Back in the day, you probably remember your mother warning you about making sure that you were wearing clean underwear "because if you're in an accident, and they bring you to the hospital, then, you want to make sure that you don't have dirty underwear". I must admit I didn't think about this a lot during my various ER experiences of broken bones after falling off my bike or crashing into trees while learning to snowboard. Actually, there never seemed to be any checklist at the ER asking about the health or even the cleanliness of my underwear.
But, every spring, I celebrate the end of winta' by visiting the Jockey store in Manchester, Vermont and buying 16 of everything. It's part of my purging process to travel to this particular brick and mortar store and not succumb to the temptation of buying online and having FedEx deliver two days later. More difficult? Longer to execute? Sure, but this annual ritual is part of my shaking off the heavy coat of a long winter and pushing me into thinking ahead to warmer temps and lighter clothing.
You should think about doing the same not only for your physical office, but also for your digital files.
Sales Enablement (get it? "enabling" your salespeople") is all about making your sales team both more efficient and more effective. Taking time this weekend, or next week, after the quarter closes, and going through this cathartic process is not only good for the soul, but you'll also find that the results will be self-stimulating since during the process you'll rediscover old files that you had forgotten and identify where there are training content gaps that need to be filled.
Too often in trying to bring customer success down to "our-size" companies, we're told to emulate FedEx, Staples, Home Depot or other enterprise giants, which leaves most of us staring blankly into space when all we're simply trying to do is to figure out how to have the phones answered after 5:00 PM. In taking a fresh look this spring at our 2016 plans for improved Customer Success, my thoughts are that we should start thinking about the best examples in our personal lives that make us feel special. My own are from tech companies such as Hubspot, Brainshark and Plum Choice, and retailers like Jockey.
Major changes in either strategy or in making meaningful shifts in sales and marketing tactics, take time to think through, to plan and then, most importantly to execute. So, there's nothing in the "Embracing Major Change Column" that you want to try to do quickly without sufficient planning and training at a detailed level. Having said that, major changes, well planned out now at the beginning of the second quarter and executed brilliantly during the balance of this year, will have solid impact on your Q4 results and even more impact in 2017.
Let's turn again to Jockey and underwear for a lesson in major change...
Today, white is still there, of course, but totally eclipsed with colors and an equally wide variety of shapes and sizes.
More importantly, the women's section of the store now occupies 75% of the space while "Men's White Underwear" has been moved to three sets of shelves on the back half of the left side of the store. In embracing the strategy of "let's make major change", some clever young woman (most probably) asked "Why are we using our most expensive retail space to market a commodity product that anyone can buy online from Amazon?".
Should you try to do all three? Nope, too much going on, and you need to focus on your day job of running the business and executing on your sales plan while managing a complex marketing package that's all ready to launch for whatever you are planning for Q2..
What you should do...is to bring the team together next week, right at the beginning of the quarter, get 500 feet off the deck and figure out...
To give you some guidance in this process of questioning and then building a resulting plan, to get you started, you may want to click on here and receive a downloaded copy of our Writing the Winning Business Plan, 2016 edition.
Another opportunity for kicking off the quarter in the right spirit is to do the same type of "re-look" at the basics of your 2016 Marketing Plan after reviewing our ebook on "How to Write a Marketing Plan". Mostly basics and structure stuff which just might be the correct view to take as we move into Q2.
Good Selling ! during the next few days as you wrap up this critical quarter!
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