It is happening over and over millions of times a day during virtual sales calls: “The over credentialization.” Over credentializing is the process of talking too much about yourself and trying way too hard to get others on your call to think you know what you are talking about and are worthy of their time.

The only thing that will ever convince prospects that you are worthy of their time is providing business value through a valid business reason for having the sales meeting.

What does over credentializing sound like?

In these new and disrupted times, I am so focused on our clients that I rarely have time for vendor calls. This week, at the suggestion of a colleague, I agreed to join a call where a company was pitching us a new idea for some sort of business process outsourcing. It sounded interesting so I decided to give it a shot. What did I have to lose beside a precious hour?

Business Fatigue is real. And it seems that it is all anybody is talking about. “Hi, how are you? Oh, good, but I’m exhausted” must be repeated about 5 billion times a day in the course of new normal business conversations. It is clear to most that the COVID-19 Pandemic has also been the greatest accelerator of business change we have ever experienced. The global economy is shifting at the speed of light toward a new model of interaction and engagement that thrives on less physical contact and less friction in systems. In the good old days, getting from point A to point B through air travel presented a lot of friction to the system (not to mention the human body and travel budgets). When you think about it, jumping from Zoom room to Zoom room with the touch of a button is pretty frictionless in comparison.

During the past several months, as the reality of the pandemic has sunk in, business organizations have accelerated their evolution of remote leadership within matrixed structures. Before the pandemic, many managers realized (and lamented) they had direct reports they had never “met personally.” Now, working with remote employees in the matrix that you may never meet is the new reality. There is no lamenting or complaining that you can’t do your job because of remoteness. This change has left many leaders wondering what they are supposed to do and how to do it. Clearly new skills and best practices of leading remotely in the matrix are required.

One of the many realizations about our “new normal” is that speed matters more than ever. I was  interviewing a CEO of a large global company today as part of the process to tailor an upcoming Business Acumen program for his direct reports. Within the first few moments, I could feel the instant connection in terms of the way he though about strategy and the way we design our Business Acumen and business simulation solutions. I could also sense that he had an intuitive feel for the rhythm of his business and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead during the rest of 2020 and into 2021.

Seasoned executives like this CEO know how often to make certain decisions, how hard to drive specific objectives, and how quickly to react to changing circumstances such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

July was another extremely busy month in the world of virtual business simulation capability development. Our team had the opportunity to work with hundreds of leaders from around the world delivering customized, virtual learning experiences developing leadership capabilities in the area of Business Acumen.

As our technology and reporting capabilities have advanced, and as we have become more focused on the data analytics that Business Acumen skill development engagements can produce, it is my pleasure to share some interesting trends that can be used to understand and explain some of the behaviors you may be seeing in your organization, within your peers, or within your direct reports.

Here are three unique trends that we have observed and assessed coming out of our post-simulation data analytics: