Disruptive Technologies - DON'T FOCUS! 

In a globalized world be open for opportunities!

By Malko Ebers, Feb 10th 2014 - New York City

In our 'uber-rational' world we underestimate with timelines, deadlines, balanced scorecards and management by objectives we very much underestimate trial and error and luck in business.

You can have as many focus groups and do as much market research as you want weather your new cereal bar, slogan or car name will be accepted and successful is hard to say and you have to experiment, try and improve through continuous improvements and an efficient feedback mechanism. This is what Kaizen, the Japanese management practice means: Continuous improvements. 

You might say this is probably true for the high tech industry, where drastic improvements in technology are the norm? Wrong, actually the food industry is the most innovative one and one of the toughest to predict product success. You just have to throw an innovation at the market and listen very carefully to the customer's response. If you focus too early you will not receive necessary feedback and opportunities to learn and improve.

One might say business is like fishing - you focus on fish as a category not a single one. When a customer catches your bait, when what you offer is attractive and they show interest then you focus your attention. The metaphor is useful because it shows that we have to be patient and diligent when it comes to innovation and where and how to focus our attention in business. 

As teenagers we have probably all been told to focus by parents, supervisors, teachers, colleagues. Because others want to figure us out, want to put us in a category they can comprehend. What do you want to do, what is your specialty? In a market environment where jobs, technologies and consumer demand changes constantly it makes sense to be able to wear many hats, to have various product and service options that meet customer demand. A lot of innovation doesn't originate in organizations but by the customer himself. This so called lead user innovation (Eric von Hippel, MIT) is something that more companies should appreciate and capitalize on. Only when the leadership of an organization encourages this open attitude and doesn't focus too early an organization can comprehend these innovations at the fringes of their attention span.

Of course 'focus', division of labor and very specific job descriptions and roles are the very essence of the traditional organization this leads to high efficiency, economies of scale, specialization and greater output. Since Adam Smith and later Henry Ford's production system this is no secret and these principles work very well. However companies build around these central paradigms for example 'copies/minute' (Xerox) very often miss disruptive innovations in the market that can challenge or destroy their market. Leica dominated the camera market but missed the digital revolution, Xerox was synonym with making copies but missed small mobile printers and Nokia dominated the cell phone market and missed the smartphone revolution. All because these huge, powerful companies focused and optimized so tightly that they became huge bureaucracies, efficient and standardized but not open minded and innovative enough. Small competitors could operate below the radar of the large organizations and their innovations finally challenged and often destroyed a market to replace established paradigms.

Sales REPS Vs. Sales PROS 

By: Steve Young, esm4, Inc.

Sales professionals are among business owners’ greatest assets.  These talented and tenacious individuals advance the frontline of a business in the marketplace.  Their work is vital to the success of the businesses they serve.  Unfortunately, these individuals are becoming increasingly difficult to find.  The sales occupation continues to change from the influx of sales representatives into the workforce.

 

In recent years, the sales occupation has sustained a different kind of salesperson, which I refer to as the sales representative. While there are several types of salespeople, there are but two fundamental classifications of salesperson—the sales professional and the sales representative.  The difference between these groups is important for business owners and sales managers to understand, especially if they are interested in growing a business by acquiring new accounts. 

Most business owners and sales managers cannot distinguish a sales rep from a sales pro.  Unlike other professions such as accounting, the profession of sales is not formalized; there is no required certification process, and therefore, no criteria defining the differences between the levels of proficiency existing among those in the profession.  While these two groups—reps and pros—perform many of the same functions, the differences between them account for many of the problems business owners have in growing their businesses. 

Drawing the Line

The difference between sales reps and sales pros can be expressed in terms of a degree of quality.  Sales reps will present your products and services to prospective customers, identity, qualify, and follow-up on sales opportunities.  They will create presentations, schedule sales meetings, and, in the process, occasionally receive a sale.  The sales of the representative are incidental to their work, which is more mindless (as of a routine) than it is mindful (as if engaged in to ensure the fulfillment of an objective).   By contrast, the sales of the professional are orchestrated results of his/her work, which is thoughtfully pursued with the intent of achieving a specific result. 

Vision, preparedness, investment, and skill provide categories for good examples that can more clearly highlight the differences between sales reps and sales pros. 

Vision

There are several main objectives in most sales sequences, including finding and qualifying prospective clients, scheduling appointments with prospective clients, profiling and identifying leveraging points, clarifying urgency to buy, and obtaining next-step commitments with a prospect.  As selling becomes complex, additional steps are required in order to achieve a sale.  Identifying and having a vision of the often arcane, prospect-specific steps can challenge a salesperson.  And an initial vision must often adapt in order to accommodate new steps as they arise in the pursuit of sales.  

Sales reps lack vision.  They give little or no thought to modifying general sales procedures.  Sales reps are not concerned with maximizing the effectiveness of their endeavors.  Sales professionals consistently strive to gain insight and advantages into sales situations and opportunities to ensure the success of their mission to convert potential sales into actualized sales.  

Sales reps can develop their vision and improve their sales by thinking more deeply, questioning, not settling with their assumptions, and reasoning the “why,” “how,” and “what” beyond the ostensible.  This thinking process accounts for the main difference between many sales successes and failures.

Preparedness

The basics of preparedness for most sales pursuits are: (1) having a breadth and depth of knowledge about the prospect and the sales opportunities the prospect represents; (2) strong leveraging points; (3) anticipation of a prospect’s responses to your presentation, and consideration of any peripheral issues that could impact achieving the sale; (4) a step-by-step vision for securing the sale; (5) a fallback approach for reengaging a waning prospect.  Sales professionals are prepared to engage and nurture sales opportunities.  Sales representatives mindlessly go through the motions of call, meet, and follow-up without sufficient preparation.  Sales is a numbers game for the sales representative who hopes that eventually something will come from “all of my work.” 

Preparing a salesperson to engage in a sales pursuit requires an investment of time and materials from the business owner.  If the business owner or sales manager isn’t supporting her/his salespeople in the activities essential for selling in today’s world, both the business and the rep will typically lose in competitive selling situations involving competition that is better prepared.

Sales representatives can improve their preparedness by asking and answering for themselves questions such as:

1.     What data might help me engage and intrigue my prospect?

2.     What is the main objective of my meeting with this prospect?

3.     What possible issues might be influencing my prospect’s buying decision?

4.     How can I create desire for my product in my prospect?

5.     What questions might my prospect ask me and how will I answer?

6.     What hurdles can I anticipate between where the sale is now and finalizing the sale?

7.     How will my presentation help my prospect understand the value I offer?

Investment

A sales rep rarely considers what his/her sales pursuits cost her/his employer.  Profitability is not a consideration for the rep.  Sales reps see a sale simply as a sale, and their effort in any sales work as equally valuable.  Sales professionals are more valuable to employers and will consistently outperform sales reps by simply knowing where and how to invest their skills.  Professionals know which prospects to pursue, when and why a sales pursuit should be abandoned, how to negotiate and achieve profitable transactions, and strive to improve their skills in order to maximize profits from their endeavors. 

Sales representatives can improve their value as salespeople by periodically questioning themselves:

1.     Am I on-track for reaching my goals, and, if not, how will I change that status?

2.     What overall value does this sales pursuit represent to me and my employer?

3.     What priority should I give this pursuit in helping achieve my goals?

4.     How does the work I’m doing right now rank in helping achieve my goals?

5.     What can I do in order to increase my productivity and ensure reaching my goal?

Skills

Salespeople must develop a multitude of skills in order to consistently bring sales opportunities to fruition.  Sales reps often neglect developing their skills.  Sales representatives and sales professionals, therefore, vary to the extent that they diverge in possessing the skills required to sell most effectively. 

Consider the components of most sales work and their respective demands:

Conducting research     Requires resourcefulness and creativity

Qualifying                     Requires logic, and breadth and depth of specific (industry) knowledge

Setting appointments    Requires technique proficiency, discernment, and assertiveness

Presenting                     Requires strategy formulation, positioning, and presentation skills

Nurturing business        Requires patience, resourcefulness, persistence, creativity, and subtlety

Selling professionally requires a multitude of skills working synergistically.  Those who possess and refine such skills become top performers.  Most people employed in sales, however, do not improve their skills, and thus, remain ill equipped to succeed consistently.  

When striving to improve the sales of your company, understand which skills are required to meet your specific challenges.  Consider your sales methodology.  Understand the rationale behind what you are practicing, and require the same exercise from your salespeople. 

The greatest sales skill that you can develop is the depth of your thinking.  Sales professionals are deep thinkers about sales situations and, therefore, are more capable of figuring out how to effectively manage those situations in order to achieve success.  Convert your sales reps into sales professionals with process-based sales training, performance standards, and appropriate support, and then enjoy greater sales success.

What is it that Africa, the Caribbean and Middle East have in Common?

Advocacy for a diverse economy.

Malko Ebers, New York Jan 26th 2014

Comparing economies as different as the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East that sounds like an impossible task and pretty arrogant statement. Yes and No! I'd like to contribute to the discussion what these three huge marketplaces have in common, why this is important to know and how this might relate to your business.

Africa, the Caribbean and the Middle East in large part are all still very dependent on a few business sectors, their economies are often not well diversified. This matters because it creates big dependencies and it gives young entrepreneurs few choices. 

Africa in large parts is still very dependent on mining and commodity exports and the prices are set on world markets. If you look at the supply chain for cocoa, coffee, oil the money is made usually not at the production site in the country but later. The value is added and the profitability is higher when technology is added. This technology and (foreign) direct investment is often missing in Africa. How can it be that one of the oil richest and resource richest countries on earth Nigeria has to import gasoline? Because there is no refinery and people have to wait in line at gas stations pretty often in a country that should be blessed with abundant natural resources. Another example is Guinea in West Africa where bauxit mining & the aluminum industry provide a staggering 80 & of the countries foreign reserve and where agriculture still employs about 80% of the countries workforce. These structures are often not sustainable because not much knowledge, technological skill spreads, it provides little incentive for creativity and entrepreneurship and the generated income typically doesn't reach the majority of the population. 

In the Middle East with some notable exceptions we still have strong dependencies on oil exports and the generated wealth, concentrated at the top of clan structured autocratic regimes is used for tax and other subsidies - the political and the economic structure are very much intertwined and the 'end of oil' and of easy money is very much threatening the power structures and political stability. 

The third economy that I would like to briefly discuss is the Caribbean, one of the most beautiful places on the planet blessed with sunshine, tropical islands and some of the most impressive tourist resorts that were ever built. However the extreme dependence on tourism and offshore banking in most parts of the Caribbean creates very strong dependencies and makes the economy vulnerable to external shocks - such as 9/11 when int. tourism declined and int. banking became more regulated, storms and nature in general. 

All three regions discussed from Africa to the Middle East and the Caribbean see an enormous brain drain, their best and brightest people study, live and start businesses in Europe and America because the political stability, infrastructure, high speed internet and technology and the vast market of consumers very much supports all their creative ideas and talents. If you are a young graduate and your only realistic job chances are in tourism or working in mining or on an oil field then you might very well emigrate which is exactly what large proportions of you entrepreneurs do. Meanwhile many governments and institutions are realizing that a diversification of their economies, improvements in governance, fighting corruption, improving infrastructure, improving education and research and nurturing the entrepreneurship sector keep their talent and retain new ones. The IT revolution, near sourcing and outsourcing, access to global education, access to best practices in business, regimes that allow greater mobility of capital and goods support these efforts.

We are at the beginning of a global area of entrepreneurship, we see amazing talents all over the world working on a more fair, more collaborative and democratic form of doing business. We can and are collaborating worldwide on projects and we are living in a world where a good idea knows no borders. Governments and other bodies of society do well to embrace and support this groundbreaking transformation towards a more diversified, more global and collaborative economy.

How do use your heart and mind in business? 

Malko Ebers, New York Jan 26th 2014

Business is an important part of life, so important in fact that we spend hours and years with work. We exchange our time, effort, goods, services, money and that can be a very political and emotional affair.

Yes, we do get emotional about business, what happens at work, what happens in market negotiations and when we create dependencies in teams and organizations is close to our heart. We should do what we love, isn't that what everybody says? Well the chemistry and emotional passion can be a force for good, it drives us and inspires us and others. However emotions can be very much in the way as well. When we feel hurt, angry, sad then it affects our performance, our state of being awake and looking realistically at all options.

Let me give you an example. I just finished an inspiring and very direct conversation with a business partner who happens also to be the direct advisor to a king in Africa, a man of influence, experience and affluence. A lot was at stake finance, reputation, time spend and for the business and event we are planning we depend on each other, we need to build trust. When you feel you are passionate about something you are creating big positive expectations - the necessary independent variable and condition for disappointment. So besides all positive energy and momentum ask for feedback, ask what can go wrong and work on a plan B.

In business as in life we are acting in imperfect conditions, we lack time, resources and have imperfect access to information. Still we have to make decisions and have to act, the window of opportunity is only open for so long.

Hearing about groundbreaking innovation, negotiating a big deal, being passionate about a huge opportunity - business can be VERY emotional. So while you are in this state, remember what is your plan B, what is the worst case scenario and how would you mitigate these risks. I can not stress that enough. Life and work with passion but don't forget common sense, especially when a lot is at stake.

Manage Work not People!

A radical call for the liberation of the workplace

By Malko Ebers, CEO New York Business Consultants LLC

January 21st 2014

Context matters - the environment in which we work and which we perform matters, of course. Therefore extensive research has been undertaken to optimize just about everything at the workplace, to make it more efficient, to reduce movement, to measure every second and detail. But how far did this get us? 

To give an example Frederic Winslow Taylor about a hundred years ago was very successful at the Bethlehem steel company identifying the ideal size shovel for each worker, to optimize the workplace and to eliminate any waste. Following this paradigm Harvard under Prof. Elton Mayo (1880-1949) studied textile factories how they could increase output changing the context factors, in this case the light bulbs. So they measured performance/output as the dependent variable and changed the light (input). How much can I save, turning the light (heat, anything) down while not compromising on quantity?

The surprising result even in almost complete darkness the output was higher than before, it didn't correlate well with the light intensity. That was a really strange surprise that required further investigation. It turned out the workers were more productive not because of the light intensity or other context factors (the established paradigm at that time). This later called 'Hawthorne effect' meant that it was the social relationship, the attention the researchers have to the workers that increased productivity. 

A whole new paradigm of 'social relationships' and socially responsible management developed. Equipment, workplace conditions, access to technology, measuring and rewarding performance and output still matters but it is an illusion to think that it only matters if you can measure and therefore manage it! People matter and they probably matter more than ever before. In our modern service economies, in a flat world and information economy, organized in networks (network society, Manuel Catsells) creativity, innovation and empowered employees are the key asset that makes a difference in a competitive marketplace.

The idea that all employees have to come to one physical location 'the office' or factory and putting them in cubicles where specific tasks have to be performed under strict supervision (following Adam Smith and the insight of productivity gains through division of labor and specialization) it seems to be outdated. We need to manage the work and not the people, we need to measure output and encourage creativity and taking chances and a truly entrepreneurial spirit. 

Let employees work when and where and how they want and encourage results, initiative, creativity and collaborative teamwork. There are just numerous examples out there where individuals or small companies or even bigger ones put an idea out, something to design, to invent, to develop and if the idea is attractive in no time it might have thousands of followers people who research, investigate, think, share, collaborate worldwide. Thousands of people write code, design, edit wikipedia articles, collaborate for free - no money, no boss to tell them what to do and they work with all their heart? That's hard to explain to an orthodox economist, why would people do that? 

Because of intrinsic motivation, the urge to be creative, to bring something new to the world, belonging, doing something that has meaning with others. These are intrinsic, deeply embedded emotional drivers of behavior and positive emotion that no hierarchy, or money can buy or replace.

If we want to be at our best, as individuals, teams, networks and organizations of any kind then we need to embrace these motivators, then we need to radically change and reinvent the way we work, invent and collaborate. We see examples of this new form of network based real time collaboration, IT brings us closer together and allows us to collaborate, think, act and work together with people from all over the world. It has never been more exciting to be an entrepreneur, to make a difference and have an impact.

The liberalization of the workspace is taking place with or without consent of the established hierarchy and old school of thought but the organizations embracing the new way of collaboration, communication and production will be the ones thriving.

New York Business Consultants invites you to the World Entrepreneurship Summit 2014 on South America and the Caribbean

February 18^th you will have the opportunity to meet diplomats, entrepreneurs and market experts. Join us for an evening of learning and sharing and business networking.

The World Entrepreneurship Summit on South America and the Caribbean is held at Mercy College Manhattan February 18, 2014. The summit showcases success stories, best practices and challenges of entrepreneurship in South America and the Caribbean. Network with a distinguished group of business leaders, academics, ambassadors and other thought leaders. With the summit our company and partners also wants to help rebuild the Caribbean after the devastating storms of December. A percentage of each ticket sale is given to the Caribbean American Heritage Foundation of Texas.

New York Business Consultants LLC is a global management consulting company with a strong focus on international business development and emerging markets. Headquartered in New York City and with representation in Europe, the US, India and Africa the company provides management expertise, market analysis, strategy and other professional business services.

The Summit starts with a welcome address from the CEO of New York Business Consultants, Mr. Malko Ebers and an opening remark from the director of Center for Entrepreneurship of Mercy College, Mr. Wazi Wazihullah. Guillermo Silveira, an Argentinian artist gives a piano performance before the keynote speeches. The speakers include Citibank Director Mr. Eduardo Urdapilleta who will present the challenges and opportunities of business in Latin America.

The first session of the summit has two speakers and it addresses the tourism and retirement industry in South America and the Caribbean. Mr. Lovoy Rubin from Belize will present the project development and investment opportunities in Belize and Ms. Paige Brown will share share how to do business in the South American travel industry.

Prof. Peter Fusaro from Columbia University and Mr. Antonio ValleNeto from Brazil will host  the second session, which focuses on energy and sustainability.

After the sessions a panel discussion on best practices of entrepreneurship from the retail and beauty industry in the Americas concludes the Summit’s informative sessions and discussions. The panel will be moderated by  Vice President of Business Development & Marketing of GCaribbean Magazine Mr. Fabrice J. Armand. The panelists include CEO and co-founder of Soapbox Mr. David Simnick, founder of Kreyolessence Ms. Yve-Car Momperousse, Ms. Portia C. DiMicco and Mr Bertrand Gervais CEO FindSuccessMentors.

After a musical performance of Dr. Nyjeri Norman the participants will enjoy a reception and have the opportunity to network with each other.

For further information on the summit, speakers and sponsorship opportunities please visit www.wesnyc.com or contact the NYBC team.

New York Business Consultants Announces Business Partnership with South African Company Upbeat Marketing

By Madeline Tanamal, Malko Ebers

We are delighted to announce a strategic business to business partnership in South Africa with the company Upbeat Marketing.  The emerging markets and in particular Africa are growing fast and we need to take advantage of these opportunities. The new partnership supports our strategy and vision to become one of the premier service providers in emerging markets.

Upbeat Marketing is a strategic marketing consultancy headquartered in Sandton, Johannesburg. The company offers research and consultancy, training as well as business development services to private and public enterprises with a Pan-African vision. This partnership will further enhanced our ability to offer global consulting services, especially in offering African companies access to the mature and huge US marketplace. Furthermore, we can now better service our US clients that want to enter and establish their brand in South Africa and the African continent.

To learn how your company is affected by emerging markets and how you can grow sales, invest and take advantage of these opportunities please get in touch with our team. Let us share our excitement for Africa.