Like all trainers I read and borrow a great deal from others. When I am facilitating creative sessions I use a wide range of techniques from the experts and from fellow practitioners. I always try to recognise the author and to recommend their books if people find the processes that we are using to be useful and effective.

One of my Creative Thinking heroes is Edward De Bono. I have most of his books and have attended many sessions that taught his techniques. One of the most well known commonly used methodologies is the Six Thinking Hats.  (If you Google the term, be prepared for lots and lots of references). However I have found that some groups just struggle to make the six hats work for them. Some get so wrapped up in the detail of the process that they lose site of their goal, others dismiss it because they tried it before without success, others still seem inhibited by the idea of wearing different coloured hats (even if they are imaginary).

However De Bono created the Six Hats as a tool to access a powerful principle that he called parallel thinking. In short it is the process of getting everyone to look at all aspects of an idea or problem from the same “cognitive stance” i.e. we will all look at the positives or the idea together, or we will look at the negatives together. This approach saves time and energy required to battle on behalf of new ideas. Parallel thinking takes the Ego out of the discussion around new ideas. It turns debate into dialogue. De Bono is not the only one to tap into Parallel Thinking the Disney Creative Process uses the construct of three rooms (the dreamer, the realist & the critic) to achieve much the same result.

So here is my version, I find it works very well with business groups who may be a little suspicious of anything that seems like a gimmick. It is a variation on the six hats (and offered with the utmost respect to Professor De Bono) We call it the 360° idea review. It is slightly more directive a process than the six hats but is very flexible and a very effective way to promote real discussion.

360° Idea Evaluation

The 360 Idea Evaluation is a combination of Six Hats and Disney Creative Process (and other) methods which allows the group to work around an idea (without the need for dressing up or extra rooms).

1. Ask the group you are working with to abide by the 360 rules as they review the idea.

Tell them that we will look at the idea from all angles and that the aim of the exercise is to be sure that we make the right decision for the right reasons..
Remind the group that as a result of the discussion, we may decide to

a) accept the idea
b) accept the idea with minor revision
c) accept the idea with major revision
d) hold the idea for now
e) reject the idea, but use elements of it as part of another solution
f) reject the idea

Make sure that everyone understands that the purpose of the dialogue is to explore the idea together.

2. Put a flipchart page on the wall or table. Make sure that everyone can see it and contribute to the discussion.

3. Using the 360 checklist, start the discussion at Instinctive Reaction at the top of the chart. Remind the group that you would like them to give their honest and instinctive response to the idea but not to provide any justifications or reasons.

It is important to get everyone’s ‘gut reaction’ to the idea because it allows emotions and instincts out and acknowledges that they are an important part of the process. This, in turn, allows people the space to look at the idea from multiple perspectives without ego issues clouding the dialogue.

Use the questions listed below as a prompt to get the discussion going. Record everyone’s answers.

4. Then move round the chart to the Data section. It helps to move either the group or the chart so that everyone is looking at it from the same perspective.

Now ask everyone “If we were to move ahead with this idea
a) What information/data do we need?
b) What do we already have?
c) Where will we get the information?”

Remember, this is not a debate about whether the idea is any good or not simply a discussion about what data we need to explore it further.

5. Next we look at the Strengths and Benefits of the idea. Once again, we move the group/chart so you are all looking at strengths from the same perspective.

Remind the group we are looking only at the strengths of the idea and the potential benefits that it might bring. Record all input.
6. The next step is to discuss the Problems & Risk associated with the idea and to identify any issues that might arise from implementing the idea.

Remind the group that no decision will be made at this time, we are simply surfacing problems that might sink the idea at a later stage.

7. When we move to the next step, Development, the whole group works together to mitigate the problems.

They can use any brainstorming technique to do so, or simply start the conversation with the question;

“If we had no choice but to implement this idea, how would we go about doing so?”

8. Finally, ask the group to step back and to Review & Decide. Review the process that you have been through. Check that the idea has been developed enough for people to feel that they can make a decision.

Remind the group that in innovation, the decision is rarely “yes” or “no” and that we may decide to do something in between (see notes for step 1).

If you have a number of options you may, as a group, apply some decision-making techniques such as “paired analysis” or “weighted rankings”

I spent yesterday lunch time with a client and she told me an interesting story about her younger brother Tom who is 19 years old and who has just started his career in telesales.

The UK, like much of the US and the rest of Europe, has experienced some pretty brutal winter conditions in the last few weeks. On the worst days, people have been unable to get to work and businesses have suffered a great deal of disruption as a result. One such business was a local newspaper in York, here in the north of England. The Advertising Sales Manager, upon realising that most of his staff were struggling to make it into work, asked staff if they would be prepared to work from home (or whether they would prefer to take the days as holiday).

Four of his sales people (including Tom) opted to work from home, the rest took the days as vacation.

The guys who worked from home did not have access to the main sales database in the office (prior to the blizzards no one envisaged that they would need it) and were selling to their customers on their mobile phones and home lines. They had no sales data with them and they had to dig out the customers’ contact details from Yellow Pages and from other local business directories on line. Hardly ideal conditions, but the sales manager reasoned that this was better than nothing.

Curiously, when the sales manager reviewed the sales figures for the days that the Fantastic Four had worked from home, he found that each of them had delivered sales roughly three and a half times greater than they had in the office. This was in spite of having only limited access to sales resources and client lists.

So what is going on here, and what can entrepreneurs learn about their own sales performance?

Here are a few of my own theories;-

By asking the sales team to make a choice between working from home and taking the days as vacation, the Sales Manager has effectively identified who his top sales people are (at least in terms of attitude) The four most motivated people on the team had a whole marketplace to themselves.

The sales team were able to work free from daily administrative duties. They were unable to input each call they made into their CRM system or to follow up on the many administrations that are required to publish adverts in newspapers. All they did was sell, keep a note of their progress and then phone all the results in at the end of the day.

There were no distractions- they may not have appreciated this at the time, but having even a few hours of uninterrupted sales time is a real luxury. They were able to move straight from one call to another without the need to spend time on their CRM system or explaining their call to a colleague or being diverted into another conversation. This actually means that they can quickly get into “the zone” -that state where we feel confident, articulate and capable and the lessons learned on one call are easily transferred to the next.

The sales people didn’t have access to all their usual sales tools and resources, perhaps the fact that they had to really think about everything they said to customers produced a more authentic sales experience.

Finally, they may have succeeded simply because they weren’t being over managed, . They had proven that they had the initiative and drive to work under their own steam by volunteering to work from home and their manager had little option but to trust them to get on with the job.

What can entrepreneurs learn from this?

Make sure you create a dedicated time to talk to your customers, a time without distraction or administration. (you can always write up your CRM notes later). The only way to get good a selling is to be selling. Don’t try to fit in a few calls around other jobs. You will never get round to them.
When you hire sales people, hire attitude first and foremost. Sales skills can be taught, hire the people who want to be selling and who find themselves somewhat frustrated and irritated by the admin.
Don’t let your CRM rule the roost, the job of a sales manager is to increase the quantity and quality of sales output. Let the CRM system serve you, not the other way round.
If you find a really great sales person, get out of their way! trust them and they will reward you by using their initiative and tenacity to deliver the results you need.
And remember, selling is just talking to customers. Sales brochures, websites, research documents and presentations all help the process, but none of them are absolutely necessary. Never let the lack of one of these things become a reason not to pick up the phone.

A couple of months ago I was doing some prep work for a new sales seminar and I decided to listen to a bunch of sales calls from a few clients. Many now record their sales calls as a matter of course and there is much to be learned by listening to what sales people actually do rather than listening to them tell you what they do.

Any way my initial plan was to do a bit of research into how effectively people articulate the benefits of their products or service. I couldn’t help but notice how quickly people started talking about their own product. A quick review of the opening minutes of over a hundred calls showed that the average time between the end of the small talk and the start of the pitch was 49 seconds. Yes 49 seconds to talk about the customer before the pitch begins.

This is woefully inadequate!

But what an opportunity for the customer focused sales person and for the entrepreneur trying to carve out a niche for themselves in a competitive marketplace. If you talk to your customers about the stuff that really matters to them for just a few minutes, then you are already world class!

We will talk about some easy hacks for engaging the customer in a in a meaningful dialogue in a future post, but in the mean time just concentrate on spending a little bit more time with the customer’s concerns rather than worrying about what you are going to tell them about your own.

Introverts can’t sell! Can they?
I have been fortunate to have been invited to speak at the Business of Software Conference http://businessofsoftware.org for the last three years. It really is a fantastic conference – the delegates are every bit as inspiring as the best of the speakers, there is a huge sense of comradeship amongst the tribe of entrepreneurs who attend this conference and every year, I leave motivated to do things differently in my own business.

At the most recent conference, in October in Boston, Neil Davidson, (BoS founder and co sponsor) in his welcome speech was trying to encourage people to mix and share stories and he asked how many of the audience considered themselves to be introverts. I think that there was only me and about two other guys who kept their hands down. 290 plus hands were held aloft. I have to confess it made me feel a little like a visitor in a strange land.

However, during the three days of the conference I spent some time thinking about the whole topic of introversion and in particular why tech entrepreneurs (who are usually introverts) rarely see them selves as effective sales people. Many also say that they hate being sold to or they really dislike sales people. (to get an idea of how tech entrepreneurs view sales people, have a look at my deeply unscientific piece of research, conducted during the opening of my 2008 Business of Software presentation http://businessofsoftware.org/video_08_pkenny.aspx ).

Most of us learned about introversion and extraversion by doing a psychometric assessment on a management course or as part of Psychology 101 at college. So we become familiar with the terms and they have moved into the the modern parlance. The terms introvert and extravert are used as labels, as if we are one or the other, and are often bandied around by people who have only a loose understanding of what they mean. As a result, the meaning that we attribute to these very specific terms has changed rather dramatically over the years. Ask people to tell you the difference between an introvert and an extravert and the usual answer is along the lines of;

Extraverts are the outgoing sociable ones, the life and soul of the party.
Introverts are the quiet ones, who prefer their own company and can be anti social at times.
These stereotypes persist, and are repeated so often that we start to accept them without question. Indeed since the rise of Geeks as the new masters of the universe, many people working in tech roles wear their introversion proudly as a badge. I actually saw a delegate at a conference wearing a t-shirt with the slogan Please F**K Off I’m an Introvert! The problem with these modern definitions is that they are inaccurate and overly simplistic and as a result, they are persuading otherwise brilliant people to accept unquestioningly that they can never be good at sales because they don’t fit a psychological stereotype.

So let’s get a few things straight, and to do so we need to go to the Grandaddy of all this stuff Carl Jung.

Preferences not personality

When Carl Jung (upon who’s work almost every personality assessment tool is based) talked about introvert and extravert he wasn’t even talking about personalities, he was talking about preferences and the Introvert /Extravert dichotomy is only one of three pairs of preferences that drive the way we perceive, and respond to, the world around us. We all have times when we feel more introverted and we all have the ability to be extraverts, we just tend to prefer one over the other. What’s more, Jung was certainly not talking about whether we are sociable or not. Jung’s definitions of introversion and extraversion had much more to do with where we get our energy from and how we form our thoughts. Extraverts get their energy from the outside world, (imagine they are solar powered), they are relaxed when they are “out there” sharing views news and ideas with the outside world. Extraverts tend to externalise their thoughts in order to work out what they think, which is why you may often hear them articulate an idea or opinion and then change it as they are discussing it. They are not being indecisive or ingenuous they are simply thinking aloud! Introverts on the other hand tend to get their energy from within and when they relax, it tends to be by finding a quiet place to think (imagine they need to plug themselves into the mains an recharge their batteries quietly). Introverts often say less, simply because they tend to work out what they want to say internally before they open their mouth. Remember though, that these are not hardwired traits but rather are preferences that we have developed early in life. As with all preferences, when we are in our most comfortable place, where we can act according to our preferences, we feel less stress and use less energy. Move out of our comfort zone and we may find it harder work, but it is not impossible to do. As someone who has a preference for extraversion, I can work all day in a seminar group without feeling the slightest bit tired (in fact I feel the opposite) but a few hours of solitary writing at my computer I find exhausting. A colleague of mine with a preference for introversion has the opposite experience. However neither of us is seriously limited by our preferences. I have worked hard at developing the discipline to sit down and create new content for my seminars. I don’t enjoy it as much as I do delivering, but I have learned to adapt. In the same way, my colleague David has become an incredibly skilled presenter, but he still has to go and recover somewhere quiet after delivering a keynote.

Summary: Introvert / Extravert is a preference not a life script!

Breaking News: Introverts can sell!

Even if you have a strong preference for introversion there is no reason not to become excellent at selling. The only difference is that you will succeed at selling for different reasons than an extravert might.

Some of the very best sales people I know are introverts, and they succeed because they play to their strengths. For example my friend and client Francois sells surgical implants. His customers are used to being wined and dined and entertained like royalty. Most of the sales people he works with are extraverts, yet he out performs them all. He does so because he has learned to prepare really well for every call or meeting. Francois does not like small talk, it just doesn’t come naturally to him, so he invests extra time researching the customer’s background and thinking about conversation starters he can use. It is because he invests time in doing this extra research, he develops a genuine interest in the customer, not in some some schmoozey shallow way and he always manages to find something that his clients want to talk passionately about. This is real interest, it cannot be faked.

Further more, Francois really thinks about the questions that he asks. He prefers it when the customer is talking, so he asks big wide open questions and just listens and notes their reply.

Finally, Francois presents with great economy, he leaves nothing to chance, he has mentally rehearsed every answer to every question that he may be asked. He demonstrates the product intelligently, only explaining the stuff that is important and relevant to his customer. His customers are busy people and they appreciate the efficiency of his pitch.

I have spent nearly twenty years advising overly extravert sales people to pause, to listen, to think before they speak. Introverts do a lot of this stuff naturally.

Francois’ extraverted colleagues are also talented and capable (they play to different strengths) but they all struggle to match him either in quality of customer feedback or in sales.

Summary: If you play to your strengths you can be every bit as good a sales person as Francois

Back to Jung

Jung argued that the process of gaining maturity and wisdom was the process of developing those elements of personality preferences which were least natural or comfortable for us. As we gain maturity we become more at ease with our under utilized assets, we find it less tiring to be out of our comfort zone. If you build a business which is designed to reduce the volume and quality of real human interaction with your customers to an absolute minimum, if you delegate all sales and service interaction to people with a preference for extraversion then you may be doing a huge disservice to your self, your customer and ultimately your business.

Summary: Development is all about getting good at the things that don’t come naturally.

“I’m an introvert” should never be an excuse to fail to engage with a customer in a sales or service conversation

I have spent the last couple of weeks catching up with clients and friends in business, partly just because New Year is a good time to catch up and partly to assess the mood out there amongst business owners and sales and marketing people as we move into 2011.

Encouragingly many are starting to think about boosting the size of their sales teams once again. Indeed some are planning interviews and assessment centres in the next week or so. During one such discussion with an old friend and recent customer, they reminded me that in many of my presentations to sales managers that I offer the following advice.

If in an interview for a sales role the decision comes down to a choice between a candidate who asked the most interesting questions and the candidate who did the best pitch, you should always go with the person who asked the best questions.

Here’s why, great questioning demonstrates potential in the following areas

Preparation: Asking great questions is a sign that the candidate is really well prepared. Intelligent and appreciative inquiry requires that they have bothered to look beyond the landing page of your web site and that they have dug around and really thought about the stuff that they found there.
Agility: Great sales people need to be adaptable and responsive to the needs of the customer, if a candidate is comfortable to ask questions and able to adapt their message dependent upon the answers you give, then they are demonstrating raw sales potential whatever their level of experience. A slick pitch can sound impressive but if it is delivered by rote it will fail to inspire your customer.
Listening: You know that someone is a natural (or experienced) questioner when they are able to gently elicit the customer’s needs by allowing the answers that they get to be the mother of the next question.
Unlocking difficult customers: You cannot talk a doubting customer into believing your pitch, (at least I haven’t seen it happen in twenty plus years of working with sales people) however you can always unlock an unarticulated need, or help a client to see things from a different perspective by asking questions that start a process in the client’s mind. (more on this in a future post).
Customer Focus: If they are really well prepared a good candidate will ask questions about your customers, (their experience and their concerns), they will ask questions about where the product is going and how it will be developed and they will ask questions about your expectations of the role and of them before they ask about the pay and conditions. This is what I call unselfish questioning, that is questioning the client’s needs before their own. (It is surprisingly rare and you should take notice if people are smart enough to focus the majority of their questions on you their customer.)
So give me a great questioner over a “pitch meister” any day!

For the last twenty years or so I have been lucky enough to work with a wide variety of businesses (from start-ups to multi nationals) helping them to explore and develop the way they win, keep and grow their customers.

One of the most interesting parts of the job that I do is researching the customer experience and working out how small changes to the customer experience can make a huge difference to overall profits.

There are three common themes that recur whenever and wherever we do the research regardless of the size or type of business. Companies who understand and embrace these tend to thrive those that lose sight of these tend to struggle. So whether you are a dog grooming business an IT consultant or a major bank these three principles apply.

1. Customers don’t buy a product they buy a result. If someone goes to see a lawyer they are not buying the experience and knowledge of the Lawyer in the first instance they are buying the fact that they believe this Lawyer will resolve their problem satisfactorily (be it a dispute a divorce a property purchase etc,) like wise a customer in a clothing boutique is not buying a dress they are buying how they will feel when they wear the dress, how their friends or partner will react or what they think they can achieve when they look their best.  If you want customers to buy from you, spend time talking about the result they want before you talk about yourself.
2. Customers buy with their heart first. People like to do business with people that they like and feel they can trust. We are always more likely to buy from businesses where we are made to feel welcome, where the staff show genuine interest in the customer (not just the sale) and where they feel they belong. This is as true of a local green grocers as it is a major department store.
3. Finally Customers will make their own mind up about your business based on a few small experiences (we call these moments of truth). If the small experiences are good, for example a waiter in a restaurant takes time to be nice to your children, they impact on the rest of the customer experience, they can make the customer’s day. If however the small experiences are bad, a rude response to a simple question for example this negatively affects the way the customer views the whole experience.

So if you run a business ask yourself .

Do we spend enough time talking to the customer about what they need our product to do?
Do we engage with them on a personal level?
Do we pay attention to the small stuff?

Whether you are M&S or the local village shop the answer to these questions will have a big impact on your business.

I recently asked a group of  delegates to recommend some great presentations to educate and inspire us to deliver even better presentations. Here is a sample of the presentaions suggested.  There are some very different styles of presenter but all in my book are highly engaging  presenters who I believe have not only mastered the art of communicating to groups but who also demonstrate my number one rule of presenting.

You are the message!

Everyone of these guys has a great set of slides, but note that they have very little actual information on the slide, they use the slides to support their story.

Seth Godin presents to Google

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294

Steve Jobs introduces the iphone

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=PZoPdBh8KUs

Guy Kawasaki “The art of the start”

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/06/the_art_of_the_.html

Malcolm Gladwell at the TED conference

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4651524651477591115&hl=en

Hans Rosling on the Myths of the Developing World

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4237353244338529080&hl=en

Al Gore on averting climate crisis

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/al_gore_on_averting_climate_crisis.html

Enjoy

I have just done a favour for a client they asked me to review a presentation that they are making as part of the tender process for a significant chunk of business.

The presentation arrived (all 18Mb) of it and within three pages could see a reason not to do business with this company.

Slide 1 Introduction A presentation for X by Y (Fair enough I suppose)

Slide 2 A fourteen point agenda slide , bullets 18pt no visual content at all ( I suppose they were working on that age old maxim tell em how you are going to bore them, bore them , tell em how you just bored them.)

Slide 3 A brief overview of their company history and operations.(all about us)

Sadly I see this all the time, a golden opportunity to impress and engage the group is wasted with a formulaic and self centered approach.

When I took this up with my client (who doesn’t mind me writing this so long as I protect their anonymity) They argued that they always started their presentations this way…! In fact they could point me to an internal document from their Marketing department that suggested this was the company standard.

Talking about your agenda and your company at the start of a presentation is almost always counter productive. In a competitive tender the client wants to find out why you are the right partner for them so talk about them first.

There are many ways to do this but as a default mechanism start your presentation with a review of the client’s objectives. What are their objectives? What do they want from the partnership? If you cant answer these two questions prior to the presentation then you shouldn’t really be there.

Do your prep, and remember that the presentation is all about the client, their objectives preferences and needs. If you start talking about you, people start to switch off, talk about them first and you make it easy for them to tune in to your presentation. When you have their full attention, when they are fully engaged then you can tell them why you are their best solution.

If you have an important pitch coming up and you want to talk it through drop me a line it is amazing how your chances of winning (or at least achieving your stated objective ) can be dramatically improved with just a few amendments.