There are be a lot of books and movies about time travel and seeing the future. Often the premise is the hero who can see the future but can’t tell anyone without breaking a trust or sending the world into at state of confusion as bad as Hell itself.
This forces the hero to save the day without asking for help to bring the world back to stable alignment.
In the real world there are professionals who live this experience. There are teachers, social workers, probation officers, clergy and cops who see an infant, a child in kindergarten or first offender in court. Even without a crystal ball or next year’s newspaper the future is written. This person will have a highly challenged future of poverty, illness, substance abuse and / or legal problems. Is the outcome always the way envisioned? Of course not. There are places and ways to change those futures to create leaders, teachers, business owners and cops. There is also the possibility that just plain good luck will change everything.
Doctors live this “clear future” experience all the time. What they see is even more scientific than the other professionals. Every day Doctors “clear future” gets even more predictable because every day there is more science, more research and more data to analyze and predict. As doctors ask better questions, do better diagnostic tests and tie all of the body systems together to access interdependency they help patients live longer and healthier lives.
The social professionals and the doctors improved ability to diagnosis and help people make changes grow, but there are powerful things that inhibit change and they are:
1. The patient, client or customer willingness to listen and apply the learnings to their life.
2. The patient’s, clients, or customer’s discipline to change and move to a new and better place.
CROs are professionals just like the groups above and like the doctors apply science from many areas to support and guide their organizations or clients to a place of health and long-term financial success.
Like these other professionals the CRO can see realities that are invisible until there is a diagnosis and then they can recommend the application of the best “Revenue Science™” has available. Like the other professions the issues are about this organization’s survival and ability to thrive. “Revenue Science™” will make that predication very accurate after the diagnosis. Then the issues are:
1. Will the organization or client or customer and apply the learnings.
2. Once the organization or clients understands the learnings do they have the discipline to change and move to a new and better place.
To be a CRO like the other professions is driven by passion. The passion is to apply the science so individuals, teams, industries or countries so they don’t wake up one day and realize their ability to compete is in trouble and time has run out.
Because of “Revenue Science™” a CRO like an MD sees what is coming and often they see it months or years before that day when it is too late. What the CRO can’t do is see the future and force their organization or clients to align with it overnight.
A CRO’s work is organization wide with many professional and personal belief systems. On day one each person and part of the organization has beliefs, facts and myths born in their individual experience and business silo. In addition, almost every person and silo has had success in the past using what they know, so change is scary.
An analogy to the silo beliefs is from medical science. The patient has gotten to 35 without much exercise, they have a high stress job, still smoke and love their beer and don’t believe that pre diabetic means they will become diabetic. They heard the doctor, can’t believe it applies to them and plan to be a little careful but no real changes.
CROs face the same issues with an organization. The silos really believe they just need to do more of what they have been doing and maybe do it better. They often believe all their problems are out of their control. The problems may be brought on by the other silos, the market, technology changes or just a bad economy.
The CRO knows that “Revenue Science™” provides ways to drastically improve results by focusing on what can be controlled and part of that is getting the silos aligned to a Revenue Strategy and deploying accordingly.
The CRO can see exactly what needs to be done and it should start now, but the humans in the game are not ready to change the rules. The CRO wants to move fast and far, but if they try too much too soon it will all fail and the CRO will need a new job and won’t be replaced (the CRO will be seen as the problem).
The CRO can see how the organization can move forward, step-by-step pulling the silos into a team – if only the team would play. To win for the organization and for the CRO mission it is about changing the habits of the humans over time. As the habits of the humans change the culture changes and the level of achievement changes also.
The successful CRO will redefine how fast to move and what habits to change based on the team. In the short-term these “Revenue Science™” habits are steps toward the culture they want in the long-term.
Examples of short-term human habits to develop are:
1. Establish a high-level cross organizational Revenue RoadMap with key human behavior outcomes (if a suspect doesn’t tell you the problem they want solved and what that will look like – this is not a qualified prospect) along the RoadMap.
2. Establish high-level cross organizational metrics based on those human behaviors that are simple to capture (and in the future can be continuously improved).
3. Change all communication to be buyer focused – try to eliminate all I, we, us, me, etc. by getting your highlighter out.
4. Change all phone scripts to be customer focused.
5. For any activity (marketing, an email, a meeting, a demo) be clear up front the expected human behavior outcome expected and measure.
Over time as “a” human habit changes the disciplined CRO starts the process to change another habit and is teaching everyone all the time about how all of this fits together in a Revenue Strategy based Revenue RoadMap.
CROs, doctors and teachers all want everyone to make massive improvement NOW because these professionals know it can be done. They also know once the change is made everything is better, but since they deal with people they have to be patient and move one step at a time.
Being “right” and moving “fast” often makes you “wrong” and everything will take “too long.”