Sometimes I’m shocked by the amount of time it takes for the “obvious” to become apparent to me.
We just completed a review of 100 of our clients as a means of calibrating our Target Filter and determining the characteristics of our most successful clients. We’re always trying to define our best prospects, not just those with the “potential to buy our services with speed,” (although that’s a very important quality), but those with the “greatest potential to implement our system with success.” The latter is the more important quality for us. It’s the quality on which our brand is built. To pick our prospects for the future, we wanted to use our past clients as our base data.
For the sake of the analysis, we defined successful implementation outcomes for our client as having one or more of these qualities:
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- Landed at least one account that was 10 – 20 times the size of their average account
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- Doubled their rate of sales revenue growth in the 12 month cycle following implementation
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- Grew targeted existing accounts by greater than 40% within six months
From our analysis, the companies that achieved these outcomes by implementing the Hunt Big Sales system exhibit the following characteristics:
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- Between $5M and $125M in annual revenue
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- Privately held with majority ownership in the CXO positions
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- Profitable operations over most recent 3+ year period
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- Senior management has been working together for 2+ years
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- Company has and implements its Strategic Plan
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- CEO/Executive Management invests in professional development
This last quality was UNIVERSAL! (To be clear, I’m not talking about their investment in HBS since that was a given due to the nature of the study.) In every case that we’ve seen remarkable success, this quality was also present.
And it makes sense. Just think, Tiger Woods has 5 coaches; Roger Federer – 4; Shaquille – 3. It seems that the best invest…
The groups that these companies invest in most consistently for development include:
Vistage: The world’s largest CEO and Executive Management development company.
The CEO Project: A remarkable and tailored CEO development program.
YPO: Young President’s Organization.
In addition, they invest in executive coaching, strategic planning, and process development. We also found Lean Manufacturing initiatives, quality systems initiatives and many other efforts to systematically improve the organization’s ability to perform.
Improvement at the highest level of the company is a cultural value, not an event or a “hail Mary pass.”
Our work aligns with their approach to improvement and fits into the belief sets of their people.
The Best Invest.
My appeal to you would be to ask yourself, “How is my company looking at its investment in being the best?” Are you being intentional? Is there a regular review of the areas that need improvement? When you identify these areas do you approach experts to help you through the process of getting better? After all, Tiger Woods can beat almost anyone in golf, yet he has 5 coaches to help him improve, not just a mirror.
So, here’s the obligatory sales pitch: If your company is looking to achieve remarkable results in sales growth through large account selling and have the criteria I listed above, consider coming to Indianapolis on July 30th for my one-day workshop “How to Land Big Sales.” Many of the companies who have had the most explosive growth using our system started with that first step.
I would also encourage you to look into the programs I listed above. They are not cheap—but becoming the best never is. I don’t know what Tiger’s, Roger’s or Shaq’s coaches cost, but I have to believe they used a criteria other than “lowest price” to make their choice on who would help them become world-class athletes. It has been my experience that when getting world-class development, there is a price for value.
I’d like to hear from you—what other programs have you seen that should be added to the list for CEO and Executive Management development?