A Balancing Act

How do you balance it all?  Ask the question in a room full of women, and you get a variety of reactions.  From the recent piece in Atlantic Magazine titled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” to Sheryl Sandberg’s “Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders” speech, there are a million perspectives.

Just because I am usually the one standing in front of the room full of people doesn’t mean I have the answer.  But I think it starts with clarity.  And I think it’s a message that every person can pay attention to, not just the women in the room.

Gaining clarity around what matters to you is the single most important thing you can do to find balance.  When the world comes at us, as it often does, it allows us to say “yes” to the things that align with our priorities and empowers us to say “no” to the things that do not.

Earlier this month, I did a women’s event for the PGA TOUR.  At the end of the day, I asked each woman to take five pieces of paper and write down the five most important things in their lives.  It was a pretty easy exercise for most of the women.  Then I asked them to take one of their sheets of paper and crumple it up.  There was a little bit of a murmur from the group.  Next, crumple another sheet.  Then a third.  Finally a fourth until you had just THE most important thing in your life staring back at you.  By the time we got to the final step, their was almost an uproar in the room.  It’s a great exercise to get clarity.  Don’t worry, after the agony, they got all five back.

The point was to get really clear on what matters to you.  The other thing I tell people is don’t be your worst critic.  So often we judge ourselves day in and day out on.  I have a wonderful husband and three daughters.  If I judged myself every day on my priorities, I would feel like a failure some days.  Balance is a bigger picture.  Look at it across a week or a month.  It’s unrealistic to be perfectly balanced every day of our lives.  Sometimes work will take priority or sometimes it’s a family member or a health matter.  Remind yourself, that’s ok.  Just yourself on the overall direction, not the day-to-day.

HBR Blog: The (New) Skills You Need to Succeed in Sales

Via HBR by Lynette Ryans and Javier Marcos
(http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/08/the_changing_face_of_sales.html) 

The practice of business-to-business selling is in a curious state. On the one hand, commentators and academics are repeatedly telling us that transactional selling is outmoded and that relational selling is the 'new normal.' On the other hand, most businesses are operating with traditional models of salesperson recruitment and training. The American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) estimates that in the U.S., $15 billion is spent per year on sales training. However, many salespeople find the training they receive either ineffective or less than useful. Given the importance of skills and capabilities to sales performance, businesses need to reconsider who they recruit into sales roles, and how they train them.

Put simply, we all we tend to recruit people like ourselves. This in turn means that existing cultures, styles and modes of behavior tend to perpetuate themselves. Trouble is, business-to-business selling has been undergoing a revolution. Traditional sales methods are increasingly unproductive. In fact, aggressive sales styles and product-focused selling are now so outdated that some customers are simply refusing to meet with salespeople using these techniques. These customers find it more pleasant and more efficient to order online, and who can blame them? Information about product and service features is increasingly available online, so sales people find themselves in front of well-prepared customers. In this situation, focusing on product features in the sales meeting is a waste of everyone's time. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that high-performing sales people are those who listen and respond, who are flexible, and who think in terms of developing a solution to an emerging customer problem.

To find out what kind of people succeed in sales, and the kinds of skills they need to have, we carried out interviews with thought leaders in selling and sales management in the U.S. and the U.K. These included top sales leaders in major corporations, leading academics who have published in the sales field, and senior practitioners within sales associations or research-oriented sales consultancies.

Our research confirmed a growing trend: Salespeople today need to engage in collaboration with the customer but also increasingly with their own organization. Good selling is about transcending the customer-facing role and becoming an internal change agent as well.

Our thought leaders identified two major drivers for this change: the use of technology, and changes in customer demands. Increased use of technology, they told us, means that online channels are substituting for traditional face-to-face meetings, and CRM systems are providing new insights into customers. On the customer side, our informants talked about ever-increasing customer expectations and more emphasis on return on investment and value. Our analysis revealed four categories of skills and capabilities that sales people need in this new environment: Commercial, Relational, Managerial, and Cognitive.

Commercial skills and capabilities are about financial insight, business acumen and customer insight — specifically, insight beyond what the customer has articulated. In complex relational sales, customers expect business-to-business sales people to act as business consultants and demonstrate a broad strategic understanding of their organization and the impact on the customer's bottom line of the solutions they sell.

Relational skills and capabilities include the ability to manage multi-level, multifunctional relationships, to understand relational dynamics and to inspire trust. Across all the research we have done in sales and Key Account Management, trust is repeatedly cited by customers as important in their selection of a supplier.

Managerial skills and capabilities needed by people in sales roles include people management skills (because so much business-to-business selling is now done in teams and cross-functionally); high ethical standards and integrity (growing customer demands in relation to corporate social responsibility and ethics are changing selling behaviors); openness to change and adaptability; and influencing skills.

Cognitive skills and capabilities include innovative problem solving; the ability to identify opportunities; the ability to work under pressure; and mental toughness and resilience. These cognitive skills are important in a consultative selling role because the best future sales opportunities may be found within existing customers, not necessarily within new customers, and the sales person needs the skills to recognize and develop these opportunities.

These skills and capabilities identified by our thought leaders have some clear consequences for the recruitment and training of sales people in business-to-business consultative selling roles. Look again at the four elements: traditional selling skills are conspicuous by their absence. In fact, the people best fitted to these new sales roles may not necessarily be people from a sales background. Instead, we see more people from technical or operations backgrounds such as project management, R&D, or supply chain moving into sales. They can be particularly adept at problem-solving and cross-functional working. Perhaps we should talk not about 'sales people' but about 'people in a sales role.'

This broader view of the sales professional has implications not just for sales recruitment ("who"), but also for training and development ("what" and "how"). People in a sales role need a broad general management development that focuses on commercial, relational, managerial and cognitive capabilities. Sales leaders, HR directors and CEOs need to ask some tough questions about how their organization is training its sales people to develop these vital elements. Those responsible for commissioning, designing and/or delivering sales training must ensure that programs move beyond task-related knowledge and skills and emphasize a fuller range of general management competencies that are needed to manage increasingly complex markets and business relationships.

When To Call It Quits

Often a hand goes up and asks me, “have you ever and how do you fire a client?” 

Yes, and let me explain how.  

When I get this question, I often know it is coming from someone who is generally a nice person who is not sure how to deliver tough news.  Kudos to them for this quality.  It is also coming from someone who likely has some “dead weight” on their client list.  So what they are really saying is, “I am getting sucked into spending time on business and/or a relationship I really don’t think will pay off and hasn’t paid off.”  More often than not, the client has more awareness around this challenge than we realize.  

A few suggestions below: 

Manage expectations:  On the front end of the relationship, be clear about your expectations for the relationship and how you see it evolving.  Communicate it in an early meeting.  Set mutually agreed up milestones that both of you can use as a measure when evaluating the relationship.  This allows you to create a foundation that you can refer back to as the relationship evolves.       

Anticipate: Anticipation is key so that you can be prepared when a relationship changes and know how to respond.  Respond when you first see the relationship change—whether it’s the client’s needs changing, their world changing or your world changing.    

Understand the implications: Who does this relationship touch and what impact does terminating this relationship have on those people? Are my company and I prepared to deal with this?

Be them:  Ask yourself a few questions: “What else is going on in their world?” “How can I best time this transition and/or conversation with them?”

Communicate: Not all things, but most things, can be solved through communication.  Hopefully you have a built a relationship based on trust and mutual respect.  So when you communicate, they hear you and you connect.  Periodically have the guts to be vulnerable and ask, “how’s this going?” 

If you think you might need to “trim the fat,” odds are you do.  So, do it.  It’s like the 22 year old who breaks up with someone he isn’t going to marry.  Often better for both parties, because if you truly aren’t committed, the relationship won’t develop to greater levels of mutual support.

The Definite Dozen

Whether or not you are a sports fan, Pat Summitt's journey will inspire you and her legacy will leave a lasting impact.  The winningest coach in NCAA basketball history, Summitt stepped down as head coach of the Lady Vols in April, eight months after revealing her diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's.  After 38 years at the helm, she walked away from the game she had changed.   

For those doing the math, that means Summitt started her career as a head coach at Tennessee at the ripe age of 22.  That was eight years before the NCAA recognized women's basketball as a sport.  Perhaps more impressive than the 1,0098 wins, 8 national titles and 16 SEC championships is the fact that in 38 years of coaching, every single one of her players earned their degree.  

If you didn't watch the ESPYs, you missed a touching tribute to a woman who has impacted generations of players and who now faces a tougher opponent with the same grit and resolve that defined her on court success.  Watch the video below.

Pat has always been the face of her sport.  Now she is the face of something even greater.    For years, we admired her from afar-- the coach with the icy glare who dominated opponents and demanded the best from herself and everyone around her.  In the last year, we witnessed a vulnerability as she chose to fight her battle on a public stage.  Perhaps this is where we learn the greatest lessons on courage and grace.

In honor of Pat, here is a reminder of "The Definite Dozen," the principles that were the foundation of her program for decades.  Keep a copy at your desk, in your wallet or on your bulletin board, but keep them present in your life!

The Definite Dozen
1.   Respect yourself and others
2.   Take full responsibility
3.   Develop and demonstrate loyalty
4.   Learn to be a great communicator
5.   Discipline yourself so no one else has to
6.   Make hard work your passion
7.   Don’t just work hard, work smart
8.   Put the team before yourself
9.   Make winning an attitude
10.  Be a competitor
11.  Change is a must
12.  Handle success like you handle failure

Which principle speaks the most to you and why? Send us your comments on Twitter @MollyFletcher.

Making the Pick: NBA Draft and Talent Evaluation

I had an interesting conversation last week with some friends facing challenges in the hiring process.  We got to talking about comparisons within the sports world.  Last night's NBA Draft was a great snapshot of sport's "hiring process."  

How companies (or in this case teams) evaluate talent is an interesting and varying process.  Of course there are major differences between the two, but the parallels are relevant.  There is always a pipeline of talent for NBA scouts and coaches to evaluate and they constantly monitor it.  One of the interesting points in my conversation with some recruiters was that many companies have a "superficial" pipeline.  They don't establish "real" relationships with prospective talent until there is a specific need, at which point they are placed in a reactive position.  Teams ask themselves many of the same questions that companies ask.  Questions like:

Do I have a specific need to fill or am I taking the best available?  

Am I looking for immediate return or a long-term solution?  

Do I take the safer choice or do I take a risk on higher potential?  

Are there any red flags?  

Will this person fit within my existing team?  

Is this person coachable?  

What is his or her reputation?  

Will they support our efforts to create a healthy environment? 

Intangibles like he's a "high-character guy" or a "relentless competitor" or "high basketball IQ" came up in draft commentary almost as much as performance.  For employers of all types, the search is all about the fit and proactively building a healthy pipeline which requires carefully weighing talent and performance alongside the intangibles.       

Title IX: Lessons Beyond the Playing Field

This week marks the 40th anniversary of Title IX, the landmark legislation signed on June 23, 1972 to expand opportunities in higher education for women.  The discussion around Title IX typically centers on athletics, which fell under the educational programs umbrella.

Reading the stories this week from countless female athletes from different decades, they all pointed to the lessons sports taught them off the field.  Having spent all four years of my college experience at Michigan State on the tennis team, the message resonates.  A 2002 survey by Oppenheimer Funds found that 82% of female business executives participated in organized sports after elementary school.  This probably does not surprise most men, who have long realized how lessons learned early on the playing field translate later to the boardroom.

Sports teach us how to win and how to lose.  They teach us accountability, selflessness, time management, sportsmanship and resilience.  We learn how to work within a team- when to be a leader and when to be a role player.  Sports teach us how to bounce back from adversity and understand that calls won’t always go our way and that there will be bumps along the road to success.  We learn how to communicate and how to deal with different personality types and management styles.  It’s not hard to connect the dots and see why the lessons we learn in sports last us a lifetime.

Recovering from Adversity

The Oklahoma City Thunder’s remarkable turnaround has been the talk of the sports world this week as they advanced to their first NBA Finals in dramatic fashion.  The NBA Playoffs have been a great example of how we find lessons in sports that we can apply to our every day lives. 

How do we handle adversity, and on the flip side, how do we handle success?  The Thunder faced a Spurs team that had won 20 straight games.  Down 2-0, the numbers said they had no chance.  How did they respond?  By reeling off four straight victories, rallying from an 18-point deficit in the decisive game, and becoming only the third team in NBA history to win four straight in the conference finals after trailing 2-0.  You don’t have to be a sports fan to appreciate their fight.  

Successful people—in sports, business and life—share a common trait.  They recover from adversity quickly.  They don’t focus on the negative and they control what they can control.  So what can we learn from the playoffs while we are enjoying the games?  Don’t let adversity unravel you.  Allow it to motivate you and propel you forward.