Posted by Bob Apollo on Sat, Aug 28, 2010
Online shopping should be a painless experience, right? Aviva, the UK insurance company are certainly trying to convey that impression in their current ads starring comedian Paul Whitehouse.
Unfortunately, their online systems appear to be programmed by comedians with rather less talent. I’ve been using Aviva for years, since before their expensive rebranding from tried-and-trusted Norwich Union.
Viva Voce
We own a couple of properties. At the appointed time, Aviva reminded me by email that one of the property insurances was due for renewal, and that I could save 25% by renewing online. “Simples”, I thought. How wrong I was.
Expecting that in a few clicks I would be done, I followed their instructions. Only to find that the insurance policy wasn’t shown on my list of policies. No matter where I looked, there seemed no way to add it. I felt my Viva draining away. So I resorted to the phone.
Press 1 for frustration, press 2 for more frustration, press 3 for ...
After holding on and navigating my way through the inevitable IVR system, I got to speak to a human being. I’ll give her credit, she was trying to be helpful, and could speak intelligible English. I explained that I was only phoning her because their online system had failed me, and that I expected to pay the online rate.
I suppose that I shouldn’t have been surprised that despite all this, she still quoted me the price for renewing over the phone - without the online discount. So I pressed, explained that I was only calling because their online systems had failed me, and she gave way. At least that was a result. I had my policy renewed. But the Aviva system was still broken.
I just don't get the Aviva deal...
I felt it my civic duty to help Aviva diagnose and deal with the root cause. So I left a comment on the web site, using the only mechanism available to me. No response. A few days later, I made a more forceful compliant, and got a response. But not the one I wanted.
Because of the “way the policy had been set up” (this was the full extent of their explanation), they could not consolidate the policy with the others. I would have to manage it separately. I felt my Viva draining away faster, so I responded asking them to change the way the policy was set up. No reply.
Not so simples
I thought I should try logging in again this morning to see if they had fixed the problem without telling me. And guess what? Now I can’t see any of my policies at all. Well, at least that makes it simple. I won’t have to bother considering them when it comes time to renew the other policies.
You can bet that I’ll be comparing the market when that time comes around. And Aviva will have lost a previously valuable customer.
You have to be on top of your game on line
So here’s a thought: if you rely on the web to improve your customer’s experience, do you understand what it’s really like to step into their shoes? And if the expectations you have set are not realised, could promoting your web services actually drive customers away, and into the arms of companies that better understand how to create a great online experience?
Posted by Bob Apollo on Tue, Aug 24, 2010
In my previous article on the Buyer's Journey, I set out our latest thinking on the nature of the B2B Buying Process. In this article, I want to examine some of the implications of the Buyer's Journey for the B2B sales and marketing process.
If you recall, I described the B2B Buying Process in terms of consideration phases and decision gates.
Each consideration phase reflects an important step in the buying process. These phases are separated by decision gates.
Each decision gate represents vital evidence of commitment on the part of the prospect.
We've found the distinction between phases and gates to be significant when designing, measuring and managing sales and marketing processes.
Consideration Phases
Each consideration phase in the buying journey is marked by changing priorities, attitudes and behaviours on the part of the prospect. If they are to align their sales and marketing activities with the prospect's priorities, vendors need to consider:
- Which roles are likely to be involved at this phase in the process?
- What are likely to be their most important needs?
- What might cause our prospect to move forward to the next phase? How can we help?
- What might cause our prospect to hold back or abandon the journey? How might we reduce the risk?
- What tools do we need to facilitate this phase of the buying process?
- What could we be doing to requalify the prospect's interest and motivations?
- How long has the prospect been at the current phase of the process?
- What evidence of progress should we be looking for?
- How should we be prioritising and focusing our activities?
It should come as no surprise that the sales people - and sales organisations - that have been able to anticipate their prospects' most important needs at each stage in the process show consistently shorter sales cycles and higher win rates.
Decision Gates
The correct identification and diagnosis of the status of decision gates is the critical factor in accurately placing prospects at the correct phase of their decision making journey. Decision gates offer tangible evidence of prospect commitment and progress.
Depending on the phase of the project, sales people need to consider:
- What evidence can we uncover about the buyer's current intent?
- Can we win? What would it take to win?
- Have we identified, and has the prospect acknowledged, a catalyst for change?
- Are we sure that someone in authority has committed the necessary resources?
- How many proposals has the prospect received, and what criteria are they using to evaluate them?
- Are we in the lead? How can we be sure? Have we been selected? Have all other options been rejected?
- What's the approval process? Who is involved? What do they have to do before placing an order?
When it comes to decision gates, in the words of sales trainer Rick Page, "hope is not a strategy". Sales people must be encouraged to look for tangible evidence of buyer behaviour and intent. Sales managers should not allow sales people to advance deals to the next stage in the sales process without it.
Diagnosing and Dealing with Bottlenecks
Focusing on the buyer's journey has another advantage - it enables vendors to anticipate, diagnose and deal with the bottlenecks and constraints that commonly delay or derail buying processes.
A determined effort to understand how prospects are moving through their buying journey usually throws up a handful of common choke points that - if systematically addressed - will enable opportunities to move from one phase to the next faster.
Timing is Everything
Getting involved early is a critical success factor for most opportunities. It's widely recognised that vendors who only get involved after an RFP is issued have a small chance of winning unless they can do something to reshape the propect's agenda.
The earlier vendors get involved in the buying process, the better. Recent studies confirm that sales people who connect with prospects in the "window of opportunity" between a catalyst for change being identified and the formal search for solutions being initiated - while the prospect is still assessing the impact of the change - enjoy win rates 4-5 times higher than the average together with significantly shorter sales cycles.
There's an important implication for marketing here: vendors need to position themselves as experienced change agents - and as experts in change management - when it comes to addressing the most common issues, trends and challenges in the markets they have chosen to serve.
Making the Economic Case for Change
Vendor marketing activities should focus on anticipating common catalysts for change and position themselves as the place to turn to for advice when they are recognised by the prospect. Once engaged with the prospect, the vendor should focus on establishing the economic case for change - and identifying the potential consequences of inaction.
In many early buying processes, it's more important - and ultimately more valuable - to concentrate on identifing the case for change (or qualifying out opportunities where this is weak) rather than prematurely diving into the details of the vendor's solution.
Facilitating the Buying Process
Have you established the typical buying processes, consideration phases and decision gates in your target market? Are your sales and marketing activities consciously targeted at facilitating your prospect's buying process? How are you helping to establish the economic case for change? And where are the typical choke points in the buying process, and what are you doing to deal with them?
Posted by Bob Apollo on Sun, Aug 22, 2010
The concept of the buyer's journey has been around for a number of years. Hugh Macfarlane's "The Leaky Funnel" inspired a number of our early sales and marketing alignment assignments, and was one of the first books to suggest shifting attention away from driving the sales process to facilitating the buying process.
More recently, I've been impressed with the work being done by Sirius Decisions, StrategyMix and Marketo - amongst a growing number of others - to think through the implications of this dramatic (and very much needed) change in vendor mindsets.
The Process of B2B Buying
I've concluded that most high-value b2b sales reflect a remarkably consistent evolution in the prospect's mindset - from being satisfied with the status quo, to recognising the need for change, evaluating options, and finally implementing the chosen solution.
The process is rarely simple. The prospect can choose to abandon the journey, put the project on hold, or revisit a previous phase, at any stage in the process. But it's unusual for complex, high-value purchases not to pass through a series of key consideration phases - or to have to navigate a series of decision gates.
Consideration Phases and Decision Gates
The diagram below identifies the common phases and gates. It's worth establishing the distinction between the two, because many sales processes and "out of the box" CRM implementations fail to recognise the differences.
Each successive consideration phase reflects an important step forward in the buying process. It's been repeatedly proven that opportunities with momentum are far more likely to result in a positive buying decision than projects that have been stuck at a given phase for a long time.
These phases are separated by decision gates. Each decision gate represents vital evidence of commitment on the part of the prospect.
To start with, the prospect may be satisfied with their current situation. But then something happens - it could be change within their organisation, or something in the external environment - that forces them to challenge the status quo.
We call these inflexion-points "catalysts for change" but you may also see them referred to as trigger events.
At this point, the organisation is typically focused on assessing the impact of the change - and determining whether it is worth dealing with. If it is, resources are committed to finding a solution.
The Critical Decision
This decision - to commit resources - may be the most critical gate in the process. Someone with decision-making authority must have agreed that the problem needs solving, assigned the appropriate people and committed to making the necessary funds available.
The prospect then typically spends some time establishing criteria. This usually involves both business needs and functional requirements, as well as determining how they will decide if and what to buy. By the end of this phase the prospect will have requested and received proposals from one or more vendors.
Assuming that at least one of these proposals is worthy of consideration, the prospect evaluates their options - including the possibility that they may, after all, choose to do nothing. But if the case for change remains strong, they will select their preferred vendor.
But - as many sales people have learned to their cost - being told you have been selected is no guarantee that the business will follow. The project now faces an investment approval process that will see the proposal competing against a variety of other possible expenditure - or the conclusion that the prospect would be better off keeping the money in the bank.
Only once the order is confirmed can the sale process be regarded as finished - but the process of buying continues, until the solution is implemented and the original issue has been addressed.
Applying the Buyer's Journey
Some B2B buying decision processes are more complex than the one I've set out above, but it's unusual for the process to be simpler for significant high-value purchase decisions.
I'd welcome your feedback - how does the above process align with your experiences? Have you seen the process evolve in the markets you serve? Have you carefully defined the key consideration phases and decision gates in your markets? And how closely have you been able to integrate the buyer's journey into your sales and marketing activities?
Looking Forward...
In the next article in this series, I'll be examining the implications of the buyer's journey for the sales and marketing process... Until then, good selling!
Posted by Bob Apollo on Sun, Jul 25, 2010
BANT, in case anyone is unfamiliar with the acronym, stands for Budget, Authority, Need and Timeline. It’s commonly used in the sales qualification process. But I’ve come across a few too many situations recently where sales people were routinely rejecting marketing leads because they weren’t “BANT Ready”. I’ve also been pitched by telemarketing agencies offering “BANT-qualified deals”.
I want to explain why that’s a really bad idea.
But before I do, it’s probably worth confirming that I'm thinking primarily about new business opportunities involving complex, long buying cycle product or service offerings here, rather than simple transactional sales that might be concluded in a single call.
Of course BANT matters...
I have no problem with the idea that, before a complex sale can be concluded, budget, authority, need and timeline all have to exist. But sales people need to be creating BANT, not expecting BANT to be served up on a plate for them. Here’s why: by the time budget, authority, need and timeframe have been established, it’s highly likely that another vendor’s fingerprints are all over the deal.
Think back to any unanticipated RFPs you might have received over the past. How many did you win? Unless you manage to dramatically reshape the prospect’s requirements, studies suggest that if you win more than 1 in 20 of such deals you’re doing better than average. The dice are already loaded against you, and you’re just serving as “column fodder” to make up the numbers.
Your sales people need to create BANT not wait for it...
Instead of hoping that fully-qualified, BANT-ready deals can be uncovered, your sales and marketing teams need to be working together to connect with prospects that have unmet needs that they cannot afford to ignore, and for which you happen to have an economically attractive solution. Even better if your actions serve in some way to create the need, or elevate its importance.
Of the four components of BANT, it’s pretty obvious that need has to come first. It’s also clear that identifying a need is your entry point into the opportunity. But your sales people must be careful not to leap straight from an identified need to proposing their solution. They must use the freshly uncovered need to develop the other three factors, and to establish the economic case for change.
Establishing the economic case for change...
Merely identifying a need is, of course, no guarantee that the prospect will do anything about addressing it. First, they must establish an economic case for change. By helping them, you can identify the likely source of budget and authority, and determine whether a time-critical event exists - or can be created.
Start by exploring the consequences of the issue, and identifying who else is affected. Don’t stop at the first-level implications - keep probing and developing your stakeholder map until you’ve built a complete picture. Work with the prospect to flesh out the costs or lost revenues associated with the situation - the more specific the better.
If the issue is relatively new, help them fully understand the potential impact. If the issue has been obvious to them for a while, find out why they haven’t dealt with it before - and what’s changed to elevate its importance now. Ask them how the company goes about making recent similar decisions - and what distinguished the projects that were approved from those that stalled.
If your initial contact doesn’t know some of the answers - and hopefully they won’t - take advantage and secure their help to reach out through the organisation to others who are affected. Remain consultative. Keep asking questions. Refuse the temptation to propose your solution until you’ve helped them establish whether there is an economic case for change.
Back to BANT...
The process of establishing the economic case for change, assuming that one exists, enables you to use the need you have uncovered to understand and influence budget, authority and timeframe. Your pursuit of consequences will enable you to more effectively influence their requirements - and align your capabilities accordingly. And you’ll be in a much better position to determine if the opportunity is real, whether you want to pursue it, and whether you can win.
Don’t wait for another vendor to establish BANT. Don’t brief your telemarketing agency to focus primarily on discovering BANT-ready deals. Don’t let your sales people demand only BANT-qualified leads. Focus on uncovering the need, developing the requirements, and on developing the economic case for change.
You’ll find your company in the driving seat in a far higher percentage of deals - and you’ll shorten your sales cycles and increase your win rates at the same time. Oh, and you’ll be more confident about “no bidding” those unexpected RFPs you had no chance of winning anyway.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Thu, Jul 15, 2010
It’s an old story, but one that I still hear far too often. Salespeople complaining that marketing never generates any decent leads. Marketing getting frustrated that sales never follows up on the leads they have created. And, amusing though the idea might at first appear, we can’t excuse it by claiming that “Sales is from Mars and Marketing is from Venus”.
I should probably have put the word “leads” in quote marks. It’s not unusual for part of the problem to stem from a failure to agree what a sales ready lead looks like, or to get confused between an enquiry, a lead and an opportunity, or even (bizarre as it may seem) to regard those three categories as being in some way interchangeable.
Creating a contract between sales and marketing
But the real root cause predates even the enquiry-lead-opportunity definition problem: it arises from the failure to agree and define what an “ideal prospect” looks like. Without a consensus about the characteristics of a well-qualified prospect, marketing are likely to continue investing resources targeting people who are never likely to buy - and sales will be unable to sign up to a contract with marketing that basically says “find opportunities that look like this, and we will commit to pursue them”.
What does an ideal prospect look like?
I’ve conducted a number of ideal prospect profile exercises with clients - I have come to regard them as the essential foundation for making smart sales and marketing investment decisions - and here’s what I’ve learned:
- Demographics alone aren’t enough. The classic dimensions of market segmentation - industry, geography, company size, etc., form the foundation of an ideal prospect profile, but they are by themselves insufficient
- The devil is in the detail. When you evaluate recent sales successes, you can usually uncover more subtle characteristics that have a more important predictive effect. Things like existing systems in use often have a profound impact on the chances of sales success
- Don’t ignore behavioural factors. Years ago, when I was working at HP, we uncovered something that had far greater impact than any demographic factor: companies that were highly decentralised (like HP) tended to prefer to buy from HP. Companies that were highly centralised (like IBM was at the time) strongly preferred to buy from IBM
- Look for patterns. A more recent predictive factor has emerged from my work with SaaS based offerings: for reasons that are fairly simple to understand, companies that have already signed up for one SaaS based solution are far more likely to buy additional ones. The pioneering work has already been done
A few simple recommendations...
Here’s what I’d recommend to any organisation that wants to leverage the concept of “ideal prospect profiles” to dramatically increase sales and marketing effectiveness:
- Establish ideal prospect profiles for each of your significant product or service offerings as a collaborative exercise between sales and marketing. Be sure to combine demographic, environmental and behavioural characteristics
- Make a determined effort to progressively enhance your target account prospecting database by capturing the characteristics of your “ideal prospects”. Include this learning in the information you collect in web form submissions, etc.
- Help prospects to self-qualify by explaining how your solution is particularly relevant to organisations that exhibit the characteristics of your “ideal prospect profile”. Ensure that your case studies and reference materials support this
- Encourage sales and marketing to enter into a contract based on the commonly agreed characteristics of an “ideal prospect” that ensures that if marketing uncovers a suitable candidate, sales commits to follow them up
- Implement a continuous qualification process that helps marketing and sales to judge - in an evidence based way - just how good a prospect any given enquiry, lead or opportunity is likely to be
Trust me, it will be worth the effort...
Get this right - and continue to refine it - and from all my observations, you’ll spend your marketing money far more wisely and apply your sales resources far more effectively. And both departments will enjoy working together.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Thu, Jul 01, 2010
I’ve lost track of the number of companies who proclaim that they are embracing a “value-added” strategy in order to differentiate themselves in an increasingly commoditised market. They often see it as their best chance of breaking away from relentless pricing pressure and a highly competitive sales environment.
Many have thrown enormous sums of money at trying to move up the solution value chain without successfully changing a sales culture that is still rooted in selling simple product offerings and lacks the experience or credibility to deal with the buying processes that are associated with evaluating complex solutions.
Value-added - or cost-added?
So why do so many of these “value-added” initiatives manifestly fail to deliver the hoped for results? And why in many - maybe the majority - of cases, do the initiatives turn out to be nothing more than “cost-added” strategies that only serve to further depress the profitability of the organisation without actually moving the dial when it comes to sales win rates?
In my experience, most of these initiatives make no attempt to confirm that their various so-called “value-added” activities have any meaningful value to the prospective customer, or are likely to positively influence their behaviour. In fact, all-too-often they reflect the misapplied imagination of a product marketing manager about what matters to customers they have spent all-too-little time trying to really understand.
It's what the prospect is prepared to pay for...
I propose the following test of value added: “that which a well-qualified prospective customer proves by their behaviour they are willing to invest their time or money in, which materially advances their buying cycle, or increases the chances of them making a positive buying decision”. In other words, we shouldn’t be doing anything that a prospect isn’t prepared to pay for with their time or money.
Of course, there is a big problem implementing this thinking in an environment which is focused primarily around a vendor’s sales process. But when you turn the telescope around and look at matters from the perspective of the buying process, and what it takes to persuade your prospect’s decision making team to move forward from stage to stage, you can much more easily identify where the real value added lies … and where all the potential sources of wasted effort might sit.
Are your "value-added" efforts wasted?
Take a look at your sales and marketing actions? Can you identify where and how they add value to your prospect's decision-making process? And if not, how much more effective could your organisation be if you saved that money and effort or re-purposed it to a better cause?
Posted by Bob Apollo on Tue, Jun 15, 2010
Is your sales and marketing aligned? If not, you are running the risk of falling behind. Sometimes the signs of a lack of alignment are obvious. Marketing spends money generating leads the sales force never follow up whilst sales people "reinvent the wheel" because they don't want to use the sales tools marketing has created. The Aberdeen Group concluded that the average sales person spends 40-60 hours a month re-creating sales-ready, customer-relevant material they think marketing could and should have produced better in the first place.
It's strange to observe that these remain such common experiences when CSO Insights’ 2010 Sales Performance Optimization survey of more than 2800 sales leaders identified “achieving better sales and marketing alignment” as one of the most important revenue-driving initiatives for the year ahead.
alignment brings benefits
The Harvard Business Review has confirmed the often dramatic benefits enjoyed by well-aligned organisations - they observe that “When Sales and Marketing work well together, companies see substantial improvement in important performance metrics: Sales cycles are shorter, market entry costs go down, and the cost of sales is lower”. Hugh Mcfarlane of Mathmarketing found much the same. He surveyed 1,400 people in 84 countries around the world, and found that well-aligned organisations grew 5.4% faster, closed 38% more proposals and lost 36% fewer customers than their inadequately-aligned rivals.
The evidence seems to be clear - when sales and marketing organisations get aligned, great things happen. So it ought to be a question of how, not if. Most of my recent work with clients has been on sales and alignment issues. I'm pleased to be able to report that we've seen some pretty dramatic benefits along the lines quoted above or better, albeit with a smaller sample size.
the foundations of effective alignment
What's the formula for success? Naturally the precise approach will vary from one company to the next, but I'm confident that there are at least 7 common factors. Sales and marketing organisations that are well-aligned:
- Have agreed "ideal prospect profiles"
- Involve sales in active market research
- Craft "messages that matter" to their prospects
- Manage an integrated revenue cycle
- Share a common language
- Establish shared metrics
- Enjoy executive commitment
download the white paper
I've encapsulated what I've learned about these factors in a new white paper, entitled "are you aligned - or falling behind?". You can download it here. It includes a 20-point questionnaire that I think you'll find illuminating. No registration is required, but I'd love to hear your comments - let me know what you think.
Posted by Bob Apollo on Wed, Jun 09, 2010
BP has been getting a great deal of adverse publicity for the recent massive leak in their Gulf of Mexico oil pipeline. It’s taken an age to address the underlying problem. The clean-up operation is clearly going to take ages and cost billions. The fortunes of the Bubba Gump shrimp company and many others like it may never recover.
Those of us who manage sales pipelines know that they rarely run freely. Many are clogged with deals that are going nowhere and which only serve to slow the progress of more promising opportunities.
But slow-moving pipelines aren’t the only problem. Sales pipelines also leak, as prospects either decide to buy something else or do nothing. Worst of all, many deals leak late in the process – towards the end of the pipeline - after huge amounts of sales effort have been applied.
My observations of high-value B2B sales suggest that clogged and leaky sales pipelines are often the norm and that much of the effort that sales teams expend on trying to move deals forward is wasted. So it’s no surprise that CSO Insight’s annual report on sales performance optimisation has recorded some of the lowest sales win rates on record.
It’s time for a massive clean-up operation – let’s just hope we can do better than BP. But what is it going to take?
Clearly define the key stages in your sales pipeline
Let’s start with the basics. Your pipeline stages must be clearly defined, consistently applied, and reflect meaningful steps in your prospect’s decision making process. The progress of each opportunity must be based on observable evidence of your prospect’s behaviour and intent, and not just on your sales activities. These are the essential foundations for any successful sales pipeline clean-up operation.
Carefully measure flow and leakage
Once you’re sure that the contents of your sales pipeline are being reported accurately, your attention should turn to measuring flow and leakage. Flow is about measuring how long it takes for successful deals to pass from one stage to the next in the pipeline, and using this as a benchmark to identify deals that have been “stuck in stage” for too long. This is important because of one simple fact: it inevitably takes you longer to lose a deal (or recognise it is lost) than it does to win.
Leakage is the other key metric. At what stage do deals fall out of the pipeline, and what is the real percentage of deals that ultimately convert to wins from each stage? I use the phrase “real percentage” deliberately. More often than not, CRM systems apply percentages to stages that have no relationship to reality, have never been reviewed or adjusted, and are precisely and dangerously wrong. It’s no wonder that average forecast accuracy rates (as measured by whether deals close as predicted) is now below 50%. If you’re still using the percentages that came out of the box with your CRM system – or if you haven’t reviewed them against reality recently, deal with it now. You can’t afford to wait.
Establish benchmarks
Once you have good underlying data and good metrics, you can establish benchmarks and start comparing the performance of your sales team members. Look at recent sales successes. Establish the cadence of their progress from stage to stage. Set deal flow benchmarks. Isolate deals that are taking longer than these winning benchmarks, and carefully re-qualify them to make sure they are real. If not, remove them from the pipeline. Review your sales strategy for deals that still seem promising but are stuck in stage. What can you do to help the prospect move forward to the next stage with you?
Look at the shape of your sales team’s pipelines. Are they qualifying out early, or losing late? Winning sales people seem to follow a consistent pattern – they take time over qualifying, qualify more deals out early in the pipeline, and successfully close the remaining opportunities faster than their also-ran peers. Conversely, average sales performers often have a habit of “losing late” – deals are either lost or qualified out late in the journey, after huge levels of effort have been wasted. You need to understand why, and take remedial action to help them embrace the winning behaviours of your top performers. But most important, if you’re going to lose, lose early!
Qualification should be a continuous process
Another common reason for opportunities getting stuck in the middle of the sales pipeline is that the prospect’s circumstances have changed. Even if the deal appeared well qualified initially, something’s happened – maybe the prospect now has other priorities – and progress has stalled.
Qualification is not and cannot be a one-time event. In fact, I recommend that at each stage in the sales pipeline that you identify and assess key qualifiers that are relevant to that stage in the buying process and which can alert you to these changing circumstances and either give you the chance to react to them or to qualify out before any further sales effort is wasted.
Avoid putting rubbish in your pipeline in the first place
My final recommendation is to avoid filling the pipeline with rubbish in the first place. Make sure that you establish “ideal prospect” profile, target your marketing towards them, and qualify inbound enquiries against them. Be careful to distinguish between interesting, important and urgent needs, and ensure that you are working on opportunities where the problem is already urgent or can be elevated to an urgent need.
Resist the temptation to add more poorly qualified prospects to the pipeline – you’ll only make matters worse, and have an even more expensive clean-up operation to perform later on. Focus on managing quality, velocity and leakage and encouraging winning behaviour, and you’ll have the foundation for a smoothly flowing sales pipeline. And by eliminating all that wasted effort, you’ll be doing your bit for the environment as well!
Posted by Bob Apollo on Mon, Jun 07, 2010
What really motivates people? Dan Pink is a contrarian thinker who always challenges me to think from a new perspective. I think that you'll really enjoy this video...
Posted by Bob Apollo on Sat, Jun 05, 2010
I came across Simon Sinek's work through a blog post by Augie Ray of Forrester. Sinek is the author of Start With Why. In the following video, he explains why great leaders, and great companies, don't start with what they do, but with why they do it.
To take just one convincing example, he observes that (unlike so many of our current generation of politicians) Martin Luther King won his followers over not by having a plan, but by having a dream.
Sinek goes on to suggest, in a powerful and compelling way, that great organisations succeed by doing business and attracting followers (buyers, employees, influencers, etc.) who believe what they believe.
Invest 18 minutes in watching this video, and then reflect on whether, at the heart of how you communicate, you are leading with "why" - or with what... and whether you are driven by a cause, or a belief, that you and your organisation are passionate about.