We get paid for our promises.

This specific text message was nothing special. It was from my bank – an alert that a client had sent me an engagement fee for a consulting project… And that’s when it struck me. I had given this client no samples; no brochures; nothing tangible at all. We had just talked.

Talk.

That’s it. He sent me some money because we talked. I implied that I could help solve a problem, in essence I just promised to help. He believed me, so he sent the money that I asked for.

In many ways, this is the heart of all business. A lawyer promises to solve a legal problem. An investment advisor promises to care for your money. A restaurant promises to give you good food and good service. A brand promises to deliver a consistent experience.

Not all of these promises are kept, but buyers buy because they believe that they will be kept.

So I know – this is not earth shattering news,  but it is an important perspective nonetheless. Our customers will buy from us if – and only if – they believe our promises.

So then, in order to sell, we need to be convincing. We can do this honestly or not.

To be convincing in a dishonest way won’t get you repeat business, referrals, recommendations or peace of mind. So let’s forget about that and focus on the honest approach.

The best way to be convincing in an honest way is to know our business well, and to communicate that clearly and with conviction. Let’s break that down.

Know our business:
No matter what you sell, you probably spend more time on it than your clients do. This gives you the opportunity to share your knowledge and to help them make a buying decision in a more informed way than they could without you.  Take this perspective – that you help the prospective client buy with your informed input, and you both will be happy with the interactions you have and the transactions you make together.

Communicate it clearly:
Over time, you will find that many of your customers want to know similar things about your business.  You will also find that certain ways of saying what you have to say resonate better with prospective clients.  Figure these things out.  On the other side, there are certain questions that are the most fruitful in getting the information you need, or certain statements that your clients make that require some clarification in order for you to get the most clear picture of their situation.  Communication is how you will differentiate yourself and simultaneously learn about the needs of the client.  Study this well and master it.  It will – unquestionably – make all of the difference in the world.

Communicate it with conviction:
Never – ever sell something you don’t believe in.  That said, if you believe in your product or service, and believe that the prospective client will benefit from using it, let your enthusiasm show.  You don’t need to be a cheerleader or a carnival act to convey enthusiasm.  Simple body language and tone of voice are enough.  When you believe in your product, and discuss it with energy and enthusiasm, your clients will notice.  Be subtle about it, but know your business, believe it in and speak about it with conviction.

When you communicate clearly and with conviction, and your communication has value to the client because you know your business well, then it is easy for people to believe you, and to accept your promises.  This is not a quick fix or a magic act, but if you do the work to be believable, it might just feel like one when it comes time to count up your results.

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Click here to read more blog posts by David Masover

Click here to buy “Mastering Your Sales Process” by David Masover on Amazon

Click here to learn more about David’s upcoming book on sales management

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I. Role of Engagement Leader with Internal Stakeholders

Business leaders want to build on, expand and sustain their company’s success. Insightful ones know that engaging their internal stakeholders is vital for assuring that there will be buy in and ownership throughout the organization to achieve ambitious (or even basic) goals.

While leaders usually have explicit frameworks for other internal processes, they often do not have a clear engagement action plan. The following example demonstrates how engagement leaders aligned internal stakeholders at a critical juncture in their company’s history. While this case is about a family-owned business, the core principles of increasing internal engagement apply to other corporate structures.

Case I: The Patriarch Always Ran the Show

Challenge: Instituting change and improving the organizational structure to save a struggling company, at which a strong founder led for 40 years without engaging others in key decisions.

First Engagement Leader: Andreas Müller, oldest son of founder/family patriarch, Jürgen Müller.

Outcome: By successfully engaging with his father, other family and non-family employees, and board members, Andreas revived the company and simultaneously increased profits and morale.

From its home base in Germany, Müller Holdings had operations throughout the world and it had customers on virtually every continent. This family-owned business had reached its fifth decade when its founder, Jürgen Müller, cognitively knew it was time to share responsibilities with the next generation who held board and senior management positions. But emotionally, he wasn’t ready to let go because of his doubts that any of his family members could run his “baby” and he certainly wasn’t about to consider non-family members.

Jürgen personally made every key decision, directing family members to execute them. The board of directors (a handful of family members) rubber stamped all his decisions. Senior management – also all family members – jumped into action whenever Jürgen had a new idea. Thus, despite the company’s tremendous success, Müller Holdings had no real institutional structure. Although the company had thrived over four decades, it was now carrying serious debt and facing declining revenues taking them consistently further into the red, a matter of grave concern to the founder.

While he still didn’t understand that the slump was a direct result of a lack of broad engagement in the future success of the business, he allowed his oldest son, Andreas, to enlist a change management consultant to help form a strategy to focus strictly on the financial issues. After an early discovery phase, the consultant helped Andreas grasp that he had to address a larger engagement problem. They identified several people with the requisite strategic relational engagement (SRE) skills who could be trained to be engagement leaders. With some basic SRE framework guidance, they could then achieve buy-in among a broader spectrum of internal stakeholders, thereby motivating them to collaborate in saving the company.

All too often, a CEO or an executive team come up with the “perfect” strategy, only to see it wither away because of lack of buy-in by the people who actually have to execute it. So, whether your company has a gifted facilitator internally, or, must contract an external advisor at the start, you need to set up a structure and process for enabling engagement leadership to flourish. This is the only way to translate vision into action. As Peter Drucker, one of the most influential thinkers on management theory and practice, famously said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Next Generation Knew It Was Unsustainable

Andreas realized his aging father could not solely sustain the company into a quickly-evolving future. Substantial changes had to be made. But first, Andreas had to convince Jürgen it was time for him to loosen the reins, which was no easy feat. After spending a lot of time discussing the company’s future, Andreas eventually won Jürgen’s trust and became one of the first of several engagement leaders at Müller Holdings, albeit within a limited scope initially.

Whether you work in a family-owned business or a multi-national corporation, you may have experienced the challenge of trying to drive someone in leadership to recognize the time has come to let go and open up what they’ve long held close to the vest. Resistant leaders may appreciate the reality, sometimes dire, but may still feel too threatened to accept initiatives that don’t originate with them. As an engagement leader, you often have to start with small steps and show early successes before they can adopt larger changes.

Additionally, you must reassure them that you have their and the company’s best interest at heart, and that your actions won’t diminish their stature or impact. Even in the quagmire of deeply internal family dynamics, Andreas had that ability. But it is not always the “heir apparent” who has these skills. As the process of change began, several people at all levels of the Müller organization emerged with or developed skills to serve as engagement leaders. Through this iterative process, increased engagement started to achieve buy-in throughout the hierarchy.

Taking the First Steps

An engagement leader can work from any position to create a level of comfort for peers, subordinates and even superiors. They can put themselves in another’s shoes. Whether working horizontally or vertically, an engagement leader earns trust by giving others a sense of belonging, empowerment and validation. In turn, each newly-engaged stakeholder then forms expanded concentric circles of trust to create a larger sense of shared purpose and benefit.

Andreas knew that the center of his circle was Jürgen, whom he convinced to begin a next-decade plan. He was wise enough to initially appeal directly to his father’s pressing desire to increase revenues and decrease costs. Andreas’ sensitivity to start engaging with Jürgen on an issue the founder cared about allowed Jürgen to feel comfortable with ultimately allowing his heir and others – starting with a concentric circle of immediate family and building out from there – to start pursuing a more ambitious plan for the future survival of the company and restructuring it accordingly.

This is an example of how an engagement leader using strategic relational engagement (SRE) can unite disparate parties (even within the same organization) with differing interests to participate in a larger shared effort. This was exemplified at Müller Holdings because Jürgen accepted the planning process for specific tactical reasons, while Andreas knew they would uncover larger strategic opportunities for the company’s sustainability and viability. By commencing with the least threatening activity, they ultimately conducted a complete transformation of their global business.

“My father cherished the company he created and retained power to protect it. He became willing to relinquish some of that power in order to address our dire financial straits. And I was right in believing we could engage in a much more comprehensive change process if we were victorious within those initial parameters.” – Andreas Müller, CEO, Müller Holdings

Since Andreas was dealing with “the boss” – in this case, his father – he was especially respectful of Jürgen’s position as founder. With the assistance of a change management consultant, Andreas began to gently nudge his father towards seeing the bigger picture. You may have been in the position of wanting to initiate a really big change, and perhaps you, too, learned that the proverbial longest journey starts with the smallest step. Having SRE skills increases the likelihood that, as an engagement leader, you will take the right steps with the right people in the right order.

Moving Forward

To implement the change process, Andreas set up some early “easy wins,” using the family’s previously untapped skills to earn his father’s confidence that the next generation truly could keep things running smoothly, if given the authority. Andreas began by proposing that Jürgen remain as Chairman of the Board while Andreas became CEO. Other senior positions were filled by trusted family members with the right skill sets: nephew Gerhard became COO, daughter-in-law Anja became CFO, and other family members were given new senior management roles and responsibilities.

As important as their ability to perform operational functions was, the new executives had to have equal ability to effect change. They were chosen because they knew how to use SRE engagement leadership skills to align others around fulfilling specific missions to achieve the company’s overall goals. They were all good listeners, open to constructive critique and insights, first from their counterparts and then their subordinates. This sparked renewed, palpable excitement among a greater number of internal stakeholders at all levels of the business – and this energy was transmitted from the top to the bottom and back up the chain, reinforcing itself in the process.

Together, they created an institutional structure that encouraged cross-functional collaboration among senior leadership and their respective teams. At a weekly senior management meeting, these executives shared updates and gave each other support and honest feedback. Immediately following each meeting, the executives discussed the topics covered and decisions reached with their respective teams, from whom they sought the same level of support and candor. They began visiting their operations globally, many of which were managed by non-family members who, for the first time, were invited to participate in this give-and-take engagement.

The positive, synergistic impact of this far broader engagement was immediately felt. Team spirit, which had been lagging in the face of growing debt and a stalled business, was sparked and then began to flourish. With subsequent iterations of shared information and feedback from affected stakeholders continually informing the next set of decisions, a sense of ownership permeated the entire business structure, encouraging employees throughout the hierarchy. This new spirit of engagement had the desired financial effect Jürgen wanted, and it also created a much more innovative environment because stakeholders at every level genuinely felt invited to participate.

Expanding Stakeholder Engagement

Great ideas started to be presented from all over the world. Throughout the company, they continued to refine SRE processes so the wisest decisions could be made systematically. People who had earlier felt they were simply cogs in a machine now felt empowered, because they were being actively engaged and their inputs were affecting company decisions. Senior management benefitted from many formerly untapped employees who now felt a real stake in the future of the company because of being validated. This made the family feel more confident about expanding efforts towards even greater inclusiveness, which in turn engaged larger numbers of their non-family internal stakeholders. This substantially contributed to a quicker turn-around to profitability and progress.

Now the company had something it greatly needed: an institutional capacity to move forward. This capacity was strengthened further when they created a genuine, functioning board – the next stage of enhanced engagement. With Jürgen at the helm, board members were assigned explicit obligations as committee chairs of finance, nominations, governance, operations, etc. Most striking about this new development was that close friends who had financially invested in the company were invited to serve on the board for the first time. The newly constituted board began holding regular meetings of its working committees, a basic good governance procedure they had never used before. As a result, long-time allies shifted from being passive supporters to becoming active advocates. This broadened the spectrum of expertise and energy the company needed to regain its footing.

These new people felt empowered to step up to the plate as engagement leaders. For example, Dieter Schroder, a long-time investor who’d always felt side-lined (and slighted) by the Müller family, was now the finance chair of the newly constituted board. He made enormous contributions to the company’s financial stability and also identified and recruited other non-family investors to help shape the company’s future with their own respective areas of expertise. At first, Jürgen resisted bringing in “outsiders” (as he viewed all non-family members), but because he was so impressed by what Dieter had accomplished in a short time, Jürgen began to trust Dieter’s recommendations about potential new board members. This is a great example of the power of engaging more stakeholders, based on concentric circles of trust. The concept of “family” was broadened to include anyone who cared.

“I always admired my friend Jürgen and supported him to the degree he allowed, but I knew he had never fully trusted me, as I was not in his family. Once he allowed me to play a greater role in the company, I unleashed my energies on behalf of helping him save what I’d watched him create over many decades.” – Dieter Schroder, board finance chair, Müller Holdings

A New Era for an Old Company

Based on what engagement leaders – some whom might have been expected to serve this role (e.g. son Andreas) and others who were a pleasant surprise (e.g. non-family member investor Dieter) – did to align stakeholders through SRE, the re-engaged organization went from being severely in the red to breaking even in the first year after this reorganization. Over the next three years, revenues rose substantially and costs were cut each year. They were able to do this through ideas that emerged from many sources – again, some anticipated and others truly unexpected. Ever since, Müller Holdings has achieved significant annual growth and profitability. Jürgen Müller is now extremely trusting and proud of his children, other employees and board members, all of whom are confident the company will perform strongly well into the future. Everyone has bought in to a shared commitment to engaging each other as a core principle of shareholder involvement.

“I spent my life building this business and I was not about to let it be run by ‘strangers,’ despite their qualifications. Six years after we commenced a phased-in transformation initiated by my eldest son, I now trust those around me beyond just my family to sustain my legacy.” – Jürgen Müller, founder/chair, Müller Holdings

Many have worked in environments where the person at the top, or even the entire senior management team, is fearful of anything other than policies or procedures they themselves put in place. In fact, that person might be you as the head of a particular business line, region or even an entire company. In typical command and control mode, they (you) simply did not take advantage of opportunities that didn’t originate with them (you). Taking lessons from Müller Holdings, perhaps you now have a better understanding of how you might introduce (or be introduced to) new and better ideas by engaging others. Or you might now know how to expand the scope of your company’s success by more fully engaging a broader spectrum of its internal stakeholders.

Role of an engaged leader (click to enlarge)

KEY POINTS about ENGAGEMENT LEADERS and INTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS

Relationships and trust are foundational

• Build trust with key stakeholders by listening to them and incorporating their input
• Expand engaged relationships throughout organization through chains of trust

Harness emotional intelligence

• Be sensitive to those whose status is changing (up, down or sideways)
• Use creative psychology, especially within a tight-knit structure

Create structural support

• Develop systematic mechanisms that value and reward stakeholder collaboration
• Engage global offshoots, helping them understand, buy into and support change

Read the first installment of this series here….

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Nadine B. Hack, named one of 100 Top Thought Leaders on Trustworthy Business Behavior, is Executive-in-Residence at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, and President and CEO of beCause Global Consulting based out of New York, USA. She has advised The Cocoa-Cola Company, Omnicom Group, Unilever and other Fortune 500 companies on rethinking stakeholder engagement. Follow Ms. Hack on Twitter @nadinehack, on her blogs at http://blog.beCause.net and http://www.rewiringbusiness.co.uk/author/nadinehack/.

Download the full report . . . .  Global powers of retailing 2012

First published: May 4, 2012

Author: Deliotte

Link to post at Deloitte: Click Here

This article is republished courtesy and with permission from Deloitte (URL to Deloitte Blog Site).

Copyright Deloitte 2012

The idea for the world’s first CT scanner was conceived in 1967 by Godfrey Hounsfield, a scientist at EMI, a British company. However, much to EMI’s dismay, by the time Hounsfield was rewarded for his innovation with the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, the company had ceded almost complete control over the CT scanner market to later entrants GE and Siemens.

H. Edward Roberts, designer of the Altair computer circa 1975, is widely regarded as the inventor of the personal computer. The legendary Steve Jobs and his partner Steve Wozniak were the duo who brought the PC to the masses in 1977. However, by the early 1980s, it was a later entrant IBM, rather than Altair or Apple, which dominated the global PC industry. Using Intel and Microsoft as key suppliers (of the microprocessor and the operating system respectively), IBM entered the PC business in 1981 – fully four years after Apple’s entry.

Marc Andreessen, leader of the Mosaic team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and co-founder of Netscape, launched the world’s first commercial internet browser circa 1993-1994 and quickly commanded a market share of over 90 percent. Yet, barely five years later, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer had come to dominate the browser market rendering Netscape Navigator to the verge of extinction.

Harsh reality

These and countless other examples illustrate a harsh reality. More often than not, the innovating firm is not the one that survives or emerges as the market leader even five years down the road. In his first stint at Apple, Steve Jobs was blind to this common reality. In his second stint, however, Jobs was far shrewder. During his twelve-year exile from Apple, he had learned how to translate insanely great innovations into sustainable market leadership.

Why do innovators not always win (and why is it that that sometimes they do)? We outline four primary reasons, going from the most to the least obvious.

The first and most common reason why innovators lose out to shrewd followers is an inability to protect one’s intellectual property rights. Schneider Electric, the French company, learned a harsh lesson when it found itself the target of an IP-infringement lawsuit by Chint, a Chinese company. Schneider’s argument that Chint was a copycat which had pre-empted it in China by obtaining a local patent proved futile in Chinese courts. Schneider was forced to pay damages and cede the market for the particular product to its nemesis.

A second reason why innovators often cede the ground to followers is overlooking the fact that innovation is a never-ending race. You may be the pioneer in round one. However, if you get overly focused on exploitation and not enough on ongoing exploration, a competitor could learn from and leapfrog over you in round two. The videogame console industry has demonstrated this phenomenon repeatedly. Nolan Bushnell, widely regarded as the “father of videogames” founded Atari Corporation in 1972 and hired Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak as two of his earliest employees. By 1982, Atari had reached nearly US$2 billion in revenues, making it the fastest growing company in U.S. history. However, as new technologies would continue to emerge, leadership in the home videogame industry switched repeatedly – from Atari to Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), then to Sega (Genesis), from there to Sony (PlayStation), and then from Sony to Microsoft (Xbox).

Excessive devotion

A third important factor why innovators don’t always win has to do with excessive devotion to technological wizardry and not enough to usability and customer benefits. This is largely why Apple’s first PDA, the Newton, proved to be a commercial dud. Instead of resting on their laurels too early, innovators need to spend the time and effort to look at the product from the customer’s point of view. What customers care about is ease-of-use and derived benefits, not technological innovation per se.

The fourth, least obvious and often the most potent reason why innovators don’t always win, has to do with blindness to the importance of complements. EMI’s technological leadership in CT scanners was, by itself, not sufficient to win with hospitals. It also needed a manufacturing, sales, and service network – domains where GE and Siemens had a commanding advantage over EMI. A cool PC, such as the 1984 Mac, could not by itself win market leadership with families and office workers. Computers are useless without application software, a domain where the IBM-Microsoft-Intel team was far ahead of Apple. Far too many innovators overlook the critical role that complements play in enabling the company to win the hearts, minds, and wallets of end customers.

Even smart political leaders can fall prey to the dangers of ignoring the criticality of complements. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have repeatedly called on America to out-innovate emerging economies such as China and India. Obama and Biden overlook, however, that America’s problems have little to do with any real or perceived weakness in R&D. Instead, the country’s problems are rooted far more squarely in a complement to R&D – a manufacturing sector that is much weaker than it was in 1990.

Anil K. Gupta (anil.gupta@insead.edu) is a Visiting Professor of Strategy at INSEAD and the Michael D. Dingman Chair in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at The University of Maryland. Haiyan Wang (hwang@chinaindiainstitute.com) is managing partner of the China India Institute. They are the coauthors of Getting China and India Right (Wiley, 2009) and The Quest for Global Dominance (Wiley, 2008).

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First published: March 15, 2012

Last updated: March 27, 2012

Author: Anil K. Gupta and Haiyan Wang

Link to post at INSEAD Knowledge: Click Here

This article is republished courtesy of INSEAD Knowledge (http://knowledge.insead.edu).

Copyright INSEAD 2012

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So in last weeks blog, my son illustrated the power of incremental learning. My daughter has been watching all of this play out, and as such got to start her tennis lessons with the benefit of a model.

While the trait that first jumps out from watching my son is competitiveness, in my daughter it is diligence. She really focuses on how to do what she is being told, then working to execute well.

In this way, my son and daughter together make a great analogy for a sales organization.

My sons experience highlights the idea that if you are doing a lot of stuff pretty well, incremental improvement can get you to a place where you are overall much more proficient.

My daughter teaches us that coming into a situation already rich with a model of success, one can improve dramatically by focusing on refining execution within the framework of the model.

Frequent readers of this blog, readers of my books and clients of my consulting service should be able to predict what is coming next:

In a sales organization, the sales process is the model and the framework for success. When you have some raw skills, hunger and drive but need refinement like my son, then the framework of the sales process can offer the model to follow.

When you bring new talent into a well functioning system, analogous to my daughter beginning her tennis adventure with the benefit of a model, then refining towards a uniform and correct goal is much easier and much more likely to succeed that trying the same thing without the model.

To improve the results of your personal selling system or that of your organization, follow the lead of my (clearly brilliant) kids and first set up the system itself, then fill it with people capable of growing within it.  The degree to which your sales organization will grow relative to the more random approach taken by most just might astound you!

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Click here to read more blog posts by David Masover

Click here to buy “Mastering Your Sales Process” by David Masover on Amazon

Click here to learn more about David’s upcoming book on sales management

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Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is an archetypical engagement leader. After 27 brutal years in prison, he emerged as a fervent advocate of engaging with the very people and institutions that oppressed him and others in South Africa’s movement for democracy. When he was released in 1990, he spent the next four years in negotiation with the stalwarts of the apartheid regime. As President, he continued to ensure that all faces and voices of his country were represented in government, business and other institutions. Mandela helped people of disparate cultures, even some of whom had a history of violent enmity, to see that only by actively engaging with “the enemy” (something most had previously been unwilling to do) could any of them achieve their ambitious goals.

We can learn much about engagement leadership from President Mandela, but it would be defeatist to think that one must be an extraordinary person like Mandela to be a successful engagement leader. Leaders are, at heart, ordinary people who are willing and able to stretch themselves and others to achieve extraordinary outcomes.

Engagement Leadership

Keep in mind that engagement leadership and its specific skills, behaviors, and mindsets are first and foremost human qualities. The extremely powerful African concept of Ubuntu focuses on affirming your humanity by recognizing the humanity of others and, on this basis, establishing respectful relations with them. South Africa emerged from apartheid not only because Mandela called for restorative rather than retributive justice, but also because Ubuntu was so central to the national psyche that it enabled people who had been enemies to embrace and buy-in to his call.

Essentially, the motivation for and value of being an engagement leader in 21st century business should be your personal desire to engage with others in order to play a key role in making a positive difference when challenges arise. If you have that desire, you are not alone, and neither are the people you want to engage. A rich body of research (not to mention eons of human experience) shows that people yearn for engaged relationships with others, particularly in group endeavors including all aspects of business.

Age-old teachings espousing that people find purpose and meaning in life through relationships with others have now been affirmed in every field of study. Neuroscience supports the idea that engaging relationships are vital to achieving anything. Mathematical studies show that an ability to cooperate is the secret of humanity’s success. Business journals reveal that enhanced engagement between employees and customers has a direct, outsized effect on company performance. Thus, for your company to be sustainable, you must foster relationships with many different types of people.

Philosophers from Confucius to Aristotle to Rumi to Oprah have talked about human relationships. A Welsh proverb tells us, “He who would be a leader must be a bridge.” What I call engagement leaders are indeed “bridges” connecting divergent types of people for the benefit of each and all. They know that deeply engaging internal and external stakeholders in the co-creation of business changes and new initiatives is vital for any strategic action plan to be properly executed. “Hell is other people,” declared Jean-Paul Sartre. But a good engagement leader finds Heaven in them.

It is because of an appreciation of connectedness that an engagement leader (along with whatever other leadership styles he or she may employ) has a distinct advantage in sustaining business success in the interconnected 21st century. His or her ability to foster relationships improves business productivity, profitability and sustainability while simultaneously satisfying stakeholders – which leads to greater satisfaction on the part of shareholders.

Engagement leaders are the prototype 21st century businesspeople, with skills and temperaments ideal for doing business effectively. To be successful in today’s world, where diverse stakeholder boundaries expand daily – and exponentially – it is imperative for leaders to build and strengthen relationships even among those who may initially mistrust each other, or who simply have never worked together in the past.

Enhance Your Ability as an Engagement Leader

In three real-life cases, I review the role of various engagement leaders involved in creating and sustaining strategic relational engagement (SRE) among stakeholders.  The cases explore gaining and increasing engagement buy-in from three key types of stakeholder groups:

1. Internal      stakeholders      (e.g., board, management, employees)
2. External      stakeholders      (e.g., customers, suppliers, partners, organizations pursuing the same      goal by differing methods)
3. Potentially      adversarial      stakeholders (e.g., regulators, watchdog groups, shareholders)

After participating as a change management consultant in each of the following cases, I walked away with what I believe are some valuable lessons.  I hope they will help you to more effectively deal with your current business challenges and opportunities.

Read Part 2 in this series and learn about the role of a leader when engaging with internal stakeholders…

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Nadine B. Hack, named one of 100 Top Thought Leaders on Trustworthy Business Behavior, is Executive-in-Residence at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, and President and CEO of beCause Global Consulting based out of New York, USA. She has advised The Cocoa-Cola Company, Omnicom Group, Unilever and other Fortune 500 companies on rethinking stakeholder engagement. Follow Ms. Hack on Twitter @nadinehack, on her blogs at http://blog.beCause.net and http://www.rewiringbusiness.co.uk/author/nadinehack/.

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The Leadership Premium – How companies win the confidence of investors

“Based on our research, we have developed some practical recommendations for businesses on how they can enhance their leadership effectiveness and demonstrate it to the financial markets, their stakeholders and, ultimately, their wider stakeholders.

As a firm, we believe that leadership can be developed, that organisations can be set up to create long-term, sustainable leadership capability, and that doing so can improve bottom line results and increase shareholder value.

In compiling The Leadership Premium, we’ve combined survey data and perspectives from interviews with analysts with our own expertise and experience. We hope that the result is a  blueprint for successful leadership”.

Download the Deloitte paper . . . .  The leadership premium – How companies win the confidence of investors

First published: April 25, 2012

Author: Deliotte

Link to post at Deloitte: Click Here

This article is republished courtesy and with permission from Deloitte (URL to Deloitte Blog Site).

Copyright Deloitte 2012

Are mentoring programmes really a worthwhile addition to your business training arsenal, likely to bring about genuine organisational change and bring tangible improvements to the bottom line?

Or are they one of those well-meaning ideas that promise much but deliver little?

They could be either, but done properly, mentoring programmes have the ability to bring both short and long term benefits for the mentors, mentees and the organisation as a whole. If a mentoring programme is to be successful and bring real benefits, it needs to be properly resourced and managed, with clear goals in place.

Mentoring vs. Coaching?

Mentoring is often confused with coaching, but they are very different. Coaching is training done as part of the normal line management structure, designed to ensure that an employee has the skills they need to do their job effectively. Mentoring is focussed on the individual, designed to help them progress and perform, both in their existing role and in their career in general. It is about professional development, not skills training. Informal mentoring takes place all the time, as employees develop relationships with each other and help each other. Informal mentoring can be very powerful, but it is not available to everyone, and is not focussed on measurable goals that would benefit both the organisation and the individual.

For mentoring to work, it needs to be tailored to your organisation and it needs to have support from staff at all levels. If those at the top do not buy in to it, neither will those at the bottom, and the programme will fail. Mentoring is sometimes used to target particular groups in the workplace (such as women working in traditionally male-dominated occupations), but it can benefit everyone, both mentored and mentors. Most mentoring programmes use one-to-one mentoring, with the agenda for each meeting led by the mentee. Group mentoring sessions can also be used, and some programmes use a more top-down, executive-led approach in which the mentor takes on more responsibility for directing sessions.

Devising a Mentoring Programme: The benefits…

The main aim of any mentoring programme should be to reach otherwise untapped potential. Because a mentoring programme exists outside of an organisation’s line management structure, it can help those who may struggle to progress otherwise, whether for personal or cultural reasons.

A good mentoring programme can:

-          Improve retention and promotion rates

Studies show that both mentors and mentees show increased rates of promotion and salary improvements as a result of taking part in a mentoring programme. A study carried out by Sun Microsystems into their own successful mentoring programme that mentees saw a 25% increase in salary and mentors saw a 28% increase, with managers who were not mentors seeing only a 5% increase. Mentors and mentees showed retention rates of around 70%, compared to 50% for others.

-          Improve workplace diversity

Female and ethnic minority employees tend to benefit most from mentoring programmes, perhaps because it is outside the traditional line-management structure that they may perceive (whether accurately or not) to be likely to discriminate against them. A study of female, ethnic minority executives found that ‘lack of mentors was cited by women of color as the biggest barrier to success’.

-          Improve workplace culture

Implementing a successful mentoring programme can help improve workplace culture, and a good workplace culture can help support a mentoring programme. If mentoring is embedded in an organisation’s culture, the benefits can be seen beyond the programme itself. Employees feel a greater sense of shared responsibility for each other and the organisation. Mentoring promotes knowledge sharing and open, trusting relationships throughout that break down traditional barriers that exist between senior and junior employees.

Sun Mircosystems – The Mentoring Success Story

A study of Sun Microsystems’ mentoring programme found it produced a very healthy ROI of 1000%. If your business does not yet have a mentoring programme in place, why not?

Think about the other things that you are willing to invest time and money in getting right. You probably spend time making sure your IT suppliers and your parcel couriers are the right ones for you business, and deliver what you need them to. Generally, this is not that hard to do. Working out how to get the best out of your staff and improve retention rates can be more complicated, but a mentoring programme is a proven way you can achieve both.

Keep your focus…

If you already have a mentoring programme and you are failing to see significant returns, don’t give up: you may just need to re-evaluate and look at others companies’ more successful mentoring programmes to see where you might improve yours. There is little doubt that a good mentoring programme has the power to make a significant contribution to the health of your business.

Stay tuned for more…

Imogen Reed

So my 8-year old son has been taking tennis lessons with a small group of boys for almost two years. He is a very competitive little guy, so whenever the class exercise involved keeping track of points, time or anything else that could be counted or compared to the other kids, he really dug in and used his natural athleticism to push for – and often find -  a win.

What he didn’t do really well was technique. In the second year of lessons, when the tennis like games for 6 and 7 year olds turned to real tennis technique work for 7 and 8 year olds, he just wasn’t interested. Unfortunately, most of the other kids did work on technique, and soon my sons natural athleticism became less and less effective against the more refined technique of his classmates.

As you read, I am sure that you can see the sales analogy. There are those salespeople who find a way to get the metaphorical ball over the metaphorical net, and stick with that. They find a groove that is comfortable and effective enough, and they stay in it.  Some of these rote players even do pretty well.

On the other hand, you have those salespeople who work to refine their skills and to learn more about their craft on an ongoing basis. These salespeople often enjoy better sales results, but also may enjoy life more as their interest in learning turns to things like time management and work-life balance, or communication skills, or self-fulfillment.

So what about my son? Well, he went to a few one-on-one lessons and was drilled on the techniques he lacked – specifically – following through with the racket and rolling his wrist as the racket made contact with the ball.

After a few private lessons, he was a whole new guy on the court, and you could tell that he felt great about it.

By focusing on incremental changes, his whole game got better. He added what was missing and the addition of just the right things lifted him to a much higher level of overall proficiency.

You probably have a decent set of sales skills. As 7-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong said, ride your strengths and train your weaknesses. Discover your weaknesses, and train them. You might become much better, happier more fulfilled, etc. with less effort than you imagine.

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Click here to read more blog posts by David Masover

Click here to buy “Mastering Your Sales Process” by David Masover on Amazon

Click here to learn more about David’s upcoming book on sales management

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For many companies, scoring a competitive advantage entails pouring millions of dollars into research and development to come up with revolutionary new products and technologies.

But new research by INSEAD Assistant Professor of Marketing Myungwoo Nam and associates Jing Wang of the University of Iowa and Angela

Myungwoo Nam

Lee of Northwestern University shows that companies don’t always need to focus on developing new tools and products when in some instances, consumers might simply prefer improved or updated features. When does it matter? One way to make that distinction is by doing some research on the consumer: especially his or her levels of knowledge and experience.

Consider the market for digital cameras. In the point and shoot category, consumers tend to be recreational users with an elementary knowledge of photography. They evaluate brands on features such as the number of pixels, weight of camera, zoom lens—attributes that are basic, familiar and common across most brands. But, in the digital single lens reflex (DSLR) category, consumers are typically experienced photographers with deeper knowledge and awareness of complex attributes such as ISO levels, shutter speed and other advanced features.

Companies can benefit from first considering the expertise levels of consumers and then creating product development and marketing strategies, Nam’s research suggests. Prior studies have generally found consumers evaluate products based on comparable features, not on new and unique ones. But, on filtering consumers by expertise, Nam finds that while novices continue to deliberate common attributes, experienced consumers pay greater attention to new and unique features not offered by other brands.

The Nikon D90, for example, was the first DSLR to feature high-definition video recording capabilities. Nikon emphasised this attribute as its point of differentiation. Both the development and advertising strategies worked, Nam explained to INSEAD Knowledge, as it allowed Nikon to successfully compete with its competitor Canon’s 50D which boasted higher pixel counts but lacked high-definition video capabilities.

Separating experts and novices

The authors carried out a series of experiments in which participants were presented with two brands of MP3 players, cell phones, laptops and smartphones. Each pair of products carried both similar and distinguishing features. Participants were asked to select attributes of greatest importance. They were additionally tested on their understanding of the various features and experience with the brands.

The results were unanimous. Savvy consumers gave greater importance to unique features. With MP3 players, a new feature for one brand was its Bluetooth capability, which was picked by experienced users. Novices, on the other hand, preferred regular attributes—battery life, storage space and design.

“The results suggest there might be a disconnect between consumer preferences and companies’ expectations of consumer preferences,” says Nam. It is therefore important for product developers and marketers to distinguish between expert and novice consumers. “When companies are targeting experts, their strategy should focus more on developing products with attractive unique attributes and on positioning their competitive advantage on these attributes. On the other hand for consumers with little product knowledge, companies should instead allocate resources on improving existing attributes and on highlighting their superior performance in promotional campaigns.”

The authors also found that rookie consumers’ choices changed and became more aligned with their expert counterparts, when presented with additional information that helped them understand new and complex features. The finding carries implications for marketers that may be able to provide inexperienced consumers with information to improve awareness and understanding of new, unfamiliar features.

When new becomes familiar

But as can be expected, particularly with high technology products, consumers grow familiar with unique attributes to the point where they become conventional. The first generation of iPhone users had no experience with smartphones that seamlessly integrated with personal computers. Today, Apple has lost that competitive advantage, Nam points out, and instead competes with aggressive rivals on its extensive offerings of mobile applications.

“It’s very difficult for companies,” says Nam. “As a product category evolves and matures, the importance of alignable versus non-alignable changes over time and most attributes become basic and expected features.” Product developers and marketers have to be alert all the time because what’s important this year might not be in two or three years. It explains why a telecommunications giant like Nokia that was very good in the past is struggling today, he adds.

The real challenge arises when it’s difficult to identify who’s an expert and who’s a novice,” says Nam. It’s an issue that’s likely to challenge a company such as Apple going forward, he says, given the company’s strategy of developing a limited variety of products for broad consumer segments. Last year, Apple launched Siri—a voice-enabled application—as a tool of differentiation from its competitors. “I wonder whether the majority of consumers would care about this attribute,” asks Nam, suggesting that Apple might have overestimated the level of knowledge of its target consumers. Now that the iPhone and its systems have become familiar, improving its existing capabilities might work better for Apple to stay ahead.

Myungwoo Nam is Assistant Professor of Marketing at INSEAD.

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Related Reading: From the INSEAD Faculty Blog

Nokia and Apple: What’s market power got to do with it?

Why did a successful organization like Nokia lose its ability to innovate? Why did they miss the market new trends? A look at where Nokia fell behind and how Apple quickly became the market leader. But Nokia might still have a chance to recover.

Read more..

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First published: April 23, 2012

Last updated: April 25, 2012

Author: Mrinalini Reddy

Link to post at INSEAD Knowledge: Click Here

This article is republished courtesy of INSEAD Knowledge (http://knowledge.insead.edu).

Copyright INSEAD 2012

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Having a CSR policy demonstrates that a company is interested in more than just its own shareholders. It has a commitment to its staff, customers and the wider world that it affects with its actions. At least, that is the theory. Does having a CSR policy always achieve such impressive-sounding ends? It does not, of course. Having CSR policy is just the start: to actually achieve something tangible from their CSR policy, companies need to make sure that they work to implement their CSR policy effectively.

Another question it is worth paying attention to is how the nature of a business affects its ability to implement CSR. Can a tobacco company have a meaningful CSR policy? What about an instant payday loans company? Some would argue that companies that sell products that might be considered unethical cannot have an effective CSR policy, as any good done by the CSR policy is cancelled out by the nature of the company’s product. It is also argued that a CSR policy can be used to distract attention from unethical activities. However, a tobacco company is a legitimate business. It will exist regardless of whether it has a CSR policy or not. Is it not better that British American Tobacco has a CSR policy that includes a commitment to harm reduction, than that it operates without? BAT’s CSR policy helps its stakeholders, and it also helps its shareholders, by reducing the harm caused by its business.

The Business Case

Companies like BAT are unusual, in that they suffer from particularly high reputational risks that come as part of their core business. Many (or even most) other businesses occupy a grey area, in which they can be perceived as damaging or dangerous, depending on events. In the current economic climate, in which the finance sector in particular is experiencing heavy criticism in some quarters, and with the Enron scandal (and others) still making its impact felt, an effective CSR policy should be seen an essential, not an add-on.

Businesses reputations can plummet very quickly in a crisis: an effective CSR policy can help create a company culture that prevents the crisis from happening in the first place. A good CSR policy should not just be a matter of drawing up a policy that few outside the CSR department will ever read. Some argue that having a separate CSR department can mean that CSR gets sidelined. Others would say that not having a dedicated department means that there is no-one to drive the policy forward. Different things may work for different businesses. However it is implemented, these are the things a CSR policy can achieve:

- Efficiency. CSR can enhance profitability by encouraging efficiency and the use of sustainability. Paying attention to environmental impact often means reduced use of resources. For example, British Airways increased efficiency and profitability by reducing their environmental impact.

- Staff Commitment. Committed staff that believe in the business and want to work for it will help it grow. Unhappy staff will disengage, leading to higher turnover levels and lower productivity. Improving staff conditions, showing them that their work is valued, and making the workplace diverse benefits businesses. One large-scale survey done in Canada demonstrates the potential results.

- Improved Brand Reputation. A business is its reputation. Research by the Carbon Trust shows that people are more likely to use businesses that they know are paying attention to environmental and sustainability issues. To make a CSR policy count when it comes to reputation, businesses need to make sure that they can build customer loyalty in the long term. Today’s consumers are savvy: businesses that try to cut corners with a grand gesture or two will not impress, but those that show a long-term commitment to CSR are more likely to prosper.

The funny thing about this objection is how often I hear it from SALESPEOPLE with respect to finding time to do prospecting work.

Lets not sugar coat this… It is a load of BS!!

I usually hear the objection when I suggest dedicating a small chunk of time a few times a week to prospecting.  The negotiation with the reluctant salesperson usually winds itself down to a suggestion of a dedicated 30 minutes once a week for proactive prospecting. Even this is sometimes seen as completely impossible.

What a load of BS!!

When I get this objection from a salesperson, I often hear things like “it is impossible for me to find time because I am so busy”.

Or, “I can’t dedicate time to calling new people because my existing clients need unhindered access to me.”

Funny, but I am usually working with these people because they need to boost their sales numbers. The guys making the big money don’t seem to have nearly as many excuses, and certainly not stupid ones.

To confront this predictable objection, I usually ask if these people ever have meetings with their clients, or with their boss, or with a doctor during the work day? If not, I ask if they ever have phone calls with important clients that can’t be interrupted.

If a person is in sales, then they probably say yes to one of these engagements that requires a dedicated, uninterrupted chunk of time.

See where we are going here?

So the problem isn’t really time, but rather priorities.

So what these sub-optimal performers are saying is that they don’t prioritize the first part of the sales process. If this is true, how can their business grow?

A process – by definition – is a sequence of steps that starts with the first and works through towards the last.  Our salesperson, by way of analogy, is trying to bake a cake but not bothering with the ingredients. If you put an empty pan in the oven, you won’t wind up with a cake.

In the same way, you won’t wind up with sales if you don’t contact leads – existing clients or otherwise – and ask them to talk about new lines of business.  As much as we might hope that it does, new business rarely falls into our laps without a little push from us.

So ask yourself – what do you do to avoid prospecting, and at the end of the day, is that a good thing for your business or not?  If not, then simply schedule a meeting with yourself a few times a week, and treat it like a meeting with your most important client.  If you consider yourself and your future success as a business person to be more valuable than any single client, then this might not be so far fom the truth.  Schedule these meetings, do this work, and watch your importance and success as a business person grow!

For some, the path forward might begin by pushing existing solutions and processes to mobile channels, without blue-sky thinking of how business might change if location constraints disappeared. For others, disciplined experimentation can reveal compelling scenarios, which can lead to doing traditional things differently, as well as doing fundamentally different things. When left to its own devices, each faction – individual, department or organization – will struggle through the learning process towards its own vision of mobile enlightenment.

In this chaotic environment, CIOs face three challenges. First, they need to build capabilities to deliver intuitive, user-friendly mobile applications that can meet or exceed expectations set by consumer technologies. Mobile delivery requires new skills, new mindsets, new application architectures, new methodologies and new approaches to problem-solving. Above all, solutions must focus on usability – design-led thinking with mobile mentalities. Scope should be reined in to create well-defined, elegant solutions that address explicit problems, not broad collections of functionality. User experiences should be mobile-centric, based on touch/swipe/talk, not point/click/type. Leonardo da Vinci’s description of simplicity as the ultimate form of sophistication might be a foreign concept to many central IT departments today, but it is also a prime directive. As mobile becomes increasingly important in customer and employee interactions, the complexity of applications, or apps, will naturally grow with heightened integration, security and maintenance needs.

The second challenge for CIOs is to help the business deliver innovative applications with significant potential for positive disruption. Experimentation can be a good way to show progress and help crystalize opportunities, but many use cases remain uncharted. Until users interact with an early prototype, they may not know what they want, much less what they need. CIOs can become beacons of big-picture thinking and tactical adjudication by embracing the proliferation of mobile initiatives, and accelerating the mobile adoption learning curve across the organization.

The third challenge is that mobility introduces yet another level of complexity that CIOs must manage and support at an enterprise scale. What’s an effective way to deal with pressure to get behind each “next big thing”? Should employee-owned devices be allowed on enterprise networks? And if so, what data, applications and services should they be permitted to access? How should IT practices change to support mobile applications? True enterprise-class mobility requires governance, security, privacy and compliance policies – with effective management of mobile devices, enterprise app stores, mobile middleware and more. The trick is to build a solid foundational infrastructure without throttling the business. As you likely know, the business can’t – and won’t – wait for a fully formed mobile enablement roadmap to be defined and put into place.

First published: April 3, 2012

Author: Deliotte

Link to post at Deloitte: Click Here

This article is republished courtesy and with permission from Deloitte (URL to Deloitte Blog Site).

Copyright Deloitte 2012

This post is part of an 8-part series on the steps of the sales process.  Click here to see the full series.

An Overview of the Steps of the Sales Process

The sales cycle – or the time from the first attempted contact with a specific prospect until the time that a sale is made to that prospect – is often referred to as a funnel when considering a large number of prospective clients over some period of time.

The funnel is a good metaphor, because at each stage of the sales cycle, some of these prospective clients fall out of the cycle, or decide not to move forward.  As a result, there are more people at the first stage than the second, more in the second than the third, and so on.  Graphically then, a funnel with a large top – representing the start of the sales cycle, and a narrow bottom – representing the end of the sales cycle, illustrates well the progression of a large number of prospective clients through the sales cycle.

When we speak of the sales process, we mean the specific of steps that are taken as we work through the sales cycle with each individual prospective client or customer.  For the purposes of this series, the steps of the sales process are as follows:

[NOTE:  Click on the name of each step to see the post in this series related to that step in the process]

Generating Leads:  A list of names that you may contact to initiate a sales conversation
Prospecting:  Contacting your leads to set up the opportunity to have a sales conversation
Qualification:  Determining if the person you are talking to is able to and likely to buy from you
Needs Analysis:  Discovering what is important to the prospect about their needs as they relate to what you might sell to them
Offering a Solution:  Suggesting to the prospect some solution to the issues raised in Needs Analysis that you or your company may offer for a price
Objections:  Questions, comments or concerns that the prospect has about your solution that – if left unanswered – may prevent the prospect from completing a purchase with you
Closing the Deal:  Reaching agreement with the prospect to exchange the product or service outlined in the proposal for some price

At this generalized, framework level, this sales process fits any and every kind of sale one might imagine.  The benefits of examining sales activities through the framework of this sales process include allowing a salesperson to consciously move through the sales process and to know where they are and where they need to go in the process next at any given stage of the process.  It also allows salespeople and sales managers to evaluate which parts of the sales process seem to be the most difficult, so that improvements can be made in each specific area.

Evaluation of the sales process also allows optimization of the sales process as a whole.  For example:

• Doing a lot of prospecting allows more chances to qualify and do needs analysis
• Doing needs analysis well makes the development of a compelling proposal more likely
• And the development of a compelling proposal minimizes objections and increases the likelihood of a successful close.

From this perspective, the sales process is not a disconnected set of parts, but rather an integrated system in which the pieces relate to each other in such a way that optimizing each part influences the results of the whole.

Please follow this link for the full list of topics in this 8-part series on the sales process.

Please follow this link to buy Mastering Your Sales Process by David Masover on Amazon.com

In this emerging cloud services environment, HR has a responsibility to help the organization adjust its people and processes to operate more effectively. HR is uniquely positioned to do this — not just because HR is responsible for the overall talent agenda, but also because many HR organizations learned valuable lessons as early cloud adopters. Leading HR organizations are already using cloud technology to improve how HR services are delivered. And now, they are looking for opportunities to share their hard-earned experience and insights with the rest of the business.

What’s driving this trend?

Cloud offers benefits that in many cases are too compelling to ignore. The technologies and processes associated with cloud are rapidly maturing and are now gaining acceptance as standard business practices. Recent forecasts for 2012 predict that 80 percent of new software applications will target the cloud and that spending on cloud services will exceed $36 billion — which indicates a rate of growth four times faster than the IT industry average.ⁱ Key drivers for cloud adoption include the following:

• Cost reduction. Improve utilization and save money through consolidation of servers and data centers. Capitalize on economies of scale by sharing resources across organizations. Reduce training costs thanks to improved ease of use and browser-based interfaces.
• Reduced capital investments. Replace capital expenses with operating expenses. Pay only for what you use.
• Faster implementation. Get up and running quickly by avoiding the need to acquire hardware or to develop and configure applications.
• Agility. Adjust to changing demand and market requirements. Scale up or down as needed. Take advantage of vendor best practices, which are drawn from multiple organizations and rolled out quickly.
• Smarter decisions. Take advantage of cutting-edge tools that support fact-based decision-making.

Read more about this trend

First published: April 5, 2012

Author: Deliotte

Link to post at Deloitte: Click Here

This article is republished courtesy and with permission from Deloitte (URL to Deloitte Blog Site).

Copyright Deloitte 2012

“when life gives you lemons, make lemonade”

All over the developed world – from Greece to the US to my country of residence, Hungary, the lemon-du-jour is the economic crisis.  It is not small thing.  People are losing jobs, even houses, and there is great uncertainty about what the future will bring….

…a very big bucket of very sour lemons.

So what can the optimist do?  Well, if you are lucky enough to still be running a business or a division of a business, I have good news for you.  There is plenty of lemonade to be had for you.  Let me illustrate the point.

In my own sales consulting practice, I have always done three primary things:  Training, consulting and recruiting.  Recently, I began doing more recruiting and have been amazed at the number of highly qualified, motivated, strong salespeople that are available on the market today, because of nothing other than the crisis.

Many companies are closing offices in Hungary.  Every week I speak to great salespeople who are looking for work because their former employer decided to move out of the country due to changing legislation; or to close the local branch office due to changing market conditions; or to close the local office to consolidate at a regional level.

We normally receive this news with fear, sadness and uncertainty about the future.  What will it mean for our economy, and even our own future if this trend continues?  It is a reasonable and often a scary question to consider.

So what should we do?  One could choose to freeze – to lie still like a hunted animal that doesn’t want to attract the attention of a passing carnivore.  Many business owners I see do just this.  It may an understandable response to fear, but it is far from logical.

Logic would dictate that – at the most simple level – things will either get better or not.  Let’s consider both.

If things are destined to never get better, then in many senses, it just doesn’t matter what you do.  Your boat will sink with the lowering tide no matter how hard you paddle.  If this is your prediction, then you can choose: do you want to go down fighting or whimpering?

If things do get better, however, then the things that you choose to do in order to remain strong while they get there could make a big difference in your success, or even help you to reach this coming better time while others who wait it out doing nothing die of starvation along the way.

As far as I am concerned, people will always need stuff.  With the exception of a bleak, post-apocalyptic future as one might see in movies like Mad Max, The Book of Eli or The Road, people will shop for food, phones, cars, etc.  They might not shop for as many of them when the economy is bad, but go to the mall and look around.  There are people in the shops, and they do pull out their wallets.

The shops that sell these things that people are buying need services.  Insurance, IT, light bulbs, and coffee for the break room.  The vendors who sell those things need…..

You get the idea.

In this current economic crisis, there is a great opportunity to take advantage of the changes to position yourself better for the future – the immediate future and the long term future, whatever it is and however long it takes to get there.  Consider this:  If you believe that X% of companies in your market will fail, then what can you do to make sure that of that X%, you are not only one who survives, but one who thrives.

Take this opportunity to upgrade your talent, in product development, administration or sales.  Make your products better, run your business better, or sell more stuff.  Your competitor may go out of business soon.  Go get their customers.  Have some lemonade.

For consumers nowadays it is a massive challenge to separate useful information from noise. The average American is exposed to about 3000 advertising messages a day according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Thus, when communication in Social Media is essential to create the impression of being a reliable source of information which brings extra value and to stay that way. This is by no means an easy job, not even for experienced marketers.

One re-tweet you get is more important than a thousand tweets you make. It is a confirmation of the value of your content. Supposing you already have the right distribution channels, namely a reasonable number of members in your networks (followers, connections, friends, likes, people in circles), then the reactions you get (comments, re-tweets, shares, likes) are a good indicator of the quality and suitability of the content.

The difference between engaging customers and spamming customers is made by getting the right content. Success does not come by chance. There is no recipe for being successful in social media but keeping a few rules can put you in front. Below there are some guide lines to follow when generating content and spreading it through social media channels. This will make a difference between releasing quality posts and spamming. It even applies to personal branding and your online identity you may wish to build through social media.

1. Understand your online network not just your shop customers. What would they want to see and how does your post add value to their businesses or activities? It might be the case that your online customers are slightly different than the ones walking in your stores. The online customers need a more innovative approach due to their consumption patterns. For example a feature of the Y Generation is spending a high proportion of their time online. Many of their activities and duties are completed online, including studying, shopping or socializing. Thus a store might get different customers walking in their physical location then the ones logging on their web portal.

2. Communicate with your network partners rather than sending them content. Create a win-win situation. You need to see your readership as an intellectual audience which you need to engage with and convince to distribute the content in order to generate synergy. Thus they are partners rather then simply connections or customers. If you do not come up with something that was worth reading you are wasting their time and they will soon move you to the junk section of their network.

3. Articulate a story-line and stick to it. Keep it simple. Link every single message you launch in social media, to the brand universe. Ask yourself if the content connects to your products in any way and if it is a positive association. If the content does not create value it will just shrink the brand’s equity. The audience will lose engagement and the action will affect the brand promise. Think about your personal brand. If you post something which you do not want to be associated with, you might be affected irreversibly.

Source: www.smosh.com

4. Get the right timeframe. The eternal and universally applicable management principle has its respected place in social media. I would emphasize not just the importance of the length and clarity of the content itself, which is clearly using a share of your readers’ time, but rather the frequency and timing of the posts. Even if generating useful content but releasing it at an inappropriate time, too often or too rare, you will not be able to create an audience or get full access to the one you have.

5. Social Media is not a direct sales tool. Do not misunderstand the role of social media which is a wonderful, innovative communication tool. If you are there just to send another sales offer, forget about it. You will soon be placed in the spam folder. Use this vehicle to educate the market and demonstrate you are savvy in your industry. Make the most of it. You can promote your brand by being useful to your audience in other means than selling them goods or services.

And remember, Social Media should be fun but also serious. Keep it that way!

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Radu Rachiteanu is an experienced project manager in the education sector. Radu has held various positions at AIESEC, the world’s largest youth organisation. IN this role Radu also held roles within the AIESEC sales team. Prior to this, Radu was a Financial Management Coordinator and Trader. Radu writes on the ways in which the CEE Region has the potential to develop further and on effective and innovative marketing communication methods. His blog ‘Mastering Marketing Communications’ can be found exclusively at Rewiring Business.

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President Obama has made great efforts to address the crisis in Syria and the development of nuclear weapons threat in Iran through multilateral, diplomatic means.  Why single out Obama on this?  Because rather than go at it alone or with a coalition of the willing, he has put American military power in his pocket (for now?) and attempted to seek results through a diplomatic route led by the UN, as international law would dictate that one does.  No other country can really do that, because only American has both the political will, potential ability and the military power to consider using or not using a non-multilateral option in these kinds of situations.

Whether or not you think this is a good thing, it is intuitively clear that it doesn’t make sense to seek a diplomatic solution, and then keep seeking it regardless of the results. If a multilateral diplomatic solution is Plan A, then what happens if it doesn’t work and when will it be decided that it is time to consider something else?

The parallel issues that relate to sales management are accountability and consequences. This political dilemma is structurally no different than a sales manager trying to address sub-standard performance in a salesperson by a particular approach.  If it doesn’t work, does it make sense to keep trying the same thing indefinitely?

Sounds a lot like that old definition of insanity – try the same thing again and again and see if you get different results.  Yup – crazy!

In your sales organization, both goals and consequences should be clear. President Obama is facing issues that are much more complex, and the results of his decisions much more significant to a greater number of people, but the principle is still the same.

That principle was well articulated in a horse training manual that I read one summer before taking a wrangler job at a summer camp. It said that when you want the horse to do something, first ask, then tell, then command. There is no reason to start with a command, but it is fruitless to repeatedly ask and be ignored (sn’t it amazing how much horses, salespeople and uncooperative political leaders have in common!?!). Obama needs to consider the extent to which the requests of the international community may be ignored by Assad and Iran, and then decide what telling and commanding might look like.

As for you and your sales organization, if you fail to escalate your responses towards the consequences around accountability, you will be ignored -  whatever you say and however you say it – and a culture of mediocrity plus the (lack of) results that follow will be your prize.

Workforce reporting and analytics traditionally used historical data to improve decision-making and business performance. And it still does. But now, advanced analytical tools and techniques, such as predictive modeling, are also making it possible for organizations to glimpse into the future and make informed predictions that they can then develop into targeted solutions.

For example, advanced analytics is helping leading organizations retain top talent and mitigate churn by identifying employees who are potential flight risks. This kind of analysis may include everything from past and current employee data and performance ratings to mentoring relationships, compensation levels, personal networking activity and even daily commute time. Advanced analytics tools are also helping organizations beef up their leadership pipelines by looking deep into their workforces to anticipate which employees are most likely to reach the top.

What’s driving this trend?

• The need to look ahead. In today’s fast-paced business environment, companies need predictive solutions that can help address critical business issues, such as retention, before they become problems.
• Workforce complexity and cost pressure. As workforces become more global and complex, management challenges increase exponentially. Advanced analytics help HR and business leaders cut through the complexity to control labor costs and generate more value from the workforce.
• Untapped data. Widespread deployment of ERP and other people-related systems is creating vast amounts of useful workforce data. Yet much of that data remains locked up in organizational silos. Workforce reporting and analytics can increase the return on a company’s technology investments by helping to turn mountains of raw data into nuggets of valuable insight.
• Cloud reduces barrier to entry. Cloud services can give HR more control over its own tools. HR can decide for itself what reporting and analytics capabilities it needs and can then gain quick access to those capabilities with a smaller capital investment and faster time to implement. Also, cloud applications are frequently updated to reflect the latest business practices, which makes it easier for HR to stay on the cutting edge.

Read more about this trend.

First published: April 2, 2012

Author: Deliotte

Link to post at Deloitte: Click Here

This article is republished courtesy and with permission from Deloitte (URL to Deloitte Blog Site).

Copyright Deloitte 2012

Normally, we associate these phrases with complex selling, and we would be right to do so.  For a salesperson to be consultative, there needs to be something to first understand and then to propose a solution for, and the more complex something is, the more the consultative approach makes sense.

Accordingly, we think of financial advisers explaining complex financial instruments, or engineers selling complex software solutions, or doctors working for a pharmaceutical company explaining complex new genetic therapies to other doctors as consultative sales professionals in complex selling environments.

While these situations are certainly complex, is this objectively high level of complexity required for a salesperson to take a consultative approach?  That would imply that the level of complexity about a certain topic is a static value on a fixed scale.  I don’t think that is right, and to reject this idea, opens up the consultative selling approach to a much wider range of selling situation.

I would suggest that complexity is relative.  Something is complex to the extent that it is not understood by the prospective buyer, and to which understanding it is not obvious.  For example:

• A technophobe buying a new computer is facing what seems like a high level of complexity.
• When I go to a hardware store to buy something for a do it yourself project, I am overwhelmed by the complexity of the choices.
• Even a person trying to buy a nice ripe melon at the fruit stand could be facing a complex purchase if their ability to differentiate between a ripe melon and a non-ripe melon is not something they are confident about.

The point is this: Any salesperson can approach their job in a consultative fashion by simply deciding to do so.  The steps include:

• Learning as much has possible about your products and services
• Learning to understand your products and services from the perspective of your prospective customers
• Working to understand the needs of your prospective customers
• Offering solutions to their needs based on your inquiries

Now there might be someone out there reading this who is selling sugar, or #10 corn who says, “my product is a commodity, so how can I consult about that?”  It is a fair question, but the answer is still the same.

In this complex world in which we live, there are always variables.  In the case of a commodity product, purchasing variables that are not directly related to the product but rather to the purchase might include:

• Financing terms
• Packaging options
• Long term purchase contracts
• Shipping considerations
• Etc.

In other words, there is no reason that you must consider your product a commodity, sell only on price, and let the world have its way with you.  If you make the efforts to instill value into your products and services, you will reap the rewards of working at a higher level to service your clients, keep those who appreciate you for doing so, and those who do will pay you accordingly as well.

Difference in “meaning”:-)

It is celebration – Easter Time – for all the Christians, so let’s try a different approach for Relationships…and postpone the discussion about their On Line Management for next time…

So, what is your first reaction when you hear the word : “spam”? Most of us feel disgusted, bored, bullied or even offended, maybe?!  …and just a few heard about this word’s history, yes…history, as it is a “historical” definition:-)

SPAM (The Food Item)

First, let’s get the ingredients out of the way. SPAM is chopped pork shoulder meat with ham,salt, water, sugar, and sodium nitrite. Unless, that is, it’s SPAM Lite, in which case there’s also some chicken thrown in there. Or SPAM Oven Roasted Turkey, which includes (we assume) turkey and is suitable for Muslims.

SPAM was invented in the late-Depression era, in 1937, which may explain at least some of why it seemed like a good idea: people were desperate. According to Nikita Khrushchev’s book, Khrushchev Remembers, SPAM was a godsend for another hungry group — Russian soldiers in World War II. For a further illustration of how bad things were, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher – who we really, really can’t imagine eating SPAM — reportedly once referred to it as a “wartime delicacy.”

SPAM (The Email Genre)

In 1970, the members of Monty Python’s Flying Circus came up with one of their most beloved and inadvertently prescient sketches, in which a customer in a restaurant desperately tries to order something that doesn’t contain SPAM, only to find that pretty much everything on the menu features it. In the course of his ill-fated dinner, a nearby party of Vikings – hey, we did say it was Monty Python – breaks into song: “SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, SPAM, lovely SPAM! Wonderful SPAM!” Clearly, repetition is funny. Also, and more relevant for the relationship between SPAM and email, repetition is annoying.

Apparently, the first people to make the connection between repetitive SPAM and repetitive email were enormous geeks, by which we mean to say they were players in “multi-user dungeons,” or very early predecessors of games like World of Warcraft. Brad Templeton, who has done meticulous research on the topic, writes: “The term spamming got used to apply to a few different behaviors. One was to flood the computer with too much data to crash it. Another was to ‘spam the database’ by having a program create a huge number of objects, rather then creating them by hand. And the term was sometimes used to mean simply flooding a chat session with a bunch of text inserted by a program (commonly called a ‘bot’ today) or just by inserting a file instead of your own real time typing output. When the ability to input a whole file to the chat system was implemented, people would annoy others by dumping the words to the Monty Python SPAM Song. Another report describes indirectly a person simply typing ‘spam, spam…’ in a Multi User Domain with a keyboard macro until being thrown off around 1985.”

Early spam consisted of mass invitations to parties, broad anti-war messages (“THERE IS NO WAY TO PEACE. PEACE IS THE WAY”), and appeals for college tuition funding. The classic “MAKE MONEY FAST” appeared as a USENET post in the ’80s, Templeton says, but as a one-off, not a constant barrage of email. Then, in 1994, USENET users were warned of a “Global Alert for All: Jesus is Coming Soon” in every single newsgroup. Until then spam had at least been somewhat avoidable. What a quaint era that was:-)

Wonderful Spring,

Ioana David

Corporate social responsibility … and your eyes glaze. You’re not alone. Last October, I saw a lecture hall full of members and guests of the INSEAD Alumni Sustainability Roundtable who almost unanimously raised their hands in support of a proposal that “corporate social responsibility” should disappear from our lexicon. Even people who walk the CSR talk want another brand.

The late Milton Friedman saw this coming in 1970, when he famously declared that executives who promote CSR are engaged in “hypocritical window-dressing”. Two generations and countless firm-level CSR programmes later, Friedman’s distrust is general. Did you believe Lloyd Blankfein as the financial crisis gained momentum, and he claimed that Goldman Sachs is “doing God’s work”? Would you have found him more credible if he merely said, “We’re doing well by doing good”?

The widening backlash to CSR

CSR window-dressing is lately generating a growing popular and scholarly backlash. The California Management Review reported this winter that in one way or another, 95 per cent of products that claim to be “green”… are not. The popular backlash shows up on websites like http://gawker.com: “Companies these days love to sell you their crap by assuring you that simply by purchasing their crap you are not just purchasing crap – you are actually doing good. In fact, if you don’t purchase their crap, you likely suffer from a severe moral defect.”

Within business, CSR has another kind of credibility problem: no one has proven that it contributes to the top and bottom lines. The best research we could find, a meta-analysis of CSR elements evoked in 167 studies, concluded that their “overall effect… on corporate financial performance is positive.” However, the effect appeared weak.

So why does CSR persist? On the one hand, as scholar Jem Bendell argues, CSR is driven by individuals trying to change corporations “in accordance with their personal commitment to public goals and the expectations of wider society”. A number of leaders and emerging leaders of firms are sincerely concerned that unless some significant changes take place on a number of fronts, businesses and societies alike are headed for a long dark age. Thus CEO Pierre Nanterme of Accenture recently told INSEAD Knowledge that “convergence” of firms, NGOs and governments is inevitable, because solving issues like climate change clearly requires resources beyond any of these sectors acting on its own: “They have no other options”.

We agree, but this transition will be very risky for business. Consider the fate of John Browne, the former CEO of BP plc. At the beginning of the past decade he was called the “Sun King”, thanks to bold declarations that there is “a direct link between business success and environmental progress”, and that “the application of all the normal methods of doing good business to meet the challenges” facing society would solve them. Then came the Texas City explosion of 2005, and BP was on the way to becoming a symbol of business hubris and destructiveness, a reputation cemented by the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe of 2010. People who feel differently are rare these days, but they include UN Assistant Secretary General Henrietta Elizabeth Thompson, a confirmed environmentalist, who went out of her way in a recent interview for INSEAD Knowledge to say “very much” that one shouldn’t dismiss Browne’s past efforts out of hand.

Stakeholders to the rescue?

Meanwhile, a different approach to CSR is emerging. The key idea is that CSR is not just about doing good, it’s about creating stakeholder networks based on values and objectives, in which each member insists that the others maintain certain ethical and professional standards as a condition of doing business. This vision is at once cross-cultural – we’ve seen it at Hayleys of Sri Lanka, as well as Europe’s Unilever – and consistent with existing best practices. Thus a new book, Leveraging Corporate Responsibility, proposes that stakeholder-based marketing can secure competitive advantage, on condition that the firm demonstrates its “usefulness” to stakeholders. A stakeholder-based approach to CSR implies a partial solution to the inevitable credibility problem, because stakeholders are at once harder to convince, better informed than the public, and more loyal when interests converge. It also helps resolve the bottom line issue: If the choice is between joining a stakeholder network and losing the business, the benefits are easier to see.

Whatever we call it, we need an ideal that gives more people a reason to accept business values as legitimate. Last August, when the BBC asked home-burning London rioters who they were revolting against, a girl answered: “Rich people – the people who’ve got businesses.” A growing share of society – some claim as high as 99 per cent– is holding business responsible for inequality, for crisis, for injustice; whether that is fair or not, business will have to deal with it. Is CSR the perfect tool or name for this process? No. Is there a better one in sight? Not yet, but if you find it, we’re listening.

Mark Lee Hunter is Adjunct Professor at INSEAD Social Innovation Centre.

First published: February 22, 2012

Last updated: February 22, 2012

Author: Mark Lee Hunter

Link to post at INSEAD Knowledge: Click Here

This article is republished courtesy of INSEAD Knowledge (http://knowledge.insead.edu).

Copyright INSEAD 2012

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Whether it is the slick slime balls in Boiler Room or the loser Willie Loman – the main character in the Arthur Miller play “Death of a Salesman” – anyone trying to think of themselves as a professional salesperson has a lot of societal resistance to overcome.

As for you crappy salespeople – whether or not you know who you are – if you don’t do your job professionally, you are making it worse for the rest of us!

I was on the buying side of two sales experiences recently which reminded me how weak some salespeople are, and I am convinced that neither of the salespeople involved thought they were anything less than perfect in their work.  Let me summarize those experiences to help make my point:

In the first experience, I wanted to join a new gym in my neighborhood. Just before the gym opened, a salesperson told me the price of a six month membership, then offered me a free week when the gym opened. After my free week, I was told that the price went up, and the originally quoted price was only good before the gym opened. So instead of recognizing the mistake and going to bat for me, the salesperson simply avoided me by being busy when I came to her office, and not returning my calls.  When I finally caught up with her, she told me she would have to talk to her boos, who of course said no luck – pay the higher price.

In the second, I was approached by a sales training company to become a franchisee of their sales training system. The person who called me had no idea that I was a writer of sales books, had a blog, and was very active as a group manager on Linked In in spite of the fact that a Google search of my name would have revealed all of this without even needing to click the links or read past the first few hits.

I work with salespeople and sales organizations every day, and every day I hear about how hard it is to sell. Well, for those like the salespeople in my examples who don’t:

• communicate clearly
• act on behalf of the customer when it is the right thing to do
• take the time to learn about who they are selling to and what might be important to them

…then yes, selling can be very hard. Much harder than it has to be really!

For the rest of us who do our work with pride, diligence and discipline, we can and should go to work believing that we help the people we work with make better buying decisions and even better strategic decisions about their life or their business because of the discussions we have with them about issues and solutions.

It is too bad that there are so many salespeople who perpetuate the negative stereotypes, complain that sales is hard when they make no professional effort, and generally screw up the way our profession is seen by the world.

But take heart – if you do your job well, maybe you will be lucky enough to sell against one of these losers. Do your job the way you know you should, and more often than not, you might even get the happy endings you work for.

The task of identifying and developing high-potential leaders is nothing new. What’s different now is that many organizations are getting much clearer about what “high potential” really means — based on science, not anecdotes — and then investing in an integrated set of data-driven activities to accelerate the development of their most promising leadership talent.

Being ranked in the highest performance category does not necessarily make someone a high potential employee. What really distinguishes these special leaders from the rest of the pack is their critical leadership attributes and the value they can provide to drive the company’s growth.

High-potential leaders must be able to operate on a global scale and adapt quickly to change. They also need the depth and breadth of skills and experience to work across converging industries. For example, high potentials in the telecommunications world must be able to lead, manage and innovate across multiple business areas — including computing, entertainment and social media — as well as multiple geographic markets.

True high potentials are a precious asset that is critical to an organization’s future growth and success. They are the best of the best — and should be nurtured accordingly. Cultivating the right mix of personal attributes, skills and experience requires rapid evolution through a diverse range of leadership opportunities and career paths. Accelerated leadership development is about making this happen.

What’s driving this trend?

Aggressive growth targets in global and converging markets. Rapid expansion into new markets demands leadership that can handle the unknown. With growth as a dominant business driver — and the increasing importance of differentiation — companies require leaders who can make change and innovation happen across converging industries and diverse cultures.

Severe leadership pipeline shortages. High-potential leaders are scarce — especially executive succession candidates. Many companies are finding it increasingly expensive and risky to source senior leaders externally, particularly for top jobs in global growth markets and critical product/service segments.

Increased scrutiny from boards and investors. Boards, investors and analysts are taking a closer look at leadership risks across the organization, not just at the CEO level. They are asking tough questions about the numbers and types of leaders necessary to meet growth commitments and navigate uncertainty. Also, they are demanding multiple options for critical positions — and aren’t willing to wait 10 years for an organization to close the leadership gap.

Rising expectations and declining loyalty of top talent. Companies want more from their leaders — and leaders want more from their companies. When next-generation leaders believe their companies are underinvesting in their development, they will look elsewhere for opportunities to grow — often with competitors. They are expected to do more with less yet are not being sufficiently challenged with the diverse set of experiences that can help them expand their personal brand and value proposition in the enterprise. As a result, they grow impatient, especially as opportunities start to open up elsewhere.

Demand for leadership ROI. Although the C-suite recognizes the importance of developing the next generation of leaders, it wants to see a tangible return on its development investments. Are the right investments being made? What are the returns? How do you measure current investments when they are building future capabilities? Beefing up the leadership pipeline can drive a company’s growth agenda, reduce succession risk and deliver tangible business results.

Download the full article . . . .  Fast-Track to the Top

First published: March 20, 2012

Author: Deliotte

Link to post at Deloitte: Click Here

This article is republished courtesy and with permission from Deloitte (URL to Deloitte Blog Site).

Copyright Deloitte 2012

Gaping disparity between the rich and the poor used to be the hallmark of third world or developing countries – places without a “middle class” or an equitable and sustainable tax code or developed agencies of social support and education. Today, however, income disparity is an issue in developed countries… and there is hard data to support the claims of inequality.

“From the 1940s to the 1980s, the income gap in the US remained fairly consistent,” points out Pushan Dutt INSEAD Associate Professor of Economics, citing United States government statistics. “In the 1990s, however, while those in the bottom 90th percentile have seen stagnation in their income levels, the top 10th percentile has seen their incomes double.” Dutt spoke to INSEAD Knowledge on the sidelines of a student discussion on income equality held at INSEAD’s Asia Campus in Singapore recently.

This is difficult to swallow in the U.S. where achieving “The American dream” of house, car, job and happy family is considered a birthright. In the U.S., research shows that the shift in the top 1 percent and the top 0. 1 percent today comes from the rise in salaries and numbers of financial sector workers, and the increasingly higher salaries of the CEOs – people with in-demand skills and expertise – according to Dutt. That’s drastically different from the beginning of the 20th century, when wealth was measured by ownership of capital or land – real assets. “Very pertinent questions can be raised about whether the levels of compensation of CEOs reflect productivity or not,” adds Dutt. “I don’t know the answer to that but I think it is a valid question.”
An Anglo-Saxon Problem?

As it turns out, the U.S. is not alone among developed nations in facing rising income inequality. Its cultural brethren are also suffering. Dutt claims rising income inequality is not a global phenomenon; it is “mainly an Anglo- Saxon phenomenon,” mimicked in the U.K. and Canada. This widening income gap, however, is not happening in France, Japan and Sweden. In other words, while the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer in Anglo-Saxon countries, there has been stability in the income distribution in many other developed countries. But while the S&P downgrade may have been expected, the breakdown of Greek restructuring talks was a bad surprise to markets unprepared for a disorderly default of an industrialised country.

The irony of the tax code

How do these other countries manage to stave off inequality while the U.S./Anglo-Saxons have failed to do so? Dutt points to the tax system: “The pre-tax income inequality in France is significantly reduced by the tax system. If you don’t want to increase income inequality in your country, what you have to do is to subsidise some of the people who have low incomes. Bring them up to minimum wages.” Dutt adds that the tax code in France and Sweden is more progressive than in the U.S. Amongst OECD countries, apart from Turkey, Mexico and Chile, the U.S. tax code is listed as one of the least progressive.

Tax codes vary throughout the world. “Singapore, for example, has two or three tax brackets with very few deductions. This simplifies the tax structure considerably, making it easier to administer,” says Dutt. “You don’t run into the problem as in the U.S. where a myriad of deductions and exemptions means that the official tax rate can be rendered meaningless.”

Dutt says the complexity of the U.S. tax code creates a disconnect between the tax rates on the books and what people and corporations pay. “Whoever has the best accountant pays the best tax rate. Who has the best accountants? The rich have the best accountants. This exacerbates and creates the weird scenario where the rich are taxed at a lower rate. They also have the best lobbies for tax reduction and the best accountants who can provide the best strategies to avoid (not evade) taxes.”

Technology vs education

There is also a lot of debate as to what has been the effect of technology on rising inequality – maybe up to 40 percent according to Alan Krueger, Chairman of the U.S. President’s Council of Economic Advisors, says Amine Ouazad, Assistant Professor of Economics and Political Science who participated in the student discussion in Singapore. “Technology, for example, has rendered many mid-level professions redundant. Since the advent of the personal computer, many kinds of work performed by people, such as secretaries, have been replaced by machines.”

Dutt describes a phenomenon which economists call “the race between technology and education”. “Technology raises the demand for skilled workers, which raises the wages of skilled workers relative to unskilled workers. Education raises the supply of skilled workers, bringing relative wages down and therefore reducing inequality.” However, the problem is that society has not responded to the technological revolution by becoming more educated. Indeed, Ouazad points out that the demand for skills has far outstripped their supply, which suggests income inequality will exist as long as the skills gap remains.

Is education then the key to narrowing the gap? Dutt argues that the benefits of education go beyond the level of individual satisfaction and achievement. “The best minds go to the most productive occupations,” he says. “By increasing access to education, you not only create more economic equality, you also create greater equality of opportunity, leading to an efficient allocation of resources.”

Yet Ouazad points out, “According to the latest estimates, there is an increasing fraction of people who are dropping out of high school, while at the same time, there is an increase in the college enrolment rate. In other words, there is an increase in the polarisation of education in the US.” He says that the same phenomenon is true in the U.K., France and other developed countries.

Unfortunately those with the least education are the most likely to be hurt by disruptions and changes in the economy caused by international trade or by technological changes. “Also, when you have a degree, you are much more likely to be insured against the fluctuations of the business cycle,” opines Ouazad. He adds that in the U.S., immigration, the decline in unions and
the decline of the minimum wage in real terms – conditions which largely affect those with less education – may also have an effect on rising inequality.

Politicians take aim

While education is an important tool in narrowing the income gap, it is one that can take 20 years to reap results, Dutt points out. The population is demanding a response to income inequality today, and politicians are responding. U.S. President Barak Obama’s State of the Union address focused heavily on his proposals for greater economic fairness in America; his budget address took aim at tax cuts enacted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, for the rich – signaling his re-election strategy in the November elections. Politicians in debt-strapped Greece, Spain, Portugal and the U.K. have also been making income inequality a major talking point.

But is all this talk coming up with a sustainable plan for fiscal stability? Dutt says “No.” “In no country in the world does a politician have a 20-year horizon. The best you can hope for is a 5-year horizon. So they look for quick fixes that will affect things now; but effective fixes require greater foresight and more patience.”

How will rising inequalities impact the 2012 U.S. election? Dutt says that that the U.S. elections is not driven so much by inequality as whether voters believe that the U.S. economic conditions are getting better or not. Ouazad agrees that the economy is the major concern of U.S. voters, and the unemployment rate and job creations will have an impact on Barack Obama’s chances of re-election. “Today the unemployment rate in the U.S. is falling (latest: 8.5 percent) but this is partly due to the fact that a fraction of active workers has decided to stop looking for jobs. In fact, in past elections, the incumbent has had a hard time when the country went through a crisis.” For example, U.S. President Jimmy Carter was not re-elected in 1980 partly because interest rates at the time were nearly 20 percent.

Inequality and emerging economies

While both China and India are seeing increasing levels of inequality, they have not seen as much social unrest, observes Dutt. He told INSEAD Knowledge that while the income gap is widening in these countries, a degree of inequality is to be expected during periods of growth in emerging economies. “When countries grow, it takes people out of agricultural sectors and shifts them into manufacturing, in the case of China; and into services, in the case of India. It raises their salaries and wages in relation to those in agriculture. This is part of the growth process.” However, he opines that governments still need to be concerned about the widening gap between rich and poor, because it may result in political instability which in the medium to long term can hinder growth.

What next?

The economic inequality issue has recently been very clearly framed by demonstrations around the world: the Arab Springs in Tahrir square and the streets of Moscow, and the Occupy Movement in the U.S., which found supporters in educations institutions, such as Harvard University, where students camped out on campus. The Harvard administration responded to the occupiers by shutting the gates to anybody who did not have a Harvard ID, making the protest “exclusive” and isolated. Meanwhile, outside the gates on Harvard Square, others were also camped out on the street: the homeless, on the sidewalk out of necessity, rather than ideology.

Of course, an admittedly cynical subtext of the demonstration at Harvard is that these wide-eyed, mostly well-off students were well on their way to becoming the 1 percent.

First published:February 22, 2012

Last updated: February 22, 2012

Author: Grace Segran

Link to post at INSEAD Knowledge: Click Here

This article is republished courtesy of INSEAD Knowledge (http://knowledge.insead.edu).

Copyright INSEAD 2012

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Featured Image: Shutterstock and Andrei Shumskiy

“Sometimes you have to choose between being right and being successful”

I heard that expression years ago, and have referred to it many times since then. It made a lot of sense for me early in my sales career.  At the time, I took it to mean that it makes more sense to win a sale rather than to win an argument that might come up with a prospect. Better to steer a conversation away from a confrontation, and towards a collaboration about a pending sale.

Later, when my career took a more entrepreneurial turn, the same expression took on a different meaning for me. One of the lessons of life in the dot com boom (and ensuing bust) of the late 1990′s was that sometimes you had to make decisions with inadequate information. No-one really knew how business on the Internet was going to work, but we all wanted to move forwards anyways. Accordingly, you couldn’t always wait for enough information to ensure a perfect decision – and you had to push forwards towards the hope of success in spite of the uncertainty about the relative “rightness” of the decision you had to make.

In the last several years, the focus of my career has been on what can be called consultative selling. Consultative selling is known for – among other things – being performed by a salesperson with a high level of subject matter expertise, and who uses this expertise to help a prospective client discern the best complex solution to a well analyzed business problem.

From the perspective of consultative selling, the idea of choosing between being successful and being right gets turned completely around.  In other words, my original interpretation of this idea, that it is better to win a sale than an argument, became completely backwards.

Imagine this:

If a subject matter expert, consultative salesperson is engaged in a sales interview, and agrees with everything the prospect says, where is the value?  “Yes, you are exactly right” is a good way to make someone else feel very smart about what they are talking about, but if the goal of the consultative salesperson is to sell their expertise, then it must be demonstrated that the consultative salesperson has has some original, and perhaps contradictory ideas about how to approach a business problem than the prospective client.

In fact, the best approach of the consultative salesperson is to stress the point that the prospective client is doing or thinking about something incorrectly, and that the expertise and input of the consultative salesperson is needed in order to move forward most effectively.  This may take the form of:

“Actually, back up a minute – I don’t agree with the assumption that is behind your suggestion…”

or

“You know, a client of mine in a similar situation tried that same approach that you are suggesting, and was quite unpleasantly surprised by the results.”

or

“There are three fundamental problems with the approach you are suggesting….”

Now embracing the “you are wrong and you need my help” approach is not a license to be rude, condescending or aggressive.  It is never right to behave this way.  The idea is one thing, but you must be professional in how you execute it.

That said, if you are a consultative salesperson, and you convince the client that they are a bit lost, and need your help to get found again, well, you have been both right and successful, in both your quest to acquire a new piece of business, and perhaps to helping the client as well.

CONCLUSION: USING SRE IN YOUR COMPANY

Strategic Relational Engagement (SRE)

The central message from these cases is that all stages of SRE require building up relational intelligence, implementing practical mechanisms for that. New business imperatives have emerged in the 21st century. Interestingly, the most important is the very one that has defined human evolution over the ages: the ability to communicate and form intricate relationships.

Stage I. Create Value through SRE

The Weyerhaeuser case describes how wildly divergent stakeholders came together to cooperate. To incorporate its lessons – whether with internal or external stakeholders – you must determine the capabilities, conditions, and processes that are necessary for you to create value through SRE. Remember: create a safe, trusting, collaborative environment in which your stakeholders feel engaged, valued and motivated to contribute to your business goals.

Stage II. Overcome Obstacles to SRE

The Xhong, Inc. case outlines how they effectively dealt with obstacles that hindered SRE among their subsidiaries and with the parent company. To translate observations from that, you must assess your unique obstacles to SRE, the drivers you have to overcome those obstacles and how you can effectively mobilize those drivers. Remember: be open and transparent; find those willing and able to help stakeholders find common ground for the benefit of all.

Stage III. Sustain SRE for the long-term

The Fujisimo Industries case conveys how stakeholders from related companies learned to make SRE last. To use insights from what they accomplished, you must determine what it is that will sustain SRE; when, where and how breakdowns might occur or have already occurred; and what you need to do to mend the resulting breaches. Remember: strengthen relationships continuously; take quick action to restore connectivity among stakeholders whenever it fractures.

SRE: Essential to Doing Business in the 21st Century

How often have you criticized a business (or bureaucracy) by saying “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing”? Solidly-incorporated SRE assures that all hands function as they should: a connected team. 21st century business demands that you develop and nourish relationships with your stakeholders. Strategic Relational Engagement enhances productivity, profitability and sustainability in an increasingly interconnected business environment.

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Catch up on the rest of this excellent series and more from Nadine Hack here…

Note: all the cases described are real but some identifying names have been changed at the request of the companies and/or individuals who prefer anonymity.
——————–

Nadine B. Hack, named one of 100 Top Thought Leaders on Trustworthy Business Behavior, is Executive-in-Residence at IMD in Lausanne, Switzerland, and President and CEO of beCause Global Consulting based out of New York, USA.  She has advised The Cocoa-Cola Company, Omnicom Group, Unilever and other Fortune 500 companies on rethinking stakeholder engagement.  Follow Ms. Hack on Twitter @nadinehack, on her blogs at http://blog.beCause.net and http://www.rewiringbusiness.co.uk/author/nadinehack/.

IMD is ranked first in executive education outside the US and second worldwide (Financial Times, 2008 – 2011).  Follow IMD on Twitter @IMD_Bschool and at http://www.imd.org.

Historically, companies doing business outside of their home country have tended to rely on one of two operating models. First is an entrepreneurial model (sometimes known as an international model) in which the rest of the world is subordinate to the company’s home market. Second is a federated model (sometimes known as multidomestic) in which multiple geographies are all treated as distinct and separate.

Looking beyond these two established models, many leading companies are increasingly shifting toward a third model, where major business operations (including both front- and back-office functions) are globally integrated, with the company’s home market treated as just one of many global markets.

The move toward a globally integrated operating model is likely to be one of the most significant transformations a company will ever face. Much of it involves people-related issues, such as change, talent and HR operations — and HR has important roles to play in this transformation. The question is how can HR leaders and their teams prepare to meet the challenge?

What’s driving this trend?

Rise of global customer markets

Different economies around the world are growing and recovering at different speeds. Mature markets in North America and Europe face flat or uneven demand, while emerging and developing markets — such as China, India, Latin America, Southeast Asia and the Middle East — are widely recognized as the primary engines for future growth. In Brazil, economic growth continues on the strength of its export economy, but also rising domestic demand. An estimated 35 million people joined the middle class between 2003 and 2009 and 20 million more are expected to be included by 2014.ⁱ In China, the middle class is already larger than the entire population of the United States.ⁱⁱ

Rise of global talent markets

Over the past decade, the talent pool has become increasingly global — and not just for commodity activities, such as offshore manufacturing, transactions and call center operations. Many companies are now using offshore resources for high-value activities, such as R&D, knowledge processing and advanced analytics. The United States used to lead the world in the number of 25- to 34-year-olds with college degrees. Now, it ranks 12th among 36 developed nations.ⁱⁱⁱ Also, China produces 10 times more natural sciences graduates than the United States.^iv While the quality of science and engineering graduates from emerging markets may not be as high as those from developed markets, the overall trend is clear.

Hyperconnectivity

Technology is accelerating the rise of global customer and talent markets by making it easy for people to communicate and collaborate, whether they are in adjacent cubicles or halfway around the world. In a business environment where everything is connected to everything else, geographic distances and national boundaries are almost irrelevant.

Cost pressure

The need to cut costs used to be the main reason for moving work to lower-cost locations and remains a key driver thanks to a tough economy that has prompted the most significant cost restructuring in decades. However, reducing costs is now just one of many important reasons for tapping the global talent pool.

Regulatory and capital requirements

In the financial services sector, increased regulation (both nationally and globally) and higher capital and solvency requirements are forcing many companies to adjust their global footprints and change how they operate.

Click here to read more about this trend.

First published: March 15, 2012

Author: Deliotte

Link to post at Deloitte: Click Here

This article is republished courtesy and with permission from Deloitte (URL to Deloitte Blog Site).

Copyright Deloitte 2012

Each of us has, no matter the industry or department we are working in, heard about the famous “Golden Rule”. Treat others the way you want to be treated. We have been hearing it even since we were kids: don’t be rude, don’t be arrogant, selfish, etc. These were all things that I didn’t want done to me, so of course that I took care not to “apply” them in the relationship settled with my classmates, playing partners and friends. Consequently,  I brought as a gift on her birthday, to my best friend, the most beautiful, violet purse, that could ever be imagined – by me, of courseJ . Her reaction?! On a very polite, shy tone : “This the first thing in this color I’ve ever had…”

Then, after entering the “real life”,I heard another rule which is still making a lot of sense to me. This is “Platinum Rule” : Treat others the way They want to be treated.

We as Human Beings, have, each of us, his own scale of values and maybe what is right for me isn’t always “right” for you. We all wish the best for ourselves. Only that “the best” is quite different from person to person.

Let’s transfer this Platinum Rule to our Relationship Management. What’s right for the customer isn’t always what’s right for you . Maybe I would benefit from selling the most expensive product, extra insurance, maintenance contracts…but would my customer really benefit from purchasing these? In the same “spirit” a solution to one client’s problem won’t always fit another client, even one with the same problem.

What’s to do, then?..Asking questions and actually listening [active hearingJ] to the answers to find out what the client considers to be “the best” for him. Asking questions and listening could even make your job easier by delivering the correct solution faster.

Ultimately, a successful negotiation results when the client’s chosen “best” fits your own “best”. Not to mention that platinum is the best “nest” for Diamonds…for ever:-)

Fitness maximizing,

Ioana David

• If you ask a room full of financial advisers, you will get a bunch of answers related to the valuation of various parts of their business.
• If you ask a room full of IT people, you will get a bunch of answers related to their algorithms.
• If you ask a room full of venture capitalists, they will just curse, unless they were among those who funded Google early.

But here in this room, where I am writing today, the focus is on selling.  From that perspective, the reason that Google is worth so much is the same thing that could make you worth more as a salesperson.

Needs Analysis.

Google recently got some heat because Google+ didn’t seem as sticky as Facebook.  According to a new comScore report as reported on CNN, it was noted that the average Google+ user spend only 3.3 minutes per month using the service compared to 7.5 hours for Facebook.

[NOTE: I wonder if any of those heavy Facebook users (pun intended) are making excuses about not doing important things in their life (like exercising) for lack of time?  If the average is 7.5, imagine how much time the top 20% of users are spending!]

But I digress…

In a much more insightful article on Techcrunch, readers were enlightened to a different perspective on the amount of monthly usage statistic.

Google doesn’t care.

Google isn’t about social networks.  At the bottom line, neither is Facebook for that matter.  Both companies make their money with targeted internet advertising.  Once you sign up for Google+, you are being tracked.  With Google’s new privacy policy, you are being tracked across your usage of all Google properties from Gmail to YouTube.

So what does this have to do with Needs Analysis?

Needs Analysis is about finding out what is important to your prospective customers.  When you use Google products, you search for things you are interested in using the Google search engine, or the one on YouTube.  You write about things you are interested in your emails that you send on Gmail.

By mining this data about you across all of these internet properties, Google is conducting needs analysis on what is important to you.  As an internet advertising company, this is the core needs analysis that they need to do in order to be most successful.  The more Google knows about you, the better they can target advertising to you.  By doing a really good job of understanding what is important to you, they can sell advertisements directed at you for more money, because they are more targeted and more relevant, and therefore more valuable to advertisers.

And that is where we come full circle to sales.  Needs analysis is the vehicle in the sales process for creating value.  Your proposals and your products or services will be more valuable when they are more important to the people you are trying to sell them to.  The more you know about the people you are trying to sell your stuff to, the more likely you can make your stuff more valuable to them.

If you have a needs analysis discipline that can be improved, you will increase your success ratio with clients.  They will be more enthusiastic about buying what you have to sell, because the work you do in understanding their needs and baking that understanding into your offering will increase the value to them, the likelihood that they will buy it from you, and the price they will pay for it.

Now go Google how to do a good Needs Analysis and you will be all set – maybe you will even be served up an advertisement for one of my books along the way.

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Click here to read more blog posts by David Masover

Click here to buy “Mastering Your Sales Process” by David Masover on Amazon

Click here to learn more about David’s upcoming book on sales management

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