Graham Swann’s recent jibe that England continue to single-handedly keep Test cricket alive became a nail-bitingly brilliant mantra for the final day’s play in Cape Town’s drawn Third Test. With the final rubber about to start, I spent some downtime flicking on the cricketing web through recent analysis and came across Ashes winning pair of Captain Michael Vaughan and coach Duncan Fletcher discussing their approach.
There were some delightful pointers to anyone running a sales team, many of which reference the 2005 reclamation of the Aussie’s long-held urn:
Trustful Relationship - This is essential in any team. It stems from respect and confidentiality. Respect in each other’s ability and their knowledge, and knowing the other person’s faults (both technical & personal) but keeping them to yourself.
Shared Vision - Everyone must both be ‘on the same page’ as well as having the same focus and horizon. In their case, they each saw the 2005 series as their focus and knew the team make-up would need to change to meet that challenge in the two-year run-up to it.
Get Character - Talent is not enough. They deliberately sought players that would have the character to fight. The same went for their backroom, of which they couldn’t speak highly enough. Of all the contentious selection decisions they made, the person that won out was always the one which they felt demonstrated their desired character (Pietersen over Thorpe’s dodgy back, achievement connected to his 100th cap just gained and mental scars from previous drubbings and Jones ousting Read for the gloves due to his batting).
Show Consistency - It is vital to show this from start to finish. When something went badly wrong in the first game of a big series, what has changed to make you think that the team originally chosen is no longer fit for the duration? In their eyes, the answer is nothing, as vindicated by their (admittedly bizarre injury to McGrath aided) Lords-Edgbaston turnaround. When you suddenly lose one, remember the terrific twelve months you had beforehand and think of that, rather than dwell on the loss. And the same goes when getting a youngster in to replace a legend. See their potential and allow them to develop into their own legend.
I’m involved on a project aiming to launch a technologically advanced product into an arena where legislation has removed any current viable options. There’s a yawning market gap compounded by substitute solutions being woefully inadequate.
The entry-level version of the product will retail at around $40. It is mass-market with first year projections for six-figure unit sales.
Two ad agencies have been approached for an initial campaign, costed just below $400,000. One of them summed up their approach to market as
“hit it hard, hit it fast”.
Although this struck me instantly as skewed towards their own and short-term agenda, it did neatly sum up what everyone wants to do when launching a brand new product. First-mover advantage can be vital, but how do you utilise it rather than simply stoke demand for competitive entrants?
Interestingly, when I had a little ailment randomly, suddenly appear a while back, the doctor’s advice was exactly the same phrase. And I was cured.
From my experience in this area, this is one mantra that solution sales teams can definitely use to their advantage to help focus their support efforts for new product launches.
Having recently spent many fun-filled days with, among others, a friend that owns a cool chain of London pubs as England somehow salvaged a draw in the Cape Town Test, I learnt plenty about the intricacies of running a gastropub.
One insight was when an order in Capetonian institution, Forresters, went way south. As an aside, one reason why remedy was so elusive was because incredibly the waitrons, and not the kitchen staff, had any mistakes deducted from their wages. In the end, the manager (as labelled by one of our troop, he “couldn’t run a bath”) accepted calls for an “apology pizza”.
I instantly recalled two similar philosophies. A kick-off conference many years ago in the courier industry where the Chief Exec had a slot about how everyone messed up, and as they did more than most, he urged his charges to admit to problems immediately and try and make amends. Do not let it fester, communicate, make compensatory gestures and people remember these actions. Then there was the UK’s largest pub chain that tried to instill in their barstaff to adapt a mindset of “glorious recovery from failure”.
Apparently, having a string of ‘apology pizza’-style options quickens resolution and heightens the prospect of return business.
The other main insight is that each time the gastropub chain revamps a menu, they’ve noticed that whatever they put on it or how ever they change it, the biggest sellers are always Sausage & Mash and Fish & Chips.
A discussion I enjoyed the other day was with a chap holding a doctorate in public administration.
He described someone as having a reputation for being a project initiator rather than project finisher. Nothing wrong in that at all, except that the person in question erroneously thought of themselves as a project finisher.
This got me thinking though. I wondered if these traits were actually mutually exclusive, opposing poles on a scale where it’d be virtually impossible to find someone that majored in both?
Almost simultaneously, a friend of mine who set up an artificial grass business a couple of years ago is now successful enough to merit taking on extra sales resource.
In our chat on the subject it was clear that he was torn by the classic quandary of what the new sales person would do. Should they go out and create their own leads or pursue his web and press ad generated ones?
My hunch is that although renowned sales operations separate initiation from finishing, most of us need to do both. The starting point is to put in place a disciplined process that allows for sufficient initiation to take place.
This is a phrase I heard a highly experienced accountant say in a meeting the other day.
Its context was that a partnership was in play between a producer and a distributor. The one that made the product had only got into the market in the first place by teaming up with the person that could get their wares into retail. Despite agreeing to an exclusive arrangement, the producer was now actively seeking alternate routes to market. Consequently in direct breach of their deal, the whole enterprise was in danger of abrupt failure.
Yet this seemed so unnecessary, as success was undoubtedly accruing to all parties. The producer needlessly risked jeopardising the entire endeavour over his greed for a few dollars more.
The result at this time was that the distributor’s enthusiasm for these particular wares began to wane. It seemed a classic case of true win-win philosophy being ignored. At no stage did the producer ever frame anything from the distributor’s viewpoint, whereas the distributor constantly referred to how better-off the producer was, and could continue to be.
