Change | A Sales Guy

Change Little Things, Not Just Big Things

If you want to make a BIG change, don’t focus on changing a few big things, focus on changing a bunch of little things.

It’s the little things that make the biggest difference. The little things are embedded into our day to day. It’s hard to forget the little things. If one little thing fails, the entire effort doesn’t fail. Little things are repetitive. They build on themselves. The little things act as building blocks for the big things.

Too often we swing for the fences when we are trying make a change. It feels good to make big, sweeping changes that are going to bring in a new era of something. The problem is, BIG is too hard for most of us. It’s overwhelming and scares us.

A lot of small changes can make BIG happen.

If you are looking to make a change, don’t make a few big changes, make a whole lot of little ones, they’ll add up to big change.

May 13, 2010 | Filed under: Business Performance,Personal Development,What I Think! | View Comments |

Rose Colored Glasses and Blurry Vision

After we’ve done something for awhile something begins to happen. Our vision gets blurry, this is especially true in business.

In the beginning we wear rose colored glasses. Everything looks like an opportunity. Everything is fresh, exciting and new. Things look clear and defined. Experience, failure, and success don’t blur our vision. As the business grows, experience develops and success is had, our vision get’s blurry. New ideas are more difficult to see. Change becomes the enemy. Protection becomes the goal. Talk is still about growth, change, and winning, but the conversations change. The conversations switch from how, to why, and from let’s do it, to why do it.

When our vision gets blurry we move slower, we are less sure of where we are going, we have less confidence in our choices and have a tendency to stay where we are. We feel there is more to lose.

Growing, competing, changing, new markets, and new products require the same vision as the day you started, nothing has changed, just your vision.

As success is had, put the rose colored glasses in a drawer not too far out of reach. Soon, very soon, they will be needed again. Wearing rose colored glasses is far better than blurry vision.

March 20, 2010 | Filed under: Business Performance | View Comments |

Stop Rewarding The Naysayers

It’s easy to bash things that are new or unconventional. It’s easy to say someone is wrong when it’s a new perspective. It doesn’t take a lot of guts to challenge the unique idea from the intern. It’s not hard to say something won’t work if it has never been done before.

Taking the safe side of a controversial position is easy. It’s easy because you can’t lose. If the idea or innovation fails your were right. If it is successful, no one else saw it either and so your not faulted for being wrong. We reward the naysayers.

If you want more innovation in your organization, stop rewarding the critics and start rewarding innovators, they are the ones taking the risk. Make it harder to be a critic and easier to be an innovator.

Don’t reward the naysayers.

August 18, 2009 | Filed under: Business Performance,Leadership,What I Think! | View Comments |

Why Do Your Employees Work For You?

Why do your employees get up and come into to work everyday? What drives them to make the commute, to miss family events, and to commit to YOU. I get why they work, but why for you? Do you know why?

A friend of mine and I were talking the other day about the difficult economy and it’s impact on employee moral. He predicted a mass migration in his company as soon as the job market improves.

Why? Companies are making a lot of poor decisions, which is creating terrible working environments. People are still getting paid, but they are finding their work environment brutal. I tend to agree with him. In down times companies tend to lose focus on employee moral. They ask for more than they give. They show little loyalty and politics rules. When this happens, the only thing keeping their employee from exiting, is they have no where else to go. They feel trapped. Trapped by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. They are in the safety hierarchy, trying to keep from falling into the physiological one. Things aren’t good if your there.

Tough times at work find people in the safety zone trying to hang on and protect what they have. Unfortunately, it’s not enough. I think Maslow’s needs is true in the work place. Once the economy improves people will start to look elsewhere. People want to believe they are part of something bigger, that they belong. Layoffs, and budget cuts from up above don’t make people feel as if the are part of something or belong. They feel like leaves in the wind.

Once people feel they belong to something bigger, that they are part of something special, they want to contribute and be recognized for their contributions. This is where esteem comes in. Finally, they want to realize self-actualization. They want to leverage creativity to drive innovation, they want to have spontaneity, and more. People aren’t happy with just a job. They want to be a part of something. They want to help improve it and be recognized for it and they want to have the freedom to push the envelope. As choice comes back, employees will look to move up Maslows chart and if your company can’t provide it, they will leave.

What are people getting from your organization? Why do they work for you? If money and security are the answer be prepared. As things turnaround, you will find yourself hiring not because your growing, but because everyone is leaving.

Why do you work were you do?

July 28, 2009 | Filed under: Business Performance,Career Development,What I Think! | View Comments |

Why Not Create a Movement

Motivating people is critical. People drive companies, promote products, save lives, eliminate disease and change the world. These things are done in small focused group efforts or by creating a movement. Movements have something efforts don’t have — ENERGY.

Movements happen when an idea grows bigger than the originator. Movements are more than an just an effort, they become viral and participants make them personal. Why not turn your important corporate efforts into movements?

The most important efforts in your company should be movements, why waste time in efforts, that have half the return?

Rather than having an expense reduction effort, create a cost savings movement. Pick a cost savings goal that can make a difference, like eliminating the need for lay-offs. Give people a compelling personal reason to cut costs. Movements are personal, people need to “feel” the benefit to them and their peers.

Once you have identified the effort and set a goal, market it and brand it. Give it a name, “Save a Dollar, Save a Job”. This makes it unique to your organization, it creates a sense of ownership. It’s a lot easier to get excited about saving money to save your job or your friends job, than it is to cut travel because you got an e-mail asking you to. To create a movement it has to be personal.

To turn the effort into a movement, promote it. Asking or mandating people cut expenses on a conference call, or via email isn’t going to get people behind it. You need to find the influencers in the organization. Introduce the effort to them personally. Explain why it is important. Share the organizations vision of avoiding layoffs. Have weekly or bi-weekly newsletters and calls to announce progress and share the numbers. Highlight the divisions, and individuals who saved the most money. Give recognition to the person and group that created a creative new way that cut costs. Share how they did it and how much it saved. Create contests and get peoples competitive juices flowing. Make it fun!

An effort to cut costs, increase revenue, reduce carbon footprint, or attack a competitor is good. A movement is a whole other story.

What is going on inside of your company? A whole lot of efforts, or is there a movement afoot?

April 10, 2009 | Filed under: Leadership,Marketing | View Comments |

People, Product or Process

I’ve been talking to some of my peers about the economy and it’s getting more and more difficult out there. There has been a lot of conversation around lay-offs and downsizing. With revenues down, companies are doing what ever they can to remain profitable and survive. We’ve all had to do it and it’s no fun.

The stories are interesting and painful. Companies are laying off 5, 10, and even 20% of their organizations.

One of my peers was telling me that during his most recent layoff, people were let go who were integral to over 10 million dollars in new sales opportunities. In one case, his sales team is to present to a perspective client for a 6 million dollar deal this month and the key technical expert on the account was let go. At the time of this post he has yet to find a replacement. The most recent cuts at his company have put 10 million dollars in new sales at risk in an effort to save money. It doesn’t sound too prudent does it?

Organizations, like people, tend to lack creativity and objectivity when they are scared. No one is willing to take a risk and they have a tendency to see things for what they are. The spreadsheet takes over and if it can’t be measured, easily measured, no one pays attention to it.

While my friend and I were talking we got on the subject of how much work it is to close a deal at his company. The processes are cumbersome and time is wasted in non-selling activities. He was frustrated with the amount of work the processes entailed and how it negatively effected sales. With even less people, he is concerned its all just going to spiral out of control, more deals lost, more sales cuts, more revenue at risk, more deals lost, more people cuts etc. He was really concerned they were in a death spiral.

There are 3 main things that impact revenue and sales, product, people, and process. People get the most attention. When times are good, hire, hire, hire. When times are bad, fire, fire, fire. Unfortunately, you can’t not fire your way to survival. At times like these looking at the entire picture is critical. What products can you get rid of? What products are losing money. What are the costs associated with them? Find them and get rid of them. Streamline your product portfolio, make the tough choices and trim them down.

Process is the other area. Few organizations evaluate their existing processes to determine their cost. Processes have a cost, a real tangible cost. Figure out what the expensive processes in your organization are and fix them. My friend was telling me his sales people (these are high-end sales people making over 200k a yr.) spend hours a week hunting down 16k orders or filling out paper work for mailing $500 dollars worth of product. An organization that has high-end sales people spending hours a week on trivial efforts has processes costs that far exceed their people costs.

Getting lean, saving money and becoming efficient is critical during a down-time. Expense to Revenue management is critical. Cutting people is part of the process. However it is also the easiest. The good companies will look at more than just the people. They will get real with their organization and ferret out savings in product and process as well as people.

Eventually cutting people will cost you more than you save. My friend is very concerned. He thinks his company has cut too deep and will lose more than they save. If what he is telling me accurate, that he has over 10 million dollars in net new sales at risk due to the newest round of cuts . . . I think he’s right. His ship may be sinking.

March 23, 2009 | Filed under: Economy,The Chase | View Comments |

Wanted: Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was right. It’s simple. The world was not flat, and you could sail West and reach Asia. Was he exactly right? No. But, he was right enough.

What makes Columbus impressive is his fortitude and courage to stick to his idea. Few people believed he was right. It took tremendous strength to swat off the naysayers and persevere.

Being a Christopher Columbus isn’t easy. Great ideas are great because no one has thought of them. They are great because they challenge the status quo and what we know to be true. Great ideas are great because they challenge conventional wisdom. There are GREAT rewards to be had by embracing contratrian views. Yet, new, creative, outside of the box ideas are not readily embraced until AFTER they are realized.

Warren Buffet: Beware the investment activity that produces applause; the GREAT moves are usually greeted by yawns.

Unfortunately, when conventional wisdom and the status quo are challenged people become scared or dismissive. Our existence and security rests in our confidence of the world around us. When the validity and reality of our secure world, or what we believe to be true is challenged we resist and fight. It’s our nature. We embrace security.

It takes tremendous, strength, courage, and fortitude to challenge conventional wisdom and the staus quo; and this is exactly what Columbus did.

It’s a lonely path for the maverick, or the idea pioneer. They need to be strong, determined and thick skinned. The Christopher Columbus’s of the world are considered, irritating, a distraction, loony, and out of touch. They are attacked or minimized. Being a Christopher Columbus is a lonely path.

Creativity and innovation don’t rely on what we know to be true, and they don’t fit well on a spreadsheet. This makes them difficult to quantify. This is a problem in today’s world because far too often, if something can’t be easily quantified it will never see the light of day.

Apple completely changed the mobile phone industry because they looked at things differently; Apple wasn’t bound by traditional Mobile Carrier thinking. It is NOT a coincidence there is little difference between the big 4 mobile phone providers. They look alike because their cultures drive conformity, not because no one within the Mobile Carriers has innovative, game changing ideas. It’s because they don’t have a Queen Isabella. The person(s) willing to embrace and act on the ideas.

Who are the Christopher Columbus’s in your company? Who are the people challenging the status quo? If you don’t know, either they’ve already left because they weren’t being appreciated or they’ve been silenced. If they haven’t left find them, they are ones who just may make the biggest difference in the next year.

Tough times require creativity and innovation. Tough times demand changes in the way we think; the Christopher Columbus’s need to be embraced and conventional wisdom challenged.

If you can’t be a Christopher Columbus, then at least be a Queen Isabella.

March 11, 2009 | Filed under: Leadership | Comments Off |