The Blowback Machine

Time Management

Last week, we took some friends out to a new restaurant, and noticed that the waiter who took our order carried a spoon in his shirt pocket.

It seemed a little strange. When the busboy brought our water and utensils, I noticed he also had a spoon in his shirt pocket. Then I looked around saw that all the staff had spoons in their pockets.

When the waiter came back to serve our soup I asked, “Why the spoon in your pocket?”

Well, “he explained, “The restaurant’s owners hired Andersen Consulting to revamp all our processes. After several months of analysis, they concluded that the spoon was the most frequently dropped utensil. It represents a drop frequency of approximately 3 spoons per table per hour. If our personnel are better prepared, we can reduce the number of trips back to the kitchen and save 15 man-hours per shift.”

As luck would have it, I dropped my spoon and he was able to replace it with his spare. “I’ll get another spoon next time I go to the kitchen instead of making an extra trip to get it right now.”

I was impressed. I also noticed that there was a string hanging out of the waiter’s fly Looking around, I noticed that all the waiters had the same string hanging from their flies. So before he walked off, I asked the waiter, “Excuse me, but can you tell me why you have that string right there?”

Oh, certainly!” Then he lowered his voice. ” Not everyone is so observant. That consulting firm I mentioned also found out that we could save time in the restroom. By tying this string to the tip of you know what, we can pull it out without touching it and eliminate the need to wash our hands, shortening the time spent in the restroom by 76.39 percent.

I asked, “After you get it out, how do you put it back?”

Well,” he whispered, “I don’t know about the others, but I use the spoon.”

I tried to get a little traction on this at Since Sliced Bread but their site has gone inexplicably inactive … or active, I can’t tell.

Recently, the company I work for, Monster, changed its health care provider. This hit my pocketbook substantially, and Monster is not a small company. Now, I spend the day advising companies in LA and I’m very aware of their company sizes and their Standard Industry Codes (SICs), as one might expect. Ironically, a good source of business for me has been small companies in the legal field. And as much as much as these firms might make, it still hits the paychecks of the legal secretaries and research assistants, who make firmly middle-class (or lower) level incomes.

After working with numerous small companies and constantly trying to find decent health care at decent rates, we kept coming up against with the fact that because the company was small, we were pigeon-holed into a high cost plan. Forget that the people were categorized as young but not so young as a risk, and healthy, our costs were astronomical. Yet, if our company was 2000+ in employees, we would have paid half. HALF! I beg your pardon?

So it finally struck me: to the actuaries, the main factors are risk (propensities for problems such as age, or industry — paper pushers only risk paper cuts; machinists push iron and smelt) and the dilution/buying power that comes with strength in numbers. OK, let’s give the insurance firms that much. But what is the difference between a law firm in LA and one in Chicago? Or mechanics in Portland and Houston? Among them, they share the same in risk (injuries in law firms don’t differ area to area) but have the buying power. So, why not give them that buying power?

Across all state lines, let’s combine all companies with less than 2000 employees with the same SIC so that they’re treated as one company. Together, they can elect their own to choose the provider they want but otherwise, so long as they meet the same risk criteria, they are treated as one large company. The insurance companies minimize their risk and the small companies keep their costs down. A win-win for all.

Am I missing something?

Obviously, from the lack of focus and the erratic timing of the postings, I’ve been preoccupied with other things. Consequently, I’m officially declaring this blog On Hiatus until further notice. Expect either this or another to show up soon (and with all the vitriol and widely-gathered data but with more focus).

Until then,

M

Since it’s that time of year when companies assess their successes and failures during the course of 2006 and subsequently roll out new marketing plans, selling strategies, comp plans, and titles, it’s worthwhile to point out what clients (Amazon.com has customers — transactions, you have clients — you might start transactionally but you work consultatively, right?, so you have clients) and you and your peers think when they hear who they’re working with. For example, working with the President is much more significant to the client than working with a Customer Service Representative to solve their problems. Consequently, when planning for Strategy 2007, take a look at the company and think about whether or not you’re sending the right message when working with a client.

1. No client wants to work with a ”Customer Service Representative.” When I need help, I don’t want to work with a lackey and nothing spells “low man on the totem pole” more than “CSR.” No matter how empowered that person may be, the title alone makes me ask for a “supervisor” — an insult to the CSR and what a supervisor does will be dubious at best.
2. Don’t put the title “territory” anywhere near a sales person. Nothing says to a client “that’s not my job” more than that word. The fact is, a client wants to work with the right person right now. As a salesperson, you might be assigned a territory, for better or for worse, but that is irrelevant to the client. If you introduce yourself to the client first or the client finds you first, pigeon-holing you in the mind of a client is just about the fastest way to piss off a client. Assigning territories is one thing. Just keep it out of the client’s face.
3. Another problem with titles where the clients are concerned is “business” or “development” or anything else that says you’re going to be sold. The job of a salesperson is not to sell a thing. It is to facilitate the buying. You must make sure the client knows that they are buying and they’re not going to be swallowing something they don’t want or need. Your job is to get them to want it, ask for it, not to agree to it. Agreeing is tantamount to a compromise. Yes, negotiating is part of the sales process but to put it up front in a title is like sending in Jimmy Carter to make sure each party is equally screwed on the deal. If it doesn’t sound like a win-win from the start — the title — then the buyer will go shopping elsewhere, or equally bad, shop around in which case you’ve just about lost the sale anyway.

So, what words say what you want to say? It depends on your selling strategy. If it starts on the Web, which most do and should, your website is your “Customer Service Representative” or your “Client Care Representative.” Everyone else after that is the client’s assistant. If I called an airline and got an advocate on the phone such as a “Client Assistance Manager” (think of the power of the word “manager” over that of “representative” or the nebulous “executive”) I’d feel as though I didn’t need to go anywhere else to get my problem solved; this person is in charge of my needs.

The client wants to work with someone who:

• Is supposed to work with clients
• Is empowered to get the job done without having to pass the buck
• Isn’t going to make them feel sold
• Has a title that makes sense and isn’t full of new age froufrou like the word “concierge”

Look at your org chart (you do have an org chart, don’t you?) and ask yourself, is this the kind of company I want to work with to solve my problems? Don’t read the job descriptions or your company’s workflow, just look at the org chart. If it doesn’t send the right message, in plain English, change it.

Every sales manager should read Michael Lewis’s Moneyball. Whether or not you are a fan of baseball it’s a terrific exploration of looking for the metrics that matter in business, no matter what kind. And even if you are the master of statics — you have scorecards, dashboards, measurements of all kinds, even if you never saw a metric you didn’t like — my bet is you’re still failing to do your job properly.

Too many sales managers, and management as a whole for that matter (which is why few MBAs make worthwhile sales managers), look at numbers and more numbers figuring the key to the company’s sales success lies buried somewhere in those metrics. Well, stop it.

Metrics that demonstrate activity such as calls, appointments, new opportunities, pipeline status, even sales and collections are all simply parts of the big sales puzzle, and all secondary at that. The real answers lie in the database your salespeople are using to log the activity with their clients.

Managers look at their top salespeople who are breaking sales records and making their sales quotas look like soccer scores and think, he’s doing great so there’s no need to monitor him.

Wrong.

Managers look at metrics and see that others are all generating the right metrics and think they’re doing OK too.

Wrong again.

To those who think top sales are enough I say, it’s not where you are it’s where you should be.

To those who think metrics that are in line with expectations I say, don’t confuse motion with movement.

Get your head out of the numbers and into your salespeople’s database and read what they’re doing.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, salespeople will learn to work the system. If you’re just looking at numbers, they’ll find a way to make the numbers look good. And for those salespeople you think are selling their way into the history books, you’re getting complacent — you’re setting yourself, and them, up for failure.

Metrics will tell you that your people are working but they will not tell you how they’re working. As a sales manager your job is to train, coach, ensure that no opportunity is overlooked, that they’re not wasting time working with the wrong people, that no money is left on the table. No metric will tell you that. Only by reading what your people are doing, and saying, will give you the most important information about the selling going on in your organization.

One very successful company has a company policy that every sales manager will read the activity of at least 25 accounts per day. By digging into how the salespeople are working they can immediately correct behavior before it becomes habit. They understand the company culture and can therefore drive it in a way that leads to superior performance no matter where the salesperson ranks on the tote board.

Read first, and take corrective action immediately. The metrics come second.

Seems everywhere I turn lately companies are rolling out the new comp plan — Sales Compensation version 2007. Year after year companies are trying to build a better mousetrap without ever thinking what effect this has on the sales force, let alone whether or not there’s actually a need for change. Usually, changing the compensation plan means management isn’t doing its job. Of course, that’s not always the case but compensation plans don’t just fall from the sky — someone actually has to sit down and think about profit margins, driving desired behaviors, what the company can afford, what is fair market value, and so on. So, why the change? Look for these signs of bad management:

• No productivity metrics other than dollar volume. This may be fine for the first few months of a startup but after that, management has taken its eye off the ball. Are you, the salesperson, filling your pipeline, moving your pipeline, emptying your pipeline, all in a timely manner? If you don’t know, management has not simply let you down, they’re sitting on their asses. Without watching your pipeline, among other things, you’ll see spikes in your commissions … and eventually you’ll starve. As a salesperson, your job is to sell. If you don’t have the tools to do it, get in the face of management and demand it. If you don’t get what you need, find another job; the job you have is a dead end.

• Sales last year didn’t hit its target. This is always the fault of management. Sales Managers who change a comp plan because last year’s target wasn’t hit is not the fault of the salespeople, per se, it’s because the managers failed to hold up a mirror to themselves and look at the reality of the situation, regardless of the comp plan. Salespeople sign on to a comp plan or take another job. That said, they sell to make money. Period. If the numbers weren’t hit, managers need to say, “if you can’t change your people, change your people.” Improve the coaching, training, reporting, marketing, leads, etc. or, if all that is in good shape, find salespeople who are better fitted to the job.

• The comp plan was seriously flawed and needed to be changed. Read the comp plan. If it can’t be explained in one page — NDAs, examples, etc. notwithstanding — it’s too complex and is flawed. I recently found one that went over 10 pages. Ten pages to explain how a salesperson makes money. That is a disaster in the making. As a salesperson, walk — no, run — away. As a manager, take it out behind the barn and kill it with an axe and start over.

Salespeople need the following from a comp plan:

1. Simplicity. If you’ve hired rocket scientists as salespeople, you’ve put them in the wrong position. That’s what subject matter experts (SMEs) are for. Salespeople want something they can think through in a second while in the middle of a sale. Does this make me money? Yes = keep going. No = pass. (NB: you need a simple contingency plan for dealing with those deals they’re going to pass on. They might be good for the company but if they’re not going to be good for the salesperson, you could lose a perfectly good opportunity elsewhere.)
2. Consistency. For all the stress a good salesperson goes through, the last thing they need is an unstable future. And I don’t mean one year. Unless you have a botched comp plan on your hands, work it for at least two years. You get a lot of worthwhile statistics from two years that you don’t from one and the salesperson learns to work the system. And working the system is the best possible thing for a salesperson to do, contrary to the negative connotations managers take from that statement. Working the system means maximizing it not manipulating it. If the system gets manipulated, that’s because managers took their eye off the ball. You want salespeople to maximize the comp plan, make money, be happy, and if they identify faults in it, fix it. Don’t throw out the comp plan, modify it.

Sales drives the bus. Any organization who doesn’t buy into that 100% is either dying or complacent (which is the same thing). No compensation plan needs to be changed annually. Keep it simple, achievable (a top salesperson should reach six figures in year two or it’s flawed), and profitable for the company. If you’ve rolled out a new comp plan this year, don’t roll out a new one for at least two years. It may need some tinkering along the way but that’s no reason to throw it out and start over. You might as well fire the whole staff and start over, which is better than Compensation Plan version 2008.

Agree? Disagree? Discuss it in comments.

Incarceflation strikes again … by Mark Fiore.

1. Concentrate on the four small dots in the middle for about 30 seconds.
2. Then look at a wall or any smooth, single-colored surface.
3. A circle of light will start to appear; blinking can help this come into focus.

What do you see? Who do you see?

Ironically, the only two great players who haven’t had a meanstreak — a good old-fashioned whup-yo-ass kinda meanstreak — were hockey players: Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky. I could be wrong. And I welcome the input. And it’s too early to judge Federer.

Wikipedia now has a listing of English words with diacritics. Now you can pretend you’re a writer for The New Yorker … or a Frenchman giving English a bad whack.

A sampling:

N

naïf, naïve, naïveté, né, née, negligée, Neufchâtel cheese, Nez Percé, Noël, número uno

See? We went from naïve to número uno. Just goes to show you ….

First, Fark.com observes US anesthesiologists asked not to help execute death sentences

Then commenter stilleto_the_wise writes:

I have a simple solution to the “death penalty” problem. When a child is born, the parents are presented with a form that reads:

“For the duration of my child’s life, if he or she is ever convicted of a capital crime he or she ____SHALL or ____SHALL NOT be elgible for the death penalty.

(check one)”

And make it legally binding. We’ll see how many people truly support the death penalty and how many are hypocrites.

The comments are the usual collection of pro- and anti-death penalty line-drawings, including abortion, naturally.

It reminded me of the story of the angel who was walking down the street with a torch in one hand and a bucket of water in the other and was asked what he was doing. He replied, “I’m going to burn down all the houses of worship and put out the fires of Hell and then we’ll see who really loves God.”

Today, as I was watching a few minutes of the US losing to Ghana, I thought about two old friends of mine, Mike Prather and Jeff Hahn, two of the most gifted athletes I’ve ever seen, bar none.

Mike I knew in grade school and there simply was nothing this guy couldn’t do. If he wasn’t outrunning everyone by a lap, he was throwing the ball harder, faster, farther, than anyone else. He was most remarkable around any kind of gymnastics: untrained, he could somersault, flip, Gainer … he had complete control over his body in space. Watching Mike in sports was like looking at art. The only area I had him beat in was soccer, something he had no interest in, and something they carried me off the playground on a stretcher one day. The last I saw of Mike was in a yearbook where he was voted “best hair,” which makes more sense than you think because instead of any “conventional” sports, he spent his time surfing. He would have made a helluva soccer player.

Jeff was one of my roommates in college, a baseball player on scholarship like all my roommates. He was a shortstop and a natural. A self-destructive natural. He would field an infield hit and juggle the ball in his hand, taunting the runner and then at the last second let loose a frozen rope to first base … out! Hitting, he took so long to run the bases after his home runs that you could take a restroom break … in Tanzania. But he would show up five minutes before the games, never warm up, and play that well. He skied better than anyone, walked onto any football game. He tore up his arm and his leg so badly the last I heard from him he was teaching inner city kids in an LA high school for troubled teens. He would have made a helluva soccer player.

Me, my cosmopolitan upbringing didn’t have me playing the drums in band or Pop Warner football. I played the violin and was concertmaster and soccer where I made the all star team. I became disenchanted by the nerds in symphonies who on tour cared nothing about sports and where soccer was concerned, well, the doc took one look at my double-jointed knees and said I’d never make a helluva soccer player. Fact is, they never let me on the pro field.

My point is that this year the US was not ready for the World Cup. Nope, the Super Bowl, the World Series and the NBA Finals (and, alas, NASCAR), come first. FIFA’s math is clearly aimed at driving marketing dollars toward the World Cup if they actually think the US is really ranked #5 in the world. Puh-leeze. Use the former algorithms and leave them in 25th place where they belong … and then the competitiveness of the Americans will come alive (again). We don’t like to lose let alone not be #1. For the US to deserve to be in the round of 16 (let alone 4), soccer teams have to get past recruiters for not one but three enormous sports with plenty of fans and more money. Today, US soccer players are in it for the love of the game like, say, Trinidad-Tobago (also out this year).

Where will the US be in 2010? Well, if FIFA gives the US the low ranking they deserve and the US continues to grow in popularity, money and talent (in no particular order), they may well deserve a #5 ranking. Granted, Mike, Jeff and I won’t be there (thankfully — we’re too old anyway), but there are plenty of gifted athletes born every day who might look at soccer on the same level playing field (har!) as football and baseball and basketball and say to themselves, no thanks, I want to play soccer.

If the 10 Commandments are so important to him…