Systems

Do Challenger Sales Reps Do Demos?

Product Demos | Challenger SaleInspired by a very good question in the CEB Challenger Sale forum, I decided to write an article on the topic of product demonstrations relative to the Challenger Sale, addressing some of the questions around this particular subject.

The question posed to the group, was in essence, “What conditions would need to be in evidence before a good Challenger sales rep would initiate a product demonstration?” Excellent question!

Derivatives of the question throughout the forum discussion evolved into whether or not Challengers should conduct product demonstrations at all. Equally good questions! Following is my take on the two questions — Do Challengers do product demonstrations, and if so, where in the sales process would be the appropriate time to do so.

Do Challenger’s Demo?

The short answer to whether or not a Challenger Rep does product demonstrations is a qualified “Yes,” but with some caveats. Let’s look at a couple of them.

  1. Demos don’t define Challengers. Challengers define demos. Not all products require demonstrations, which you already understand. When they are pertinent as part of the sales process, the Challenger conducts at the appropriate time, anchoring back to what the customer didn’t understand about their business or industry in the first place. To be clear, the Challenger Rep is not defined by whether s/he does a demo. They are defined by their behaviors throughout the sales process …with or without a demo.
  2. Challengers don’t win the sale with demos. This will be, perhaps the most important point I make here. If the sale were won at the point of product demonstration, something went wrong earlier in the process as this has just become the Features and Benefits sale. True Challengers shape demand before a prospect ever knew they wanted or needed a solution, then continue to expose problems, consequences, etc. through commercial teaching/insight. Challengers effectively win the sale by selling the problem prior to a product demonstration. Furthermore, the effective Challenger rep will have been leading TO their solution throughout the sales process, thereby making the product demonstration merely ‘confirmation’ of the sale.

When Do Challengers Demonstrate Products?

As a quick rehash of the Challenger choreography, following are the key stages:

  1. Warmer – Prospect Response: “S/he knows my industry/business”
  2. Reframe – Prospect Response: “I never thought of it that way before”
  3. Rational Drowning – Prospect Response: “I’m familiar with the story s/he is describing”
  4. Emotional Impact – Prospect Response: “S/he is telling my story”
  5. A New Way – Prospect Response: “What should I do?”
  6. Your Solution – Prospect Response: “Will your product address these problems?”

With my paraphrase of the Challenger choreography above, the answer to when a Challenger rep should do a product demonstration is quite straight-forward…At the end of the choreography.

To add a little bit more color to this though, following are a few key elements of Intentionality that must have taken place with your prospect prior to a product demonstration occurring:

  • You taught them something about their business or industry (commercial teaching/insight), that they didn’t appreciate or anticipate before
  • You effectively led them to the center of their own story (Emotional Impact) and created a compelling need to change
  • You remained disciplined and left product/solution out of the discussion in stages 1 – 5 of the choreography

There is certainly more to it than these three areas, but these tend to be the primary areas where lack of intentionality and discipline show up in a rep’s process. That said, when a rep has effectively met the aforementioned criteria, the prospects are prepared to confirm their selection of you as their supplier once the demo is complete.

As a bit of an exaggerated visual picture for what this looks like, consider what the audience members looked like each time Steve Jobs was unveiling a new product. It was the Jerry McGuire version of, “You had me at ‘Hello’!” as the audience, both physical and virtual, has already said ‘yes,’ and are merely waiting to see what they have said yes to.

Repeatable Success Tip

Intentionality. Staying disciplined to the process, despite the prospect’s tendency to try to remain outside of their own story and talk about product requires tremendous intentionality on the rep’s part. In fact, for a great illustration on commitment to the process, see the following article on Zappos’ CEO, Tony Hsieh.

To practice intentionality in this area, consider doing the following. In your next conversation with a prospect, pay specific attention to how quickly you begin speaking about your own product/solution. It doesn’t matter if the prospect initiates discussion on product. If you engage and proceed to discuss your solution, prior to the other 5 stages of the choreography taking place it counts. Furthermore, it will typically cost you for reasons I will describe in my upcoming article on The Consequences of Introducing Solutions Prematurely.

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.

1 Easy Step to Shorter Meetings

Shorter MeetingsProblem: Habitual Thinking About Time
Think about a meeting you typically schedule for your team. How long do you schedule for the meeting? For sake of discussion, let’s assume it is an hour-long meeting. Is an hour really needed, or is scheduling an hour just a habit in thinking about time in 30-60 minute increments?

We have become accustomed to increments of time that are rounded off…and most often, rounded up to greater increments of time. For example, consider human behavior with New Year’s resolutions.

What is normally considered a goal, becomes a resolution because it was set on or around January 1. Then most people stick with it for as long as they can…typically a couple weeks…then say to themselves, “I will try harder next year.”

While we are accustomed to think habitually in terms of year-long resolutions, when what is really needed are week-long or even day-long resolutions. Why wait a whole year to make adjustments to what didn’t work after a few weeks.

Shorten your time increments. Similarly, when we schedule meetings, we tend to look in 60 minute blocks of time, when what really may be needed is 45 minutes or perhaps even 20.

Solution: Plan for Less

To Meeting Organizers – Reduce meeting time by 25% or more.Before scheduling your next meeting, first be a responsible organizer and do the following:

  • Ensure there are clear decision points
  • Communicate to all necessary attendees in advance of meeting
  • Determine how much time you think will be needed for the meeting
  • Then recognize you are thinking about time in traditional ways and reduce the time by at least 25%

This is counter-intuitive, but you will be amazed at how properly prepared attendees that know the meeting time is short, will focus in on the essential decision points. Longer meeting times suggest to the participants, that there is plenty of time, so settle in and pace yourself.

To meeting participants – Plan to leave early.
For your next scheduled meeting, let the meeting organizer know that you will have to step out [25% of the meeting] early (i.e., leave 45 minutes into an hour-long meeting).

  • Ask the meeting organizer to cover the key points while you are there
  • Identify a colleague to get a recap for the last 15 minutes missed
  • Congratulate yourself for taking intentional steps to reinvest valuable time
  • Recognize this is a short-term solution, so address it at the root by sharing these tips with others

I understand this is not possible for all meetings, particularly meetings that your supervisor called. In those instances, what you can do is share the concept you read here. Let them know these methods have increased staff productivity levels in excess of 25%. What supervisor would not be a fan of that?

“Less talking, more doing!”

This really works and puts valuable time back in your day, especially when you attend or hold multiple meetings each day. The result? Spend less time talking about what you will do and more time actually doing it.

Please share your successes in employing this technique. Also, if you have a favorite way to reduce meeting times…or meetings altogether, we’d love to hear about 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.

Can you guarantee your next hire is an ‘A’ player?

Hiring A-PlayersYour down a person and need to ensure you bring in a top-notch person to replace your exiting staff member. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 representing absolute certainty, what is your confidence level that your next hire will be an ‘A’ player? Have a number in mind? Good, what is it?

After asking this question of hiring managers for years, the responses I hear most often usually come in one of two forms:

  • They respond by saying, “It depends on the hiring pool…position…economy…time of year, etc.,” or
  • They provide a number between 6 and 9

To be candid, I only see an answer of ‘1’ or ’10’ as being acceptable, not a number in between, as I don’t subscribe to varying levels of confidence. You are either confident or you’re not.

Nevertheless, I have continued to ask the question intentionally in scale form because the answers serve as good indicators on how a person sees their role in the process. What I have found is that answering in either of the two aforementioned ways can suggest that they are unintentionally relegating themselves to a victim of circumstance in the hiring process.

So back to the question, what was your gut response to your confidence level? If less than 10, do you understand what created that seed of doubt? Perhaps it’s a history of mixed results in your hiring. If that’s the case, it is certainly understandable. Consider the results of two significant studies that had been conducted on success rates in hiring.

One study by John Hunter, Ph.D., at Michigan State University, showed that the interview is only 14% accurate in predicting a successful hire. Another study conducted by Harvard University concludes that nearly 80% of turnover is due to mistakes made in hiring.

With the odds against you, it stands to reason that to beat the odds, we need to be intentional in how we go about the process of creating repeatable successes in the hiring process.

To be clear, there is a lot that goes into excellent hiring, and I do not intend to cover all facets. Instead, I want to provide one specific area that can give you a quick start to immediately beating the odds.

The Problem…

Following are the three areas I most commonly see at the root of the problem:

  1. You don’t have interview questions prepared in advance for the position to be filled
  2. You have questions prepared, but they are not tied into the business processes that lead to excellent results
  3. You have questions and they are tied to your processes, but you don’t have specific responses that you are looking for

Further Diagnosis…

  1. No prepared questions in advance. This can suggest more of an ad hoc hiring process and approach and can leave hiring the right candidate to the luck of the draw. For people at this stage, you are likely to find that there is a lot of pressure and stress on you as you are not only scrambling to find a replacement for the exiting staff member, but you have a lot of administrative responsibilities added in addition to opening a job requisition, recruiting, screening, thinking up ‘good interview questions,’ etc.
  2. Questions not tied to known business processes.For the person in this second category, this most typically describes the hiring manager who has taken the time to prepare questions in advance. The problem that arises in this category is that while the questions are prepared in advance, they often times are developed with the filter of whatever the exiting person’s inadequacies were. For example, if the person that exited your organization was weak in reporting, the new interview questions will tend to be aimed at screening for reporting. This can distract from the larger issue of whether ‘reporting’ is central to the success of the role or a secondary issue. Another trait for this category is that questions are often crafted from the hiring manager’s perspective of what “good interview questions” are. You may like to ask, “What books have you read lately?” This may be interesting to know, but how does it tie to known processes that you are screening for to get the results you are after?
  3. Questions without answers. In this third category, this describes the person that has prepared questions in advance and has even drafted them in such a way that carefully asks about skills in areas known to contribute directly to the results you seek. So where is the problem? The most common problem I see for hiring managers in this area is that while they have specific questions they want to ask, they don’t have specific responses they are looking for. What ends up happening in an interview is a carefully scripted question gets asked of the candidate, and without knowing what a great response would be in advance, all you can do is decide based on a gut feel, if you like their answer and the way they answered. The problem with that is too often style trumps substance, since there was no sense of what the best answer should have been.

The Solution…

As you may have guessed, the answer to producing more intentional, repeatable hiring successes is to do the following:

  • Write down the business processes for the position that, when consistently followed, lead to excellent results
  • Identify the specific skills necessary for the position that map directly to the business processes
  • Develop situations or at a minimum, situational questions (e.g., “Tell about a specific time when…”) that provide you with direct demonstrations of the candidate’s level of competency in the skills you seek
  • Finally, predetermine what good responses would be to the questions asked, so you recognize a successful response when it comes

A final word of encouragement…While the process described above is simple, it is not easy to just whip this out if none of this has been identified. My encouragement is to invest the time now before it’s time to hire. Doing this process simultaneous with trying to rehire for a position is really tough. Perhaps that is the situation for some of you. Be diligent. Most opt out and just stick with the status quo of how they have always screened, interviewed and hired. I have seen this prove costly time and time again for many, highly competent leaders that didn’t invest the time up front to fortify their team with ‘A’ players.

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.

Do You Have the Right Decision Strategy?

Decision StrategyAs a business professional who has dedicated my career to identifying the behaviors that create intentional, repeatable results…or what I call Succeeding on Purpose, there is one area I see commonly connected with poor business results. That is in the area of decision strategy.

More specifically, this refers to the tendency of professionals to make decisions based upon current, unexpected results they encounter. On the other hand, those that consistently create intentional, repeatable successes expect occasional ‘losses’ and remain committed to their time-tested strategies and processes to guide their decision-making when a loss occurs.

Reams of materials have been written correlating successful companies with excellent decision-making processes, so no need to add to the contributions of legends like Jim Collins and Ram Charan. My aim is to provoke thinking around your own decision strategies and test how well they are working for you.

In Tony Hsieh’s book, Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose, he discusses how at one point he took up the game of poker and studied it intently to learn how to master the principles. Following is an excerpt from his learning experience:

“One of the most interesting things about playing poker was learning the discipline of not confusing the right decision with the individual outcome of any single hand, but that’s what a lot of poker players do. If they win a hand, they assume they made a right bet, and if they lose a hand, they often assume they made the wrong bet.”

One of the key points Tony drives at is that adjusting the bet based on an individual hand is a losing strategy because it is reactive. That type of short-term thinking often compromises longer-term results. Rather, it is better to be disciplined in making the right decision where the odds of winning are more favorable in the long run.

What does your decision strategy look like?

The principles that Tony articulated in his book are excellent, but as you may have perceived, if you don’t have the right decision strategy, then remaining disciplined to the wrong strategy and process can commit you to failure. That said, it is important to note that simply reacting to results is most typically the approach with the ‘poorest odds of winning.’

Not convinced? Consider it from this perspective – Imagine starting an exercise program. You know there are a myriad of exercises that can bring results, but you need to stick to the program in order to see results. If you simply use a mirror, which represents current circumstances and results, as the primary feedback of your results, you will likely react in the wrong ways based on what you see. That is simply because the mirror does not reflect the long-term results of what you are working towards. It merely reflects your present reality, and for many, they don’t like their present day reality. So they react to do something differently, thus disrupting any momentum that may have started to build.

How do I know if I have the right decision strategy?

As a basic litmus test to know if you have the right strategy, ask yourself this question…When I see things getting off track, how do I respond?

If your first response is to review your strategy for misalignment or derailment, that is an excellent sign. On the other hand, if you more typically find yourself reacting to circumstances or unexpected results (e.g., Missed a monthly sales goal,  weak marketing campaign response rate, etc.), without orienting to your strategy to calibrate what you are seeing in your present reality, you may respond prematurely and even inappropriately.

For example, I recently saw an organization struggling to recover from sales declines in one of its areas by switching strategies to start offering aggressive discounts to bolster sales for the current month. The results? Cannibalization of future customers. Sales from future months were borrowed for the current month’s performance result. My understanding is that the organization has yet to recover from the short-term decisions made many months earlier.

How do you respond when unexpected results occur in your business? Are you betting based on winning or losing the individual hand, or are you betting on the process that delivers success in the long-term?

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.

The Sales Athlete: Do You Warm Up or Play Cold?

Sales Call Warm UpHave you ever considered how a professional athlete may perform in a game if they never practiced first? For the golfer, this may look like no time spent at the driving range before tournaments….or no batting practice between games for the baseball player…No free throws for the basketball player…No blocking and tackling for the Football player, etc.

Sure, their natural talent may certainly kick in and mask a bad performance during the game, but would a truly great performance be a realistic expectation of the professional athlete without first practicing?

We are all likely to agree that it is not realistic. More likely, the initial inning, quarter or period played is likely to produce mediocre results, with performance increasing as they get warmed up in real-time.

See where I am headed with this? Consider how often the sales professional jumps into the game with no warm ups. For many sales professionals, they may inaccurately chalk the first few losses on sales calls or appointments as the customer being a poor fit or uninterested. What if in truth, it had everything to do with the rep jumping in cold to a situation in which the customer would later respond better to a ‘warmed up’ competitor?

In doing analysis on contact rates some time ago on each of my outbound sales teams, I noticed that our best contact rates were generally in the morning, though the conversion rates were lower. In digging further, I saw that typically, these peak contact rates for our markets, were within 30-45 minutes of the rep’s shift beginning. The inference was that during peak opportunities with prospects, we were using the calls for what I call ‘game-time warm ups.’

Sales Warm-Up Exercises

As a result, we began incorporating warm up routines that we call ‘batting practice’ into weekly sales meetings and daily sales rep’s routines to improve our batting average. While we vary the activity to adjust to where we are needing the most practice, here are a couple quick and easy examples to follow to incorporate into your own batting practice.

  1. Call yourself – Leave yourself a voice mail message with your most compelling point to provide value or a teaching point. Perhaps just a 30 second message that demonstrates credibility or adds value with reason to call back. See how you sound to yourself and determine if you would call yourself back. If not, refine and repeat.

  2. Pair share – This is a quick exercise to do with a peer in which you practice a specific skill, question or comment in areas you are likely to find yourself dealing with. Over time, you will find that the paired reps begin to give more open and honest feedback on what statements ‘compelled’ and what ‘repelled.’ After all,  they want the same type of feedback for themselves.

  3. Spontaneous Reframes – At the leader level, we work on spontaneously coming up with a unique point of view and reframe on common, everyday objects or situations. The goal of these exercises is to quickly identify what we want to teach, then do a warmer statement to establish credibility in the topic and end with a reframed way of thinking about the object or situation. At the leader level, we call this ‘Iron sharpening iron.’

Those are a few ideas from what we are doing. How about you? Do you use unique exercises to warm up your sales leaders and reps?

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.

Time Management: 15 Minutes Can Make or Break Your Day

15 Minutes a DayDo you ever find that you spend a good amount of time coming up with fantastic goals, that meet all the criteria of a S.M.A.R.T. goal and if achieved, would make a significant difference, but somehow you fail to give it the attention necessary each week and month to actually achieve it? If the answer is yes, it is a more common response than you might think.

I too, struggle now and then with this, and whenever I catch myself feeling “too busy to devote time to my goals,” I know where the problem is and what to do next. You may have systems that you use with success when this occurs and if so, great! However, if you are finding less success in your process, consider the following system. This is a system and practice I came up with based on some long-standing and timeless principles to address issues I was experiencing.

The process is what I call The First 15. The concept references the ‘first 15’ minutes of everyday that I dedicate to planning the most important things I can accomplish within a week’s time frame. While there are simply three primary steps to the plan, it is the last action I take that makes all the difference in my process. The process is as follows:

Step 1: Weekly Goals –I identify the top 2-3 goals that I should be focused on that are tied directly into and support my longer-term goals. I write these front and center at the top of the page.

Step 2: Daily Actions – This is important in making sure that the actions I will take Monday through Friday are not merely things-to-do, but are the most important things that will accomplish my weekly, monthly and longer-term goals.

Step 3: Schedule Actions – After having identified my weekly goals and the daily actions to achieve my weekly goal, I use my planning time each day to make sure I know specifically what time slot I will be working on these daily actions. I use a 1-page template that includes the following components:

  • Longer-term goals (1-3 years)  – These are written at the top of the page so that I am always orienting to those
  • Goals for the week – I identify specific actions to take this week to move closer to my longer term goals
  • Daily Tasks – Next is a 5 column table (M-F) that lists the specific actions I need to take to meet my daily tasks; I write the specific day I will do the task and the time I will do it using my Outlook calendar
  • Weekly Calendar – The last element on my 1-page goal planner is a screenshot of my Outlook calendar. I do this after planning when I have time for each daily task, then I schedule time for the task in Outlook with a reminder

By planning in advance specifically what is most important, what actions I need to take to accomplish the goals and when I will actually get this done, I find that my odds go from wishful thinking to success. At the core though, is my commitment and discipline in following the process.

Important to remember is, whether using this process, or any other, the process itself is less often the issue. More common is not having a process and self-discipline to follow your own process. Typically at the heart of these matters is a personal discipline to slow down and evaluate what has been done and how effective, or often times, how ineffective the actions taken were in producing results.

More common is the pursuit of activity to feel that we are actively pursuing the results we seek, which takes the form of sporadic bursts of activities for short periods. These activities result in feeling increased pressure for the goals you are not achieving and the rest of your responsibilities that seemingly take the back seat while you are busy “trying to accomplish your goals.” The result is ending up overwhelmed and exhausted.

Sound familiar? If so, consider evaluating your process and level of discipline in consistently following your process. You are likely to find the answers in this area.

One note of caution is that as you start any new process that is foreign to your daily/weekly routine, it is inevitably going to feel a bit onerous out of the gate. It will require focus and discipline to stick with the process and reorienting yourself to why you committed to taking more control of your success. The answer for why you are doing this, of course, is to establish a long-term structure for how to accomplish goals consistently. After all, a lot is at stake when you consider the consequence of repeatedly missing goals. What approach will you choose?

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.

Are You Succeeding on Purpose?

Repeatable Success

Guilty of accidental success?

Five words consume your every thought as you think to yourself, “I should have seen it coming!” But you didn’t.

Another sales forecast missed for the last reporting period and the revenue you thought would come in, simply didn’t. Instead, what came was the CEO’s invitation to meet with her about last quarter’s shortfall.

You were going in prepared with the four economic shifts affecting the whole industry that resulted in last quarter’s missed forecast. You rehearse the four talking points in your mind:

1. Tight budgets
2. Competitive landscape
3. Shifting consumer trends
4. Longer buying cycles

You are not only prepared, but convinced that these four areas are commonly understood and accepted conditions that the CEO can take to the board as the reasons for the continued declines.

As you walk into the CEO’s office, you notice the subtle, yet noticeable change in her disposition. Whereas recently, frustration ruled the day, today is different. You think to yourself, “Is she distracted? No, not distracted, but melancholic…or is that disappointment? Yes, disappointment. Or perhaps its…”

“Chris,” she says for the second time, interrupting your thoughts. The CEO wastes no time in delivering those five haunting words…”We are letting you go!” It’s funny how, when caught off guard, your mind goes to the strangest places. Instead of presenting your defense, you suddenly realize in a moment of clarity that she only uses “we” when “WE are having a good month”…or when “WE have to let someone go.” With the recent sales shortfalls, there has been no “WE are short of projections,” that’s for certain.

The rest of the 5-minute discussion–monologue, actually–is a blur. All that remains are the five words rattling around your head that you just can’t seem to shake…”We are letting you go.”

In the following days, you are less shocked by the decision as you knew this was a distinct possibility. What has really rattled you though, is that you remember the day you went from being the company’s ‘Golden-child’ to being incapable of hitting a single sales forecast for 6 consecutive months. You hadn’t done anything differently, and had kept the intensity high with your team, but you had no idea what truly caused the sales decline. What happened?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sound vaguely familiar? Thanks to a colleague sharing his story, this likely has a healthy dose of realism for a few of you. While the end of the story may be different for you, chances are you have had a change in the business environment in which you were no longer producing the same results that came easily only a quarter earlier.

The common question is, “What contributed to the sales decline?” The more appropriate question is, “What contributed to the success in the first place?”

Let’s be honest with each other for a minute. We ‘sales and marketing types’ are an interesting breed. For many of us, we are quick to claim it was our doing when things are going well. When performance declines, we are quick to look for, and point to conditions that created the performance issues. “It certainly wasn’t my fault!”

For these exact reasons, this website was created to help the executive level leaders down to the front-line reps ‘Succeed on Purpose!’ That’s right, succeed on purpose – an operating philosophy and principle I developed over the last two decades. In other words, it is the process of creating Intentional, Predictable and Repeatable Success. Watch for my book, ‘Are You Creating Repeatable Successes?,’ in the near future.

I encourage you to not only be a reader and consumer of the concepts, methodologies and recommendations, but also a contributor. The incentive? First, it is better to give than receive. Secondly, for a select few that contribute meaningfully to the discussions and posts, I may very well use you as a contributor in my book…only with your written consent, of course.

Enjoy!

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.