Perseverance

"Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats."

I'm not sure who penned this quote, but it has rung true for me this year.  It was a tough couple quarters but things are finally starting to take shape.  Perseverance is important, especially in a businesses with long sales cycles.

#Social Selling

Over the last couple weeks, I've been to a few conferences in the SF Bay Area, including the Sales 2.0 Event and the Eloqua Experience.  One of my big surprises was that "Social Selling" was a huge focus of these two events.  Until this point, I figured this was a buzzword of hyper-connected sales people in the Bay Area looking for an excuse to be on Twitter all day long.  It turns out this is an up and coming focus in enterprise sales with some of the leading "old school" companies encouraging their reps to curate content through social channels.

After hearing a few lectures and talking to dozens of people about such topics, I'm a new found believer, even going so far as to focus on expanding my Twitter and LinkedIn connections.  

One positive side effect that I noticed as a result of this new focus is that I'm becoming an equal opportunity networker.  In the past, I fear that I had a very short-sided view of business conversations, opting to focus on those that would have an immediate impact on my pipeline and quota.  I'm no longer considering people potential "prospects" and am instead seeing them as potential future advocates.  

The long term benefits of this shift in thinking will hopefully be an increased network from which to reap referrals, gain introductions, or cultivate future opportunities.  

The short term benefits are that I'm actually enjoying meeting people more than I did in the past.  I'm not a shy person, but I've always been somewhat private, so striking up small talk with a complete stranger over a cheap cocktail has always felt a little forced.  Shifting my vision from sales to building a social referral network has made these events a lot more fun. 

Of course, the key to all of this will be posting interesting, relevant content, positioning oneself as a thought leader and industry expert; otherwise we're just a bunch of narcissists overly focused on our number of "followers."        

Over coming your "blind spots"

This is an interesting look into how certain mental biases can affect decision making in organizations.  One of these is confirmation bias:  people naturally enjoy working with others that agree with them.  I'm as guilty as anyone of liking the conflict free route, but it's always good to have someone playing devil's advocate.  This ensures that evaluations and decisions are routed in rational thought and backed by true analysis, rather than just acquiescence in social or professional hierarchies.

Original article: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/10/three-tips-for-overcoming-your-blind-spots/

Ernst Cramer, the late, great editor-in-chief of the German daily Die Welt, once recounted how as a college student in America in the midwest, just after World War II, he questioned in a math class whether the textbook was not mistaken in a particular instance. The lecturer reflexively, and rather sternly, dismissed the possibility. Several months later, Cramer was working on a farm during summer vacation when he looked up to see his professor jogging across the field from a parked car in the distance. “Cramer,” a repentant voice yelled, “you were right – the book was wrong and they’ve changed that section!”

Cramer related the tale as an endearing anecdote from his early experience in America. We’re similarly charmed by the graciousness and integrity of Cramer’s math professor. But we’re re-telling the story here because the professor’s first response reveals two failings all too common in managers. One is the reflex always to bestow uncritical faith in authorities (including one’s own superiors) and handed-down rules; the other, the quick dismissal of seemingly irreverent assertions.

We all have such blind spots, and they are weaknesses we should combat. Even that idea is unfashionable in an era when we are urged to focus on polishing strengths. In the world of professional music, it’s often the opposite. Most conductors, for instance, begin rehearsals by directing the orchestra immediately to the most difficult passages in a given piece, and spend most time on them, because they are areas of weakness.

But how do managers work actively to fight weaknesses of which, by definition, they are insufficiently aware? We’ll offer a few tactics we have used deliberately to counter the effects of three infamous cognitive biases.

To fight confirmation bias, have a devil’s advocate.

Confirmation bias refers to our tendency, when receiving new information, to process it in a way that it fits our pre-existing narrative about a situation or problem. Simply put, if you’re already inclined to believe that the French are rude, you will find the examples on your trip to Paris to validate your thesis. Disconfirming evidence – the friendly waiter, the helpful bellman – gets pushed aside. They’re just “the exception.” Warren Buffett says, “What the human being is best at doing, is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” He knows he is prone to it himself.

Attorneys, debaters, and politicians engage in a kind of confirmation bias when, in order to make a case, they select certain data while deliberately neglecting or deemphasizing other data. But confirmation bias can cause disaster in business and policy when it leads a decision-maker to jump to conclusions, fall prey to misguided analogies, or simply exclude information that inconveniently disturbs a desired plan of action.

What to do? The only remedy is to make sure you have a full and accurate picture available when making important decisions. When you have a theory about someone or something, test it. When you smell a contradiction – a thorny issue, an inconsistency or problem – go after it. Like the orchestral conductor, isolate it, drill deeper. When someone says – or you yourself intuit – “that’s just an exception,” be sure it’s just that. Thoroughly examine the claim.

Dealing with confirmation bias is about reining in your impulses and challenging your own assumptions. It’s difficult to stick to it day in and out. That’s why it’s important to have in your circle of advisers a brainy, tough-as-nails devil’s advocate who – perhaps annoyingly, but valuably – checks you constantly.

To cure hindsight bias, keep a diary.

As we move through life, we all keep a running record, at least at some level in our memory banks, of what worked, what didn’t, and why. The trouble is, most of us tend to have selective memories. Hindsight bias is confirmation bias’s equally problematic sibling. Again, we’re cherry-picking from a body of data, in this instance to confirm a theory about why something that has already happened (the 2008 financial crash, the re-election of Barack Obama, the decision to hire a senior executive or implement a business strategy) played out as it did.

There’s nothing wrong with having theories, mental models, and frameworks of analysis. On the contrary. The problem begins when critical, independent thinking ends and we fail to keep testing our templates. Hindsight bias impairs our ability to draw the right conclusions, as we imagine after the fact that a situation in the past was avoidable, or a decision simpler than it actually was at the time. This is a point made compellingly by the Swiss businessman and novelist Rolf Dobelli in his new book The Art of Thinking Clearly – a fascinating examination of 99 cognitive inclinations that most of us carry around, generally unaware.

Here’s one way to check hindsight bias: Keep a diary. And record minutes from important meetings. We have a friend who just for fun asks dinner guests in his Capitol Hill home in Washington – he entertains some pretty heady gatherings – to scribble on a piece of paper their predictions about politics, business, and world events. He tucks the scraps in a drawer, let’s them settle for a year or so, and then pulls them out for a reading over coffee and dessert. It’s pretty funny stuff. What becomes painfully clear is that we failed to predict much of anything – claims after the fact notwithstanding.

To overcome “groupthink” start with hiring.

In his 2008 book “Outliers: the Story of Success,” Malcolm Gladwell shares a cultural theory of plane crashes. He notes that Korean Air had more crashes than virtually any other airline in the world for a period at the end of the 1990s. Why? It seems likely that Korean traditions of hierarchy created the tendency – including in the cockpit when something seemed out of place or not quite right – to defer to superiors.

Companies like developing their own culture. It’s important. Yet a culture that binds too tightly suffocates, chokes off independent thought, and can create a Stepford-like environment. If you find yourself feeling exhilarated because everyone around you is thinking just like you, you should consider that a huge red flag. It may well be that people are self-censoring for fear of exclusion or retribution. There’s also ample research – psychologist Irving Janis is the pioneer in this area – that when groups become too close-knit they fall prey to illusions of invincibility.

Fighting groupthink should start at the hiring stage. Look for people who share your basic values and purpose, but who are also tough, independent, and able to tell you what they think. Moreover: check that decisions at all levels in the company are being made on the basis of rationality, not merely flowing from authority or a tendency (however subconscious) to conform.

Which brings us back to editor Ernst Cramer, who also liked to tell the story of how he was first hired by legendary German publisher Axel Springer. The two men had a meeting at Springer’s Berlin office that, in Cramer’s view, did not go very well at all. It seems there was a serious bone of contention, a rather vehement disagreement on a political issue that went back and forth between the two for some time. Neither was willing to relent.

Later that day, Cramer received a call asking him to return to meet with Springer again. The publisher greeted the young editor with the announcement, “Cramer, you’re hired.” The somewhat stunned Cramer reminded Springer that the two had spent half their time that morning in very spirited debate, to which Springer replied: “Exactly – that’s why I need you on the team!”

That’s self-awareness. That’s taking the blinders off for full vision. And exactly these things lie at the core of growth and great leadership.

More blog posts by John Dame and Jeffrey Gedmin

More on: Decision making, Leadership, Managing yourself

JOHN DAME AND JEFFREY GEDMIN

John Dame is CEO of Dame Management Strategies (DMS). Jeffrey Gedmin is CEO of the Legatum Institute.

Networking Doesn't have to be that hard

This is a great article that was orginally posted on Inc.com about a young entrepreneur that ended up gaining funding for his startup by beating Peter Thiel in a round of chess.  This got me thinking about arenas that I'm able to even the playing field with powerful and influential people.  Sports are my world, what is yours?

Getting Peter Thiel's Attention--and His Money

Sometimes the best pitch...looks and feels nothing like a pitch. Here's how one young founder hooked a prominent VC.

Some CEOs love chess; others…not so much. 

Seth Bannon, the founder of Amicus, a start-up that helps non-profits spread awareness--and raise money--by tapping volunteers' social networks, is in the former category. He likes to boast with a soft humble-braggy smile that during college he spent so much time playing speed rounds of chess (called "blitz") with the hustlers around Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts, he nearly had to drop out of school. 

Last summer, when Amicus was being incubated at Y Combinator, Bannon was also looking for funding for the company. But so was everyone else. That was evident when Peter Thiel, the Paypal co-founder, audacious-idea advocate, and managing partner at $275 million VC firm Founders Fund, came to speak to the batch of YC founders. As Bannon tells it, as soon as Thiel finished, a throng of young entrepreneurs swarmed him, waiting for their turns to pitch the billionaire their companies.

"He was being pretty brutal. He told one of my batchmates, 'I've got to say, this is a product I'm not at all interested in; I gotta tell you this is a business I'm not at all interested in'," Bannon says. "He was not in a good mood."

Bannon says he cut in anyway, banking on a rumor he'd heard that Thiel was as much of a chess aficionado as himself. In his telling, the conversation went like this:

Bannon: How about a game of blitz?
Thiel: What?
Bannon: How about a game of blitz?
Thiel: Now?
Bannon: Yeah, I have a table set up over there.
Thiel: Give me five minutes.

Here's what happened next, according to Bannon: 

He came over and the entire batch came to watch, and crowded in all around us. It was five minutes--that's the length of a "blitz" game. He said, "only one game." I said, "no problem." So we played and I beat him. I wasn't nervous. I felt good. I'm like in my element when I'm playing blitz. As soon as he resigned the game, the first thing he said was: "another."
He won the second one. I think the Founders Fund partner who ended up investing in us probably heard about us thorough that. They ended up putting in for our second seed round.
At some point, I friended Peter Thiel on Facebook, and that was surreal. Once I went to the office, and they showed me around, and showed me all of the cool chess stuff they have. They have a very beautiful chess set.

Bannon didn't even pitch his company. But he got Founders Fund interested--he later met with partner Luke Nosek in New York City. They sealed the deal, and the fund's early-stage-investing arm, FF Angel, invested.

Here's photographic evidence of the match (Thiel left; Bannon right), by Arda Kara.

Christine Lagorio is a writer, editor, and reporter whose work has appeared inThe New York Times, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Village Voice, and The Believer, among other publications. She is senior writer at Inc. @Lagorio

10 Resolutions Successful People Make and Keep

This is a great Forbes article that I think reminds you of where to give your focus and what will drive the most success in your daily pursuits.  It's so easy to get bogged down in the weeds of whatever it is you do, that I think articles of this nature are always a good read, no matter what time of year it is.

-Chris

Ten Resolutions The Most Successful People Make And Then Keep

Original Article from Forbes by Matt Maddock

Well, it’s that time again—time to start rolling out the New Year’s resolutions. Some of us will vow to eat less, exercise more, live in the moment, be more grateful. You may even decide to bury the hatchet with the family member who makes you so crazy.

But what about your New Year’s business resolutions?

This time of year is a great time to start making—and keeping—business resolutions, too. But sadly, like our personal goals, we often make them (year after year) with sincere intent only to see them quickly fall by the wayside, as we revert to (bad) habits that we have vowed to break.

But what about the most successful people and their resolutions? Have you noticed how the most accomplished people just seem to identify important things and consistently get them done?

Study successful people long enough and you start to pick up on the resolutions they seem to consistently make.

Here are ten of my favorites:

#1 Spend more time on the not-to-do list

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Strategy is the art of sacrifice. That’s why you may consider creating a larger clearing for what really matters by first identifying, and then avoiding, what matters the least. Your time is a treasure to be invested. Creating a list of things that you are notgoing to do, allows you to invest more of your treasured time on the few things that matter the most.

#2 Essential first, email second

What’s the first thing you do in the morning? For many of us, it is looking at email. We wake up with a renewed mind and spirit, ready to take on the world, and then we immediately allow ourselves to be distracted by an insignificant email. Instead, wake up, take on the most important task of the day, and then (and only then) hit the email.

#3 Resolve to think about “Who” instead of “What”

Do you work for a “What” business or for a “Who” business? Successful companies run the risk of focusing too much on their current products and distributors thus—the “What”—losing sight of the constant and dramatically changing needs of their customer base. (The “Who.”) Insurance, pharma, health care, higher education often listen too much to their agents, doctors and professors. The real innovation starts with the end consumer.

#4 Resolve to find your purpose

As my friend Simon Sinek will tell you: People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. Starting a career, a company or any kind of journey that is based firmly on your purpose is foundational to success and happiness. If you don’t know your company’s purpose or even your own, finding one is the worthiest of resolutions.

#5 Resolve to support a cause

If you’re reading this, chances are you are one of the rare people who know how to start things. Fortunately, there are people like you who have already started causes that make the world better—they feed the hungry; they save the rain forest; they fight cancer; they do good things. There is virtually a cause for everyone, and contributing will make your year happier. Promise.

#6 Resolve to invent more choices

Here’s a secret that happy people know that I learned from my friend Dr. Dan Baker: You can’t feel grateful and fearful at the same time. And one certain way to become afraid is to feel trapped by any situation. The remedy is choice. The more choices you feel you have, the less trapped—and happier—you will feel. So this year, resolve to do a bit of brainstorming every time you feel unhappy.

#7 Resolve to find a Yin for your Yang 

Walt Disney had Roy Disney, Steve Jobs had Steve Wozniak and Orville Wright had Wilbur Wright. Wherever there is great innovation, there is a Dreamer and an Operator; an Idea Monkey and a (Ring)leader. First, determine where your passions lie, then go find an equally passionate partner, then go change the world.

#8 Resolve to get outside your jar 

You can’t read the label when you are sitting inside the jar. The sad irony of being an expert is that it keeps you from seeing possibility. After all, you know what works, what doesn’t, what you can afford, what’s been tried in the past. Instead of relying only on your expertise, learn how to find other experts solving similar challenges to the ones you are facing. Go ask them what you may be missing.

#9 Resolve to be the creator

What is the outcome you want? What stands in your way? How do you overcome these obstacles? These three simple questions will keep you from being victimized by any situation. Creators change the world. Victims just bitch about stuff.

#10 Plan vacations (now)

You have probably heard the saying, “Life is what happens when you are not paying attention.” Unfortunately for many of us, we let this become true. Do yourself a favor and plan your vacations for the next year today. I promise you that the days around your vacation will fill in nicely. I also promise you that you’ll have something to look forward to and the life that happens during your vacations will be precious.

Happy New Year.

Be the Challenger

I try to come back to this article regularly to continually remind myself about the characteristics of successful sales relationships.  It's always fun to be peoples' friend, but at the end of the day, people invest in those that make their business better and more profitable.

Source:  HBR.org

Selling Is Not About Relationships

by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson 

Ask any sales leader how selling has changed in the past decade, and you'll hear a lot of answers but only one recurring theme: It's a lot harder. Yet even in these difficult times, every sales organization has a few stellar performers. Who are these people? How can we bottle their magic?

To understand what sets apart this special group of sales reps, the Sales Executive Council launched a global study of sales rep productivity three years ago involving more than 6,000 reps across nearly 100 companies in multiple industries.

We now have an answer, which we've captured in the following three insights:

1. Every sales professional falls into one of five distinct profiles.

Quantitatively speaking, just about every B2B sales rep in the world is one of the following types, characterized by a specific set of skills and behaviors that defines the rep's primary mode of interacting with customers:

• Relationship Builders focus on developing strong personal and professional relationships and advocates across the customer organization. They are generous with their time, strive to meet customers' every need, and work hard to resolve tensions in the commercial relationship.
• Hard Workers show up early, stay late, and always go the extra mile. They'll make more calls in an hour and conduct more visits in a week than just about anyone else on the team.
• Lone Wolves are the deeply self-confident, the rule-breaking cowboys of the sales force who do things their way or not at all.
• Reactive Problem Solvers are, from the customers' standpoint, highly reliable and detail-oriented. They focus on post-sales follow-up, ensuring that service issues related to implementation and execution are addressed quickly and thoroughly.
• Challengers use their deep understanding of their customers' business to push their thinking and take control of the sales conversation. They're not afraid to share even potentially controversial views and are assertive — with both their customers and bosses.

2. Challengers dramatically outperform the other profiles, particularly Relationship Builders.

When we look at average reps, we find a fairly even distribution across all five of these profiles. But while there may be five ways to be average, there's only one way to be a star. We found that Challenger reps dominate the high-performer population, making up close to 40% of star reps in our study.

What makes the Challenger approach different?

The data tell us that these reps are defined by three key capabilities:

Challengers teach their customers. They focus the sales conversation not on features and benefits but on insight, bringing a unique (and typically provocative) perspective on the customer's business. They come to the table with new ideas for their customers that can make money or save money — often opportunities the customer hadn't realized even existed.

Challengers tailor their sales message to the customer They have a finely tuned sense of individual customer objectives and value drivers and use this knowledge to effectively position their sales pitch to different types of customer stakeholders within the organization.

Challengers take control of the sale. While not aggressive, they are certainly assertive. They are comfortable with tension and are unlikely to acquiesce to every customer demand. When necessary, they can press customers a bit — not just in terms of their thinking but around things like price.

We'll discuss each of these capabilities in more depth in our upcoming posts, but just as surprising as it is that Challengers win, it's almost more eye-opening who loses. In our study, Relationship Builders come in dead last, accounting for only 7% of all high performers.

Why is this? It's certainly not because relationships no longer matter in B2B sales--that would be a naïve conclusion. Rather, what the data tell us is that it is the nature of the relationships that matter. Challengers win by pushing customers to think differently, using insight to create constructive tension in the sale. Relationship Builders, on the other hand, focus on relieving tension by giving in to the customer's every demand. Where Challengers push customers outside their comfort zone, Relationship Builders are focused on being accepted into it. They focus on building strong personal relationships across the customer organization, being likable and generous with their time. The Relationship Builder adopts a service mentality. While the Challenger is focused on customer value, the Relationship Builder is more concerned with convenience. At the end of the day, a conversation with a Relationship Builder is probably professional, even enjoyable, but it isn't as effective because it doesn't ultimately help customers make progress against their goals.

This finding — that Challengers win and Relationship Builders lose — is one that sales leaders often find deeply troubling, because their organizations have placed by far their biggest bet on recruiting, developing, and rewarding Relationship Builders, the profile least likely to win.

Here's how one of our members in the hospitality industry put it when he saw these results: "You know, this is really hard to look at. For the past 10 years, it's been our explicit strategy to hire effective Relationship Builders. After all, we're in the hospitality business. And, for a while, that approach worked well. But ever since the economy crashed, my Relationship Builders are completely lost. They can't sell a thing. And as I look at this, now I know why."

3. Challengers dominate the world of complex "solution-selling"

Given the first two findings, it might be reasonable to conclude that Challengers are the down-economy reps and that when things return to normal, Relationship Builders will once again prevail. But our data suggest that this is wishful thinking.

When we cut the data by complexity of sale — that is, separating out transactional, product-selling reps from complex, solution-selling reps — we find that Challengers absolutely dominate as selling gets more complex. Fully 54% of all star reps in a solution-selling environment are Challengers. At the same time, Relationship Builders fall off the map almost entirely, representing only 4% of high-performing reps in complex environments.

Put differently, Challengers win because they've mastered the complex sale, not because they've mastered a complex economy. Your very best sales reps — the ones who carried you through the downturn — aren't just the top performers of today but the top performers of tomorrow, as they are far better able to drive sales and deliver customer value in any kind of economic environment. For any company on a journey from selling products to selling solutions — which is a migration that more than 75% of the companies I work with say they are pursuing — the Challenger selling approach represents a dramatically improved recipe for driving top-line growth.

In the next post, we'll look at how Challengers teach their customers and how leading companies are equipping their salespeople to do the same.

For a graphical summary of our findings, click here

More blog posts by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson

More on: Sales

Presentation Structure: Make it a story- HBR.org

Structure Your Presentation Like a Story

by Nancy Duarte  |   8:00 AM October 31, 2012

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After studying hundreds of speeches, I've found that the most effective presenters use the same techniques as great storytellers: By reminding people of the status quo and then revealing the path to a better way, they set up a conflict that needs to be resolved.

That tension helps them persuade the audience to adopt a new mindset or behave differently — to move from what is to what could be. And by following Aristotle's three-part story structure (beginning, middle, end), they create a message that's easy to digest, remember, and retell.

Here's how it looks when you chart it out:

And here's how to do it in your own presentations.

Craft the Beginning
Start by describing life as the audience knows it. People should be nodding their heads in recognition because you're articulating what they already understand. This creates a bond between you and them, and opens them up to hear your ideas for change.

After you set that baseline of what is, introduce your vision of what could be. The gap between the two will throw the audience a bit off balance, and that's a good thing — it jars them out of complacency. For instance:

What is: We fell short of our Q3 financial goals partly because we're understaffed and everyone's spread too thin.

What could be: But what if we could solve the worst of our problems by bringing in a couple of powerhouse clients? Well, we can.

Once you establish that gap, use the rest of the presentation to bridge it

Develop the Middle
Now that people in your audience realize their world is off-kilter, keep playing up the contrast between what is and what could be.

Let's go back to that Q3 update. Revenues are down, but you want to motivate employees to make up for it. Here's one way you could structure the middle of your presentation:

What is: We missed our Q3 forecast by 15%.

What could be: Q4 numbers must be strong for us to pay out bonuses.

What is: We have six new clients on our roster.

What could be: Two of them have the potential to bring in more revenue than our best clients do now.

What is: The new clients will require extensive retooling in manufacturing.

What could be: We'll be bringing in experts from Germany to help.

As you move back and forth between what is and what could be, the audience will find the latter more and more alluring.

Make the Ending Powerful
You don't want to end with a burdensome list of to-dos. Definitely include a call to action — but make it inspiring so people will want to act. Describe what I call the new bliss: how much better their world will be when they adopt your ideas.

So if you're wrapping up that Q3 update from above, you might approach it this way:

Call to action: It will take extra work from all departments to make Q4 numbers, but we can deliver products to our important new clients on time and with no errors.

New bliss: I know everyone's running on fumes — but hang in there. This is our chance to pull together like a championship team, and things will get easier if we make this work. The reward if we meet our Q4 targets? Bonuses, plus days off at the end of the year.

By defining future rewards, you show people that getting on board will be worth their effort. It'll meet their needs, not just yours.

This is the fourth post in Nancy Duarte's blog series on creating and delivering presentations, based on tips from her new book, the HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations.

Read the other posts here:
Post #1: How to Present to Senior Executives
Post #2: Create a Presentation Your Audience Will Care About
Post #3: Do Your Slides Pass the Glance Test

More blog posts by Nancy Duarte

More on: Communication, Presentations

NANCY DUARTE

Nancy Duarte is the author of the all-new edition of the HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations, as well as two award-winning books on the art of presenting, Slide:ology andResonate. Her team at Duarte, Inc., has created more than a quarter of a million presentations for its clients and teaches public and corporate workshops on presenting. Follow Duarte on Twitter: @nancyduarte.