Executive Insight

The Route to Sales Excellence

The Route to Sales Excellence

For over 20 years PLAYER MAP has been the sales process of choice for thousands of salespeople and hundreds of companies worldwide.

But sales mastery takes more than a world class methodology. It takes sales professionals with the capability to build enduring client relationships, skillfully position products and services to advantage and out-compete rivals. Recognizing this, PLAYER MAP and Charlesmore Partners International have created a Sales Certification Process to provide a systematic and sustaining route to competitive sales excellence for sales professionals and sales teams.

Based upon the proven principles of PLAYER MAP and best practices of professional development and learning, sales professionals and sales teams engage in an intensive, experientially-rich development process that builds the 10 core competencies of sales excellence.

Sales excellence can be readily validated by the consistent achievement of stretch sales targets set by companies and consistently achieved by the best performers. But to reach this level of achievement and to sustain these results year-on-year takes more than effort, it takes a highly developed skill set.

Over the last two decades we have worked with and studied successful sales people in some of the world’s best and most prestigious companies.

Consistently the most successful sales professionals role model a series of discernible and definable core competencies:

• They excel at sales skills, sales strategy, sales process management, and customer relationship management
• They possess deep market knowledge, strong industry relationships and comprehensive product and/or service knowledge
• They are emotionally intelligent, serve as peer leaders within their own organization and with customers, possess outstanding communications skills and consistently hit their numbers

We’ve codified and distilled these capabilities into their core elements so that we can help sales professionals understand the DNA of sales excellence.  From this knowledge base, we have created an engaging, intensive and experientially-rich development process to help guide and catalyze accelerated progression to sales excellence.

PLAYER MAP certification can be earned at three professionally demanding and progressive levels. Each level requires developed and validated competencies in the 10 dimensions of sales excellence. It is a long-term professional journey of competency development and accreditation that is designed to help sales people excel and win more. We also offer a certification process for sales managers charged with orchestrating the development and performance of intact sales teams.

PLAYER MAP certification works for professionally-ambitious individuals, intact sales teams and at enterprise-level. Companies can private label the certification methodologies and embed into their core talent development practices. It can be self-guided, sales manager guided, trusted advisor-guided or PLAYER MAP coach guided and really depends on needs, circumstances and preferences. The intention is to provide a robust and practical development platform to help sales professionals significantly and more rapidly improve their competencies.

For more information contact Edward Ferris or Scott Leland.

CEOs Embrace a More Connected Culture

A new IBM study of more than 1,700 Chief Executive Officers from 64 countries and 18 industries worldwide reveals that CEOs are changing the nature of work by adding a powerful dose of openness, transparency and employee empowerment to the command-and-control ethos that has characterized the modern corporation for more than a century.

The advantages of the fast-moving trend are clear. According to the IBM CEO study, companies that outperform their peers are 30 percent more likely to identify openness – often characterized by a greater use of social media as a key enabler of collaboration and innovation – as a key influence on their organization.  Outperformers are embracing new models of working that tap into the collective intelligence of an organization and its networks to devise new ideas and solutions for increased profitability and growth.

To forge closer connections with customers, partners and a new generation of employees in the future, CEOs will shift their focus from using e-mail and the phone as primary communication vehicles to using social networks as a new path for direct engagement. Today, only 16 percent of CEOs are using social business platforms to connect with customers, but that number is poised to spike to 57 percent within the next three to five years. While social media is the least utilized of all customer interaction methods today, it stands to become the number two organizational engagement method within the next five years, a close second to face-to-face interactions.

Coming after decades of top-down control, the shift has substantial ramifications – not just for the CEOs themselves – but for their organizations, managers, and employees, as well as for universities and business schools, and information technology suppliers. IBM’s research finds that technology is viewed as a powerful tool to recast organizational structures. More than half of CEOs (53 percent) are planning to use technology to facilitate greater partnering and collaboration with outside organizations, while 52 percent are shifting their attention to promoting great internal collaboration.

Greater openness is not without risks. Openness increases vulnerability. The Internet – especially through social networks – can provide a worldwide stage to any employee interaction, positive or negative. For organizations to operate effectively in this environment, employees must internalize and embody the organizations values and mission.  Thus, organizations must equip employees with a set of guiding principles that they can use to empower everyday decision making. Championing collaborative innovation is not something CEOs are delegating to their HR leaders. According to the study findings, the business executives are interested in leading by example.

By the Numbers

CEOs regard interpersonal skills of collaboration (75 percent), communication (67 percent), creativity (61 percent) and flexibility (61 percent) as key drivers of employee success to operate in a more complex, interconnected environment.

To build its next-generation workforce, organizations have to actively recruit and hire employees who excel at working in open, team-based environments.  At the same time, leaders must build and support practices to help employees thrive, such as encouraging the development of unconventional teams, promoting experiential learning techniques and empowering the use of high-value employee networks.

The trend toward greater collaboration extends beyond the corporation to external partnering relationships. Partnering is now at an all-time high. In 2008, slightly more than half of the CEOs IBM interviewed planned to partner extensively. Now, more than two-thirds intend to do so.

Other Findings

The IBM study found that a majority (71 percent) of global CEOs regard technology as the number one factor to impact an organization’s future over the next three years – considered to be a bigger change agent than shifting economic and market conditions.

Across all aspects of their organization – from financials to competitors to operations – CEOs are most focused on gaining deeper insights about their customers. Seven out of every ten CEOs are making significant investments in their organizations’ ability to draw meaningful customer insights from available data.

Given the data explosion most organizations are facing, CEOs recognize the need for more sophisticated business analytics to mine the data being tracked online, on mobile phones and social media sites. The traditional approach to understanding customers better has been to consolidate and analyze transactions and activities from across the entire organization. However, to remain relevant, CEOs must piece together a more holistic view of the customer based on how he or she engages the rest of the world, not just their organization. The ability to drive value from data is strongly correlated with performance. Outperforming organizations are twice as good as underperformers at accessing and drawing insights from data. Outperformers are also 84 percent better at translating those insights into real action.

Source: IBM

Selected Charts: Flickr

 

The Next 10 Female CEOs

The ranks of female chief executives remain thin—with women in the top spot at just 35 Fortune 1000 companies.

In this article by Joann Lublin and Kelly Eggers, 10 female executives are profiled – women whose operational expertise and track record make them likely picks to lead a Fortune 1000 company within five years. The lineup was compiled from an informal Wall Street Journal poll of 15 U.S. search firms, executive coaches and women's organizations. Human Capital News, a newswire owned by market research firm HSZ Media, also surveyed 75 human-resources executives for the Journal.

In the video, Ms Eggers talks about the selections.

Source: Fins

Choosing How to Compete

Strategy is about setting yourself apart from the competition. It’s not just a matter of being better at what you do - it’s a matter of being different at what you do. Increasingly, market leaders will be those companies that don’t just optimize within an industry, but actually transform it.

This requires executives to think differently about their business and to devise and stake out a unique and valuable strategic position involving a competitively differentiated set of activities that integrate and compound to create a value proposition that is difficult, if not impossible, to imitate. A comprehensive, coherent, integrative and evolving portfolio of initiatives is then required to drive value and long-term performance. This includes a balance of adapting the core business to meet future challenges, shaping the portfolio in an ongoing way to respond to a changing environment, and building the next generation of business growth.

 Read more…

 

Achieving and Sustaining the Strategic Logic of the Merger

Following a merger, management is under intense pressure to address challenges such as defining integration priorities and quickly identifying and capturing synergies. In addition, special attention has to be paid to addressing cultural change and controlling business risk in the new organization.

Key considerations include:

• What is the best way to most quickly realize the strategic objectives of the merger?
• What must be integrated quickly, and how to draw down on synergies?
• How to best integrate two different cultures and deal with conflicts between them?
• How to retain key talent during and beyond the integration process?
• How to keep employees focused on business and customers during the integration process?

It is widely known that roughly half of all mergers and acquisitions fail to create shareholder value and that about one-quarter actually destroy it. It is also no secret that there are tried and tested methodologies for successfully integrating companies. So why do so many deals—especially those that appear to offer substantial cost and revenue synergies—produce such disappointing results?

Read more...

New Release: CEO Succession Practices Report

The Conference Board has just released the 2012 edition of CEO Succession Practices, its annual report documenting leadership turnover events at S&P 500 companies.

One of the most important strategic risks that a corporation must manage is the succession of its chief executive officer. This is true today, more than ever, due to the extraordinary challenges posed by the economic times we live in and the increased turnover of top business leaders. To make an informed decision, the board should understand not only the technical knowledge and experience necessary to effectively lead the company into the future, but also the context and practices of the succession planning process. 

The purpose of CEO Succession Practices is to provide such background information and serve as a practical tool to the corporation in the performance of this critical task. 

In its News Release, The Conference Board highlighted the following key findings:

CEO succession rate

In 2011, 55 CEOs in the S&P 500 left their post. The rate of CEO succession was 10.8 percent, consistent with the average number of annual succession announcements from 2000 through 2010.

Company performance and CEO age as determinants

The probability of CEO succession is higher following poor performance. In the 2000–2010 period, the succession rate of CEOs of poorly performing companies averaged 14.0 percent, ranging from a high of 21.2 percent to a low of 10.0 percent. In 2011, the succession rate of CEOs of poorly performing companies was consistent with the prior trend at 12.7 percent. The succession rate of CEOs of better performing companies varied from 6.5 percent to 11.6 percent during the 2000-2010 period, averaging, 9.7 percent. In 2011, the succession rate of CEOs of better performing companies was 10.3 percent.

The probability of CEO succession is also higher for CEOs who are at least 64 years of age. In the 2000–2011 period, the succession rate of CEOs who were at least 64 years old ranged from 29.0 percent to 9.4 percent (on average, 18.4 percent over the period), while the succession rate of younger CEOs ranged from 8.3 percent to 13.4 percent (on average, 10.1 percent over the period). The rate of CEO succession for younger CEOs is remarkably consistent across the sample.

CEO dismissal rates

CEO dismissal rates vary across the 2000–2011 period, ranging from a high of 40.0 percent in 2002 to a low of 16.2 percent in 2005 (on average, 28.2 percent for the period). Despite that variance, the rate of CEO dismissals for the 2000–2005 period, at 28.6 percent, is similar to the rate for the 2006–2011 period, at 27.9 percent. Since 2008, which roughly coincides with the beginning of the financial crisis, 28.6 percent of all succession events were associated with CEO dismissals.

Inside promotions and outside hires

Consistent with a continuing trend in the hiring of outsiders that has been recorded since the 1970s, 19.2 percent of successions in 2011 involved an outsider CEO appointment.

Joint election as board chairman

Only 19.2 percent of the 55 successions in 2011 involved the immediate joint appointment of an individual as CEO and chairman of the board of directors. Based on reviewed succession announcements, the majority of departing CEOs remained as board chairman for at least a brief transition period, typically until the next shareholder meeting.

The report is organized in four parts: 

Part I: CEO Succession Trends (2000-2011) illustrates year-by-year succession rates and examines specific aspects of the succession phenomenon, including the influence on firm performance on succession and the characteristics of departing and incoming CEOs. 

Part II: CEO Succession Practices (2011) details where boards assign responsibilities on leadership development, the role performed within the board by the retired CEO, and the extent of the disclosure to shareholders on these matters. For ease of reference, data is categorized based on industry groups, company size, and financial performance. 

Part III: Notable Cases of CEO Succession (2011) includes summaries of 10 episodes of CEO succession that made headlines in the past year that were carefully chosen to highlight key circumstances surrounding each transition. 

Part IV: Shareholder Activism on CEO Succession Planning (2011) reviews examples of responses by companies that have recently received shareholder proposals in this area. 

The report ends with an Appendix featuring The Conference Board Roadmap to CEO Succession Planning—a series of practical steps to make it all happen. 

Click here to access the report 

Source: The Conference Board

Breakthrough-Thinking Revolutionizes the Sales Training Industry

This is a story of business disruption and an executive brave enough to cannibalize a successful business because he felt there was a better way to serve clients.

Just two years ago PLAYER MAP – a sales performance advisory firm – was celebrating two decades of helping sales organizations improve their win rates on large, complex sales projects on a worldwide basis. Clients included large high technology and engineering firms employing hundreds of field sales personnel in over 60 countries. Client sales personnel were responsible for many millions of dollars of revenue generation in highly competitive industry sectors.

Over the years PLAYER MAP had continued to refine its approach and methodologies, but essentially it taught sales people how to compete for and win high value projects. It had a loyal client base and a large, active user base for its methodologies. Mostly, salespeople liked how PLAYER MAP distanced itself from the process complexities of other competitive/consultative selling offerings and kept it all simple and pragmatic. And it worked, with one large global client reporting 30% improvements in win-rates and doubling of average project profitability.

Yet PLAYER MAP still delivered its methodology in high-impact (generally) two-day workshop settings – as is the industry norm. Participants left with new tools, insights and considerable enthusiasm. Clients shelled out relatively large facilitation fees. Sustaining momentum though was hard - as it is with all training type of interventions. Frequently PLAYER MAP was called in to provide refreshers or to coach on particularly important project pursuits.

Believing there had to a better way, PLAYER MAP president, Scott Leland set about reinventing the business. Today, the essence of the PLAYER MAP methodology has been distilled into a $3 a month computer app. Clients are signing up in droves. Large companies are enrolling hundreds of field sales personnel and process adoption seems to be sticking and working. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) industry leader Salesforce™ has just approved PLAYER MAP to be embedded into its AppExchange offerings.

So what do you get for $3 a month?

Access to a web-based portal and application where you can build a “map” of the “players” vital to the success of each of your project pursuits. Graphical keys readily label the players and visually show the positives and negatives of the situation – what is looking good and what needs to be worked on. Sales managers and colleagues can weigh in and the “Player Map” becomes a tool for project communication and collaboration. A series of legends reminds users of the competitive strategies they need to consider to advance and intensify the project pursuit. The portal is full of handy tips and reminders that guide the utilization of the tool.

Most importantly, the application becomes the sales and communication tool that users work with each and every day. It sure beats all of those complex proformas that typically characterizes large account methodologies.

Certainly users need help to get started and the company offers free webinars to new subscribers. Expert process coaching is also available to users and sales managers to enhance process utilization or to provide guidance on specific project pursuits. But it’s certainly a disruptive business model that reinvents the sales training marketplace, and clients are loving it. PLAYER MAP has a mantra, “Sell more sooner when you Player Map it” and this is playing out in practice.

For more information on PLAYER MAP, please visit www.playermap.com or call 414-921-2550.

In addition PLAYER MAP has also recently launched a professional certification process for its users. Based upon the proven principles of PLAYER MAP and best practices of professional development, the certification process provides users and user companies with a systematic and sustaining route to competitive sales mastery.

Charlesmore Partners has a strategic alliance with PLAYER MAP, is certified to provide PLAYER MAP user coaching and is the co-developer of PLAYER MAP’s new Certification Process.

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A New Capabilities Presentation From Charlesmore Partners International

Consultants in Organizational Strategy

• Why organizational strategy matters
• What organizational strategy is
• Selected clients and projects
• How we work
• How to reach us

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Effective Leadership Development

How leaders really develop; the keys to implementing an effective and sustaining leadership development process and why experience is the best teacher.

Effective Leadership Development

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Effective Succession Management

Why succession management is so important to leadership continuity and future enterprise performance; implementing an effective succession planning process; protecting your organization from the risk of management discontinuity.

Effective Succession Management

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