The world is a crazy place. The biggest client threatens to leave, the best sales person is interviewing elsewhere, the weather closed the factory for 3 days and the bank is demanding we have an audit to renew the LOC.
There is so much going on that is urgent that remembering what is important is a challenge we all face. Over the last 40 years the business world has gone from long stretches of relative stability to complexity and chaos. Stability for HR was about getting a few good people on board and then after a year or two they help steer the ship for decades. Vendors, partners and service providers learned what was expected and delivered within reasonable limits seemly forever.
Today nothing stays the same and if it does that may be the thing to worry about the most – staying the same is seldom a winning formula for more than a short time.
If complexity is growing, chaos is the word of the day and there are fewer long-term staff. How do we manage a business over the long-term to assure predictable revenue growth in a crazy world?
How to proceed is different than the past but surprisingly simple. Today success is about the discipline to apply “Revenue Science™” and may be the biggest change is saying NO, which is a top 5 skill for owners and leaders.
If there are 10 things demanding attention every day, there is no way to deal with them all today. So the question is not will there be any NOs. The question is how to say NO to things that don’t make you better and more profitable (they produce negative leverage for your resources applied).
Discipline is what is required to SEE the Revenue RoadMap that achieves your goals for profitable growth; it is the discipline to take these 4 simple steps that will deliver a sure NO or a Revenue RoadMap to goal achievement.
- First identify the problem or opportunity
Too often fear (of biggest client leaving) or pressure (my banker wants a CYA audit) demand attention and the attention is reactionary vs. strategic. When this happens all the energy goes to avoiding something or patching something rather than another step toward the goal.
When the demand for attention comes from an opportunity there are only two situations. The first is that this is aligned to the Revenue Strategy and the second is that it isn’t. If it is aligned to the Revenue Strategy then it is part of the current deployment model with someone to handle it. If it is not say NO.
So the challenge for problems is to step back and separate the fear from the real problem and be clear about what you have control over. Once it is clear how much control you have a lot of chaos is removed and what is left is what needs to be addressed.
Finally determine the degree of leverage you will get if you commit resources to the problem or opportunity. Now compare that degree of leverage to other strategy driven things you are already doing to achieve the Revenue Strategy.
- Diagnose the situation using “Revenue Science™” tools
With clarity about the problem or opportunity the questions are what do you have control over, what resource is available, what appears to be the best plan of action at this time, what are the critical Inhibitors and Enhancers in that best known plan. Based on that, diagnose what is the degree of certainty that the best known plan will work?
- What is the Revenue RoadMap for deploying the best known plan that will meet or exceed the degree of certainty to achieve the predicted levels of leverage?
Looking across the Revenue RoadMap what are the serial behavioral outcomes (what behaviors must happen – what do suspects have to do to become qualified prospects and what do qualified prospects have to do to become contracted customers) and what are the outcome’s preceding activities that produce each necessary behavior. How will the achievement of these outcomes be measured and what is the process for course correction? You may have to course correct an activity that is not producing the outcome you want. You may have to correct an outcome that seemed critical and isn’t or you may need to correct the final goal if is unattainable or not as valuable as predicted. Course correction is a critical part of the discipline. There must be a process and a process owner for goal achievement.
- Based on the planning from 1 to 3 what has changed?
- Is this problem or opportunity still worth pursuing?
- Is the plan coming out of step 3 achievable and with what degree of certainty?
- If the step 3 plan succeeds
- what is the timeframe
- what is the degree of leverage measured by:
- increased qualified leads
- qualified prospects
- shorter sales cycles
- greater contract dollars
- greater contract margins
- higher percent of closed deals
- faster delivery times
- higher deliver margins
- greater follow-up business from delivery
- if the step 3 plan does not succeed what are the biggest risks
- to current Revenue Strategy
- to cash flow
- to True North
- to brand
- will survival be threatened
- when the step 3 plan succeeds how will the leverage compare to other options in the current Revenue Strategy for the same level of resources application
Going forward there will be staff changes, the economy will continue to be unpredictable, technology will explode on the scene and internet transparency will keep the customer in charge of the relationships with the seller. No one is safe with a business as usual approach, because there will be NO business as usual.
Leadership owes their team ways to think about the most likely change situations so the team can make most of the decisions and make them right.
Examples of the tools leadership provides for decision making are a clear Revenue Strategy, principles, a True North and ways to SEE the Revenue RoadMap to the goal. Every RoadMap is subject to change along the way, so start using science based CRO Thinking tools and the deployment discipline.
Have the discipline to do these four things.
- First identify the problem or opportunity
- Diagnose the situation use “Revenue Science™” tools
- What is the Revenue RoadMap for deploying the best known plan that will achieve or exceed the degree of certainty to achieve the predicted levels of leverage?
- Based on this additional planning to get to this point what has changed from step one.
This is a time where size doesn’t matter. Use these for four things in a 30-minute or 30-day session depending on the magnitude of the problem or opportunity but always apply the discipline to do these four.
After doing these four things if the answer isn’t clear there will be a trail for anyone on the team to review so they can add value to the decision. Remember when things are not clear often the answer for what to do next is drop this go back to the deployment of your Revenue Strategy!