Executive Summary:
Executive Summary
Executive Summary
Nick Johnston is a serial entrepreneur, a leading sales professional and a successful business owner. He started his career in London’s competitive financial sector before being lured to Hong Kong by a business acquaintance. Using his financial services experience, the recruiting company, Wall Street Associates, was established with his business partner in Hong Kong before Nick decided to go it alone and focus on the Japan market.
In 2010 Wall Street was sold to en Japan, and Nick moved to Singapore to start the next phase of his life. Nick is now a private investor and business advisor and has a keen interest in HR technology solutions and HR business processes.
Craig: Can we start by talking about your experience as a sales executive; when you were an individual contributor and also when you owned a business.
Nick: I was a recruiter, and I set up a recruiting business, but a lot of the sales practices apply in many sales strategies, especially B2B. I learnt from an early mentor who told me: “Talk to decision-makers”. It’s the most common sense and logical piece of advice, however, it has been a challenge through my whole career in managing sales teams.
Getting sales professionals to talk directly with decision-makers is more difficult than it should be. People forget its importance. The decision-maker is in the best position to understand the requirements and the subtleties required to close the deal. For example, in the recruiting process, the decision-maker or hiring manager is in the best position to identify whether the candidates are technically strong or a great fit for their business. As well as this, some candidates undersell themselves. Therefore, my job was to get a great candidate in front of the decision-maker. This gave the best outcome.
Executive summary:
• Competent strategic sales executives are the “20%” in your team that contribute 80% of revenue.
• From your client list, establish the top 20% based on the potential opportunity (not historical opportunity because it is “history”). Develop an account plan for each. • The Key Competencies of a Successful Strategic Account Manager include commercial awareness, communication skills, ethics, results-oriented and problem-solving.
Over the years, I have had the great opportunity of working with groundbreaking companies who valued strategic selling and encouraging their best key account representatives to achieve the highest level of relationship with clients.
In the 1980s the American academic and researcher, Neil Rackham, established the Huthwaite Institute, published “SPIN Selling” and “Major Account Sales Strategy” and developed a close relationship with IBM and Xerox. These collaborations established the foundation for modern strategic account management methods and processes.
At the same time, both IBM and Xerox invested heavily in the development of their people. Around this time, I was participating in a training program at Xerox’s University, situated on a spectacular campus on the banks of the Potomac River in Leesburg, VA. Such was the commitment to training by the large leaders of US corporations.
Executive summary:
• The best sales professionals are outstanding at intensive farming of a territory.
• The best sales leaders apply a comprehensive territory management plan across their team. • Have a communicated rule on how often key accounts need to be engaged.
• Have communicated criteria on how accounts are graded.
• Insist on account management plans from the front-line account managers.
• Have multiple account managers working for large clients.
Who owns the relationship with your biggest clients?
If one of your key account managers leaves tomorrow does the relationship also leave the business?
Are new members in your sales team given a warm set of relationships or starting from the deep freeze?
What are your criteria for sales activity in your top 20 accounts?
Many years ago, I studied agricultural science at the University of New England in the northern tablelands NSW city of Armidale. As part of my studies, I learned the stark difference between the intensive farming that is found in horticulture or pork manufacturing compared with the broadacre requirements found on some beef properties in central Queensland. In the latter, the stocking rate could be where one beast requires 10 or 12 hectares on which to graze.
Related to this, I have found that the best sales professionals are outstanding at intensive farming of a territory. The less skilled requires a broad acre approach. This is also akin to “picking the low hanging fruit” without too much sweat or application.
Executive summary:
• All organisations are looking for sales professionals. Develop a comprehensive talent acquisition strategy.
• The training curriculum should cover onboarding, relevant professional development as milestones are achieved and leadership training. • It is a very high risk to have too much of the budget depending on one individual.
• Fraud in the sales process is more common than most people think.
• Protection of intellectual property (IP) can be achieved by including a data protection clause in employment contracts and reinforcing the company confidential nature of critical client data.
One of my trusted business advisors has a breath-taking level of confidence in the importance of marketing in scaling a successful business to new heights. Our discussions are always energetic, and we don’t agree on everything. He acknowledges the importance of the sales function in a fledgling organisation but enthuses about marketing’s potential and power. I find his strong viewpoint counterintuitive because he comes from a finance and accounting background and specialists from this area of the business are not the usual enthusiasts for elaborate marketing plans
Depending on your perspective: finance & accounting, marketing, sales, comprehensive operational excellence or people & culture; you are likely to have a preferred bias and focus.
At some stage, some focus for a founder wishing to build a business will be a comprehensive and professional sales function. If this is executed competently, then the sales function will be able to deliver the orders necessary to achieve the strategic revenue plan.
Executive Summary:
• Sales support should be used for the areas where salespeople are notoriously weak or relatively uninterested.
• Before adding the additional cost of sales support, it can be more cost-effective to provide necessary training and sales automation tools to enable the sales professional to be more productive.
• All salespeople are not created equal.
• Allocate expensive sales support in a careful and specific manner.
• Expect a return on investment. Measure and track this return.
The best sales professionals in the world are hardcore business practitioners. They understand their own specialist vertical intimately. They are well connected and highly remunerated. As a business owner, you want this. Sales professionals read their compensation agreement carefully and then set out to achieve the best outcome for themselves and the company.
When the planning and business analysis is done, the members of the top sales are 20% who contribute 80%.
In this situation, the average company provides a lot of support in pre-sales with the explicit goal of leveraging the highest performing sales members.
The case for providing sales support can be examined from two angles: skill enhancement and ROI.
The Balancing Act – Compensating Performance
Executive Summary:
• Provide a culture which aims at developing its people and compensating them fairly. • Mitigate risk by not having the organisation too dependent on any one individual.
• “A” Players love working with “A” Players and therefore, attract the same.
• The internal communications piece is a powerful retention tool. • What is the percentage of gross margin budgeted for total people costs?
• Be slow to give away equity.
Over a recent coffee in Sydney’s CBD area with a small business owner, I discussed her strategies for compensating her high performers. Her retention strategy for pillar leaders was to give them equity and pay them, on target, 50% above the market. On further exploration, she revealed how fearful she was of other key members leaving the organisation. However, despite showering this leadership team in gold, there had been a recent defection. There was shock and self-recrimination on what should have been done better to retain this “key” leader in the organisation.
People leave organisations. The reasons for leaving vary. It is rarely just for compensation. In a talent-short market, great talent will always have a choice. You should always assume your best talent is regularly being head-hunted. The best strategy is to provide a culture which aims at developing people and compensating them fairly. At the same time, it is important to mitigate risk by not having the organisation too dependent on any one individual. That includes you, the business owner. Sharon Koss writes that compensating performance needs to address three levels: • Talent attraction • Peak performance • Talent retention
2.3 Like a Great Red Wine: Developing a Leadership team
Executive Summary:
• Establishing a leadership team will gradually permit the business owner to move up “onto the business” and gain more time to think and strategise.
• It is important for every member to have a distinct role and a reason for being in the team, no passengers, only drivers.
• The leadership team should feature diversity in personality, business skills, gender and ethnicity.
• A weekly communications meeting can be effective and a quarterly or semiannual offsite to reset and align is paramount.
• Technically, each leader is expected to wear a different hat when they are in the leadership forum.
Being able to select a young red wine full of tannins and fruit and predict its greatness in 10 + years hence is an art. To the uninitiated, the wine could be almost undrinkable. However, to a trained and experienced wine drinker a relatively easy thing to accomplish.
Similarly, choosing your leadership team members from existing managers and staff is an art. The experience will make you better, but at first, there will be missteps. We all know that many great individual contributors cannot make the step up to management. In the same way, many managers cannot make the step up to be leaders.
Executive Summary:
• An organisation with a succession plan should have the capacity to ease a new manager into the role. • The soft skills and the associated people skills are those that need early focus.
• A new manager has to learn how to be selfish by treating their time as a valuable currency; trading the currency at pre-arranged times as much as possible.
• A new manager needs a business plan and vision of where the team is heading. • Team members need to own their own plans and are accountable.
• Reward and recognize individuals and the team.
The oft. neglected step in an organisation’s succession planning is an adequate preparation program for a new manager. There is a lot written about the importance of leadership and the differences between a manager and a leader. However, a reasonable and challenging first step is for an individual contributor to step up and manage a team.
The typical characteristics of the individual contributor in their previous life are quite often one of a high performing individual and a rising star with relative independence. However, the transition to manager is contrasting in many ways. I have seen this cause much stress and consternation, and so I want to share some of the coaching points to help you ease their pain, minimize the “crash and burn” outcome as a possibility and help set them up for success in as short a period as possible.
2.1 Tightly coupled with Strategy and Values – High-Performance Sales Culture
Executive Summary:
• Setting up the sales culture involves the provision of a CRM, sales training and KPI dashboards.
• The focus should be on sales process automation and effective use of sales time.
• Referring to the strategic plan: be clear about what you are selling and what is not being sold.
• Early communication and buy-in with sales leaders are essential. • Sales territories belong to the company, not the sales professional.
• Conduct regular performance reviews: sales members, territories and client. In business, there are few things more energizing than stepping onto a sales floor, which has an audible buzz and a clear sense of purpose. Contemporary sales models involve increasing levels of remote working conditions and digital communication. An accomplished leader can still generate great teamwork and a focused sales effort through regular online team meetings, conference calls, a focused CRM data entry strategy and 1:1 phone reviews.
Stop.
Sit.
Close your eyes.
Focus on your breathing.
Now visualize what your business looks like in 3 ~5 years. What will you be doing? What will be your business legacy? How will you measure the progress? Will you still be the owner? What is your strategic plan? Are you growing the business for the experience, challenge and reward of growing and managing a larger business?
When I ask a lot of my clients to give me the 3 ~ 5-year outlook, they find this one of the most difficult things to do. Quite often, they have not thought about it. If they have thought about it, they have not thought through the critical milestones.
There is a myriad of mid-term planning documents available on the web. All of them have very fancy diagrams, arrows and aspirational ways of achieving the strategic plan.
Without clear goals and a plan, human nature usually dictates that you will eventually become fatigued with the day to day challenge of running a business. Some business partners I work with have been successfully run their business for nearly eight years. As the fatigue starts to set in, they wonder what the point is or what is in store for them and the business.
Executive Summary:
• Without clear goals and a plan, you will eventually become fatigued with the day to day challenge of running a business.
• Taking time to visualise and put in your own words what you are passionate about can be very energizing and produce a clear and aligned purpose.
• “Achievable” means available skills, financial resources and market positioning.
For more than 15 years the European futurist Gerd Leonhard has been writing about the impact of technology on humans. He has challenged businesses to look into the future and spend more time strategising with an open mind about the impending changes to the technology landscape and how best to adapt. Leonhard’s approach has always been a proactive, positive endeavour with a problem-solving process that sets organisations up in a prepared way and ready for adaptation.
Related to this but with a different approach; “The Future of Work” is one of the hottest topics being Googled these days. Of course, the work is closely linked to business and its evolution. We are all told on frequent occasions that AI is coming, and we should get ready for a dramatic change around what we do for a living and whether our businesses are going to be relevant places where we work. In “Future Fit” Andrea Clarke talks about the era of rapid change and the requirement for an “adaptable mindset”.
Executive Summary:
• We are morphing into a new world which will allow companies, owners and employees to develop new skills, strategies, careers and markets. • Retraining is a way of life for most people.
• When mapping out a foundation on which to Scale New Heights, give adequate attention to the differentiators but also the emerging technologies and the required key skills.
In a recent interview with a CEO and APAC country manager, I learned that she had a manager who visited the country regularly and spent a lot of 1:1 time with her. I asked the CEO if this was a threatening or micro-managing style. The response from the CEO was that, initially, she thought it would be like that, but in reality, she was learning a lot from her manager, he was a great leader and mentor. She had a lot of respect for him and appreciated the time with him.
Many of us can recount the influential leaders we are experiencing or have experienced in our careers. The reason is that it does not happen many times for each of us and stands out as an event or period. Sadly, it sometimes does not happen at all. You will know when you have been led by an influential leader because you will regularly refer to the teachings, the mannerisms and the methodologies. You will adopt the best practices as your own but always remember how you came to learn them.
Executive summary:
• One of the key characteristics of a great leader is a strong sense of the Mission, Vision and Strategy for the organisation.
• A strategy map allows you to communicate the strategy in a consistent manner across the whole business.
• You will know you have been a great teacher when you hear the common language (initiated by you) used in meetings at all levels; everyone is pulling in the one direction and supporting each other.
• The strategy map provides a framework for the business reviews and ensures the company updates and priorities are relevant to the strategy.
Carlo’s diverse business experience has been with leading companies across FMCG, pharmaceutical, chemical, logistics, banking and government. Roles include sales & marketing, HR, and general management. He has also consulted and coached executives and held board appointments. Strategic business and organisation development are strong interests.
He places great emphasis on the customer, team relationships, performance achievement and leadership. He has always coached leaders to challenge the status quo, think in practical ways, develop in-house talent, and to be a catalyst for opportunity and ideas in the organisation.
Carlo has had leadership roles in the UK, Hong Kong and Australia.
Leveraging Strategy for Sustainable Business Results
A modest and quietly spoken CEO of a fast-growing FMCG I am working within SE Asia was recently bemoaning the fact that all functions in his business were not pulling in the same direction and this was starting to limit the business growth rate. It was clear from our discussion that this company has a clear Mission, Vision, Core Values and Strategy.
The problem seemed to be poor strategy alignment and the lack of a cascading strategy throughout the organisation. It is a common CEO lamentation globally but especially in the fast-growing SE Asia region where rapid growth is leading to many first-time management problems for young CEOs.
When a company is Scaling New Heights at a rapid pace, it is a challenge for the Board and the Executive Officers to ensure all the areas of the business are functioning efficiently. One reason is that rapid growth can take a lot of resources and, despite scaling, it means time for focus and strategy alignment is difficult or not deemed important.
Valuable Takeaways :
Warring factions? Your rationale for Strategy Invigoration and Alignment?
Consider the business challenge of a CEO for a fast-growing consumer business in South East Asia. Over the last five years, they have enjoyed a successful ride with impressive growth year on year that exceeded their company’s mid-term plan.
However, recently, they have found themselves with gaps in strategy alignment between the board and their leadership team. Their role has increasingly become one of peacekeeper rather than company visionary and leader. In this case, the problem lies in the absence of alignment between the direction the board wants to take the organization and the decision and priorities the leadership team prefers.
Valuable Takeaways :
Laying a Foundation - Leadership and Culture
Deciding on the company culture is the precursor for selecting and developing leaders. The process must be decided or owned by the CEO. It must project into the company values, talent acquisition, onboarding and compensation and benefits.
Many clients ask me how it is possible to Scale New Height with a sustainable business and grow market share. Of course, the answer is not simple, but a foundation piece is deciding on the components of the company culture.
As part of the required changes, a regular retort from the client is to ask about the outlying high performer. “…we have this high-level contributor, but they do not necessarily fit into the culture of the company…would you suggest letting them go?”
Valuable Takeaways :
Platitudes or imperatives, mission vision and strategy.
In this chapter, we'll consider that many companies have a mission and vision statement. However, the degree to which this is communicated, and the resultant engagement in the organization can be very different from these typically bold statements. Also that the CEO or managing director is responsible for regularly communicating the company mission and vision.
And finally, that the company mission, vision and strategy are business imperatives when they are current, well understood, and foster engagement. A few weeks ago, I spent a day interviewing the members of the leadership team of a fast growing services business in Southeast Asia. Talking with young, intelligent, energized and switched on leaders is always great. Within a few minutes, it is easy to ascertain which leaders understand the company mission, vision and strategy.
More importantly, one can gauge the level of engagement and alignment for each leader. In this particular instance, the responses varied from lack of engagement to operating with own agenda to fully engaged, I concluded there was a lack of alignment, which was one of the reasons for low company performance. If you want key stakeholders engaged and walking the talk on strategy and strategic priorities, then the best place to start is with the foundation pieces of mission and vision, platitudes or imperatives.
Valuable Takeaways:
