Lets face it: unsought change can be painful.  New software roll-outs, mergers and acquisitions, outsourcing departments, in-sourcing departments, office relocation, process changes, new technology installations, company reorganizations – all of these events constitute changes that can be unpopular, expensive and stressful particularly if they do not meet expectations.  But, change doesn’t have to be painful.  At the very least, the pain of change can be minimized and at the very best it can lead to a delightful transformation.  And that transformation, my friends, is what good change management consulting is all about.

A successful implementation of any initiative should produce increased profitability through increased net revenue or decreased costs or else why initiate it?  But far too often, expectations are not met and months if not weeks after go-live C level executives and/or board members are questioning the wisdom of the change made.  In many of these cases, it wasn’t the change itself that was the problem – the problem was that the new behaviors required to make the change a success weren’t there.  For example, software applications can have all the best features in the world, but if users aren’t willing or knowledgeable enough to embrace those features, your company will never see the benefits.  Optimal transformation to that more profitable state will not be realized.  But proper change management does address behavioral changes and even attitudes to help inspire your team to make a true transition.

I like to think of change management that leads to successful transformation in terms of three major components: stakeholder analysis, communication, and training.  Of course there are many moving parts among those three components which I will touch on in this blog during the coming months, but let’s keep it simple for now.

• Stakeholder analysis involves understanding the hearts and minds of your stakeholders (employees, vendors, customers, shareholders, etc.), assessing how your initiative will affect them, and identifying associated risks to the success of the change.  Project teams often skip this step or minimize it believing they already know stakeholders issues or that they are irrelevant.  That strategy often results in unexpected delays or even disastrous road blocks.
• Communication encompasses the flow of information before, during, and after the change is implemented both within the initiative team and between the team and stakeholders.  Too little communication and a void will be created that is usually not filled with good things.  Too much communication and you can scare stakeholders with events that never end up coming to pass or over-promise and leave stakeholders disgruntled.  Proper change management helps your team get the right amount of communication delivered at the right time and in the right format.
• Training is how stakeholders learn what behavioral changes will be required to make the change successful and how they will be manifested.  Without proper change management, training is often neglected until late in the project and not given the attention it deserves to adequately prepare stakeholders for the change.  Many training plans include some sort of end user instruction, but ignore or take for granted required process changes.

Giving these components the attention they deserve not only helps avoid project pitfalls, but also gets your organization engaged and often helps establish a sense of ownership needed to move from “change” to true “transformation.”

To learn more about how incorporating change management in your next initiative can help set your organization up for a successful transformation, check out my video How Can Change Management Help Me? or subscribe to this blog.  In the meantime, please contact me with any specific questions either in the comments for this post or privately via email and as always wishing you a joyful, productive and successful day!

In my last four posts we discussed the four areas of strategic planning that I evaluate during a Clone Your Favorite Client (CYFC) Assessment: mission, vision, core values, and SMART goals.  I’ll be honest, rarely do I find all four of those items present in my target market companies let alone communicated throughout their organizations.  But I usually find at least one or two which is enough to help define the company culture (even though you really do need all 4).  So when I start the next section of my CYFC assessment (Marketing & Branding), the first thing I evaluate is how well a company’s branding strategy reflects their strategic plan and company culture.

Increase net profit coming from new targeted customers (favorite clients) by 20% in the calendar year 2012.

Often when goals get set by executive management they either are too broad (i.e. not SMART) such as: “increase revenue” and/or are not communicated to the rest of the organization.  Sure, we’d all like to increase revenue, but is increasing non-profitable revenue really going to take you closer to your vision?  And will you have achieved your “increase revenue” goal if the actual increase is only .01%?  And, how likely is it that you will achieve a goal if everyone doesn’t know about it?

There are a lot of great articles out there on how to create a SMART goal, but my main focus here is your company’s ability to clone your favorite clients.  What I really want to see is that:

• Goals have been set and at least some relate to increasing business from favorite clients
• Goals have been communicated throughout the organization
• Goals are SMART so that the team knows their progress toward accomplishing them
• Every employee has access to a measurement of where they are on a day to day basis in achieving goals

Obviously if you want more favorite clients then your SMART goals should be geared in that direction and they have to be communicated to everyone.  If you are going to communicate how well you’re doing in meeting your goals, you have to have a way to measure and visualize your progress (that is why they need to be measurable and time-oriented).  For example, I want to see if the sales team knows at any given time how well they are contributing to that 20% net profit from targeted clients increase.  You’ll want to use Key Performance Indicators or KPIs to measure and illustrate progress on achieving SMART goals and make them available to everyone so that both management and the rest of the organization have a communication tool to drive progress as well as spot and navigate through road blocks. Look for a KPI post in the next few weeks when we discuss the Sales Process focus of Clone Your Favorite Assessments or in the meantime check out this post on creating metrics to illustrate KPIs

Without SMART goals I find that organizations tend to have a hard time focusing on activities that will target favorite clients.  Even in an organization with a great culture where everyone loves their job and their company, it is very important to make sure that tasks are aligned toward the discipline specific goals that are important to achieving over all favorite client focused company goals.  Otherwise, employees tend to get myopic and just concentrate on their specific day to day operational challenges as opposed to working together with other departments from a more holistic approach.

I would love to hear comments on your experience with SMART goals versus general ones an in the mean time, happy hunting!

In my last two posts I discussed the importance of mission statements and core values to better understand who your best potential clients are and how to get more.  In this post its time to look at vision statements (no pun intended).

In general, you need vision statements so your employees know where the company is going and how they will have to develop to help it get there.  I’ve worked with several clients whose businesses have outgrown some of their long term key employees because the employee didn’t understand the vision well enough to develop their skills to match the company’s future needs.  Sound familiar?

Obviously your investors and other stakeholders will need to understand you vision statement too, but your clients also need to see and understand it so they  know how they fit in with your plans.  I conducted a customer perception study for one client where we learned that because they were expanding into a new market segment, some of their current clients were concerned that their market was no longer a priority.  That concern potentially could have cost them a renewal contract.

When it comes to a Clone Your Favorite Assessment, its obvious that your company vision can go a long way in helping define your target market.   Often when companies start out offering a product or service, they sell it to whoever will pay for it.  What you may find over time is that there is a specific market segment where your product or service can add more value – potentially game changing value for an industry.  In that situation your vision statement may and probably should change to reflect that revelation.

In my next post I’ll cover the last piece of the mission/vision/values/goals section of my Clone Your Favorite Assessment – SMART goals.  In the mean time, I’d love to hear some of your favorite vision statements (and why they’re your favorites) in the comments and as always, happy hunting!

Core values are what keep you and your employees honest with yourselves in a pinch.  They are what define your company culture and I almost always find that organizations with strong and ubiquitous core values have a relatively healthy culture with great employee and client retention.

And, once again, core values are important to defining your best target market.  For example, if one of your core values is consistency e.g. to provide a predictable and consistent quality product, then you will want clients that value consistency.  They may prefer to pay more for it or less for it depending on where you fall in the quality scale.  Either way, you meet their need every time.

As with mission statements, I encourage my clients to brainstorm with their employees (in this case from all levels and departments) to help define core values if they have not already.  You will be surprised a how quickly they jump out in a healthy company culture.  Another way to get a head start on defining core values is a customer perception study where a third party (like me) interviews your stakeholders individually and compiles results.

In my next post I’ll talk about the importance of vision statements (yes, you need them too), but in the mean time, please feel free to share with me your company core values and why you think they are important in the comments.  And as always, I wish you happy hunting and a safe Memorial Day weekend!

Yes, you really do need a mission statement.  Glad we got that out of the way.

When I first started conducting target market assessments, I found that it was much easier to hone in on what made a company a good prospect for my client and even more importantly what gave my client a competitive advantage for prospective customers if they had a good mission statement.

For example, say you are a retail electricity provider with no mission statement.  How do you know whether to improve your processes to better suit households or small businesses?  Are your customers more likely to require cheap power or reliable power?  Now you may say most need both, but that is not necessarily true.  If my power goes out for a few minutes in the middle of the day, its no big deal.  But what if the power goes out in an emergency room or a continuous process manufacturing facility?

You don’t necessarily have to nail down your target market in a mission statement, but you do have to know what you do best – how you differentiate yourself.  For example: if you are going after lower income households or small businesses, then being the “low cost provider that makes service available to those who could not otherwise afford it” may be part of your mission.  If your target is high end businesses, hospitals, and nursing homes then your mission may encompass being “the consistent and reliable source.”

Writing missions statements is not always easy, but as previously discussed it is necessary for a variety of reasons including understanding who your best potential client is.  That is why I start every Clone Your Favorite Client Assessment with a review of my client’s mission, vision, core values and goals.  And writing a mission statement doesn’t have to be mission impossible either.  There are some great resources for helping write missions statements online (check out How to Write Your Mission Statement on entrepreneur.com).  I usually recommend that my clients conduct a brainstorming session with their management team to at least hammer out the basics and then let their marketing firm turn their ideas into a statement that will speak to their stakeholders.  I’d love to hear about your mission statement creation war stories in the comments and in the mean time, happy hunting!

Have you ever had a client that you liked so much that you thought to yourself “I wish I had 5 more just like them!” These are the clients that you enjoy working with, you make good profit on the business you conduct with them, they pay on time and they value your product or service (see Anatomy of a Favorite Client).

The flip side is the client that can potentially bankrupt your business.  I’ve seen several growing businesses crater under the weight of what they thought was going to be their flagship client.  Possibly a big name client that instantly doubled their revenue, but perhaps also instantly shrunk their profitability.  Or you might have several smaller clients that don’t value your service and want a low margin deal, but high margin service.  Either way, once you take into account all the hidden costs, you may find yourself underwater financially and your employees miserable from dealing with these high maintenance folks.

The good news is that with a little analysis followed by some strategic planning, you can get more of the best and less of the rest.  For the next few weeks I’ll be publishing a series of posts on how to clone your favorite client, but for the now the real question is – could you answer the question – “what is Misty’s job” in a Jeopardy lightening round??  If not, please leave me some feedback and in the meantime, happy hunting!

What if instead of approaching a new software roll-out as a new company edict, it gets internally marketed as a solution?  Companies are getting better and better and viewing their employees as internal clients and this message fits right in line with that thinking.  Do software sales people tell prospective clients “you are going to buy this package of code I’m peddling and then rock your employee’s world by forcing them to to learn how to use it and give up their old familiar applications.”?  No, software sales consultants have to determine what their client’s needs are and then show them how their software can help meet those needs.  A roll out shouldn’t be any different.

So the next time your company gets ready to roll out new software, think about some internal marketing.  You might want to start with a quick survey asking your employees that will use the new application what their greatest day to day challenges are.  Next you can do some internal marketing showing how the new software is a great solution to help meet those challenges.

The roll out of a great new software application should be something to get excited about, not something to elicit dejected groans.  Fun and positive internal marketing that shows your employees how they will benefit from the new software is much more likely to produce early adoption and proficiency that will result in successfully meeting the needs you purchased the software to fulfill in the first place.

Got any great stories of successful software roll outs?  I’d love to read a comment about them below!  And in the meantime, happy hunting!

When I came back to Houston I started thinking about other situations where I’ve been a little paralyzed and guess what?  Launching this blog was one of them.  If you know me or you’ve read the About page for this blog, you know that I’m a sales and marketing consultant or as I like to call myself: a favorite client cloner.  A big part of my job in working with clients that are transitioning from small to medium sized companies is to be a change agent i.e. I help clients make changes in their business development processes that accommodate and facilitate their growth.  But what often comes with change is fear.  Miraval was a great eye opener for me because I’ve often found it challenging to relate to my client employee’s fear of change. After all I love change – I’m a change agent!  I want to make their lives better, easier, more prosperous!  Well, when it comes to stepping off the platform or moving to a new blog, apparently I too experience transitional fear.

So why is this transition to a new blog necessary?  Most of my consulting work used to revolve around systems – Microsoft Outlook often being the center piece and the subject of my first blog Arrow-Tips.  But my consulting practice has expanded to encompass a more holistic set of services including target market analysis, customer perception studies, mission/vision/values/goals alignment, etc.  Arrow-Tips has developed a great following with several hundred subscribers, great feedback and it’s a familiar and comfortable forum for me.  But like my clients, it’s time for me to step outside my comfort zone in order to better meet their needs and add more value.  Like the experience I had flying down the zip line or the experiences my clients have had growing more efficiently and with confidence, I’m hoping this blog will reach a bigger audience to help spread that feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction.

So to kick things off, I’d love to hear some of your stories of overcoming fear to transition to a more successful place.  And in the meantime, happy hunting!