Giri Fox

We’ve all seen a major sales initiative that fails to deliver the results expected, for example from a sales force restructure. But what’s the root cause of the failure? Here I will explore the reasons hidden in the background and the ways in which they can be successfully overcome. From poorly-handled internal politics to lack of sponsorship; from factual bias to weak or inflexible planning; the same obstacles that stand in the way of a product launch also apply to business restructuring as well as shifts in sales strategy. Knowing what the stumbling blocks are and how to conquer them is vital to the successful execution of major sales initiatives.

Having reviewed recent literature on the topics of change initiatives, sales management and behavioural management, I distilled the key barriers to success down to these six:

What are the barriers to success?

1. Personal bias and blinkered thinking
2. Poor understanding of the market and sales context
3. Failure to address dissenting behaviour
4. Muddled and ineffective planning
5. Lack of leadership/ ownership
6. Failure to follow-through

Whilst these barriers may seem intuitive, they are commonly overlooked in practice. I think the root cause of this oversight is often an unconscious avoidance of the work it takes to do things properly. With this in mind, I wanted to outline how to succeed for those readers who have the strength of character to do it right.

How do we mitigate against failure?

Understanding and acting within the right context is very important.

Using the decline of Sony from its pre-eminences in the 80s and 90s as a case study, Sohrab Vossoughi points out in HBR that “a great strategy is only great in context” and “all the hard work in the world won’t matter if you’re working toward a strategy that was framed for an another era”. Message: don’t let your decisions become biased by entrenched assumptions about the way things should be done. Re-assess reality.

I want to continually improve how accurately I see reality. This also means questioning my own views. The skill here is for “strategic decision-making leaders to recognize their own biases”¹. In order to avoid bias during the decision making process, it is crucial not only that you ask the right questions, but also that you ask the right people². Don’t just invite your direct reports and usual leaders: go wider, skip levels and look for disruptive thinkers.

McKinsey provides an insightful guide to mitigate flaws in strategic decision-making, which – along with the other key articles I’ve sourced – is worth reading. In short, successful strategic planning³ has these qualities:

• Stakeholders shared all critical information
• Actively sought evidence contrary to initial plan
• Truly innovative ideas were allowed to reach senior management
• Dissenting voices were given ample opportunity to express themselves.

Bias

Of course, you shouldn’t be afraid to trust your own instincts, just remember to consider bias. Don’t assume you are viewing reality with perfect clarity. Consider these tests by the authors⁴ of Think Again:

1. The familiarity test: have we frequently experienced identical or similar situations?
2. The feedback test: did we get reliable feedback in past situations?
3. The measured-emotions test: are the emotions we have experienced in similar or related situations measured?
4. The independence test: are we likely to be influenced by any inappropriate personal interests or attachments?

Actionable

Always ask yourself ‘Does this strategy balance commitment and flexibility?’ Once you are clear on a robust strategy, make sure it can be adapted to suit a changing situation. Next ask yourself ‘Is there conviction to act on the strategy?’⁵  This is one of several recommended tests, which essentially ask whether it will actually work.

Don’t let your sales initiative fail because of ‘AWOL Sponsors’, where the leadership you are relying on do not provide the political clout, time, or energy to see a project through⁶. Make sure everybody is on board with the strategy and that the leadership is committed to seeing the project through.

It would be better to qualify out of an initiative than to invest yourself in one which will fail due to lack of executive sponsorship.

How to assure effective execution

Instead of hoping your planning process is robust, reflect on the steps you’re taking, on how you make decisions and the quality of input, and your next major sales initiative can be a success. You should:

• Build on unbiased facts
• Deal openly with dissent and internal concerns
• Construct a robust yet flexible plan
• Ensure the full commitment of the sponsor.

Pay attention to the decision process itself.

Think about how you go about making a decision, and consider how you will execute on the decision. Don’t be seduced by the fun part of making the decision. The lists I’ve provided let you decide on how you will make the decision by considering the requisite preconditions and subsequent actions required to ensure success.

I have attended far too many brainstorming sessions which have not been framed to make them useful. The science is in. Brainstorming doesn’t work.

When and why you need ideas

In sales, we will want to come up with creative ideas to grow our accounts, penetrate new ones, grow the business, invent new offerings and so on. In fact, if you want growth for a company, you should you use the Alchemy of Growth (1999, p52) framework from Mehrdad Baghai to do a comprehensive search for opportunities.

For an individual sales person this model is not as useful. Instead, read on about brainstorming.

Basically, the first place to look for growth is at the bottom of the stack. It’s the closest to what you are currently doing. He offers seven degrees away from the current state, each of which is a perspective which could identify growth.

Baghai’s model predates the excellent work from the Business Model Generation team, and does not have anywhere near its robustness, but I still find it useful for its simplicity. If you have exhausted growth in degrees 4 through 7, you should consider more drastic reinvention and for that purpose read up on the #bmgen model.

On better brainstorming

Two common situations for a sales person to want effective “brainstorming” are account planning and business-unit planning (such as during a sales off-site meeting).

One key point to avoid:

• traditional brainstorming, where everyone gets in a room and is told to come up with whatever ideas they can, no matter how crazy, and that no-one should criticise one another, does not work.

McKinsey suggest you use a facilitated structure, which I agree with, where you define specific limits and constraints on the participants. This is so important. Otherwise, you get ideas which simply cannot be implemented within the realistic parameters of the company.

The seven steps to better idea generation are:

1. Know your organization’s decision-making criteria and do not deny them
2. Provide focused questions to consider
3. Choose a mix of people and consider group dynamics
4. Conduct multiple, discrete, highly focused idea generation sessions in small groups
5. Frame the exercise properly and have them focus on a single idea for 30 minutes
6. Wrap up by highlighting a few of the best ideas but do not discard the rest
7. Follow up with participants quickly afterwards

The long reads about why, and what works, are well chronicled in a superb essay from the New Yorker. The McKinsey article is shorter and pragmatic.

By using these seven steps for your next planning session, you will definitely get a better outcome.

For example, if you cannot normally sell a particular service offering in certain countries because your firm does not have a legal entity those countries within which you would want to sell it, that becomes a constraint which any brainstorming should propose solutions for. This is as opposed to denying the reality and not working through the issue, and creating impractical solutions. It might seem obvious but the point is that traditional brainstorming generates ideas which are not actionable. By requiring that constraints are considered, you may analyse alternative commercial paths to market such as partners, licensing, export and so on.

The first two steps are particularly important because they frame the idea generation session, and are notable departures from the traditional brainstorming methods which we know do not work.

I came across two particularly good articles on how to interview and screen a sales person.

The first by Dave Kurlan provides an insightful list of 10 behaviours you’d want to see, and 10 bad ones too. He likes it if candidates:

• talk concisely versus ramble
• distract him from the interview strategy
• push back and challenge me without starting an argument.

Read the rest of the article over here.

The second article is by Lee Salz, it’s longer and it’s really superb. He lists seven screening techniques to use, including a few I’d forgotten about. Each is explained in some detail. The seven are:

1. be really clear on the profile of candidate you want
2. always be recruiting, keep your eye out for possible hires
3. reverse interviewing, where the candidates meets a peer-to-be and asks questions
4. standardised interview questions
5. mock sales call
6. online assessment or personality profile
7. asking them to write a mini business plan.

I think that asking the candidate to put a plan together is a great idea. Someone who is really keen on the job may well have done it already. I had a number of interviews before winning my role to look after Cisco’s relationship with BP in the UK, and had prepared a 90 day plan as part of my interview preparation. It helped me think clearly about the role.

A mock sales call is a great idea. For a solution sales environment, I’d suggest you stage it as an initial meeting with a client, as if the candidate is taking over a patch, where the client already deals with your firm but has been frustrated with service delivery and has to reduce their IT spend. The candidate therefore has to perform discovery, which should expose how well they can diagnose and prioritise findings.

Read the full article here.