Clear and Presentation Danger

Several years ago I had to do a presentation at a Sales Management Conference.  The location was the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall and there were about 150 people in the audience.  The room was opulent and ornate, all chandeliers and gilt. Massive mirrors hung on every wall, an unwelcome by-product of which was that presenters could see themselves from multiple angles.

All a little intimidating. Of more concern to me however, was that I wasn’t as on top of my material as I would have liked. I was a last minute stand-in for a colleague who had had to cry off. Would I be able to bring it to life, or would the audience find it worthy but dull?

While I fretted, the speaker before me was introduced. The Sales Director of a Beer Company; he was confident and commanding.  He even had introductory music –  ”Born Slippy” as used in the movie Train Spotting.  At the bit that goes “mega, mega white thing, mega, mega white thing,..Lager, Lager, Lager”, he ran down from the back of the auditorium and bounced up on the stage.  My discomfort was complete.  Would I look like an unknown indie band following U2?

He launched into his piece, utterly fluent, not looking at the slides, illustrating his points with well-chosen examples.

Unfortunately, these were the days of the slide carousel (younger readers might like to wiki this). He hadn’t noticed he’d started to send the slides in the wrong direction.  Now the previous speaker’s slides were coming up.  There was a ripple of audience confusion and then people started exchanging nervous glances.  Some tried to mumble words of warning.  The speaker sensed something was wrong and looked at the screen.  You could feel his horror. Why was the “wrong” presentation on the screen?   From then on, things disintegrated.

He finished a broken man, with the audience embarrassed and ill at ease.  I felt some sympathy, after all we shared a common cause.

I wasn’t at my best either, but no one got hurt and there weren’t any slip-ups. It was a bit wooden, but by comparison, it was slick.  I received warm applause, I’m sure a result of the audience’s relief.

What did I learn?  Well, by all means focus on the audience, prepare content, develop visuals aids intelligently and rehearse.  But most of all remember, relax, the audience want you to do well, they’re on your side.

If only because the alternative is just too uncomfortable.

Mike Hawthorne, Managing Director

Looking for a Global Training Supplier? Five points to ponder.

Many organisations find it increasingly important to implement training and development on a European or even Global basis.   But selecting a prospective supplier,  particularly for the first time, can be something of a white-knuckle ride for the client team.   It’s not that there’s a shortage of information  -  do a simple Google search on the topic and you’ll get 150 million hits, together with the names of dozens of willing suppliers.  But at the risk of sounding just a little bit cynical (and of course I haven’t reviewed every supplier’s credentials),  it’s my guess that some of these companies may not be quite as proficient as they claim.

So how does the prospective client separate the wheat from the chaff?   Well based on what clients have told us – and in the spirit of the season and its fondness for lists  -  here are our “Top Five Characteristics of Suppliers Who Can Truly Deliver Internationally”;  together with client suggestions as to how one can test for the existence of each characteristic.   By the way,  the list assumes that the supplier has understood your needs and can come up with a credible proposal that promises the right kind of development.

As they say on Strictly Come X-Factor,  these are in no particular order. 

1.  Does the supplier have a physical presence and personnel based in each country involved in the implementation;  people who can respond to local issues and ensure appropriate sensitivity to such issues?   The biggest source of disappointment appears to be with suppliers that imply they have a presence,  which is in reality a centralised,  if mobile,  group.

Suggestion:   If timescales and diaries allow, visit different operations  –  satisfy yourself on the capability of those individuals who will be working on your project.

2.  Practice makes perfect,  so immerse yourself in their real life experience.   Experience cuts short the process of project set-up and enables potential obstacles to be anticipated.   A global roll-out is not the same as a very large roll-out in a single country,  only with different languages and cultures.   Sadly, it’s a wee bit more complicated than that.

Suggestion:  Try and investigate,  in detail,  2-3 European projects that have been successfully completed by the supplier;  try to interview the clients where possible.

3.  A successful track record and established implementation methodology is reassuring.  However processes shouldn’t be at the expense of flexibility.   Ideally a supplier should draw on a body of experience but be sensitive to your structure and your preferred way of working.  You’re paying the bill after all. 

Suggestion:   Feel assured that the project team is aligning itself to work with you.   Alarm bells should ring if you feel you are aligning yourself to work with the project team.   

4.  Selection can be a demanding process from a client perspective,  so it makes sense to select an organisation that can work with you in the long-term, so you don’t have to repeat the process more than is necessary.   Is the prospective supplier’s strategic direction consistent with your view of where the market is heading?   If it isn’t, it might be difficult to work together in the long term.   And if it is indeed consistent with your view,  do they have the necessary financial strength moving forward?    Vision is important,  but so is the ability to invest in the vision.

Suggestion:   Clarity of direction is essential;  feel free to examine the financial accounts of the organisation itself.  Consolidated or group accounts can be useful too,  but these can hide operational difficulties.

5.  Not surprisingly,  suppliers go to extraordinary lengths to put their best foot forward and present to you their “A-Team”.    If you like this team at the initial selection stage,  then that’s all well and good.   But it’s worth double and even triple checking that this will be the team who are actually responsible for your project.   It would be a pity if those dynamic trainers or insightful account team weren’t seen after the successful pitch!

Suggestion:   Demand to see ‘your’ delivery team before you make your selection.   They should be modelling the skills you want your organisation to adopt.   Would you want your people to behave like them?    And if you do, will they be the ones actually working on your account?   

So what’s the conclusion?   Selecting a global supplier is a demanding process,  but it shouldn’t be a risky one.   The challenge is to determine compatibility with the supplier, as well as being convinced about their experience , flexibility and responsiveness.   A compelling presentation and excellent demonstration by a trainer provides some insights;  but these should also be expected in terms of value.   Peace of mind in the long term comes from the creative spark,  together with those elements that are rather more corporate.

Mike Hawthorne, Managing Director

Measuring Business Impact – The Holy Grail of Training Assessment?

One of the perennial issues facing the training industry is the extent to which one is truly able to measure business impact. Often, at an intuitive level, one can be confident that a programme is delivering excellent results. But a more detailed assessment is challenging in practice, particularly where it is a necessary part of securing further resources.

Some of the basics are reasonably painless. It is relatively easy for example, to measure the extent to which skills are being adopted during the training; it is also reasonably straightforward to assess the extent to which these skills are being used back in the workplace. But is the investment producing something that is truly tangible in terms of business impact? And even if tangible results are being achieved, are these a direct consequence of the training, or are other factors responsible? Perhaps more importantly, could even better results be achieved?

These imponderables can be frustrating for everyone involved. Those who invest in training have been promised value and they want to see if it is being delivered. If it isn’t, they want to drill into the reasons why, so they can ensure action is taken to realise the anticipated value. The scenario is similarly frustrating for the trainer, or the training company, because they have promised to deliver value and they want to be able to demonstrate that they’re being successful in doing so. If they aren’t demonstrating value, they want to take action to ensure that they do, helping their client and preserving the relationship at the same time.

Many of our clients have developed their own measurement systems and we have been happy to work within such frameworks. The difficulty for the client is that these can be very labour intensive and in many cases they are creating a measurement system from scratch. This, of course, is very demanding, particularly in today’s environment when resources may be scarce.

Some training companies also offer their own measurement and assessment. But I know that some clients have concerns about these – after all the training company is under pressure to show value and there may be a temptation, even unconsciously, to look for evidence of success – and that can be at odds with being truly objective.

We at AchieveGlobal wanted to find a solution, which was truly objective; hence, our recent partnership with Knowledge Advisors. They are specialists in this complex, labyrinthine field and can develop robust and highly credible tools to lead you out of the measurement maze. Moreover, they have considerable experience and resource, so their processes, from a client point of view, are extremely straightforward.

We are hopeful that this alliance puts us a considerable step ahead in the quest for effective evaluation. Feel free to share your own experiences of measurement and let us know if you have found your own Holy Grail.

Mike Hawthorne, Managing Director

Salespeople, Sales Management and Learning from the Best

Rob Andrew was one of the England Rugby Team’s finest goal-kickers. His metronomic consistency could ensure an England victory even when the team as a whole hadn’t played particularly well. As a follower of Ireland, I always hoped he would have the occasional off-day, at least when he played against us. It never seemed to happen.

Andrew learned to break the task into achievable chunks. Instead of focusing on the tiny gap between the posts way, way in the distance, he discovered he could tell whether a kick was going to be successful, almost from the moment the ball left his foot. Then he discovered there was a sweet spot when the ball had travelled just a short distance. If the ball was in that spot, it would likely be a score. By learning to hit that spot, rather than focusing on the posts, he could concentrate on his task, shutting out the crowd and all the other attendant pressures.

There is a lesson in this for salespeople, particularly today. Most salespeople focus on revenue because that’s what their managers focus them on. Revenue is important, but it can be elusive. It’s the equivalent of the tiny gap between the posts. The problem is that the salesperson’s need for revenue frequently gets in the way of the customer’s need to make the right decision. The salesperson wants the result too quickly, so they appear pushy and self-interested, even aggressive. Their attendant pressures have got in the way.

The best salespeople , and equally important, the best sales managers, break the tasks down into chunks. And they follow a simple mantra: “Chase the revenue and the revenue gets further away, chase the service and the revenue will follow”.  They know that building relationships is the same as identifying the sweet spot ahead of the ball. If they focus on that, rather than revenue, then they’ll be successful with their ultimate goal.

That’s why top salespeople move at the customer’s speed. They exhibit natural curiosity and they find useful, meaningful reasons to be in contact. They also know many more people in an account. They seek out referrals, get in touch with other divisions, enquire about and get introduced to other stakeholders. The customer sees a salesperson who is prepared to invest and add value, and the salesperson is far better informed, can recommend a more appropriate solution and is less vulnerable to people leaving. For that reason a salesperson who focuses on building and refreshing their contact base, will always be more successful, than a salesperson who focuses on revenue alone.

Of course the key words in all this are “they find useful, meaningful reasons to be in contact”. They aren’t there to eat the customers biscuits, or talk about last night’s game. But that’s a topic for another day.

As many Sales Managers will know, it can be difficult, if not impossible to reform the inveterate revenue-chaser. But if it was easy, we wouldn’t need sales managers, or for that matter, training!

Mike Hawthorne,  Managing Director

 

Fuelling discontent

Mike Hawthorne, Managing Director

I imagine there are some people who actually enjoy buying petrol.  You may even be  one of them.   Most  people are probably indifferent, but for me it’s a banal and joyless experience.  Not as bad as completing  a tax return and way better than root canal, but joyless none the less. 

Perhaps the origin of this lies in some past, forecourt -related trauma.  Perhaps I have a particular dislike of getting diesel on my soles.  But  whatever the cause, the problem definitely got worse for me once petrol stations decided to  “maximise their site’s retail potential”.  Now fan belts, oil  and other motoring essentials fight for space with barbeques,  pies and latte.  The net effect is to make the whole process  even longer.  In many garages the increased transaction time ensures vehicles are stuck at the pump.  And at a well-known garage on the A3 this frequently leads to tail-backs on to the main road.  In my own case I’ve been known  to drive with the gauge in the red in the hope  I’ll  come across an old -school filling station, that just sells fuel.  By the time I find one, the car’s usually on vapour, which makes for quite a lucrative petrol-only sale.

There is, of course, nothing wrong with trying to sell related products and services.  Done well it provides the customer with additional benefits and it helps boost profits.  But this illustration demonstrates some of the risks.   It shouldn’t be detrimental to the original service and it definitely shouldn’t jeopardise the relationship.

At AchieveGlobal we’re often asked to help by giving service providers the skills to sell,  either in business to business or business to consumer environments.  One of the biggest challenges can be that the individual service people are concerned at the prospect of  selling  - often because they’ve experienced it being done badly.  When they see how the skills can actually improve customer attitudes, they become much more positive.

Speaking of positive experiences, recently I was getting my passport application pre-checked at the Post Office (not an AchieveGlobal customer).   The clerk asked when I was travelling and offered travel insurance and  currency.  Perhaps others wouldn’t have liked this approach, but my response was positive.  They met all the golden rules, being friendly, relevant and targeted to me. 

There are many organisations who could learn from this.  And for some of them,  here’s today’s free consulting tip:   Can we please have a fuel only queue,  or as a compromise,  a line for three items or fewer?

Have I Got (Bad) News For You?

Mike Hawthorne, Managing Director

I’ve a bit of a confession.

From September 08 until somewhere around April 09, I barely watched or listened to a news bulletin. I allowed myself a little bit of web surfing just to get the basics and I gave the headlines an occasional listen. But then I’d hastily turn the radio off, or if it was TV, I’d hit the channel change.

I’m sure this didn’t cause sleepless nights at the BBC but it was a big step for me. I’d always prided myself on keeping up to date.

I ran to ground when the world’s news media started predicting financial Armageddon. Actually, it seemed they were falling over themselves to see who could describe the grimmest vision of the future. Various channels even decided to brand their bad news coverage with suitably alarming logos. One chose a graph going into the red with the word “Crisis” emblazoned across the top. Balanced reporting?

And all this came hot on the heels of the summer’s Big Story on rising energy prices. Some reporting stopped just short of predicting Mad Max style dystopia.

Meanwhile I’d come home after a normal day at work; apparently productive, working with good people. If you recall, the weather in early autumn was uncharacteristically benign. Chelsea FC was riding high too, in the honeymoon days of Felipe Scolari. Yet despite all this, I only had to glance at TV news and my spirits fell faster than the FTSE, or anything else whose fortunes depended on Lehman Brothers.

Do you make better decisions in white noise? I thought not. So I decided I needed to take back a little control, stop listening to how bad things might be and focus on those things I could influence. More importantly, I felt I would be more useful to those who knew me if I could keep my spirits on an even keel. And if that meant avoiding the hype and the hyperbole of a news media using increasingly extreme language to sell its content, so be it. I could make my own judgments, free to take the view that, while things might be very difficult, maybe just maybe, we weren’t completely doomed. And even if we were, we still had a few options left.

Turns out I was in good company. I met quite a few “business leaders” as the BBC likes to call them who thought the same way. Apparently, ‘Suralan’ was one of them too, though I’m not absolutely sure how I found this out. Perhaps it was osmosis. It’s possible he’s changed his view now given his new role, but then again……

I broke cover the other day and watched the news. “Green shoots?” There was some talk too about things “bottoming out”. Is the worst over? Who knows? The answer of course is absolutely nobody. But while the media speculates we can get on with our lives, see customers and run businesses. In NLP this is called “managing your state” but that’s another way of saying whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist, the end result will always be the same; it’s just that the optimist has a better time in between.

What are you doing to keep your spirits up? And if you’re a manager how are you supporting your team’s morale? Please let us know.

It’s been emotional

Mike Hawthorne, Managing Director

A man much wiser than me (self-help Guru Tony Robbins to be precise) once said, “People buy things because of the way they think it will make them feel.”

This particular sentiment has always struck me as a brilliant insight into the complex business of decision-making.  It perfectly captures the balance between the rational aspect of a decision, such as evaluating the requirement, assessing options and making a choice on the basis of the benefits delivered, and the ultimate output – the feelings generated by the benefits.

We can clearly see this at work in decisions such as which house we choose to buy.  Even though it’s one of the biggest transactions of our lives, many people own up to the fact that they chose their house on the basis that “it just felt right”, picturing themselves on the terrace with a glass of Pimms on a sunny summer’s afternoon. Gut feel is a powerful thing; a miserable grey autumnal day and a mug of cocoa are not in the same league when it comes to justifying romanticism.

Advertisers know the power of emotion too and pitch their products accordingly. Think cars.  Okay the way they tug our heart-strings may have changed in recent years – social responsibility, a better option for the planet, passenger safety etc; but it’s still an appeal to feelings – showing how a benefit will deliver a positive emotion – a feel-good factor if you like.

Is it any different for business-to-business transactions?  Not in our view.   Most decisions on making a business purchase are taken in order to achieve an improvement in performance or costs, or maybe to boost an organization’s image.  But at the core of all this is also how the decision-maker or decision-makers will feel.   Will they feel a greater sense of control, do they feel more secure and will they gain kudos?

Paradoxically, many decision-makers know the importance of feelings and set up buying processes to try and reduce their impact.  Formal tenders, for example, seek to stipulate objective criteria and allow a number of individuals to contribute.  But I don’t think it’s stretching the point to say that these processes appeal to another set of feelings – confidence for example, or the belief (or relief) that responsibility is shared.

At AchieveGlobal we train Salespeople to (among others things) ensure that solutions properly take into account feelings.  And we also work on the other side of the desk as it were, helping managers and others identify the impact of feelings and how they can accommodate theirs and those of others.

Is emotion in decision-making a positive or negative? Fans of Life on Mars / Ashes to Ashes will observe how the legendary DCI Gene Hunt is, more often than not, spot on with his initial ‘Gut feeling’ and yet the need to also incorporate his non-emotional sidekick’s logical behaviour solution to solve the crime is invariably necessary.

What do you do to ensure your decisions, or those of others, respond to and incorporate emotions?