Sales Transformation. No need to change

We change our companies in good and bad times.

There’s no need to change when everything is ok, right? That’s exactly what most people think. Of course, this makes logical sense. Why spend time and effort, think much, then suddenly spoil everything and change yourself again? It’s hard. It’s even harder when things are not going well, right?

Usually, the company’s cycle of ups and downs repeats every 4-5 years. Have some acceleration—get cool customers, crisis in the market—no customers. Get new clients again—the market has begun to recover, but you have no available personnel who had attacked the company a year ago, pleading to hire them with a salary 30% smaller. Merry-go-round nonstop.

All the changes are difficult—that’s true. Write processes again, test them in the market, and observe how the colleagues support and  implement them in practice. And it’s very hard to draw conclusions afterward again and again. Why was I talking so much about complexity in the previous two paragraphs? Because too many people come through it with super-efforts. If there is no one inside the company eager to change it, to give it new speed, or, on the contrary, to focus on certain problems and solve them, we feel stupor. Especially when there are still bad times going on, and it will take a couple of years to wait for the heyday again.

Perfect time for homework?

Will there ever be the perfect time for homework? No. Will there be some kind of magic power to make everything work by itself? No. Is it possible to make people work more and pay less, to get more profit? Yes, it is, but not for long. How do all your changes begin? Precisely from you. Knowing that you need to change. The things you did 10 years ago may not work today. Habits—for example, your notebook with a pen—no longer work in digital systems. Notion—with all the files and coordination with employees+asynchronous communication without hundreds of calls per month for just two questions—will not slow down the company but will make it most effective.

Does everyone need to be effective?

Yes, and if you decide to stop, you may need to leave the role for someone who is active and energetic enough to make changes in the company. Why is there so much resistance to making a decision all the time when you need to change something in advance, not at the last moment? Because every change starts with you, and it is very difficult for many people. Because you always have to learn something new, to dig in, to think—and this is a time-consuming process. It’s rejecting. If not you, who else can do it?

I am addressing the CEO now, who has built a business titan for ages somewhere in his imagination. Maybe, it’s OK, but where will you be in your business later, when it works in a new way, and you come to the meeting with a notepad again?

There are plenty of different resources about how to pump energy and stay as focused as possible. I am sure that if you swing for the fences, then, like in a marathon, after the first 10 km, it will be easier. But what is the risk? You can finish your first marathon, burn out, and then completely lose interest in your favorite business. Everything that needs to be done and changed, sucks. To prevent this from happening, because business has been described long ago in all books as an individual organism,  you need to place the blocks from the energy losses correctly.

If you have a headache, the whole company will be sick. You should enlist the support of colleagues in the case you don’t know something. And they shouldn’t tend to give you a cold shower all the time but rather bring you to the right stream of ideas carefully, bit by bit, work with rejection, and involve you in it. Upgrade the team constantly: look for new and energetic people and give them opportunity to teach you new things. Get ready to run new marathons together, find your interest, and for the heaven’s sake, love routine and endless rearrangements in the processes.

Was there a perfect moment in our outsourcing?

Some intervals were really successful in time: 2004, 2012, and 2015, but after that there appeared to be too many IT companies working on the same traditional technology. They found cheaper employees on the market, or grew them up, as we say, and sold to the highest bidder. Or managed to get more than usual margin in a certain period of time, increase the staff at once, and open beautiful offices, but worked and acted in old habits. Ignoring the sales department, hiring chaotically, and clinging to the old habitual business methods, everyone had the same result: in bad years, large customers left for more flexible and nimble companies offering more values, and the old clients tried to find a problem inside and in themselves, what was going wrong, blaming customers, the market, and colleagues, evading the conclusion that they didn’t have to improve the company impulsively but constantly.

New companies created yesterday already have better marketing, more logical sites, and a more thoughtful approach to outreach. Why? Because everyone knows and understands the mistakes that entrepreneurs have repeatedly shared with everyone in clubs, chat rooms, etc. But think of yourself at 20, 30, 40 and even 50. What priorities did you have, how much energy, and how much desire did you have to do something and build? Those are completely different states, environments and values.

Everything is built almost the same way: first you want to prove to yourself personal ability to build a business, then you want famous clients, then the significant projects, money, to assemble the best team on the market, to set up all the processes in the company, and then you are 60. I’m laughing, of course, but for someone, all the changes may happen earlier. And for some, these things do not resonate at all. Someone wants not just to wear a hoodie, but also to live in a good house. For some, value is just availability of money, for the others, it is to provide himself with a permanent, interesting job. Someone feels out of control of the management and is glad that he works for himself. But all this comes down to how you improve yourself and your business life with people who came to you for various reasons described in the two sentences above.

It is evident that business purchases knowledge from people able to improve, fasten, stabilize and enrich it. But if you, as a business, just listen and do not want to improve yourself and your company—you are not interested in personal value—just in the simplest form of obtainig the money, avoiding intricate schemes and clever people, respectively, who can think and counsel. Have I ever seen a management ready to change, and are there constantly changing companies? Yes, in my practice, I  have been working with such clients for years. There are a few of them—2 to 3 per 10 companies of different ages and energy levels, but with a great desire to understand, try and draw their own conclusions.

This article is dedicated to the people who always and everywhere blame someone for something instead of figuring out personal business interests, their impact on business (not including payments to colleagues) and  their real role in company growth, their contribution to its wellbeing, and the number of innovations tested by them for the last year.