Monthly Archives: August 2012

Endurance Runners Are Like Entrepreneurs

In writing for Inc magazine, Patricia Fletcher draws a comparison between entrepreneurs and marathon runners. In addition to being a little crazy, she says both have a plan to follow that prepares them for success. The performance for which you are judged is predictable from the “practice” that leads up to it. Here are Fletcher’s observations about the right mindset both need–

Get comfortable being uncomfortable for long periods of time.  Believe it or not, this will become a badge of honor.  Most of your work as an entrepreneur requires you to try new approaches, to push yourself beyond your limits. This means that you will fail a lot. You will struggle for funding–a lot. You will lose customers and opportunities–a lot. It’s all part of the training process. Your response to rejection is as good a determinant of your entrepreneurial ability as your response to success.

Adopt a resilient mindset. You are going to have some tough days; days when you question your own sanity and want throw in the towel.  Much like a marathon, the entrepreneurial experience is long, twisting, and filled with ups and downs. Every successful entrepreneur and marathoner I have talked with believes mindset is either your biggest asset or your biggest barrier. The pros handle it by maintaining an objective mindset that looks at setbacks as opportunities for improvement.

Embrace others like you. Working in a vacuum is not going to help you finish the race. Runners find running partners or join running clubs. They get faster because they push each other. They become stronger because they share tips for nutrition and avoiding injury. You can do the same thing. 

Connect with other entrepreneurs. Get together to practice your pitches, test your demos, and talk about go-to-market strategies. Working together will give you practice and insights while creating the relationships that will push you forward.

Don’t over-train. In my first few years as a runner and professional, I over-trained, thinking it would make me stronger and better, and prove that I belonged. Instead, I burned out. You will not succeed if you have 10 No. 1 priorities. Identify your top three goals. Don’t do anything that won’t make a big impact on your progress toward those three.

At conferences, I have heard several speakers tell up-and-coming women entrepreneurs and executives that they should say yes to any high-profile opportunities. I disagree. Go after new opportunities only if they’ll help you achieve one of your three big goals.

Measure. A good plan incorporates key performance indicators to track your progress. It also helps lessen risk by proactively addressing problems. What measurements will tell you that you are making progress?  How often should you track your progress?  What are your biggest obstacles?  Which do you need to address and which can be ignored? 

As someone who has been a distance runner for over 30 years, I can relate to each of these. When I was competing, I had a mental edginess honed from the daily effort I put into psyche and development of my skills. As an entrepreneur, I have  been more successful when I have brought my “A” game to what I do. How about you?

 

Delegating By Degrees is Effective Leadership

In advising private businesses, I am frequently trying to help owners delegate more effectively to their teams. It is hard to get the executives to give up making all the decisions. Making fewer decisions is part of the challenge; influencing less decisions is even harder.

Sergio Zyman, the former Chief Marketing Officer at Coca-Cola, in his book “The End of Marketing As We Know It,” wrote about the decision making process he used with his team, broken down into 5 levels:

  • Level 1 – His decision with no input from the team
  • Level 2 – His decision with input from the team
  • Level 3 – Consensus decision
  • Level 4 – A team member’s decision with his input
  • Level 5 – A team member’s decision with no input or influence from him

When other organizations have experimented with processes similar to Zyman’s, some employees found the five level decision making process difficult. Others perceived it as freeing because the knew in advance what was required to keep an initiative going.

Many organizations have a disproportionate number of Level 2 and Level 3 decisions. Level 5 is the least common. A critical success factor seems to be selectively choosing what to care about (not to be confused with apathy.) The evolution needs to be towards a focus on being involved personally only in decisions that are strategic in nature and require knowledge or experience unique to your role. What is likely to ensue is a new paradigm in which the executive’s willingness to let go creates unexpected, but still very positive outcomes. It may not look the way it would have with your hand print, but can still “work out.”

 

 

How To Grow Business All the Time

 

Whether your trade is producing software, computing tax liabilities, or manufacturing tangible goods, the success of your organization is going to be tied to strong sales (business development/ “bizdev”) performance over the long haul. Yet, few organizations are able to create a bizdev model that is sustainable and that constantly fuels the capital needs of the enterprise. Bizdev, however, is something that far too many senior executives (or, business owners in the SMB world) think must be acquired through osmosis or tenure. While I don’t actually believe that they think that, their actions would indicate otherwise.

Virtually everyone in North America has had a frustrating experience with bad sales execution. Either one has been on the end of trying to convince someone to buy, or the other end where we hate to be the recipient of “sales.” There’s much wrong with the selling models that are so pervasive that negative experiences abound on both sides of the equation.

Mahan Khalsa, who led the Sales Performance Group at FranklinCovey for a number of years, is one of my favorite authors on the subject of business development. His background included developing instruction for one of the old Big Eight CPA firms, then turning his attention to training almost 100,000 salespeople and consultants from all over the place in many different verticals.

Khalsa says, “Most professional sellers have good intent. They know manipulation and deceit hurt rather than build long-term sales success. They know that building trust is essential to both creating and capturing value. So they eliminate a lot of what would otherwise be dysfunctional—no surprise there. Yet most also consistently engage in actions that are not value adding–for them or for their customers. Even when great intent is present, there is a lot of room for improvement in eliminating dysfunctional behaviors.”

Both Khalsa and Neil Rackham find the tendency to jump to solutions before having completed the questioning process to be the bane of many folks involved in bizdev. I have observed noted rainmakers stumble in prospect meetings over this very subject. It’s as though the brain clicks into autopilot and, rather than seeking to understand, hubris takes over and the rainmaker is intent on being understood. Often, the solution that is recommended is premature–it doesn’t bear the wisdom of listening and consultative due diligence.

“Looking a little more holistically we could say the missing link is the ability to successfully blend excellent inquiry with excellent advocacy – to do a superb job of matching our story to the client’s story. Good inquiry is essential and most often the more undeveloped portion of the balance – and it is still only part of the equation. I’ve seen people get good at inquiry and still not be able to convert on advocacy.” (Khalsa)

When Khalsa left FranklinCovey, part of his intent was to transform the way business developers approach their work. He felt there was room for continuous improvement over an entire career. To that end, he began to wed together the twin concepts of business development and change management, with a sprinkling of performance measurement. In order to see strong long-term results, he argues, there must be an environment supportive of continuous improvement and a repeatable process that can be practiced and refined. 

Edward Deming once said, “It is not enough to do your best. You need to know what to do and then do your best.” So the quality of the practice and application is as important as the quantity of practice – and the quantity is essential. Khalsa subscribes to this concept as it relates to bizdev, stating “What I find liberating and motivating about the research is that everything, repeat everything, we need to do in order to get really good at sales is learnable – if we are willing to practice. It doesn’t have to do with our DNA, our native IQ, our personality type or social style, our years of experience. If we are willing to engage in a high number of repetitions of quality practice we can become as great as we want to be. That’s powerful.”

A key factor in effective bizdev is the ability to build a trusted relationship with the other party. Khalsa firmly believes that trust can be built intentionally and that it is tied strongly to value and information flow. In fact, he would argue that anyone who has two can obtain the third. Fundamentally, a rainmaker will have to become consistently better at doing what is promised and establishing a culture where the other party feels safe to share meaningful information.