In sport, as in business, leaders need to have high performance teams and they need to be looking for the latest, but proven, methods to allow them to get competitive advantage.
So, leading edge, rather than bleeding edge.
We see so many business leaders wedded to the past using inefficient and ineffective methods that are just not relevant anymore.
Look at marketing. Nobody reads ads anymore, ad-blockers growth is 30% year-on-year. Amongst Millenials and Gen Z it is more like 70%. I met a millennial marketer the other week that couldn't understand the irony that she spent her marketing budget on advertising, but all the marketing team used ad-blockers.
Cold calling is so inefficient. If I call you up and spend 20 minutes, that is 20 minutes of my time invested for one conversation with 1 client.
I can invest 20 minutes in this blog and it can reach my 20,000 LinkedIn network. Now that is efficient.
Gartner (what was CEB) state that the average B2B sale involves 10 stakeholders, to say that all of them are not on social, shows a total lack of understanding on how the world works today.
As a sales person, when a client makes a decision, we know we have to have been in front of all the decision makers and pressed our case so they vote for us. But with 10 stakeholders in the decision, plus additional users in the decision, plus change makers (people without authority, but influence), plus independent third parties, non executive directors (NEDS) ... how will you get around them all and build relationships with them?
Cold calling isn't fit for purpose, it's old, inefficient, ineffective, pisses people off and does not scale. Plus Millennials don't use the phone!
Google stops 100 million spam emails a day, so if you send emails, the likelihood, that it will get stopped at the spam filter of the server or at my email client is massive. Anybody who sends me an unsolicited email, I create a rule so any more will go straight into the waste paper basket, bypassing junk.
Open rates for unsolicited email have fallen through the floor and no marketer can tell me the connection between open rate and revenue. Go figure!
For CEOs to grow, well for CEOs to maintain status quo in 2020 they need to invest in high performance teams and they need to invest in social selling.
As you prepare your marketing, sales and revenue plans for the upcoming year, it behooves you — and others in your organization that have revenue responsibility — to take a candid look at issues that have important revenue implications. It’s my job to work with CEOs and other C-level executives (CMOs and CSOs) to craft and execute revenue growth strategies that are effective, repeatable and sustainable over time. Sometimes, this requires injecting a dose of reality into the discussion.
