My Best Practices

Simple Models That Won't Let You Down

 

There are often situations in which you need to quickly formalize data in order to make a decision. Cutting endless discussions to the minimum and leveraging a reference model helps you step back, clear and organize your thoughts. I have always been fond of these tools that speed up the decision making process or give you a roadmap for action. Getting to Yes or Strategic Selling are kind of more elaborate ones that require some training before been mastered. But the following ones are simple and easy to use for an immediate pay back.

 

WHAT DO WE EXACTLY WANT?

The situation is quite usual. You have set up a meeting to discuss and precisely "define something", such as a pricing model or the structure of a commission plan (actually those are real life exemples for which I did use this approach in my current job).

Generally after a slow production period (people need to warm up...), participants start shooting a few inputs. Then the pace accelerates and ideas florish. The room temparture gets higher and people now react in real time to solutions given by others, often criticizing them ("That doesn't make sense...", "It's not going to work...", "I disagree, that's not fair...". Finally, ideas fly all around the room in a very unstructured way, letting you confused and stressed... as you have to summarize it up and get a consensus to move to the next step.

How could you structure this session to avoid the mess and get an usable output to move forward?

The principle is actually to step back and to first define the ATTRIBUTES OF THE SOLUTION you are looking for BEFORE producing a flow of unstructred ideas.

Here is an extremely simple framework that you can draw on a white board, and that is going to efficiently helps you and the team describe the attributes of the expected or ideal solution, while making sure you don't forget to look at it from any angle.

Give it a shot and you will see it works like magic!

With that done, you can now forget it (for a moment) and enjoy an energic brainstorming session. Just make the rules clear:

1. People may say anything they want; there is nothing silly. They should not censor themsleves.
2. Critic is NOT permitted.
3. Ask participants to carefully listen to what is being said and always try to bounce back on the last input, making it better, associating ideas, sound, color, meaning...
4. List ALL the ideas without any exception
5. Sometimes when the production slows down, summarize the topic and all the ideas that have been produced. It gives the group a rest and a boost to move on again.

Finally you can go to the third and last step of the process, and analyze the inputs toward the initial attributes to keep, save or eliminate them. This final synthesis consists in framing, combining and eventually twisting the ideas to match at best the attributes of the ideal solution.

This is an easy, simple and very effective way to get results. Just try it!

WHO IS DOING WHAT?

Another extremely usual challenge is to define roles and responsibilities when creating a process or an action plan, and to make sure nobody is going to drop the ball or be kept out of the loop.

To make things clear for all the stakeholders, here are four basic roles you have to assign to individuals, groups or organizations in order to have a well understood and flawless process:

• Who is Responsible: the first step is to define the "owner" of the action or process, ideally the person (when two people or more are in charge, stuff are usually getting more complicated...) who will be in charge of making things happen.
• Who has to make Approval: the next question is to determine whether or not somebody should approve the decision or the output at the end of the day, such as a Director or VP who won't necessarily be participating to the discussions or work group, but will have to give a final "Yes", and has then a "veto power".
• Who has to be Consulted: when working on the issue, many people will have to be consulted to give their inputs along the way. It is important to list them all and don't forget anybody to avoid the risk of having them stand-up "after the facts" and say "We don't agree, and by the way we have not been asked our opinion, which is very unfair, even unacceptable".
• Who has to be Informed: some people will not be involved into the decision making process but should however be informed. Failing to do so could jeopardize or slow down the excution of the decision made and approved. Don't forget them.

Let's take a short example to really see how it works. Let's say we want to define a "new pricing model for a software solution".

 Give a shot to this one too and let me know what you think.

COMPLAIN EFFECTIVELY

How many times did you have to formulate a complain to a colleague, your boss or even a customer? This is a tricky exercise that often leads to a flat out "No way"...if not worse. This is unconfortable and usually we don't know how to start, neither how to conclude>

Here is a small model that will help you framing it into a very effective and usually very well acceptable way: DESC.

• Describe: the first step is to describe the situation with which you have an issue. You have to stay extremely factual and as objective as possible. Give facts and facts only, document eventually your claim with additional data from researches (comparisons, statistics, definition...). If you are familiar with Transactional Analysis, let's say that only your Adult is supposed to speak here.
• Express: this second step is quite different as you are going to express the feelings the situation is causing: frustration, stress, guilt, unsecurity, doubt... describe your emotions (you have first to identify them, which is not always easy). In term of Transactionnel Analysis, your Child is the one who speaks now.
• Specify: this third step consists in specifying a solution to solve this issue. Again you have to come back to a factual description: what has to be done, by who, when and with which resources. Be specific, precise and as clear as possible. This is your Adult who is back behind the wheel.
• Conclude: the last phase aims at showing the benefits, if applicable the "mutual benefits", of implementing the solution you have just proposed. This comes as a very natural next step of the previous ones and shows the positive consequences of doing the right thing to fix the torn situation.

Easy to remember thanks to the acronym (DESC = DESK) and extremely effective, this is a model I am often refering too, because he gives a very balance tune to your speech, mixing Adult and Child, facts and emotions, complqin qnd solution, without excluding the ones for the others.

That's it! Three easy to use models you can leverage on to simplify the world, get directions and finally a roadmap for actions in diverse situations. I would be interested to get your feedback if you give one of them a try. Looking forwards to reading from you.

 

 

 

Selling is the Art of... Shutting Up!

  Too many people are deadly wrong thinking "Selling the art of Selling"... Actually "Selling is the art of Making People Buy". Sounds like a tiny difference, isn't it?

Unfortunately this is not, at least within a B2B long term relationship, and this is precisely why so many sales people perform so poorly although their are definitely brillant speakers.

 

Many very outgoing sales people beleive indeed that their best skill is their high ability to speak in public, to explain their company value proposition (that is already way better than describing their product features...), and finally to convince their prospects that they need their products. 

What is the most important  actually is to understand your "prospect's perception of the reality". This might not be "The Reality", but it is for him/her.

Referring to my Strategic Selling related post, there is a lot of information to discover to really and deeply understand what his/her role is within this project, how he/she perceives the current situation, and what does it mean for him/her (Win-Result concept).

So here is a very simple model to benchmark the way you sell, and to improve it.

In a nutchell, "Listening" is more important than "Speaking". So learn to Shut Up!

• 2/3 of Listening
• 1/3 of Speaking in which:
  • 2/3 of Questions
  • 1/3 of Affirmations in which:
    • 2/3 of Reformations
    • 1/3 of decisive arguments (equivalent of 3,7% of overall time!)

 

"Listening"should be "Active Listening" with eye contact, notes taking, and non verbal confirmation that you are "Getting it". Techniques like NLP could be extremely instrumental in that regards.

Keep in mind that it is more valuable to ask "Open Questions" than "Closed Questions" to discover more facts, opinions and feelings about the current situation.

Although it sounds weird (you might not feel comfortable using it at the beginning), reformulation has the benefit to confirm that you have heard and understood of what has just been said, and to invite and encourage the person you are speaking with to go on and to give you more details. This is a very powerful tool you have to master as it is less intrusive than direct questioning.

As a side note, to make sure you are discovering as much information about your prospect's situation as possible, don't rush to address a proposition. This is a very common mistake to do it too early within the sale process... and discover later, if not too late, that your understanding was extremely partial, and your proposition not optimal (positioning, arguments, price...) at this very time.

 

Let me know what you think about this simple but powerful model, and share your best practices with me. We all have to learn from others.

 

Matrix Reloaded

That’s great! You’ve got this promotion or this new job you’ve been dreaming of for a while. Higher salary, broader responsibilities and extended power… Yes, but also coming with... higher complexity, larger expectations and stronger pressure on your shoulders to quickly deliver some results, and prove the people who put you there they were right.

It is a fact that you won’t get for ever to secure some short term wins while working on longer term goals. In this situation, it is very important to be able to quickly analyze the situation, figure out what is wrong, and make some decision to fix it. This is a typical situation in which having a few frameworks to rely on could make a big difference. And most likely you will get 90 days to do it. I have found and practiced for years many good models to manage this crucial period, amongst which this great book by Michael Watkins named "The First 90 Days".

Let’s step back for a second and think about a few topics and questions you have to master before doing anything.  How large is the market? What are the main trends? Are there differences per geography? Who are the main competitors? How strong are they? Why? What is the vision, the mission, the culture and the strategy of the company? How is the company organized from marketing, R&D, Product Management, Sales and Pre-sales, Operations…? What are the key processes and tools to support them? What is the overall positioning of the product portfolio? What is its structure? How does the roadmap look like? What are the main technologies you should understand and watch? What are the main goals and objectives for each product line and region? The main issues? The shareholders’ expectations...? We could go on and on…

So it is crucial to get organized, to build a plan, and to have a plan for the plan. This is what I want to cover from 10,000 foot today, by just highlighting some key avenues and tools.

Let’s take a look to the general plan. Within the next 90 days you have first to learn a lot and understanding what is going on over there, whatever the scope of your responsibilities is now (market, company, country, region, department…).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your actions should span three areas:

• ·         Assessing the situation both globally and locally (per region, product, department…)
• ·         Reviewing performance of organizations and people
• ·         Interviewing  key people from top-down

 

But how can you quickly assess the situation? I don’t know a better tool than simplifying it somehow and building a map. Like I explained it in my previous post about Strategic Selling, you should not mix up the map (simple) and the territory (complex), but the first one is definitely a key resource to navigate the second.

One of the tools I have found extremely relevant is that regard is the following Situation Assessment Matrix.

Basically, whatever the level of your analysis is, you will find your-self in one of the four following situation:

·         Start-up: everything has to be created from scratch. A good example is the launch of a new product or the opening of a new country. Nothing is really wrong because there is pretty much nothing yet. Usually there is a lot of energy, great expectations and positive attitude within the teams, but a lack of direction, structure and processes.

·     Turnaround: this is the worst case scenario. Here everything goes wrong and you have to fix the mess. Low morale, poor results and extreme frustration are what you’re going to find. This is going to be painful and there will be collateral damages for sure. Be ready for it.

Realignment: things are not as good as they should be, but this is not a catastrophe either. At least not yet, but rather sooner than later if nothing is done to fix it.

·     Sustaining Success: this is the best case scenario where everything goes well. Results are great, the right people are at the right place… the challenge here is to find out how to make this success sustainable. Nothing last forever and the natural law of physics goes from order to chaos. How to make the success last?

Actually what you are most likely going to find is a patchworks of these four situations: this product has just been launched or this subsidiary open (start-up), the customer satisfaction is at its lowest point since 5 years (turnaround), the roadmap is great but delivered with one month late in 35% of the case (realignment) and the consulting department is getting best result and the best customer feedback ever (sustaining success). So you need more than one map!

 

Now that you have an overall understanding of the situation globally and locally, you have to go to the next step and understand why that is from a product, organization or individual stand point. Simply put, that means comparing the results to the objectives over the last 2 to 3 years. This is a data intensive job, but the only way to have an objective view. Again here again, a simple matrix will help you organizing you findings and taking the appropriate action.

This is a pretty self explanatory matrix. Is this product, organization or individual “Often/Always” getting “Good/Poor" results? This is a structure very close to the so well known BCG Matrix’one.

 

From there you can quickly define the right type of action to be conducted to improve the situation. Let’s consider people, not products or service.

  

The appropriate answer is quite straight forward:

• ·         You have to get rid of the low performer (see my previous post)
• ·         You need to train people who are at risk and struggle performing at the right level. If they did it right once, they could do it again. Helping them to come back on track could surge their energy and benefit the entire team.
• ·         You have to coach people who are solid and have potential to do better, but are not top performers yet. Your future champions are amongst them.
• ·         You definitely have to leverage the top performers and use their leaderships to create a global momentum into the right direction. For example they could coach high potential juniors, and lead learn&lunch sessions to share their best practices.

You can easily transpose these actions to a product or service: stop it, rethinking its fundamentals (positioning, features, price, promotion…), fine tune them, or leverage its success by cross selling on the top of them or applying the same success factors to the next generation.

 

You have also to consider the mix People Profile/Markets, as different markets require different skills. Everybody is not a pure hunter, and every body is not a good farmer. Put the right people at the right place is crucial.

Finally you have to get feedback at all level of the organization. But to make something valuable from the, they have to follow a consistent and simple framework. There are 6 key questions that represent the skeleton of what you have to seek to really evaluate the situation, yesterday, today and tomorrow.

• Biggest challenges in the near future?
• Why?
• Most promising opportunities?
• What is needed to exploit them?
• How are culture, strategy, organization, processes and skills aligned?
• What are the priorities to focus on?

 

Well you should be well armed now to jump into your new job and make the right steps within the first 90 days and secure the early wins you needs based on a quick, consistent and quite comprehensive analysis. If you have other models that you have used and work, you are more than welcome to share!

Don't Screw Your Meeting Up!

You have a very important meeting next week with one of your major customers. Your boss is going to attend as well as a hand-full of other people from your company. How can you make sure everybody will be on the same page and that you or anyone else is not going to screw this meeting up?

The answer is easy: get prepared! Here again, the best way to be ready and in sync with your team is to use a simple model to define and share your objectives prior to the meeting.

This is a simple but quite effective method that I have been using and asking my team to use for years. This is called POP and 4A's, and stands for Purpose, Objectives that are broken down into Actions, Abilities, Acknowledgment and Answers, and Premise. Let's review them one by one.

• Purpose

The first question you have to answer is to define the overall PURPOSE of the meeting. This is the right place to give some background information about the situation, the history of the relationship, the market and the main issues you and your customer have to solve.

Actually I like very much associating it with a Strategic Selling Blue Sheet that summarizes perfectly your situation in a given account for a specific sales opportunity.

• Objectives

Then you have to be more specific about the objectives you want to achieve. This a great topic to be addressed by the team, gathering inputs from all the future attendees to make sure everybody's objectives are listed. The sales department doesn't have the same objectives than the Customer Services or the Project Manager who will be responsible for the deployment. Be as exhaustive as possible.

This is where the 4A's come in play. There are an easy to remember model to cover all kinds of objectives you have to think about.

• Actions

This is the most important one. What do you want your customer TO DO at the end of the meeting?

This could be a myriad of items, from signing a PO to scheduling a demo or a reference visit or another meeting with his own boss... Take a look to your Strategic Selling Blue Sheet and figure out what is missing to improve your chance to win and move to the next step by removing a major red flag.

• Abilities

The second targets the brain of your customer. What do you want him TO UNDERSTAND?

You have to be very factual here and able to prove what you say. What it is that you want him to know and even more, to understand. For example: your product or service is the only one having such a feature; your company is financially rock solid and invests 20% in R&D; you have 1200 satisfied customers and a survey to prove it... Again check out your blue sheet, identify the weaknesses your still have and figure out which are the information that could make your stronger and improve your rating.

• Acknowledgment
  

But your customer doesn't only have a brain, he also has a heart. I mean you cannot always "understand' things but you have sometimes to "believe" them. So the next question to be answered is "What do you want your customer TO BELIEVE at the end of the meeting?

You cannot prove everything you state easily, but there are important factors you wish him to consider: for example your solution is very intuitive to use; or you have one of the best consulting organization in the industry; or you have been winning 60% of the deals against the competitor X or Y. Try to select the points that are direct answers to your customer's main expectations.

• Answers

The final point you have to take care of is to list all the ANSWERS you need from your customer, and then all the questions you have to ask him. Again your Blue Sheet is going to be a great resource to identify the most valuable questions to improve your position within the account. They should all be listed as red flags.

Let's go through a few examples: what is the dead line for the decision? Who are the people involved in the decision making process? How do they rank your solution technically? Financially? What are their precise decision making criteria?

• Premise

A last topic to be in sync on with your team is how you are going to kick off the meeting. What will be the initial PREMISE with which you are going to introduce the meeting to make the objectives clear and create a positive atmosphere?

The best way is to put your-self in your customer's shoes and summarize the current situation, what has happen over the last weeks or months, what you have understood of their pains and expectations, how you can solve them properly and what the remaining issues to be addressed are.

Just give it a try for whatever meeting you have next. This is simple, quick and very effective. You can find the form here. I personally use it as a sanitary check even before a simple phone call to nail down what I really want to achieve. But this is even a better method when you have to prepare a meeting attended by a bunch of different people in your organization. That guarantees that their objectives have been included and that gives to all the participants a clear road map for the meeting.

What Makes Your Team Great? (3/3)

So it is all about people or all about results, isn't it ? No, it is actually all about process!

Processes are the only way to really improve your bottom line and turn your hard work into gold.

Getting the best people in the world aiming all in sync to the same well defined objectives and achieving great results is not enough to really make it on the long run. Sorry... So let's review a few additional ideas here.

 

• Waste time to save time

        Too often people resist to defining and implementing processes because "it is a waste of time". Yes, highly motivated and fired up, they just want to jump in and start working right away. Is time not the essence? But this could be a deadly mistake.

Taking some time to think about HOW you are going to realize WHAT you have just defined at the previous step (Results) is going to save you and your team a lot of time downstream. Most of what you do is not brand new stuff and so defining the way to do it, documenting it and making sure people know about it is the best way to speed it up later on. Waste time upfront to save time later.

• Enforce your processes to scale

        What if each time somebody within your organization has to do something he has to figure out by him-self how to do it. What if these people do not sit at the desk close by your own office but at a different floor, or in a different building, or in another city, or even a foreign country? How do you want to scale if there is not a modus operandi that guarantees that things are done quickly and in a consistent way across the entire organization?

Would you fly a company in which the pilot won't follow the standard comprehensive check list prior the take off and would try to do his best not to forget something critical? Processes are the highway to scale your business and your company up, and improve both productivity and quality. Don't leave it up to luck or common sense (although it is always good to get some). Write down the processes the people has to follow (wikis are perfect for that) and get it done right everywhere.

• Always try to find a better way

        Processes are supposed to support the business, not to slow it down. Processes should be written but not in stone. You should definitely keep your mind and ears open to your team's feedback. Some processes look great on a flow chart but just don't work well. Don't fight to death to make it work if there are consistent feedback that it doesn't.

Always try to improve it, to make it strong but lean, comprehensive but simple, well documented but easy to remember. Process is gold, not god, and there is no reason not to challenge it on a regular basis and ask to your team the question "But why do we do it that way? Could we do better, simpler, faster or easier?". Often the answer is "yes"... so just do it. Change the process and do it again!

• Evaluate and measure all the time

        There is only three ways to know where you stand: measure, measure and measure! Without a clear understanding of what the situation was, is and should be, you are blind. Is this process effective? Is it better than the other one? Where is the weakest link in this process, or the longest one on which you should focus your attention? Where is the most expensive step? How was the quality before and after implementing this new process? And so on...

Evaluation and measure from a cost, quantity, quality or customer and employee satisfaction stand point are the only way to improve your organization, and take the appropriate decisions to fine tune what you do to reach Excellence.

We are done. We have reviewed the three main things you have to take care of to make your team great.

It is all about people. Hire, train, empower and make accountable the best people you can afford, and get quickly rid of low performers.

It is all about results. Define and articulate a sound vision,smart objectives, clear priorities, a strong business model and write your plan down to easily share it with your team. Keep everything and everybody highly customer centric all the time.

It is all about process. Finally take the time to create and set up processes to make your organization consistent across the board, to improve its productivity, and to enable it to scale. Measure and improve your processes on a regular basis.

I would like to add that on the top of this, you have to have fun! Fun is the dressing that will make your great team standing the test of time. Fun is the bound that will help them to go through tough time. Fun is what will them all keep moving forward, day in, day out.

That's it. I hope these three posts will bring you some value. This is just a map, a highly simplified map, not  the territory that is far more complex. But having a map is a great way to know where you are and what to do to go where you want to go! So if you have additional contributions that could help us to make our team great, feel free to post a comment.

What Makes Your Team Great? (2/3)

Now that you have built a great team, you have to make the necessary steps and create the appropriate conditions to make sure everybody is working in the same direction, and is aiming at the same results.

This is mainly common sense, but here are a few recommendations that could help you framing the environment to get the best results.

• Articulate a sound vision.

The  best way to guarantee that all your team members are consistently adding their efforts up to reach the expected results is to give them a high level sense of the final destination, the big picture, a sound vision that they can relate to and dream of. That will guide their actions and help them to make the right decision along their way.

• Define clear goals and objectives.

But a sound vision is not enough. To really be effective, the team needs a much more specific road map based on clear goals and objectives. Everybody knows that they should be SMART, meaning Specific in their description, Measurable to be able to exactly know what will be achieved, Achievable to keep people motivated, Realistic to keep common sense, and finally attached to a Time Line with a precise dead line. Clear goals and objectives will also help people to make the right decisions without having to wait for you to make the call. The team will be faster, more agile and nimble and finally more productive.

• Set clear priorities.

Another key element to overachieve and develop greatness is to clarify what should be first, second... and last.Teams are usually working on multiple projects, themselves built from multiple sub-projects and tasks. It is so easy to run thin and burn a lot of resources on many topics without achieving anything. Defining the priorities and making sure they are both clear and understood by all will bring focus to the team; moreover achieving the first ones will bring a lot of satisfaction and then trigger a new wave of motivation within the team.

• Develop a strong business model.

Companies are sometimes unclear as to what is their exact business model and related strategy are. Direct or Indirect? VAR or OEM? Online or face to face? Large accounts or SMB's? Local or international? And on the top of that, what it is they want to exactly achieve? High revenue or strong bottom line? Higher gross margin or increased market share? New (challenging) accounts or (profitable) repeat business? These obvious questions are sometimes not clearly sorted and answered, and that causes a lot of confusion and waste of time. Again strong and clear business goal and model are paramount to get the team on the same page.

• Write your plan.

You could be a great speaker and give the presentation of your life to your team to line up your plan. In any case you have to do it. But nothing is better than a written plan that people can refer to. People are not going to remember your great speech (nor your killer jokes...) and you need to leave them with something they can easily read afterward, think about and use as a roadmap for their own actions. From making your slides public to adding to them a more comprehensive sound track or comment, you have to spend a fair amount of time to make sure your plan really goes through all the layers of your organization.

• Stay Customer centric.

The worst thing a team could do to lose any chance of greatness is to be self-centric and forget who is actually the real and natural center of any company; its customers. Greatness comes when all the members of your team are 100% motivated and deeply aware that the ultimate goal of everything they do is to satisfy their customers. Great customer service, listening to needs, better anticipating them and finally delivering on promise are the key steps toward long term success. So make your customers are the number one preoccupation within your team, no matter what.

We have first reviewed how to build a great group of people and then create the best possible conditions to get outstanding results from it. Sound vision, smart objectives, clear priorities, strong business model, written plan and a customer centric overall attitude are the steps you need to take to make it happen. The next time we will talk about the third leg you have to take care of to reach greatness, the processes.

What Makes Your Team Great? (1/3)

Some teams are great, others just good. It is not easy to qualify what actually makes the difference. There is no "magic recipe" and most of it is directly linked to the quality of the leader, his values, his ethic, his vision, his passion and his way to manage people and business. Thinking about what I was given to see and experiment, I tried however to list a few characteristics that should facilitate greatness versus goodness.

Success is all about people. Actually life is all about people. So you should start by the people, as it is the most crucial resource to build sustainable success.

• Hire the best.

        Never hire cheap or low to protect your job, your position, your status or your knowledge. Hire the best people you can afford, no matter what. That will help you performing and going to the next level while establishing players to take over your job when you will be gone. It is not the easiest way but you have to create the conditions to challenge your-self to move forward.

• Fire under-performers.

    This is always a tough decision to fire somebody, but there is no hesitation to have. A low performer who is not made responsible at the end of the day, after appropriate warning, training and meeting to help him getting back on tracks, could ruin your team and your credibility as a manager and a leader. The first time I did it was devastating for me. But I had to do it several times in my career and I know it was the best move I could do to put my entire team on a successful path.

• Train your team all the time.

    The world is changing fast. Competition is launching new products. New technologies are appearing on a constant basis. And on the top of that, you have to make sure your team is sharing the same referential, the same objectives, common vocabulary and processes. To achieve this, training is paramount. A killer team that is not appropriately trained will not stay at the top very long. Consider training as an investment to keep your leading position. And so invest wisely on training that are really going to make a difference on the field.

• Empower people.

    When people know where they have to go and why, they can make decisions quickly, without wasting time escalating the ladder to get a decision from their management. Sure that requires trust, but keep in mind that trust doesn't mean lack of control. Over the time, control gets looser and trust gets stronger. Obviously people will do some mistakes (who doesn't ?) and this is no big deal.They will learn more from their mistakes than from their successes. This is a fine balance to find, and I believe the only way to have an agile organization, motivated people and a high productivity.

• Make people Accountable.

    This is a key point. Accountability is the corner stone of an healthy organization. You should first be accountable for your own decisions. Don't blame somebody or one of your team member if you were aware of the situation and did not react, or worse, approved the decision. There is no alternative but leading by example here. It is only being your-self 100% accountable that you can ask your team to be. This will raise the maturity of the organization. No more "I didn't know", "It is not my fault"or "How could I know". Taking responsibility and admitting failure to next searching for solutions and ways to avoid it in the future is the best practice I know to build a strong team.

In my next posts, I will cover two other key topics, results and processes. These are the two missing legs to create a great organization  and a stable stool on the top of this first one, a well trained, empowered and fully accountable team of the best people you can hire.

Don't Leave Closing To Luck!

You have been working on this multi-million deal for months. You’ve met a lot of people, gathered tons of information, got a good understanding of what your customer really needs and you have even a pretty good sense of where your competition stand… you feel great, a little euphoric… and you have pushed this opportunity at the top of your forecast. You already imagine your-self coming back home with the largest-winning-smile-ever and you have started thinking about what you could buy with the five figure commission check you’re going to make. Man, you love your life!

The decision should be made this week. You’re thrilled. You call your buddy, a guy you’ve build a great relationship with, but that left a bitter taste in your mouth. He is cold, short in his answer… And he tells you they have a board meeting where the deal is going to be presented, discussed and actually decided. You suddenly feel frozen by panic. Wow, you had no idea it would go so high. And you don’t have a clue who those board members are. Within a few minutes, you have definitely lost control, and fallen down to square one. Everything is now just a question of luck…

This is very close to a true story. I was delivering a sales training in Sweden, Strategic Selling. I was 31 and one of the attendee was a senior sales guy who has been working on a huge deal for more than one year. He was quite arrogant and clearly thought he had nothing to learn anymore, and certainly not from me... Applying the model to real sale situations during the last day of the training, he suddenly realized that such a large deal had very little chance to be decided at the level of the people he was dealing with. He went from overconfident to scare to death in minutes. He has forgotten one important thing, to build a map and to look at it to know where he was and where to go to win.

What are maps for? Their objective is to simplify the territory and give you a simple representation of the reality that you can easily apprehend. This is exactly what you need when you are worried about a deal… or when you are too much euphoric, losing touch with reality. The best map I know to manage a complex opportunity with a long sales cycle is the model offered by Strategic Selling from Miller Heiman, precisely the one I was teaching in Sweden.

Strategic Selling methodology gives you a map to assess your situation within an account for a given opportunity. From there, you can really and comprehensively understand your strengths and weaknesses and make the best decision as to what the nest right move is. No more luck, but a systematic, repeatable and extremely effective way to maximize your chance to win.

To give you a little taste of how it works, here is a quick list of the main concepts in 10 points.

1-      List all the Players who are or could be involved in the deal, internal players as well as external ones such as consultants.

2-      The next step is to find out what the Role of each one is. They are only four possible roles:

a.       Economic Buying Influence is the one making the final decision, the one who signs the check and can veto the decision recommended by the team.

b.      User Buying Influence is going to use or supervise the use of your product/service. His/her performance is going to be directly impacted by it.

c.       Technical Buying Influence is screening the specifications either technical or legal. He can say “No” but cannot say “Yes”.

d.      Coach is somebody who is going to guide you on this sale for whatever reason. Coach doesn’t exist per se; you have to develop somebody in a coach.

3-      Then you have to know what their individual Modes are, meaning how they see the sales situation and what their perception of the reality is. This is the one that matter, not yours.

a.       Growth. They perceive that the results needed are higher than the current reality. They want more, more quality, or more quantity…The positive gap to be filled makes the probability of a sale high.

b.      Trouble. They perceive that the current reality is lower than what should be. They want to come back to normal, with a sense of urgency. The probability of a sale is high too.

c.       Even Keel. People perceive here that the reality matches the result needed. Chance of a sale is low. The only way is to change their perception and show future threat they have to address. That will take time.

d.      Overconfident. People who consider they have never had it so good. Their perception of the reality is above the results needed, so they won’t do anything to rock the boat. Chance of a sale is null.

4-      The next two things you have to qualify are what each person Win-Result is. Win is personal; Result is corporate.

a.       Win is how a person win on a personal level. This is often intangible, non measurable nor quantifiable such as “remaining in a power position” or “gaining recognition”  or “having more free time with his family”…

b.      Result is related to your product/service and its impact on the customer’s business. As opposed to the win, it is tangible, measurable and quantifiable.  

5-      Finally you have to find out how each player Rate your solution and its ability to fulfill his/her Win-Result on a scale from -5 to +5, from strong antagonist to enthusiastic advocate.

6-      Now you have a pretty good map in hands. You know who the players are, their roles, their perception of reality, what they want to accomplish business wise and how they could personally win, and finally how they rate your solution. Challenge each information to make sure you have the best of your knowledge captured.

7-      This is a lot of information to uncover. Everything you don’t know for sure because you have not been told directly by the individual answering your questions or by somebody else in the organization such as one of your coaches is a Red Flag. People not met are red flag. Guessing is not an option. A red flag is good because it makes clear you don’t know yet something you should know.

8-      You can now list your strengths such as a coach who would be in a growth mode, be the economic buying influence and love your solution.  This is the best situation you can get ever!

9-      You can also list your weaknesses, as not having a coach or having two users with unknown win but rating your solution -3.

10-   Finally you can step back, look at the map, and decide what the best next move is. The best actions are defined as the ones that leverage strengths while reducing or eliminating at least one weakness. For example organizing a meeting with your coach-user to uncover the win and rating of the economic buying influence that you have not met yet is a great one. Meeting him alone would be less of a good move.

This approach is extremely powerful and when mastered, become a second nature. You have a map for action and you know what to do next to increase your understanding of the sale situation, and maximize your chance to win. You rely now on an objective analysis and no more on luck.

Additionally when shared across an entire sales team, from sales to pre-sales to management, it is a powerful tool that gives the opportunity to describe precisely a sales situation in a few minutes. Everybody is on the same page, use the same definition and that facilitates collaboration and team work to make the deal happen. You can find a Blue Sheet Form here.

Which tools have you used to over achieve? Share your best practices here to give us a chance to improve our game with new weapons.

Value Matters More Than Number

Now that you know the greatest feature of Twitter, “Search”, let’s review how to successfully complete something that is absolutely required to make anything from Twitter, gaining “Valuable Followers”.

It is a fact that if you don’t have any followers, your tweets are kind of useless. They will always be included into the public feed that anybody can browse, but they would be drops  in an ocean of tweets (Twitter has 18 million users now, and even if 60% of Twitter users abandon their accounts within their first month of use, that sums up anyways in a lot of tweets at every second).

I wrote “Valuable Followers”. Their number sure counts; the bigger the number the more influence and interaction you will have. But quality matters actually more than quantity. The question is how to gain followers that are interested by what you have to say? Where to find them? How to start? The value of Twitter is in the dialog you can establish with people, and the contribution you can make to selected topics of interest.

Like for a blog, the first step is to define what you want to cover, and what you want to talk about. You need an identity and a positioning on Twitter like everywhere else. Are you a subject matter expert and do you want to engage people on this topic? Do you want to promote your company and its services? Or do you want to share your view on technology, politic or anything else. Without being 100% specialized, you should be somewhere (I exclude again the use of Twitter for just interacting with friends and family. I only consider here a professional use of it).

With a clear positioning in hands, you are ready to start your quest. Here are my advice to build a strong base of valuable followers.

1-      Leverage Search on Key Words

Using the Search function, target tweet thread that are related to the topic you want to cover. You can launch a few searches to cover more space and keep them all visible thanks to the tools I mentioned in my previous post. Then identify the most valuable people, the ones who are making interesting posts, who are RT’ed by the others, and who have a lot of followers. Just follow them to start with. They might follow you back, although recent changes in the way Twitter allows you to follow people has discouraged Twitter users to automatically follow back. That was very common a few months ago.

2-      Reply to targeted users

If you feel good, have found your Twitter voice and could add something valuable to the discussion, you can “Reply” to them, engaging the dialog directly. Not sure they will answer either, but your chances to get noticed and followed back are higher… if you really added value.

3-      Use hashtag

Hashtag are words preceded by the sign # that people use to tag their posts. You can read this article on Mashable to better understand the concept.

The benefit of a hashtag is easy to understand. When you have identified hashtag related to your selected topic (use this site to do it: ), searching on them will bring you a new flow of people sharing the same interest. From there, use the same technique, follow the most influential ones and engage them.

4-      Add value

This is certainly the best advice: value, value, value. People will follow you if they learn something from you. Spammers and people sharing only “what they are doing” don’t get much traction, unless there are celebrities, or worst they are blocked. Twitter is a highly transparent and public space and people abusing the system get usually strong fire back.

 

There are three ways to do it.

a.       Directly in 140 characters… always challenging!

b.      By directing people to interesting articles, blog posts… and posting their url. My recommendation is to save room and use short url then, such as http://bit.ly/ (short url converter is embedded in Seesmic Desktop)

c.       By ReTweeting (RT) interesting tweets that you have liked and want to make more visible and share further.

5-      Be consistent

You read the statistic, 60% of Twitter new users drop their account after a few months. And amongst the existing users, a very little percentage actually post something every day (average is 14 time a month, meaning some people post once in a while and others do more than 10 times a day). If you want to gain and keep followers, you need a certain discipline and post on a regular basis. My recommendation in a professional environment is 2 to 3 tweets a day, always aiming to add value.

6-      Be nice

Yes, be nice. Thanks people who “RT” you, answer users who “D” you (interact directly with you), say “please” when asking something, and thanks also people referring you in the #FollowFriday weekly movement. 

Twitter is a social environment and being nice, while not hesitating to challenge ideas, is a must.

 

You should be ready now to smartly use Twitter in your professional world, identify people and topics of interest, contribute by adding value and grow your follower base regularly.

 

If you are a Twitter user already, would you recommend other techniques and way to use it and gain followers? Please share your experiences and advices by leaving a comment.

 

Your Boss Is Wrong!

Twitter. My first impression was like yours. “What can I do with this? Who cares about what I am doing? This is a waste of time.” Today, your boss might think that way too... I was wrong. Your boss is wrong!

I joined Twitter on Nov 8, 2008. One year later, I have been gaining an average of 4 followers per day, and I've got today a little more than 1800 ones. More importantly in the meantime, without been addicted (anymore…), I have found the real value of Twitter, which was definitely not obvious in the first place. I don't want to review here what Twitter is nor how to use it 101, there are plenty of great resources available on the Web. I highly recommend Alltop and lessons by Guy Kawazaki. I am aiming to the core of Twitter, what makes it a great tool for you and for your business.

The first consideration you should keep in mind is that as a 21^st Century Executive, you should have a digital footprint and you should control it. This is a larger topic I will cover in future posts: “What do people find when they Google your name?” This is an interesting search to do, and you might be scared… actually at the end of 2007, when I did it for the first, I was…. because I found “nothing”.  For your information, more than 85% of recruiters say they have used search engines to uncover information about candidates, and more than 40% say they have eliminated a candidate because of information they found (or not!) on the Internet.(source Execunet)

But let’s come back to Twitter. There is a lot to cover, so for this first post on this topic I want to keep it simple and focus on “The key feature of Twitter”. Actually people who spit on Twitter usually don’t know it, don't use it, and don’t get the value of Twitter at all.

I heard about it for the first time at a local tradeshow in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, maybe one week after having joined Twitter. I was attending a session on Social Media, and one of the speakers explained that “at the bottom of the Twitter user interface, there was this cool feature “Search” that we should try”. Twitter UI is getting better today (not great, even not good yet), but it was the worse UI ever one year ago. Not only it was not user friendly, but it was making this feature quite invisible.

I typed my company name “Qtask” and was stunned to discover people chatting about us! Yes, people I did not know were just talking about our CEO’s presentation a few days earlier in Atlanta. It was a big surprise. So I tried other words… such as my main competitors names… it was fascinating! I was live with people talking about them, positively or negatively.

This feature is a direct channel to listen in real time to your own market, what is going on out of there, what you competitors are doing, what the users are thinking and asking… this is pure gold! Companies like Comcast or Zappos understood it a while ago and have based a good chunk of their customer service on Twitter, having direct interactions with their customers.

Now that you know (if you didn’t know yet) the best and most valuable feature of Twitter, you need to know how best to use it. Twitter original user interface is extremely limited (you’ve got that, right?) and doesn’t give you the power you need to really leverage “Search”.

My recommendation is to use the following tools; they will dramatically change your Twitter experience.

On your PC, rely on Seesmic Desktop (my favorite) or TweetDeck. Both applications offer multi-columns search enabling you to build a dashboard to follow the key words you care about.

On your cell phone or iPhone, the best one for the same reason is Tweetie.

Moreover Tweetie and Seesmic Desktop are multi-accounts, so you can for example work from your personal account and from your company account at the same time without having to logout and login continuously. Pretty awesome!

 There are many other interesting aspects to Twitter, which is clearly a great online marketing tool. We will talk about this soon.

In the meantime, let us know how you have heard about Twitter in the first place and how was your original experience. Which tool have you been using and why?