I know this might seem strange, based upon my obsession with using process and controls to create a scalable business, but it’s a valid question.
Can you damage your sales function by having too much control and if so why?
This report from Hanoi City in Vietnam could give you the answer.
You might be tempted to skip this one but it’s a common problem I see in many sales organisations especially the large ones.
Check it out here.
This might sound like heresy but deep down you know it’s true.
What do you do if the biggest tree in the orchard stops bearing fruit?
You try everything to make it start again but nothing works.
Worse still, the smaller trees it shades don’t have chance to grow so they don’t bear as much fruit as they could.
And you’re spending all your time tending to the big tree.
If it was me, and I wanted the fruit, I’d chop the big tree down and let the smaller ones grow and flourish.
Sometimes it isn’t fruit trees its clients and sometimes it isn’t fruit its profit.
If you’re not bothered about the fruit that’s fine but if you are then reach for your axe and do the brave thing.
Oh, probably a good idea to make sure you’ve planted some smaller trees first though.
Considering starting a blog to share your expertise? Here are 3 reasons why I think you should go ahead and dive in.
The truth is you can but it’s a risky, very risky, strategy.
Depending solely on referrals is risky because you can’t control the number, type, frequency or quality of the leads you receive.
You can decide not to run with a lead but you can’t make people refer potential clients in a specific sector or location. Neither can you dictate what they want to buy.
In short you aren’t in control of your business growth.
Following the crash of 2007 referrals for many people fell off a cliff and people really suffered.
The problem was they didn’t know how to go out and win new client’s themselves.
A bit like 3 months after a nuclear war when all the supermarkets have been emptied. Where’s the food coming from?
The answer is simple. Learn how to seek out and convert your own clients. Choose the prospects you want and go get ‘em.
Actually, nowhere near as hard as you think either!
We’ll be running a webinar on the subject of ‘Making Contacts With New Prospects‘ in September, you can save your spot here.
Video is becoming increasingly important in the world of business. In a 2016 HubSpot survey, 43% of consumers wanted to see more information delivered by video. If you’re not already it’s probably time to embrace video. But people have the idea that video is complicated, or expensive, or time consuming.
Newsflash – it’s not!
You can create great quality video using just your mobile phone and this video give you 5 free and simple tips that will help you make sure your video looks fantastic right from the start.
Playing with fire means you’re doing something different; something new, something that might fail at first.
If you’re doing what you did last week, last month, last year you’re playing it too safe.
Truth is, as you read this one of your competitors has just discovered something new which gives them a slight edge.
Whilst you just keep doing the same old, same old.
Too many household names we don’t see any more, refused to move from their tried and tested.
Don’t be that person. This week reach for the matches.
Guest post by David Friel, Managing Director of the Entrepreneur Handbook.
Five years ago I started my media company. About three years ago I had reached a point where revenue was heavily positive, we’d gained two serious investors and the team was expanding quickly.
Everything at the time seemed like we were in the midst of fantastic growth and we’re poised to take a considerable third investment round. I was at a juncture where I considered myself an impeccable leader, was very confident in my skills and that I had effective control of the business.
Fast forward 6 months from that point and we had scaled the team to 24 and the business was experiencing serious internal problems and financial trouble.
So what lead to that? Many things but here are the key problems and lessons I learned that almost brought the company to ruin.
Scale & Systems
At the time I had been running the company with a small dedicated team on loosely defined and managed systems, formal processes were not in place and it worked on a small scale.
When we started scaling the team, projects and business, chaos ensued. The lack of systems and procedures meant it was impossible to effectively manage people and the business, it created a culture of no accountability.
The key learning from this is that loose and undefined systems will work only at a small scale. When you really start to scale you must have robust systems, projects, documentation and training in place to avoid chaos we experienced.
Family Vs Colleagues
Like many founders I’ve always seen my team as family, unfortunately for my disposition at the time that meant I made personal allowances for colleagues not doing their work, not committing to goals and no real accountability for management of theirs.
Over the last few months drastically changing my management style and business relationships to a focus on performance coupled with accountability, has brought back respect, order and has greatly improved our culture and performance. The simple answer is this, in a startup your team generally are your family but you have to have accountability and clear business relationship in place to achieve an effective family!
Less Execution, More Leadership
When we were a small, managing the company and team was pretty straightforward and I could focus my time on a lot of executional work in marketing, data and technology, all areas I loved and was good at.
As we scaled I applied the same methodology, this was a bad idea. As your company grows your role as MD will drastically change to managing the company full time, you need to understand when this is and that it’s a serious responsibility/role to aspire to, it’s now your job, you won’t have time for this role if your still doing huge amounts of executional work!
Hire slow, fire fast
I was extremely fast to hire people without proper interviews, processes and references. I hired on talent and ambition, this lead to hiring people with the wrong attitudes and values for our company. Don’t do this! Hire slowly, have a clear process and make sure you thoroughly assess each candidate.
I was also slow to fire bad performers, mainly because I didn’t carry out proper performance reviews and when goals weren’t hit I didn’t hold people that accountable. I could always make a business or personal excuse for not firing someone. Now I keep strict performance reviews, meetings and tracking with the team, it allows us to easily identify good performers, support those who need help and in a drastic situation fire someone.
I cannot iterate enough how important it is to have a clear, followed and good process here, if you don’t it will cost you huge sums of money and time.
Go to your browser now, click through to Netflix presentation, consider it now mecca for hiring, firing and HR practises, applied in your own unique situation. If you don’t it will likely cost you serious amounts of time, money and resources.
Team Player Vs Genius
As mentioned earlier I used to hire purely on talent, this was a huge mistake. We ended up with many talented people who lacked professionalism, accountability to deadlines and ability to manage their own projects/areas. I now look for core competencies that match our performance/ accountability driven culture coupled with genius but any day of the week I would take an average performer with an ethos that matches our culture. Hire purely on talent at your own risk, it likely will cost you.
Learning
Put short I got to a point where I stopped actively learning new things, for some reason I felt at X number of people all my key learning would now be tacit and on the job. When I stopped doing this the level of innovation, systems and changes in strategy I made dropped hugely and I stopped pushing the business forward in a meaningful way. I’m now actively back to reading, writing, taking courses and watching too many random YouTube videos, the result on our traction and revenue from this has been substantial and continues to grow. Never stop learning!
Arrogance and not being an idiot
A lot of this article has focused on the smaller but important problems in hiring, learning, management and more, at core though these were the symptoms of one major problem, arrogance.
That is arrogance in my abilities and skillset, I had reached a point where because of favourable environmental conditions I felt I was a terrific CEO.
Put simply as you can probably see from the above I was not a terrific CEO and in my blindness to this I nearly killed my company, lost all my team and very nearly drove myself crazy.
6 months on from starting to see the error of my ways and making some changes to myself as a CEO and the company:
Pride often comes before a fall. Hope this post helps you avoid some of the mistakes I made but I often find no matter what you’re told or read, sometimes to understand you have to learn the hard way, just don’t kill your company in the process!
On final note I do often get asked why I’m so candid when I write publicly, the answer is simple, there is too much dishonest bullshit and terrible advice online to add to it.
Let’s face it, the typical ‘networking events script’ can be both predictable and dreary.
“So, what do you does you company do then?”
“And what’s your role?”
“Do you come here often?” – well maybe not this one but you get the picture.
Of course, it’s important to learn this information but what else can you ask that’ll liven things up a bit?
Well, in my experience the following three questions can help you move out of the small-talk zone into the business zone (where you need to be).
1. What’s working well for you at the moment?
People like to share their successes because it makes them feel good about themselves so this will usually get them talking.
2. And what challenges are you facing right now?”
Did you know that if you ask this question first 67% of people will deny they have any challenges at all? Ask it after question 1 and there only too happy to share, which is what you need for the third question to work.
3. We worked with a client who had a very similar challenge. I can’t tell you the detail, of course, but would you like to hear what we did?
Clearly you must have tackled a similar challenge to the one they have, but if so pretty much everybody wants to know how somebody else tackled a problem that they have.
Just by using these simple questions you can turn a typical ‘chardonnay and cheese’ conversation into something much more interesting.
On the same subject – check out our free NETWORKING webinar by clicking here!
Supposing you want to strengthen your product’s Unique Selling Points (USPs) but it’s not possible to change your core offering.
Perhaps it’s manufactured somewhere else and comes in a box ready to go.
Perhaps you don’t have the authority (especially true in large organisations).
Or we know that change takes time and money and perhaps you’re short on both.
Looks like you can’t give your clients a compelling reason to use you then….
DON’T PANIC!
In this video we’ll reveal how you can differentiate your product or service so that it stands out from the competition, even if you can’t change your core offering.
Standing out from your competitors helps you win more business and is achieved by promoting your Unique Selling Points or USPs.
Think about it: if you can’t stand out in a way that benefits your prospects why should they choose you over your competitors?
In this video, which is the first of two on USPs, we’re going to explore the two ways buyers purchase things and so use your USPs.
Knowing this will give you an advantage when shaping your own USPs.