Sir Clive Woodward, had a track record for building high performance teams. While he has played Rugby, he was a "surprise appointment" to become the England Rugby Manager. Especially, in the run up to the Rugby World Cup in 2003. Which England went on to win.
Clive's "secret", which if you ever get a chance to see him present, then you should, is about a management methodology.
He is also realises that to have a high performance team and have competitive advantage, you need to embrace new ways of working.
He tells the story of how he had to spend the day at Arsenal (he's a Chelsea fan) with the then manager, Arsene Wenger. What he was demonstrated there, was a new way to see his players and the competition on the pitch. In those days it was done with cameras built into the stadium, now it's done with GPS trackers on the players shirts. Clive knows that to have a high performance team, in leadership and sales having the talent isn't enough. You have to, today, embrace new technologies.
High Performance Does Not Come From Processes From The Past
Woodward was a master at building high performance teams. He knew that high performance, didn't come from the process of the past, they came from embracing the future. However uncomfortable that is for the players and the managers. He gave all his Rugby players, laptops, some of them didn't even know how to switch them on, but they mastered it.
He also knew that if the skills were not in the team, there was no way the skills would be built by the team. As Rugby player that does not know how to switch on a laptop, isn't going to give laptop courses. We see that with sales people blindly posting content and getting no engagement. They have no idea why they should do this and are in fact causing their company and brand more damage than good. If you need new skills, you have to bring them in from outside your business.
Sponges Vs Rocks
Woodward knew a high performance team wasn't just built on talent, it was built on people he called "sponges". The opposite people he called "rocks". Sponges want knowledge, they want to try new things and want new ways of doing things.
Nowadays, it's called open mindset and fixed mindset, check out the book "Mindset" by Carol Dweck. Your Sales team must be made of sponges otherwise you are not going to get to the other side of the recession that his about to hit us.
So How Are You Going to Survive a Downturn?
There is a famous saying "what go you here, won't get you there".
While other analogue managers are going to stick with what they did in their 30s. "It was good for me then, so it can be good for me now". We so often hear.
Covid19 has accelerated the need to move to digital and social.
You know as well as I do that you and your team need to be fitter and stronger and have embraced digital and social by the time we get out of this crisis. This is your moment to lead.
A friend of mine, Nikki Finucan, just left this comment on one of my blogs
"This is the evolution moment. If leadership believe they have a chance to begin the evolution, however in moments of panic we stick to what we know and what is comfortable. This is the opportunity to move out of the comfort zones, get weird, be different, change... In my online yoga class this morning, the instructor made a comment that stuck in my head... Transformation is taking something that already exists and making it even more beautiful. So my question is from a Social perspective what are they already doing (whether it works or not right now) that can be moved to being more beautiful? "
Social Selling Business Case
In case you are required to justify getting people into support your social selling program, here is a business case to help you.
We expect each of the people we train in social selling to be able to make (if they do what we say) at least one additional meeting per week. Let’s assume that 4 of those meetings turn into proposals and you close 1 of those proposals. That means you are closing one additional deal per quarter. If your average deal size is $100,000, then each sales person is closing an additional $400,000 per year. As sales team of 10 will create $4 million additional revenue per annum. This isn’t a one off, this is every year. Forever!
The Low Risk Approach
Here at DLA Ignite, we are not pivoting, we have been transforming companies to use social and digital for four years. We have the track record, we also know what when we run our social selling programs the results are repeatable and predictable. In fact, we have done this so many times that we are a low risk option.
If you want to get out of this mess, maybe it’s time to talk to us.
More often than not, even the best economists are usually blindsided by a recession. With the current Coronavirus pandemic and the resulting shutdown of major sectors of the economy, many countries around the globe are facing an economic slowdown and almost guaranteed recession either now or in the near future.
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