Tomicide Solutions August 2008: 11 Ways of Building Inner Values Among Your Business Development Folks
By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan
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Business development departments are notorious for sky-high talent attrition. In my experience there are two reasons for this.
- The wrong managers: Department managers are not skilled in the area of managing human beings, and they chase away good people with their bad behaviour. In their managers, people are looking for mentors, coaches, guides, exemplars, counsellors, role models, but NOT bosses. Most managers are nothing more than bosses.
- The wrong people: These are people from the lower end of the professional ladder. People who don't really have careers but only jobs, and keep moving around from employer to employer, depending on which employer offers the most money. Most people on commissions belong to this category. The retarded commission structure forces them to adopt the mercenary attitude.
After slavery ended in the US, a new name had to be invented for the people who were called masters during slavery. So, the English language adopted the bastardised version of the Dutch word "base". Slave drivers were no longer called Masters, but the new word "Boss" expressed the same thing in a more politically correct manner.
And the worst managers all over the world expect their people to call them "Boss". And I'm sure, if they could get away with it, they would expect their people to call them "Master". I've also met some - mostly male - managers who would be extra delighted if they had the right to kill or at least beat the hell out of their people at will.
I truly believe that the more vehemently people exert their suitability for management positions, the more vehemently they should be kept away from them. The best leaders in history haven't tried to become leaders, but when they got into those positions, they have done pretty well.
Good managers (the minority) desire to improve the status quo and improve their people's lives. Bad managers (the majority) merely desire to boss people around because this pervert behaviour makes them feel important and satisfied.
But aside with cretins, let's see what good managers can do to build common values among their people.
1. Sharing Responsibilities
Make certain that when times are high, everybody knows it, but when business is slow, again, everybody knows it. To do this, you may well have to change your leadership style.
Develop a culture in which taking risks and screwing up are all right, but not acting is a cardinal sin. Involve everyone in the decision-making process, so people know in advance what the firm gets into. People feel empowered when they have choices.
The problem I have seen is that many managers are engaged in hard-core brown-nosing in order to climb the corporate ladder without earning the merits to do so. And one way these managers try to demonstrate how good they are as managers is by ruthlessly kicking and beating their people for the smallest mistakes. Of course, when those people do something good, managers claim the credits for themselves.
2. Creating Personal Relationships With Your People
By relationships you must focus on building strong 1 to 1 relationships with your people and their families. Good leadership takes place between one leader and one follower. And since in business development, your people have the means of production in their heads, as knowledge workers, they must be managed drastically differently from industrial workers. In my experience, the better people are in their professions, the higher they are on the Maslow hierarchy of needs.
English Sculptor, Henry Moore put it this way...
"The secret to life is to have a task... something you bring everything to... And the most important thing is it must be something you cannot possibly do."
Top-notch business development folks have a big purpose of why they do what they do. Ask some of the best, and they tell some something like...
"I want to revolutionise the world of business development."
In order for your people to be excellent professionally, they need all the support they can get from their spouses and families. Make sure you can call your people's spouses, and they recognise you by your first name only. If you have to use your surname and get into an extensive explanation of who you are, then there is a problem.
As a leader, your name must be a household name in your people's families. This is a pretty sure-fire indicator of how you're positioned in your people's minds and hearts. Professional underperformance is caused by personal issues, so you must make sure your people get all the support they can handle. Rather more than less.
3. Developing Structured Learning Opportunities
In the knowledge age, your business development folks must do their best to stay on the leading edge of business development. That includes attending seminars, workshops and conferences, and creating an in-house resource centre with printed-, audio- and video materials.
If you live in a larger city, you have the temptation of attending programmes with local experts. Here in Vancouver there are lots of "sales experts".
However...
These local experts are - usually - not the best of the industry. Many of them are even local university professors.
In July I attended a one-day marketing workshop with one of my mentors, Robert Middleton. It was really well priced at $200. And Robert is a recognised expert in the area of marketing professional services.
On the same day, some college professor held a one-day marketing seminar for $990. Robert's workshop ran from 08:00am to 10:00pm, whereas the professor's seminar ran from 9:30am to 04:30pm.
There is one more difference. Robert's been running his own firm since 1984, earning his own money, but I dare to bet some vital parts of my anatomy that our professor has never seen a business from the inside let alone running one. With a stable union job and a state pension he has never been in the vice grip of "bring in business or starve" crunch, which happens only in the trenches of real businesses. Yes, he has theory up to his eyebrows, but the real-life experience is missing. And no amount of classroom theory can replace that.
In the first year of university we had some lab sessions with another class where the folks were studying electronics as a science as opposed to as engineering.
When there was need for some prototyping, the scientists started calculating using theoretical formulas. We, the engineers, would build the circuit and hooked it up to the "vital signs monitors": Signal generators, oscilloscopes, voltage and current measuring devices, spectrum analysers, etc. The scientists got their "results" from their calculators. We got ours from our "vital signs" instruments.
Imagine you go to the doctor, and instead of measuring your blood pressure, he would use his calculator and mathematical formulas to tell you what your blood pressure should be. I wouldn't feel too good about his kind of check-up.
So, try to get your learning from practitioners.
It is also very important to understand that it's the learners who are the most vital parts of the learning process. Leaders must create a culture in which people want to learn without being cajoled to learn. Learning must be a significant part of the organisational culture.
And parallel with the learning, leaders must provide opportunities for their people to apply the newly learnt materials.
There are three main phases to the learning process: 1) discovering what to learn, 2) learning the topic and 3) applying it on a regular basis. The other aspect of learning is that with new know-how you can add new value to your clients, which in turn warrants an increase in your fees. Every time you raise the bar, raise your fees too.
4. Having A Feel For Your People's States
This means you must know your people not only on the head level (intellectually) but also at the heart level (emotionally). Remember that thoughts - in the head - create feelings - in the heart, which create action - in the hands.
You must know your people's strengths and weaknesses, so you can share the workload accordingly, and avoid basic mistakes. You don't send a shy person to run prospecting seminars. If you want to maximise the talents inherent in your people, you must know each of their unique gifts, and build their work on those gifts.
Every time I get hired to help clients to hire staff members, a cornerstone of the hiring process is the Strengthsfinder talent profile. I know there are many psychological profiling tools, but I prefer talent profiling to make sure that we hire the right per son for the right position.
5. Allowing Conflicts Between Your People
Conflicts must be seen as the natural part of a great business development department. Using Mark Twain's words...
"It is not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races."
Conflicts are normal parts of life, and as a result of going through them, we can take not only small steps but quantum leaps forward. And resolving the conflict could be a huge mistake.
Resolving conflicts is the same as catching a falling knife. Yes, you can catch it, but you may end up ankle-deep blood. In your own blood, I must add. Your people must go through that conflict and learn from it. It must be a unique experience for them.
The key is that they get skilled in going through conflicts without going at each other's throats.
In the 17th century, German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel developed the Hegelian dialectic which his based on a triad...
- The thesis is an intellectual proposition
- The antithesis is simply the negation of the thesis, a counter-proposition
- The synthesis solves the conflict by reconciling their common truths and virtues, and forming a new proposition, thus becoming the new thesis
Then the process starts again and repeats forever.
Most often a conflict acts as a catalyst to moving your business development to a higher ground. And if you try to artificially "resolve" the conflict, then you can bring your business development innovation to its knees.
6. Make A Connection From Your Inner Culture To Your Marketplace
The external performance of your company (fees, prices, margins, productivity, etc.) is just a manifestation of its culture and atmosphere, and its people's values, beliefs, attitudes and way of thinking.
Yes, you can increase productivity by pushing your people to sell more stuff, and driving your company faster in second gear on two cylinders and with the handbrake half-way on, but eventually when something explodes, giving you a few pieces of shrapnel in the belly, your wounds may be just deep enough to kill you slowly in screaming agony.
Your best people and clients desert you and the local business community will reposition you as a rank amateur, who is best to be avoided like the plague.
So, the key is not doing what you've always done harder and longer, as conventional wisdom dictates, but doing something different.
7. Maintaining Fair Representation
Good managers have to be able to balance two important issues: 1) representing the company's interest to their people and 2) representing their people's interest to the company. Everything else stems from these two issues.
Most managers are great at representing the company's interest to their people but suck at representing their people's interest to the company. This is the essence of the typical kiss up and kick down environment which we can observe in so many technology companies. Managers desperately want their promotions, and in order to get them, they're willing to do anything, and a bit of boot-licking seems to be perfectly normal.
The problem is that while these managers are brownnosing hard to get promoted, their best people are leaving, and most business development initiatives go down the drain. And in turn, our manager looks more and more incompetent in his peers' eyes. So, our manager doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell to get promoted. Instead, due to lack of results, his own arse is in the sling and he can get fired at any time now.
8. Having The Courage To Show Your Passion And Enthusiasm To Encourage Diversity
In a business development emotions play a significant role. So, it's perfectly all right to allow to show emotions at work too. Your passion, excitement and enthusiasm must be known to your potential clients.
Why do you think multilevel marketing (MLM) is so successful all over the world? Those people freely show their emotions and that is attractive enough to other people join them. Not everybody becomes a millionaire in MLM, but everybody likes the easygoing, cheerful, upbeat company.
However, we have to be careful with the other side of emotions, the negative ones, like anger, frustration, cynicism, etc. While they can happen to all of us, letting them out uncontrollably can be a bit of a disaster.
9. Creating Effective Teams Instead Of Efficient Groups
What is the difference? Group members are involved, but team members are committed. Using the example of the egg and ham, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.
In a group you have a bunch of individuals - most often - pushing their own individual agendas. There is no joint vision, only personal steaks. In a team, on the other hand, people are in headlong pursuit of a joint vision.
Teams have the autonomy to make decisions to recruit and replace members, and have their own budgets they can use without needing authorisation from outside the team. It takes guts to create this type of teams, but it is worth doing. The increase in productivity justifies the risk million times over.
Who do your teammates compete against? Workgroup members compete internally with each other. Teams compete with other teams of competitors. Workgroups compete inwards. Teams compete outwards
Workgroups are autocratic whereas teams are participative.
Workgroups contain independent or over-dependent people. Team members are interdependent.
Two signs of great team people: 1) ask for help when needed 2) offer help when others need it.
In workgroups people tolerate each other and the work they do. Team members actually enjoy their work and the company of people they work with.
Workgroups thrive on avoiding risk and minimising costs. Teams thrive on challenge and maximising ROI. Teams understand that a healthy level of ambiguity is part of the game.
10. Showing Interest In Your People's Personal Goals And Help Them To Reach Them
Before collaborating with your clients, you must collaborate with your people. That is, you must know where your people are heading in their personal lives.
You must be familiar with their personal goals and dreams. Without knowing this, and demonstrating that as a leader, you are actually helping them to build their own dreams, you can expect no support from your people. You must create an alignment between your firm's objectives and your people's personal goals.
This is the only way of getting full participation, and commitment, not merely compliance. Listen to your people's needs, wants and interests, and do your best to help them to achieve them.
The problem lies in the fact that many managers regard their people as walking-talking tools to achieve the company's goals and the manager's bonus. They are regarded as the proverbial pawns on the organisational chess table.
And people are not stupid. They know that their only purpose at the company is to make the company and the managers stinking rich, they will switch back to second gear and put the handbrake on their performance. And at this low performance they go through life all the way to retirement.
11. Maintaining Two-Way Communication
Make sure you are not lecturing and preaching to or at your people but connecting and communicating with them. You must jointly establish and regularly review your company's vision and your business development strategies and tactics.
Imagine the business development department as a professional knowledge firm, and in such a business model you all are equals. Instead of superiors and subordinates, you are all peers and must treat your people as your ardent partners in revolution. Make sure before you try to treat your clients as partners, treat your people that way. Otherwise the whole partner concept can blow up in your face, costing you an eye or two and may burn down your hair too for good measure.
It's one thing that as a manager you evaluate your people's performance, but what about having your people evaluate you as a manager? That is even more important than your evaluating them. And I also believe that to earn the right to evaluate your people, you have to let them evaluate you first.
But this may be pretty hard. Most of your people have probably worked for petty dictators in Dilbertian hellholes where they had to put up and shut up, and they may be conditioned for that "hunker down" behaviour. So, you have to lead the charge and demonstrate that this is a different work environment.
On Summary
Technology companies are up to their eyebrows with highly talented and skilled people. Nevertheless, for some reasons, there are only very few technology companies in the world that can command the same respect from the marketplace as doctors or lawyers.
And one of the reasons for this lack of respect is the way technology companies run their business development departments and overall business development. The business development folks are the first line of contact for interested prospects.
Imagine that an interested buyer calls your company. Who is taking the call? In most technology companies the receptionist is a minimum-wage kid barely out of school because these kids are cheap to hire. Yes, they are cheap to hire and this is exactly what they bring to the table in terms of value: Zero.
Yes, they have pleasant telephone manners, but are not skilled in marketing, sales, diagnosis and other key skills that play important roles when engaging in a sales conversation with a buyer. And in most cases they certainly lack the business skills that are necessary to conduct a peer-level conversations with prospects. In my experience, most receptionists don't even know what ROI is.
When we conduct diagnosis, we can do it on two levels:
- Family doctor level diagnosis: Pulse, blood pressure, knee reflex, etc.
- Specialist level diagnosis: MRI, blood test, tissue biopsy, ECG, EEG, DNA analysis, VO2max., etc.
And what only adds to the insult is a company employs only one receptionist who usually starts phone conversations with...
"XYZ Company. Good morning. Please hold!"
And then the automated message comes every 15 seconds...
"Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line!"
There are only a handful of technology companies on this planet that allow direct phone and email access to all of their people, bypassing the receptionist who is already overloaded with receptionist work. This way prospects can directly contact the business development folks who are skilled in diagnosis, so there is a better chance to turn the appropriate buyers into clients.
I say "the appropriate buyers" because the goal is NOT to turn everyone into a client. Only buyers who fit the company's PCP (Perfect Client Profile). This is the only way of making high-margin sales.
So, look at your business development department. Do you have well established values your folks voluntarily operate by or just a set of rules you try to reinforce but your folks try to dodge.
Just look at the military, like the US Marines. The UCMJ (Unified Code of Military Justice) is the rule book. But Semper Fi (Short for "Semper Fidelis", Latin for "Always faithful") is the value soldiers live by.
Similarly, you can have an employee manual, but your folks will live by your Code of Honour. And rest assured if your company doesn't have a Code, your folks will create one, but you may not like it. So, you'd better craft one rather sooner than later.
Attribution: "This article was written by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan who helps privately held information technology companies to develop high leverage client acquisition systems and business development teams in order to sell their products and services to premium clients at premium fees and prices. Visit Tom's website at http://www.varjan.com.
