Background
A European supplier of HVAC equipment to OEMs had grown to nearly €1 billion. However, their product managers were challenged to manage expectations and meet growth forecasts for various product lines due to differing languages and cultures around the globe.

Two challenges stood out. First, the firm had been trying to penetrate a new market – the building trades – for a decade with little success. Second, a cross-functional team had attempted to standardize everyone around a global sales process by setting up a CRM. Unfortunately, the effort of using the CRM generated much resistance from sales employees. This was especially true among the building trades sales team, where the main “OEM” oriented sales process didn’t seem to fit.

The European headquarters decided SPC, Inc. should assist a US-based team in developing a B2B sales process for its building trades market. The strategy was to pilot development of the new process in a single local sales office, and once proven, roll it out to others over time. Key goals were:

• Dramatically accelerated growth rates
• Sustainable, predictable, and measurable improvement
• PDSA-style continuous improvement approach 

Client Discovery and Root Cause Analysis
A root cause of sales, marketing, and service challenges is their divergent views of the world. Therefore, the priority was for the team to fully understand the problem they were trying to solve. A guided discovery process revealed the team’s agreements and disagreements in this matter:

Disagreements

• What customers value
• What successful account relationships looked like
• What sales success looked like
• How to manage deal flow

Agreements

•  Building trades differ from OEMs (multiple channels and customers)
• We do not know how to effectively learn what customers want
• We are not meeting customer expectations
• We do not know how to improve
  
  

Before Sales Process Excellence
Due to regional and structural differences in markets around the world, words like “prospect” and “qualified opportunity” meant widely different things to people. In addition, the salespeople had only a dotted line relationship to the Sales VP for building trades. Instead, they reported directly to OEM sales managers. The reasoning for this was that the salespeople were geographically closer to the OEM sales managers, so they could provide “hands-on” support when needed.

Unfortunately, these executives were preoccupied managing the larger OEM business, where marketing and product promotions created interest and inquiries. This was different from the building trades which require proactively calling on and building relationships with a wide variety of influencers in local markets over time. The differences produced conflict between the OEM and Building Trades executives.

Compensation had been tied to KPIs in the CRM. These KPIs were intended to encourage salespeople to spend more time on prospects who scored higher on a specific qualification framework. Unfortunately, the need to generate their own prospects meant the building trades salespeople had fewer opportunities to pursue. They could appear to be working hard only by completing large amounts of data entry in the CRM. No perceivable improvement in forecasts or close ratios took place. Managers struggled to identify KPIs that were more sales and marketing and customer oriented.

The SPE Approach
After achieving initial alignment around these challenges, the team proceeded through a repeatable sequence of work enabling them to design and test a new sales process. The VOC gathered VOC from both existing and new contacts uncovered surprising insights about the market.

• Identify VOC (including dealer channel customers)
  “Our marketing touts our technology – but most of our customers couldn’t care less about it!”
• Research and analyze niche market opportunities
  “The biggest return for what we are good at is in the medical market, where the need is most urgent and the benefit most provable.”
• Define observable quality attributes for
  • Representative firms and dealers
    “The best rep firms are those who already aim at the medical market.”
  • Strategic accounts
    “Facilities engineers in large research hospitals are interested in the fact that we can reduce their infection rates.”
  • Sales opportunities
    “Opportunities go through a predictable series of stages and dealers can help identify them.”
• Develop Customer Value Maps
  “We can identify what the main players want, how their performance is
  measured, the strategies they employ, and the issues they struggle with.”
• Testing sales activities and launching improvement cycles
  “Once we have respectful agreement with our dealers on what we should all be looking for, prospects respond, and good news just starts happening!”

Results
The sales team generated their own sets of qualification and opportunity tracking tools, along with a cadence of sales meetings following the PDSA structure.

The new sales process required them to get prospects to talk freely about their business goals and challenges, a big difference compared to the old product-oriented way of selling. The team was excited to request and receive training and coaching for getting prospects to talk about their interests. 

This improved the salespeople’s ability to build trusting, coaching relationships everywhere they went. The cadence of PDSA meetings drove numerous insights and ideas for improving. 

The post A Repeatable Approach to Sales Process Design Increases Sales Productivity 40% in Six Months Case Study first appeared on Sales Performance Consultants.

“Absolutely,” said Steve. “Did you see Sally lean in when you described your account, Ambro? Plus, she was asking questions and wondering how to apply this to her prospect.  She is usually pretty quiet when we have a group meeting.”

“Yeah, it is so easy to dive into the weeds and forget other people haven’t been in on our conversations. We all need to be in the loop,” said Jorge.

“Thanks for the suggestion,” said Steve.

Steve and Jorge had just finished a sales team meeting at AIRS.  Steve was global sales VP.  AIRS’s artificial intelligence algorithm was still unique in the industry.

AI fascinated regulatory compliance officers around the world. Under the right circumstances, the system easily justified its multi-million-dollar fees. Unfortunately, its effectiveness was hard to predict. AIRS’s tech services team had to spend weeks simulating sequences of model transactions against a prospect’s asset portfolio. Compliance officers loved the layers of insights this revealed. Unfortunately, very few of them seemed to have an influence on their own senior executives. The enormous demands COVID placed on the financial industry made it more difficult than ever for Steve’s salespeople to know which accounts to spend time on.

Jorge had taken a sales job with AIRS after retiring from a bank in Singapore about four years ago. On Monday, Jorge had called Steve just as he finished a call.  “Sorry, Jorge. I just learned that Sally committed tech services to a demo in three weeks for a German bank.  She doesn’t know if they have a business case and plans to use the demo to start gathering information.”

After a few minutes of discussion, Steve decided the idea should be the topic for this week’s team call.

The Team Call

When Steve launched the Zoom for his team meeting, he told the team he wanted to start off a little differently.

“I want you to know I’m not challenging any of your accounts or how you are handling them.  I think we can learn from one another by focusing on what you know about an account.  We’ll go through the weekly update after that,” he said.

“Sally, will you start us off with Schroeder?  Just looking for a brief overview.”

After Sally finished, Steve asked Jorge to talk about ABN Amro. He described how they had contacted him after testing their own simulation of databases and regulatory systems. They’ve had a four-person team work on the simulation for three months. Several department managers are interested in the project.

Sally interjected. “Wow, I’ve never had an account research their own simulation data like that. And I only know two people in Schroeder’s so far. But they told me this was important to their bank, and said they have a budget and the authority for the project.” said Sally.

“That’s interesting,” said Jorge. “Because none of the people in the simulation project at Ambro have anything close to the authority to approve a project with AIRS, and they know it.”

There was a long pause.

“OK, I get it” Sally said. “There must be other people pulling the strings at Schroeder, and I don’t know who they are yet. Do you know who those people are at Ambro?” asked Sally.

“Well, I know that the executive team overhauled the bank’s strategic plan in the last six months. I have a meeting with one of them next week to learn why they did that.”

“Well that’s impressive,” said Sally. “How did you get that meeting?”

“I never assume anyone at the prospect is a decision-maker no matter what they tell me” said Jorge. “I assume they earnestly want to get ahead in their career, and that finding a cool system like AIRS could be a feather in their cap. As we all know, the system might not be a good fit, and that would be trouble for both of us. So, I ask if they might let me do some homework to prevent them from wasting their time. With that, I launch into a research meeting. From there, I ask who else in their firm might help me really understand what they’re trying to accomplish.”[1]

“That makes sense,” said Reneé, another salesperson. “So what evidence are you looking for during these meetings?”

Jorge explained that the first purpose was to build a trusting relationship. You had to keep an eye out for what was in the other person’s interests personally and professionally. Like any company, different people working for the same company had different knowledge and opinions. This gave the outside salesperson an advantage – an opportunity to piece together an external perspective on the objectives, strategies, and issues of the senior executives. He pointed out that “strategic” meant something different to the simulation team than to the bank’s executives.

Finally, Sally said, “Well, this has been a very helpful discussion. Now, I just have one problem. … Schroeder’s is expecting me to get back to them with a schedule to do a simulation.”

“That’s easy,” said Steve. “Tell them we’re backed up, but that you can start the process by doing some homework. You’ll make it easy on their calendars, and maybe even save them some time and embarrassment if there isn’t a good fit.” Steve saw the relief on Sally’s face.

As the call continued, there was more discussion was about the differences in prospects and why they were motivated to investigate AIRS.

Steve was glad Jorge had called when he did.  Focusing the conversation on the facts about the customer’s perspective had changed the feel of the call. He thought it was useful for everyone. Changing up the discussion was a leadership device he would use again. He knew there was a lot more he and his team needed to discover.

[1] A highly professional method for conducting a customer meeting, where the salesperson uses preparation and active listening techniques with the goal of enabling the customer to talk for 95% of the time during the meeting. This skill is central to the IMPAX process, and is described in “Beyond Selling Value – A Proven Process to Avoid the Vendor Trap” by Mark Shonka and Dan Kosch  (2002, Dearborn).

The post SPIF Tip #59: Changing Up a Sales Team Call first appeared on Sales Performance Consultants.

Mentioned in This Episode:   NE Lean Conference
Greater Boston Manufacturing Partnership
Bruce’s blog
The Toast Video preview

Michael Webb: Good morning, everyone. I am pleased to bring you my guest today, Bruce Hamilton. I met Bruce several years ago at a Shingo conference and Bruce has… Well, Bruce, let me just give you a chance to explain your background to my audience. It’s largely sales managers and company presidents. Many of whom may not be familiar with the kind of work you do and much less the Shingo Institute. So take a couple of minutes and describe your background.

Bruce Hamilton: Thank you. And good morning, everyone. I appreciate whoever is joining in. Appreciate you being out there. I’ve been in a number of different careers in business, started out actually in sales promotion and spent seven years there. And I loved that position actually. And oddly, my interest in problem-solving led me to IT. So I spent seven more years in IT thinking that some of the issues we had in sales and marketing would be solved through IT.

Bruce Hamilton: And so the bad news is it’s not really a panacea. I learned a lot about IT, however, and those kinds of problems. While information technology has changed remarkably since I was in that position, a lot of the thoughts behind computer systems have not so much. It’s more or less has to do with the speed and scale that we have today, but the basic algorithms, as we say, not remarkably different. But systems led me into materials management. I worked in a manufacturing company and at the time we were implementing MRP and it was not actually doing much for us. And so I ended up transitioning from a computer systems to manufacturing. Never spent any time in manufacturing, not even in the manufacturing building. So this was an eyeopener for me, definitely. It was a world of pain with many problems. Some of them actually caused by the computer systems that I was involved with. And that brought me to the Shingo prize incidentally.

Bruce Hamilton: We were a company that had a lot of issues. We couldn’t deliver on time. Like many companies back in the ’70s and early ’80s, our profits were flagging and we were trying to find ways to get around that. When I was in sales and marketing, we raised prices twice a year. And we Pat ourselves on the back about how our sales were increasing, but they actually weren’t, we were just printing prices. So now I suddenly found myself on a different side of the coin, still with that thinking in mind from sales and marketing and focused on the customer. But I noticed I joined an organization that actually was shielded from the customer. We had very little to do with the customer. And this created its own set of headaches. But Shingo prize and particularly the ideas of, shingo and some of the others…

Bruce Hamilton: And they’re not all Japanese. A lot of them came out of the US, but a lot of that thinking was critical for me? And it was just my good luck that since I had no background in manufacturing, I had no biases. And therefore I started to study this and that led to award of a prize for our company in 1990. And there were some remarkable improvements. We were still awful, but we’d made an awful lot of improvement. That in fact, led to some attention back in 1990 from Toyota, who at the time was for purposes of trying to be a good corporate citizen and trying to overcome an image of taking jobs, which killing American auto manufacturing, which they didn’t really need any help. They were kind of hurting themselves.

Bruce Hamilton: They helped us out for or five years. And it was exciting, very exciting. They felt like as they like to put it, being dragged through a keyhole. So there was this technical knowledge from Shingo and some lot about behaviors of people. And then dealing with the folks from Toyota, understanding what management’s role was in this. because I was not totally clear about that, about how the whole thing fit together. It’s a whole system. It’s not just one thing or another. One piece. We often talk about lean is a bunch of pieces and that can create a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. Because unless you’re looking at it as a whole, you don’t really get a decent understanding. That finally led me into general management. And at that point I was back actually working with sales.

Bruce Hamilton: So I started out in sales and I ended up in sales. Then 20 years ago, hard to believe, 20 years ago I quit my job. Loved the company, it was doing okay, but I got so excited about continuous improvement. And actually I think it was my interaction with the Shingo prize and the Shingo Institute and getting to go out and visit other companies, not just in manufacturing, but in lots of kinds of different businesses. It was exciting to do that. So I became a consultant and that’s where I am today. I worked for a, not for profit organization that’s been around since 1994 and it’s our mission to keep good jobs, predominantly here in the US. We’re parochial that way. Don’t begrudge anyone else but we liked the idea of overcoming challenges that we have and particularly in our own region. So that’s me and happy to be with you today.

Michael Webb: Looking back on that, a couple of points, I guess, to ask about, because I’m similar age to you, right? And so I went through different… Coming from the sales background, but during this period of time when first mainframe computers and then mini computers and then microcomputers were upending the way businesses managed themselves. And I remember observing, and I wondered if you did this to back in your days of IT, the IT department… I remember realizing, wait a second, if you’re going to have a computer, that’s going to be able to do all these real fast calculations and make reports. And people from all over the company are putting information in them. That means everybody has to define their terms exactly the same way. And that’s not the way it works right now. That’s a revolution to help over smplify things. Because that’s one of the reasons that computer systems didn’t work.

Bruce Hamilton: That was true back then and it’s still true today. Different parts of an organization. We talk about language barriers, sort of the English versus Spanish or Vietnamese, but there are huge language barriers between engineering and sales. And when I was in sales that released. We would say it was released in sales promotion, that meant that there was a concept on paper and we were going to take it to a trade show. Whereas released in purchasing meant we purchased all the parts. Released in engineering meant we’ve finished the prototype. So every part of the organization had a different definition. They were all wrong. The computer system then tries to codify this, but the codes are all messed up. One of the better parts of MRP that I participated in was that it actually forced us to ask the questions. Ali White , who was an early leader, liked to say that it’s a people system which utilizes a computer and he emphasized all people. This is probably the first time I think in my company where sales felt they had any connection to what was happening in operations.

Bruce Hamilton: And that was pretty reluctant too, it was like, they felt that you’re putting us on the spot. Forecasts are very difficult because of the, let’s say, less than friendly relationship between sales and operations. They’re immediately on the defensive. So a lot of those conditions persist today. Organizations are, siloed, is a popular word. I used to say compartmentalized. We’re all in our own little cubbies and we don’t get out much. Even if there aren’t physical walls, we just don’t go to certain areas.

Bruce Hamilton: So the language is kind of messed up. Computer systems take that language and they make it look official. And once it comes out of computer, it must be right. I honestly did not have a concept. There was a guy back then called James Martin who was a futurist. And he talked about back before there was even a hint of a laptop. He talked about that and he talked about communication. He talked about computers and devices, but it didn’t really hit me for 20 years, most of us.

Bruce Hamilton: And that’s where we are now, what we’ve got is this connectivity and more processing power. And surely it amplifies the opportunities, but it also amplifies the misunderstandings.

Michael Webb: Yeah. So, then to build on that, because I went a kind of a similar path, only I was selling MRP systems for a while, integrating the wholesale distribution and then production control, cost accounting system and like that. And was very eyeopening for me to learn just how complex things were inside a production facility. And I was fortunate enough in high school and college to work in a couple of manufacturing plants. And my goodness, your eyes open up to all this stuff. And if you’ve ever been in that before, you don’t realize the complexity of it.

Bruce Hamilton: It surely is. There’s complexity in every systems. There’s complexity in sales system. Some of it’s just because things are complicated and some of it’s because we make it unnecessarily complicated. Complicated in any system.

Michael Webb: As you help companies to improve in their profitability, their quality, their performance, a lot of it has to do with helping those people understand each other and what their words mean. I’m guessing that’s a key element. I know Shingo model focuses a lot on respect for people and drawing on what they think and thinking jointly together. Why don’t you cover that?

Bruce Hamilton: It’s not the only thing. And the Shingo model focuses heavily on it. And it adds a lot to the opportunity for improvement. But I think you need to be careful that it’s not just that. There actually are some concepts which are hard to wrap your head around and some tools which seem crazy at first glance. And so you need to get to be able to lead the horse to water. And it’s often difficult if you haven’t actually tried it. And this is where the interpersonal relationships become really important. Dialogue is a really important word for me. It’s so easy to, the minute it’s an argument, we’re just back to where we always were. It’s us and them. And that’s where most organizations start.

Bruce Hamilton: As a Shingo prize examiner. I listened for those two words or those kinds of words, totally, all the time, because the minute I hear them, I know that there’s issues with interpersonal relationships. And I want to know who them is? Who are they? Could be management, could be other departments, could be the customers. It could be the employees. And so if we are looking at this as a whole, we need to have more of a shared understanding. That’s where the interpersonal relationships become so important.

Michael Webb: Since you spend a lot of time in production facilities and your focus is largely with management of those facilities. What was interesting, your sales background and many of your customers, your clients end up needing to engage the sales departments. I guess two questions on that. Why does that happen? And then what are some of the special problems that you’ve run into as you tried to do that?

Bruce Hamilton: There isn’t a single answer for that. First off, not every organization has the same problems. Organizations can be very different. Different types of organizations. And they all look… You’d mentioned how you were surprised how complex systems could be in manufacturing, but sometimes that’s easy to understand if you’re building a jetliner, it’d be easy to say that’s pretty complex, but if you’re bottling water, you would say, nobody should mess that up.

Bruce Hamilton: In fact, each system has got its own kind of conditions and problems. And those problems are not just on the production floor. Coming out of sales, I think in sales promotion, I’m a very top line-oriented guy. I learned early along that management is much more interested in what you can do to improve the top line then what you can do to save money.

Bruce Hamilton: Not that I think saving money is unimportant and unfortunately, a lot of the things that organizations do to save money don’t really make sense. They only save it on paper. That resonates particularly well with sales because sales is charged with generating revenue. Okay, so what can we do to help sales create revenue? And there’s a number of things. Like margin flexibility is a really big deal, particularly today. A lot of companies just give up on certain segments of the market because they feel they can’t compete. And they can’t compete because they haven’t managed to get that connection between what the customer needs and what operations can provide. And engineering, by the way, it’s not just production. So that’s one thing, margin flexibility.

Bruce Hamilton: Another thing is just things that are specific to salespeople, territory management. And oftentimes that hasn’t been looked at, at all. We set up when certain areas of the country were not populated and had no industry. Now things have changed, particularly for older companies. And it’s never been looked at. So you’ve got one person, salesperson who’s out there trying to cover a million square miles. And another one who’s basically rolling around in a neighborhood. There’s so many different things in sales, like distribution policy, like pricing, like discounting, all of those things. They’re all systems which are important to salespeople. So it’s not so much finding a problem. It’s more a matter of, well, what do you work on first? It’s no different than working in operations. Yeah, we got lots of things we could fix, but what’s bothering you the most.

Michael Webb: Which you have to find with any group of people, if you’re going to get them-

Bruce Hamilton: That’s right.

Michael Webb: So in all my years in sales, four different industries, a bunch of companies, and then consulting with hundreds of companies, you find that the sales department is often just like all by its lonesome. Yeah, we need to improve sales. So what do we need? We need sales training. So they hire these real expensive sales trainers because after all, if they weren’t good salespeople, they would be cheap. So we teach the salespeople the magic words and they go out and they do their best to implement it. And then a year later it doesn’t really look like much has changed. The sales department is still trying to push more proposals and more orders. And it’s a tough thing. That’s just the way sales is managed. Why is it that sales, from what you’ve seen, why is it that there’s this division in companies between how sales is managed versus how the rest of the company is thought of as a system?

Bruce Hamilton: I’m going to maybe answer this in an oblique way. Salespeople and production workers have something in common. They’re measured by their output and it’s out there in hard numbers. You may feel it’s unfair, but there it is. Other departments, not so much. Hard to measure some other departments that way. I worked in sales promotion and, jeez, nobody could really figure out how to measure us. It was like, how many leads do we get? How many qualified leads? But salespeople, they have sales quotas, things that they’re supposed to hit. And that’s what they would like. They’d like to figure out how to do that better. So in that respect sales, isn’t really too much different than other organizations. I think as a whole, we continue to have a misconception that all the problems and all the opportunities are in operations.

Bruce Hamilton: So that’s something to get by. Let’s focus on pain first. Not saying that people are doing a bad job. Because that’s what you hear in manufacturing. I know you’re saying we’re doing a bad job. When you say waste, you’re saying I’m wasting time. No, I’m not saying that. I’m saying there are things that get in the way of your work. That’s what that toast video was about. I don’t know for those of you who had seen the toast video, it’s just about somebody trying to provide a service or a good and struggling to do it. Has these problems, information problems, don’t have the right equipment, don’t have the right instruction. So for sales, oftentimes… I know in my own sales organization, the thing that they hated most was groveling. They did not want to waste their valuable time, apologizing, making excuses.

Bruce Hamilton: First of all, they couldn’t sell when they were doing it. And second of all, it just felt awful. That’s not what they’re being rewarded for. So we focused on that. And of course, that goes right back to operations. What are those problems? Let’s get specific. What can we do for you? Is it late delivery? Is it quality? There’s this image that you often hear in lean of the problem funnel of taking a vague general problem and boiling it down to something specific and then fixing that. Okay. So that has two benefits. One is, it gives me a little bit of my own WIFM (what’s in it for me) because something got better. And second of all, it gives me an idea that there’s a process which can make things get better generally. And that, in fact, in order for that to happen, we probably need to work together on this. Can’t do it alone. Each of us has some significant part of the solution to the problem. But if I’m sales now, sales is the front line.

Bruce Hamilton: Sales is our front line. And I’m talking about people who are in the field, not so much the folks who are in the office handling complaints and taking the orders and so forth. And they’re very important too, but I’m talking about the people who are out in the field, They’re out there alone. Something didn’t happen right. They got to deal with it. They don’t want to be doing that at all. That’s not sales. It’s like rework. People in production hate rework. There’s no plus in it. And then they get punished for it. It’s like it’s their fault or something. So in that sense, I think even though salespersons… It’s a tough job. It’s a tough job being out there and having to answer for anything that happens, having to put your best face on every single day, even when things are not working. Working with systems that don’t work. I called that order in, where’s that order go? That pricing is all wrong. All those things that go wrong, very frustrating to them.

Bruce Hamilton: So I think it’s more a matter of just getting folks the same… Anybody, it doesn’t matter which occupation you’re in. I say in that toast video, it’s not about the work. It’s about all the things that get in the way of the work. It’s all those things every day, which just gives me a headache. You can’t find anybody who can’t give you a long list of those.

Michael Webb: And by the way, we will include a link to The Toast Video. Very well worth watching in the show notes. When I work with sales organizations, one of the things… You talked about leading the horse to water. One of the things we have to get them to recognize is that whether you created value or waste in sales, you have a number at the end of the quarter, whether you made your number, but all the work that led up to that, which part of it’s value? Which part of it’s waste? That’s invisible. You have to invent a way. We have to develop a way to determine whether we’re wasting our time or whether we’re creating value. And whether that value is for us or whether it’s for the customer.

Michael Webb: We have to do things with the salespeople to help them have an experience, that says, oh, golly. I guess when I use the word customer, I’m referring to somebody different than you. What other terms might we have to define?

Michael Webb: Do you have that same kind of thing when you’re doing that with production folks or when you start working with order entry or customer service or salespeople too? Have you gone through the same thing?

Bruce Hamilton: There’s a kind of a spectrum, particularly I think in smaller companies. There’s pretty good understanding of who the customer is. There’s a shared understanding of the customer. Larger companies, even there. I think many organizations that we work with… Yeah, I guess I have to qualify. If we’re just starting out with an organization, usually operations is removed, maybe twice removed from the customer. Their idea of the customer… Worst case, they see the customers as the problem. You have that kind of belief. I don’t know if I’m answering your question here.

Michael Webb: It’s not hard to go into a company and say to one department, who’s the customer? And they say, well, it’s the guy at the distributor who signs the cheque. Ask another person, who’s the customer? Well, it’s the person who’s got their hands on our machine and using it in the shop. And somebody else says, well, no, it’s the plant manager who’s going to benefit from it.

Bruce Hamilton: Companies that have had some background with TQM will generally say, think of the internal customers the next process. And they’re aware that, that leads to someone outside. Once you get outside, it gets a little dicier, depending upon the industry. Is your customer the patient? Is your customer the doctor? Is your customer of the hospital? Is your customer the insurance provider?

Bruce Hamilton: All of these are, actually like that term, stakeholder. And it’s kind of relative to the problem we’re trying to serve. We’d like to keep everybody happy. All those customers are important. And I worked for an organization that made products that might go into a piece of cooking equipment, but ultimately the customer might’ve been McDonald’s. That’s who we’re really trying to make happy. The customer for a part that we make could also be the person who’s taking that part and assembling it into the product our customer makes.

Bruce Hamilton: So it doesn’t stop at the purchasing department or the stock room. It goes right to the person who is going to then need that part. And that’s important relative to problem-solving. So if there’s a problem with a part, it tends to get discovered at the point where… It’s not discovered, typically. It might be a might get discovered on receiving, but it might get discovered when, I’m the assembler and I’m trying to put it together and it doesn’t work. So if I don’t have that frame of mind as my customer. I’m not going to solve the problem. I wrote a post about it called The Salesman’s Gamble . We made a sensor and it was a type of RTD sensor, had three wires. And the three wires had a particular protective coating on them, an armor prevent the wire from being damaged.

Bruce Hamilton: But when we manufactured this, we sometimes nicked one of the wires and then that would be rejected, its customer. And we spent hours and hours analyzing the work, trying to figure out how we could manufacture that part without nicking it. And it was hard because it wasn’t really concentric. So we get into manufacturing issues. And we were struggling. We’re getting better, but still the stuff would come back from the customer, we nicked the wire again.

Bruce Hamilton: One of our field salesman from the Midwest was in the plant and we invited him to the meeting, and he asked this question, why do they need the armor? Now that’s a question, that armor on the wire. None of us would ask that. It was just a given. He asked the question, why do they needed the armor? And I actually traveled to that company with the salesman. And the first person we asked was the buyer. And she pulled out the prints. She says, the armor is absolutely necessary, but we pursued it onto the floor. And we talked to the person who was assembling it. And he said, and I’m not exaggerating here, He says, not only do we not need the armor, it’s a pain in the neck. It’s hard to get that armor to thread through when we do the assembly. And when we’ve dug into it, what it was, was it was a repurposed sensor that we had made years before. And they just use the sensor in new equipment. And in the new equipment, A, the armor was not needed. And B, the armor was a problem.

Bruce Hamilton: So because we had all that engagement and particularly from our field sales guy, we actually reduced the cost of the part because we didn’t need the armor anymore. And they got a part that they wanted. So there’s a perfect example of how, when you have the right interpersonal relationships, you can really solve a problem. In another environment, that would have gone on and on forever. We probably would have lost the customer.

Michael Webb: Think of an environment where salespeople are measured strictly on revenue production, not on nuanced understanding of what the customer’s problem is. That’s what a lot of young kids today who go into sales and hired by these companies, into telephone boiler rooms and make a million calls a week and it’s just push, push, push. There’s no real analysis of what’s the value to the customer. Is there an easier way to get some attention and create something useful for them as a way of getting engaged. Salespeople today are struggling so hard because customers are trying to avoid them. And so we had to step back and take a more value-oriented way of redesigning sales processes and stuff.

Bruce Hamilton: Yeah. Salespeople, as I said, have a very hard job. And there’s a certain set of skills which are unique to sales. A type of sales training is very valuable. I coached soccer for a while. And not that I know much about soccer, but the first thing you do is you teach people how to dribble and you teach them the basic skills. And that’s essential. You can’t play the game if you don’t do that. And then there are tactics that you… How you’re backing around and how you manage the field. And that’s important, just as it’s important in sales. But then finally, there’s this overall strategy of how are we going to win the game. And this is typically where organizations tend to… They don’t put enough effort into that. And we win the game. As I used to say, we beat better players because we’re a better team. Because we play as a team. Same story is true in healthcare, manufacturing, anywhere. So its’ our ability to look at the problem from many sides to solve it.

Michael Webb: As they say at Toyota, I think, we build people before we build cars. The people have to understand each other. They have to understand the problems they’re trying to solve. They have to use evidence and data instead of opinions and biases and drawing people through that critical thinking. As I understand it, that’s management’s primary role.

Bruce Hamilton: But there’s another piece behind this, which can make it difficult, Michael. And that is how we’re measured. Manufacturing will be measured in such a way that does not necessarily promote good customer service. And you can’t blame them for that. It’s normal to cherry-pick jobs in order to hit a bogey. And it just is it’s normal in sales to pull orders in that the customer doesn’t need, so that they can be…

Michael Webb: That’s something that we really don’t want.

Bruce Hamilton: And I don’t hold them accountable. It’s the measurement systems that we use. And this is where senior leadership really, really can play a part. They’re the only ones who can look at this and say, you know what? I’m not going to argue with Gap accounting. When we pay our taxes, this is how it’s done. It’s done a certain way. We can’t do much about that.

Bruce Hamilton: So we’re not going to fight it. We are just going to fail to take it seriously because we know, because we can see, because we’re business people. And we realized that building something just because we want to activate resources is not actually making us money. It’s not turning into sales. In fact, it’s eating up our resources that we could use to sell products to our salespeople. One of the first things I tell companies, the nonproduction departments, I tell the financial people, be prepared for an excess of cash. That’s the first thing that’s going to happen. Because when we stopped doing things that we never should have done in the first place, making policy decisions. Eli Goldratt called them evaporating clouds. Just like, we made this decision, and now we’re just not going to do it. A controller of my former company said, I think we just need to stop forcing orders at the end of the month so that we look good this month and then have nothing to build the following month.

Bruce Hamilton: He needed to say that. That’s an evaporating cloud. It was a policy decision. It was a self-inflicted wound, that we were not late to customers. Well, we were late the first of the month, because we ran out of parts building things that weren’t needed. So that’s one kind of thing. And what I say to salespeople is, you best be prepared to find new markets for all the capacity that we have now. Otherwise, we’re going to have that problem. We stopped making things that were not needed. And now we have this capacity and with this capability, let’s make sure that we use it. Let’s go out and sell the factory.

Bruce Hamilton: One of the challenges that I had early on was, there are people from sales who would say, Oh, you see what this is doing? Our backlog is dropping. I said, no. Our backlog is not dropping. We are not forcing customers to order a half a year in advance of when they get to the order. We are just the same amount of sales. We are just not not forcing companies to make decisions that they really can’t make, because they don’t know. As a result, we’re putting heavy pressure on our competitors because they still are taking six months to deliver. And guess what? We can do it in a very short period of time. Sell that. And that worked, actually. It worked, after a while we figured this out. And our marketing programs started to talk about how we can deliver quickly customers love that. Customers are a good spot to go to get support for this process. And that they’ll talk to salespeople. It’s a great opportunity.

Michael Webb: When you are leaning out and making the production operation so responsive to the market, I think your point is huge. Now the salespeople have to go out and find new markets and new customers. That is not a trivial thing, right? The whole scientific method, so that you can be pretty confident in the sales forecast.

Bruce Hamilton: That’s the strategy I was talking about. We’re beyond tactics now. Where are we going to move? We’re going to move out. Are we going to develop new markets or are we going to develop new products? Are we going to develop new sales channels? Where do we go? And this is what salespeople can and should.

Michael Webb: All this critical thinking. Respect for people is hugely beneficial. It’s the only way that I know of to help organizations actually be more effective. So if someone wants to learn more about your organization, how would they get in touch with you?

Bruce Hamilton: We are at Gbmp.org, we’re online presently like a lot of organizations. We do a lot of things virtually. You can find us at www.gbmp.org. You can find us at the Shingo Institute as well, since we’re an affiliate of the Shingo Institute. If you’d like a few minutes of entertainment once a month, write a post under the heading of oldleandude.org. And also if I may, make a plug for our upcoming conference, which is in October seven and eight, and it’s virtual as well. And it’s called 21st century lean. All the things that we see in the 21st century. And this has certainly been a rip-roaring 20 years. If you think about it. Of all the things that we have had to struggle with and the changes and how do we pivot quickly. And we’re all trying to do that right now. So the theme was kind of prophetic. We set it up over a year ago.

Bruce Hamilton: We had no idea what kind of a mess we’d be in right now. That you can find us at northeastleanconference.org. So there’s several ways to get in touch with us. I’d be happy to get with anybody. So thank you. A hope that we will see a couple of folks from your listeners at the conference and happy to chat with anybody. And I appreciate you asking me to participate with you today, Michael.

Michael Webb: Well, my pleasure. This has been a great opportunity. Thank you very much. This is really valuable. I’m sure we’ll be talking real soon.

Bruce Hamilton: All right. Thank you Michael. Peace.

The post Bruce Hamilton | Playing As a Team first appeared on Sales Performance Consultants.

Right now, things are unsettled. Lots of issues nagging for a sales leader’s attention.

How do you figure out what to focus on now and what can wait? I am thinking about quality issues.

Right now, things are unsettled.  You probably have some things that are going okay.  Other things you used to count on aren’t OK.  You or your team have new ideas, but it is hard to feel comfortable projecting how they will work.

You are also trying to look around corners to see what is coming next.  There are a lot of things competing for your attention

Feelings nag the sales leader. How do you figure out what needs attention now and what can wait?

Suppose your gnawing feeling involves the quality of deals.  How confident should you be about the near-term deals in your sales funnel?  Are your team members still listening for the right cues from prospects?

Doubling down on the pipeline reviews tends to focus attention for the short run.  It’s called the Hawthorne Effect.  The gnawing feeling will be back.

Fortunately, there is a way to get facts that reveal what’s happening.

Get a snapshot

Choose three of your reps and two prospects for each. Whatever qualification method you use, ask each rep to bring a highly qualified prospect, and a one that is lower.  Ask each for five minutes of their time.

“I am just getting a temperature check.  There are so many moving pieces right now, I want to make sure I am understanding how everyone is thinking about their current situations.”

You will not be challenging or debating them in any way.  You will not be coaching.  It is very important that you not react negatively to their answers.  You want to listen carefully to the words they use.

For each opportunity, start with a general question like “Where were we at when you updated them in the CRM on Thursday?”

Then ask a follow-up question or two.  You want them to describe how they thought about the same specific qualification questions for each of their opportunities.

What to listen for

Part of your takeaway is going to be about the quality of the deals.

Equally important, is how they answered. Here is a shortlist of some things you might reflect on from what you heard:

• Were they expressing feelings, or observations, or a mix of these?
• Were the meanings of their answers to the scoring questions consistent?
• Was their use of the qualification questions consistent with the intent of the questions?

Ideally, everyone talks about observations of their sales opportunities that lead them to their decisions, and they interpret the questions in a consistent way. That will give you the most confidence.

You might find variation in how individual salespeople answer instead.  It could be just style.  Some people lead with a feeling and back it up with an observation.  Others talk about what they think is going to happen or how they think the prospect is reacting.

In sales, we often have a habit of talking in approximations and feelings.  These are sometimes called floating abstractions – linguistic customs representing a hash association, assumptions, or feelings. They can cause a lot of trouble in sales environments if they go uncorrected.

For example,

• A green salesperson’s excitement about a large new prospect might distract them from the uncomfortable fact that they do not have a strong coach network.
• A salesperson who doesn’t have the skill or ambition to develop their opportunities might overlook them.

Qualification criteria that are sufficiently defined are invaluable. In operational excellence, this is known as a standard. It enables salespeople to evaluate the clarity and strength of their own observations about their accounts. It takes some time and a few iterations to get there. And when you do, good standards reveal all.

Conclusion

You may be pleasantly surprised and find there is no reason to worry about the quality of your standards or of your deals.  Or you may find a starting point for further discussion to improve the view of the funnel and rectify the situation.

Either way, you’ll be able to ease the gnawing feeling by bringing you and your team closer to the realities you face.

The post SPIF Tip #58: Getting Rid of Gnawing Feelings and the Value of Standards first appeared on Sales Performance Consultants.

Last time we described a method that enables getting this kind of information, called a “research meeting”.  When times are challenging, changing, or both, skillfully conducted business-oriented conversations with customers and prospects is not just a huge advantage, it is a necessity.

For many of us, the answers we’re hearing are all over the place.  We’ve heard themes like:

• Suspended or reduced operations
• Shifting to serve different market segments
• Unexpected demand (or lack of it) for specific types of products
• Lots of uncertainty about customer plans
• Changed decision-making patterns
• More time for Zoom-type meetings, especially among engineers and technical peoples
• Emphasizing retention over prospecting

At times, it may have seemed that planning a few weeks out was harder than planning for all of 2021 would have been 4 months ago.

Being in sales, we keep churning.  It really does not matter whether we understand everything we’re seeing, or even if we like it.  We keep looking for opportunities and try to move them forward.  It is in our DNA.

This is an important foundation for improvement, whether we know it or not. Being open to learning is the first step in a method for improving.

At the same time we are human, so we are biased to what is most familiar.  We want things to go back to “normal”.  We want deals to restart where they were on March 10^th.

Imagine how hard it is for the folks in manufacturing, distribution, finance, or IT to not know the future. At least we’re in close contact with customers and prospects.  We hear about their challenges and how they are making things work for their business.  We can bring the customer’s perspective into our organization and hopefully find wins for everyone.

Improve by Design

We don’t know which of the changes our customers are making will be short-term or lasting, because they don’t know themselves. Edwards Deming described a business as a series of experiments. It applies even more so today.

Having this mindset about your business is a  powerful tool for putting what we have heard into action. It opens the eyes of the sales team to what is possible.  It is also a way to frame things to the rest of the organization:

“This is an experiment we are targeting to specific situations for a specific period of time.  If it works, I’ll come back to talk about how we can expand it. If it doesn’t produce results, we will stop it.”

In our conversations, we’ve heard of sales teams coming up with experiments things like these:

• Observing that capital is constrained in some industries …
  a firm integrated maintenance and replacement parts in their equipment lease so it can be funded from operating budgets instead.
• Observing that engineers in building trades seem more available for Zoom technical sessions …
  a firm increased the frequency of training and case example webinars.
• Observing that some executives responded positively to skillful cold calls …
  a sales VP decided to train more of his sales reps on the approach.
• Observing court officers conducting simple courtroom proceedings via the phone …
  some lawyers are attempting to broaden the practice.
• Observing that some of his salespeople had time on their hands …
  a sales VP decided to engage them to define a prospecting problem and develop a process to solve it.

All these examples start from seeing what exists, developing a theory of causes and potential changes that might create improvement.

Deming described this approach as a PDSA cycle – Plan, Do, Study, Act.  Sales and marketing organizations are uniquely suited to rapid iterations of PDSA cycles because they live with and around customers. (For a description of PDSA from a sales and marketing perspective, see the article linked below.)

Hopefully, your sales team is doing this as well. If so, tell us what you’re seeing and what you’re learning. Whether the news is good, or bad, we can all learn from this if we pay attention.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Michael Webb

(770) 410-1601

Mentioned in this article:

• Plan, Do, Study, Act/Adjust
  https://salesperformance.com/pdsa-a-scalable-method-for-learning-and-improvement/
• Taking A Ride Without A Map, SPIF Tip #55
  https://salesperformance.com/spif-tip-55-taking-a-ride-without-a-map/
• In Uncharted Territory, How to Create a Map, SPIF Tip #56
  https://salesperformance.com/spif-tip-56-in-uncharted-territory-how-to-create-a-map/

The post SPIF Tip #57: Converting Maps Into Action first appeared on Sales Performance Consultants.

Today most of our businesses, suppliers, partners, and customers have been disrupted in one way or another. We wish we were dealing with things that matched our mental models. Like everyone, we’re making operational and financial adjustments.

We listen as customers tell us the impact and offer words of encouragement.  Everyone wants to think farther out, but there are constraints. How far out are our customers thinking? How can we learn how their business is changing? How is their customer’s business changing?

Consider the stories of companies shifting to produce medical supplies or equipment, from bulk products and packaging to consumer, from maximizing occupancy to occupancy caps. Are these business models of the future?  Or are they short-term detours?

Getting customers to engage in a “what are you thinking?” conversation is not like typical sales conversations. It requires a different mindset. We need to understand a deeper context – a business context. The privilege of learning this sort of thing must be earned.  How do you earn it?

Like everything in sales, if you haven’t done the thinking required it is not going to work well. You have to do your homework. Here are some principles to guide your preparation:

• Chose customer segments wisely
  Choosing who to talk with is more than just having a sense of who might be willing to have this kind of conversation. Think about the cross-section of your customers. Certainly include some of your large customers. Also look for those that serve different/varied geographic or consumer segments, those located in different areas and some you wish would buy more.
• Select who to talk to
  This is a situation where you are probably going to talk to only one person within an organization. Ideally, you want someone who has a good perspective about their business.  It definitely needs to be someone you have a relationship with so each of you is comfortable talking openly.
• Do your homework
  Collect what you know about them – their geographic area, their company, their industry, their customers, their key players, and backgrounds. What do you know of the individual you will meet with, and their role in the business? What have they accomplished? What publications have they appeared in?
• Prepare open-ended “research questions”
  What things might look like to them? What are they trying to accomplish? What challenges do they face? Have there been any silver linings? Any truly unexpected changes? Also, what hidden challenges might the business be facing?
• Prepare to be valuable and respectful
  You already know this, but it bears repeating: Humans implicitly perceive through a WIIFM filter. Therefore, everything you say or do must be of some value to the other person.For some, it might be summarizing what you have heard from similar but different customers to help them tri-angulate where they are. For others, it might be how other businesses are experimenting to serve their customers (obviously, anonymously). Or it could simply be a chance to think out loud with someone outside their business.People appreciate when you have thought about them and their context. Ask specific rather than general questions. “What challenges do you face?” is not as effective as, “I saw that you delayed launching your new product. What signs are you looking for to put that back on the schedule? What challenges did that create?”
• Keep the focus on them and their business
  Resist the urge to talk about yourself and your business. This is harder than it sounds, which is why it earns respect.
• Set the customer’s expectations by how you request the meeting.
  When requesting this meeting, wording is crucial. You want to distinguish it from the typical kind of meetings you may have had with them. Here’s an example:

“Bill, we’ve all been buried in urgencies in the past few weeks. So, we decided to do some homework to learn what might be coming in the future. That homework is giving us a bit of new perspective.

“We’re curious where you see your customers heading, and how your firm is adapting. Not specific projects or products, so much as what might be driving those things. This might help us be prepared when you need us.

“In addition, we may have gleaned some useful ideas from others that we can share with you.

“We’d like to ask you for 30 minutes or so to step back from the day-to-day and share what you see happening at a broader, business level. What day looks better for you? Do you want to pick a time or play it by ear?”

So, we’ve discussed the objective – creating a better mental map of what is going on with your customers. And we’ve presented a bit of method for how to get that kind of information.

Next time we’ll describe some of the powerful things you can do with this kind of information.

P.S. Do you have concerns or see obstacles in taking this direction? If I can help you think through it, give me a call (770) 410-1601 Eastern Time.

P.P.S.  A good model for conducting meetings like this is included in “Beyond Selling Value, A Proven Process to Avoid the Vendor Trap,” by Mark Shonka and Dan Kosch (Dearborn, 2002).

The post SPIF Tip #56: In Uncharted Territory, How to Create a Map? first appeared on Sales Performance Consultants.

On my first visit there, she showed me the little motorboat they all had so much fun in. Lou suggested I take it for a spin. What a delightful idea.

The water was like glass. Opening the throttle on the little outboard, I cut out across the lake. I’ll never forget the scenery, the sound, and feel of the boat.

Then, BOOM! The boat twisted to the left with a sickening screech.

“SHIT!” I said, shutting off the motor.

No water was leaking in. I was near the middle of the lake. How could it be shallow? Over the side, nothing was visible.

Something behind caught my eye. A tree stump lurking below the surface. Then, another. From a few yards away they were invisible.

A dam on the Tittabawasse River created Wixom. Trees that once stood on its bank were now below the surface. The locals knew where to look for them. I didn’t have their map.

The Territory is Always Changing

A lake is something like your company’s market. When enough customers need what you do it can be an easy ride. But, circumstances do change. Most of the time, gradually. Sometimes, suddenly.

“If the urgencies would only let up, I wish I could talk to a bunch of my customers.” That was Bill, a past client. I asked what he wanted to know. We discussed what his customers were like for some time. In the end he said, “I guess what we want to know is,

• What changes are they seeing in their customers?
• What have they learned about their business?
• What do they think we might do to help them?”

Bill had been stewing with this idea in his head for a while. His customers seemed very focused on the short term. That made it hard to learn how their needs might change in the future.

Bill’s perspective was different. He saw the progression from his customer’s customers to their businesses to his business. He knew the contours of the map.

We are all dealing with real urgencies. We also need to extend our view beyond the current chapter and the next one.

Then Bill said, “Lots of people around here are anxious for things to get back to normal. The thing is, I’m not so sure that is going to happen.”

When There’s No Map for the Territory, How Do You Create One?

Are you wondering how your customer’s business may be changing? Can you help them think about how their customers may be changing?

This won’t be a typical sales conversation.

I’ll go there in my next post.

P.S. Are you similar to Bill? What concerns or obstacles do you see in learning this kind of information? If I can help you think through it, give me a call (770) 410-1601 Eastern Time.

The post SPIF Tip #55: Taking A Ride Without A Map first appeared on Sales Performance Consultants.

It was during my first year working for a sales training company. My boss was trying to get me to deliver a presentation in a way that felt like a gimmick to me. Ultimately, he had to say, “Mike, this is ‘My way or the highway.’” I swallowed hard. And when showtime came, I did as he asked. The audience’s reaction was far more positive than I expected. My assumptions about them had been wrong. I never forgot that experience.

As our ancestors learned the hard way, the fewer assumptions we make the better. However, assumptions are an important part of living today. No one person has all of the information nor the mental focus and processing power to make sense of everything our organization is involved in.  We depend on bosses, peers, customers and others to know what they are doing. We depend on them to avoid unwarranted assumptions and to help us overcome the limitations in what we know.

My mistake is a common one. I didn’t understand my audience. It is an important lesson, and a constant challenge, especially in sales and marketing.

Here are three keys that can help us avoid mistakes like this.

Focus Externally

In sales and marketing, we have the advantage of thinking about our customers/prospects/candidates most of the day.  When we focus on what they are trying to accomplish and their challenges, we go into situations with a different mindset.

When we proactively ask, “What are you trying to accomplish?” and regularly solicit their feedback, we put ourselves in a position of co-creating rather than selling. This builds a stronger relationship and avoids assumptions about how we can improve.

Use Language Precisely

This is not about grammar or what Dictionary.com shows. It is about creating clarity when working with others.

Too often we assume other people use words the same way we do. Chances are, they don’t. Not only does everyone have different experiences and assumptions, they typically haven’t bothered to align the meanings of the words they use.

It can sound like an overwhelming task – and it is. You can’t do it all at once. So you start with the most critical issues and resolve to make defining terms a policy for solving problems as you move along, of defining things. Leaders who maintain an open glossary of terms encourage their team members to respect this policy.

Respect For People

This is a common theme for me and I assume it is important to you. But it is easy to slip up in the heat of a hundred urgent things going on. The self-awareness to know it happened is what is important.  Then, continuing to model it and reinforce it with your team. Sometimes members of your team can give you feedback or can help you translate your venting into a productive thought.

Veering off course is likely conversations focus on opinions. Making sure we are grounded by evidence and data (focusing externally again) before racing ahead is a useful guardrail.

The upcoming weeks and months will be unsettled times.  I hope these reminders will help you and your team work together better right now.  And be a stronger organization that is better prepared for the future.

Be safe.

The post SPIF Tip #54: I Was Wrong first appeared on Sales Performance Consultants.

Most of us are reeling from the current and projected impact of COVID-19. Where will the dominoes stop falling across our customers, channel partners, and salespeople? Much less in your personal life? The uncertainty of the future and being hampered by isolation is maddening.

There is a silver lining, however. This can be an opportunity to step back and consider what is most important to you.

“If I must deliver ideal and sustainable results, and I must,
what are all the factors I must focus on …?”

Robert Miller
Former Executive Director
The Shingo Institute

What Factors You Should Focus On?

In sales, most things are not in our control. We learn to navigate through what the customer thinks, what our salespeople do, or what the support department thinks they should be doing. You have always attended a tradeshow, so you budget for it again. A customer is dragging their feet, so you offer a discount for ordering early. You go around the service department and call your friend in scheduling to get a special ship date. You copy and paste words from an old monthly report, because no one reads them anyway.

You know the behaviors are not ideal. They’re just what has to be done. Or are they?

We have control over what we think about. Our commute is shorter.  We’re spending less time traveling and waiting in lines.  Fewer people stopping by our desk ‘to ask a quick question’.

Define the Problem You Are Trying to Solve

In sales, we tend to use some words without paying close attention to what those terms refer to in reality. Take the word, “problem.”

The president of a medical equipment manufacturing firm once said to me, “The problem with our sales team is, they need time and territory management training.”

See what he did there?

Unwittingly, he named a solution, not a problem. This was no trivial issue, it was a habit. It contributed to the loss of his job about a year later, along with great disruption to the organization.

A Senior Sales VP of a $360 million sales team told me, “My salespeople spend too much time on the wrong accounts.”

Everything was clear to him until I asked, “Can you help me understand how much is ‘Too much time?’ and, what is a ‘Wrong account?’”

After struggling for a while, he said. “I guess what I mean is, my salespeople don’t have a common standard for prioritizing their accounts.”

Now, THAT was an improvement.

The Key

The key to defining the problems you’re trying to solve is to avoid using the word, “problem.” What you are looking for is evidence or data (numbers) you do not like. (I use the term Undesirable Result, or UDR in my book, Sales Process Excellence. (Some people prefer Undesirable Effect.)

When we try to improve, we all have a huge tendency to focus on our theories for the causes, or pet solutions we are interested in. We should be lasering in on the evidence instead.

This can seem a bit awkward at first.

• You will find yourself starting a sentence then restarting.
• You will hesitate to interrupt someone who is explaining “We need sales training” to say, “I see that. Now, what is the evidence you do not like?”
• You will catch yourself asking “What should we do here?” before you have asked, “What is the evidence we do not like?”

It is worth it.  First, you’ll be listening more. Your team will become more engaged. Discussions will no longer be a competition to have the answer “Lauren” wants to hear or to be the loudest, most forceful presenter.  Or, dreading making changes “so my emails look like Ben’s” again.

Your team will be able to name what part of “the elephant” they see, in a collaborative and respectful way.  It is just more fun when you are making progress. Plus, you will be building a sturdy foundation for addressing your company’s chronic challenges.

You will uncover surprises.  Stronger contributions from team members.  New ideas. Root causes for nagging problems.

And that is gold.

The post SPIF Tip #53: Finding Gold in Your Teams first appeared on Sales Performance Consultants.

Drew Locher brings several different perspectives to helping organizations improve.  He began his career in engineering.  He was introduced to quality management in a management development program which later lead to specializing in organizational behavior.

Today, he talks with us about several aspects of making and sustaining change in an organization.  The importance of energy and staying focused until new habits are formed.  The role of measurements, standards and understanding of the broader process to have the context for making adjustments.  And, how to shorten learning curves.

Throughout the conversation, we highlight the role of leaders:

• To communicate a purpose that is meaningful to people
• To insure plans carry forward to help workers sustain their improvements
• To follow progress – adding energy to the system and spending time with people

And more.

Mentioned in This Episode:          cma4results.com

Drew’s YouTube Channel

Hello everyone, this is Michael Webb, and this is the Sales Process Excellence Podcast. Today I have a guest that I’ve been looking to for quite a while. My guest is Drew Locher, a management consultant par excellence. And I’ve been following Drew for quite a while. Drew, could you tell us about your background, introduce yourself and how you got into what you’re doing today.

Drew Locher:                     Thank you Michael. And thank you for having me on your podcast. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to speak to your colleagues and constituents. So a little bit of background. Basically I grew up in the 1980s in a corporate management development program at the General Electric company. And it was there that I got introduced to, what we called at the time, world-class enterprise and quality management concepts. And we were expected to apply those concepts in whatever management role that we had.

I was with GE for seven years. I left in 1990, went back to school for organizational behavioral science. Up to that point my background was in engineering, several engineering fields. And at the same time I went out and started working with different organizations in different industries trying to see how these world-class and quality management concepts applied in different environments. And that’s what I did throughout the 90s, working with typically smaller and medium size organizations. That kind of grew into working with larger organizations by the end of that decade.

So I’ve been working with all kinds of different industries over the last nearly 30 years on my own, including healthcare as well as manufacturing, financial service companies, even higher education. They’re currently trying to apply these concepts to their operations. And I’ve been kind of doing that for 29 years, 30 years. And wrote a few books, which kind of gets you some notoriety as you know, in the field. Mainly focusing on the application of the concepts, what we would now call lean concepts to non-production environments. Three out of my four books are on that topic. So how do we apply the concepts to finance and accounting, sales and marketing, designing, product development or any development really. And that’s what I’ve been doing for a long time now.

Michael Webb:                 Excellent. Excellent. Unlike me, you sort of started off in management and got introduced to this and have been in the quality and productivity sciences of management for almost your entire career. I started out in sales and I had to go to three different industries. So very interesting and a really deep background. And maybe that’s why you write such a good newsletter. I love following you.

Drew Locher:                     Oh, thank you.

Michael Webb:                 I’ve been following it for a while now. And in April you wrote about a topic, it caught my eye, The Science of Management. And you reflected on your training as an engineer and you observed that there’s principles or laws that explain how reality behaved, and that some of them also apply to management of organizations. I thought it was really insightful. So before we drill into them, I thought maybe I would just cover an overview of the ones that you introduced and then we’ll kind of dive into them.

The first one you used as the example was a Newton’s first law of motion, right? An object at rest stays at rest, an object in motion stays in motion. The second one was the second law of thermodynamics, right? That energy or order decreases without effort or work. And third, you introduced the idea of a system, that feedback is necessary to keep results in the desired range. And then fourth was a reference about learning in organizations, and that seemed to be more about the human mind than about a principle of physics. But we’ll get into that.

So these are fascinating topics. I promise you there are people in the audience who might think, “Oh my God, you’re talking about physical properties, this isn’t going to apply. How could this possibly apply?” But it really, really does in a fascinating way. So Drew, let’s start at the beginning. This first law of motion, an object at rest stays at rest. Tell us how that applies in the science of management.

Drew Locher:                     So I only chose four, I’m sure there’s more. But those are the four that came to mind when I wrote the piece. But that particular one, it dawned on me as soon as I went back to school in 1990 for organizational behavioral science because there was an expression they used, organizational inertia. And I’m like, “Oh, I know a little bit about inertia.” And so it caught my attention early on that one. And as organizational behavioral science folks have recognized, the application of that theory for a long time now, at least decades.

The second one, the second law of thermodynamics, that was something that sort of dawned on me as I was studying organizational behavioral sciences. And I’ve seen subsequently people also referring to it, entropy in particular, and not always applying it or citing it or referring to it properly. So that for the last few years has been in my mind thinking I need to write a little bit about this at some point just to kind of clarify things because I’ve seen people refer to it and not always correctly.

Michael Webb:                 So let’s take those two, right there. As it applies to management, what does management have to do as a result of the law of inertia?

Drew Locher:                     Well, they just can’t leave things be. They’ve got to inject energy into any system. And an organization is a system. A closed system. And we’ve seen evidence of that in any… pick a topic. I think in the newsletter, I refer to Five S. I often hear organizations or leaders of organizations kind of complain that it can’t sustain Five S. And I’ll talk to them about, “What is your sustain model?” And they kind of look at me puzzled and maybe they do periodic audits or maybe they used to and they got away from them, or maybe they did them, but they didn’t really do them properly. They didn’t engage people in participating in them, so it became like a police action when people did the Five S audits.

And it’s true really of any organizational change. You have to continue to follow up for various reasons, not just injecting energy but really making sure new habits are formed. One of the other things I studied in the early 90s was habit forming. What does it take to create habits or overwrite existing habits? And that all takes effort. It takes energy really on the part of leaders in particular.

Michael Webb:                 So you’re saying that management needs to recognize that in order for things to change, they can’t just issue an order or tell people what to do, they have to plan that people aren’t going to be able to keep it at that level or keep that change in place unless they have a plan that keeps it in place. What would be an example of something that managers and executives would need to put in place to keep a change in motion?

Drew Locher:                     Well, in lean terminology, it’s just go see. We always say go to the gumbos, as Toyota calls it. But you need to have a focus when you go see. So the focus could be on, are we sustaining Five S? And, oh, by the way, I should involve people from the area in that observation, that go see activity. And I can use it to reinforce the importance of it, I can use it to teach people more deeply of what that topic is, and what it’s not. And you can use, again, pick a topic, visual management, leaders have to go and use the visual management. They’ve got to go see how other people are using it if they want to sustain it over time. If they don’t, it sends a message that, oh, this is important, or this is just a flavor of the month kind of thing, with a beginning and an end. And people will make assumptions that, oh, leaders don’t find this important anymore, so we’ll just stop it.

Michael Webb:                 Okay. All right. So in operational excellence and lean, there’s this idea of standardized work, which a lot of salespeople just bristle, right? In fact there’s a lot of value of that in salespeople, but are you referring to something that managers have to do? Well, it means like something called management standard work. So what would be some of the things… I mean, there’s got to be some of the things that would be necessary to keep entropy from the order or the energy from declining. What would we be involved there?

Drew Locher:                     So you bring up the topic of standard work. So that would be a focal point or a focus of a go-see of a manager. They should go see existing and observe being performed, existing standard work in their area of responsibility, with a particular focus on standard work that was recently changed, is what I always suggest. So that’s another topic for go-see. And all of the go-see activities as well as other activities make up the lean management system, and a leader’s personal commitment to that system should be documented, I believe, in what we call today leader’s standard work, which is just really a multitasking version of regular standard work. It’s a leader’s plan of how they’re going to participate and support the lean management system on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.

Michael Webb:                 So question, if I am the leader of a sales and marketing organization, and I’m interested in this idea of standard work and standard management work, and I want to try to figure out what that consists of and translate it into my world of selling marketing, servicing customers. Is there a good succinct description of what are the components of management standard work that I could use as a model to figure out how it applies to sales and marketing?

Drew Locher:                     Well, there’s a model. A matter of fact, I have a brief, I think a two part YouTube series on the topic of what leaders standard work is, what should be in it, and also the process of creating it that they’ve learned is helpful. But really, fundamentally, people have to recognize that what they do are processes, and that is not always apparent to people in the sales and marketing world. That they take great pride in the creative nature of what they do, the relation, the strong relationship management nature of what they do. And they don’t always recognize process because the leader standard work is created… It actually documents all of the different activities or processes a leader is expected to be involved in. Just like standard work is for a particular activity or process. So first and foremost, people have to recognize the processes they perform. And that’s usually where I start and say, “Well, tell me what your processes are?” And that’s not always a quick response to talk it through.

Michael Webb:                 Right. Interesting. Okay. We’ll put the link to your video, your two-part video on management standard work in the show notes page for everyone. Out of curiosity, I ran across a book a few years ago by Jim Lancaster, The Work of Management: A Daily Path to Sustainable Improvement. I thought that was very well done because he talks about starting at a state where management was just kind of by walking around without a lot of forethought and planning to it, and how his mind got changed by his experiences, and now he’s able to improve the order and the productivity of his managers by design, by the way he goes through it. So I thought that was possibly a good list. Are you familiar with that book?

Drew Locher:                     Oh, I’m familiar with Jim. He’s the real deal. His company LandTech, his father was an early adopter of lean concepts. Matter of fact, they were written up in the original lean thinking book from Jim Womack and Dan Jones. And Jim has taken over the business, the son. And he’s a deep system thinker. Great. He’s the whole package. I mean, he’s got the interpersonal skills. So it’s a book I highly recommend put out by the Lean Enterprise Institute.

Michael Webb:                 All right, cool. So then there was this third idea. So we have, if an organization is in a certain state, it’s in motion and it needs to change, you have to inject energy. And when you do inject the energy and change its direction or its momentum, you have to have a way to maintain it over time. Your third idea introduced the concept of a system, right?

Drew Locher:                     Yeah.

Michael Webb:                 And systems thinking. Let’s talk about that. And then you went from that to feedback. So tell us how those things apply to in a management context.

Drew Locher:                     Yeah. I was actually introduced to the concept of system thinking to organizations before I returned to my studies in the early 90s. And it was really Deming. If everyone knows Dr. Edwards Deming, he’s the father of quality management and all these principles were trying to encourage organizations to apply. And I was introduced to his concepts in the 1980s as part of my training at GE.

In one of the readings, I believe, there was a picture, a graphic of a system model, which really kind of struck me. And his whole thing is organizations are breathing, living organisms that have to adapt. They need inputs to tell them where they need to adapt. Things like voice of the customer. And that’s why the sales and marketing folks are so important to a lean enterprise at some point.

Michael Webb:                 Right.

Drew Locher:                     So then when I went to do my organization behavioral studies, then it really sunk in. I was like, “Oh, okay, I get this.” Because we were introduced to system theory thinking, which was taking hold in the early 90s, really late 80s, early 90s.

Michael Webb:                 Okay. And so systems thinking, the way I think about that, and I just bounce this off of you, I think about it, what it really is, is the law of cause and effect.

Drew Locher:                     Absolutely.

Michael Webb:                 Entities behave according to their nature. And so you can describe those in the physical world by the law of motion and thermodynamics. There’s mathematical that we’ve observed that entities behave in these ways that are predictable by mathematics. And so in an organization there’s cause and effect also, right? And so in a… We call them systems, but really it’s cascades of systems, right? Because the company exists in a market, the market exists in a political environment. Inside the company, there are functions and departments. Inside the departments are the people and the roles that they play. And there’s the systems, the software that dictates how they do their reporting. And then there’s the training that they have and how they’re compensated. All of these things make it a very complex environment that often behaves in counterintuitive ways. So tell us about the requirement for feedback and why is it necessary? What does it enable us to do?

Drew Locher:                     Well, it’s even a little more fundamental than that. You have to have a plan, a standard, a normal condition, whatever terminology you want to use, so that then you need sensors to tell you what the actual condition is to compare it to the two. So it’s no different than your thermostat in your home, right? You set it and then it’s constantly measuring the actual ambient temperature and adjusting accordingly. So it’s no different. But it starts with what is your standard or normal condition, so we can have something to compare it to and then adjust. And in lean terminology, that’s this whole plan versus actual concept, which is prevalent throughout lean thinking. Again, I can use Five S as an example. There’s visual standards, and when we go observe are we sustaining? We can see things are out of place or things aren’t being replenished like they should. That kind of stuff.

We can see those quickly and easily only because we have standard conditions to begin with. Measurement systems of any form, process measures, lean enterprises all have an abundance of… It’s not just the chart and the data, but we always say you have to have some sort of standard or goal. So we can see, are we hitting the standard or not? And if we’re not, then that stimulates a conversation in electronic and electrical systems. That conversation is more audit or can be automated. Again, much like your thermostat, it’ll automatically adjust. The key is to have the right sensors in your organization and measures help with that. But we’ve got to be timely measures. Your thermostat is operating in real time, and too often metrics or outcome metrics that are very backwards looking. And it’s particularly true in sales and marketing, but it doesn’t need to be these days.

Michael Webb:                 No.

Drew Locher:                     But it’s not just that, there’s quantitative, but there’s also qualitative. So we talk strongly, and have for decades, about voice of the customer and what are your processes for voice of the customer? What are your customer touch points, and have those processes developed standards so we can kind of keep feeding the feedback loop to see where we need to change or improve or even more strategically where’s the market going?

Michael Webb:                 Yeah. So in sales and marketing, in a lot of organizations, this term key performance indicator. And I have had companies I worked with and clients as well to say, “We’re going to go look out in the market, in the industry, and find the best key performance indicators and bring those best practices into our organization.” And that never seems to work. Could you speak to why?

Drew Locher:                     I think a lot of it is this lack of process thinking because if I don’t see a process, I don’t have to standardize on it. I don’t have to measure it. These are obstacles I’ve encountered quite often working in a sales and marketing area.

Michael Webb:                 Okay.

Drew Locher:                     So how do we get people to see process in what they do? That’s often the first step.

Michael Webb:                 I remember being in a conversation a number of years ago, and some executives of a pretty well-known company were talking around a big conference table, and we were talking about Deming’s management cycle, plan, do, check, act. Or plan, do study, act. And one man made the observation, “Well, a lot of the people in my team, they just don’t want to do that. They’re just not interested in that.” And the comment came back a little bit later, “That’s a management problem.” If your employees don’t want to do that, if they don’t want to follow a process, they don’t want to do PDCA, you have to find out why, and if you don’t, you’re not going to be able to create improvement. Would you say that’s fair?

Drew Locher:                     Oh, absolutely.

Michael Webb:                 So then why don’t executives, why don’t managers, excuse me, why don’t employees want to do process or PDCA? And what can managers and executives do to break through the barriers?

Drew Locher:                     So I don’t know if you’ve read the newsletter I wrote on Psychology of Learning. That was another one that came out, I think, earlier this year.

Michael Webb:                 Okay.

Drew Locher:                     The first thing you have to do for anyone, that you’re asking them to do something different, right? Measuring or just even seeing process, you have to give them a purpose. So why? Because if people don’t have a purpose for whatever you’re asking them to do, then they’re not going to even consider it. So leaders have to provide that purpose. So why we need to see process and sales and marketing? What are the problems that we’re having today that are not being met maybe due to our lack of process or really defined processes?

So sometimes things are going okay and everyone believes it’s going okay, and then leaders have to create a gap and say, “Okay, well we have to strive to improve or reach this new goal and here’s why.” Maybe something’s going on in the market and the competitive set that they’re dealing with. So a good example is… And I’ll use a specific sales and marketing one. We were going to map out the process of bringing on board a new sales person at a company, this was years ago, and before we mapped anything out and got the team assembled, I asked, “Why?”

They weren’t real clear, the VP of sales and marketing, or I think it was this title. I said, “Go gather some data.” High level data. And we talked about some possibilities. And he came back. And what he showed was that when they had a change in a salesperson in a region, he could show the economic impact of that. The negative economic impact of that in the transition. And it was millions of dollars. When you added it all up, it was several hundred thousand dollar impact per salesperson. And these guys were in the commodity business. A lot of salespeople working in the retail industry. And once he had that, now he was really clear on what the motivation was, and then he could articulate that to others. And that’s what we did when we kicked off the event. People were like, “Oh, we had no idea.” I was like, “No. No, you didn’t.”

We always had to get purpose for anything we’re asking people to do differently, and the purpose could be addressing existing problems, which are gaps, or leaders have to create a gap, forward looking gap of higher level of performance. But to have a reason why too, not just because, “Oh, we’ve got to get better.” Unfortunately, that’s not enough for most people. Well, everyone wants to improve, right? Well, no, not actually. It’s not the way humans were. They’re comfortable in their known and familiar environment, they don’t really want to change. I’m sure you’ve heard the expression comfort zone, right? People’s comfort zone.

Michael Webb:                 Well, and it’s even more than comfort zone. I mean, this story leaps to mind. I had this sales executive in a professional association here in Atlanta, and he was lamenting about how hard it was for his sales team to find qualified prospects because there were so many of them. And so they were just hitting the phones, doing prospecting calls, and they expected them to do 75 or 100 phone calls a day. And so I said, “Well, there might be some scientific kind of experimental ways to make that work a lot easier. Would you be interested?” “Oh sure.” “Great.” “So, tell me about the experiments that you do.” “Oh, we do experiments all the time.” “Oh, that’s really cool.” “So what kind of data did you have?” He said, “Excuse me.”

Drew Locher:                     Yeah.

Michael Webb:                 “Yeah, what kind of data?” “Oh well, just the standard data that’s in our CRM.” “Oh, okay. So what kind of improvements have you done?” “Well, our guys are all doing experiments every day.” Of course, it was on their own, it was completely unstructured, there was no baseline, there’s no cause and effect thought process, they’re just out working. And that’s what he thought experiments were. So a lot of sales managers they don’t even get the concept.

Drew Locher:                     Oh yeah. It’s amazing. Certain terms like an experiment can have a very different meaning in different people’s minds. It’s like the term problem. It can have very different meanings in people’s minds.

Michael Webb:                 And that has led me down a path, let me bounce this off of you also. Deming spoke and much of his work was brilliant illustration of the power of understanding variation. And in sales and marketing, we have almost no data in most organizations. Well, we used to have almost no data, now we got things people think are data, and there’s too much of it. Right? But if you don’t understand what that data means, how it ties to reality, if you don’t have operational definitions, if you don’t understand variation in terms of words and concepts, then your numbers are out of context. They don’t mean anything. So you have to understand variation in your operational definitions first. So to the point you just said, people don’t really… They have the word experiment. The word customer means different things to-

Drew Locher:                     Oh, yes.

Michael Webb:                 … the same company, right? So you have this system, you have these animals, wild animals, these human beings that are in the organization, and you’re trying to get them to improve. And as you pointed out, they have to have a purpose, so you as the executive need, you can’t just give them a purpose, right? You have to see what’s important to them too, right?

Drew Locher:                     Well, it should be an inspirational purpose. So people should be able to relate to it on a personal level, and be able to see how they can affect that purpose.

Michael Webb:                 Yeah. I remember working in a sales training company, and the inspirational purpose we were given, we’re going to be the best senior level sales training organization in the market. It was a great purpose because we had a great process, we had great skills.

Drew Locher:                     But what does that mean, what you just said?

Michael Webb:                 Exactly. What does it mean? What do we do differently?

Drew Locher:                     What is great?

Michael Webb:                 What are the executives going to do differently? It was like the same guys, our managers would go around and interview each of the sales trainers and take our feedback in, and then the company needed to make some important decision. So they heard what we said, and then they announced their decision, it had nothing to do with anything that the guys called them. It was like they were kind of doing the dance but not walking. They were, what do you say, talking the talk not walking the walk. And so this idea of a vulnerable… Not vulnerability. I guess it is vulnerability. Leaders have to understand what are the problems that are preventing the people in the organization from improving. And you have to kind of go back and forth with them to make agreements about where we’re going to prioritize and why we need you to try this for a while. I find that especially in sales organizations, I’m curious, have you seen that too?

Drew Locher:                     Oh yeah, absolutely. A lot of folks in the sales and marketing world, they’re very independent, they’re very individualistic, tend to be. And sometimes it’s the nature of that, just the traveling and things that they often do. Sometimes they lose connection with the organization because of that. I’ve seen that firsthand. And then couple that with there’s just lack of process thinking. It makes it for some formidable obstacles, but it can be overcome. Those obstacles can be overcome if we are properly motivated.

Michael Webb:                 Right. Okay. And so now let’s wrap up here on the fourth reference, which was about learning in organization.

Drew Locher:                     Yeah.

Michael Webb:                 That struck me because it wasn’t really a physical principle that applies. So speak to that a little bit.

Drew Locher:                     So the idea, and what I referred to in the piece is artificial intelligence, which I studied as part of my computer engineering degree studies. And within AI, in the 1980s, it was just kind of starting. Within AI, there was a thing called knowledge based management. And I learned that in the early 90s. And actually we had applied some of those concepts, I didn’t know that’s what they were called, in the late 80s in GE in our aircraft engine business. Where we were starting to kind of do predictive maintenance, where you could predict when you needed maintenance. This is different than preventative maintenance. Again, conditions of the aircraft engine would change and you would know that, okay, I’ve got to do some maintenance on that. Well that came from experience. And people a lot smarter than I in our aircraft engine group because I had a chance to work with them briefly on this project was they were developing software, which was drawing on those experiences.

So that’s kind of where I saw it, but then when I learned about AI in particular in school a little bit. Actually it was around the same time, now that I think of it. I was like, “Oh, okay, I get this.” And then when I went to study what does it take for people to learn and develop habit and skills, that’s when I started realizing, okay, this is all part and parcel of the same concept. It’s not physics per se, but control systems isn’t physics really either. It’s about taking information and reusing that, whether you can infer from it or just set up some simple rules that people can follow. It’s all part of that.

And there was a great book, if you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend it, even though it’s about 30 years old now, which is Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline. The art and practice of the learning organization. It was way ahead of its time. So when I read that in 1990 I was like, “Oh, wow.” What’s interesting in sales. For example the sales and marketing, oh, we do lots of experiments, but we’re not learning because we’re not doing it in a scientific way. We’re not capturing that learning for reuse. So that just people off on their own winging it, which is not really good learning.

Michael Webb:                 Right. And you have unarticulated assumption that sales is about what salespeople do, and it’s way more than that, right? The sales process doesn’t start when the customer calls a salesperson. The sales process starts by whatever caused the customer to call the salesperson. The market awareness. And today in particular, customer prospects don’t want to hear from salespeople. They want to do stuff that’s going to help them solve problems. And they’re looking on the internet. So if your company doesn’t have the right kinds of offers and assistance, the salespeople, their job’s getting tougher and tougher. Banging the phones, making calls, and that’s a sinking ship. But if you think about this… Your example of the engine is a great one, I think, because they have sensors and they detect subtle changes in the vibrations of the behavior of the engine and they’ve learned which ones are indicating that a bearing might be going bad, or the oil is losing its viscosity or whatever.

So they can detect that preventative maintenance needs to happen in organizations which are filled with physical systems, machines and software, and human systems, which have hearts and minds, right? Free will. We need to capture our learning in a manner that those hearts and minds can use it. And so in sales organizations, if you have properly defined your operational definitions of what makes a good prospect, it presents an opportunity to detect changes in the quality of the input of prospects to the sales process, which gives you a signal long before the market turns right, or a recession happens. So instead of your company floating along and when the tide comes in, we do great, and when there’s a recession, we do bad and you’re helpless, you have some forewarning. You have some ability to do counter measures, but that’s at a high systemic level. And it requires these people in the organization just like in the manufacturing side, to have a clear shared understanding of the causes and the effects and what’s value and what’s waste, so that senior executives can see signals that actually tie down to observable reality.

Drew Locher:                     The example you just gave where, let’s say, you found what makes for a good prospect, and I had not, for whatever reason, I’m a slow learner, I’m new to my job. Boy, if we could take what you learned and document that in some simple way and share that with others, we can have huge impact on ourselves and our organizations because people can get up to speed quicker.

We talked earlier about standard work, and I do a lot of lean in office environments and other environments where it’s more like knowledge workers. And I would always say sales and marketing people are knowledge workers. Engineers are knowledge workers. Even certain manufacturing environments are knowledge workers. Well, what does knowledge worker mean? It means what information I need, where do I get it, and what do I do with it in terms of what decisions or actions do I take. And if I can kind of standardize all of that, I can transfer that to others, shorten their learning curves, improve their performance in timely manners. I mean, that’s the essence of knowledge reuse.

Michael Webb:                 And the essence of a learning organization.

Drew Locher:                     And the tools that are available to do it, I’m describing it, they’re readily available. You mentioned CRM systems earlier, the capability that’s there is amazing if we use it. So I’ve got to take some time to put some notes or something in it so you could reuse it later maybe for that customer or we run some reports and things that show us trends or just having conversations of best practices

Michael Webb:                 Yes. To have so-called best practices that actually are proven by data that shows the cause and effect, right? And I’ve said for years, CRM systems is software, but if you don’t have the wetware, what goes on between people’s ears lined up and organized, the software is not going to do you much good. Right? At least in collecting data across a system. Now software can encourage people to capture the right kind of information. Now we’re back to the forethought and thinking of managers to identify what are the signals and what’s the noise, what are the important things and how do we change the behavior and keep that energy from dissipating in the organization.

So Drew, this has been a great conversation. It turned out exactly the way I hoped it would. So thank you very much for being here and your great examples and your really authentic way of  thinking about it and addressing it. If someone in the audience wants to start reading your newsletter or get ahold of you for a reason, how would they do that?

Drew Locher:                     You can go to my website and there’s on the front page, I think the homepage, there’s a place to sign up for the newsletter. I don’t put them out regularly, it’s just when the mood strikes me and I think I have something to say that people might benefit from. So I might put out four or five a year at the most. But people are welcome to sign up for that and they can do it through the website. You mentioned also some videos I’ve been putting out on YouTube. I have a YouTube channel and people can sign up for those so they get notice of when something’s been added. We mentioned earlier about leader standard work. I have a video I just put out on metrics, and kind of the process of figuring out how do you come up with metrics? Not specific to sales and marketing, but any process. How do you turn to determine a set of metrics that you want to start, outcome and process metrics. That might be of interest too.

Michael Webb:                 I want to leave all these links. So what is the URL for your website? Just so the audience will be able to find you.

Drew Locher:                     The letters CMA4results.com.

Michael Webb:                 CMA for Change Management Associates.

Drew Locher:                     Yep.

Michael Webb:                 Number 4.

Drew Locher:                    Results.com.

Michael Webb:                 Dot com. Okay, cool. Drew, this has been great fun. Thank you for being here and I would look forward to having you again sometime.

Drew Locher:                    All right, thank you for having,

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