By Deborah Fleischer, Green Impact

Green America’s Green Business Conference was the yenta of the green business world when it hosted its Product Expo:  Marketplace and Community Connections.  Participants were invited to set up a business display at this product expo that was modeled after the ever so popular speed dating concept.

The idea was to get all the conference attendees networking and doing business with each other.  One of my complaints about conferences is that they don’t do enough to promote networking and Green America has done a great job at this conference on integrating creative ways to encourage us to meet each other.

At a traditional speed dating event, you spend only three minutes speaking to a potential love interest and then move on.  If there is mutual interest, you follow-up on your own after the event. While the networking last night was a bit less structured, we were encouraged to circulate and meet as many businesses as possible.

Below I highlight a few of the businesses that made it onto my final dance card.

Salazar Packaging:  Call me a green geek, but one of the products I got most excited about was the green packaging products offered by Salazar Packaging. While the talks by luminaries such as eBay and Green For All are great to inspire small, green business owners attending the conference, what I see many small businesses hungry for are practical tools to help green their operations, such as the issue of packaging.  Think 100% recycled post consumer waste (PCW) boxes, biodegradable bubble wrap and cardboard Eco Flex, manufactured from recycled newspaper,  a 100% PCW material that is reusable, recyclable, biodegradable and compostable. Eco Flex is strong enough to replace less eco friendly packaging products including rigid and flexible polyethylene foams, bubble wrap, and polystyrene peanuts.

I recently ordered some free-range, natural dog chews from the Only Natural Pet Store and they proceeded to pack the chews in polystyrene peanuts.  Their brand would stand out to me as more authentic if they extended the concept of “natural” to their packaging.

World of Good: Libby Reder of  eBay gave the final presentation of the day yesterday highlighting the greening of eBay. While some of the best practices eBay is using to engage employees and consumers might be out of reach to small businesses, she reminded participants that eBay got its humble beginning from selling one broken laser pointer. And she also introduced World of Good, an organization that connects artisans from the developing world with mainstream retail markets. During our “date” at their station, I learned that they have grown to become a marketplace for socially responsible companies to sell their products, using the eBay platform. The interesting twist is that companies must have a relationship with a “Trust Provider“, one of 23 organizations pre-selected to verify that companies selling on World of Good have products that foster transparency, sustainability, economic empowerment and ethical business practices.

Shasta Visions: You only have a few seconds to make a first impression, both in dating and in the business world.  Shasta Visions owner Richard Lucas captures your attention when his calling card is a beautiful small earth-shaped marble with his company name on it. And while at first glance the larger globes he sells are elegant to look at, on one the playful surprise is that the word peace is hidden in 37 languages on the inside on the globe.

Some of the products are made of recycled glass and they offer custom imprinted marbles.

Williams James Foundation (WJF): The Williams James Foundation (WJF) is offering more than $100,000 in cash and in-kind expertise to help sustainable entrepreneurs turn their passion from plans to action.

The WJF, a long-time leader in expertise and prize philanthropy, brings together more than 300 high-level subject experts to provide detailed feedback on the business plans that are submitted into the competitions. Prizes offered include the most socially responsible business, for the business that actively measures reduction in their carbon footprint and for businesses that show the innovative and viable approaches to using the tools of sustainability for financial profit.

Interested entrepreneurs need only submit one executive summary and they will be considered for all of the prize areas for which they qualify. The next entry deadline is December 4^th, 2009. Full information on what the WJF is looking for and how to apply see the WJF web site.

There were many other companies and products of interest–many will be participating at Green Fest this weekend in San Francisco.  See you there?

—

Deborah Fleischer is founder and president of Green Impact. She is a LEED AP with a Master in Environmental Studies from Yale University and over 20-years of direct experience working on sustainability-related challenges in both the public and private sectors. You can follow her at @GreenImpact.

Don’t own a car, but want to get out to one of the Bay Area’s hundreds of parks and trails? Or perhaps, you are trying to reduce your carbon footprint and wondering how to get to your favorite hike without using your car?

Transit and Trails is a new resource for outdoor enthusiasts who want to leave their cars behind and easily get information on how to take the bus (or ferry) to reach Bay Area hiking trails and campgrounds.

A project of the Bay Area Open Space Council (BAOSC), the new interactive website identifies hundreds of trailheads and 150 campgrounds to explore across the Bay Area’s 1.2 million acres of preserved lands. Just enter your starting location, and roughly how far you want to venture, and the site suggests possible hikes and featured trips. Once you decide where you want to go, it connects with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s 511 Transit Trip Planner to provide a detailed trip itinerary, complete with a map, transit times, fares and walking directions to and from the transit stop.

BAOSC a collaborative of more than 55 member organizations actively involved in permanently protecting and stewarding important parks, trails and agricultural lands in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. They are committed to connecting people to the land.

According to Bettina Ring, Executive Director of the BAOSC, “Transit and Trails is the first ever trip planner focused on parks and trails…It brings all the needed information to your fingertips so you can easily plan your outing.”

The ROI of Not Driving

The site also calculates the cost of driving to your destination and estimates the pounds of carbon you would save by using public transit, so you can calculate the ROI of leaving the car at home.

Wouldn’t this make a great iphone application?

Transit and Trails makes it easy for you to access all the amazing parks and open spaces in the Bay Area while minimizing costs (save on tolls, gas and parking) and reducing your carbon footprint. Give it a try!  Since I live in Marin and can reach many trails from my front door (or if I need to travel, I have the dog along)  I have not tried the service yet.

—

Deborah Fleischer is founder and president of Green Impact. She is a LEED AP with a Master in Environmental Studies from Yale University and over 20-years of direct experience working on sustainability-related challenges in both the public and private sectors. You can follow her at @GreenImpact.

QuickBooks reports can show you how to improve the financial performance of your business, but getting to the right information can be a little cumbersome if you don’t take advantage of certain features in the software.

In our first video release, I demonstrate the time-saving QuickBooks reporting features I use in my day-to-day work as a small business CFO, financial analyst, and trainer.

These techniques are easy to learn and will help you work with QuickBooks reports more quickly and with deeper insight.

This video is intended for bookkeepers and business owners who want to improve their QuickBooks data analysis and reporting skills. It uses QuickBooks Accountants’ Edition 2009, and assumes a basic knowledge of QuickBooks.

For more details about this video, which costs $2.97 @ www.mindbites.com, please click here. It’s part of a series of videos we’re working on.

P.S. For best resolution, click the ACTUAL SIZE button to the left of the video.

Thus far we have spent some time “Rethinking our own leadership style” and “Discovering our informal leaders.” The next item on the agenda in the 25 Weeks to Building a Successful Organization series is “Creating explicit norms or protocols.”

Transformation in any organization has the potential to produce unwanted conflict, often leading to ineffective processes, reduced communication, and poor working relationships. It is inevitable and a fact of life. Change brings about tension and without managing the behaviors of individuals and the organization as a whole, you might see your organization’s ability to succeed plummet.

The impact is exponential. Again, we go back to the initial post “Rethinking our own leadership style“—in that, each employee’s actions, inactions, and interactions shape the environment of the organization, their cumulative effect can have much more dramatic results.

When it comes to the tensions hindering the progress of your organization, you can take two approaches. For one, you can take a BB gun line of attack by relentlessly documenting each employee demonstrating patterns of sub-par behavior, ultimately leading to disciplinary action. Word will get around that certain behaviors are not tolerated, and everyone else will get the hint. Yet, without a well-known set of “rules,” this approach might create more stress within, especially for you. It may even push many employees to stray away from working with their peers for fear of disciplinary action if things go badly in their own day-to-day dealings.

The second option, “Creating explicit norms or protocols,” can be linked to a shotgun approach. In effect, it is far-reaching and effective, yet it doesn’t dismiss those who are already doing things right. Creating explicit protocols is about you making a deliberate effort to engage your employees in the creation of shared and accepted expectations for employee behavior. In other words, you facilitate the proactive development and agreement of productive group norms. These norms serve as organization-wide commitments to act or behave in certain ways. Once these agreements are in place, your employees will have the capacity to turn conflict and tension into progress.

Spending the necessary time to eliminate any ambiguity in expected behaviors is far from wasteful when the aim is to provide a concise guide for individual and collective behavior. A systematic approach guarantees, above all, that everyone recognizes the values they share as a group. Explicitly developed productive norms have the advantage of helping employees deal consciously and conscientiously with any situation before it begins to impede progress.

Try this.

At your next meeting facilitate the creation of organization-wide norms or protocols. I offer you a simple nominal group technique.

1. Place everyone in groups of six to eight with the chairs arranged in a circular fashion.
2. Assign each group with a recorder to document the sharing of each employee’s desired norm on a large poster in the middle of the circle. (Note: You may want to assign the recorder. This has to be someone who is skilled in keeping conversations on track.)
3. Give everyone one index card and ask each employee to write one desired norm or protocol that will help create an organizational culture that is conducive to collegiality and group effort.
4. After each employee’s statement, the recorder asks the group if they understood the desired norm, agreed with the norm, or had some reservations about the norm.
5. Everyone continues to share their desired norms until all the cards within the group were read and clarified.
6. Once each group finishes, the meeting transitions back to whole-group where each recorder briefly summarizes their group’s dialogue and posted their respective poster for all to see.
7. Assign everyone a partner and give each group ten colored dots. Ask them to walk around the room (similar to a gallery walk), exchange ideas on the various norms, and vote on the ones they jointly felt would have the maximum influence on building a positive organizational climate and culture.
8. Count the number of dots for each desired norm, announce the top fifteen norms that would serve as the initial guideposts for accepted behavior, and ask if anyone would have difficulty committing to the newly established norms.

Now, as the leader, it is essential that you hold others accountable for the newly established ideal behaviors. Ultimately the aim is for each and every employee to begin holding one another accountable. That takes time, persistence, and modeling by you.

Try this.

If you observe an employee failing to adhere to the agreed upon protocols meet with them. During the meeting “describe the gap” by stating the following—almost word for word.

(Employee’s Name) on (date) we all agreed upon (the protocol for the behavior they failed to follow). On (date/time their uncooperative behavior was observed) I noticed that you (their specific negative behavior). What’s going on?

Now just sit and listen intently; trying to “hear” the root of the problem. Is it motivation or ability? Both require a different response. Oftentimes a failure to meet expectations surrounding agreed upon behaviors tends to be a motivation issue. If this is the case you want to make the invisible visible; in other words, explain any inherent consequences they may not see.

I always like to challenge their values. Check this out.

You know (Employee’s Name), we all agreed to (the protocol for the behavior they failed to follow). When you don’t follow through with this your colleagues might wonder if they can trust you. Everyone was there and agreed.

Ouch! You know how much employees yearn to keep the respect of their peers. It takes you out of the equation.

This approach stems from skills outlined in the book, Crucial Confrontations; a resource all leaders should explore. The book works to give people the tools to hold others accountable without damaging relationships. Check it out.

Final Thoughts

No doubt bringing all your employees together can help achieve a positive context. They can go a long way toward building a collaboration-filled culture when they put effective processes in place to draw the system as a whole into creating protocols agreement. With agreement comes the institutionalization of productive norms. This is an ongoing process, which takes persistence, time, and effort, because agreement is constantly changing as the organization faces new internal and external challenges of change.

Activities in a nutshell

1. Work with your employees to create, and agree upon, explicit norms or protocols.
2. Hold employees accountable for these expected behaviors.

Upcoming

The next post in the 25 Weeks to Building a Successful Organization is “Re-inventing organizational values, beliefs, and goals.” Everyone comes to the table with diverse experiences, worldviews, and beliefs. How can the leader tap into these individual ideals and translate them into organizational values, beliefs, and goals?

Cheers!

Perry Wiseman, author, Strong Schools, Strong Leaders: What matter most in times of change

I recently took an informal survey of some colleagues and clients and here are the results of two of the questions I asked them:

What change have you made that has had the largest benefit in your procurement operations?

• Formalizing processes and measurements
• Automation of transactional processes
• Proper organizational structuring – consistency and accountability

If you could improve one aspect of your procurement operations, what would it be?

• Reduce cycle time for competitive processes
• Improve process measures

I welcome you to add your thoughts or responses to these questions.

By Kimberly D. Mackey, MCSP, CMP, Realtor®

One of the biggest complaints I get from people who are just starting to use Social Media as part of their overall strategy for marketing is that it takes a lot of time.  And yes, particularly in the beginning as you are learning and setting up your sites, it does take a lot of time.  Then before long, someone tells you about this “really cool tool” that will feed all of your sites at one time.  WOW, you think, this is the answer to my prayers, I can just PUSH messages out there all day long and they will go to all of my sites at one time.  HOLD ON THERE NELLY—NOT SO FAST!

There are a lot of  Aggregators (systems that let you blast out to all Social Media Outlets with one click) out there and it can really be tempting to use them to save time, but you really have to be careful or you will turn off your audience and you will start to see your followers drop off.  Perhaps even worse, is that they just “hide” your updates, so you never even know that you might have done something to offend.  Each site has its own unique “personality” and its own set of etiquette rules.  Please make sure you understand those for each site you are utilizing.

In my opinion, some of the biggest audience turn-offs come when people/companies use Facebook like Twitter.  What do I mean?  On Twitter you can post up to around 30 times per day and no one would think twice about it.  However, on Facebook if you post that many times, you are monopolizing the Newsfeed/Live Feed on your Fans/Friends profile pages and they won’t read it.  In fact, they will have a very adverse reaction to it.  Facebook updates should be limited to a few times per day at the very most.  LinkedIn should probably only be updated a couple of times per week if you really want people to read what you have written.

On Twitter, you might include a whole host of articles regarding positive press about why now is the time to buy or perhaps the $8000 tax credit and you can even use services like Tweetlater.com to have them appear at different times of the day.  Some of the best Tweeters, “re-tweet” their own articles at varying times because you get a different audience at different times through out the day.  Now, let’s say you want to use some of this same information on Facebook.  Pick out only the 1 or 2 top articles you want to share.  Space them out, so you don’t appear to be hogging the Newsfeed of your Fans (and I say Fans instead of Friends because Facebook is a self-prescribed PERSONAL site, your personal profile is just that—PERSONAL.  Per Facebook’s rules, businesses are allowed to have Fan Pages).

Articles or any information you wish to share should be targeted specifically to who your audience is on each site.  If you have more Realtor® followers on Twitter, use specific call to actions or link to your inventory page with several of your Tweets.  If you have more of a customer following on Facebook, you might post great home ownership related items, such as the importance of caulking your windows once per year or new painting techniques that everyone can do, how about gardening and landscape ideas?  Perhaps even feature a happy homeowner each month and have them tell the story in their own words about why they enjoy living where they do and how great their experience was with you.  Run fun contests, but keep them simple.  Support any articles you post on Facebook by also posting them on Twitter (not the other way around).

I use a couple of different Aggregators that I find helpful.  Facebook now allows you to post your Fan Page status updates onto Twitter.  Since this is Facebook TO Twitter, it avoids the problems of doing this the other way around; plus it has the added benefit of allowing you to build your Fans on Facebook because posts that are larger than 140 characters, which is all that is allowed by Twitter will have to be viewed by clicking a link which will take the reader back to your Fan Page.  My Fans on my Facebook Page grew substantially once Facebook made this feature available.  Another Aggregator that I use is a “widget” or programming tool that allows my last 5 Twitter Updates to be posted live right onto the homepage of my website and another one which does the same thing on my blog.  It is always interesting to me when I run into someone who says they don’t have a Twitter account, but who have read my latest Twitter posts.  It turns out that they are following my posts by pulling up my homepage of my website.  Just imagine the potential for your business if you were to add this widget to your site as well.

Blogging is a fantastic way to interact with your target audience, and you can have different blog sites for different audiences.  You should certainly support your blog with your other Social Marketing efforts, but again be careful not to over-expose.  It is my very strong opinion that rather than using an Aggregator to post all of your blog posts on your social media sites just post the occasional one to draw your audience to your blog where they can choose to subscribe. There are some great “widgets” out there that allow you to showcase your blog on your LinkedIn or Facebook Page without using an Aggregator to post every single article.  The danger in posting every single article is that people just tune you out and then begin to never read what you have written.  Now, I have to be careful here because I do believe that you should support your Social Marketing efforts on your blog and visa versa—just don’t overdo it.  For instance, you get an amazing Happy Homeowner comment on your Facebook Fan Page, copy it and post it on your blog and your website.  Also make sure you Tweet it and link back to your blog and website.  Have links on your website and your blog to your Facebook Fan Page and your Twitter and LinkedIn sites.  If you have a YouTube Channel, make sure that your website and blog showcase those and occasionally post links back to them from Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.  If this sounds like a delicate balance, it is because it is.  I use the ratio of 1:15 +/- with (1) being the self-promoting object and (15 +/-) being the content you post that has nothing to do with direct self-promotion.

So, while it is ok to use Aggregators to some degree—do so cautiously and expeditiously so that you don’t run the risk of turning-OFF the very audience you are trying to turn-ON!

Kimberly Mackey, MCSP, CMP, Realtor®, is the founder of Creative Sales Solutions, which provides sales and leadership training in all aspects of business development — including social media strategy and training — and sales and marketing management and training. For more information, visit the Creative Sales Solutions Web site at www.creativesalesnow.com, or visit Mackey at LinkedIn, www.linkedin.com/in/kimberlymackey; Twitter, www.twitter.com/CreativeSales; and Facebook, www.facebook.com/CreativeSalesSolutions.

Social media use for individuals is becoming harder to ignore all the time. Some, like me, long avoided it, based on worries about spam and identity theft. In fact, the theft can actually exceed one’s identity. I feel concerned, when I see friends, neighbors, and clients posting online, telling the world they’re about to go on a trip for five days. Isn’t that like broadcasting to burglars? Some apparently think so. Rebecca Camber reports Facebook and Twitter users face pricier insurance as burglars ’shop’ for victims’ personal details on networking sites.

The social media investment decision is much more complex for business strategists. So, when considering jumping into or increasing your business social media campaign, how do you weigh the potential return on investment against all those horror stories you hear about the bad things that can happen?

Less than a year ago, I received an e-mail from a business associate inviting me to “link” to him on LinkedIn. He is a client and also my associate in a “virtual” consulting business, so I “trusted” his invitation and clicked on the link in his e-mail. “Poof,” with a few clicks of the keyboard, inputting some relatively low-level contact information, I became a member of LinkedIn, my first real social networking experience. Less than a year later, I have started two LinkedIn groups, manage another one, have started a companion Facebook group, and am regularly recommending social networking strategies for my small business clients. I just had my flu shot, but sounds like I’ve caught at least one virus, doesn’t it?

We’ve all read those stories, like The Social Media Revolution is Changing the Way We Do Business, presumably leading us, as entrepreneurs, to the conclusion we should jump on the paradigm change and invest heavily in social media marketing for our company. After all, as the article says:

The number of texts sent and received every day exceeds the Earth’s population! It took radio 38 years to reach 50 million people, yet Facebook added 100 million users in less than 9 months! If Facebook were a country, it would be the fourth largest country in the world, after the U.S.  Ashton Kutcher and Ellen DeGeneres have more Twitter followers than the entire population of Ireland, Norway and Panama! These astounding facts were published recently in the YouTube video, “The Social Media Revolution”. The world of social media is exploding, bringing people to people and businesses to people in a way never before imagined; and it’s having a profound effect!

Social media is no longer a casual social interaction. Businesses nationwide are jumping into the arena, not merely to gain the ear and attention of their constituents and clients, but more importantly, to create one-on-one relationships with the public at large.

But what about The Social Media Fear Factor? Rachel Happe’s article points out that “there is plenty to be anxious about in considering using social media for business.” Among other things, there is:

• knowing your legal and cultural boundaries and limitations;
• being prepared to respond proactively to criticism;
• being sure enough of your intellectual property assets to engage in sharing them, to some extent, with competitors;
• having enough interesting content

Of course, like anything else, if you don’t know what you’re doing there is always the chance of making yourself look like an idiot. Unique, relevant content is always appreciated, as Joe Hall points out in his article, Cup of Joe: How Not To Go Viral and Look Like an Idiot.

There are, however, much worse things to fear. One of those was telegraphed by the title of Jordan McCollum’s article, Are You Breaking the Law with Social Media Marketing? Her article focused on what some consider to be new regulations or changes in existing regulations by the Federal Trade Commission with regard to self-advertising. In fact, these new guidelines, available from the FTC, really clarify existing law, which provides that if somebody is paying you to endorse a product, you must disclose it or face a substantial fine. Unless you’re trying to pull a fast one on your customers, this really shouldn’t be a problem and the “new” guidelines should be seen as assisting in preventing mistakes, rather than imposing new regulations. Nothing to fear there, so what’s the problem?

One issue is that once we publish on the Web or the social media equivalent, if we’ve made an error, it never goes away. As Eric Enge’s article points out, The Web is a Permanent Record. Once published digitally, our error is always there, lurking just below the surface (if we’re lucky and it is not on the surface) for some customer, competitor, or regulator to discover.

Years ago, I discovered the Wayback Machine, which I found very useful in litigating trademark and trade secret cases, using it to prove information posted on an adverse party’s Web site. The site’s FAQ says:

Visitors to the Wayback Machine can type in a URL, select a date range, and then begin surfing on an archived version of the Web. Imagine surfing circa 1999 and looking at all the Y2K hype, or revisiting an older version of your favorite Web site. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine can make all of this possible.

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains almost 2 petabytes of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. This eclipses the amount of text contained in the world’s largest libraries, including the Library of Congress.

Which of us had not clicked “Send” on an e-mail we wished we’d checked more closely before sending? Likewise, what company Web site has not posted something it wished had never seen the light of day? Knowing it can always rise from the archives to haunt us, can cause a chilling effect among the prudent. You say you are prudent so it’s not a problem. Well, can you say the same of all your employees? What about your customers and competitors? You will likely be “engaging” them by simply putting up a Web site, let alone pursuing an interactive social networking strategy with your customers and prospects.

David Berkowitz tells us there are at least 100 Ways To Measure Social Media. Is that helpful? It has to be if you know what you’re doing, but this is hardly a case of black and white. As Berkowitz says:

Some entries here can be interpreted several ways. Depending on how you define them, some of these metrics may seem redundant, while others may seem so broad that they can be broken out further. Many of these can be combined with each other to create new metrics that can then be tracked over time. It’s a start, though, so dive in and consider which ones may apply to programs you’re working on.

Sounds like we may need an “expert” here to help us determine which metrics will tell us what we need. The search for such an expert, however, creates its own set of issues, to some of which I alluded in a previous post, Is Everyone A Social Networking Expert? Robert Strohmeyer came to similar conclusions in his article, Beware the Social Media Charlatans:

For anywhere between a few hundred and a few thousand bucks, you can hire a social media consultant to come to your office and put on a training seminar for your staff. They’ll spend an hour or two pontificating about the power of social media to raise awareness of your brand and the magical benefits of building closer relationships with your customers in 140 characters or less. They’ll probably even offer you a few “insider tips” based on their “deep expertise” in the field. The only problem? It’s a load of bull.

Unless you define success by the sort of loosey-goosey standards that might make your horoscope appear to actually predict the future, the real measure of any business undertaking is that it increases your profits. But in the vast majority of use cases, neither Twitter nor Facebook stands any significant chance of doing that for business users. And if you’re a small business that depends on, say, actually selling real products and services to actual paying customers, wistfully tweeting about your daily specials is almost certainly a waste of resources.

Admittedly, I’ve probably raised more questions than I’ve answered in this initial post in a series. This is a complex, ever-changing subject, which is one reason for this blog and the LinkedIn group I started, Social Media Search and Forensics. We have just scratched the surface of trying to weigh social media fears against the Ashton Kutcher comlex. We’ll turn next to a more detailed examination of the validity of social media fears, before going on to methods to weigh those risks against the potential return on investment of employing worthy social media strategies in your business.

That’s what I think. Please leave a comment and let us know what you think.

If you are really interested, I just started yet another free group on LinkedIn, Social Media Search and Forensics. Many of these articles and discussion about them are posted there. Please join us.

I spent the week at the National Academy of Curriculum Leadership designing a professional development action plan for science in our district with 9 amazing people. As part of our plan we would like to see Professional Learning Communities throughout our district. Our reading and discussion for this week could not have been more timely. In fact, I am now in charge of summarizing our work in this class to help better inform our decisions about the type of professional development we would like to see in our district.

No matter what professional development we have we need to see student learning increase. Our NACL PLC has been looking at data to try to make decisions to best impact student learning. We learned that the first thing that needs to happen is for teacher beliefs to change. Teachers need to believe that all students can learn to a high standard. Part of our plan is to raise up and train more teacher leaders so that leadership is shared. This way more teachers can see that they have a role in changing our school/district climate for the good.

I have a lot of information to digest and will be returning to school for a short week after being gone at the conference for 5 days of class. I am hoping that the passion we have for making our district better will not diminish too much when we get back in the swing of things. At the very least we will have our OEL groups for another 2.5 years so we can develop a protocol for looking at student learning and hopefully by the end people will crave the collaborative work we are doing and demand time for it from our union and district.

After six months of nearly round-the-clock work by consultants and campus planners, Nebraska Innovation Campus’s final business development strategy and campus master plans were presented and approved today by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents.

Lincoln, Neb., November 20th, 2009 —

(read more UNL News Release)

For more information about Nebraska Innovation Campus and to view the most up-to-date versions of the plans, go to http://innovate.unl.edu.

Talk to anyone now a days. If the person is from corporate world and if he is in some distinguishable ranks of management, best practices as a term will come up within 30 min of conversation. Everyone seem to be in a rush to make a profound sounding statement such as ‘best practices are foundations of a robust organization’. So, what are these best practices.

Following would be rattle off, if you ask someone the question ‘Can you define best practices?’

• Proven way of accomplishing something like following
• A means to save time on a process which is already established and proven in the industry
• Analyzed and adopted set of practices, which really work
• Processes which minimize the risks and enable organization for success
• Ensured way of operational and tactical efficiencies

 Going by these points, every organization, every company should be

• operating efficiently
• would not be making mistakes
• would be leveraging learnings established by other companies from the past

Because almost all companies are following and/or adopting one or other set of best practices in all departments or functions they have.

So, why it is that we find inefficiencies (of all kind) so common place in majority of the organization. No one can comment conclusively, but here is an opinion. The following words are not a complete answer and definitely not a ‘best practice’ for ‘best practice’. These are just some random thoughts.

Best practices are usually based on rationalization of predictive ability (of an organization). They are founded on a simple premise of ‘planned output’ of a set of activities. The reality of life in organizations if very different. Output of an activity mostly does not matter, its impact does. So, if there is a best practice, its genesis should be impact of an activity not the output of an activity.

Mostly placing the conditional boundaries around a set of activities (and their outcomes) is simple, so organization and consultants come up with ‘best practices’. Thinking of impacts of a set of activity and walking backwards to output and activities is inherently difficult. So mostly everyone seem to retire to comfort of defining set of constraints (call them processes) around a set of activities and their desired outcomes. And bang you go, ‘best practices’.

There are no cookie cutter available in the world. A set of best practices are best definable by one world. And that is a template.

By Scott Walls

In the past week alone, two readers have asked about UNSPSC codes (universal product coding scheme) and Don Sweeney, Partner at Emerging Solutions, forwarded a related question he noticed via a Yahoo Group seeking assistance re UNSPSC codes as PeopleSoft categories.  For these reasons and because UNSPSC codes offer amazing value, I thought it would be helpful to write a quick BLOG about UNSPSC codes, their government equivalent NIGP codes, and three examples of how these codes can be very useful to today’s best in class procuring organization.  For more information, please email me directly at scottwalls@srm-plus.com.

UNSPSC & NIGP Codes

Definitions via Wikipedia:

• UNSPSC – the acronym for the United Nations Standard Products and Services Code. UNSPSC is a coding system for the classification of both products and services for use throughout the global marketplace. It is managed by the GS1 US, which is responsible for overseeing code change requests, revising the codes by interfacing with industry projects, issuing regularly scheduled updates to the code, communicating with members, as well as managing special projects and initiatives as determined both by the UNDP and by member requests.
• NIGP – The NIGP Commodity/Services Code is an acronym for the National Institute of Governmental Purchasings Commodity Services Code. The NIGP Code is a coding taxonomy used primarily to classify products and services procured by state and local governments.

While I have known about UNSPSC codes for much longer, their adoption has picked up dramatically over the past 5 years.  I am seeing NIGP more and more now that the predominant amount of work being sold is in the United States government arena.  From a 10,000 foot level, I attribute the rise in popularity of these universal coding mechanisms to the need to identify common items and their attributes among buyers, suppliers, and third-parties.  For more on buyer, supplier, third-party connections, see Supply Integration Solutions. 

3 Major Advantages Offered by UNSPSC/NIGP Codes

Because all serious marketplaces and suppliers provide this information for free and it is relatively accurate, here are a few great ways to take advantage of your procurement partner’s efforts.  The following three sections provide a high level overview of the advantages offered by universal coding schemes such as UNSPSC and NIGP:

1. Assign set downstream defaults with little to no effort.  When using an external organizational marketplace (SaaS marketplaces, AKA content management, are a best of breed must for every company) these values come back automatically assigned and all setup/maintenance is performed by the marketplace/supplier.  All marketplace items are assigned a UNSPSC code.  The SRM application uses those codes to set its downstream defaults.  Here are a few valuable examples
   1. Use universal codes to set the asset profile – determine depreciable life, capitalization, and more
   2. Use universal codes to set the asset tracking information – require receiver to tag and note ID in SRM app
   3. Use universal codes to set a default GL account – requester gets the correct GL account without any accounting knowledge
   4. Use universal codes to set the NIGP Code (Periscope and others translate UNSPSC to NIGP codes)
2. Real-time acquisition (requests/purchases) reporting with little to no effort.  Again, when using an external organizational marketplace, the purchasing/reporting categories (in PeopleSoft these are called categories and required on ALL requisitions) within the SRM application can be setup to mirror the UNSPSC/NIGP codes.  Using the SRM application to set the category, or a portion of it, to the SRM category allows for an easy, free classification for all acquisitions.
3. Identify items for special routing automatically.  Items requiring imaging, special workflow, safety concerns, etc can be identified at request, purchase, receipt, etc. via their UNSPSC/NIGP code.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that UNSPSC has some complications; which version suppliers use, keeping current, cross referencing.  However, the benefits almost always outweigh the related costs.

About SRM Plus

SRM+ is a boutique procurement business consulting firm.  We provide procuring organizations with the strategic and tactical consulting services required to dramatically reduce operational expenses, create revenue streams (1 million per every 200 million in spend), and decrease their Cost Of Goods Purchased (COGP).  Whether defining a strategy, creating measurable objectives, designing / deploying solutions, or creating a continual improvement framework, SRM+ wants to turn your cost centers into cash centers.  Visit us at www.srm-plus.com.

“She is not a girl, and she is not a pinup.”

Susan Estrich, Columnist, on Sarah Palin, saying she hates defending her, but is annoyed at Newsweek for featuring her on the cover in running shorts.

“I am applauding Bebo …I don’t understand the  logic for the others not following suit.”

Jim Gamble, of Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), saying social networking sites need a help button for children to report predators  bullying.and bullies

“we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good,”

Barack Obama, conceding that the Copenhagen summit would not come up with a binding agreement on global warming.

“A portable device with an appropriate wifi connection, and a very powerful browser.”

Google CEO, Eric Schmidt’s definition of a Netbook, in a broad discussion of the future of the internet.

“Huh? If you’re already a Fortune 100 company, ‘brand awareness’ is probably not your biggest problem.”

Fast Company, commenting on a study by Weber Shandwick, that says only about 3/4 of Fortune 100 companies have Twitter accounts, few follow best practices, and most are chasing after brand awareness.

“Would I be cynical if I said I believed Apple was secretly fueling the hype by leaking bits and pieces of information to raise expectations? Does it matter?”

Linda Vandevrede, at ValleyPRBlog, on the role of PR in hype, or whether it evolves in some ‘organic’ way.

Chris Brogan wrote a brilliant post today called How Much Time Should I Spend On Social Media?

Why brilliant?  Because his take is fresh and out of the box.

Instead of telling you that you need to spend X hours on this piece and Y hours on that piece, he gives you a simple formula like this:

1. 1/4 of your available time should be spent listening
2. 1/2 of your available time should be spent commenting/communicating/engaging
3. 1/4 of your available time should be spent creating original content

You’re the only one who knows how many hours you have in a day to devote to your online marketing strategy and it doesn’t matter who is doing the telling, you’re not going to find four hours in your day that don’t exist, just because some guru told you four hours is the magic amount of time to devote to your social media efforts.

Other than the fact that he doesn’t dictate some magic number of hours per day to you, I also think Chris’ formula for how you divide up your time is right on the money.

Listening To Your Network

To start, you can’t authentically engage and provide value to your network, if you don’t know what is being said out there in your network.  This is where the listening aspect come in.  You have to listen to figure out where you can add value.  Once you understand the context within which your network is operating, you can safely proceed to sharing your opinion and adding value to your community.

Engaging With Your Network

At first glance, it might seem a little out of whack to spend half your total time engaging, but I think the point that Chris is making is that Twitter and Facebook have become a huge part of the social networking landscape and both of these platforms are more about sharing information than about pushing your own content.

You can’t share, however, without researching and reading materials to share. By the time you factor in reading the news in your space and discovering other nuggets to share, the engagement segment of the formula really does take the lion’s share of your available social media time.

And I agree that it’s a good use of your precious time to share lots of soundbites on Twitter and Facebook, using other people’s information. You can write a great blog post, but at the end of the day, it’s just one piece of information with your name on it.  Leverage other people’s information and share many soundbites during the commenting/communicating/engaging portion of your time.  Remember OPM?  Leverage, baby!

Creating Original Content For Your Network

Content creation can take a chunk of time — or not.  Great pillar content for a blog or a new white paper requires research and drafting and editing, but who says you need pillar content?  While I personally happen to think that a little pillar content is good for demonstrating expertise, you can probably also demonstrate expertise by banging out short blog posts commenting on events and other people’s material.

No matter what your opinion is on pillar content, it is good to be reminded that blog posts are just one part of a bigger formula.  Blog accordingly.

Take Aways

Finding success with this new thing we call “social networking” requires more than broadcasting your expertise in a one-way blog post.  True, authentic success in social networking requires you to engage in what is going on, and engaging is about community and the back and forth of multi-party dialoguing — the cocktail party.

Want more evidence that engagement is where it’s at on the web?  Check out An Insider’s Secret To Twitter Success.

Do yourself a favor and put a note on the wall next to your computer with Chris Brogan’s formula.  If you stick to its rough proportions, you’ll be hitting all your engagement bases.  To your unlimited social networking success!

Our good friend Deb Gondek, Sustainability Director at Rich Products Corp., sent the links for these videos to us, and we had to share them…

Do any of these characters remind you of someone at your office?

Despite centuries of discovery, salespeople are still cast in ancient agrarian terms as “hunters” or “farmers.” Organizations value aggressive hunters who dote on Big Corporate Game, compete for new major accounts, and ink million-dollar-plus deals. Hunt. Kill. Carve. Eat. Drool! Farmers, on the other hand, are installed-account focused. They’re patient, nurturing, and empathetic. Vision, without as much saliva. Even still, farmers are expected to grow cash crops, not weeds. Could any sales organization survive without them? The better question is can they survive with them, because these metaphors are dying. Today, such simplification no more reflects sales than it does food production.

In the context of socially-empowered customers, thinking “hunters and farmers” jams salespeople into roles they can’t adequately fill, and forces processes that don’t match how customers buy. Why? Because social media that fuels socially-empowered customers has fragmented communication into many pieces, and selling responsibilities have fragmented along with it. Just twenty years ago, holding conversations with customers was an almost-inviolable domain of the sales force. Not anymore. And we’re just beginning to understand that buying processes are in fact, complex social processes. Social buying needs social selling, and vice-versa.

This fragmentation yields a related problem—no longer can a hunter/farmer assemble a target-account sales puzzle single handedly. It’s hard enough when the pieces aren’t moving. Try doing it when they are. Nothing in sales remains static. An article by Tuba Ustuner and David Godes, (Better Sales Networks, Harvard Business Review, July-August, 2006) says it best: “The salesperson’s job changes over the sometimes lengthy course of the selling process, with each phase requiring its own particular set of abilities. The skills involved in finding a lead don’t apply to, say, closing a deal. Moreover, each stage requires the salesperson to build and use a different kind of social network.”

If different social networks underpin different phases of the buying process, it’s not safe to assume that sales methods based on “individual contributor” hunter/farmers can support those processes. The multiple social network idea Ustuner and Godes describe begs many questions:

Do sales executives need to challenge the long-held view that selling is about managing deals? Instead, is it more about managing networks?

Can sales organizations innovate new strategies that embed customer-centric engagement?

For the answer to the last question, it took none other than GM, former paragon of ossified thinking, to show us true innovation. Though the company’s experiment to sell cars through e-Bay flopped, GM recognized that buyer needs might be better supported by looking at their sales process differently. According to Rob Chesney, VP of eBay Motors, GM wanted to know “if we offer consumers a new way to interact with the purchase of a car, would they engage?” Who could imagine GM asking that even one year ago?

Engage they did. The program generated 1.5 million visits to a dedicated section of eBay’s website, and 15,000 leads for California dealers. But GM ran into a pothole: the engagers failed to buy, and for now, GM is trying to understand the reasons. Although GM postponed further implementation of the program to 2010, Mr. Chesney believes “there is a real proposition that we can build upon there.”

Failure or not, GM’s eBay initiative is significant for heralding another legacy sales process cracking under its own weight. Changing the status quo in sales is always fraught with risk, but GM and other companies are proving that there’s nothing sacrosanct about tried-and-true. There has never been a better time to consider the question whether buyer needs are best supported by an “individual contributor”—whether hunter or farmer. Social selling has become too complex for any one individual to perform.

Further Reading:

Can a Kinder, Gentler Sales 2.0 Rep Still Make Quota?, by Anneke Seley

Thoughts on Sales 2.0 from Lee Levitt, by Chad Levitt

Five Steps to Real Customer Centricity, by Graham Hill

The Ascent Group is conducting benchmarking research to better understand training and development practices for front-line customer service employees. The main objectives of the study are to identify “best practices” and to understand how best-in-class customer service organizations prepare front-line employees to deliver excellent service to customers. Secondary objectives include understanding:

• What initial training programs are used? Duration?
• What on-going training programs are used? Duration? Frequency? Pass/Fail?
• What job rotation processes are in place?
• What training techniques are effective in increasing customer satisfaction?
• What technologies are improving the training process?

Share your experiences by participating in our benchmarking research. See how your frontline training and development practices compare to our database of best practices and best performers. We are especially interested in companies that are innovative and successful in the training and development of customer-oriented front-line employees. The results of this research will be published in our upcoming report, Improving Frontline Training Practices 2009.

There is no cost to participate in this study and we will provide a complimentary copy of research results to all participants at the completion of the study. To participate, http://tinyurl.com/TrainingBmk

This is a blind study, your data will be coded and protected in the final report.

Please submit your responses before December 11th.

That’s what the Dalai Lama said in September at the Vancouver Peace Summit.   Ever since my sister shared that amazing quote with me, I’ve been thinking of what it means, particularly for the nonprofit sector.

Monica Maher, Greenlights’ new Operations Manager (and one of three incredible women that we recently hired), remarked that “As soon as you said that statement, I somehow knew it was true.”  I feel the same way, too.   But why?

It’s certainly true that the nonprofit sector is all about “saving the world” and that the majority of people working for nonprofits are women.  I’ve always believed that the large number of women in our sector is mostly due to the fact that women are generally nurturing people.  We are programmed to take care of others both biologically and socially, so it makes sense that we would seek out work that is nurturing or helps care for others in some way.

Lisa Witter and Lisa Chen, authors of The She Spot: Why Women Are the Market for Changing the World and How to Reach Them, have provided us with a fascinating and timely view of why it makes sense for us to pay attention to the power of women.  Witter and Chen state that, “Women vote more, volunteer more and there is every indication that they will be giving more than men since they control over half of the total wealth in America. Women aren’t a niche–they’re the primary change-makers.”

I’m just beginning to explore the unique and important role that women play in affecting change in our world, but I am truly excited that our role seems to be more often recognized as critical and truly powerful. So while I continue learning, I will take the Dalai Lama’s prediction as evidence that what my fellow Western women and I are doing is working and needed.

Please share your thoughts and reactions to the Dalai Lama’s quote, “The world will be saved by the western woman.”

As a small business grows, there’s a natural progression to staffing its finance department. I think Ken Kaufman describes it perfectly in his blog post:

http://www.cfowise.com/part-time-cfo/staffing-accountingfinance-department-from-start-up-to-medium-sized-company/

Vous êtes invité à la présentation des nouveautés de Solid Edge Synchronous Technology 2.

Venez voir les progrès formidables de Solid Edge avec Synchronous Technology 2. Joignez-vous à nous et découvrez comment Synchronous Technology peut considérablement améliorer votre processus de conception et comment les autres produits et services offerts par Designfusion peuvent réduire vos coûts et vous donner un avantage stratégique.

Québec

Montréal

Agenda:

Vous pouvez également vous inscrire en contactant Nathalie Tremblay au 1-877-722-8003 ou ntremblay@designfusion.com

When talking about social media to a group, I often step back to get them to pay attention to how to design for interactivity. After all, social media is all about interactions, right?

I like to note how wicked a wiki could be (though no one ever talks of wikis anymore, with all the tools around Facebook and Twitter). I mention how Microsites can do a lot of things their POW –that’s Plain Old Web sites, in my book) can never do. All this thanks to social media elements that are almost invisible.

So I want to comment on two microsites that came on my radar this week. Toyota and Timberland.

The Toyota site works like a cross-section between an ad and a social network. Timberland is more complex. I’ll take that first here:

Timberland’s Earthkeepers is so complex it could easily be a mistaken for a grass roots movement, or a cause-marketing campaign such as Hopenhagen. Indeed, it has a cause-driven section called ‘Don’t Tell Us It Can Be Done’ (launched this week), aligned with the Copenhagen summit. As the press release states, it is “a movement that encourages citizens of the world to challenge government leaders attending the United Nation’s Conference…”

It has definitive calls to action – Take Steps, Make Pledges, Shop Responsibly etc.  The Twitter site is actually set up to track 12 students on a bus tour supporting the cause, rather than the typical corporate tweets. Their ‘Heroes’ are doing more than sporting Timberland attire. They are doing things like this.

There is a lot more, and it points to how web sites are getting built up so much around engagement, that very soon these microsites will be the template for the macro-sites. You know: the  standard corporate sites with dated, static information.

Toyota’s Beyond Cars, is a different animal: Dynamic content on steroids. Almost too much information. It’s an ever-changing grid of visitor-generated content (a term I like to use because it is more appropriate in this case than User-Generated). You could sort through four categories of content – innovation, environment, community, economy, with a floating navigation bar. It asks for story submissions using text, video or photos. Not sure if these go through content moderation, but it has a real-time feeling about it.

Unlike Timberland Beyond Cars is not connected to a specific cause other than to make a positive impact on the economy and environment –which is somewhat of a cliche if it ends there. But the very intent, to tap into ideas from the crowd, is bold and inspiring –yes, and visually very appealing. I wish they had thought it through into not just Twitter and Facebook, but beyond cars, literally –into activities not involving wheels. As someone who has two Toyotas in the garage, I have vested interest in this brand, obviously. I could think of a dozen, inexpensive things they could do.

What do you think?

1. If you have some ideas, jot them down here as a comment. I will add to it next week.
2. Which microsite do you prefer, and why?
3. What do you think of a site like Timberland’s that stays behind the scene, as opposed to Toyota’s which is very much a branding exercise, with a cause tacked on?

Here’s a somewhat contrarian view to the many calls for “more lending, more lending” to small businesses. Yes, more lending to small businesses that represent a reasonable risk i.e. those with solid fundamentals. But more lending to small businesses with little collateral, negative cash flow, and a high debt-to-equity ratio? I’m not so sure that’s a path toward long-term economic recovery. Seems like more of what got us into trouble in the first place, because underlying structural problems aren’t being addressed.

As a small business CFO I tend to be on the conservative side when advising companies how much debt to take on, and this recent article called The Debt Economy by James Surowiecki extends this caution to a macroeconomic level. He traces the line of excessive debt from individuals businesses and consumers to the economy as a whole, and the bust cycle that follows as a natural correction.

Most interestingly, however, he drives home the point that the tax deductibility of business loan interest isn’t a given; it’s constructed to meet social, economic (supposedly), and political (definitely) goals. His point is that if we remove the inalienable right to take a tax deduction for household mortgage interest and interest on business debt, how do we feel about such debt?

Being a fiscal conservative, I expected to view this article as support for my cautious approach to taking on more small business debt — keep your current ratio at 2.0 or higher, your debt-to-equity ratio at 2.0 or lower, etc.

And I still feel that way. Mostly. But I’m also intrigued by the financial engineering behind running a highly leveraged small business. If the tax deductions are there, and lenders are willing to take the risk, why not? You increase your risk of losing it all, but if you’re comfortable with that trade off — more risk to achieve more return — why not try it?

The problem I see is that many companies take on a lot of debt, but then don’t engineer the company to generate the above average returns necessary to justify the risk of being highly leveraged.

So where do I end up on the issue?

For the majority of small businesses, keep your balance sheet in a range that commercial lenders are comfortable with.

But for the minority who are comfortable with lots of debt and want to make a fast run for outsized earnings or a quick exit strategy, be very clear on your plan, because it’s a different business plan. Build in some downside protection to minimize the collateral damage if things don’t work out. But most importantly, set your targets high and run all aspects of the company (sales, operations, and finance) to meet those targets. Engineer the company to run hot, essentially, and be ready to sell it when the right opportunity comes along.

The Simplicity of Network Marketing as a business.

So you are a genius when it comes to modeling, operations research, activity-based cost management, material requirements planning (MRP), inventory control, SQL, SAP, Oracle/Hyperion, regression analysis, operating ratios and statistics?  Good for you.  If you are like me you’ve had to use some sophisticated systems and techniques in your job but don’t try too hard to explain it to your peers in management unless you want their eyes to glaze over.  Also, visibility is not something that ANY VP wants and I’ve had more than one VP throw an analysis at me in a meeting with the CEO and call me a [*#&!]  liar.  Why?  Because the numbers made their management decisions look bad even though we were not trying to make someone look bad and only improve the bottom line.  When it comes to gross profit and product costing even the CEO would prefer less visibility and worries about outsiders (particularly financial institutions and competitors) getting their hands on the information.  And so, when the investors tell you what lousy systems (at least the part they get to see) your company has you have to smile (internally of course).  Do you know that a program to improve operating visibility might even get your fired?  Another something you won’t learn in business school.

And so, put your talents and education to a more profitable endeavor!

No boss, no payroll, no in-house sophisticated systems, no large inventories, no reports to the government (except tax returns), and no political wars with high level people.

The business environment of a Network Marketing business is “very” attractive!

“How will your IT solution help me sell more pizza?”

That was the opening question from one COO recently when he met with a team of software salespeople on their first sales call at his company.

The team could not answer his question because they had prepared for a different discussion. The PowerPoint they brought, but never showed, included lots of technical information, along with charts and graphs showing ROI (Return on Investment) and TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)—none of which offered insight about how to solve COO’s strategic challenge. The meeting was terminated and rescheduled for a later date. The final outcome? It’s described toward end of this blog.

No doubt their ride back to the airport didn’t include much jovial banter. The pain of that interaction underscores why one of my clients, a large software developer, initiated a worldwide program to help their resellers shift from selling mainly small $20,000 Information Technology (IT) projects—which are frequently vetted using ROI calculations—to selling larger enterprise projects that require sales teams to prove strategic value along with financial returns. As enterprises adopt governance policies and “balanced scorecards” designed to promote alignment between IT investments and corporate strategy, the need to adopt a sales process that proves value beyond the achievement of simple financial calculations or Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) has never been stronger. The project I’m currently working on provides me the opportunity to facilitate this metamorphosis.

But what’s wrong with talking to prospects about ROI and TCO?

Nothing, other than the fact that many marketers and salespeople simply fail to put these metrics in any context. Case in point: This week, RFID Solutions Online sent me an e-newsletter with the subject “Find The ROI In Your Asset Tracking Initiatives”. But the accompanying article summary doesn’t connect the value of asset tracking to financial or operational strategy.

And it’s not that there isn’t a connection. There is, but I couldn’t find it anywhere in the email. So the over-worn statement “Find The ROI . . .” isn’t visceral to C-Level executives who live and breathe strategy. This example is the tactical equivalent of a quarterback leading an offense to the opponent’s 10-yard line, and on third down saying “I think we’ve gone far enough.”

Why does ROI/TCO alone fall short? Because the “heavy lifting” in sales is in enabling prospects first to [i]believe[/i] the facts about an issue, then to care about the issue, then to act to solve it. ROI and TCO are reasonably helpful for the belief stage (“We used the numbers the client provided for our ROI calculations!”), but marginally effective for answering the question “Why should I care?” And, if no influential individuals in an organization care about a given issue, would anyone wager that they would act to solve it?

So, beyond ROI and TCO, how can a company gain a sales advantage?

To answer that question, let’s look at how the sales team managed its setback with the pizza company COO. After returning to their office, the group took the time to formulate a set of questions about the growth strategy for the pizza company, including questions about finance, supply chain logistics, CRM, and human resources. They reformulated a presentation and met with the COO about two weeks later. Their project was approved and they won the opportunity.

What did the team figure out?

First, the team realized that positioning their offering to enable growth was mission critical for both vendor and prospect. By making the shift from a purely financial appeal to a strategic appeal, the sales team minimized the risk of “no decision.” In addition, another important outcome occurred. Because strategic growth impacts every operating unit in an organization, the sales team opened relationships with a cross-functional team of senior executives. Prior to that change, the vendor’s sales team networked only in the IT department. Finally, the sales team was rewarded with an unintentional benefit: they faced fewer competitors. Before changing their approach, the sales team competed with every vendor touting high ROI—some of which were selling IT solutions. Now, only two vendors offered a path to the strategic growth the COO required.

How did the sales team realign to address the COO’s problem, and what steps did they follow from beginning to end?

The team leveraged the competencies they already had, but had never effectively combined. They used empathetic listening skills, systems analysis techniques, and business acumen to convert what could have been a certain loss. All of these competencies rarely exist in one individual, so collaborative processes and effective team leadership were also required. The specific steps the team used will be covered in another blog, Strategic Questions Will Uncover Strategic Opportunities.