I have to post this here to use the pic URL for something else

WHY

After watching the TED talk by Simon Sinek on the golden circle, I'm completely sold on "why". Dan Pink touches on it in his talk about purpose as well, and I've felt it countless times in my life. I crave the why in all I do.

When considering that everything we do is born from a "why", that word becomes perhaps THE most powerful word in all of English language. It is the motive behind every action, and it is the decision criteria for all future action. Why.

Will Smith - Unstoppable

Design Thoughts

The age of information - we are trying so hard to organize information. Huge amounts of data often fall into lists, tables, charts, etc., and thankfully so.

Outside of the electronic world, however, I feel like we gather, understand, integrate, and act on much larger sets of information in much shorter periods of time. Take a human face for example. Immediately upon seeing a face, we are able to gather, integrate, and draw conclusions from an enormous amount of data. Hundreds of micro-adjustments in facial muscles are gathered by our eyes and brain and formed into a complete image, then understood as an expression, then an emotion and all that goes with that emotion, including how we should respond to it. And all this happens immediately.

I wish we could design business reports the same way - immediate comprehension with one look. Instead of reading about the health and trajectory of a project or an entity, what if we could design a report that gives a picture which immediately conveys all information necessary about that thing...!

I think design is getting better at this, but we need to do it BETTER! More information in a simpler form for immediate and thoughtless comprehension. Simplification of information.

Elements of visual data in the natural world

• Color
• Size
• Distance from you
• Distance from other objects
• Shape
• Texture
• Movement
• Direction in relation to you
• Direction in relation to other objects
• Speed
• Volatility
• Rotation
• Density
• Mass

Consulting Lessons Learned

2 May 2012
Lessons learned

1. Start at the top. This introduces clarity and simplicity, or at least it should. If the top objectives are unclear then they need to be clarified and simplified.
2. Create a goal tree. Include the goal, owner, and deadline. Be MECE.
3. Establish a reporting method for each goal. What metric will be used, how often, how (email, in-person, etc.), and to whom (this should be pretty clear after creating the goal tree).
4. Step 2 is an alignment mechanism. It should help all projects and processes in the company contribute to the major company goal.
5. Projects vs. processes. They are different, but as far as I can see right now, all things in the company should be designated as either a project or a process. Projects have clear end dates, processes are ongoing. Projects may include process elements, however, for example, a task which requires multiple iterations to be completed is a process inside a project. But I don’t have that one totally flushed out yet.
6. I haven’t done it yet, but I think the real power will come in regular reporting. Accountability, baby. Make it regular, get into a rhythm and hold owners stringently accountable. Don’t let people skip out on reporting no matter what. Seriously. It must happen every period. Hunt them down.
7. Being a bit of a dictator is a good thing, because it offers clarity and focus. People don’t like constraints... but then again people love constraints. I think it’s a situation where on the surface they typically don’t like the pressure or work required, but deep down they really want someone to push them to their potential.
8. Logic trees ROCK. They help to break things down clearly. Be MECE in your trees, of course.

Also, setting up meetings with people takes FOREVER. Don't let that happen anymore, just show up and ask for a few minutes right then in person. They're not doing anything super important.

FHE Video

Building a World-Class Sales Force

Gallup Management Article
http://gmj.gallup.com/content/331/building-worldclass-sales-force.aspx

Forget Slide Decks - Metrics!!!

While most Angel List profiles include incredible product photos and videos, there is one startup that stands out among the pack. This is the only photo on the remind101 Angel List profile.

http://startupstats.com/this-startup-reminds-us-why-the-best-dont-need-pitch-decks-2012-02/
Article by the founders: http://betashop.com/post/14249821547/behind-the-scenes-how-fab-raised-40-million-with-a

Keep it Fast and Simple

Selling Power 500

The 500 top companies in America – which employ the world’s largest sales forces – depend on more than 21 million salespeople to achieve their revenue goals


http://www.sellingpower.com/magazine/article.php?i=1318&ia=9152#topArticlePages

More Lessons Learned - Time Efficiency

Now that we have a better idea of who our customer is and what the pain is that they feel, our interviews are getting much shorter and more focused - which is great, because our true customers are high-level executives who have limited time and patience. :)

I've found that we're able to get a lot of the information we need from their subordinates, specifically size of the organization and current solutions. It's basically a qualifying activity, which is cool because we're all about sales, so meshing sales and lean start-up is both fun and obviously necessary.

I've pretty much gotten our qualifying down to 2 questions, though our interviews still lack structure because we still don't really know what we don't know! This is a crazy, crazy life to live.

Nail it Then Scale it / Lean Start Up Lessons Learned

We're trying hard to be smart about this whole start-up business. Limit risk. Sell before we build. Allow the market to create what it needs instead of forcing our ideas on it.

But it's been an extremely rough road. We've interviewed somewhere around 35 companies now, and are finally beginning to understand who our real customer is - and who we should be interviewing.

Here's something I've noticed so far - the people we've talked to can be separated into two criteria for being our customer. The first is their position within the company. Front-lines salespeople are not our customer. They're barely even our user. The majority of the early interviews I did were with front-lines people, who validated the concept to some degree, but didn't give it a really strong reaction either way. That made it extraordinarily difficult to understand the feedback we were getting. It wasn't negative... but it wasn't positive. So I felt like we were on to something, but hadn't really nailed it, and had no idea what to change to get to the right answer.

Then we interviewed a couple sales managers, and they were all for it. Some of them. Which led to our second conclusion - size matters.

Smaller organizations are too intimate to need a tool for management. The managers interface with their people every day and know exactly what's going on.

Larger organizations, however, do need a tool for performance management. We've hypothesized the threshold to be at about 10 salespeople. We've interviewed a few that have teams of 7, and they give validation, but not very strong. There seems to be a very strong correlation between size and need, with the largest organizations (300 and 100 salespeople) being the most adamant about the value of this concept.

Why to Mechanize while your team is still small

If you have a small (less than 10) sales organization, you should still Arena Machines because if you wait until your team is bigger, you'll have to force a major culture change on a much larger group of people and get them all to adopt it. If you do it now, it's just a good idea for one thing, and for another, it will aid in disciplined use of the methodology as you grow. No transition needed later. Boom.

5 reasons salespeople hate using CRMs

http://www.yesware.com/blog/2010/09/09/5-reasons-salespeople-hate-crm/

CSO Insights

Turnover is one of the first metrics we look at.  It is a leading indicator of a long list of
issues, including:
• Poorly crafted compensation plans
• Overly ambitious quotas
• Sales management weaknesses
• Sales force morale problems
• Poor training programs
Of course there are industries that accept turnover as a part of doing business.  We
believe that, if anyone analyzed the cost of turnover, they would take extraordinary
measures to avoid it.


http://www.csoinsights.com/assets/files/2012SPO-Sample-Benchmark.pdf

Talent Maximization

Overall, sales leaders ranked talent maximization as one of their five
most pressing issues, second only to ongoing worries about winning
and keeping profitable business. But when asked how well they were
meeting the talent challenge, participants gave themselves low marks,
rating that area fourth out of five in terms of success.

http://www.lmsleader.com/pdf/06-Secrets_of_High_Performance.pdf

Understanding high performers extremely well will also aid in hiring the right people because you'll recognize similar characteristics!

I have a dream

I have a dream...

I dream that salespeople will no longer feel anxious about hitting quota. I dream that salespeople will know exactly what is expected of them, and that they will feel confident that they can perform well.

I dream that salespeople and sales managers everywhere will have access to data which will allow them to accurately predict closings. That they will hold trainings and make changes based on the projected future instead of the unchangeable past.

I dream that salespeople and sales managers will seek out continuous improvement. That they will manage their activities as the most efficient manufacturers manage their factories. That they will be able to identify bottlenecks, areas of excessive waste, low input volume, so that they might create a lean selling organization with as little opportunity loss as possible.

I dream that salespeoples' lives will be simplified, that all unnecessary variability will be eliminated from their day, and that they might have a clear understanding of what to do and how to do it. When increased quotas are met not with panic, but with a spirit of confident determination.

I dream of a day when salespeople aren't only successful, but consciously so. When they know why they are prosperous, when they understand and dominate every step of the sales process. When they can visually see their improvement over time and draw strength from knowing that they are great.

I dream of a day when success is democratized. When leaders and salespeople alike work to expand and fill each salesperson's potential. When the tendency to oscillate between panic and pressure becomes an effort to work in a confident, consistent, and continuously improving method.

I dream of a day when the nebulous world of sales becomes a simple, comprehensible job and allows salespeople to focus their attention on what they do best - save the world.

Day 1

So here's the premise of this diet - people aren't poor, they're stupid. I'm going to prove, with little conviction at this particular moment, that you can eat for $0.60 per day and be totally fine. Yay me!

We'll see how it goes. Peace.

Competitor - SAM

SAM Sales Activity Management, Inc. Very good story.

http://www.salesactivitymanagement.com/consulting

BYU Musa Interview

http://www.byumusa.com/2012/01/30/northrop-grumman/

Business Bible

Seriously, look a this. It is awesome.

http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgewater-Associates-Ray-Dalio-Principles.pdf

Gain Actionable insight into Sales Performance

http://www.calliduscloud.com/products/reporting-analytics/

I emailed this to myself a while ago. Must be good.

These guys get it

http://www.dei-sales.com/sell-more/power-of-15-7-1.html

Laura lifts the telephone and dials 15 people. On average, she gets through to or makes contact with 7 people (let’s call them the “decision-makers”) - and she gets 1 booked appointment per day. That’s 5 appointments per week. That’s 15 dials, 7 contacts and 1 appointment. To make a sale, Laura will have to visit some people twice. On an average week, she does 8 visits (3 are “repeats”), and she will get 1 sale.

15:7:1 (Dials:Contacts:Appointments per Day)
5 New Appointments PER WEEK
3 Repeat Visits
8:1 Sale per Week

Why does she do 15 dials per day?

Laura’s goal for the year is to secure 50 contracts and her “ratios” tell ther something that is critical to securing the target: if she makes 15 dials a day, she will hit the target. In other words, she now knows how to go about guaranteeing she will hit the target.

Once she understands this formula, she now has 5 ways to sell more:

1. She can make more dials.
2. She can try to get through to more decision-makers.
3. She can secure more appointments.
4. She can increase their conversion rate.
5. She can sell a higher value per deal.