Archive for category Business
Character Defines the Results You Attract
Posted by Doctapaul in Astrology, Healing, Leadership, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Relationships, Self Development, Selling, Soundbytes of Wisdom on February 22, 2012
“…all that happens is the result of character, the only manner in which the destiny can be changed is to change the character….. the chart of birth….is merely a map of character…..(and) can be markedly altered in any direction desired.”
CC Zain[1]
Image sourced from Spencer Hope Davis
[1] Ref: Chapter 4, Doctrine of Nativities from the book, Laws of Occultism, Inner Plane Theory and the Fundamentals of Psychic Phenomena by CC Zain, published by the Church of Light.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
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The Original Meaning of Valentine’s Day
Posted by Doctapaul in Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Poetry, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Training & Development, Uncategorized, Visions and Dreams on February 14, 2012
The ancients celebrated Valentine’s Day to acknowledge the wakening of the seed in hu-man. Deep within the ground, unable to see the light (above the surface) ahead, surrounded in darkness, the seed commits to its journey to the light of summer.
Image sourced from totaltrinity.wordpress.com
Valentine’s Day
Only Arthur, borne of truth,
Could release the sword from the stone.
Find your truth, release light into your darkness.
Glory lies in the once-shadows now lit.
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Commit to your journey;
to break through the surface.
Allow your past to drop away.
Focus ahead, now.
Truth beckons.
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Declare your intent!
Love, for Arthur.
Love, for God.
Love, the journey.
Love, the Light.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Life’s Jigsaw – Fixety or Infinity
Posted by Doctapaul in Personal, Quirky Ideas, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Visions and Dreams on January 26, 2012
Sourced from askert.com
Existentialism: Life’s jigsaw has an infinite number of pieces, only if we restrict ourselves to adhering to the maxim of infinity.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Unconscious Attracts…
Posted by Doctapaul in Coaching, Healing, Leadership, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Selling, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Training & Development on January 18, 2012
With so many changes in the world around us, tis vital to focus on that which you feel you can control and influence:- namely yourself and those in your immediate sphere.
Image from Crystalinks
You may not be able to influence the chaos but You can control how You respond to it. Feelings of anger, hurt, guilt and fear move from your conscious to your subconscious and then you project them outwards subliminally.
People see your “armoured shield” not the truth within. People are less attracted to an armoured tank than the beauty of love and truth. As a tank, your influence and effective communication is thus limited, if not futile.
So what is this armour? It manifests itself in the form of guilt, anger, sadness but most of all fear. The four seeds of karma. You cannot hide but you can get lost.
If you inebriate yourself from your negative feelings, you are in conscious denial. This does not work.
If you embrace your negative feelings, you restrict yourself from releasing them. For example, you may work long hours and completely commit yourself to avoiding failure. No matter how successful you are at avoiding that which you fear, you never release the fear.
Notice, I say “release the fear,” not “defeat it.” It takes courage to defeat fear, but it takes more courage to release it. Warriors defeat fear, alchemists release it. And in doing so they achieve fearlessness – which is not about bravery; it’s about wisdom.
On the far side of fear lies wisdom.
Release the four seeds of karma (guilt, anger, sadness and fear) and you…..
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
John Lennon, 9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980
Posted by Doctapaul in Current Affairs & The Economy, Leadership, Love, Personal, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Visions and Dreams on December 8, 2011
Steve Jobs
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Leadership, Quirky Ideas, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Training & Development on October 6, 2011
Image sourced from realmagic.com
“Innovation has nothing to do with how many R&D dollars you have. When Apple came up with the Mac, IBM was spending at least 100 times more on R&D. It’s not about money. It’s about the people you have, how you’re led, and how much you get it.”
Steve Jobs
Image sourced from
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Replace Forgiveness with Accountability
Posted by Doctapaul in Astrology, Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Pitfalls I've Fallen Into, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom on October 3, 2011
“Forgiveness is an illusion of the mind. It appeases our false ego. Instead, we are wiser to erase the data that attracted whom, or that which, we resent or feel guilty about. I speak not of erasing an unpleasant memory or the learning there-from. I speak of erasure of the negative emotions we attach to that memory. The same negative emotions or darkness by which we attracted the person or event, that we allowed to offend us, in the first place.
The sun shines on us all, regardless. The Heart Chakra, your 4th chakra, is the domain of Helios, the Sun King. The heart doesn’t judge. Tis all in the mind.”
Image from American Mathematical Society
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
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Do your Maths, before you speak your mind.
Posted by Doctapaul in Leadership, Relationships, Soundbytes of Wisdom on October 1, 2011
Being right is one thing.
Being helpful is another.
Make 1+1=3.
Image from Dave Tutin’s site. Dave writes important stuff about USA’s Poltical-Social System as well as many other subjects, close to his heart.
Shine on…!
/|\
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Hold a grudge, do you?
Posted by Doctapaul in Fun and Laughs, Healing, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Quirky Ideas, Relationships, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom on September 28, 2011
Sourced from Johnny Hughes on Facebook
Fearless versus “Fearlessness” – the difference between courage and wisdom
Posted by Doctapaul in Coaching, Healing, Leadership, Life's Changes, Love, Personal, Relationships, Self Development, Soundbytes of Wisdom, Training & Development on September 27, 2011
Should we ignore, or remain in denial about adverse situations or issues, we learn little if anything at all. The situations fester and pester more and more. We feel more pain or hurt. Should we continue to isolate ourselves from our feelings of hurt about what’s going on, we isolate ourselves from love, joy and fulfillment as well. This might need some explanation.
Image sourced from The Hero Construction Company
We can’t learn if something is wet or not if we don’t know what not-wet, i.e. dry, is. Likewise, we are unable to be selective when we detach ourselves from negative emotions. Should we detach ourselves from sadness, we detach ourselves from not sadness, i.e. joy.
I recall when a relationship, I was in, broke up, not too long ago. I took myself to the pub at night, to inebriate myself from the fear and sadness of spending lonely evenings on my own. It took me 9 months before I readied myself to acknowledge the sadness, fear and start to move on life.
So here’s the curious dichotomy: when we ignore or deny fear, we deny not-fear – i.e. courage.
And it takes courage to deal with inner issues. In fact, all issues are inner issues. (When the relationship ended we both had issues to resolve but they were different issues.She had hers. I had mine. They were both proprietary.) The more courage we demonstrate to ourselves to deal with our inner issues the more we learn about them.
And when we learn more about a subject, we become wiser, we become expert and eventually we become a master. Not only are we a master at what’s going on, we become a master over our fears. We don’t hide from, or deny, them. We manage our fears. We control them. We become warriors. We become heroes. To some people, this ends the journey (“Hail, the all conquering hero!”). It does not. It ends a significant part of the journey and starts the next.
When we acknowledge our fear and gain mastery over it – we start to experience the stillness or void from which we base our actions. We start to realise that the issue, we faced, was attracted by and to our fear. We brought the issue, perhaps unknowingly and albeit unwantedly, on ourselves. The issue brought the fear to the surface so that we can erase that fear and evolve to the good.This is a fundamental rule to the game of life. (It might even be the only rule. I’m still working that one out.)
When the fear is fully out in the open in front of us, noone else,we see through it. We wise up to the habits and patterns inside of us that manifest that fear. We realise that those habits and patterns are only habits and patterns – and nothing more. They are not reality but responses we took on, usually in our early childhood, to adverse situations. And when we see their illusory nature, they disappear and so does the fear.
We begin to realise we had nothing to fear in the first place. At this stage we are not fearless, instead we experience fearlessness. We have transmuted our fearless state of mind into fearlessness.
The warrior or hero does not ignore or deny, but manages and controls, their fear. The master or magician, through the wisdom from insight, dissolves fear. Magicians are not brave. They have no need to be. They know fear for what it is – a very real-like illusion.
Fearlessness is a symptom of having achieved a spiritual step on our road to enlightenment. Only two types of people experience fearlessness – masters and fools.
When we become a master at one stage of our journey we instantly become a fool (or totally uninitiated) in the next stage. We become both master and fool at the same time.
We experience the two purposes of fearlessness:
- It tells us we’ve achieved mastery at one level
- It gives us the encouragement to tackle the next stage in our development.
Such is the computer game called “Life” – until we take the last step, of course.
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Shine on…!
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
A New “Business-Consciousness” Model for the World
Posted by Doctapaul in Astrology, Business, Current Affairs & The Economy, Leadership, Life's Changes, Quirky Ideas, Visions and Dreams on August 25, 2011
I started advertising my Facebook page, Beowulf, earlier this week, at only 1p/click-through. It’s aimed at sharing wisdom and research into business, leadership and consciousness – and hopefully attracting some business for me too :).
(Image from Just Give Me Peace who share/sell great art and poetry.)
It accumulated more than 660 followers in 24 hours. It now has over 1000. I expected take-up to be a slow burner, maybe 30-60 people in the first week. Instead, take-up has blown me away. I still don’t know why so many started following it. Will those of you, already signed up, please send me or share your reasons for following Beowulf and your interests? Thank you.
In return I shall write about what you are interested in, best I can.
I would like to discuss something that I’ve been working through in my mind for a couple of years. I haven’t thought it all through. Therefore I write of idealism – which you can, should the more clever than me of you want to, rip to shreds.
We live in a world where land, property and wealth is won through forfeiture. Some kill in the name of a religion or a God, egged on by clerics who say “you shall become martyrs”. Forget it. That is a religion based on brain washing, protectionism and Middle -Age theocracy that preys on the fears of man. The Sun shines on everyman regardless of race, colour, religion or creed. Whether you believe in God or not – can we not all accept the principle? “We are all equal in honour not privilege.”
We see industrial giants, under the guise of “democracy”, scrambling for oil rights in Libya, pipelines across Afghanistan and trade in the Middle East. We spend billions on war, space travel and litigation. We see 1 billion people in the world without adequate food, shelter and clean water. We see violent uprisings (now in London, where next?) where people on the street say “Enough!”
There is a quickening of change. I don’t yet know what shape it will take. Those who attempt to hold on to that which serves only themselves will meet their “come up-pance”. And the “me too” or “me first now” attitude of the developing economies (after centuries of exploitation, want their “rightful share”) will only replace one capitalist empire with another.
Let’s work together to create an abundant business world where wisdom is created and shared. So that those who work hard but do not share the success of those at the top, can learn and raise the value they bring to the market.
If we all focus on helping those who need wisdom most, we raise the wisdom of the whole business planet. At the same time, if we isolate/patent wisdom to line our own pockets, then we transgress the laws of nature.
I speak not of communism versus capitalism but of freedom of wisdom and a change in mindset, so that we sign up to conduct business for the benefit of all. This, I am told, is the essence of the Aquarian Age.
An age based on raised:
- inner experience + scientific reasoning = wisdom + knowledge
- …………………………………………….. = consciousness(to replace out-dated faiths and beliefs)
Raising the world’s consciousness is no easy task. But we can make a start – with ourselves.
I would like your input and feedback please.
Ω
Shine on…!
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Fear Attracts Fear – Case Study
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Healing, Personal, Self Development, Selling, Training & Development on August 19, 2011
I coached an experienced salesperson who had fallen on hard times. Sales were down.
Like all good salespeople, he worked extra hard, and made as many sales calls as he could. He crossed all the t’s and dotted all the i’s in abundant call reports, to demonstrate his commitment and loyalty to his bosses. Alas, all to no avail.
Image from How Stuff Works
Like most of us (I include myself) it was easy to blame the economy………………
I asked what was driving him. Back came the response “Well I’m behind in my numbers and I want to catch up. I don’t want to lose my job!”
I asked a series of questions:
Q: “So fear drives your actions?”
A:“Yeh, I’ve got a wife and kids to support” came the answer.
Q: “To what extent do your friends and colleagues share your fear?”
A:“Quite a few, it’s time like this you find out who your friends are.”
Q: “To what extent do your existing customers share in your fear?”
A: “Yeh, a few have intimated that I’m trying too hard and come across as more pushy than usual. They are a bit apprehensive about me.”
Q: “And what of new customers and prospects?”
A: “Yes again, everybody I meet seems fearful to do anything right now, even when the business case is clear cut.”
So what’s going on here? I’ve coached many people in this predicament. Here’s what I’ve seen, time and again.
What drives us, we attract. Fear attracts fear.
So in the above client’s case, the coaching focused on tools to switch out fear and replace it with what the client wanted instead: “creative confidence”.
Within weeks, despite an ailing economy, the client’s sales figures went from poor, to fair, to good, to very good. He got back on track.
Ω
Shine on…!
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
More Sales from Less Waste.
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Leadership, Marketing, Selling, Training & Development on August 19, 2011
I saw a definition of the word creativity recently. It went something like “linking two things together for the first time”.
I got a message from Edward de Bono. He encouraged me, to think of creativity as more than selling new things, into a new market, incurring risk (against the grain of the current economic climate). But better still to use creativity to perhaps minimise risk and cut costs. This got me thinking.
“How might we minimise risk, cut costs and increase sales?”
I proceeded to think about the role the various functions or departments play in large corporations. What is it that Marketing, Training and Development, Sales Operations (sometimes called Sales Enablement) do? What do they all try to achieve?
A simple answer could be to get a decision-making customer (the information they need) to make a favourable decision.
Each department looks out from their pigeonhole and does their bit in getting the customer’s favourable decision. The more enlightened departments work in harmony to achieve the same end. Alas, this is a rarity…..
….. because most people still look at the function of their work inside-out….. “What outputs do I create, in accord with my job specification?” For example: a flyer, a campaign, a training event. What they often don’t do is measure the ultimate goal: favourable customer decisions. Instead of looking outside-in, they look inside-out. So the sum of the parts is never the whole.
So how would it be if we merged departments: Sales Training and Development, Marketing and Sales Operations/Enablement?
How about if we created a single department called: “Getting Favourable Decisions”.
(Or something less obvious, like “Customer Enablement” for those organisations whose culture has not yet migrated to the Aquarian Age of meaningful information.)
There is an old phrase: “50% of our marketing is valuable and 50% is waste. The trouble is, which 50% is which?”
Luckily for me, I got to analyse a vast amount of data. The utilisation data of a large global IT company’s marketing materials, deposited into a single digital repository. It tracks which materials are used, by whom, where, when, and for how long. The statement “50% waste” proved to be an understatement. The data revealed it was 85%, i.e. only 15% of the material was read by anybody outside marketing i.e. sales and customers.
Likewise I’ve spoken to many sales trainers about knowledge retention. They typically reckon that when people walk away from a training course, they retain 15% of the knowledge and wisdom imparted. That’s about the going rate.
So curiously enough this number 85% crops up again. 85% of the marketing material isn’t being used, 85% of the wisdom imparted is not being retained.
So how about creating a “zero-retention” application? An application that provides on-the-job information, wisdom, knowledge, learning, call it what you will. It gives you what you want, where you want it, when you want it. It’s concise, understandable, and is already customer ready. (No more time consuming training courses, no more pedantry e-learning.)
We merge, into one repository, all the materials we need, to give customers the right information, in the right sequence, to make a favourable decision. We provide this through one single department. We merge Sales Training & Development, Marketing and Sales Operations/Enablement into one. We reduce management overheads, courses and waste (by 85%?).
Your customers and salespeople engage using (the same) articulate materials, media, dialogues, analyses, questions and messages. They all sing from the same song sheet.
Sales go up. Selling cycles shorten. More sales from less waste.
p.s. Now you know what to do. Should you want to know more on how? Get in touch :).
Ω
Shine on…!
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
“White Space” – The Customers’ Problems We Don’t Know About
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Leadership, Marketing, Quirky Ideas, Selling on August 19, 2011
I pondered about the conundrum of “White Space”. The problems and wants (leading to opportunities for you, me, us) that (non-existing and existing) customers have that we don’t know about.
One morning, something came to me in my waking conscious about “The unheard voice of the customer.”
Here’s what popped up first…
The outside is sent as a mirror to what’s inside.
To find White Space, that problem you don’t yet know that customers have. To start, look for the problem in yourself that you don’t know yet.
So how about finding answers to the following questions:
- What problems/opportunities exist in the organisation that the Board doesn’t know about?
- What problems/opportunities do the Board have that the rest of the organisation doesn’t know about?
- What problems exist that customers don’t know about?
Use this data to inform a customer research programme to find the unheard voice of the customer….….
- What met or unmet expectations do customers have that we don’t know about? (How do we stack up?)
- What problems do customers have that we/competition don’t know about (especially those we/competition contribute to)?
- What would happen if these problems and expectations were met (even surpassed)?
- What new opportunities might we help customers create for themselves (value creation)?
- So how can we get ahead of the wave to create new value?
Mmmm this could be some project…. What thinks you?
Ω
Shine on…!
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
The Executive’s Challenge: Make Transitions Quickly
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Leadership, Training & Development on August 19, 2011
I coach high flying, low flying, delinquent (and some just doing ok) executives. All do the best they know how.
When we meet, I often ask the following questions:
• How much of your time do you spend managing this month’s financial numbers – and how much on where you want to be?
• To what extent are you achieving what you set out to achieve? (Test anyone who says “more than 70%”.)
• How fast are your customers’ expectations changing?
• How fast is your competition?
These lead to one question they all have in common…..
How can I make the next transition fast?”
3 Transitions: from Strategic Business Unit Manager to….
Transition 1: Manage Cross Functional Change, to….
Transition 2: Visualise/Lead Change to….
Transition 3: Innovate Change: 1st to market business models, beyond “the edge of the envelope” (eg the next “Google”, Web 4.0)
The Business Unit Manager’s (budding executive) typical, environmental characteristics:
• Known ie tangible
• Current: this month, quarter, year
• Has much historic and comparative data
• And thus considered manageable
Contrast the above list with Transition 3:
• Unknown
• Little or no data. Historic data of limited value.
• Future paced: Next year, 3-5 years, 100 years?
• Abstract, conceptual
So many of the personal strategies the executive used to get to “base camp” will hold her/him back. Indeed, as their positional power grows, should they continue with the same behaviours, they drive everyone nuts. “Counting the beans in the bag: by size, geography, colour (or whatever category dreamed of) does not make more beans”
What happens? (How might coaching be relevant?)
Tis all about Relationships, Relationships, Relationships….
At a Personal Level:
• A change in context; from say, a promotion (or a move into another part of the organisation), the executive finds that the personal strategies that have underpinned their success, in their careers so far, are no longer as effective.
• With each career transition; to forge new relationships in a new context fast (and existing relationships that also change) requires more flexible relationship strategies and mindset.
• It’s also about helping the executive to find out and let go of what needs to be let go of.
• There may be more/too much data to analyse, or no data. In either case there is less time. So it’s about helping the executive to create personal strategies that are effective when faced with the unknown, missing data, even the abstract.
• To summarise, I coach to get the executive to figure out what to do more of, what to do less of, what to do differently.
• It’s also about the commitment and flexible mindset required to step outside the comfort zone that has enabled the success in their career to date – and even more vital in the next level of impact.
At higher Strategic Levels
(any migration along the continuum, from: Business Unit Leader–>Manage Change–>Lead/Visualise Change–>1st to Market Business Models)
• As their network of influence spreads, the executive’s emphasis for influence transcends from personal to strategic. Despite positional authority, the executive has less face to face time “per person” whilst they visualise and lead change, as well as manage issues as they crop up.
• Two things thus become more important.
1. The success of the executive strategy depends upon on the emotional journey (strategic buy-in or resistance) it receives. So it’s about mapping and future pacing strategy, to foresee emotional blocks, leaks, politics and value shifts required, to make it happen. The logic and process for change adapts to the least path of resistance.
2. The success of the executive is a function of their “Strategic Identity” within the extended organisation. To what extent do their seniors, peers, direct and indirect reports put trust in their integrity and capability. And how does this “trust” underpin their “Strategic Identity”. Is the “Strategic Identity” effective within the current and desired corporate cultures espoused?
• Advanced Influencing: Can the executive deploy advanced influencing techniques, by being at their peak in every meeting? “Yes!”
• And beyond? Is there a space where the executive generates strategies to influence people, who at first do not wish to be influenced (because influencing everyone else then becomes relatively easy)? Once again the answer is “Yes!”
• Distinguishing Traits and Characteristics: I spent the last 10 years studying people who deal successfully with senior executives. This work consists of 100’s of interviews and workshops, around the world, for a number of major organisations including IBM and Xerox. The research points to 7 Key Traits or Characteristics. By definition, traits are nurtured (ie coached) not taught.
To conclude….
Should you reflect, you will see that the transitions happen in everyday life too.
1. We run our own lives as a business unit, day to day. We hopefully balance our bank account every month.
2. Every now and then we have some change passed on to us to manage (e.g. a change in tax laws, a pay rise).
3. Sometimes we visualize and lead change (e.g. we get married/divorce).
4. There are other times we may choose to completely reinvent ourselves (e.g. a new career).
So, conceptually, Executive Coaching is not a million miles away from everyday life. What differs is the context, and complexity of dealing with a vast network of people, over whom we have no direct control.
Executive Coaching needs to address our Strategic Identity as well as the Personal. It needs to address the flow of energy we put into our network of influence, and what we take out.
Ω
Shine on…!
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
4 Warning Signs that Tell You “You’re not ready!”
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Healing, Leadership, Life's Changes, Personal, Relationships, Self Development, Training & Development on August 18, 2011
x 4
Can you recall a time when you set off on a venture and ignored or didn’t spot early warning signs that things were probably not going to go to plan? Those things are much easier to see in hindsight when “the milk has been spilt.” At the outset, our emotional attachment to the outcome is high. Those emotions however can cloud our vision of what’s possibly about to go awry. We head down the path to disappointment. We can avoid the path to disappointment and setback, when we can read the “road-signs”.
Four warning signs that point to pending setback and disappointment (in a relationship, in business, in everyday life):
- You get upset easily; means your pride is hurt. When you get emotional quickly and easily, you give your power to those you get upset with. You are clouded with emotion. You cannot see out what to do. Others cannot see in. You isolate yourself.
- Less power leads to low self esteem. You don’t feel good about yourself. This leads to fear.
- Fear of further upset and isolation: in extreme cases you despair and turn to others and do their bidding – in order to maintain some form of connection. This is not love or friendship. It is….
- Mind control: someone else has you under their thumb. This is not love. It’s manipulation. You have no way out, until you find the courage to get out from under.
So we can start by acknowledging our vulnerabilities. Which means neither embrace or deny them. Instead learn from them. Accept them for what they are…. head trash that needs dealing with.
We can go it alone – but I’ve found solitude and contemplation takes a wee bit too long for me. Instead I seek help… either through a group or an “energy healer”.
When you ready yourself to learn, your teacher will appear -and vice versa.
And should you choose to do nothing about it? Prepare yourself.
Because…. ( a definition for not taking responsibility)
“When the rocket is lit, your backside will appear.”
Ω
Shine on…!
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
4 Killer Strategies to Boost your Sales
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Coaching, Leadership, Selling, Training & Development on August 18, 2011
Killer Strategy #1
Coach Top Performers: increase your top people’s contribution by 30% (and maybe increase your total company sales by >20%)
My research over the last 20 years has found that top performers demonstrate 7 key traits or characteristics (eg curiosity: eager to learn). Top performers love to be coached, to go (not think!) outside of their comfort zones. They yearn to discover what lies above and beyond their limits of success (all-be-they high already).
I see top salespeople, whom I coach, increase their sales run rates by 30%, in a matter of weeks. For those who really trust themselves and commit to the journey, performance goes up several fold.
_________________________________________________
2 Case Studies:
- Account Director (now a Vice President): Responsible for renegotiating a £50M pa contract within 9 months. The client achieved the £50M target within 11 weeks from commencement of the coaching programme.
- Regional Manager (now a Senior Vice President): used coaching methodologies to prepare his team for a new business-services sales campaign with an Australian bank. The team won a pilot worth around $100K in the UK. Our client flew to Australia to extend the bid. He then steered the local sales team to win further contracts……“I won the big one (worth £15M!) for the Australian bank I was after….. my life has changed quite a bit (for the better) and 80% due to your help”
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Lever your company’s sales revenue. The top 20% of your salespeople probably bring in 80% of your revenue. Measure, if you can, the proportion, they contribute, to your profit line. I have clients who were staggered at the results.
You can now imagine what happens to your bottom line when your top performers raise their game by 30% and more. And, 0rganisational beliefs (about what’s achievable) get smashed. Others follow. But how fast? And can they keep up the pace?
So what about the remaining 80%?
Killer Strategy #2
Raise Every Salesperson’s Results: model and spread your top performers’ traits and behaviours to everyone else
Sales effectiveness is a function of motivation, confidence, competence and curiosity.
Effectiveness = Motivation x Confidence x Competence x Curiosity
or…
E = MC3
(No longer a Theory of Relativity, nor rocket science, get everyone winning!)
So the objective is to raise everyone’s:
- Motivation: better yourself, seek wisdom, explore below the surface, relate to people and situations, analyse facts, follow process
- Confidence (as opposed to arrogance) know, execute: when to listen (ask), when to learn (bide time) and when to advocate (articulate)
- Competence and knowledge in 4 verbs, to: Connect, Inspire, Prove and Proceed
- Curiosity (to explore below the surface) about: selling, the customer, the customer’s industry, self, technology, your company, the world, and beyond….
This is how top performers come across and do things differently to average performers?
My personal research goes back nigh on 20 years. My studies include cross industry interviews and workshops with hundreds of salespeople, sales managers, directors, consultants and customers around the world.
My purpose here, is not to tell you how to do this. My purpose is to tell you what needs to happen.
Case Study: A pan Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) survey, by a Top 5 Global IT Firm, reveals a boost in sales millions of dollars.
- UK, Regional Business Development Manager: “Sales are up because 30% more Account Managers are going out and selling solutions that otherwise wouldn’t have.
- “Middle East and Africa: Within 6 months of the launch, sales surpass $2.5M, in a region where hitherto, no Account Managers had been selling these solutions proactively.
- Q: “Score out of 10, how much has the approach contributed to the $2.5M revenue sum?”
- A: MEA Regional Business Development Manager “Contribution to sales? I’d say more than 8 out of 10.
- “Scotland: Regional Channel Partner Manager: “I started in May. The subject matter was new to me. I hadn’t been on any courses. I shared your “transfer mechanism” with our Business Partners. They were impressed. It’s now July, I’ve displaced our competitor as Business Partner of Choice and just won the first piece business, worth over $100,000,, that competitors were due to win..”
Killer Strategy #3
Increase the Effectiveness of Sales Leaders: Equip managers to lead others, outside their zones of comfort.
I coach managers (to coach others). Many have already been “trained in coaching”. Yet, they increase their personal productivity measurably (£).
Why?
Because, for most, “training” does not engage the manager sufficiently in the emotional and insightful journey to become a great coach:
I have found that “training” gives process.
Training alone doesn’t:
- Engage the emotional journey of moving into discomfort with a fresh mindset.
- Shift the mindset from being an expert (i.e. mentoring) to a non-expert (i.e. a co-explorer)
- Shift the mindset from being directive (eg “you need to do a,b and c!”) to non-directive.
- Nurture 7 key traits, common to both coach and a top performer.
- Get managers to realise that every coachee (at some level) mirrors their own imperfections
All the above are essential skills and learnings to coach well.
A study carried out by Olivero, Bane, & Kopeirnan in 1997 demonstrated an 88% increase in management productivity when coaching and training were interwoven as opposed to a 22.4 % increase when managers were placed on a management training programme.
Top 5 Global IT Company: European Sales Management Team, Public Sector, already “trained” as coaches.
MANAGER A:
“When I do follow the coaching process it works and it fails when I don’t”
“First two sessions were particularly useful. I would not have got through that month without the 2 List System. I am more effective in how I use my time and am more prepared for important meetings. SOS helps me synchronise with people. Using 2nd position has helped enormously. Coaching isn’t an individual session; it takes place over a period of time to get to a solution. It’s made me face some demons.”
MANAGER B:
“The Coaching Process gets an A* for managing poor performers. “
MANAGER C:
“It has helped me to explore new ideas and not get hung up if they don’t work. I took away the “Preparing for Key Meetings” from the workshop and used it – it’s brilliant. I understand the coaching tools and need to get myself organised to use them on a regular basis next year.”
MANAGER D:
“I am more rigorous in the analytical and process quadrants and it’s paid off.”
“I took the material from the workshop and applied it rigorously to coaching (underperformer) X. It’s not there yet but the mountain has moved.”
The managers achieved “Top Team” status aross Europe, in the year following the coaching.
Killer Strategy #4
Lift Under-Achievers out of the Mire: Save them, your managers, and you, a lot of time and possibly grief!
What do you do with an underperformer?
- Sack them?
- Leave them alone?
- Manage as best you can?
- Invest in them?
Coach them. Why?
Corporate Sales Case Study: a highly rated salesperson was underachieving in her first year on quota. Within two months, from the start of the programme, the salesperson’s going rate of year-end target increased from 20% to 80%. Her results then went from strength to strength.
Quotation…. “I found the programme extremely beneficial: it grew my self-confidence and self-esteem tremendously, and allowed me to go and sell. I have both the ability and I have earned the right to do this. I also treat customers as human beings, realising that the best way to persuade someone to agree with you is to get on well with them. I am much more ruthless about agreeing to tasks outside the scope of my quota – unless it eventually benefits my quota in some way. I do nothing unless it progresses me closer towards meeting my targets. I am better respected amongst my peer group and managers, and I am assured of a successful career with solid progression!
Overall, I recommend this to anyone, so long as they are prepared to accept new ideas and alter their attitudes to certain ways of working.”
Sales Managers lose 26 days (5 weeks!) per year dealing with poor performers, source: “UK Managers Losing Twenty-six Days a Year to Poor Performers”, SHL GROUP plc, Business Series 2005.”
The UK’s “lost management days” figure is lower than the other regions studied apart from one. The UK figure is 7 days more than Sweden.
No coincidence: Sweden invests the most in getting people to competence. Source: “Getting the Edge in the New People Economy”, www.futurefoundation.net, Future Foundation and SHL Group plc.
Under-performers, when coached, take an emotional journey (similar to top performers) to step up to the next level. They rid themselves of sometimes deep-rooted, personal, blocks that hold them back. Sometimes, it only requires a simple shift: maybe just a reframe of their perspective. Mostly though, it involves something deeper.
I often find that training doesn’t go anywhere near these deep emotional blocks. Under-performers will not allow it to. They fear the consequences of exposing what holds them back, often unconsciously.
The irreplaceable value of coaching: from research undertaken (Trygve Roos, Mental Coaching 2002) to discover what really causes effective behavioural change. It proved that the most pervasive change happened when learners were trained in various excellent techniques, followed by personal coaching/interventions.
Corporate Sales Case Study: New to sales, and prior to coaching, an erstwhile consultant’s going rate was 40% of his year-end target. Within two months his going rate was 80% and he was looking to overachieve. We focused on sales campaigns to win new business in competitive accounts. He went on to win a contract from one of the campaigns worth about $1.5M, from a client whose spend up until the start of the campaign had been minimal.
Ω
Shine on…!
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Sales Reporting Issues – “The Perfumed Pig” versus The Truth
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Leadership, Selling on August 16, 2011
I’ve witnessed sales reporting issues in a number of organizations. They affect negatively:
- Sales productivity
- Sales management effectiveness
- Bid management quality
Three fundamental issues stem from senior management’s right and penchant for scrutiny…..
- Information overkill: There is a lot of work involved in the mechanics of the reporting process itself. Whilst this may be worthwhile for the very top tier accounts, it’s an overkill for the rest.
- Major Bid Scrutiny: The more time senior management have to take a decision, say about funding a major bid, the more information they will ask for. Sales people soon realise that if they put in a major opportunity above a certain level in revenue terms or percentage of winning chance then it will attract scrutiny. They thus underbid to avoid management attraction. They wait until the very last moment to play their hand. And senior management don’t like surprises. They question “Why the swift change?” Back comes the answer, “Do you want us to win the bsuiness or not?” Beneath all this we find no bedrock of Trust or Truth either in one’s self or the other party.
- Isolation of the Weakest: Senior management have tendency to transform any bids going wrong into a star chamber process. So sales people start filing progress reports that will keep management off their backs. They avoid the ignominy and embarrassment of having senior managers putting them under the spotlight of scrutiny. Erich Clementi, IBM, called this ‘The Perfumed Pig’ effect. Senior Management sit in the illusion that bids are going ok – until either cut off has passed or the sale is lost. They may take out their frustrations on those who said everything was ‘rosey’ and is now not. But by this stage the many, that have ‘failed’, hovel together; hoping they won’t be picked out from the crowd – for ‘they can’t sack everyone’.
In every case, game playing is afoot. And whilst the game plays, senior management are making investment decisions based on false data that salespeople use to keep them out of the way.
With this in mind I’ve been working and thinking of ways around the issues. The game playing needs to be replaced by Truth. And that will only happen when salespeople who are struggling with their customer relationships ask for and get help. ‘Beating them up’ simply doesn’t work. The archaic carrot and stick approach is no longer effective in an economic climate where most, if not all, are struggling.
I’ve 3 things in mind…
- I’ve pieced together a best practice, Relationships-based Account Management Template – tis based on my own experience and research. I set out to create a reporting system designed for both Tier 1 and 2 clients – ie requires a fraction of the work that the big hitter systems take up – and is more effective. It currently consists of about 7 pages of data but the vast majority of focus is based upon one relationships chart for the whole of the account. For it is here that sales are made or not. This system is Word based at the moment but I might have an economically viable way to make it fully interactive, fast and trackable….
- The review of account plans is conducted on a peer basis. Where teams, with at least one leading expert, are created to help one another in the sales process. Sales ‘leaders’ (not managers) mentor and coach peers (in a ‘safe’, private and confidential process) who want help through critical points in the sales process. This takes away the pressure that management applies and fosters Truth instead – because the struggling salesperson feels safe to share his problems. This doesn’t stop a sales person engaging management for support if they want it.
- The role of management is then to ‘facilitate’ success as opposed to leaning on people to go out there and win by the of the week/month/quarter at all costs.
I recognize this will require a change in behavior for many senior managers – BUT if Senior Management haven’t got the results they wanted in the past, they won’t get them in the future either – by doing the same things over and over again. The new Sales Leaders need to be equipped with techniques to lead others outside their comfort zones – and do it in such a way that the people they are helping feel ok with them and the process.
Ω
Shine on…!
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
Grabbing the attention of customers’ boardrooms – common sense, uncommonly applied
Posted by Doctapaul in Business, Leadership, Marketing, Selling, Training & Development on August 16, 2011
I was researching the value of Cloud Computing. It’s still relatively new in boardroom parlance.
IT Vendors, speak of several issues to sell new technologies and services (such as Cloud Computing) to customer executives.
“How do we get our message across and understood?”
“How do we get our young salespeople to make executive calls confidently?”
“How do we skill them up, or maybe equip them, to do so?”
“How do we motivate young salespeople, who by definition aren’t experts, to call on Marketing Directors, Finance Directors, and so on?
I’ve been working with a global IT supplier. When introducing new advanced (and world-class) technologies, they had a devil of a job to get their value message across, convey trust and inspire across to its customer executives, outside the IT function
Here are the issues they encountered:
1. Only a small number of salespeople knew how to generate trust, articulate value and inspire action with senior executives in “big clients”
2. The rest avoided selling the new technology because they didn’t know how to perform Action 1.
3. If customer executives aren’t even curious about the value you can bring to planning table, you don’t get invited” to dine” there.
Now if we apply all the above principles to the SME market and Indirect Channel Sales, the whole picture gets economically fraught. In this market space people no longer sell on price and brand – and haven’t done so for years. They sell what they know how to sell.
So how do you give anybody the motivation, confidence, competence and curiosity to go sell something that’s new to the customer and new to them as well? How do you maximize cross and up selling opportunities?
Answer: You make it easy for them (and the customer) and apply an Outside-In Selling Approach.
Sounds easy doesn’t it? And so it is. Why, oh why, don’t more sales organisations apply it?
Here lies Rub #1. IT Vendors are very interested (and rightly so) in how their technology works. Customer executives are interested in the value it brings, i.e. what it does, not how it does it. By and large, customers executives are not intrinsically interested in technology.
Thus the successful sales approach requires a shift in mindset, from Inside-Out to Outside-In. For a large organization to take it on, such a shift has to be sponsored from the top. Why?
Rub #2:The traditionalists in product training and marketing will say they can do it for themselves. Well, they can’t. Because it also requires a structured approach to how customer executives want to receive information. “Less is more”. Product enthusiasts want to say more about what they are proud of. Customer executives want less. About 85% less, if I were to guess. So it’s about having a structured approach to find out which 15% of your collateral can be transmuted to inspire customer action.
“A lot of people in our organisation have supreme knowledge about our technology and what it can do for the customer, Paul. The vast majority of them, alas, don’t know how to articulate it to a customer to inspire action.
Inspiration = Knowledge + Articulation (first to self, then to others)”
– Top performing salesperson in UK for a Top 10 Global IT vendor
I leave you with a thought. I’ve checked out quite a bit of IT and IS vendors’ collateral on Cloud Computing and the like. It’s written mainly Inside-Out i.e. feature/benefit. Which means the customer has to be interested in how it works first, to see its value.
Top selling these years is applied outside in.
Ω
Shine on…!
Paul C Burr
Follow @paulburr
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