Which box do you want to check?

[  ]  Change to grow and thrive
[  ]  Change to accommodate and stay abreast
[  ]  Change to make do and survive

Virtually every industry and every business has had to make changes since the start of the pandemic. Some were welcome and led to success, some were necessary, and some were downright discouraging. There is a silver lining: Change can be planned, executed and managed for outstanding success. Even if that means changing and adapting to recent unexpected events.

The Crispian Advantage helps teams assess their current status in relation to a planned change. Together we align people’s expectations for that change and track their progress. In parallel, we help identify where competencies, programs and procedures need improvement to adapt and prepare for change. We then work collaboratively to design and implement solutions. During this process we help refine an organization’s dashboard to track progress, make course adjustments, and achieve change program targets.

Prepare for Change

1. Grow revenue and competency together

Design training and other initiatives that are linked to real jobs.   Our strategy is to avoid event-based thinking which will only be suffered and seen as distracting. Instead:

  • Improve point of revenue generation activities
  • Integrate revenue and competency growth for specific deals
  • Deliver learning at the point of greatest need—how to win
2. Build on existing practices
  • Augment and extend clients’ existing standards and best practices
  • Translate practices into competitive competencies that are specific, measurable, and replicable.
  • Focus coaching on applauding desired behaviors and outcomes as well as correcting those that are not producing results
3. Identify change traps early

We help leaders and their managers avoid “change traps” such as:

  • Not walking their own talk so people don’t see why they should bother
  • Seeing changes as a quick fix
  • Throwing the baby out with the bath water and creating a “flavor of the month” atmosphere
  • Selecting standardized spray and pray training disconnected to people gaining revenue
  • Advocating more is better. Loading more techniques on busy people is at best ineffective.
  • Letting urgency bleed out importance, rather than removing distractions
  • Paying lip service to coaching and allowing subjective coaching that confuses and de-motivates
  • Allowing perfection to be the enemy of the good which results in little improvement
4. Remove distractions to release time for change

Work with teams to uncover and reduce distractions. Even when new strategies are introduced, Distraction Indices can be over 80%. That means 80% of the leader’s expectations are either not known or understood by those expected to implement the change.

  • What activities can people stop doing to release time to focus on improving revenue generating actions?

Coach for Change

5. Align change expectations between teams and individuals

Expectations flow in two directions: (1) What a leader expects of an individual and (2) what the individual thinks their leader expects. The expectations are often inconsistent or contradictory. Similarly, an individual has expectations of their leader of which the leader may not know or disregards.

We help leaders and individuals identify their expectations, met and unmet. We help resolve them through structured discussions to mutually agree to what they will stop, start, and continue doing.

6. Uncover revenue related blind spots to drive learning

We help leaders build accountabilities, performance metrics and tools, including rewards programs, to ensure expectations of both leaders and their people are met.

We also help integrate compensation and other directional systems to point people’s behavior toward a common strategic direction, goal, or purpose.

Ultimately, the goal is a culture that provides direction and focus, both formally and informally.

It’s not what you know, but what you don’t know that creates competitive momentum. Knowing the factors that make the difference to achieving superior performance, then practicing/executing them, separates sales winners from second place finishers.

We help people identify, map, and mitigate their own blind spots or self-limiting beliefs to reach their full potential.

7. Build a coaching culture to reinforce change

Help change leaders lead through coaching. This means each manager:

  • Models commitment to the change
  • Uses the same “leader language”
  • Provides consistent direction,

Without change leaders, change will be resisted and not seen as an opportunity. The goal is to accelerate the adoption and integration of the change they want to see.

8. Ensure people “do different things!”

The need to grow and compete has even more impetus today. Increased costs, competition, regulations, and technology investment mean growth through innovation is imperative. These dynamics dictate transforming sales and marketing processes. Doing things differently and doing different things will move the team forward. We guide people to:

  • Think! Be Creative! Enable Themselves
  • Define replicable skills
  • Reduce reliance on a few talented individuals and avoid favorites
  • Continuously develop new talent

Manage for Change

9. Establish people’s commitment to continuous improvement

We help to identify and leverage the existing tools, skills, and processes that are valued before introducing new concepts.

Where tools and processes are no longer aligned with a customer’s sales strategy, we work with the entire sales and marketing organization to make improvements through rapid prototyping.

10. Measure the ‘how’s’ not just the ‘what’s’ of success

Replace the over-reliance on winning or losing metrics by developing metrics that quickly tell you if you are on the right or wrong track. Rapid sales and competitive improvement require:

  • Changing the balance from outcomes to process-based approaches.
  • Moving management’s focus away from what was achieved to how they can win
11. Ensure everyone walks the same talk

Facilitate senior management, line managers, marketing, and customer-facing people to synchronize their behavior and use the same leader language.

Sustainable results are only possible when customers and stakeholders receive consistent signals and messages. Otherwise people will do what they have always done.

12. Develop speed, intensity and momentum

Many training solutions do not sustain the intensity and momentum required to overcome the status quo. You need to:

  • Do different things throughout the company
  • Move with speed so that your changes are not mired in inertia or swept away by circumstance.
  • Move with intensity by focusing on doing a few new things excellently.
  • Build momentum by promoting early successes that have resulted from the change.

Successful change relies on overcoming cultural inertia-FIRST

  • Gain line manager’s full commitment to change tools, processes, coaching and sales and marketing to elevate their skills.
  • Keep managers focused on a few key changes at any one time.  Too broad a focus slows down the acquisition and application of new skills and competitiveness.