If someone is interested in going where you are going, you don’t have to hustle them, you don’t have to say this is where we are going. For example, you don’t need persuade people who you think might want to go to Cape Verde. What you need is to find the people who want to go to Cape Verde and then let them know, that’s where you are going.
Game changers
“Heroes don’t need to fit in. Heroes are willing to risk criticism to dare to break a social norm that needs breaking.”
Listen to the minority voice
I attended the Presidents Summit in Copenhagen on Monday, and I have now had time to reflect on how fortunate I was to be invited to this wonderful event. I was grateful for both the auditory and visual inputs from Linda Hill (Professor and Faculty Leader at Harvard Business School), Itay Talgam (Conductor and Leadership expert), Henrik Andersen (CEO, Vestas), Robert Waldinger (Professor at Harvard Medical School), Ashley Whilans (Professor at Harvard Business School), Daniel Pink (Author and Human Behaviour expert), Neil Strauss (Author) and Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez (Project Management expert). It's our nature as human beings to only remember 20% of what we hear and only 30% of what we see, however we remember 50% of what we both see and hear.
Linda Hill left us with some exciting questions:
1. How much time do you spend on ”coulds” and ”shoulds”?
2. How do you encourage diversity of thought?
3. How do you get people to view reasonable missteps and intelligent failures as learning opportunities?
4. How do you ensure that people don’t compromise to quickly – as opposed to working through differences – when making decisions?
5. Are you developing talent to be value creators and game changers
6. Is your team collaborative ready?
Hear and react
I think that if you want your business to run effectively one of the best investments you can make for your staff is repeated training. Training enables you to set and raise the standards of staff performance and proactively prepare them for difficult situations. For training to be effective, it has to be repetitive so that important concepts are constantly reinforced and reiterated. In my experience the best training for your sales and marketing teams is via workshops, as this will give them the opportunity to try out techniques before having to react to unfamiliar situations in real life and therefore increasing the chance of success. Contact me via e-mail for tailor made workshops for your organisation.
Sharing information across your campaigns
The idea that we can look somebody in the eyes and engage with them is scary for many people. When you work in sales and marketing this behaviour is the bare minimum of expected of you. Many organisations spend loads of money marketing their various products yet often their marketing strategies aren’t connected to one another, instead they use isolated campaigns without any formal unities. Why are they doing that? I think you should start correlating all of your marketing activities by streamlining your marketing strategy and messaging, as this will increase their effectiveness and put you in the spotlight for potential customers. Contact me via e-mail if you would like an evaluation of how to create a more unified marketing message for your organisation.
Game changers
Please explain how you make companies survive and thrive?
When I go to your website, subconsciously my brain is looking for ways for your product or service will help me survive and thrive, for example, save time, simplify my life, make money, purchase, reduce risk, organise information, connect with a tribe, etc. I think that when you attach a survival trigger to your product or service the perceived value will go through the roof. And if you can do it in a way that your customer does not have to burn too many calories when trying to understand how you can make them survive, it works even better.
Perceived value
Affordable luxury in simple terms means that luxurious products within the financial reach of a much larger buying segment than for example, in the case of Louis Vuitton or Chanel. In the past, luxury meant exclusive and privilege to the wealthy. Luxury has always reflected one’s personality, but nowadays luxury has become accessible. As luxury begins to target the younger population there will be a movement towards sub-labels and diffusion ranges, for example, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Armani Exchange, McQ, See by Chloe, etc. Sometimes there is very little differentiation on the product and quality fronts, but in most cases the logo and communication can create a perception of luxury.
Sunday mantra
Our minds are a center of Divine operation and Divine operation means expression into something better than has gone before. To get good results we must properly understand our relation to the great impersonal power we are using. It is intelligent and we are intelligent, and the two intelligences must cooperate.
Leading through the fog
Do you think that the market rewards people who are seen as have paid their dues?
I think those of us who have come onto the other side after a dip or misfortune are the ones who seem to be the best at what they do. For example, I don’t just listen to your words, I listen to your tone, I observe your body movements, your eyes, and facial expressions. I interpret your silence and I hear everything that you don’t say, and all these skills are learned behaviour. Whether you or I can turn this skillset into a revenue stream is a whole other question.
“Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”
E is for evidence
What happens when you take time to appreciate and be thankful for those who have contributed to the abundance in your organisations?
I think that if you create an evidence-based mindset by using empirical evidence and value-based metrics. According to my dictionary the word evidence means ‘one or more reasons for believing that something is or is not true.’ So, to answer your question, perhaps it would be a good idea to include non-digital metrics and those measuring the strength and health of the organisation as well as short term data sets.
U is for understanding
How do you scale the understanding of value creation across your organisation?
I think that it’s better to understand something than it is to know it. Sales and marketing teams must demonstrate the ability to collaborate and partner effectively with finance as improved financial literacy will enable stronger strategic debates. Working with finance and the rest of the leadership team is central to fulfilling your commercial objectives whether you are a start-up or a multi-national organisation. Contact me via e-mail for training and understanding workshops for effective sales and marketing teams.
L is for language
What does the EBITDA abbreviation mean to you?
EBITDA means ‘earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation’, and this is how an organisation’s overall financial performance is measured. Do you use the language of business and of value creation? I think it’s time for marketing teams to move away from marketing jargon and encourage more discussions. Marketing teams should use their insight skills to communicate more effectively with the internal stakeholders, as this is about building relationships.
A is for accountability
As debate rages about restarting economies, one critical element is absent from discussion. In his Harvard Business Review article, Joseph Grenny suggests that the heart of a high reliability culture is immediate peer accountability. The predictor of our success or failure will have less to do with when businesses open their doors and more to do with how often people open their mouths. I think greater transparency is needed to generate respect, trust and support. Do you accept accountability for the actions of your organisation and for their metrics of value creation?
V is for value
Do you understand how value is created within your organisation and how it is created for your customers? This requires understanding of the value of long-term brand building and the communication of its commercial benefits for your financial team regardless of whether you are a start-up or a multi-national organisation.
“A fool is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”
Show me what could have been better
What is the key to a performance-based profession?
I think that in sales it’s all about how well you perform in the eyes of the customers. The customers are the audience, and they are the only thing which matters in the big scheme of things. The customers are the receivers of our communication, and all communication is performance regardless of whether it is written, oral or visual, it’s all a performance.
How well do you perform?
It’s not just the words, it’s the tonality and inflection, it’s the timing, it’s a whole sequence of things and it may seem overwhelming at the beginning, but we still must do it. The repetitions, the feedback, that learning cycle which we all must go through if we want to move from good to great. Contact me via e-mail if you are ready to speak to someone who has no emotional attachment in your deals.
Familiarity vs. Awareness
I have found it really useful to find out everything about a company or organisation before I have a meeting with them. We are taught that knowledge is power, well if that was the case then why are all researchers not millionaires? Disclaimer: This is not to say that the only measure of success is financial. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, knowledge is defined as ‘facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.’ I think this is because knowledge is potential power but it’s not power in that sense of the word. Knowledge has to be properly organised and intelligently directed for it to be explicit (theoretical) or implicit (practical). How will this help you personally or professionally?
“When you do not seek or need approval, you are at your most powerful.”
Giving back
Before the pandemic, I was what one would call a frequent flyer, traveling across the globe and meeting people. Nowadays, these meetings are taking place via believe that businesses around the globe are suffering from the common phenomenon of a LACK of clarity of purpose. My belief seems to be echoed by a number of Customer Experience specialists and commentators. If you look at the dictionary definition of ‘purpose’, it is quite simple: “the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists”
Developing a very clear and well understood organisational purpose is critical if the business is likely to succeed in its attempts to sustainably achieve its strategic goals. If employees have differing senses of the ‘reason for being’ of an organisation, then this will and can only translate into the delivery of random customer experiences. If you want your customers to have a consistent customer experience, all employees need to know what that consistent customer experience should be.
Why does it matter?
While 80% of executives know that their companies’ success depends on introducing new products and services, the term “innovation” is often associated with geniuses turning start-ups into gold mines. Private equity firms place hundreds of little bets on start-ups hoping for the next Skype, Twitter, or Amazon. These bets on the next growth engine often depend on luck more than insight as many companies invest in or buy them, unsure what they’ll yield. What do you think happens if these companies dedicate insufficient resources to support innovation in the start-up phase? Contact me via e-mail for a deeper dive into the subject.
Simple is hard
People can explain away numbers, but anecdotes tell the emotional story. I think that it’s a good idea to have cross-functional teams sit in on interviews to hear feedback first-hand and include their questions to ensure customers dig into areas that matter to your team. Whenever possible, have some of the executive team join in as it can be jaw-dropping for someone in the C-suite to hear from a customer that the program they relentlessly pushed for creates a negative experience.
“The more you rehearse, the less rehearsed you sound.”
Do you know the difference?
Demographics are an old-fashioned method and is only used by people who don’t want to understand psychographics. Demographics is all about what do you look like on the national census form, whereas psychographics are about what do you believe? What do you want? What do you dream about? I think that if I know that you drive a cabriolet, this far more informative for me than knowing that you are 45 years old and a woman. We need to find the choices people are already choosing to make and then help them make their dreams come true.
