generation of learners used to mixing up learning channels on the internet (Google and Wikipedia for starters) and sharing ideas with their peers via social networking sites (Facebook, Twitter, Blogger etc) before they even consider picking up a book?

Look at the success of viral marketing methods. Look what happened to the Christmas No.1 song in the UK this year – viral promotion at its most effective? Even Simon Cowell thought so.
What if organisations could harness some of this methodology to help spread best practice ideas throughout their work-force? What if there was a way of utilising the organisation’s intranet to facilitate a sort of cross between Facebook and Suggestions-box? Maybe it could be called Suggestbook or Yourview.com? If it were made open and accessible to all employees (even remotely) suggestions could be posted, tried, commented on, and even rated. Employers could even set up incentive schemes for the most highly rated ideas. Maybe financial rewards for the ideas that prove to make a significant commercial impact – who knows?

There’s (at least) two elements that need to be considered:

For ideas to really penetrate they need certain characteristics better explained in ‘Made to Stick’ by Dan and Chip Heath – it’s well worth the read. Successful ideas need to have certain qualities, including their ability to ‘replicate’, how they break down into ‘digital chunks’ that can be passed on with only small adaptations or modification without losing the key message.
For ideas to spread the environment needs to be fertile, and without wishing to stretch the ‘viral’ metaphor too far, ‘The Meme Machine’ by Susan Blackmore has an interesting take on Universal Darwinism for how ideas get transferred. For successful viral transmission sometimes all that is required is the mechanism to be set up, the right conditions to be fostered and finally, the removal of inhibitors!

What are your thoughts on Viral Learning? Get in touch and let us know.

Transitioning From Sales Manager To Sales Director - Why Many Find It So Hard

2010-03-23T16:56:00.001Z

In coaching sales managers a reoccurring development need that comes from their boss is ‘they need to be more strategic’. Below we list the six major issues we’ve found helpful in repositioning sales managers:

Many sales managers achieved the position because of their energy and industry. As managers they still run their teams by being into every facet, making sure everything happens and generally being a constant cheer leader for the performance of the team. This makes them very tactical in outlook. They need to learn to stand back a little more, be less of a ‘plate spinner’ more orchestra conductor.
They often remain the best sales person on the team. This is a dead end. The only way they are going to position themselves differently is by recruiting and developing people who are better than they are.
Many people who go into selling have a very practical, task focused approach to work. To make career progress they need to add (not replace) to that a more conceptual perspective. ‘How’ and ‘When’ are the sales managers watchwords, ‘What’ and ‘Why’ are the Sales Directors.
They need to learn about strategy. They need a bigger picture perspective, their world has been sales targets and budgets, it now needs to be more strategic, as much about tomorrow as today. This intimidates a lot of sales managers; thinking strategy is very theoretical with lots of models to learn. It isn’t. Fundamentally strategy is about a five step process; doing some analysis, making some choices, writing a plan that moves the business from a current to desired state, implementation, and finally reviewing and monitoring progress.
They need to manage up in a more sophisticated way. Rather than simply focusing on the numbers they need to focus on raising their profile in more senior circles. Boss management and internal networking need to move up their agenda.
They need to make themselves available for project work and development initiatives. Always being too busy to widen their role means they will be permanently labelled Manager.

Put simply they need to direct more and manage less. If you would like to talk about effective coaching for your sales managers, SalesPathways can help.

If You Like Simplicity – A One Page Sales Strategy

2010-03-23T16:54:00.001Z

Strategy can often become over complicated and the sales version contain too many complex second and third layer requirements.A different approach is to look at what you want your sales strategy to deliver. For a Business to Business sales organisation requiring to develop existing customers and find new ones, we have distilled what people need to do into three actions that, if done properly, will deliver everything a sales strategy should be about:

To constantly increase the number of high quality, profit yielding customer relationships.
To increase and extend lifetime customer value by constantly unlocking new opportunities with all active accounts.
To deliver enhanced customer experiences through revolutionising all interactions – in all (integrated) dimensions – at a constantly lower cost.

For some organisations there will be more focus on point 1, new customer acquisition, for others more focus on the second, increasing the amount of business done with existing customers, but all salespeople will in some way need plans for both of these vital sales activities.

The third area is more difficult simply because it involves other parts of your organisation. All the evidence shows that the way your whole organisation engages with the customer impacts on both your customers’ loyalty and their repeat purchase motivations. Sales people should be at the heart of understanding the levers that affect customer buying decisions and be able to effectively orchestrate their improvement.

Pre and post sales activities need to be brought into the sales persons’ sphere of influence. Too much sales people’s time is spent expediting their own sales, recovering difficult situations and apologising for other departments. By taking a more holistic view of the customer the sale function becomes much more sophisticated is its dealings with its own organisation.

By organising what people do around these three themes you will achieve real strategic clarity.

= deeper engagement with larger numbers of more profitable customers

What Is Really Going On When Designing Sales Incentive Schemes?

2010-03-23T16:52:00.000Z

You would think wanting to create something that was really going to motivate sales people to perform to higher levels than they would ordinarily do would be positive for everyone. And that’s where you would be wrong.

Below we have put together the five most common ulterior motives we have come across when the subject of sales incentive schemes is on Senior Managers’ agendas.

Depressing salespeoples earning capacity. By far this is the most significant (mostly) unspoken driver. We are quite happy for salespeople to earn some bonus/commission … but not too much. And watch out for a bumper bonus year, the next year’s scheme will be all about clawing back to a more ‘reasonable’ level.
‘As long as they don’t earn more than me’. It’s interesting how often a cap on sales earnings is closely related to a managers pay. We operate a simple maxim – any individual team member can earn more than their manager, but if every team member achieves more than their target none will earn more than their manager (who should be well rewarded for getting every team member above target).
Something that is just achievable. For many organisations ‘stretch’ means getting a lot more sales from the team with as little pay-out as possible.
Complexity that conceals management manipulation of the data.
First past the post systems that set members of the same team against each other, so rather than focusing on beating their targets, they are encouraged to focus on beating each other. Apart for the obvious inward perspective it also creates more losers than winners – not a good motivational move.

If you would like to design a world class sales incentive scheme we can help. Getting the principles right can have a profound impact of the effectiveness of any scheme you might deploy. For more information contact us.

It’s Time To Get Real With The People You Still Employ

2010-03-23T16:50:00.001Z

We are seeing an interesting people issue emerging as we move into a post-recession environment.

A strand of the workforce that survived the redundancy programmes but was only just competent in their roles. They were happy to keep their heads down and the employer having cut the overhead dug in for the reminder of 2009.

These businesses are now looking to grow their revenues as quickly as possible back to pre-credit crunch levels, which means having a look at the quality of the people who will make it happen, and they are faced with a stark truth. The quality of your business performance will never exceed the quality of the people responsible for its delivery. The only exception is if you are lucky enough to have a product or service that people want to buy in spite of the people they have to deal with.

Managers who can only rationalise and justify problems are no good to you when your marketplace is sluggish and/or volatile. You need people who can transcend their current environment and develop new conditions of business, moving from a reactive stance to a much more proactive one.

It isn’t the worse performing people which hold an organisation back; it’s having too many mediocre ones in key positions. And there is a further brake on this being sorted out as a function of normal market conditions. Any recovery is unlikely to drive high levels of new employment, slow improvement continues to create a very tight jobs market, so these very average managers are not going anywhere of their own volition. This can create a real sense of negative change inertia, the good people who hoped the leaner organisation would be more agile and innovative find it’s even more frustrating than before.

The challenge for HR is to move from downsizing to genuine building of bench strength. It’s the only way to grow the business ahead of a poor demand curve.

What People Do On Trains

2010-03-23T16:47:00.001Z

Train travel is instructive for observing the work habits of ones fellow passengers. We think it is a very under researched area of human behaviour deserving of more attention.

Computer Jockeys
Hunt and peck typing is still the most popular form of typing. It’s interesting to see a form of genuine equality, neither sex seeming to have lots of competent typists. Our unscientific research shows Word and Excel being the most common programmes (excluding email see next section) with PowerPoint a very poor third. It’s much more common to see people watching films, although interestingly more in the evenings than mornings, a treat after work perhaps?

Writers
Still a common activity. Note taking and list making the most prevalent forms.

Talking
Only to people you’re travelling with, otherwise a very weird thing to do.

Email
BlackBerrying (or version of) very popular. Often done with lots of frowning, either due to frustration or difficulty reading the screen.

Phoning
We think this is less common than it used to be. Very little on the morning commute unless train delayed, evening calls ‘I’m on the train’ still easy to overhear, but generally the serial phoners are a smaller hard core.

Reading/Annotating Work Stuff
Prep for meetings easy to spot. Evidence of lots of printing still going on. Like all reading sends a lot of people to sleep...

Staring Out The Window
Who knows if this is work related?

Non Work Activities

Sleeping
We think more common among younger travellers. Burning multiple ends of several candles perhaps? Snoring seems to be generally tolerated by fellow passengers

Newspaper Reading
If you work for a national newspaper you must weep every morning when you see the number of Metro readers.

Texting
It's in the non work section because so many people are smiling while they do it. People seem to enjoy text messaging.

Book Reading
Pleasingly still common.

Media Players
Noisy headphones the most annoying thing on trains, watching video becoming more common.

What is fascinating to speculate, is how much peoples’ industry on the train has anything to do with the quality of their productivity, and how they contract with themselves around the balance of work/non-work activities.

Managing In A Changing World

2010-03-23T16:45:00.000Z

We may now know when the budget is going to be, and from that it’s a short logic leap to know when the next general election is going to be, but even William Hill is reluctant to speculate too strongly on who the next UK Government will be. What we do seem to know for sure is that a new Government will bring new changes, and regardless of the ministers in charge it’s safe to say those changes are going to bring at least as many challenges as they will opportunities for the organisations we work in.

Planned change can work really well when organisations have time, resources and clear parameters to work within, and confident enthusiastic managers and leaders to help implement that change. Yet change isn’t always planned and sometimes it’s us that’s reacting to change created by others. The ability to withstand constant change, to remain resilient in the face of relentless change, and to have the confidence and capability to drive yet more change through successfully in change weary organisations will be a key management skill for the teens (the teenies?).

How well does your organisation handle planned and unplanned change? How well positioned are you to be flexible in the face of a changing marketplace? If you’d like some help with making your organisation flex-friendly, give us a call, we’ll be happy to help.

Be Careful – Your Management Style Reveals More Than You Might Think

2010-03-04T13:39:00.000Z

By really observing what a manager focuses on you can get a good insight into their management style. Rather than talk about the common autocrat democrat stuff we have indentified an interesting sub species - The Micro-Strategy Managers.

Mic-Strat obsesses about two things - micro managing and strategy. This is a very dangerous combination because it misses out the meat in the sandwich, operational delivery. Spending time on pursuing a huge acquisition whilst simultaneously choosing the colour of the office chairs is not a good combination.

Strategy is fine, growth is obviously a critical capability, but so is operational excellence and this is something Mic-Strat struggles to pay attention to. S/he has made a fundamental mistake. They have confused micro managing with attention to detail, they think they are synonymous – they’re not.

Attention to detail is all about making sure there is a coherent, joined-up plan that shows clearly how the big picture stuff gets converted into operational delivery. Having set up the process, attention to detail means building ownership throughout the organisation to pay attention to the small things that make the difference, literally the detail. When people (both front line and management) feel accountable for all the components of operation delivery, high standards become institiutally embedded.

Micro management is none of these things. Micro management is about getting involved in things that should be delegated down the line. Micro management disempowers people to take responsibility, if a CEO is choosing the table decorations for the Christmas party between meetings on a key merger and interviewing a new COO you can see the problem. Welcome to Mic-Strat’s world. Their waking nightmare is losing control; they feel that nobody can do the job as well as they can, that they can add value to every decision in every field. They think this approach comes across as passionate, leading from the front rather than in reality; their subordinates see them as desperate and insecure.

Change – Nothing Is Secure, Nothing Keeps

2010-03-04T13:36:00.003Z

We have been doing a lot of work on Change Management recently. The impact of the recession has been felt across both the private sector and public sector alike. The effects of restructuring and cost-saving policies are driving change across organisations large and small. And it’s not just the nature of change that people are struggling with but the unsettling feeling of one initiative after another; so that they hardly get to grips with one new change before another follows hot on its heels.

We tend to think that the rate of change today is faster than ever before and it certainly feels that way when we’re in the middle of the latest round of initiatives. It may be to do with the way we look back on the changes we’ve been through, but in our minds it always seems steadier in the past than it is right now. However, over two thousand years ago, ancient Greek philosophers commented on the pace of change even then, "What can we take on trust in this uncertain life? Happiness, greatness, pride - nothing is secure, nothing keeps" remarks Euripides in Hecuba.

There are some principles and techniques that can help with managing change whatever your circumstances. Here are some the key points we’ve found working closely with very different organisations dealing with large-scale change:

Change is messy by its nature - there are times when it’s difficult to see all the details, where they all fit or how they all join up. We have to step back and focus on taking the ‘helicopter view’ and not obsess over the finer points.

Change means being in-between - neither one thing nor the other, it is the stage where we haven’t quite let go of one way of working nor quite embraced the new way. We need to understand and appreciate how different people respond to change and provide the appropriate support.

Change is disorienting - some people like the feeling of dislocation, some hate it and others are simply sick of too much change. It is important here to provide some clear objectives, no matter how small, towards which people can direct their focus.

Change is challenging - there will always be obstacles and resistance to change; some we can expect and prepare for, others we have to take in our stride. It is crucial that once started, we keep going, keep up the momentum but be flexible in dealing with resistance and not bludgeon our way through.

Change is not and end in itself - change for change’s sake can be counter-productive, without a clear purpose or focus, change becomes a blind force that can do more harm than good. People need to know what is going to change, specifically, and how and why.

If you are going through significant Change now or it’s looming on your horizon then contact us.

Empowering Your Frontline

2010-03-04T13:35:00.000Z

As we head towards a new financial year, the success of frontline employees has never been more important. Customers want great service and the sales, customer service, warehouse, administration and accounts teams in your business need to be ready to deliver. Support your frontline sales people and the first line managers who make sure service and quality are delivered by training them in the skills they need most. We’re doing our bit, offering 25% off two of our most popular courses - Selling…The Essentials For Success 22-24 March and Fundamentals of Management 19-21 April. Do your bit – book now!

To book your place contact Claudine McClean on 01789 734300.

What Are The Conditions Required For Effective Sales Coaching To Happen?

2010-03-04T13:32:00.001Z

One of the most misunderstood and misapplied areas of sales practice is around sales coaching. In a recent conversation with a new client who had been struggling with this for some time, and wasted considerable money ‘training’ people in coaching, they asked if we could put together some material to make sure they don’t make the same mistakes again. They’ve given us permission to share an overview of some of the resulting work.

The prevailing culture has a huge impact on either enabling or inhibiting the development of coaching practice, because good coaching is a non hierarchical, colligate process, not something management ‘does’ to subordinates. Blame cultures are toxic to coaching. A good test for organisational coaching suggestibility is how sales best practice is viewed. Are the most successful salespeople involved in a learning process of what makes them good at what they do? More often they are left ‘to get on with selling’ while the ‘less good’ are sorted out with some ‘coaching’.

The next most significant factor is the role of sales managers - what is the source of their credibility? If it comes mainly from being previously successful as salespeople, or simply from their more senior position, they will struggle to coach. Also we found a direct correlation between the amount of time managers spent in the field with the likelihood of them being good coach material. Desk-bound managers who ran their teams from spreadsheets and through email had less to offer so consequently achieved little learning transfer.

Finally it was the coaching process itself. There are many coaching models, the simplest and most powerful is:

Performance – Feedback – Review – Repeat (differently)

Each of these phases has their own success criteria to work in an optimised way. The faster you can make these learning loops, and the more effective your learning distribution system,the faster you improve performance, both individually and organisationally.

We can help both to create a culture conducive to coaching and embed coaching capabilities into your sales organisation. To discuss further, please contact us.

The Effective Presentation Of Sales Data – A Grave Yard Of Well Intentioned Failure

2010-03-04T13:31:00.000Z

The ubiquity of spreadsheets has created a real problem with sales information. Given the old nostrum that managers don’t measure what’s important they measure what’s measurable, technology now allows easy measure of everything – we are drowning in data.

Sometimes you come across an article that is so sensible that you just want to share it with others. So without any apology we hand over the rest of this article space to this link. (and the links off this page are also worth checking out as well)

http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/

Final thought: Don’t focus on the data, focus on the insight you extract.

Notice Board Translations

2010-03-04T13:26:00.001Z

Spending lots of time in organisations offices you see many things pinned on notice boards, cubicle walls and dividing screens. Below are the most common ones (seen more than three times in different companies over the last 6 months).

You don’t have to be mad to work here… but it helps!
ABC Always Be Closing
Careful, wacky/zany sense of humour present
Don’t work harder, work smarter
Think outside the box
Careful with your work/life balance
Careful, you’re attitude is on show
You are what you eat!
What goes round comes round
The Customer is King

After you get past the banality, the most striking thing about them is how desperate they are. It’s a law that anyone with a zany sense of humour would never say so. Also notice three begin with Careful, the parental zeal to admonish is very strong. The lack of ambition/aspiration/originality is very also dispiriting.

But then we realised they are actually written in code. They are designed to send out much more meaningful, organisationally subversive messages.

We think we have worked out the translations below:

You don’t have to be mad to work here… but it helps! - A sense of humour is needed to put up with the awfulness of working here

ABC Always Be Closing - Our sales practices are dreadful and unprofessional

Careful, wacky/zany sense of humour present - Careful, boring people about

Don’t work harder, work smarter - Since the last round of redundancies, we have to do two jobs and take a pay cut

Think outside the box - We have no new ideas and not a clue how to innovate – help!

Careful with your work/life balance - We’re worried about the amount of self-medication people are employing to cope

Careful, you’re attitude is on show - We have lots of racist, homophobic nut cases working here

You are what you eat! - The staff canteen is a health risk

What goes round comes round - Revenge is a dish best eaten cold, be careful

The Customer is King - We are republicans and have a low opinion of royalty

Now these signs are fascinating. We look forward to discovering others and their real meanings.

Being In The Matrix – There Is No Spoon*

2010-03-04T13:16:00.004Z

Matrix structures are sometimes the only effective way of deploying a multi-dimensional strategy. The problem is they are beyond many organisations’ maturity to successfully execute. In fact some attempts have failed so badly it can be career limiting to even suggest ‘going matrix’ around some CEO’s.

However, for some organisations a matrix gives them the flexibility to achieve much more ambitious and sustainable strategies – with great results.

Below we offer a simple summary of the strengths and weaknesses of a matrix versus the most common structural designs.

Predaptive have successfully helped organisations implement a matrix structure, if you would like to find out more please contact us.

*No prizes for guessing the film quote – he is the One.

What The Toyota Recall Tells Us About An Organisation’s Mind Set?

2010-03-04T13:15:00.000Z

Toyota has a hard won reputation for being the best car company in the world and from 2008 they also become the biggest. This was achieved without making any significant acquisitions, all done from relentless, organic growth.

And then the mood music started to change. During the last 12 months there has been the odd warning from a couple of senior Toyota executives about being the biggest not automatically meaning you stay the best; about needing to avoid complacency, retain some humility. These siren voices now seem too little, too late.

Toyota’s long term success has now presented them with their biggest challenge. The cornerstone of their reputation was built on quality, which led to reliability, which led to repeat sales; a virtuous circle of business excellence. And with their hybrid technology they added a sexy ingredient to the mix; innovation.

This is now at risk. The recalls won’t destroy the company but they will force it to confront how it runs its business model. GM was the biggest car company for many decades, but with a much simpler supply chain, much less deployed technology (in production and in the vehicles) and a much longer product cycle. Toyota’s complexity may have got ahead of its capabilities, allowing systemic failure to develop.

And there are also early indications that it believed its own reputation. Customers complaining about the accelerator pedal or the braking system can’t be correct because the quality systems prevent these kinds of things from happening. Ergo, we’re right and they’re wrong. A classic symptom of an arrogant mind-set.

And their success also means they don’t just have millions of Toyota customers they have thousands of Toyota families – because when something works brilliantly, why not buy another one? And nobody won referrals like Toyota because satisfaction is contagious. But so is being let down, people will want to share just as much their sense of being duped. Toyota is like all the other companies, not special, but average.

How they respond it critical; not only do they need to over communicate they need to develop a new narrative, one that shows why these issues occurred and why similar problems can’t reoccur. They need to show tactical humility and a strategically different way of thinking about their business model. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Genesis Hubris Nemesis – Which Stage Are You At?

2010-03-04T13:12:00.001Z

In this article we thought we’d share with you an overview of a new way of looking at business maturity, taken from some very wise, old ideas. We have identified three key stages, each with its own distinctive attributes.

Genesis
This is the most important stage, not because it is responsible for beginning the journey (although that’s pretty significant), but because leaving it means you move into very dangerous territory.

A Genesis mind-set is entrepreneurial, creative and hungry to learn. It contains the spark that started things off and it’s the flame that powers your development. The challenge is to maintain the Genesis phase indefinitely. Andy Grove, ex boss and co-founder of Intel, talked very compellingly about remaining paranoid, not allowing complacency to settle in, and never believing your own publicity. Paranoia that your success could end at any moment is a very healthy fear to have. Maintaining a dynamic position in the Genesis phase is harder than it looks.

The problem is some people don’t find this challenge exciting, they find it debilitating, they want to move into a more comfortable phase, where Hubris awaits.

Hubris
Literally, pride before a fall. Hubris is very seductive lulling you into a false sense of security, making your success feel permanent and your competitive position secure. And for a while this remains true. You will be at your most successful just before your success declines. The rate of decline will have a lot to do with the amount of Hubris imbibed. You will be able to indentify organisations, business people, sports people, celebrities who are in the Hubris phase. It’s tantalising to watch because they are the least aware of the oncoming third phase, Nemesis.

Nemesis
Retribution follows Hubris, and for many the fall is very painful. This is when the unsustainability becomes clear, its obvious (now) things couldn’t last; the career stutters, even collapses, the organisation fails, all the chickens come home to roost.

As you will see this journey’s arc can apply to individuals and organisations. It applies to business people, sports people, politicians and entertainers.

The challenge is to firstly become conscious of the dangers and then to work hard to stay in the Genesis phase. It may be challenging, but it will certainly deliver a more future proofed outcome.

Predaptive specialise in helping organisations to effectively change, by developing deep Genesis capabilities that convert into real competitive advantage. To talk about your change issues please contact us.

Ten Ways Customer Service Development Is Misunderstood

2010-03-04T13:01:00.001Z

As many marketplaces increasingly commoditise, the significance of delivering excellent customer service increases. That being the case, why do so many organisations deliver poor service making the majority of customer service experiences at best unmemorable and at worst hopeless?

Below we list the most common mistakes organisation make in delivering excellent customer service:

They have no working definition of service, what it is and what it isn’t.
There is no service measurement, no success/failure criteria.
Having nobody on the Board responsible for service success/failure. If everybody is accountable, nobody is accountable.
Service should be hard-wired into performance management across the whole organisation.
Poor understanding of customer requirements. Often an offering is designed around what works for the selling organisation rather than what works for the customer, Bank opening hours being a classic example.
Too much focus on front line exhortation to ‘go the extra mile’. Delivering excellent service cannot be demanded. Delighting the customer comes from discretionary effort; people have to be motivated to want to serve customers brilliantly.
No service design imperative. Excellent service starts with processes, systems, structures and tools not with smile training. All customers would rather receive right first time service delivered to meet their needs from somebody miserable, than a happy smiling person emphasising with them over why there has been a service failure.
The basics done brilliantly are more important than unasked for extras delivered on top of an unachieved minimum.
A dynamic and challenging customer feedback system.
People in front line roles who don’t like people. This is only a fair criticism of them when points 1-9 have been successfully achieved.

Laying out the issues that surround effective service delivery are straightforward, an organisations’ appetite and ability to make it happen is something else.

EQUIP Yourself To Deal With Complaints

2010-03-04T12:58:00.000Z

Complaints – love them or loathe them? Irate customers or moaning minnies in your team? There will always be those people you just dread having to deal with. Whether they are justified or not, whether they are your customers or your staff - you still have to deal with them. Attitudes to complaints can reveal a great deal about certain individuals and organisations as a whole. How proactive are you in searching for and responding to complaints?

Whatever our view of complaints, there will always be those issues and concerns about which we are dissatisfied. People may grumble and moan about their grievances, but it is only when they actively complain that there is an opportunity to do something about it.

Here is a deceptively simple structure that can turn around a possibly confrontational situation. The important thing is to stick to the structure and do it well – not half-heartedly.

E - Explain clearly and concisely state what outcome you are aiming to achieve; in an assertive manner that shows genuine interest in finding a mutually beneficial result. You want your customer/staff member to go away happy, which does not necessarily mean giving them what they want.

Q - Question using open and probing questions to fully uncover their issues and concerns. Not just the problem, but how it affects them. The key here is to spend longer establishing the real underlying issues not just the easiest ones or the first things that comes up.

U - Understand show real empathy with their point of view, use ‘I appreciate’ and ‘I would feel/think that way too’. There is a difference between empathy and sympathy – make sure you know which is which and use it sincerely.

I - Influence their feelings/thinking by offering solutions and making suggestions that help them move nearer towards the desired outcome. Get them involved in identifying solutions and manage their expectations with thought and consideration.

P - Plan with their agreement what actions need to be taken, the timescales involved and who owns the actions. The action plan may not resolve the issue completely on this occasion but should show how improvement is to be achieved.

EQUIP is easy to remember and particularly effective way to handle complaints as long as you remember to ask the questions before suggesting the solution.

The Non Development Of Sales Professionalism Is Still With Us

2010-01-28T13:56:00.002Z

Why has selling changed so little over the last 20 years? When compared to other functions it still looks pretty similar to the 80s and in some organisations even further back than that, where as in Finance, Logistics, HR, Production etc you will see something very different.

The most striking thing about today’s’ selling is how amateur its approach still is. This is revealed in several significant ways:

The Sales Directors board report. Many still have no real robust forecasting model, a last minute ring round of sales managers who have been cajoling their sales teams for ‘the latest numbers’ is as good as it gets for many meetings. There is little programmed activity around pipeline analysis, scenario modelling or market tracking.
Improper use of CRM (Customer Relationship Management). Often it’s used simply as a recording mechanism to track what salespeople are doing rather than an integrated part of the value proposition.
The lack of effective performance management. With many sales organisations the ends still justify the means. If the salesperson delivers reasonable numbers – job done. Where is effective expectation management, a robust consequence model (covering good, bad and indifferent outcomes) and rich feedback mechanisms?
Target setting is still seen as a war of attrition between the sales person and the sales manager, with very little authentic dialogue. It’s very common to see management almost desperate to find commitment in their teams when in reality they are lucky if they have even achieved compliance. It’s still common to find salespeople with an emotional investment in proving to their management why their numbers are not going to be achieved rather than the opposite.
The lack of professionalism around sales recruiting and on-boarding. ‘I can pick ‘em, let’s give her/him a go’ is still a sentiment heard in sales functions. Little use of competencies, structured interview techniques, assessment centres or psychometric support.

We’re not suggesting all these faults exist in the same sales organisation, but in many at least one of these amateur approaches is still seen as the norm.

In this article in the newsletter we look at one underused and misunderstood area all on its own – the powerful learning and performance enhancing use of Best Practice.

What Is So Special About Selling?

2010-01-28T13:53:00.001Z

Very few people go into selling as a vocation, something they wanted to do from an early age. Yet when we spend any time with high performing salespeople one of the most striking things about them is how engaged they are, and how passionately they believe in what they doing. Selling is something that gets in the blood stream, something that when you realise you are good at it you can’t stop doing it. As the old saying would have it, ‘selling is the most fun you can have with your clothes on’.

This is intriguing, why does it have this affect on some people? We think we have found the answer.

...Selling is the only business discipline where innovation and performance are simultaneously created…

At face value that doesn’t seem to be a big deal, but we think it is. What happens in front of each customer is unique; no matter how disciplined the process, how grooved the technique or how seemingly repetitious the conversations, there are uncontrollable variables which create the potential for unplanned and original things to happen. A salesperson’s ability to be creative, to weave new approaches on the fly, into the way they manage this particular interaction requires flexible innovative thinking.

And whilst they are doing that their performance is being formed in real time. This call, this meeting, this customer review, will impact the targets they achieve, the standards they have set for themselves. Their performance is created as a function of their ability to manage each of these unique interactions; the ratios that track their productivity change as a result of every different customer connection they make each day. In other roles a bad day can be recovered or compensated for, work can be made up. In selling a bad day can have performance repercussions for many weeks, even months afterwards.

This we have found is a major reason why successful salespeople love what they do. They have the potential to redefine their role, to take it to a new level of performance every time they engage with a customer. And they can do that in their own way, finding a new approach, a new line of questioning, a better objection handling technique, or a new hot button to press.

How To Develop Sales Best Practice

2010-01-28T13:51:00.000Z

Best Practice used as a development tool is one of the most powerful ways to improve performance. In this article we give an overview that covers how to go about embedding its use into your sales organisation.

Management must understand its significance and define their terms. Our working definition of best practice is: The conscious understanding of what works, applied constantly in all that we do. WHAT WORKS drives Best Practice. There has to real belief that every part of the sales process can be modelled against an exemplar standard. Its this standard that is used as a benchmark to develop people against.
Next, is to make sure your sales culture will support its adoption. For Best Practice thinking to gain any kind of traction people have to own their personal performance. If management spend all their time trying to get salespeople to do what they otherwise wouldn’t do, (management imposed activity targets is the obvious symptom of low ownership) then the engagement of Best Practice will not happen.
A coaching rather than ‘sink or swim’ development process is required. Effective Best Practice development is highly iterative, needing a constant, candid, two-way dialogue between coach and coachee.
The effective collection, collation and dissemination of meaningful data. Without objectively underpinning the Best Practice standard with supporting, current data, the conversations are too vague and subjective.
Ownership of the standards must be with the field, not at the centre. HR or Sales management should never be in charge of the Best Practice ‘bible’. If they are, it quickly becomes a sterile, bureaucratic nightmare. We believe most sales organisation’s ‘selling’ can be captured in well under 20 separately indentified processes. Each of these should be owned by the person who operates to the Best Practice standard – they become the Best Practice owner. It is their responsibility to codify what they do (to a standard format) and then share it with others. When someone else performs that process (say an account review) better than the standard, the Best Practice gets reset and ownership passes to that salesperson.
Reward and recognition tools should be used to differentiate sales people who are owners of best practice from those who are not.
Managers facilitate the sharing of the Best Practice and vigorously coach to the standard.

We believe when Best Practice is used effectively its one of the most effective sales performance enhancing tools available.

10 Hopeless New Year Resolutions For Managers

2010-01-07T11:58:00.000Z

I’m sure you’ve attempted to make some New Year Resolutions, some you might not have even broken yet. Below we list some you will be wasting your time making. How do we know? – because each year we hear managers say these are the things they are going to do better at, but seem to find very hard to achieve:

Demonstrate more leadership and less micro management. If anything this seems to be getting worse not better. Few managers seem to be able to inject greater leadership into their working practices.
Consistently make a more value-added contribution. Stand out from the crowded mediocre manager space through your insight and original perspective, rather than simply stating the obvious, confusing quality with quantity or producing poorly thought through ideas.
Trust people more.
Communicate more effectively. This is always near the top of the complaint list when employees are surveyed. Why is this so difficult? Note to self: there is no necessary relationship between how many minutes (hours?) a day you spend emailing/blackberrying and how well you communicate to your people.
Spend more time with customers and less behind a desk.
Pay more attention to success inputs rather than just measurable outputs. Profits, sales, GP etc are all consequences of doing something. Focus more on the doing. This seems to defeat many managers.
Design more effective bonus schemes, ones that promote the right behaviours as well as performance.
Smile more, not when it suits you, but when it would make a real difference to the meeting or situation.
Increase your learning.
Work less hard. Perspective is everything, many managers fail in obtaining some. Modern business life makes it very difficult to calibrate work rate or hours expended.

If you can apply even half of the 10 you will stand out from the crowd.

New Year – New Direction For Your Training Plan

2010-01-07T11:53:00.002Z

Most organisations, whenever their financial year starts, use the New Year as a time to look at their Training Plan and see if it’s fit for the year ahead. After the traumatic events experienced in 2009 all organisations need to plan for and anticipate the challenges expected in 2010.

To ensure your Training Plan for 2010 is fit for purpose – it should take into account two seemingly contrasting demands; is it focused on the organisation’s Vision, Values and Goals – what we call the Purpose Framework? Whilst at the same time taking into account the diverse training needs of the individuals that make up that organisation?

Off-the-Shelf Training: most organisations can find some benefit from generic training courses; whether ‘soft’ skills or more technical skills. Where they have small demand but well-defined training needs, these types or courses can give individuals useful tools and techniques to help them develop the required skills and knowledge back in the workplace.

Standard Corporate Training: larger organisations often have their basic skills from Induction through to Management Development programmes standardised to fit the organisation’s culture and predominant learning style. Where this approach leaves gaps in the individual’s training needs the next style is often required as well.

Coaching & Mentoring: again most organisations benefit from delivering some one-to-one training sessions where they can utilise the knowledge and skills of experienced people to support trainees toward their individual training objectives. These can be highly impactful and tailored to suit different learning styles although they are less cost-effective as a result.

Bespoke Solution Training: in order to bring together real organisational focus with interventions that are tailored to suit the individuals’ training styles, courses should be crafted specifically to have maximum impact in a cost-effective approach that maximises the contribution to success.

All four of the above training quadrants have their pros and cons; some are more cost-effective than others but may only have limited impact on diverse employee populations. Other methods may produce more profound results but are more costly in terms of time, cash and resources.

For 2010 to be a real turning point for your organisation and position you for success in the decade ahead, your Training Plan needs to utilise and combine these four approaches in the most business-effective manner.

The Compelling Business Case

2010-01-07T11:48:00.003Z

With selling very much on the agenda for 2010, customers are increasingly looking to buy great value. When you’re up against stiff competition, making sure you’ve got a compelling business case for your offer can make the difference between making the sale and missing out. We’ve developed this in-house course to help your salespeople make the most of every selling opportunity.

This workshop has been developed for managers who have commercial responsibility and need a better grasp of the key business issues that must be addressed in a business case. It is a very practical course that will be immediately applicable in your business.

What You Will Learn

The key questions and areas you should be addressing
Analysing and utilising information within your reporting pack
Developing a business case that focuses on ‘fact based selling’
Linking your ‘story’ to key corporate strategies

Workshop Content

OPERATIONAL & CAPITAL INVESTMENT

The principles of investment appraisal
The key ROI methodologies used
Quantification of benefits (hard, soft & intangible)
Best, worst & likely cases – Sensitivity analysis
Case study

BUSINESS CASE STRUCTURE

The effective and high impact questions you need to ask to prepare your business case
Business case structures & templates
The key areas you must focus on: costs, margins & sales volumes
The consequences of not getting your business case approved
Translating business issues into business solutions

PRESENTATION IS KEY

Presentations that have focus & impact
Focusing on the requirements of your audience
Identifying & delivering key messages with clarity & consistency

DRAGONS DEN

The opportunity to present your business case to an audience of senior managers – and receive constructive feedback on whether it was compelling!

For further information on how this course could benefit your company, please contact Claudine McClean on 01789 734300.

The Difference Between Those In Sales Management Positions That Can Add Value And Those That Can’t

2009-12-17T10:37:00.005Z

This year has shown that in tough times some approaches are more effective than others, some sales leaders really do shown a navigable path through to improved performance, whilst other less able managers add no value at all through their visible anxiety and single dimensional approach.

We have captured the main difference in a table below:

What’s interesting is how many sales managers and directors, who behave in the left hand column, believe they are doing the right thing. They also tell us that morale is low, performance is flat and pressure from above unceasing. What they don’t see is any connection between behaving in the old fashioned, left hand style, and the way the team is (not) performing.

This blind spot can be so bad that when we talk about the right hand column and what the benefits are, the response is one of ‘we haven’t got time for any of that, we’ve just got to SELL!’

The value-adding approach delivers a sustainable management style, a more engaged sales team and a much greater chance of consistently improved performance.

Our sister company Structured Training Ltd runs two open sales management programmes that very effectively develop the above themes in more depth - High Performance Sales Management and Operational Sales Management.

To find out how SalesPathways can help transform your Sales Management practices or to find out more about either of the above courses, please contact us.

Tales From The Riverbank – Sales Version

2009-12-17T10:35:00.001Z

What we have learned from our travels in the UK this year:

When you have had your Starbucks type refuelling stop and are getting up to leave always look back at the table and chair you were sitting in. Often something will be left behind. This also works well in taxis.
In hotel rooms always check the room radio alarm isn’t set; some peoples’ idea of fun is to set it for a ridiculously early time before they vacate the room.
McDonalds free Wi-Fi is great – it works in the car parks as well.
The luggage racks on Virgin Pendalinos are very comfortable in sit in - don’t ask how this became to be known.
The toilets on these trains are very scary with their easy access doors. It’s not happened (yet), but the idea that the door, which is the whole wall, could slide open if you press the wrong button creates unnecessary frisson.
Flying with Flybe is not the most pleasant experience. Reliability very poor. Eight flights this year all delayed, or through poor service process, more stressful than they should be.
The reasons people give when they are late for meetings make Reggie Perrin’s excuses seem very boring.
Sat Nav does not compensate for people with no sense of geography. People have ended up in some very strange places.
City Inn and Village hotels are now giving Malmaison a run for their money in the mid market sector. Hotel Dun Vin very good. At the budget end, Premier Inn and Travel Lodge very variable. At the top end, The Grove at Watford consistently good.
The M1 carriageway widening around Nottingham creates the most boring 14 miles of driving, and often causes bad hold ups as well. Also, being sandwiched by three lorries all doing exactly 50mph in driving rain is not boring but it’s not much fun either.

Stop Press: The A46 M40 junction improvements are almost complete, the new flyover is now open, getting to our offices is now even easier!

Christmas-time Reading

2009-12-17T10:33:00.000Z

Some older books, some new ones; all are worth the price of a cheap meal out, much more sustaining, and all are non-fattening:

The Complete works of Malcolm Gladwell - his stuff makes you think, makes you smile and makes you think again. There are three books “The Tipping Point”, “Blink!” and “Outliers” plus a recently published book of essays “What The Dog Saw”. He has sometimes been criticised for stating the obvious and making a lot from a little, but his way of thinking and the examples he gives are refreshingly different from the norm.
Three books by Jim Collins. His seminal work “Built To Last”, the follow up “Good To Great” which contains his Level 5 leadership model and his latest book “How the Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In”. This book has recently been used by the new chairman of Toyota to warn his organisation that unless they change they will slowly die. This is currently the biggest car company in the world. Very provocative.
The business biography of the year is probably “The Snowball: Warren Buffet’s Business of Life”. This is the world’s most successful investor who lent Goldman Sachs several billion dollars at a preferred interest rate of 10% in the depths of the credit crunch and has just completed the purchase of a major US railroad company, in effect betting on the continued need to move vast amounts of finished goods and commodities around America in a reasonably environmentally sustainable way.
The guru of all management writing is Peter Drucker and he should be mandatory reading. A great intro can be found in “Essential Drucker (Classic Drucker Collection)” and his autobiography “Adventurers Of A Bystander” will give all the background to him you need.

All the books can be found at Amazon or through good book shops. Happy and thought provoking reading!

Values Driven Culture

2009-12-17T10:32:00.000Z

What do the MPs expenses row and the Banking Crisis have in common? A set of rules being followed without a framework of values to inform peoples’ behaviour.

It’s striking how similar the two issues were. People saying they’ve done nothing illegal, done nothing wrong, simply following the rules. What is scary about this is how little contrition has been shown. The MPs still feeling hard done by and the Bankers going back to their old ways, paying themselves the huge bonuses as soon as they can.

When you see values informing behaviour it stands out. Three weeks ago Wigan Athletic lost 9-1 to Tottenham. This was a pretty humiliating defeat. The players (not the manager) volunteered to pay all their travelling supporters costs for travelling to the game. They were under no obligation to do so, they didn’t hide behind rules, they simply did the right thing. The following weekend they won, showing huge resilience and team spirit. This bounce back is not unconnected to their values driven behaviour.

Anderson Consulting were the biggest audit firm in the world, they were destroyed by the Enron scandal because they took the money rather than be true to their historic values of probity and integrity.

Organisations without values need lots of rules. And people in that environment without the coalescing force of values then set out to game the system (see MPs again). You will see compliance not commitment to change, box ticking not real engagement around reporting, people doing the minimum (always inside the rules), but always reluctant to mobilise their discretionary effort.

With clearly communicated values, consistently demonstrated by management you create a purpose driven culture, informed by bought into standards that are non-negotiable. This creates something to work and live up to, and reduces the need for extensive and onerous rules. Never forget, for somebody who wants to remain disengaged there is never enough rules, they will always find a way round them.

Predaptive successfully works with organisations to develop values driven cultures. If you would like to talk more about helping your organisation to do the same, please contact us.

People Howlers

2009-12-17T10:26:00.002Z

Given the end of the year is looming we thought we would capture in one place the 10 worst examples of people management practices we have come across this year:

Using the economy as a reason to get rid of people rather than engaging with them around the real reason why they are not suitable.

Saying there is no bonus for people whilst giving out huge redundancy payments to people you haven’t the courage to performance manage.

When a VR programme is underway saying to some applicants you are too good to ‘let go’; the money is going to be used to sort out the people we want out. See previous point.

Interviewing potential recruits and not telling them they have been unsuccessful.

Managers who talk about vision and values and then do the opposite.

Treating induction as a one day tour of the office and issuing the log on password. It’s no surprise this organisation has a very high first year churn rate.

Not setting the annual bonus plans until the first quarter numbers are in.

Allowing a salary review date to slip, with no communication around why.

Using the difficult economy as a reason to underpay new recruits, or in one circumstance not pay them at all.

And latest news just in; cancelling the Christmas party for the wider population and senior managers going away for a secret dinner.

What we find interesting is managers often have a real blind spot around these issues. In the name of realpolitik they believe this way of operating gets the job done. The problem is with this approach is the affect it has on morale and job satisfaction. We have been to several Christmas parties recently where the recently redundant are positive and being as constructive as possible about their new situation and the people who are still working in the organisation are anxious and fearful about their employed position. This idea that you should be just be thankful you have job so put up with everything, including the way the organisation behaves, is the refuge of the deeply mediocre manager.

If you want cheering up after reading this watch our favourite clip of the year. It’s happy, clever, ridiculously addictive and cool to boot!

Proust Questionnaire

2009-12-17T10:25:00.001Z

With the holidays almost upon us, Christmas parties are in full swing and soon we’ll be looking forward to the year ahead. It’s a great time to explore the ‘Proust Questionnaire’. This structured set of questions have drawn revealing and insightful answers from people from the salons of fin de siècle France through to the celebrity revelations in Vanity Fair today.

You can try the questionnaire for yourself online, or for an interesting conversation starter with colleagues, try the print version. It could make an intriguing conversation booster for tamer Christmas parties, but remember, it’s not a competency based interviewing structure for recruitment.

What Have We Learnt During 2009 From Clients Dealing With The Recession?

2009-12-17T10:23:00.000Z

This year has, for most organisations, been one of the toughest on record. For some, still being in business in December 2009 is a significant achievement. We thought it would be interesting to try to consolidate the challenges, circumstances and learnings some of our clients have experienced this year and group them into a set of themes:

Organisations that got hold of two key financial levers very early on are coming out of the downturn stronger; (a) Quickly reducing their cost base to reflect income levels and (b) Nailing their cash management.
It was critical to get close to customers who were going to spend money in 2010. These were rarer but they were (are) in the market-place. Those that took a cold hard look at their pipeline and focused their energies accordingly did very well.
Kept key people on-side. When making redundancies the people who you keep are often ignored, they can suffer from survivor guilt, restlessness and low morale. Organisations that made efforts to demonstrate how much they valued this group have reaped the benefit of sustained engagement.
Visible leadership. Low morale is a function of poor management. In times of difficulty it's leaders that people are looking for. This means creating a realistic but positive mood, being more visible, increasing communications, being open about difficulties, keeping people informed about the businesses health, and perhaps most importantly, being a role model for the changes being asked of everybody.
Maintaining a strategy. Yes, tactical survival is all that matters when you’re really struggling, but the future still needs to be thought about. Management teams that kept part of their thinking directed on the medium term can now think about growth with a serviceable plan.
Not expecting the recovery to be demand led. Organisations that are waiting to see demand come back will improve their business levels in 2010 over 2009, but only in relatively small amounts. The organisations that are already doing better are ones where they are seeking to take share, take a more compelling offer to market, or in some other way shake up their market place. Double digit growth will only be delivered by pro-active organisations.

These six themes have reoccurred throughout 2009. How did you measure up?

Connecting Great Leaders To Daily Business Behaviours That Demonstrates A Leader Mind-set

2009-12-17T10:20:00.001Z

In a recent course on Leadership a wide range of inspirational leaders were suggested by participants. Ranging from the well-known ‘greats’; Sir Winston Churchill, Mother Teresa and Martin Luther King to the more controversial; Baroness Margaret Thatcher, Sir Richard Branson and Bill Gates. What do these inspiring figures have in common other than their ability to inspire others?

Which great leaders inspired you? Were they from the world of sport; Muhammed Ali, Pele, Stirling Moss? Or great explorers; Raleigh, Hillary, Shakleton? Or from the scientific world; Newton, Darwin, Einstein? What, if any, qualities or characteristics do all great leaders have in common?

Great leaders certainly inspire a lot of analysis and evaluation. There are numerous leadership theories around and shelves of books on the subject all trying to pin down those elusive qualities that make some individuals stand out from the rest. In reality, can these qualities be specified and, further more, can they be learnt by others?

These previously mentioned leaders are clearly very aspirational, larger than life characters. What about a more realistic view of what demonstrates leadership behaviour at the real world business level? When implementing leadership development work we always seek to understand why some people show greater leadership behaviour than others. We have found these exemplars have a particular approach to their work that is informed by a certain mind-set. We have distilled some of what these leadership focused people do into a 10 point checklist below, see how many you pro-actively do currently:

Keep a record of your accomplishments
Maintain an up-to-date CV, aligned to career goals
Have a credible walk away position from your current role/employer which you will action if you don’t believe you are achieving your career aims
Look to update your network and manage your contacts
Work to be the ‘obvious choice’ candidate for any new opportunities
Identify and coach your successor for greater future success
Work hard at getting along with people and having a reputation for being helpful, resourceful and supportive
Work at deepening your point of view about how your market sector and functional specialism are developing, and the likely changes they will be going through – you try to develop a personal vision
Take responsibility for your career and your current position
Work to further your professional training and development

The Data Checklist For Creating A High Performing Sales Organisation

2009-11-24T15:37:00.002Z

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:

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