Leading in times of transition is at best a significant and complex challenge. At worst it can be a leader’s darkest nightmare. The tension between what leaders want to achieve and their organization’s culture often means that traditional leadership training has not equipped leaders to effectively lead the organization through major changes.
Too often previous leadership training and a history of failed change contribute to the tension between the forces for change and those for maintaining the status quo. Unfortunately, as each attempt to use training to improve leadership competence fails so do the chances of successful change decline.
One reason leadership training lacks impact (no matter how good) is the lack of rigorous and continuous linkage between advancing change and advancing competence. Consequently, leading up to a change, those expected to start the change become part of the problem, not the solution. Too often they are unable or unwilling to tackle rising uncertainty and resistance.
How can you re-engage managers and develop their leadership competence?
This blog looks at how you can develop both measurable short- and longer-term results based on:
1. Getting People On The Same Page by Aligning People and then;
2. Making Better Use of What You Have by using Action Learning to help managers solving difficult problems while developing their leaders’ skills.
How can sales trainers and managers use BA to boost sales?
Observing and assessing what people to say and do in given sales situations is not new. It can have a powerful impact on sales effectiveness when done well. From sales ranging from inside to field sales, from direct to indirect, from simple to complex it is not so much which is the best system but which is most appropriate for the job you need to do. What follows is an overview of the case for BA in improving sales performance.
Why measure what people say or do?
Many of us are unaware of how skilled we are and, more importantly for development purposes, we are very often unaware of exactly how we produced such skilled purposes. We could, of course, ask skilled performers how they have reached their level of ability. Unfortunately, many of their highly skilled performances are by now unconscious with apparently little effort or planning. In fact various research studies of expert performance skills – music, sport, selling has shown such analysis can be really misleading. The prize though is worth it. If we can analyse top performers and are able to develop those skills in others the pay-offs are often double digit sales revenue increases. For example, in my own sales productivity projects, with a range of clients, have produced sales increase ranging from 25% to 100% using a BA based approach.
Clearly, if we want to illuminate why some people are more skilled than others we need to measure what is going on. A crucial factor is to make sure there is a balance between sales outcomes (Lagging Indicators) and the sales behaviors/process used to achieve such results (Leading Indicators). This balance shifts as the complexity and length of the sales increases. It becomes crucial to know how more skilled sales people achieve sales progress, such as:
Get invited to bid
Gain customer’s agreement to visit a reference site
Help the customer develop their RFP
If you are interested in having Nick speak to your organizationfill out this form.
Being competitive comes from people who are well aligned with their organization’s intent and mission. If you take that extra care to recruit and select such people, my question is:
How easy is it to waste the opportunity you have created?
Certainly, having faith that “they will get it” is not a strategy. Without real investment of your time, onboarding will be hit and miss. So, let’s look at that investment and how best spend time with New Hires. Continue reading →
Crazy as this seems, surveys and research show this is a common outcome.
There’s got to be a better way to ensure sales executives get a return from their sale training projects. We need to raise the bar in how we select Sales Training providers?
A poor investment?
What follows is my personal quest for improving the outcomes of such projects
Three reasons kept surfacing in conversations with sales managers:
1. How Much People Forget.
No matter how well we train sales people and they say they get it, typically most value gained erodes inside 30 days (80%+ is typical)
2. How hard people find it to change their natural behavior
They get frustrated easily, after seeing the value of change and experiencing progress during a training program, they slip back to their default behavior – their comfort zone.
3. Even when trained well, coaching is too little and too-outcome focused. And again people revert to their default behavior pattern.
Our experience is not unusual. All those trying to gain competitive advantage for their companies recognize these problems.
Over the last 25 years, sales executives have become jaded about sales training’s contribution to the bottom line. For many, memories of being pulled from the field for some grizzly sales training remain. Today there are hundreds such programs . . . from being customer value centered, to chasing foxes (tiring at best), to filling shark charts and don’t forget your green sheets!
Yes, these approaches point the way, but too many sales managers don’t realize how ingrained their salespeople’s habits really are. Even if they manage to get them to complete their “forms” they lack the awareness of when they are not in sync with different and changing customer needs. This is really prevalent in those sales people whose past success was in products that sold themselves. They got mentally lazy differentiating on value or service. For example, the telecommunications and IT markets in the early 2000s. Consequently, many are unaware changes before it’s too late, like:
Back in 1995 I worked with my client Peter Barlow then VP Global Account Management and Major Projects for APV (Food Process Engineering Company) on developing a Major Account Management System. Now over 15 years on I ask:
What’s changed in Key Account Management 15 years on?
Building and maintaining profitable relationships with your most important customers is more challenging than ever. The stakes are even higher of investing reduced resources on a few customers (accounts) with that nagging doubt of “backing the wrong horse”
“… (Managers) often don’t realize or understand how markets change and believe sales to be just how it was fifteen years ago.” (TACK Sales Leadership Survey 2011)
“Doing business with and actually making money from your largest strategic ‘partners’ has never been more difficult….Only a few corporations are getting it right.” (Richard Ilsley, SMCG 2010)
This blog takes a hard look at strategic, key or major accounts (KAM) and why many senior executives remain concerned 15+ years on. To do this retrospective I have drawn on several current experts in the field including a paper by Richard Ilsley of SMCG, TACK International and Mercuri.
For 40 Years few have challenged Matrix Management’s viability. Most writers remain convinced that a matrix approach is superior to a hierarchy, but why hasn’t it been more successful? This blog looks at pointing the reader to answer:
How do ensure we get the promised rewards of the Matrix?
First, a definition for SHRM
In a matrix structure, an employee reports to two managers who are jointly responsible for the employee’s performance. Typically, one works in an administrative function, such as finance, HR, information technology, sales or marketing, and the other works in a business unit related to a product, service, customer or geography.
The matrix model is a network of interfaces between teams and the functional elements of an organization. As its simplest it is:
I developed this as a discussion paper for a client’s European Sales Management Effectiveness Project. The interesting perspective is how the issues raised in the early 90’s are still validated by Deliotte’s 2010 survey of 250 Sales VPs. It begs the question:
Why are Sales Compensation Hydraulics Still Leaking?
1.1. How do you design a good sales compensation plan?
Specifically, a good plan:
Uses performance metrics that drive the company’s overall strategy;
Ensures roles, skills, selling, processes, internal culture, etc. are consistent with the overall sales force strategy
Are mechanically sound ; and
Can be administered efficiently.
Fits for your sales organization?
Can be administered with existing people, processes, data, and technology
(The following is based on Frank Cespedes book Concurrent Marketing, The Management of Major Sales (Neil Rackham) and 2010 Strategic Sales Compensation Survey by Deloitte & Varicent)
1.2. Compensation Hydraulics springs a leak
Since the mid 90’s the great bulk of literature still emphasizes what might be called
“Compensation Hydraulics”: Push this pay lever and get this kind of behavior.
This type of thinking fails to recognize that sales compensation is dependent upon, data analysis, strategy, values and human motivation. Many forget to ask:
How should we pay our customer facing people? (Which inevitably involves a range of business issues?)
(Journal article by George M. De Marco, Byan A. Mccullick; JOPERD–The Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance, Vol. 68, 1997)
I like this article as it challenges some of the more superficial approaches to training sales managers to coach. It is a challenge that so many duck and as I wrote in Quality Sales Managers Matters:
#1 High-performing sales manager’s impact reps engagement and financial performance. Reps reporting to great managers report high job satisfaction with four times more revenue than those working for poor managers.
#2 Coaching Is King—The manager activity most linked with sales rep success is coaching. However, their coaching ability to coach individual sales reps is the weakest.
#3 Who they coach is selective— Coaching low or star performers does not statistically improve performance. Core performers, the 60% center of the performance Bell Curve make significant improvements with coaching.
#4 Effective coaching hits the bottom line. Core sales reps receiving great coaching reach on average 102% of goal in contrast to sales people reporting poor coaching who achieve only 83% of goal. Good coaching can improve core performance by 19%. This is lower than with PDS’s and Huthwaite’s sales productivity projects (18%-30% sales increases)
#5 Great Coaching Is a Learned Skill—Quantitative analysis shows that five elements account for 77% of coaching effectiveness. Armed with this information, we can develop great coaches by focusing them on specific activities such as emphasizing the importance of targeting the best opportunities and spending at least three, but no more than five, hours coaching each rep per month.
The characteristics of coaching expertise, research into coaching effectiveness, coaching expertise, and expert performance in other domains, a profile of expert coaching has emerged. – Five distinct Characteristics
Characteristics of Expert Coaches
1. Extensive, Specialized Knowledge
All around understanding of the internal and external sales environments
2. Organize Knowledge Hierarchically
The ability to store and organize information as learning patterns which allows them to compare idealized performance standards with the present performance of their people.
At its core the experts are superior planners and evaluators. E.g. expert gymnastic coaches used a model to determine and plan for their athletes potential developing short- and long-term goals being set and periodically reset according to the athlete’s progress.
Another study compared 10 expert and 10 novice basketball coaches. The results indicated:
“..experts had more in-depth and detailed planning protocols, with more augmentation, sub goals and anticipated problem statements than novices. They planned practice sessions in bigger chunks, taking into consideration more components of the problem at one time” (p.215).
3. Highly Perceptive & Superior Problem Solvers
Experts are uniquely capable of accurately perceiving stimuli in game situations. They can sort important clues from other “white noise” and then generate superior responses. They can see how all the pieces fit together to help their athletes to plan, diagnose and strategize more effectively. The experts solve problems more methodically
4 Accurately assess and prescribe performance
This positively impacts the quality and quality of coaching during practice. Basketball experts spent 42% of their time in instruction In another study, expert coaches gave significantly more feedback.
Expert coaches are able to detect what people need to know and then find ways of supplying that information.
5. Exhibit Automaticity During Analysis & Instruction
Several studies on coaching effectiveness showed that coaches of less satisfied high school teams often interrupted the flow of practices to instruct, whereas coaches of satisfied teams typically provided instruction as they played.
Commentary of Summitt’s coaching:
“provides succinct and rapid-fire instructive and prescriptive feedback during play”
6 Self-Monitoring Skills
Experts are more self-aware, analytical, evaluative and corrective of their performances. They are driven by the desire to improve their own coaching performance
Developing Expertise in Coaching
Gain More Knowledge
Study successful coaches
Identify the important. Organizational skills are critical to effective coaching. Keep yearly, monthly, personal records
Stay perceptive, recognize problems early and solve them quickly.
Concentration is a must – focus on the task at hand and don’t let yourself be interrupted or distracted. When analyzing a skill performance, focus only on one aspect of the performance, not the whole skill. ”The sooner the coach can analyze skill problems, the sooner the will move to the expert level”
Identify & solve problems in a rapid, complete and correct manner demands skill that continually needs to be developed
Increase short- and long- term Memory – A great distinction between the experts and others “the ability to acquire, retain and apply knowledge”
Make it Automatic – develop practice routines, warm-up drills, pre-game activities
In one of my clients in the food engineering sector, I estimated that only 1:12 quotes were successful. What are the implications of this situation, apart from not making your “Nut”?
Effort devoted to lost causes
Good opportunities starved of resources at the right time
Internal relationships between sales engineer and other suppliers
Damaged Sales credibility due to poor forecasting
And??????
A Test
So, here’s a test. At your next Sales Meeting checkout to see if people are on the same page. You might use different terminology but the principle is the same. Can you get your people and those that support them “on the same page”. Here’s some definitions to check out with them.
Sound weird, doesn’t it? Truth is . . . being tied to one training methodology simply isn’t productive.
There’s no “perfect training methodology” – whether it be focused on selling, managing or coaching. Any training should Advance Competence while Advancing Sales. Complex sales organizations need methodological purpose rather than one methodology piled on top of existing methodologies.
Additionally, people have been trained a lot in their lives. It seems obvious that we should also give them credit for the concepts, processes, and skills they have already learned. Adding methodologies (no matter how good they are) risks creating indifference. We know indifference does not change behaviors! Conversely, building commitment relies on giving your people and managers credit for what they already know, while at the same time changing behaviors that do not work.
Regular readers will remember I was talking about how many change projects started in response to the worsening economy yet almost half of the respondents said that a significant amount of change projects failed to meet their stated goals.
Last month we looked at competitive differentiation and emphasized the importance of Competitive Value Discovery as fundamental. It helps you discover value potential over your competitors. Finding value that the Customer had never thought of before is competitively differentiating. Also, whether it’s your existing customer or you are trying to secure a new client, they always weigh your value against your competitors’. Focused Value Discovery helps you gain greater control over what they weigh, how they weigh it and, as importantly, what the competition is doing in the same regard so that we can counter such tactics. So, if we have far better intel and a better sense of the client’s changing priorities we can work both offensively and defensively to influence their Decision Guidelines.
In sum, you need to gain the high ground
What have you chosen for us this month?
This month I want to explore why planned and focused value discovery is vital to creating and implementing a successful sales strategy. Aligning where you are going with your resources gives you the best chance for creating new or additional revenue sources. This means being competitively clear about how you are going to choose the products (or services) you want to build. For instance:
Build the product you want to build,
Market the product you want to build,
Sell the product you want to build,
Service the product you want to build
Build the next generation
Determining where to differentiate based on market conditions is a strategic value conversation. You have to know your products as well as you know your competitor’s. Then determine strategically where competitors are most vulnerable and how to deliver those messages. You must regularly test your premise with the customer…
How easy is it to find out how your competitor is differentiating themselves?
Not easy! Sure, hard product functionality is on their website – that’s the easy bit. It’s difficult because most think each competitor is static and consistent – but they are not! Many competitors don’t even behave the same between their different regions or divisions. For example, a competitor can be your partner in one geography, yet be your competitor in another. Typically, this occurs in IT. So, what they do in Idaho is often very different than what they are doing in Chicagoland. With one client, we helped them find out that a technology partner was in fact competing against them using two strategies. The first was in schools districts and the second in State Government. They were losing 8/10 sales to them. After we determined this we helped them reverse that condition.
Why do so many companies fail to recognize such competitive strategies?
Because they don’t have the focus, processes and ability to read their competitive environments. Such signals are not easy to read: they are weak ambiguous, and need deciphering. Only a systematic and aligned process can decipher competitive signals early enough to make a difference.
It is difficult. First, top management is never close enough to the market. Second, some top executives can’t see competitive reality. Somehow they become insulated from competitive reality by relying on intelligence that is invariably biased, subjective, filtered or late.
By the time most executives get evidence of changes in their markets, they have already lost touch with customers, technology, competitors, suppliers, government and the other forces operating to squeeze their profits.
The question is, if you do nothing, what are the competitive consequences? Without taking specific preventive measures, such as ensuring that top managers consider competitive information in making decisions, companies will be hit on the head by change – time and again.
You may be thinking, who has the time to continually and systematically identify such signals early? Who has the expertise to attempt to decode all of them? The answer is: Your people – those who are in daily touch with the competitive arena.
Survival depends on competitive agility when facing changes in the environment by:
Continuously moving on three fronts –content, context and process
Being unpredictable and so easily identifiable to your competition
Being experimental
To compete in unstable markets you need to be competent in two things:
Identifying and understanding the competitive forces at play and how they change over time, linked to
Mobilizing resources to respond competitively
How do you get this flow of competitive intelligence to decision makers?
The Five Aspects of Competitive Strategic Change
Our uncertain environment means strategic change involves parallel streams of activity. There is no easy logic; It’s more like brewing a culture– like beer. It’s a difficult complex process where a manager’s ability to cope with ambiguity is paramount.
It’s not surprising then that higher performing firms handle five interrelated aspects of strategic change better:
The firm has to be an open learning system and not reliant on one specialist function.
As Romme (1989) puts it:
“There is the problem of not only environmental “sensing”, but also “sense-making””And sensing tends to be by individuals whereas sense making nearly always involves collective processing…
Successful competitive sensing and sense making is requires:
Key people to champion assessment techniques which increase openness
Both structure and culture to encourage environment-facing behaviors
Even with these factors are present there is no guarantee anything will change without actions which stabilizes and drives this assessment capacity forward. .
Presumably, this means leadership style has to change?
2.Leading Change
I agree, it’s not is not just ensuring that the environment is understood; the vital need is to ensure that the organization learns and acts on new information that requires courageous leadership. The leadership challenge is that unpredictability makes the prospect of greater control remote. So, big initiatives in themselves are of limited value and may well be dangerous. Paradoxically, effective leadership relies on the gradual and modest. This includes assessing, for instance, through “problem-sensing” and “climate-setting” management can assess the political implications of a competitive strategy. Effective leadership relies on shaping a long term process rather one direct initiative. These processes have to encourage analysis and actions which are sensitive to changing circumstances.
Competitive research suggests that leading an organization through change does not imply reliance on one leader. Great emphasis in those organizations studied was placed on:
Creating a broader notion of collective leadership at higher levels
Embedding a complimentary sense of leadership and responsibility at lower levels
Leaders need to be “Radical Gradualists,”knowing where they need to go using incremental and unspectacular steps.
It involves integrating competitive actions at all levels.
Building a climate for leading change also needs to raise energy levels and set new directions. The conditions needed are:
Showing why the changes are needed
Building the organizational capabilities to mount the change
Establishing an agenda which sets direction, visions and values
What’s the next challenge for becoming more competitive?
3.Linking Strategic & Operational Change
The cumulative effect of separate acts can be powerful. As Pettigrew & Whipp puts it:
“Translating strategy into operational action does not occur by a neat sequence of steps to a logical outcome; it may include…iterative actions in order to break through ignorance or resistance; it often requires…aborted efforts and the buildup of slow incremental phases of adjustment which….allow short bursts of concentrated action…”
You need to focus on:
Opening up people to reach closure on what worked in the past and reinforce the changes that need to be made
Sustaining speed, intensity and momentum of the process
Recognizing that re-formulation of the strategy will occur – Set the expectation that you can’t to get it right first time
Translating strategic intent into operational reality – WIIFM
Then, new knowledge and insights gained during implementation of a strategy can be captured, retained and disseminated. So, replicate success and avoid failures better than you competition
I am curious to learn about the next step
So, the next step is about the organization’s ability to keep learning about its competitive surroundings
4.Competitive Learning
Peter Senge defined learning organizations as:
“Organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together.”
Competitive learning organizations need to create positive learning spirals that:
Develop the value of competitive knowledge as a key differentiating weapon
Facilitate learning that generates, maintains and regenerates that knowledge
Find ways of exposing knowledge locked-up in the procedural repertoires of the firm
Ensure that the knowledge base of the firm matches changing competitive conditions
Competitive learning spirals involve observation, reflection, hypothesizing, experimentation, action and “hands-on” application. What is learned has to be codified and diffused.
Such spirals are team based. People collectively developing their knowledge, values and shared mental models of their competitive environment. It goes beyond training. The need is for a much broader approach which embraces “play experimentation”, developing appropriate language as well as reshaping attitudes and values.
Often overlooked, is the need for breaking down entrenched knowledge and beliefs – “unlearning”. – Shedding outmoded knowledge, techniques and beliefs, and then learning new ones to carry out strategies is crucial. The ability to do so faster and more effectively than your competitors becomes almost priceless!
How do Leaders juggle all of this?
5.Orchestrating Competitive Change
It’s about holding a firm’s strategic thinking together, while carrying out the reshaping and adjusting which new or emergent strategies demand. Research shows the need for competitive integrity between the strategic competitive position adopted by the firm, the internal resources and external collaborators
Such orchestration is not easily attained or maintained. It means solving analytical, educational and political problems.
The problem of orchestration lies in the divergence between official goals and more routine decisions. As Kanter (1983) says, “there are many rules for stifling innovation”. These include multiple layers of managerial approval; intensive controls; secretive decision making; and suspicion of new ideas. In other words, corporate contradictions prevent change – the formidable obstacles to which many give little attention.
Are there any other aspects which leaders should consider when conducting competitive change?
Developing Competitive Networks
A key aspect is developing competitive networks. It’s investing in networks to build up, for example, a set of complimentary assets which it needs in order to exploit its knowledge base.
Networking focuses on developing relationships between your firm and others which are directly concerned with generating new intellectual capital (IP) For example, sharing life science research with a collaborator. Each has one piece of the puzzle, so they build a database by sharing intellectual property.
It also is about developing relationships which affect the firm’s process of generating and altering its knowledge indirectly. An example here is with data centers and different IT firms used to support the customer’s service in that data center.
Developing such networks requires learning local cultural and market conditions, techniques of partnering, negotiation skills and collaboration. Such networks are often invisible assets which cannot be readily purchased and controlled.
So, I guess the real question is how well an organization develops its competitiveness by being better at discovering customer values and then aligning their organizations and partners to meet those demands. Right?
Competitive Value Discovery is the tip of the spear targeted and driven by superior focus, processes and leadership that galvanizes the organization. It is sustained by the belief that being competitive is about making sense of changing market conditions, customer needs, priorities and competitive responses.
Competitiveness rests not only aligning such aspects, but also replicating what works over and over again. Can you tell me what those systems are in your organization?
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
This is the third in my Leadership Skills series to help Leaders assess where they need to develop their people skills. In my last Post I introduced the research-based model that led to many useful insights into how to create and manage effective meetings. I covered the impact of Filter and Amplifier meetings which were the names the researchers coined to distinguish the different ways in which ideas or proposals were managed. This Post focuses on people who are difficult for many to handle or feel comfortable with, and you may be one of these people under certain circumstances.
Typically, you will work with one of these people who naturally behave this way and, in certain situations you may change the way you behave, often without realizing it.
How do you recognize you are dealing with one of these mysterious people?
Let’s look at one aspect of behavior – Reacting. It’s a group of behaviors you can choose to use; each of which when used repeatedly will have certain effects on the people you interact with, for better or worse. Let’s take the first of the Reacting Group – Supporting someone’s ideas or position – what’s your most likely response?
Supportive, likable…I guess
Yes that’s right. Secondly, there is Disagreeing with someone’s ideas or position. How are you likely to feel?
Well, I could see them as negative if they are aggressive or defensive…
That’s interesting….funnily enough people don’t see people who are high in disagreeing as necessarily negative, because they are rational, and seen as more objective…if they stick to a person’s proposals or ideas and do NOT focus on the person themselves. If they do get defensive or aggressive they are not disagreeing, they are Defending/Attacking. No surprise there about how such emotional people are viewed by colleagues and family members, for that matter.
OK, so who’s this mystery person… high “disagreer,” or defend/attacker?
Neither, this person is called the LOW REACTOR; they use lower levels of all three behaviors in both their verbal and non-verbal behavior, they show very little reaction to others
So, they are very quiet individuals..right?
Not necessarily. They may, for example, have high levels of Initiating and/or Clarifying behaviors. The only thing they avoid is Reacting.
Why is this Low Reactor a problem?
They give very little feedback about whether they approve of points you present. This tends to make people feel uneasy and people tend to handle them ineffectively. For example, even experienced sales people find it difficult to make their case convincingly when they are faced with somebody whose lack of response makes it hard to judge. One salesperson summed up the difference between high “disagreers” and low reactors.
“You know where you stand with someone who is prepared to disagree. What makes it hard with the Low Reactor is that he doesn’t’ even disagree!”
Some research to back up this comment was presented in the famous Xerox Research Project in the late 70’s (Neil Rackham, Simon Bailey & Linda Marsh, Huthwaite Research Group), one element of which looked at this very point. The researchers showed that while high “disagreers” are harder to sell to, the hardest to sell were the Low Reactors.
How much different were sales people’s success rates?
It was quite striking. The researchers looked at calls which advanced to the next stage or a deal was signed. For average reactors, salespeople were successful in about 11 out of 20 sales, where selling to high “disagreers” only 8 out of 20, and finally, Low Reactors only 3 out of 20 sales.
That’s a big difference…did they find out why selling to Low Reactors was so difficult?
It turns out that there are Five Common Traps people tend to fall into when trying to persuade a LOW REACTOR. Let’s see if you have experienced any of these…
Ok Go ahead… I am sure I have fallen into at least one and not realized it
That’s an excellent point…most people don’t know what’s happening to them … other than this person seems awkward to deal with.
Trap 1 – Losing Control Over Your Speaking Pace
Because people lose confidence in front of Low Reactors they do one of two things, either they talk faster to get to something that will spark interest or they run out of things to say due to the lack of reaction. For example, sellers’ normal speech rate was 119 words per minute (wpm) where it was 138 wpm when selling to Low Reactors and the number of pauses, or “umms” more than doubled. In fact, the number of redundant words significantly increased as well, like “Well, you see…what I meant to say…”
I bet this doesn’t apply just to sales situations?
Quite right, job interviews are another good example of finding Low Reactors – more situational – Interviewers know they are not supposed to support or disagree.
Fascinating, what’s the second trap?
Trap 2: Losing Sequence During Presentations
This was common in any situations where someone needs to make a verbal presentation. If either the decision maker or Leader is a LOW REACTOR or they are evaluating and making a big decision presenters will tend to jump around or lose sequence. In a study of 23 leaders, presenters “back tracking” occurred over 50% more often and “jumping the Gun” occurred 3 times as often.
What’s the Third Trap?
Trap 3: Over-Reacting. (Over-stating to get a reaction)
This is the most common and most dangerous trap to fall into. In a study of twenty-eight trade union officials and their management counterparts researchers actually observed real life labor negotiations and listened for emotionally charged statements. The differences were stark when the low reactor was on either side of the negotiation table – nearly 50% more emotionally charged statements were made.
In another study of salespeople, selling to LOW REACTORS led to a drop in factual statements and overstatements went up from 4% average to 13% with LOW REACTORS also untruths went to 3% from 1%.
Well it confirms that sellers do lie on occasions..doesn’t it?
Yes, BUT, so does the general population…some of the time.
OK… two more to go,…what’s number 4?
The Five Traps
Trap 4: Asking Fewer Questions Than Usual.
Asking more questions is usually a good thing to do with LOW REACTORS to find out where you are if nothing else! Especially; “How do you feel about this point?” Unfortunately 80% of people say they should ask more questions yet only 30% actually do. In one sample of 196 sellers questions fell by one-third to one half.
What’s the fifth trap?
Trap 5: Giving Too Much Information
For example, in selection interviews, law courts and other places where low reaction is normal, people often come away having given a great deal more information than they wanted to. In one study, sales people gave 50% more feature statements to LOW REACTORS.
Do we all fall into these traps?
No. Some people are more susceptible than others.
The 5 Traps: Your likelihood to fall into them
1 Pace 10-15%
2 Sequence 25-30%
3 Over Reacting/Stating 55-60%
4 Fewer Questions – 75%-80%
5 Blah,blah, blah (Talk too much) 75%-80%
What proportion of the population are LOW REACTORS?
That’s difficult to say considering factors like ethnicity and cultural differences – e.g. Scandinavians vs. Italians. What the researchers indicated is that the bigger the decision someone makes the more likely that their reaction levels will be lower. For example, in selling larger sized machines researchers found that LOW REACTOR levels rose from 18% to 46% and when people were making a decision for someone else Low Reacting goes from 16% to 47%.
How do you define Low Reactors?
Typically researchers found that Reacting Behaviors less than 10% of all behaviors identified a LOW REACTOR.But it’s clouded by reaction levels being higher in one-to-one situations, so for groups the number is 7%, and the other problem is with those people who just don’t say much at all.
What is the significance for Leaders?
Let’s look at how leaders could actually set up their people to fail (placing these traps in their way unintentionally). If you are not aware of how your reaction levels drop, and under what circumstances they drop, you can set up your people for progressive confidence loss. Are you a natural LOW REACTOR anyway? It is natural for many leaders, as they rise up the corporate ladder, to learn that reacting either in support or disagreement too quickly can create risks. So, many senior leaders exhibit the “keeping your cards close to your chest” behavior.
Your Low Reacting behavior can deplete your peoples’ confidence and create risk avoidance in their behavior. This can result in lower levels of informal communication, especially from junior staff members. The point is that Leaders may not want to lower their reactions with their people too often. For example:
Can you imagine leaders lowering their reaction levels during big presentations? Given the above traps, less experienced people might suffer a confidence loss and start to think you are disagreeing with them, when in fact you are thinking things through.
How are you going to set and manage team expectations to avoid – or at least manage – falling into one of the above traps?
Think about your expectations when people are preparing next year’s first round budget presentation. How apprehensive were they last time? How did this detract from an effective process and the team’s engagement?
How can you set expectations to improve this process?
For example, you might say:
“I expect that you will give me feedback on the impact of my behavior when making big decisions.” (How are you setting yourself up for unintended Low Reacting?)
“At the end of this meeting we will agree to expectations that I have of you and what you expect from me.”
“Before we start budget planning I expect people to come to a review meeting to assess how effectively the process and people’s preparation helped or hindered during that first round?”
Given that Low Reaction levels will occur, how can you help your people feel more comfortable?
Brief your people when you know your reaction levels are likely to fall. If several subordinates are presenting, it can be helpful to ensure certain reactions are planned. For example, say something like:
“I expect team members to give feedback directed at the expectations we set in the Review meeting…”
“I expect that all feedback will focus on the evidence presented and not how it was presented.”
“I expect that all proposals put forward during presentations are not rejected or accepted immediately.” (We owe it to the presenter to seek to understand and try to help their ideas come to fruition.”)
What Conclusion Can We Draw?
Low reacting levels are normal and often more situational, rather than an indicator of a person’s preferred behavioral style. As a leader, it is within your control to set expectations to avoid and/or manage the negative impact of such behavior.
Low reacting can be turned to advantage, forcing ideas to be fully explored before people react. It also facilitates a sense of team by encouraging Building rather than Reacting Behavior.
What can you do about this situation?
Madness can be defined as “doing what you have always done, yet expecting different results.” So, what expectations do you now have for yourself in terms of managing your reaction levels?
Doing different things is about “purposeful practice” and then getting feedback from others, What mechanisms or structures do you have in place to do this? How are you going to restructure major interactions with your staff to lower their chance of falling into traps?
Great, but how can this help me?
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
_________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
The focus of this blog is the first of two on Improving Sales Effectiveness. The first is the Quality of Sales Managers Matters. It is based on findings from the Conference Executive Board, PDS Groups and Huthwaite Research Group studies on sales management and coaching. All three agree on 5 Main Factors: (Listen to the Radio Show)
#1 High-performing sales manager’s impact reps engagement and financial performance. Reps reporting to great managers report high job satisfaction with four timesmore revenue than those working for poor managers.
#2 Coaching Is King—The manager activity most linked with sales rep success is coaching. However, their coaching ability to coach individual sales reps is the weakest.
#3 Who they coach is selective— Coaching low or star performers does not statistically improve performance. Core performers, the 60% center of the performance Bell Curve make significant improvements with coaching.
#4 Bottom-Line Impacts—Effective coaching hits the bottom line. Core sales reps receiving great coaching reach on average 102% of goal in contrast to sales people reporting poor coaching who achieve only 83% of goal. Good coaching can improve core performance by 19%. This is lower than with PDS’s and Huthwaite’s sales productivity projects (18%-30% sales increases)
#5 Great Coaching Is a Learned Skill—Quantitative analysis shows that five elements account for 77% of coaching effectiveness. Armed with this information, we can develop great coaches by focusing them on specific activities such as emphasizing the importance of targeting the best opportunities and spending at least three, but no more than five, hours coaching each rep per month.
What difficulties do firms face in getting Sales Managers coaching to impact results?
The really effective sales organization has a number of characteristics, for example:
Skills and strategies suited to their market outstanding products or services
In-depth understanding of how these products can solve customer problems
Appropriate rewards and performance measures
Sales support system which actually helps to sell, not just administer
An ability and willingness to learn
Full effectiveness, however, can be achieved only if everyone:
Has a clear and shared vision of where the company is heading
Understands the strategy for getting there and their part in the process
Is rewarded for playing their part
Focuses obsessively on the customer
Some barriers to effectiveness are obvious – if the products are poor then no amount of sales skill can compensate sufficiently to build success. Many barriers are more subtle, and can sap the strength of the company over a long period without being tackled. Such problems usually fall under one the following three headings:
Misalignment
Inflexibility
Internal Focus
Misalignment
Feels like a bad back
There are many ways in which Misalignment is introduced into organization structures and processes; at best they generate unhelpful tensions and frustrations, at worst they lead to departmental rifts and sabotage. Common examples are:
Poor alignment of individuals’ expectations, departments and the company as a whole
E.g. the sales force seeks job interest by selling bespoke solutions, while the company is trying to standardize its offerings
Incentives for interdependent departments or people are not congruent
E.g. Sales force targeted on increased volume, administration targeted on decreased costs performance management process runs counter to company strategy
Sales management sets 30 day revenue targets, while company exhorts the salespeople to develop major accounts for the long-term
Salespeople are expected to cross-sell for other Divisions or countries, but are not rewarded for so doing
Sales management is “do as I say, not as I do”
E.g. Managers use a hard ‘push’ style, while advocating a ‘pull’ or consultative style with their people
Doing what we’ve always done what is going to be needed due to changing technology, markets and competition
E.g. When a monopoly supplier meets competition for the first time so the products no longer ‘sell themselves’
When new products address a different market – for example, printer sales force find themselves selling systems not peripherals
Gaps between stated values and actual values
E.g. “Our customers are our greatest asset ” while salespeople refer to them as “Buyers are liars”
“Our employees are our greatest asset”, while managers show little concern and even less investment
Inflexibility
Many markets are now more turbulent and unpredictable than ever before, and success comes only to those who are ‘quick on their feet’. Unfortunately many players suffer from at least one of the following:
Their sales organization structure and roles don’t match those of the customer
E.g. they offer multipoint direct contact with sales, service, technical support, while the customer wants single point contact
Geographical location of functions and authority doesn’t match the customer’s
Their organization is inherently unresponsive to change
E.g. in rapidly evolving markets, companies operating a traditional hierarchical and functional structure find it hard to compete with those successfully using a cross-functional team approach
• Their people are resistant to change
E.g. Salespeople who have been adequately successful for years have become “order takers”, and the entertaining approach to account development
Managers who find it hard to let go of their traditional, power-oriented style and allow staff the space and authority to really contribute
Technical people who are unwilling to take on the sales role and don’t believe in the new technology
Internal focus
True customer focus involves a lot more than ‘customer service training’; it means that no aspect of the organization should be free from an all-pervading concern with delivering what the customer wants, and a bit more. It means taking your cue from the customer in areas which traditionally have been internally focused, for example:
Company and/ or departmental structure
E.g. Split on arbitrary product/technical grounds, so that several sellers approach the same individual
Performance measures
E.g. Call rates, scrap rates, production volumes, instead of response times, satisfaction ratings, service call-outs
Perception of what is being sold
E.g. In terms of a product rather than the results of using it – a security system rather than peace of mind, a training course rather than increased sales effectiveness
Conclusion
There is no one best sales organization structure, incentive scheme, or strategic approach. If there were, we would not see the huge diversity which exists in the real world, and change would anyway render it obsolete.
The effective organization is never complacent, and audits itself rigorously and constantly, seeking out and remedying any instances of inconsistency, inflexibility and internal focus. It also never fools itself into believing that change=progress;. change follows cycles of learning of what works and what doesn’t, not from a fear of stagnation.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Contact: Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD E-mail I Web I Linkedin
If we can analyse top performers and are able to develop those skills in others the pay-offs are often 
amental. It helps you discover value potential over your competitors. Finding value that the Customer had never thought of before is competitively differentiating. Also, whether it’s your existing customer or you are trying to secure a new client, they always weigh your value against your competitors’. Focused Value Discovery helps you gain greater control over what they weigh, how they weigh it and, as importantly, what the competition is doing in the same regard so that we can counter such tactics. So, if we have far better intel and a better sense of the client’s changing priorities we can work both offensively and defensively to influence their Decision Guidelines.
It is difficult. First, top management is never close enough to the market. Second, some top executives can’t see competitive reality. Somehow they become insulated from competitive reality by relying on intelligence that is invariably biased, subjective, filtered or late.
This is the third in my Leadership Skills series to help Leaders assess where they need to develop their people skills. In my last Post I introduced the research-based model that led to many useful insights into how to create and manage effective meetings. I covered the impact of Filter and Amplifier meetings which were the names the researchers coined to distinguish the different ways in which ideas or proposals were managed. This Post focuses on people who are difficult for many to handle or feel comfortable with,
I bet this doesn’t apply just to sales situations?
The Crispian Advantage 