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Category: Personal Development

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Best Practices Culture Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

How To Fight The Negativity Of Cyberbullying

“Cyberbully – A person that seeks power by hiding behind the cloak of anonymity due to his cowardness to confront others head-on. Or, someone too weak in personality that it causes him to seek pleasure by denigrating others.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

“He constantly picked on me by posting untruthful things that he said I engaged in. Then, he made unflattering comments about my mother. I found that of particular distaste.”

You may have thought the words above stemmed from two friends in their teens. The statement did come from two friends, but they were CEOs of major corporations. They were discussing the cyberbullying effects targeted against one of the CEOs in cyberspace.

Anyone can come under attack in cyberspace. The reasons for such don’t have to be valid. Do you know how to fight the negativity of cyberbullying? Continue reading this article to gather a few tips that you can use to combat a cyberbully.

Prevention:

Keep your guard up.

Be on the alert for those that might attack you. Some will do so because of the assets they perceive you to have. They may also do so because of the industry your business is in, your ethnicity and/or gender. Some people may just be mentally challenged, which causes them to seek out a target to bully.

None of this is to say that you should become paranoid. It simply means that you should be alert about how and why someone might attack you in cyberspace.

Turn yourself into a small target.

Know that some people engage in cyberbullying for pleasure. Others may do so as the prelude to extortion; extortion can be in the form of gaining leverage to achieve a goal, especially when negotiating.

To thwart a bully’s efforts, turn yourself into a small target. Don’t flaunt your assets in the manner that would attract and invite a possible attack. If you become a victim, keep a prepared set of documents that show you may not have what the bully wants. To do this, you must know what his ultimate goal is. You don’t want him to turn your perceived lack of assets against you and use that to enhance his position. Remember, it’s harder to hit a small target, but you must know what to morph that target into before it can be effective.

Fighting back:

Why me?

Bullies tend to target those persons or entities that they sense as being vulnerable. So, project strength when responding to the bully. You can do this by having others come to your defense and responding on your behalf. You can also respond by hitting the bully where he’s most vulnerable; it’s obvious that you’ll have to know his vulnerabilities to do this, which may require research.

I used the above strategy in an online forum in which someone attempted to bully others in the group. I asked the group if anyone knew that the bully had done the same thing in other groups. Someone said they did and that individual took the bully head-on. The bully retreated and was never heard from again. As an aside, I and the cohort that I used to fight the bully had already discussed this tactic before my ally engaged him. The bully had perpetrated the same tactics in a different forum that my ally and I were in.

Depending on the severity of the cyberbullying, you can get law officials involved, private detectives, etc. Regardless of the countermeasures you engage in, use them strongly enough to arrest the bully’s activities. Crush his will to engage you further so he dares not return to his former activities against you … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating!

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.TheMasterNegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#Fight #Negativity #cyber, cyberbullying #Management #SmallBusiness #Money #Anchoring #combat #negotiatingwithabully #bully #bullies #bullying #Negotiations #PersonalDevelopment #HandlingObjections #Negotiator #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #psychology #NegotiationPsychology

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Best Practices Personal Development Sales

Sales Process: Good, Better, Best…and the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Last week, in part one of this three-part series, I made the case that CRM alone is not enough for an effective sales system.  This week, let’s talk about what B2B selling organizations need instead.

What We’re Going For:  The Goals of a World-Class Selling System.

You should have three goals for any selling system you implement:

1. Drives effective selling behaviors, not to be confused with mere activity tracking. Behaviors that align selling process with a customer’s buying process make the difference between activity quantity and quality.

2. Change deal outcomes: Proactively identify which opportunities in your funnel are at risk…and more importantly, tell individual sellers what to do about it.

3. Replicate Winning Behaviors. Uncover new effective selling behaviors, then replicate them across the entire sales force.

These three goals should drive your selling process. Only then can you decide how to implement any CRM (last week’s topic) into a world-class selling system.  

The Good the Bad, and the Reeeaally bad.

Before we get to the more aspirational implementations, let’s consider less effective ones.

Look at the three goals of a sales system above:  Drive effective behaviors, change deal outcomes, and replicate wining.  Now evaluate the sales systems below on how well they are able to deliver on those three goals

The Good:  Process

In “good”, selling actions (for example, discovery meeting, demo, proposal, etc.), and playbooks are established and used.  A best practice is that selling process is tethered to the company’s marketing stack, etc. This coordinates marketing activities and assets to the selling process.

Selling actions are not tightly connected to a customer buying process (see “better” and “best” further down to see what I’m talking about) , but when well-formulated, they were designed to parallel a “model/average” buying process (remember, it takes methodology to consistently engage with the customer to confirm/align with their individual buying process).

In “good”, there is little real aspiration to improve deal outcomes by applying specific selling behaviors, and the “model sale” is enshrined as the standard; replicating success is capped at this ideal standard.

The Bad: Activity-Based Metrics

When managers start to track seller activities that don’t clearly align with – or meaningfully influence — the customer journey, “process” becomes a hindrance to selling success.  If your sellers are measured primarily on activity-based measures like call volume, demos conducted, proposals lobbed, lunches bought, miles driven, number of deals in the funnel, you start chasing mirages.

In “bad”, metrics emphasize quantity, not quality.  Activities tracked tend to be the easy-to-measure kind, not the success predicting kind.  The activities emphasized here don’t drive effective selling behaviors, don’t change deal outcomes, and don’t replicate winning.

The Ugly:  Activity Before Progress

Sometimes “the bad” is so ineffective that management’s conclusion is to double down on it.  In addition to inefficient activity-focused measures, selling organizations apply reward systems to inefficient behaviors, and draconian compliance measures (sellers must enter activities into CRM or be disciplined). In addition to ineffective selling activity, sales forces are incentivized to engage in “manager repellant” data entry activity. Reports are clogged with garbage, which yield such poor results that managers opt for even worse measures.

The three goals of a great selling system are in a different world from this activity-based tar pit.

Good, Better, and Best

Now let’s explore the more desirable end of the spectrum

CSO Insights has clearly defined several levels of process maturity in their research. According to their findings, these levels achieve progressively better outcomes – on several levels (contact me for more detail and access to the research).  Let’s look at some of the alternatives…what makes good, better and best.

Good:  Process

“Good” was described above.  It’s well-structured selling actions (for example, discovery meeting, demo, proposal, etc.), with playbooks and good marketing stack alignment.

In “good”, selling actions (for example, discovery meeting, demo, proposal, etc.), and playbooks are established and used.  A best practice is that selling process is tethered to the company’s marketing stack, etc. This coordinates marketing activities and assets to the selling process.

Again, deal pursuits are fit to the model sale/expected customer buying process, not extensively customized to a particular pursuit.

CRM for this level is little more than a compliance tool, not particularly valuable as a salesperson effectiveness tool.  The operating assumption is reliance on the process design, not seller acumen—certainly not customer acumen.

Better:  Methodology

At Miller Heiman Group, we distinguish “selling activity process” (as described above) from another kind of process: methodology. Methodology is another kind of process which aligns sellers and buyers…specifically, selling process (above) to customer’s buying process.  Methodology bridges the huge gap between selling activities and behaviors that create customer-perceived value…and then leverage customer value into a compelling case for change.

In methodology, “discovery meeting” becomes a customer-centric process of value discovery and development. “Demo” becomes “connecting our solution to a well-articulated customer value gap by demonstrating only those aspects of our solution that add value to this customer”.  As you can imagine, selling organizations who implement methodologies have higher sales success and better customer relationships.

Today’s CRMs don’t really support methodology out of the box, but methodologies like those from Miller Heiman Group can be incorporated using add-in modules.  Using these, sales professionals begin to use CRM voluntarily, because methodology integrated into CRM finally offers a sales-success payoff for using the tools.

Best:  Dynamic Methodology

Today, the state of the art is methodology with analytics that:

  • Help Sales managers look at opportunities and give high-value opportunity coaching in real time. Managers diagnose, then drive winning behaviors, that change deal outcomes.
  • Give managers a real-time tool to glean best practices from their sellers, then characterize them and replicate them through the entire sales team.

The definition of dynamic methodology is about to change.  Soon, these same dynamic coaching capabilities will be converted from “intitiated by front-line sales managers via personally generated insights”, to rules-engine mediated coaching initiated by the CRM system itself to more quickly and widely distribute management attention to all deals.

The Best is about to get much better.  Real-time dynamic methodology, first with a sophisticated rules engine, and eventually with a machine-learned, dynamic coaching schema, is going to transform the sales performance world.

Your thoughts?

Last week, I asked if CRM is the tail wagging the dog.  As you can see, process/methodology maturity should be your goal, and CRM should be your execution tool.

Agree or disagree?  Have any additional thoughts?  Please share them below, or reach out directly.

To your success!

Categories
Growth Management Personal Development

The Glue in Leadership and Relationships That Holds Everything Together

In leadership and in relationships, what is the glue that holds everything together?

In one of my leadership development workshops, my client and I were discussing the integral role that trust plays within an organization, particularly between a manager and his or her team members. Eric serves as a Lead Operator on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. “I don’t care who you are or what your title is, if I don’t trust you, I can’t work with you!” Eric said vehemently. His rationale behind this statement isn’t hard to understand. In his role, he puts life and limb on the line every day, and if he can’t be absolutely sure that his co-workers are being safe and not cutting corners, he doesn’t want to work with them.

You guessed it, TRUST, is that glue in leadership and relationships that holds everything together.

Whether you’re a leader by title or by influence, trust needs to be a huge part of your make-up. Frankly, it is an important part of any relationship. You may not be in a life and death situation in your workplace, but I can assure you, trust is just as important.

Cheryl Biehl says, “One of the realities of life is that if you can’t trust a person at all points, you can’t truly trust him at any point.” To earn trust, our actions must be consistent. If I’m only trustworthy in some departments of life but not all, it’s like cooking a huge pot of gumbo, then adding strychnine to the pot and saying that only part of the gumbo is poisoned. Now, give me a shot or two of Tabasco in my gumbo, but I’ll pass on the poison! Consistency is the key.

Trust can’t be compartmentalized.

Author of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” Steven Covey compares trust in a relationship to an emotional bank account. We can choose whether to make deposits or withdrawals to the account. When we follow through and do what we say we’re going to do, we’re making deposits. If we make enough deposits over time, trust is earned and our account earns interest and grows. When we don’t follow through or fail to honor a commitment, we make a withdrawal. If we make too many withdrawals, our “account” will be “overdrawn” and trust is shaken.

It takes two to tango, too. “He who trusts in others will be trusted in return.” One thing that is apparently tough for many leaders to do is to place their trust in others. When I was a young professional, I worked with a manager who assigned me an important project and let me have the reigns. Nothing could have been more motivating or inspiring than having her place her confidence in me. I truly wanted to do a great job so that I could show her she chose the right person.

Each time you let a team member know that you believe in them, they will want to produce positive results – they’ll run through a brick wall for you – anything not to let you down.

Think about someone who made a significant difference in your life. Maybe it was a boss, coach, teacher, or even a parent or grandparent. Think about how it felt when they expressed their confidence and their trust in your abilities.

Are you showing your team members that you trust them?

Are you earning your team members’ trust by acting consistently?

To receive solutions to your people problems in your inbox every month, and to receive our report: “7 of Your Biggest People Problems…Solved,” click here.

You might also like:

Leadership Team Accelerated Results Program

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Jennifer Ledet, CSP, is a leadership consultant and professional speaker (with a hint of Cajun flavor) who equips leaders from the boardroom to the mailroom to improve employee engagement, teamwork, and communication.  In her customized programs, leadership retreats, keynote presentations, and breakout sessions, she cuts through the BS and talks through the tough stuff to solve your people problems

Photo by Chibelyaeva Katya on Reshot

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Management Skills

3 Reasons Why Entrepreneurs-To-Be Should Finish College

Around this time of year, a lot of students question the value of getting a degree. Now more than ever, they’re being urged to drop out. People say, “You don’t need a formal education anymore, especially if you’re planning on being an entrepreneur.” They might say, “Just get started, the real-world experience will be more effective than the abstract and theoretical education you get in college.” These proponents are quick to follow up with a long list of wildly successful people who dropped out of college and are now making zillions!

Our advice is, “Don’t do it!”

If you’re truly planning on being an entrepreneur, you should stay in school. Here’s why:

1. Learn How to Juggle. In college, you must be an expert in a valuable entrepreneurial skill—juggling. You have to juggle work, class, and social activities. You must get a good night’s sleep and stay healthy. Juggling your finances to be able to afford college means learning how to budget your time and money. You have to prioritize, sometimes without gratification, each crucial skill in the real world of entrepreneurship.

2. Learn How to Learn. College teaches you so much more than the courses you take. Due to the number of classes you must take each day, the limited time you have to study, and your course load, you won’t be able to pass unless you adopt a systematic approach to learning. Make assumptions about the course material on a basic level, fill in the blanks, and adjust your assumptions as you go. At the same time, you have to outline the material so that you’ll be able to recall and use it—even if it’s just for a test. You need to learn how to learn. This skill is necessary to be a successful entrepreneur in the real world.

3. Learn How to Finish What You Start. Completing things is essential in the world of entrepreneurship. Finishing college shows that you can really stick to it. Tenacity and commitment require a lot of practice, and they provide rewards. You’ll earn the reputation of a quitter if you pivot too often. You will be someone who can’t be taken seriously after saying you’re going to do something. As an entrepreneur, your customers choose your product because they believe you will do what you say. Your reputation is at stake!

If you still aren’t convinced, try doing these two things:

1. Work Part-Time for an Entrepreneur. Yes! Start working for someone who does what you want to do. It will give you a sense of awareness and respect for what’s involved. Seeing a real entrepreneur face real problems, make tough choices, and prioritize will get you ready for the road ahead.

2. Take Some Humanities Classes. These are also referred to as Liberal Studies or Liberal Arts. A successful entrepreneur properly uses and understands the skills they’ve learned about critical thinking, philosophy, communication, history, psychology, and sociology. Those courses will give you appreciation and gratitude for others. This will be invaluable when communicating leadership skills and selling your ideas to others.

You might’ve noticed we aren’t defending the content of higher education, but we are defending the challenges and rigor necessary to finish what you started. The college experience in itself forces discipline, focus, and frugality at a time when you need these critical traits. They will shape your future as an entrepreneur. So, stay in school! Learn the skills successful entrepreneurs need before you get started!

For more, read on: http://c-suitenetworkadvisors.com/advisor/michael-houlihan-and-bonnie-harvey/

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Health and Wellness Industries Management

Peloton: The Poster Child of Intentional Customer Attention

Create an Exceptional Customer Experience with Intentional Attention

If you follow me on Instagram, you know I’m obsessed with Peloton. What’s a Peloton, you ask? It’s basically a bike that goes nowhere. It is also a case study in my book, Attention Pays.

John Foley, the CEO, is the brainchild of Peloton, a stationary bike with a tablet attached. But what John will tell you is it’s a technology company, not a fitness company.

They are the poster child for intentional customer attention for many different reasons. John is very attentive to the community which has over 80,000 subscribers on their Facebook group. This active community posts questions about features they’d like, and then, the company incorporates them in the software.

They carefully choose instructors they know will resonate with riders. Their instructors have become so adored, they even have their own cult following. These instructors are like celebrities. Each very different and very talented, attracting a certain kind of customer. Instructors often times have their own Instagram and Facebook pages that riders can follow as well.

Peloton pays attention to their community, which is made up of home-riders. These home-riders use their bike in the basement, their home gym and on their patio while following instructors they love. Riders can choose to ride live recordings or ones previously recorded. They can select from many different scenic rides when the class model isn’t what they desire.

They even created the home rider invasion where riders leave the confines of their home and travel to New York. There, they get to meet their favorite instructors and do classes in the studio. Because their rider community is so strong, meeting each other in the home rider invasion is as much of a perk as meeting the instructors.  I a very loyal customer and any day I’m working from home, I take advantage of my Peloton. I love their instructors! Jennifer Jacobs is definitely one of my most favorites.

Peloton’s business model demonstrates how one leader paid intentional attention to the customer and created a revolution in the fitness industry. Are you ready to do the same in your business?

Categories
Best Practices Growth Management Personal Development

Workplace Civility Starts with Management

 

Most Americans would agree that we’re living in an increasingly uncivil society. Our incivility is now invading the workplace, and bad behavior is demoralizing managers and employees. If you want to do something about this negative trend, listen to what Christine Porath has to say.

I recently interviewed Dr. Porath, an associate professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and the author of Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace, on an episode of my podcast Manage Smarter.

Porath suggests that managers increase awareness of their own civility. Managers often don’t realize that simply checking their phones during a one-on-one can be seen as rude. Porath urges managers “to ask people they work with about how they could improve their effectiveness. They should also ask which of their habits rub employees the wrong way.”

While they’re at it, managers should solicit feedback across the organization. Once you hear about how your habits and behaviors impact others, reflect on what was said. If people say you have a sharp tone in your email, think about how to change. For example, maybe you’ve been firing back responses to emails when you’ve been stressed. Are you always a bit stressed in the afternoons? If so, don’t respond to email until the morning, when you’re feeling energetic and positive.

Remember that uncivil behavior on the part of a manager can result in a big hit to the bottom line. Porath’s research shows that when managers act like their computers or phones are more important than anything else, employees react negatively. They:

  • Cut back on work effort: 66%
  • Worry about the incident: 80%
  • Leave the organization: 12%

Employees

Besides demonstrating their own commitment to civil behavior, managers should be on the lookout for employees who are rude and condescending. Some employees may act that way directly to their managers, while others are only rude to co-workers. If you want to curtail this kind of behavior, pull the offending person aside for a private chat. Explain how their behavior is hurting company culture and their personal reputations.

Another path toward a civil workplace is to establish a formal policy. Your policy could address topics that frustrate team members. For example, employees should show up on time for work. They should behave courteously to everyone in meetings. And they should nip their other rude tendencies in the bud.

Managers must showcase their commitment to civil behavior if they want to see change in their workplace.

Categories
Best Practices Body Language Entrepreneurship Human Resources Management Marketing Negotiations News and Politics Sales Skills Women In Business

Lie To Me, Please

“Alternative facts are aversions to the truth, to the degree that the truth remains concealed.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

“Okay. If you say that wasn’t you, I’ll believe you. Just know, the person I saw from 15 feet away looked just like you. Even more, when I called your name, the person that wasn’t you turned around, saw me, and hurriedly left the area. As that person scurried away, they walked like you, too.”

Do you know why some people will allow others to lie to them, accept the lie, and be okay doing so? The answer lies in one’s current circumstances and the environment they’re in.

1. Some people will subjugate themselves because of their circumstances (e.g. the liar is the one that pays the bills, earns the money in the relationship, is dominant in the relationship, etc.)

2. They do so for the better good of others that are involved.

3. In other cases, the target of the lie wants to be perceived as fitting into the norms of the group they belong to; to do otherwise might mean expulsion from the group.

4. In yet other situations, it’s easier for some people to accept an altered reality because the truth would hurt too badly (e.g. I can’t believe they’d do that to me. It must not be true.)

5. Some people may go along for a while to see what a liar will do next.

Here’s the point. We’re all driven by our emotions. Thus, our emotions will lend insight into what we’re willing to believe and accept. It’s not until that belief is too heavy a burden to bear that we change our beliefs about others and ourselves. That’s when we’ll take our life in a new direction.

Always be aware of why someone possesses certain beliefs. Having that insight will allow you to understand the person’s source of motivation and thinking. That will also allow you to better assist that individual in determining what reality really is. You’ll be able to use that to benefit yourself and them … and everything will be right with the world.

What does this have to do with negotiations?

In a negotiation, there will be times when you sense that the other negotiator is lying. You may gather such sensations from the manner that the opposing negotiator conveys certain sentiments via their body language (e.g. leaning away when defining a statement as the truth, altering the pitch of their voice while constantly looking away from you when doing so, fidgeting with other items in their proximity).

In such situations, it may behoove you to allow the liar to continue his lies to understand the characteristics of the person you’re dealing with. You may also do so if he’s telling little white lies so as not to embarrass him. Then, when that position no longer serves you, consider confronting him to validate his perception of the truth versus what he professes it to be.

Always remember, people will only do to you what you allow them to do. That means you have a degree of control in every environment you’re in. When it comes to dealing with those that lie incessantly, recognize them for who and what they are and deal with them appropriately.

Remember, you’re always negotiating! 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com

 To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.themasternegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#Business #SmallBusiness #Negotiation #NegotiatingWithABully #Power #Perception #emotionalcontrol #relationships #liars #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #ControlEmotions

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Best Practices Entrepreneurship Human Resources Investing Management Marketing Negotiations Sales Skills Women In Business

How to Use Anchoring Better in Your Negotiations

“Anchoring is a way to keep a negotiation within boundaries, but it can also be a way to weigh it down.” -Greg Williams, The Master Negotiator & Body Language Expert

“We can pay your bill if you’re reasonable about the settlement. That means, we’re willing to start the discussion at $300,000, not the $650,000 that you indicated. Anything else is a none starter. Do you wish to start the discussion?” Those were the words of one negotiator to another. He was using a technique known as anchoring to advantage his position. How would you respond?

The following information will give you insights as to how you can use and defend the technique of anchoring in your negotiations.

What is anchoring?

Anchoring is a strategy that you can use to set boundaries in a negotiation. If you and the other negotiator agree to those boundaries, you have the confinements in which the negotiation will occur.

Be mindful, depending upon the depth of the negotiation, those outposts can be violated and lead the negotiation to unsavory places. Thus, be cognizant of the signals that indicate that the other negotiator might be in the process of abating those boundaries. At the first sign of such actions, note the cause that promoted the change in behavior. That will give you the clue about what to address if you wish to bring the negotiation back in bounds.

Why use anchoring?

As stated, anchoring is a way to set parameters around the negotiation. Therefore, if abided by, the agreement should allow for an easier flowing negotiation.

Boundaries in a negotiation can be a curse or a blessing. That’s the inherent dilemma in using this strategy. If you’re negotiating with a weaker negotiator, you can skillfully use anchoring to limit his abilities, while leaving your options open to explore the upper realms of possibilities. If you’re the weaker negotiator (i.e. fewer resources, little leverage, etc.), you risk being susceptible to an unfavorable negotiation outcome.

Factors to consider when using anchoring tactics.

  1. Negotiation (resources, personalities)

As mentioned above, you should consider the resources that you and the other negotiator have at your availability. The more resources that a negotiator has, the more leverage he can bring to bear on the negotiation. That doesn’t mean if you have fewer resources that you’ll automatically fall into the weaker category. It means, if you’re the weaker negotiator, you should attempt to limit the leverage of the other negotiator so he’ll not be able to employ those resources against you.

In addition, consider the other negotiator’s personality. Some negotiators don’t like to take advantage of others. And other negotiators will stomp on you while you’re down to keep you from getting up. The better you know the personality type that you’re negotiating with, the better you’ll be able to predict what he might do.

  1. Leverage points to consider (i.e. urgency, unseen negotiators, etc.)

If you have a grasp into the urgency, deadlines, and timeframes that the other negotiator needs to conclude the negotiation, you’ll have insights into how you can use anchoring to lead him down the negotiation path. For example, if you know that he must conclude your negotiation before another phase starts with those that are not part of your negotiation, you can anchor his deadline to a timeframe. Then, if he doesn’t make concessions that you request, you can slow the negotiation down.

Anchoring can be an extremely powerful strategy to use in your negotiation. Most negotiations contain some form of anchoring embedded in them with them identified as such. If you’re more aware of anchoring in your negotiations, you’ll be less likely to get sunk by them … and everything will be right with the world.

Remember, you’re always negotiating! 

After reading this article, what are you thinking? I’d really like to know. Reach me at Greg@TheMasterNegotiator.com 

To receive Greg’s free “Negotiation Tip of the Week” and the “Sunday Negotiation Insight” click here http://www.TheMasterNegotiator.com/greg-williams/

#Management #SmallBusiness #Money #Anchoring #combat #negotiatingwithabully #bully #bullies #bullying #Negotiations #PersonalDevelopment #HandlingObjections #Negotiator #HowToNegotiateBetter #CSuite #TheMasterNegotiator #psychology #NegotiationPsychology

Categories
Best Practices Growth Industries Management Personal Development

Pay Attention to Peer and Partner Departments

What are you doing to pay attention to other departments? That’s right. In today’s organizations, we have so many different business models, we have matrix organizations. Whereas a leader you might have virtual relationships with you, that don’t have a direct line to you but maybe they have responsibilities that impact your team. Or maybe you have other departments who have to get work done before you can touch it in order for you to proceed. We need to pay attention to other departments. So, today, what I would like to consider is how do we have that profession attention commitment to other departments?

The first step is an obvious one and that’s about building relationships. Now, building relationships sounds so easy but how are you doing it? Are you inviting people to your team meeting so that they can get an insight into what your team’s talking about? Are you shadowing people to understand what’s going on in their business?

One of my clients is a major media company, and they have an advertising and sales decision. Now in advertising and ad is called a “spot”, so what I was able to do was to follow a spot. Like a day in the life of a spot from the moment they sold the ad to the client all the way through until it was placed on television. What as fascinating about that was working with all the different departments to understand how everything impacts something else.

When was the last time you developed department relationships by reviewing end-to-end processes for efficiencies? What relationships could grow? What policies could you update?

The first step in truly paying attention to other departments is build relationships. This can often happen through things like affinity groups. Another one of my clients has major affinity groups for all kinds of different reasons that people meet. Can you build relationships through affinity groups?

The second strategy is to share success. That’s right. So what does that mean? Understanding objectives of other departments is really important because you can know how to celebrate when they get some great things happening. But in the same way, if another department has an implication, has and impact is probably a better word, on what you do, then share with them when that goes well. Share the successes and not just the challenges. Too often we only reach out to another department when somethings gone wrong.

Wouldn’t it be cool to proactively pay attention to celebrate success together? Share new stories, share customer experiences, testimonials, emails that are great. Share success stories with other departments, so they have a greater appreciation of what they’re doing and how it impacts you and vice versa.

The third strategy is to invite collaboration. When you have someone who comes into your team from another department, they have a very different perspective. They might look at the world more creatively. They might have a great idea so ask for their input, encourage them to share, openly, about anything they see that might improve the way you do things, might enhance the client experience.

I have one client where they do regular Lunch and Learns for other departments. It’s a great way for them to meet other people, to share success stories about what’s going on but also, to be able to collaborate on how they can perform better as a company overall.

Three ways that you can pay attention to other departments. Build relationships, share success and invite collaboration. What would you add?

You see I believe that when we truly pay attention to others, attention comes back over and repeatedly. You’ve heard me say it before and in our book, “Attention Pays”, that when you pay attention, attention pays, right?

What are some additional ways that you can really pay professional attention and commit to other departments? Other departments impact your success as a leader. Like I said, “When you pay attention, attention pays.”

Categories
Best Practices Personal Development Sales

CRM: Is the Tail Wagging the Dog?

Note:  This is the first of a three part series on how sales performance management is evolving

According to their marketing materials, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications solve just about every sales problem your company has ever experienced. Are the promises true?  Or…does CRM just help make your existing processes (good or bad) more efficient –at best? Do your sales people feel like you own your CRM or that your CRM owns them? Is CRM the tail wagging the dog?

CRM systems have powerful functionality, and are able to analyze more data all the time.  And yet, an alarming percentage of CRM implementations don’t meet expectations – see the chart below (CIO magazine recently found 33%, a more current figure, but not out of line with history).  Those numbers look worse when you examine how “expectations” were defined.

What’s going on? CRM Alone is Not Enough

 There are a couple of reasons why CRM implementations miss expectations:

They typically focus on selling process alone.  I’ll discuss this in greater depth next week, but selling process is the easy part: aligning with the customer’s buying process is where big gains in effectiveness happen.

CRM can only analyze the data it has access to. Order history reports tend to be pretty accurate, but opportunity pursuit data is almost always sketchy at best…especially for lower-performing sales people.

For sales people, CRM is often simply a compliance tool; that is, it’s an administrative system to track actions. If it doesn’t help sales people win opportunities, it doesn’t get used.

Even worse, the actions tracked aren’t quality actions that lead to success, and everyone knows it.  If CRM’s intent is to streamline customer interactions, most implementations don’t measure up. Why? Many companies fall into the trap of tracking what is easy to capture, not what’s important.  Analyzing non-predictive data gets you lots of numbers, charts and graphs, but no real insights.

The tail wagging the dog:

If all CRM is in your organization is a tool to track (the wrong) activities… and you’ve become a slave to tracking those activities, you exist to serve your CRM, not the other way around.

There is a huge difference between a tool that makes sellers more effective and one used by managers to gather semi-meaningful data.  While I don’t want to ignore the importance of lightening a front-line sales manager’s reporting burden, that benefit may not be worth the cost s of implementation.

While they’re billed as sales performance tools, most companies’ CRM implementations fall short. When CRM becomes merely a compliance and reporting tool, you’re in trouble.

Worse, if you fall into the trap of measuring only the wrong activities (unfortunately, that means measuring activities that CRM finds easiest to measure and track), you’re in the worst kind of trouble.  You’re not leading with measuring the right things.  Opportunity counts mean nothing.  Winnable opportunity tracking means something. Understanding how to turn an at-risk opportunity into a winnable one is everything.

What should CRM be and do?

While CRM should also be able to analyze post-sale information, it should be a tool for sales professionals. Companies should set a high bar for their expectations. To be a genuine tool for sellers and their leaders, the next generation of CRM needs to:

1. Drive effective selling behaviors(not mere activity tracking). My expertise is selling behaviors that drive sales – as opposed to activities that sales people could perform.  For example: I want to drive great conversations with the right people, not number of calls completed.  Today’s CRM implementations typically help leaders track the latter, when they know they should be driving the former.  The ideal CRM should help alert sales people to the right behaviors at the right times.

2. Change deal outcomes: using expertise, a CRM system should proactively identify which opportunities in your funnel are at risk…and more importantly, why.  That same CRM system should automatically tell individual sellers what to do about it. Early risk identification and management (mitigation or de-resourcing) would be gold in the hands of a selling organization.

3. Replicate Winning Behaviors. The sales behaviors that predict selling success are observable, trainable, trackable and coachable. Uncovering those behaviors, then replicating them sales force-wide by training, coaching, and tracking those behaviors, allows you to bring all of the sellers on a team to a higher level. A CRM that does this would be a huge advantage for a selling organization.

Where CRM has been.  Where It’s Going

CRM has evolved through three major generations:

  1. Contact manager.An automated Rolodex and tickler file.
  2. Massive powerful DB that does everything – some are capable of managing the ordering and assembly logistics of a space shuttle…although integrating proposals and contracts with enterprise resource planning, etc. were common uses.
  3. Today, State of the art CRMs “’Manage’ the selling process”; that is, ather seller data on their activities.
  • Activity-based selling fits today’s CRM tools best.
  • Activities and behaviors that align selling activities with customer buying processes (customer-centric sales methodologies) are firmly out-of-scope.

My company has had, for years, a skinny software stack for CRMs that allows sellers to practice methodology within CRM.  It allowed sellers to benefit from CRM as a performance-enhancement tool.  Because of that, many clients find that CRM utilization by sellers dramatically increases, yielding data accuracy benefits to the organization. (Ironically, some companies have bought sales training –at least initially–to finally achieve acceptable compliance with CRM).

Today, even the best coaching is done in-person, by managers examining meeting plans, account plans and opportunity pursuits, diagnosing selling behavior gaps, and conducting coaching conversations.  The skinny stack is great for this. Tools that score opportunities and selling methodology behaviors (methodology is what connects sales process to customer buying process) have enhanced the skinny stack tool even further.

The three requirements of a great CRM implementation above are met with this skinny stack.  The challenge:  coaching is almost 100% in-person, a large demand on front-line-manager time resources.

What if there was a true sellers-first tool, that helped sales professionals be great?  What would that look like?

Watch this space…or contact me right away to learn more.

To your success!