Tip of the Spear Ventures

A Family Office that behaves like Venture Capital | Private Equity | Business Consulting

Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

Improving Business Development Leadership Skills – 3 Tips!

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The Point: In any business development effort, the leaders are the key elements of any organization to increase the number of sales. Effective business leadership gives direction and defines the framework to achieve the expected objectives, all the while attempting to avoid inefficiency and misuse of resources. So in this post, we’ll explore improving business development leadership skills and share 3 tips… Enjoy!

Improving Business Development Leadership Skills - 3 Tips!

Business Development Leadership… Lonely at the Top?

Business development leadership is the driving force behind efforts to achieve best sales, innovation and productivity. In my years of consulting, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I’ve identified that there is a strong correlation between leadership development and business performance. So why are so many organizations reluctant to invest in leadership development training for sales leadership? The answer may surprise you!?!

The Best 3 Tips for Improving Business Development Leadership Skills

A leader with a vision ensures that people understand not only where the company is at, but where it plans on going (and how the people listening play a vital role in how the organization will get there!) The sales leadership in the company can, and should, be seen as the engine that powers the business. The business development leadership role is to be an influential person who motivates their troops and displays a natural positivity.

The following are what I consider to be the top 3 tips to achieving a good sales leadership dynamic:

Tip #1: Be Transparent

Good communication skills are essential for leaders to perform well.

The first step is to be totally transparent with the employees and to tell them exactly where the business is and what their role is.

I often see Sales Leaders that lack authenticity (Be yourself!) attempt to hide behind a proposed leadership mask. People, especially salespeople, will know if you are sincere or not. Your salespeople need all the information they can get to help you achieve your business development goals. Not disseminating information can only provide you confusion/trouble along the way.

Tip #2:   Know Your Strengths and Weaknesses… Then Delegate

In good business development leadership the particular leader must be aware of his or her skills and personality. Make sure you know your strengths, weaknesses and gaps. You can focus on what you do the best, while knowing where you are likely to need help. Furthermore, you could reinforce a weak point in your skills by hiring an external consultant.

The inability to delegate is probably one of the biggest challenges for many leaders who often practice micromanagement (or mismanagement). Sales leadership should recognize the strengths of other members of their team in order to benefit from them. It is important to learn how to surround yourself with competent staff, but you must provide them with the opportunity to prove that competency.

By delegating you also develop your employees, which would be essential to the long-term growth/stability of both the individuals and your organization (People are generally up to the challenge!)

Tip #3: Networking

Another effective business development leadership tip is business networking. If ABC stands for “always be closing,” then the sales leader should employ ABN (Always Be Networking!)

Business networking is a leader’s best friend, regardless of business size (but especially for small and medium-sized businesses). Leaders often need to connect with other business owners, so as to share experiences and learning from each other. Effective leaders know how to build relationships and build beneficial partnerships/alliances.

Networking is also a way to keep up with trends and maintain your visibility in a highly competitive market.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve explored how improving business development leadership skills can be beneficial. Effectiveness in business development leadership often results in improved performance and improved the sales in the organization. The 3 top could create wider opportunities in business development. These tips have benefited from actions that have had a lasting impact on their business growth.

Sam Palazzolo

 

The Tough Work of Turnaround Management – 4 Tips!

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The Point: If you’re like me, you love CNBC’s “The Profit” staring Marcus Lemonis! Week after week Marcus seems to not only identify, but successfully partner with organizations looking to turn their business around. But does reality really work out this way off of television? The Profit makes turnaround management look so damn simple/profitable! So I started thinking, “What is the tough work of turnaround management?” So in this post, we’ll explore the tough work you’ll need to employ in order to achieve success in your turnaround endeavors… Enjoy!

The Tough Work of Turnaround Management!

Wait a Second… This is NOT so Easy!

Are you a businessman or a prospective businessman who is just curious to know how tough turnaround management can be? You may not want to feel too inquisitive, and therefore keep your curiosity to yourself (or as my old-boss used to say, “Kid, don’t quit your day job!”) If truly you belong to this category, then you are currently perusing the right post. Turnaround management and business change are important for new developments in an organization’s business strategy, and should be done with adequate seriousness, regardless of how tough they seem. Although I won’t say it is elusive to achieve success, it can require some special dedication and seriousness to achieve desired outcome (Value creation, profitability, etc.)

The Tough Work of Turnaround Management!

Here are four (4) tips to help keep you aligned for success in a turnaround based on the most common failures I’ve seen/experienced:

Tip #1 – The Toughness of Taking Charge: Factually, you have to learn to be a leader before you can finally lead. For an effective business change, you must be ready to take charge. Among the members of your business, there will be some that appear hard to control. However, know this much that you must do it! Having an excellent business strategy but zero leadership is like having a good car with no one willing to drive it (or no engine!) (If you’re looking for leadership development while encountering a turnaround scenario, I’ve established a new offering just for you. Drop me a line at selections@tipofthespearventures.com).

Tip #2 – The Power of Confrontation: Some people need confrontation before they can get things done. Confrontation is not really bad as people perceive it to be, and it can be highly effective! You have to apply pressure sometimes to get people to work. Some people always try to avoid confrontation so they don’t look cruel, but this notion should be erased when it comes to business change. Confrontations do not always mean lambasting a person, and if you are the kind that confront this way, you may have to change completely. Every statement uttered by you when confronting a team member should be positive, so as not to dispirit them.

Tip #3 – Building a Culture of Success: It takes more than a well-designed business strategy to metamorphose from a business that has gone sideways/down completely to a business that everyone wants to liaise with. If you do everything possible by you for turnaround management, but don’t get success, it is equivalent to you doing nothing. A business owner who has lost superfluously may even dash his hope in business change, and feel it is no longer possible to recuperate all that is gone and go back to normality. It is tough for you to lose too much, and still believe you will be successful, but it is paramount to believe so.

Tip #4 – Choosing the Right People: Choosing the right persons is also a challenge in going back to normality. Developing a new business strategy to bring back you company to normality may entail you dismissing wrong people, and retaining or recruiting the right people. This is a difficult task, compounded by the fact that it is difficult to differentiate between the right people and the wrong people.

SUMMARY

It may not be stress-free for to turnaround a company, but I’ve found degrees of success can be achieved if you take charge, are willing to confront, looking to build a culture of success, and choosing the right people. Remember, real-life isn’t like a made to order television show! You’ll have to put in a great degree of dedication and seriousness in order to achieve the best outcome within a short period of time as possible.

 

Sam Palazzolo

PS – If you/your organization has challenges as a result of Turnaround Management activity, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line and request future post titles! Here are a few other titles that are currently in the works:

 

 

What Makes M&A so Difficult to Execute Successfully? Top 3 Reasons!

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The Point: Visualize a scenario where you buy a used car… There were test-drives available, you could examine both interior/exterior, even seek assistance from a trained mechanic to help assess the performance/stability of the car. Now, irrespective of all due diligence, the real fact is, whether you made a good purchase or otherwise, you will get real evidence after the purchase is made once you start riding around in it over time. Mergers &acquisition deals also have the same route and challenges – you can examine the existing business based on visible financial numbers, assumptions of potential fitness and advisory assistance from M&A advisors. With all these though, it’s only when all deals are made and the business needs to be moved forward that reality sets in – the dreaded difficulties and challenges may arise. In this post we’ll talk about what makes most mergers and acquisitions difficult to operate successfully… Enjoy!

What Makes M&A so Difficult to Execute Successfully?

Why Most Mergers & Acquisition Fail

Most people have read studies reporting the failure of most acquisitions to provide shareholder value – yet there have been an increasing M&A market with frothy valuations, not lacking willing buyers to venture.

A purchase with a high price often increases the task of creating a higher value. For the last decade, it has come to the understanding of many buyers that value is created from building real business value and NOT just from mere clever financial engineering and opportunistic buying.

Acquiring growth from new markets, customers and products are the major purpose for most mergers & acquisition – for profit maximization through the strategic potential of a deal. But are most firms really getting all of these? Statistics have confirmed it not to be the case. Discussed below are the reasons why executing M&A successfully can be difficult.

Top 3 Reasons Why Successfully Executing M&A is so Difficult

Reason #1: Not Executing the Integration Process

The post-merger integration has been a major challenge for many mergers & acquisitions deals. In order to identify crucial projects or products, key employees and all sensitive matters, there must be a well structured appraisal process in place. With this in place, there should also be a design for efficient integration/adoption of processes that will be supported with automation, consulting and possible outsourcing alternatives (so as to avoid deal complexity).

Reason #2: When Owners are NOT Involved

Most of the time, a limited role is assigned to advisors until a deal is completed. With this being made known, newly acquired entities are onus of their owners (or without). There should be involvement from owners starting from the establishment of the deal, to how the business will run and should allow advisors to play a role assisting (if need be). This will have a lifelong benefit to the organization as the owner will benefit from the experience of gaining tremendous key knowledge/insight and the all too important ability to execute.

Reason #3: Assuming Optimism Blindly

It is very common for buyers to assume that a targeted company operates just as the way they do things themselves. It must be noted that there are a lot of different approaches of operational functions by which companies operate by. The integration team should account for these differences when plans are being made. They should consciously make the right assumptions rather than aggressive ones.

We’ve worked with a large client for several years now… While each has the same corporate logo hanging out in front of their business, each operates dramatically different from one another on the inside!

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve discussed the topic of mergers & acquisition, and more indepth what makes M&A so difficult to execute successfully. From an outsiders seat there appears to be a need to enhance deal-making skills for acquiring a new business if lasting success is desired. A potential great company will learn from the three reasons given of mistakes made by rookies and improve, integrate the right process where owners will be involved, and consistently build capabilities needed for future growth.

 

Sam Palazzolo

PS – If you/your organization has challenges as a result of Mergers and Acquisition activity, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line and request future post titles! Here are a few other titles that are currently in the works:

  • Will Your M&A be a Success or Failure? 3 Tips!
  • Disrupting Your Industry with Exponential Growth: How Amazon’s Purchase of Whole Foods Upended Retailer’s Strategic Plan
  • Mergers & Acquisition: Should You Go for Stock or Cash?
  • The Importance of an M&A Strategic Plan
  • Mergers & Acquisition: Creating Shareholder Value
  • Mergers & Acquisition – Six Diversification Questions
  • Mergers & Acquisitions: The Future in the Old/New Economy
  • How to Successfully Survive Mergers & Acquisition
  • Mergers & Acquisitions: The Problem with Acquisitions

 

Is the Art of Business Development Prospecting Overrated? 3 Tips!

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Many sales guru’s think that the Art of Business Development Prospecting is overrated, but this aspect of business can never be sidelined. Many make blunders because they mistake the art for “something else” by committing one or more of the under listed blunders:

  1. Not listening. No salesperson has ever heard of a sale. However, when asked a simple question, many sellers take it as a license to deliver a monologue. Here are three tips for better listening.
  2. Using sales of snapshots. People often start to lose interest when they feel they are being sold. Usually they begin to feel this way when they hear phrases like “This is a great question” or “What is needed to get your business today?” People need to feel like individuals, not like parts on an assembly line.
  3. Failure to adapt to the situation. The problem with using a rigid sales script is that it assumes buying motivations, prospects pain points, and supposed similar situations in life.
  4. Distinguish features from benefits. Often focus on sellers telling someone what a product or service to the detriment of this problem solves or what pain takes away. Once I observed a commercial leasing agent from the prospective client’s office. When he met in the hall of the building, he commented on the large outdoor car park. It was a declaration of characteristics. A benefit statement would have focused on how customers would never find a parking lot or that people could always park near the building in bad weather. Was it a necessary conversation point to make? Probably not!

Below are three tips that can assist in the art of business development prospecting, taking you from overrated to actual sales/business development activity:

Tip #3 – Prospecting is Not Networking.

Prospecting requires thoughtful analysis. Networking is improvisational and immediate. Prospecting requires equal measure of looking out into the marketplace assessing the need or demand, and introspection to look within yourself and determine, with clarity and confidence, what opportunities you are well positioned to pursue that will elevate your scene to ever-higher levels.

Prospecting requires discernment. It’s not a numbers game all the time. Whatever your business, you will not be good for all potential prospects. There should be a mutually perceived adjustment between you and your prospective client – where the best to serve them well is in a way that is highly valued by them (NOT you the salesperson!) Believe me, this dilutes the pile of pressed mud. Once you are able to define what a “good fit” is for the prospect, and why they should care, you are able to focus all your energy and resources on the opportunities that feed the most promising of prospects. When you are highly specialized, prospecting is often though of as “easy.” If you are a specialized expert, known in the market to solve specialized types of problems you may be thinking that you do not need to prospect for customers (or those customers who need this kind of problem solved). It is much easier to determine which prospects place a high value on your solution. Chances are good that these prospective clients will be looking for you too, and you will be much easier to find as a result.

Tip #2 – What Defines a Perspective?

A prospect is a known buyer at an early stage in search of a solution to a major problem that cannot be solved now or in the near future. All the others are suspect. Converting suspects into prospects is a tough job and takes time. In my consulting firm, it takes three months or more of careful “in-touch” strategies to transform a prospect from a suspect.

Tip #1 – Always Be Prospecting (ABP)!

Prospecting is not an activity you do when you need business. If you need business next week, the prospecting of evil cannot correct. Always be prospecting (ABP), no matter how busy you are. It is the only way to create a sustainable sales pipeline to grow your business. Whatever your current business book, plant and tend a garden for abundant future prospects ripening every day.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve set out to identify is the art of business development prospecting overrated, along with three tips to assist you in implementing the prospecting pipeline-fill needed to be successful in sales.

 

Sam Palazzolo

PS – If you or your organization is challenged as a result of Sales / Business Development activity, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line and request future post titles! Here are a few other titles that are currently in the works:

  • Rеѕроndіng tо Emergencies
  • Identifying thе Strеngthѕ and Weaknesses in Representatives
  • Dеvеlоріng Strаtеgіеѕ fоr Rеvеnuе Grоwth
  • Developing Effесtіvе Cоmреnѕаtіоn Pans
  • Hоldіng Sales Rерrеѕеntаtіvеѕ Accountable fоr Pооr Pеrfоrmаnсе
  • Learning tо Motivate and Inѕріrе Sales Representatives

The Leadership Challenge: Flexibility – 5 Tips!

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The Point: If you’ve ever taken in a Cirque du Soleil show you know that the pure athleticism of a cast member is simply mind-boggling. It bears repeating… Mind –boggling! Mix several of these cast members into the choreography of the show itself and it can be sensory overload (almost inducing a nauseous state!) In this post we’ll examine the leadership challenge of flexibility and provide 5 tips so that you as a leader can be more Cirque-like in your leadership pursuits… Enjoy!

The Leadership Challenge: Flexibility – 5 Tips!

I Have to Do What with My Phone?

Is there anything better than taking in a show in Las Vegas? In full transparency, I’m fortunate enough to call Las Vegas home and am 100% biased. I simply believe it’s the best city on Earth! After all, who has better entertainment, restaurants, and night-life than LV (I’ll recognize NYC, but…)? And nothing is better than going to see the Cirque du Soleil shows. From KA at MGM, Michael Jackson at Mandalay Bay, The Beatles at Mirage, “O” at Bellagio, the list goes on and on… Each of them fantastic in their own right.

As different as each of these shows are, there is a core athleticism that remains the constant benchmark. The cast members are not only in fantastic shape, but the choreography highlights just how fantastically athletic each one is. Another constant is a need for safety for each and every cast member. So with safety in mind, each show starts off with a “kind” way of informing the audience to please shut-off your cell phones (NOTE: Videos/Photos are forbidden!)

5 Tips for Leadership Flexibility

I recently took in the “O” show at Bellagio, and it did not disappoint! I was left mouth-opened (ironically in the shape of an “O”), gasping for explanation as to how the cast members were able to pull-off the many choreographed scenes that were performed. In a word, I was stumped!

So it’s with this show in mind that I began to ponder “What are the leadership lessons that can be learned from such an amazing production?” Here then are 5 tips for the leadership challenge of flexibility, Cirque-style:

Tip #5 – Sometimes It’s Going to Rain!

To say that the “O” Cirque show has water in it is like saying there is oxygen in the air… It’s everywhere! And just when you think you/the cast members are safe water presents itself again and again. So know this much as a leader, it is going to rain (or the elements are not going to cooperate). It’s not a matter of if, but when… So prepare yourself for the elements.

Tip #4 – You Better Be Flexible!

The Cirque cast members, as previously mentioned, are each gifted athletes, with strength and flexibility. So as a leader you had better be prepared to flex your muscles and be flexible when those unplanned business situations arise.

Tip #3 – Eliminate Noise (No Cell Phone Utilization!)

I previously discussed the cute way in which audience members were requested to quiet their phones. Likewise, as a leader sometimes you’ll be better off if you go and sit in a quiet conference room by yourself to actually think (and breath) about what you are going to do. Think of this as a strategy session for one!

Tip #2 – If You’re Scared, Say You’re Scared and Jump In!

The highlight of the “O” show for many is the high-divers that jump to what appears to be their peril, but in actuality land in a very wide/deep pool of water. I guess that old New Orleans phrase of “If you’re scared, say you’re scared” can come in handy for the leader that needs to get over whatever is presenting the obstacle-of-the-moment so that they can move on.

Tip #1 – Enjoy the Moment!

Nothing, and I mean nothing, gave me greater joy than to go see the “O” show with loved ones (I’ve actually seen it twice!) It was in this second viewing that I was able to take in more (See my sensory overload comments earlier) and really notice what was taking place all over the stage. As a leader, you’ll be pulled in a multitude of different directions in what appears to be simultaneous instances. When this occurs, and I know it will be difficult, you need to remember to smell the roses and enjoy the moment.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve explored the leadership challenge of flexibility, brought to life through the magical Cirque du Soleil shows in Las Vegas. While you/I might never look like a Cirque performer (I’m still attempting to!), hopefully the five tips presented will provide you with some insight into how you can be the best leader you can be (Or at the very minimum, jump from a high-dive into a pool!)

 

Sam Palazzolo

 

PS – If you have a leadership challenge you’d like me to explore, please drop me a line and let me know!