Informed Innovation in B2B Sales Productivity

Lessons From Start-Ups on Improving Sales Productivity Despite Uncertainties

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:05:00 +0000

These days, selling Business-to-Business can seem like risky business. CSO Insights' latest Sales Performance Report notes that in 2009 the percentage of reps making quota dropped to 51.8% from 58.8% a year earlier. The response? Most firms have increased quotas for 2010, seemingly hoping that an improved economy will be the tide that raises performance. In CSO Insights' view, it's a risky approach prone to fail unless other things occur.

The right interventions to improve sales productivity seem equally uncertain. New sales compensation models? Re-organizations of sales operations? New technologies? Sales training? One of the challenges to buyers is that these choices tend to be silo-ed silver bullets which, when shot, end up being advocated most by those who've shot them. There's no independent proof that the chosen tactic had more impact than any other tactic would have had.

So, what's one to do? In my view, there's value in thinking like a successful start-up. For start-ups, uncertainty is a given; the trick is drive down the risks arising from uncertainty. From Eric Ries's thoughtful post on balancing process and innovation, these best practices emerge:

ACCELERATE LEARNING.
The speed at which a startup can learn is its competitive advantage and the defining factor in its success. Any change that accelerates learning is a win, and everything else is waste
MEASURE CUSTOMER-VALIDATING THINGS.
Startups measure their firms' impacts based on customers' experiences. They do so in ways that create a common measurement language for all members of their team. This eliminates risks that different parts of a firm's team "learn" in their own private reality. It lets teams, when facing difficult choices, come together and make informed, fact-based, decisions.
TRIGGER LEARNING VIA FEEDBACK.
The faster feedback on customer experiences arrives, the better. The feedback loop between taking an action and seeing the results should be as short as possible. To provoke learning, simplicity matters. Reports that bury users in data won't affect behaviors. Simple ones will. It's not about how much data you can store. It's about how much learning you can provoke.

In short, there's great value to firms in gaining fast feedback on impacts of their actions, delivered simply with actionable metrics, based on customer behaviors, that trigger learning. Doing so makes more predictable the impacts of actions taken in the face of uncertainties. It eliminates the risk of making the same mistakes over and over again. It builds craftsmanship.

These lessons from start-ups have legs. Look at what successful firms did through past recessions to grow their market shares and you'll find these same themes.

When Conversations Are the Key to Success, Why Bother With a Keyboard?

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:50:00 +0000

Conversations have always been a key to my career success. Since 1981, I've used keyboards to support conversations, often with folks working a long distance from Vancouver. Email and other forms of on-line messaging became a way of conversing with key people who were normally very hard to reach.

It came as a bit of surprise to me this week when a really bright, highly valued, colleague suggested that writing wasn't very important in sales, and it was becoming less important.

My reliance on my keyboard as part of my conversations hasn't really changed in 30 years. Letting busy people choose if and when they'd like to re-engage in conversation with me. Proving that I've listened to them. Offering my perspectives. Making an honest effort to contribute value to those who I'm conversing with (much as Neil Rackham advocates). Waiting for proof that I've succeeded in my efforts via some feedback (like a reply email).

In 1993, I asked a senior executive of a Gas Utility if he could ever foresee their industry using the Internet as part of their business. Not a chance he said. Three years later, he asked for my help in a presentation to the CEO's of Canada's gas distribution firms on that very topic. Two years after that, we proudly helped their firm create an on-line conversation with regulators and the public that led to approvals for their firm's construction of a new natural gas pipeline. This happened despite many underlying route complexities, including environmental and first nations concerns. We used keyboards, for a first time, as part of their conversation.

Throughout all this, the importance of engaging the public and regulators in a dialogue on the merits of the project never changed. What did change was the means to that end. We found a way to improve the odds of success by giving valuable communications added amplitude and speed via clever uses of emerging technologies. Keyboards became a trigger for conversations, not a replacement for them.

The approach worked, in my view, because the fundamental work never changed. It felt familiar to those who were doing it, we'd just instrumented it a little differently. Users gained feedback on how well (or not) they were engaging target audiences in the dialogue we knew had to occur. They got that feedback fast. This required added agility in how we participated in the conversations we'd invited. We needed to respond in a fashion that proved we were actually listening. When we did, it seeded feedback reinforcing that we were on the right track. Success became more predictable.

At the end of the day, everyone involved looked at each other and couldn't believe what we'd collectively accomplished. We'd triggered more conversations, quickly, with the help of keyboards. We'd triggered more good conversations, quickly, with the help of feedback that let us make mistakes, then discover and fix them fast.

This was 17 years after I'd begun learning how to support conversations with a keyboard. It's now 12 years later,
and I'm still learning how to do so.

For me, the keyboard's role in triggering conversations
is still the same.

The screen's just a little different.

In Sales Productivity, Velocity Matters

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 15:57:00 +0000

Learned this week of a sales manager who's raised the white flag for 2010 after one month's sales effort. Her team's January numbers were down 22% over last January and for 2010 their firm's looking for 18% growth over last year.

The good news? There's still 11 months to go. The bad news? The specific things that she and her team might do to course-correct for the rest of the year aren't clear. Worse than that, it may take a few months to detect the impacts on future sales of their course-correcting tactics. If they get it wrong, they'll have that much less time in which to try other things, then even less time remaining in which to detect whether or not their latest tactics have 'turned the tide'.

This manager's situation underscores how velocity matters. Victor Cheng notes that one of the keys to recession-proofing a business is to shrink decision cycles. In sales, this requires sharper, faster, feedback on the impacts of sales efforts. With it, sales leaders can detect, quickly, whether or not a tactic is working. If it isn't working, there's still plenty of time left in which to try other tactics and strive for more impact.

Faster decision cycles in sales create two advantages: lowered costs of mistakes and enhanced craftsmanship in sales practices. As Clayton Christensen notes, those who fail fast, gain much - fear of failure is surpassed with a curiosity to succeed and the learned skills with which to do so.

11 months to go? Bring it on.

The Value of Social Media in Triggering Sales Productivity

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 17:16:00 +0000

Sociable! is a new bible on how firms are profiting from their uses of Social Media. The authors - Shane Gibson and Steve Jagger - are both entrepreneurs + seasoned sales professionals. They're hard wired to only do things that deliver a positive return on effort. This makes their perspectives on social media useful pointers on the little things one can do using social media to improve sales productivity. Specifically:

ON CONNECTING
Social Media are all about connecting conversationally with folks who you might otherwise never have the opportunity to connect with. Such media can, when used properly, create connections and shrink distances and do both, quickly. Social Media are an opportunity to stop pitching + start connecting. In a conversation economy, there’s a huge need for conversation engendering ways of doing business. Used successfully, they create a dialogue. ‘Me’ focused conversations will fail. When you master the art of conversational connecting, you’ll thaw the cold call or cold event.

ON BEING A LEADER IN BEING SOCIABLE
Social Media are new + create new opportunities for thought leadership. Those who emerge as thought leaders will be able to harness the power of the crowd.

Real thought leaders are exceptionally helpful. They make it easy for influencers to digest and evaluate information. Thought leaders don’t make their colleagues do mundane work – they do it for them.

As you seek to be helpful to others, be authentic. Most people work on a relationship to get a deal, but the relationship is the deal.

Measure your success as a thought leader thoughtfully. With Twitter, it’s not about the number of followers. With LinkedIn, it’s not about your number of connections. In both cases, what matters is the number of relationships. Becoming a thought leader isn’t about getting referrals … it’s about becoming referable.

ON BEING ENORMOUSLY SUCCESSFUL
Social media bring not only the potential to connect, but also the potential to learn, quickly, how to most effectively connect. The reason: the feedback mechanisms such media provide. Use those feedback mechanisms to discover how successfully you are connecting and, then, be prepared to be wrong. Expect to make mistakes + learn when you do. When you’re pioneering uses of social media, there are no set rules for avoiding mistakes. Failure is part of the process of becoming successful. If you do make a mistake, don’t be afraid to apologize. It’s part of learning. It’s part of being authentic.

Shane and Steve offer rules for profiting from Social Media which are simple and sensible. Their rules are also authentic, backed by numerous stories of the successes enjoyed by those who’ve lived by them.

If you're wondering about how using Social Media might improve your sales productivity, read what Shane and Steve have discovered. Then sign-on to Social Media. The hit send. At that point, your journey will begin. With their book as a guide, the journey will be a rewarding one.

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These points are what I discovered from a first read of Sociable! The wisdom in these discoveries is the authors'. The mistakes, if any, are mine. FYI, the 1st chapter's available for free download from here

Triggering Sales Productivity by Understanding Return-on-Effort

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 19:10:00 +0000

There is much talk these days of a need for better, deeper, integration of marketing and sales. In my view, it’s desperately needed, but must be done in ways that address the underlying reason why executives are demanding it – they want a higher return on investment (ROI) from marketing and sales. At its core, this requires finding ways to improve the return-on-effort (ROE) in sales.

In recent years, marketing automation, sales enablement, and Sales 2.0 tools have helped marketing and sales teams be more informed and efficient. Despite these advances, declines in sales productivity continue (according to CSO Insights, quota attainment declined, again, in 2009). There’s a need for marketing and sales to combine expertise and resources in new ways that actually fix this underlying sales productivity problem. In my view, this requires that marketing and sales find ways to create:

more helpful selling processes
simpler, smarter, user experiences for sales reps
better metrics on the impacts of sales efforts

From my perspective, new buyer-centric (self-service) sales models have negatively affected the buyer experience. Ask someone who's trying to buy something from another business today to identify the thing that's hardest for them to find these days and they'll tell you it's ... help. Now that help is a scarce resource, if it’s offered in abundance by sales people to prospects who’d most appreciate it, I believe prospects will notice. In noticing, my bet is that prospects will do something extraordinary - they'll engage in the process. They'll take the sales rep's calls. In doing so, they’ll reward sales effort with a buyer impact. It’s an important first step.

The second key to improving sales productivity is to deliver much simpler views of the massively useful information now available. Today, in many sales teams, there’s an all-you-can eat 24/7 information buffet in play. There’s so much work to be done, and so much information available with which to do it, that important callbacks aren’t occurring. Often it’s because sales people don’t have the time to call. In some cases, they’re flooded with so much information that they’re missing opportunities to re-engage with interested prospects.

In my experience, the more information sales reps have the less of it they'll ever consume. Barry Trailer's noted the same in CSO Insight's formula for sales productivity. What's needed therefore are interfaces that reduce the flow of information to sales people and add some smarts to the information that’s flowing. What’s needed are interfaces that make it much easier for sales people to understand everything that's going on and then choose, wisely, where best to invest their efforts. In my experience, when Sales Reps’ can make smart choices, easily, of what to do next, and with whom, their efforts have more impact. It’s an important second step.

The third key to improving sales productivity is measuring, in the aggregate, the impacts of selling efforts. In my view we've come to a point where our ability to measure content consumption and do clever things with it (like lead scoring) is really impressive. Being helpful, however, requires sales conversations, not just content consumption. In my view, this requires new metrics that reveal the impact of conversational sales efforts. Metrics which reveal, for instance:

How many good sales conversations the sales team is having every day (based on what prospects go on to do after a sales conversation ends)
Behavior-based conversions of prospects through the sales funnel. This means a shift away from measuring, for instance, how many quotes the sales team produced today to measuring, instead, how many prospects read quotes today.
What marketing and sales activities are triggering the highest and fastest impacts from sales efforts.

When it's clear what impacts conversational sales efforts are having, marketing and sales will improve impacts, together. Silos between marketing and sales will disappear. They'll innovate in ways that improve sales productivity. It's an important third step.

I’ve been privileged to witness the impacts on sales productivity of doing these three things, and doing them all at once. They’re seeding improvements in the return-on-effort for both marketing and sales. It’s what keeps me coming into the office every day.

The Scientific Advantage of Improving Sales Productivity

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 18:43:00 +0000

Improving the productivity of an existing sales team holds enormous promise for new competitive advantages. A recent HBR article on the New Science of Sales Productivity hints at the scope of the achievable.

The authors provide a useful comparison of two approaches to achieving an 80% growth in sales over 5 years - a 'capacity' focus relying on additional sales hires to hit the sales target vs. a 'productivity' focus relying on teasing higher sales productivity from the existing team.

They conclude that an existing sales team that achieves an 8% annual improvement in their productivity will generate the same sales growth as a team that adds 27% more reps. This ignores, of course, the added costs of recruiting and training new reps.

In their view, such productivity improvements are now enabled when sales leaders implement systems around the art of selling that provide data, analyses, processes, and tools that shrink the performance gap between top performers and the rest of the sales team.

Perhaps there are, now, better ways to drive sales productivity than merely admonishing reps to work harder. They found that firms using sales productivity improving systems are typically seeing gains of 30% in sales revenues per rep within two - three years.

A summary of their comparative estimates of impact:

Are Your Prospect Experiences Productive Ones?

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 17:27:00 +0000

It amazes me how much one can learn about the tricks to B2B sales productivity by being prospected by someone else. I recently attended a trade show, had a pleasant chat with a vendor rep in one of the booths, then 'got scanned'.

A couple of weeks later, our sales desk received a call (in the middle of a sales meeting). One of our colleagues dipped out to take the call. When she lifted the receiver, there was no one at the other end of the line so she hung up. Thirty seconds later, my phone rang and (given the sales meeting had already been disrupted), I took the call. It was an Account Exec from the vendor and (apparently) not anyone I'd spoken to in the booth. While I wasn't rude (or at least worked at not being so), I did make it clear that this wasn't the most convenient time to chat. The call ended with no attempt by the Rep to be helpful by scheduling a callback or offering to help in any other way.

A few days later, I got another call. From the same vendor, but a different Account Executive who, also, I'd never met. This time, I explained I knew someone at the firm and would probably follow-up with them. At that point, I was effectively dropped (politely) like a hot potatoe.

In both cases, I walked away feeling like here were two well meaning sales professionals who connected with me (audibly) yet missed an opportunity to really connect with me substantively.

Add it all up, and you have a prospect experience that wasn't very helpful. Neil Rackham's take on how to sell in tough economic times is the antithesis of this kind of activity-completing experience. Rackham advocates being exceptionally helpful, often unexpectedly; it will trigger prospects to engage in 'the conversation'.

Are your prospect experiences activity-completing ones for your sales people, or helpful ones for your sales prospects? If you were the prospect, which type would you rather participate in?

What Makes Great Sales Managers Great?

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:13:00 +0000

Recently had the pleasure of reading Philippe LeBarron’s book on the habits and practices of top-performing sales managers. In his view, great sales managers make productive things happen. They do so through a unique combination of great people skills, and great inspecting skills. They’re backed by systems that reveal , for everyone involved, the impacts of sales efforts. Awareness of impacts creates a continuous drive to improve impacts.

Great sales managers are typically not numbers inclined, ‘out of the box’, but they’re drawn to metrics by ‘thinking out of the box’ of the challenges they face in ‘making the number’. Like everyone else, when they first became a sales manager they were asked to shift from their strong, natural, people development focus to a ‘making the number’ focus. They, however, see things differently. For them, making the number requires leading a team that’s sufficiently skilled and coached to ‘make the number.’

Great sales managers, apply the same curiousity to sales metrics that they formerly brought to understanding their customers’ circumstances. As before, they take what they discover to create exceptional value for their sales people. They create this value by doing things that make a difference, then providing metrics that help them understand the impacts of their leadership efforts. With one eye on winning each sales quarter, they take a longer view of building back-to-back winning sales years. It shows in the metrics they track in terms of their own performance as leaders: # of star reps, shorter productivity ramp times, lower rep turnover, and % of reps at goal.

In LeBarron’s experience, it’s not by chance or luck that such sales managers are great. They implement exceptional systems that let them discover the underlying performance of their sales process. This lets them improve forecast confidence and get early warnings of impending problems. The best of the best go even further. They reverse engineer what’s being done that makes their colleagues good at what they do. Then they probe for proof that the effort being invested is being invested in the right things, and really making a difference. As leaders, they create new forms of transparency that clarify the Return-on-Sales-Effort and, in doing so, provoke a drive to constantly improve it. They’re able to make a difference, and add value, because they’ve got feedback systems that continuously give them the opportunity to do so. Then, when they sense a chance to make a difference, they do so, in ways that underscore their focus on people development.

If there’s ever a conference of such Great Sales Managers, I’d like to be invited. They sound like my kind of people.

++++++++++++++++++++
Philippe LeBarron's observations come from his 18 years in sales and project management, including seven years as Manager, Sales Productivity, EMC2. The errors, if any, in the above summary are mine. The wisdom is his.

Why B2B Sales Productivity Could Use a Dose of Design Thinking

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:13:00 +0000

Tim Brown's TED talk in July 2009 at Oxford argues the case for designers to think big. In his view, much of what now passes for design isn't that important - it's too incremental and has too little effect. It's become a tool of consumerism, creating amusing products, but not ones that are very important.

He contends as the pace of change and uncertainty quickens, there's a need to solve much bigger problems and, in doing so, create world changing innovations. In his view, it requires bigger thinking, as enabled by the discipline of Design Thinking. Brown's points are reminiscent of Peter Senge's on systems thinking back in 1990.

In both authors' views, big changes occur when thinking is provoked which helps the players in a system discover the impacts of their efforts on system performance. Products which trigger such thinking, simplify choices and provoke improved outcomes. In my experience, solutions which reveal the impacts of existing system dynamics trigger design thinking. They become perspective shifting, change provoking, and performance improving.

Others have noted the implications for product innovations of Brown's ideas. A recent blog posting from Harvard Business notes that, in a savagely complex world, breakthrough ideas in business most often come from enabling a diversity of viewpoints and perspectives to be brought to bear on whatever challenges lie ahead. Jim Estill (a member of the Board of RIM) contends, in his review of the Design of Business, that successful business requires more design thinking.

Where might such thinking apply, best? In my view, where a problem's complex, the players don't directly control the impacts they have, and indigenous efforts haven't eliminated the problem. B2B sales productivity is an example. It was the number one issue for CEOs in 2008. Since then, quota attainment has continued to decline, according to CSO Insights, and firms have responded by raising quotas. In addition, in planning for 2010, some firms have apparently decided they're better off retaining mediocre sales people than replacing them. Perhaps, with bigger thinking, there's a better way.

Implications for Sales Productivity of Avinash Kaushik's Call To ReThink Web Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:23:00 +0000

Recently had the pleasure of hearing Avinash Kaushik, the head of Google Analytics, share his views on the need to re-think (web) analytics. His perpsectives added resonance to Peter Nicholson's contentions that we've become data rich and attention poor.

Avinash's mantra for capturing and using analytics is, on reflection, a valuable take on how analytics must evolve to contribute to improved sales productivity:

focus on outcomes. They're what matter, and today they're buried in a sea of activity measures that don't matter unless they affect outcomes.
as a core outcome, don't stink. Dig for any stats that might suggest you do stink, then drive the odor away by the actions you take to improve your business.
conversations are key to marketing and sales outcomes and growing in importance. Look for new measures, including via social media, that gauge how effectively you're participating in conversations.
learn to be wrong, quickly. Be curious; resist the temptation to let the Highest Paid Person's Opinion persist; test hypotheses; make changes, fast. Mistakes are key to gaining deep insights. Velocity makes the cost of mistakes matter less.
segment or die. Aggregate metrics rarely reveal anything that can drive learning + improvements. Compare things and, from comparisons, find new performance benchmarks to strive for.
magnificant successes will come from deep strategic thinking that people engage in with the help of data, not tactical reactions to raw data themselves nor tools that deliver the raw data.

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Based on his presentation to the Internet Marketing Conference in Vancouver, and points made in his forthcoming new book Web Analytics 2.0. The wisdom in these observations is Avinash's. The mistakes, if any, in this summary of his remarks, are mine.

Implications for Sales Productivity of Aberdeen's 2009 Sales Automation Report

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:24:00 +0000

Aberdeen's 2009 Sales Automation Report reveals conditions with important implications for firms looking to gain a sales productivity advantage via uses of technology. Their survey of over 200 firms reveals that:

being a Best-in-Class firm using sales automation tools is lucrative; such firms are the equivalent of sales superstars. More of their sales force achieves quota. Their lead conversion rates are higher. They're achieving higher year over year revenue growth.
having technology, by itself, is no silver Best-in-Class bullet. Firms getting the highest ROIs are integrating sales automation systems, improving data quality, aligning systems to fit their sales processes and activities, and (through combinations of the above plus the odd carrot) achieving exception user adoption.
best-in-class firms are constantly learning and improving; they're continuously honing their sales automation systems based on user feedback.

There's still plenty of room for improvement:

only 10% of firms using sales automation tools are extremely satisfied with the relationship between their tools and sales performance.
uncertainty in sales performance persists. Even with flawless sales execution, sales people are still left with nothing more than hunches as a basis for gauging their prospects' levels of interest.
such uncertainy makes it difficult to identify 'at risk' prospects and ensure corrective actions occur. Firms able to do so are rare. Even in best-in-class firms, only 26% are detecting and pro-actively serving their 'at risk' prospects.
user adoption of sales automation tools comes at a cost - in best-in-class firms, sales reps are spending up to 3 hours a day inputting data or sales activity into their sales automation system.

My take on the implications for improving B2B sales productivity:

user adoption will be automatically assured (without carrots or guns) when sales people can see clearly the impacts on their own performance of using sales automation tools.
users will be impatient to see impacts. They won't be willing to wait weeks or months. They're results oriented and pressured to produce results. Just like their bosses. It's a good thing.
real-time data showing the connections between effort and sales impacts conquer these user adoption issues. Users can see the future sales impacts of their invested sales efforts. They can see and fix mistakes quickly. They can develop the craftsmanship of top sales performers.

Improving B2B Sales Productivity Requires A Better Balance Between Data and Attention

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 15:01:00 +0000

Peter Nicholson, President of the Council of Canadian Academies, notes how profoundly we've become information rich: the costs/unit of capturing, storing, and transmitting data have declined 10 million fold since the early 1960's. "It's as if a house that cost half a million dollars in 1964 could be bought today for a nickel."

He goes on to note that as we've become information rich, we've become attention poor. It's triggered a knock-on effect - an erosion of the deep, integrative, learning that can only come from 10,000 hours of focused effort. What's required, in his view, is a more balanced tradeoff between the depth of what we know and the speed with which we can retrieve it. This, in turn, will require creating new ways of interacting with information and colleagues that create a 'peripheral intellectual vision' with which deep insights can accrue.

In my view, his observations carry important implications for improving sales productivity. We're seeing some of the most profound advances in B2B sales productivity coming from sales people who are attacking the scarcity of their prospects' attention with deep insights. They're creating significant value for their prospects by creating a vision of the possible. Doing so gains their prospects' attention. As Reps do it over and over again, their deep insights become habitual. Their methods for producing insights are learned through feedback, creative habits, and hours of practice; craftsmanship emerges.

Why Execs Throw Each Other Under The Bus (and how to avoid fatalities)

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 21:38:00 +0000

When things go wrong in companies, it's really hard to achieve alignment between various business functions without the sobering effects of a common understanding of what's going on. Fingers get pointed (rarely inwardly) and execs take turns throwing each other under the proverbial bus.

An obvious example: sales and marketing execs. Look carefully and when sales aren't as expected you may also spot a CFO tossing a CMO. Or a COO tossing a CSO. When things go wrong, life at work can become a really big toss-fest. In my view, it's symptomatic of a much bigger problem - sales productivity - and the challenges execs face in coming to grips with what to do about it.

The problem, in my view, is that there's no basis for translating CEO, CFO, COO, CMO, and CSO perspectives into a common understanding of what's going on. Without a common language, the scene is fraught with tons of noise, no understanding, and absolutely no progress. Under the bus, it can get pretty crowded. There are fatalities.

What's needed is new information that clarifies the impacts on sales productivity of investments made, and initiatives tried. It can be the common language that execs need with which to gain a common understanding of what's going on and learn from each others' perspectives. This new info needs to arrive in real-time, in order to shrink the costs of discovering and fixing mistakes. When informed, and informed quickly, execs will throw ideas at each other (rather than each other under the passing bus). It's an alternative response to sales productivity challenges that's a lot less fatal and a lot more productive.

Firms that understand this need, and address it, will astonish themselves with how much their execs can learn from each other. They'll astonish themselves with how much more they can earn, triggered by how much more they can learn.

____
Kent Huffman, CMO, BearCom Wireless, thoughtfully provoked this post. Silverpop's latest whitepaper gives a valuable summary of
'Why Sales Throws Marketing Under the Bus (and how to avoid fatalities), drawing on the findings of recent research studies. Their points illustrate the communications gulf that exists between departments when sales aren't as intended. David Cooperstein's recent tweet noting how he can't wait to get Forrester's research going on CFO-CMO connection provided further grist for the mill. Hopefully this post adds some value.

Gartner Calls For Emergent Enterprise Information Architectures

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 16:53:00 +0000

A new report from Gartner advocates a new enterprise architecture - an emergent architecture that manages connections between different parts of the business, thereby enabling more adept responses to the growing variety and complexity of markets, economies, networks, and companies. Specifically, such emergent enterprise architectures:

are non-deterministic and innovation enabling
devolve control to automonous actors
enable rule-bound actors to make choices
enable constituents to act in their own best interests
provide feedback that alters individuals' behavior
are dynamic and adaptive systems that change over time
are resource constrained, which drives their emergence (out of necessity)

Solid stuff, particularly when compared to trends in the types of solutions available for deployment within such emergent architectures. These include the growing emergence of Cloud Computing and SaaS solutions, and the ease of their integration with on-premise systems. Gartner's findings have implications for both Enterprise Architects, and vendor Product Managers aiming to enable the adaptive enterprise.

With a Kid-Like CuriosityEveryone Can Make A Difference

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:01:00 +0000

Sales superstars often have a child-like curiosity that they apply in an unending hunt for good ideas. Their approach to their work is inspiring for the effects it can have on those around them. In many ways, they're classic entrepreneurs.

Irish Business Coach Elaine Rogers recently posted to Twitter this video reminder that everyone can make a difference when they take an entrepreneurial bent to tackling challenges they face. The key to this is remembering what it's like to be a kid, with the curiosity and drive to conquer all. It underscores many of the points Twyla Tharp makes about the creative habits of the the craftsmen amongst us.

In B2B Sales, Making Mistakes Fast Is a Key to Shortening Sales Cycles

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:45:00 +0000

In B2B sales, Reps yearn to close more sales more quickly to counter industry trends pushing in the opposite direction. They yearn for the craftsmanship of sales superstars.

In any craft, making mistakes is key to honing craftsmanship. True craftsman know the value of making mistakes. They learn, from experience, how to perfect the practices they practice.

This notion is challenging in sales. There's an expectation of quickly performing that's out of whack with the ten years practice it takes in any craft to gain the skills of a craftsman. Most Reps only last a few years in the sales profession.

One of the keys to helping Reps endure their time-bounded pressures to perform while still learning and honing their craft is shrinking the time it takes for them to detect + fix mistakes they're making.

This helps them become 'sales innovators'. As with innovators in any craft, they become curious. Learning-oriented. Confident that if something's wrong they can fix it. As Clayton Christenson notes here:

As the time shrinks in which Reps do these things and gain these traits, so, too, does the time it takes for Reps to have impact. Results accrue faster. Cycles shrink, as happened in this example from the on-boarding of a new Sales hire.

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The Role of Creative Habits In the Craftsmanship of Sales Superstars

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:41:00 +0000

The connections between sales superstars and craftsmanship continue to intrigue me. In The Creative Habit, renowned choreographer Twyla Tharp writes of the techniques she and other creative thinkers use to be exceptionally successful - creative habits that seed the perpetual discovery of good ideas.

The creative habits she’s found work best echo many of the things I’ve learned about sales productivity from the talks and writings of folks like Gladwell, Sennett, Senge, and Gitomer, amongst others. Those habits include: working hard, rituals of preparation, scratching with a child-like curiosity in an unending hunt for good ideas, building failure into the process (it has to happen for good ideas to emerge), feedback that makes it possible to see and acknowledge ruts, perfecting practice, and making your own luck by how practiced you are.

She contends practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect practice make perfect. It also sets the stage for luck to happen. Put another way, the luckiest amongst us are usually the ones who’ve most perfected and habitually practiced their best practices. An example: having honed to perfection what he practiced, Gary Player once noted that “the more I practice, the luckier I get.”

In Tharp’s experience, those who master these habits often have an epiphanic moment where they make a quantum leap forward in their ability and vision. It shows in their work. They’re constantly escaping their ruts and finding their groove, and having fun doing both - just like sales superstars.

Victor Cheng's Four Rules for Recession-Proofing Your Business

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:00:00 +0000

Victor Cheng's four rules for recession-proofing a business, based on his analysis of the patterns behind businesses that grew during 12 recessions over the past 136 years:

an opportunistic focus on growing
a product or service addressing a problem that persisted, or got worse, during a downturn
solving that problem in a unique way
then, when all of the above are in place, aggressive pursuit of growth

The challenge, for many businesses, is their inability to see through the 'fog of war' created by shifting customer demand and associated uncertainties. Cheng contends firms therefore need new mechanisms + processes for figuring out what the heck is going on in the marketplace. They need to:

detect what customers are doing + what they want (the equivalent of x-ray vision glasses)
shrink decision cycles + in so doing, shrink the costs of making mistakes
rack up high success rates through the iterative testing enabled by short decision cycles.

When done, and done well, Cheng found the businesses he studied achieved rampant growth during recessions. They became: bigger + more profitable; more aware of their uniqueness; more known in their markets; better able to quickly detect + respond to market conditions; more like VC's in their willingness to make mistakes in their hunt for home runs (given their new found abilities to contain the cost of their mistakes).

The patterns behind his findings: companies need new customer metrics, delivered in real-time, based on behavior, framed in the context of processes, able to be analyzed in aggregate, with a focus on outcomes, delivered in ways that change the way people think and behave. It's much easier to say than do, but it can be done. When done, it's a paradigm-shifting, holistic, approach that's profit-generating. It can be so, despite the state of the economy.
It all starts with a focus on growth.

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The wisdom in these findings is Victor's. The mistakes, if any, in this summary of his findings are mine.

Being More Productive Requires Being Less Busy

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Thu, 14 May 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Being busy is easy. It's easy to see. It's easy to achieve. With the economic slowdown, it's also a huge temptation. Everyone's being asked to do more with less. The sweat on my brow from all my hard work is proof that I'm doing more with less. But for what purpose and with what impact?

Being productive is harder. Much harder. It requires a focus on impacts rather than activities. It means achieving more with less. In business processes, it's much harder to see than raw effort. That which can't be seen + measured is likely to remain elusive.

Processes have goals + intended outcomes. Activities need to be seen + measured in the context of their contributions to achieving desired goals + outcomes. Then and only then will the seeds be sown for really becoming more productive. Then and only then will we buffet the pressures to reach fruitlessly for more productivity by merely being busier.

Perhaps it's time for business leaders to slow down, take a breath, and reach for new ways of doing business that improve productivity at a time when it's most required. Being busy, and getting busier, is a recipe for missing the boat.

Twelve Rules of B2B Sales Productivity (an ode to the economic downturn in 12 parts)

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 19:30:00 +0000

When we combine the #1 issue for CEOs with today's economic downturn, what emerges are Twelve Rules of B2B Sales Productivity. Each by itself is a path to improved sales productivity. The most productive firms are those who live by a combination of all twelve:

Rule 1: focus on outcomes. Being busy isn't productive. Busy is about activities and inputs. Productivity is about outcomes.

Rule 2: give Sales Reps more time for selling. Automate away time-consuming tasks. Automatically report sales outcomes. Give Reps sales templates that get valuable information to prospects quickly.

Rule 3: enable repetition. It's the key to craftsmanship. Structure the sales process with clear exit criteria for each pre-sales milestone. Make best practices the easiest practices and they'll be the most repeated practices. Practice makes perfect.

Rule 4: measure prospect behavior. What people say matters less than what they do. The inflection in a prospect's voice can be misleading. Their behavior never is.

Rule 5: being helpful to prospects creates competitive advantage. For prospects, help is elusive and hard to find. Service them in timely, helpful, ways and they'll engage with you. Use measures of prospect behavior to do so.

Rule 6: detect trigger events. Use systems that detect triggers such as early stage business problems, prospect product research, and prospects' interests within the sales process.

Rule 7: help Reps invest their time and effort wisely. Give Reps feedback that lets them reach out to the right prospects, for the right reasons, at the right time.

Rule 8: conversations count. Deliver information and help to prospects in ways that yield synchronous communications. The more your prospects get to know and trust you, the higher the odds they'll do business with you.

Rule 9: good conversations count more. Measure prospect behavior in ways that disclose the outcomes of conversations. A Rep sends a prospect detailed answers to their questions (an input). Has the prospect read those answers? If so, how quickly upon receipt? These are desired outcomes. They are, also, leading indicators of the scope and pace of future sales.

Rule 10: speed matters, more than ever. Disseminate leading indicators quickly to your sales team. If your ability to sense and adapt to sales realities is faster than your competitors', you have an enormous advantage.

Rule 11: learn from patterns. Encourage learning. Provide training. Use aggregated metrics, based on prospect behavior, to see the effects on outcomes of small changes in sales practices. Make mistakes well, by making and correcting them fast. Learn more to earn more.

Rule 12: expect uncertainty. It's the new norm.

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These rules are my blending of our own experiences with the observations over the past year of pundits such as Neil Rackham, Jeffrey Gitomer, John Monoky, Verne Harnish, Chet Holmes, Victor Cheng, Greg Alexander, Jim Cecil, and Victoria Medvec. The wisdom is theirs. The blending is mine.

John Monoky's Take on Selling in Turbulent Times

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:44:00 +0000

John Monoky is an Adjunct Professor of Executive Education, Ross School of Business, UMich. He recently made a presentation to technology industry executives sponsored by the BC Technology Industry Association, BC Innovation Council + Sauder School of Business (UBC) on Selling in Turbulent Times. His key points:

in a down economy, if sales growth is flat you're growing market share
there's a heightened need to find creative ways to overcome customers' increased reluctance to buy
there's a mis-match between the hardest sales to land (new products w/new customers) and who on the sales team is given the task of landing them (typically the newest members of the team)
best practice companies have sources of customer info not coming from sales reps exclusively
just because your sales team is busy doesn't mean they're productive - of the 220 working days available each year, typically only 90-130 of them are selling days

As a result, in his view, there is a pressing need for new methods and information that change what people do - that help them make different choices armed with important, new, information.

There's also, in his view, a need to change how, how productively, and how often the sales force sells. Too much time is now being committed to not selling. This requires new accountabilities for the base portion of Reps' compensation that reinforce behaviors + increase activities that seed sales.

Imagine Sales Reps Gaining a 6th Sense + Becoming More Productive

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 23:09:00 +0000

Information can have a dramatic effect on the choices people make. It's especially true when its relevance is apparent, and it's available without interrupting user behavior. When this happens, users make much smarter choices than ever before. They acquire a 6th Sense.

We're beavering away developing a choice-influencing tool (Amacus) designed to give Sales Reps a 6th Sense. We're watching Reps adopt it as a daily tool of choice. We're measuring how much more productive they become when armed with it. For a glimpse at how far we've progressed, see this summary. For a futuristic look at how such a 6th Sense can inform and affect daily user activities, see Pattie Maes' presentation at TED 2009, viewable here.

We're excited by the impacts Amacus has already had.

We're inspired by the possibilities of what remains to be accomplished.

We're encouraged by the conversations we're now having with others whose information will have an important role to play in the 6th Sense we're ultimately looking to give to Sales Reps.

With Real-Time Feedback Reps Can Get to Know, Fast.

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 21:22:00 +0000

We’re all hard wired from birth to learn from feedback. With it, we discover the difference between good and bad, pain and pleasure. We gain the joy of learning, the inspiration to keep trying, and the chance to develop true craftsmanship.

The wisest amongst us are often those who’ve made the most mistakes. They’ve gained wisdom from practically applying what they’ve learned and gone on to discover new things. As a result, they don’t fear failure; they’re immensely curious. They’re typically easy to pick out in any crowd. They’re the ones with the biggest smiles, getting the most out of life, and having the most fun. They’re exceptionally successful.

Reps selling business-to-business often invest effort unknowingly with prospects who never have any intention to buy. Reps lack the feedback needed to avoid wasting effort (the inflection in a prospect’s voice can be misleading). As a result, Reps are often surprised by their failures, and it takes a long time to learn from mistakes.

Imagine, instead, if Reps got feedback in real-time on the value to each prospect of every conversation; feedback that repeatedly helped Reps converse with the right prospects at the right time and for all the right reasons. Reps would gain wisdom. They’d become curious. They’d try new things, and often fail. They’d celebrate things learned from their mistakes. They’d make mistakes well, learn quickly, and iterate on the fly. Imagine that.

It’s one thing to get to NO fast. It’s another thing to get to KNOW fast. It may sound the same, but the impacts on a Rep’s sales craftsmanship, and sales results, will be profoundly different.

New Study Shows B2B Sales Productivity Continues to Erode

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 01:06:00 +0000

CSO Insights' 2009 Sales Performance Optimization Report is the latest industry report to confirm declines in B2B sales productivity and note that associated challenges faced by sales reps and their managers.

For anyone looking to confirm their instincts that 'life just ain't what it used to be', this report is a sobering read. It should sharpen a reader's resolve to try for something better. Of particular note:

the amount of time Reps actually spend selling continues to erode. In 1998, sales reps spent 47% of their time actually selling. By 2009, it was down to 37%. It matters. The more time Reps spend selling, the higher their close rates.
the time it takes to get a new sales rep fully productive is long and getting longer. In 2003, 59% of firms reported ramp times of 6 months or less. By 2009, this figure was less than 30%. Today, 69% of sales execs report it taking 7 months or longer to ramp new sales hires. Reps now have much steeper, longer, learning curves before reaching peak performance.
companies that have invested heavily in training or sales processes have failed to shrink their ramp times. On the other hand, those companies that improved access to sales knowledge are seeing shorter ramp times.

In terms of optimizing chances for success in 2009, they conclude firms may see better returns by optimizing the performance of their existing reps rather than trying to hire their way to success with a fresh new crop of reps. In their view, there's a new + emerging role for 'digital assistants' which can automate away non-selling tasks, giving Reps more time for selling.

Hear. Hear. There's evidence, from our work, that such 'digital assistants' can do more than just give reps more time for selling; they can also seed discoveries that shrink ramp times.

For Craftsmen, Failure is the Key to Success

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 01:05:00 +0000

Guy Kawasaki recommends the following video from Honda on failure as the new key to success. A great illustration of ideas from Gladwell + Sennett on what builds craftsmanship.

By extension, anything that can hasten the discovery of failures, will hasten the emergence of craftsmanship and tommorrow's superstars. Imagine the value of being able to hasten discoveries, and build craftsmanship, in sales.