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2007 The Year of the Salesman?

The ugly secret of dynamic Asia is that, despite rates of growth that exceed Europe and the US, business here is beset by weak selling skills and ramshackle support processes.

When the US is growing at 3%, Asian operations that notch up 7 or 8 or even 10% look like winners - yet many sectors in this region, especially in the tiger economies of China or Vietnam, are expanding at rates closer to 20% and in some instances as high as 30%.

Bottom line, the sales heros capturing 10% growth are probably losing market share to competitors - often more nimble local companies - and because they look good in world terms they are given a free pass.

Asia Now research across 8 sectors suggests that salesmen in Asia spend massive chunks of time engaged in non-sales related tasks, like admin, form-filling, or "travel". In addition, time spent with customers or prospects is frequently squandered on easy wins or repeat business when it could be far better directed to new higher-margin wins.

Our unique growth methodology frees up selling time and using simple planning disciplines backed by training and skills building migrates sales effort to a new level of excellence based on value.

"By showing us how sales time was being used - both in term of time lost to inefficiency or error, and the effectiveness of customer-facing time, Asia Now really helped us get started on changing our sales culture" says the CFO of a leading listed integrator.

"By selectively capturing the improvements identified by Asia Now we have had 16 quarters of continuous growth

Typically the first step to growth takes no more than a few weeks: call Asia Now today, read more here or write to me at simonl@asia-now.com

Enjoy your Christmas and Make 2007 the Year of the Salesman!

Simon Littlewood
President Asia Now

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Why does change fail and what can executives do about it?

Whilst this region boasts the most dynamic markets on the planet most attempts to execute change within regional businesses - be they large or small - fail. Ernst and Young estimate that globally about 70% of major change programs deliver significantly below expectations - ASIA NOW research over 15 years in Asia suggests the number is higher for certain initiatives and geographies , for example those involving China or CRM.

How can it be that most regional execs preside over failures and we hear nothing of it? Well firstly failure is not just an orphan - failure is smothered at birth. To understand the reasons for repeated execution disappointments and fix them you have first to acknowledge that things have gone wrong. When was the last time you witnessed a senior executive, politician or other notable stand up and say, "Sorry, we got it wrong, planned it badly, executed it worst, mea culpa"?

Pick Your Bets

The first imperative for our putative exec is to lay out all the initiatives his core team, country managers, and superiors think they have to address and evaluate them based upon importance and difficulty in order to identify the ones he will actually pursue.

What passes muster will be a combination of the politically inescapable (the Chairman's big idea) and a small selection of high-return initiatives. The leadership team will need to buy into the reasoning behind the selection - and the exclusions - and some blood will probably flow, because individuals will lose pet projects. Much better to thrash this out up front (and get unequivocal commitment to what emerges), than to let everything through and fail widely, or have disenfranchised execs throw rocks from a distance.

Put skin in the game

Important in making his pick will be a sensible estimation of the change bandwidth of his organization. Executives used to change failure happily agree to any number of initiatives because they do not expect to be held accountable. From the outset, therefore, a significant proportion of variable remuneration and face will need to be very visibly allocated to whatever initiatives make the cut, backed by some simple and clear metrics. This focus - clarified early - should encourage the team to limit what they take on to what can sensibly be executed.

Test the water - before you get in, and often when in

Once he has the leadership team focused on the right things he must address the single biggest change risk, which is passive resistance. The silent majority, fearful of change, unclear of what it means, un-persuaded of the benefits for themselves, will simply sit it out and hope that it will go away.

If he conducts a change readiness assessment, consisting of questionnaires completed in confidence and without individual attribution, backed up by communications workshops where the environment is culturally appropriate and fosters open dialogue, and typically he will learn lots about how people feel about this, and previous, change programs, and be able to address concerns and mitigate fear. He will need to repeat the exercise to ensure that key constituencies are moving through the program.

He can use this process too, to isolate the recalcitrants who (for one reason or another) will undermine what he wants to achieve, and to identify (and harness) the luminaries who will carry the change message to their peers and persuade by example.

Plan in detail

Most initiatives which fail, fail in the planning. It always amazes me how many "detailed" project plans (if they exist at all) start with an output. This is a bit like having a detailed life plan which consists solely of a date 30 years from now and the action "go to heaven". Okay, but what are the 77000 things I need to do, and in what order, and with what dependencies, to be sure of getting there on the target date?

More in September

In Execution 3 we will talk about the need for a program office to drive change, the benefits of a pilot, and how to learn from mistakes. Watch this space.

With a canny sense of timing China has announced that its GDP has been understated by approximately the size of Turkey's. What few analysts have noticed is that if you factor in the undervaluation of the yuan, which may be as much as 30%, you get a GDP of $2.6bn which actually makes China the world's 3rd largest economy, and (unless Japan suddenly put on a spurt) puts it on track to take the number 2 spot within 5 years.

Why announce it now? In the last few weeks we have had APEC, ASEAN and the WTO round in Hong Kong which ended in picaresque failure. At daggers drawn with Japan over the Yusukune shrine, under pressure from the American right who scarcely need an excuse to call for trade sanctions, flotation of the yuen or simple annihilation, and faced with an ASEAN coming to terms with Chinese hegemony and sore over the devatating switch of FDI from them to Beijing, small wonder the Middle Kingdom kept mum till this week.

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