Communicating Difficult Information

"Difficult Communication" was something that came up as a topic of interest during Mary Uhl-Bien's instruction on Leadership & Sales Management. Understanding that this is an area of interest - nay, urgent need for learning among EcSELL Institute members, I thought it would be helpful to share the story below. Although it describes "customer" relationships, I remind you that the principles are likely the same for your sales team members. Said another way, your 'customer' is the recipient of the communique.

Turning Bad News Into Good Vibes - New Siegel Gale Simplicity Survey Finds Organizations Can Strengthen Customer Relationships in Times of Crisis

This study examined letters sent to customers by mail telling them about changes to their credit. The letter which was discovered to be the best overall and the most "informative, balanced, direct, and made[readers] feel most loyal to the company" was one that was sent to mortgage customers explaining the bank's new policies. The letter's key features were:

1) Explicitly stated its commitment to transparency; and
2) Contained easy-to-understand descriptions.

Other letters had positive features including truthfulness and respect. According to Siegel+Gale's Global Director and Practice Leader of Simplified Communications, Lee Rafkin there exists a "Strong correlation between clarity, comprehensive explanations, and respect on
the one hand, and trust, engagement, and loyalty on the other" in these types of written communication.

Applied to delivering bad news to your customers, peers, salespeople, etc... do the same principles of Clarity, Truthfulness, Respect, and Relevance apply?

Summit a Success!

Thank you to everyone who attended the EcSELL Institute Sales Management Summit. It was great putting faces to names. We will be emailing out evaluation forms to the attendees for all the intructors and the Summit overall. From the few I have reviewed, it appears that everyone got a lot out of this event.

The people who attended the Summit are an amazing group of sales managers. Their commitment to professional development is comendable.

Liveblog: How to Grow Sales in a Shrinking Economy, Justin Roff-Marsh

Justin Roff-Marsh is an author and prolific blogger at http://www.salesprocessengineering.com. Roff-Marsh is an expert in the Theory of Constraints, the process-engineering methodology that underpins Ballistix's contrarian approach to the sales process.

Roff-Marsh asserts that if an organization meets the two following criteria...

1) The organization has unutilized production capacity
2) Market share less than 20%

...then, the following two conclusions fall out:

1) The organization has growth potential; and,
2) The constraint to growth is sales (not production)

"There is a potential for productivity improvement in sales. The modern salesperson is currently an artisan, operating in a craft-shop environment."

"Standardization, centralized scheduling and a format management regime are prerequisites of division of labor."

"In a knowledge-based environment, we have invisible work-in-process."

Roff-Marsh posits that specialization results in 10x the 'effective capacity" of sales:




Center: Business development meetings go from 2/week to 4/day

Periphery

• Promotions
• Administration and clerical
• Customer service and fulfillment (engineering)

(Talent + Fit) x Investment = Growth

A portion of the peer learning session focused on the "(T + F) x I = G" model.



(Talent + Fit) x Investment = Growth

Does the investment "Motivate" or "Satisfy?"

Potential types of investment:

Job descriptions are boxes. People are puzzle pieces.

Reading Recommendations

In a peer-to-peer session, the EcSell Summit group shared some of their recommended authors and books.

• Patrick Lencioni, "The Five Temptations of a CEO," "The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive," "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" and others

• Jim Collins, "Good to Great"

• Ricardo Semler, "Maverick" and "Managing Without Managers"

• Harvard Business Review, "The Musings of Management" and "Who's Got The Monkey?"
  

Liveblog: Leading for Innovation, Learning and Adaptability in Sales, Mary Uhl-Bien

Mary Uhl-Bien's research and teaching interests are in leadership and ethics. Widely published, Dr. Uhl-Bien has been active in research, consulting and management development both nationally and internationally. She has consulted with Disney, British Petroleum, and the General Accounting Office, and she served as the executive consultant for State Farm Insurance.

"There is a sea change going on in leadership, involving a shift from a hierarchical way of thinking to a connectionist, networked view."

Connectionist buzzwords:

• Collaboration
• Innovation
• Integration
• Connectivity
• Adaptive Work
• Distributed Leadership

Classic organization theory pits groups (with local specializations, local expertise, local autonomy, local self-interest and local identities) vs. an "integrated" approach (organization-wide hierarchy, formalization, organizational identity, and centralized leadership).

This doesn't work in the Knowledge Era (Network Age), because attempts to create "integrated" organizations actually results in more localism, and greater pushback.

"In the 1990s, when reorganizations happened en masse, there was a changing psychological contract between organizations and employees."

Organizational silos are an Industrial Age artifact. A representative of a major government contractor noted to Uhl-Bien "I wish that we could have a supply chain that goes across 'production' and 'sustainability.'" Right now, the two functions are in unconnected silos.

Historically, the "heroic" leader was connected to the idea of managerial leadership, where the leader was a "lone ranger, isolated from those being led and who often commanded his/her organization primaily through the use of top-down directives."

In the Knowledge Era, leadership is a behavior, not a role.

Question from the room: "Sarbanes-Oxley is forcing silo'd behavior...how do we get around it?"

A: "We need adaptive solutions that come from the people in the organization, not from the top. When we drive bureaucracy, we drive silos. We want to take a different approach and drive this from inside the organization."

There are two kinds of power: "positional" power and "personal' power." Millenials don't care for positional power, and prefer personal power.

Liveblog: The ROI of Recruiting and Retaining Top Sales Talent, Kimberly Rath

Kimberly Rath, President and Managing Partner, Talent Plus, has nearly 25 years of experience in the human resources field, and she is a recognized leader in the field of executive development. Rath provides executive management consulting consulting and training to organizations worldwide, including the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, The Estee Lauder Companies, and Mercedes-Benz USA.


Rath asserts that:

(Talent + Fit) x Investment = Growth

• Talent means "Talent/Potential"
• Fit means "Culture, Schedule, Compensation, Skills, Education"
• Investment means "Relationship, Training, Mentoring"

"Recruiting is like shaving...if you don't do it every day, it gets a little rough, and a little shaggy."

"We are a company of 120 people. We had 1,500 applicants last year."

Rath also led the group in a very eloquent conversation of the judgements and labels we put on candidates based on our initial impressions. Bill Eckstrom was a great sport, and allowed himself to be "labeled" by the group. Literally.

Rath counseled that an organization needs to hire "as-is" - as fundamental change of an individual is unlikely.

Over thousands of interviews, the attributes that Talent Plus has seen that drive success are the following nine (values, competition, focus, discipline, customer relationship, empathy, positivity, persuasion, enterpriser), in the following five categories:

Drives and Values
Values
Competition

Work Style
Focus
Discipline

People Acumen
Customer Relationship
Empathy
Positivity

Influence
Persuasion

Thought Process
Enterpriser

Successful sales people need to have 2 of the following 3, according to Rath: Enterpriser, Persuasion, Competition. ("After Sept. 11," Rath noted, "the two key attributes were Positivity and Persuasion.")

"We can predict failure -- e.g. 'this person won't make it' -- better than we can predict success."

"The behaviors you hire in, they define your culture."

Opening Keynote: Dr. Lowell Catlett

Dr. Catlett received his doctorate in Economics from Iowa State University, and has twice received the Don C. Roush Award for Excellence in Teaching. He is also a recipient of the prestigious Burlington Foundation Faculty Achievement Award for Outstanding University Teaching. In 1994 he was one of two Western Regional recipients of the National Association of State Universities and Land Grant Colleges "Excellence in College and University Teaching in the Food and Agricultural Sciences Award."

Lowell recently received the College of Agriculture and Home Economics Advisor of the Year as well as Teacher of the Year at New Mexico State University.

He is a consultant to the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, the Interior, Defense and Labor. He has also been a consultant to many Fortune 500 companies.

A stellar keynote presentation by Dr. Catlett, which was anchored by a discussion of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. At it's basis, Maslow's hierarchy is:

Self-Actualization

Esteem

Love/Belonging

Safety

Physiological Needs

The basic needs (physiological) are at the base of the pyramid, and the highest level (self-actualization) is the pinnacle.

Catlett made a number of key points, and the recurring theme was "don't sell products and services...sell people their dreams." In other words, just connecting with the "basic" needs doesn't cut it. One needs to be connecting at the top of the pyramid, not at the bottom. (A great example was an anecdote he shared about a hospital in his town. The hospital CEO communicated with Catlett at a level that connected at the highest level - "if you ever come here, you can bring your dog," and not at the basic level of, for example, price.)

There was also a lively discussion of the differences in communication across generations with respect to sales. The "Y generation," according to Catlett, is the first generation to not be defined by their music. The Y generation, he contends, does not define itself by rock, or punk, or hip-hop. Instead, their iPods contain all of those (as well as Frank Sinatra and myriad other genres).

A key change that spurred a rich conversation was the advent of mobile and wireless devices, and that new conversational modes such as texting were adding to (and not always necessarily supplanting) traditional modes such as face-to-face meetings. (One participant shared that one of his children sent and received over six thousand text messages a month.) This move toward constant, real-time communication was acknowledged as a key sea-change that the profession was going to need to understand, and address.

Catlett also noted that the Y generation has a different set of values than their predecessors, noting that 38% of students who went on Spring Break last year went on a philanthropic (vs. hedonistic) spring break.

So the question -- what changes are you seeing with respecting to changing communication modes and mores with respect to your customers and teams?

Registration Desk at the Summit is Open

People are beginning to roll in at the EcSELL Institute Sales Management Summit. We are having fun putting faces with names. The weather is cool but sunny. The hotel is beautiful and conveniently located right next to the SFMOMA. Tonight our attendees will enjoy cookies and milk in their rooms, compliments of EcSELL Institute, before they retire for bed. Tomorrow's instructors are: Dr. Lowell Catlett, Ph.D. who will share the five trends that are changing society and providing more sales opportunities than ever before. Kimberly Rath, President of Talent Plus, will share the key attribures associated with the best sales performer and Dr. Mary Uhl-Bien, Director of the Global Leadership Institute. Check back and read the instructor summaries tomorrow morning and be sure to post a comment/request if you would like a copy of any of their ppt decks.

Research & Publications is ready for the Summit

As the Director of Research & Publications for the EcSELL Institute team, I play a quiet role in the preparations for the Summit. But I hope to meet many of you who are planning to attend.

I'll be roaming around - and listening, for best practices, your questions, and research needs from the EcSELL Institute. As you know, the EcSELL Institute hunts down the fact-based practices of sales management which can drive sales productivity... and I'm always eager to learn more!

We're also planning to host an informal (and interactive!) discussion among our participants. I'll be leading this discussion to dig further into what drives (or does not) the sales productivity at your company.

Come with your "thinking caps" on!

Warmest regards,

Jaime Davis-Thomas, MA

Director of Research & Publications

EcSELL Institute

jdavis_thomas@ecsellinstitute.com

Read live blogs during the Summit!

This is really cool. We will be posting live blogs during the EcSELL Institute Sales Management Summit. Chris Carfi, of Cerado, will be our scribe. Tune in to this blog throughout the day on July 28-29 to find out what is going on. You will be able to read recaps of the instructors, see photos of the attendees, view posts from people at the Summit and more. Be sure to leave your thoughts and comments on this site.
To learn more about the instructors, agenda, etc. check out www.ecsellinstitute.com/summit09

EcSELL Institute Summit Has An Amazing Line Up Of Instructors

The EcSELL Institute Sales Management Summit is bringing in world-renowned experts in their respective fields to provide cutting-edge, fact-based solutions and strategies around the key drivers of productivity, sales leadership and management.

Dr. Lowell Catlett, expert futurist and forecaster of economic trends will help sales managers prepare for success by helping them understand the five economic trends that will drive sales organization growth over the next ten years.

Dr. J.P. Pawliw-Fry, President of the Institute for Health and Human Potential will teach attendees how to harness the power of emotional intelligence and develop this productive trait within the entire sales team.

Kimberly Rath, President of Talent Plus, will show partipants how to maximize a sales team's performance by leveraging the difference between selection & hiring and talent & training.

Dr. Mary Uhl-Bien, Director of the Global Leadership Institute and Howard Hawks Chair in Business Ethics and Leadership, will demonstrate how to apply 21st century leadership theories to improve sales productivity, innovation, learning, and adaptablity.

Justin Roff-Marsh, President of Ballistix, will demonstrate how to exploit the enormous amount of underutilized capacity in most sales environment to make incremental gains in market share.


The EcSELL Institute Summit will provide unparalleled opportunity to focus on the topics and activities that make the biggest impact on sales management. To learn more and register, go to www.ecsellinstitute.com/summit09

There still is time to register!

Register for the Sales Management Summit!

The EcSELL Institute Sales Management Summit is just around the corner. There is still time to register at www.ecsellinstitute.com/summit09.

This year's conference is focused on the six key drivers of sales productivity. Instructors will share information, strategies and solutions around talent identification and acquistions, leadership approaches that work, emotional intelligence, sales methodology, planning around five key economic drivers that impact sales, how to re-engineer the sales process and more.

If you are interested, a first time attendee, and not a member of the EcSELL Institute, call the EcSELL Institute marketing team to learn about a first time attendee special offer. kshoemaker@ecsellinstitute.com

EcSELL Institute Sales Management Summit
July 28-29, 2009
St. Regis Hotel
San Francisco, CA