As the world continues to grapple with the realities of the global pandemic, which is spiking again, there is a quiet battle brewing in the executive ZOOM meetings of many organizations. The battle is going to be about what to do with Travel budgets that were allocated in 2020 to functional use but were used for other business purposes.

The combatants of this battle will be the Finance department versus functional departments including big spenders of travel including Marketing, Sales, Operations, and Human Resources. The IT departments are somewhere in the middle of that battle and preparing for their own battles related to digital security which might be the topic of a different blog on a different day.

We will all remember 2020 for the rest of our lives for many things including quarantines, home food deliveries, social distancing, political unrest, and new ways of working.

When thinking about new ways of working, one of the recent trends that I have observed is an entirely different approach to leadership development. Because of the disruption of COVID-19, everything about the way we work and lead has been disrupted. As a result, the way we are developing leaders has also change… and we are just starting to recognize some of the interesting differences and impacts.

As we continue to work with business and talent leaders around the globe on finding new ways of developing leaders in 2020 and beyond, a statement one of our dearest clients recently shared resonates well and summarizes one of the most significant changes that is going to impact us all, “The most important thing that we are working on is teaching our leaders to be more human.”

Part of the fun of being on the cutting-edge of leveraging digital technology in training and talent development is listening to client organizations share their insights and perspectives on things that many of us may take for granted.

Over the past 8 months, I have had the privilege of introducing professionals participating in corporate learning programs to the joys of learning through games. Leadership and business games to be specific. Many of the new organizations that I’ve had the chance to work with during the pandemic have used digital simulations because their previous methods of learning, most notably classroom based “talking head” types of programs, do not translate very well to the virtual learning world. Faced with the reality of doing nothing, having some trainer talk at their participants for 8 hours, or try something new, many organizations opted to try something new and the results have been spectacular.

I was speaking today with a long-term colleague about what’s different in this year’s “selling season” and we had a lot to talk about. “Selling Season” is that time of year, usually from October-November were customers start planning and buying for the following year.

I think it is safe to say that none of us have ever seen or could have predicted how different Selling Season 2020 would be. As part of the continued development of our Strategic Business Selling™ curriculum, we just released a new module on what is different and what Sales Professionals should be doing about these differences. In our research, we identified 5 major trends and 15 different tips, tools, and techniques to be effective this selling season.

I am pleased to share with the readers of this blog 3 significant things that are different and some ideas on what to do with the differences.

The participants going through the global pharmaceutical business simulation today listened to the ground rules that “this is a safe learning environment and there is no such thing as a bad question.”

“I am in R&D and I am having a hard time remembering some of these key business metrics like gross margin, operating margin, and which levers to pull to impact them.”

I shared a quick response and promised a nice blog for her team and the rest of the cohort developing their Business Acumen and Leadership skills this week.

For most business professionals, their primary business objectives are to generate as much profitable revenue as possible over a sustained long-term period of time. While most non-MBAs understand what revenue is, it is the “profitable revenue” that can sometimes be tricky and needs further defining.

Profitable revenue is defined as - revenue (the price of your product / service multiplied by the volume sold) that is generating a profit - where profit is equal to the revenues less the expenses incurred to generate those profits. I provide further clarity and examples below.