Leading the Millennials
Posted on July 31, 2008
Filed Under Business, Customers, Digital Age, Mentoring, Sales, Selling | Leave a Comment
As a consultant and speaker in r’evolutionary sales leadership (evolving individuals and organisations through the power of ‘r’ or relationships) it continues to be frustrating to find that, after spending time developing a relationship with sales leaders, they are often incapable of following through on interventions that can make a profound difference to their teams and their productivity.
But a change is coming. With the new evolution of business values to more human values such as co-creation, communication, community, accountability and creativity, sales leaders are starting to hear the message of change. This corresponds with the rise of Generations X and Y and the continuing evolution of the Digital Age.
Sales leaders are starting to see that staff are no longer responding to ‘command and control’ management – people are looking for more meaning and purpose in their work and not just a job, people have less interest in security than in personal mobility today. Jobs are no longer jobs – they are contracts. The old ways of business leadership are changing and the leaders need help.
Thus sales directors and managers must choose to become ‘agents of the r’evolution’ and help to bring about a radical change in attitude about how we engage with today’s new generation of sales people and customers. However, they can only do so if they get courageous and are willing to take risks about presenting radical new ways of working to the senior management of the company.
Playing it safe, using ‘tried and proven’ methods won’t cut it anymore. Sales managers have to get radical, both in selling their message to their teams and finding new ways of engaging and making themselves meaningful to their market place in the new world of work.
Sales leaders have to start actively engaging and promoting the new technologies of the work place. They should be creating company sales/social networks and virtual worker or specialist communities, understanding how technologies like Twitter and virtual world simulations such as SecondLife.com can be used to recruit, retain and educate their new sales forces.
Instead of providing generic live trainings, they need to start becoming highly targeted in defining training needs and then, start using more effective, niche-targeted, blended learning methodologies such as DVD, MP3, the Net and effective group and individual mentoring and coaching. (By effective, I mean coaching and mentoring by properly trained staff and not the usual ‘cup of coffee and a staring match’ approach but coaching and mentoring approaches that are pragmatic, meaningful and effective).
It’s a new world of work - not only only have we a new generation entering and working in sales today - we have a new generation of customers too. It’s time to get into their model of the world to ‘future proof’ our businesses.
Recession-Proof Attitude
Posted on July 28, 2008
Filed Under Coaching, Customers, Sales, Selling | Leave a Comment
Oil prices, sub-prime meltdown, banks in crisis, property crashes - things look tough.
There’s no question that life in business is going to get tougher. But is that really a problem? Necessity is the mother of invention and when times are good there is very little innovation in business. Staff can charge high salaries and often deliver less results. In selling, less is required from sales people as the money just rolls-in from all the businesses flushed with cash.
Come the first winds of recession however and everyone starts to ‘dig-in’. Businesses retrench, budgets are slashed (often reflexively) and people start to hoard their cash.
However to take an attitude of retrenchment in business and especially in selling is disastrous at a time like this. This is exactly the time to start ramping up your sales operations. Coach and train your people now in the best of relationship management techniques - how to find, engage and keep the customer. Many of your existing sales people probably have little skills in networking, influencing and closing business.
As others start to believe that there is less opportunity in the market place - this is the time when we train our sales teams in believing that there is more opportunity. The ‘mind set’ of the competitors removes them from the market as they fail to see opportunities that their ‘attitude of loss’ blinds them to.
Whatever we believe sufficiently in - we manifest. This is not psycho-babble but real psychology. Our perceptions are created by our beliefs and expectations. When we expect things to happen they often do - because the brain and our perceptions re-aligns itself with what we expect to see - thus if we see opportunity, the brain will make what opportunity there is clearly stand-out from our everyday reality.
It still means targeted, effective, sales activity is required. But with more opportunities spotted, the competitors hiding in their recession ‘bunkers ‘ and a greater expectation of success in the minds of our sales teams - we can recession-proof our businesses.
Service with a Smile
Posted on July 14, 2008
Filed Under Business, Reflections, Selling, relationships | Leave a Comment
I’ve returned from a recent family holiday to Malaysia and Borneo - part of taking time to educate my young kids to the wider world. The one thing that struck me the most on my return to Europe was the contrast between how people whose work it is to help and serve you - in no matter what capacity - and how they smiled.
Smiling conveys the greatest of human needs - acceptance. It has become a rare commodity in the West. One which I now remark upon when I get one from an airport attendant, a bar person, a hotel person, a coach driver - anyone who works in the ’service industry’.
Whether its just a better quality of training or simply a matter of culture, a smile is ever on the lips of nearly all of those who serve in the East. From room cleaners who meet you in the hallway and bid you ‘good day’ with a genuine smile, or lift attendants, pool attendants, waiters or restauranteurs who at least appear genuinely happy to get your business.
Maybe it is a cultural thing. Perhaps we in the West see ’service’ as demeaning and ‘below us’ in some way while those in the East do it because they take pride in whatever work it is that they have and do in the service of others. Maybe in the West we have a greater sense of personal entitlement and they don’t.
Whatever the reason, when it comes to my choice of rewarding a person’s service to me as a customer, I know which kind of person I’m happy to leave the bigger tips with.
Leverage
Posted on June 23, 2008
Filed Under Business, Customers, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
I recently had talks with a firm about taking my business systems in sales and coaching/mentoring to a more international audience on a joint-venture basis. I’m looking forward to progressing things.
In a service business - especially when one chooses to work as a micro-business - you eventually reach a stage where you cannot physically grow much larger or create any further revenues - short of increasing your standard fees. At that point the need for leverage becomes apparent.
To grow further or to get to a stage where your IP can be richly mined then in a service business such as mine, there exists the opportunity of leveraging the business through technology - audio/DVD training programmes, the Internet (on-line coaching programmes, e-books and social networks) and
finally through joint-ventures or investors.
Its never easy for an entrepreneur to ‘let go’ of their business. After all, it’s their ‘baby’. However we have to realise that it is just that - a business - designed to attract, serve and retain customers for a profit. It is a separate legal entity where one has created a corporation or limited company. Just like any child there comes a time when you let it go in order to grow.
Once you do, you may discover there are new worlds and markets to create and succeed in.
