Business is a combination of war and sport.

The title of this blog is a quote from French Author, Maurois. It's a grouping of words that has always been so true, and a practical concept which is all-too-often left out of business courses which "prepare" our entry level athletes for a game they never expected.

Think about this... sport is defined as "an active diversion requiring physical exertion and competition", while war is defined as "the waging of armed conflict against an enemy."

There are some key words in there that really summarize an ideal business setting:

Active: Not passive. Passive employees get fired... eventually.

Diversion: Now, everyone may not agree with me, and I know that not everyone is in this situation, but your job should be a diversion. It should be fun, and ideally something you love. And I can honestly say that even if the tasks you have complete are not fun, you can make them fun if you're in the right company.

Exertion: This lines up next to Active, but I think that is a bit more colorful. After you leave work on a Friday evening, most people I know are exhausted. They want to go home, crash and are not heard until Saturday at the earliest. These are the people with tireless work ethic. These are the people who are exerting themselves. In my book, this is an awesome attribute for an employee.

Competition: There are so many ways we can define competition in business.

• You should complete with yourself daily to work faster, harder, more effectively, more efficiently, smarter, and maintaining the same or higher quality. Your job is not only a team sport, but an individual sport.
  
• You should compete with your immediate peers. Remember that there are less spots up top than at the bottom. If you want to grow, remember that your colleagues are a great source for healthy competition.
• Compete with the previous month, previous quarters and previous year. Compete with your goal. Use the numbers and KPIs as a competition to not only meet them, but to exceed them with no mercy.

Armed: Wars are waged without guns and weapons. Those are not the "arms" that we're talking about for successful business. We're talking about knowledge, skills and attributes (KSAs). When you're looking for a job, these are the tools that help you get in the door and qualify you for the job. The more KSAs you have, the more useful you're going to be. The better and stronger your KSAs are, the better you'll be than the person in the seat next to you. Don't every stop building your collection of knowledge and skills. They are the tools in your toolbox.

Conflict: What's the difference between conflict and competition. For the purpose of this, the key difference is that competition is a contest, where as conflict is disagreement or collision. Competition is pushing yourself; conflict is pushing others and others pushing you. As a result, conflict has a negative connotation. Conflict between individuals and departments needs to be healthy; unhealthy conflict leads to politics and silos (yuck!). Healthy conflict is my favorite ingredient in brainstorming sessions, and raising your team to the next level. Healthy conflict is evidence of trust among individuals, and respect of others' opinions. Healthy conflict brings about team and individual growth. Its a pretty amazing thing when you recognize that disagreement with trust and respect yield amazing results.

Enemy: Save the best for last... the threat. First off, the enemy is not always your competition - though they may be the most obvious one. Sometimes your enemy may be internal obstacle, or budget constraints or the infamous "red tape." It is the enemy that keeps us on our toes and having work-related dreams at night. It is the enemy that makes us want to strive that much harder to be armed, active and exerting ourselves. They are often a source of conflict and competition, or better yet, the motivation for that healthy conflict that takes us to the next level. While the enemy can make your life harder, they make victory so much sweeter.

Have you thought, lately, about your role in your industry? your business? your department?

Can you identify each of these elements for yours situation, and determine how they help or hurt you?

If you're lacking one - maybe its exertion - ask yourself 'why'? Without each of these elements, you're not performing at your highest level.

Sheep Herding for Dummies.

After writing yesterday's post, I came across a quote from Ken Blanchard:

"Too many leaders act as if the sheep - their people - are there for the benefit of the shepherd, not that the shepherd has responsibility for the sheep."

Had I had this yesterday, it could have been an additional paragraph, however, instead, it shall be a separate, but so appropriate follow-up.

While I am a bit conflicted by using an underlying Christian metaphor, it is at the same time appropriate so I have to run with it. Looking at Jesus as the ultimate shepherd, nothing he did was for himself. Whether you believe in the Jesus-figure, or follow the path of another religion, the story still rings true. As a leader, he was self-less and put his flock before himself. His every decision was based on the needs of the sheep, the people he was leading.

If you follow the Christian doctrine or not, I encourage you to still open your mind to the tale of Jesus and learn - if not from his faith stories - from his attributes as a leader and in leadership situations be courageous enough to ask yourself "What Would Jesus Do?"

Forget the business needs - look at your employee's needs!

They say there is no "I" in team. I disagree.

If you're a manager or leader, heading that team, you need to inspire each "I" in order for the team to function at its best. Life tells us that people aren't motivated solely because the team needs are met, but also because their personal needs are met. It is critical to understand the "I".

In his book, "Three Signs of a Miserable Job," Patrick Lencioni taught us that the main reasons people hate their jobs are they can't measure their results, they don't understand how they contribute to the bigger picture, and because they feel anonymous to their organization or leader. Focusing on anonymity, it is critical to learn as much as you can about your employee as possible. Make personal connections; ask them what motivates them; be engaged in their life and let them know you actually pay attention to the above.

In doing this, however, we - leaders - often make the mistake of assuming we understanding a team-member's individual needs. We assume that the way they show up everyday is the biggest clue as to how they prefer and/or need to be motivated. This is a classic "Ass-U-Me" situation. This is also a mistake that many coaches, mentors, teachers, trainers and even parents make - then scratching our heads wondering why our team members (sometimes our personal teams too - like our family and relationships) aren't happy. The truth is that our needs - the things that motivate us to act at our best performance level - are rarely observable by those around us; they can't be assumed with a high degree of accuracy.

I encourage you to look into the Birkman Method - the only personality assessment with the ability to help your team understand each others' needs. This tool is literally the lens to the motivated team.

Training as a Product

With the economic crunch arguably continuing, every business is looking to find a means to differentiate. Every sales person is looking for a means of rooting themselves in the client in order to assure not only today's dollars, but tomorrow's dollars as well.

Training can be used as a client-facing value add - and one which can create a strong lasting impression. In every company, you have experts in what you do. If you don't have at least one expert, then you have bigger worries. These experts, and often the practitioners, are capable of putting together a training on topics which relevant to your product and how they benefit your clients. This isn't a sales pitch, but a value add topical presentation to educate and demonstrate expertise.

Corporate education is most commonly thought of in terms of internal training and the first priority being your staff. This is understood and certainly important. But it is also important to find creative ways of enabling your front-line to develop lasting business relationships in a new sales paradigm. You have competitors, and in addition you must consistently demonstrate differentiation if many ways.

Training as a Product, or as a value-add, allows your organization to demonstrate to your clients that "we are the experts" and "we want to teach you to about fishing" (note: I did not say teach them how to fish.) The more they know about your field and your area of expertise, the smarter buyers they become. The more you teach them about becoming a better buyer, the more loyal they become.

Its not rocket science - its just basic sales. The basics, though, are what we oft forget.

In business, there is only one thing that is constant

Have you ever gone into work on a day and realized that everything is exactly the same as it has ever been? Neither have I.

While I say this half-joking, any successful business changes by the day, by the hour and sometimes by the minute. Especially in today's fast paced society, change seems to be the only constant.

So if change is the only constant, why are employees so bad at handling it? why are managers so crappy at managing it? and why isn't the word change replaced in our conversations with words like "innovation," "improvement," "launching," "propelling forward," etc.

The reason is simple - because as humans we suck at handling change. It is not natural to us, and is not part of our mold. While we've developed so many amazing appendages through evolution and natural selection, we have not developed the capacity to appropriately handle change flawlessly.

So here are some of the most forgotten, yet simplest, things to know and/or do to avoid your team, business, organization being managed by they the change, rather than managing the change yourselves:

1. SARAH: This acronym is a favorite of mine. It lays out the 5 steps which people go through when change is introduced. When you introduce change, be cognizant of the human element of the change, versus just saying "we'll get there"

• Surprise!: That's right - if they didn't see it coming, they're surprised. And no, this is not rocket science.
  
• Anger: Now, not all employees will be throwing chairs, but you bet they are cursing you under their breathe, to each other and other signs of contempt. You are no longer their best friends - and you probably never were.
  
• Resistance: When change comes, you want things to be back to the comfortable way they were. Think about breaking up with someone. If you're not making that decision, you long for the comfortable life you had, versus the potential rollercoaster of unknowns ahead. Thus you resist the idea that change must happen.
  
• Acceptance: There are two types of acceptance. There's "This is the best thing, and I'm on board." Then there's "Ah shit... if I want a paycheck, I guess I have to deal with this and move forward." The first one is the easiest to deal with. The latter is the one you need to look out for - and in my experience - more common.
  
• Help!: It is the last stage of people's natural reaction to change to want and/or ask for help. Doesn't that seem illogical? Sounds more like a man asking for directions. But it is true. Up until this point, the focus is on dealing with the change as a person. Only once it is accepted will they motivate themselves to ask for help.
  

2. Offer help! Now you know where this is coming from, right? If it is the natural tendency for employees to not ask for help until the end, we must offer it as often as we can. It must not be optional, and it must be positive. An interesting way to see who has accepted the change is to have an optional "help session" and watch only 25% of your staff show up. Tech sessions with sharing best practices, new skills, new knowledge acts as a therapy session for people to really share and learn about the information that will get them to accept faster.

3. Change the way you manage. Any change is simply the first domino. And in order to be successful, it is going to hit many many more dominoes along the way. The first needs to be the manager-employee relationship. Oddly enough, this rarely happens. The manager coaches, mentors and handles their team in the exact same fashion they always have. They don't enforce the change, discuss it with their team, let alone discussing it one-on-one with their players. If you expect your players to be playing by new rules, you have to coach them by the new rules. Period.

4. Be happy about the change. Enough said.

Leveraging Video WebConferencing for Training and Business

In recent months, I, as well as our organization, have been turned onto the use of video chat for communication. Being a global organization, the value of being able to chat face-to-face has been beneficial in building and keeping rapport. For me, it has also put me on a quest to find the next best thing when it comes to video conferencing - a voyage which is still not completed.

The benefits for me have been priceless. First - the personal side of the coin... As an INTP, keeping my attention through an entire email or phone conversation is not likely. Face-to-face communication is always preferred because I need to hold myself accountable for paying attention, keeping eye contact, and appearing that I care what the other person is saying (which I do... usually). With the ability to video-chat with someone miles and miles away, my attention span has increased and retention of those calls has been excellent. While this may be a personal note, I'm sure that many of you can relate.

That said, it has also been used for those note "miles and miles away." My admin, Melissa, is amazing. She splits her time between multiple teams and stretches herself. The downfall is that she and I are on different floors, so if we want to have a quick face to face, we have to get up off our tails and move. Now, as you may have inferred from the previous paragraph, I often don't want to get up off my tail and move. So not only am I videoconferencing with folks in Europe and Asia, but now I'm video conferencing with coworkers one floor above me.

As a last examples, we've been using this for our daily huddles - a team of five with four in the US and one in the UK. To date, we've been gathering around one computer here in the states and hoping that our UK comrade can see us all clearly (though some mornings, we're probably glad he can't). So that leads me to the next stop of my voyage... where is there a GREAT, ECONOMICAL video web conferencing platform which will allow many of us to talk, share and see each other seamlessly.

So before looking forward, a quick look back -

First I started with Skype and GoogleTalk (Gchat, Gtalk). Skype and GTalk both allow users to have one-on-one video conferencing at no cost. For the business user, this has helped to reshape the way many of us communicate. Now, in addition to providing new colleagues/vendors with my phone and email, I also send them my skype contact as well, hoping that they'll be up for face to face time when they're trying to sell me whatever it is they're trying to sell me. As time has moved on, more people wanted to chat, and I also started to use this for personal conversations as well. Something I really appreciate and enjoy. It has replaced the phone with a few of my friends, and I hope more and more join on the bandwagon as time goes on.

Currently, I'm exploring a tool called TokBox - www.tokbox.com. This seems to be the best tool (price, quality, ease of use taken into account) that I've found. First, its free for webconferencing up to 20 people. That is unheard of. Secondly, its FREE!! Get my point?

I'll have to admit here that I've only been using TokBox for about a week, but I'll also admit that I'm smitten over it. The quality of most sessions has been good, though I've only maxed out at 5 users. I have noticed a trend that trouble starts to brew when crossing continent boundaries, but I'm hesitant to blame that on the platform - could be bandwidth, PC issues, etc. But that is still something I'd like to see made a bit easier across many tools (especially as those are the colleagues its most beneficial to use with).

p.s. If you scroll down on this page, you'll also notice that I've embedded tokbox into my blog. That is how exciting this truly is!

So help guide me on my voyage - are there tools out there that I'm missing that are better than TokBox? I've done some searching, and I'm betting someone out there has a better solution to share. So please - just share it.

"How to select a sales training company" from the ASTD 2010

A summary of the "how to select a sales training company" attended on Monday at the ASTD Conference. This session was most helpful as i am currently knee deep in the evaluative and investigate process of working with a number of outside firms to determine a best-fit for SSI.

Dave Stein's session will surely make me take a step back, hopefully not a large step, to evaluate the evaluation and increase the odds of success. Frankly, it also has me asking myself the questions "are we better off hiring a full time, experienced sales trainer" to assure that there is indeed a 'warranty' on services rendered.

I hope that this summary provides you with some great insight as it did for me.

Presented by Dave Stein - CEO & Founder of EB Research Group, Inc. You can read Dave (excellent) blog at http://davesteinsblog.esresearch.com/

Sobering facts about Sales Training
Sales leaders typically choose a trainer who:
- trained them when they were a junior sales professional
- has the latest hot book
- presented at a conference or webinar they attended
- recommended by a colleague
- have a recognize brand

85% of third party sales truing delivered results in no more than a 120-day blip in productivity

Sales training industry is highly fragmented, with the largest near 80M USD... If could be a two- or three-person firm that best meets your needs.

On average, ESR's clients switched sales training vendors every three years.

Fewer than 10% of sales training companies will provide a credible ROI as part as part of their proposal. (ask for a guarantee or warranty on services)

CONCLUSION: Much more often than not, outsourced sales training is a TRAIN-WRECK.

Winkel's POV: with regard to this background information, it actually sums up how I was taught to seek out vendors. Go with what you know. The training selection process, however, needs to be far more investigative and seeking out the company that is the bet fit - not the company that you've heard of which seems to be a good fit. Thinking about the investment which a sales training initiative can mean for any organization, these facts truly make you take a step back and say "Holy cow! Let's make sure we're in the minority and do this right!"

A strategic approach to (sales) training - 8 Steps to Minimize Risk
1. Assess
- single most important factor = how your clients buy from you
- overlooking this step is the most common reason for mismatch between org and sales trainer choice

2. Gap Analysis
- understanding how we sell based on how they buy

3. Benchmark current performance
- measure where we are now based GAP Analysis
... Average price,length of sales, etc. (what are the metrics you want to move)
...from a timing standpoint, this is the shortest step as you should have access to these metrics from step 2.

4. Vendor selection
- this was truly the meat to Dave's presentation. This is covered thoroughly below.

5. Methodology
- if the training and the learning doesn't impact behavioral change, then the training won't be effective, generally. The training must enable to use of the organizations sales processes, rather than simply support it.

6. Infrastructure
- are the right pieces in place to enable and enforce learning
- structure, managers, compensation, schedule, etc.

7. Ongoing learning
- it does not stop when the sessions are over - what plan is in place to enforce this, and continue the discussion, share feedback, etc.

8. Measure and adjust
- reassess- once done once, the timeframe is far shorter and consolidated, but must be ongoing to assure that the post 120 day criteria is met.

Vendor Evaluation (step 4 from above)
1. Convert requirements definition to RFP

Your customer requirements
- Your current capabilities
----------
= Gap
- Insourced capabilities meeting requirements
-----------

= Outsourcing requirements

2. Build a long list of suspects
- more than 300 in US
- more than one will meet your requirements and could be the right fit

3. Publish an RFP
- Have executive level sponsorship
- state your need (from outsourced requirements above)
- budgeted (don't need to specify the amount, just that its enough)
- timeframe - response and decision
- minimal vendor influence on criteria - "this was written by us, not by your competitor nor another vendor who is filling out this RFP"
- even playing field - "by responding to this RFP, you have the same odds as any other vendor responding as well"

If you don't have the internal expertise to execute this, hire an independent firm to conduct the assessment who will then NOT be bidding for the business.

4. Review responses
- objectivity
- Priority weighting
- team evaluation
- vendor capabilities
- etc - what is important to the client

11 critical vendor capabilities
- methodology
- Breadth and depth of programs
- effectiveness of the programs
- instructional design
- ability to customize
- learning technology
- Sales manager/coaching programs
- train the trainer
- customer satisfaction
- performance measurement
- ongoing reinforcement

5. Determine short list candidates

- objective, measurable, apples to apples

6. Open dialogue with short list

- Subjective

- Provide access for answers

- Understand vendors job

- Do they use the methodology they are planning to teach your team? Do they practice what they preach?

7. Vendor Presentations

- stick with the agenda

- vendors use this as a way to mask areas where they lack capabilities, so hold their feet to the fire on what YOU want to hear

8. Final proposals

- Narrow down the field post-presentation if appropriate

- Post-presentation vendor fine-tuning

- Reference checking -- if they give you 5, ask for 10

9. Negotiations

- Take into account: rates, margins, licensing, R&D, customization, etc.

10. Contract

11. Engagement commences

Best practices

1. Get an objective assessment of your situation - not from your vendor

2. Set the rules for vendors access to your people and stick with them

3. Allow finalists to present their vision of a solution and allow them to differentiate themselves.

5. Meet the people who you'll be working with

Recommendations

- Take a strategic approach to your sales performance improvement challenges

- Do not engage with a sales company until you understand your requirements

- Go about sleeting a training company methodically and carefully

- Build a whole plan and then execute in phases.

Winkel's POV: This was eye-opening to me, as I am not a fan of RFPs. However, Dave's insight helped to shape a mindset where the POV is really meant to start a conversation, feel out the right fit objectively, and then take a subjective approach. Dave's methodology simply makes sense, is not rocket-science, and provides a start-to-finish (and then start again) approach which also assures that you are measuring what you're managing.

Dave's most interesting point (to me) --

"The most successful sale trainers are those trainers which consistently and
immediately convey that they can help put more money in their pocket."

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Chicago