These two days at a resort, hotel or private club produce yet another version of Mission, Values, Vision, Goals and Objectives, which seem to be an annual necessity. The myth is if the right words are in the right order and shared with your team, partners and market, you will dominate like no one since Apple – if you just get the words right.

Domination requires lots of profitable revenue so you set a revenue goal that will fulfill your budget requirements and investor expectations. With this budget in place you start making work assignments to sales, marketing, manufacturing, and so on by wrapping those budget goals with those great words about Mission, Values, Vision, Goals and Objectives that you crafted at the offsite.

Now it is one year later, and it is again time for the required annual offsite. You will do yet another version of Mission, Values, Vision, Goals and Objectives, once again hoping for all the right words, in the right order, etc.

To prepare for this offsite, you look back at the past year and can seldom even remember last year’s words, let alone the right order or the degree of passion you must have felt when you created them. Some of those attending the offsite quietly ask themselves if all these smart people working on this have any impact, and if so, is the impact positive or negative – after all how do the required annual versions of Mission, Values, Vision, Goals and Objectives collecting dust on the third shelf create positive results?

The budget numbers from this effort also create problems. You either under budget, over budget, have the wrong forecast, over build a product no one wants or miss a great opportunity by being late to the market. The inaccurate budgets from these two days frustrate everyone, and as a result, you lose some good people and a lot of energy.

What if the Mission, Values, Vision, Goals and Objectives were not left on that third shelf, and you didn’t pretend that these five words were magic, but used them as direction, guides and the beliefs that drive every decision, action and person connected with your company?

Then what if you supported these words throughout the organization with strategies and plans aligned to your Mission, Values, Vision, Goals and Objectives?

What if the last thing at the offsite was the development of a “Revenue Strategy” that was in alignment with those five words and answered the following five questions?

That would be the first step of aligned and metriced deployment for making Mission, Values, Vision, Goals and Objectives real.

Question 1: “What is your brand promise” is the result of knowing what your Mission, Values, Vision, Goals and Objectives are and exactly how you will deliver them to your customers, partners and staff “EVERY TIME!”

The other 4 questions take the intent from your Mission, Values, Vision, Goals and Objectives and make that intent actionable, measurable, teachable, scalable and real to your staff, partners and the buyers.

Which Comes First?

Mission, Values, Vision, Goals and Objectives come first so the Revenue Strategy and Plan can be aligned and deployed in the real world based on their direction.

The Revenue Strategy is next. The Revenue Strategy is the first of the operational groups’ strategies. The operational groups (operations, HR, finance, etc.) have one purpose - “align their efforts to attain predictable profitable revenue.”

They are not the same. Mission, Values, Vision, Goals and Objectives are about “WHY” you are in business, and the Revenue Strategy is “HOW” you will realize your noble mission.

You need both, and once you have both, you will be on the path to being the company you always wanted to be – so go plan that annual offsite and finish the two days with the start of your Revenue Strategy.

I grew up at my Grandpa’s cabin in the middle of the Michigan woods and started shooting when I was about 4 years old.  By 10, there was no grown-up I couldn’t out shoot.  By the time I was in my mid-twenties with a shotgun, I could shoot 3 clay pigeons at the same time and was qualified by the Sheriff’s department as an expert with the first pistol I ever fired.

At 12 years old, I could legally hunt, and I did!  As a target shooter, I was 9.5 out of 10, and as a hunter, I was 5.5 out of 10.

I could hit a beer can at 100 yards every time.  Yet when a big buck stood less than 50 feet away, I could empty the gun before the deer would depart without a scratch.

If I got enough chances, I would get my deer.  As a teenager, there were lots and lots of deer so I got enough chances, and I got my share of deer to be able to pretend to be a great hunter.

As I got older as a result of nature and a mass of hunters, there were less and less deer, which resulted in me seldom being able to pretend I was a great hunter.

Even though there were less deer, lots of my friends would get a deer every year.  Sometimes they would pass on two or three deer waiting for a bigger one.  I never saw one, and my friends passed on many.

There was a business lesson here.  Hunting is a lot more than pointing a gun at a beer can or target.  Just like in business, producing revenue is more than taking an order from a buyer who found you, told you what they wanted and handed you a credit card.

The business version of a Great Shot / Bad Hunter is a company in the right place at the right time with the right product or service just when the buyer community woke up and said I want one of those new Televisions, or G.I. Joes, or Time-shares or Nehru Jackets.  With all those orders, you declare that you are a great company that knows how to produce revenue just like I declared that I was a great hunter.

During the Tech boom of the ‘90s, I watched sales people and technology companies (Great Shots / Bad Hunters) who on their best day could only hope to be a good company yet at least for a while they got rich because they were in the right place at the right time.

Those Great Shots / Bad Hunters were “Best of the Worst” companies that others described as good because the orders poured in, and they were accompanied by cash.

These same companies were out of business or in big trouble as soon as the economy went bad or good competitors showed up.  Everyone around them was either surprised or pretended to be surprised when this company or that sales person failed.

Just like deer hunting with few deer, when the order bubble bursts and you have to know how to find and keep customers on a limited budget, the BOTW (Best of the Worst) companies are quickly separated from the BOTB (Best of the Best) companies who know how to have abundance all the time.

Over the years, I have learned key differences between BOTW and BOTB companies even though the deer are still completely safe.

BOTB companies focus and align starting in the market.  They focus on the customer and align their business to solve customer problems.  On top of that, the BOTB are all about controlling the cost, bringing great value to the customer and measuring most everything so they can manage and improve.  One key difference between the BOTW and the BOTB is the BOTB aren’t afraid of knowing the truth and strive to learn it.

So my learnings are pretty basic:

1. Great hunters know that you have to be able to hit your target, but that is just a place to start.
2. Great hunting requires a lot of work to keep everything under control and learn about the game.
3. Great hunting is a result of studying the field, having a strategy and then the focus to execute even when things are tough.
4. BOTB companies know it is important to have something good to sell that the market will buy, which is just a place to start.
5. BOTB know that success is not random – it requires process, metrics and management.
6. BOTB companies know their customers, develop a deployable Revenue Strategy and are not afraid to learn from the market and change.

If you want to win with or without order bubbles, don’t settle for being a great shot or a BOTW company.  Do whatever it takes to be a great hunter and a BOTB company.  Have a deployable revenue strategy, measure all key outcomes, know the customer and create value before the buyer knows they need it (that is like knowing what the deer are going to do before the deer knows).

Last, even if you are in a bubble, do the work to become a BOTB company and stick around for a long time, and then you will live in the Happiest Place on Earth.

• Revenue Principle #4 -You are always in transition regardless of the market conditions!

• Revenue Principle #8 - Be proactive, not reactive!

Every business plays The Revenue Game.  Some embrace the principles of revenue science and do very well.  Others pretend that revenue is a result of something beyond their control, and if they just keep their head down and work hard, somehow everything will work out well for the good guys.

Of course, when you see the second option in writing, it is ridiculous, but most business owners or CEOs never see it in writing so they keep their heads down and tell their teams to work hard for that “good guys” result.

Principle #4 reminds us that no matter how comfortable we are with today, it will be gone in the morning.  Likewise, no matter how bad things are today, we can be the winner tomorrow if to proactively embrace and apply the science to our revenue strategy, because everything is in transition.

Principle #4 – transitions show up in so many ways:

• One of our longest term employees is not up to the job requirements of today.
• Two of our best long-term customers just don’t fit our business model.
• Our biggest competitor is gone, and we are challenged by a company from a different industry.
• Our customers only care about price.
• The new young employees have different goals.
• The government creates new regulations every year.
• The international market impacts us.
• Washington keeps making it harder and more expensive.
• The economy has changed again.
• Technology is so different and demanded by our customers and staff.

Those that embrace the science have a deployable revenue strategy in place, and as the world changes the strategy can be deployed in a different way based on the transition, or the strategy can be changed if the transitions are that great.

Those that keep their heads down and just work harder don’t even see the transitions until they have no more work to do, and when they finally look up, they see a new world they don’t know how to react to.

Principle #9 must become part of the culture.

Applying the science of “Revenue Generation” is proactive by nature.  Your longest employee, biggest competitor, customers, employees and the rest of the elements of the global community are all moving as single elements and as a group and will never stop.  In the US, industries like cars, appliances, computers, telecommunications and transportation all created comfortable bubbles that burst leaving confusion and destruction because the transitions were ignored, and proactive change was viewed as a threat instead of the way to long-term success and prosperity.

So what are the 3 things you must do in order to see the transitions and the 3 proactive things you need to do to lead your company through the transition to get the benefits from the transition vs. getting run over by the transitions and then trying to catch up.

Principle #4 – 3 key things you must do to see the transitions:

1. You must have an intentional revenue strategy that you have deployed.  This is your “Stake in the ground” to measure the change around you. http://tinyurl.com/7kwjfn8
2. Listen to your People http://tinyurl.com/7ll6jy3. The challenge with listening is every member of your team speaks their own language so you need to apply the language from the Science of “Revenue Generation” to get everyone on the same page.  Then listen, learn and measure.
3. Deploy your Revenue Strategy in a structured way and say NO a lot where the opportunity doesn’t fit your strategy.  If you say yes to everything, you have removed your “Stake in the ground” and don’t know where you started or where you are or what has transitioned. http://tinyurl.com/chwlrmd

Principle #8 – 3 key things to be proactive:

1. In your Revenue Strategy, declare your value to the market and how you will deploy that value.  When the market responds to the value, then you track everything on the BellCurve tool http://tinyurl.com/3jx8zmy and be sure you are following your strategic RoadMap.
2. Every revenue strategy has a thought leadership requirement.  So proclaim your leadership position and only give it up when you have a better one. http://tinyurl.com/3zahxvg
3. Announce your value to the niche or niches you dominate and then play your version of The Revenue Game and “delight your ideal customers” in your niches. http://tinyurl.com/cj8jqr

Throughout life, we watch things change, and we plan for that change (think retirement) so apply that to the revenue process of your business.

Get clear about where you are and how the world is changing around you, while you declare and deploy your value to your ideal buyer in those niches you dominate.

No matter how good it feels today, don’t be comfortable – if you are comfortable, you are about to lose.

“This BO should be our Client”!

Have you even had that conversation with your team or at least thought that as you once again strategized to win that BO business?

Odds are if you have been a sales person or business owner, you can relate.  No doubt there are times where you just need to do a better job winning the BO over and earning their business.

BUT there are lots of times that just working harder and pouring in more resources is not the smart answer.  You can chase them, woo them, strategize how to win them with no win.  You can give them references, invite them to lunch, and do lunch-and-learns and still not have a contract.  You can raise your value, lower your price or try to get to their CEO, but most of the time you NEVER win the business, and those times when you get a trial order it ends BAD.

So what is going on here, and how do you avoid all the investment and heartbreak for this fruitless BO chase?

"Revenue Generation" is a diagnostic science, so let’s diagnosis this situation.  To do that, we will use two tools.  The first tool we have written about before, and that is the BellCurve.

A refresher regarding this tool shows us that every product, offer, company (both buyers and sellers), and employee lives on this curve somewhere based on how much brain  vs. how much stuff they are either trying to buy or sell.

New products that buyers have NEVER heard of, don’t know how to buy or use are born over in the far left corner.  Since the buyer has no experience with this type of offer, they depend on the seller to bring brain to the buyer so the buyer can apply this new product to solve major problems in their world. 

Buyers and sellers are at every spot on the BellCurve, however most SME (Small Medium Enterprise) companies are left of center.  As the BellCurve shows only a small number of buyers live in that small left-hand area of the curve, but they are willing to take the risk to spend big money on something they have never seen before.

For all the buyers across the BellCurve (BO or small), you can chase, strategize and invest forever, and MOST buyers will never leave their current place on the curve.  So Revenue Science suggests that you place yourself as the seller on the curve by the brain / value you sell vs. selling stuff.  Next place the BO buyer on the curve by the amount of brain / value they want to buy vs. buying stuff.  Now see how close the two organizations are.

If on the curve you and the buyer are more than one track apart, it is unlikely the deal will ever happen, and if it does, it will be ugly.

The second diagnostic is “the buyer’s rules of engagement,” and this can be applied with the BellCurve or as a separate way to diagnose if you want to invest in a BO target.

Definition of "Buyers Rules of Engagement":     How does the buyer do business today?  Do they want vendors or partners, do they always use a RFP process or do they sole source, do they lease or buy, do they ever do prototypes or trails, do they pay promptly, does every conversation go through purchasing, etc.?

Most SME (Small, Medium Enterprise) companies know who they are calling on.  They can easily know how those BOs do business, and they can have enough information to compare the buyer’s (BO or small) “engagement model” with their selling model.

In all but the rarest cases, the engagement elements of the offer (partner vs. vendor, Brain vs. Stuff, installation, warranty, on-going support, joint SOW, price vs. cost, etc.) are as important and often more important than the core product or service.

Every buyer has a culture, which includes their “rules of engagement,” and it takes a LOT to engage outside that culture.  If the buyer breaks their “rules of engagement,” the engagement between the buyer and seller is tough since every process, activity, relationship is out of the norm.  When things are out of the norm, they are hard to keep on track and they are subject to problems unrelated to the product or service.  Offers out of the norm not only impact process but the ROI, the metrics, the people and the way the organizations perceive the outcome (a risk for both buyer and seller).

Big companies may not already know about the prospective buyer but they have the resources to quickly assess the buyer’s “rules of engagement” before investing a lot of selling or delivery resource into a risky or low-return engagement.

“Buyers Rules of Engagement” by themselves give us great reasons to pursue or avoid possible relationships and should always be considered as early as possible and integrated into weighting a BO target for initial or continued resource investment.

The combination of the BellCurve and “Buyers Rules of Engagement” creates a powerful diagnostic approach to pursuing the best and avoiding the worst BO.

Take the time and do the diagnostics before committing the resources, and when you have been chasing that BO for a long time, stop and use these tools to review your next steps.

Chasing the wrong BO costs a lot of resource and seldom results in a positively leverage return on resources.  So diagnose, say NO to the wrong BOs and build a strategy to win the right BOs.

The focus of this article is on B2B companies and how do they create intentional long-term profitable relationships with customers.

One of the questions not asked in Christine’s blog is “should we define customer service as a revenue strategy.”  We have written about this before http://www.therevenuegame.com/ceochallenge/11/is-customer-service-really-a-revenue-strategy/, but it deserves a review.

A strategy needs to be “Intentionally” addressed and be compelling when deployed.  If other companies promise or claim they deliver “customer service” (or do we expect competitors to admit they don’t), the result is the buyer doesn’t know who to trust before they buy.  So price becomes the buying criteria, which sets the customer’s expectations for what they will pay long-term.

Intentionally selecting a strategy that results in the buyer using price as the decision criteria is seldom ideal, and only when the seller has the scale to be the long-term low price winner (at a sustainable level of profit) should it be considered.

Back to the elephant and understanding what Revenue Strategy would create that desirable long-term profitable customer relationship.  Creating that long-term relationship requires putting together the various parts of the elephant into an intentional revenue strategy with predictable results for both the buyer and the seller.  Make sure the following critical parts of the elephant get reviewed before taking any action and that all action is “Intentional” vs. opportunistic (not long-term sustainable).

Those critical parts are:

1. Does the seller company consider itself a vendor (vendors fulfill buyer’s demands) or a partner (partners solve buyer problems).  B2B Companies under $100m seldom have the scale to be a sustainable vendor.  Most B2B companies under $100m describe themselves as adding GREAT value through business models, technology or their thought leadership.
2. Customers/buyers have different relationships with partners and vendors (from vendors, they want first, price and logistics and second, a great experience).  From partners, they need ideas, design, integration, change leadership, overall thought leadership to solve business problems the buyer is not sure how to solve or that the problem can EVEN be solved and a great customer experience.
3. 3.  The sophistication level of the buyer as it relates to the “problem” being solved helps frame the answers to the two questions above and determines the type and level of support desired by the buyer related to this problem.  The seller’s “specific” offer to the buyer regarding solving this problem sets the original Scope of Work (SOW) to measure service against.
4. The last critical element is “the details of offer” the seller makes to solve the buyer’s problem.  The less specific and focused the offer means support is about trying to get or keep the offer aligned with the buyer,s emerging requirements.  If the offer is specific to solve a problem where the seller is the thought leader in how to solve the problem and the buyer is following the seller’s lead, then the customer service is about leading the buyer to solve a problem.

The strategy first or last is really clear once the seller “Intentionally” decides if they are a vendor fulfilling the buyer’s defined needs or if the seller decides to be a partner who is leading the buyer to a solution of a problem they can’t solve without their partner.

Very few B2B companies under $100m can win as a low price vendor over the long-term and most don’t want to.  SME (Small Medium Enterprise) B2B companies are proud of the value they bring and don’t even think of themselves as low price vendors.

The bottom line is if you are a B2B company and you are passionate about the value you bring, build a Revenue Strategy http://www.therevenuegame.com/ceochallenge/07/knowing-your-competitors/ based on the problem you solve for your buyers that no one else solves (every company can determine this), and you will get paid what you deserve by long-term customers who consider you their partner in solving business problems.

Is it just me?

or

Is there a time when “good enough” isn't “good enough”?

What is the lesson for Revenue Science?

Lately there have been a lot of books that talk about disruptive business models ripping business way from the current provider through a combination of low price and “good enough” product or service offerings.  Just think what if those current providers’ business models were also based on “good enough.”

I grew up in Michigan and in the car business.  Besides cars, Michigan had something else it was famous for (at least in Michigan), and that is Vernors Ginger Ale, and today it was Vernors that launched me on a day of learning about “good enough,” the Cost of Chaos and Revenue Science.

I went to my local Safeway store (a large grocery chain) to buy Vernors.  When I found it, there were only two 12 packs with a sale tag stating “if you buy 3, your price is $2.99 each.”

Since Safeway acquired the store, the story is always the same.  There are 2 or less on the shelf and the pricing is to buy 3 or more and sometimes “buy 3 get 3 free.”  For 4 years, this practice required me to search the store for an employee who will search for the balance of 12 packs needed to get the benefit of the best price.

Today I was finally done with this silly practice.  I explained the problem to the manager.  He, of course, gave me excuses about why, but when I asked him why for 4 years his staff kept putting pricing on the shelf with clearly not enough products to support the offer without doing something about it – he went silent.

Next I went to Staples (another multibillion dollar company) to buy 1 mouse pad and recycle 4 used ink cartages.  Of course, no one helped me (If someone would have helped me quickly, I would have bought a new Microsoft tablet), but I found my mouse pad and went to check out.  The mouse pad was listed at $5.99.  The first amount I was asked to pay was $76.55.  The cashier and I talked, and she decided to give me recycle credit for the empty ink cartages instead of charging me for them a second time.  Next the price on the monitor was $7.85 which seemed high even with the high Phoenix sales tax.  With additional conversation, we finally got to a price of $6.67 which at least seemed closer.

Next I needed to get gas and went to QT (another HUGE company) that like the previous two tries to be “good enough.”  Today I got gas, went inside to get my retirement plan funded (lottery tickets) and then returned ready to rush to pick up my grandkids.  However, the screen on the pump said to go back inside for a receipt.  So I went back inside to get in a long line and got the receipt I should already have.

Since I was rushed, I was hoping to get these tasks done quickly.  Since I just read a book about “good enough” as a strategy for disruptive products and services, these experiences became an important lesson.

All three of the businesses are B2C and highly competitive working on small margins.  Here at The Revenue Game we have written about the Cost of Chaos for producing revenue, and today’s lesson was a great example of that chaos.

Safeway with this pricing model guaranteed high costs of operation, lower gross revenue and may also lose additional revenue for every customer who gets tired of not being able to get what they need without finding staff and waiting.  Not to mention the shelf is now bare, and the next customer will find NONE.  Worst of all Safeway is training their staff to mark prices that make no sense at best and looks out of integrity or stupid at worst.

Staples missed the opportunity to sell me a new tablet and now have me checking all details at the register, and I am skeptical about making referrals to the “Easy” company since they aren’t very easy.  They will have to buy a lot more ads to convince me.

QT got my business today because I thought they would be fast to get in and out of at a reasonable (not the lowest) price.  Next time if I don’t think QT is easy and fast, I will go to the lowest price.  Keeping receipt paper in the POS device at the pump is a simple way to reduce the Cost of Chaos, and to keep customers returning.

Imagine if these 3 current providers showed me this many points of Revenue Chaos in less than 90 minutes, how much more there really is and how large the opportunity is for reducing the Cost of Chaos while growing the topline.

B2C organizations like these sell the exact same commodities to the same group of buyers with the same expectations of getting the same problems solved over and over again.  These B2C companies have all had many years to develop and implement policies, process, systems, technology, training programs, etc. to drive out the cost of chaos.  But since their goal seems to be “good enough,” they are still full of cost, missing out on topline growth and pushing away great long-term customer relationships, while opening the door for competitors.

There are places like Nordstrom’s, Google, The Ritz and Johnson and Johnson, and IBM that don’t settle for “good enough.”  These types of companies aren’t perfect, but they don’t settle for “good enough” and have high valuations with long histories for growing profitable revenue.

Don’t allow your company to build a “good enough” culture or in the long-run, it won’t be!

Which generates the most profitable revenue?

1. A product
2. A service
3. An Offer

Entrepreneurs are often really good at something - they are good programmers, plumbers, designers, cooks or something needed by at least one group of customers.

Some entrepreneurs have a vision of a product or service that has never been designed let alone delivered before.

In both cases, the entrepreneur needs to find someone willing to pay enough money to make the effort a success.

Most people who open a business are good at “what” they do, so the question is not about the quality of what they bring to the market.  Since the entrepreneur is hungry for any customer (and their money), as a result, the price is almost always VERY reasonable.

How does this impact why then do entrepreneurs (and big companies) have so much trouble getting new products and / or services into the market in a profitable way?

The problem is businesses almost never sell what the buyers need to buy – the business tries to sell a product or service.

Buyers have some kind of problem they need solved, and seldom is the fact a company has a product or service a clear indication of a solution to the buyer’s problem.

Certainly commodities that are known to the buyer may solve the buyer’s known problem.  When that is true, why do buyers have a preference for one commodity over another even when their preference may be more expensive?

For example, Kroger’s sells a store brand cola, a mom and pop gas station sells off-brand gas, and smoke shops have brandless cigarettes, but in each case, these attract only a small portion of the buyers with the rest opting for more expensive brands.

The same is true with service offerings.  There is a guy with an old pickup painted up with advertising about his services as a plumber for $20 per hour, but few of us call.  Not only don’t we call, but we knowingly pay 5 times as much per hour and wait a day for the person to come.

Since the buying behavior is predictable, what is the entrepreneur missing that they should be doing to get and keep more customers who will pay a premium?

What few companies get is that you can’t buy or sell a product or service until it is turned into an offer.  Most of the time offers are created by accident with little or no thought to any feature other than the “product” or “service” is good or cool or the best, when what the customer wants is the problem of speed, or quality or image, or long-term support, or risk, or training or ROI, or anything else.  All of these or any combination of these go way beyond the ability of product alone to solve the problem.

As the father of three daughters, I can tell you that the label and the shopping bag are often more important than the product inside and that the salon is more important than the look of the haircut, and how much you paid (normally a lot) is more important than shopping in an inferior store for a lower price.

Each of those things is part of the offer that surrounds the product or service.  Those offer elements that surround the product or service impact the B2B world as well as the B2C world.

The B2B world cares about ROI, risk, liability, training, speed and a hundred other things beyond the product or service, and in both B2B & B2C where there is more than one person in the buying picture, different elements of the offer may appeal to different buyers.  My wife cares about how things wash or what they tell the world about our kids.  Purchasing cares about contracts, and engineers care about design, maintenance and down time.

Once these are answered, determine the 5 to 10 elements that must surround the product or service to eliminate all buyers’ (often there is more than one buyer in the picture) objections, solve the buyer problem, make buying easy and show great value.

Based on these surrounding elements, you can train your sales staff what to talk about, build go-to-market structure and focus your marketing efforts to those who have the problem, are in the niche, with the ideal buyer profile who values both the product and the 10 surrounding elements.

Stop trying to sell products or services – it is not possible until they are turned into offers, and it is your choice who determines your offers.  You can determine the offer or let the market determine the offer, and then you can enjoy the chaos of trying to deliver what the market decided to buy.

Go build intentional offers to dominate your market, delight your ideal buyer and get paid for all the value you deliver.

It is hard to explain things beyond our realm of experience.

How do you tell someone about being a parent, falling in love, accomplishing something you didn’t believe possible, loosening your virginity or running a company that accomplishes continual growth of profitable revenue regardless of the conditions or competition?

We all know the old saying “if you keep doing what you have been doing, you will keep getting what you have been getting,” and it doesn’t seem to matter how many talks we have or books we read or what the writing on the wall says.  Change has risk, and change is very hard.

One difference between loosing virginity and the CEO engaging in the continuous Engineered Growth of profitable revenue is the virgin has heard sex is good or maybe great, but CEOs haven’t heard a lot from peers or competitors who have been there and done that Engineered Growth thing since it is so new, and if competitors have applied Engineered Growth to their business, they are sure not going to share - they want to keep the advantage all to themselves.

The second difference is the virgin at least thinks they know what they are supposed to do.  The CEO on the other hand not only doesn’t know what to do, but normally fears they also have to stop doing a lot of things they currently are doing.  Often the things they have to stop are the ones that got them to where they are today and maybe even made them rich.

The third difference is the virgin has heard all the stages of sex have some really nice benefits, while the CEO believes the only good part of Engineered Growth comes after the hard work and the risk.  The CEO believes no matter how good the end is, the path to get there is hard, risky and might not be worth it.

Now let’s look at the facts.  Difference one – The word on the street is Engineered Growth is the only safe way to run an organization that wants predictable, profitable revenue growth.  The best estimate today is over 10% of companies have CROs, (Chief Revenue Officers) and CROs are practicing some form of Engineered Growth based on revenue science and have found it to be both GREAT and SAFE!

Difference two – If a CEO is not practicing Engineered Growth, they have no “revenue strategy” which means everything they do is unintentional, just hoping for good results.  No strategy means they can’t have an intentional revenue process.  So any process in place is so someone can earn an MBO bonus for doing “something” even if that “something” is marginally effective or wrong.  If the CEO is not practicing Engineered Growth, it is a sure bet that everything is hard, risky and very expensive.  So like the virgin, the CEO thinks they are OK today yet they will learn change is required for sustainability, and there is a better way that is easier and a lot more fun.

Difference three - The CEO thinks the beginning and the middle parts of Engineered Growth process is hard and no fun, but the truth is that once the CEO understands how hard and expensive it is to maintain the current high "Cost of Chaos," they realize that right now is the REALLY hard, risky and VERY expensive place to be, and they see that Engineered Growth immediately brings clarity, motivation, energy, increased sales and profits that are unavailable today.

Finally, the really big difference between the two is that there is a lot of risk for the virgin once they decide to change their status.  The risks are physical, emotional, financial and cultural and last a life-time.  For the CEO, the risks (financial, cultural, survival, etc) are all from NOT changing status.  The Engineered Growth process puts the CEO on a continuous path to revenue growth, gets their team and partners all aligned to the same revenue strategy, immediately starts to remove the "Cost of Chaos," forms an aligned revenue process, releases the topline to grow and makes every day of every year safer for the CEO and all of the stakeholders by virtually assuring sustainability.

Risk and opportunity are everywhere.  CEOs who decide to change their status and commit to Engineered Growth will see immediate and lasting benefits that will bring prosperity, scalability and security to their company and sustainability for the long-term.  They will be the most desirable place to work because the team will know where they are, where they are going, how they will get there and how each team member adds value along the way.

Don’t be an Engineered Growth virgin – take that first step and enjoy the trip – you will love the outcome.

• Go-to-market is the process of getting something to the point that there is a market that wants to buy what the seller wants to sell.
• You can’t launch a product until it is integrated into an offer.
• In the go-to-market process, there are 3 distinct phases:
  • Launching
  • Introducing
  • Executing
• When you go-to-market, you have to pick a sideof the buyer’s BellCurve. Your choices are Brain side (launch) or Stuff side (introducing). Brain and Stuff are defined by the buyer’s understanding of the seller's offer.
  • • On the stuff side, the seller is introducing the offer into an existing market. In the eyes of the buyer, the offer is the same as or slightly different than other items in the market. The buyers know everything they need to know in order to buy other than the price and availability for this particular offer.
    • On the brain side, there is no identified market for this offer. The seller is launching something (phase one of go-to-market) new to the buyer, that the buyer has no idea about what it does or why they should care. On the brain side, the seller must find the buyers, evangelize the offer, prove the buyer will get the full value from the offer at a level of risk they can manage and with a financial return that justifies the risk.

    

With that understanding of the go-to-market process, here are 3 myths and 3 facts for those who launch.

Myth # 1 - You can launch a new product into the market.

Fact # 1 - You can’t launch or sell any product until it is transitioned into an offer. The offer covers the whole buyer experience (value, price, distribution, services, warranty, etc.). Also, you can’t launch into a market. Markets represent a group of buyers who are proactively looking to buy, and since a launch is about something new (that they have never heard of), they can’t be proactively looking to buy it.

Myth # 2 - It is important to price new products low to get the product (offer) into the market or, better yet, give the new product (offer) to a big name user for the reference.

Fact # 2 – The launch is about the seller being very clear about solving a customer problem that no one else is solving or has ever been solved. In solving this problem, the seller is selling their brain (knowledge) as part of the offer. The buyer does not know how this new approach to the problem will work and will only feel safe enough to acquire this offer if the seller’s brain is a major part of the offer in the form of intellectual property like design, training, consulting, installation, integration or ongoing support.

If the offer does not demonstrate the brain as part of the offer and that the fee for the brain is large enough to assure the brain will be available every time the buyer needs it to get the expected outcome, the buyer will not take the risk of acquiring this new offer. The buyer wants to be very comfortable that, in partnership with the seller, the buyer can get from where they are today to the promised land of the offer.

The fee for a brain offer should be 10 percent of the value of the problem solved. If the fee is more than 10 percent of the value of the problem, the risk ratio to the buyer will be too great. If the fee is less than 10 percent of the value, the buyer feels that there's something wrong.

For a brain offer, the buyer wants to pay a LOT because they want to believe the value is GREAT, and the seller is engaged in the offer until everything meets or exceeds the buyer’s expectations.

Myth # 3 - The best channel to launch a new product is through commission-only sales reps.

Fact # 3 – Indirect channels in general and commission-only sales reps in particular get up every morning, look in the mirror, and ask just one question, “What can I do today to make the most money before dinner?”

Evangelizing a brain offer is NEVER the answer to the question for the person in the mirror. Indirect channels won’t do the long-term work required. They can’t be counted on to meet the seller’s schedule, and most importantly are not trusted by the buyer. Since the buyer is taking a lot of risk, they want the seller team totally committed to the process, and indirect channels don’t normally fit that definition.

Go-to-market is one of the most important skills for a CEO or a CRO (Chief Revenue Officer) to master for the long-term health of the company. Realizing that go-to-market has three phases gives leaders the power to control each one and, as a result, the whole go-to-market process.

Don’t confuse the launch of a brain offer with the introduction of a stuff offer. Both are part of the go-to-market and require execution but the supporting execution is as different as brain and stuff. Developing clarity about the difference between brain and stuff forms the basis for success.

The real estate crash. Obama Care. The Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, the bank collapse, the Greek banking crisis, high employment, off-shoring, GM’s bankruptcy. Libya, Egypt, inflation, nuclear meltdown, Generation X, Generation Y, the Baby Boomers, call centers in India, tsunamis, Hurricane Katrina, the stock market drop, and my EBITDA is way down.