I was just reading a book called the Power or Habit by Jack Hodge. The primary narrative of the book is that we, more than anything else, are defined by what we do, and close to 90% of what we do is determined by habits both good and bad. I am not sure how he determined the 90%, but we all know that our habits are a powerful force in our lives. However, I would argue that we as managers may underestimate the power of habits in managing and coaching our teams. This make me think back on a conversation I had with one of my past employees a few years ago. She came into my office to discuss the relevance of my monthly training topic. Her point was that everyone already understood the best practice we were going to discuss. It was in her eyes a waste of time. It was then that the light bulb went off. I wasn’t training because they didn’t already understand the best practice; I was training because they weren’t doing the best practice. So in a way, my training was an infomercial on the best practice and a platform to explain my expectations to the … Read More
Jack’s Big Aha!
It’s never a bad idea to look at strategic principles through the lens of proven business leaders such as Jack Welch. Jack started at GE as a chemical engineer in 1960 and by 1980 he was promoted to CEO where he proceeded to grow the company from $26B to $130B with a market value of $410B. To learn more about Jack’s story, feel free to read more detail of his accomplishments here. In his book Winning Jack outlines three key success factors when crafting company strategy: Come up with a “big aha” for your business- a broad idea that’s smart, realistic, and able to deliver a sustainable competitive advantage. Put the right people in the right jobs to drive the “big aha” forward. Relentlessly seek out best practices to achieve your “big aha” from inside and outside your company then adapt them, and continually improve them. The “big aha” is the focal point of a company strategy, and every company regardless of size, benefits from a clear understanding of how they compete in the marketplace. However, company’s often think their “big aha” has to be a transformational strategy that radically changes how business is conducted giving them an overwhelming competitive … Read More
Building Trust
Trust is elusive, and it is one of most critical components of why people buy. Buyers must trust that what they are buying provides the expected value. However, trust plays a different role based on what the buyer is purchasing and how that purchase provides value. For example, when it comes to purchasing simple commodities value is often tangible and easy to measure. If I go to a grocery store to buy an apple I trust that it is going to be free of worms. If I find worms, outside the emotional distress how have I really been impacted? The cost of the apple is nominal, and I can just show the store the worms and get a refund. Sure, its possible that the store may deny responsibility, but now I know I need to take my business elsewhere and all I’m out is 79 cents. But most business to business selling is obviously not that simple. The ROI of many products and services are not immediate and can be very difficult to measure objectively. It is simply impossible for the buyer to really know the return of what they are buying. To make matters even more complex, larger purchases … Read More
Establishing a Culture of Performance
Having discussed the internal drivers of sales culture, the next step is to explore what leaders can do to establish a culture of performance. Since culture is largely defined by human behavior and decision making, it’s important to understand there is no one size fits all approach. The variability within the three internal drivers makes that clear. Companies have unique sales strategies, leadership styles, and team compositions. So if there is no one right answer, then how does a company establish a culture of performance versus a culture of adequacy? I believe the key for leaders to build a culture of performance primarily relies on three factors; clarity, communication, and consistency. Clarity Every company has a culture; the question is whether that culture has a clear purpose. This clear purpose is largely defined by executive management and gives their team a roadmap on what is desirable behavior. By not providing clarity, the culture is much more vulnerable to counterproductive or even destructive behavior. Strong leaders understand this threat and respond by providing a clear purpose for their team to embrace and rally around. In the business community the most well established approach for providing a clarity of purpose is the … Read More
What Drives Your Sales Culture?
In the last blog article, I discussed how the Global Workforce Study on workforce culture reported the highest level of employee dissatisfaction in the study’s 23 year history. Employee dissatisfaction can be especially damaging to a company’s sales culture, threatening client relationships and overall company growth. There are many companies that have compelling products and services and good people to sell them, but have a weak culture that undermines performance. Understanding your sales culture is required in order to determine what changes are needed to make a team more effective. The first step is to determine the drivers of a company sales culture, and the threats to its effectiveness. What is Culture? Before we dive too far into the drivers of a sales culture it’s important to understand what culture is and how it impacts team productivity. Company culture can be described as a set of unwritten rules that determine employee behavior and decision making. Culture determines what is appropriate and inappropriate for interactions between employees, their managers, and clients. Measuring the impact of an effective culture is very difficult, but anyone who has witnessed both high performance and low performance organizations understands its impact on company effectiveness. Internal Drivers … Read More
Attitude Reflects Leadership
Anyone in management who has seen Remember the Titans should remember this exchange: Big Ju: Why should I give a hoot about you, huh? Or anyone else out there? You wanna talk about the ways you’re the captain? Bertier: Right. Big Ju: You got a job? Bertier: I’ve got a job. Big Ju: You been doing your job? Bertier: I’ve been doing my job. Big Ju: Then why don’t you tell your white buddies to block for Rev better? Because they have not blocked for him worth a blood nickel, and you know it! Nobody plays. Yourself included. I’m supposed to wear myself out for the team? What team? Nah, nah what I’m gonna do is look out for myself and I’ma get mine. Bertier: See man, that’s the worst attitude I ever heard. Big Ju: Attitude reflects leadership, captain. I typically don’t pull from popular culture to make a point about leadership practices; however, this scene captures a basic truth on leadership accountability. The attitude of a team is a reflection of the characteristics of their leadership, especially in uncertain times. So how are business leaders doing? In January of 2010 The Conference Board released their results on employee satisfaction and revealed that only 45% of employees are satisfied with … Read More
The BP Spill: A Consequence of Bad Strategy
“A company can’t prioritize everything, and while BP was prioritizing PR and acquisitions, it wasn’t prioritizing operations.” Holman Jenkins, WSJ A preventable catastrophe is unfolding along our Gulf shores and much of the region is going to suffer for years. Who’s to blame? The easier question may be who isn’t to blame. However, one thing is clear; a combination of bad politics, policy, and corporate leadership can claim a significant portion of the responsibility. My concern focuses on corporate leadership, and their role in allowing such a massive operational failure. The Weekly Standard has an excellent article titled “Beyond Pathetic”. The Standard is a conservative magazine so be prepared for jolts of politics throughout the article. However, from a business perspective the article is a fascinating study on poor executive leadership and how its failure to prioritize operations into the company strategy has led to an unmitigated disaster. Much of this is from Oberon Houston’s perspective. He was an engineer who resigned from BP in early 2004 for reasons summarized below. “In short, Houston no longer trusted the company to do the right thing. As someone who grew up idolizing the company, he came to the reluctant conclusion that BP itself … Read More
Why You Should Support Staffing Associations
The audience I am speaking to today are executives and managers that question the value of being involved in industry associations. There are times when I would have been a member of that audience through my years as a staffing executive. However, associations have not only done a better job of providing measurable value to staffing organizations they also play a critical role in protecting our industry from potentially devastating regulatory changes the most recent of which was the Nuefield Memo released in January of 2010. Understanding the importance of addressing short term needs, associations have added services that provide more immediate value to their members. In the case of TechServe Alliance they have three distinct value propositions that speak to address more immediate operational issues. Including: Networking & Educational Opportunities Unparalleled Access to Industry Best Practices Business Tools that Reduce Costs & Extend Market Reach Tapping into the Extraordinary Efficiencies of Scale Insurance & Financial Services Tailored to the Specific Needs of the Industry, Cost-Conscious Products from a Trusted Source Staffing companies can also benefit from industry benchmarking information that allows them to compare their performance to the industry as a whole. Benchmarking is critical in determining your company’s … Read More
Beware the Cassandra Complex
Cassandra was a princess of Troy, who had the gift of prophesy, but who could not persuade anyone because was cursed with a severe credibility gap. Can you imagine her frustration? She knows she is right, but lacks the credibility to persuade anyone. Why should staffing executives be aware of the Cassandra complex? Because they are responsible for defining the value proposition that the sales team must take to market. Unfortunately, some executives curse their sales people with value propositions they are ill-equipped to credibly represent. A company’s value proposition summarizes the problems a company solves and how they solve them. It is what makes a company unique, and is the reason buyers will buy. Value propositions vary greatly and many times a company has more than one. From diversity to technical specialization the value proposition defines a company in the eyes of the client. So how does changing the value proposition potentially affect the credibility of the sales force? Many staffing firms are attempting to move up the value chain by providing a greater level of specialization. From a sales strategy perspective this may make sense, but the danger lies in how effectively the sales team can represent the … Read More
Are You Selling to the Right Accounts?
An effective sales strategy starts with well defined segmentation of your current and target accounts. However, many companies struggle with defining the right criteria to build an effective account pipeline, which then significantly reduces the productivity of their entire sales process. This post will discuss three examples of how to qualify the accounts you decide to pursue; the existence of vendor programs, the match with delivery capabilities, and account productivity. Vendor Programs Most fortune 500 buyers have implemented some type of formalized vendor program. The key considerations in pursuing programs are the strength of relationships a staffing company has with corporate decision makers, along with any differentiators a company can illustrate to the account such as industry vertical expertise, diversity status, or technology expertise. If your organization can manage long term corporate relationships and/or can provide a unique differentiator then pursuing large vendor programs could prove to be fruitful. Selling outside of vendor programs either means avoiding companies that have them or providing services that can capture spend outside of the program. To avoid vendor programs completely translates to an aggressive prospecting strategy that target mid market companies and buyers that have SoW or some other mechanism to bring in … Read More