Become a Social Pariah in one simple step

A good friend of mine found herself single and alone after a 9-year relationship when her “soul mate” cheated on her.

The concept of dating filled her with dread, as she had not been on the social scene for quite a few years. So she was shocked when she discovered the world of dating has changed dramatically in almost every way. She downloaded Tinder on her phone and spent multiple hours a day (literally) sifting through images of prospective partners… She struck up conversations with a small number and effectively stalked them on Facebook to find out if they were genuine or not and then arranged to meet the number one pick! All the while her friends from work and family made sure she was supported throughout the whole process. Six months later and they are looking at a life together and she is far happier than she had been a year’s before.

Contrast this with colleagues and associates I have in the IT industry looking for their next role and the story is cyclic, repetitive and more than a little disappointing.

Over the past 4 years I have had the opportunity to both contract and consult with some really interesting businesses, working not only in the UK but in the USA , EMEA and beyond and with this sort of role you meet lots of new people. The cream of the crop quickly make themselves known and those are the ones even after a few short days of interaction that you keep in touch with.

Almost three years ago one of these contacts was forced to take redundancy, they had a reasonable pay-out for years served etc. but these things rarely become life changing so with three months wages in the bank he started to look for a new position. I noticed the change on Linked in and reach out to offer support, his plan was fairly standard:

• Contact recruiters
• Trawl LinkedIn Job pages
• Reach out to colleagues and friends from the industry
• Draw up a list of ideal companies and track recruitment pages
• Re write the CV and make sure that references are set up and prepared to take all the very many calls!

I offered what little support I could in this instance, I happily checked the CV (iterations 1- 99!!), introduced him to people who I knew were recruiting, introduced him to my friendly recruiters, and wrote a reference in LinkedIn. Most importantly, I made a mental note to pick up the phone to him as often as I could not, just to update or to get an update, but also to support and ensure he knew he wasn’t alone. Three months down the line and no job had materialised …. We met for a coffee to discuss strategy and potential issues, to review his CV and to ensure that every I was dotted and T crossed.

What came out of the conversation shocked me more than that fact that an A-grade player had not been snapped up within a couple of weeks.

He had contacted a number of the head-hunters and recruiters in our space and they were all happy to add him onto their systems but none of them followed up past that point. The odd recruiter would try and fit his round peg into a square hole but none of them took the time to really engage of introduce him out to there own contacts and really market him. But far worse than the apathy from recruiters not a single other personal or professional contact had bothered to respond to emails , call him back after he left messages and certainly no one picked up the phone to him to offer support , no one had referenced him or forwarded potential positions nothing of any conceivable value had been offered.

A few weeks later after putting significant effort into the task we managed to find him the perfect role, two interviews and a couple of tests later and he was working for a Tier 1 vendor at VP level earning great money. So where did he go wrong and why so badly?

Well the short answer is he didn’t. I have seen this over and over again to the point of sickening regularity and constant disappointment. I have two friends at the moment who are senior level people, very good at what they do in different departments (so this is not just Sales) and they have very little, if any, support from people they have worked with for years previously. Calls get pushed to voicemail; recruiters rarely pick up and hardly ever call back. In the few instances where they get interviews, the roles are poorly qualified so they either choose not to progress or are not put forward and even then when feedback is gold dust, they rarely get any.

This madness has to stop.

We owe it to each other as professionals to take a little time to support those we have worked with or around who are in that transition phase.

Check on LinkedIn for those people struggling to find a job, as your network is different to everyone else’s.

Pick up the phone and offer support and words of advice, actually make the intro when you promise to do so. Make time to meet them for a coffee and introduce them to other people who might help. Validation from someone is worth far more to a recruiting manager than almost anything else.

Finally if you are a recruiter or a hiring manager, please give feedback honestly, in a timely manner and every time you interview someone. Not only is it good practice but it makes your business look professional to the outside world and your feedback will certainly help the person to close out the next role.

Too soon to go international?

I started out selling Widgets and Grommets early on in my IT career. Almost always the solutions were physical and, more often than not, the only real software was the management system, which sat in a datacentre run by the customer. ASIC’s were the cool new solution with speeds and feeds all the rage where software was embedded onto a chip in a factory and then plugged into a metal case and sold for many times it’s individual build cost, where all the investment had been paid for up front in creating this piece of silicon.

Way back then international business was a risky business with directly acquired costs and impacts that needed to be foreseen before the choice was taken to actually make the first move.

Now though, many aspects of selling and supporting internationally have changed. The only real constant has been translation but, even then, many companies successfully maintained English as the only support language and, for the most part, customers were happy to work with that.

In my last company we were based in Boston, USA and the first 10 or so clients were local, almost all within a 20-mile radius from the office. At C View Technologies, we were all based in the UK but our first client was headquartered in Japan and our second was headquartered in Moscow, and neither thought that strange or out-of-the-ordinary, and so this is just one example of how times have changed.

Hardware sales have always had the extra issue of logistics to contend with; shipping, returns, customs, and installation services all add to the cost of doing business further from your office.

On-premise or installed software has had the advantage for decades as it could be shipped on disk, CD or DVD.

Nowadays that exact same software can be downloaded and installed straight from the internet without that extra cost. Granted, it still needs to be supported and updated over time, but in many cases this can be done online rather than on premise. The only real barrier with this model then is language.

2 or 3 years ago, this paradigm shifted in a way few expected thanks to the introduction of off-premise offerings or ‘The Cloud’, mostly notably in the form of Software-as-a-Service (or Saas) offerings.

Cloud had been a buzzword in tech for nearly a decade and analysts, vendors and industry spectators have been waiting with baited breath to see how this development would manifest itself within the industry.

The beauty of Software-as-a-Service offerings lies in that they need never be installed or updated onsite and rarely need direct support. SaaS provides a stage, not only for small start-ups, but also for tiny businesses to sell their wares on a global scale.

In a similar way to the App store from Apple or Google Play, SaaS offerings are gaining ground attaching to platforms like Salesforce.com, Microsoft Azure and others besides. This allows businesses to evolve quickly with lower risk and, because contracts can be a fraction of the cost of an installed software or hardware solution, customers take a much lower financial and physical risk trying out new solutions.

My company, C View Technologies, is a prime example of this.

When we started, it was just me and my Co-Founder working out of my home office. Yet, after only 6 months, we had a raft of customers and not a single one of them was smaller than $1b business.

And guess what? None of them cared that we were early stage or that we were only two people.

The same applied to CVT when it came to global engagement with customers. CVT now engages with customers across 23 countries on 4 continents and we are able to offer the same level of service and the same high standard across all our clients, not least because we built a product from scratch that enabled multi-lingual support.

I strongly believe that “For a region to invest in a company, the company must first invest in the region”. This ability to invest in, and focus in on, a region is the only limit to how many areas you can work in or reach.

If you are looking to expand into regions outside your own the best advice I can offer is this:

Find a sponsor or confidant in that region that can help you escape the pitfalls and traps and partner with those organisations where a win/win comes from them supporting you where you are weak, and you supporting them with a product or service that they would struggle to create themselves.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to ask and I will answer them as soon as I can.

It's not WHO you know, it's HOW you do it!

When I first started to hire enterprise sales people for our North American sales team, the advice from recruiters and other Execs was very similar, “Hire lone wolves with an impressive rolodex”. Much of the time I took this advice and the lone wolves would start off at a significant pace often hitting target in the first quarter. At the same time I would be hiring inside sales people who would join and be trained and integrated into a strict program. While at Proofpoint I was introduced to one of the most process-driven people I have ever had the pleasure to work with. Jim would sheep dip any new inside sales starter and then sharpen and hone the skills they had to within an inch of their lives while also identifying where they needed help and support. I have used my version of this structure ever since and continue to be amazed that not every business does the same.

I found the problems would normally start at the end of the first year, when the rolodex that the lone wolves had brought to the business, and the personal contacts they dined out on, would begin to dry up. This did not happen every time, as the very best Enterprise sales person will always be growing contacts and connections, but still it struck me that I needed to rethink my strategy. Using Jim’s methods for managing and building the inside sales team would never run out of opportunities or new contacts to connect with, constantly filling the funnel and growing the pipeline daily.

In Direct Sales, the numbers don’t lie or at least rarely. However, the same cannot be said of Channels. Channel sales can seem like a numbers game but this is a critical mistake to make.

Anecdote time… Last year I was working with a mid tier IT vendor who sold 100% via channel partners. They had almost 4000 partners globally with 99% of their revenue coming from just 42 partners; that’s 1%!

The Head of Channel was asked: “How are you going to grow revenue in 2014?”

The answer? “Increase the number of contributing partners by doubling the partner base from 4,000 to 8,000.”

Imagine the time and cost it would take to find and contract with 4,000 new partners!

This is an extreme example of a dysfunctional channel model. However, with a minor amount of adaptation this could have been transformed faster and more efficiently while also increasing the chance of success 100 fold!

Most large vendors will need to apply a degree of standardisation to channel programs and individual partner relationships. The key to ensuring success and scalable success for that matter, is in the hiring of dedicated Channel sales staff. This is a difficult task as in my experience very few “lone wolf” Channel sales people are out there. You will find many relationship focused Channel managers who believe that the road to success is through infinite alcohol-fuelled weekends away and a constant supply of Pizza on the sales floor. This model perhaps works when you have a handful of partners but doesn’t scale, is difficult to model and certainly doesn’t help anyone to forecast.

There is a more functional model!

It involves having well-liked, well-respected Channel sales people who focus on a defined program, adhering to the rules without constantly trying to break them. These people will be able to manage 5 or even 10 times the number of partners, and often much more effectively, than the lone wolf.

When we review data around regularity of contact and communication, it is very clear which model is used across partners with a higher overall level of satisfaction.

Both the process-driven sales person and the lone wolves have their roles to play. Early stage companies looking for the “impossible win” are best served by the go-get-it attitude and historic relationships of the wolf. However, businesses looking to for a mature Go-to-Market model, a scalable solution with predictable results need an operationally sound plan and focused, structured, professional players to make it happen.

To be a successful sales organisation, you need to apply a degree of standardisation to channel programs and direct sales processes. If you can create a great partner program, and find and build solid talent you will then watch your effective partner numbers rise , your close ratio will build and your revenue will soar but only if you are supporting that with an equally effective direct sales model.

Why cash flow is king for businesses and how the government needs to step in to help.

I had a meeting with one of C-View Technologies board advisors on Friday afternoon, we try to catch up at least once a month over a coffee and a piece of cake. This meeting was no different from every other as we started by discussing the cash flow, this particular advisor is from a blue chip company and very financially / operationally focused but you can tell she is often perplexed by the regularity of cash flow hitting the conversation. For our business we are in many ways very lucky we have a subscription model with customers paying regularly every month in a fairly predictable manner, as a SaaS business our fixed costs have always been lower than you might expect and all the stake holders from day one have been in this for the long haul and not the quick win so we don’t drive Astons and can run lean and fast as required. The issue for CVT when it comes to Cash flow is our investment planning and the fact that very few clients pay on time or in any predictable way.

Many of our customers are globally recognised brands which is a double edged sword as often Finance has very little communication with the people we work with. The payments people have targets of their own and will tell you one thing and do the opposite. We have some customers that pay over 120 days late but the same clients might also pay us on time for a different invoice. This makes growth and investment predictions and planning almost impossible and that has an impact on hiring, our own payments, and purchase choices for third party providers the list goes on. The knock on of this is that the economy (For CVT the UK economy) loses out and to what end? Most importantly we are not alone as we communicate with an ecosystem of tens of companies all in the same or similar situations.

So what can be done?

My suggestion is simple with predictability comes stability which allows growth and that is in itself a reward for a government trying to grow out of a global recession. The plan has X steps:-

1. Legislate payment terms of 7 days. The EU mandates payment terms of no more than 60 days but why that long?
2. Provide standard terms and legal recourse. T&C’s are a mine field for the smaller business and few shop keepers or start-up founders etc. understand what the implications mean to them and certainly don’t often have the reserves to create new versions so end up copying terms from the web.
3. Provide a central form of recourse. Almost two years ago we had a significant client who walked away from a significant debt for us. We could have chased in court but the time it would have taken and the cost meant that we had few options. If the government could provide a fund to up front pay a proportion of the debt and then the infrastructure to hunt down the debt then most companies would not risk it in the first place but also small to medium businesses could afford to take bigger bets.
4. Speculating to accumulate. I spoke to a Web business MD in January about why he turned down a significant contract with a G500 account. His answer was the upfront investment combined with the payment term delays meant he couldn’t afford to take the deal. Worse still the business didn’t go elsewhere the opportunity died on the vine.
5. Investment would be more secure and easier to find. Many people lament about the lack of funding for small businesses either from banks or the government but actually with the way the economy is still moving this is a risky business to be in even now. Many more start-ups go bust than survive to grow and so interest rates need to be significant to sustain this model. But with a legislated payment plan a centrally managed investment fund backed by banks could actually be a very safe vehicle for the investor community. This also benefits the entrepreneur as they can clearly borrow what can and will be payable with the X factor of cash flow being at least significantly reduced in the medium term.

Obviously these concepts need to be thought through and expanded by smarter people than I but the basic concept of supporting companies to reduce the issues of cash flow born from success, as opposed to cash flow that kills a failing business that doesn’t have customers, has to be considered in this day and age.

The Validated Sale

New technologies and innovations are changing defined processes some directly and some indirectly. Sales process has always been in a constant state of flux, especially in the Information Technology arena where it isn’t always “the big that eat the small it is often the fast that eat the slow”. I believe that the direct sales model has been changed for ever to become a validated sale controlled by back door references and referrals rather than referencing, case studies and analyst relations.

The dotcom bubble seems like a distant memory, almost 15 years ago. For some people they never experienced the craziness as it was before they joined the industry. I have heard the stories of the time before that: carrying a bag and knocking on doors; selling printers or copiers and the like; needing to find phone boxes so they could call the office; losing the piece of paper with your meeting list on it and ruining a whole day! The cycle continues and the process changes as new solutions provide answers to problems you never previously had.

As the years moved forwards email became the contact method of choice. For organisations it meant reaching a larger audience faster, and, at least for me now, I would much rather someone email me than cold call because I have the choice of when I look at the new information, if indeed I look at it at all.

The problem is, there are a great many like me and indeed this way of selling has all just become noise. So Salespeople try to get above the back ground hum. At conventions or seminars you are thrown information supporting the promises that these potential suppliers purport with references from current clients corroborating these declarations.

In my days as a sales person I used incentives for my clients so they would give us a reference, even if that become a private one. Most companies would give deep discounts in the early days for a case study or white paper with a named brand and that would in turn help carve out vertical and horizontal markets for them. Prospects felt safe in the knowledge that another named customer was using the technology or solution before they were.

Once again though, times have changed and I think this new "Social Era" has more than a small part to play in this. When I was a field sales rep I was primarily focused on very large Enterprise customers, normally Global 500, ideally in the top 100. When swimming in that sort of ocean you meet some very powerful and wilful people who know they are not only protecting their own brand but also their necks on the way! They can be hard negotiators, savvy interrogators and they spot a weakness a mile off, all in all quite terrifying prospects. These same people use Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and many other platforms and they all at one point or another show the world how they feel by retweeting, liking etc. which would never have been an option even 7 or 8 years ago.

Most social media platforms allow you to like, fan, or support in some way statements, thoughts, feelings, brands, services and specific products and because many people now do this on a day to day basis on a variety of platforms accessible on a variety of devices, we get accustomed pre-programmed to that way of life; everything is referenced, multiple times. Once again, it is hard to hear anything in the noise.

So the time of the "Validated Sale" has arrived.

Validation is now "King of the Hill" and referencing is old hat. The difference is real and has dramatic impacts to the way we are starting to do business now and will certainly impact sales and marketing in the future.

A reference or case study is normally static, it will be in a PDF and it is signed off by legal multiple times. Sometimes that reference will take a call for you but other than knowing the name of the company, it is unlikely that they have any engagement with your prospect.

A validated sale requires a much higher level of involvement and collaboration from all parties. It normally begins with the validator introducing you to the prospect, this might be on email or via social media, a phone call or even face-to-face. As soon as this happens you are effectively in partnership with the introducer, without that positive influence the engagement would never have happened and it needs that to survive.

The positive aspects of this type of sale is that they tend to be much more honest on both sides, qualification can be reduced as you are communicating from a different starting point. Statements like "This is above my sign off", "This project would not be under my remit", "My boss is already talking too XYZ" all rise to the top quickly and can either help make a 'Go/No-Go' choice faster or can be combated sooner rather than later. Deals are more predictable, discounting can be minimised and value propositions are also clearer from the start.

Some negatives do exist and can be hard to work around. The biggest issue is scale and mass marketing as this is very much a one to one engagement especially to begin with. The channel is impacted and could lose some control over opportunities. Deal registration also becomes more complex but with a good PRM system in place and an effective Marketing automation solution which can track and nurture leads this impact should be minimal. Validated sales do translate well to social media platforms but not at the first port of call, empowering the validators with the right information, understanding and support is key for this to be successful.

The world of sales is evolving again and very few processes or strategies can be maintained for long without reviewing them and adapting to the latest trends, technologies and even some fads. Sales and the sales process is now adapting to the new stringent requirements that prospects and leads are enforcing on them. These frameworks are morphing day-to-day as technology and the industry moves forwards. The referenced sale had a lifecycle lasting 15-20 years, the validated sale will likely have a lifecycle of half of that.

Remember that your sales team now extends beyond your payroll your bonus may well depend on it.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Albert Einstein

At C-View Technologies we face a tough competitor in the form of a type of corporate insanity!

Let me explain and see if these symptoms sound familiar:

Some companies are so focused on the ‘today’ and ‘right now’ tactics that they are slowly and surely driving themselves into the hands of their more strategic competitors, and eventual obscurity, due to a lack of real-time strategic thinking.

We are a technology start-up, doing business in 36 countries across the globe and we see some interesting national flavours to the balance between tactical and strategic. As an example, we are a technology exporter to Japan and our customers there have a definite strategic and considered approach based on achieving long-term business goals. If something shows only short-term gain then they will not prioritise it. In many other regions we see a lot of panic around the ‘this-quarter-only’ approach to business, sometimes in total disregard for even midterm goal achievement. Germany is somewhere in the middle but definitely closer to Japan than the other places we work.

Even though the results are irrefutable, some companies are structured in such a way that they are unable to think and act strategically in a coordinated and real-time way. I am not complaining here as there are enough smart companies to keep us fully engaged but it is a shame to see so much opportunity and resource wasted due to structural issues that are easily fixable. It would be great to hear some views from people out there on both the causes and possible resolutions to this performance-blocking dilemma.

TWO TYPES OF "THINGS"

As an adult I have come to accept and adapt to the fact that I am rabidly dyslexic, but as a child it was a much harder limitation to accept and adjust to. When I started middle school the first day was the start of my living nightmare in the form of joined up handwriting! This will sound easy enough to the majority of people reading this post but to me it was, and still is an impossibility. To make matters worse an incentive was introduced…….

“When you have mastered joined up handwriting you may start to use a pen rather than a pencil”.

Most of my class were using pens by the end of the first term…. I began a torturous road which lasted almost two years before my teacher gave in and realised I was never going to manage to scribe whole words let alone sentences in a beautiful flowing script.

This was of course terrible for me at that time unlike now where children in a similar situation would just be offered a tablet or laptop with spell check and the problem almost goes away. Something that seemed important is now an irrelevance, ‘something’ that needed to be done well now doesn’t and in today’s fast moving business world I see this scenario repeating itself in much faster cycles. I consider there to be only two such categories as that described above!

The vast majority of activities are “things that just need to be done” where quality is not a prerogative the completion or the ability to move forwards is the important factor. The second are far more critical and fewer in general and they are “Things that need to be done well”.

In my business this differentiation is critical in two ways: firstly, as a small and fast-growing company, we don’t have endless cycles to get things done. We rarely get a second chance at anything and we need to come up with answers before the questions are even apparent, this is just the way it is. With so many activities, actions and pressures on our time we need to work out what to do and what not to do. Even the points we agree on doing need to be prioritised into either just get them finished and out of the way or focus on getting them finished to the best possible degree.

>The second reason this is important to us is that our software solution is based on the premise that we can not only identify where there are capability weaknesses within business processes and operations but also that we can identify which actions should be focused on, how much they will cost and the impact they will have on the revenues and profits. When one first engages with a new company most of us will search for that business out on the web, if they don’t have a website then alarm bells ring. But how many of us actually read through every page or count how many pages they have or looks at how often the news is updated, having a website is certainly an important requirement but, is it one of those tasks that just needs to be done or is it one that has to be done well? This is an extreme example, as quite obviously the better your website is the better the view the world has of the entity behind it and this scenario plays out in all other areas as well.

The answer is often defined by the situation rather than the other way around and boils down to the individual’s preference, ability, availability, external pressures etc.

However, making the right choice and knowing when to change that choice can often make the difference between success and failure in both life and in business. I spent many years of my life trying to improve my handwriting and spelling, I no longer worry about my handwriting prowess or the fact that some days I can’t spell my own name, not because my handwriting or spelling has improved (because they haven’t) but because we now communicate in emails not written letters so no one else even knows I have this weakness and this requirement has moved from needing to be done well into almost irrelevance.

Kissing Frogs

In business, you are often told that the hardest daily trial is not working out "What to do" but "What not to do".
The difficulty in this is that opportunities tend to arise either on their own or because of the work you put in. It happens every week, you get a call from someone asking to meet over a coffee or I get introduced to someone who isn’t the right person for me to do business with. It may seem easy to ignore these types of meetings, discard them into the "What not to do" pile, but in my experience, sometimes it is exactly these meetings you should be going to. In my experience, you shouldn’t be afraid to "kiss some frogs".

Hope is a not a strategy, therefore the key for this to be successful is not having any expectation that something will happen, but that it more than likely will not.

Some of my most valuable confidents, friends, partners and long term clients have originated from these first engagements. I used to get in trouble with my boss years ago for wasting “prime selling time” on pointless meetings but now I honestly believe that this has made my career and the companies I have worked for have all benefited from my approach. I don’t spend all day every day sipping lattes with strangers, talking about unimportant topics and lining the pockets of Starbucks investors but I equally don’t shy away from it! If I aim to help others with useful introductions and advice then more often than not so do they. We all know of a really well connected or networked person, who can pick up the phone and speak to people you could never dream off. These people often never have a bad word said about them and manage to positively influence everyone around them.

The simple truth is that they have worked very hard to get to that point and probably they too kissed some frogs on the way.

The world of “Sales” has many rules but only one law

Parts of our lives are considered a constant. You always have friends and family to support you, a job you always enjoy in a good location and a home you always like living in. Congratulations if the previous sentence applies wholly to you, but, for the most part, and for most of us, those things are far from static and are often changing.

Similarly, The Universe has many rules by which we all live but under certain conditions these rules can be bent or indeed, broken completely.

It is for this reason that the world around us has a much smaller number of Laws than rules. These Laws need to have a number of characteristics:

• They need to be Universal.
• The Law needs to be Absolute.
• It needs to be truly Stable.
• A Law must be Omnipotent!
• It must beSimple to describe.

Sales is a wide ranging term encompassing multiple roles, different activities, goals and objectives. This means that in Sales we have lots of advisory rules and frameworks. Grizzled, grey-haired sales people who have been through the mill often reel off these sayings or rhymes to describe perceived best practice:-
People buy from People. The only thing a sales person should not sell is their own integrity. "Listen" to the words your prospect isn’t saying. You’re born with two ears and one mouth and they should be used in that ratio.
This list of sales rules is extensive and grows every day as we all learn more about our ever changing markets. However, like the Universe, Sales has Laws. One Law in fact. A single simple statement that is applicable in all sales situations no matter the size, scale, vertical focus, complexity or difficulties involved.

"Time kills all deals".

I am certain people smarter than I could build the Simple equation that describes this Law but at its core it is, Universal, Absolute, Stable and I would argue Omnipotent! Sales frameworks and process are put in place to increase the likelihood that any given sales person can close more deals. These processes improve your forecast accuracy but given that the only law in sales refers to Time, the critical area to optimise across your sales process is the Speed with which you can impact and effect your prospects. The earlier you engage with a client in the sales process, the faster you can respond to a request the higher the likelihood of success. All the time and every time.

Technology should magnify competency but all too often it embeds incompetency.

Time after time I see organizations investing huge sums in technology that enables processes and decisions that kill competitiveness and drive down financial performance. One example that I came across recently was a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform from one of the biggest software companies in the world where the promotional video on the website ran the following customer scenario:

Scenario

• A North American organization in its last quarter uses their CRM technology to manage the pipeline
• They Identify the west region pipeline is short and threatening the overall number
• They further find the issues lie with the Enterprise deals that are blocking at the negotiation phase
• Further discounts are required to close the deals

Action

• Use the collaborative nature of the technology to get the key sales stakeholders together to discuss the deals
• Agree to give the discounts requested and quickly generate new proposals and close the deals

"Discounting fuels the race to zero!"

The big assumption in the above scenario is that giving the discounts was the right course of action, especially without any attention to the root-cause issues. When discounting is used to close deals it causes the competition to join in and the customers to leverage this behaviour and a self-fulfilling prophesy of commoditisation ensues.

What would good technology look like?

At the point where the above organisation identified that the revenue performance issue was with negotiating on Enterprise deals, they needed to see what capability gaps and weaknesses were causing this and the actions, money and time needed to fix it. Even if they take the discount hit to get the top number, there must be a strategy to prevent it becoming a continuous competitive weakness.

THE 5 ESSENTIAL BUSINESS QUESTIONS

There are 5 questions that business leaders need to be able to answer in order to run a business successfully:

1. What do we need to do?
2. Why do we need to do it?
3. How long will the benefits take?
4. What will the cost be?
5. How can we truly execute?

These are simple sounding but actually very tough questions when considered fully. But they can be addressed is a structured way, and lead to deliver predictable and measurable business performance improvements.
Let’s dig in and explore each one in turn to expel the myths and surface opportunities.

What do we need to do?

Companies set strategic objectives and map actions in the form of business functions and processes to them accordingly. They often then look at resource requirements and set key performance indicators to measure the return on investment. But this approach misses a fundamental and business critical question:
What are the capabilities that we need to build or borrow within our business?
To miss this point is to ignore the root causes of performance success and to leave success down to a strategy of hoping the competition screws up worse; to be the lesser of evils in the context of their solution. Companies need to map capability templates to their business goals and assess or transform their operations in the context of them.

Why do we need to do it?

Every action and capability within an organisation needs to be clearly reconcilable to the creation of customer value, as it is only the ability to do this that will consistently beat the competition and generate the required revenues. If we take the capability template discussed earlier, and identify gaps and weaknesses, we can then identify and map actions to each one to fill the gaps and strengthen the weaknesses. Only after doing this can we truly say with hand-on heart that we know what needs to be done.

How long will the benefits take?

Another schoolboy error is to not factor in the lead-time-to-benefit for the actions we take in business. I wager that, like me, you have all done it though and probably more than once. I always make sure that for every action I plan in business it carries the key attributes of not just cost but lead-time-to-benefit, otherwise it does not get approved by the executive team. Not to complicate matters too much at this stage, but it is important to also consider how sustainable the benefits are, but I will leave that for another post on another day.

What will the cost be?

I mentioned in the previous section that all actions carry cost and lead-time-to-benefit attributes. Therefore, it is possible to model the return on investment at certain time intervals by tracking them to actual revenue generated by the actions. The screen shot below shows this happening in the Excellence Platform’s transformation dashboard.

How can we truly execute?

True execution is about assigning clear ownership and responsibility to the required actions and conducting a rolling review to ensure the required benefits are materialising and that the actions are delivering them. Organisations are attempting this, but with various degrees of success, as the key issue seems to be that they are trying to use 1990s technology in the form of Excel amongst others that is just not able to map the variables in real-time. It is exactly this lack of effective enabling technology to simplify the whole process above that we created the Excellence Platform at C-View Technologies