Spirited Investors helps businesses tackle their problems and opportunities. We do this by investing money, know-how, effort, and time. 

Spirited’s key investment focus, at this time, is smaller businesses. Smaller businesses: think in terms of private companies ranging from early-stage revenue to $10,000,000 in sales.  

Smaller-business success is influenced in a profound way by the presence or absence of good Marketing & Sales performance.

Unfortunately, the absence is more common than the presence.  Together, we can fix this.  

Marketing: Most small businesses do little marketing, aside from a very-limited set of things such as attending trade shows and having a printer do up some brochures to support sales. Websites exist but often they are neither compelling nor updated. When marketing activity does happen it is rarely measured or tested. Marketing work receives perhaps sporadic attention. There is little commitment to doing marketing. Some say it is not required. They are wrong. Many think they do it right or state ‘these things are under control’. Yet, most businesses struggle at identifying: [1] target markets, [2] value propositions, and [3] unique selling propositions. Meanwhile, the whole marketing & sales process, from strategic to tactical, must start with those 3 things.  

Sales: Often, small-business owners personally handle much of the sales activity at their company. They regularly choose to do sales work rather than delegate it. They have problems when they do try to delegate it. The recruiting of sales people is another real challenge. And, about 7 out of 10 sales people shouldn’t even be in sales jobs. The 80/20 Rule is confirmed, that is, if sales success is happening at all then ‘the few’ generate the lion’s share of the sales revenue. Within an industry, most competitors do sales work more or less the same way. Not much innovation, not much creativity. So, sales attitudes can be quite lackluster and even when sales performance is happening the work isn’t much fun.  

Most small businesses do not have a written Plan for their Marketing & Sales.  

Almost all smaller businesses need help with marketing & sales [not just sales work on its own]. Even those that are earning profit are leaving money on the table and leaving clients less than fully satisfied. They would do better if they had a Marketing & Sales Plan. Marketing & sales must start with Plan the Work [ie, Napoleon Hill – Plan the Work and Work the Plan].  

Planning offers at least 2 major benefits: (1) it forces folks to think through the issues and that ‘thinking through’ alone adds value and (2) the Plan serves as a guide and a reference…it is a map. Maps help. 

We will do the smaller businesses of our community a tremendous service if we can create together an education and training ‘tool’ for marketing & sales.

The marketing & sales training tool we create should have 3 overall components: [1] marketing, [2] sales management, and [3] sales.

The existing sales training programs can provide a good starting point for the work in the sales area. Most of the sales training I have purchased is too complicated…it needs to be simplified. We must make our marketing & sales training tool ingenious and simple - that is...we must make our marketing & sales training tool elegant. Many good books and tapes exist to help us create all 3 of the parts. These 3 parts must be integrated because sales work can only be excellent and resilient if it is meshed with the results of good sales management and marketing work. And, there will be no excellence [or peace of mind] if marketing & sales work is not handled in a Plan the Work and Work the Plan way…much strategic thought, much tactical thought, alignment, measuring and testing, training, etc. 

We can create a special ‘tool’ for Marketing & Sales education and training. 

And then, we can share it. 

Here is an excerpt from the Introduction of Ford Harding's book, 'Rain Making - Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field': 

"Historically, training of professionals to win new clients has been haphazard. Law, accounting, engineering, medical, and architectural schools teach nothing about selling. This is also true of most business schools, surprisingly so, given that a sale is what defines the existence of a business." 

The Introduction goes on to explain how the author, while doing consulting work, experienced good times then bad and due to particularly bad times was called upon to 'sell'.   

About 'selling', the author reminisces: 

"Slowly, with a little mentoring and coaching and after my share of mistakes, I learned what to do. Knowing how to bring in business, and so build a practice, has helped ensure a good income and more control over my own destiny than many people have in this turbulent world. It has ensured a flow of interesting work with interesting people. It has allowed me to develop and maintain a team of professionals. It has earned me respect among my peers." 

(That excerpt contains a summary of many of the reasons why one might want to succeed in business.) 

  ***  

The Introduction to the book contains the following major headings: 

• Sales mean survival. 

• Lack of time is no excuse. 

• You must take responsibility for your own development. 

• You have to get over the hump before it starts to be fun.  

• You must adopt new measures of productivity and success.  

• Marketing is an emotional roller coaster.  

• You can gain a sense of control in business development.  

• It is always better to be doing some marketing than none.  

• You need to get face-to-face with a prospect to make a sale.  

• Everyone can make a contribution.  

• When you win, celebrate.  

• Now is the time to start.   

(Many good points)

***  

A couple of sentences in the Introduction also stood out and impressed me. 

 "Clients almost always return phone calls; prospects often don't." 

"Marketers market."  

***  

Harding says, "Most professionals who succeed as marketers begin by doing." and "Such people are doers first and planners second."

Harding doesn't just talk the talk on this, he also walks the walk. This is confirmed by the structure of his book, which begins with three parts action/tactics and ends with one part planning/strategy.  

To explain his belief he states, near the end of the Introduction, "Part IV shows how to build a marketing strategy that is appropriate for you and your firm. It comes last because you must understand something of the tactics at your disposal before you select a strategy." 

(This caused me to think about plans and action…and about Leading With Revenue.)  

***  

"Leading With Revenue" is a philosophy I coined in an effort to describe how successful entrepreneurs go about being successful.  

Leading With Revenue has particular impact during an entrepreneurial start-up.   

***  

I feel Napoleon Hill's advice "Plan your work and work your plan" is the essential framework for sustained success.   

***  

When asked to state the key ingredients of success, from start-up success to sustained success, I always include Napoleon Hill's "Plan your work and work your plan".  I also always include Leading With Revenue. 

Leading With Revenue is a philosophy containing about as much emotion as logical argument. Being that way, it is hard to learn it if you don't 'get it'.

I suppose, like the 'secret' Napoleon Hill embedded in and talked about throughout his 1937 classic ‘Think and Grow Rich’...if you are ready to receive it then you will 'get it'.  

The 3 words - Leading With Revenue - can and should be taken literally. But, that's where the understanding of the philosophy begins, not where it ends.  

Regardless, Ford Harding's words offer help....perhaps a good way to present some of the thinking behind the philosophy. 

Ford Harding said, "....you must understand something of the tactics at your disposal before you select a strategy."   

This aligns with the 'how' of Leading With Revenue.   

***  

Here is a simplistic, theoretical and hypothetical example - an effort to explain Leading With Revenue: 

Assume you come up with an action-tactic for selling something to someone. Assume you do the selling action. Assume the someone buys your something. Assume you find a similar someone and repeat the process. Assume the second someone also buys your something. Assume this process is repeated at least one more time. After three successful actions proven by three sales, you have generated some revenue and you have reason to conclude you have come up with a successful something to sell and a successful way to sell it. Assume you decide to feed this result back to your plans/strategies and make adjustments to reduce all the other somethings you sell and reduce all the other somethings you do in sales while expanding the one combination of somethings that has proven to be successful in generating revenue. After that strategic change is made, assume your fourth sales effort succeeds, your fifth sales efforts succeeds, etc. Then, assume you feed that additional success back to your plan and assume, because you feel you are definitely on the track to success, you remove everything but the combination of somethings that has worked and you etch your plan in stone...at that point, your plan only contains instructions/guidance about the successful product/service and the action that leads to the successful sale of it and the generation of maximum (or at least optimum) revenue.  

Assume all that... 

The business-develoment stars have aligned. 

Not only have the stars aligned but they have aligned in about as efficient and simple a way as one could ever expect.  

That would be an ideal example of Leading With Revenue.  

·         Have at least one product or service

·         Have a plan, which contains at least one good sales tactic for action

·         Do that selling action

·         Succeed every time you sell (sales success means revenue)

·         Feed the results (successful product/service, sales tactic, and resulting generation of revenue) back to your plan

·         Revise your plan to remove things that don't work, leaving only the things that do work

·         With your revised and fully-precise (perfect) plan, do more selling

·         Grow your business rapidly and without any challenges whatsoever  

***

That's a picture of the ideal Leading With Revenue. 

That incorporates Ford Harding's points and Napoleon Hill's philosophy. The only problem is, being 'ideal' it is purely hypothetical and theoretical and it will never happen in the real world of business development.  But, the fact the example is 'impossible theory', does not reduce the need to understand Leading With Revenue.  

The impossible example illustrates the iterative, back-and-forth relationship between plans and action, the foundation of Leading With Revenue.

While Ford Harding quite intentionally teaches tactics before planning, we must agree plans come first. We must agree with Napoleon Hill: one must Plan the Work before one Works the Plan. However, one must not expect to plan with perfection or completeness at the first try. (Actually, I would argue plans are never close to perfect, but that's another topic.) One must not underestimate the value of one good idea, backed by action. (Napoleon Hill repeated that message frequently.) And, one must not underestimate the danger of excessive planning, at the expense of action. 

The initial plan may be just an uncomplicated combination of an idea about a product and a process for selling it to a buyer. In fact, isn't that what's near or at the heart where invention meets entrepreneurship?

Or, the plan could be 50+ pages of verbiage, tables, graphs, and pictures. That's not an unusual thing at mature businesses and larger corporations.  

***

Regardless, whether it is applied to nascent plans or to mature plans, Leading With Revenue is the driver for initiating, expanding, and sustaining business.  

• Have a plan... whether large or small, whether deeply personal or widespread corporate doctrine 

• Take action in the field... whether in strict compliance with your marketing plan or due to leading-edge entrepreneurial spirit 

• Monitor the results of your business-development actions....both the absolutely-essential failures and the to-be-celebrated successes   

• Feedback those failure results and success results to your planning process 

• Adjust your plans, to organize, guide, and optimize your action 

• With optimized action, expand your sales…expand your revenue…grow and sustain your business  

***   

While that is not how I have done it in the past, that is another way to begin to describe the iterative, success-oriented processes around plans-action-results-plans....which I call Leading With Revenue.  

Synchronicity always causes me to pause and reflect.

For example: I was browsing Bryan and Joyce's (2007) book 'Mobilizing Minds' when I came across a section titled 'Unproductive Complexity'. I had just written an e-mail, in response to a question. In my response e-mail I had talked about how it seems to me people frequently take simple things and make them or view them as complex...that is, 'making mountains out of molehills'. We were discussing a 3rd party's communication with us and it seemed to me that party was really over-complicating the matter at hand.

Shortly after, I was reading the Mobilizing Minds section titled Unproductive Complexity, which began as follows: ‘For a while in the 1990s, we thought that digital technology would enable us to overcome our communication challenges.' Facts and figures were provided by the authors. And, they stated the following: 'In a 2005 survey conducted by the McKinsey Quarterly, of senior and top executives, 60 percent said their company's size and complexity have made it somewhat difficult, or much more difficult, to capture opportunities than it was just 5 years ago.'

This struck me with synchronicity.

As I read on...'The problem is that today companies rely on a model designed for the 20th century, one that depends on vertical, top-down hierarchical authority. The problem is that in the 21st century, the key to creating value is not just in providing top-down direction, but also in enabling and motivating self-directed, thinking-intensive professionals and managers to work with one another horizontally across the firm.'

The book referred to big companies, success-limiting silo organizational structures, band-aid matrix overlays, and troubles due to hierarchy.

***

It seems to me the problem of complexity should be approached in an as-simple-as-possible way.

Considering…'The problem is that in the 21st century, the key to creating value is not just in providing top-down direction, but also in enabling and motivating self-directed, thinking-intensive professionals and managers to work with one another horizontally across the firm.'…

At first reading, the advice of that quoted sentence seems to be on the right track.

I don't think it is new or provocative advice. It is different wording but the various messages in that advice have been stated by others and they were as pertinent 25 years ago as they are now, in the 21st century.

We do need to set adding value as the key goal of business. We do need top-down direction for order and control as we achieve that goal. And, we do want to have as many self-directed, thinking-intensive professionals and managers as we can. And, of course, we want them working together in harmony to achieve corporate goals. All of that makes sense.

Put in other words...

Our organizations need effective hierarchy and we need to employ talented, self-starters who work together effectively, add value, and achieve desired goals.

How do we do that?

***

A Question to Consider:

Can we handle the complex better by concentrating on the simple?

***

Considering the excerpt, '... enabling and motivating self-directed, thinking-intensive professionals and managers to work with one another horizontally across the firm'…

While we probably agree that piece of theory is directionally correct, how do we put it into practice?

We could assume people ‘get it’ and so they will naturally be able to take action to make ‘it’ happen. That could be a very dangerous assumption. It could be very dangerous for big, well-established organizations. It could be even more dangerous for smaller, more-entrepreneurial organizations.

That set of words contains considerable complexity, for example:

• enabling and motivating
• self-directed, thinking-intensive professionals and managers
• work with one another horizontally across the firm

These things strike me as complex because they raise many questions, for example:

• Can one person motivate another person?
• If a person is self-directed, thinking-intensive, and professional then does that person need external motivation?
• How do people successfully 'work with one another horizontally across the firm'?

***

Some thoughts on how we could help people work more effectively with one another...

• have a simple, clear, and concise Corporate Vision
• have a simple, clear, and concise Corporate Mission
• have Corporate Values and define them in simple, clear, and concise words
• display those Corporate Vision, Mission, and Values at high-traffic areas of the office
• regularly, both internally and externally, have conversations about those Corporate Vision, Mission, and Values
• state Corporate Goals in simple, clear, concise, and SMART words, repeat them frequently at Business Unit, Department, one-on-one, and other meetings
• state Business-Unit Goals in simple, clear, concise, and SMART words, repeat them frequently and explain how those Business-Unit Goals align with the Corporate Goals
• state Department Goals in simple, clear, concise, and SMART words, repeat them frequently and explain how those Department Goals align with the Business-Unit Goals and with the Corporate Goals
• provide Role Descriptions in simple, clear, and concise words
• state Individual-Employee Goals in simple, clear, concise, and SMART words and explain how the Individual-Employee Goals align with the Department Goals, with the Business-Unit Goals, and with the Corporate Goals
• at the Corporate, Business-Unit, Department, and Individual-Employee “levels”, review performance regularly, under defined process, using simple, clear, and concise words.
• help Individual Employees understand how their roles and their performance impact on others, directly and indirectly, throughout and outside the company.

In addition to these basic things,

Create ways to help people understand how they and others fit in.

Perhaps, start by looking at your business as a jigsaw puzzle. That jigsaw puzzle can be created by using 10 pieces, 100 pieces, 1,000 pieces or 10,000 pieces or more. 10 pieces could represent the number of pieces you could use to describe your Corporate picture. It’s a big picture, so you could choose to use many more than 10 puzzle pieces, but don’t. Choose to use 10 big puzzle pieces. While some will argue “That kind of puzzle would be worse than childish: a big colourful 10-piece puzzle would be something one would give to an infant.”

That is true.

It is also true that communication and branding experts spend careers seeking the essence, the concise, the clear, and the simple message in an effort to truly connect with other people. While, communication and branding experts are doing that sales experts are teaching about 30-Second Elevator Commercials.

It seems to me these people are seeking simple. 

If 10 puzzle pieces is the right number for Corporate-level picture/puzzles then perhaps 100 pieces would be required to complete a Corporate puzzle that contains Business-Unit details. If the company doesn’t have Business Units then perhaps 100 pieces would be required to create the picture containing some Department details. That is: if we need 10 puzzle pieces to adequately show the Corporate picture then we will need at least that many pieces to describe each Business Unit and each Department. So, when we add the Business Units together or when we add the Departments together or when we add both of those we will have something like 100 puzzle pieces…that’s the order of magnitude. Or, as an alternative, maybe having more detail is important…maybe we need 1,000 pieces. Regardless, as we construct the more-detailed picture/puzzle we have two choices.

1. we can keep the size of the puzzle pieces the same and so the whole picture/puzzle gets a lot bigger or
2. we can shrink the size of the pieces so the whole picture/puzzle remains more-or-less the same size

The picture/puzzle metaphor takes on another leap in order of magnitude when we move from Business-Unit-level detail to Individual-Employee detail. Instead of thinking in terms of a 10 piece or a 100 piece or even a 1,000 piece picture/puzzle, we need to think in terms of a 10,000 piece or a 100,000 piece picture puzzle. And, as the details and complexity expand, we have two choices:

Choice #1: we can look at the entire picture while losing the ability to look at the tiny individual pieces or

Choice #2: we can look at some of the tiny individual pieces while losing the ability to see the entire picture.

If we step back and think about it, we are likely OK with that 2-choice limitation…as long as we can alter our choice whenever we wish.

We know Choice #1 is the most-desired answer in certain situations while Choice #2 is the most-desired answer in other situations.

The problem is – in practice, we get mixed up. We regularly make the wrong choice.

***

Missing the forest for the trees.

From the Individual Employee’s perspective...

That old metaphor has some meaning in this picture/puzzle metaphor. If we choose to freeze the size of the puzzle pieces so we can see the details then our business picture/puzzle is huge. The picture is so huge we cannot see most of it let alone all of it…so we miss the forest for the trees. Conversely, if we freeze the size of the picture/puzzle so we can keep the big picture in focus then the pieces become so tiny we have no ability to see and understand them. What’s worse, as Individual Employees we lose the ability to understand how our personal pieces fit in our company’s picture/puzzle. When this happens there are many negative implications such as: our orientation is at risk; our connection is at risk; our focus is at risk; our ability to know corporate culture is at risk; our ability to work in harmony is at risk; our ability to add value is at risk, etc.

To excel as Individual Employees we need to understand our pieces of the puzzle and we need to see the big picture. We need to do both. But, we need to construct our picture/puzzles with care.

We need to plan the picture/puzzles.

To excel as Individual Employees we need to understand certain other Individual Employee`s puzzle pieces and how those pieces fit together with our own and how they fit in the big picture. At the detail level, likely of most importance, we need to understand how our pieces mesh with our boss` pieces.

To excel as Individual Employees we need to accept we will never be able to see or understand all the pieces in the puzzle. Even if that were possible, it would be inefficient and ineffective. So, we must trust those numerous other pieces are either in their proper places or moving toward that direction.

***

Getting back to that quote from Mobilizing Minds…

'The problem is that in the 21st century, the key to creating value is not just in providing top-down direction, but also in enabling and motivating self-directed, thinking-intensive professionals and managers to work with one another horizontally across the firm.'

How do the people and the various pieces they bring to our business picture/puzzle do top-down direction, enable others, and work with one another horizontally across the firm? [Note: I have intentionally left out the motivating pieces - that’s a whole other puzzle.]

It seems to me the answer is we must encourage our people to 'seek simple' and not to 'express complex'.

Every Individual Employee should understand and be able to describe his/her business’ Corporate picture in simple terms…the Vision Statement, the Mission Statement, the Corporate Values, the Corporate Goals, etc.

Every Individual Employee should understand and be able to describe his/her Business-Unit picture [if applicable] and Department picture…in simple terms…starting with Department Goals.

Every Individual Employee should understand and be able to describe all the other Business-Units [if applicable] and Departments in the Corporate picture. And, every Individual Employee should understand and be able to describe how his/her Department fits in the Corporate picture and how his/her Department is related to other Departments. The same applies to Individual-Employee roles vis-à-vis the roles of certain other Individual Employees. We must always keep the big picture in focus…zooming out regularly to make sure we don’t lose it. And, at the same time, for certain selected areas of the picture/puzzle we must be able to zoom in so we can see the details of our individual connections.

Obviously, a person’s ability to understand and express his/her knowledge of the big-picture and his/her unique ‘individual picture’ will depend on many factors. For example, on average new employees will be less capable of understanding and expressing these pictures than more-experienced employees.

Regardless, the Corporate Culture should encourage proficiency.

To promote picture clarity between Departments and between Individual Employees, we need to discuss the work, the impact of the work, and the flow of the work…from work donors, to work doers, to value recipients.

So, we need to catalogue and understand work-process and work-flow systems.

Work needs to be systematized, to the extent that is possible and reasonable. When we discuss work-process and work-flow systems we need to do it in concise, clear, and simple ways. Discussions need to be frequent, and they need to be repeated. To show the logic trail for work-flow know-how we need to start with Corporate Goals. Then we need to zoom in on Department Goals and inter-Department Goals. We need to zoom in even farther to show how Individual Employee Roles are connected…work-flow impact, work-flow cause and effect.

As we plan and construct the pictures of our business we need to be seeking simple.

Then, when we do the zooming in to our detail pictures and the zooming out to the corporate big picture – as we do our daily jobs well – we will be finding the value that seeking simple ensures.