Communication is not Engagement

May 8, 2015 //
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It’s easy for us to think we’re doing a great job of staying close to our customers or our staff. We’re sending regular emails, having regular meetings, touching base as often as we can.

We tend to forget one simple, inalienable fact. Communication does not equal engagement.

Your customers are not buying from you because they’re not engaged.

Your staff are not changing the way they do things because they’re not engaged.

It’s a question of commitment. Think of eating your egg and bacon. The chicken was involved, but the pig was committed…

Communication does not equal engagement, and engagement is what you need, if you want to achieve or change something. You need to start involving people earlier, getting their buy in, and asking them the why questions, starting with why they’re not engaged, why they’re not committed.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

Lead and Lag Indicators

May 6, 2015 //
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Most companies tend to study the traditional barometers of performance, such as revenues, revenues as a percentage of targets, and quota attainment as a percentage of salesperson sales quota.

These are your classic ‘lag’ indicators. They lag because they typically come a few days after a reporting period closes, with the lag occurring as companies wait for the final numbers and do their calculations.

Lag indicators are concrete, illustrative and unchanging. But they also indicate performance in a period in the past, one that you can’t change or influence.

Leading indicators do what you think they might, namely give an indication of future performance. The size of your sales pipeline, for example, gives you a sense of how close you are to achieving your sales targets, given what you know about your sales cycle and your conversion rates.

Other lead indicators might be behavioural, especially if you’re looking to measure the new behaviours you want to see if you are to change the way you do things.

This is the power of leading indicators. You don’t have to wait for the lag indicators to see if you’re making progress, because then it might be too late. You can monitor the leading indicators and either confirm you’re on track, or make the necessary alterations and correct your course before it’s too late.

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Categories General

Conditions for Change

May 4, 2015 //
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Whenever you try to improve the way you or your company does things, you’re into the business of change. More importantly, the business of changing behaviours, those engrained activities that increase comfort and save time, without necessarily upping productivity or success.

An awful lot of initiatives to change the way we do things come unstuck, and if you believe the research, the success rate can be as low as 30 to 50%. Why is this? A bunch of possible causes contribute. People are set in their ways, or they actively resist change, or the company doesn’t get a host of other things right.

To look at this the other way, and from a more positive angle, there is some first class research from McKinsey about what conditions need to be in place for change to occur successfully. In short these are:

1) A purpose to believe in. Folk have to buy in to what you’re trying to do

2) Reinforcement systems. Front line managers have to coach to the new behaviours

3) The skills required for change. We learn by doing, and doing repeatedly, to acquire the new skills

4) Consistent role models. Seeing people you look up to doing things the new way pays dividends

So there you have it. Easy to blog about, harder to do. Get buy in, reinforce what you’re looking to see, practice makes perfect, and let the leaders lead the way. For more on this excellent research, have a look here.

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Categories General

Analysis Catalysis

May 1, 2015 //
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You used to hear the phrase ‘analysis paralysis’ all the time in business. The inability to make a decision in favour of hiding behind a surfeit of analysis was a common attribute of poor operational business.

You tend not to hear the aphorism that much these days, at least not in the last 5 years or so. Now we’re all about big data. We have more data, but we have better analysis since we can corral computing power, sometimes from global networks and forces, to crunch a monumental amount of inputs and come up with meaningful, helpful outputs.

Now we’re all about analysis catalysis. Since we’re only as good as our data, our ability to maintain a high quality of it and interrogate it in the right ways is the catalyst for solid, informed decisions. Sure, we can still rely on our gut from time to time, but now we can test repeatedly and get extremely fast feedback on our hunches.

Analysis used to cause inertia. Now it causes energy.

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Categories Customers, General, Marketing, Planning, Strategy

Square Hole, Round Peg

April 29, 2015 //
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You know the phrase, ‘square peg, round hole. It’s used to describe a lack of fit between a person and their role. It’s a good image, both visual and memorable. The thing can’t or won’t fit – if you allow the poetic license that the peg must be of a similar size to or larger than the hole.

Fit is important. Cultural fit is hugely important, and fit to the functional demands of the role is relatively important too.

So should you be looking to fill all the round hole in your business with round pegs? Of course not! Round holes and round pegs are boring, predictable and there’s no room for innovation and thinking outside of the box – or the hole in this case.

When you have some round pegs in square holes, you create space for expansion into the corners. You provide some wiggle room, some room for manoeuvre, development and growth. You’ll get something extra from your people, something unexpected, something unplanned.

Square hole, round peg. Try it sometime.

 

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Categories General, Strategy

Opening a Bank Account

April 27, 2015 //
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Opening a bank account in 21st century Ireland is a tortuous exercise. Let me put this another way: starting a relationship where you are trying to be a customer of a financial institution and give them your money so that they can make interest off it in return for a meagre few services is a tortuous exercise.

I know there are money-laundering regulations to be complied with, and processes to go through, but come on, there has to be a better way. I won’t tell you which bank, but they’re all pretty much the same. I was recommended by my accountant to go with a specific one, which I did, but these were some of the hoops you have to go through to become a paying customer. As someone who advises companies on how to work hard to attract companies to you, I’m always boggled by how difficult life is made for someone who wants to become your customer.

I suppose it’s because they’re all as bad as each other, and they’re pretty set in their ways, but if there’s one industry that’s prime for disruption, this is it. Anyway, here are some of the things I find amazing:

– You can’t apply for a business bank account online. The lady I spoke with in the bank said there’s more paper involved these days than there ever was

– You can’t take the application form out of the branch

– You have to make an appointment to apply in person (I’m not making this up)

– If it’s a limited company, all of the directors need to attend in person, to be verified in person for ID and address. For small companies who have maybe two directors, one of which is a spouse working somewhere else, this means they need to take a holiday to get to the bank, for the next reason

– The bank’s opening house are 10am til 12:30pm, and 1:30pm til 4pm. On Mondays they push the boat out and stay open til 5pm

– Once you’ve negotiated the application process, which has to be done in real time, your time, with the bank person, they send it off to head office, where it takes two weeks – yes, two weeks – to process

As the Irish would say, it’s mad isn’t it? Except the Irish simply shrug and get on with things.

As I said, ripe for change, this industry…

 

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Categories Communication, Customers, Strategy, Technology

The Loss of Win/Loss Analysis

April 24, 2015 //
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Most companies talk about the importance of win/loss analysis, yet few of them do it. Win/loss analysis is the business of analysing the deals you won and those you lost. Setting up a formal call with your customer to analyse why they bought from you is a very useful exercise, as it builds both a qualitative and quantitative picture of what makes you successful.

Setting up a formal call with a non-customer, or an existing customer who didn’t give you the new business, to analyse why they didn’t buy from you is even more successful, since – yes you’ve guessed it – you can learn what contributed to your being unsuccessful so that you can improve your approach and win more business.

Even fewer companies do the loss analysis than the win analysis, and there are lots of human reasons for this. You can learn so much from a lost customer, however, so here are some things I’ve found useful when doing them:

– Get someone not in sales to do the call. It’s easier to get the call, and less confrontational, so it’s easier for them to open up. Sometimes they simply didn’t like the sales person

– Offer to arrange an appointed time for the call, but ask them if now is a bad time, as you only need a maximum of 10 minutes and then you might get to do the call right then

– To secure the call, emphasise that it will be a short call, you’re not trying to reopen the business – though that might happen if you do a stellar job on the call – and that it will help you improve your service in future bids

– Have your questions in writing before the call. If the person is a touch monosyllabic in their answers you can use the questions as prompts to avoid an embarrassingly short call

– Have some suggested answers to some of the questions that can also be used as prompts. For example, for ‘what was it about our proposal you didn’t like’, you might prompt with price, service, track record, solution fit, project management and so on

– Sometimes they prefer to fill something in than speak to you, so be prepared to send in a form with your questions on it, and be prepared to chase to get it back

– Ask them to be as honest as possible in their assessment of why you were unsuccessful. You will get subjective answers and objective ones. Your job is to figure out if they’re giving you a different answer to the true answer. Probe if you have to

– Try to distinguish between personal and subjective answers that you can’t do much about – like ‘we didn’t get on’ – and more objective answers that you can feed back into the business or use for coaching. Example of these include: ‘I felt she was unprofessional’, ‘I didn’t like his approach’, ‘she didn’t understand my business’ and ‘they were too pushy, I wasn’t ready to buy’

– It’s not that high a priority for the person you’re calling, so be prepared for them not to pick up the phone at the appointed time. Be persistent and polite

– After the call, send the person a hand-written note or a small gift thanking them for the feedback, mentioning how valuable their feedback was

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales, Strategy

Message distillation is the key

April 22, 2015 //
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When you’re raising your awareness, or trying to get someone’s attention, you have a very small window within which to hit home.

You have to distil your communication into one eye-catching line and / or image. Don’t be tempted to cram too much in, as message complexity is disproportional to message efficacy. Put another way, simple wins.

Let the Comms Rule of One be your master. Then, when you’ve earned their interest, you can start to build out your messages and arguments.

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Categories Communication, Customers, Marketing, Sales

Better to be Active than Passive

April 20, 2015 //
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You could argue that the subject of this post could be a motto for life, not just for business writing. After all, it’s better to effect things than be affected by them. It gives you more control over your destiny, more flexibility in your choices.

In business writing, it’s also better to be active than passive, especially if you are writing ‘persuasive’ documents like business cases or sales proposals. As an example, look at the previous paragraph. The active ‘voice’ is more powerful at effecting something, whereas the passive voice governs being affected by something.

Try and avoid phrases like ‘the ROI calculation can be found below.’ It sounds stuffy and conservative, but also weak and, well, passive. You’re writing this document, you’re in charge of it, so take control. Better to say ‘The ROI calculation below shows the value of our service to your business.’

The active voice is to do with action, and when it comes to your business writing, it’s action you want your reader to take, otherwise why take the time to write at all?

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Categories Communication, Customers, Language, Marketing, Sales

The One Interview Question You Should Parry

April 17, 2015 //
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When you’re interviewing for a new job, there is in my view one type of question you should parry. That question is anything to do with being in the role you’re interviewing for.

The question is sometimes phrased along the lines of:

‘Can you describe what your typical day might be if you took this job?’ or

‘What would your priorities be coming into this role?’

You might be tempted to blurt out ‘how the heck do I know? I don’t work here, I don’t know the company, the people, the products, services, challenges, objectives or anything else well enough to answer that. I need to assess the situation first before I decide anything. Alternatively, I can share with you some vacuous generalities if you like…’ Assuming you want to work here, I don’t recommend quite such a confrontational approach to what is an unfair question.

Rather than attempting to answer the 64-thousand-dollar question, it’s much better to parry it with ‘It depends‘ and illustrate the approach you would take to learning the role so that you’d be best placed to answer the question with the knowledge, experience and authority of having lived it for a couple of weeks. After all, that’s what you did in previous roles and look how well they turned out, right?

 

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Categories Communication, Sales, Strategy
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