Insights

To say the last three years have been tumultuous would be like calling a hurricane a rain shower—utterly understating the forces of change. A global pandemic, social awakenings, raw materials and labor shortages, supply chain issues, rising fuel costs, global conflict, volatile financial markets… The list goes on. While some aspects of the “good old days” of selling and marketing have returned (e.g., in person meetings), sellers are working in an environment irrevocably changed.   And now, just as is in the late 2000s, we once again stand on the precipice of an economic downturn.  As the COVID pandemic has mutated into a value-shortage pandemic, commercial teams of sellers and marketers are working to address a morass of new symptoms. Chief among them is unpredictability, which has led to a loss of trust with customers. Historically, sellers and marketers fostered trust by demonstrating understanding of the customer’s business, their industry, and their needs by delivering products and services to meet those needs, and by providing ideas and insights to help customers see needs on the horizon and get out in front of them. These were the active ingredients in the prescription for great selling and marketing. But this new unpredictability, due to digital transformation—along with societal, geopolitical, and macroeconomic maladies—has left those ingredients in short supply. Consequently, customers, marketers, and sellers are suffering withdrawal symptoms, as they struggle to rebuild their shared trust. Though communication has always been and continues to be critical when working with customers, with such volatility and uncertainty, there are four new treatment guidelines you need to know to help your sellers overcome the ill effects of the upheaval.  

• Lead with empathy.While stress has always been a constant for commercial teams, the level of mental and emotional strain on your sellers and marketers has skyrocketed. The frequency with which they must have difficult, potentially trust-breaking conversations with their customers continues to increase. Daily, sellers and marketers must tell customers that their purchase is not available on schedule, communicate a price increase, or deliver some other unwelcome message. The wild ride has left commercial teams with wounds that are hard to recognize, even harder to expose, and that require different desk-side care from managers and leaders. Showing vulnerability, and allowing others to show it, is a reflection of strength and builds trust and confidence. Give your sellers and marketers the space to bare these wounds to you and offer a shoulder to share the newly heavy burden, as sellers and marketers are, likewise, called on to exhibit empathy to their customers. This is the perfect opportunity to allow your commercial teams to be vulnerable, but also to reward the healthy behaviors they’ve displayed through this difficult journey. Yes, this is a volatile ride, and everyone will encounter bumps in the road; however, acknowledging effective sales and marketing behaviors will go a long way in keeping morale high.

• Counsel against jumping to conclusions.In high-stress moments, our brain chemistry naturally leads us to find quick explanations or solutions—and worse, shuts off our ability to see options.¹ For instance, sellers and marketers faced with a specific product’s lack of availability might assume a customer won’t be open to discussing alternative products, even though an alternative might suffice in the short term. Your commercial teams might be committing malpractice by diagnosing their customers’ needs prior to fully examining them. This not only makes the conversations that much more taxing—it also increases the likelihood of improper or irrelevant treatment of the customer’s symptoms. Staying open and continuing to ask the right questions to uncover a customer’s pain points will lead to larger and deeper sales opportunities. Refocus your commercial teams on the fundamentals of fully understanding their customer and their customer’s situation. Help your sellers and marketers become aware of the unfounded conclusions they may be drawing and how those preconceived notions may hinder their customer conversations.  

• Guide sellers and marketers to redefine mutual success.Typically, the markers for success are defined early in vendor-customer relationships. Rarely are those success markers revisited, despite changing circumstances. Now more than ever, your sellers and marketers should spend time with their customers redefining those markers of a healthy relationship in a way that accounts for the realities of today’s volatile marketplace. By jointly redefining objectives with customers, commercial teams can systematically rebuild trust. Guide your sellers and marketers on how to co-create with their customers a new definition of what success is in these uncertain times.

• Help commercial teams stay agile.Raw materials and labor shortages combined with supply chain issues mean that some products and services are readily available while others are not. How has the health of your customer’s relationship with their customers changed? What alternative methods can your customer use to service their own customers? What new offerings might your customers need to build now to serve their customers in the future? For those alternative methods, where can your company and your commercial teams make it easier for your customers to service their customers? Brainstorm with your sellers and marketers the different directions customer conversations could go and then practice the conversations with them to help them get comfortable being agile in those conversations. This agility is not only critical for sellers and marketers; leaders also must commit to taking a more agile approach to working side-by-side with their teams to provide adequate care and value to customers.

Don’t fall into the old routine of relying on statements like “we’re suffering right along with our customers” or “we’ll get through this” as the panacea to this economic pandemic. Serve your sellers, marketers, and customers by addressing both emotional and business needs through leading with empathy, avoiding jumping to conclusions, redefining mutual success with customers, and staying agile.

Sources

¹Wemm SE, Wulfert E. Effects of Acute Stress on Decision Making. Appl Psychophysiol Biofeedback. 2017 Mar;42(1):1-12. doi: 10.1007/s10484-016-9347-8. PMID: 28083720; PMCID: PMC5346059.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5346059/

The hardest sell is not the one you have to make, it’s the one your buyer has to make internally against other priorities andinitiatives.

As a seller, you can feel it coming. When recession looms, a company’s first impulse is to dramatically cut spending. But you can work the downturn to your advantage—helping buyers position your solution not as just another cost competing for space in a tightened budget, but as the key to thriving in hard times.

These four steps will enable you to make it easier for yourbuyers to buy.

1. Improve your understanding of the situation‍

Take a macroeconomic view of how a downturn is affecting your customer’s business. Examine the trends moving against the company’s ability to purchase, in particular the implications of how these trends impact the budget areas where you sell today. Customers who were previously looking for 20 percent year-over-year growth are likely now aiming for something more conservative, or even hoping just to remain flat. Maintaining revenues and market position are more important than ever in a recession.

Even during market downturns, however, customers still have problems that need to be solved. Consider the decision levers influencing purchasing amid these macroeconomic trends by identifying high-level trends that customers need to focus on in a downturn. These will fall into at least some, and maybe all, of the following categories: technology, people, strategy, key initiatives, competitive landscape, and business performance. Examining the internal communication of your own company and any changes in how decisions are made mayalso give insight into what your customers are experiencing.

2.  Improve your understanding of the situation

Even your strongest business relationships can now look much different due to economic pressures. Most customers will be facing increased scrutiny on any purchasing decision, with new stakeholders involved in the buying process who require higher levels of justification. A longer sales cycle has wide effects on your ability to manage your pipeline and territory and forecast your year. In a downturn, sales fundamentals are more important than ever, so you need to take these three actions:

Evaluate your customers. Looking at your book of business, who are your most critical stakeholders? Taking the time to evaluate which relationships are essential to sustain and beginning to formulate a game plan will keep you focused.

Discover and align to changing goals. Particularly for your most essential customers, you will need to be intentional about understanding how the looming recession is affecting their business and their decision-making processes. Often a short-term strategy is put in place to maintain financial health throughout the downturn. As a good partner, you need to be able to align with the new success targets and be proactive in the process.

Uncover the new competition. A downturn can bring a source of competition you haven’t faced before: other initiatives inside of your customer’s company competing for the same budget dollars. With waning confidence in growth, C-suite leaders have little choice but to tightly monitor costs throughout the organization. Inevitably, this ratchets up the internal competition for funding as finance departments try to decide which initiatives are mission-critical and which could wait for better conditions.

Getting back to basics and spending the time to deeply understand how the external pressures are creating new internal processes for your customers can help you better position yourself throughout the downturn.

3. Position yourself

Now that you fully understand the new strategy of your key accounts and any potential internal competition, you are ready to position yourself. While you may be tempted to look at shorter contracts or discounting, any amount of discounting can have long-term effects on your relationships and signal desperation. More than ever, it is critical that you create a value proposition for your customers. In addition, you must present a creative value proposition that is broad enough to appeal to the new stakeholders at the table. You may find yourself with C-suite executives involved in conversations that previously required lower-level sign off. Being able to confidently present your offering and think on your feet will be essential. Be sure to understand what value your offering brings to different areas of your customer’s organization and know what levers you have at your disposal to help a deal move along. Remember that just as your customers want to avoid any short-term missteps for their business, you must protect your business as well. Look for creative ways everyone can win.

4. Identify new opportunities

Finally, you need to be more proactive and agile during this time. While maintaining major accounts and relationships is important, finding new areas of business may be even more important. You might have built a book of business around an industry that is widely affected by the downturn. Networking with your team and staying current on market conditions can you help you find marketplace shifts and lead you to new opportunities. Communicating with your sales and marketing leadership on what you see and hear in the field may help everyone uncover new applications, industries, and customers for your products.

There’s no denying that selling in a downturn presents a new set of challenges. But by leveraging empathy and insights into the internal and external forces impacting customers, you canpartner with your buyers to make a winning business case—even in a downturn.

Originally published in CustomerThink.

Anticipation is often at the core of customer-centricity. Companies that utilize a customer-centric strategy can often predict every want, need, and possible passing fancy of their target audience — and find themselves handsomely rewarded in the process. Putting the customer front and center, even above revenue, can make a company 60% more profitable. Not a bad proposition for taking great care of one of an operation’s most essential assets.

Of course, claiming to be customer-centric is a far cry from actually being customer-centric. Companies that deploy a successful customer-centric strategy often use a different method of thinking to achieve their results: the “who-what-why” scale. Using these three W’s, every employee can better understand the customer beyond basic demographics. A deeper understanding then helps inform nearly every decision, shapes the experience across all possible touchpoints, and allows for more thoughtful and meaningful targeting.

With this method, employees make customers feel seen and heard. Customers see the company they chose to put their trust in actively meeting their wants and needs. Such basic services can do wonders for brand loyalty and brand advocacy. It can also encourage consumers to devote a larger share of their wallets — around 3% to 20% more.

In a fast-paced society, businesses must always look for the most beneficial way to appeal to customers and retain loyalty. A customer-centric strategy is the first step, though a deeper understanding of the customer’s wants, needs, and communication preferences is necessary for tangible results. This begs the question: How exactly do you come to a deeper understanding of a target audience?‍

Understanding a target audience

‍Businesses often use four specific methods to capture consumer insights and better anticipate customers’ wants and needs. The first is naturalistic observation, which monitors people’s interactions with the world. These findings can offer insights into how a target audience might try to fulfill a unique want or need. The second is customer surveys that allow organizations to gather valuable feedback. The third is focus groups, which involve customers discussing products or services.

Big data is the fourth strategy. Unlike the others, this method is where companies are currently experiencing the most change. Cloud computing has led to reimagining customer insight-oriented activities such as customer service analytics, brand experience, social media marketing, and voice of the customer tools.

New options and systems can easily overwhelm anyone looking for the right data to track for customer-centricity. Starting with a limited number of metrics and expanding from there can save you time, money, and hassle. Here’s where to direct your attention first:

1. Brand experience

Tracking brand experience can help capture consumer sentiment about your brand. It gives you a better idea of what people think and feel about your services. If done well, brand experience tracking can shine a light on which of your brand initiatives do or do not work, allowing you to pivot your efforts quickly. Both your net promoter and customer satisfaction scores can help crystalize what consumers might be saying and thinking about your brand.

Surveys can also be a great source of information. Keep questions to a minimum and targeted to encourage more thorough participation. Additionally, make sure not to bombard consumers with questionnaires. Quarterly can be a good frequency to capture such sentiments. Understanding your consumers’ mindsets encourages them to trust your brand and keep coming back for more.

2. Customer experience

Customer experience, or CX, tracking involves understanding the different dimensions of customer delight, including emotional and rational reactions to a company’s offerings. It also provides insights into the customer’s inclination to repurchase, recommend, or reject a product or service in the future.

Using certain data sets, particularly those associated with customer interactions, transactions, and profiles, you can arrive at what McKinsey & Company is calling “predictive insight.” This can help shape CX moving forward. All it takes is machine-learning algorithms to make sense of the information and direct funds toward certain touchpoints most likely to drive behavior along the customer journey.

3. Employee alignment

In a customer-centric organization, every person shares the goal of creating a great CX — from the C-Suite to front-line associates. Tracking and measuring employee alignment, or EA, will give you a better idea of how well each team member understands customers and, more importantly, believes that understanding and fulfilling customer needs are pivotal to the company’s success and their own.

EA starts with a sense of camaraderie and belonging. A Deloitte survey found that 79% of employees tend to agree. What’s more, 93% believe it to be a factor that drives organizational performance. When employees can see a common goal, they are more likely to achieve it for the success of everyone involved.

As with any customer-related initiative, it all comes down to the data. The most important steps are to monitor customer sentiment and understand where your company might fall within their purchase decisions. Just appreciate that one wrong move can leave people seeking alternatives to your services. Customers want what they want when they want it. By focusing on a client-centric business strategy, you can ensure they get it and keep coming back for more.

Big waves of change and disruption seem to keep coming. The latest – a recession. Just one more disruption in what is now a long series of hard events. If my own work is any indication, many leaders are facing the same challenges across many different businesses and countries. They struggle to find enough people to keep their doors open. They face supply chain problems. People are breaking down at work and quitting on the spot. To add insult to injury, their bosses are asking them to grow the top and bottom line in the face of hiring freezes, travel bans, budget cuts and layoffs. Sound familiar?

A colleague recently reminded me about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. She remarked that now, more than ever, we need to get back to basics, to attune ourselves and our clients to some pretty central needs. In Maslow’s terms: safety, belonging and esteem.

This is what we see many of the successful leaders we work with are doing now to get back to the basics.

‍Acknowledge what’s real.

‍These leaders are not sugar coating the very real challenges that they and their teams are facing. They are being as open and transparent as they can about these issues and what they mean for the business and the team. This creates a sense of both safety and belonging by removing the mystery of what they are thinking and making it ok to acknowledge things that aren’t going well. Safety in the form of trust, as in, “you trust me enough to be transparent.” Belonging in that “we are in this together."

Focus on the practical and the possible.

‍When the pressure is on, people tend to obsess about everything that is going wrong – what can’t get done in the face of budget cuts, layoffs, lack of resources and time. Great leaders are instilling a focus on what can be done. They keep it simple. Set priorities. Clear the clutter for their teams. Build a rhythm of completing the projects, tasks and activities that are important and achievable. Getting things done helps build esteem in individuals and on teams and is progress in face of uncertainty.

‍Celebrate wins.

‍As their teams complete these practical and possible projects, today’s great leaders take time to celebrate accomplishments. In person and on Zoom, they make space not only to give recognition to their people, but also to create an in environment where employees give one another recognition. One leader has introduced an interesting and important twist: their team celebrates mistakes, things that did not go as planned. They use this as an opportunity to learn for the future and make it safe to fail. Whether these teams are celebrating wins or mistakes, they are doing it together and finding that it builds belonging and esteem.

‍Find the silver lining.

‍Every challenge produces a new opportunity. A client recently shared that their team had been cut in half, leaving everyone worrying about how to continue to deliver on their commitments. They quickly realized there was no way they could do everything. After engaging with key stakeholders, they were surprised to learn that much of what they were doing was not even really wanted or needed. The list of true needs was actually shorter, more doable, and more satisfying to both the team and their stakeholders, since everyone could create value more quickly and feel a sense of progress. These interactions also produced new, more efficient ways of working, and a greater sense of safety, belonging and esteem.

‍Stay close to their people.

‍Perhaps the most important thing these leaders are doing in these turbulent times is to continue building relationships with their people. They do not cancel their 1:1’s because “everyone is so busy.” They treat these meetings as sacred and use this time to connect to their people, listen to their challenges, and offer support and guidance. High performing leaders learned this lesson very early in the pandemic, in the sudden move to virtual work, and have not forgotten. Being there and being present is a game changer for all involved.

In this time of unprecedented change, one thing has not changed: people leave their jobs when they don’t feel a close connection to their manager or to the company. In fact, a recent Sloan Management Review analysis concluded that a “toxic culture” was 10 times more important in predicting turnover than pay. The suggestions above to ensure that your teams feel safety, belonging and esteem, are a few of the ways that leaders can keep their best people and persevere as we ready for the next wave of change.

Big waves of change and disruption seem to keep coming. The latest – a recession. Just one more disruption in what is now a long series of hard events. If my own work is any indication, many leaders are facing the same challenges across many different businesses and countries. They struggle to find enough people to keep their doors open. They face supply chain problems. People are breaking down at work and quitting on the spot. To add insult to injury, their bosses are asking them to grow the top and bottom line in the face of hiring freezes, travel bans, budget cuts and layoffs. Sound familiar?

A colleague recently reminded me about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. She remarked that now, more than ever, we need to get back to basics, to attune ourselves and our clients to some pretty central needs. In Maslow’s terms: safety, belonging and esteem.

This is what we see many of the successful leaders we work with are doing now to get back to the basics.

‍Acknowledge what’s real.

‍These leaders are not sugar coating the very real challenges that they and their teams are facing. They are being as open and transparent as they can about these issues and what they mean for the business and the team. This creates a sense of both safety and belonging by removing the mystery of what they are thinking and making it ok to acknowledge things that aren’t going well. Safety in the form of trust, as in, “you trust me enough to be transparent.” Belonging in that “we are in this together."

Focus on the practical and the possible.

‍When the pressure is on, people tend to obsess about everything that is going wrong – what can’t get done in the face of budget cuts, layoffs, lack of resources and time. Great leaders are instilling a focus on what can be done. They keep it simple. Set priorities. Clear the clutter for their teams. Build a rhythm of completing the projects, tasks and activities that are important and achievable. Getting things done helps build esteem in individuals and on teams and is progress in face of uncertainty.

‍Celebrate wins.

‍As their teams complete these practical and possible projects, today’s great leaders take time to celebrate accomplishments. In person and on Zoom, they make space not only to give recognition to their people, but also to create an in environment where employees give one another recognition. One leader has introduced an interesting and important twist: their team celebrates mistakes, things that did not go as planned. They use this as an opportunity to learn for the future and make it safe to fail. Whether these teams are celebrating wins or mistakes, they are doing it together and finding that it builds belonging and esteem.

‍Find the silver lining.

‍Every challenge produces a new opportunity. A client recently shared that their team had been cut in half, leaving everyone worrying about how to continue to deliver on their commitments. They quickly realized there was no way they could do everything. After engaging with key stakeholders, they were surprised to learn that much of what they were doing was not even really wanted or needed. The list of true needs was actually shorter, more doable, and more satisfying to both the team and their stakeholders, since everyone could create value more quickly and feel a sense of progress. These interactions also produced new, more efficient ways of working, and a greater sense of safety, belonging and esteem.

‍Stay close to their people.

‍Perhaps the most important thing these leaders are doing in these turbulent times is to continue building relationships with their people. They do not cancel their 1:1’s because “everyone is so busy.” They treat these meetings as sacred and use this time to connect to their people, listen to their challenges, and offer support and guidance. High performing leaders learned this lesson very early in the pandemic, in the sudden move to virtual work, and have not forgotten. Being there and being present is a game changer for all involved.

In this time of unprecedented change, one thing has not changed: people leave their jobs when they don’t feel a close connection to their manager or to the company. In fact, a recent Sloan Management Review analysis concluded that a “toxic culture” was 10 times more important in predicting turnover than pay. The suggestions above to ensure that your teams feel safety, belonging and esteem, are a few of the ways that leaders can keep their best people and persevere as we ready for the next wave of change.

How will your business survive amidst surging inflation and increased costs for energy and raw materials?

How will you ensure customers buy your products and services when they need to spend more on almost everything? Right now, these questions are top of mind for you and other business leaders. Unfortunately, most factors that contribute to inflation are out of your control. However, there are a few key strategies you can leverage to mitigate the consequences of inflation.

1. Rethink your value proposition

More than ever, a clear, targeted value proposition is mission critical. To reach customers in a time when they are hesitant to spend, you need to address their specific needs and desires, which requires having deep insights about them. Without this understanding, it’s impossible to highlight the value that your offering provides. To dig deeper, conduct customer focus sessions or interviews to understand what they value most and why. Leverage the following process to structure how you rethink your value proposition.

• Customer Understanding: Know your customer better than anyone else and appreciate the difference between customers.
• Customer Segmentation: Gain a solid understanding of the segmentation process. Segment your customers based on your customer understanding.
• Specific Value Proposition: Develop segment-specific offerings based on customer insights. Create segment-specific value propositions.

2. Redesign your pricing approach and strategy

Amidst high inflation, price is a sticking point for customers – but increases are often necessary for the longevity of your business.

When considering price increases, ask yourself, what do we want to achieve? Your pricing approach and strategy depend upon how much of a price increase you can afford. Do you want to gain market share with your premium brand? Do you need to defend against a private label? You must consider these questions when rethinking your pricing strategy because price increases should not jeopardize your overall strategy.

Regardless of which path you choose, use insights you’ve gathered about customers as you reevaluate. Your pricing should reflect the benefits of your offering.

Depending on your customers’ price sensitivity, their reaction will be different. Consider these factors when redesigning your pricing strategy:

• Customer’s income statement / financial status
• Customer’s willingness to pay
• Customer’s industry and product segments (necessities vs. luxury goods)
• Availability of alternative products and substitutability

However, your price increase shouldn’t be too moderate (< 2%). An increase needs to be worthwhile and secure your margin, so you don’t have to raise prices too often.

3. Communicate your price increase

Raising prices without a thoughtful communication strategy can backfire and harm your relationships with customers. Remember, your customers are also facing higher prices for almost all goods and services, so be sure sellers are equipped to approach the situation with care.

Create a compelling story that sellers can use to frame the price increase highlighting the value your customers will receive when purchasing your offering. What additional benefits will they receive at this new price? Why should they be willing to pay more?

As part of the story, sellers should only plan to mention the increase in input costs as a secondary factor. But, if higher input costs are the reason for the price increase, sellers should not be afraid to communicate this. Transparency counts.

Decades of psychological studies have proven that calling it what it is – a price increase – and avoiding euphemisms is important to customers. Sellers will often call it “price update” or “price adjustment” because they are afraid of customers’ reactions. However, customers value authenticity and honesty more than diluted messaging.

Another important factor is time. Since your customers might need some time to adapt to your increased prices, the earlier sellers communicate, the better.

In summary, before communicating the price increase to customers, be sure your sellers are prepared to do the following:

• Create a value-first storyline without neglecting external factors
• Avoid euphemisms and let customers know what they can expect
• Communicate in a timely manner

Whether you’re restating your value proposition or adjusting your prices, collecting feedback and insights from customers enables you to build trust and serve them better. This is especially critical during inflationary periods when price can be sensitive and communicating changes must be approached with consideration and care. However, putting in this additional work will be rewarded with steadfast customer loyalty even if price increases persist.

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Every decade has its iconic video games. Whether it was Pac-Man, Super Mario, Call of Duty, or MineCraft – among many others – everyone can remember the hot new game that thrilled the generation.

The platform didn’t matter. Atari, Xbox, or Wii – it was all about the game. It still is. Console makers and game designers know this well, so the competition is fierce when it comes to creating the next killer app.

But killer apps aren’t just for video game players. When developing your sales reps, a killer app—defined as “a computer application of such great value or popularity that it assures the success of the technology with which it is associated broadly”—can be transformative. In today’s world, the old ways of selling are no longer sufficient. To be successful, reps need to adopt a new, data-driven way of working.

However, this transformation does not come easily. Unfortunately, sales reps are not exactly longing to open Salesforce or PowerBi to spend a couple of “joyful” hours analyzing data, extracting insights, and defining a course of action to improve their results.

Sales reps who make the shift to this new way of selling, though, see huge benefits in both their productivity and bottom-line results. So how do you motivate all sellers within your organization to adopt this new way of working? This is where the killer app comes in—you need to codify how sellers access datasets and support the new approach with powerful use cases for increasing sales success, so that salespeople see the benefit of changing their ingrained behaviors.

What’s in the way of adoption?

There are two common arguments salespeople make as to why IT system adoption doesn’t happen.

1. “I am not good at using technology, and every year a new tool comes out, I just cannot keep up.” This is only half-true. Often times, reps will reveal that they tried to open the system just once or twice, felt lost and overwhelmed by the complexity, and gave up.As one CTO described: “With IT, you need to get your hands dirty to learn and see the potential of the tool.” In this case, reps’ hands are clearly spotless.
2. “I am a people person… I want to be in the field talking to clients, not entering data into the CRM and analyzing them. Sales calls is what delivers results. I am not sure how the new IT tools will help me with that.”

As one CTO described:

“With IT, you need to get your hands dirty to learn and see the potential of the tool.” In this case, reps’ hands are clearly spotless.

This second argument would be reasonable if salespeople’s roles were purely relational – however, in today’s world that is not enough. The best salespeople are great at both everything that is client-facing, and at leveraging IT tools in order to help them make better decisions about their sales activities and build better insights to communicate their unique value to each customer.^{[1], [2]} Unsurprisingly, better value also leads to better client relationships.

Still, many companies today have to deal with a change-resistant sales force that fails to recognize the potential of the data and tools they have at arm’s reach. Most sales forces continue to work based on their intuition and what they remember from past wins. So how do you shift your people’s mindsets so that they make more data-driven decisions?

Connecting the case for change with the power of the killer app

Shifting mindsets takes time, energy, and persistence. It requires a multi-dimensional approach to change management, and often calls for multiple rounds of training, coaching, and mentoring to make changes stick.

While this may seem daunting, embarking on the journey to enable your salespeople to be more data-driven can produce incredible results. In fact, research shows that 56 percent of CEOs whose organizations shifted toward a digital transformation experienced increased revenue.^[3]

So how do you get there? Combine a change management strategy with the power of killer apps is a great place to start. Begin by asking:

1. What is the outcome you are trying to achieve for your salespeople? Why is better IT tool adoption the solution?
2. What are possible killer apps for your salespeople to use to get where you want them to be? These can take the form of a dashboard or set of instructions on how to leverage the company’s IT tools (CRM, PowerBi, Sales Enablement, etc.)
3. What are related use-cases that leverage data or insights, which will encourage sales reps to seek out IT tools and change how they work and think?

There are no easy answers. What you come up with will be contextual – it will depend on your company’s industry and unique needs. Here are two examples of organizations that have leveraged the three points above:

A global player in the paper industry wanted its sales reps to be more prepared for meetings with important clients. They created a killer app in the form of a report to better understand recent shift in SKU volume that made up the bulk of recurring orders from clients. These patterns made it possible for the rep to figure out if a competitor was aggressively pursuing the same client, or ask the client what was behind the SKU change.

A global player in animal pharma is in the process of deploying their new onmichannel strategy. Their killer app aims to provide sales reps with analytics on interactions between veterinarians and the company, which includes their engagement with communications delivered through multiple channels—emails, calls, and meetings. These insights will enable sales reps to activate the best omnichannel strategy to connect with their prospects and clients. For example, after a face-to-face visit, the rep will be able to see that a veterinarian opened 80 percent of emails, but never engaged in calls with the Inside Sales team. As a result, the rep will be able to make an informed decision about the best next touchpoint—whether it is sending an email, or following up two weeks later with another visit.

These two examples demonstrate how a killer app – and its related use case – need to be specific to each organization.

Bringing your sales force along on the killer app journey

After selecting your killer apps, it’s critical to ask, how can your organization codify it and cascade it internally to drive adoption?

1. Start by listing the KPIs your salespeople care about (net sales, growth, frequency of visits, etc.) and identify the key decisions that can help improve that KPI. For example, if the KPI is sales in a specific client segment, underlying decisions might be the number of touchpoints or demos of a new product.
2. Define and explain the killer apps – and their related use cases – to help your salespeople make those important decisions based on the data in the system. This can take the form of a killer-app playbook – a document encompassing all of your killer apps and their use cases for different roles in the sales force. Pro tip: define when these killer apps need to be accessed, whether at specific moments (e.g., gauging a territory’s potential at the end of each quarter) or continually (e.g., before daily visits to important clients). Doing so could, for example, provide visibility into product demos that others on the sales team have already run for a particular client, making it easier for a sales rep to more effectively allocate their time and run demos for less frequently touched clients.
3. Codify an easy way for salespeople to dig into the IT system and extract the data they need for a specific use case, and build a set of steps to analyze the information. Again, this is core to the killer app and can take the form of a dashboard or a set of instructions to follow in the IT system. Keep it straightforward to avoid overwhelming the sales team: two to three killer apps and related sets of instructions will be enough to start.
4. Bring your salespeople onboard, engage them to discuss why they should change (emphasize the connection between killer apps and relevant KPIs), what is in it for them (highlight success stories and the possible cost of inaction), and how to do it (leverage gamification to make adoption fun, and use recognition as an incentive to encourage implementation of the new tool). Enabling this change also means setting the sales managers up for success as internal champions and adoption coaches for salespeople.

This kind of transformation doesn’t happen overnight. It requires an iterative approach—with frequent reviews and expansion as your sales force grows in confidence—and a recognition of people’s different reactions to change, which is called an “XY Sales Transformation.” Developing this culture around sales tools will prime your team to adopt more sophisticated killer apps in the future, resulting in better planning, more insightful conversations, and higher sales performance, among many other benefits.^[4]

Though it may be easier to convince someone to try a new console to play their favorite video game, creating killer apps for your salespeople can go a long way in shifting reps’ mindsets and promoting action. Eventually, IT systems adoption has largely to do with the people side of sales strategy – it is still about “getting your hands dirty.”

References

[1] A Theoretical Review of CRM Effects on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty. Shaon, K.I.; Rahman, H. Central European Business Review; Prague Vol. 4, Iss. 1, (2015): 23-36.

[2] Sales Technology Orientation, Information Effectiveness, and Sales Performance. Hunter, G.K.; Perreault, W.D. Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management; Vol. 26, Iss. 2, (2006): 95-113.

[3] Gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2017-04-24-gartner-survey-shows-42-percent-of-ceos-have-begun-digital-business-transformation

[4] Why Sales Reps Should Welcome Information Technology: Measuring the Impact of CRM-based IT on Sales Effectiveness. Ahearne, M.; Hughes, D.E.; Schillewaertb, N. International Journal of Research in Marketing; Vol. 24, Iss. 4, (2007): 336-349.

Your company just asked you to negotiate a price increase with your customer based on the recent market conditions. It might be the first time that they’ve asked you to do this. But in some cases, this request could be the first of many.

Price increases are never easy to bring up with potential or existing customers. There are numerous reasons why these can even make the most seasoned sellers uncomfortable:

• “My customers are struggling with their own margins and now I’m asking them to increase costs and possibly shrink their own margins further?”
• “This is the fourth time this year that I have had the same conversation with my customer.”
• “It’s not a comfortable situation for me. My customer tends to get upset and threaten to find other suppliers.”

And there are many more. The bottom line is that this is an uncomfortable conversation. So, what can you do to make a more compelling case?

1. Negotiate on something other than price.
   When it comes to negotiating price increases, sellers tend to negotiate on a single variable… price.  In most conversations, you might hear “your price is too high” or “you need to lower your price to stay competitive.” Instead, think about other variables you can explore to help further the conversation.
   
   Consider ways to create value for customers other than price, such as:
   - Volume or share achievements
   - Specifications on certain products
   - Warranties or guarantees
   - Contract terms
   - Delivery term
   - Trainings or support
   
   Ultimately, retaining the customer will come down to the value that you’ve demonstrated and the relationship you’ve created.
2. Understand your customers’ position.
   To make a compelling case for raising prices, you’ll need to present the other ways you create value for customers in a way that is meaningful to them. This starts with understanding the customer.
   
   Ask yourself:
   - Why do they have this position?
   - What are their interests in this position?- Is it a company mandate?
   - More importantly, is it important to them?
   
   Once you can answer these questions, you will have a very clear understanding as to the “why” behind their position – in other words, the root cause behind their issue with a price increase. By developing this understanding, you can identify the other avenues for creating value that are meaningful to them and whether it is something the organization values highly. If the answer is yes, and you’ve found a variable that is important to them, you should be able to trade for equal value. You get the price you need, and they get the value that matters most to them.
3. Above all, trust.
   The last factor in navigating a price increase conversation is trust. A seller’s ability to build trust with their customers is necessary for helping reduce the fear, uncertainty, and discomfort involved with price increases. However, trust isn’t something you can earn once and bank on indefinitely. It is constantly being evaluated. Expect your customers to be thinking about your:
   
   - Capability and competence levels in interactions
   - The reasoning behind why you are taking a certain action
   - Responsiveness to past challenges
   - Knowledge of their business and needs
   - Level of curiosity around their current state
   
   The level of trust between you and your customers will accelerate or inhibit your ability to influence them and properly position a price increase. Make sure that you are constantly putting in the work to build trust so that when the time comes to raise prices, your customer is ready and willing.

In a recessionary and high inflation environment, price increases are only to be expected. However, by negotiating on something other than price, knowing what your customer values, and establishing trust, this challenging conversation will be significantly less difficult.

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN and SAN FRANCISCO, CA – BTS GROUP AB (publ), a world renown strategy implementation and consulting firm, won 44 Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards in partnership with clients. These awards represent some of BTS’s best and most innovative solutions crafted in partnership with clients, including: 

• Abbott
• Accenture
• Air Liquide
• Anglo American
• Astellas
• Bayer AG, Crop Science division
• Blackmores
• Colgate-Palmolive
• Discover Financial Services
• FirstRand
• Grifols
• HP Inc
• ING
• Mondelez Global LLC
• Mubadala Health
• National Australia Bank (NAB)
• Repsol
• Salesforce
• Santander Portugal
• ScotiaBank
• Standard Bank
• Symetra
• Vale
• Vodacom
• Zebra Technologies

“We are very grateful to be recognized for our partnerships with clients,” said Rick Cheatham, CMO at BTS. “Amidst the past few years of constant, accelerating change, we are honored to have the privilege of continuing to grow with our clients. Our ongoing collaborations to deliver best-in-class solutions, whether virtually, in-person, or in a hybrid environment, are a testament to the trust and strength of the relationships we’ve built together.” 

These awards include 21 gold, 14 silver, and 9 bronze, ranging from Best Advance in Leadership Development for Women to Best Learning Program Supporting a Change Transformation Business Strategy. Find the full list of winners here. 

“Excellence Award winners distinguish themselves through their growing understanding that all the functions of HCM are integrated and must work together to move businesses forward,”

“It is a pleasure to see more organizations collaborating across functions and getting more sophisticated and accomplished at delivering measurable benefit through ground-breaking HCM practices,”

“For example, it was inspiring to see how diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are increasingly embedded into people and business strategies and cultures. We saw more alignment between HCM and business objectives than ever before.”

said Brandon Hall Group Chief Operating Officer Rachel Cooke, leader of the HCM Excellence Awards program.

Entries were evaluated by a panel of veteran, independent senior industry experts, Brandon Hall Group analysts and executives based upon these criteria: fit the need, design of the program, functionality, innovation and overall measurable benefits. Excellence Award winners are scheduled to be honored at Brandon Hall Group’s HCM Excellence Conference, Jan. 31-Feb. 2, 2023, at the Hilton West Palm Beach, Florida. Select winners also will serve as presenters in breakout sessions, sharing their leading practices during the conference.

“Our award winners demonstrated the vision, agility and innovation needed to excel in the unchartered hybrid work environment,”

said Brandon Hall Group Chief Executive Officer Mike Cooke.

“We added and revised awards categories to ensure that we not only validate best HCM practices but also solicit and recognize next practices that set a high bar for everyone.”

When will the recession begin? How bad will it be? The answers to these three questions are anyone’s guess.

What we do know is that a recession is coming – the current geopolitical conditions foretell the future: rapid inflation, spiking interest rates, political unrest, and resulting supply chain issues, as well as the ongoing challenge of a highly contagious virus that will most likely never go away.

‍The writing is on the wall. At some point, the economic cycle will turn, and the economy will begin to decline or continue to stall.

‍Recessions happen all the time, it's a normal part of the economic cycle. However, what’s particularly interesting about this environment is that it will likely be the first recession that members of Gen-Z and most Millennials have ever experienced – that is, aside from the initial shock of Covid-19 pandemic. Any Covid-induced economic shrinkage was more of a disruption than a true recession. This type of downturn can be described as “V-shaped,” or characterized by a short duration and swift recovery (for example, Western economies’ post-pandemic growth, driven by lower interest rates, constrained supply, and government stimulus).

Under the current economic conditions, the recession ahead is classic both in the sense that companies are cutting costs and delaying investment in anticipation, and that its causes can be attributed to external factors. Younger leaders are facing a new, but not entirely unfamiliar, challenge.

Over the past few years, Millennial and Gen-Z leaders have risen through the ranks, taking on significant leadership roles across all industries. During the pandemic, these leaders leveraged their tech savviness to weather the challenges of working from home and the shift to a hybrid-virtual environment. Now, new generations of managers and leaders will experience this set of recessionary economic conditions for the first time, and it’s impossible to predict what will happen.

What we do know is that a recession can change many things, from the obvious to the less obvious. Let’s start with the obvious. Companies will quickly look for ways to conserve cash and protect margins, which often means slowing spending, layoffs, and restructuring to cut costs. Tech companies that boomed during the pandemic have started to reduce spending and announcing hiring freezes, signaling for companies in other industries to do the same. Jobs will be at risk. If you cannot prove a good ROI, your project is at risk. There are no longer unlimited resources to try out new ideas, and emphasis shifts from growth to profitability at all costs. An increase in uncertainty will make companies more conservative and tentative. All these are well-known dynamics.

Less obvious is the impact of increased uncertainty on people. Coupled with rising fear in general, volatility is the name of the game. Your investments just lost a lot of value. High inflation means that your purchasing power, and the new house that you stretched for, are declining in value. You’re worrying about your job, or are not getting the bonus you banked on.

The combination of fear and an increase in messy information escalates your “cognitive load,” or the need to tap into your cortex. Responses triggered by fear force you to call on more ancient and less intelligent parts of your brain, effectively reducing your IQ and decreasing the thoughtfulness of your decision making. The solution? While your brain is triggered to respond with its most animalistic “fight or flight” parts, you need to be smarter about navigating your new work and home life.

What are the implications of this on organizations? For one, fear responses may decrease teamwork and collaboration while increasing peoples’ self-interest (aka – the burning need to keep their job). At a time when teamwork and tapping into everyone’s intelligence is more important than ever, external stresses will likely drive your team to be less than their best.

Given this understanding, as a leader, what are you doing to build resilience in your teams? How will you help them tackle this uncertainty and thrive? Resilience can be built on both an individual and team level through intentional coaching and practice. Cultivating these behaviors not only builds a better workplace culture — it also gives your people the tools to bounce back.

You may also need to develop a recession playbook that helps you map out how you’ll support your people while also driving the business forward. It’s no easy feat, but remains critical as you move forward during this challenging period.

One practice we know helps build team and organizational resilience is something we call Future Storming. Future Storming is the process of preparing your business leaders from the “future-back” rather than “today-forward.” This means anticipating trends that have yet to occur and envisioning how they might intersect in surprising ways. This exercise, which can be practiced by leaders at all levels, helps them build the capacity to navigate uncertainty, strengthen collaboration with diverse stakeholders, and bolster your business’ capability to manage risk and uncertainty.

For example, you can run Future Storming exercises where your team thinks holistically across business silos about where the industry, customer trends, technology, and competition will be three, five, or ten years in the future. As your team evaluates the intersection of these trends, they build the capacity to mitigate risk and uncover insights that provide opportunities for innovation. The focus on opportunities is essential, as recessions can be rocket fuel for disruptive ideas and startups. Furthermore, customer buying criteria changes during recessions, and can upend traditional relationships.

A good example of this disruption is Airbnb, which was born during the 2009 subprime mortgage crisis. In a time when many were strapped for cash, but had a few extra rooms to spare, it offered people the opportunity to gain an extra source of income by renting out their extra rooms or vacation homes. By injecting a new supply of affordable short-term rentals into the market, Airbnb disrupted the hotel industry and drove down hotel costs. The hospitality industry was already primed for disruption; the recession was just the multiplier.

‍In the next recession, which new, disruptive companies will thrive, and why?

‍Lastly, how can you empower the new generation of leaders to drive the cost and cash flow initiatives needed in your organization? Your team needs to be capable of contributing to improved cash flow ahead of time or just in time. This requires strong business and financial acumen to understand how their decisions will need to change in tighter times to free up cash and realize better margins or returns, while simultaneously continue innovating and testing out new ideas to drive the business forward.

Are your young leaders ready and capable of doing this? Have you developed them to be effective in such a scenario? Up until now, Gen-Z and Millennial leaders have focused almost exclusively on growth. Moving forward, they need to focus on margin, cost, asset utilization, and cash flow. While in growth mode, investment dollars for innovation were plentiful, but now disciplined innovation is the name of the game. These leaders need to be prepared to fail fast and cheap, and move with agility towards the better innovations and investments.

In good times, leaders may not be aware of how the decisions they make every day at work impact margins, but in a recession, leaders need to be hyperaware of how they spend time and resources. Furthermore, funding is easy to come by in the name of growth, but in a recession? Not anymore.

Learned future preparation, resilience, and the financial proficiency and confidence to drive cashflow are critical for success in this new environment. By providing tools, expectations, and discipline now, you can inspire your young leaders to take control of the future. Instead of acting rashly when the increase in uncertainty tricks brains into inaction, acting ahead empowers your leaders to drive the improvements required to be successful.

It’s time to get ready. It’s time to prepare your leaders to flourish in tough times. Prepare your team to storm the future by building the resilience and confidence necessary to make good business decisions when they are in the eye of the storm, all in the name of managing through this recession. Better yet, give them the skills to innovate new products, services, and business models to propel your organization forward, and do it all while using the smart part of your brains.

Being ready for recession means asking your teams to think differently.

There’s an entire generation of leaders today who have never led through a recession. Now, faced with raging inflation, tumbling profits and volatile stock prices, they are flummoxed. While this is not another global pandemic, there are whispers in the wind that troubled times are coming. How can you help your teams work together in an agile way to prepare for whatever is next?

There are lessons to draw from winners post-COVID who seemed to nimbly navigate the last crisis, and those that lumbered and bumbled their way through.

Among the losers were those that didn’t just get it a little wrong – they doubled down on a single bet. They kept rolling the dice at the same table despite the odds that their “luck” could run out.

• Peloton produced more bikes than people wanted and were left peddling in the wind with quality issues and a saturated market for their product.
• Bed Bath and Beyond bet on branded goods instead of investing in technology that would have brought loyal shoppers online to buy goods for staying home and feathering their nests.

These companies looked like early winners, and yet the falls were more spectacular than the rise. They had a plan. They were aligned. Where they failed was in imagination. Marching in lock step they went right over the edge.

‍Why it’s easy to go over the edge

‍In hindsight we can see mistakes. But how does a smart team keep from outsmarting itself?   It comes down to a discipline – avoiding the tendency toward group think and coalescing around one possibility.

‍Breaking the cycle to think differently together

‍Breaking this cycle of group think is difficult, but there is too much at stake not to do it. The discipline that saves the smartest, most successful organizations in times of uncertainty is a dedication to scenario planning.

Scenario planning is both a process and a discipline that enables your team to imagine “what happens if…” by reflecting on the variables for your business and speculating with the best of your current data and experience how those might play out.

With this process your team can go deep and long before events occur, playing out how they might respond. They can then agree on the critical factors that they’ll need to consider as events unfold. They put together plausible scenarios – not only Plans A and B, but also plans C, D, E, F, and G.

Scenario Planning

Scenario planning is the practice of creating varying courses of action for a business to implement based on potential events and situations, known as scenarios.

It enables teams to challenge their own thinking, consider possibilities, and later, respond dynamically to an unknown future. There are many ways the future may unfold with scenario planning, guiding teams to be responsive, resilient, and effective.

The process begins when you define your critical uncertainties and develop plausible scenarios.

‍This requires teams to both apply a sophisticated process and develop the team dynamics and characteristics of agile teams.

Scenario planning is a team sport in that it first requires us to acknowledge no one of us is smarter than all of us. When your team develops this capability, you have the ingredients to become agile. Agility is not so much response to crisis as it is planning to pivot when necessary and knowing what you will do. It may mean changing the metrics by which you’ll measure success so that you can manage through a challenging period.

There may be no industry that suffered during the pandemic more than the airlines. Many tried and tried again to “guess” when air travel would resume. CEO of United, Scott Kirby told analysts “We’re not going to pretend we know what demand will be.” After spending months pouring over data, they concluded it couldn’t be done.

Instead they assembled a “bounce-back” cross-functional team to consider slow, medium, and fast rebound scenarios. Conversations on cutting costs were scuttled for debates on growth. Many had never met each other or worked together. But they set a goal of becoming a “just in time” organization, looking at options, risks, plans. Through that they placed some bets. The result was a different version of success – liquidity – which enabled them to ride out volatility in demand indefinitely.

Why can’t more teams do what United Airlines did? The answer is they can if they know how to get there. There are qualities of leaders and teams that give them the capabilities to work together more effectively and thrive in uncertainty, and tools to support them through the churn. Scenario planning is one of those tools – the most powerful way to ensure your team has the debate before there is a crisis. The difficult conversations have been started, the tradeoffs contemplated, so that when it’s time to act, it feels familiar.

‍Leading a future-proof team

‍The role of the team leader is to create space and environment for acknowledging what is unknowable and building a process that moves away from report-outs and political debates to alignment around critical factors and criteria for decision-making.

The team needs to be empowered and expected to debate constructively and bring discipline to its decision process. We know from research and through our work with agile teams that there are three qualities of these teams that make it more likely they’ll be able to plan for various scenarios, stay current on the critical factors, and be ready to pivot.

‍Seize the power of Both/And thinking

Both/And Thinking is the ability to hold that more than one seemingly conflicting fact or set of facts may be true, or there maybe be more than one scenario, potential outcome, or impact of any decision.

Both/And Thinking in teamwork requires all members to hold for the group the notion that seemingly opposing points of view can both contain truths. For example, it can be true that a recession may be painful, but also positive for your company.

To encourage both/and thinking, enable your team to embrace the plausibility of numerous scenarios, as well as options for the best actions based on emerging data. Helping your team to explicitly understand and analyze both sides of the seemingly contradictory truth is a key step forward.

Unlock the creativity that comes with curiosity

In teamwork, curiosity is ability of a team to display humility by soliciting input and other points of view. Curiosity avoids narrow, myopic thinking. It prevents your team from closing ranks at critical moments and helps open the aperture to see all possibilities.

To encourage curiosity, insist on questions even from those who have “been there and done that.” Seek to understand, model the behavior by asking questions yourself, even if you believe you know the answer. You never know when the “crazy” idea will be the one that makes most sense.

Make the path forward real through Decision Savvy

All the curiosity and flexibility in your approach won’t mean much if your team can’t make good decisions and move forward together. Agility requires a discipline around decision-making that encourages the team to decide on the criteria for decision before advocating for a point of view. When your team does this, it is far easier to build alignment and get to the right decision.

To foster decision savvy requires the leader to insist on taking a step back to ask “what problem are we solving” before the team begins solutioning. This step alone will prevent your team from solving before they get to the heart of the matter. Then, simply ask, “what are the criteria that this decision must meet?” and generate those in writing. Use it as a checklist to consider the various options, and then, tally up how well each potential solution meets the criteria.

Scenario planning is not a cure-all for thriving in a recession. But it will give you and your team a multitude of options and a path forward to take now. Perhaps most important, it will change the crisis mentality and alter the chemistry of the team. You’ll be able to meet each challenge head on, with greater confidence, agility, and resilience.

I work with senior leaders who spend a good portion of their time in meetings with other senior leaders.

You’d think that because these leaders are facing similar challenges, at similar levels, communicating and influencing would be somewhat effortless between them. After all, who understands the challenges of senior leaders better than another senior leader?

Therein lies the rub. It’s true that senior leaders share plenty in common with one another, including similar blind spots, which is why the same types of communications challenges often come up between them. Here are of the most common mistakes we see leaders make and how to rethink communicating with your colleagues at your next meeting.

Remember that you’re never there to just inform one another

Bringing a group of senior leaders together is an expensive proposition. It’s why if you’re asking your highest-paid people to meet, it should only be for a handful of reasons: To make a decision, agree on a path forward, address an urgent matter, debate an important idea, and so on. Bringing senior leaders together to simply inform one another, provide updates or discuss problems with no real resolution is low value for them and their organizations. If you want to inform, share a pre-read, or send along a dashboard link.

Focus on how to move from informing to action

To get at this, stop talking about what you’re working on and start shifting the conversation to produce more results to come out of the conversation. If you’re leading a discussion with other senior leaders, always decide what result you’re there to achieve ahead of time: A decision? Agreement on a plan of action? Alignment around a commitment? Then, determine how you’ll achieve the result in the time given. Don’t underestimate how much more impact and value you can immediately create with those two simple steps.

Own the fact that you are there to sell

Producing results is not a neutral activity, which is why if you’re leading a discussion with other senior executives, remember that you’re there to sell your colleagues on a course of action. Just because they are your peers doesn’t mean they want the same things—or that they are automatically on board with your agenda. It’s your job to persuade, to influence, to break through the noise and get this in-demand audience to care. Sharing compelling data and information may be a helpful starting point, but if you’re meeting with other senior leaders, those are table stakes. To win hearts and minds, do more to put your audience at the center and engage them on how your idea will help them win.

Make the audience the star of the movie

Think about your discussions with other senior leaders like movies, and if the star is you instead of them, you’ve lost the plot. To influence, help the audience see how they benefit in the future you’re describing. To do that, storytelling is key. Your executive peers can be the toughest audience a leader can face. It’s all the more important to paint a compelling picture of the future state. Describe the potential opportunity in realistic, credible terms, walk the audience through a path to achieving the future that feels doable. It may be tempting to boil the ocean or go heavy on the doom and gloom language (“we’re going to be out of business in five years if we don’t start now”), but a little goes a long way. Most of us don’t want to star in a depressing movie, so to influence, work on a compelling narrative that your audience wants to be part of.

Play to win

The biggest mistake I see senior executives make with one another in meetings? They play not to lose, instead of playing to win. In practice, this might look like keeping comments safe when sharing ideas, checking out or multitasking, keeping quiet, refusing to challenge each other in meetings, or not holding peers accountable to achieving results in discussions. The impact is that we miss the opportunity to have the types of high value, business-moving conversations that senior leaders can and should be having. To get at this, self-awareness is essential, and it may require you to do more to make sure your leadership voice can be heard. For many, this may require preparing differently, sharing ideas in a bolder way, or doing more to make sure the value of your ideas is obvious to the audience.

There may be no single action a company can take to improve its business more powerful than this: Enable your senior executive peers to engage in high value conversations with each other, more often, because when this happens, the benefits are far and wide. Decisions get made, alignment is strengthened, and that accelerates results for companies. Equally important, when senior executives show up differently for each other, they create new norms, elevate the culture, and set an even higher standard for performance.

‍

Most CEOs are revising downward their forecasts for business, though they remain reluctant for the moment to declare a recession is at hand. Within the current administration, and in congress, there is broad disagreement about what to do to head it off. This uncertainty is wreaking havoc on business planning. Chief Executive reported in June that 300 CEOs downgraded business forecasts for the next 12 months to 5.6 out of 10. CEOs are telling their people to prepare recession plans.

At the start of the 2020 pandemic, we also lacked foresight to imagine the dramatic swings in the fortunes of companies. There were big winners like technology, retail, financial services, and home entertainment; there were big losers like travel and tourism, hospitality, and energy. The massive shifts in the global business landscape rendered strategic plans out of date and useless.

So, what now? How do we navigate the next big, bad thing?

In 20 years of advising CEOs and senior executives on strategy execution, we’ve learned that during crisis, some teams rise to the occasion, while others are less resilient and more susceptible to doubt, which prompts reaction in the moment and can foster a chaotic sense of doom. While there are winners and losers in industry sectors, it is also true that some defy the odds, look around corners, seize opportunities, and keep steady hands at the wheel.

‍What kind of leaders weather tough times?

‍Through a review of our data on leaders and teams, we’ve discovered that inevitably there are qualities of both that drive growth and innovation, even in the most challenging times. These qualities are not always intuitive. In fact, in shorter supply your team is stretched thin, exhausted, and too busy to stop the whack-a-mole game to think clearly and provide direction to others. What do these leaders and their teams do right?

‍They tap into the stabilizing power of composure and restraint

‍Leaders who demonstrate a high level of composure and restraint in challenging times create an environment where it is safe to make mistakes, and to tell others when things are not working. Leaders are then able to foster discussion in a calm environment and resolve small issues before they become bigger ones. These leaders get a read on the fast-changing environment and quickly problem-solve with colleagues.

‍They dial up their antennae of awareness and concern

‍Awareness and concern are two additional qualities that go hand-in-hand in times of change and uncertainty. As people struggle to navigate the pressures and volatility, it’s more important than ever to know what your team is thinking and feeling, and to be aware of the pulse of the organization. If a downturn is ahead, you may be glad that not every position post-Pandemic is filled. However, the reality for most companies is that their best talent is most at risk and likely to leave. Staying aware helps you shore up your best defense against threats to growth.

‍They ramp up their curiosity and interactivity

‍These are two leadership qualities that work together beautifully when you need to solve problems. During challenging times, many leaders turn inward to try to shoulder the burden of solving problems with a ready-fire-aim approach. They hear about an issue and move immediately into action. They may ask for input, but not in group settings. Thus, they put spokes in wheels and their best people are talking only to them; not to one another.

It may feel counterintuitive, but when you can be intentionally curious and convene smart people, you learn that they can solve the problem better and faster than you can. Because they’ve authored the solution, they claim ownership of it and put all their energy behind it. As you move through uncertainty, they begin to feel more confident of their own agency in managing turbulence. As Ken Blanchard once said, “All of us are smarter than any of us.”

‍They focus on unleashing the capabilities of their interdependent, interconnected teams

‍Virtual and hybrid work have already laid bare the hidden, destructive issues that can derail relationships and teams. Teams that had less face time and more conflict found the challenge of misunderstanding and unresolved conflict even greater. It isn’t only each team but your network of teams, and how they operate together, that makes your organization resilient.

The performance of teams is vastly more important to the future of work than individual performance. Teams are really the new heroes of organizations. When you see unresolved conflict between teams, you can diagnose, with absolute certainty, the role that the friction is playing in creating drag. As you try to pivot in a recession, it’s time to prioritize how teams in your organization are actively engaging with one another, aligning on the goals, and working with enterprise focus.

Our research on teams has found that in challenging times, trust, support, candor, and curiosity lay the foundation of team culture. Make it a priority to bring people together and resolve trust issues by encouraging candor and looking for solutions. Do this by first being curious yourself, and then encouraging others on your team to seek to understand. Take the time now to ensure that your teams are performing at their best, and you’ll reap the rewards today and well beyond any recession or downturn.

‍What now?

‍I remember a CEO that I know telling the story of the commitment he made to retain all of his employees during a downturn, even though he predicted a 20% revenue loss in the first year. That decision, while risky, turned out to be fortuitous, as the economy pivoted and demand soared long before expected. Competitors who had let go of employees struggled, while this company recovered quickly and remains above capacity today.

The decision he made was informed by the values and qualities of leadership that defined this company’s culture. The CEO led by example, demonstrating composure and restraint that others modeled. They spent time talking with their employees about the decisions that they were making and why. They demonstrated concern for their well-being when demand picked up and they were under pressure to deliver.

Take a lesson from this CEO and what we’ve learned about leadership and teams. Keep these three approaches in mind as you move forward:

• Stay focused on what works – good leadership will get you through.
• Double down on your people and your teams – listen, learn, respond, and invest to make sure they have the knowledge, support, and tools to do their best.
• Bring your leaders and teams together to navigate the uncertainty together – forget being a hero and instead draw in your organization to collaborate, cooperate, and invent the future – you will all be stronger as a result.

As the next months unfold, we can all prepare to be better leaders by reflecting on what we already know about leading in uncertain times. Think about what worked and didn’t work over the last two years. Ask yourself: what is the lesson and how can we apply it now?

The Chief Digital Officer (CDO) had a compelling vision for leading a digital transformation that would be critical to remaining a viable competitor in their marketplace. She was hired to deliver on this innovation, and everyone knew that without implementing this vision, the company would not survive for more than four or five more years.

Yet, the CDO could not get her C-Suite peers to have a reasonable debate and reach a decision on a path forward. The rest of the leadership team was avoiding the issue, and her attempts to engage them went unanswered. They weren’t hostile, and in fact expressed agreement on the importance of the change—they just refused to respond and take needed action. Because the company had this “nice” culture that avoided even healthy debate, the CDO was completely frustrated. She was losing ground rapidly, and yet was under the gun to deliver. She didn’t know what to do.

During a coaching session, she said to me, “Do I express my frustration and risk being seen as angry? That will not get me far. So how can I be authentic without upsetting my peers? I am tired of being ‘nice’ and getting nowhere! There are two big non-traditional competitors out there who will eat our lunch if we do not act now. Don’t they see that inaction will lead to the death of the company? I was given responsibility for a mission-critical job, yet no one wants to debate it or make any decisions! I’m going crazy!”

“Nice” cultures: death by a thousand unspoken cuts

The CDO was describing a passive-aggressive organization. These cultures are not rare. In fact, studies have found that over 25% of companies can be classified as passive aggressive. On the surface, everyone is friendly, which makes reaching consensus easy. The problem is that the consensus is really false agreement since it was reached without constructive debate. As a result, few people are really committed to the decision since they gave in rather than buying into the decision. So, everyone drags their feet when it comes to supporting implementation.

A common symptom of false consensus is second guessing. Since team members don’t express their true concerns the first time around, they may bring up a concern or a question later, after you thought the team had made a decision. And since no one likes confrontation, the second guessing brings everything to a halt.

Everyone is pleasant, but nothing can get done. And this can go on for months, if not years. Meanwhile, the company’s competitors are starting to steal market share.

3 things a leader can do

We worked with this leader to plan her path. These three actions, when done in combination, can unlock conversation, collaboration, healthier debate, as well as a way to accelerate your ideas, while navigating the culture of “nice.”

1. Make the case – the executive team needs to be persuaded on the value and benefits to move off their position
   Explain, in simple language, why the company needs a digital transformation now. Use a few key pieces of data. For example, tell a quick but compelling 2-3-minute story of how a customer filed a complaint because the company’s databases did not talk to each other. Or refer to an industry study that makes the case for the need for a transformation. Show data that is important to your audience – your C-Suite peers.The goal is to show them you need to take action now.
2. Explore their resistance – understanding what’s behind their behavior helps you to connect to what matters to them
   Of course, as you are making your case, your audience is thinking of all the reasons not to take any bold actions.To break the norm of a passive-aggressive culture, it is important to make it safer for people to voice their concerns. You need to understand their resistance, not ignore it. How can you deal with their resistance if you do not know what it is? You want concerns out in the open, rather than buried under a veneer of “nice.” The trick is to create the setting to make this comfortable and productive.
   
   In this case, we coached the CDO to break down the executive team into groups of 3 or 4 people and start the conversation with something like, “You all have heard my plans for a digital transformation. I know I probably didn’t think of everything. Maybe there are some unintended consequences I haven’t considered. Or maybe I am not aware of some data you have. Or maybe parts of my plan seem ambiguous or not clear. In your breakout groups, I’d like you to discuss your biggest concerns and questions. I need to know them so I can make the right tweaks to my plan. Come back with a list of your biggest concerns.”
   
   By doing this, she is giving them permission to challenge her. But, at the same time, she is making it clear she is going ahead with her plan. This process is a good authentic way to display both the humility required in a “nice” culture, as well as the assertiveness needed to get things done.
   
   Hopefully, this type of exercise will yield some insights into their real resistance, which makes it easier to respond to concerns, and possibly adjust your plans to meet their needs. And sometimes you will not be able to meet their needs, but at least they will feel heard, and you may be able to offer an alternative solution. For example, you can say, “I understand this initiative will take resources away from you, but this mission-critical project is in the best interest of the company and will keep us sustainable. Perhaps we can find some way to give you some temporary help.”
   
   By hearing and responding to their concerns, you are increasing the chance of buy-in and hopefully minimizing the second guessing that often comes later.
   
   If you have successfully made your business case (step #1 above) and you have been given the responsibility to transform the company, you do not need to make sure everyone agrees with you 100%. The goal of decision-making, even consensus, is not unanimity, but unity.And once you have that unity – the agreement to proceed with the transformation – the next step is to rally the troops.
3. Inspire the troops – lay the groundwork to engage and inspire everyone to do their part in delivering on the transformation
   Once the C-Suite is united around the vision of the digital transformation, it’s time to get everyone, not just the executive team, on board. Often, a leader can have the right vision, but the troops will stifle execution. Especially in a passive-aggressive culture, a functional or department head may be talking negatively about your vision to their people but saying positive things to your face. Talking to and hearing from people directly eliminates the backchanneling and filter.
   
   One powerful option is to go on a “vision tour” and meet with the various departments and functions to explain the vision and answer questions. For our CDO, ideally, she would be accompanied by the CEO and the department leader.

A successful vision tour focuses on two points:

1. Demonstrating how the change will benefit the audience
   Everyone probably has a horror story about the current situation that is leading up to the change – it could be something like how frustrated they are when trying to get accurate information quickly, or how their systems do not talk to each other. Share a short story from someone in that function about their pain points and draw the connection to the change. Show how you understand their frustrations and how this initiative will make their work life better
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2. Giving people a chance to ask questions and express their concerns
   Consider convening a virtual or in-person town hall. Ask people to get together in small groups and come up with three questions or concerns. Have a spokesperson from each group take turns sharing a concern. Answer as many of these questions are possible. It is important to be as honest and transparent as you can. If you do not know the answer or need more time to give one, say so, but be sure to get back to the group with a response as soon as possible. By being authentic and honest, people will begin to trust you and see you have the best interest of the enterprise at heart. In passive-aggressive cultures, people are used to leaders saying everything will be fine when everyone knows everything will not be “fine.” You will gain lots of credibility if you are honest with people about the challenges change brings.
   
   And just as important, you will model a way to be “nice” and respectful without the need to avoid difficult conversations.

Be appropriately nice and appropriately assertive

If you follow these three steps, you will greatly increase your ability to influence change. True, you can’t change a passive-aggressive culture overnight. But you can take some actions to minimize the chances that your ideas will be stymied and gently killed by a “nice” culture. Remember, “nice” cultures are really not very nice. As Carolyn McCray says, “You do realize that passive-aggressive behavior is aggressive behavior for cowards, right?” You need to take the fear out of speaking up.

You are expected to lead, so lead. You are also expected to be nice, so be nice. You can do both.

Can prioritizing people and the planet improve your organization’s business outcomes?

Most social impact efforts are viewed as purely altruistic, making it hard to justify anything beyond the occasional “socially responsible” expense. However, by adopting a future-forward mindset and leveraging mindful business approaches, you can offset social impact expenses and improve overall profitability.

Here are three ways social and environmental impact can help grow your business

1. Small steps lead to big changes.
‍When choosing social impact initiatives to support, take your organization’s values into account and leverage its existing capabilities and assets. These factors will help identify fruitful opportunities for volunteering and sponsorship.

Here’s one example of leveraging existing assets: say your organization hosts a catered event in its cafeteria space. Partnering with a nonprofit catering service, preferably one that’s authorized to repurpose leftovers, creates opportunities for your people to connect with external volunteers. The sum of these interactions may produce your newest clients, candidates, or media promoters.

Another example: a professional services firm that specializes in capability development runs one of its signature programs for non-profit leaders, free of charge. Both parties grow: the non-profit leaders build capability, while the program facilitators gain experience, all in a low-risk environment. Any resulting relationships between participants and facilitators will multiply social impact throughout their networks.

2. Creating a great workplace culture.
‍Today’s job market is hyper-competitive. One way for organizations to stand out is to be a place where people are proud to work.

Supporting causes that talent cares about — whether by creating volunteer opportunities, sponsorships, or initiatives — will help you win and retain talent. If there are aspects of running the business that may negatively impact people or the planet, consider proactive ways to offset these costs.

For example, carbon offsets — e.g., sponsoring rainforest preservation — can help compensate for environmental costs incurred by business travel. Over time, these partnerships can evolve and enable talent to feel more confident about working without compromising their values. Efforts like these are reasons for mission-driven employees to stay and become superfans.

3. Sustainability simply makes business sense.
‍Working towards a “greater good” benefits how your organization is perceived by stakeholders (including talent, clients, and investors), which may result in unforeseen opportunities. This is critical for organizational longevity, which requires sustainability in every sense, whether economic, environmental, or social.

‍Economic sustainability is a no-brainer: keeping your organization in the black and not the red, year over year, is necessary to stay in business. However, economic sustainability becomes more challenging without environmental sustainability, as all organizations rely on the planet to provide. It’s the place where we all work, live, and grow.

It is in every organization’s best interest to focus on environmental sustainability, because long-term access to natural resources is necessary for any organization to succeed, or even exist, in the future. Failing to mitigate the costs incurred on the planet will obstruct day-to-day business operations.

‍Social sustainability is another requirement for success: organizations do not exist in a vacuum. The communities where your employees live and work contribute to creating a productive work environment. Investing in this community — whether by volunteering at a local food bank, or creating internship opportunities for local graduates — yields a safe and mutually-beneficial environment for for your people, your organization, and the surrounding area.

Social impact need not remain an altruistic write-off on your income statement. The business case for doing good includes furthering impactful causes, cultivating a culture that retains talent, and fostering sustainable practices for generations ahead. When these efforts align with your organization’s values and capabilities, they become sustainable drivers of people, planet, and profit for your business.
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Measurement is key for ensuring action, so many leading businesses account for the triple bottom line by assessing social and environmental impact in addition to profits and loss. This enables them to remain responsible for decisions that positively impact not only the current and future success of their organization, but also the world we all share.

Understanding the culture and needs of Sales and Marketing professionals.

BTS interviewed 100 professionals in Sales and Marketing (including CXOs, sales and marketing leaders, L&D, digital, key account managers, and other commercial excellence roles) from various industries across the globe and identified current trends impacting their sales and marketing organizations.

This document outlines our research findings and best thinking on prevailing customer needs, trends in sales and marketing, and current challenges our clients face today. As we explore various topics, from digital transformation to new ways of selling, we will offer some insights and key takeaways.

Context is everything. When you’re swimming in the ocean and see a fin sticking out of the water, your brain concludes: "It's a shark, get out of the water!" But if you're in a pool, you think: "It's a kid with a swim toy that looks like a shark fin." In both situations, the context leads you to reach two very different conclusions and behavioral responses.

How people behave in any given situation is a function of both who they are as individuals (e.g., their personality, skills, past experiences) and the context in which the behavior takes place (e.g., the situation itself). In other words, context matters, and it is difficult to interpret an individual’s behavior without an understanding of the context they faced.

When it comes to using assessments during the hiring process, organizations have a vested interest in making certain that these assessments reflect the organization and job – the context. Doing so helps jumpstart onboarding by ensuring that candidates' assumptions about the organization, the job, and their suitability for both – that they invariably make during the recruiting process – are rooted in reality.

But assessments modeled after the organization and job are superior for another reason: They are generally stronger than generic assessments that cut across job type, level, organization, industry, etc.

1. More predictive. First and foremost, the closer the alignment between the assessment and the specific context in which the individual will ultimately perform (i.e., the job at the organization), the better the assessment will do in predicting future job performance. In fact, research demonstrates that highly contextualized assessments have incremental predictive validity beyond situational judgment and job knowledge assessments. This means that even after measuring candidates' job-relevant knowledge and how they would handle particular situations, highly contextualized assessments still reveal candidates' ability to perform the job that we don’t otherwise know from these other tools.

Why is this true? Because the best predictor of future behavior is past performance. For many years, this adage has been dubbed "the Golden Rule of selection." Think about it: What's the best way to predict whether an individual will be a good salesperson at your organization in the future? Answer: Observe them in the job of salesperson at your organization. The only problem in the pre-employment context, however, is that you cannot observe a candidate perform a job they do not have… Or can you?

Assessments designed to reflect the realities of an organization and job often take the form of a simulation – sometimes completely automated; other times involving role plays conducted by trained assessors. In essence, these assessments let candidates "try the job on for size" – explore the situations and challenges faced, engage in dealing with the situations, etc. Such work samples provide the opportunity to, in essence, perform a job that candidates do not yet have, thus enabling conclusions about how they would perform the job if hired.

2. Less adverse impact. Not only are highly contextualized assessments, such as simulations, highly predictive of future job success, but they also have lower risk of adverse impact. In fact, a seminal meta-analytic research study – looking across many years of other research studies – found that simulations comprising role-plays or presentations have about 50 percent less risk of adverse impact (i.e., sub-group differences) compared to other assessment tools. This decreased risk of adverse impact translates into a more diverse group of candidates deemed qualified for the job, ultimately leading to a more diverse workforce.
3. Higher face validity. Finally, because highly contextualized assessments look like the job, candidates see the relevance of these assessments for the job to which they've applied. Candidates understand why you are asking them to perform some task or answer particular questions because the assessments make sense in their minds given what they know about the job. This is known as face validity, which highly benefits the organization. This underlying concept can decrease the risk of candidates challenging the results of an assessment, improve perceptions and impressions of the employing organization, and increase job offers acceptance rates.

All three areas of highly contextualized assessments are paramount on their own, and together highlight the importance of tailoring pre-employment assessments to the organization and job. They serve the dual purpose of teaching candidates about the job, while also assessing their capabilities and alignment with the organization's needs.

The employment decision is important for both the candidate and the employer, and it benefits both parties to ensure that candidates are assessed in an accurate and authentic manner to make the best, most informed decisions possible.

Recently, while coaching a frustrated Chief People Officer, he vented to me about his company’s plan to bring back the workforce – 3 days in the office, two from home. The leadership team would prefer to have everyone in every day, but they know that will make it almost impossible to recruit new hires and could further damage their already falling engagement scores. And now, they are struggling with a whole set of new problems: how do they track who’s coming in and when, and what do they do about those who aren’t following the guidelines? Why don’t the employees appreciate that the “gift” of flexibility that is being bestowed upon them? It seems like whatever solution the company offers some portion of the work force is unhappy.In talking with executives, this story comes up over and over. The leaders want things to go back to “normal” – meaning pre-pandemic times – and employees want something else. And they are puzzled by how to respond. Yet when I ask if they are partnering with their employees to find solutions, I often get blank stares in return. The idea of asking employees what they want in this situation seems to horrify many leaders.

Missing a big opportunity for buy in and guidance

Based on my own days as a CHRO navigating this kind of challenge, I am struck by how much these leaders are missing by taking this view. There are clearly so many advantages to involving your workforce in their future workplace! We are all in this together after all – and designing the workplace of the future should be exciting and fun.Imagine the enthusiasm for the outcomes that will follow if representatives of all levels and departments contribute to the solution and the deeper understanding of business needs that would come from their involvement. And by pulling in key leaders, they will benefit as well, because they will develop better insights and respect for the challenges and constraints many employees are experiencing.

Why leaders are afraid

I realize leaders are afraid to involve their workforce when considering their workplace of the future and other changes. Why? I see 3 primary reasons:

1. It takes too much time
2. Employees may lack the critical business insights needed to make informed decisions
3. Participation might lead employees to have unrealistic expectations for the outcome

It’s true, the planning and preparation can take longer, when getting more input and involving more people. And sometimes employees don’t have the “big picture” regarding the business needs. And, if you aren’t careful, participants in the change may have unrealistic expectations. But I can tell you, having had the pleasure to lead many corporate teams that had a balance of members from all parts/levels of the organization, these challenges are easily mitigated. And worth managing, because the outcome will lead to better business outcomes, provide sustainable solutions, and increase employee engagement and commitment.

Paving the way for a quantum give back

I’ve led and watched successful teams help their companies drastically change their performance management approach, implement department re-organizations, enhance their employer brand, and develop new sales strategies. In each case, the additional time upfront saved us time later when we avoided re-work and re-communication due to poorly conceived ideas. We carefully set the stage by explaining the challenges and needs and ensuring that the team consisted of individuals from a variety of levels throughout the organization to ensure a strong business focus.We also made it clear to the participants the criteria and boundaries that were involved, who needed to approve it, and how their recommendations would be managed. I have found time and time again, our employees are grown-ups and if treated that way, will behave that way. They can handle being told no if they understand the “why” behind the “what." In fact, I have had employees approach me after townhalls and other group meetings, where the leadership had to say no to some employee requests, with a handshake and a thank you for being transparent and trusting them to understand and support good business decisions.

Asking your employees for help gets you more than you can imagine

Perhaps my favorite example of a time when a team of employees and leaders worked together to improve the business was with an organization that was working on improving the employee perception of their Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) efforts. The company was very committed and had implemented many solutions to ensure improved representation and inclusion for all, and especially for their women and people of color. And yet, they were confronted with a steady decline of employee perception of company commitment to DEIB. To change this perception and make things better, the organization spent months engaging over 100 of their employees and leaders in teams to find ways to improve.Within one year, the organization really moved the needle:

• Numerous organizational and programmatic changes were firmly in place based on the teams’ recommendations and employee perception rose from 78% favorable to 83%.
• Deep friendships and connections were made across those teams and leadership opportunities emerged for many of the employees that participated, an important goal of the initiative in the first place.
• The executives involved were surprised and delighted by the new insights and awareness they gained from the process, as well as the progress made on a complex challenge.

Was one year a long time to take to achieve all of that? I don’t think so.I have been afraid before, too, for the reasons mentioned here. But I promise you, if you take the time to do it right, you will soon forget your fears and find there’s a better way of operating: improving the future with your employees – not doing it for them or to them.

STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN and SAN FRANCISCO, CA — BTS GROUP AB (publ) a world-leading strategy implementation firm, was recently named a Top 25 Sales Training Companies 2022 list.

“We are grateful for this recognition as one of the world’s leading sales training companies,” said René Groeneveld, Global Head of BTS’s Sales and Marketing Practice. “In 2021, BTS continued to deliver world-class solutions in a mostly virtual, increasingly-hybrid environment. Our efforts to support sellers, sales leaders, and marketeers innovate their communications enabled them to reach and exceed their sales goals amid continued uncertainty.

”Companies on the list submitted a comprehensive application, which included their offerings for training and retention, innovative solutions, unique contributions to the sales training marketplace, and response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The main criteria for evaluation included:

1. Depth and breadth of training offered
2. Innovative offerings (courses, methodology, or delivery methods)
3. Contributions to the sales training market
4. Strength of client satisfaction

To evaluate applicants for the list, the Selling Power team surveyed and considered feedback from over 340 of their clients. Here are some of the comments:

“Our sales managers that went through the training said it was the best training they had ever received as part of a sales organization.”

“The prep work, training, and follow-up after training are all world class.”

“Outstanding, key to our sales transformation.”

“Not only is the training content excellent, but the delivery and interactivity of the sessions really help participants absorb and apply the techniques.”

Selling Power advises CROs, sales VPs, and sales enablement leaders to leverage the list to find the right sales training partner for success in the hybrid-virtual environment.

Customer empathy is key for sellers who want to win in today’s hyper-competitive environment. This ability to anticipate customer needs, produce thoughtfully tailored solutions, and drive meaningful outcomes for clients is not an innate ability that only a few select sellers possess, but a skill that all sellers need to actively cultivate.Developing customer empathy begins with gaining a deep understanding of your customers’ business, otherwise known as industry acumen. Industry acumen provides the critical foundation for customer empathy by helping sellers identify customer pain points, key goals and metrics, and the critical business drivers and care-abouts for each function within an organization.If sellers and organizations are willing to invest in building industry acumen, they will most certainly reap the rewards. In the case of one cloud services provider, sellers with industry acumen training delivered a 31% higher pipeline than their peers. Facilitating industry acumen leads to bigger, better sales opportunities. So, how do you help your salespeople develop industry acumen?

1. Practice makes perfectOne of the best ways to embed new skills and knowledge is through practice. By leveraging role-plays or AI-powered platforms to simulate conversations with customers, sellers learn to “walk a mile in their customers’ shoes.” These simulated experiences immerse sellers in the opportunities, challenges, and strategic decisions faced by executive teams in specific industry verticals. Sellers also gain an understanding of the care-abouts for different functional executives (e.g. Chief Financial Officer, Chief Marketing Officer), overall developing a strong sense of industry acumen.

2. Customization is keyEvery organization is different, but individuals within your go-to-market team will likely require different levels of skill-building. For sellers who are entirely new to vertical selling, training must begin by building a foundational knowledge of their industry vertical. On the other hand, there may be members of the team with backgrounds in vertical selling who need a more tailored approach to improving client conversations.It’s also critical to consider different levels of specialization. For example, mastery of the healthcare industry in general may be enough to get by at one company. At another company, however, it may be crucial to drill down on Provider, Pharmaceutical, Medical Device, and Payer verticals to reach the level of sophistication needed to converse with industry executives.

3. Collaborate, collaborate, collaborateFor this verticalized, go-to-market approach to be successful, many groups within the company must work together. The sales enablement team can no longer just deliver sales skills training – the team must also work with product management and with marketing to create customized value propositions and use cases for different verticals.

Developing industry acumen is made easier by leveraging simulations, whether standard, self-paced ones or fully customized and facilitated experiences. Investing in sellers’ abilities to connect more deeply with their customers will result in better solutions, which will ultimately lead to larger deals and faster time to close those deals.

Senior leaders must frequently choose to devote their time to the company’s long-term strategy or focus on short-term execution. Often, the need for achieving quarterly earnings wins out, and leaders will lean towards the latter. With their time already monopolized by meetings, damage-control, and financial analysis, it’s too easy for senior leaders to slip into focusing exclusively on short-term activities. As one biotech executive said, “I think about strategy on my commute to work and my commute home. I don’t have time during the day.”

Most executives recognize the need to focus on both strategy and execution; however, what remains is how to do so. In an interview with an energy company’s board member, BTS consultants asked, “What makes an ideal CEO?” The interviewee expressed the need for a “bungee CEO” who could move quickly from big picture- to detail-oriented work. "Bungee CEOs" lie at the midpoint between strategy-focused CEOs, who are too far removed from day-to-day operations and struggle to connect with employees, and execution-focused CEOs, who run the risk of being perceived as micro-managers.

At a time when unforeseen shocks such as the Covid-19 pandemic have made it even harder to focus on long-term strategy, here are four principles senior leaders can implement to achieve balance between strategy and execution.

1. Strategic pivots and scenario-planning

In the past, many executive teams thought that rapidly changing a company’s strategic direction would reflect poorly on the team to the board, because that meant the strategy was ill-conceived. However, with the increasing volatility of global markets, it’s become more critical than ever to anticipate and make quick strategic pivots.

One way to anticipate pivots is by leveraging scenario planning. For one senior executive team surveyed by BTS, identifying the worst-case scenarios and possible solutions for the business helped them to be better prepared for the pandemic. During a strategy session prior to the pandemic, these executives imagined the impact of a global pandemic on their industry. The leaders created a “playbook” that would enable them to make strategic pivots in weeks rather than in months, ultimately increasing their odds of surviving a shock without taking drastic action. In this case, these leaders was able to leverage their solution when the pandemic hit, so that its strategy could remain intact while its tactics for execution evolved. Clearly, scenario planning can pay great benefits in the long term.

Another kind of scenario planning is called “war games,” where executive teams break out into two groups to discuss an idea. One team presents the idea in a positive light, while the other argues the opposite. This exercise creates conflict within the team, helping leaders practice healthy, animosity-free debate so they are prepared for when the stakes are higher. Experience with war games is particularly useful in situations where there is strong ownership for an initiative and coming to a consensus is challenging.

2. Trust, the linchpin between strategy and execution

CEOs set the tone when it comes to building a culture of trust amongst senior executives. Cultures built on trust allow leadership teams to focus on what is best for the entire organization, rather than any one person or function. Trust is also the foundation for setting a team-wide strategy. As mentioned by one CEO, “We can argue as a team, but once we leave the meeting room, we all have to agree on a common message.”

Frequent strategic pivots are a very real part of today’s business environment. While these shifts will inevitably leave some negative effects on employee engagement, one way to circumvent this is by adopting a policy of radical transparency. By taking the time to explain the reasons behind a change, you will increase the chances of buy-in from your employees, which is critical for making any shift.

3. Risk-taking

Every risk comes with potential for failure, but in order to balance strategy with execution, senior executives must allow and even encourage their people to take risks. Without overly “scripting” out the future, leaders need to provide their teams with both the goals and the guardrails within which to accomplish them.

Senior leaders need to encourage teams to “fail fast and cheap,” using each attempt at executing an idea as an opportunity to gain insight for a future iteration. The risk-taking mindset is also an asset for senior leadership teams. As stated by one COO, “You need to have a short-term memory and not dwell on mistakes.”

4. Create a culture of psychological safety

Some employees fear that sharing bad news will adversely impact their career, so creating a culture of “psychological safety” where employees feel safe to share problems is critical for ensuring teams communicate problems quickly when they arise. This is imperative because failing to address problems early on can have a compounding effect. When errors identified at lower levels go unreported to senior leaders, leaders will often continue to make decisions that drive the business down the wrong path, unaware of the impact they are creating.

Executives who lead in a punitive fashion are particularly prone to employees withholding critical bad news. For example, one professional services firm’s CEO was nicknamed “Mushroom” because his team felt it best to keep him in the dark, just as growing fungi are, while they fixed the issues at hand.

Creating a culture where reporting issues early and often is encouraged is particularly important in matrixed organizations, where a small issue within one group may cause a large issue in another. Bad news travels slowly in these hierarchical organizations where information must go “up the stove pipe,” slowing down decision-making and exacerbating once-small problems into large ones. Therefore, senior leaders must establish the psychological safety necessary to ensure open communication from the lowest level possible.

Focusing on strategy and execution simultaneously has never been easy for senior leadership. Challenges already associated with rapid changes in technology, customer preferences, and the global economic environment have only increased with disruptions such as Covid-19. To address the dilemma of strategy versus execution amid such continued seismic shifts, senior leadership teams must pivot strategy, plan for worst-case scenarios, create cultures of trust and psychological safety, and allow for risk-taking.

Some of the teams I work with report to a boring leader, and it’s a problem. As someone who works with leadership teams, it’s easy to spot when this is happening because the clues are usually obvious. During meetings, the team is multi-tasking, they are checked out, and they’re often quiet, only offering thoughts when called upon by the leader to do so. Not surprisingly, the team retains little, to anything, that was discussed in the meeting, which often results in – you guessed it – more boring meetings and discussions on the very same topic.

Being boring isn’t just a benign idea or an interesting notion. It’s a behavior that presents serious consequences for leaders and teams because the negative impact on productivity and execution is real and here’s why: Boring leaders beget underperforming teams. When a team is led by a boring leader, it’s almost a guarantee that you see a team focused more on compliance and getting the work done, versus real engagement and energy to work together in an above-and-beyond way.   That may be because boring leaders often are the last ones to see this behavior in themselves, and consequently, they don’t recognize how their behavior is doing their teams a major disservice – a boring leadership style never brings out the best in others.

What does it mean to be a boring leader? The answer may surprise you.

Most of us can be a little bit boring

It’s easy to hear the word boring and think that it applies to someone else.  Personally, I hate the idea of others thinking I’m boring, but here’s the thing. The opposite of boring isn’t being charismatic, energizing, or rah-rah. That’s why it’s easy to think this concept applies to anyone besides us, because it conjures up an image of someone droning on about a dry topic in a monotone voice.

In the context of the workplace, boring leadership often takes on a different look, staring with a lack of awareness about the audience. When a leader is seen as boring, it’s often because they assume that what matters to them matters equally as much to others. We know that in practice, it just doesn’t work that way. This lack of awareness creates a dynamic where you’ll see the boring leader doing more talking than listening, asking few questions, reading slides or reporting out information, and then wondering why the audience is so quiet or unresponsive in the meeting.

The opposite of boring isn’t charisma, it’s curiosity

Here is a very cynical - and effective - place to start if you want to break the habit of being boring. Assume your audiences do not care. Even iif it is the board, your investors, your CEO, even if you’re talking about a matter of great importance. When you start from that cynical point of view, it forces you to ask yourself better questions and get deeply curious about your audiences. For example, rather than assume your board cares about how you’ve evolved your customer value proposition, you might ask yourself:  If they don’t care about this, what do they care about?  Is there any connection between our evolving customer value proposition and that issue? You might also wonder: Why am I assuming they would automatically see the value in this idea? Is it obvious why this is a good idea to others?  You could even ask yourself: If I imagine I am one of my board members, would I remember or understand why we decided to focus on our customer value proposition in the first place? Audiences will only care once they understand the value in your ideas and how that value applies to them. When we’re boring, we simply forget to connect those dots for the audience.

If you want to stop being boring, stop talking about boring things

Several years ago, I was invited to attend a meeting run by a Chief Audit Officer on reporting and I’ll be the first to admit that I was not chomping at the bit to attend what I anticipated would be a major snoozefest. (To all my beloved Chief Audit readers, forgive my ignorance.) Imagine my surprise when this meeting turned out to be one the best I’ve ever attended. What made the discussion so energizing was the leader himself, who had called the meeting together because of legislative changes requiring a major shift in reporting across the company. It would have been easy for the leader to focus on the challenges of making these changes, how tough it would be for the team, the difficulties ahead in managing workload.

To be clear, those challenges were very real, and the leader did address them, knowing that these were valid concerns on the minds of his employees. But he also focused on the future, painting a very powerful picture of what life would feel like once this project was behind the team. He engaged them in the vision of what it could feel like in six months, when the project was completed.  As he led the team in discussion, it was interesting to observe the team’s reaction. They went from panicking about the changes to seeing this effort as something that could make them better as an audit team. They began thinking about how the reporting changes would be a short-term hassle, but in the long run, it would help them finally break free from creating hundreds of low-value reports they dreaded generating in the past.

How to shift the balance

It’s easy to talk about what is difficult, tough, or challenging, but the problem is, it’s boring, it motivates absolutely nobody, and it keeps us stuck. After a while, it just gets boring to talk about the workload, the lack of resources, how busy we are, how tough our market is, the challenging quarter we just got through, and so on. What’s crazy is how often we do this inside companies, and it’s incredibly counterproductive, because in most cases, the conversation never really evolves beyond how tough things are. Start to pay attention to whether this a pattern you fall into, and simply shift the balance, so that you’re also talking about solutions, about the future, or about what we can control to influence a different outcome instead.

Being boring isn’t a personality defect; it’s something that can happen to the best of us, and the good news is that with simple behavior changes, we can improve in this area quickly. To start, ask yourself questions like:  Do others really engage in my meetings? Do I find myself talking mostly about challenges and how tough things are? Do people describe me as inspiring? Do I do enough listening and asking questions? Become curious about your responses and consider where you can put a few simple changes into place. It’s worth the effort, because when we can do more to inspire and engage others, we inspire and energize ourselves, too.

STOCKHOLM & SAN FRANCISCO -- BTS GROUP AB (publ), a world-leading strategy implementation firm, was recently recognized by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Sales Training Service Providers.

“We believe that being recognized as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Sales Training Service Providers is a testament to our sales and marketing client partners — as a result of your trust, we’ve been able to develop and deliver innovative, world-class solutions for both training and transformation that unlock the next level of success,” said Rene Groeneveld, Global Head of Sales and Marketing at BTS.

According to Gartner, “Leaders have strong execution and vision scores and broad service portfolios that improve sales performance through skills and process training. Leaders have some of the most comprehensive and wide-ranging services of all sales training providers with offerings aligned to support seller execution of all parts of the sales process. Leaders are a step ahead with technology — specifically, AI and tight integrations with clients’ sales platforms such as sales force automation, LMS and enablement platforms, which allow them to measure progress and ensure adoption of new behaviors and best practices. Leaders serve a diverse customer base in terms of industry and are well-staffed to provide industry-specific expertise, tailoring engagements to make the learning more applicable to sellers. Leaders’ willingness to tie pricing to client success may be attributed to their high client retention and overall win rate.

A Leader may not always be the best choice for every customer. A focused, smaller vendor that is not a Leader can sometimes provide superior support and commitment. Other vendors may provide a specialized capability that is essential for some organizations. A vendor that focuses on a specific vertical market or within a limited geographic area may not be a Leader in the overall market, but it may be a competitive option within its chosen market or area.”

“Companies need sales and marketing partners who offer innovative solutions that meet them where they are and take them further than they thought they could go,” said Groeneveld. “For more than 20 years, our focus has been developing a breadth of offerings that empower sales and marketing teams to engage their customers in new ways. We’ve invested heavily in technology and digital learning tools to ensure that learning is seamlessly integrated into the flow of work and inspires true behavior change on-the-job.

”Read the full report here.

*Gartner, “Magic Quadrant for Sales Training Service Providers”, Shayne Jackson, Doug Bushée, Debbie Bender, Elizabeth Beard, February 28, 2022.

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Rainforest Trust is a non-profit conservation organization devoted to preserving biodiversity and saving endangered rainforests through strategic land purchases, community engagement, and global partnerships. By allocating 100 percent of its donations directly to conservation action, Rainforest Trust offers wildlife and tropical ecosystems the critical protection necessary to help maintain a healthy planet for all species.

BTS made its first donation to Rainforest Trust in 2010, acquiring 100 acres of rainforest. These first acres contributed to the creation of Las Tangaras Reserve in Columbia – one of the most critical rainforest sites in the world, which is inhabited by tens of thousands of residents in rural communities. More recently, BTS’s conservation efforts include safeguarding Nicaragua’s El Jaguar Reserve to prevent tropical deforestation and the resulting carbon release. Since its initial land purchase in 2010, BTS has made numerous donations, which have protected over 63,000 total acres.

The pandemic has presented Rainforest Trust with some recent challenges, which include slowing land purchases, preventing community meetings, and reducing income from tourism. However, as part of its commitment to sustainability, BTS has continuously provided support to Rainforest Trust’s conservation initiatives. As a result, Rainforest Trust experienced substantial protected-area creation in 2021, and now hopes to build on this success heading into the new year.

‍We invite you to join us in making a lasting conservation impact.