Category Archives: Performance Excellence Culture

Escaping the Non-Innovative Product Development Box

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The Four Boxes of Product Evolution:

The figure below illustrates the basic four boxes of product development evolution. Along the horizontal axis we have Explicit and Implicit customer needs and wants. Along the vertical axis we have Conscious and Subconscious customer needs and wants. The intersection of these dimensions creates 4 boxes, or quadrants, each defining the level of basic and/or differential value your new product might provide to customers.

The Product Evolution Matrix:

To use the map, simply bulletize the product characteristics you are planning to develop, recording them in each appropriate quadrant. The further up and to the right your newly developed product capabilities fall, the more value they should provide to customers, the higher prices they should be able to command and the higher the innovative brand value they should create.

Think of what box Steve Jobs was working in at Apple – and what he was able to accomplish with Apple’s products and brand.

 

What to Expect in Each Box:

The Reactive Box:

Engineers and marketers using “Voice of the Customer” techniques to build the product development road map, can simply ask customers what they would like to see in their next generation product. This may be one step better than simply going off into the engineering “lab” and, in a vacuum, conjuring the product changes that the customers “should” like. But, this approach puts the firm squarely in the Reactive Box of our Product Evolution Matrix. A firm working in the lower left hand corner of the map, the Explicit-Conscious sector, is simply reacting to customers’ explicitly-stated needs and missing the opportunity to create unique value.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, unless of course, you stop there and do not venture outside of this box. If your competitors are working in the boxes further to right and up on the map – you lose. Working in the Reactive quadrant, provides little in the way of competitive, defensible advantage – because all competitors can do it.

Many developers elect to start in this box because it’s the easiest and path of least risk. If the redesigned product ultimately fails miserably, the product manager can always say, “Well, we gave them what they asked for. You can’t blame me for wanting to give customers what they explicitly requested.”

However, in order to achieve high customer-value product functionality, strong competitive differentiation and defensibility (all things that permit price premiums), a product manager must travel through, and out of the Reactive Box – upwards and to the right.

The Pro-Active Box:

Thinking in the Pro-Active Box requires a deeper understanding of customers. It requires considering their psychological, emotional and physiological motivations in buying, using and experiencing your product. For example: Consumers would not likely have asked for a microwave oven in the early 1960’s if a cooking stove manufacturer was asking questions in the Reactive Box. They didn’t know what a microwave oven was. Respondents, more likely would have said: “I’d like a clock that does not fail after a few months.” or, “I’d like a self-cleaning oven” or, I’d like a selection of colors other than simply white.”

It would have been unlikely customers would have said “I need a stove that cooks faster because I am pressured by time.” Only by understanding the subconscious, psychological and physiological needs of the primary chef in the house would a faster cook time have been recognized as a critical value needing to be delivered.

In the Pro-Active Box we think about emotions and subconscious physiological factors – not just functions.

The Insight Box:

In the Insight Box a product manager asks the question, “I know what the customer said they want, but what do they really mean?”

Take, for example, a customer observation that a first aid kit is difficult to open. What do they really mean? Does it mean, they have fat thumbs or does it really mean that, the life-saving components in the first aid kit need to very easy to access… fast! Is it a minor inconvenience or a life-saving need.

In the Insight Box we search to understand implicit needs

The Innovation Box:

When a product manager is working in the Innovation Box, he is bringing to bear all of the dimension of need: Conscious, Subconscious, Explicit and Implicit. The Innovation Box produces products that break with tradition, fulfilling needs people didn’t even know they had and providing features they never imagined they would love. The Innovation Box challenges product designers. The Innovation Box creates products that create iconic brands.

Steve Jobs lived in the Innovation Box. Thomas Edison lived in the Innovation Box.

Framing the Innovative Product within an Innovative “Experience”:

But, your job is not complete, even if you have worked our way into the Innovation Box.

Once a product manager has exercised their power of inquiry and thought in these 4 boxes or quadrants, they must then envision all of these boxes working within a greater bubble of the total customer experience. This means that prior emphasis on product features and capabilities must now yield priority to the customer’s total experience. The product must be integrally woven into the total environment your customer will experience in buying, setting up, using, servicing and communicating with your business throughout the life of the product.

This last exercise brings into play almost everything from order entry to repair and replacement parts. The key here is envisioning the perfect experience and creating and aligning all the key parts of the business model, and your organization, around that vision.

Experiential needs then fall into the same four quadrants for consideration. By blending an Innovation Box developed product with an Innovation Box developed experience, you create an true innovation.

Conclusions:

  • Never be satisfied with just developing product enhancements out of the Reactive Box. Reactive Box product enhancements rarely achieve price premiums, defensible competitive market positions or market share gains.
  • Even a thoroughly mapped out product enhancement plan that incorporates input from all the quadrants can fail on a bad holistic customer experience. The whole customer experience needs to be exercised according to the same 4-quadrant tool.
  • All aspects of the business must be aligned to deliver both innovative products and innovative experiences.

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Copyright Jerry Vieira, CMC and  The QMP Group, Inc 2015 All Rights Reserved

For more information about The QMP Group and it’s methodology for developing market and product strategy, call Jerry Vieira, CMC at 503.318.2696 or email to Jerry@qmpassociates.com.

The Key Components of a Thorough Marketing & Sales Audit

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The word audit can strike fear into the heart of almost any person or organization that is its target. “Audit” conjures up images of someone in a position of authority digging through paperwork and records looking for evidence of malfeasance, mistakes, incompetence or non-compliance.

However, when a business performs an audit on their marketing and sales function, they typically just want to answer two basic questions:

  1. What can we do to improve our sales results?
  2. What can we do to improve our marketing and sales ROI?

At its purest intent a marketing and sales functional audit should not conducted to uncover incompetence, to fix blame or to penalize, but rather to discover opportunities to make both marketing and sales more effective. If the motivation of an audit is solely to find a scapegoat or assign blame, the problem is not in the firm’s marketing and sales function, but rather in its culture and leadership.

Step 1: A Quick Starting Point – The Self-Audit

We, at QMP use an 8 dimension, quick 50-question self-audit or self-assessment approach to determine whether there is need for deeper investigation. The output is a simple spider graph which illustrates the impressions that the executive team has of its marketing and sales organizational capabilities and effectiveness.

Figure 1

 

 

Copyright The QMP Group, Inc. 2012 All Rights Reserved

The shape of this figure provides a general idea of where performance gaps are perceived to exist. However, this is a chart which reflects executive impressions and personal observations – not a formal, detailed analysis of processes and capabilities. If the chart reveals high capabilities, but sales performance is actually poor, there is strong misperception among the executive team. But if both the chart output and the firm’s performance are satisfactory, the need for a detailed audit is probably not compelling.

(Click here to request this free self-assessment tool)

Step 2: The Detailed Audit:

If a detailed audit is indicated, the model in Figure 2 provides a framework for conducting that audit. Each of the 8 dimensions of the spider graph will be evaluated within that model.

Figure 2

he Marketing & Sales Engine™

Copyright The QMP Group, Inc 2002 All Rights Reserved

All gears must turn efficiently and together for optimum revenue generation. If any gear is broken or stuck, the engine stalls – and it can only turn as fast as its slowest gear. If a marketing and sales audit is going to identify opportunities for breakthrough or discover where things are malfunctioning, an audit must assess the systemic working of all the gears – even the little ones. One must even include in the audit the oil in the oil pan – which we call Performance Excellence, or the Culture of the firm. A healthy corporate culture can grease, or an unhealthy corporate culture grind to a halt, the firm’s marketing and sales engine.

Auditing the Gold Gear: Market Strategy:

“Even the best soldier becomes a casualty when engaged in unwise battle strategy.”

Audits of Market Strategy often lead to the greatest sales breakthroughs. It is common that a strategy audit reveals a lack of market focus. And though it may seem counter-intuitive to consider narrowing rather than expanding one’s market range, a redeployment of resources to a more tightly-defined, more economically lucrative market segment, almost always results in accelerated growth and less cost.

In one case, prior to a strategy analysis, a rather smug marketing and sales executive said, boasting “I don’t care who buys them (his products) or for what reason. All I care is that they buy a lot.” His attitude reflected itself in the highly unfocused efforts of his sales team. This manager did not expect significant impact, nor did he believe much would be revealed, from a strategy audit. In actuality, the audit triggered a strategic market re-focus which triggered strong double-digit growth for a handful of years while enabling price premiums along the way.

Opportunities for sales breakthroughs are available by looking into other aspects of the firm’s strategy as well, not just its strategic focus. Breakthroughs can be found in analysis of the channel-to-market, pricing policy and the alignment (or rather misalignment) of all the components of the strategy together.

Auditing the Blue Gear: New Business Development

The Business Development gear comprises what most people consider to be classic, tactical marketing. It includes the firm’s e-commerce process, web presence, advertising, sales tool kit, lead generation process, print collateral, trade shows, branding, press relations, publicity and social media. Contrary to the intuition of many – more emphasis on this gear is not always better. Conflicts arise when the strategic intent is to focus while the tactical marketing team is hell bent on “getting our name out there” to as many people as possible.

A Business Development audit can reveal such things as: a) misaligned messages and focus, b) opportunities for shifting resources from expensive promotional efforts (trade shows, advertising) to more effective and less expensive targeted publicity and press relations, or c) a poorly conceived sales tool kit.

One of the most common gaps in a firm’s Business Development program is the lack of a “Thought Leadership” program. In general, thought leadership is the process of building a highly visible industry presence and reputation for your firm and your people, as industry experts. When people look for a solution, they often seek out the experts first – most of the time these days, with an internet search. Thought Leadership is typically the role of technical specialists, marketing spokespeople or senior executives of your firm – the people with enough technical or industry knowledge to be considered experts. “Thought Leadership” involves public speaking, writing and publishing articles, writing blogs, participating in industry association panels, conferences and committees and even involvement in community issues. That activity is heavily reflected in internet presence.

Auditing the Red Gear: Sales Process Disciplines

Within the sales function, the audit checklist is long. Here’s a sampling:

  • the reality, quality and current value of the sales pipeline
  • the usefulness of the sales tool kit
  • the relevance, effectiveness and currency of the sales training program
  • overall sales process effectiveness
  • the discipline of providing, and quality of, market intelligence feedback
  • the sales person’s understanding of the value proposition, differentiation and ideal customer profile, particularly for new products
  • the alignment of the compensation plan to the strategy

Something as simple as re-establishing focus on the Ideal Customer Profile can achieve rapid and significant results. While running a mini-audit, one of our clients discovered their sales people did not have a clear idea of the types of opportunities they should be pursuing. Sales sent in everything they dug up for a bid, swamping the quote department.

We took the client through a focus exercise and profiled the ideal opportunity. It took only a couple of hours to formulate. Within 9 months of this re-focus, their win rate had increased by more than 15% while the number of quotes generated decreased by nearly 33%. They won more of the right kinds of profitable opportunities. It was that simple. Less waste. More success. No blame.

Low-to-no-cost adjustments to issues discovered in an audit are common and can significantly increase sales productivity.

For example, research has shown that 35% to 50% of the customer opportunities in a sales person’s pipeline will never reach a “buy” decision. These are costly, unproductive investments of sales and support resource that have ended up in the “No Decision” bucket.

The likelihood of an opportunity ending in a “No-Decision” is inversely proportional to the degree of the “Compelling Need” a customer feels about solving their business problem. If a customer is not faced with a compelling need to fix their problem they will not buy any solution – yours or your competitor’s. A quick audit of the sales opportunities in the “No Decision” bucket brings cold reality to bear on the need to do a better job of qualifying customers.

Auditing the Soil: Performance Excellence, aka the Culture:

Think of a company’s culture as its soil. At its best, it is nutrient rich and encourages growth. Think of strategy as the seed. Even a genetically perfect seed will not grow in nutrient starved soil. On the other hand, a genetically inferior seed, planted in nutrient rich soil, will at least yield some crop. Culture is everything.

The nutrients in a firm’s culture are its values and its behavioral norms. In our experience, the best cultures exhibit the following characteristics:

  • the setting of clear expectations
  • individual and organization accountability
  • clarity of ownership of initiatives and results
  • measurements and metrics
  • rewards and consequences tied to performance
  • honesty and openness in communications
  • periodic progress checkpoints (at minimum, monthly)
  • a sense of urgency to deal with barriers and challenges to progress
  • teamwork
  • a creative problem-solving orientation focused on solutions not blame

 In our engine model the culture is the oil in the oil plan pan in which the gears move. The culture lubricates and sustains a healthy engine. Without oil the engine seizes up. Without a solid culture of performance excellence, your business seizes up.

Conclusion:

A marketing and sales audit is simply a periodic analysis of what’s working and what’s not. It is a discipline that requires digging into the marketing and sales process to look for opportunities, barriers, bottlenecks and trends. We know from experience, that initiating an audit and analysis, with the discovery of root cause as its objective can spark sales breakthroughs and improve marketing & sales ROI.

A Final Note: A Marketing & Sales Organizational Self-Assessment is not the same as a Marketing & Sales Audit

A Self-Assessment is an organized compilation and scoring of your perceptions about the capabilities of your marketing and sales organization and processes. An Audit is a validation or invalidation of those perceptions from a deep dive into weaknesses and root causes of performance gaps. Self-Assessments record perceptions. Audits discover reality.

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Copyright 2010 The QMP Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Learn more about what kinds of growth opportunities a QMP Marketing and Sales Effectiveness Audit can reveal. Or, request a free QMP Marketing and Sales Organizational Capabilities Self-Assessment through our Contact Us Page. We’re here to help.

PinPoint Change: Reducing the Frustration of Slow Process Improvement

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What is Pin-Point change?

Pin-Point change is a simplified, three-step approach for affecting high-leverage, rapid business process improvement.

A pinpoint change comprises; 1) the identification of the single most critical and ineffective business process preventing the firm from achieving its objectives, 2) the identification of the specific process change needed, and 3) focusing, laser-like executive attention and decision-making on the few key people in the organization that must quickly change their behaviors to fix those ineffective processes. This does not necessarily mean removing or replacing them – unless, of course, they simply cannot or refuse to quickly learn and adjust behaviors.iStock_000005918667XSmall

What’s different about this approach to change is that to achieve the most rapid positive result, change is only required of a few strategically positioned people in the organization that are key links in the ineffective process – not the whole organization. Focus permits rapid change. Once the success of the change is proven, the rest of the organization typically falls in line, encouraged by both the initial success and the management intensity applied to the execution of the change. As a result all organizational change is faster.

 

An example:

The sales manager of a small, innovative health care products firm was convinced that the fastest road to sales growth was quickly setting up as many distributors as possible. He had charged his independent reps with the task of finding those distributors and directed the whole customer service team to respond quickly in setting up these new distributors when they called – credit checks, registration, setting them up in the system, getting them sales materials and servicing their other needs.

The number of distributors exploded – rapidly jumping into the hundreds. The customer service folks were overwhelmed servicing distributor requests, responding to inquiries and processing extremely small orders. In spite of this intense effort, sales results, as measured by sales per distributor, were poor.

The channel strategy and channel management process was broken – running wildly, un-steered and developing no traction.

Reversing this strategy by creating a single, national master distributor to which to send smaller distributors and distributor wannabe’s allowed the sales and customer service team to focus on the most important larger distributors, large end-user sales, lucrative growing market segments and most profitable products. After the channel strategy and process change, customer service productivity improved and revenue quickly turned upwards.

Changing the mind of just one person in this critical distributor management process was the key. The sales manager had to be convinced that his direction, process and behavior needed to change.

The ineffective process was channel strategy. The single person that needed to change behavior was the sales manager. One process, one behavioral change and one strategically positioned individual made the difference between success and failure.

 

The “Drive-Train” of any business:

A drive-train is the series of mechanical parts of an automobile that actually make it move. It starts with the engine, which in turn is connected to the transmission, which in turn is connected to the drive shaft, which in turn is connected to the read-end differential, which in turn is connected to the wheels through the rear axle. All this energy transfer goes on, beneath the visibility of the driver. All the parts of the drive train have to work together for the car to move. If any one of those segments of the drive train breaks, the car can’t move. The energy produced by the engine is lost before it gets to the wheels.

In most business units, the drive-train is the sequence of processes and people that makes the business run. In small to mid-size businesses, process-specific drive-trains typically operate two levels below the visibility of the business owner or executive in charge – yet these people-process drive-trains are the connections through which most business activity takes place.

The majority of day-to-day activity goes on beneath the awareness and visibility of executives. That’s actually good news – for the most part. It means the executive can get the flu on Sunday, stay home for the week, play golf on the weekend and return to work on Monday and notice the business hasn’t collapsed. The bad news is that processes in this chain, when broken or inefficient, continually produce weak or bad results. The executive sees less than optimum results in her business dashboard, but doesn’t know where the process is broken. It’s like the driver of a car, not understanding, when she presses down harder on the accelerator, why the car doesn’t seem to be move any faster.

 

A Typical Business Drive Train:

A typical business drive train might look like this. A sales person finds an opportunity. That sales person links to the inside sales and/or estimating team that produces a quote. That part of the drive-train, in turn, connects with the order entry people, who, once the customer decides to order, accepts the order and enters it into “the system”. The system then informs the production planner, the materials person, purchasing and the final link, operations – which in-turn builds and delivers that order. Then the “system” takes over and spits out an invoice. When the invoice is paid, accounts receivable enters the receipt into the “system” and deposits the check in the bank.

Each step is a mini-segment of the larger business process. But, because these drive-train links are more-or-less serial, one persistently ineffective segment will continually plague and corrupt the whole business.

In a small to mid-size business, at its most fundamental level, each drive-train segment comprises, the combination of a basic process and a key person.

 

Fast Change – Rapid Improvement:

The fastest three-step route to positive change comprises 1) the rapid identification of the inefficient or broken process in the business drive-train, 2) the identification of the specific process change needed and 3) the focus of management attention on the one individual through which behavioral change will be crucial.

I am continually amazed at how effective “the one process-one change-one individual” approach to improvement can be.

The steps of PinPoint change are straightforward:

1. Discover the broken process,

2. Identify the behavioral change needed,

3. Find the key individual whose behavior must be the first to change

 

One final consideration:

The one person that is critical to initiating all rapid behavioral change in a small-to-mid-size firm is the executive in charge. The speed of a drive-train change is only as fast as the decision on the part of the executive-in-charge to direct that change. A much higher probability of success exists, when the executive in charge, knowing what process is broken and what change is required, quickly identifies the key individual in the process and clearly communicates the expectation of what needs to be adjusted. An uncompromising insistence on the three-step approach is essential. Executive indecisiveness can hold it all back.

My advice to executives: Do not let the discomfort of insisting and confronting the need for behavioral change of a few key people in a critical drive train process jeopardize the well-being of all other employees and stakeholders.

It’s that fundamental.

Copyright The QMP Group, Inc. 2013    All Rights Reserved

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Click here to learn more about Marketing & Sales Organizational Tranformations led by Jerry Vieira and The QMP Group

Why Employees Don’t Always Do What You Ask

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Are you pleased?

Pulling Out HairIf you are consistently thrilled with the responsiveness and results of important tasks you assign to your direct reports, there is no need to read on. On the other hand, if you are like the majority of business owners and executives we have worked with, you are probably frustrated at times by the lack of understanding, speed of response and quality of the results of those requests.

There are two major ingredients to getting what you request done well. The first is Motivation and the second is, what I will call the Assignment Dynamic – which of the two is much more complex but, actually, easier to manage.

 

Motivation: The Vroom Expectancy Theory

Many books have been written on the subject of motivation, but my favorite model was created by Professor Victor Vroom*, called the Expectancy Theory. It states that people are motivated by the product of three considerations: a) if they attempt something they will accomplish it, b) if they accomplish it there will be a reward and 3) the reward will be relevant to them. If any of these are “zero” there is no motivation. Before giving an assignment, particularly if the assignment is a major challenge, 10 minutes of thought on this motivational model might help,

 

The Assignment Dynamic:

The Assignment Dynamic takes over from the point at which the assignment is given. This Assignment Dynamic is shown in Figure 1. It has 3 major steps. The 3rd step delineates the 9 common barriers to progress.

Figure 1.

The_Assignment_Dynamic

1.   Clarity:  Be clear about what you are asking for. Describe clearly the acceptable form the answer or solution must take. Clarify the timing for the completion, the importance/urgency of the assignment and the priority of the request. If the result is numerical, collaboratively set the number.  Just this first step goes a long way in improving outcomes.

2.  Checkpoints:  Let the individual assigned to the task know you will be checking on progress on a scheduled basis. Set the schedule.

3.  Confronting Delays and Diagnosing Barriers:  During a checkpoint, if satisfactory progress hasn’t been made, don’t be afraid to confront it. I know, “confront” is such a hash word. In this case, however, “confront” simply means addressing the delay directly and professionally to discover the barrier-to-progress as quickly as possible, rather than simply letting it go with an “OK. I’ll check with you next week.”

The root causes of the lack of progress can almost always be found in the list below. When confronting a delay, discuss directly with the employee the potential barriers to progress. The following 9 items can be used as a barrier identification checklist.

  • Communication:  Stalls and delays can occur simply because someone failed, or forgot, to tell someone that something had to be done. All of the components mentioned in the section on clarity apply throughout the chain of all the people required to fulfill the request and achieve the goal and an objective is communicated.

Just hours before the attack at Pearl Harbor a small crew manning a newly installed radar site on a mountain near the harbor noticed a large swarm of blips. They did their job by discovering them and thought they had communicated it to headquarters. In actuality, due to breaks, oversights and inefficiencies in the communication chain, the note was not received by the harbor until the day after the attack.

  • Capacity: “I’m too busy,” is often the cry for why something is not getting done. In this case, managers must be clear about the priority of the task requested, and if the employee is simply at capacity, be specific about what needs to fall off the tailgate and be delayed in order to make time for this task. Capacity, more often than not, typically means unclear priority.
  • Capability: Occasionally an assignment isn’t completed as hoped because employees simply do not know how to accomplish it.
  • Criticality: “I just didn’t know it was that important,” is the response to a delay caused by this item. This can be avoided if the first step, “Clarity” is done well.
  • Courage: Some people, who have been asked to do something they have never done before, simply do not have the courage to attempt it. Fear of failure, and its consequences, is typically the reason.
  • Cooperation: If the employee is unable to elicit cooperation from other employees, departments or customers the manager can assist in breaking free that logjam.
  • Capital: Occasionally, funding is needed to enable the completion of a task. If this is the reason for delay, management simply approves the funding or the original task yields its first position to the enabling task of developing the economic justification for the investment.
  • Cognition: I don’t understand what you are asking me to do.
  • Credibility: Credibility means the person assigned the task doesn’t believe that the task is worthwhile, meaningful or will have the desired outcome.

Here’s a real example:  When asked how the economic benefit story for the firm’s new product was being received by customers and the distribution channel, Bill, a lead sales person, said he wasn’t telling the story, because he didn’t believe the numbers. This new product had a compelling economic benefit to customers and the company had collected customer testimonials confirming it. The management was perplexed by this lack of willingness and compliance to tell the economic story to prospects when selling this new product. A little bit of sales person re-education, coaching, clarification and re-explanation of the economic benefit was required to change his belief.

It changed. The result was a 28% increase in sales, in a year when the general economic activity in that sector declined 15%.

Conclusion:

To some, this organized approach to doling out assignments might appear a bit formal and cumbersome. However if the task is truly important, something that really needs to get done, the approach and checklist can prove a very useful tool.

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Jerry Vieira, CMC is the President and founder of the QMP Group, a Portland, based management consulting firm specializing in marketing & sales organizational transformations. For more information on how to use this Assignment Dynamic model call him at 503-318-696 or email to Jerry@qmpassociates.com.

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* In 1964, Victor Vroom developed the Expectancy theory through his study of the motivations behind decision making. His theory is relevant to the study of management. Currently, Vroom is a John G. Searle Professor of Organization and Management at the Yale University School of Management.[4] Source Wikipedia

Networking from the front of the room

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There are two statements I hear repeatedly when speaking with professional services firms. The first is, “It’s a relationship business.” The second is, “We generate the majority of our new business through networking and referrals.”

In fact, service professionals (attorneys, bankers, financial advisors, IT service providers, consultants, brokers and accountants), tell me that they are encouraged (if not by their bosses, by everything they read) to attend a lot of networking events, engage in conversation, not drink too much and hand out business cards.

They are, in effect, being encouraged to play a numbers game. The more events attended and the more cards handed out, the more new clients. Why this approach? Because, it has worked in the past – and if it is not done, new client opportunities dry up. With all the hype in recent years about branding, eMarketing and social media – networking still ranks as a top priority for generating new clients for professional services firms.

But, think about this kind of networking for a moment. In the 30 minutes or so before an event speaker is introduced on the dais, you are supposed to: a) meet as many new people as possible, b) demonstrate sincere interest in who they are and what they do, c) identify their key challenges, d) empathize and e) build up enough mutual trust to get them to remember you well enough to agree to an appointment in the the next, oh let’s say, 3 months. There must be a better way.

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The professional services marketplace is much more competitive these days. A lot more people are handing out a lot more business cards at a lot more events. In addition, a swarm of unemployed executives, and there are many, are buzzing the networking circuit. The bottom line is that professional services firms need a better way than traditional networking to stand out and find new opportunities in this market. They need a more effective way than traditional networking to generate the essential credibility and trust that precedes all new client opportunities.

Front of the Room Networking

Front of the room networking is the act of being the headline speaker at networking and other business events. It has incredible power to attract new prospects and many advantages over crowd surfing. The following list of advatntages illustrates the power of this approach:

1. An intriguing title will attract the right kinds of prospects with the right kinds of problems

Picking a title which addresses and offers approaches to problems commonly faced by your clients is a way to garner interest in your talk. In fact, if done well, the people attending will self-pre-qualify simply by demonstrating enough interest in the topic to attend and listen.

I recently offered a topic to an organization of management accountants for their October monthly meeting entitled, “How to Judge the Reality of your Marketing and Sales Team’s 2012 Forecast”. October, being coincident with most firms’ annual planning efforts, was perfect timing, and the topic being relevant attracted a good amount of attention.

2. Offer to speak at a venue that attracts, by function and title, the key decision makers or influencers for the service you provide

While it may be flattering to be asked to address the local Boy Scout troop, and you may get a feeling of civic and professional pride in doing so, if your professional services are bought or recommended by B2B CFOs, you may want to reserve some energy and your best jokes for the latter crowd.

3. Insight is Essential

Assuming you are addressing the right crowd, with the right topic, with an intriguing catchy title, your talk must provide insight. To be effective it must have the effect of causing people to tilt their head, look up toward the ceiling and say to themselves, “I never thought of it that way.”

or

“ Wow! That’s a clever approach.”

or

“Wish I had thinkers like that in my organization.”

or, best of all …

“I MUST to talk to this guy/gal after he/she finishes.”

4. The hosting / sponsoring organization typically does all the logistics work

They invite the people, promote the event, reserve the venue, arrange and pay for the breakfast, lunch, snacks, coffee, beer or wine (depending on the time of day), provide you a flattering introduction and assure that the place is cleaned up afterwards.

5. You speak (and consequently network) to the whole room at once

Being the featured speaker at a monthly meeting typically permits you to address 25 to 100 people simultaneously, instead of engaging in chit-chat one-on-one for 10 minutes with each of 3 people. As mentioned above, typically networking and association get-togethers allow 30 minutes for that kind of chatting before the speaker starts. That allows time for meeting 3 new people – if you don’t waste time catching up with your buddies first and talking sports, books or politics

6. You have their uninterrupted attention for 45 minutes

For this networking approach to work, you must be an engaging speaker and deliver value. You cannot take advantage of the opportunity and try to sell. You must be willing to share.

Many people feel they will be giving too much away if they do this. As a consultant, my experience is that you can give someone your complete process binder and they will not be able to deploy it without your help. The caution is that you can really only share so much. You must protect your Intellectual Property – but do not fear to share a lot. It builds your credibility, demonstrates your expertise, illustrates your commitment to help and provides more opportunity for your listeners to want to talk with you afterwards.

7. It helps you continue the development of your ideas, products and intellectual property

The compelling need to think and develop your talk after you have committed to it, has the added benefit of forcing you to take thinking time. This thinking time always generates new ideas that you can test with the new audience.

And here are some tips for giving a great talk and getting great results:

1.  Assure you have an audience of decision makers or highly placed (by title) recommenders  

As a colleague of mine said, “Pick your talks by who you want to listen to you, not by who accepted your talk”. Before i recognized this, I wasted more than one evening giving great talks to very interested attendees who weren;t anywhere near the decision to decide on using my services

2. Make your presentations interactive

Another key point is the need to engage interactively with your audience versus lecturing. Small exercises that illustrate key concepts are very helpful. One of the most effective tools is some sort of self-assessment which illustrates key gaps in the current situation of the attendees.

3. Make frequent eye contact with individual people in the room.

It gives listeners a feeling of a personal conversation and intimacy with you even though there may be 100 people in the room.

5. Don’t forget to smile

If people see you are enjoying yourself, and excited about talking with them, they will enjoy themselves and be excited about talking with you.

6. Exchange business cards after your talk

If the sponsoring organization does not provide for it, offer to make (and personally deliver) copies of your presentation to the attendees if they provide you a business card. Also ask if they would mind being on your mailing list when you get their card. At the accountant meeting mentioned in Point 1 above, out of 50+ attendees, I collected 12 business cards after the talk by people coming up to me, expressing their appreciation for what I had to say and requesting the presentation. Within the next few days, I had scheduled four appointments.

7. Follow up quickly, when they ask you to

A final point is worth repeating: Remember, you are never selling when you give one of these talks. You are providing information and insight. The sense the audience feels of you as an expert is what creates the magnetic attraction for you to come and solve their problems.

Summary:

Speaking in front of crowds is an integral part of Thought Leadership and an active Thought Leadership effort is essential for a professional service providers’ business development efforts. A well constructed Thought Leadership effort builds brand, reinforces your individual and firm’s reputation as experts, piques client interest, builds web traffic and provides opportunity for price premiums.

For a good book on the pillars of Thought Leadership, grab a copy of “The Expert’s Edge” by Ken Lizotte (McGraw Hill)

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Networking from the front of the room and other Sales and Consulting business development practices are part both the QMP Sales Skills and Process Workshop and the QMP Consutlancy Navigator Program offered by The QMP Group. Click on their titles to learn more.

 

Lean Marketing and Sales: The Art of Optimizing both Customer and Company Value

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“Lean is the process of maximizing the value delivered to customers by eliminating any wasted activity or expense marketing or sales process that does not create, communicate or enhance customer-received value.”

In this QMP Insights blog we offer an approach for improving both top and bottom-lines through the application of “Lean” principles to six key areas in the marketing and sales function of a firm.

 

Getting Started with Lean in Marketing and Sales:

iStock_000023705897XSmallThere are three foundational principles that must guide any application of lean principles to the marketing and sales function

First, the law of economic value is always at work. That law states: All economic value accruing to your firm has as its source, the customer’s perception that they will receive more value (economic, emotional or physical) from your product or service than it costs them (economically, emotionally or physically) to purchase, acquire, set up and use.

Second, avoidance of the application of lean concepts creates growing breaches in your business that competitors will exploit. If there is any place in your product or service offering, customer service process or sales approach that customers consciously or subconsciously perceive as not providing the highest value possible, that gap will be the place you are most vulnerable to competitive attack.

Third, when assessing the relative importance and value of deploying a specific lean initiative, use the first and second guiding principles above. Considering the deployment of lean principles in your product and service portfolio or your marketing and sales function only as an opportunity to reduce costs can result in customer backlash. Bank of America felt that backlash recently when they instituted debit card user fees and we all feel the frustration when we can’t reach a real person in customer service.

 

The Six Targets for Lean in Marketing and Sales:

Market Focus

Face the facts. Your product or service offering does not offer the same set of economic, emotional or physical values to all market segments equally. Lean means focusing on those market segments where the value-received by customers is the highest. If that situation exists, the law of economic value is satisfied and research shows that the following benefits accrue to your firm:

  • the ability to garner price premiums
  • faster market penetration
  • higher customer satisfaction
  • more peer-to-peer, word-of-mouth customer communication of that value proposition
  • higher interest in your product from channel partners
  • higher probability of achieving market share leadership in that segment
  • reduced marketing expense
  • improved sales win rate and faster time to close
  • reduced product design costs and a clearer product evolution path as a keener awareness of the customer needs in that specific market are revealed
  • greater returns from focused social media and website investments

Market focus is Lean in action.

 

Market Communications

The wisdom of lean and focused market communications is the toughest principle to convey to marketing and sales teams. The common fallacy is that, “more marketing expenditure is better than less”. Marketing and sales teams typically will fight tooth and nail to avoid reductions in this sacred arena. They believe that more marketing dollars across more expansive markets means more customers. Not so.

Research (Everett Rogers, “The Adoption of Innovations”) shows that communications of a new idea is best accomplished through opinion leaders in a target market. Peer-to-peer communications, accelerated by opinion leaders, is 13 times more effectively than mass communications. Focused marketing communications programs to reach those opinion leaders, with focused value propositions achieved through market-focused product design is as effective as can be achieved. Social media can help – as long as it is focused.

Focused marketing communications is Lean in action.

 

Channel to Market

Your business will begin to erode if your channel-to-market provides value only to you and not your customers. Marketers must be vigilant to assure their channel continues to deliver real value to customers and clients. Let’s take Amazon.com as an example.

Amazon.com is, at its most basic level, merely a channel-to-market. They do not write books or build any product. Even the manufacture of the Kindle is outsourced. Amazon’s growth was the result of tapping into an under-satisfied customer value (convenience) and leveraging an emerging technology (the Internet).

By building an on-line bookstore coupled with an efficient order fulfillment process, Amazon stole the customer segment of the book market motivated by convenience, not couches. Relevant value to that segment is: browsing at home, saving gasoline, saving time, the use of peer reviews and comments to facilitate decision-making, fast customer service, the opportunity to contribute reviews and comments, and avoidance of the “out-of-stock to be supplied by another store across town and we’ll call when when it’s in” situation. The introduction of “Whispernet” (the wireless purchase and instant delivery of e-books to the Kindle) further enhanced this basic value set. And taking this value proposition even one step further, Amazon has now added free, unlimited on-line storage of your complete media library (music, books, movies) in the cloud with the Kindle Fire®. Wow!

All this value provided by basically a channel-to-market. Amazon understood how to find untapped needs and use technology to meet them efficiently. This is Lean in action in the channel-to-market

 

Sales Process Discipline

An oft cited statistic claims that 30% to 50% of the opportunities in the average sales person’s pipeline won’t close because the customer makes a decision not to buy anything. The sales person has, in effect, wasted time and money pursuing something that was destined to never result in a sale. How can one really know if a specific opportunity will actually result in a purchase?

The answer has several parts.

First, if Lean principles are applied in the previous steps (strategy, channel and communications), there is a much higher probability that a purchase will occur, because the value proposition and its communication are more efficient, focused and aligned with customers that are likely to receive the greatest value from your product or service.

Second, if the firm has developed an ideal customer profile that describes that buyer type, it enables the sales team to quickly identify a good potential prospect and politely decline continuing involvement with a poor prospect.

Third, there is a simple set of 5 criteria that can improve a sales person’s ability to quickly qualify an opportunity.

  • intensity of the customer’s need or problem,
  • degree to which the product offering can meet that need,
  • degree of the economic, emotional or physical value the customer will receive by using the product or service,
  • customer perception of the relative competitive advantage of the product or service solution
  • the existence of a customer champion for the solution

These principles put Lean in action in the sales process.

 

Market Intelligence Feedback

Market intelligence is critical to success. Sound market strategy depends on current and valid market intelligence. That intelligence may comprise some or all: competitive intelligence, customer satisfaction, barriers the sales people keep running into, the health of the customers’ markets, usage idiosyncrasies and a host of other informational tidbits. The sales team must be at the forefront in gathering this data, because the sales team is company asset that is in the most frequent contact with the customer.

The most efficient way to gather market intelligence is through weekly or monthly sales reports. Contracting market research firms to gather market intelligence from the same customers the sales people talk to each month anyway, is admitting to un-Lean practices and indicative of other organizational or culture problems.

Here are some thoughts about making your Lean market intelligence gathering:

  • make a bullet-point market intelligence section a required part of your sales person’s weekly or monthly report
  • train your sales people how to question and observe – not just spew the benefits of your product
  • include providing market intelligence in the sales compensation plans and sales position descriptions
  • provide the ability to award spot bonuses for the most timely and important pieces of information that come your way
  • read the market intelligence reports; think about and acknowledge them by calling back the sales person who provided the information, thanking them and getting more information

Listen carefully when sales people talk about gaps in the customer’s perception of your product’s value delivered. The first comment is inevitably pricing-related. Pricing-related value gaps are more about market targeting, product design and the customer’s perception of value received than actually about pricing. Pricing is only a symptom of a bigger strategic problem.

 

Conclusion:

The application of Lean principles to marketing and sales is easy and inexpensive. A firm of any size and market can deploy Lean. Lean principles assure that customers get the best value they can – and in return, consistent with the law of economic value, your business optimizes its own economic return.

Click here to talk to QMP about Lean Marketing and Sales

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The Basics of Foundational Marketing

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“You can’t build a durable building on a weak foundation.”

 

We’d like to share an insight that has helped executives and business owners sort through all the hype and claims over the last several years about an ever growing list of “gotta-do” new marketing and sales techniques.

If you’re a General Manager, business owner or C-level executive, your marketing team probably approaches you annually with a laundry list of funding requests to support their critical marketing and sales programs for the coming year. Those requests may include any or all of; a website upgrade, a branding program, a social media expansion program, a blog, a publicity and PR program or maybe even a new six-figure trade show booth – not to mention the additional staff to help manage it all. How do you decide what to approve? How do you sort through all the hype and enthusiasm about each program and decide what will truly give you the best return for your investment?

The graphic below illustrates an alternative approach to selecting marketing initiatives.

Foundational-Marketing-JMost people think of marketing as one or more of the items listed on the right side of the graphic — in the grey, typical-marketing circle. Stop a moment and consider the list. Is this what you think of when you think of marketing? If yes, join the majority club. If not, join the other group. It has fewer members – but they are the ones who have found the secret to getting greater return on their marketing buck.

Before those of you in the smaller, enlightened group get smug, remember “typical marketing” programs aren’t completely useless. Let’s be realistic. These days, unless you operate a lemonade stand that will only be open for two weeks in August, everyone needs a website. So let’s agree that, to some degree, typical-marketing expenditures are necessary – and in fact, required, once the foundational marketing base is laid.

But, back to the point – the hidden secret about marketing and what the people in the smaller group know that others may not is this; Rarely will any typical marketing initiatives produce truly breakthrough results — and they can tie up a lot of money! What really sets up top and bottom-line breakthroughs is Foundational Marketing. Foundational Marketing is the stuff in the oval on the left. Foundational Marketing is inexpensive and the primary, required ingredient in every major success.

For any typical marketing expenditure to be productive, Foundational Marketing must be done well. In our experience, foundational marketing tools and techniques have produced remarkable results. For example:

  • A software firm earned 1,000 new clients in just a little more than two years
  • A fledgling medical product landed 150 hospital placements in its first two years, with some orders exceeding $1M. Prior to using Foundational Marketing techniques, this product was in only two hospitals, with the largest single order only $20,000.
  • An electronics firm achieved a 50%+ growth rate for six years straight
  • A components firm increased their win rate by 15% while investing 33% less quoting time
  • A wholesale distributor generated a 47% increase in regional sales in 1½ years

None of these breakthroughs required a significant investment in typical marketing.

To contrast the effectiveness of the two types of marketing even further, in one of those cases above, after the success had been achieved using Foundational Marketing techniques a new management team invested in a mid six-figure re-branding typical-marketing program that didn’t move the needle a bit – losing the discipline of Foundational Marketing along the way.

Why don’t more firms adhere to Foundational Marketing disciplines?

They don’t know what they are: B-school educators are fantastic at teaching principles and concepts, but in general, weak at delivering a practical approach to moving those principles and concepts into practice. I speak from experience as, at different times, both an MBA student and MBA-level university instructor. Concepts and principles education does not equate to skills, tools and process disciplines. Most B-school graduates do not come out newly-minted with a honed skill set and tool kit.

They haven’t developed a standard tool kit: You are more likely to find a dozen carpenters that use the same field-proven tools and processes for their trade, than a dozen top B-school graduates that use the same tool kit and process for strategy development. Coming to the job site, most marketing practitioners have to create their own tools and processes, convince the executive team to learn, trust and use them and support the execution discipline to see the resultant strategies through to success. Not to place all the blame on the practitioner, many firms simply haven’t developed a Foundational Marketing process and tool kit.

It’s tougher to do: Typical marketing programs are an easy way out – particularly if everyone in the industry is “doing something”. They can be delegated and the deliverables are easy to see: a new web site, a new logo, a bigger show booth.

They don’t have the discipline to do the Foundational work first: Unless the top-dog insists that Foundational Marketing receives first priority and is the right way to do marketing, it won’t get done. Foundational Marketing is a “think-before-doing” approach.

They think it takes too much time: Building a good foundation doesn’t take long if you have the right tools. We have witnessed strategic decisions made in a few days with execution and success in as little as 90 days.

They don’t believe in it because they’ve never seen it work: Using and trusting Foundational Marketing principles does take some faith and practice, but the track record is proven.

Under the Hood of Foundational Marketing:

Practicing Foundational Marketing is really not difficult if you have the right tools. Good and sound foundational marketing tools are based on empirical marketing science. Even non-marketing people can learn and succeed using them. In a way, a good Foundational Marketing tool is like a cell phone. You don’t need to be an electrical engineer with an understanding of electromagnetic field and communications theory to use a cell phone. All of that has been done for you and integrated into the cell phone. Good Foundational Marketing tools have already integrated sound empirical marketing science into them.

Success with Foundational Marketing does require – and this is the difficult part – transforming the way your organization thinks and the way your team executes marketing and sales. It really comes down to a battle of the mind – more than a battle of the wallet. When your organization understands Foundational Marketing – and begins to use its tools and techniques, both the probability of success and the return on investment of your marketing programs skyrocket.

A complete Foundational Marketing approach has four components:

· Market Strategy: A proven and steadfast way to decide what market segments to focus on and what differentiated position to carve out for your firm and each of its products.

· Business Development Initiatives: These are about how you will approach the segment(s) of the market you have decided to target. While components of tactical (typical marketing) are included, emphasis here is on specific customers to target, specific messages to communicate, the customer’s buying process, channel-to-market decisions and leveraging the intra-market customer-to-customer communication network in the target markets of choice.

· Sales Disciplines: There are two parts of the sales disciplines component of Foundational Marketing. Both require training and consistency. First, an effective, consistent sales process is a must – one which qualifies, discovers needs, proposes good solutions, and wins/sustains long-term clients. The second part is a differentiated sales story that is meaningful to customers – one which assures that your unique benefits story is told consistently through all channels to all target customers. It’s a story that emphasizes the economic, emotional and physical benefits in the right priority, for the right customers, in the right market. Sounds obvious, but many clients actually fail in these two fundamental requirements.

· A Performance Driven Culture: Think of the components of Foundational Marketing as the gears of an engine, the culture of a firm is the oil in the oil pan. (See the figure below). To consistently achieve your goals, the organization’s culture must encourage teams to communicate, execute, adjust, think, make decisions and lead in an honest way. A culture of performance excellence is defined by: accountability, clarity of expectations, measurements and metrics, ownership, open and honest communication, fact-oriented, sense of urgency, rewards and consequences, frequent checkpoints and the ability to quickly and constructively confront barriers and problems. With a culture of performance excellence lubricating Foundational Marketing, the engine hums. Without the oil of a culture of performance excellence, the gears seize.

Can Foundational Marketing fail?

Foundational Marketing programs do fail – for one of three reasons: First, if an organization does not have the discipline to execute and follow through, any program will fail. Foundational Marketing programs are no exception. Secondly, it is possible that some firms are too far gone to be saved by a Foundational Marketing program. However, in 20 years of consulting, we have witnessed only one firm in the second category. They required a complete change of their business model to survive. They did survive, but at a much lower revenue level.

Finally, we have witnessed firms that have relapsed. Relapse is characterized by success with Foundational Marketing, followed by a reversion back to sole dependence on those items in the typical marketing list. Relapse is very costly in money, time and lost opportunity. A relapse typically occurs when a new, uniformed marketing and sales or C-level executive enters the picture.

A Final Word:

A good example of the need for foundational discipline is in the weight loss arena. The basis of all weight loss programs is discipline: discipline to eat better, discipline to exercise more and discipline to adhere to a healthy lifestyle. The latest exercise machine does not obviate the need for discipline.

So it is with Foundational Marketing. Good tools and processes are needed – but organizational discipline fuels the best results. Foundational Marketing, supported by a culture of performance excellence has proven again and again to lower marketing and sales costs, increase market share, achieve more rapid adoption of new products and increase significantly the firm’s return on investment.

To learn more about Foundational Marketing call the QMP Group at 503.318.2696, email us at qmp1@qmpassociates.com or connect with us through our Contact Us page where you can detail your challenges.

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Common Sales Myth #1 – A Sales Person’s Job is Just to Sell

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After many years of both conducting sales training workshops and personally selling, I have come to recognize six popular misconceptions about selling. And, I must say, every time I broach those myths during a sales training session I get push-back, disbelief, the wagging of heads and several audible “No Way!’s”. So I am braced for your blog comments.

I have chosen to address each myth as a separate blog post, to make it more convenient to get through in the smaller and smaller free time chunks we all seem to be experiencing these days. Here’s the first.

Myth 1: A Sales Person’s Job is Just to Sell

We understand that sales people are under a lot of pressure to spend time face-to-face with customers and on the road – rather than behind a desk.  But pushing, or allowing, a sales person to only sell is counterproductive. That approach would be the equivalent of saying, “A soldier’s job is just to shoot and kill the enemy.” Good soldiers do a lot more than simply shoot. They are part of a team that sometimes requires them to play different roles and take on different duties. Here are some examples, along with their contrasting business function.

They collect and report field intelligence: Good soldiers are trained, not only to shoot, but also to observe and report on the enemy (competitors), their armaments (competitive advantages and value propositions), their location (markets and customers) and their strong points (where they have impenetrable positions – be it markets or accounts). Soldiers also report on the enemy’s weaknesses and gaps in their lines (under-serviced customers and under-served markets).

Any General, coming onto the battlefield needs, first and foremost, intel – to be able to formulate a strategy. Business managers need intel as well, for the same reason.

They report on the effectiveness of their own, and the enemy’s, weapons: The business equivalent is reporting on customer receptivity to the sales tools in use, the sales approaches, product capabilities, product reliability, product effectiveness, installation problems, quality, training problems and a host of other relevant experiential aspects of selling, delivering and using the product.

They dig in and defend the ground already captured: In business terms they defend their current accounts through disciplined customer service and make sure they are secure.

They exploit a victory, charging after a retreating enemy, or pouring through a breach: When something works in the field they use it again and again, winning repeatedly over weak competitors and landing new customers until the territory is “owned” and they move into a temporary “hold and defend” mode – until the next opportunity for an offensive.

BocageBuster

They share techniques and victories: In World War II, shortly after the Normandy invasion, the allies, having driven off the beaches into western France found themselves in bocage country . Bocage country is best described as countryside spotted with crop and grazing fields that are edged on all sides by 6 foot earthen walls entangled with scrub brush, vines and trees. These barriers have been built up over hundreds of years, a result of field-tending by farmers. From the air, bocage resembles a bunch of egg-cartons set side by side as far as the eye can see – each carton with deep, rectangular recesses. (Though at the time of the invasion, aerial observers did not recognize the impenetrable nature and height of the actual barriers.)

Capturing each field required soldiers to climb up one side of the barrier wall, scramble through the brush, trees and tangled vines, enter the field and charge across it to the bocage wall on the opposite side of the field. Tanks could not climb and penetrate these natural walls. The soldiers had no cover when entering the field. Casualties were high. The enemy simply placed machine guns at the opposite side of the field and mowed down any soldiers coming over the opposite wall. Progress in liberating France, ground to a halt.

That was, until some innovative engineer found that welding a fork-like scoop on the front end of a tank allowed it to tear through the walls, enter the fields ahead of the Allied soldiers and place heavy covering fire on the enemy gun emplacements on the opposite bocage wall. The success of that technique quickly spread to other infantry units. The casualty rate dropped. Progress accelerated. Eventually France was liberated.

When a sales person finds, discovers or invents something that succeeds and creates breakthroughs – it must be shared with all.

They train: To think that basic training is all that soldiers go through is a myth. Soldiers constantly repeat their training and hone their skills to a razor’s edge. They train on new techniques, new weapons, new systems and capturing obstacles and enemy positions in different terrains. Then they re-train on what they learned in their first training. Sales people, sadly, might train once a year. New sales people joining the team, may have to wait as long as 11 months before undergoing their basic training. Lack of training puts the team, the company and the product reputation at risk.

One more point: Training has two parts: basic physical conditioning (sales skills and disciplines) and weapons training (product and sales tool training).

Yes, there is more …

We could go on with the “good soldier” analogy, but by now, if you are a salesperson, you’ve probably reached your reading time-limit and need to run to do something else.

Have a good day.

Read the complete set of  The 6 Common Sales Myths.

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Click to learn more about the QMP Sales Process and Skills Training, call us 503-318-2696 or connect through our Contact Us page

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guest Post: Why 50:50 Partnerships can be Dangerous

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We are pleased to introduce our QMP Insights readers to our guest blogger, Mr. James Hillas, P.C., Attorney at Law. The material he offers in this brief and extremely valuable post, is something business start-ups, consultants and even current partnerships can benefit from thinking about. Much appreciation to Jim, for giving us permission to republish his piece.

Many two-owner businesses start out as equal partners to avoid potential conflict.  After all, what could be more fair than a 50-50 split?  It avoids a potentially awkward discussion about whose contributions are more important, and allows each partner to equally share in the risk and reward.

Unfortunately, what looks like the easy way out can turn into a nightmare.  No matter how compatible or easygoing two people may be, they will not agree on everything.  And if one of those disagreements involves a major decision, an equal partnership can mean a permanent deadlock leading to a shutdown of the business.

Working out a solution ahead of time can mean the difference between success and failure.  One option is to value each partner’s contributions and decide on an unequal ownership split, for example, 51-49.

If the business is structured as an LLC, it is possible to draft the governing documents to permit partners to share profits and losses equally, but have unequal voting power on key decisions.

Yet another option is to add a third owner with a small percentage of ownership—say two percent—to act as the swing vote.  This prevents either majority owner from taking action without the consent of at least one other owner.

If two partners are still determined to be 50-50 owners, they should at least have a buy-sell agreement that provides a process for allowing one partner to buy out the other’s interest if there is a permanent deadlock.  For example, a simple buy-sell agreement provision for a 50-50 partnership might allow Partner 1 to set the terms of an offer to buy out Partner 2.  Partner 2 has two options: accept the offer and sell, or reject the offer and buy out Partner 1 on the same terms.  The “shotgun” choice is similar to one sibling cutting the cake in two and letting the other sibling choose which piece to take.

If you are starting a business with another partner or are currently in a 50-50 partnership, consider setting things up or changing them to avoid potential gridlock.

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Jim Hillas can be reached at 503-407-6074, through eMail to Jim@Hillaslaw.com. His website is www.HillasLaw.com .

Getting Things Moving: What to do when progress is stalled

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Program delays challenge management in all types of enterprise – profit, non-profit, public and private. Stalls, stumbles, delays and barriers seem to randomly and inconveniently attach themselves to all types of organizational initiatives. Whether a firm is struggling with a critical initiative intended to dig its way out of a stuttering economy or dealing with the challenge of quickly responding to unprecedented growth in customer demand for its new product, all initiatives hit roadblocks.

Pulling Out Hair

Some suggest that roadblocks are simply a way of life in business – inevitable. That may be true. But if these banes are inevitable and ubiquitous, shouldn’t the management tool kit and training programs of the firm include an effective method for dealing with them?

I am not going to tell you that I have discovered some magic formula for the total avoidance of stalls, stumbles, delays and barriers. Rather, I will share a process and 12-point checklist for rapidly discovering their root cause and overcoming them.

From a Fiddler, comes insight

My insight into this common challenge came from the following scene in the movie Fiddler on the Roof.

Tevia, a poor Jewish farmer in Czarist Russia, is attempting to deliver fresh milk to the townspeople from his farm on the outskirts of town in time for the Sabbath. Tevia is pulling a heavy, wooden two-wheeled cart ladened with cans of milk, the harness around his own neck because his horse has come up lame. He is determined to fulfill his obligation to deliver – leaning forward and pulling in the summer heat on a dusty, gravel-strewn road.

I pondered Tevia’s circumstances. Should a pebble in the road find its way into the path of one of the cart wheels, progress would immediately come to a halt. Tevia would be faced with a choice – either attempt to lift a 400-pound cart over the pebble, or, simply remove a pebble.

The business insight?

Discovering and removing pebbles is the true challenge in making progress on a stalled business initiative ~ not pushing harder or lifting.

A process for discovering and removing pebbles:

The process we offer has four parts: 1) the nurturing of a Culture of Immediacy and sense of urgency around identifying, diagnosing and fixing delays 2) the discipline of having frequent Checkpoints, 3) immediate Confrontation of the stall and 4) a Checklist of 9 C’s for quickly diagnosing and overcoming the real barriers to progress.

All steps begin with the letter “C”.

Culture: An organization’s culture usually reflects the CEO’s vision and personal example. A disciplined drive to get things done, supported by a culture of immediacy and a sense of urgency will keep the momentum going.

Checkpoints: Frequent Checkpoints is the second most important “C”. Checkpoints are not micro-management. The purpose of a checkpoint is to discover and address barriers and enable progress – not target and fix blame. Barriers and pebbles are discovered quickly and time loss is minimal with frequent Checkpoints.

To punctuate the point, we recommend clients change the company vocabulary by striking the words “Meeting” and “Review” from all company communication and replacing them with the words “Working Session” and “Checkpoint” respectively. These new words imply a strong need for, and set the uncompromising expectation of, the active participation of all members of the team to drive to make progress. These changes in lexicon create a new cultural baseline if this drive didn’t exist prior to the vocabulary change and reinforces it if it did. Participation replaces passivity. Passively sitting back and watching someone present becomes forbidden.

Managers and leadership must demonstrate hands-on participation in these working sessions. They must lead problem solving, knock down barriers and be decisive. Working sessions should end with the following questions: Who is specifically going to do what, by when, to remove the discovered pebbles? Does anyone see any additional barriers or pebbles immediately ahead of us in the road? When is our next checkpoint?

Confrontation: Confrontation does not mean argument. It suggests immediacy, persistence and determination in overcoming a barrier. It means seeing a discussion through until a solution or path-to-a-solution is agreed upon – and not giving up until it is.

People are not confronted in working sessions – barriers are. A combination of objective tough-mindedness and social courage is required to confront a delay discovered during a working session.

In 20 years of consulting, I have found the lack of these two C’s (Checkpoints and Confrontation) are extremely common at all management levels. If the CEO or leader demonstrates a lack of discipline for checkpoints and a reluctance or fear of confronting barriers, the organization will reflect that “looseness” of good management discipline and process.

The 9 C’s Checklist

The list below identifies the most common root-causes of delays in business initiatives.  Once you have identified the correct root cause “C”, you can jump to the only “C” that is not on the list – Correct It.

Communication: The importance of this first “C” cannot be over-emphasized.  Communication-related delays   occur because someone has overlooked the need to communicate something that needed to get done, when it needed to be done and why.  It’s difficult to communicate too much.

Capacity:  Insufficient personal or organizational time available to complete important tasks can cause delays.  Most of the time critical task delays that are laid on the doorstep of Capacity are really related to inappropriate or misaligned priorities.

Capability: Occasionally a team member’s lack of understanding of how to tackle the task at hand creates a delay.  In such a case, outside expertise or training will break through the barrier.  This is a particularly nefarious “C” because individuals rarely want to admit that they simply don’t have the skills or knowledge to get around the problem – which brings us to the next “C” – Courage.

Courage: Progress often requires personal behavioral change.  We all know how difficult it is to accomplish behavioral change – personally and organizationally.  Personal courage comes into play most often, when an individual does not have Capability but is afraid to admit it.

A second type of Courage is organizational.  We have a good historical example from the 1980’s – the adoption of Total Quality Management disciplines by most major manufacturing firms in the country.  This change represented a major shift and courageous commitment made by executives.  One of its primary tenets was to first “drive out employee fear”.  Honest, open communications, generated from data and fact, and rewarding people who identified and overcame barriers earlier rather than later, helped drive out the fear of enable the desperately needed change.

Co-operation:  Typically, what appears as a delay caused by a lack of cooperation, either from an individual on the project team or from a support department, is actually caused by a priority misalignment.  Management Clarification and Communication quickly overcome these barriers.

Cognition: Ever been caught in a “deplaning jam”?  It’s the experience of de-boarding quickly from an airplane only to be jammed-up in the terminal by Grandma hugging all her six grandchildren right in front of you?  People scurrying on their way to catch a cab or to baggage claim start crashing into one another as they stop short – preferring that collision to crushing Grandma and the youngest granddaughter wrapped around her leg.  Grandma has stopped and stalled progress – oblivious to the consequences of her behavior.

Sometimes people simply don’t know they are in the way of progress by their inaction or that what they are doing is counter-productive.

Criticality: The negative economic implications of delays (and the positive economic implications of rapid success) should be visible to all members of a project team.  Creating and sustaining a sense of urgency is essential by the manager ultimately responsible for the P&L impact of the program.  When a delay is on the critical path it must be confronted immediately.  Again, sometimes people just don’t realize the critical nature of a task assigned to them.  Setting deadlines helps punctuate criticality.

Credibility: Do the team members really believe there is a need for the change initiative? Do they trust the judgment of the management team?  Has the management team’s judgment proven itself in the past, demonstrated by a good track-record of success?

Trust doesn’t happen overnight and a lack of trust may linger just beneath the surface, as a pebble that is difficult to see – perhaps buried in a small puddle of passivity.  In such a puddle, you can’t see the pebble, but you can feel, see and hear its effect.  You may be afflicted by a Credibility pebble if you hear the phrase, “Program du jour”, notice a roll-of-the-eyes in the ranks of the team when the objectives are described, or recognize a blasé attitude..

Capital: Sometimes funding is needed to overcome a barrier.  In some cases there is an ingrained philosophy, or unspoken rule of not asking for funding.  To overcome this hesitancy, set expectations at the beginning of an initiative to make capital-related issues visible immediately.

Example: A Persistent Barrier Falls to 3 of the “C” Questions

A number of years ago I was working with a client to rebuild their weak sales pipeline.  When I asked the sales manager what he thought the barriers were, he answered, “Time”. In our vocabulary that “C” is Capacity.  He continued, “We have to baby-sit every project opportunity from birth to death – including project coordination.  This makes us too busy to look for new business.”   I suggested that they document the customer engagement process, divide it into phases and assign different phases to different departments– freeing up their time to engage more new customers and new projects.  Stunned silence was the response.  No one had thought to solve the bottleneck by looking at it as a process capacity issue instead of a sales problem

I asked, “Is there anything else in the way? He said, “Training. We don’t know how to use the pipeline management system.” In our vocabulary that “C” is Capability. We scheduled training for the next sales meeting.

“Anything else”, I asked?  He said, “The CRM system isn’t designed for our business”.  They ordered a new, easy-to-deploy system that fit the business better.  It could be installed in the next 45 days in time for the next sales meeting and would cost only a few thousand dollars.  That “C” is Capital.

Anything else? “Nope”

I then suggested a series of working sessions, (Checkpoints), over the ensuing several weeks to assess progress on these pebbles and identify any new or additional barriers.

These pebbles had been jamming their cart wheel for more than two years.  In one hour, using our list of “Cs” we identified and began the process of removing them.  You can too – if you have the Commitment and the Courage to Confront them.

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Learn more about a QMP program for deploying a culture of Performance Excellence and Getting Things Done