Chris Howard, vice president of research and co-founder of Bersin & Associates, shares his insights on critical success factors in effectively leveraging technology for learning and development initiatives.  In recognizing our Know it Now™ online learning platform with a 2010 Learning Leaders Award for Vendor Innovation in Learning and Talent Management, Chris stated “measurable business impact was one of the key things we looked for in choosing winners.”

Q: What questions do you counsel organizations address before investing in online learning?

A: The first generation of online learning basically replaced classroom instruction, taking content and turning it into web pages. The resulting courses were often too long and people wouldn’t take them. Now, organizations are looking at:

1. how the learning fits into the overall picture, the overall instructional plan; and
2. combining modalities – classroom instruction, eLearning, coaching – not to replace classroom instruction, but rather to augment classroom instruction.

Q: For organizations looking to effectively integrate online learning into their development initiatives, what critical success factors should they consider?

A: Measurement should be at the top of the list. In general, measuring learning is a real challenge. Traditional models, with Kirkpatrick probably the most well known are fine, however; our perspective on measurement is that ultimately it’s all around impact.

Many of the Learning Leader applications we received measured all sorts of stuff, but measurable business impact was one of the key things we looked for in choosing winners. The way I look at learning is like any other business function: once you’re properly aligned with the business impact, you can measure a lot of things.

Executive Conversation’s industry, sales training, is one of the most dynamic examples. Companies may have lots of new products coming out quickly and struggle to keep up training on all products. By setting up training to be readily accessible, chunking it up into pieces and delivering in a variety of modalities, sales people can get it when they need it and resulting sales performance can be tracked.

Q: Learners work on their actual accounts and opportunities to complete activities within Know it Now. In your opinion is the learning efficacy of using such real world scenarios stronger than relying on case materials?

A: Definitely. There’s nothing like getting your hands on the real problem. In the case of sales people, who won’t sit in front of a computer for hours at a time taking a course, this is especially true. We believe if you do the homework upfront, design to meet the needs of the target audience and the objectives of stakeholders, you can most successfully align with the business model.

Q: What are some of the most common shortcomings you see in leveraging technology for learning and talent management?

A: It gets back to knowing your audience, their tolerance for online media, how much time they’re willing to invest, and the type of training you’re doing. The ‘throw it up and hope they come’ model that people did a few years ago has limited adoptability and was not successful. Here’s the biggest misconception – deploying online learning that is not part of a plan or performance assessment or needs analysis, and hoping they will come.

Q: Know it Now integrates learning, application and measurement within a single framework. How important is blending each of these elements for effective online learning?

A: The more you can do that the better. However, organizations commonly don’t have the time, don’t see the importance or don’t do it for any number of reasons. That’s where they bring in an organization like yours: you have the expertise, you’ve done it before, and to me; it’s certainly optimal if you can have those pieces working together. In our view, the sum then becomes more than the parts.

Q: What technology trends/advances do you see blossoming over the next 12-18 months?

A: The biggest areas we see are social capabilities, the concept of the organization teaching itself after some initial content introduction. We call it ‘we-learning’. This is where the target community learns from each other with some support from a subject matter expert. This can be done in tandem with a formal initiative, or outside of that when the target audience already knows something about the subject and is just trying to sharpen their skills, or get ideas from someone else. We see training organizations becoming more of a catalyst for this type of collaboration so those in their organization can teach themselves online or offline.

Q: What’s a key area of focus for Bersin & Associates today?

A: We’re definitely focusing on talent development, talent acquisition and talent management strategies. In the sales arena, for example, what we’ve seen effective are development techniques to increase horsepower versus simply to ‘sell more’ with whoever does get promoted. We look at how do we ready those in the sales organization that exhibit leadership characteristics to take on new management responsibilities? While organizations often want that to happen organically, we’ve seen sales organizations have success by integrating sales training to become a more sophisticated organization.

I wanted to share with you an article by Martha Heller that I found both informative as well as insightful.   Heller writes about the traditional CIO role and some of the issues they have traditionally faced, the problems of transitioning from one regime to another, when bad technology meets good people, etc.  What takes this from a run of the mill article on the woes of CIOs are the insights into CIO strategy which occurs in the second half of the article.

Enabling is Failing!

I was particularly impressed with a quote from Scott McKay CIO from Genworth Financial who discusses the differences between being an enabler of business processes to a driver.  At first glance enabling business processes does not seem like a bad goal for IT.  What Scott as well as most CXOs know is that enabling a process gets none of the glory for success and is first in line for the responsibility for failure.    The idea of being an “enabler” like in a 12 step program is not one that is going to get you a lot of rewards.  Enabling is Failing!

View Video

For even more insights on the changing role of CIOs, take a look at this recording of one of the webinars from our Buyer’s Side Perspective series, Selling to Today’s CIOs.

Enabling processes in a company are a function of either supporting or coordinating another group’s goal or business process.  As a support role it is of course critical to getting the task done, after all we all need support in one way or another to accomplish our responsibilities.  The problem with being pigeon holed into this role is that it is seen more as a cost function than one of business value.  As a result the phrases “how much is this going to cost my budget” or “what’s the best way we can do this at the lowest price” becomes the guideline for the “enabler”.   Not only is the value stripped from the IT group but the ability to control their expenditures is moved to the original business group that is driving the process.

What You Should be Asking

The question you need to ask yourself personally is when you work with IT or the CIO which process do you lead with or support.  If you talk about TCO or your ability to deliver an SLA or even talk about being a one stop shop you are supporting the CIO to FAIL.  And if they don’t want to fail then where does that leave you and your ideas.

The question you need to ask is ‘What can I do to help the CIO/IT group to succeed?  What value add do you bring that they can bring to their business units?  How can you help them to lead and be one of the drivers of the business?  Once you have figured that out you now have a reason to engage in CIO executive conversation.

If you don’t know how just ask us.  After all we are a company made up of CXOs.  Your thoughts?

By Scott Karren, CEO Channel Ventures and Executive Conversation Consulting Executive

Social networks are all the rage right now. If you are not talking about ‘friends’ and ‘community’ you are SO 2009. With all of the smoke, it is hard to even get a glimpse at the mirrors.

I was recently engaged to facilitate a small channel community. Since the group met face-to-face only a couple times a year, we used web forums, teleconferences, and one-on-one phone calls to facilitate interaction. Because the group was hand picked by the vendor and all members had significant common interests, we were surprised at how hard the process was. Some community building principles have come to light through this process.

First

The facilitation team must have a member who is obsessed by the topic and issues. The team must have an individual who is not only super smart and experienced, but also endowed with boundless enthusiasm; someone who wakes up at two in the morning with valuable insights that must be communicated. This person can be a customer, an employee, an analyst or even a consultant, but has to have an unstoppable obsession for the group and for the topic.

Second

Communications within the group must be open and interesting. Conversations cannot be overtly censored or even covertly managed. If members get the sense that they cannot speak openly, they go mute. Although communication should be respectful, the objective is not to restate the party line or reiterate the program benefits. It is simply to explore, refine and document critical issues and their solutions. Because the issues are important, expect (even encourage) disagreement and strong feelings.

Third

Groups must have true leadership. People want to know their contributions are significant and that they make a difference. Communities can suffer from two kinds of failures: 1) lack of direction; and 2) lack of motivation. One is like being lost and the other is like being in a storm. Leadership is the ability to deliver both of these issues at the right times.

Without clear objectives, the individuals that make up a company, channel or community question whether or not they are in the right place. Loss of faith in a channel takes a long time to dissolve a community, but if it gets momentum, it is often fatal.

More sudden and more violent are the outbreaks of frustration that are manifest when community members feel disenfranchised or ignored. While they may still believe in the strategy and vision, they stop contributing positively because they are unrecognized. While most employers understand the need for providing recognition for employee contributions, channel managers often take the morale of their channel for granted.

‘Community’ is hot. We see it discussed in all of the news magazines. Yet even with all of the new community building tools (e.g. Facebook and LinkedIn), true communities are still hard to create and grow. Without enthusiasm, candor and leadership they will never produce the returns both vendors and partners desire.

How successful have you been creating demand with today’s new breed of CIO?

Join us for this 30 minute complimentary webinar to gain an executive perspective on where – and how – you can offer value relevant to today’s CIOs.

Register Today

Date:  February 18, 2010 
Time:  11:30am ET | 8:30am PT | 16:30 GMT

About the Webinar

Today, CIOs are commonly members of their organization’s executive committee. They’re expected to be a driving force behind growth strategies. They’re challenged to address business issues such as:

• How well are we anticipating customer and market shifts?
• What new product opportunities does our customer data suggest?

This session will equip you to initiate CIO selling opportunities around:

• The new metrics by which today’s CIOs are compensated 
• 5 surprising trends that too few sellers play to their advantage 
• How to capitalize on the emerging partnerships between CIOs and other executives 
• What to do – and not do – around cloud computing and mobile capability initiatives 
• Positioning your value in sync with the 3 key roles successful CIOs must execute

About the Series

The popular series is led by acclaimed speaker James Melillo, this fast-paced, information-packed webinar series is designed to provide sales professionals with timely, actionable insights to sell to financial decision makers and executives. Each live session of this complimentary webinar series runs approximately 30 minutes followed by audience Q&A.

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View upcoming events in the Buyer’s Perspective Series

Sample recorded excerpts from previous webinars

Download guide on which documents are most useful and which sections to read within those documents.

Research and preparation are critical for successfully engaging and selling with buyer’s side perspective.  Download this Finding the Information to help guide you on which documents are most useful and which sections to read within those documents.

US Letter (PDF 1,389KB)
A4 (PDF 61KB)

TIPS TO STREAMLINE YOUR RESEARCH

1. Annual Report to Shareholders
   The principal document used by most public companies to disclose corporate information to shareholders, this single best source of information usually includes the Letter to Shareholders, financial data, market segment information, new product plans and information by lines of business.
2. Forms 10-K and 10-Q
   Focus on these sections:
   Item 1 Business Overview for an explanation of the account’s business.
   Items 7 and 7a MD&A where management is compelled to disclose market risks and address the tough question “What went wrong last year?”
3. Proxy Statement DEF 14A
   Focus on these sections:
   Report of the Compensation Committee -What performance metrics are used to compute executive bonus and incentive plans?
   Board of Directors - Are any board members also associated with another customer? How could this relationship be leveraged?
4. Analyst Reports
   Most public companies are followed by one or more financial analysts whose reports include the analyst’s opinion of the company and an outlook on future performance. Look for recently dated reports labeled ‘Initiating Coverage’ or ‘Reinitiating Coverage’ to identify more comprehensive reports.
5. Management Presentations
   Typically found in the Investor Relations section of a company’s Web site, these files provide a unique opportunity to hear customer executives talk about their business in their own words. Look for original files or transcripts with names like ‘Investor Presentations’ or ‘Analyst Call Q&A.’
6. Press Releases
   Focus on Earnings Releases (there are usually 4 per year), and any releases addressing management changes, strategy or current events.

While the Financial Services industry has been in the news a lot lately, the metrics such customers use for managing performance are rarely mentioned. Here’s a look at this industry’s unique metrics.

While the Financial Services industry has been in the news a lot lately, the metrics such customers use for managing performance – the metrics you should use to quantify your solution’s value – are rarely mentioned. Here’s a look at this industry’s unique metrics.

We’ve developed this short format overview for exactly that purpose. In addition, use Analyst Reports. These reports used to benchmark companies are an ideal resource for identifying industry and customer-specific metrics.

Operating Revenue Growth (Net Interest Income + Fee Income)	Measured as year-over-year growth, use this metric when your solution impacts fee income drivers such as product mix, cross-selling, product bundling, customer retention and loyalty programs, and reducing time for entering new markets.
Net Income Earnings Per Share (EPS) Growth	Measures year-over-year profitability. Areas of opportunity include impacting cost savings, operational improvements and improved acquisition integration.
Efficiency Ratio (Non-Interest Expense ÷ Operating Revenue)	Primarily used in retail banking, potential points of alignment include increasing branch productivity, shifting call centers to sales and enabling customer/employee self-service.
Loan Growth	Evaluating year-over-year and quarterly growth compared with your customer’s peer group is one way to identify new opportunities.
Deposit Growth	Year-over-year and quarterly measurements of total deposits.
Net Charge-Offs	A ratio computed by current year provision plus the average loan balance.
Cross-Sell Rates	The ratio of customers using more than one product or service (e.g., checking accounts, credit cards, home loans, etc.) To the total number of customers.
Return On Equity (Net Income + Shareholders Equity)	A high-level profitability ratio used for benchmarking financial services companies. sed for benchmarking financial services companies.
Combined Ratio  (Claims And Expenses As A Percentage Of Premiums)	A general gauge used by insurance companies that encompasses sales, claims and expenses in one calculation.
Customer Churn	Churn, or turnover, is calculated by dividing the number of customers who cancel service during a period of time by the total number of customers at the beginning of that period.

]]> http://www.conversation.com/executiveselling/index.php/how-to-quantify-your-value-with-financial-services-customers/feed/ 0 http://www.conversation.com/executiveselling/index.php/the-cios-business-metrics/ http://www.conversation.com/executiveselling/index.php/the-cios-business-metrics/#comments Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:29:10 +0000 Executive Conversation http://www.conversation.com/executiveselling/index.php/the-cios-business-metrics/

How do you effectively sell to Chief Information Officers? What are their drivers? A CIO responsible for multiple business units shares his first hand experience.

Insight #1: Know Me Before You Meet Me

Before you enter my office, know me. That may seem challenging since I don’t issue shareholder letters or get written up in the media like a CEO might. But here’s a tip: My priorities as CIO are wholly aligned with the objectives of my company’s CEO and CFO.

Reference annual reports and management presentations to discover objectives my CEO has set for insights into what I’m focused on.

Consider:

• My role is to further these objectives through the smart use of technology.
• My CEO and CFO are spending up to 20% of their time assessing technology decisions – and this percentage is growing.
• As CIO, my team is increasingly relied upon to drive business growth and profitability through application of user friendly technology.
• My clout as CIO within the organization can vary dramatically

To put this all into context, consider the scenario below. It outlines issues a CEO might include in a letter to shareholders and demonstrates how I might use those cues to improve my company’s competitive position through the smart use of technology.

If My CEO/CFO Issues Are To:

• Become more competitive in a more challenging environment
• Drive more profitable revenue
  • Increasing revenue 10-20%
  • Increasing Profit 5-10%
• Acquire other companies to grow market share

Then My Corresponding CIO Issues Are Likely:

• Cut maintenance, administrative and training costs by 50%
• Accelerate time to insight from hours/days to seconds/minutes
• Cut maintenance, administrative and training costs by 50%
• Integrate multiple information systems due to acquisitions

Your next step is to review industry and business analyses for broader insight into my issues and objectives within the context of my organization and industry. Here are four top CIO priorities for you to align your value:

• Delivering projects that enable business growth
• Linking business and IT strategies/plans
• Demonstrating the business value of IS/IT
• Applying metrics to IS organization/services

Insight #2: Apply Metrics to Your Value Propositions

By referencing metrics in your initial discussions with CIOs and later in your value propositions, you demonstrate you understand the linkage between your solution and the CIO’s measures of business performance.

But applying metrics to IT can be difficult. A sales professional who understands this – and is proactive about helping a CIO develop relevant metrics – will do well. Three things to keep in mind:

• Be prepared to add value by suggesting metrics the CIO might use to measure business performance. For instance, recommend metrics your other accounts have found valuable for quantifying impact
• Consider how your value proposition impacts CIO performance metrics
• Ensure the metrics you choose relate directly to the metrics the CIO is using

Using a similar CEO/CFO relationship as discussed earlier, here’s another example of how you may identify metrics to use when engaging CIOs for your value proposition.

If Meaningful Metrics For My CEO/CFO Metrics Are:

• Become more competitive in a more challenging environment
• Drive more profitable revenue
  • Increasing revenue 10-20%
  • Increasing Profit 5-10%
• Acquire other companies to grow market share

Then My Corresponding CIO Metrics Are Likely

• Expedite end-user access to information
  • Accelerate time to insight from 3 days to 2 hours
• System administrative time
  • Reduce from 8 hrs/week to 4 hrs/week per administrator
• Integrate multiple information systems due to acquisitions
  • Reduce reports from 4 separate to 1 integrated

Start Now

So how do you take these insights and sustain them over time?

Suggest an idea about every 90 days that will make the CIO’s organization more competitive through strategic use of technology.

Let us know your thoughts.

Form 10-Ks offer highly useful information about your customers.  Here’s a summary of 10-Ks and how to quickly navigate to these four sections for insights most relevant to your sales efforts.

What is a Form 10-K?

It’s an annual report that publicly-traded U.S. companies are required to file with the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) each year. With some exceptions, it must be filed within 90 days after a company’s fiscal year ends.

Is the 10-K the same as the Annual Report?

No, what is commonly referred to as the "annual report" is a public company’s Annual Report to Shareholders. While a 10-K is also an annual report, its primary audience is the SEC. This separate document contains more detailed financial information and a more comprehensive description of the business and related business risks.

What information can be found in the 10-K?

Typically, the 10-K includes information such as company history, organizational structure, equity, holdings, financials, earnings per share, subsidiaries, etc. The 10-K also features more in-depth information about the company’s products, market segments, competitors and legal proceedings.

Where can 10-K forms be found?

The Investor Relations section of your company’s Web site or the SEC’s  EDGAR database. EDGAR is short for the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system that automates the collection of forms submitted to the SEC.

Have you ever walked out of an executive’s office after a critical sales call – and immediately started kicking yourself about what you should have said, what you should have known?

Of course you have. And you’re not alone.

The trick is to use that hindsight to your advantage. After every executive engagement – successful or not – make it a practice to self-assess, self-coach and improve. It’s like the game tapes athletes watch after every win or loss. The idea is to study what you did right, what you did wrong – and how you can learn from both to improve performance next time.

Athletes obviously have coaches to help them improve. Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a sales manager with the time and ability to coach you – to actually go out on sales calls with you to observe and provide feedback on your performance.

But I’m guessing you often don’t. Given today’s hectic schedules, sales managers tend to be consumed by the demands of closing deals and hitting sales targets, leaving little time for one-on-one coaching.

Develop a Self-Coaching Regimen

For truly motivated sales professionals, the ticket to improving performance lies within. More to the point: If you don’t figure out what you need to do better yourself, nobody is going to figure it out for you.

To be sure, what you have in your head – and what you actually say when you’re face to face with a customer executive – are often two different things.

An ideal practice to develop for anyone who sincerely wants to build credible engagement skills with executives is to create a Scorecard and fill it out immediately after key in-person meetings or telephone calls. You’ve got to be completely honest. You’ve also got to do it while the details are fresh; the exercise will be less effective if you even wait a day.

And save this regimen for calls with truly senior-level executives, otherwise the routine won’t stick.

The best approach is to memorize the Scorecard questions. This will help you build your skills and confidence as you prepare for your calls. Below are recommended questions for on your Scorecard, but you may decide to add some of your own. Over time you may want to narrow the focus of your Scorecard to those areas needing most improvement or posing the greatest personal challenge.

Bottom line, the Scorecard concept doesn’t need to be rigid, but it should be a regimen you follow faithfully.

Call a Time-Out

Although you have many demands on your time, for this Scorecard regimen to work, you must stop the action immediately after your executive engagement. You’re going to have to pause from the press of daily tasks to be reflective. What did I do well in that meeting? What could I have done differently? Did I successfully secure sponsorship to re-engage with the executive? Do I need a refresher course to improve my executive focused selling skills?

And if you manage others or collaborate with team members on accounts, encourage them to participate with you. Hindsight multiplied can be a wonderful thing.

Use or adapt the Scorecard below to get started. Answer each of the following with True, Mostly True or Needs Improvement after every senior level engagement.

Self-Coaching Scorecard

• I successfully validated my customer’s top business initiatives.
• I effectively aligned my solution’s value with those business initiative(s).
• I credibly demonstrated my solution’s value using business performance metrics meaningful to the executive with whom I met.
• I clearly articulated the enabling solution I envisioned from the perspective of how it will positively change my customer’s business.
• I asked questions that effectively established my credibility and discovered new opportunities.
• I had carefully considered the implications of my customer’s corporate structure and budget cycle in the decision process.
• I scheduled time to role-play the engagement with my manager in advance and to debrief afterward.

Develop a New Game Plan

If you take the time to honestly analyze the details of your engagements and complete a Scorecard each and every time, you’ll start to see patterns. For example: When you went in and tried Approach X three different times, it was totally ineffective each time. But on the occasions you tried Strategy Y, it really sparked some good dialogue and got things moving.

Once you start recognizing patterns and associating them with success or failure, you have exactly what you need to develop a winning game plan. And since you’re both player and coach, the ball is in your hands.

What techniques have proven useful in your experience?

We all know customers are fixated on metrics to evaluate technology investments, such as IT spend as a percent of revenue. That’s understandable. The language of business is finance, and organizations know their technology investments must improve the equation. Yet most struggle to translate greater technical capabilities into measurable business value.

So what do you do? You make it easier for them.

When engaging customers, ensure the conversation focuses on the business impact of your solution by moving away from metrics that evaluate technology investments internally and going beyond common measures such as Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).

Here are some better metrics. Use them to elevate the value you’re delivering to a trusted partner. Use them to help your customer view you favorably relative to your competition. Use them to push through stalled deals because your customer needs clear economic justification to make the business case for investing in your solutions.

• Customer interactions. Show how you can reduce the number of failed interactions. Look at such areas as invoicing inaccuracies, poor order fill rates, incomplete transactions or failure to ship a product on time. Show how you can create an alert system to improve visibility/ability to identify areas at risk of failing. Customers will welcome your ideas as quantifying customer satisfaction is always difficult. Be specific when you quantify solution value. The better you do this, the more credibility you’ll have with executives.
• Innovation to support ratio. Show how you can help customers sharply improve the percentage of their technology spend devoted to driving business growth relative to internal support. Plot your proposed projects and any competing projects on a grid (see below) to present your customer a view of this ratio. Leading companies target a 3:1 ratio and want it trending upward.
  
• Customer usage. Present a plan to help measure how many customers will actually use the alternative new products, services, features or tools your customer is evaluating. For example, from a revenue perspective, show how to measure whether partners and suppliers are collaborating to reduce time to market for product development. Demonstrate a way to track new markets, channels or cross-selling opportunities resulting from your solution. Suggest how your new service could be more effective and/or cost-effective than competing solutions.
• Cost of doing nothing. Quantify the true cost of taking no action. For instance, the investment can be justified by comparing the cost of continuing to use a largely manual process to the cost of the automated solution you’re proposing. Or compare the existing mix of in-house and outsourced resources to your solution and show the impact on how employees spend their time.

What are some example you’ve seen work effectively?