Blog

Better Versatility = Better Relationships

2012-04-02T18:26:00Z

In conversations with clients about the impact of the current economic downturn, I keep hearing one concern everyone seems to share: "how can we help our people manage the strain of all the budget cuts, layoffs, and reorganizations?"

Employees are worried about their jobs even while adapting to major changes in their work environment — new reporting relationships, restructured work teams, different job assignments. Even when they understand the necessity for all the changes, the effects can be debilitating — communication gets more difficult, morale sags, and productivity slows.

So what’s the answer? How can companies deal with these problems and maintain productivity and efficiency? If you are a leader concerned about this question, you know you can’t control the external economic conditions. You can, however, do everything possible to help your people cope. A simple place to start is to make sure communications breakdowns aren’t adding to everyone’s stress and getting in the way of trust, teamwork and collaborative effort. As people struggle to adjust to new realities at work, it’s normal for them to experience misunderstandings and increased relationship tension. By becoming more versatile in their interpersonal communications, employees, managers and leaders can better understand differences in communication preferences and create more effective and productive relationships.

Versatility can be learned, practiced and improved over time. It’s based on understanding your own and others’ Social Styles — defined in Wilson Learning’s model in terms of four categories – Analytical, Driver, Expressive and Amiable. Each style is characterized by being either more or less “Tell” or “Ask” oriented and more or less “Task” vs. “People” oriented. People generally feel very comfortable communicating with others who share their style, but can have problems with different styles. If you’ve ever felt impatient, intimidated, or frustrated in a conversation with a colleague, friend or family member, there’s a likelihood that the root problem is a style difference neither of you recognizes.

To improve versatility, managers and employees need to:

Get feedback from others to understand their own social style. Knowing how you are perceived by others is critical. Study after study shows that most of us have no idea how we are coming across to others.
Learn to identify the social style of others (e.g., Analyticals, Drivers, Expressives, and Amiables)
Learn to adapt their own style of communicating to match the preferences of others, putting them at ease, building trust, and allowing both parties to work together to accomplish the tasks at hand.

These are our thoughts…What do you think?

How to Get Salespeople to Call Higher: Tips for Success

2012-03-05T14:00:00Z

Over the years I’ve heard from many sales leaders who have been frustrated by efforts to get their salespeople to call wider and higher in their accounts. Although we all have a strong belief that there are opportunities outside the safe "green zone" of familiar contacts, many salespeople are particularly intimidated by trying to get appointments with executives.

And if they do get an appointment, they are unsure about taking the best advice—to “leave your bag at the door” and talk about the executive’s business. That seems to take them too far afield from what they know best—their products.

To overcome this type of call reluctance, I’d suggest building confidence by helping salespeople learn to “speak executive.” The biggest help is to provide some language and terminology to describe what is most important to a business leader. I use the term “critical success factors” (CSFs) as a way to zero in on the handful of things that keep executives awake at night—the things that have to go right for them to reach their goals. These factors are also where our solutions can have the greatest impact on the business.

Since there are CSFs at the industry level as well as the company and departmental level, I coach my people to do some research first to find out what’s critical to the industry. You can say, “Such and such is a concern for many companies in your industry. Is it a concern for you as well?” This is a great conversation starter and shows homework has been done. The next step is to ask about goals (which any executive can easily reel off) and follow up with questions about what is critical to achieve those goals. This has a double effect. The salesperson gets great information about priorities, and the executive gets something to think about. Executives often haven’t thought about their issues in just those terms.

There’s obviously more to a successful strategy for calling across the entire enterprise—people need a whole strategic calling plan, for one thing. But a few clear tips on what to say to get an appointment and what to say when you get there goes a long way toward building the confidence to really go after opportunities that can only be found outside the “green zone” barriers.

Have you found your sales team is hesitant about calling on higher-level decision makers? What seems to get in the way? What have you found to be effective in making successful calls on executives?

Rejuvenating Your Team: Discretionary Energy Lost and Found

2012-02-14T21:06:00Z

You know the feeling . . . Low enthusiasm, low energy, not a lot of motivation. You’re tired out and feeling oppressed by "making do with less" for way too long. Chances are your employees are feeling this way too, stretched too thin and tired of putting out extra energy to cover work that used to be done by employees who are now gone.

As the job market improves, you are likely to lose some of your best people if you don’t make some changes to revive their sense of engagement with work. I’d like to make a couple of simple suggestions for how to reengage a work group that’s been stretched too thin, and even more, to tap into that elusive discretionary energy employees could unleash with the right motivation. You will reduce your own burden by sharing it, and give your people a new lease on their work life.

First, think about how you can give people something new and different to challenge and engage them. You’re probably thinking that’s not a likely scenario, given you are all working above capacity as it is. But think about these questions: How many of your group’s routine tasks are absolutely necessary? Are there things done out of habit that could be changed or thrown out altogether? Most workplaces have reports no one reads, e-mails that are routinely deleted, data collected but not used. So step one is to free up time by getting rid of unneeded work.

Step two is to review your own workload, and especially backlogged projects that never seem to get tackled. How about delegating a couple of those projects to your people? One employee I know of was given a lead role in coordinating the launch of a new e-learning course. She was soon interviewing some key stakeholders outside her own department, learning how to use PowerPoint to create graphics, and planning a 45-minute webcast. She was energized and her manager was relieved of a major time-consuming task. The main caveat with this kind of assignment is to make sure this is work that is meaningful, that will help the assigned employee grow and develop new skills. You should also provide enough resources, support, and decision-making authority to ensure the employee is empowered and able to be successful. In the case above, the employee was granted a limited level of budget authority.

Finally, bring your people together to share their experiences and provide each other with support. If they have been working in silos or focusing just on the day-to-day routines of their own tasks, it will be a breath of fresh air if they can work together, share information, and help each other out.

If you want to lift the fog of indifference and get employees to feel less stretched, more motivated, and more willing to spend their discretionary energy on productive work, try changing the game with fresh projects and new challenges. That tired-out atmosphere can once again be charged with enthusiasm and a new outlook that is more enjoyable for everyone—and far more productive.

Click here to read an article on re-engagement

What Can We Do To Make Training Stick?

2012-01-24T19:48:00Z

Originally published on TrainingMag.com / Whats-New.

Training 2012 Conference & Expo speaker Carl Eidson answers the question, "What can we do to make training stick?"

I’m frequently asked this question by new contacts who are frustrated with a lack of behavior change from sales, leadership, or customer service training initiatives. I’d like to share the advice I give them, which is based on best practices from companies that get the optimal results from their learning transfer.

Three strategies to make training stick and increase performance:

Have managers complete the same training as their direct reports (or at least get an executive overview of the skills being taught).
Train managers in a specific approach to coaching that involves clarifying expectations, but at the same time listening carefully to input from their direct reports.
Equip managers with a coaching tool that makes it easy to plan for and deliver an effective coaching conversation where the direct report is engaged and motivated to take action.

Research by one of my colleagues indicates that when this approach is taken, learning transfer is 42% higher than when managers are not involved in supporting learning.

What actions have you taken to make training stick? What role do you see managers taking when it comes to supporting new skills learned in training? What advice do you have for making it easy to get managers involved in coaching skills learned in training?

To Differentiate, Leverage Your Customer’s View of Fair Value

2011-11-04T15:35:00Z

I hear a lot of questions these days about how to differentiate in a weak but highly competitive market. The challenge affects clients from both ends of the spectrum—those selling premium high-end solutions with high costs, and those whose solutions are regarded as commodities.

When I ask what they are doing now to get their customers’ attention, they tell me they are offering price discounts, “selling the value” to justify the pricing, or offering value-added services or features the customer doesn’t pay for. Some of these strategies are successful in the short run, but often at the cost of smaller margins and lowered profitability.

I’d like to suggest a whole different way of looking at value. Each customer enters into a decision-making process with certain ideas about what constitutes fair value for their situation. And their ideas may not be the same as yours. When you push a premium solution and try to justify the price based on your high-end features and performance, you may be speaking with a customer who doesn’t really want or need all the bells and whistles. Fair value, for a customer, is the point at which price and performance intersect to exactly meet their requirements. Understanding what each customer specifically requires on each dimension allows you to adapt your offering to meet those specifications. For a customer, performance may refer to “speeds and feeds"—how fast do they need the equipment or software to be? Or it may be a matter of quality—do they need the highest possible level of quality? Or in their environment, can they work with slightly lower quality in a component or do without a feature? Just as consumers are often satisfied with a lesser brand for a lower cost, so you may have customers who are looking for a solution that will suffice, at the right price, and are not in the market for the top-of-the-line, more expensive solution. An adaptation for these customers may be unbundling to offer a satisfactory solution at the right price.

For either premium or commodity customers, think about offering service and options based on their whole experience with the solution—from when they first shop for the solution, to when they make the purchase, then install and use it, and finally dispose of, update, or replace it. For example, you might be able to help them with financial arrangements as they make the purchase, such as a lease agreement that is suited to their specific situation. Or you might offer to help solve problems at the stage where they are installing and using your solution. The important thing is to improve the performance side of the fair value equation without adding a lot of cost to yourself or the customer.

In this view, differentiation is based not so much on the features of your solution, but on creating an offering that is spot-on with the customer’s view of fair value—the right performance for the right price. And you can enhance the customer’s view of value by helping solve a problem or meet a need as the customer enters into the process of purchasing and using your solution.

What have you tried to differentiate? What have been the results?

What kinds of discovery questions have you asked to identify your customers’ views on what constitutes value for them? Have you been able to get good information on this?

We want to hear from you!