Change Velocity: The Secret to Leading a Successful Sales Transformation
116
Change Velocity: The Secret to Leading a Successful Sales Transformation
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781524641832 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | AuthorHouse |
| Publication date: | 10/07/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 116 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Change Velocity
The Secret to Leading a Successful Sales Transformation
By Charlie Thackston
AuthorHouse
Copyright © 2016 Charlie ThackstonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5246-4182-5
CHAPTER 1
WHY DOES CHANGE HAPPEN FAST?
Change happens fast in today's world. The increasingly rapid pace of change is happening due to 3 Pivot Factors: Rapid Dissemination, Faster Creation, and Time To. While Rapid Dissemination and Faster Creation have fairly obvious meanings, you may wonder at the meaning of Time To. Time To is all about speed of achieving an expected outcome. This speed to expected outcome is accelerating with the rate of change in the business world today.
RAPID DISSEMINATION
Rapid dissemination happens in every sector now because of greater connectivity and greater proximity of that connectivity. Information, knowledge, experiences, opinions and perspectives are instantly available as we glance ever so frequently at our mobile devices. I believe mobile devices will all soon be Wearables. Who could have imagined twenty years ago that we would be able to wear phones or computers? My forecast for 2030 is that Wearables will become Thinkables, devices that respond to our thoughts rather than our physical or verbal commands. This is the effect of Rapid Dissemination, as it continues to spark new thoughts, we imagine more. Beyond my forecast of Thinkables for 2030, my forecast for 2050 will be the migration from Wearables to Thinkables to Imaginables as the ability to imagine will be translated through Thinkable designs to 3D Printers that generate one-of-a-kind products unimaginable to us in our current frame of possibilities today.
The breadth and depth of information is continuously expanding through the connection to everything from our televisions, to our thermostats, to our appliances and many more applications in the commercial world. All of this connectedness, now referred to as the Internet of Things, is accelerating the dissemination of information. In 2006, we worked on a strategic initiative with a global communications company to support the launch of their Machine-to-Machine, now known as Internet of Things, business development initiative. At the time, they had to look for applications for Machine-to-Machine communications to seed the space with real business applications. How the world has changed! Now, we must simply take a look around our office, our home, our car, or even our bathroom to see an opportunity for connectivity in this world of the Internet of Things.
Why this change from looking for applications for connectivity to responding to opportunities for connectivity? The answer lies in the ability to connect, collect information, and make the information actionable. We supported an initiative for one of our clients to drive the selling of Innovation to their clients. Many of the success stories that participants shared as a part of the initiative were due to the power of Rapid Dissemination resulting in action. There were stories regarding using geospatial location information to protect and conserve trees in rapidly developing cities. There were stories of delivering point of location information to guide visitors in exploring all there is to offer in an exciting city such as Barcelona. There were stories of optimizing the flow of use and servicing for the bathroom facilities at major sporting events. We can all relate to the experience of missing that most important play during a sporting event as we dashed off to the facilities to find a long line. Rapid collection and dissemination of information from the point of interaction creates the opportunity to drive better outcomes and, most importantly, the opportunity for each of us not to miss that big play, whether on the sporting field or the business field. These are all examples of the change resulting from the Rapid Dissemination of information driven by greater connectivity, greater bandwidth, and greater capacity to use the information.
Connectivity, Bandwidth and Capacity are the technology capabilities enabling Rapid Dissemination. However, capability at the corporate level does not indicate desire from the customer or user perspective. What is happening at the customer level that is creating the desire for Rapid Dissemination? In my view, it all started with the introduction of self-serve pay at the local gas pump. I refer to it as the Gas Pump Phenomenon. I was happy in my youth to pull into a service station, wait for an attendant to come to my car, ask him to "fill 'er up" and then view through the mirrors and windshield as they filled the tank, checked the oil, checked the other fluids, soaped and squeegeed the windows clean. It was probably a ten-minute process, and you frequently met a very engaging attendant. This was in the day when gasoline cost 35 cents per gallon. Today, I pay five to ten times as much for the gasoline, pump it myself and certainly do not get very much entertainment at the pumps. And I get to squeegee my windows, check my oil and check the fluids by myself, if it happens at all. So, what do we get from all of this self-service that started with the gas pump? We get freedom to do things when we want and as fast as we want. If the line looks long at one station, I just go to another, which is usually right across the street with prices that are fairly consistent. If I am in a hurry, rather than filling the entire tank, I just get enough fuel for now and "fill 'er up" later. Self-service creates a more direct connection to the customer as information is collected about the specific customer's buying interactions from transactional information to buying patterns to frequency of purchase to their shopping basket of purchases. Connectivity makes the capture of all of this information possible. More importantly, the collection creates the opportunity for Rapid Dissemination.
A side effect of Rapid Dissemination is a changing information relationship between the businesses selling the products to the end customer, the distributors and the manufacturers. A new transparency becomes possible for the understanding of who the customer is and what they are buying. This transparency creates new expectations in the relationship and sometimes eliminates the need for intermediaries in transactions within the supply chain. New, simpler business networks are formed or new, simpler networks displace the existing network. Let's consider the retailing effect of what is referred to as show rooming. The shopper sees a product in the retailer's show room or store; immediately starts to check features and capabilities for comparable or same products on their smart phone. They no longer have to go from physical store to physical store to compare prices or even make a phone call. Much of the information is instantly available at the potential customer's fingertips.
Just think of all the immediate access to information that we have as the result of our Smart Phones. Have you ever enjoyed sitting around and bantering back and forth about sports, history, movies, or music? Who was the 1982 NCAA college football champion? Who won the 1996 baseball World Series? Who was the news reporter that cracked the Watergate scandal? Which rock and roll band had the number one hit of 1978? Who won the OSCAR for best Actor in 2008? Where is Bali? When these types of questions come up today, watch the fingers start moving as everyone types the questions into their Smart Phone as quickly as possible. It is no longer about whether you know the information, but how quickly can you access it. All this is the power of Rapid Dissemination, access to information and the ability to use information.
FASTER CREATION
Faster Creation of products, services and expertise is the reality of today and will be the reality of tomorrow. Speed is critical to success with customers and markets. It is all the result of the Gas Pump Phenomenon. We now have self-serve gas, food, customer service, technical help and even love. Find the love of your life, all through your "self-serve dating site". I found mine the old fashioned way: I walked her home from a party and even talked as we walked, rather than texting. This is a novel idea in today's world of virtual connections. Connections between people are created faster, as well as products. Take car production, for instance. New car models are now introduced much quicker than they were in the past. This is all the result of computer-aided design and new platform-based production processes. This results in efficiency through common core designs for frames and foundational components across models, creating economies of scale in sourcing, production equipment and production processes. We have all of this efficiency paired with the ability to tailor the design of your own personal car, taking the concept of self-service and personalization to a whole new level. As I mentioned earlier, I believe we will soon move into the era of Imaginables, where the consumer is able to think of and create their own product. I am fascinated by the 3D printing industry and the possibilities as we move from self-service to self-creation.
This is not so different from the early pioneers in America who, upon realizing a need, designed it and made it — from tools for tending the fields to log cabins for shelter. As the world moved to division of labor for productivity and scale, this one-man connection between thought, design and creation was separated into more distinct functions. This now frequently involves silo organizations, causing some of the drag on the speed of change within many commercial organizations. So, maybe those in our day and age are the new pioneers with the opportunity to create a vast array and large quantity of objects with less labor and time. Faster Creation in terms of products, services and expertise means new business models are created and new industries spawned. Virtual communities create the opportunity for new interconnected networks of businesses and people for driving new business opportunities. New communities share expertise that helps the community advance quickly in solving complex needs. It creates a self-service learning environment where learning is delivered through virtual on the job training brought to you instantly by the experiences of others. Faster Creation of knowledge and skills is driving faster results. Faster Creation seems to be focused on even faster production of personalized products. But does Faster Creation beget simplicity? Is the seeming convenience of self-service or self-creation really convenient?
The possibilities and potential for Faster Creation will bring new opportunities for personalized products, services and expertise. Additionally, individualized creation will reduce the need for collaboration in the design and development process. On the expertise front, I have experienced Faster Creation in my research efforts to learn more about the history of my family. Using an online genealogy research site, I was able to generate multiple branches of my family with detail facts on locations, dates and events with personalized hints served up on a continuing basis as I added more information. The tool learned about my family, then served up the relevant genealogical information to help me rapidly build my family tree. Faster Creation in this case took much of the expertise required for genealogical research and delivered it directly to me. This created an altogether different and better customer experience.
TIME TO
So, what is Time To all about? There is a short Time To expectation for everything. Let's name a few of the Time To's:
1. Time To - Customer Delight
2. Time To - Benefit
3. Time To - Value
4. Time To - Return on Investment
5. Time To - Launch of a New Product
6. Time To - Win a New Customer
7. Time To - Deploy a Solution
8. Time To - Get a Question Answered
9. Time To - Receive Your Product or Service
You get it. The Time To expectations have changed. This is one of the key reasons for the increase in the rate of change. When the customer expectations for Time To change, so do the demands for acceleration and demands for time contraction. I grew up in the construction business, and my Dad frequently said, "Time is money". That certainly is true today. You are either making money or spending money, depending on where your organization is in your impact on the Time To pivot factor. Your focus has to shift to the "How To"- how to respond and anticipate the "Time To" requirements of your customers. How to reduce time to benefit, time to value, time to return on investment, time to customer delight, and any additional time expectations of your customers.
So, the question for each business and organization is what Time To levers affect your organization? If you do not focus on them, a new or existing competitor will. Time To can be a disruptive factor in many industries. Take a look at the disruptive nature of digital commerce where we simply search, point, click and buy, all in the comfort of our own homes. No longer are we required to drive or walk to a store to search for what we want, then go to another store for comparison of options and prices. One example of a business identifying and meeting Time To needs comes from a very busy Starbucks location near our office in Atlanta. The location is filled with busy executives, families and students hurrying in for their coffee order in this walk-in only location. The result between 6:30 am and 9:00 am is a very crowded store with a usual line of 8 to 10 people. Voila, a solution addressing time to customer delight and time to benefit rescues the day with online ordering. You simply walk in and pick up your coffee ready to go, as the transaction is complete before you arrive. So, adding to our list of Time To's is the Time To - Coffee reducing the Time To - Perk Up for the day.
As a part of our work with clients, we have traditionally asked them to identify the internal and external influences that are causing their business to change. When it comes to the accelerating pace of change today, it is important not only to think about the influences driving change, but also to understand how Rapid Dissemination, Faster Creation and Time To are impacting your customers and your industry. What new business networks, ecosystems or communities (your customers, the suppliers to your customer, your customers' customers) are being formed as a result of these pivot factors in your industry and your customers' industries. These new business networks are reshaping industries as distribution layers are removed and connections become more direct through online interactions that shift the relationship from multi-layer engagement channels to direct exchange.
After 17 years in the technology industry growing young venture capital backed software companies, I began consulting. As a consultant, I have experienced and helped drive many a transformation as the markets and businesses have changed. As an executive leader in developing private companies to be public companies, this required an even more substantial transformation. Both good and bad transformation happens as you move from a start-up to a public company. A start-up is agile, constantly looking for the sweet spot for growth in the market, while a public company has requirements for predictable and repeatable results to satisfy the investment community. These two types of companies have very different needs. In my transition from software industry executive to consultant, I learned quickly that the best way to start a consulting engagement was with a diagnostic of the client's needs. Rarely was there an argument from the clients about the need for a diagnostic when we engaged with them in the early 2000's. The clients were generally very receptive to the approach of doing a diagnostic including a series of interviews with leadership, top performers and thought leaders within the organization to understand what was working, what was not working and what the top performers did differently from the rest of the team. More importantly, we strove to determine how we could create a repeatable process that leveraged what the top performers were doing in their typical unconscious competent state. You have probably seen someone who is extremely successful on a repeatable basis, yet unaware of how they do it when asked. We got very good at discerning secrets to their success through structured interviews and assessments we could use to build the secret sauce for the rest of the organization. The Client leadership always found the results of the diagnostic interviews very useful, with high impact actionable recommendations to move the needle in the business.
This unconscious competent situation reminds me of my summer days as a young boy. On an early Saturday morning when we were not working, I enjoyed going fishing at any one of the small lakes within a bike's ride of where I lived in a then small town of Marietta, Georgia. One of the fishing lakes of my youth near my parent's former home is still there. The others have gone the way of development; where the fish lived, there are now homes and apartments. As a boy, I would arrive at the lake with my fishing pole, fishing tackle box, water and a snack in case the fishing continued past the ever-important lunchtime. Upon arrival at the lake, there would usually be few older men fishing ahead of me. I guess they did not take time for Saturday morning cartoons before fishing. Soon, I would start my rounds to check out what had happened before I arrived, hoping someone was not in my favorite spot under the willow trees. After a few years of fishing the lakes in the area, I was familiar with the types of fish in each of the lakes, which bait historically worked best, which times of day to held the greatest likelihood of catching a large fish. Regardless of this experience, I always asked the same questions when I arrived. "Did you catch anything?" "What kind of fish was it?" "How big was it?" "What bait are they biting?" "How was the fight landing the fish?" The last one to slip in just after the tale of the fight to get the fish ashore was: "Where did you catch it?" Through these questions and experiences fishing the lakes near our home, I became quite a good small lake fisherman for a young boy. I was your unconscious competent, catching trophy fish and not knowing they were trophy fish, not quite able to explain to others how I had done it. I knew the lakes. I knew what types of fish were in each lake. I knew the baits that worked best for the fish in each lake. I knew the best spots from my own experience and the answers to the questions I asked of the older men fishing the lakes.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Change Velocity by Charlie Thackston. Copyright © 2016 Charlie Thackston. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments, 5,Introduction, 9,
1. Why Does Change Happen Fast?, 13,
2. What Is Change Velocity?, 27,
3. What Is Transformation?, 39,
4. What Needs Transformation?, 51,
5. From Strategy To Execution, 63,
6. Creating Change Velocity, 79,
7. Creating Believers, 93,
Appendix A: Keywords, 101,
Appendix B: Chapter Summary Questions, 105,
About The Author, 113,
A Few Final Thank You, 115,