Informed Innovation in B2B Sales Productivity

In Sales Productivity, Coroners' Inquests Won't Improve Life Expectancies

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 23:33:00 +0000

Executives looking to win more business + speed up sales face a sea of choices. Every option’s offered as the right drug for curing the disease of declining sales productivity. Modify the structure of the sales organization with a shift from field sales to inside sales. Modify your sales compensation. Implement CRM. Augment it with inbound marketing, Add Marketing Automation with lead scoring, Use sales Intelligence to detect trigger events. Do sales training on the art of sales. As one sales VP recently noted, “if I’d purchased every solution I’d been offered to improve my sales productivity in the past year, based on promised ROI, I’d be bankrupt.”

So which of these is the silver bullet choice that saavy sales leaders should be making? Which is right path to choose? Who truly knows?

In my view, what’s lacking are diagnostics with which sales people can make right choices in a given circumstance. Some of the best sales productivity diagnostics take a long time to show up, especially when sales cycles are long. What’s missing are diagnostics on the little things which, when done day-to-day, make a big difference.

Consider an example. Today, one of the productivity-improving therapies often recommended in sales operations is Loss Analysis. When a deal’s lost, do a post mortem to determine what happened + what should be done to prevent future deal deaths. In my view, it’s a bit like holding a coroner’s inquest. It accepts that fatalities are unavoidable other than by learning from them after the fact. It’s a strange way to stretch life expectancies.

Surely it makes more sense to perform diagnostics while deals are still alive. Some deals may get sick, but surely with better diagnostics things can be done to save a few of them from dying. Saavy sales coaches know this + do it, but the coaching impact is less than it should be. Coaches simply can't go deep enough, fast enough, often enough to turn the overall tide of sales productivity. The real-time diagnistics they need are not widely available. The type I’m advocating would let patients (sales teams), with the help of their medical team (led by their Sales Managers), test various therapies, witness their effects, then (based on observed effects) settle on a combination of therapies that really work for them. Such sales performance diagnostics would:

Reduce uncertainties by disclosing the impacts on buyer journeys of changes made to sales efforts, practices, activities, compensation, structure, skills, etc.
Shrink decision cycles. Patients (sales teams) would spot + fix their mistakes, fast. They’d spot + replicate best practices, fast.
Seed the learning, curiosity, + experimentation needed to discover new best practices
Make improving sales productivity an on-going process, rather than a one-off gamble

When we get the diagnostics right, and right away, we'll be talking about Sales2.0 in bold. Patients will have drug therapies ideally suited to their specific conditions at a specific point in time. Therapies which patients + their physicians can adjust, as conditions change. Therapies which lower the risks of fatal mistakes. Therapies which give patients a path to improved health, and proof they’re on that right path, as in this sales example.

I say, it’s time. Bring it on.

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PS: Sirius Decisions, CSO Insights, Aberdeen, and IDC report sales productivity is declining + of great concern to saavy executives. Research from the Harvard Business Review + McKinsey show firms who measurably improve it will reap a huge competitive addvntage.

Is Your Sales Experience Valuable to Buyers?

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:19:00 +0000

A recent study from McKinsey on the basics of B2B sales success notes that "B2B customers say they care most about product + price, but what they really want is a great sales experience." Hmmm ...

Are buyers getting valuable sales experiences? I wonder. As firms have moved to squeeze more revenues from sales teams, they've created activity-based accountabilities; sales cultures in which if what you're doing isn't working, 'try harder'. Do more with less. The result: sales people are often too busy to be helpful to buyers. As a consequence, the hardest thing for buyers to find, these days? Help.

It's created a stark disconnect between what sales teams do + what buyers seek. Sales teams are communicating value. Content distribution + consumption metrics are king. Lead scores emerge. Sales calls get made. Activities get recorded. Everyone on the sales team is really busy. Often so busy they haven't the time to be exceptionally helpful. They're spending half their time NOT selling. Perhaps being busy is counter-productive.

Buyer's confirm it in McKinsey's findings. Of the many habits that undermine the sales experience, over 1/3 involved contacting customers too frequently.

Their findings suggest customers want fewer, more meaningful interactions with sales people. This aligns with what sales experts like Neil Rackham, Jill Konrath, + John Monoky have been saying. Sales teams should shift from being busy to being productive; from communicating value to creating value. Give buyers help that's so helpful, they'd pay for it if asked. To the helpful will go the rewards. The gold in this conclusion? McKinsey estimates hi performing sales teams can boost their share of their customers' business by 8-15%.

Want to Improve Your Return-on-Effort in Sales? Improve Your Buyers' Return-on-Effort.

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:05:00 +0000

An article to be published in the July edition of the Harvard Business Review shows the value of improving productivity in customer service by improving the Return-on-Effort for customers. It shows that delighting customers doesn’t build loyalty, reducing their effort (the work they must do to get their problem solved) does.

The authors' research suggests if the concept of what it means to be productive is defined too narrowly, associated metrics will encourage the wrong things and productivity will be less than it could be. “Most customer service organizations still emphasize metrics such as average handle time when assessing productivity + Rep performance.” From a customer’s perspective, Reps focused on being fast make it tougher for customers to get their problems solved. For instance, “when an Australian telecommunications provider eliminated these types of productivity metrics from its frontline reps’ performance scorecards, handle time increased slightly yet repeat calls fell by 58%.”

We have seen precisely the same effects in B2B sales productivity. Processes which deliver a high Return-on-Effort for buyers win more business and speed up sales. When the norm from a buyer’s perspective is that Reps are too busy to be helpful, firms that figure out how to replace ‘busy’ with ‘helpful’ will win big.

I’m reminded, for instance, of the experience of one of our clients. He began using Amacus to make judicious use of his own time and, at the same time, deliver timely, helpful, offers of help to every interested prospect. He stopped calling every prospective buyer. Instead, he focused on calling buyers who were potentially most interested in, and ready for, another conversation. After every sales conversation, he’d email to the buyer hyperlinks on details they’d requested. His messages were brief, to the point, and focused on getting each customer answers to questions they’d asked. He’d then leave them alone until they’d signalled their readiness for a callback. Buyers didn’t need to do anything different to send their buying signals. Every time a buyer clicked to retrieve info they’d requested, Amacus would ring the Rep’s cell phone suggesting who he should now call back, and why. He’d call them back, ask if the info he’d sent was what they were looking for, and then, with the buyer, continue to get them the help they wanted and needed. Buyers rewarded his time and effort with theirs. The buyer Return-on-Effort was high. The Rep’s Return-on-Effort was remarkable: in his first 3 weeks use of Amacus, with a 6 month sales cycle, he closed three new deals. It was no accident. I recall, for instance, the comment of a buyer when she got a call from an Amacus user shortly after she’d begun reviewing a requested proposal. “Dave, I knew it would be you. You’re always there for me when I need you.”

Focus on making things easy and helpful for your buyers.
It'll improve their Return-on-Effort. Then yours, too.

Energize (Sales) Growth NOW

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:01:00 +0000

Lisa Nirell’s book, Energize Growth NOW: The Marketing Guide to a Wealthy Company, is a bible for founders looking to energize their firms’ growth. Many of its points ring equally true, in my view, as guideposts for energizing sales growth.

In Nirell’s view, energizing growth requires that you choose a positive mindset, honor your values + recover rapidly when you hit a bump in the road. Just like sales people. She notes that “current planning methods reward the wrong things: good ideas, complexity + busy work.” Just like in sales. After planning, various commotions take over. Accountabilities fade. Well intentioned plans become a distant faded memory. You end up feeling constantly overwhelmed and, as a result, cling to the familiar. Energy’s drained. Worse than that, doing over and over again things which aren’t improving things starts to look a bit like organizational insanity. In sales, it starts to look like another quarter of uncertain sales results.

She notes Jim Collins’ take on this instinctive condition which she refers to as Time Deficiency Syndrome – we end up “leading but undisciplined lives with ever expanding ‘to-do’ lists, trying to build momentum by doing, doing, doing – and doing more. It rarely works.” Collins’ take: those who built the good to great companies use of ‘stop doing’ lists every bit as much as ‘to do’ lists. “They unplug all sorts of extraneous junk.” We’ve seen proof of this. Our users recently tripled their collective Return-on-Effort in an 8 week span. User consensus on what triggered the improvement – knowing some sales efforts weren’t having any impact on buyers’ journeys, they stopped wasting those efforts.

Nirell advocates thinking of growth planning as a living organism requiring constant care and feeding. “With on-going preventative care, businesses remain vital and strong.” As part of this, she thoughtfully suggests ways to calculate your firm’s Wealth Quotient, define your Ultimate Result-Unique Value Quotient, and target ideal customers. Each of her insights on these topics resonated with me as clever ways to eliminate corresponding barriers to sales growth. In its details, for instance, the book offers fresh ways to think about personas and how they may affect sales. Table 8.1, for instance, suggests leading and trailing indicators of a firm’s growth stage which, in turn, sharpen the picture of a firm’s ‘fit’ to your profile of your ideal customer.

Against the backdrop of what firms should do, she notes that in most businesses, thinking is stuck in an Industrial Age time-warped mindset - time spent on task equates to value.” Time on task used to count. Today, what counts is the customer value created from time on task. Just like in sales.

In the end, she advocates firms having processes that view + trigger growth systemically. Measure new things that matter. Those which trigger or inhibit growth in ways which span units, dollars, and people. Inspire personal growth. Focus efforts, founded on values, that build and amplify customer value. Inspire change and energize effort in ways that steadily, and incrementally, build customer value. Just like in sales.

With a nod to Kraig Kramers, she advocates anchoring all of the above around what causes sales to consistently happen.

If you’re looking to energize your firm’s growth, drink in the ideas in her book. If you’re looking to energize your firm’s sales growth, apply the ideas in her book using what Chip Heath describes as destination postcards in sales operations that create + measure the customer value from time on task. There are new tools out there, today, that will let you do so. Their impact on sales productivity is proof of both the growth and energizing value of Nirell’s ideas.

A Review of SNAP Selling, by Jill Konrath

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:05:00 +0000

In her new book, SNAP Selling, Jill Konrath explains how sales is changing as buyers become more informed and frazzled. SNAP Selling is a practical guide for savvy sales people looking to improve their performance at a time when it's not easy to do so. The skinny: stop selling your stuff. Start selling your personal value to each buyer. Help frazzled buyers fix their most important problems with the least disruption. Do so in ways which are exceptionally valuable for every buyer. Let the focus + cadence of buyers' interests dictate the cadence of your efforts. Make everything simple in a world which seems endlessly complex. In doing so, your value to buyers will be amplified. The bigger your value to buyers, the, faster you'll succeed.

Read her book and you'll find many nuggets of wisdom, including:

SOMETHING NEEDS TO CHANGE
Businesses, today, face some daunting hurdles in sales performance. In recent years there’s been an alarming erosion in sales rep effectiveness. Life as a buyer isn’t any better. Buyers are now surrounded by complexity and chaos, yet yearn for simplicity and order. Despite the frenetic pace of business, changes occur slowly. Buyers have little if any appetite for risk.These conditions make sales challenging.

IF LIFE AS A SALES PERSON SUCKS, TRY BEING A BUYER
Konrath sees in these conditions a rising importance of sales people who ‘get it’. Frazzled buyers want to fix important problems with the least disruption. They haven’t the time to think about the bigger picture of their business situation, nor can they tolerate anything which adds risks. Today, few sales people recognize these buyer burdens. As a result, day-to-day, Konrath concludes that buyers are often left with little choice but to find comfort in what they already have or have always done.

REQUIRES A SALES PROCESS THAT’S EXCEPTIONALLY HELPFUL TO BUYERS
In Konrath’s view, the 1st key to turning things around is for sales people to become Business Improvement Specialists whose personal value to buyers is obvious, and amplified by the buyer experience. At a time when buyers expect very little of sellers, Konrath’s model is one in which sales people don’t wait for customers who are ready to buy. They constantly learn how to initiate sales out of thin air from their thoughtful ability to create value for buyers.

THEN, SIMPLIFY THINGS FOR BUYERS
In Konrath’s view, most sales people fail to simplify things for buyers. As a result, their access to buyers is limited and they’re constantly looking for new prospects to call. A savvy sales person’s simple message is too important to ignore. Konrath concludes the smaller the idea, and actions required to implement it, the higher the odds of success; the higher the odds buyers will invite change, not fear it.

LEARNING IS THE KEY
Sales success hinges on each sales person’s drive to see their struggles as learning opportunities. Top performers will constantly dig in to figure out what works. They know success is achieved one decision at a time. For them, there is no failure – only many valuable learning experiences. Konrath’s take: it’s not possible to try to be successful at sales. It requires commitment; a willingness to do what it takes, including learning from things which fail to work.

The book includes, for each of these nuggets of wisdom (and many others), Konrath's practical suggestions of things sales people can do day-to-day to improve their performance. Against the backdrop of the emergence of sales productivity as a key business agenda, this book is both insightful and well timed. If you're a savvy sales person, or forward thinking sales leader, you'll read it and learn much from it.

+++++++

The wisdom in the above is Jill Konrath’s. The mistakes are mine. For examples of some of her practical tips, see the free resources available on the book's website. For another's take on the value of the ideas in this new book see Christian Maurer's thoughtful review.

Sirius Decisions Sees B2B Sales Productivity As The Next Big Agenda

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Fri, 21 May 2010 21:57:00 +0000

One of the recurrent themes of executive briefings at Sirius Decisions' 2010 Summit was that sales productivity will be the next thing forward thinking marketing and sales leaders turn their attention to.

Joe Galvin of Sirius Decisions suggested, as part of this push, firms will increasingly deploy inside sales teams, then equip them with technologies which:

bring the process disciplines of traditional opportunity management to prospecting,
reveal the impacts on buyer journeys of marketing and sales tactics with new forms of business intelligence, delivered in ways which make the process of selling much more informed + helpful,
shift the focus of associated metrics (the ‘connect rates’ of today will be replaced by the ‘response times’ of tomorrow),
shift the sales process focus to: confirm, develop, react, respond.

Rich Eldh of Sirius Decisions suggested this agenda will beget a new science of sales productivity as transformative in sales execution as Money Ball was in baseball. The underlying metrics will deliver an added velocity, and focus on outcomes, to sales management practices. Some related details from their presentations and others' at the Summit:

VELOCITY WILL MATTER MORE THAN EVER: the new agenda of sales productivity will be, in part, an agenda of better aligning the velocity of decision cycles with the day-to-day burn of marketing and sales efforts. As part of this, firms will implement systems yielding new feedback that makes clearer the impacts on buyer journeys of day-to-day marketing and sales efforts. When the connection between effort and impact becomes clear, and real-time, firms will gain an advantage of faster decision cycle times. This will accelerate firms’ abilities to detect and fix mistakes. The need for added velocity in decision-making is underscored by the speed with which firms are moving to create marketing and sales-driven advantages in their businesses (Polycom, for instance, has added over 150 new sales reps in recent weeks).

BUYER JOURNEYS WILL BE KEY TO PRODUCTIVE EXECUTION: in a Sales Force Accounting model, Reps are asked to record their activities and efforts in a bid to make them accountable for how hard they’re trying to close deals. On the other hand, they’re compensated for how many deals they close. They hate reporting, and they’re lousy at it. It comes at a cost of unreliable data, inconsistently reported, subjective in nature, yielding unpredictable sales results, and consuming a block of time that could have been better spent engaging with interested buyers. A focus on sales productivity will cut this waste. It will get sales people back to the real work of conversational selling where there’s a chance they can create real value for buyers. It will feed the new science of sales productivity with new, objective, measures of the Return-on-Effort from marketing and sales tactics. It will trigger higher Returns-on-Effort by revealing the impacts of marketing and sales tactics on buyer journeys.

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The above is my summary of what I gleaned from two and a half intense (and incredibly valuable) days of briefings by Sirius Decisions' executives. The wisdom in these observations is Sirius Decisions'. The mistakes are mine. For additional summaries of the many valuable points made in by Sirius Decisions in their executive briefings, see summaries posted by Adam Needles and Dan McDade.

If You Thoughtfully Provoke Change, Sales Productivity Will Improve

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Wed, 05 May 2010 18:54:00 +0000

In my view, improving B2B sales productivity requires provoking sales people to confidently change what they're doing to improve their Return-on-Effort. This requires giving them a viewfinder that lets them kill tactics that aren't working and inspires them to practice, more often, practices with the highest Return-on-Effort. This viewfinder needs to provoke them to act, wisely, with a knowledge of how what they’re doing every day is affecting results.

But, there is a problem. All of this requires that people change. In this context, B2B sales productivity is, quite precisely, a change management issue. Chip Heath notes that change can be exhausting; resistance is often confused with laziness, and provoked by a lack of clarity. Heath contends change is easiest when you can direct logically-oriented folks and motivate emotionally-oriented folks, then shape the path forward for both.

For the logic-inclined, some is not a number, and soon is not a time. They need specific data that reveals bright spots, triggering them to act, now. The emotionally-inclined must feel a need for change. They need to see things they care about in a different light, then given a carefully scripted path forward. Without these things, uncertainties will drive the emotionally inclined to continue doing what they've been doing and drive the logically inclined to analyze, rather than act.

Heath advocates using 'destination postcards' to overcome these barriers to change. They show the logically inclined where you're headed and the emotionally inclined why the journey's worthwhile. By then scripting the critical moves, you'll point to the destination, shrink the change, appeal to folks' identities, build a habit, and rally the herd. Destination postcards paint a picture of a future that hard work can make possible and inspire those involved to invest the effort. They marry long term goals to short term critical moves. They simplify choices, provoke action, and inspire effort.

Imagine giving every sale person their own destination postcard. With it, they could both see and feel the need to try new things, discover bright spots worth emulating, be inspired to act, then see the long term impacts of their short term actions. Change, now so thoughtfully provoked, becomes easy and, as such, sales productivity will improve. Just imagine having such postcards, and knowing your competitors don’t even know there’s such a thing. Hmmm …

Patterns of Performance

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 19:54:00 +0000

B2B sales people are incredibly results oriented yet, according to CSO Insights, sales performance continues to degrade. In such chaotic conditions, Slywotzki's ideas on Profit Patterns and Tufte's ideas on Visualizing Information, hold promise as a potential way out of this muck. We'd strive to measure process productivity, then depict it visually, as patterns, in ways that change how people behave. We'd produce higher performance via 'Patterns of Performance'.

The measurement part's easy to champion, but tough to do.
Barriers exist:

Capturing the Data is Disruptive
Today, capturing sales process performance data requires disrupting the process ("excuse me, can you please stop selling for the next hour and fill our your CRM sales report so that I can get a sense of what you've been up to"). Disruption degrades compliance. People hired to do one thing (sell) resent having to spend their time doing something else, especially something that they're not very good at (reporting and forecasting).
What's Captured is Incomplete
In sales, process performance isn't just affected by what a sales person does, it's also contingent on what, if anything, a buyer goes on to do on their own time as a result of conversing with a sales person (producing 10 proposals, for instance, this week is an important part of enabling hi performing sales processes, but it's not enough; if no buyers read those proposals, we're still a long way from a hi performing process).

For now, let's just imagine there were ways of overcoming these measurement barriers. We'd still be left with how to paint a visual picture of what's going on that anyone could understand at a glance. Here's where patterns can have a huge impact.

Slywotzki contends that people learn from experience by discerning patterns. Patterns are especially crucial when things, at the surface, seem chaotic and it's become impossible to see what's going on by looking at things in conventional ways. In my view, this aptly describes the state of many B2B sales processes today. Adept leaders have become pattern-discerning, and exceptionally profit generating.

The first time I realized the power of seeing patterns of system performance in this fashion was in 1983, when I heard Ed Tufte describe his just released seminal work on visualizing data. He contended, back then, that most information was presented in ways that appealed to people's stupidity. He advocated an approach to graphing data which revealed patterns and provoked deep thinking.

Sprinkle Slywotzki's and Tufte's ideas onto today's challenges in sales productivity. The takeaway: help sales people see and understand the patterns of their impacts on buyer behaviors and they'll astonish you with the brilliance of their responses. They'll not only learn, they'll go on to have more impact, more often, often more profoundly and predictably than anyone could see coming.

In Uncertain Times, Be More Adaptive + Certain

noreply@blogger.com (John Cousineau, CEO, innovativeinfo) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:37:00 +0000

An inventor with WhatIf Innovation, Arjan Polhuijs, recently highlighted the lessons he and his colleagues have learned from helping firms innovate during uncertain economic times. In his view, market uncertainty creates unique opportunities to innovate.

Not every company sees it that way. Some will try to control their destiny by cutting costs, firing talent, and killing projects without tangible returns within 12 months. They tend to be weakened in the long run by this approach. Others hunker down, putting their fate at the whim of a market recovery. Lacking a clear vision, such firms tend to frustrate their stakeholders who gradually lose faith that they can do anything to affect results.

Firms who seize the opportunity to innovate tend to thrive: "they use the gloom in the air as a catalyst for change." They adapt, adeptly.

These findings add an innovator's resonance to Victor Cheng's findings about what firms have done, in past downturns, to achieve rampant growth during recessions.

Cheng found that successful firms create new ways of seeing through their 'fog of uncertainty'. They framed their appetites for change with new sensing processes for figuring out what the heck is going on and what to do about it. They informed their efforts at re-invention by: creating new mechanisms to detect what customers are doing and need; shrinking decisions cycles; and iteratively testing new ideas.

Uncertain times create opportunities for incredible growth, triggered by informed adaptations to new market conditions. Astute firms and visionary leaders know it. They're connecting the dots between an appetite to try new things, and lessons on how to do so without betting the farm.

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 proposals the sales team produced today to measuring, instead, how many prospects read proposals 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.

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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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