Thanks to the bureaucracy and lack of listening that exists in most companies today, we have created working environments that stifle the creativity, original thought, and innovation that make our human capital so valuable. As such, it has become all but impossible for many organizations to adapt to our changing business world. Simply put, an organization that cannot innovate is dead; the only things missing are the inevitable funeral and suffering along the way.
Many organizations confuse the occasional ‘lightning strike’ of a new idea or product innovation with having a culture that fosters innovation. But for this to truly be the case, innovation should not be something that happens every once in a while; it should be viewed as a critical competence – a skill to be developed, fostered, rewarded, and embedded into the workforce.
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Chris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential Project, is the author of The Power to Transform: Passion, Power, and Purpose in Daily Life (Rodale), which teaches the strategies corporate, military, and sports leaders have used to positively transform themselves and their organizations in a way readers can adept to their own lives and professions. He may be reached at www.humanpotentialproject.com.
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In our rush to ‘modernize’ everything and make our enterprises more efficient, we have mistakenly come to believe that information is our most valuable commodity. But data and information are useless without human beings to interpret them. These days, computers can do just about anything – except think for themselves. But we have come to tolerate the illusion that the essential matters of work can be invented, managed, and sustained through the creation, storage, retrieval, display, and publication of information.
Contemporary information systems are blind to many of the key drivers of productivity and have consistently failed in their quest to integrate the diverse operations of a company. By making information the priority, we have lost sight of its fundamental purpose – to enable the people to effectively address the concerns of their customers.
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Chris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential Project, is the author of The Power to Transform: Passion, Power, and Purpose in Daily Life (Rodale), which teaches the strategies corporate, military, and sports leaders have used to positively transform themselves and their organizations in a way readers can adept to their own lives and professions. He may be reached at www.humanpotentialproject.com.
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Every single employee is important in an organization, but there is nothing more vital than having leaders to drive change and manage day-to-day work. These leaders might be supervisors, managers or partners, but they are hugely important regardless of what department of the business they work in. So it is time to figure out whether your business has true leaders! If you feel there is room for improvement, here are a few ways you can change the tide:
Invest in leadership programs
The first thing you can do is to take advantage of leadership program benefits. There are many different programs run by trained professionals, so you should be able to find one that suits your style of doing business. Your staff will learn invaluable skills that will help them to move your business forward over the coming weeks, months and years. They might need to learn to be better at delegation, or they might need to break out of their shell and stop being so shy. Other people can be too direct, so for them it could be learning to tone down their personality when in an office environment. Either way, this is one of the best investments you could make for your team.
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From her 25 years in business, Elizabeth Hill aims to pass on knowledge and skills gained in that time through her writing. She loves walks in the countryside, spending time with family and friends, and is ever so ‘slightly’ addicted to coffee.
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To most people, bureaucracy is a bad word, synonymous with ‘red tape’ and wasted time. Yet, despite the negative connotations, most companies still operate bureaucratically – insisting employees work inside of increasingly complex structures with processes and procedures designed to standardize or control everything. While this might have been the most efficient way to train assembly line workers during the Industrial Era, human capital is now the greatest resource for most companies. In other words, we’re paying people to think, to innovate, and to collaborate with others to produce the best possible results. You can’t achieve this level of performance if you attempt to dictate their every move with rigid policies and procedures.
The fall of many of our great companies – including GM, Chrysler, AT&T, DEC, and a host of others – is a testimony to bureaucratic blindness. Unfortunately, contemporary management theory offers no alternatives to this style of organizing work and designing organizational structures. Current hierarchically oriented systems – no matter how lean and ‘matrixed’ – are relics of the bygone era of WWII industrialization and manufacturing.
Hi there! This article is available for free. Login or register as a StrategyDriven Personal Business Advisor Self-Guided Client by:
Chris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential Project, is the author of The Power to Transform: Passion, Power, and Purpose in Daily Life (Rodale), which teaches the strategies corporate, military, and sports leaders have used to positively transform themselves and their organizations in a way readers can adept to their own lives and professions. He may be reached at www.humanpotentialproject.com.
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The minute I get a thought, I capture it. For the past year or so, I’ve been texting myself through voice dictation. It works. It’s the same way I am writing this column. Voice to text. It works.
I’m about to show you, and share with you, some of those random thoughts. They are in no particular order, and as I paste them into this word document I’m reading them aloud and altering them. (That’s how I edit.) I’m reading them and expanding them on the spot so they become even more valuable and applicable to a salesperson. You.
ON QUESTIONS
When someone asks you a question, ask yourself, “Why are they asking this, and what does this mean in terms of this person moving toward a purchase?”
There’s a motive behind every question a prospect asks. And that motive is the sales driver. In reality they’re thinking to themselves, if this function works, I can increase my sales. That’s the motive, not the function.
For example, they may ask you, “Can this function take place?” If you answer, “Yes,” then you’ve gone right past sale. If you answer yes and then ask, “What will this function lead to?” or “What makes this function important to you?” you will then uncover the real buying motive. In sales this is known as the hot button. The reality is, it’s your money.
WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?
In sales, the largest chasm is the difference between knowing and doing. You already know everything; the problem is you’re not doing it.
How many of you cannot afford to buy what it is you are selling? And how does that affect your belief system? And how does thataffect your passion to close the sale?
Whoever said, “Thoughts are things,” only had it partially correct. The better statement is, “Thoughts become things when plans are made, belief is strong, and action is taken.”
In a game of ‘sales chess’ you have to be thinking at least two moves ahead or you’ll likely lose your queen.
WHAT DO THEY REALLY WANT?
Your customer doesn’t want to buy a ball bearing. They want to keep their plant producing. Customers want outcome, not product. Your customer does not want a can of paint, brushes, and rollers. Your customer wants a beautiful room or a updated look to the exterior of their home. Sell OUTCOME, not product.
BE SPECIFIC.
Is your presentation full of generalizations or customization? If you only generalize for the enterprise and generalize about the business, you will lose. But if you customize for your customer, or their customer, they can visualize what’s in it for THEM, and they will buy.
SHOW ME THE MONEY, NOT THE PERCENTAGE
Don’t give me a percentage. Give me a dollar amount. EXAMPLE: You say, “We lost 7% of our customers this year.” Really? HOW MUCH IS THAT IN DOLLARS? That will make you mad. Large companies refer to this as “churn.” I define churn as management’s inability to keep customers loyal. And these same companies who call it churn only present it as a percentage. Our churn rate is 3.2%. Why doesn’t management have the intestinal fortitude to present that as a dollar amount? Answer: They don’t want anyone to know, and it places the burden on salespeople to replace the 3.2% in order to get to last year’s numbers. Not good.
WHAT’S THE REAL CHALLENGE WITH CRM?
Customer relationship management is the most purchased, least-used, and least-adopted software in the history of computers. Why? The salesperson looks at it as management’s tool for accountability. CRM adoption rates would triple if salespeople viewed it as something that could help them make a sale.
If you have CRM software for your sales and service people, and you have a 72% adoption rate, that means 28% of your sales team, and/or your service team, did NOT adopt it, and most likely hate it. I feel reasonably certain that of the 72% that did adopt it, a high percentage of them look at it as something they ‘had to do’ rather than something that would help them.
ON IMAGINATION AND WOW!
Salespeople are missing huge opportunities for engagement and opportunities to gain response from customers by not being imaginative or creative in their communications.
Show me a sales script, and I’ll show you a boring message.
Show me a slide deck prepared by marketing, and I’ll show you a boring message.
Show me an email prepared by a salesperson, and I’ll show you a boring message.
Where’s the value? Show me the value. Where’s the WOW? Show me the WOW! If you show me WOW and value, I will respond, I will engage, I will connect, and I will buy.
Those are my thoughts and ideas of the moment. All captured the second they occurred to me. Hope they get you thinking, taking action, and capturing yours.
Reprinted with permission from Jeffrey H. Gitomer and Buy Gitomer.
About the Author
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, www.gitomer.com, will lead you to more information about training and seminars, or email him personally at [email protected].
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Chris Majer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Human Potential Project, is the author of The Power to Transform: Passion, Power, and Purpose in Daily Life (Rodale), which teaches the strategies corporate, military, and sports leaders have used to positively transform themselves and their organizations in a way readers can adept to their own lives and professions. He may be reached at www.humanpotentialproject.com.
Jeffrey Gitomer is the author of The Sales Bible, Customer Satisfaction is Worthless Customer Loyalty is Priceless, The Little Red Book of Selling, The Little Red Book of Sales Answers, The Little Black Book of Connections, The Little Gold Book of YES! Attitude, The Little Green Book of Getting Your Way, The Little Platinum Book of Cha-Ching, The Little Teal Book of Trust, The Little Book of Leadership, and Social BOOM! His website, 
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