Steer the ShipTM

There’s something about the hunger for growth that inevitably leads to the hunt for a business partner. After all, you’re under pressure and you need results faster than you can produce them on your own. If you could just find the right partner, you’d have it made. All of those unresolved issues in your strategic plan will fade away as you form a perfect union with a company that will seamlessly complement your capabilities, free up your time to focus on other initiatives, and undoubtedly drive your sales through the roof.

Snap out of it. Partnerships are hard work, and they often end up in shambles. So before you take the plunge, make sure that a marriage of convenience is really what you want for your business. More often than not, CEOs make partnership decisions for the wrong reasons and seriously underestimate the amount of effort they take, especially for distribution and sales. Don’t assume that partners will be as motivated as you are to sell your products. You can’t expect to flip the switch on a partnership and immediately increase your sales. However, if you position your product as a catalyst for increasing your partner’s sales, and create early successes with leaders in their sales force, you’ll have a much better chance of keeping the relationship off the rocks.

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Build Business Partnerships on the Right Foundations

Don’t Expect Partners to Sell Your Product

Think for a moment. When was the last time that you had a team meeting where someone pointed out a flaw in your reasoning or just flat out disagreed with you? If you’re having trouble picturing that in your mind, you may have a problem. In fact, you should probably start asking some questions about yourself and the people around you—before it’s too late.

Have you created a management cocoon? It’s fairly common for CEOs and other executives to end up with an inner circle of people who are intensely loyal and protective. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, unless they’ve been rewarded for loyalty instead of performance. Make sure that you have the best people around you. Insist that they challenge your ideas, and always reward their performance based on quantitative metrics. The right kind of loyalty will follow over time.

Are you getting the objective opinions that you need to vet your ideas? It’s hard to snap out of your exuberance when you and your team are in a groove and thinking alike. But that’s exactly the time to shake things up a bit. Step outside your comfort zone to get some unbiased input, and avoid making some uncomfortable mistakes down the road.

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Foster Intense Loyalty in Your Organization, but Don’t Lose Sight of Performance

Look Beyond Your Comfort Zone for Unbiased Opinions

There’s no middle ground when it comes to having a passion for your business. It’s all or nothing. Hot or cold. At least that’s the way your team sees it. They simply don’t understand shades of grey when it comes to entrepreneurial sprit. You are either out to change the world, or you aren’t. In their minds, being “sort of an entrepreneur” is like being “sort of pregnant.” Forget about it. Once you’ve started down the path of bringing your business to life, there’s no turning back.

Unlike pregnancy, however, entrepreneurial spirit is extremely contagious. In fact, that’s what makes the spirit so incredibly powerful. It spreads like an epidemic throughout the company, infecting employees, customers, and investors along the way. And it goes hand-in-hand with a grand sense of urgency. If you set the pace in the right way, everyone around you will rise to the occasion. It’s not about telling people to work harder or paying them more money to stay in the race. It’s about their seeing that you’re focusing on the mission and won’t let anything get in the way of making the business successful. So keep it up. Everyone’s watching.

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Succeed by Infusing Entrepreneurial Spirit into Your Organization

Create a Sense of Urgency to Drive Your Company Forward

Are you the consummate service provider that wants to create products to streamline your operations and increase profitability? Do you already produce killer products, but hate being treated like a mere vendor by your customers?

Regardless of which camp you’re in, you’ll encounter significant challenges in changing your business model. Nevertheless, sometimes it makes a lot of sense to take the plunge. If you look around you and find that your people are performing a lot of repetitive services or building custom software to satisfy recurring customer requirements, you may have the makings of a product in your midst. And you’re well positioned to take on the product world, because you already know the market and have a good fix on what customers will buy.

Product companies can also profit by adding services, as long as they focus on the service offerings that enhance the value of their products. Of course, the most compelling reason for providing services is to build long-term relationships with customers. Innovative services can be the cradle for new-born products and can also be powerful selling tools. In any case, if you carefully orchestrate your product and service offerings, you’ll inevitably strengthen them both.

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Add the Right Service Component to Your Product and Watch Sales Grow

In business, the mere mention of change can get attention faster than politics, religion, or even SEX. Maybe change wasn’t the word that got your attention. Nevertheless, when you’re selling a disruptive technology, you’re really selling change. And that’s pretty powerful stuff.

What really bothers people about your technology? On the surface, it may be about money or technophobia. More often than not, however, there’s something else about your pitch that’s scaring them to death—even if they’re saying “WOW” after your demo. So until you figure out how to address their real concerns you won’t have a prayer of making a sale.

You aren’t going to change the world in a meeting. So settle in for the long haul. Your prospects are going to have to experience the effects of change and make sure that they work for them. If you approach it right, a smart pilot program can be a deal saver. But it will only work if you lay off the product push and use the time to foreshadow the experience of working with you and your company. Set clear criteria for the success of the pilot and make change a winning strategy for you and your customer.

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Introduce Disruptive Technologies with a Big Dose of Change Therapy

Master the Art of the Pilot to Increase Sales

Blah blah…productivity…blah blah…sales…blah blah…growth. Did you ever stop to think that this might be how you sound to your team? It’s probably not the message. It’s most likely not the messenger. It could be about how you are conveying your ideas and interacting with your team. If you are like most executives, you probably spend a good part of your day thinking about what you need to do to get the results you want. But it’s not only the thought that counts. The delivery can make or break you.

We are all products of our environment, whether we like it or not. And that environment is dominated today by the media and the Internet. So what do you get when you mix business with our media-driven, online culture? You get management by sound bite. And you get management by email. Sound familiar? We’ve become so infatuated with the power of attention-getting sound bites that we use them as a shortcut for real communication. That can wear thin with your team as they struggle to get at the meat of your message and provide honest feedback. Worse yet, we tend to blast out directives electronically in the interest of expediency. If you have something important to say, don’t use your keyboard. Do it the old-fashioned way. Talk…and listen.

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Don’t let Sound Bites Obscure Meaningful Communications in Your Company

Avoid Management by Email

Your mother was on to something. Learn to live within your means and don’t squander your money. Unfortunately, the glamour of the 90s fostered an entrepreneurial model that runs counter to Dear Old Mom’s advice. Raise money. Spend money. Hope business grows. Repeat as necessary.

Or not. It’s possible to spend less and get better results by leveraging your strengths and bootstrapping your way to the tipping point for your business. This is especially true if you have a disruptive technology or you have the first-mover advantage. Having all the money in the world won’t necessarily change the way that people think or influence their behavior. In fact, if you have too much money, you are likely to end up launching a large sales force head-on against a brick wall and developing elaborate products that miss the mark.

That’s not to say that you shouldn’t pull out all the stops. Your sense of urgency is critical to the success of your business. It’s just that there are some things that can’t be bought when you are developing a new business. So save your money and use it only when you know you’ve cracked the code and aren’t likely to waste precious resources. Your mother will be proud.

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Go for the Tipping Point to Capitalize on Your First-Mover Advantage

The Influx of Too Much Money can be Bad for Your Business

You know your industry better than anyone, but can you prove it? And how do you transfer your aura to your company and your products? You’ve probably got access to some sweet data that could capture the attention of your customers and prospects. If you are like a lot of executives, however, you may be struggling to figure out the best way to harvest information in a way that makes sense for business development.

Can you track the behavior of the people using your product or your customers’ products? If so, then you are sitting on a goldmine. The key decisions makers in your sales process will be looking for knowledge that will help them understand their markets and steer their businesses. User data provides invaluable insights that will establish you as an industry expert and give your customers a roadmap to success.

Quantitative information will substantiate your ideas and add meat to your sales presentations. Of course, you will always be faced with people who are numerically challenged. If you don’t make the numbers come alive and paint the right picture, you may fall flat with your most important audiences. Learn to stimulate the right action with data-assisted presentations and your sales results will tell the rest of the story.

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Capture the Attention of Key Decision Makers with a New Twist on Your Products

Don’t Let a Table of Numbers Table Your Sale

“Grasshopper, break through this cinderblock with a single blow.”

“But Master, how is it possible to do such a thing?”

Anyone trained in the martial arts knows the secret. It’s all about concentrating power and visualizing the result. And a black belt in business does the same thing to achieve success.

Power comes from the right kind of training. Get back to the basics. Align your team to focus on a single objective, and avoid diverting energy from your business punch. Look through the immediate goal in front of you, and you’ll be able to smash through the obstacles in your way.

Don’t stop there. Look at your business as a whole. Are you gaining strength in your existing market and routinely knocking out your competitors? Have you mastered the art of taking on multiple opponents that may attack your market share? If you feel like you are still in a defensive position, you may want to think twice about diverting your attention to new business ventures. Any vulnerability in your business will only become more pronounced when you lose your focus. As soon as you are in a dominant position, however, move quickly to develop new business combinations that will reinforce your attack and take competitors by surprise.

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Focus on a Single Objective to Get the Machine Running Smoothly

Diversify Your Business Only When You Can Afford to Diversify Your Attention

Your business plan may be the best kept secret in your company. Let’s see, you have a written plan somewhere… It just needs a little “updating.” In any case, you may be missing one of the best team-building opportunities out there. Treat your plan as you would any other sales tool and practice using it with your team first. Focus on creating a compelling presentation and getting buy-in from your team. You’ll be way ahead of the game when you take your story on the road.

Of course, you need to have a unique plan that differentiates your business. But you don’t need to reinvent everything when it comes to strategies for success. Get instant credibility by using a cover that draws on the success of others. Put yourself in the presence of success and you’ll be able to answer a lot of the tough questions about your plan by referencing proven ideas. And don’t be afraid to look outside your industry. You may find that someone else has already solved a similar problem in a way that will be extremely innovative on your home turf.

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