PESTEL Analysis

 

A PESTEL Analysis examines the external or Macro Environmental factors that could potentially effect or influence the industry and the company; such as taxes, tariffs, business and consumer sentiment, demographics, changing technology landscapes, the environment and laws and regulations.

The BCG Matrix

BCG Matrix;
a tool to analyse business units, products or brands in a company's portfolio.

• Stars shine very brightly, but require heavy investment
• Cash cows should be milked
• Question marks are often hard to know quite what to do with, be selective about these investments
• Poor dogs perhaps should be liquidated.

Powerful attributes for B2B selling

Be Determined

Know the market and the competition. Sharply define your target customer. Research prospects; understand who the decision makers are. Sharpen skills consistently through learning and training.  Build a referral network.

Be Patient and Energetic

Listen more than you talk. Ask open ended questions. Be resilient and transparent; be your best enthusiastic and genuine self. Be warm and easy to spend time with. Be tenacious but not overbearing; know when to dig in and pursue and be equally mindful of when to walk away.

Be Focussed

Focus on outcomes and setting realistic expectations. Sell within scope, don't sell the client what they don't need.  Be attentive to details, take good notes, and communicate efficiently with both the client and your team. Be methodical about using the CRM; understand how to tightly manage and review the sales process regularly within the CRM system, it helps to move the sale along. 

These are areas commonly accepted as something sales people are not good at, I've heard a number of business owners say "Sales people are just no good at the admin stuff." Aim to defy this perception!

Challenge

Learn how to start relationships and ask for commitments. Challenge the clients thinking about their pain points; yes, this really is something they need and want to change. Be strategic; contest what you know about the client’s business and learn more. Contest what you know about your own business – and business in general – and learn more.  Challenge your understanding of the products and services you sell, ask hard questions about the customers perception of quality and value.  Be an agent of change if it needs improvement.

8 Influencer snippets on Life & Leadership

From Time's Top 100 Influencers for 2013, I picked a few names and went searching for inspiration...

Valerie Jarrett (Senior Adviser to Obama)

"Anytime I was hesitant about taking a chance, my grandmother would say, “Valerie, put yourself in the path of lightning.” You can have it all, just not at the same time and all in the proportions that you may want."

Elon Musk (American entrepreneur, founder of SpaceX and co-founder of Tesla Motors and PayPal)

"You've got to communicate, particularly within the company, the true state of the company. When people really understand it's do or die but if we work hard and pull through, there's going to be a great outcome, people will give it everything they've got."

Kevin Systrom (CEO of Instagram)

"Work/life balance…Inherent in the term is an assumption that work and life are diametrically opposed. I actually think some of my best moments in life have been while I was with people from Instagram – whether it’s super late nights getting a release out or being able to travel to places I’d never visited and meeting some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met."

Ted Sarandos (Netflix Chief Content Officer)

"As if anything in life is not execution dependent. Breathing is execution-dependent. So yes, we have all the elements of a good show that lines up with the viewing data that we have. But it still has to be well executed."

Sheryl Sandberg (Businesswoman & Author; Chief Operating Officer of Facebook)

"I don’t believe there are stereotypical forms of male and female leadership. But I think there are things we’re encouraged to do as women that can be good for all leaders. Women are often very good listeners. They are often good consensus builders. They can make teams cohesive."

John Brennan (CIA Director)

"They really were trying to do what they thought was the right thing to do, based on their sense of morality. So who am I to judge them? Because they were operating on what they think. I like to give them the benefit of the doubt that they really believe this."

Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo!)

"I always did something I was a little not ready to do. That feeling at the end of the day, where you're like, 'what have I gotten myself into?' - I realized that sometimes when you have that feeling and you push through it, something really great happens."

Mary Nichols (Environmentalist)

"I am committed to completing the work I am doing here, whenever that is. I've never had any desire to think of myself as a retired person. I will always be working; it is just a question of where. Whatever the job description is, I can't imagine not continuing to work on the issues and for the causes that I've cared about all of these years."

Kai-Fu Lee (Computer scientist)

"The size and scope of the organization is limited by two things. One is how many great people can you hire and mentor. And second, how many ideas can you generate."

IT Vendor & Partner; a tumultuous affiliation

CRN yesterday posted an article highlighting some of the “pet peeves” IT vendors have about their channel partners.  IT Solution Providers can see this list as a bit of a mini SWOT; it gives a pretty good overview of how vendors see Partners positioned as far as their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats go.  Those pet peeves birth ideas on how to do things differently.

Get ahead of the curve; adopt new business models, sell new technologies, understand core sales activities.  Only about 10 – 15% of partners are seen to be doing this.

Talk business, not tech; technology decisions are increasingly made by business influencers.  Talking tech to them means nothing; you need to get at the heart of what drives them.

Stop cuddling those boxes; with the changes happening in the industry the focus should be on developing and delivering more than just product and transitioning to services, content and IP.

Vendors love new business; learn to prospect and market to new business, not just existing customers.

Be trendy with transition; According to Microsoft, only 25% of their partners have expanded into Cloud computing.  Solution Providers that stagnate or hesitate to adopt new technologies are potentially losing significant opportunities.

Crack on with Certifications; a two way peeve, Partners find the certification process laborious and costly.  Vendors see it as the best way for Partners to promote their expertise.  There are advantages of certifications for instance getting bumped up Microsoft’s Pinpoint listing which in turn helps generate leads for new business.

Bleed vendor Marketing Funds dry; they are gagging for it, apparently.  IT Vendors allege that between 10% and up to 50% of the Marketing Development Funds they make available goes unspent every quarter.
 
Fill that sales funnel; explore marketing and proactive demand generation, don’t be satisfied with simply moving boxes.

Push the portfolio; sell outside the square.  Vendors feel they have a lot to offer over and above those one or two solutions their Partners are currently selling.  Have you offered the fries with that?

Often that of the Vendor and the Partner is a tumultuous affiliation, but like any dynamic relationship, one that can have a lot of mutual value if forces work together rather than in opposition.


Source: 10 solution provider habits that irk vendors

History of Management

When you review the history of management, you get an interesting perspective on current management techniques and trends.
 
American mechanical engineer Frederick Taylor (1856 – 1915), known as the father of Scientific Management, was one of the first “management consultants”.

The scientific approach to management is the art of gaining efficiencies by increasing the output volume of workers.  When you consider the era, this approach was born at a time when workers predominantly used their backs to produce results.

Frederick’s fundamental principle revolved around maximum gain for both employer and employee by effectively training each individual employee in a role that was most suited to their capabilities.  Of particular interest was investigating ways to increase output by reducing unnecessary movement.

German sociologist Max Weber (1864 – 1920) developed what is known as the bureaucratic approach to Management.  The principles of this style of management centre on job specialisation and clear job descriptions, where qualifications determined positions.  Clear hierarchy and control along with the uniformity of applied regulations created formal rules and performance indicators.  Clear pathways for career advancement were designed to promote long term employment with a single company.

Elton Mayo (1880 – 1949) approached management from a more social aspect.  Coined human relations management, the theory he developed was more concerned with employee motivation, team building, communication and leadership skills. He theorised that employee motivation stems from relational factors such as feedback and team dynamics more so than simply pay and environmental conditions.

French mining engineer Henri Fayol (1841 – 1925) took an administrative approach and developed six primary functions of management; Forecasting, Planning, Organising, Commanding, Coordinating, Controlling.  These are closely aligned with 14 principles of management that cover off the division of labour, authority, discipline, unity, remuneration, order, equity and initiative.

Management consultant, author and educator Peter Drucker (1909 – 2005) was interested in the social ecology of man, exploring the way we organise ourselves and interact.  With an extensive body of work (39 books and countless articles) he was and remains incredibly influential when it comes to management by objectives; believing that by setting clear goals and with effective collaboration and communication, it is possible to allow staff to do a job in their own way.

A retrospective look at management evolution enables us to see how modern management borrows aspects from each of these theories.  Management today is a healthy mix of science, bureaucracy, administration, human relations and goal setting.
 
Good managers should be borrowing techniques and theories from all these approaches and applying them as best determined by the particular situation.

Choosing to be Great takes discipline.

The thing that struck me the most about Great by Choice – Jim Collins & Morten T. Hansen’s handbook on choosing greatness over mediocrity – was the sheer weight of the research involved.  All good books undoubtedly require a lot of research, even those based purely on fictional characters and events require some level of research to build plausibility.

It was the minutiae of the research that impressed me; the dedication to trawling through years of corporate records for indications of luck, discipline, creativity, risk and reward.

The basic premise of the book entails taking two like coins and turning them over and over under a high wattage desk lamp, looking for irregularities and differences.  What is it that makes one coin infinitely more valuable than the other?  Why, when flipped, does one coin seem to come up heads, the other tails?  What dictates whether that was a lucky flip?

The coins are company comparison cases; two similar businesses in field and opportunity over a set timeframe – one experiencing extraordinary results of greatness, the other fading into mediocrity if not complete obscurity.

The research examines the key physiognomies of each company and why one rose to fly in the face of luck; maximising their returns regardless of events being fortuitously beneficial or unexpected calamity.  The insights that this research uncovered formed a set of characteristics that those who choose to be Great exemplify.

 

Key concepts that I took away from this reading:
 

• Choosing to be Great takes discipline and a consistent approach to vision, mission and execution.
• A leader’s job is to set out for their team firm guidelines about how far they need to travel each day; set boundaries and targets so they don’t overreach or underachieve, and make sure they have reserves for whatever the next day brings.
• The most effective creativity is that which is based on evidence and facts.  Research and pragmatic understanding of a situation helps with strong and sensible decision making. 
• Innovation must be timed so that it happens at the right point in the curve.  Innovation should meet market demand rather than pre-empt it; crest with the tide rather than after it.  Learn how to experiment so that riding a large wave of innovation is simply the culmination of many smaller test runs.
• Luck will find you; it is an absolute certainly in a chaotic business environment.  It’s what we do with our luck and how we prepare for that luck (good or bad) that counts.

Out of all of the concepts, this was the kicker; keep an eye open for the people who will be game changers for the company.  Out of all of the strategic and methodical plays a business can make, finding and keeping Great people is the single most important one.  

Porter's Five Forces

Originally developed by Michael E. Porter while working for the Harvard Business School and the Boston Consulting group, Porter’s Five Forces are five powerful forces seen to impact profitability and completive clout in a business situation.

The Five Forces:

• Industry Rivalry - How many competitors are in the market, who are they, what are their growth prospects? 
• Threat of new entrants - How easy is it for start-ups to muscle in on your turf, what are the factors that would encourage or discourage them?
• Threat of substitutes - How easy is it for clients find alternative ways of satisfying their needs?
• Bargaining power of suppliers - What is the relationship you have with your suppliers, how easy is it for them to drive up pricing?
• Bargaining power of customers - How sensitive are they to pricing, how transparent is the market, what is the value of the customer to the business, how unique is your product or service?

Reviewing each of these market forces in depth and determining whether the power or pressure of each is low, medium or high gives insights into the “micro environment” of the business.

Porter’s Five Forces can help understand both the strength of the current business position as well as assessing a situation you’re about to move into; it helps to determine the attractiveness of a market; how potentially profitable that market will be.

 

Marketing your core competencies

Firstly, what are core competencies? They are the essential ingredients that make a company what it is. They are those key abilities with which the company achieves great things; not just abilities they aspires to do well at, these are the literal foundations of the customer’s experience.

Understanding core competencies has a number of benefits. It sets out a clear list of strengths and inversely showcases areas that fall outside of these competencies. These insights potentially highlight areas that may be better off outsourced.

Focusing on core competencies means investing in and throwing resources at the areas of the business that are already proving to be the most profitable and influential. It can help decision making around whether to pursue ventures that fall outside of the core competencies of the business.

Identifying core competencies gives a business a set of pillars to start basing their marketing around. They paint a very clear picture of how the business should be positioning itself in a market, what the unique selling points are or if not quite “unique” qualities, they are abilities that a company excels at when pitched against their competition. Everyone can claim to have great technical capability, but if it’s your core competency, you’ll trump your competitors with your technical skill.

So how do you create a marketing campaign around competencies? The first step of course is to dig deep into the company’s psyche to determine exactly what they are. This may be an exercise that the directors or leaders of the business do either by themselves or with their entire team.

Once identified, the next step is to determine how your clients benefit from these competencies. For example, a consulting practice may identify that their core competencies are keynote speakers, consultants, coaches, project managers and educators.

How might each of these factors benefit their clients? Keynote speakers may instigate change, their consultants may improve processes, their coaches may challenge behaviours, project managers assist in achieving successful outcomes and educators enable skill sets to be mastered.

Entire campaigns could now be generated around these competency > benefit concepts, further strengthening the focus in these areas and giving potential clients clarity about what to expect the company will do for them.