DISC Styles Defined - Dominance

There are four primary DISC styles - D, I, S, C.  We're going to start a series on each style to help you better understand people through their preferred communication channel.  We begin with the High D.

Dominance
This factor describes people that tend to favor a direct, assertive communication style and tend to focus on problems and challenges.  High Ds love to stick to business, get to the point and not waste time.  Ds tend not to immerse themselves in minutiae or specific details.

Observable Behavior
Buy:  Quick decision makers; new and unique products.
Change:  Love change.
Conflict response:  Fight back.
Drive:  Fast, always somewhere to get to in a hurry.
Decorate an office:  Status conscious, large desk, efficiency.
Gesture:  A lot of hand movement when talking, big gestures.
Goal Setting:  Sets many goals, usually high risk and not written down.
Organization:  Efficient, not neat.
Read:  Cliffs notes, executive book summaries.
Risk Factor:  High risk-taker.
Rules:  May tend to break the rules. The end justifies the means.
Stand:  Forward leaning. Hand in pocket.
Stress Relief:  Physical activity, preferably of a competitive nature.
Talk on the Phone:  Little chitchat. To the point. Results.
Talk to others:  Direct. While others are talking may do other activities, as well as interrupt or jump to their next response.
Walk:  Fast, always going somewhere.
Writing:  Direct, to the point. Results-oriented.
Color noticed first:  Green.
 

Communicating with the High D

• Be clear, specific and to the point.
  Don't ramble on, or waste their time.
• Stick to business.  Don't try to build personal relationships, or chitchat.
• Present the facts logically; plan your presentation efficiently.  Don't leave loopholes or cloudy issues if you don't want to be zapped.
• Ask specific (preferably "What?" questions).  Don't ask rhetorical questions, or useless ones.
• Provide a win/win opportunity.  Don't force the High D into a losing situation.
   

Managing the High D

• Clearly explain results expected.
• Negotiate commitments one-on-one.
• Define rules.
• Confront face-to-face in all disagreements.
• Provide challenging assignments.
   

Potential Limitations of the High D

• Overstep authority.
• Be too directive.
• Be impatient with others.
• Be argumentative.
• Push people rather than lead them.

Overall, the High D style is the easiest to observe and maybe the most difficult to manage.  They beauty of the High D is that they will often achieve victories that you may have thought too difficult to pursue...or win.  The D will provide drive and competitiveness to any team, just be prepared to lead them in a unique way.

Source: Target Training International

4 Steps to a Bankable Forecast

Forecasts are a true management challenge for almost every Chief Revenue Officer.

One reason is that salespeople know that their lives are more enjoyable when the forecast dollars are increasing…whether that is an accurate forecast or not.  This deceptive approach creates forecast bloat.  This bloat can be a actual loss to manufacturing companies that build their products based on the sales department’s forecast.

So how to fix this issue?  I provide 4 steps that will transform your data into a bankable forecast in this classic article in Upsize Magazine.  Briefly, the 4 steps:

1. Define what CAN go on the forecast.
2. Build an audit trail.
3. Use an up or out model.
4. Give Incentives for forecast accuracy.

Each of the 4 items is built out in more detail within the article.  As they say, I recommend you read the entire thing.

How To Keep Your Forecast On Track

Everybody wants a sure thing. They want to kick back and let the money roll in.

But sure as Lucy is going to pull that football away when Charlie Brown comes running, your “prospects” are going to come back with reasons not to buy your product or service. It’s time to put an end to that.

If you’re experiencing fluctuating quarterly revenues, your business may have landed itself a seat on the revenue rollercoaster. Structure is your key to success here. You know that well-run production boils down to thoroughly developed and managed systems; it works the same way with revenue. Accurately predict and generate revenue by operating under the four interrelated core processes that constitute a complete revenue system.

But before we discuss the four core processes, let’s clear the air on prospects…

It’s great when your sales team envisions endless prospects as they gaze upon the world of business. Don’t ever let them lose that sense of the market being theirs to win. But help them keep their feet on the ground while they’re reaching upward. There are ways to identify a lead as a true prospect, or a potential waste of time. Your salespeople should be shaking the money trees, not chasing down tumbleweeds.  Teach them to focus on the Differentiating Value that your offering brings, and to also ask Critical Qualifying Questions (CQQs) to uncover problems, frustrations, gaps, losses, and challenges that the potential prospect is experiencing.

Once you’ve got your people going after the true prospects, set them up to lock in realistic sales forecasts. Here’s a quick rundown of the four interrelated core processes:

5 M’s Sales Process:  Message, Motivation, Money, Methodology and Market

It’s likely that you already give major consideration to the power behind these words. When all five are achieved, you have the foundation for an objective, measurable sales process. Put them to work for you based on your business today – not hypothetical models.

Bankable Forecast Process: Build your forecast objectively, rather than as a conglomeration of the unique forecasts created by your reps, using the four qualifying elements of the 5Ms above: Motivation, Money, Methodology and Market. These are called the Four Aces, and should be incorporated into your forecast math. If your selling system is well defined and connected to a direct audit trail, you will be able to extract the objective data to report and determine accurately where you are in the qualifying/sales process for each revenue opportunity.

Results-Driven Incentive Process:

If the incentive system isn’t structured correctly, companies typically wind up losing their strongest performers. Focus on improving these seven aspects of your incentive process.

1. Structure your incentives. It is important to keep your company strong and growing, and new business is the best way to accomplish this. So why would you offer the same incentive for both new and existing accounts?

2. Remove the caps. If your salespeople bring value and profits to your company, why shouldn’t they be appropriately compensated for it? If you put a cap on your salespeople’s earnings, you put a cap on your company’s earnings, and may ultimately lose your best salespeople along the way.

3. Create an incentive based on your company’s desired sales outcome. If you want your team to sell to volume, make sure they’re incentivized toward it.

4. Define your sales cycle. Having an understanding of how long a piece of business takes to go from an initial contact to payment for goods/services delivered is critical for both business planning and incentive structuring.

5. Integrate the incentive plan into the business model; don’t allow it to be designed by other groups, such as finance. It’s important that the incentive process supports and rewards a salesperson’s measurable level of contribution.

6. Make incentive payments at customer payment, not based on orders written.  Clarify that incentives are earned only upon timely payment of the complete transaction amount. You can pay incentives at any time, but waiting until the payment has been received can save your company money, and legal risk.

7. Help out the low and non-performing reps. Address their performance issues and create a plan for their revival. Leave top leads for high performers to help ensure the business can be closed.

Skills-Based Staffing Process:

If you hire people who fit your core sales force profile, you have better odds for success. The skills and characteristics that best fit your sales positions will be defined by selling process, forecast process, and incentive process metrics.

Not every hire will be successful, but the odds are significantly better when an objective, more structured process is in place.

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Once you have built these processes into your business structure, forecasting will move from hazy and hopeful guesswork to a clear component of your operation. And remember to update your revenue forecast with changes on a quarterly, if not monthly, basis. Your forecast is a living document that should be constantly reviewed and updated to reflect the changes in your business. Set it up correctly and it will serve your business’ success.

The Asynchronous Sales World

Sales is morphing into an asynchronous world.  Communication is based more on written words shared via email or text.  Training is migrating to an on-demand model that is available at the moment of need.  Face-to-face conversations are becoming less frequent.  Everything has changed.

How are you handling it?  Are you providing your team with the right tools to compete in this changing market?  As the Chief Revenue Officer, the responsibility to stay ahead of the curve is mission critical for success.

Saleshacker provides some definitive tools for your consideration.  Just to point out a few:

Outreach

Get your email campaigns in order. Outreach helps you track, pace, analyze and automate your email and voice messages to your customers. By integrating Outreach into your CRM, you’ll never have to manually log your messaging activities and outcomes, freeing more time for you to book more meetings, close deals and make better-informed decisions.

6sense

Accelerate your account management process with market-leading analytics. 6sense  adds a data-driven layer to your sales cycle, unlocking and prioritizing new prospects across your pipeline. Use 6sense’ predictive intelligence to accurately forecast your customers’ purchasing behavior in a specific context.

ClearSlide

ClearSlide is a full-stack sales engagement service covering content management, analytics and smart messaging. Use ClearSlide to ramp up the quality and impact of your emails, conferences, presentations and other engagements. Persuade your customers and prospects with the most compelling content. Motivate and train your team with the most effective and inspirational learning modules.

Of course there are many more found in their comprehensive list.  As a CRO, you owe it to yourself to check out the list and see what tools could help your team be more effective in this asynchronous sales world.

Chicago Briefing - June 27

Learn about the RoundTable at our upcoming briefing on June 27.

Does your business have more upside than current performance exhibits?
Are you locked-in on the rapidly changing sales world?
Who is your go-to person for sales leadership questions?

The RoundTable provides answers to these questions and so much more.  You can learn about the RoundTable at one of our upcoming briefings in Wheaton, IL.  We will be hosting a 1 hour briefing on Wednesday, June 27th at the Arrowhead Golf Club.  If you would like to attend, please register today.

2 Key Traits for Managing Millennials

This list could be much, much longer in dealing with this generation. However, let's focus on two traits that we are seeing consistently in successful leaders of Millennials.

1. Empathy - a quick, paraphrased definition from Merriam-Webster:  the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another without having those things fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.

Now to be clear, empathy has always been a valuable leadership trait through the generations.  Leadership is associated with power which allows leaders to operate, potentially, with a heavy hand.  They need not worry about reading their direct reports.  The leader provides the direction and expects the reports to execute it.

Empathy is a critical component of emotional intelligence.  The ability to read the nonverbal cues of people provides access to the largest channel of communication.  7% of communication is verbal (i.e. words) while 93% of communication is nonverbal (e.g. tone, body position, inflection, posture, etc.).  Nonverbal communication is the universal language and if the leader can read it effectively, he or she has an advantage in leading Millennials.

2. Patience - This trait appears to be more uncommon by the day.  Millennials have matured in a microwave world.  Data, entertainment, communication has always been at their fingertips primarily through their cell phone.  Patience has not been a common point in their collective lives.

The ingrained lack of patience means the leader of this impatient generation needs...patience.  Saint Augustine famously stated, "Patience is the companion of wisdom." How true.  The Millennial generation often pushes for expediency in their careers to the point where they leave companies after short tenures.  They believe they have acquired all of the skills they can from that company and their path to the CEO suite is unclear.

The modern-day leader has to maintain a steady hand with the Millennials.  The leader must manage the Millennials expectations and provide a growth path focused on skill development.  The key is to coach them to take measured steps forward.  Patience will provide progress.

Keep this in mind, by the year 2020, Millennials will make up approximately 75% of the workforce.  Their generation requires an evolving leadership style better suited to the Millennial mindset.  Two traits, empathy and patience, will be in growing demand each year.  The leaders with the ability to adapt will successfully harness the energy of this new generation.

An Introduction to RoundTable Chicago

An introduction from Thomas Herman, Managing Director - Chicago, CRO Executive RoundTable

10 Traits of Creative Leaders

Creativity is a rare talent in leaders today.

The modern-day pressure to increase productivity, I believe, has put a burden on leaders that has neutralized their natural creative abilities.  Creativity takes time, thought, risk, perseverance and resources.  You can see where this cuts against the role of many leaders today where profitability, speed, and efficiency are valued over pace-oriented traits.

This article from Monster.com quotes 10 qualities of creative leaders.  The source is David Ogilvy, one of the original Mad Men:

1. High standards of personal ethics.

2. Big people, without pettiness.

3. Guts under pressure, resilience in defeat.

4. Brilliant brains — not safe plodders.

5. A capacity for hard work and midnight oil.

6. Charisma — charm and persuasiveness.

7. A streak of unorthodoxy — creative innovators.

8. The courage to make tough decisions.

9. Inspiring enthusiasts — with trust and gusto.

10. A sense of humor.

Notice how his list contains elements of courage in multiple qualities?  I couldn’t agree more with his list and especially this need for courage.  Creativity usually requires some form of going against the grain.  Many leaders simply avoid upsetting the status quo or longstanding sacred cows within an organization.  I find that reluctance all-too-common...and disappointing.

I’ll leave you with some sage advice directly from the author of the article:

“Creative leadership makes your job more meaningful and gives you visibility. Do something small at first – deliver a project early, come up with alternative courses of action, and whenever possible deliver unexpected added value. A bit of qualitative research or sentiment analysis (collecting comments made on forums or social media) is a good example of providing new perspectives that lead to new solutions.”

Most CRO's Don't Know This Important Ratio

Seems simple, but here it is:

Let me offer up some definitions of each box:

Connects: Cold contact from a list or similar resource

Suspects: Contacted and have general need or use for your product/service

Prospects: Qualified for need, budget & buying time

Quotes: Formal proposal to do business

Close: Completed order in response to quote

Again, this is a simple concept, but it is of great consequence when hiring salespeople.  We call it the Connects-to-Close ratio and it defines many of the parameters you need to use in your hiring efforts. 

There are many layers to the ratio that impact the sales skills, selling style and aptitudes to measure in any candidate.  Instead of getting lost in those weeds, let me boil it down to the essence of why you need to know this ratio:

You cannot ask a new salesperson to do something 10, 50, 100 times without first being able to explain it one time.

10 Characteristics of a Leader

Photo by David Dibert from Pexels

These are the 10 according to Selling Power:

1.)  Be courageous.

2.)  Think big.

3.)  Master change.

4.)  Be ethical.

5.)  Have a sense of humor.

6.)  Be persistent and realistic.

7.)  Be positive and hopeful.

8.)  Accept power and use it wisely.

9.)  Make decisions.

10.)  Be committed.

A solid list for sure.  I have to call out the description for “Think big.”:

“Great leaders are curious, eager to create new things, and able to bring out the best in others.  They have an ability to see the big picture and work toward making that picture a reality.”

If you want to call out 3 qualities for a strong leader, you would have a good start with curious, creative and inspiring.