We spend a lot of time looking for better answers. But every once in a while, you come across something more useful than a better answer. A better question. And in my experience, there’s one that stands above the rest - and we use this question in almost every client engagement: “What would need to be
Read MoreOne of the things we humans do remarkably well is simplify the world around us. Reality is complex, nuanced, and constantly shifting. But in order to function day-to-day, we compress that complexity into something more manageable. One of the primary ways we do this is through
Read MoreMost of us have had the experience of walking into a room and noticing something that everyone else seems oblivious to; a persistent noise, a smell, a tension in the air. Mention it, and the response will often be along the lines of: “Oh yeah, I'd stopped noticing that till you just reminded
Read MoreI often hear from people, at all levels within a business, about how the focus always seems to be on the here and now - the immediate problems, the next fire - and how they wished they 'knew what the plan was'. A short term plan would be great, and knowing the longer term plan would be even better. It strikes me that this is not really just...
Read MoreSpoiler: It’s not about having all the answers. It’s about asking better questions. We started out by asking it simple stuff. “How many board feet of timber does Canada ship each year?” Not bad. Then we got more ambitious. “Who are the three main purchasing contacts at Caterpillar?” Bit of a swing and a miss. And eventually: “Design a...
Read MoreOften, when I examine a company’s approach to sales, they want to dive right into fixing the symptoms. They want to discuss MQL, SQL, Conversion ratios, average contract value, and so on. Where I want to start is with strategy: How have you defined your perfect prospect? What are the problems that you might solve for them? What are the...
Read MoreOver the last couple of weeks, quite coincidentally, I’ve had to contact a surprising number of customer service desks. This has included IT, hotels, airlines, banks, and stores etc. These required me to interact with FAQs, text bots, live chat, voice activated option bots (speaking/listening), and in most cases, I ended up 'communicating' in...
Read MoreSometimes, the cause of falling revenue is obvious – a major client fails, a sales channel quits, input costs increase, a new competitor enters your market. But more often, the cause is really hard to pin down and it can be really frustrating. Far too often we leap to price (our competitor is undercutting us), or sales effort (let’s have a sales...
Read MoreBack in high-school, one of the many books we had to read and discuss was 1984. Two of the questions we were posed concerned: 'what would have to happen for the world described in that book to come about', and 'what would have to be true for people in that world to not realise what was happening to them'; remember those 2 questions as you read...
Read MoreBuyers are increasingly using AI to solve problems such as ‘How do I manage a sales funnel? How do I seal glass to aluminum? Where should I stay in Atlanta? They do this because they will get answers rather than a list of ‘sponsored’ web pages they could visit. And they typically get a prompt asking if they would like to know where they can buy...
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