2017 Internet trends report by Mary Meeker at KPCB

2017 Internet trends report by Mary Meeker at KPCB

Jun 4, 2017 | Governance, Leadership, Strategy

Since 2001 Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers has released a report on the technical and behavioural trends driving the internet, compiled by Mary Meeker. It has become the bible of everyone associated in any way with the net as a generator of revenue and value.

The 2017 report was released at the annual Code conference on May 31.

The amount of work required to assemble this bible must be humongous, then it is given away as a contribution to the development of the industry where KPCP operates.

It is to my mind one of the greatest pieces of content marketing we will ever see.

Making any attempt to summarise the powerpoint summary of the report would be disingenuous, I recommend you flick through the slides, all 355 of them in the report and consider the implications for your business.

 

 

The most important lesson from writing 1,500 blog posts

The most important lesson from writing 1,500 blog posts

Jun 2, 2017 | Governance, Marketing, Strategy

This is the 1,500th post on the StrategyAudit site, and the journey has been a surprising one.

I am  not a writer, I stumbled into blogging as a way to market my services as a consultant.

However, it has become way more than that.

Writing a blog, particularly when the commitment is 3 posts a week, is about self-discovery.

When I started I never realised how much I did not know, but was curious to find out.

Writing has humbled me, as I struggle to form views on topics, and then articulate them in ways that convey the meaning as I intend.

That sentence is full of traps, all of which I run into regularly.

It is also why some themes keep on cropping up, I see or hear something that adds to the understanding I have, it puts a different spin on something that leads to a different outcome in differing contexts, asks a question in a different way.

Writing also removes the requirement that people be mind-readers.

No longer do they have to interpret body language and gestures, or  read between the lines of a  mangled verbal explanation, and generally guess what it is I am getting at.

Writing forces improved communication, and clarity of thought and conclusion. It forces the distinction between correlation and causality, and demands a sufficiently deep analysis of problems to expose the root causes rather than just seeing the symptoms.

Writing also exposes mercilessly any failings of logic and common sense.

A gratifying number of people have read, commented and shared my various musings over the 1,500 posts, but the  one who has benefited most is me.

So, thank you for being a part of the process, and spending your valuable time engaging with me on the journey of discovery.

A particular thanks to those who have been my clients, as most of the writing has come from you in one way or another, combined with the collected wisdom now at our fingertips, should we take the time and make the effort to sort it all out from the self-interested crap and cat photos that infest the web.

Finally, at the core of why I do this is the basic observation that if I give you a widget, I do not  have it any more, but if I give you an idea, we both have it.

We have a way to go yet.

 

5 habits of really successful B2B sales people.

5 habits of really successful B2B sales people.

May 30, 2017 | Customers, Sales

Last week, I was unfortunately the target of an unwanted sales pitch from someone who would not take ‘Not today’ or ‘No thank you’ or  ‘I am not interested’ or ‘Piss off I am busy’  as an adequate response to his ministrations.

Clearly he had been to a sales training course that had at its core,  the ‘ignore any feedback you might get, plough on regardless using this template‘ school of selling. This morning I stumbled across this video on YouTube, that nailed exactly the situation, except I was not in an office.

Sales is the key function in any business, without sales, there is no business.  Why is it then that sales people are often towards the bottom of the organisational totem, why do we allow anyone but our most trusted, intelligent, persuasive, sales trained, and effective employees anywhere near our source of revenue… customers.

Really effective sales people, those who bring in business that sticks, should be well rewarded, after all, they can easily go to your competition.

What sets the great sales people apart? How can you pick them?

Seems to me there are several characteristics that make super salespeople, based on years of watching them.

They speak to you as they would to their best friend.  The bloke in the video above not only worked to a script which did not fit the situation, he was absolutely full of faux enthusiasm, a sure sign of snake oil to come. If you want to engage someone, it pays to be respectful,  to seek their permission to speak, and deliver a message, and do it with humility that implies that you are doing them a favour, as you would your best friend, just because you can.

They build trust. Trust is a vastly overused word in sales training, everyone advises to build it, then sets about destroying any possibility by being assertive and overpromising. Trust is built on performance, not promises, so demonstrate that you deliver. Humans build trust in others by actually seeing evidence that they do what they say they will do, or by having those we already trust assure us of their veracity. This is why testimonials work on websites but they must be videoed, the person specifically identified, and they must be similar to you to be trusted. You would not trust the sales manager of ABC used cars to tell you the truth about their exemplary customer service, but you might trust someone who looks and sounds like you saying that they had great service from ABC used cars.  Your prospects must feel like they are buying from you, not that you are selling to them. The hard sell is out, it can work in some transactional and low value situations, but almost always leaves a bad taste that removes the possibility of a repeat.

Only subtle Anchoring is used. Anchoring is perhaps the most used sales tactic there is, you see it every day, and it screams ‘ hard sell’. Again, it can and often does work, it generates immediacy and urgency, which is why we have legislation that invokes a ‘cooling off’ period in some circumstances. Anchoring is when you see something promoted with words similar to ‘Normally this will cost $300 but if you buy in the next 10 minutes, we will give you this once only offer of this magnificent thingo for only $39.95‘. It does sound like a bargain, only because of the contrast between the so called ‘normal’ price and the deal not because $39.95 is itself a great deal. Anchoring does not have to be about price, although it most often is. Anchoring is about contrast, good vs bad, them vs us, up Vs down, any contrast will do.

They give reasons. When you give a prospect a reason ‘why’ that is credible to them, they will feel somewhat compelled to agree with you. This is the discipline of communicating the benefits rather than the features, and the more personal the benefit the better. A reason delivered with the word ‘because’ is always more powerful. ‘I want you to have this gizmo because it will double your productivity‘ rather than ‘This gizmo will double your productivity’. People are not silly, they know you are selling something, but if they believe that the reason you are selling to them is that you are looking out for them, that it is for their benefit rather than yours that you are having this conversation, they will tend to trust you, just that little bit more. It also puts the onus of making the decision onto them, so they will have a far greater commitment to the decision, than if they feel you pushed them into it.

They sell to the heart, not the head. We all know this, but so often we sell to the head because it seems  easier, and certainly requires less work. It is clear that nobody buys an expensive sports car because it will cover the standing 1/4 in under 5 seconds, they buy it because it tells everyone else that they can. Understanding the emotional triggers that apply in any selling situation rather than relying on the rational ones, which are always more  obvious,  will make you far more effective.

Call me when I can help you be more effective.

Header image courtesy www.gapingvoid.com. I use Hugh McLeod’s insights quite a bit

Trust: very easy to say, very hard to do.

Trust: very easy to say, very hard to do.

May 29, 2017 | Governance, Leadership

Trust is the basis of our humanity, without trust, we cannot have relationships of any value, and the breach of trust once given  is an emotional wrench. The greater the level of trust given the greater the emotional pain on realising that trust has been breached.

Collaboration relies on trust, the notion that we need to put the best interests of a group ahead of our personal best interests is fundamental to success in any true collaboration.

Unfortunately, they are as rare as hens teeth.

The notion of commons, comes from medieval times, a common ground on which everyone had equal right to graze. However, if one person doubled the number of head he grazed, he gets a short term benefit, to the detriment of the others, and the foundation of the commons, trust and mutual obligation, is broken.

Trust is also something that is highly individual.

People can learn to trust each other, while not having any trust in the institutions they represent. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the Christmas 1914 football match on the western front between the opposing German and British forces in the trenches. The military leadership on both sides were appalled, that their fighting men were able to put aside the deadly enmity they so valued sufficiently to have a game of football in the spirit of Christmas.

We are wary of trust because it makes us vulnerable, we give it only after it has been earned, after the ‘trustee” has demonstrated that the trust will not be breached, that it will not only do us no harm, but that it is in our mutual best interests that we trust each other.

This presentation by David DeSteno on the psychology of trust is well worth watching and absorbing into  the way you consider your relationships.

 

8 human impediments to genuine business renewal.

8 human impediments to genuine business renewal.

May 25, 2017 | Change, Governance

Why are these  changes so hard?

Why can they not see that continuing on will be a disaster?

These are two questions that I often ask myself working with businesses in distress, or often just underperforming, and looking for some sort of renewal.

Neither is possible without change, as the old saying goes ‘do what you have always done and you will get what you always got’

Pretty common sense, so why is it so hard?

Over the 40 years of working with businesses that need change, first as one of those at the bottom of the tree wondering why the monkeys at the top could not see it, and for the last 22 as an adviser, I have seen a lot.

The first thing that seems prevalent is that change only happens with a significant catalyst of some sort. Usually it is the person at the top who finally commits to the changes, often someone new, who is prepared to push very hard, and to break the shape of the status quo, and reshape a new one.

Then they have to address the very human emotions that combined created the situation in the first place.

Uncertainty. Human beings hate uncertainty, it is usually more corrosive and more damaging than staying in a known state of misery. Collectively, we will do almost anything to feel safe and secure by removing uncertainty.

Saying ‘No’ is easier. Following on from the avoidance of uncertainty, often agreeing to something new or even slightly different enables some level of uncertainty, so the easiest thing is to just say ‘No’. This is why the first sale is always the hardest, you have to get over that psychological predisposition to stay with what is known and understood. As the other  old saying goes, ‘nobody ever got fired for buying IBM’

Loss of control. We like to feel we are in control, even if it is just our immediate environment, and the prospect of losing any of that control is painful. In a world where things are changing around us at apparent logarithmic speed, this loss of control of personal space can be alarming.

Loss of face. Losing face in some cultures is a horrendous possibility to face. Even in those cultures where it does not matter so much, we all want to be liked, to be respected, and by conceding change is necessary, conceding we may have even just condoned sub optimal  practises carries personal risk.

Competence.   Again, conceding that what has gone before is not good enough calls into question the competence of those who allowed it to continue, and in some cases, created the circumstances in the first place, and very few of us are happy to be labelled incompetent.

Change is hard work. Hard work is not just keeping your head down for an extended period, it is also the work of being prepared to suffer the stress of change. Much easier to avoid it, particularly as in most situations where change is necessary, everyone is already working hard, even if it is to fight all the stupid fires, so there is no time left to fix the causes of the fires.

Skeletons reappear. Most of us have a few skeletons buried somewhere, and while all sails on undisturbed, they will remain hidden, but once things get turned over, there is a risk of the ghosts of past stumbles being revealed to a whole new group.

The harsh reality. Sometimes all of the above may be in play, but the biggest link to the status quo is that in a change, people know they will be left behind. In a world of rapid technical changes, this infests many organisations as they set about dealing with the implementation of technology and productivity tools generally.

In my experience, there is no easy way to generate change, and make the new reality stick.

You can either do it progressively, piece by piece which requires leadership, persistence, and a preparedness to communicate, communicate, and communicate some more about the reasons change is necessary.

Alternatively, you can employ the ‘baseball bat method’, and force the change. This is painful, and leaves a lasting scar on not just those who get ‘batted’ but on the survivors as well.  Whichever course you choose, be committed, as the status quo is the most elastic and resilient thing in the known universe, hugely resistant to change and able to recover from a succession of near death experiences.

Change is absolutely inevitable, the very best thing you can do is embrace it.