The primary objective of every Sales Professional is to close business and generate revenues by presenting customers with an irresistible value proposition.  Revenue is the lifeblood of any business and without it, there simply is no business.

This week, I am working with a group of highly skilled Sales Professionals as part of a continuing, year-long curriculum that is focused in developing their Business Acumen skills.  From an instructional design perspective, we are building their Business Acumen skills so they can help present their solutions to their customer from the business perspective and not just the product perspective.  This approach identifies smart, and profitable revenues which is critical to their success.

“What’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”

In William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet argues that it does not matter that her partner Romeo is from her family’s enemy house of Montague and that his last name is Montague.  Her point is that It’s just a name and the name shouldn’t impact their desire to be together.  Unfortunately for Romeo and Juliet it really did matter and as we all know, things didn’t end up so well for them.

In today’s evolving world of Talent Development, the disruption of going digital continues to change the way people learn and apply new skills.  The term “gamification” unfortunately remains a significant part of the training and development lexicon and let’s be honest, too many companies push the concept of gamification because they believe Millennials and Gen Xers will buy into a learning process that is hip, cool, and “gamified”.  I happen to believe that is a ridiculous argument and using the term gamification as a tool to sell training is bad business.  Great content, great experiences, and great methodologies of learning are what’s important, not the name you call it.

The more I travel around the world delivering Business Acumen, Business Leadership, and Strategic Business Selling programs for our global clients, the more I am amazed at the disconnect between the skills needed by organizations to execute their chosen business strategies especially as we move further into the digital disruption.

For many C-Suite leaders trying to create their version of the digital disruption, they are faced with the stark reality that the strength of their strategy is as strong as their weakest link in the value chain of human capital and skills.

... Because they Don’t Have Business Acumen

As many business professionals know, there are a number of different “personality styles” that show up in the approaches of managers in the workplace.  Great tools such as DiSC identify behavioral patterns managers and employees exhibit in the workplace that include “dominating”, “outgoing”, “influencing”, “steady”, “skeptical”, and “questioning”.  By definition, skeptical and questioning people like to have all the details and aren’t comfortable until they have them.

Being skeptical, questioning, and detail oriented can be critically important in business especially if you are a leader responsible for making business decisions that have a significant impact on the results of your business.  This approach can be beneficial in many instances and there is certainly nothing wrong with conducting deep analysis, understanding how things work, and doing everything possible to limit or minimize mistakes.  Unfortunately, sometimes being too detail oriented can frustrate other styles who like to move quickly and make decisions on instincts and smaller data sets.  We hear terms like “agility” and “disruption” being thrown around by organizations who think too much detail and too much analysis gets in the way of being innovative and agile.

54.

That’s the average number of unsolicited cold prospecting touches (emails, texts, phone calls, and letters) my focus group of 7 key business decision makers say they receive in a typical week.  That’s more than 10 a day and when I asked these decision makers if they ever follow-up on the unsolicited prospecting touches the answer was not unexpected, 0. Not one of the 7 professionals in my focus groups said they saw any value in the prospecting reach outs and wouldn’t waste even 2 seconds reviewing it because they all instantly knew it wasn’t for them.  Here are a few comments from the focus group that should sound familiar as we’ve all experienced this: