Do schools kill our creativity?

I came home last night to find my 8th-grade son working on a Powerpoint presentation for school.  Much to my horror, it was filled with bad clip art and dense text.  Here was a very creative kid who spends his spare time making films attempting to conform to the "accepted" practices of presentations for his school.  Scary.  But this is where it all starts.

So, join me today in helping children and your young colleagues understand that communication does not have to forced into bad Powerpoint and that there are better ways to get your point across.

With my son I suggested video and images from Flickr or even better taking his own photos to supplement the communication. 

This reminds me of a presentation at TED (the thought provoking conference that now posts all of its presenations and discussion online) by Sir Ken Robinson called "Do Schools Kill Creativity?  He talks about how a group of small children were asked if they could draw,  everyone in the room raised their hands.  When asked if they could dance, everyone in the room raised their hands.  When asked if they could sing, everyone in the room raised their hands.  And, then later in life - I can't remember what grade but judging by my son it happens before 8th grade - children were asked the same questions and nearly everyone didn't raise their hands anymore.  Their confidence was gone.   Where did it go?

Furthermore, do schools force our children to begin thinking in Powerpoint and Word instead of thinking, creating and then choosing to express some part of their ideas in this tool called Powerpoint as well as in tools called writing, drawing, video, audio, painting and songs?  It seems to me that it does and it seems to me that we all have to do whatever we can to stop it or we will be doomed to bad presentations and bad communication for generations to come.  And, judging by the environment out there a little better communication couldn't hurt.

Accelerating the sales cycle and reducing cost

Here is a something I just posted on my company's blog about automating sales documents in order to accelerate sales and significantly reduce expense.  Documents like NDAs, pricing proposals, contracts and services agreements can be created by sales people themselves through a browser-based interview so that they can be created in real time with no waiting.

Sales is hard enough

Over the past 20 years or so CRM has exploded on the scene, fromGoldMine to ACT! to Siebel and now Salesforce.com and its SaaSbrethren.

CRM has done wonders for automating the sales process and helping sales people execute on a cadence of sales activities, follow a standard process and keep up with customers. Unfortunately, this is only half the battle in creating a truly efficient prospect-to-pay process.

Most sales cycles require a number of sometimes complex and burdensome documents to proceed to closure.  And, if our experience is any guide, it is the creation of these documents that causes immense pain for most salespeople and can delay and even lose sales in some cases.

NDAs, Proposals, Services Statements of Work, Business Cases, Sales Contracts, even customized collateral can be automated to accelerate the sales cycle, reduce the need for lawyers to create and review large volumes of contracts, and increase compliance with internal process and procedures.

Document Assembly can solve this problem by creating standardized templates, clauses and business rules that are owned and controlled by legal and/or sales operations so that every document that is created is done so in a compliant fashion. No more rogue Limitation of Liability clauses or unprofitable pricing.  No more out-of-date templates or old bottom drawer contracts re-used inappropriately.

While ensuring compliance, document assembly also empowers salespeople to create the necessary documents themselves in real time (with non-standard deals automatically escalated to legal on an exception basis). No more backlogs means more satisfied customers.

So, if the documents and contracts in your sales cycle are somewhat negotiable and fairly repetitive and predictable, and if the creation of these documents is slow and painful, you might want to consider automating them.

How to have better sales meetings

Sales meetings are usually bad and frequently a waste of time for a number of reasons.  In a virtual world, where you don't even see your sales people while you are meeting with them, things get even worse.  I used to have a manager who made me drive 3 hours both ways once a month so that I could attend his Monthly Sales Meetings that most people slept through or made excuses avoid.

1) Sales managers and their managers have to learn to trust the system.  If you use a system like Salesforce.com, make sure every sales person religiously updates it and then use it to generate reports and dashboards for management and yourself.  This way you can be very up to date on everything and know that even more data is available if you need it, without having to go through the details of every deal on every weekly call.  It is a huge relief to be able to trust the system and let go of the tedious inspections.   It reminds me of David Allen's book Getting Things Done.  Once you get everything in a system you trust, you can relax and focus on execution and not worry about what you are missing.

2) Sales managers are or used to be sales people and they like to talk.   In order for sales meetings to be succesful, I would argue that sales managers in general need to talk less. Collaboration is much more powerful than any one person so don't be afraid to let everyone else talk and pitch in.  It doesn't mean you aren't doing your job.  What you should do, is be a catalyst for good conversations.

3) Sales managers are also very susceptible to what I will call the Idea of the Month.  Since they spend a lot of time thinking about how to do things better and typically read and research a lot this as well, they sometimes will latch on to the latest idea and create a whole meeting around it. The problem is that most of the good sales people probably read the same books and do the same research.  What I do is write a blog and I used to write a newsletter/email for my team so that I could get book recommendations and ideas out to them in a way they could consume on their own time and not on a weekly call.

4) Agendas are also very important. If you don't tell your team what to expect and what to prepare for, they won't be prepared and won't have thought of questions and will end up not paying attention.  I just read a great interview of Jill Myrick on the MyVenturePad blog by David Stein about how to have better sales meetings.  Jill is a sales consultant whose company Meeting to Win  and blog  are also great places to go for ideas on making your sales meetings worthwhile and motivating.

5) Take the one on one discussions off line.  If you have to talk about a particular deal in real depth or if you have found information lacking in your sales system, then set up another 20-30 minutes with the person to discuss this.  I would recommend 20-30 minutes per week with each rep anyway if you can afford the time to make sure you are hearing things from them that they don't want to mention in the group.

6) Start and finish on time.  If you don't hold the call for people who show up late, they should eventually figure out that they shouldn't show up late.

Passion is the key to great virtual presentations!

The key to presenting a subject in a compelling manner I believe is defined by one thing: passion. When presenting in a virtual world, passion and enthusiasm become even more important because whatever you possess will be repeatedly diminished by distance, bad speaker phones, distractions on the other end that you don't see or hear and etc.

All other things being equal or even failing, passion can sometimes, maybe most of the time, win the day.

I have just finished reading the book iCon Steve Jobs by Jeffrey Young and William Simon. And, among other things, I was really struck by how a passionate person who believes in himself and what he is doing can convince many smart people to do many crazy or seemingly impossible things. While you may be able to argue that he is not a saint, Steve Jobs is passionate and he is one of the best presenters I have ever seen.

So, how do you build passion and sustain enthusiasm throughout the day so that you can deliver probably mostly repetitive presentations in a compelling manner over and over again. How do you build passion and sustain enthusiasm throughout the day in this world now in early 2009 when you wake every morning to news of bad earnings and layoffs, political corruption and squabbling, scandals and foreclosures. It ain't easy.

For me, there have always been three tricks for creating passion and enthusiasm for a presentation, for a visit to the gym or sometimes to just get out of bed.

Number One is Inspiration: Find someone or a number of people who inspire you and then surround yourself with reminders of their hard work, dedication and success. For me it is Steve Prefontaine (a runner), Lance Armstrong (a cyclist) among many others. Think about the sacrifices that others have made to get where they are and how little you really need to do to get up for this next presentation. Another way to get inspired is to watch/listen to great presentations from the past. I would highly recommend listening the old Apple MacWorld keynotes by Steve Jobs (available on iTunes). There are also a good number of great presentations available for free now from the TED Conference. (www.TED.com and also available on iTunes). I would recommend listening to Majora Carter's presentation on Greening the Ghetto, Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin and Sir Ken Robinson on How Schools Kill Creativity for starters. Then just follow your muse. You can also find some good presentations by Guy Kawasaki online.

Number Two is Music: Get an iPod or an iPhone or any MP3 player or use your laptop but get some inspirational music that you can play whenever you need it. In the elevator on the way up to your in person presentation or in your office for a few minutes before you pick up the phone. Whenever you can listen to the music that gets you going. Then on the way home at night listen to something more relaxing to bring you back down to a more relaxed state.

Number Three is Exercise: If I am bogged down during the day, feeling out of it, losing momentum, saying dumb things on the phone, I try to squeeze in a 30-45 minute run or a trip to the gym. Pushing yourself to talk to prospects and customers when you feel out of it doesn't do either of you any good. You can't create a sustainable value to your company or your customers without energy and health so you should be exercising anyway. However, sometimes it pays to time the exercise so that it also helps you get up for your job.

And, one last thing, unless you are in the investment business, I would try to minimize the contact with the bad news in newspapers and TV or save it for the end of the day when your down mood will not be shared with your customers and prospects. Of course, your family might not like that.

Virtual Team Management

How do you manage a team of sales people who you don't see in person?  

This is all about relationships and building them in a virtual environment even though you may get to see your team once a year or so at the sales kick off. You need to continue to create touch points with your team to keep in touch such as email, phone, IM, text, Skype, and etc.

In the past, I have always done a one hour weekly team call and then a 30 minute individual call each week to allow people to brainstorm and share successes etc on the former and to go over individual opportunities and issues on the latter.

In order to keep the team call focused on adding value and brainstorming about how to find deals or close deals, you need to have a solid system in Salesforce so you don't have to spend a lot of time getting caught up on deal details.

Once your reps commit to this input into the system, however, it is your management responsibility to always be checking in the system when you have questions and not just defaulting to a call or email that will distract your reps.  Learn to use your system. Learn to create reports.  So that you can begin to interact with it naturally throughout the course of your week and keep a finger on the pulse of your business while providing minimum interruption to your reps. 

One of the reasons I started this blog was to be able to more effectively communicate to my team tips about selling virtually without having to tell them.  Now, if they have an interest in a particular post then can read it and if not they don't.

This isn't exactly new news but make sure your meetings also have an agenda so your rep(s) no what to expect and can prepare.  If they are prepared and have thought through things in advance they will be more proactive in the meeting and add more value.  If they no what to expect they will not worry about what they might not be expecting.

Also, make sure to start all of your meetings right on time.  Eventually, your laggards will learn their lesson and start getting their on time. Meanwhile, the team members who do get there on time will feel that you respect their time as much as yours.

During the meeting, make sure you have one scribe taking the action items and distributing them after the meeting so that you can go over them as part of the next meeting.  You need to create a culture of execution so that everything is getting done in a timely manner and so that people expect to be asked about their commitments and are not able to just let them slip.  A great book on this whole subject is Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan.

Also a great tool to check out for helping you manage your virtual meetings, enforcing an agenda and creating a culture of execution is MeetingSense.  Go check it out and take it for a test drive. I have used it successfully so far at three different companies. 

What is Sales 2.0?

There were several questions recently that I saw on the Customer Collective as well as on several LinkedIn groups that asked the question, what is Sales 2.0. My answer is below. I think that this is an important question as many people I think view the answer as being about technology where as I believe it is more of an evolution of a state of mind:

Sales 2.0 to most people I think means simply using Web 2.0 tools such as Google and SEO, Social Media, Inbound Marketing and etc. to help you sell. However, I think that there is a much larger revolution going on in selling these days that is driven by the environment, the stagnant but also changing economy, by the internet and just generally by people's feeling of empowerment in the information economy. I have been seeing a lot of things point to this recently and have started a blog to talk about it at www.virtualsales.blogspot.com

For example, the economy, reduced budgets, higher travel costs and a drive towards being green, has drastically reduced the amount of travel we salespeople do, are expected to do and are allowed to do. In order to adapt we must utilize Web 2.0 tools to help us continue to build relationships, educate our target audience and add value to our customers without regularly being in front of them.

Also, since emergence of the Web and now even more so with Web 2.0, people feel empowered to take control of their own lives and enabled to research and manage many more things that they once outsourced to professionals like lawyers, stockbrokers and accountants. In this world, the saleseperson has to learn to embrace an educated public, learn to engage in this ongoing discussion as opposed to trying to leverage a lack of information. A great example here would be looking up the price of a car on a site like Edmund's before going into a negotiating with a dealer or owner. In this case the seller has to differentiate and add value through service or value added extras or knowledge as opposed to just on a lack of information.

So, given these two major changes in the environment of sales, I think people will absolutely have to adapt to be more focused on adding value, being knowledgeable, embracing the new web of information and being able to communicate and build relationships in a virtual world.

In Adversity Lies Opportunity

For people looking for inspiration and positives thoughts in this economy and new year, there is a great column in Forbes recently by Rich Karlgaard called "Pessiimism's Bull"

Essentially, he talks about how many great things and companies were started during the leaner times and people that get laid off sometimes go on to start bigger and better things.

Here is the last paragraph.

"Need some optimism? Here are ten great companies started in rotten times: General Electric (nyse: GE - news - people ) (1892, one year prior to the panic of 1893); Disney (nyse: DIS- news - people ) (recession of 1923--24); Hewlett-Packard(nyse: HPQ - news - people ) (1939); Hyatt Corp. (1957--58 recession); Intel (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) (1968, a year of assassinations and political upheaval); FedEx (nyse:FDX - news - people ) (founded in 1971 but launched in 1973, the same year as the Arab oil embargo); Microsoft (1975); Apple (1976); Genentech (1976); Wikipedia (2001)."

Karlgaard also has a blog if you are interested in other things he has to say.