NOTE: in this blog I use the terms prospect and customer interchangeably although they are different. The concepts of pain apply to both prospects and paying customers.

Consequently, it is important to focus conversations around the pains your prospects experience.  This requires sales and marketing people who are able to get prospects to discuss their pain.  Most people are not going to reveal their weaknesses to a sales person.

I spent many years selling security products and services.  I found that the way to get prospects to open up, was to simply be curious.

Curiosity

Curiosity is amazing. It creates a safe environment where people can openly discuss their pain.  However, you need be careful. Too much curiosity to quickly can make people defensive.

Over the years, I developed a set of questions to ease into discussions about pain.

• Tell me about the problems you are experiencing.
• How is this impacting (harming) you?
• How long has this been going on?
• What have you done to make things better?
• What results did you get?
• Have you tried anything else?
• Are you satisfied with your current efforts?
• Do you think there are better ways?
• How do you feel about this?

When people open up and reveal pain, you must show empathy, concern, and more curiosity. Then you are building a relationship based on support and care, rather than a merely transactional sales engagement. Curiosity is magical in how well it disarms people and reveals truth.

Being curious also refocuses the conversation away from you (and your products) and on the customer. People like to talk about themselves. They will like and trust you when you let them talk about themselves.

Storytelling

However, not every customer will be receptive to curiosity. It may cause the customer to take up a defensive posture where they will reveal nothing. In this case, you need to nudge them back to a safe space. Telling a story can do this.  But not any stories, rather a stories with the specific intent of communicating “I am like you, I get you.”

Again, most salespeople mess this up, as they tell stories about themselves. For example, anybody blathering about what a big shot they were when they worked at some big boy company, is not communicating empathy. They are communicating ego.

What are these stores like? I tinkered around with this for years. I found that stories that are tangentially relevant, were the most effective. A tangentially relevant story is about pain that is similar (not identical) to the prospect’s pain.

For example, when I was meeting senior level security people, I would often tell stories about when I did security operations (SOC) work for a customer. I did not focus on me (or confidential customer information), but rather on the clumsy tools and soul-crushing politics of the organization. In other incidents, I would tell stories about the frustrations of deploying particular technologies which were similar (but not identical) to the technology the customer was installing.

The intent of these stories was twofold:

• I have “been there done that”
• I understand your pain

The reason my stories worked, was the tangentially relevant details.  For example, when I mentioned the politics of the organization.  Superficially, this sounded like innocuous complaining, but when people hear these details, it reinforces the credibility of the story. Moreover, it communicated to the listener, “I have had to put up with this stuff too.”  Small, unusual details are what make stories more real.

Once I had reassured the customer I understood them, they were more receptive to a question such as “tell me about your pain.”

Incidentally, while I did draw upon my experiences for stories, I also altered the details so as not to reveal confidential information. Stories do not need to be absolutely accurate. Removing key details ensures you are not violating confidentiality while still benefiting from those experiences.

Training Sales to Tell Stories

Invariably, this prompts the question, how do you train salespeople to do this?

1. Stop pitching. Reorganize your sales methods to stop all pitching. The first few meetings with a customer should be 100% listening and gathering information. Any discussion of your product or services should be relegated to later.
2. Build Buyer Personas. While not discussed in this blog, it is vital you understand who you are selling to. Buyer Personas help define these people. More specifically, they should define what is important to these buyers.
3. Role Play: Gather your sales team and role play scenarios.  Hire a sales coach to help.
4. Remove Ego and Collaborate. You do not need to actually experience something to tell a story about it. With an ounce of creativity and a lot of humility, you can borrow stories (and be honest with customers that you borrowed it.) Remember, the story is not about making you seem smart or cool, but rather reassuring the prospect you understand them and have credibility. Collaborate with other’s and listen to their stories. The stories you need are everywhere around you.

That last item is the real magic. The gateway to stronger relationships with customers is to remove your ego from every engagement. I can tell in an instant when a salesperson cares about me or themselves. It is all in how they present information.

If you can tell a genuine story, that shows you care, you can build a strong relationship based on trust, and not merely selling.

The post How to Get Sales Prospects to Discuss Pain appeared first on Zenaciti.

When people work face to face, trust builds naturally.  Casual interactions, body language, and frequent socializing strengthens the bonds between people and therefore builds trust.  Consequently, leaders who were able to manage accountability through casual interactions pre-pandemic, lost this ability when the workforce became remote.  Since remote work is here to stay, this problem of accountability persists in many organizations.

As mentioned in a previous blog, I have been lurking in many on-line forums for leadership as well as Reddit’s (in)famous Antiwork forum.  Lack of clarity around expectations, schedules, and responsibilities is a persistent source of ire among Antiwork commenters.  In one Anitwork post, a remote worker dodged repeated, angry calls from his manager demanding he get online to finish a project, that was not his responsibility.  Likewise, in my work with other startup CEOs, there are recurring complaints about holding remote workers accountable and maintaining deadlines.

Accountability (or a lack thereof) impacts both leaders and employees.  Yet, like many other organizational problems, leaders must embody the behaviors they wish to see in others.  As such, here are ten tips for improving accountability among a remote workforce.  These tips are derived from my own experience as a founder/CEO as well as providing advisory services to other startup CEOs.

Ten Tips for Remote Worker Accountability

1. Doc It

Talk is cheap and easily forgotten.  Whenever a decision is made, an issue discussed, or a plan made, document it.  This ensures everybody is working from a shared, trusted source of information and not memory.  There are numerous collaboration tools, like Atlasian’s Confluence, Microsoft Sharepoint, or Trello which provide tools to capture agreed upon goals and plans.  For lower tech workplaces, pen and paper are equally effective.

2. Make Meetings Matter

It is extremely easy for people to waste time babbling and pontificating in meetings.  This feels like work. It is not.  Silence the babblers, stay on task, and keep meeting short.  Also, document action items from meetings, to prevent repeating the same topics in subsequent meetings.

3. Hope is for the Holidays

One of the more insidious weasel words in corporate speak is “hope.”  As in “I hope to get work done.”  When people say hope, they are avoiding commitment and passing off accountability to the whims of fate.  Stop all use of the word hope.  Require people to use the word “plan” or “intend.”  This may seem trivial, but it makes a significant difference in perception of a commitment.

4. Be Curious

If your team is missing deadlines, rather than blame, be curious. Use exploratory questions such as: “What is holding you back?” “How can I help you?” “What happened to delay the project?”  Avoid “why” questions, as they sound like blame.  Curiosity drives people to hold themselves accountable.

5. Silence Blame

Blame is a potent workplace toxin. Blame is how everybody (managers and employees) side-steps accountability.  It feels satisfying and justified to blame somebody else yet it accomplishes nothing. Shut down blame and refocus everybody to solving problems and accomplishing goals.

6. Pour on the Praise

If blame is a workplace toxin, praise is an effective antitoxin.  When team members meet commitments and accomplish goals, praise them openly and profusely.  Reward the behaviors you want, and you will get more of them.

7. Set and Respect Schedules

Have all team members set and commit to a recurring work schedule.  This not only replicates the cadence of going to a physical office, but it also sets boundaries for when meetings or quick chats are acceptable.  Boundaries that leaders must respect.

8. Open Calendars

Shared calendars are an ideal way for everybody to transparently communicate their availability as well as their work schedule.  This ensures those boundaries mentioned earlier are communicated effectively.  Communicate the importance of this transparency to the team.  Then ask the IT team to open calendars for sharing.  Establish a requirement that everybody, including leadership, is expected to maintain their calendar.  Anybody concerned about privacy issues can block out private meetings or use a personal calendar on a different platform.

9. Beware of the Likability Conundrum

Being clear, resolute, and consistent with expectations are good leadership practices.  Those behaviors will also cause some people to dislike you because they do not like being held accountable.  This is the Likability Conundrum.   You can be an effective leader, yet people will still dislike you. When the team meets goals, produces results, and receives praise for the success, the dislike caused from being held accountable will fade.

10. Cameras On

When you can see a person’s face, you communicate more effectively and build trust more naturally.  Require cameras on for all meetings.

Conclusion

The core concept of holding remote teams accountable is increased formality.  When people work face-to-face, they build informal avenues of accountability.  Remote workforces demand a more formalized approach, especially when it comes to documentation.

Moreover, formalized practices also set clear boundaries.  This allows both leaders and employees to work within established rules and expectations, while also allowing people to leave work behind when the logoff.

Even with the pandemic subsiding, remote work is here to stay.  As such, rather than forcing people back into the office, update your accountability practices to work for both remote and on-site people.

The post How to Improve Remote Workforce Accountability appeared first on Zenaciti.

However, Antiwork is only one side of the story.  Consequently, I also started lurking in a number of other forums focused on leadership, entrepreneurialism, and startup businesses.  These forums tell a profoundly different story.  While some leaders (like myself) are genuinely sympathetic to the struggles of workers, most are not.  These leaders blame everything from weak education, government handouts, and even Hollywood movies for causing workers to revolt.  They are genuinely panicked, but conceal it with rage, arrogance, racism, and many other forms of hatred.

Predictably, these leaders never blame themselves.

In the midst of all my lurking, along comes some new research from the Association for Change Management Professionals (ACMP). This article provides fascinating evidence on how toxic work culture impacts turnover. A core conclusion of this report is that companies with good cultures have lower turnover.

The ACMP research also shows that the Great Resignation defies simplistic answers.  However, among the many insights, there is a loud and clear one for leaders: workers are fed up with the toxic, American work culture. While low pay and weak benefits are undoubtedly significant factors driving resignations, toxic work culture is the real leviathan lurking under the surface.

Fixing corporate culture is equally a complex effort that also defies simplistic answers. However, one of the lessons I learned in my own leadership training was: when there is success, look out the window. When there is failure, look in the mirror. This was a reminder to reflect on my own behaviors when there were problems, rather than jumping to blame everybody else.

While a top ten list of ideas to improve corporate culture is woefully inadequate, there is only so much I can jam into a blog. With that in mind, here are my 10 ideas for leaders who want to improve corporate culture

Ten Ways to Clean Up Corporate Culture

1.       It is Not About You

I am appalled at how tone-deaf many leaders are about their own importance.  They will toss around all the big and important people they know, as if that is some fabulous accomplishment that grants them authority over everybody.  Workers do not care that you met Andy Grove at a really chic party.  Proximity to power is not an accomplishment. Bragging about your own importance only makes sycophants respect you. For everybody else, this makes them feel inferior and resentful.

Talk about the team and their accomplishments. Talk about great ideas. Talk about plans for the future. Talk about anything other than yourself, who you know, and what you did ten years ago – nobody cares.  Which is a good segue to the next item.

2.       Listen

Following from the previous item, nobody likes the blathering blowhard who talks over everybody (boy, did I learn that the hard way.)  There are numerous Antiwork posts from workers fed up with being talked down to, bullied, and ignored from leaders. In one post on Antiwork from a few months back, a young woman said she was talking to her boss about a problem with their computer system. The boss just shut her down and told her she did not understand how it worked.  Fed up with the bullying, she walked out and quit on the spot.

A few years ago, I discovered a great truth about leadership: the more you talk the stupider you sound.  Shut up and listen.  Listen to the workers’ worries, concerns, and complaints.  You might not be able to solve the problems, but listening will show empathy and build connection.

3.       Stop the Hustle Culture Nonsense

Everybody has the exact same number of hours in a day to spend.  If you want spend 14 hours a day working, that is your choice.  You cannot impose that expectation on anybody else.  It is unrealistic.

If there is a lot to do, then focus on prioritizing what must be done with the time you have. It is unhealthy and unsustainable to push people to work more hours. Even the people who freely choose to work long hours should be required to take some time off. It will be good for them and everybody else.

4.       Home Invasion

Working from home and being on-line 24×7 is now the default arrangement for many workers.  There are a lot of benefits to work from home, but there are also some huge drawbacks. One of those is that people’s work is now inside their home and invading more of their time. Going into a workplace imposes a natural barrier between work and life.  Those barriers are disappearing.

If working 14 hours a day is unreasonable, so too is expecting people to be available 24×7. Work must respect people’s time off. If you need people working at odd hours or on call, then you must hire enough to balance those demands, otherwise do not offer it.

5.       PTO is Sacred

Speaking of time off, it is precious. There are a multitude of studies that overwhelmingly prove that taking a healthy amount of time off makes people more effective as employees.

However, unlimited PTO is a lie.  Make PTO simple and sacred.

6.       It is Inflation, Stupid

People are asking for raises not because they are lazy entitled communists who hate America, but because milk, bread, and cat food cost a lot more than they did a year ago.  Blame whoever you want for this, it is a serious problem that impacts the lowest paid people the most. Ranting and raving about lazy Millennials, government hand outs and the decimation of American exceptionalism only makes you sound like an idiot.

7.       COVID is not a Hoax

900,000 people are dead in the USA from COVID. That is twice the number of US citizens who died in World War II. Protecting your team’s health is a top priority of any leader.  If you are unclear on this concept, read Simon Sinek’s Leaders Eat Last.

It is completely unacceptable and irresponsible to demand people to come to work if they feel ill.

8.       Get the Jerks Out

Nothing kills corporate culture faster than enabling or supporting bad behaviors.  A jerk employee can obliterate productivity and loyalty in mere moments. However, there is a fine line between being a jerk that destroys culture and a rockstar that defines it.  Both jerks and rockstars can have a lot of energy and ambition. Both may work hard and produce results. From a leadership position, it is easy to confuse these two.

The simplest way to tell the difference is what they talk about.  Rockstars talk about great ideas and praise others.  Jerks talk about themselves and praise those in power.  Jerks drive away good employees, rockstars drive away bad employees.

Do not hesitate. Fire the jerks. Keep an eye on the rockstars and make sure they do not devolve into jerks.

9.       Compassionate Curiosity

You want to build a healthier, happier, more engaged workplace?  Be compassionately curious.  Ask questions, seek out new ideas, and encourage people to share. Compassion builds connection with people, while curiosity drives the company’s interests forward.

We all learned this in kindergarten, and it works.

10.   People Need Purpose

One of the most common complaints from workers on Antiwork is how they feel like their job is meaningless.  Once again, I am routinely amazed at how dismissive leaders are to communicating any kind of organizational vision, mission, and values. I have observed leaders dismiss these ideas as stupid, New Age touchy-feely nonsense.

A company without vision, mission, or values may make money, but it will never make a difference.

Defining vision, mission, and values is well beyond the scope of this blog. However, the Society of Human Resource Professionals has a good primer on these concepts. The best way to build a healthier corporate culture is to define core values, mission, and vision and then strive to achieve them every day. It can provide meaning to work that may feel meaningless.

Conclusion

That last item is, in my opinion the most significant deficiency in many workplaces: a lack of meaning.  Few people work because they love what they do.  People work to feed themselves and their families.  If you look at companies which are weathering the Great Resignation well, there are some consistent themes. Obviously, good pay and benefits are part of that.  However, as the ACMP article shows, company culture has an even significant impact on employee engagement.

Corporate culture is not a pizza party, a birthday celebration, or a hoodie with the company logo.  It is the values on your wall, the mission you share, and the vision of your leaders.  If you truly want to improve culture, then:

• Stop talking about yourself or all the money the company makes
• Start talking about the mission, values, and vison of the organization, and how that solves problems and helps people.
• Keep listening to those around you and show compassionate curiosity.

The Great Resignation is many different things.  Ultimately, it might be the best thing to happen to American workplaces.

The post Toxic Corporate Cultures are Driving the Great Resignation appeared first on Zenaciti.

I spent some time surveying the vendor emails I have received over the past few months.  While most of these are innocuous, there were quite a few with a notable aggressive tone.  Here is an example of an email I just got this past week:

 Why won’t you return my emails? Do you want to be a victim in the coming wave of attacks?”

The COVID pandemic and related anxiety are certainly a factor.  However, a quick look back through my old messages to pre-pandemic times still produced some aggressive emails.

Why has email marketing become so agressive?

Harassment Marketing

I believe there is one obvious reason, and two less obvious ones for this uptick in harassing marketing:

• Desperation for sales
• Lack of messaging discipline
• Weak leadership

Lack of sales is the obvious reason.  Marketing and sales teams are under pressure to produce results.  This is particularly true of startup companies.  Desperate companies employ desperate measures.

However, only some companies devolve into harassing their prospects when sales are down.  This is where leadership and message discipline come into play.

There are a lot of executives (especially in the startup world) who only have a single tool in their leadership toolbox: aggression.  I suspect this comes from how they became a leader in the first place; they bullied and shoved their way to the top.  Since aggression worked to get them where they are, they use it for everything.  When pressured to perform, they become aggressive. When challenged, they become aggressive. When they do not know what to do, they … you get the idea.

Unsurprisingly, aggressive leaders who bully others to get what they want will naturally resort to bullying their prospects into buying their products and services.  Aggression begets aggression.

However, we must be careful not to confuse aggression with confidence.  It is one thing to show pride in your products or express faith in a team.  It is something much darker when you send a zillion emails to people threatening them to reply.

So, how do you avoid descending into harassing marketing?  Having dump trucks full of money and not hiring bullies usually does the trick.  However, as that is easier said than done, I am going to shove those two issues aside and focus on the more important issue: message discipline.

Message Discipline

Have you ever read some of the emails and marketing content that startups generate?  Awful does not describe it sufficiently.  It is advanced awful.  Recently, I was reading a company’s “Definitive Guide” and got a headache from the eyerolling.  Pages of banal platitudes and grandiose claims.  For example, it took this “Definitive Guide” over 200 words to inform me that “losing data can be catastrophic to a company.”  The raccoons eating garbage in my backyard know that.

Messgae discipline is a set of basic communication principles that force you to stay on topic and build a lasting relationship with your audience. Let’s take a look at some of the components of message discpline.

1. Less is More

I just got a spam email today that was 1391 words long.  It took a full 6 paragraphs, boasting about the speed of the product, the awards they won, and the amazing track record of their genius leadership.  Ugh.  So many words, so little said.  You could have a product that cures cancer, ends world hunger, and eliminates all forms of human suffering, and people would still not read your 1000-word email, even if you send it to them 50 times.

No marketing email should be longer than three sentences or about 40 words.  If you cannot make your point in three sentences, then it is not worth reading.

Also, if you cannot get your point across in one or two emails, then you never will.

2. Curiosity

Most vendor emails spill out everything about a company, its products, benefits, and reference customers.  Moreover, ludicrous boastful statements like “we are the premier cloud solution for globally dominant brands” just make you sound ridiculous.

You want to make your audience curious. You want them to read your email, and then want to know more. The way to do this is to entice them to come to you.  Do not say what you do, or how great you are. Simply lay out your core value proposition and then invite the reader to come learn more from you.  For example:

API security is difficult. We believe there is a better way.  If you want to know more, let’s chat.

The more mystery you create about what you do, the more likely people will seek you out.

3. Play the Long Game

Quantity of content is not going to compensate for quality.  Sending out wave after wave of emails will not generate business.  Marketing is a slow grind.  You need to calm down and play the long game.

• Do not hit your email lists more than once per quarter. Anything more than that is bordering on harassment.
• Opt-out links must be flawless. If a prospect opts out of your marketing platform you have a solemn duty to never email that person ever again in their life.  It is never acceptable to get this wrong.
• Change your content frequently. Repetitive content feels harassing since people have seen it before and do not want to see it anymore.
• How about dropping the email blasts entirely? Do they really work?  How about blogs? Videos? Or something creative like a mock interview?  Creative ideas can be scary (sometimes insane.) Yet, if you do something different, it will stand out.  Even if it flops, it will make people notice your company.  A good example of this was Zscaler’s booth at RSA a few years back where people smashed firewalls with sledgehammers.  It was a wildly creative concept and supremely effective.
• Keep the email painfully brief and direct the reader to meaningful content. Let the reader come to you.  A person who clicks a link to read your content is inherently more interested.

4. Never Pitch

Nobody wants to hear your pitch.  Maybe that technique worked in 1997. Today’s high-tech buyers are savvier and have more information available to them.

Rather than pitching your product, try discussing the customer’s problems.  In other words, make your marketing about the customer and not about you.  I will eagerly read a “Definitive Guide” that addresses things I am worried about or are causing me difficultly.  Yet, the instant that guide strays from discussing the problem to pitching a product, my interest wanes.

Another way to accomplish this is to ask questions and propose some possible answers.  Keep those answers generic.  Offer the reader good ideas, strategies, and techniques, rather than product talking points.

5. Know the Audience

Who do you want to read your content?  You must know your audience.  What is their job, their experience level, their hopes, their problems, the things that make them laugh, etc.  When writing content, visualize this person and write “at” them.  It is amazing how much better (and concise) content becomes, when you have a clear idea of who you want to read it.

6. Show, Don’t Tell

When the time comes to present your product: show, don’t tell.  Show me how your product solves a problem.  Show the reports. Show the data. Show the screens.

Another way to say this suggestion: do not treat the audience as incapable of comprehending your product.  If you treat your customers like intelligent people, guess what kind of customers you will attract?  (Hint: not gullible idiots.)

Give your audience the freedom to discover why you are better.  This has the added benefit of getting people more invested in your products and vision.  Which gets to the final item on this list.

7. Start with Why

As Master Sinek teaches us all:  People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.  If you want people to be attracted to your products, then you must clearly communicate your vision.  Why did you make your product? What greater purpose does your product and company serve?

Content that leads with vision may feel awkward to you because you live and breathe the product every day.  However, to a prospect who does not know you, vision is the ideal way to introduce yourself.

At ABCTech we believe security is for everybody. That is why we make cloud security easy.  If you need a better way to secure cloud workloads, then let’s chat.

In those three sentences, I now know what this company believes and what they do.

Conclusion

Aggressive marketing does not work.  For every prospect it attracts, it repels many more.  With a more intelligent approach, you can up level your communication and attract a savvier (an wealthier) set of customers.

If you want to truly communicate with prospective customers, you must stop thinking about what you want to say and start thinking about what other people want to hear.

Also, a funny thing happens when shift your focus to other people instead of yourself: you acquire additional leadership skills beyond aggression. Skills such as listening, diplomacy, creativity, and empathy arise from reflection and thinking of others.

As for all those emails you receive from vendors, resist the urge to complain on social media about them. That will not stop them.  It has the unintended effect of giving them more attention (this is the  Streisand Effect.)  What will stop them is to ignore them or use your email system to block their address.

Happy marketing!

The post Harassment Marketing appeared first on Zenaciti.

However, not all startup pivots are as drastic as rice to Donkey Kong. Many are ordinary business model adjustments in respond to customer demand. For example, in early-2000s YouTube was a dating site, where people uploaded videos looking for love. While the dating service was a dud, the video sharing was not. 

I was a founder who pivoted my company three times:

• In 1997, I ended my technical writing business to focus exclusively on being a cybersecurity product reseller (VAR). 
• In 2013, I sold off the VAR business and changed to professional and managed services. 
• In 2017, I launched a cloud security platform service, and began moving away from professional services. 

While the company remained in the security industry, each of those changes was necessary to keep pace with shifting customer demand. Each of those changes was also excruciating. Like changing the wings of the plane in mid-flight, I had to oversee drastic organizational changes while keeping the business running and making money.

All that struggle taught me some valuable lessons. Namely, it taught me that pivoting a company is a delicate dance, on a collapsing wooden bridge, over a river of lava, filled with sharks.

In other words, pivoting a startup is not something you do on a whim. 

With the benefit of hindsight, I identified six major lessons from my pivoting experience. While I wrote these six lessons with a business leader in mind, they are equally relevant for employees enduring a pivot as well.

1. Why?

There is a reason I used the image of dancing over lava. Changing the direction of a company is dangerous. If it fails, the company collapses. Before doing or saying anything, you must nail down your reasons for doing it at all. 

When I pivoted away from the VAR business, I had powerfully precise and personal reasons to make the change. The VAR business model is profoundly outdated (I documented this in the Anitian blog, Goodbye Yellow Brick VAR). However, what truly motivated me was that running a VAR was turning me into somebody I hated: a cruel and selfish leader. 

As you move through a pivot, you will face a tremendous amount of self-doubt and detractors. You must ground yourself with a clear reason why you are making the change, otherwise the self-doubt will crush you. It will be too easy to abandon the pivot and go back to what is comfortable.  Pivoting a startup will never be comfortable, which is why you need to know why. 

Your reasons why will ultimately help you convince people to follow you into this new venture. This is why Simon Sinek reminds us to start with why. 

It helps to write down your reasons and keep them close (like taped to your mirror so you look at them every day.)

2. Where?

Once you know why to pivot, the next question is “where?” Where is the company going? 

When I changed from a services company to a product company, I spent a year talking about a new kind of security company. I laid out my ideas in presentations, articles, and goals. This vision of a new company, with a new set of products and services helped guide employees, partners, and eventually customers through the change.

The ultimate question you must answer is: after the change is made, what will the company look like? Who is employed in this new company? What do they do? How do you make money? Who are your customers? Why do your customers buy? These are all basic questions you must be able to answer.

However, you need to be careful with all this discussion in the early stages, which leads to the next item on this list.

3. Control

Pivoting a company is a bit like running a nuclear power plant. You must carefully control the rate of change to achieve the outcome you want. The unstable element in this reactor is (as it always is) people. Change too quickly, and your employees and customers will react in unpredictable, and potentially devastating ways. Change too slowly, and your efforts may sputter out.

For example, as I pivoted out of the VAR business, I slowly modified our sales pitch and marketing content over a 12-month period. Each quarter, I had the sales team focus a little more on services, and less on products. I also made small changes to commissions to reward service sales. The changes were small, easy for people to handle, and always linked back to the vision.

In the early phases of a pivot, the changes to the company need to be almost imperceptible. This allows your team to ease into the changes. Make these changes small, but keep talking about the old business and its value. You want people to see movement toward the new business, with a grounding in the old. 

In time, you must accelerate change, which increases fear, stress, and opposition among your employees. Once the pivot heats up, the stakes also increase. You are no longer controlling change, but playing a tense game of poker with the old business.

4. Stack the Deck

As change accelerates, your team will notice the changes. This will make them uncomfortable. At this point, you must not only accelerate the changes, but make it so there is no “going backwards.”   

In the tense final days of my VAR business, one of the finance people became frustrated as I questioned an outdated process. Exasperated, he said, “that’s not how we do it. We cannot just change everything overnight.” Amused, I replied, “why not?” This person had come face to face with a new reality. The old, comfortable ways of doing things were ending.  A new order was coming. 

People derive satisfaction and value from their expertise and experience. Change threatens this balance. When the discomfort of change becomes overwhelming, people will revolt and undermine your efforts to pivot the company.

I faced this dilemma many times.  After some trial and error, I devised a strategy to keep the pivot moving: stacking the deck. 

It works like this: 

1. Identify the people who are resisting the changes and unlikely to come on board with the new business model. 
2. Keep those people comfortable working under the old business methods. This keeps them satisfied and keeps the existing business (and income) chugging along.
3. Hire new people and train them exclusively on new processes and new business (what you are pivoting the business toward.) 
4. As the new business model takes hold, slowly marginalize the old business and the people working in it.
5. In time, the resisting employees will have to face a choice: get with the new business or leave. 

And leave they will. Tensions will increase as the old and new business clash. When the tensions hit a boiling point, you need to hit the gas. 

5. Tipping Point

Pivots hit a tipping point, when everybody sees change happening. Tensions are high. The old business and new business are fighting for prominence. 

Once this tipping point arrives, you must go all in. Wipe away the old business swiftly. You cannot hesitate at this stage. Change must be decisive, conclusive, and absolute. 

When I exited the VAR business, I pulled down the website on Friday. On Sunday, a new site was running with all mention of the VAR business wiped away. On Monday, I made an announcement to the employees, we were done being a VAR and there was absolutely no going back. Some were shocked, most were not. Anybody who had been paying attention saw this change happening. The only people shocked were those that were never going to accept the change in the first place. 

Rapid change like this will shock people, partners, and customers. Yet, it demonstrates your resolve. When the tipping point arrives, change must be swift and final. 

Nevertheless, there will be fallout from the change, which gets to the last item. 

6. Leave the Past in the Past

A company pivot, regardless of the scope, emotionally affects people (including you). Former employees may feel betrayed and lash out. Employees that remain will feel confused and uncertain about the new direction. After enduring the stress of pivoting the company, this emotional collateral damage can unravel everything.

For example, after dumping the VAR business, I harbored unhealthy levels of anger and resentment. I felt like a failure. The anger was blocking me, worrying employees, and threatening the whole change.

Time heals all wounds. I was fortunate to have a network of coaches, counselors, and supporters who helped me deal with my emotions and refocus on the future. However, your people may lack these resources.

Intellectually, we all understand that change is necessary (usually). However, change generates uncertainty, which in turn causes anxiety and discomfort. It is natural for people feeling unsure about the future of the company, to reject the changes, undermine leadership, and push the company to return to “the good old days” when they felt more comfortable. I saw this happen repeatedly when I went through my pivot in 2017.

People derive their self-worth from their experience and role in the company. Changing the company threatens their self-worth. Change becomes the enemy.

How can you resolve this?

1. Acknowledge the Past: The previous business was a necessary step on the road to the future.
2. Show Gratitude: Openly thank and praise to those who stuck with you and the company during the change.
3. Full Speed Ahead: Be firm and clear there is no going back to the old ways.

The first step shows people that the past has value and creates a bridge to the future. This helps people feel like their previous contributions had value.

The second step reduces anxiety, fear, and feelings of loss. It allows the people who stayed to continue to earn self-worth from their experience (which they need.) However, it also reassures new people. Seeing experienced people get praise, shows newer employees they too can earn praise if they stick with changes and remain agile. Public praise is the most powerful motivator you have as a leader (it is significantly more powerful and long-lasting than money.)

The final item, and the most important of my list, cuts off any return to the past. People need this. They need certainty. Be decisive and firm that the changes are permanent. If you sense any attempt to go back to the old ways, snuff it out quickly. This is especially important with sales and marketing groups. 

Conclusion

Change is the only constant in life. How we deal with change is as least as important as how we deal with life. The necessity of change is often obvious (new technology, new methods, new markets, new demands, etc.) What people lack is the nerve to make the changes and embrace discomfort. This is why any pivot must begin with the leadership. 

A leader who respects the complexities of change can help people navigate that change and deliver success. Moreover, leaders can make a stressful experience, become an extremely rewarding one. When the change is successful, people look back on the experience with fondness. The stress and anxiety, in time, become positive feelings of growth and empowerment. 

Reflecting back on my pivots, they were all miserable, stressful, and exhausting…and I would do it all over again. I look back upon them with pride.  

There is a reason companies like Nintendo made their change. The path from rice to Donkey Kong was undoubtedly rough. Yet, could you imagine anything different? Pivots may be painful, but they are a necessary part of building a great business. 

Go forth and pivot.

The post How to Pivot a Startup appeared first on Zenaciti.

The posts typically sound like this:

“Hey vendors, here is a sure-fire way to wind up in my ‘never do business’ list,’ send me an unsolicited email asking for a meeting. BAM! I am never working with you!!!” You need to understand what it’s like to be a CISO. You’re not in my chair!

or maybe this one…

“I got email from a salesperson who did not take the time to do their homework. My time is too precious and important to be wasting with all these salespeople!” 

Yeah, how dare anybody want to talk to you.

This article in Forbes from a while back makes the same complaints, although in a less passive aggressive manner. It is not a bad article, but it still perpetuates the notion that salespeople need to be put in their place.

Why all the rage and disgust directed at people who are merely doing their jobs?

Insecure Leadership

I believe this is a variation on Imposter Syndrome. These “leaders” feel insecure about being leaders. They believe the only way to demonstrate their authority and importance is to lash out at people they deem beneath them. They conflate cruelty and aggression with being in charge.

There are so many things wrong with this behavior it is difficult to itemize them all. However, the most ironic aspect of this is that it contradicts itself. Leaders who post these rants claim they do not have time to waste on irritating salespeople. Yet, they are wasting time on irritating salespeople posting these rants. All this ranting about salespeople hide the truth: they suck at leading. They do not properly prioritize their time or treat people with respect. Two critical skills for any leader.

Unfortunately, this ranting works to some extent. While it does nothing to stop the salespeople, it does attract other weak leaders who share a similar need to berate people. Consequently, the weak leaders get what they really want: validation.

In the end, nothing good comes of this. Nobody gets anything, nothing is better, and nothing of value was created. A petty person feels better about themselves, we all feel worse.

Ugh.

No Sales, No Job

For better or worse, sales is a fundamental component of business. Without sales, there is no money. No money, no job. Indirectly, you and everybody at your organization, owes your job to one (or more) salespeople who bring in business to pay your salary. Salespeople have an important and difficult job. Ranting about them solves nothing, does nothing, and you are not going to stop them, ever.

Furthermore, innovative ideas can arise from anywhere, even annoying salespeople. Perhaps the product they are selling is excellent, they simply lack effective communication skills. A good leader can see through this and focus on the message, not the messenger.

Admittedly, harassing marketing is irritating (See Harassment Marketing). There are simple (and respectful) ways to respond. You can say “no thank you” or delete the message. This takes seconds to accomplish, costs nothing, and hurts nobody. Anybody who has done sales for more than an hour knows that rejection is part of the game.

Being a leader means respecting all people, even the irritating ones. You do not need to give annoying salespeople your time. However, posting self-indulgent rants about salespeople solves nothing. All it does is telegraph to the world that you do not know what you are doing.

Now, will sales ever be sane again? I wonder to myself.

For culture reference, the title of this blog comes from Panic from the Smiths. This blog was originally published February 2, 2018 and has been revised a few times since then. 

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