Goals

Case Study: Is the Problem Marketing or the Marketer?

Lead Generation and Lead QualificationThe Phone Call…

“Am I going crazy?” Having just answered the phone, I had no idea who was calling and asking such a question of me. I responded with a courteous, but cautious chuckle saying, “Well…I think I’ll need a little more to go on. With whom am I speaking?”

She paused, told me who it was, laughed rather distractedly, then proceeded to dive right into describing her dilemma from today’s meeting with the Marketing Director from her “problem division.” She is the Sales Director of a firm in which I knew a bit about, particularly with the company’s background and this particular division’s struggle.

In summary, sales were strong across all of her other divisions and lines, each of which had their own marketing leader, while she led the Sales across all divisions. Things were great, that is for all but this one division. Sales continued to decline year over year and had high lead dependency from Marketing, thus her concerns.

The Rest of Her Story…

The sales model is B2B with an outbound sales team that sells consumer products ranging from $200 – $1,000. As described earlier, they are highly dependent upon Marketing to deliver leads.

The Division Head and Marketing Director were both new to this division in 2011 and had stepped in with a new, radical, $1M cost-reduction strategy for marketing. The new marketing mantra became for the next two years, “Less Quantity, More Quality!”

This strategy resulted in lead reduction of 60% in 2011 compared to 2010. In 2012, the leads dropped another 40% from 2011. Not surprisingly, sales had correspondingly declined steeply, more so than any other recent period. While sales did have a dramatic decline, it was nowhere near the rate of decline for the lead volume.

The Sales leader saw neither quantity nor quality from marketing, and as she describes it, the numbers supported her version of the story. Despite the numbers, the Marketing Leader and Division Head remained committed to defending their original strategy a year and a half into it with major revenue losses, and subsequently showed no openness to a different, or better strategy.

Towards the end of 2012, she managed to get a commitment from Marketing for substantially more qualified leads in 2013, although to the Marketer, ‘qualified’ apparently meant email, number and “Request for literature.”

Additionally, the Marketer’s commitment was simply to an aggregate number of leads on a monthly basis, but not by geography, firmographic, demographic, product type or other. His tactic? Email marketing….it’s part of the ‘cost-reduction’ plan.

Today, prior to the call and after her meeting with the marketing team, she made her plea for more qualified leads as the current lead quantity left her outbound team with capacity in excess of 60% going into their largest quarter of the year.

After her meeting, she shared that in addition to the quantity of leads being a third of what they needed, 80% of them were for two of  their 10 product lines. This meant that they had on average  a half-lead per rep to call on each day for the remaining products….not enough to meet the sales plan.

“A Lead is a Lead is a Lead!”

Through frustration, the Marketer responded to her plea for more balanced and qualified leads with saying, “A lead is a lead is a lead. We know that regardless of what product type we market, more than half of the prospects will want something different anyway. We could collect leads on just one of our products and it wouldn’t matter. All that matters is that you have leads of any type, then your team can determine what they really need.”

Again, the sales exec says to me…this time through tears…“Am I going crazy? Do I have my expectations set too high? Is it unreasonable to ask marketing to know the customer well enough to hit who they’re aiming at? Maybe I am the problem. I don’t feel like I am but it just seems like we need to change our approach to marketing.”

I responded, “Being crazy and unreasonable is not your problem, although your 2-year tolerance may be a part of the problem. It sounds to me like there is a much larger issue at play here…”

Change the Marketing, or the Marketer?

I speak with people in Sales and Marketing roles from all over the country. From executives to analysts to reps. Lead generation and qualification is by far, one of the most common frustrations I hear.

No matter who I am working with or from what field, I am pretty quick to keep the responsibility and accountability with each respective group I am working with. Most companies needing my help typically don’t have their respective ‘houses in order.’ Therefore, I keep Sales concentrated on their own responsibilities and Marketing, theirs so I don’t create an all out Game of Thrones. I work with the executive leadership on cross-departmental improvements before circling back to the departments.

For these reasons, offering up an anecdotal recommendation to this Sales executive to “change the Marketer” after merely an hour-long conversation would be ill-advised, no matter how apropos that may seem. There is always more to the story, especially when it comes to Sales and Marketing alignment.

What Advise Would You Give?

Given the very limited facts we all have here, what advice would you give and to whom would you target your comments? The Marketing Director? The Sales Director? The Division Head? Who would you love to spend 15 minutes with and what would you tell them?

Jeff Michaels | Repeatable SuccessJeff Michaels is a Sales & Marketing Executive that has worked with executives, leaders, & teams for 25 years to create repeatable success regardless of industry, economy or circumstance.

Team Exercise: Giving your best

Meeting exercise with tapeRecently, at a Sales Team meeting, we were reviewing the metrics and performance, and addressing the inherent problems with “giving your best efforts.”

The team works hard, and subsequently believed that they were giving their best in one specific area of their performance. Despite their belief, they were stuck in familiar patterns and routines that needed to be reframed, or seen differently.

Following is a quick exercise that we did to break open their thinking to get different results. By the way, we have seen a 50% improvement for several weeks straight, due to new thinking, focused efforts and solid coaching from their sales leader.

Exercise: When giving your best is not your best

We began by framing our discussion around how giving our best feels like our best, but limits the options to truly give a breakthrough performance.

We then voted for a volunteer – the criteria this particular day was for the most athletic person – but you can choose any criteria for this exercise.

Brian was voted in. I gave Brian a colored piece of tape with very specific instructions. “I want you to give your very best effort, by jumping and sticking this piece of tape as high as you can on the wall in front of you.”

Brian truly is an athletic individual, and his result was remarkable. At approximately 10′ high on the wall stood a lone piece of tape. I asked how he felt with his effort. He said, “Good!” I then asked if he had truly given his best effort. He confirmed he had.

I then gave him a different colored piece of tape and simply said, “I would like you to beat your best.”

And he did…by nearly 3 inches. His comments afterward were, “Wow! When you asked me to do my best, I thought I had already done so, but apparently I was wrong.”

We debriefed the exercise together as a team, which led them to even better insights than what I had planned for them. I won’t pass those along so as not to predetermine how this exercise can and should be used with your teams. In short, what we saw was Brian adjust his whole approach to beating his best.

Sales Meeting Exercise

If you choose to do this exercise with your team, I would love to hear the results your team’s experience.

Jeff Michaels | Repeatable SuccessJeff Michaels is a Sales & Marketing Executive that has worked with executives, leaders, & teams for 25 years to create repeatable success regardless of industry, economy or circumstance.

Sales: Those that can’t close, can’t open

Prospecting Sales CallEver get bad advice? I read a post this morning that struck me as such as it advised 3 Questions Sales People Should Ask Every Prospect. The three questions [taken from a longer ‘disqualification checklist’ of questions] recommended asking the following questions of every prospect:

1. What is your biggest [YOUR INDUSTRY] related challenge?
2. Why is what you’re doing now not working?
3. How do you go about making a decision like this?

In my post a couple of months ago, Are Your Questions Killing the Sale, I addressed the problem of exploratory questions like the first question suggested above.

In this post, I would like not only to implore sales reps to avoid squandering opportunities with prospects through exploratory questioning, but also provide compelling stats on the need to get the message right — from the opening question, through the closing of the sale.

Do you have the right starting point?

CEB had done a survey among 5,000 executives and decision makers that deal with sales reps, in which 86% of them indicated that the sales rep’s message had no commercial impact whatsoever to them.

86% of executives/decision makers believe sales rep’s messages have no commercial impact!

According to Tim Riesterer, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer for Corporate Visions, he describes the buyers as coming away from conversations with reps believing that what they are currently doing right now…the Status Quo…is okay and they themselves are okay. How do they know? The Sales Reps led them to believe that was the case because there was nothing to suggest otherwise in their communication.

Sirius Decisions had similarly shocking results from their PMM Survey suggesting that the biggest inhibitor to achieving quota was the rep’s inability to communicate messages of value. Not surprisingly, what we communicate and how, is of great import to our results.

Yet, so many take the approach of winging it with prospects, and exploring their way through the sale.

3 Steps to Approaching Prospects Differently:

  1. Know your prospects and know your story. Don’t call indiscriminately looking for any customer that may or may not fit your solution. Be specific and call those whose story you know and that you can help based on prior experience. Have a solid understanding of the issues those similar to them are facing in their industry
  2. Establish credibility quickly. If you have the right story and the right prospect, you will be able to demonstrate understanding of the typical issues those in their industry face. After stating your purpose for the call, open with a statement that summarizes the business issues affecting their industry.
  3. Validate with the prospect. Successful selling is not a monologue, but rather a well-choreographed conversation. Therefore, rather than assuming everybody has the same problem and moving on without them, follow your statement with a question to validate if they are experiencing any of the same issues you just described.

Putting the three steps together, the opening of your call with a prospect sounds something like the following:

“We work with businesses similar to yours from all over the country and have found that each commonly face one of three business issues, given the [current condition]. Their most common issues tend to be [X], [Y], or [Z]. Is your business currently facing any of these same problems?”

If you have a solid understanding of the typical issues similar businesses are experiencing, not only will you get quick confirmation, but often times they say they are struggling with most or all three areas. This allows you to start walking down the path to lead them to the center of their own story.

Even if they mention a different problem, you are still on a better path to zero in on their issues and create complete unrest with their status quo.

If they are not struggling with any of the issues you described in your opening, then you either have the wrong story, the wrong prospect, or both. Go back to step 1 and dedicate the time up front to get this right as you likely circumvented the full process and have just cost yourself a prospect and your credibility.

On the other hand, if you dedicate appropriate time to these first 3 steps of opening with credibility and delivering a message of value, you will see immediate improvement in your close ratios.

Jeff Michaels | Repeatable SuccessJeff Michaels is a Sales & Marketing Executive that has worked with executives, leaders, & teams for 25 years to create repeatable success regardless of industry, economy or circumstance.

1 Minute Leadership Test…Will You Pass?

The role of the leader is a difficult one, to be certain. Done well, it is one of the most rewarding professional and personal experiences for the leader and those they lead. Done poorly, and at best, your team may achieve incidental success from time to time…despite their leader.

After two decades of working in leadership and developing leaders, I continually see one common area in which leaders often fall short. This one minute video clip sums it up as King Leonidas asks Daxos’ men one simple question. After playing the clip, see how quickly you can spot the problem?

Leadership Test: If those you lead are asked about the organization’s or team’s top priority, would your team answer like the Spartans or more like the Arcadians?

How did you do? May I suggest that if your first thought was to evaluate the person who leads you, you’ve already failed. This is not a message just for CEOs or only leaders with teams. The message is to the leader within us all…to rise up and paint a better, more clear picture than what others can see for themselves.

If your team is lacking a “WAR! WAR! WAR!” response, time for the mirror test. How they respond is your responsibility. For additional tips on how to create more intentional, predictable and repeatable results, see this post on Vision.

Jeff Michaels | Repeatable SuccessJeff Michaels is a Sales & Marketing Executive that has worked with executives, leaders, & teams for 25 years to create repeatable success regardless of industry, economy or circumstance.

Does anyone remember your corporate vision?

Corporate VisionAfter laboring with your leadership team to set a compelling vision for 2013, the chances are, your staff won’t even remember it only 30 days into the new year.

Don’t believe me? Take this simple test:

Ask 3 staff members about your current vision.

Be prepared for the results you will likely find.

For those that found that all three remembered the vision with clarity, you are part of a rare few. This would suggest that you already know the success was not due to a catchy, compelling headline, nor was it because you were so engaging in your delivery of the vision. Both may have been true, but were not the reason.

Most, on the other hand, fell into the broader category of the ‘forgotten vision.’ Following are a few steps to take before it’s too late and your staff forgets you even spoke about the vision. Before doing so, let’s make sure the reasons are clear for why this is often forgotten so soon after being delivered.

The Forgotten Vision

Last October, I was invited to conduct a Vision & Strategic Planning workshop at a conference in Chicago for leaders from all over the country. The preliminary surveys of the audience members showed that most had led and/or participated in vision setting exercises with an even larger number showing the vision had no measurable impact on their year-end results. Here are a few of the most common reasons cited for the vision failing to make an impact:

 From leader’s perspective:

  • Nobody remembered the vision
  • They didn’t buy into the vision

 From staff’s perspective:

  • The vision failed to connect with staff
  • The vision is an exercise leaders do

Do any of those reasons look or sound familiar to you? What is interesting is that both, in the workshop and in working with other leaders in this area, is that most believe they need help with vision casting, believing that they just needed a better story or a better way to tell the story. While I do give some guidance and attention to that part in my workshops, my primary emphasis is on vision execution.

Two Steps to a Vision Remembered

When you reflect upon the vision setting exercises you have been engaged with, you are likely to remember the sense of relief you had when you finally completed the vision. Most see this process as putting in the hard work up front whereas all that is left is to deliver the vision to the team and expect the results. I have significantly oversimplified how most actually go about this, but the truth of the matter is that people too often place inappropriate emphasis on the front end of vision casting and little to no work in executing the vision.

The truth is that the vision casting is the easiest part of the process. The harder part is in distilling the vision down into executable actions that connect directly to each team member’s behaviors. The second part is in having specific, measurable evidence of where the vision is being carried out for each staff member to call and reinforce further behaviors. Here is a closer look at these two steps.

Step 1: Connect vision to behaviors. As a leader, credibility is one of the most important attributes you have, and should not be taken lightly. When it comes to making your vision a reality, failure to work through your leadership team to connect specific behaviors to the vision not only sets the vision on a course to fail, but erodes your credibility altogether. Therefore, make the time and make the connections. I recommend each leader meets with their direct reports one-on-one to maximize impact. The task itself is not difficult, but rather the difficulty is in committing to the time investment necessary to make this step effective. Don’t bail out on this one. The stakes are too high.

Step 2: Reinforce contributing behaviors. While Step 1 is a great start towards your aligning your staff to the overall vision, assuming it meets standard vision protocol and resonates with staff members, that alone will not be enough. To keep the team on track and to change behaviors leading to a successful progression towards the vision, they will need consistent feedback and reinforcement of how their actions are contributing. Therefore, after having invested the time to connect the vision to individual behaviors, the second critical step is to reinforce behaviors daily, weekly and monthly as you see evidence of the behaviors that lead to success.

As the leader, you know the pressures you experience to get things done with fewer resources. Your staff feels these same pressures, just in differing degrees. Therefore, if you feel that you don’t have time to take these steps to carry out the vision, how likely is it that your staff will naturally commit to carrying out the vision along with their other responsibilities? They won’t! Without you taking these aforementioned steps, they will simply see the vision as an interruption to getting their regular work done. Their everyday responsibilities [as they define them] will win out every time. That is, unless you define and connect the two, then consistently reinforce those behaviors. Is your vision worth the investment?

Jeff Michaels | Repeatable SuccessJeff Michaels is a Sales & Marketing Executive that has worked with executives, leaders, & teams for 25 years to create repeatable success regardless of industry, economy or circumstance.

Leadership Lesson from X Games

Tucker HibbertTalent Alone is not Enough

January 27, 2013 marks the first time an athlete has ever achieved a six-peat…six consecutive gold medal performances…in the winter X Games. Tucker Hibbert did so in remarkable fashion in the Snowmobile Sno-Cross event Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t his talent alone that won the finals for him. The X Game analysts were quick to point out that this was one of the most experienced and capable field of champions they have ever seen.

What they did point to as the differentiator, rightfully so, was his preparation. You see, in between the semi-finals and finals, Tucker chose to spend his time walking the course to evaluate how the snow conditions had changed. He also spent time evaluating where the shadows were falling on the course along with identifying the intended lines he would take. It turns out that he was the only competitor that did so.

Assimilating all of that information resulted in his selection of starting lane (afforded to him because of his semi-final finish), which was counter-intuitive to where most others wanted to start from. By the time they all completed the first lap, Tucker was in the lead and on his game plan. More than half way through the race, conditions continued to change as the shadows continued to shift and the snow conditions on the track worsened.

Lap 9, Tucker was jolted by hitting a rough patch in his originally chosen line. He adjusted his line to his plan B approach by the time he reached that same rough section on lap 10 and continued to put distance between himself and the second place competitor. Six laps later, he had finished the race creating a phenomenal 13 seconds of distance between his next closest competitor.

The Mark of Effective Leadership is Reflected in Their Preparation

Tucker prepared in a way that his competitors failed to do. In fact, all things being equal, each of the competitors had the opportunity to win with similar experience, equipment and conditions. Yet, it came down to Tucker’s preparation that enabled him to respond asymmetrically to an otherwise, equal playing field. Tucker clearly had an advantage over his competition. An advantage also available to each of his competitors, but they declined, instead relying upon their own experience to see them through.

For leaders, you can certainly attest to the pressure to perform while leading your team to do the same. With the level of responsibilities a leader typically carries, the tendency can be to approach business as just another day. merely showing up and reacting to whatever the next day has in store. This is certainly no way to lead, and definitely not a recipe for intentional, predictable and repeatable success.

So how can you tell if you have fallen into this trap? Ask yourself these questions:

  • What do today’s actions reflect about your preparation to lead your team to success?
  • Specifically, what have you done today to ensure your team’s success?
  • Does your to-do list focus more on tasks than it does in leading your team to success?

If these questions have exposed some vulnerabilities in your daily approach, you are not alone. Be encouraged as you have taken the first step to acknowledge complacency. Complacency threatens all of us if we don’t intentionally disrupt our own status quo. Here are three steps to help you prepare differently, much like Tucker had done for his record performance. After all, wouldn’t we all like to succeed in intentional, predictable, repeatable ways as Tucker did?

3 Ways Effective Leaders Prepare Differently

  • Intentionality. Evaluating ever-changing conditions in the business environment requires being prepared for anything. This includes anticipating problems before they happen, and even planning how you will respond to the unanticipated. To have this ability, the leader will need to take intentional steps and set aside time to address these areas. Action: Schedule this into your calendar to address consistently and frequently. This needs to become an habitual routine.
  • Predictability. After you begin intentionally looking for ways to be better prepared, you will begin to see patterns. These patterns often come in the forms of team member behavior that leads to lesser performance, complacent reactions of competitors, or even economic rhythms that you can predict and address now that you see them. Action: Practice predicting outcomes privately. Start developing this capability and pay attention to predictions and what surprised you along the way before you go public.
  • Repeatability. When you have devoted the time to be intentional, others begin to notice your seemingly innate ability to predict outcomes and that you are well-prepared, you will find that repeatable successes happen with much greater frequency. This makes you an invaluable asset and resource to your team and your organization. Action: Look for ways to repeat your success without relying on repeating the same exact actions. Life usually doesn’t work that way. But for the effective leader that knows how to succeed repeatedly, do as Babe Ruth did and call your shots before they happen. Then make good on it by developing your intentionality and predictability muscles.

The most meaningful things in life take time to develop. Effective leadership is one of those meaningful areas worthy of pursuing. But it’s up to you. What will you choose? What will you do differently today, that will make a noticeable difference in what you and your teams do tomorrow?

Jeff Michaels | Repeatable SuccessJeff Michaels is a Sales & Marketing Executive that has worked with executives, leaders, & teams for 25 years to create repeatable success regardless of industry, economy or circumstance.

3 Steps to Cultivating Confidence

Keys to ConfidenceAfter two decades of working with individuals, managers and leaders at various levels, I have observed and identified 3 behaviors that lead to intentional, predictable and repeatable results.  Practicing these three simple behaviors will put you on the fast track to cultivating confidence.

The three behaviors are as follows:

1. Self-Reflection – We can all get caught up in the activities that our jobs and personal responsibilities require. The tendency during the busyness can be to ‘act’ or ‘react’ without paying attention to whether that was the best course of action to take. Furthermore, because the focus tends to be on the task at hand, one can fail to assess if the action taken is achieving the results originally intended. For this reason, setting some time for intentional, self-reflection can shift your focus back from results, to behaviors that create the results.

When a person is more intentional about changing their behaviors to best achieve the results, and evaluates their intention in comparison to the outcome, significant learning takes place that guides your future steps.

Self-Reflection = Intentionality. I call this ‘succeeding on purpose.’ When a person intentionally reflects upon behaviors that contributes to the result, and achieves their expected result, the byproduct is greater confidence.

2. Write it down. Documenting your observations…even in the briefest of forms…is the least fun, but most rewarding when you start to see patterns. For example, consider a recent example of a person on a new diet.

Everyday, around 2:30 pm, Steve eats a candy bar out of habit. Before documenting his eating habits, Steve was aware that he had a candy bar on many days, but not sure exactly when in the day, how often, or even why he ate candy for that matter. After reflecting on his behaviors and documenting his observations, he recognized that he snacks in between two meetings as a sort of distraction from the next meeting. It wasn’t that he was necessarily hungry after lunch, craving sweets or needing an afternoon pick-me-up. He simply needed a non-work related distraction before his next meeting.

Once the pattern was observed, he recognized steps he could take to improve his eating habits by keeping granola bars on hand at that time of day. Even better, he later realized that taking a 10-minute walk outside provided a more healthy distraction before stepping in to his next meeting.

You can improve or change that in which you are aware. Without awareness, you are just guessing, which is the number one killer of confidence. Self-reflection of your behaviors, followed by documenting your observations, allows you to start seeing patterns, which creates predictability.

Documenting = Predictability. Similar to the infrequent golfer who never knows where the ball is going with each swing, so it is with the manager that can’t predict outcomes based on their actions. Just as Babe Ruth used to do in pointing to where he would hit the ball, we too have the ability to accurately predict outcomes. Predictability contributes to confidence.

3. Debrief your actions. An important, and often over-looked, activity that benefits all who do so is to debrief each action taken. The Army refers to this as an After-Action Review (AAR). This process of debriefing includes all members of the team and asks questions such as:

  • What was supposed to happen?
  • What actually happened?
  • What can be learned?
  • What should be done differently?
  • Who else could benefit from what was learned?

A thorough and proper debrief directly contributes to continuous learning and improved results, which enables a leader, individual and/or team to have, and repeat, success in the future.

Debriefing = Repeatability. Those that know how to repeat their successes are invaluable to organizations and to others. The ability to intentionally and predictably achieve a successful outcome at will…or repeatably…is an asset every organization would love to have.

Jeff Michaels | Repeatable SuccessJeff Michaels is a Sales & Marketing Executive that has worked with executives, leaders, & teams for 25 years to create repeatable success regardless of industry, economy or circumstance.

Reorganization or Turnaround? (Part 2): Top-Line Temptation

Top Line TemptationLast week, I wrote about common mistakes made with an underperforming Division or Business Unit in my post titled Reorganization or Turnaround? (Part 1). Most notably, I spoke of the tendency to prescribe a reorganization to situations when a turnaround was really needed, by failing to recognize issues that are below the “waterline.”

If you are the leader of a struggling division, business unit or team that has solid sales, but have continued to underperform the profitability expectations for multiple periods, this post is for you.

The Top-Line Temptation
There is no doubt that top-line revenue covers a multitude of sins. The problem is that too often this is seen as a good thing…or at least acceptable. These ‘sins’ in business, so to speak, that detract from profitability are analogous to the roots of a young tree that later grows to disrupt the foundation. The foundation, in this case, represents the whole organization. Addressing the root of these problems is always better done earlier, for obvious reasons, as the picture of the tree below perfectly illustrates the implications of letting problems persist.

Unfortunately, what happens all too often is that with solid revenue comes the belief that things will correct themselves over time. That increasing the sales will begin to create economies of scale, eventually leading to profitability. Question – When was the last time you saw a profitability issue like this work itself out over time?

Getting at the Root of the Problem
There are a variety of reasons why a leader may be experiencing solid sales with poor profitability, but I want to address one of the more common reasons I see. This is the ‘sales at any cost’ approach. When this is the case, the inappropriate pursuit of revenue tends to come in one of two forms.

Root Cause

The Root of the Problem

The first way revenue is inappropriately pursued comes in the form of aggressive discounts, incentives, and promotions. Unprofitable discounting creates an inflated sense of demand, which bursts the minute the discounts stop. The more inherent problems with this approach, other than increased costs and false demand, is the longer term impact of discounts and incentives lowering the perceived value in your customer’s eyes.

The second way that revenue is inappropriately pursued is through disproportionate costs of acquisition and retention, beyond that which is profitable. In these situations, typical strategies include increased marketing campaigns, sales blitzes, additional staff or even the introduction of new products or services on top of an overly burdened cost structure.

In some cases, a division may inappropriately pursue both, discount strategies and increased activities. The compounded effect of having lower revenue at higher costs puts the business area on a fast track to what I call ‘divisional bankruptcy.’ Not only is this unsustainable, it is a terrible strategy in general for leading a division to profitability.

5 Questions to Determine if You Have a Profitability Problem
Now that we have a good handle on some of the problems and why they occur, it is important to determine whether these are your problems are somebody else’s problems. Also important to note is that the conditions described above are not the sole list, but rather representative of the type of conditions that lead to solid sales with poor profitability. Therefore, the following questions will help in determining if you are in a situation requiring a reorganization or turnaround.

  1. Were your most recent profit results intended? Comparing performance to plan (PTP) is an important measure. There are times when losses are planned. If so, did you meet the plan? If not, proceed to #2.
  2. If your PTP was not intended, do you know specifically what contributed to this? If you answered “no,” stop reading now. Enlist all necessary resources to figure this out. Without this, remediation is impossible.
  3. What specific steps do you have in place, to correct the problems? Assuming you answered ‘yes’ for #2, specific SMART goals should be in place with key staff that will correct the profitability shortfalls.
  4. How long will the plan take to restore profitability? Remediation should occur within 6 months or less. Be very careful about setting anything longer as too often you are delaying the inevitable. The time to act is now.
  5. What is your track record for accurately forecasting corrections? This is an important gut-check. Be honest. If you tend to be overly optimistic, best to confront that now as people are depending on you.

Reorganize or Turnaround?
After having assessed the cause of the problems and determined next steps, you should have a sense of clarity on whether or not you have a ‘waterline‘ issue or not. If you have diagnosed your problem to be below the waterline, this is a turnaround. You are now in a dead sprint to correct the problem before your CEO steps in on your behalf to correct the problem simultaneous with your exit.

Time to A.C.T.
Now that you have properly diagnosed your predicament and are committed to an expedient correction, it is time to act. I have put the steps in the form of an acronym to serve as a virtuous, or repeatable, cycle to follow throughout the recovery.

  • Assess. Pull out the financials along with your sales and marketing metrics to assess where the key profit detractors lie. Don’t fall for only cutting easy, non-essential areas. The allure is that it looks like you took action without disrupting anything too significantly. The problem is that it won’t disrupt anything too significantly. Cut the small stuff, but cut the big stuff first. Remember the tree picture above…address the root issues!
  • Correct. Having identified where to cut, commit to correction through decisive action. These times aren’t easy, so best to communicate lavishly before, during and after the turnaround. Before lets people know what to expect. During to give updates and demonstrate it’s working. After confirms that your actions were worth it.
  • Target. Cuts are important and necessary, but are not the entirety of your action. Time to target key start and stop activities that contribute more quickly to your division’s profitability. Examples include not pursuing unprofitable customers, or to stopping marketing activity that aims to discount its way to profitable growth.

As described above, this process is intended to be followed and repeated, assessing and adjusting as you go. If you are entering this process of a turnaround, I would like to offer encouragement as you have demonstrated the two characteristics I described last week – Humility in acknowledging your situation and Courage to address the problems head on. Once you successfully turnaround your division or business area, not only will you have the respect and admiration of your staff and CEO, but this will likely serve as one of the largest confidence booster’s in your career that will serve you well in years to come.

Jeff Michaels | Repeatable SuccessJeff Michaels is a Sales & Marketing Executive that has worked with executives, leaders, & teams for 25 years to create repeatable success regardless of industry, economy or circumstance.

Diagnosing Misdiagnosis in Business

Diagnosis and MisdiagnosisIn the medical field, a doctor’s misdiagnosis can prove fatal. Have you ever considered the consequences of misdiagnosing a sales, marketing or business issue?  In the metaphorical sense, a wrong diagnosis can prove fatal to your career or business as well.

According to the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF), misdiagnosis occurs in the medical profession up to 42% of the time.

When you consider that doctors, being highly educated and well-trained in their field, still misdiagnose symptoms for 2 out of every 5 patients, how much more susceptible might the everyday sales or business professional be in proffering a wrong diagnosis? Yet for many business professionals, they cavalierly forge ahead with untested hypotheses of their business issue, and a firm course set for remediation.

“For most diagnoses all that is needed is an ounce of knowledge, an ounce of
intelligence, and a pound of thoroughness”

HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?
Try to recall a recent business result that fell short of expectations, and subsequently required diagnosing the problem. What was the process you used to identify the problem, and identify a remediation plan?

For many people, they follow an inherently flawed two-step plan:

  1. They compare their result to their expectation, then
  2. They work backwards from the result, looking for a plausible explanation for why they fell short

While this is a common approach, the problem is that beginning with the comparison as your starting point for diagnosis is far too late. All you can do at this point is learn for next time…if fortunate enough to have a next time. The second problem is that working backwards from the result only serves to explain symptoms, but not address the root cause. If we want to avoid bad results or avoid repeating bad results, we need to get at the root.

HOW DO YOU GET AT THE ROOT?
I used to live in a neighborhood where there were a lot of very large, mature trees with roots that would buckle the sidewalks. Imagine a city planner tasked with inspecting the damage and evaluating a remedy for the current problem, to serve as a model for future neighborhoods.

Imagine how preposterous it would be if the City Planner recommended a ‘root-redirection’ program when sidewalks started to buckle? In other words, if the proposal was to address the point of the visible problem by digging up the damaged sidewalk, and working to redirect the roots downward, we would laugh at the foolishness of such a plan.

Common sense suggests either planting trees farther away from sidewalks or changing the type of tree altogether. Stated differently, we would need to change what we do on the front end to get better results, not work from the point of the buckled sidewalks backwards.

Yet, this serves as a picture of how missed expectations are often addressed. A person does a comparison, sees the variance and looks for an explanation to the problem. When taking this approach [from the end rather than the beginning], the tendency is to stop searching once you believe you have reached a conclusion.

“A conclusion is the place where you got tired thinking.”

Those were the words of the German-American physician, Dr. Martin Fischer (1879-1962).

PRESCRIPTION FOR PREVENTION
Dr. Denis Burkitt said, “Diseases can rarely be eliminated through early diagnosis or good treatment, but prevention can eliminate disease.” Most would agree, prevention is much better than prescription.

In order to prevent a career full of missed results, followed by faulty diagnostics leading to more missed results, we need to look at a new process that will enable one to succeed intentionally, predictably and repeatedly. Doing so will prevent a career full of regret.

The best way to do so is to have a repeatable structure or process for achieving results, so that you can quickly identify and detect problems early.

Following are a list of steps to get you well on your way:

  1. Long-term goals should be front and center as your starting point
  2. Connect all shorter term goals into your long-term goals
  3. Identify specific activities/tactics necessary to achieve your goals on weekly basis
  4. Plan specific times each day/week to achieve the tactics leading to your goals
  5. Evaluate each day/week how you performed according to what you planned to do
  6. Adapt your approach as necessary based on your evaluation and insights

Do not let the process scare you as this not only is guaranteed to improve your results, but literally only takes 20 minutes/day and increases the success rate significantly. I do steps 1-4 in The First 15 Minutes of each day, and steps 5-6 in the last 5 minutes of each day before I leave. I jot quick notes of my observations for what did and didn’t go as planned and as a result, have a written record of how to repeat success.

What steps do you take to create intentional, repeatable and predictable success?

Jeff Michaels | Repeatable SuccessJeff Michaels is a Sales & Marketing Executive that has worked with executives, leaders, & teams for 25 years to create repeatable success regardless of industry, economy or circumstance.

Success in Sales Has an Expiration Date

Expired SuccessOne of life’s unfortunate realities is that succeeding once does not mean succeeding always. As we are all aware, “success” has a shelf life…or an expiration date, if you will.

We all want it, and most work hard to get it…often times with failures along the way, and when we finally achieve the success we were after, we are brought back to the reality that this will not last forever, nor ensure success with our next endeavor. For the repeatedly successful person, that means we have to replenish our successes. The more frequently, the better.

Given that this website is dedicated to the creation of intentional, repeatable successes, I am typically less concerned with or enamored by a person’s initial success. I am more curious about what creates repeatable successes.

I have listed below a few characteristics of those that have consistently demonstrated their ability to repeat success in all areas of their life:

  • Learner – They have huge appetites to take in as many points of meaningful data, philosophies, best practices as possible to better inform and guide their decisions
  • Distiller – They not only take in data, but assimilate and distill information in ways that can be dispensed at will
  • Distributor – With much collected wisdom…from both success and failure…they share freely with others
  • Conduit – They serve as a collection point for information, knowledge, wisdom
  • Filter – Despite seemingly endless supplies of wisdom & knowledge, they filter out noise for themselves & others
  • Reasoner – They have a unique ability to mentally process complex lines of thinking
  • Disciplined – Through constant practice and refinement, they rehearse the behaviors that produce the greatest benefits in their personal and professional lives
  • Curious – By nature…or practice, they have a genuine curiosity, tending to do more asking than talking
  • Decisive – Decisions are made more readily, not despite the many inputs, but because of the consistent practice of collecting inputs
  • Observer – One other key attribute is they careful observe why success does or does not occur, so they know with surgical precision, which behaviors to repeat and which to avoid

Again, this is not an exhaustive list of characteristics and traits, but rather some of the most common attributes I have observed over the years from all walks of life. This includes both those in which I have worked and consulted as well as those, whose stories have been shared in biographies, autobiographies, or other.

What have you observed from those in which you have worked or observed that are intentionally and repeatedly successful? Which attribute is your favorite?

Jeff Michaels | Repeatable SuccessJeff Michaels is a Sales & Marketing Executive that has worked with executives, leaders, & teams for 25 years to create repeatable success regardless of industry, economy or circumstance.