Jun/101
Balance, imbalance and the right things to (not) do
“…his purpose is to balance the equation. My purpose, is to unbalance it.”
- The Oracle to Neo (paraphrased), The Matrix Revolutions (part 3)
In his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, Stephen Covey tells a story about his daughter and balance. It comes after he discusses the need for balance in life. In a tip-of-the-hat to the kind of seemingly contradictory concepts that make Eastern philosophy paradoxically beautiful and baffling for many Westerners, he concludes his discussion of balance with a caveat about imbalance.
In the story, the younger Covey becomes pregnant and has her first child. In an effort to be true to the principles that she learned from her father, she struggles to maintain balance in her life. For those of you that have had children, you know that this can be an impossible goal. Very young children are by design highly demanding of the time and energy of their caregivers, and when the caregiver is also the parent, then the emotional connection and often sleepless nights of a new parent make these first months in the life of a new child simultaneously blissful and tortuous (hmm, another paradox).
So the young Covey comes to her father, disappointed in her lack of ability to find her balance, and seeking his advice for how to find it again. Here, Mr. Covey, who has no shortage of wisdom, shines with some of the wisest advice one could imagine.
He tells his daughter that balance is a good thing. When life is in balance, then all of the important elements of life are honored and managed well. But sometimes, life gives us special circumstances. Sometimes a project or opportunity comes up that requires full focus and attention for a sustained period of time. Full focus and attention are not incompatible with balance, in fact, quite the contrary. Ultimately, we should strive for full focus and attention in each immediate moment, and balance in the larger schema. However, in some circumstances, full focus and attention for a sustained period of time can be incompatible with balance, and sometimes rejecting balance at these times is exactly the right thing to do.
Having a new child is often not a time for balance. It is a time for sustained, single-minded focus. In this case, balance becomes subservient to immersion in a task so important and consuming that not being in balance is completely appropriate.
So what does all of this have to do with you (the reader), me (the writer) and the sales process (the usual subject of this blog)?
Well, I am not having a child now (neither is my wife;). However, in a session of focused reflection and deliberation facilitated by the confines of a transatlantic flight, I have decided that this summer is a good time for me to accept some imbalance.
I have three major projects on my plate this summer, including the development of my second book on management of the sales organization. Towards the goal of focusing on these key tasks, I have decided to cut out some regular items from my schedule for the next few months. One of them will be the weekly posting of this blog.
I will return to blogging in September. I’ll tell you more about the book then.
In the meantime, please continue to work on a process orientation towards the important things in your life, and at the same time, remember that becoming a slave to a process is not the same as being effective. Meditate on that, and have a great summer.
-David Masover
June 15, 2010
May/101
The dumbest thing I ever heard a smart guy say
I have had the good fortune to have worked in a few different start ups. One of the things that I really like about this kind of work environment is the lack of silos. In larger organizations, most departments (sales, marketing, finance, operations, etc.) get partitioned to some extent from other departments. In early stage start ups, there is literally and figuratively no room for that.
It’s interesting for a “sales guy” like me to get to sit next to the caliber of accountant or engineer that is drawn to and accepted in a start up environment. Often, we can learn a lot from each other. Sometimes, we get to see how deep knowledge in one arena can mask pretty dumb ideas in others.
For example…..
I was working in a technology start up a few years ago. I had helped the company to raise seed capital, and I stayed on to help with some key negotiations. One of the other guys on the start up team was an engineer with a very impressive resume. So impressive, that about six months into the start up, he got an offer that he could not refuse from a Fortune 100 company. We were sad to see him go, but he was smart to take the job.
During the few weeks between the time that he accepted the job and left for it, he and I were in the office one day. He knew that I worked as a business consultant (among other things), so he asked me if I had ever heard of a specific kind of management process. I had not, and asked him what problem he was trying to solve by learning more about that specific process.
He told me that his experience in the past was managing engineers. This new job put him into a position to manage the managers of engineers, which he had never done before. We talked for a while about some of the challenges he might be facing, and I suggested a few books from my personal library that I would be happy to loan him.
His response was the impetus for this blog. He said:
“David, if I needed to read a book in order to do this job better, then I would not be the right person for this job.”
I was speechless. When I finally came to my senses, I told him that this was the dumbest thing I ever heard him say. As I have reflected back on this over the years, I realize that this attitude is, unfortunately, not unique.
How can it be that it seems natural for doctors and lawyers (among other professionals) to be required to have continuing education, but business managers don’t feel the same need? Now there are certainly a lot of people buying business books or magazines, listening to podcasts and audio books, reading blogs, etc., but in spite of the large numbers doing such things, it seems frighteningly easy to meet people who don’t even consider keeping themselves up to date and full of new ideas.
In sales, this is particularly foolish. I maintain that at a lot of levels, there is nothing new in sales. However, sales is an interpersonal skill, and there are always things to learn or to be reminded of that can help close more deals, close them faster, qualify them better, etc.
In sales, when you do something better, you often give yourself a raise (if you have a good compensation plan). In spite of this, most salespeople I meet, and most I have worked with, scoff at the idea of trying anything other than what they have always done.
Abraham Lincoln is famous for saying, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe”. Stephen Covey use this same idea as his seventh habit of highly effective people. If you assume that you know everything there is to know about being effective in your work, well, you are just making a proverbial ass out of yourself.
Don’t be an ass. Don’t be reactive. Don’t come into work, chase your messages, tweets and voice mails and come up with the same results you always have. Rather, follow the advice of Lance Armstrong:
“Ride your strengths, train your weaknesses”.
Whatever you need to improve on, there is a book, a blog or something on the back end of a Google search to help you. Take the time to sharpen your saw, and go after that bigger tree.
If there is no-one there to hear it fall… well, we can save that for another post.
May/101
What my friend and I learned about (sales) process by doing the dishes.
Lessons in life can come from funny places. Sometimes, we don’t even realize the point of the lesson until years – even decades later.
I was doing the dishes last week, and I was reminded of just this – a lesson that a college roommate and I shared about process that we learned by doing the dishes, some 23 years ago! So here is that short story, the lesson we learned, and how it applies to your potential for success in sales.
When friends live together in college, doing the dishes can often become a source of tension (especially when they don’t get done). When it was my turn to do the dishes, I had a style that was different than that of my friend, so of course, he gave me a hard time about it.
His method was to fill the sink with all of the dirty dishes, pour in some soap and water, and fish around for dishes in the grungy water while struggling to find room between the top of the dish pile and the faucet to rinse each dish after washing it.
My method was to first rinse off all of the gunk, then put all of the dishes on the counter, and fill the sink with a small amount of clean, soapy water. I then gave each gunk-free dish a quick swoosh through the “bath”, and rinse it.
So my friend teased me about this multi-step process of mine until one day, he came up to me out of the blue, and said, “hey, I tried that rinse first method of yours, and it was a lot faster than my way”.
Wow. That kind of admission just doesn’t happen too often between 20-something college guys! Now this blog post isn’t really about the dishes, so let’s not get hung up on what might be the best way to do the dishes. It is about process and preparation, so let’s move things along in that direction!
Much like my college friend before his dish-process enlightenment, my co-workers used to often tease me about the time I took to map out a task list at the end of each day so that my work was organized for the next day. In spite of the teasing, I typically sold more than most of them, and went home earlier each day.
Hmmmmmmm.
Sense a patter here? Let’s try a few more:
- When I train and consult, I suggest that an introduction call script be prepared, printed and practiced before the first introduction call is made.
- When I consult around negotiations, I spend more time than my client expects fleshing out the position of OUR side: what we really want (interests); what we are willing to do without; and where we will walk away (BATNA).
- When I do the dishes, as you now know, I first get the gunk off of the plates before I break out the soap.
The point is the same in all of these cases
The point is that the execution of your work (an introduction call, a negotiation, the dishes) can be made more efficient and effective if you take the time to properly set up the work before you start doing it (working on a script; identifying the position of your own side; scrapping the gunk).
Lessons in life come from funny places. Many of the best lessons wind up being the kind of thing your grandmother would say – simple, effective, non-sexy, non-glamorous – but they work.
- The nutrition community cites expensive studies that suggest you should eat more vegetables.
- The health community commissions expensive studies and declares that a few drinks a day is not so bad, and might even be helpful (everything in moderation, says Grandma).
- Old expressions like “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” make us roll our eyes when we hear it from the older generation. But by golly, they just turn out to be true nonetheless.
So scrape your gunk: work out an effective selling system before you go out to sell, sell more effectively, and then go tell grandma that she was right all along.
May/100
Sales and Negotiation
Last week, I wrote about the difference between sales and marketing. The point of the article was to take these two ideas that often get mixed together, and draw a clear line where one activity stops and the other starts.
These kinds of definitions are important for the same reason that a sales process is important: If you want to be effective, then it is helpful to have a clear idea of where you are in any given situation, to know where you should be going and to know how to best get there. Taking the time to get your bearings and doing so within well defined frameworks will make these endeavors more efficient and effective.
One other set of words that often gets mixed together is sales and negotiation. Let’s take a look at these two activities, shed some light on the differences between them, and look at when and how to consider each one. Let’s start with some definitions:
Definition of Sales: I think of sales as an endeavor of persuasive communication, executed one-on-one or in a relatively small group
Sales Key Concept: Generally speaking, salespeople are successful when they successfully seek to understand the compelling reasons for which a prospect will take action toward buying the product or service offered by the salesperson
Definition of Negotiation: I think of negotiation as a conversation between two or more parties about the details of working together. It takes place after a general agreement about all of the sides wanting to work together. Negotiations can derail that idea, but this is where the details of working together are fleshed out and agreed to (or not)
Negotiation Key Factor: A negotiation is likely to be successful for a given party in the negotiation if the interests of their side are well understood and the walk-away point (BATNA) is both clearly defined and adhered to
In the sales process as defined in my book Mastering Your Sales Process, Negotiation is half of step 6 out of 7 (“Objections and Negotiations” is the single step before the last step of “Securing the Deal”). This placement in the process is critical to a proper understanding of what negotiation really is, and when it is appropriate. It is also indicative of where most people fail with negotiation.
If we look back at the definition of negotiation, there is an implication that negotiation happens when two parties have already decided to work together in general principle. The negotiation is about working out the details. Deals can certainly fall apart in negotiations, and the details are important, often hugely significant. What is important to remember is that the negotiations can’t start until a basic agreement to work together has been established.
Let’s look at an example of how NOT recognizing the proper place of a negotiation within the context of a sales process can derail the negotiation and the sales process itself. See if this sounds familiar:
You walk into the office of a prospect to initiate a complex sales discussion. You have never met this prospect before, or anyone from their company. As you sit down and begin your work of getting to know the prospect, their needs and their ability to buy, the client interrupts you and says:
“Listen, let’s just save some time here – how much does it cost.”
Now price is a certainly component of negotiation, but it is based on value. In this example, there has been no opportunity to establish value. Value is a function of needs. There has been no chance to establish needs. So what can you do?
If you offer a price at this time, you are attempting to negotiate before both sides have a chance to decide that there is an interest in working together, and you are likely to lose. To be successful in sales, negotiation skills are important. However, of equal or perhaps even greater importance is knowing when to negotiate, or even if you should negotiate.
You will improve your likelihood of success if you can help the customer understand that you offer different solutions for different problems, and each solution has a different pricing model. Based on this, what makes sense, then, is to understand the needs of the client (part of selling) before getting into negotiations about price (part of negotiation).
For a simple example, imagine waling into an auto repair shop and saying “my car won’t start, how much will it cost to fix it?”. The ONLY possible answer is some variation on the theme that the price can’t be determined until there is more information about the nature of the problem and the solution required to fix it.
It is much easier to get to your destination if you know where you are, know where the destination is, and know the steps to get there.
So to be successful in your sales negotiations, map your sales process, know where negotiation fits, and don’t go there too early. If you have not established value by uncovering needs, and you have not set your own limits about what makes sense for you as a walk-away point, then you’ll be hard pressed to get to a good solution, and to a successful conclusion of your negotiation.
May/103
Sales and Marketing: Where to draw the line and why it matters.
Last month, I was conducting a sales training focusing on the sales process as outlined in my book, Mastering Your Sales Process. Near the end of the training, one of the participants asked why I didn’t spend time talking about marketing driven sales models, and how their company can use marketing to get the client to pick up the phone and call them, already pre-disposed to the product they are selling?
From a macro perspective, the perspective of generating revenue for the business, it is not a bad question. The problem with the question is that it confuses the appropriate role of marketing, branding, PR and the like with sales. I see this issue come up a lot, so let me post on the differences here, and a way for our friend at the training to think about the result he wants to get in the context of what is happening at his company.
NOTE: These are my definitions, and they are simplified towards to goal differentiating between sales and marketing. If you feel that there is something that really needs to be added to these definitions in this context, please do leave a comment.
Definition of Marketing: I think of marketing as an endeavor in which single messages are broadcasted to a single, large group. There may be multiple single messages going to multiple groups, but the basic “unit of currency” is a focused message going out in bulk to a group. Interactive marketing and social media marketing make the complexity and execution more nuanced, but even there, if it is a message going to a group, it is marketing
Marketing Key Concept: Marketers are successful when they understand the aggregate hot buttons of a target audience, the best medium through which to reach each audience and the appropriate messaging strategy for both the audience and the medium
Definition of Sales: I think of sales as an endeavor of persuasive communication, executed one-on-one or in a relatively small group
Sales Key Concept: Generally speaking, salespeople are successful when they successfully seek to understand the compelling reasons for which a prospect will take action toward buying the product or service offered by the salesperson
So why does all of this matter, and where does this leave the guy from the training?
After he asked his question, I asked him to imagine the phone call he believes that marketing can help to materialize. We had just gone through the seven step sales process as laid out in my book (Leads, Prospecting, Qualifying, Needs Analysis, Proposal, Objections and Closing). I asked him to identify where we were in the process at the time this marketing generated phone call was received.
In this context, the answer was clear: as soon as the person called, we had a lead – someone we could talk to about buying our product. That was about it. Marketing, branding, PR and the like might have made the person more positively pre-disposed towards our product or service, but the prospect is still a lead, nothing more, regardless of their pre-disposition.
Prospecting, where we ask permission to discuss the needs of the client had not happened.
Qualifying, where we find out if the person we are talking to is both able to and likely to buy had not happened.
We had not done a needs analysis, or made a proposal, or answered objections, or closed the deal.
Now it is possible that if the company receiving the marketing generated inquiry was selling a book, a boxed software product, a toy, or some other physically well defined commodity, the caller might call in based on the marketing and said “hey, I read about your stuff – please send some to me”. In this case, there is no need to go through all of the steps.
But the training was not for a company that sold books, etc. Most people who read blogs like this are selling something that requires them to engage with their prospects in order to understand the needs, and the circumstances that might surround a sale before an offer can be made and certainly before a deal can be consummated. This is often called a complex sale, and sales has to do some stuff to convert initial interest – however it was generated – into a signed deal.
So in this case, marketing was able to generate a lead. Perhaps a qualified lead, perhaps an enthusiastic lead, perhaps a lead inclined to take action – but according to our definition of sales and marketing, just a lead. Once the lead is generated, then all of the “sales stuff” needs to happen to get the prospect through to a close. This work – the sales process – is typically NOT the job of marketing.
This may all seem a bit semantic, but it is important to know where you are in the process, who is who, who does what, and what a name on a piece of paper or on the other end of the phone really means. You may get a call one day from someone who is totally turned on by your product based on what they read in an advertisement, or a blog, or in a review, or from a friend. But they are a lead – and if you are selling a product with ANY level of complexity at all, you will need to do the sales work to carry them through to the end.
This is easier to do if you recognize this truth, along with the sales related limits of even the most effective marketing, in a sales environment that is even the least bit complex.
Apr/100
(Lack of) Motivation and the Sales Process
I have been pretty unmotivated lately. Some stuff came up in my personal life at just the time work got busy, and I started a new intensive Hungarian class. Perfect!
But this isn’t the first time that distractions from my personal life have crept into my professional life, and I am not the only one this happens to. It happens to all of us at one time or another:
- Your lover leaves you the night before a big meeting;
- Your kid gets really sick while your spouse is traveling, there is no babysitter, and you are trying to meet your goal for the end of the month or quarter;
- or something longer term comes up that just saps the energy and motivation from you.
Sometimes you can take the bull by the horns, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, stiffen your upper lip or apply one of those other spiffy expressions that imply that you can just suck it up and work through the problem.
Sometimes you can’t.
Sometimes, you get hit hard enough, that something has to give in order to compensate. But what?
Every day, everything you do is important, right? You are busy every day because you assign value to the things you do – if you could easily give something up, you probably would have already. So what are you going to do?
Hi – David Masover here – I’m the sales process guy – and guess what – a well defined and well executed sales process can help here too. Now before you roll your eyes, hear me out. I’m the admittedly unmotivated one here – so cut me some slack – will ya?
The opposite of a process-driven selling system is reactive, random effort. When your effort is random and reactive, it is hard to know what to adjust when an adjustment needs to be made.
Have you ever watched a lottery drawing in which numbered balls fly around in an air-blasted plastic sphere? If you don’t have a well defined sales process, then your tasks probably look like those numbered balls to you – a random scattering of individual items on a long to-do list (or in a big fish bowl – to each his own!).
On the other hand, if you are disciplined about your sales process, then these individual tasks fit into a larger framework. If this is the case for you, you are better able to make adjustments when you need to.
Perhaps you can eliminate one of multiple prospecting methods you use for a while, or accelerate a needs analysis process in the deals you have in the pipeline. Perhaps you can see that given the time of the month / quarter / year and your goal for that period, you can accurately calculate your progress and likelihood for success such that in one part of your process can be cut back for a few days or weeks until you get back on track.
When you organize your work in a disciplined way, you create the opportunity to see your work at the macro-level as well as at the micro level. This is not to say that your problems will go away because you have a well-defined and well-managed sales process. But having one will help with the management of your LIFE, into which your sales work needs to find a comfortable and successful place to fit.
A well defined and executed sales process is the cure to a lot of common sales problems. If there are some things in your life outside of sales that are impacting your effectiveness on the job, your sales process won’t fix those problems, but it will allow you to manage the professional part of your life more effectively than if you spend your days chasing numbered balls.
Or you could just go play the lottery – I am told you have the same chance of winning whether you buy a ticket or not!
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Hi, this is David. I hope you have liked the article and if you have any comments, please do contribute. If you would like to try the first 30% of my book “Mastering Your Sales Process” free, please click here to leave your e-mail address – I’ll send it to you right away.
Mar/100
Guest Post: Stay Focussed, Boost Productivity & Enjoy What You Do
For sales people, ‘To Do Lists’ are not a useful tool in today’s hectic, information-rich, competitive business environments. Here’s an alternative:
1. Spend 10 minutes every morning planning the day!
We know it makes sense – but we rarely do it properly. Spending just 10 minutes in the morning reviewing our main business objectives and personal goals, then physically writing out a maximum of 3 or 4 results (not tasks!) we want to absolutely achieve by the end of the day, is essential for keeping us focused. Just as important, is the reason WHY we want to achieve the result i.e. what it will mean to us personally (£) as well as professionally – this keeps motivation high when times get challenging.
2. Learn the art of the 80/20 Principle!
According to Pareto’s famous law, most of us spend 80% of our time working on things that will only ever give us 20% of the results we’re looking for. This includes: doing tasks others have passed to us; trying to clear a ‘To Do List’ (because it makes us feel a sense of achievement); and avoiding difficult tasks by distracting ourselves watching news and/or unimportant emails etc. Instead, try prioritizing during the 10 minute planning sessions, batching up similar or related tasks, and delegating or simply deleting more ‘stuff’ – remember simplicity and clarity is power.
3. Spend 10 minutes after work reviewing the day!
It’s easy to get so engrossed in our businesses that we forget to take time out to reflect. By investing just 10 minutes at the end of the day to recap on what we’ve achieved, what we’ve learnt and any great moments we experienced, we stay more motivated. We’re also able to switch off before returning home to connect with family and friends – the basic human need that should be behind why we do what we do in the first place.
Free download: Healthy Habits Guide
For loads of resources check out: www.healthysalesexec.com
Jan/100
How the talk inside of your head is hurting your sales
Do you remember what it was like when you first learned to drive a car? How about riding a bike? Using a computer for the first time?
If you remember your early experiences with these things, then you may remember what was going on inside of your head at that time, and how different that is from what goes on inside of your head now as you do these same (presumably now familiar) things.
When we first learn something that requires a lot of concentration and/or that has a lot of “moving parts”, we tend to talk to ourselves a lot. We feed ourselves reminders about what we need to remember as we go through the mechanics of executing the task at hand.
“OK, check the mirrors, put the gear shift into ‘drive’ – no wait, first push the break….”
“OK, single click the ‘start’ button; highlight ‘applications’; select ‘Word’; click the ‘file’ menu and click on ‘new’….”
After a short time, these things become routine. Part of the “background operating program” in your mind. Now you pull the car our while talking on the phone, sipping your coffee, or checking your makeup. You open a new word document as you multitask through 10 other things both on and off of your computer screen.
I am not a fan of multitasking, but I’ll save that rant for another post. My point now is that when you have achieved a certain level of comfort with the set of steps involved in accomplishing a task, then you are able to execute that task with a greater level of attention.
Wait a minute, what? Shouldn’t that be a smaller amount of attention? I just said that instead of concentrating on the steps, we can now concentrate on other things as the mechanical actions are run in the background?
That is not the right perspective – here is why. If your attention is focused on the minutia of your execution, then you are not fully present for the larger experience of getting your task done. For example, if you are backing out your car, and you are focussed on the minutia of the mechanics, it is easier to miss the fact that someone just walked behind your car.
So how does this all tie back to sales and selling? As you undoubtedly know by now, I attribute a lot of the elements of sales success back to the development of and the proper execution of a well-developed sales process.
With respect to this concept then, the salesperson who operates with confidence within the framework of a well-developed process is able to concentrate on “other things” as the mechanical elements of selling operate quietly and predictably in the background. If properly applied, these “other things” should include actively listening to the prospect; taking copious notes about the conditions and concerns of the prospect; floating trial solutions and noting the degree to which they resonate with the prospect – and why or why not – according to the prospect, etc.
In contrast, a salesperson who does not have a clear path, who does not have a visceral feel for the next steps and interconnected nature of the full sales process at a near unconscious level will spend his or her mental energy worrying about the right way to respond to the remarks of the client, as opposed to “effortlessly” arriving at their next strategic move by better understanding the needs of their conversational counterpart.
Samurai warriors aspired towards a mental state of what is called Mu Shin – or no mind. This served them well when they fought another Samurai. These fights usually played out as both Samurai standing in a fighting position, with swords drawn and ready, and within striking distance of each other for perhaps hours. The first Samurai that moved (due to less mental strength and stamina) often revealed an opening which the other exploited, usually with deadly consequences.
These Samurai would not have been well served to stand in their fighting position thinking about all of the possibilities that might confront them. They were successful if they “owned” that information, and were able to tune out that internal noise in exchange for a keen awareness of the present moment.
You as a salesperson need to own your sales process, and the steps and elements that comprise it. In this way, you will be able to stick to your path, and remain engaged with your opponent (prospect) in a way that leads you to the best result. An informed position, free from internal noise, that allows you to direct the course of action forward as is most applicable based on your observations and your internal knowledge.
The alternative, all too common, is a course of client engagement clouded by internal noise, which is a function of a lack of discipline about how to properly do the job of professional sales, and how to manage the sales process that you move through with each and every client.
Jan/100
Back to basics (part 2 of 2)
In the last post (part 1), I began to discuss the problem of information overload out-of-context for the sales newbie trying to learn the craft of selling from the blogsphere. Simultaneously, I addressed the problem of the veteran who can’t replicate success because the path to success is not known or fully understood.
In this post, we will address a solution: For those of you who know me well, or know of my book “Mastering Your Sales Process” (available on Amazon in February 2010), you know that the solution is based on a process-oriented, systematic approach to the sometimes (often) seat-of-the-pants approach that most sales people – new and veteran – take to their craft.
Sales has the potential to be a very high paying career, so why do so many practitioners refuse to study and systematize their execution? In my opinion, it is because there are VERY few resources sales people have with which to see their craft in any kind of macro, holistic way.
Most sales books, blogs, trainings, etc. focus on a few techniques, or a limited scope. This makes sense, as many authors write from what they know; what has worked for them specifically. This is not wrong or bad, just as any single piece of a puzzle is not wrong or bad. It is just not complete. A better resource for those looking for streamline and systematize success is one with a full-framework perspective.
The newbie needs a structure in which to put the new pieces of information that come in from both study and experience.
The veteran needs to be able to look at the things that have worked for them, and organize them into a set of replicable selling steps and skills that can be applied as needed to new business opportunities in their current job, or in a new sales job that they decide to pursue.
In my blog post on strategy versus execution, I emphasize the need to develop the strategy well before blindly executing. The newbie and the veteran salesperson alike will benefit from a well defined sales process, within which their execution can achieve the velocity possible from correct practice and effort over time.
I have been accused of being a broken record about sales process. I am guilty of that, but in my defense, it is the core of my personal success, the success of my trainees, and now of my readers. Give it a try. Give yourself a raise. You can, if you want to (and you do something about it!).
Dec/091
Strategy Versus Execution
It is that time of year again. After the holiday buzz wears off, many people look ahead to the New Year and vow to make it a better one. Some of these resolutions will be personal, and some professional. Many of these resolutions will not make it past Valentines day. Many won’t make it past the first week of January.
One thing that derails many well intentioned resolution makers is the relationship between strategy and execution. For the sake of this blog, let’s use simple definitions here: Strategy is what you plan to do, and execution is actually doing it. So where is the problem?
The problem comes when these two elements of a plan are done simultaneously. What usually happens is that someone may decide to try something different (such as implementing the sales process strategies from my book “Mastering Your Sales Process”). The planning part is usually not more that a vague idea about how to get started, then the execution begins. Because the plan was not well thought through ,the execution is not done well, and even when a step is done well, the next step is not clear.
I don’t mean to imply that every step can be planned out in minute detail, every contingency planned for and every possibility considered. People who err too far on this side can be rightly accused of paralysis by analysis. For them, the problem is that they never get to execution.
But the other side of the spectrum is also a problem. Failure to take time to adequately map out a strategy and give consideration to the end result, the paths that may get you there and the correct tactics to use throughout the execution of the strategy will also lead to failure.
Strategy and execution should be iterative, but distinct. Map a strategy, then execute it. Learn from your execution, refine your strategy, then execute the refined strategy. The difference seems subtle but it is not. Separate strategy and execution. Don’t do them together. When you make a strategy, do just that, then execute it. You may need to adjust mid-stream in your execution, so then AFTER you are done executing, change back into your strategy hat and refine the plan before switching hats again for execution.
It is analogous to writing and editing. Both need to get done in order to write well, but the activity comes from different parts of your brain. Your brain will write slower if you edit as you go, and your editing will not be focussed if you work on writing at the same time. In this same way, separate strategy and execution so that they dance together like separate partners, not mix together like the gin and tonic you drank too much of on New Years Eve.
Happy New Year, and best wishes for all of your hopes, dreams and resolutions!
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