Part 9 in a series of articles from Sales Through Service: How to make customers want to buy again and again and again (because you’re so ‘great’!) by Guy Arnold
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Issue Number 7 – Inability to affect change in values or behaviours necessary for successful execution of strategy
So often businesses tell me that they have got great new strategies and ideas, but they consistently fail to realise them. Indeed, in a recent interview, David Cameron, Prime Minister of the UK, at the time of writing, explained that they were pulling all the levers, but they seemed to be attached by pieces of elastic: in other words, they were doing lots of things but nothing was happening!
This is entirely normal and very much linked to the issues we have already discussed. You cannot force anyone to do anything, and you can pull as many levers as you like but nothing will guarantee that things will get done as you want them.
Counter intuitively, you need to pull less levers, but be much clearer on what results you want to achieve through the levers. In other words, empower your people to get clear and simple results and hold them accountable for results with a very clear score board and measures.
Success lies within the systems properly executed: you cannot any longer rely on luck or money to see you through: the world is changing at a ridiculous pace and global competition is arising overnight: the success lies in the systems and the systems need to be devoted to the needs of your internal and external customer to make them feel valued, appreciated and motivated to get on and do all the things that you want them to do.
Then and only then will you make sure that your strategy actually gets implemented through your processes and behaviour.
How do you do this?
- Have a very clear customer focused mission.
- Filter all of your systems and processes through your internal and external customer’s real needs.
- Continually go the extra inch in your behaviour and your processes, and hold your ‘go the extra inch’ sessions.
- Have very clear lead and lag measures, based on the key results that your business has to generate in order to survive and thrive.
- Execute all of the above using tools of effectiveness, such as, win-win agreements, go the extra inch processes, and regular appraisals (that are short, simple and powerful and not long, complicated and boring).
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Next time: Issue no 8- Access to Capital
