Leadership

Mature from the desperate pleas of “tell me what to do!” to the confident leadership of “don’t tell me what to do.”

Meddling Fools

As the subject matter experts, rock-stars that we are, we’re often burdened with taking the customer’s challenges and needs and developing our position, messaging, and solutions for the rest of the team.

We all know it is easier to edit than create, and therein lies the challenge.  After blood, sweat, and tears are invested in solution creation, the meddling fools who delegated the creation authority to us in the first place feel the need to take our effort and begin the process again from the beginning, turning over each stone.

And turning them over again.  And again.

The horse is dead.

Stop beating it.

Stop thinking on our time; We’ve invested our creative effort offline, previously, and have communicated it to you with good reason.  Be a professional, stay up to date, and be prepared.

The review is not the starting point; it’s the affirming close.

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Out of your Mind

We’ve all experienced the mind that won’t let go of a problem.

It might be stress, a problem to solve, tomorrow’s presentation, or making the system show the way we want; we perseverate on these ideas well beyond their merit, and these concerns will surface at any moment.

But there’s a time and a place for everything.  Perhaps it’s time to make dinner.  To join in your life.  To go grocery shopping.

Develop the habit of putting these ideas out of your mind.

When they start opening the door, slam it  on their fingers, lock it and latch it and move on with your life.  The problems, challenges, and presentations will still be there when you get back to them.  They have to be- their fingers are stuck in the door.

That’s gotta hurt.

Failure: Risk it or Fear it

Fear of failure may drive you to work harder.  And in so doing, you may succeed.  But with success will come greater responsibilities, greater potential failure, greater drive to avoid failing.  You may go far, but when fear is the foundation of your motivation, the inevitable failure in your future will tumble the whole tower of blocks.

If, on the other hand, you risk failure by measuring it and its companion, reward, there is joy and art in your motivation.  You will work harder to push the envelope.   When failure arrives you’ll recognize it, welcome it with a hardy “I knew I’d find you eventually,” then shrug and carry on.

What’s your motivation?*

If you find yourself in the fear-of-failure camp, here’s a helpful exercise.  In Pre-Sales, as in Sales as in baseball as in life, great batting averages are barely above .300.  Face it, you’ve failed.  You’ve failed often.  So go back to a few deals you’ve lost and spend fifteen minutes looking at your presentation, your differentiators, your themes, and the way in which you demonstrated your solution.  If it’s  had time to settle, to breathe, then the reasons for the failure will jump right out at you.

“How could I have been saying this when the customer obviously needed that?”

Learn from your failures.

*Failure can be risked and feared in darker, more dangerous ways. Risk without caution, without preparation, is foolhardy and invites catastrophic failure. Worse yet, fear of failure can drive you to avoidance, procrastination, safe decisions. Then there are no rewards; success becomes a failure.

Inner Monologue

Experience has taught me to listen to my experience.

When faced with different situations, my inner monologue* kicks in and starts feeding me nuggets of advice:

  • You’ve done this before
  • Don’t stress- you can’t know what’s going to happen in this meeting
  • Trust in your teammates in the room
  • Qualify that question, don’t answer it right away
  • Pounce! Now!  Close it!
  • Step in and save this
  • You know more about this one than they do
  • They know more about this one than you do
  • I never thought of it that way
  • It’s okay to be wrong on this one
  • You’re giving them a lot of information, building on credibility
  • It’s not about you

Listen to the advice your inner monologue feeds you.  You’ve spent years developing it.

*It’s not a dialogue- I don’t converse with it, I listen to it.

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Logic and Data; Yin and Yang

In a recent engagement, I’ve been paired with a pecuniary peer in pursuit of building a business case.

We worked together with the customer in a workshop and emerged with very different interpretations.  On its own, this is not surprising-  ask different individuals what happened in a meeting and you’ll get different answers- but we had core and complimentary purposes for the workshop.  I found obstacles and points of change.  The logical implications and resolutions flowed from that seed.  He found an accounting indicator that was far out of range (and not in a good way) for the customer’s industry. 

I focus from the qualitative perpective, taking processes, systems, information, strategies and data and craft the logical argument; he approaches from the quantitative perspective, taking processes, systems, information, strategies and data and crafts the fiancial justification.

Together we earned executive buy in.  We made a formidable team.

This post was originally titled “Logic vs. Data,” but that’s wrong.  It’s not Yin vs. Yang; it’s Yin and Yang.

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Themes emerge

We’ve all been to a meeting or an event where a bit of corporate culture was born.  Meeting catch-phrases and events take on a humorous life of their own and become a relationship link among the participants, becoming the stuff of legends. Konica Minolta’s commercials and The Office series are chock full of examples of this.

Though we try to boil down our messaging into catchy themes and analogies, there’s no guarantee they’ll resonate.  So work with the audience to find what does stick.  Corporate-culture themes can emerge in the midst of a presentation if you’re listening for them.

If an audience member volunteers it, maybe as a wisecrack, a comment on bullet point, or a strong opinion, positive or negative, of what you’re saying or showing, all the better.  You’ve got something you can work with.  Hold on to it.  Play it up.  Repeat it in a different context and in a humorous, self-deprecating way.  If another audience member joins in the fun, you’re set, you’re immortal, you have been crowned a legend.

Two years down the road, when you bump into someone who was there, they won’t remember your name, they won’t even remember what you were showing, but when they say the secret catch-phrase, you’ll have a good laugh and an even better bond.

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What is Creativity?

Early in my career, I read George Will’s excellent “Men at Work,” which not only made a baseball fan out of me, but helped me understand professionalism.  Hard work, practice, and development of skills apply to talent-related activities, not just white collar careers.

Is a creative person talented or professional?  Neither.  Both.  The creative person has a different end in mind.  For example:

If they give you a box of Legos and you build the little space-ship or car pictured on the cover, you’re solving problems; if you take that same box of Legos and make a trebuchet out of it, you’re being creative.

You have the same ingredients, the same effort, but completely different goals.

Sparring

If your customer says something you disagree with, and you have valid arguments, then challenge them.

Not their authority, not their past decisions, not their role in the decision, no.  But their preconceptions, their misunderstandings, and their prejudices are fair game.

Give them a mental challenge.  Spar with them.

You’re an expert in your domain, and they’re an expert in theirs.  You’re at par.  But you probably know more about their domain than they do about yours.  Advantage you.

You’re asking them to make a huge investment and business decision.  Let them know what you’re made of.  Take a punch and punch back.  They’ll respect you for it.

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Cost Savings

We all travel.  Now and again we’re challenged to save costs.  I did some brainstorming and here are some ideas I’ve come up with:

  • Bring a bus.  It’s much more fuel efficient per-person to use a bus.
  • Double-shot for only a dollar more costs less than two single-shots.
  • Use your children as cheap resources for keying demo data.  Not everyone can do this, of course, but it’s another good reason to adopt.  And the schools will take care of them pretty much the rest of the time.
  • Don’t key in demo data.  It’s Widgets for John Smith at Acme Corp and you’ve got a demo for every customer regardless of industry.
  • Use your competition’s free version of their CRM product to keep your sales teams up to date.
  • Visit two clients on the same day in the same city on one business trip.  Nah, that’s too much coordination.
  • A simple rhyme: Red eye flights save a hotel night.
  • Staying with relatives (even distant ones) makes trips that much more exciting.
  • Roommates. It could lead to something special.
  • Skip breakfast.  Oh, wait, we do that anyway.  No cost savings there.  Wait!  Skip lunch too!
  • If you insist on breakfast, just walk on into a Hampton Inn or Fairfield Suites like you own the place- grab some food and coffee and Sit down.  You don’t actually have to stay there.  I mean, stay at the Marriott and eat at the Fairfield. The omelets at Embassy Suites are cooked to order!
  • I’ve noticed the price of coffee is inversely related to its quality:
    • Starbucks: $4.00- bitter
    • Dunkin Donuts- $2.25 and a way of life
    • MacDonald’s Newman’s Own: Tasty and hot (but not too hot) off the $1.00 value meal and quick at the drive-thru
    • Best deal:  64 ounce Big-Gulp of Mountain Dew at 7-11:  89
  • Buzz cuts save on shampoo.
  • Shampoo is also available for free in most hotels.  Steal it from housekeeping’s carts and stuff your bags.  Oh, wait, that’s a home expense saving tip.  Well, since we’re off topic anyway… dogs can be washed with free hotel shampoo.
  • Pay in Euros.  That’s one of those currency conversion economics things.
  • Post-its are cheaper than note-pads and quicker than power-points.  Ask to use the customer’s Post-its and raid their office supply cabinet when their back is turned.  See, now we’re saving travel and office expenses.
  • Take audience outside to point out your cloud solutions.  Most effective on a rainy day.  Saves development costs.  You can also take advantage of that shampoo.
  • Charge the audience admission.  I mean, we’re entertaining, right?  Why should travel be a cost center?  Make it a profit center!  Pass the hat around in the middle of the demo.
  • Wait a few months to submit expense reports.
  • Book travel to other departments’ cost-centers.
    • This will also improve gross margin on sales and thereby increase commissions.
  • Reduce cost of expense processing by outsourcing it to another country while simultaneously making the process more tedious for highly compensated employees by having them scan their receipts into PDF documents and then upload them into expense automation software rather than jamming the receipts into a prepaid envelope for interns to sort through.  Apparently the cost of a stamp is greater than the cost of half an hour spent taping, scanning, saving, file-moving, and uploading.  What?  I’m supposed to do that on my own time?
  • Just have payroll reject every 15th expense line item.  Often, those who submit them won’t notice.  If they do notice, it’s too much effort to resubmit the report and they let it go.
  • Leave the sales reps at home.  They’re just taking up space and buying dinner anyway.

 

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