Shipley Asia Pacific

I think the sales & marketing disconnect starts, and fails with the disconnected CEO.

 

The buck stops at the top if a function this critical is not working.

 

Renee nails the key questions CEOs absolutely MUST ask, understand and act upon for more constant revenue, and lower cost of sales.

 

And yes, I do believe it can be this simple...

Over 50 years later, this idea (and helpful video) are still a key reminder (lesson?) for nearly every client we work with.

 

It all starts, and stops, with the customer.

 

You can actually map (in a great Shipley Inc. exercise) the difference in customer feelings about the customer focus of different documents. (although it equally applies to all interactions)

 

And most seller are not even aware of what they are doing in their communications that can create such a difference in customer perceptions Bad, or occasionally, Good)

 

Love your work Mr Levitt...

Boring? Or Brilliant mind-set to Winning Work?

 

Here's a tip. Ask your senior executives what your company's Ethics & Compliance approach, framework and tracking measurements are.

 

Why? Well, in terms of trust in your market, this is a fundamental issue to get right. In terms of attracting the best staff - it is vital. 

 

So if you want to work with the best customers you can attract. And the best people in your market - get this stuff right.

 

It is very easy to let this area slide. Keep each other honest. Look at your collective ethics. Ask each other what the market expectations are. Check how you are really doing. 

 

The benefits?  Market share. Better margins. 

 

And good karma.

 

 

Wonderful! A disagreement! If you've time, read all the marketing blogs on storytelling, listen to this guys' rant against it, then consider this.

 

1/ Storytelling is NOT an elitist, specialist 'art'  Do some reading on the  cultural role of stories for humans. It is baked into our DNA (literally)  To say because you have not made a major film you cannot be a storyteller is deny the truth of what and who we are as humans. I'm not saying everyone is as good or effective as each other at telling stories - nor was that the case in tribal or village times - but dismissing the beginners and the ordinary day to day storytellers is just being an elitist wanker.

 

2/ Selling was always storytelling. Customers telling and sharing their stories, companies and sales people telling the story of their offers, and the customers who use them. The fact that a lot of panicky, desperate marketing people are now being told in the trade media and by specialist suppliers they have to be story tellers or doing content marketing to be any good, or relevant, is as much nonsense as No 1/.  Marketers and sales people always have and always will be storytellers, along with their customers - singularly or aggregated by new media/social media. The minute I say the magic words 'for example...' and tell a client the story of how someone else has tackled a problem, and they lean forward to hear the journey of another - I am a storyteller. Go to any market in the world for the last, say 5,000 years, the hubbub of sound is hundreds of stories, about people, produce and providence.

 

3/ Media companies & Journalism, for the New York Times or the Idaho Express, or their radio & TV equivalents, is also storytelling, also to sell. While I'm there because of your news stories or entertainment stories,  your advertisers want to tell me/sell me their story.  Sure it's in transition because the advertisers don't have to buy connections to customers via supply constrained channels anymore. e.g. a handful of papers, magazines or TV stations has become anyone with a PC or mobile can 'publish'   Some of the best, most successful and effective bloggers are also some of the best storytellers.

 

4/ I suggest that all human progress has been inspired, and driven, by stories. Read Stephen Denning's "Springboard: How Storytelling Ignites Action in Knowledge Era Organisations"  (Butterworth-Heineman 2002) for a modern take - his work at the World Bank in effecting change in complex situations.

 

A parent reading to a child, a young couple planning their future, a start-up seeking investors, a hostage negotiator, a slam poet, or someone recounting their holiday adventures - we are all storytellers. 

 

And if someone tries to tell you otherwise, well, that's just their story.

Because the choice to listen, and what we do with these stories, is still ours as well...

Driving revenue #winningwork is more than WHAT you sell. HOW you interact with your team, and the market is often more important.

 

This quick, light piece on Company Culture is an intro or reminder of this, with some clues about where to look or revisit to help ensure  as a senior manager you've not missed this aspect of leadership.

 

I the majority of the large deal strategy I have worked in and on for the last 20 years, the role of leadership and culture remains the least understood, most under-cooked and still most impactful when acted upon.  How do others see your culture (vs your view)?

Management as empathy? No way! We are entering an age of political & corporate brutalism. Putin isn't an exception, he's the everyman CEO, running a country. 

 

I totally agree with McGrath's hypothesis (supported by many academics) that old-school organisational culture - which is what management is based upon - no the other way around - is inefficient.

 

But not for the senior executives and their contrived bonuses. And passable for institutional investors. And no one cares about the employees, or communities, when you can buy off the regulators.

 

As we enter an era of 'internet everywhere' data trading/piracy will be too tempting, and unable to be governed - combined with 'peak oil/water/biodiversity' and the pressures of these shortages - the pendulum will swing to totalitarian leadership for the impression of control. Orwell's 1984 is just running a little late.

 

Empathy? In a few sylvan glades near San Francisco maybe.

 

Like many I will keep fighting the good fight for a better organisational world. But just right now I'm not feeling optimistic. 

Why is this so hard to understand? Every new generation of technology solutions arrives. A few pioneers give it a go and extol the virtues - and another gold-rush starts. (read 'Crossing the Chasm")

 

My father went through this at IBM in the 1960s selling mainframe based accounting systems to insurance companies. He used to say 'automation was a waste of time on imperfect manual processes'

 

And with most marketing departments struggling across 5 x key focus areas (Read the latest HBR) Marketing Automation is the last thing most should try and make work.

 

All that said, this article does an excellent job of highlighting the things to understand, and get right, before investing in the next 'big-thing' and wondering why it's not delivering the results and ROI other (better equipped, insightful and prepared) are achieving.

Hubris. Or believing your own spin.  

 

Dangerous at all levels in an organisation. Fatal financially for shareholders in a CEO.

 

And normally NOT a pleasant or effective place to work for staff.

 

And customers see right through it. I had the opportunity to help a client struggling to win big deals in their market. After some digging, it turned out that the market did not like, or trust the recently hired CEO.

So no amount of hard selling, or product innovation, or wasted millions on 'brand' marketing was going to help. Now THAT was an interesting conversation with the Board...

 

So, how can boards avoid excessive self-confidence in their CEO appointments?  And avoid cronyism in the subsequent fresh of leadership teams?

 

Montreal based, WSP Global CEO Pierre Shoiry claims the new entity will be world largest "pure play" consulting firm.

 

While there is confident talk of the cultures being "compatible in mission, vision and culture", it will be interesting to see how the acquisition is handled.

 

Conceivably a consulting form this size can 'dampen' some of the market variability as growth occurs in different markets.

 

Having worked with some of the teams from both, they are all good, smart people. Let's see what the strategy to unlock the combined value looks like in 90 days...

Dave Brock nails it (again) - to solve a problem you have to know where to start looking.

 

And a 'revenue problem' is rarely the fault of 'sales' alone or in isolation.

 

Trouble for most is that the sort of organisational analysis skills needed are uncommon. And so most stumble on with revenue issues, blaming sales. But never truly understanding where in all the complexity the other contributing factors are.

 

The simple answer ? Ask. Start with customers. Especially the great customers you'd like more of. Then check in with your delivery people. Sound out the support teams. Then, if you are still convinced it's just a sales problem, and only then - talk to sales.

 

This will do two things for you. 

 

1/ avoid the trap of attacking the wrong problem.  Chances are you'll hear about several peripheral issues contributing to revenue process issues.

 

2/ when you finally get to sales you'll more quickly get buy-in if you have demonstrated understanding the situation from their point of view.

 

Good old 'management by walking around'

 

Works every time - especially when you listen as you walk...

Here's a tip - balancing Creativity & Analytics is an iterative process. The original IBM article goes into more detail, but essentially Drucker nailed it back in 1963...

It is fundamentally the the confusion between effectiveness and efficiency that stands between doing the right things and doing things right. There is surely nothing so useless as doing with great efficiency what should not be done at all.Peter Drucker (1963) Managing for Business Effectiveness. p. 53-60 So benefiting from DATA is, ironically, a creative process. What to measure, why, what to do with it - all creative. Talk to a good engineer. Or an experienced developer - the principles of LEAN design are applied nearly everywhere, except marketing.

Parents with little kids 're-frame' all the time. "Do you want carrots or broccoli, or peas and broccoli?"  Ask a kid want they want and they'd eat junk food all day long. Frame their choices and save their lives.

 

BTW this is the honourable intent of the best, consultative, challenging sales people.  

 

When done by a call centre, the catchy headline is to call it 'tricks' but it is the basics of persuasion and influence for thousands of years, even before the scientists and bloggers came up with theories and attention grabbing names.

 

My 're-frame' is this...  Want a good negotiation or bid strategist? Ask a hands-on parent that doesn't have oversight kids.

Trust is more important than anything, anywhere, any time.

 

Without trust your attempts at customer focus have probably failed. Your culture and ethics might need work and your business will struggle.

 

So the extent to which you, and your business are trusted, is a powerful litmus test for your strategy, culture and leadership.

 

What tactics to use and how to get value from them are downstream decisions.

 

That said, if you do have a trusted position in the market and high trust with/from your customers, your ability to leverage ALL your tools and tactics is higher.

Diversity in hiring is actually a good strategy for business, not only a fairer more just world. 

So - 12 percent of 'frontier' workers (tech, engineering, sales) is wasted looking for information.  

 

And the failure rate for these searches is 56 percent.

 

Now that's a barrier to learning about the other party for a deal, negotiation or crucial engagement.

 

Which is why starting early, and good planning is so so vital. Given how hard it is to find the information you need, allowing for this hurdle  in your prep time must be a allowed for.

 

 

One point nine TRILLION reasons to let go of the past, and embrace a new, lean, manufacturing and services world. 

 

Combine the digitisation of every industry (more data, better insights, increased customer focus) with less polluting, more energy efficiency and the attendant health benefits, and what do you have?

 

A nightmare for entrenched, lazy, smoke-stack high carbon industries and their lobbyists and bough-off politicians.

 

From the coal industry to old school energy distributors, to car companies, to taxi companies, to hotels, to health - and yes, maybe even one day Government - change is coming.

 

What an exciting time to be alive and watch the squirming and wriggling of dying dinosaurs.  And instead be amazed and delighted at creativity, innovation, efficiency, cleaner, healthier, smarter, better ways to do most everything.

A great idea only ever occurs to one person at a time. But it usually takes a team to make it happen. 

 

The key to this article is the reminder that 'groupthink' as a by-product of workplace 'collaboration' is a common trap and failing.

 

In the story frame of the Lennon-McCartney team it was the differences, not the similarities that made it work.

 

So the process we work to in Shipley Associates engagements to help large teams create & execute on great win strategy include 3 x phases

 

Plan

1/ agree on the end point e.g. win deal is our WHAT

2/ agree we are gathering to work out HOW we can best get there

3/ agree WHO will own which aspects of approaching problem - and get a mix of roles and experience in the groups - especially people with face-to-face customer experience (too many 'suits' is a killer

Draft

4/ begin with individual bullet point idea generation - and later, in more advanced development - individual drafts of content.  Private work, not group think.

5/ No judgements, no grading. Clarification questions only...

6/ Where possible we swap out normal team lead for an expert from another domain - they ask better questions of teams & topics they don't know as well.

Edit

7/ group review and trade-off discussions - essentially bang-for-buck conversations. Also good to involve a bigger group on this 

8/ Prioritise by impact on problem Vs ease/cost of executing

9/ have included management & budget to execute in process and announce full support for actions

10/ give credit to all involved & update on progress

3 x lessons on what lies ahead for Marketing automation?

 

Another article referencing the great book Crossing The Chasm (now in 3rd edition) http://j.mp/1lxuLJD ; - and yes, there are some likely lessons for potential buyers of marketing automation software & services.

 

Firstly, the Innovators put up with a lot of functional gaps because they see the potential benefits early, with out being sold. And are willing to take greater risks on solution fit, and make greater investments in learning how to install and benefit from Marketing automation.

 

When we implemented Eloqua in 2008, we were seriously ahead of the curve. We made it work. But it was incredibly expensive compared to now, and the amount of learning, DIY & external help needed was off the scale. 

 

Today, Marketing automation has 70 vendors, plenty of hype, but the case for change is not clear when you take into account the current barriers to extracting value.

 

It works better in B2C, with a big 'brand' and a big team, and money to invest in a/ process & tech skills b/ content. lots and lots of content  c/ integration with other process & systems.  So big bucks all round.

And executive & marketing management with both vision AND discipline. So a small market then. And even smaller in B2B, as budgets, skills, vision & discipline are even scarcer.

 

So what does Moore suggest must change to cross the chasm?

 

So, Secondly - and driven by CRM buy-ups and VCs vendor consolidation will see (eventually) functional consolidation, and hopefully, simplicity. It's very complex today.  This will also need to be accompanied by significant services for simplification of benefits realisation.  And that's across the strategy & business case, the set-up, the content scoping, generation & management, and the measurement and management advisory services.*

 

As Moore highlights, this is not new. It is exactly what happened with accounting software on computers replacing manual booking keeping in the 1960s - my father at IBM at the time went through exactly these steps. As are the CRM vendors today, now approaching Late Majority.

 

Thirdly, with the tools simpler, the strategy & plan clearer, and outsourced services making it all work better, the Early adopters in all markets will begin using. Market penetration will hit double digits at last.

 

* Full disclosure. I'm co-founder of a digital marketing service that does this for B2B clients.