Growth Dynamics Get Down

Symptoms:

Abby prided herself on the level of customer service she delivered after the sale, and loved the loyalty her customers expressed to her. That loyalty also had a troubling side and it was beginning to show. She was having some problems in her territory and as customer base grew, so did the problems. Because of her history of being so responsive to their every need, many of Abby’s customers became dependent upon her and began asking her to do things not normally her responsibility. When she didn’t have time to deliver on these extra requests, Abby felt bad about failing her customers and they, in turn, began to express some dissatisfaction. Abby could see years of her good work in developing her territory slowly starting to unravel before her. Her best efforts were turning into the source of her biggest problems.

Symptoms:

Bill and Pat were returning from their monthly poker game and while riding back in the car they both agreed they had witnessed a situation that they could apply as a "lesson learned" to their business careers. Everything had started out very similar to an everyday business meeting or sales call with socializing and normal banter between participants, but about half way through the event something had gone bad.

A simple mistake had been made that resulted in some subtle and not so subtle accusations leading to lines being drawn about who was right and who was wrong. All of a sudden everyone was very uncomfortable with the tone in the room.

The "accused" had snapped back with a defense based on fairness and leniency (not results) that almost guaranteed a confrontation between the two sides. The emotions ranged from excuse making to embarrassment to anger and then to withdrawal and alienation as the aggressors piled on the wrong-doers. When the game broke up early, everyone knew it had been caused by too much bad behavior.

Symptoms:

James was feeling discouraged and wasn't sure how he could make it through another week like he had last week. A new prospect had made him wait over 30 minutes before he would see him, and then asked James to sell to him at his cost. Another client had told him he was backing out of a deal they had just made 2 days before, and that the reasons for the change were none of his business. This wasn't the first time that people had treated him this way and he was beginning to wonder just how much he had to grovel before he could do business with folks like this.

The time has come for Growth Dynamics to expand our podcast offering. After two years of me recording the weekly coaching session of Monday Morning Manager Charlie has entered the picture with his own podcast, Charlie & Company: Business, Life & Everything In Between. 

Amanda was working through her list of live opportunities after putting her pipeline through a “kill it or close it” exercise. She set up appointments to move her sales process along with several of the live opportunities. She was steadfast in naming her meetings, sending homework, and even let some her more notorious feet draggers know these were decision meetings. She was ready to do what she had to do to start meeting her sales goals for the quarter. The week went by and she collected some yeses, found out some opportunities were not the right fit and still had two clients that could only utter the words, “sounds great. I need some more time.” No matter how much she tried to find the deal breakers, they would not budge. In fact, these last two holdouts had been in her pipeline for months. She just was not sure if anything was ever going to change.

Ella opened her calendar on Monday and saw Zoom invite after Zoom invite. She knew most of the calls were important but was not sure why so many of the calls needed to happen over a video platform. “Does everyone have to do everything on video,” Ella quietly asked herself. While video calls on Zoom and other platforms were helpful at the onset of the Covid pandemic for Ella to stay connected, now it seems like they are tying her more to her desk when she knows some of her clients were comfortable with face-to-face visits at this point. She knows she can use the video applications while in the field but worries some clients might feel she is not as engaged as they would like if she is not able to join with video capability. Ella is ready to move past the Covid challenges and return to business as usual.

Chris is concerned about his sales team. They are active, they are selling, and sales are up but margins are way down. The business model allows reps to be flexible in the field and sell at the prices they feel appropriate. But something is missing, and Chris is unsure how to help his field reps get more margin. He doesn't want to kill the ability of his reps to set pricing in the field, but doesn't know what information they need in order to be better at the task.

Rob had enough of the constant scrambling he did last year, so he has decided that this coming year he will focus on the resolve, the commitment, and the consistency required to be the pro that he knows he can be. Besides his business plan, he needs a personal roadmap that will guide him to the results he wants in the New Year.  This is driven by his dream, goal, and plan.

2020 vision, a term that meant something very positive as I was growing up, conjures up an entirely different thought as this year concludes. Normally 2020 vision means your eyesight is excellent with no need for corrective lenses or surgical procedures to see the world around you as it actually exists. After all that happened, I offer that 2020 vision is what we all should have developed as we endured the challenges of this year. All of us have been forced to keep our spirits high, our motivation positive and our commitment strong as the Covid 19 pandemic threw a fast ball, a curve ball, and a knuckleball at us this past March. 2020 gave us all a chance to see how tough you had to be when you had to be tough.