Meeting the Everyday Challenge of Innovation - Management Shorts

A case study on how one start-up made the weekly sales meeting more fun AND more effective in driving sales (and some larger lessons about leadership and innovation)
Written by Andrea Corney (ACorney@acorn-od.com)
Published by Acorn Consulting (www.acorn-od.com)

IN THIS ISSUE

I. INTRO: Meeting Madness
II. MANAGEMENT SHORT:Turning the Weekly Sales Meeting on its Head
III. LARGER LESSONS : The Everyday Challenges of Leadership
IV. UPDATE: New Teaching Gig at Stanford Business School

I. INTRO: Meeting Madness

Take a look at your calendar for this week. How many meetings are on it? How many are you looking forward to? How many of them will accomplish something useful? (Sorry to bring up unpleasant thoughts.)

I call this "meeting madness" and one of my personal missions is to "stop the madness".

This issue of Management Shorts is the second on practical ways to make your meetings more effective (and less boring or painful). Last month's issue was a short exercise for Re-engineering Your Weekly Staff Meeting.

This issue of Management Shorts provides an innovative approach to re-structuring the weekly sales meeting as well as some larger lessons on innovation and the everyday challenges of leadership.

II. MANAGEMENT SHORT:
Turning the Weekly Sales Meeting on Its Head

The Conventional Approach
Victor is the CEO and acting VP of Sales at an early stage technology company. Like any other sales manager he holds a weekly sales forecasting call to put each sales person on the spot about his numbers. It’s a grim call when things aren't going well, but conventional wisdom says this is the only way to pressure sales people to perform, and is an essential tool for enforcing accountability. This approach is so standard that Victor hasn't stopped to question it.

A Crisis
In a recent conversation, Victor told me that the initial success with early adopting customers is fading and that growth has stalled. He is losing sleep trying to figure out what to do next. As we talk, I'm reminded of something Victor said to me when he first joined the company and I replay it back to him:

The Experiment

We talk a bit more and come up with an experiment to shift the format of the weekly sales call from a grilling on the numbers to a learning conversation. This is a small experiment – with no expensive software, elaborate preparation, or paid consultant :). All he does is start the weekly call with the question: "What did we learn this week?"

The Results So Far

I talk with Victor a few weeks after he starts the experiment and he is brimming with enthusiasm:

"It’s pretty amazing how one question has transformed the sales call. We've always scheduled it for 2 hours, but in the past we were often done in 30 minutes, and even then people would jump off the call early saying they had to be somewhere else. Now we take the full two hours and I can't remember a single person leaving early.

"The other nice change is that I talk a whole lot less now. All of the sales reps are very active in the conversation and for the first time they are really helping each other with ideas and materials. [Take a moment to reflect on this. How often are you tempted to assume that people aren't stepping up or participating because of something wrong with them or their attitude? Victor's team changed their behavior significantly when he changed how he led the meeting.]

"The sales engineers have asked to join the call and I can tell when I go out on customer calls with them that they've learned a lot from the weekly sales call. This is so much more efficient than developing training materials for them!

"It has also really accelerated the process of figuring out whether or not I have the right team in place. With one sales guy, the funnel has improved substantially with real opportunities starting to surface. With another sales guy, it’s now crystal clear that he isn't suited to early adopter selling – he won't try anything new and doesn't respond to the coaching he gets from his peers – and I can let him go without second-guessing myself or feeling guilty.

"We've rapidly refined our sales pitch. We're all clearer on how to address technical objections, the real value proposition, and where the limitations in the product are (which we can share with marketing and engineering).

"The biggest change is that people are much more forthcoming about where they are in the sales process. When we frame it as learning, they are much more open about what they don't know (such as whether the project is funded, who the real decision maker is, what the org chart looks like, etc.) and that makes it much easier for me to coach them and push them to keep at the basic blocking and tackling. This is both faster and more effective than pounding my fist, shouting about accountability, or trying to embarrass people in front of the team.

"The bottom line is that we're learning a lot more about the market AND we've improved the sales funnel."

Would you like results like this? (I'll give you a minute to think about it . . .)

But, no, this isn't the right format for every weekly meeting or for every sales team or even for Victor to use at every sales meeting. That gets us back to the problem Victor was having with his sales meeting in the first place. He was using a format he had seen in the past and was applying it without stopping to ask what his purpose was and whether that format served his purpose. (Yes, he had the purpose of driving sales, but at a strategic level his most pressing need was to learn a new market as quickly as possible and get his sales people up a steep learning curve in selling something new.)

Victor's purpose was to increase the rate of learning so he used a format focused on learning. For a refresher on learning from experience see "Learning How to Learn"

What is your purpose?
The biggest mistake I see with most meetings is that they start with format or agenda, with purpose as an afterthought or not articulated at all.

Not sure about the answers or what to do with those answers? Give me a call at 650-329-8923 for a quick phone consultation.

III. LARGER LESSONS: The Everyday Challenges of Leadership

This whole newsletter and the previous one have been on the mechanics of meetings, but it’s really not about something as simple as getting the agenda right. It’s about leadership and the everyday choices you make that have such a huge impact on the results your company is capable of delivering.

Whole books have been written on this subject, but let’s look at the case study of Victor and his sales team as an object lesson on a few larger principles of leadership:

This case is just one example of the strategic impact of small choices. Magnify it by the number of interactions you have every week in your company. This is the everyday challenge of leadership. Ready to meet the challenge? Give me a call. 650-329-8923.

IV. UPDATE: New Teaching Gig at Stanford Business School

As many of you know, I am a regular member of the staff for several courses and executive education programs at Stanford Graduate School of Business. In recent years, the school has increased its emphasis on leadership and on experiential learning. (Click on this link to see an article on this major curriculum revision) Starting this fall, I will be a workshop instructor for a new leadership program that will eventually grow to include the entire first year class.

I use my experience at Stanford to enrich the leadership and interpersonal skills workshops I develop for my clients. I hope you'll keep me in mind when you review your company's management and team development programs.

About Management Shorts

Management Shorts is a free newsletter for senior managers on leadership, management and teamwork – the key leverage points for improving the speed and quality of decision-making and execution.

Management Shorts #24: Meeting the Everyday Challenge of Innovation