It’s all the more frustrating that the plug has been pulled because this is a project which could undoubtedly create jobs and wealth in the south west region and help achieve the government’s ambition of rebalancing the economy away from an over-reliance on the public sector.

So here we have a unique situation in one of the most deprived areas of Europe, where small businesses have fought hard to overcome any geographical hurdles to be able to compete on a wider stage beyond the Tamar but where the new Government sees fit to halt access to vital next generation broadband. A real case of cutting your nose off to spite your face.

It’s still a fine line to walk, because you can of course optimize your creation time as well by developing new habits to get the most out of your thought process.  But a never-ending cycle of optimization can also become a crutch, a place to hide when you really should be confronting the real issues your business is facing. It’s a salutory lesson that while Yahoo was optimizing their home page in 2001, those cheeky chaps at Google were inventing something totally new.

Definition of Motivation

Motivation is the means of encouraging individuals to move towards something they value. In a sales situation, it is how salespeople are encouraged to improve their performance and to strive towards a specific objective or target.

Motivation can be either positive or negative in the way that it works: Positive when it encourages the movement towards something desirable; negative when it encourages the movement away from something undesirable.

Motivation – the positive view

It is thought that positive motivation is more powerful than the other kind: Pushing someone into water will certainly get them swimming but will hardly create a passion for the water.

Similarly, threatening people might work in the short term, but is unlikely to produce sustained effort over the longer term.

Is the objective desirable?

Not every objective is equally desirable. Financial rewards are usually desirable in sales, but other objectives can be equally important.

Such things as status, social involvement & self-development can be equally motivational in a work situation and should not be ignored.

What are motivators?

Frederick Herzberg identified that providing a sense of achievement, offering recognition and giving responsibility are all strongly motivational, whereas company policy & working conditions are merely Hygiene Factors - elements that do not motivate on their own account, but which can lead to demotivation if not handled properly.

These Hygiene Factors need therefore to be removed, to reduce any possible demotivation, before concentrating on those factors that create motivation.

Is the objective achievable?

The best performers prefer objectives that stretch them, but only by a moderate amount, whereas weaker performers accept average performance or worse still, set themselves high objectives that they can never achieve.

The implication is to recruit people who respond to fairly challenging goals and to set targets they can achieve through reasonable improvements in performance.

Conflicting targets?

Too many targets can lead to lack of focus on the most important objectives. The more targets that exist, the more likely they are to conflict.

A good example is when managers stress the importance of teamwork, but then only to reward individual performance.

Stepping stones

The importance of breaking down objectives into a series of more digestible targets has been well proven. A series of monthly objectives is more motivational than a simple yearly target.

The implication is to chunk down objectives into those that can be achieved over a lesser time scale. Their achievement will also generate a momentum of success

Do the necessary capabilities exist?

An obvious one perhaps, but without the necessary abilities, no amount of motivation can raise performance.

An important implication is to ensure that the appropriate knowledge, skills & attitudes have been identified & that they form the basis of your training & development plan.

A link between effort & reward?

Many sales incentives schemes break this rule. Targets are often seen as unfair, or slanted towards certain individuals.

A traditional problem in sales is to set territory targets that bear no relation to the actual business potential of the territory. This can lead to some people returning exceptional numbers by just turning up. Targets must reward effort, not just lucky geography.

Value comprises a mix of costs and benefits. Costs not only consist of the actual price paid, but also perhaps the potential cost of a late delivery or faulty product. Understanding how you can help your customer with all the “costs” associated with buying from you will give you more of an insight into how much real value you can offer. As for benefits, there are of course the functional “it does what it says on the tin” benefits - product capabilities, performance etc - and also the more ephemeral emotional benefits such as confidence in the brand and its acceptability to customers.

It is in really understanding the benefits you are able to offer to help your customers business that will enable you to stand out from the crowd and take the pressure off price. By being able to demonstrate the real value of each of your benefits to your decision-makers, you should be able to protect your pricing and avoid an unnecessary knee-jerk reaction.

Now this shouldn’t be a revelation and by and large it wasn’t to the participants on the workshop, who were all very experienced and high quality sales professionals, but as we progressed through the day it became clear that it can be easy for sales people - even experienced ones - to drop into a silo mentality and not really see the need for a truly symbiotic relationship with their marketing colleagues when faced with the challenge of winning and development those key accounts that are the key to driving growth in both revenues and profitability.

These key accounts need to be treated as ‘markets of one’ with an individual sales AND marketing plans developed and implemented if their potential is to be fully realised. We had everybody on board with this way of thinking by the end of the workshop but it wasn’t completely plain sailing!


1.    Think fluid. Don’t get stuck to a rigid strategic plan. Instead, see where the water flows and trust your instincts — not your spreadsheet — in pursuing new options. Make sure your business is agile enough to react to market trends or new innovations in technology. If you spot a new opportunity, you don’t have to check it’s on the plan first — just go for it.
2.    Prototype. Test your ideas in the real world. Better to launch beta versions of your website, so you can evaluate and tweak as you go, rather than trying to perfect the model before you launch. Otherwise you might never get the site off the ground.
3.    Reinvent. Learn to love change and be prepared to rethink what you do and how you do it. Maybe your business feels a bit stale, a bit stuck. You might need to shake up your organization so your clients start thinking differently about you. Re-energize your organization by taking your team on an ‘away day’ to brainstorm new ideas; think laterally about how you can re-engineer your offering to grow the business.
4.    Think goals, not plans. Set objectives for the year: deadlines to meet, products to launch. It’s important to know what you want to achieve — if not necessarily how you’ll get there. This allows you to think big without initially worrying about the details. A goal may be “I need to get a new client every month.” Perhaps you don’t have a strict linear plan for how you’ll actually achieve that — you just start off the instinctive way: word of mouth, social networking, client meet-and-greets, and so on.  You can’t chart this activity on a graph, but mentally focusing on the goals will help you reach your desired outcome.

Ian argues that a timeline or a spreadsheet can’t capture those opportunities that arise from serendipity and random meetings, but if you remove the traditional business planning mindset, you’ll be liberated to grow your business in line with how the world really changes — not with what it says on a spreadsheet.
It’s a brave stance and not for everyone, but it certainly seems to suit the way Joe works and has been able to develop his business. So perhaps in this new economic landscape of 2010 it’s time to take a look at how you work and how you are best able to grow your business - choosing the appropriate path somewhere between “planned to within an inch of your life” and the rather freer approach adopted by Joe. To find out more about our thoughts on marketing planning and marketing plans follow this link.

Whether developing a marketing strategy from scratch, or helping clients find their way back to where they want to be, as marketing strategy consultants we ask our clients to think about three key areas:

1. Identify just how much your competitive landscape has changed. Have any new competitors emerged? If so, what are similar services of products are they offering? How have your existing competitors changed in how they tackle this new geography? Understanding how your existing and new competitors are looking to tackle the new landscape of 2010 will help you better position yourself in the market and ultimately better compete against all competitors.

2. Re-examine your target market. Time spent researching any changes amongst your target market in buying trends will give you a clear picture of who your customer is, what influences their buying decisions and what changes they are facing. Again, a clear understanding of your customers will enable you to position yourself appropriately and compete more effectively.

3. How relevant is your product or service? Whilst you may have been chasing every sale at all costs in recent times - and understandably so - this can sometimes dilute the unique set of  benefits you are able to offer. Rewriting your positioning statement can be a very useful way to make sure you are clear about what you offer, who to, and why people should buy from you. Being clear about what you offer makes it easier to communicate your particular benefits to your chosen target markets, making for more effective marketing.

Once you have a clearer strategic marketing direction, you can then set about developing appropriate marketing plans to bring real results. To find out more about how to develop effective marketing plans and marketing planning please follow this link.