Harvard Business Review Case Studies, Articles, Books. Selling Is Not About Relationships - Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. By Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson | 9:29 AM September 30, 2011 This post, the first of a four-part series, is also part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line. Ask any sales leader how selling has changed in the past decade, and you’ll hear a lot of answers but only one recurring theme: It’s a lot harder.
Yet even in these difficult times, every sales organization has a few stellar performers. Who are these people? How can we bottle their magic? To understand what sets apart this special group of sales reps, the Sales Executive Council launched a global study of sales rep productivity three years ago involving more than 6,000 reps across nearly 100 companies in multiple industries. We now have an answer, which we’ve captured in the following three insights: 1. Quantitatively speaking, just about every B2B sales rep in the world is one of the following types, characterized by a specific set of skills and behaviors that defines the rep’s primary mode of interacting with customers: 2.
The Worst Question a Salesperson Can Ask - Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson. By Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson | 8:06 AM October 7, 2011 This post, the second in a four-part series, is also part of the HBR Insight Center Growing the Top Line. “What’s keeping you up at night?” This one question is probably asked by more sales people in a given day than any other. But while it seems innocuous — maybe even the right thing to ask a customer — it’s a question that simultaneously prevents sales while also destroying customer loyalty. To understand what makes this question so destructive, we need to first understand where it comes from.
As a result, companies have poured money into teaching their reps to ask better questions. But what if customers don’t know what they need? In our previous post we described a type of rep we call a Challenger. What does this sound like in practice? Today, a conversation with a Grainger rep is very different. No supplier wants to be in the business of free consulting — and Grainger is no different. These conversations aren’t happenstance. The George Costanza Approach to Fixing Fatal Flaws - Scott Edinger. By Scott Edinger | 11:23 AM October 25, 2011 In my work on leadership development, the first thing I usually advise is to look past your flaws to your strengths, since no one becomes an extraordinary leader by becoming flawless. You become a great leader, our research shows, by having strengths so profound people forgive, if not completely overlook, your faults. But about 20% of the time, I encounter a person whose flaws are so deep that no strengths can make up for them.
I’m not talking about run-of-the-mill, we’re-all-human, flaws. These are fatal, career-ending flaws. This sounds dire — and it is, if unaddressed. It’s so simple, in fact, that we can take a page from my favorite Seinfeld character, George Costanza, a man with hilarious and obvious fatal flaws. This is not quite as far-fetched as it seems. Here are some specific examples of “doing the opposite” for some of the most common fatal flaws I’ve encountered with leaders. These are broad examples, but you get the idea. The Secret to Dealing With Difficult People: It's About You - Tony Schwartz. By Tony Schwartz | 7:51 AM October 12, 2011 Do you have someone at work who consistently triggers you? Doesn’t listen? Takes credit for work you’ve done? Wastes your time with trivial issues? Acts like a know-it-all? Can only talk about himself? Our core emotional need is to feel valued and valuable. This is especially true when the person you’re struggling with is your boss.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Lord Acton said way back in 1887. The easy default when we feel devalued is to the role of victim, and it’s a seductive pull. The problem with being a victim is that you cede the power to influence your circumstances. Each of us has a default lens through which we see the world. The Lens of Realistic Optimism. Making this distinction allows you to stand outside your experience, rather than simply reacting to it. The Reverse Lens. It’s nearly certain that the person you perceive as difficult views the situation differently than you do. The Long Lens. Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator's Dilemma - James Allworth. Four Ways Women Stunt Their Careers Unintentionally - Jill Flynn, Kathryn Heath, and Mary Davis Holt. By Jill Flynn, Kathryn Heath, and Mary Davis Holt | 10:30 AM October 19, 2011 Having combed through more than a thousand 360-degree performance assessments conducted in recent years, we’ve found, by a wide margin, that the primary criticism men have about their female colleagues is that the women they work with seem to exhibit low self-confidence.
Our gut says that this may partly be a perception issue — we’ve observed that men sometimes interpret (or misinterpret) an inclination in women to share credit or defer judgment as a lack of confidence. Still, perception or not, there is some research to suggest that women themselves feel less self-assured at work than men. A study released in 2011 by Europe’s Institute of Leadership and Management revealed that women report having lower confidence in regard to their careers: Men were more confident across all age groups, with 70% of males having high or very high levels of self-confidence, compared to 50% of the women surveyed.
Not asking. America: Excelling at Mediocrity - Umair Haque. By Umair Haque | 2:26 PM October 28, 2011 Recently, I’ve been around the world and then back to the US of A. And what strikes me is how fast many parts of the globe are forging ahead — and how decrepit coming home can feel in comparison (JFK airport, I’m looking at you). It’s got me wondering: what is America still the best at? Consider this thought experiment. Were to you have the untrammeled economic freedom to, I’d bet you’d run screaming from big, fat, wheezing American business as usual, and its coterie of lackluster, slightly bizarre, and occasionally grody “innovations”: spray cheese, ATM fees, designer diapers, disposable lowest-common-denominator junk made by prison labor, Muzak-filled big-box stores, five thousand channels and nothing on but endless reruns of Toddlers in Tiaras — not to mention toxic mega-debt, oxymoronic “healthcare,” decrepit roads, and once-proud cities now crumbling into ruins.
How did we get here? Let me be clear.