Easy or Annoying?

This is a bit of a diversion from my normal topics, but I know many of you are in technology companies, and pretty much all of you are people…

And I have something to say about this.

I was traveling in Cincinnati recently, and was greeted with the following in my hotel room. I was staggered.  I removed the actual hotel name, but this was real.

Is it just me, or are these 19 steps to program a wake-up call a bit much?

Technology and Humans

I built a successful career in technology by following one guiding principle:

Make the technology less painful for humans to use. 

Focus as much (if not more) energy on the human interface as on the technology itself.

Don’t ever show of the richness of your technology in the user interface.  Focus completely on the user’s task. Understand how people are thinking about the task they need to do, and help them do it the way they are inclined to do it.

The point is never to show that your technology is smart and powerful, it’s to make your user feel smart and powerful.

Patty’s 3 Laws of Technology

(Break them at your own business peril.)

1. Technology should not rob people of their humanity
2. If you present technology instead of a human interface it HAS TO WORK
3. Technology should never make people feel stupid

Here is what I mean:

1. Technology should not rob people or their humanity.

Probably the best example of this are those voice automated systems that make you talk to a computer on the other end of the phone.   I don’t know about you, but I hate this. I would feel much less robbed of my humanity if I was greeted with a computer voice that said,

I know I’m not a person like you are, and that you’d rather talk to a person, but we think we can help you faster if you are willing to give this a try. We won’t make you talk to a computer and pretend it’s a person, and feel like an idiot shouting answers and phrases repeatedly because we can’t actually understand them… Please help us route your call by keying in your account number and answering ONE question – then you’ll be connected to a real person.

Any time your user interface makes a person translate something they are thinking or feeling into a narrow input that your technology will accept, you have robbed them of some humanity.

2. If you present technology instead of a human interface it HAS TO WORK

If you want me to sign up for your service on your website, don’t require a special new version of a flash plug in for me to do it.  Don’t invite me to leave you feedback, only to have a link that doesn’t go anywhere.  Don’t optimize your interface so much for one platform or environment that it doesn’t work right in others.

When something goes wrong…

A human can recover and use creativity and judgment (and opposable thumbs)  if the transaction does not work. Technology just sits there there not working, and the user goes away having failed to complete the task.

I was duped recently at the airport when I accepted a boarding pass sent to my mobile phone and got to an airport that didn’t have the ability to read it.

I was promised I could pick up a prescription after hours, from an automated pharmacy dispenser, and they had mis-spelled my name when they input the prescription so there was no way I could pick it up and no way for the machine to recover.  There was a phone support number on the machine connecting me to a line which was un-manned after hours.

Make it fool proof.

Test everything.  One of the best software tests  I ever saw was a CEO who sat on the keyboard.  The system broke.  Test your technology in ways users are not supposed to use it, because they will always do things they are not supposed to do.

Use Standard (boring) components.

Go out of your way to use technology components that are as standard and hard to break as possible.

Don’t try to make your screens extra-pretty, or use bleeding edge widgets and gadgets in your user interface because they amuse you, you are trying to be impressive, or you want to try something new — especially if if there is to be no-human back up when it doesn’t work.

Set your standard to “It has to work”.  Not “It has to be leading edge”.

Don’t lose customers.

If you replace humans with technology, if it doesn’t work you will lose customers because you have given them no possible alternative but to go away. There is a corollary to this law which is “Don’t make people work hard to give you their money”.

3. Technology should never make people feel stupid

This issues is starting to go away as technology is actually working better and young people are immune to thinking that it is their fault if it doesn’t work.

Complexity is the enemy

But when technology is unnecessarily complicated and hard to use, it makes (us old) people feel inadequate because we can’t accomplish the task at hand.

I don’t think I have ever got through a self-checkout lane without requiring assistance from a clerk and feeling a bit stupid.

If you buy wine, someone still needs to check your ID. You Fail.

If you by an item that is too large to put in the bag, the system will freeze because it can’t sense that you put it in the bag after you scan it. You fail.

If you buy organic produce, it doesn’t have a selection for organic. You Fail. At this point you are given the choice either to wait for help (you feel stupid) or to steal money from the store because you can’t find a way to pay the organic up-charge (robbed of your humanity, and being made to work too hard to give them your money).

The good, at least mitigating, news is that most self-checkouts follow rule number 2.  It HAS to work – so they put human backup there.

Making technology better for humans is good for business.

Apple is an obvious example. But even putting Apple aside as an outlier, I can tell you that in every business where I had responsibility to bring technology products to market, focusing on the human interface was good for business.

We put extra effort on the user’s thinking process, the user interface, the install, the demo, the “start here” experience, the documentation, the customer support help desk, and the sales and contracting documents and processes.

By doing this, my businesses were able to steal share from competitors who were overly focused on the features of their technology alone, and tortured their customers and partners because of it.

Talking at a higher level

Selling

Most companies I work with want to sell higher value deals to higher level executives.

The problem is, their sales force doesn’t know how to talk to executives.

Chatting

Also, many people I work with are concerned about their executive presence.  When they get near big executives they get intimated and freeze up.

You ARE worthy

I think we tend to build this up in our minds to be more mysterious and harder than it actually is.  We think we are not worthy, or that we don’t have enough value to add.

Here are some ways to take the discomfort out of this, and even get good at it.

1. Listen
2. Don’t try to do too much in one meeting
3. Remember, Executives are people too
4. Have some prepared banter

1. Listen

I observed this when I was a General Manager and CEO.  I used to go on road trips where the presence of the visiting executive (me) was a good catalyst for the sales rep to get a meeting with a higher level executive than he could on his own.

Sure, the fact that I was an executive got us the meeting, but it had little to do with why I did well talking to them.

The trick is to listen.

Don’t talk. Ask questions.

These are the kinds of things I would always ask. You don’t need to be a big executive to ask these questions.

What is driving your business right now?  What are your biggest issues? What is the most important thing your organization needs to deliver this year?  How does your organization fit within your larger company?  Does that cause any challenges? What is your organization best in class at? What is the next thing you want to improve in your business?

What do you actually know?

A lot of people think they need to be highly credible about the executive’s business, and do lots of prep work to try and say smart things to make them think you understand their business.

Sure, you need to do some homework for context, but if you lead with what you think you know about their business, you may or may not impress them — they may or may not end up thinking you understand their business.

Here is the big idea:

But if you ask them to explain their business to you,  by the end of the conversation they will KNOW you understand their business because THEY just explained it to you!

This is a highly valuable outcome because you have generally learned about what matters to them, you will get highly relevant ideas for next steps, and you will have earned the right to get invited back.

Asking questions and listening is a much more certain way to build credibility with an executive than trying to impress them by how much  you know about their business.  (They will always know more.)

2. Don’t try to do too much in one meeting.

The next mistake I see people make is to think that they have to practically close the deal in the first meeting.  They have to walk away with a win, some tangible outcome that says “I got something”.

Set your goals differently.  Instead, think about your desired outcome as making a personal connection, and getting an invitation to connect with them again.

This is a big win. It is the beginning of a relationship.

It is way more valuable than turning them off in the first meeting and creating a dead end.

Don’t use up all the time talking about your stuff.  Use most of the time learning what is important to them.  Save your bit for the end.

You will have achieved a great outcome of making a genuine connection, and opened a door to more opportunity.

NOTE: If you are selling something, make sure your questions are not so specific to what you are selling.  If you are selling blue paint, still ask “What is driving your business? What is important to you?”, not “What problems are you experiencing because you have a lack of blue paint?”

3. Remember, Executives are People too.

Some people get absolutely paralyzed if they end up in the elevator or the coffee room with the CEO.

It also doesn’t hurt to remember that executives are people with families, and hobbies. They have frustrations with their teenagers, utility companies, and not having enough time to exercise. Make an effort to connect on topics as humans.

You don’t have to make an earth shattering impression in one meeting.  Just make an initial connection.  Ask a question, learn something, say thank you.

A few Don’t-Do’s… Don’t stalk executives, and don’t complain to them at social functions.  See also Visible, but not annoying.

4. Have some prepared banter

If it doesn’t come naturally to you to chat with people, or if you get intimidated when a big executive walks in the room, it helps a lot to just have some snappy things to say prepared ahead of time.

Some ideas you can keep in the bag…

• Hi, I’m Patty, I work in product development.  How are you today?
• How do you think we are doing on [something you know they care about] in the business?
• I heard you are a cyclist, so am I…
• Have you heard about our new case study from this reference customer? It’s a great story.
• I liked your recent communication on…  particulary the part about…
• What is the most surprising thing you have heard from a customer recently?

Make an impression

Even if you think you only have a once in a lifetime, 5 or 15 minute meeting with an executive, you are far better off making a personal connection, than trying to wow them with some kind of brilliant statement or pitch.

Or if you are tasked with presenting to an executive, its helpful to all involved to start your presentation by asking, “May I ask what you already know about this topic so I don’t bore you or waste your time? and What do you want to make sure you get out of this presentation?”.

Get invited back!

Hidden Expense…

Uncertainty is a huge hidden expense in your business.

There’s the obvious expense of work not getting done — as uncertainty causes people waiting for decisions instead of working.

But the more damaging and expensive side of uncertainty is the work that gets done the wrong way.

The wrong work

Unresolved strategic issues, don’t just stay in the board room until you finally get them answered.

Every unanswered strategic question leaves legions of people in your organization, less productive and more expensive than they would be with clear direction.

It’s the inconsistent work that comes from everyone taking their best guess while waiting for the strategy from above, that is expensive.

As a leader one of your biggest responsibilities is to remove uncertainty.

Strategic Chaos

What are the unresolved strategic issues in your company?  What are the decisions that are never seem to get closed?

Are we a product or service company? Should we do an exclusive agreement?  Should we be selling through different partners?  Should we upgrade our architecture, or build on the one we have?  Should we change our pricing for global customers or optimize regionally?

The cost of indecision…

It’s not that strategic unanswered questions go answered that causes the problem. It’s that they get answered every day, differently, by front line employees who are making the best choices they can in the moment for how to implement their work.

A tale of 2 business units

An interesting example of this is a company I worked with that had two business units.  At the executive level, it was a political war.

They could not commit to a decision if one or the other business unit was the primary mission of the company, or if both businesses should get equal attention and investment.

So what happened…

Hundreds of front line, individual contributors had to wonder, debate and make up their own answer to the most strategic decision in the company: What business are we in?

Customer-facing, unsupported strategy…

A specific, downstream effect of this was that every trade show event manager had signs for both businesses in their inventory.  So they each had to decide on their own, Do we hang one sign or both?  Do we make one bigger? Put one on top? Or give them equal treatment?

They all did their best, but of course they all made different decisions.  And different local politics ensured that the company was never represented the same way twice!

Because the executives left this uncertainty, the most fundamental positioning of the company was executed differently at every event.

Failure to build value, and wasted time and money…

The company shot them selves in the foot at every event, failing to build their credibility and recognition consistently in the market.

Your job is to eliminate uncertainty, so that everyone can invest in executing in an aligned way, to build value, market confidence and brand.

This is true for every function and every team in the organization. And this has a huge ROI.  Failure has a huge expense.

How much uncertainty is in your organization?

This is at the heart of the work I do with my corporate clients.  Create clarity, concrete actions and motivation both at the executive level AND with all of the employees.

If you want to talk about the execution challenges across your organization,
contact me.  I’d be interested to hear what you are facing, and would be happy to share some ideas with you.

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10 Ideas from the Webinar:

BUILD  ENDURING VALUE

An Interview with Bob Evans:

Don’t miss this one!

Bob was highly entertaining and shared really important ideas about what companies get right and wrong in creating real value for their customers and business.

DOWNLOAD THE PODCAST now to learn more about:

What companies get wrong

1. False Gods: Bob talked about how companies are driven by things that seem important, but really create no value for customers.

Shareholder Value is an example – sure you need it, but how many companies have unhappy customers and high shareholder value?

2. Convenient and Familiar: Companies often disregard what customers really want because it is too hard to change the way they work. Bob talked about how to get un-stuck.

3. The wrong metrics: Does what you measure get you closer to your customers or put up barriers to meaningful interaction?  Do your measures represent the past or the future?

The Core of Customer Value

4. Satisfied or Excited? Merely satisfied customers don’t need to talk to you.  You need your customers to be excited about engaging with you.   Bob talked about how to actively engage your customers.

5. Customers have more choice and power than ever. How do you make your customers want and need to do business with you?

6. Human Engagement: The best companies respect and engage their customers as humans.  They challenge themselves to live up to their customers’ intelligence, expectations and needs.

Building Value In

7. Knowledge. Bob talked about how to make sure you appreciate the difference between:  What do I Know? vs. What do I think I know? and how companies get this wrong.  We would all be better off asking ourselves this question each morning!

8. Partnerships. Bob gave several examples of how using Strategic Partnerships to engage customers in co-design of products, services and experiences creates genuine, enduring value.

9. Experience. The best companies focus on their customers’ experience with the products and services vs. the products and services themselves.

10. Packaging. Bob talked about the great untapped value of how companies Package, Present and Deliver their products to reach a much wider and highly motivated market.

DOWNLOAD THE PODCAST now to learn more about Building Enduring Value

About Bob Evans

Bob Evans is the SVP and Director of InformationWeeks’s Global CIO business unit.
You can check out more of Bob’s writing on Information Week’s Global CIO website:

Here are a couple of Bob’s articles:

• Global CIO: Are Oracle, HP, Cisco, and IBM too big to innovate?
• Global CIO: UPS CIO Barnes Shatters Dangerous IT Stereotypes

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Getting Clear

As I work with management teams who want to successfully execute a change…

Or to get their organization to step up to a more strategic or scalable way of working…

They often tell me, this is not a new idea, but we need to make it stick this time.

I have been thinking a lot about this lately – Why is it so hard to get organizations to stop doing what they are currently doing, and to start doing what the need to be doing?

Here’s the thought: Clarity is the secret sauce for execution, but clarity causes conflict, and most people don’t like conflict. So execution stalls.

Comfort with conflict

You need to be comfortable with the fact that creating real clarity is going to expose disagreements. It’s going to expose gaps. It’s going to expose things that you need to deal with.

It can be much more comfortable to just leave everything fuzzy so you don’t actually have to address these things. This is one of the key reasons why so many change initiatives fail.

Clarity gives you the specific trail map to success

Any successful business agenda or initiative needs a tremendous amount of clarity to succeed. First you need to be really clear about the desired outcome. What is expected?

Then:

• You need to break that big goal down clearly into smaller, concrete parts
• You need to be clear about who is responsible for each piece
• You need to be clear about how each piece is resourced
• You need to be clear about what doing something different in each case means to the old way of doing something.
• You need to be clear about how the roles of specific people change
• You need to be clear about not only what the new tasks and deliverables are, but what are the new behaviors and values that are expected at each level.
• You need to be clear about how the success of each role will be measured.
• You need to be clear about what the consequences are for not doing the new thing
• You need to be clear about what will be communicated.
  .

But getting clarity on any one of these points opens the door to conflict.

For example if you say: We need to improve the quality of our products. The priority of the next product release is quality.

That may sound like a clear statement, but…

• Does that mean that you will hire new people for testing?
• Does that mean that you will include customer testing earlier in the process?
• Does that mean that you will measure the performance of the engineers differently? How so?
• Will you re-rate the priority of all the bugs in the system? Or just some of them? Under what criteria?
• Does that mean that you will stick to your quality plan when the sales force is clamoring for new features?
  .

Or if you say: We need to sell higher up in organizations

• Does that mean that you expect every rep to spend some time on strategic deal making? How much time? Doing what, exactly?
• How will you engage customers differently? Are people trained to do that? Who will be trained?
• How will you measure if it is happening? What will you do it if isn’t?
• Or does that mean that you will split the team into tactical and strategic teams?
• Will you change the comp plans of the sales team?
• Will you create new product/solution offers to appeal at a higher level?
  .

Discussing the answer to all these kinds of questions out loud, with your team, opens the door to conflict.

Once you get really clear, people will not agree.

But that’s the important part.

That means you are doing it right

As I bring teams through this process of getting real clarity, taking the time to hear the opinions and debate, we reach a point where everyone can see what to do differently, specifically.

It becomes clear what everyone needs to do personally to achieve the big goal. Everyone leaves knowing exactly what is expected, and how they will be measured on what they do moving forward.

Being Fuzzy – the comfortable hazard

If you are not clear enough to cause and then work through conflict, I call this being fuzzy. Being fuzzy may be more comfortable in the moment but it causes several problems.

• Nothing changes.
• People go back to whatever they were doing before because they clearly know what that is. They don’t know specifically what they need to do, to do the new thing.
• When the outcome doesn’t happen, you can’t put your finger on what isn’t working, because you never defined exactly what “working” looks like.
• If people are not performing you can’t do performance management because you haven’t defined the expectations clearly enough to show the gap.
• If you can’t show the gap, you can’t get people to cross it
  .

Don’t settle for shallow team pleasantness, or avoid performance management at the expense of getting your business strategy implemented.

As a leader you need to create clarity and navigate through the conflict it causes, if you want to get anything important done.

There are many reasons that good strategies fail.

They range from, poor communication, lack of alignment, difficulty with change, underestimating resources required, failing to train people, running out of time…

But at the heart of all these things is:

How much do your employees care?

If your employees don’t personally care about what you are trying to do, it’s not likely to get done well, on time, or at all.

Give your people a reason to care

Here’s a good example:

The dreaded Mission Statement

You are probably already rolling your eyes at the thought of this…

This can become one of the most draining, irritating, and lame activities you can engage a management team in, and often results in a statement that reads something like:

To be the leading provider of the most innovative products in our space, with outstanding customer service, and the most efficient operations, therefore maximizing shareholder value.

OK employees…Now, hop to it!  (yeah, right.)

The trick is to actually care

If you want a mission that employees care about and can act on, the trick is to start with something you actually care about.

When I work with management teams on this, we start with the question “What do you personally care about?  Why are you here?”

Your employees will never care if your executives don’t.

Your team won’t care if you don’t.

You don’t need to call it a mission statement, but you do need to stand for something and care about something for real, if you want your people to spring into action, solve problems for you and drive the momentum you need in your business.

1. Define your strategy in terms people CAN care about.

If you care about customer service and believe that it is a competitive advantage then say so, and ask for help.

We are going to provide a level of personalized customer service for our products that is so good that our customers are shocked by it. We believe this is our key competitive opportunity.  Providing outrageous levels of service compared to the industry will grow our business, and we will be profitable doing it.

Now you can ask your employees to start solving this puzzle for you.

It gives them something dig into.  It gives them a way to engage.  It gives them something that they can care about too.

2. Talk about why you are here.

Why, personally are you here? at this company? in this organization? What are you trying to do?  Why does it matter to you? What are your values as a leader and as a human?

If you are willing to share your core values, your employees will care more.

You are giving them a basis to support you.  When they talk about work at the dinner table, YOU are the company, much more than anything else is.

If you stand for something they can care about, they will care.  If you only ever talk about projects and schedules, there is nothing for them to personally connect with or care about.

3. Talk about what excellence means to you, and why?

What is it that makes you proud of what you and your team delivers?  What is most important to YOU that your business stands for and shows the world?

Is it innovation? is it service?  is it quality? is it an externally validated proof that you are the best? What embarrasses you?  What do you believe is wrong that other companies do?  Why?

If you want your employees to step up, they need to understand why it matters.

So many managers struggle to get their employees to work at the same level of competence and quality that they personally deliver.  Your employees will never care about rising to your level of excellence unless you really show them why it’s personally important to you to operate at this level of excellence.

What if you don’t care?

If you don’t really care about your work or your company, if you are only there because you need the money, remember, while they are paying you, it is your job to lead, so it is your job to find  something you can care about.

If you don’t like the product, care about the way the company treats people.  If you don’t care about the company, care about the customers.

I’ve been here.  Believe me.  It’s better to find something to care about than it is to check out.  You are way more likely to get yourself into a better job later, (and maintain your sanity) if you keep caring about something along the way.

If you don’t genuinely care about something, you employees will not deliver for you.

Your strategy can be great, but if your employees don’t give a damn, your chances of executing go out the window.

UPGRADING YOUR TEAM WEBINAR

10 IDEAS

Download the PODCAST to learn more about:

It’s your job to build capability

1. A strong team. There is almost nothing more important in the “DO Better” category, which is about over achieving on the right few things that have the biggest impact on the business, than building a really strong team that can grow.

2. It is your job as a manager and leader to make your team more capable, not just manage their work.

3. You build capability in two ways: 1 – Develop people to become more capable over time, and 2 – Make people changes when current team members can’t live up to future requirements.

Start with Business Outcomes

4. Start with Business Outcomes. What does the business need? Draw a blank-sheet ideal org chart at your roadmap for your team, based on what the business requires.

5. Define NEW roles based on short term deliverables and longer term desired outcomes.  Include skill levels around judgment, leadership, communication, and personal support as well as technical/content skills.

6. People Moves. Once you have an ideal org chart, you will find some people on your current team will fit, but you will need to deal fairly with empty boxes and extra people.

Guilt, Change, & Difficulties

7. It is human nature to feel guilt when you eliminate jobs, but you need to realize that this is business driven and not personal.  You are creating roles to deliver business outcomes and then filling those roles with the most capable people.

8. You need to sell your plan and the value of the business outcomes your improved team will drive with your boss and HR early in the process.  This support is critical to getting it done and will make you feel more confident as you go through the process.

9. Don’t forget to keep momentum with high performers while you are diving change.

The Payoff

10. Building a stronger team is good for you, your team, and your business.  And don’t forget that taking people out of jobs they are struggling in is also good for them.  They deserve to be in a job where they can thrive.

GET THE PODCAST

UPGRADING YOUR TEAM

Members:
Download the Podcast for FREE

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INTERVIEW WITH
BOB KAPLAN ON STRATEGY

HERE ARE 10 IDEAS BOB SHARED WITH US IN
THIS MONTH’S MEMBER WEBINAR

How do you manage when your budget keeps getting cut, but the expectations don’t?

You need to support 30 percent more products or customers and your budget is flat or down.

The level of quality demanded is higher.
The business is more complex.  But you have less money…

It’s important to remember:

• This is not a unique situation.
• Every leader in every company is in this same boat at one time or another.
• This is what your job actually IS

Any smart person can do more good stuff with more money!

That is not what your job is. Your job is to do great stuff no matter what the budget.

If you walk around saying “I can’t do as much as I did last year because my budget is smaller” you are putting a bulls-eye on your chest.  The most effective leaders don’t worry about how much money they don’t have and how much harder the job is, they just get to work making the right, few things happen.

“Do Less with Less”

The goal is not to do “More with Less”.  More with less just doesn’t work.

Just piling more work on with less resources and telling everyone to deal with it, is not a formula for success.

At one point in my career I had to cut my annual budget from $140M to $60M.  The details are not necessary.  That is a cut!  My mantra became “we are going to do LESS with LESS”!

I learned that when you are faced with less budget you need to do less stuff, but you need to make sure what you do now, is  better stuff than what you used to do!

Do less, but achieve more

That’s where the leadership comes in. Here is when you personally need to step up to drive change.

It’s about challenging yourself and your team to do things in new and different ways to achieve better results with the same or fewer resources. This is what I refer to as “Better with Less“.

Your job as a leader is to find a way forward when expectations don’t match  resources.

It is to find different ways of working that accomplish more.  It is to:

• Make your team less busy on things that don’t matter
• Make trade-offs on purpose
• Decide things with less study
• Emphasize a few key things over everything
• Make cuts without being asked

Focus on key outcomes, then make cuts to make room

So many managers get into the mode of trying to take on everything without enough budget, and don’t think of making cuts on their own unless they are forced to do so from above.

You need to step up and take the ownership and initiative to make cuts to make room for the most important stuff, whether or not you are asked to do so.

Avoid across the board cuts.

Another sign of whether you are doing your job as a leader is that some things get less money and some things get more money.

This shows you have chosen things to emphasize to drive the business, and that they will succeed because they are well funded.  If everything gets cut equally, you are not doing your job.

For more ideas see Better with Less.

I have worked with many different sized companies and one of the universal truths I have seen is that sales people basically hate leads that are generated by marketing.

Unless of course, the “lead” is ready to buy.

Sales people only like HOT leads

I don’t say this to take a shot at sales people.  Effective sales people do a heroic job of cultivating their own business, and getting their own leads based on personal outreach, account development and referrals.

So, warm or cool leads generated by marketing are just not helpful.

They become “action items”, which get in the way of developing the business they are working on.

So why bother generating leads for sales at all?

If you are in the marketing role, generating leads is built into the DNA of your job description.  It’s also makes for a clear measurement:  How many leads did you generate and how much did it cost?

The standard goal is to spend the right amount of money and generate high quality leads that sales people use and turn into business.

Joint Marketing & Sales Approach

The real goal should be a joint sales and marketing goal where the leads are of high enough quality (and Hotness) that the sales force actually is motivated to work them.

I have seen two very basic practices make a huge difference.

For Sales: Actually use your CRM system

In so many companies, the CRM system becomes a “write-only” database for leads.  The information in it gets stale and out of date because it is not used as a day to day tool for developing business.

One time as a CMO, I investigated the leads that were in stage one of my company’s CRM system with people from sales, field marketing and corporate marketing.  “Stage one” is where leads that have been fully qualified were supposed to live.

In an unusual a fit of honesty from all involved, I got some real answers.

* A small percentage of the stage one leads were actually stage one leads.  They were being worked by sales people who had qualified them and moved them to stage one.  This was the minority.

* Some leads were there because the sales people were getting measured on qualifying leads, so they just moved them to stage one to meet that objective then just ignored them.

* This point was also good for marketing which also being measured on stage one, “qualified leads”, so it mutually re-inforced useless behavior and inflated success measures all around.

* Some leads were there because even though the deal had moved forward into later stages, no one updated the leads in the system.

* Some leads were there because the sales rep left the company and they were never reassigned.

* Some leads were there because the sales rep thought THEY had generated the lead, not marketing, so they entered a duplicate that they would get credit for directly.

* Some leads were there were actually worked and found to be not qualified, but no one bothered to close them out.

…You get the picture.

The way around this is to actually use your CRM system.

Have Lead Review Meetings

Sales teams have weekly order or revenue review meetings.  The most effective sales teams also have lead review meetings.

Imagine each week, if every sales team was looking at their assigned leads in the CRM system and every sales rep had to report on progress on each and every lead that was assigned to them.

This is not just about forcing sales to use the system, so everyone can have a nice neat system.

This is about developing business and making sales.  This is how the sales teams turn leads into business. This works.  I’ve seen this produce dramatic results from every sales team that does it.

The more focus sales teams have on the development of leads the more business they get.  It’s pretty black and white.

For Marketing: Don’t throw away warm leads

This qualifies as some of the oldest “news” on earth.  I bring it up again only because it is one of the most well studied AND most ignored marketing practices.

Companies spend money to generate leads and have a process to qualify them.  The HOT leads get worked on and the rest get thrown away.  Then you do another marketing program to get a whole new crop of leads, work the new HOT ones, and throw the rest away….

This is very expensive and also, it is well proven that the few hot leads have far less value long term than the warm & cool, but qualified ones.  (the ones you are throwing away.)

For starters, the warm and qualified cool list is a much larger list.  And people who expressed interest once are much more likely to buy eventually, then a brand new crop of unqualified leads from your next marketing program.

Think about this.  Only deliver HOT leads to the sales force.  Keep the rest in marketing and keep marketing to them until they are HOT.

Keep building your warm list and keep marketing to them.  You will get more HOT leads coming out of that group over time than from your new campaigns alone.  And they will be even HOTTER because they will have a longer term familiarity with you as you’ve been consistently marketing to them