It’s Time for Business Leaders to Step in When Government Fails.
Published November 20, 2011 | 
Howard Shultz, CEO of Starbucks, has it right. Government officials are digging their heels into their antagonistic positions and blaming each other for not enabling workable solutions and a consensus to implement them. He proposed that people boycott making election donations to politicians who seem to be using the money to attack their competition, rather than generate new solutions.
If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem. With government effectively frozen for the next 12 months until the 2012 election, he recently announced the “Create Jobs for America” program; he’s leveraging the power of Starbucks to reach 60 million people and enable them to contribute money ($5.00 or more) to be used to help create jobs by donating it to the Opportunity Financial Network which lends money to small businesses. His goal is to engage other businesses in this worthy enterprise.
But the real goal has to be larger. It’s time for business leaders throughout America to step in and create new solutions when government fails. These leaders constantly confront challenges that affect stakeholder’s lives – employees, community residents, investors, etc. They look for tried-and-true approaches as well as creative new ones, and then apply them to resolve the situation. When they succeed, everyone benefits.
Mr. Shultz re-assumed the helm of Starbucks after the company stopped growing due to
overexpansion, the economic recession and other causes. He challenged the status quo,
adopted new approaches and turned the company around. And now with the company
back on track for growth, he’s taking this no-nonsense problem-solving approach and
applying it to societal problems.
We need more leaders to do this. As Chairman of a local CEO group for Vistage International (www.vistagenewyork.com), I have the opportunity to watch these business leaders confront challenges with creative approaches and produce impressive results. Imagine unleashing the potential problem solving skills not just of the 14,500 Vistage CEOs, but millions of other business leaders throughout the USA to take the initiative and develop creative solutions to the challenges people face, without being dragged into party politics. It’s what we need to do.
Enabling leaders to realize their ability to confront business challenges creatively is the first step toward engaging them to step outside the business realm and address societal challenges. That’s one of the two driving forces behind the newest venture that I’ve co-founded, LeaderSolutions.TV. It provides a forum through which business leaders can share how they confronted challenges creatively, and allow others to learn from their experiences. Listening to the many varied stories will undoubtedly inspire one another.
As leaders increasingly recognize their abilities to creatively attack their company problems, I hope they increasingly will step outside their businesses, and apply their drive, insights and energy to address societal challenges – just as Howard Schultz has done. I chose to gain psychological, legal and management skills many years ago to work within the government sector to make this world a better place. Yet, after a few years, I felt I could better use my creative skills to create new solutions within the private sector and inspiring young people by teaching in universities to do the same.
However, today, with government frozen, and time to solve our economic, energy and other challenges slipping away very quickly, I believe business leaders need to take the initiative in developing solutions to the societal problems and gaining consensus to implement them. While government is the problem, business leaders need to drive the solutions.
Compelling Case + Irresistible Influence = Success
Published October 2, 2011 | Recently, a colleague asked for some help to sell a bureaucracy on making a change for him. Complicating matters was the fact that several other people had made similar requests before and all had been refused, in part because change would have meant promoting customer needs over the needs of his staff. We developed our presentation/negotiating approach, executed it and succeeded. He then suggested we share the process we took with everyone, so others can do the same. Great idea… so here goes.
- ADAP: Adopt the Audience-Driven, Authentic Presentation philosophy. The audience is a senior executive who has three main concerns: Promoting the excellence of his brand, protecting his staff and pleasing customers. Therefore, the presentation must address these concerns, in that order! Second, to help him resolve the conflict between customer and staff needs, we need to bring both the logical and emotional issues to bear.
- Create a Bond: People buy from people they like, people with whom they identify. You do that by demonstrating that you share similar values, background or history. In this case, I began the conversation by demonstrating my personal interest in his area of specialization and commonalities about our backgrounds.
- Create Trust: Knowing that he has to make a tough decision, I shared with the buyer my understanding of the conflicting values he must weigh, and made sure to focus on the super ordinate goal – that in order to promote the excellence of his brand, pleasing the customer was more important than ruffling the feathers of some staff members. Building a bond and trust, enables you to create irresistible influence – the emotional element in decision-making.
- Compelling Case: Since we like to make decisions based on logic, the key is to present a persuasive fact-pattern. As a leader, his #1 responsibility is to promote it, authentically. Choosing to protect his staff rather than the brand’s values would undermine the brand. In this case, excellence in education means creating an atmosphere in which we encourage people to invest time, creativity and energy learning the subject; ultimately, the goal is to inspire people to want to learn more. Anything less diminishes brand value. The leader needed to remember these were his authentic values and that only one course of action would promote them.
- Feel like a Hero: We all want to feel we make good decisions, which is why we should end with a positive conclusion that eliminates the possibility of “buyer’s remorse”. Knowing that the client might experience some negative feedback from staff, we concluded by addressing his emotional need that he made a good decision. With this decision, he would promote his brand value to customers and reinforce his self-image as an authentic leader who does the right thing.
In sum, we combined the power of Irresistible Influence and Compelling Case to succeed:
- Feel like a Hero: We all want to feel we make good decisions, which is why we should end with a positive conclusion that eliminates the possibility of “buyer’s remorse”. Knowing that the client might experience some negative feedback from staff, we concluded by addressing his emotional need that he made a good decision. With this decision, he would promote his brand value to customers and reinforce his self-image as an authentic leader who does the right thing.
- Irresistible Influence: Creation of a bond and trust for the emotional framework for the buying decision we wanted, and
- Compelling Case – A logical argument to take one course of action really promotes brand value in this case.
In your future presentations and negotiations, use the both of them to succeed!
To Help Others Develop, Start With Yourself
Published July 22, 2011 | I’m often asked “Why did you agree to chair a group of 8-16 CEOs for Vistage?”
Follow my career and you’ll see that my passion is helping good people unleash their potential. I’ve studied human psychology, strategy and organizational systems in order to facilitate efforts by good people to be consistent winners.
Vistage is for leaders who want more for themselves and their companies. They agree with Jim Collins’ insight that Good is the Enemy of Excellent. They understand that one of the best ways to encourage leadership development by their team is by openly developing themselves.
Marshall Goldsmith commented about this, after hearing General Mills’ CEO Steve Sanger talk about his development to 90 of his colleagues. Dr. Goldsmith noted that twenty years ago, few CEOs received feedback from their colleagues. Today, many of the world’s most respected chief executives are setting a positive example by opening up, striving continually to develop themselves as leaders. In fact, organizations that do the best job of cranking out leaders tend to have CEOs like Steve Sanger who are directly and actively involved in leadership development.
Michael Dell is a perfect example. As one of the most successful leaders in business history, he could easily have an attitude that says, “I am Michael Dell and you aren’t! I don’t really need to work on developing myself.” But he, has taken the opposite approach: sincerely discussing his personal challenges with other leaders.
Vistage New York isn’t for everyone. It’s for leaders at all levels who are committed to improvement by being open to new ideas and perspectives, willing to make public commitments to peer advisors and being held accountable by them and an expert coach. The CEO Game Changers, as our CEOs call themselves, proudly announce that they want to be the best they can be and will change when appropriate.
If you haven’t yet applied to be part of Vistage New York, think about how you and your team and your family spend their days, and ask: “Is that all there is? Could it be better? Am I prepared to find out?” If you want more, let’s meet and see if you qualify for one of our groups.”
7 Tips For Killer Sales Presentations
Published July 4, 2011 | Are your sales calls compelling and generating “buy” decisions without a sweat? Or are they unfocused, inefficient, meandering sales calls, where you’re not even sure you’re getting the sale till the very end? Excellence is achieved when your presentation is client-focused rather than vendor-focused.
• Do your homework: Know why prospects should buy from you. Before the sales call, identify what information you need about the buyer’s current situation to determine the need for your product/service. How is the current solution inadequate? What pain does the prospect experience which a better solution could alleviate? What benefits would the prospect like to get from a new solution? Which gains would motivate the user to take the risk and start using your product?
Ideally, you know all this before the sales call, so you can use the initial client-focused Needs Assessment stage to validate assumptions. Remember, people buy for both rational reasons (it’s a better product) and emotional reasons (I feel this vendor is really going to support me as our needs change). While validating the assumptions, you need to help the prospect feel the current product’s pains and appreciate the gains that an alternative product (yours) offers.
Since it’s rare to have all this information available before the initial sales call, your real homework is to be prepared to collect it quickly at your initial meeting. This means you need to analyze your other customers’ experiences and develop an educated guess as to which pain and gain points are most applicable to the prospect. Write out a list of the issues you want to explore in advance of the meeting, so you know which ones to ask. There’s nothing wrong with having the Needs Assessment Form in front of you to guide you; in fact, in fact it sends a message of professionalism and thoroughness to the prospect!
The order of the questions is important – because they form the basis for building a persuasive presentation. As you comment on the prospects’ answers, noting how your product avoids pain points and offers the desired gains, you’re building your case. The goal is to make the case cumulative and overwhelming – that you have a solution which will eliminate many nasty pains and/or offer sought after gains.
• Organize your Competitive Advantages, so you can present them in an order which brings the client to the natural conclusion: if the vendor’s products can really do all these things, then we really should be using the product! This means you need to know your entire product’s Competitive Advantages, group them by those that go together, and present them succinctly and powerfully. Remember, a truly client-focused presentation means only presenting those which matter to the prospect. WINning means knowing What’s Important Now.
• Build trust and confidence as you tell your company’s story. Nothing speaks like success, and relating relevant case studies make your points most effectively. The key is to demonstrate not just what your company did, but how it did it, because what the prospect is buying is your ability to analyze problems and solve them in the future. So while having a great client list and testimonials is very useful, demonstrating how you went out of your way at 10PM to save the client thousands of dollars is what builds confidence that you’re the ideal vendor.
• Counterpunch your competition, without ever bad-mouthing them, so the prospect appreciates your Competitive Advantages. For instance, if responsiveness is an important feature and your company is the only 24/7 operation in the industry, you can counterpunch the competition. “Many companies say they’re available 24/7 to take your calls; that means they are taking your call and passing on your request for help to the morning shift. Our firm is open 24/7, which means our technicians are there to solve your problem, even at 3 AM.”
• The Demo is really a Proof-of-Concept. You should start the demo after you have a “conditional sale”, meaning if you can demonstrate that your solution actually does all the things you said, the prospect will buy. It’s your chance to reinforce the most important buying points you’ve already made! (Unfortunately, many sales people think that they are supposed to make their entire presentation during the demo; this makes the sales demo take too long, especially as there are natural interruptions and waters down presentation’s impact.)
• Don’t let your sales kit distract from your sales pitch. Have your sales kit available, but give it to the prospect when looking at it won’t distract him/her from listening to you (e.g., at the end of the sales call). Often a good strategy is to let the prospect see it and know you will give it at the end of the sales call.
• Ask for the sale. Know what next step you want to take. If you’re selling a product, which will require another meeting with people, be prepared to tentatively schedule the follow-up meeting immediately. If the next step is to do a test, set up a time to begin the test and an estimated time schedule for completing it. If the next step is to have the person sign on the dotted line, don’t forget to bring the contract and a pen!
Cross-Cultural Communications
Published June 27, 2011 | Think of all the miscommunications you experience in an average week – and realize that most are with people who share your culture. You can then appreciate how much more complex it is to be an effective communicator in a world where we interact with people in China, India, Latin America, Russia Mideast, etc. who don’t share your cultural norms and business traditions.
Different cultural values, beliefs and norms
Every culture has its own set of shared values, beliefs and behavioral norms. For instance, while Americans generally value individualism/independence, focus on time to control the future, tend to be direct, open, honest and practical, other cultures are more concerned with the group’s welfare, respecting the past, people’s rank and status, indirectness and ritual. People’s value of time, deadline, accountability, etiquette when engaging others of differing ages and characteristics, all impact on direct and indirect communications, relationships, decision making, motivation, leadership and organizational structures. Most of us develop our personality and communication styles as we grow up within our culture. But when we interact with people from different cultures, conflicts can occur unless each party is sensitive to the cultural discrepancies and language differences, and adjusts to them. For instance, when doing business with people in India, it’s advisable to be properly attired (wearing non- leather products), avoid beckoning with the palm up, wagging a finger, whistling, winking or pointing one’s feet at a person, and know when and how to use words like “no” and “thank you”.
Each medium has its own communication dimensions
In face-to-face situations, what you say, how you say it, your physical appearance, body “language”, listening skills, and manner of response all play a role. In phone conversations, the importance of verbal and listening skills is magnified, because there is no visual feedback. In e-mails, the power of each word or phrase, the document’s organization and formality, response time, and how you use technology (e.g., instant messenger) all have meanings. Finally, how each party interprets the use of the medium is based on cultural values (e.g., urgency and importance), also determines the impact.