The Revenue Journal

At ThinkSales, our mission is singular: Revenue Growth Engineering – assisting our clients to outperform their markets by helping them build competitive sales strategies and execute best-practice processes. For the past 10 years since our launch, we’ve dedicated ourselves to hosting the Sales Leadership Convention and publishing ThinkSales Magazine, to deliver to you, our distilled learnings on what works, and what doesn’t, based on our first-hand observations in the field. And I am pleased to introduce you to our latest edition of the magazine, where we once again deliver best-practice for building a high-performance Sales Organisation. The ‘Winning Edge’ A few decades ago, I picked up a Brian Tracy book at an airport, back when’self-improvement’ was an emerging theme, usually relegated to one shelf in the psychology section. On my flight, I came…

How we’ve constructed this magazine This magazine comprises five sections – each aligned with the 5-Pillars of high-performing Sales Organisations – and provides actionable insights for consideration. At the end of each section, you’ll find a planning and implementation guide, with question-based prompts mirroring each of the themes covered, enabling you and your team’ to make it happen.’ Finally, at the back of the magazine, you’ll find more information about ThinkSales, our methodology and how we help our customers to outperform their markets. In this issue Competitive Strategy Competitive Strategy is a big focus in this issue. As the pandemic forces more companies to restructure, we walk through the common pitfalls of reorganisations and how to avoid them, as well as the consideration and process involved in restructuring your Sales Organisation. We explore how the findings in…

Chances are you’ve experienced at least one and possibly several company restructures or reorganisations. Reorgs can be a great way to unlock value: Two-thirds of them deliver at least some performance improvement, and with radical change in the current pandemic environment, they are becoming more and more common. At the same time, few reorgs are entirely successful. According to a McKinsey survey we conducted, more than 80% fail to deliver the hoped-for value in the time planned and 10% cause real damage to the company. More important, they can be miserable experiences for employees. Research suggests that reorgs — and the uncertainty they provoke about the future — can cause greater stress and anxiety than layoffs, leading in about 60% of cases to noticeably reduced productivity. In our experience, this occurs because the…

THE PROBLEM Most reorganisations fail to deliver on their initial promise, for several reasons: They run into employee resistance, they’re not given sufficient resources and they distract people from day-to-day work. WHAT’S MISSING The biggest reason for disappointing results, though, is that few organisations follow a rigorous, disciplined process — even though reorganisations are a common occurrence in large companies. THE SOLUTION The authors propose a five-step process: Begin with a profit and loss estimate, an inventory of your strengths and weaknesses, consider multiple options for the new organisation, focus special attention on execution and assume you’ll need to make course corrections.…

1 DEVELOP A PROFIT & LOSS STATEMENT A reorganisation is not some esoteric pursuit but a business initiative like any other — similar to a marketing push, a product launch or a capital project. So you should start by defining the benefits, the costs and the time to deliver. Remember that the costs are not just those of employees and consultants involved in the reorg; they also include the human cost of change and the disruption it can create in your business. It may seem like common sense to weigh costs and benefits, but according to McKinsey research, only 15% of executives set detailed business targets for their reorgs, and 17% of reorgs are launched at the whim of an executive or because the leadership team believes the company needs to be…

A McKinsey survey of 1 800 executives identified the most common pitfalls for reorganisations, listed in order of frequency: 1. Employees actively resist the changes2. Insufficient resources — people, time, money — are devoted to the effort3. Employees are distracted from their day-to-day activities, and individual productivity declines4. Leaders actively resist the changes5. The organisational chart changes, but the way people work remains the same6. Employees leave because of the reorganisation7. Unplanned activities, such as an unforeseen need to change information and technology systems or to communicate the changes in multiple languages, disrupt implementation.…