Posts Tagged ‘daily’
Innovation incubator: Build it and keep it running
If your company is like the one I work for, your people are talking about the need for innovation. Mine has just announced a new program “that will bring a standardized approach to gathering and evaluating your ideas for generating new revenue and improving our business.” An Innovation Team has just formed, with a new electronic mailbox and a contest offering cash prizes for the year’s best ideas.
Why do we need innovation?
Three answers seem obvious. First, you need innovation because our rapidly changing technology demands it. You cannot afford to do “business as usual,” because what was best in its class yesterday is today’s routine and tomorrow’s technological dinosaur. You have to innovate just to stay up.
Second, you need innovation because your customers expect it. They are looking to you to provide the fastest, most accurate, and most accessible products and services available in the world today. If you don’t deliver, they will go to someone who will.
Third, you need innovation because it sells. In every highly competitive industry (and what industry isn’t?)companies tend to look over each other’s shoulders and try at least to match what the competition is offering. The result is what Peter Skarzynski and Peter Williamson have labeled “strategic convergence,” a phenomenon in which each competitor within an industry moves its practices and procedures close and closer to those of its rivals. This leads to a vicious, downward spiral, aptly summarized by David Crosswhite:
Benchmarking the strategies of the “industry leaders” and then copying them, by definition, leads to convergent strategies. Convergent strategies lead to industry parity, which leads to commoditization of product and service offerings, and indeed, commoditization of value proposition. Commoditization leads to price competition. Price competition leads to declining margins, and a lack of (or a perceived lack of) an ability to invest, which leads to a belief that you don’t have the “space” to innovate. If you don’t resist the temptation of this thinking right from the start, you plunge into a strategy convergence death spiral.
Innovation has the potential to propel your company ahead of the pack and demonstrate that you are clearly the company your customers should choose and be loyal to.
Two kinds of innovation
Not all innovations are the same. Generally, they fall into two categories: incremental and quantum leap. Incremental innovations are relatively easy and quite common, like the slight improvements you notice in each new version of your favorite software. Quantum-leap innovations, however, move quickly from nothing to something dramatic and substantial, like the introduction of personal computers or WYSIWYG word processing. Your company should be pursuing both kinds of innovation.
What helps innovation happen?
Experts agree that certain kinds of thinking make innovation more likely to occur. Here are a few examples.
1. Breaking set ? To develop innovative thinking, we must learn to examine our assumptions and imagine possibilities outside of them. This is what “thinking outside of the box” means. Brainstorming usually facilitates this process.
2. Multiple options ? Part of the assumptions we must jettison is that we have only one or two options. Assuming that a whole range of possibilities exists helps to move us beyond the off-the-cuff, obvious ideas. The more choices we can generate, the more likely will be the possibility that one of them is an outstanding idea. Once more, brainstorming is an excellent tool to use. Also, aim at generating six or seven alternatives, not just one or two.
3. Lateral thinking ? You have to train yourself to discover commonalities between two or more seemingly unrelated concepts, forcing linkages between them. One useful exercise is to examine an industry very different from yours and try to determine what they are doing successfully that you can imitate. For instance, UPS documented the time and circumstances of residential deliveries to explore ways to trim delivery times nationwide. Do you have processes that can be timed, analyzed, and then streamlined? External research helps to identify and validate the linkages you make.
4. Mental helicopter trips ? Can you rise above the mundane tasks of your daily grind to gain an overview of the entire chain of events that make up the process you are trying to improve? The broader perspective will give needed context to each component task. Flowcharting helps you to start “hovering.”
Three approaches to innovation
1. Start from the end ? One approach to developing innovation is to start with the goal you have in mind. What would the ideal product look like, and how is that ideal different from what is already available? Then you work backwards, asking what changes would be necessary for that to happen, and how can we make those changes?
2. Find new uses for existing products or processes ? Perhaps a product already exists and is only waiting for someone to repurpose it to meet a long-standing need. The adhesive in 3M’s Post-It notepads had been around for decades, but it took researcher Art Fry to find a use for it that now generates over $300 million in annual sales for the company.
3. Problem-solving ? Innovation often comes as a way of solving a critical problem. “Necessity is the mother of invention,” and her babies sometimes come due at the most unexpected times. Every challenge carries an opportunity. Fry created Post-It notes because of his frustration that bookmarks kept falling out of his hymnal during church services. He recognized the lemons and made the lemonade!
Teaming for innovation
Most people find that innovation naturally occurs in a team environment. This is because of at least three factors.
1. Teams are efficient ? All of your employees are busy most of the time. Teams permit making progress on an idea by time-sharing.
2. Teams are synergistic ? Each of the members of the team brings his or her own expertise, experience, and frame of reference to bear on an issue, with the result that the team effort accomplishes more than the combined efforts of all of its members, working independently. Furthermore, they can bounce ideas off one another, sparking new, tangential concepts and inspiring alternate approaches.
3. Finally, teams are persuasive. Because the team’s voice is louder and its conclusions likely to be more credible than an individual’s, the team has a better chance of overcoming all of the barriers to change that exist within any organization.
If you identify a challenge that needs to be resolved, or have an idea that gets your blood moving, share it with a co-worker or two. Talk about it to your supervisor. A team can resolve the challenge or develop and implement the idea much better than you can as an individual worker.
Innovation must be client-centered
In the end, it all gets back to the external client. Remember that your mission is to meet or exceed the needs and expectations of your customer the first time and every time. To be effective as innovation, every idea must pass this acid test: does it improve the service or product you deliver to your customers? Satisfying them consistently, and often pleasantly surprising them, is what working at your company is all about. It is the goal, and the pay-off, of successful innovation.
Sources
Crosswhite, David. “Keep Innovation in Play.” Electric Perspectives. (March/April 2003). Available online at: http://www.strategos.com/articles/keepinnov/keepinnov.htm
Levering, Robert, and Milton Moskowitz. The 100 Best Companies to Work for in America. New York: Doubleday, 1993. The chapter on 3M is 296-301.
Skarzynski, Peter, and Peter Williamson, “Innovation as Revolution,” Economic Bulletin (April 2000).
“Training Staff to Innovate.” International Trade Forum. Issue 2 (2000): 28-29.
Uniker, William. “Applied Creativity.” SAM Advanced Management Journal. (Summer 1988): 9-12
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Copyright © 2005 Steve Singleton, All rights reserved
Steve Singleton is a communications coordinator and quality trainer for an international information management corporation. A former reporter and newspaper editor, his stories and editorials have covered a broad range of subjects, including business, politics, ethics, and community affairs.
Steve has also written and edited several books and numerous articles on subjects of interest to Bible students. He has taught Greek, Bible, and religious studies courses Bible college, university, and adult education programs. He has taught seminars and workshops in 11 states and the Caribbean.
Go to his http://DeeperStudy.org for Bible study resources, no matter what your level of expertise. Explore “The Shallows,” plumb “The Depths,” or use the well-organized “Study Links” for original sources in English translation. Sign up for Steve’s free “DeeperStudy Newsletter.”
Fighting Depression by Restoring Your Routines
When we have depression, one of the things we drop from our lives is a routine. Most humans need routine as it adds structure to our lives. During bouts of depression we find it hard to go about our daily lives with a sense of purpose and direction. Restoring your routines will help to counteract this problem.
Even the simplest things can appear to be beyond us and therefore get put aside. When this happens, we are in fact, only moving further away from a “normal” life.
To reclaim a normal life, return to doing normal things.
A major effect of depression is a feeling of losing control over ones life. We start to feel that everything is happening “to us” rather than through the choices we are able to make. By reinstating your routines you can begin to regain more control.
Start by writing a list of the day-to-day activities that you may no longer participate in.
I include a few simple suggestions below and possible remedial action you might take for each.
1) Brushing your teeth. Clean your teeth twice a day and use a mouthwash. There ARE going to be times when you smile, so make sure you are prepared! Even if the smile is accidental, there is no point in having a piece of lettuce between your teeth.
2) Remain well groomed. For men this would include having a shave every day, for women, putting on make-up (I know of some men and women who need both!). Trim your fingernails.
3) Personal cleanliness. Have a shower every day and use a deodorant, after-shave, cologne or perfume.
4) Clean clothes. Put on fresh clothes every day. Make sure your clothes are ironed; even if someone else usually irons on your behalf, taking charge of your own ironing will help in your recovery.
5) Eat sensibly. A loss of ones appetite, especially for sensible foods, is very common. Make the effort to eat as much fresh fruit, vegetables, fibre and nutrients as possible. If you find that your stomach is in a knot and the thought of eating fills you with dread, try taking these things in the form of a drink. Use a food blender, juice extractor or similar. There is a wide variety of these machines on the market. Adding an appropriate multi-vitamin supplement to your daily diet can also help. Don’t be afraid to allow yourself a food treat now and again, just be careful not to overdo it. “A little of what you fancy does you good”, with the emphasis on “little”.
6) Get out as often as you can. Even if, at times, all you think you can manage is going out into the garden, then you are, at least, getting some fresh air and a bit of sun on your face. Exercise is a great way to lift your spirits, so even going out to post a letter will help.
7) Keep in touch with family and friends. Losing touch with our loved ones leaves us feeling more isolated so make the effort to meet up with those people you care about and who care about you. Even if you feel that you can’t manage to see anyone face-to-face, phone them, write a letter or use email. If you don’t want discuss your life with people you know, you could consider the likes of internet forums as an outlet for expression. Talking to strangers is often easier.
Look after your personal environment. Housework not only improves the look of your surroundings but also provides good, low level exercise.
9) Don’t get bored. Do ANYTHING to fill in that gap. Do a crossword, read a book or magazine that you find interesting, polish the silver, polish your shoes, shave the cat. Just do SOMETHING. Make it an activity you have to concentrate on so that your thoughts are, at least temporarily, distracted from the depression. Even 5 minutes of concentrating on another subject is a welcome “holiday”.
Now turn your list into an action plan. Take the points you have noted down and make a chart with all the various activities you have listed. Each day, tick off each step as you go. Not only will taking positive action improve the way you feel, but by showing to yourself that you ARE taking action to defeat the depression, you will give yourself a well deserved feeling of achievement.
Allan Cowley is a Life Coach working on a one-to-one basis with clients throughout the world. He provides personalised online life coaching via his website. You can contact him through his website at: http://www.uk-success-coach.com/
Business Ethics: How The Sales Function Can Transmit Company Values
I recently got a “thank-you” call from a man who read my new e-book Buying Facilitation.
“Boy,” he said, “this method sure helps me close more deals and make more money. Thanks!”
“Glad I could help. Is that all you’re looking for? To make more money?”
“What do you mean?all? What else is there? Sales is about closing deals and making money, right?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t notice the value of becoming a trusted advisor, or how you can use the seller’s role as one of a servant-leader to lead your clients to discover their solutions quickly.”
“Well, I noticed all that. But it’s all in service of me closing deals and making money, right? I don’t mind doing it nicely if it gives me better results. But what’s sales about if my job isn’t about me making money?”
I’m wondering how many people out there still believe sales to be a job that is focused on making money? Or only about making money. All of us want to get paid fairly for what we do. The question is: how can we make money and make nice.
Most people get paid for doing a day’s work. But most sales people get paid for the results of their work, not necessarily for a day’s work. This leads to the tendency of sellers to have a different focus in their jobs than their non-sales colleagues: they often focus on ‘closing’ a sale rather than on the results of the interaction, or on ‘doing a deal’ rather than making sure the client has all their ducks in a row prior to making a purchase. As a result, sales practices and sellers can be seen as aggressive, pushy, eager to get immediate results, and less aware of the other person in the interaction.
What causes money, greed, manipulation, and self-interest to prevail at the expense of serving? What’s stopping sellers from using their jobs to promote respect, integrity, servant-leadership, collaboration, and trust ? for their customers, for their companies, and for themselves? Why is there a belief that it’s not possible to serve and make money? To support and be aggressive? To be a trusted advisor and close rapidly?
I once began a Buying Facilitation® program at a major brokerage house. As I was being introduced, the manager mentioned that my program was the precursor to the program they were having the following week on ‘closing’ techniques. I was dumbfounded.
“You won’t need that! You’ll be able to close twice as many accounts in half the time after this program. What else do you need?”
“I know you say that’s possible, but I don’t believe it. It’s one thing to have values. It’s another to make money.” After the program, the decision was taken to delay the ‘closing’ program and give it 8 weeks to see what the results would be from using Buying Facilitation®. It turned out that the brokers had a 25% increase in closed sales ? the first month after the training. They cancelled the ‘closing’ program.
Given our business climate today, and the need to bring values throughout our corporations, and into our interactions with staff and clients, let’s discuss how the actual function of sales can be used as a major delivery vehicle of ethics.
CONSULTATIVE SALES
As a start, let’s look at the model and beliefs that modern sales folks operate from.
Fifteen years ago, Consultative Sales found its way into the sales culture. The promise here was to move away from just pitching product and include buyers into the process by asking the buyers questions ? to help a buyer actually recognize a need for themselves so they’d clearly understand that they have a problem.
I’m not convinced that the addition of Consultative Sales has changed the equation any; the process is based on the theory that if the client discovers a need, he’ll make a purchase. The questions are therefore manipulative: they are cleverly rooted in those areas in the client’s environment that the seller knows will come up lacking, based on the seller’s understanding of the buyer’s environment and probable needs.
“Why do you ask questions?” I repeatedly ask consultative sellers?
“To discover what the client needs.”
“And, what will you do with that information once you have it?”
“Understand their environment better.”
“To what end?”
“To help them solve their problems [with my product].”
And there you have it: the assumption that just because the buyer may have a need in the seller’s product area, they will be ready, willing, and able to align all of their internal systems and variables in a way that will allow for something new to enter their system.
Let’s look at the above assumption. On the face of it, consultative questions seem to be supportive of the buyer, ostensibly showing care about the buyer’s needs. But if a client has a need, does that mean she’ll make a purchase? Does it mean that all of the internal deciding factors are ready to do something different? That the client wants to follow the path that your product will lead?
Doesn’t the buyer have a string of decisions to make that are independent of the seller’s product?
If the buyer has a need in one area, it is only part of a systemic issue that must be solved internally and systemically, and it can’t be solved by the simple addition of a product. Not to mention that the buyer may have a specific time factors to weigh, partnering issues, strategy issues. We have no way of knowing the micro elements that maintain and create the problems we perceive.
When sellers assume their job is to understand the buyer’s needs and solve them, they are committing the ultimate disrespect:
- that an outsider knows more than the insider;
- that the insider has been unsuccessful in solving his own problem;
- that the problem is a simple one (and eschews all of the politics, partnerships, initiatives, and personalities that have created and maintained the problem) and can be solved by purchasing a new ’something’;
- that all of the internal variables contained within the prospect’s culture will easily assemble around the seller’s solution in a way that will serve the organization’s mission and strategic vision.
In other words, at the point that sellers believe they have a solution for their buyers before the buyer has discovered all of the systems pieces that need to be lined up, and before buyers can specify all of the systemic components of what a solution would need to look like, they are committing the ultimate act of disrespect.
VALUES
Sales people are in a primary position to be a company’s ethical representative: they are the primary emissary who touches clients daily. Sellers hear clients’ needs and concerns; they share thoughts and ideas. Sellers are also in a position to convey client information back to the company. Successful companies understand that their sellers are their brand ambassadors.
Who are the sales people in a company? At UPS it’s the delivery people. At the phone companies it’s the customer service reps. At banks it’s the tellers. At service and repair companies, it’s the techs. In doctors offices it’s the admin, or the payment officer. Every person who touches a customer is doing a sales job, and by definition must carry the values of the company. Every person.
I’ve recently had a spate of calls from banks and financial institutions seeking to expand their environment from one of a service environment to a sales environment. I have asked them all the same question:
“What are your criteria for training up your people?”
“To increase revenue.”
“Is that all?”
“What else? We do service well. Now we just have to bring in more revenue.”
Sales people – all of the people who touch customers ? are in a prime position to teach customers how to:
- make their best decisions efficiently;
- differentiate between vendors and products;
- recognize and organize their own unique internal issues so they won’t face chaos when they make a purchasing decision. Sellers are also in a prime position to become trusted advisors ? even on short telesales calls.
Because sales has been based on getting products sold and using product data as the main vehicle (Tell me who among you has never assumed that because your product is terrific that buyers will know how to buy it?. once you explain it, present it, advertise it, and pitch it brilliantly??), ethics have often been ignored.
For me, the answer to the question that my caller asked ? “But what’s sales about if my job isn’t about me making money?” ? is serving.
For me, the responsibility of sales people, as the representatives of companies who touch customers daily, is to create an ethical foundation on which companies can flourish. Without business healing the world can’t flourish. And sales is the foundation on which companies stand: without selling product or touching customers there is no need to have Boards, or to discuss leadership, for example, because the companies won’t exist.
We can use the job of sales as the way to promote, offer, exhibit our company values; a way to show our customers and our partners, our vendors and our teammates exactly what we stand for.
WHAT DO WE STAND FOR
And what, exactly, do we stand for? As companies? As employers? As product manufacturers?
If we don’t know, we shouldn’t be in business. If we don’t want more than to sell product, if we don’t enter into business with any idea other than making money, we are losing a big opportunity of using our position to make a difference.
I believe ? and I’ll go out on a limb here ? that those companies who thrive by creating values-based organizations will fare better over the next decade then those that don’t. In my definition of values-based, I include:
- caring about people ? employees, customers, vendors, partners;
- caring about the environment and how the manufactured product supports the earth rather than destroying it;
- caring about the world ? finding a way to use some profits to give to groups with need.
Most large companies have community out-reach programs and have their favorite charities. But some large behemoths that we all know give large sums to world health and education, while their sales force remains greedy, manipulative, and aggressive.
For me, giving with one hand and taking with the other is out of balance. It is not only possible, but necessary, to run a sales force that turns over large amounts of business while serving its customers with respect and exceptional care. And for me, if you are just pitching information, or posing questions, with the hope of making a sale, rather than using that opportunity to be a servant-leader, you are losing an opportunity to exhibit your company’s values.
As worker-bees, we have a responsibility to our customers, our staff, our Boards and shareholders, to serve them with respect and care and make money. As sales people we are in the primary position to connect in a way that will make it all possible ? to make money and make nice.
BUYING FACILITATION®
As a wrap up, I’d like to put a plug in here for The Buying Facilitation Method®. I created Buying Facilitation® as a result of selling in a manipulative world, and as a way to bring my own spiritual, ethical values into my daily workplace. I believe I’m part of something bigger ? my company, my family, my relationships, my country, my world ? and that I have a responsibility to be in service at all times (well, as often as I’m humanly able). And I like money. I like what it buys, I like to pay bills, and I like giving it away.
To that end, Buying Facilitation® was developed to help sellers reach more customers more efficiently, support customers ethically as true Advisors and Coaches, and help customers buy quicker. When I created Buying Facilitation® I discovered a secret: that no matter how I sell or how great my product is, buyers absolutely cannot buy until they align all of the variables ? the people, the systems, the initiatives ? that create their current situation. Sales just doesn’t work.
Buying Facilitation® will find you more buyers. It helps people who need your product (but didn’t know they need it) understand how to buy. It will help them close quicker because the time it takes buyers to discover their own answers is the length of the sales cycle, and Buying Facilitation® helps them find their own answers.
This Method is not a sales method ? it’s a facilitative communication model rather than a sales technique. It’s a way to serve by helping people make more efficient, systems-centric buying decisions that include all of the people and variables that get touched by the purchasing decision. The Method uses a collaborative, servant-leader process that is ethical and truly consultative in the truest sense. And, best of all, it crosses contexts: it can be used by managers to communicate with staff, with coaches to work with clients, with Board members to use with each other, for customer service reps to use with annoyed customers, for nurses and docs to use with patients, for parents to use with children.
It is indeed possible to use ethics in our daily communication. It’s not only possible, it’s a necessary component of our lives.
Sharon Drew Morgen is the author of NYTimes Best seller Selling with Integrity. She speaks, teaches and consults globally around her new sales model, Buying Facilitation.
http://www.newsalesparadigm.com
http://www.sharondrewmorgen.com
512-457-0246
Morgen Facilitations, Inc.
Austin, TX
