The Complex System: Sales Lead Management, Software Automation, Business Strategy & Personal Methodology

I do not Shrink from this Responsibility, I Welcome it

I just love this quote from JFK’s inaugural address on January 20, 1961. Its part of the very famous speech we all know that includes “ask not what your country...” While there is certainly a lot to get inspired about from his talk, I think this particular quote speaks to me the most. JFK set out to make a big impact on our country and indeed he did that. But he was also challenged with adversity which in the end killed him. I have this speech in audio format and I regularly return to it for inspiration.

In the face of obstacles and uncertainty it’s not only about having the courage to push forward, it’s about the obsessive yearning to find a path.

Remember the Alamo, er 37signals That Is

In 2004 when I started Leads360, there was a soon to be very well known software startup that was making a lot of noise with a downloadable eBook about the future of software development. In it, 37signals touted the keys to successful on-demand software. It was great timing because we were in the early stages of our 1^st development cycle on the Lead Manager and we really took to heart some of the concepts. The most significant was the idea of less is more. These guys said keep it simple, features make things worse, not better. Somewhere along the line we started to veer away from this thinking. I wouldn’t say we’re over the top bloated compare us with the CRM solution we use, Right Now Technologies, and you’ll see the spectrum of complexity is very large. Still we’ve learned a lot about what clients want, how to service them and how to run a lean organization. We recently re-tooled our entire product line and released products that were “less” than our flagship software.

So when I read a recent post on Harvard Business Blog (again, this blog is amazing) about 37signals I was reminded of the importance. The 37signals guys had a new spin on the idea that less is more, they said “less is less” and that’s what you want. I love that. Why does more always have to mean better. I’m as big of an offender as anyone on this subject. They go on to explain how they don’t just build software under this premise, they run their entire organization that way. Don’t hire more people to get more done, just do less. Don’t work more hours to grow faster, just grow slower. That isn’t to say they aren’t interested in making money, they just focus on profit rather than growth. It’s certainly refreshing to hear and rings an all too true bell for this guy.

Just the Facts

I love this post on VentureBlog about entrepreneurs using adjectives in lieu of facts. Smart investors want hard facts about what you will do or what you did. It’s easy to skip the facts and insert a bunch of intelligence adjectives to fill the void.

In business, gathering factual intelligence about the company is done via metrics tracking. Easier said than done of course, but it’s an ultra-critical aspect of business. I’ve got another board meeting next week and this is a big part of the prep. I’ve actually learned quite quickly what works and what doesn’t work in a board meeting. It’s about sticking to an agenda, showing facts not color, staying on schedule coming to the board with specific recommendations, not topics for debate. Interestingly, this is a big part of what inhibits our internal meetings from being effective which I’ve talked a fair amount about lately.

Do Less, Get More

There is a great Stephen Covey saying, “things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.” Dr. Covey is essentially telling us to put the most important things first. Similarly I proposed to someone today “don’t let the pursuit of more deny the achievement of less.” In the constant pursuit to do everything, and to do it quickly, we often forget to do what we really need to. This has been a challenge for me because built to do just that. I push to make things better and faster sometimes at the expense of what’s really important. I’m reminded of the whole idea “less is more” and how important it is to put first things first; get the core needs addressed and take any extra time to do a little more.

Roles & Responsibilities - Post #1

I've been dragging on my 10 keys to exponential growth series, but I really need to get some of this out. I've discussed R&R before, but I want to reiterate how critical I think this aspect of business building is. When I first started as an entrepreneur I never even considered writing a role description. I always assumed that because “I” knew what the company need and what I wanted out of the hire. As you can imagine (or maybe not) I made a lot of poor hires, and the ones that were really good often ended up doing things other than what I wanted them to do. I realized that my picker is good; that is to say I am pretty good a finding smart, hardworking, dedicated, passionate and on-culture people, but I don’t necessarily align them with the right roles. Of course getting great people is critical. In fact, this skill is probably more important because once I learned how to write a good role description, my recruiting acumen started to hockey stick. Here is how I approach a new role.

A good role description does 2 primary things; first, it gives me and my team an opportunity to fully vet out what it is we need and expect from the job. Second it gives the new hire a very clear framework for success. As simple as it sounds, if an employee doesn’t know what they are expected to do and if they are unclear about how effective they are at achieving the requirements of the job, they will most likely fail and certainly be frustrated. You would be surprised how many people at your company have no idea what is expected of them or if they are successful in the role.

I start by researching similar roles in other companies that I respect. For Leads360, I almost always start with Salesforce.com. Incidentally, borrowing what works from other companies or people who have proven success is one of my favorite strategies. There’s no shame in copying what works vs. reinventing the wheel (that’s a topic for another post). I go to Salesforce.com and look at the comparable roles. From there I start to build out the role. I always use the same formatting and I require all my managers who hire people to use the same format.

I think it’s important to include very specific and measurable objectives for the role and the performance metrics the person will be held accountable for. No matter where the employee is in the org chart, this practice will pay dividends and save you many headaches.

Growing During Tough Times

Surviving a downturn is one thing, growing amidst a tough market is another? I read a great article on the Harvard Business Blog I started tracking (Nick Hedges would approve) about Accelerating Performance Through a Downturn. There are some advantages to this strategy, in particular the competitive advantages that can be gained if successful. If it's hard work for you, imagine how it must be for your competitors. When most companies are just trying get by and maybe even cutting costs to survive, a downturn is a great opportunity to build infrastructure, invest in technology and hit the gas on sales and marketing. Once the market comes back, and it will, you'll be in better position to really make an impact. And as this article shows, many companies in second or third place in a market moved up a few notches while the competition wasn't paying attention to growth.

Democracy Only Works for Startups

What is a democracy? What's so great about it? What's not great about it? When we think about the idea of a democracy most people think about our great country. After all it was a government by majority rule that gave us such a wonderful place to live and work. What about democracy in the workplace? Many companies operate this way and it can lead to some incredible success. My belief however about democracy in business is that it only works for startups.

When a company is first starting out it has only a few people. Usually that includes one or more founders and some key early hires. At this stage it's all hands on deck. Everyone must pitch in and everyone has input on how the company will be built. It's a fun time and these collaborative efforts are essential. Without democracy, things just don't get done. There is too much to do for one person or for everyone to work in a silo. Everyone works together to make decisions.

As the company grows the democracy begins to breakdown. More people mean more opinions. More opinions mean more time to make decisions and more chance of making the wrong ones. If you’re lucky you still come up with the right decision, but it may take you weeks longer to get there than it did a year earlier. The democracy is becoming counterproductive and starting to hinder growth, not facilitate it. Still, it's relatively early in the companies maturity cycle and at about 12-15 people things are still working ok.

Companies that make it past here must have some pretty talented and hard working people, that's great. Now it's time to hire more and start creating departments. The democracy is now implemented at the department level as well as the management level. Whoa, now things are really getting pushed back. More meetings are necessary just to go over everyone’s opinion. Meetings go longer and decisions are often postponed until another decision from another meeting can be made. Is democracy helping here or hindering?

At about 35+ people the democracy is totally breaking down. You can push through it and many companies at this stage do because democracy creates strong culture. When people at all levels give input, they feel like they are making an impact and this is one of the biggest contributors to job satisfaction. Don't want to lose that culture do you? Neither do I, it's critical. But wait, the democracy we've created is almost created a standstill. How do you balance the desire for killer culture and not get bogged down in the process? Good question, I deal with it every day and it should be the topic of yet another post.

Ok, now more than 50 people. Meetings are pretty much going on all hours of the day. Nobody is at their desk working. It's just one big decision making committee, or worse, a dozen committees all trying to make decisions so that another committee can make theirs. It just doesn't work. Management must step in and start leading. I don't suggest a dictatorship, but it’s up to management to get input quickly, analyze and make decisions, lest the inevitable paralysis.

Interestingly I think this theory also applies to government. When the country is small and trying to build all the pieces of the machine, democracy rules. But as a country grows and more and more people get to have a say, especially when it's combined with capitalism, problems arise. I personally think that's part of the challenge our own country is facing. Democracy w/ capitalism is failing and I'm not sure that time will heal it. There needs to be a change that facilitates growth, but that too is the topic of another post.

Product-Centric Leaders

I was forwarded a great article on Search Insider about how great product companies often have product-centric leaders, who are essentially customers themselves. By this I mean they understand what customers want because they are the same people. The article really resonated with me because I really am that guy. Just about everything creative I’ve ever come up with is a response to what I felt was not good enough. I’m constantly trying to “improve” products, services, systems, software, buildings, that I see. When I see something I like; when I’m in customer mode, my mind immediately goes to, ok, how can I improve this? What’s missing from this product or service? Most of the time I come up with good ideas.

At Leads360 I think we do this well. We have numerous people that behave like this and it’s enabled us to develop some pretty innovative products and services over the past 3.5 years. I wouldn’t say I know what our clients want 100%, but I get us in the ballpark for sure. The key is to add the customer input on top of baseline innovation.

Value is in the Eye of the Beholder

Discerning value from something, especially when it comes to a purchase for your business, is not something that should be assumed. All too many times have I heard from sales people, the client won’t pay that much, or it’s too expensive for a company that size. I always fire back at them about value creation. What’s valuable to one client is different to another. Never assume that any client will not find enough value in a product just because its expensive.

In a recent battle with one such salesman, I presented a very compelling argument to illustrate this point. Pretty much all corporate environments provide coffee to their employees. Of course we’re no different other than the fact that as a CEO I ascribe a significant amount of value from the coffee we provide our people. To me having great coffee, fresh brewed and always readily available is as important as the phone. We lease a Starbucks coffee machine that grinds, brews, pours fresh coffee on the fly. It is serviced weekly and we get all the supplies, coffee, creamers we need, and if the unit breaks down, it gets serviced that day! Many CEO’s may say, sweet, how much is it. And when they hear the monthly cost, they veto it. But to me, it doesn’t matter. The value we get as a company from this machine is impossible to measure.

By the way, we spend nearly $1,300 per month on Coffee for 45 people. Is it worth it? To us it is. But if the sales person who sold us the service had assumed we wouldn’t pay that amount because of our company size, he would have lost a pretty sweet account. Get it?

Reports Are So 2004

Reports are only as good as you use them. Unfortunately most people don't know how, or even take the time to use them. For the most part we've found that to be true with clients of Leads360. Of course there are a handful of clients that really dig in and get value from our reports and the custom reporting engine. But for the bulk of our clients they're "cool" at best.

As we race into the 2nd quarter of a very instrumental year we've done a lot of thinking and research on what our clients really need when it comes to reporting. The most common thing we hear from clients is "just tell me what to do". Well, when we give them reports we're doing the exact opposite. This is where analytics comes in.

Analytics is such a ubiquitous term, how do we know what clients really want, and more importantly, how do we know what actually working? This is a question we're trying to answer right now.

Wikipedia defines analytics as how an entity (i.e., business) arrives at an optimal or realistic decision based on existing data. The online resource continues by stating, business managers may choose to make decisions based on past experiences or rule of thumb, or there might be other qualitative aspects to decision making; but unless there is data involved in the process, it would not be considered analytics.

Analytics is about making intelligent decisions that are meaningful and make a significant impact on the business. If we can present our clients w/ tools to enable good decision making, along with data to back it up, and a clear course of action to get results, we're on to something. My partner Nick Hedges has a great post on the importance of consistent metrics which I agree is the first step toward good analytics. Trust me, it's all coming, and then some.