ClearPurpose

Growing a business is hard. So often it seems like a chaotic journey of hard decision after hard decision with periods of intense focused execution in between. Early in my career I learned that hard decisions become much easier once you have a strategic framework in place to guide those decisions. The structure and clarity a framework provides often immediately eliminates half the options on the table and simplifies the process of evaluating the other half.

Scaling Up by Verne Harnish is all about structure and clarity, but takes the benefits well beyond a strategic framework. The book is organized around four categories of decisions that leaders must address: people, strategy, execution, and cash. The four sections covering those four types of decisions all start with a collection of tools helpful in making those decisions. In the intro to the book Harnish says “we’ve learned that CEOs and executives of growth firms want ideas and tools they can implement immediately to improve some aspect of their business”. 

In short, Scaling Up provides tools you can use immediately for whatever hard decision your company is facing today.

Read the full review here.

One of my clients recently asked for my perspectives on how he could involve God more directly in his business. This is a big and important question.

There is no single answer that will work for everyone and every business. If you earnestly seek to involve God in your business, it will require the means of grace that God has provided including prayer, time in His Word, the Bible, and fellowship with other Christians, seeking their wise and Godly counsel.

This client knows that, and he was seeking my wisdom and counsel as part of that process. I gave him a quick answer that I think was helpful. I have identified a variety of resources to provide a more comprehensive view of what it might look like to involve God in your business.

I share both in the article available here.

A few months ago I defined business operations this way: Business operations is the collection of activities and resources required for a business to deliver its value proposition to its customers.

Scalability refers to the ability to easily handle an increasing amount of activity with consistent quality and improving economics. 

Most startups are almost intentionally unscalable. The startup phase of a business involves lots of experimenting to find what works. The business is designed for flexibility, not scalability. Scalability involves standardizing and automating processes as much as possible. It requires an investment in time and often money that really doesn’t make sense until you’re done experimenting and you’ve decided exactly how you’re going to operate.

But at some point, the startup becomes a scaling business that needs to profitably keep up with growing demand.

The article linked below describes the 5 key steps to scalable operations.

Click here to read the full article.

The Unicorn Within, by Linda K. Yates, teaches mature companies how to launch disruptive new ventures the same way that startups do, but with the added boost of what the author calls “the Mothership advantage”.

The Unicorn Within is primarily aimed at leaders of large, mature businesses who want to increase innovation specifically by establishing the capability to launch new startup ventures from within. The book lays out the comprehensive methodology that Yates’ company Mach49 uses to help their clients do just that. This involves a major commitment of time and resources.

The Unicorn Within will also be valuable to anyone wanting to know how to launch startups outside of big companies. The Mach49 methodology is based upon the best practices used by the most successful venture-backed startups. First time entrepreneurs (and even those who’ve started companies in the past) will benefit from the detailed step-by-step process the author lays out for launching a new venture. Those that teach entrepreneurship should consider using the book in their classes. Those that coach, mentor, or otherwise support entrepreneurs will also gain valuable insights into what it takes to successfully launch a startup.

Click the link below to read my full review.
https://clearpurpose.media/book-brief-the-unicorn-within-899e7714a0d9?sk=e94561db41021fcb30fbe7a63cef5868

Good salespeople have a well-defined system that they consistently apply in their dealings with customers. For those without a system, or whose current system isn’t working, You Can’t Teach a Kid to Ride a Bike at a Seminar by David H. Sandler is for you. It teaches the Sandler System. It does so through an engaging and entertaining writing style, giving lots of real world examples, and calling out plenty of “Sandler Selling Tips” along the way. 

The name of the book is meant to emphasize that you aren’t really going to learn how to sell by reading the book. It will provide head knowledge about the system and specific techniques critical to success in using the system, but you’re going to need to practice those techniques, and probably fail a few times, before you really learn it. Since the Sandler organization operates 250 training centers around the world, I’m guessing the book is also intended to emphasize that it helps to have someone running along side you, encouraging you, and pointing out how to get better at selling.

You Can’t Teach a Kid… is fun to read and full of great content. Even if the Sandler System isn’t for you, you’ll pick up some good ideas for improving your sales approach. But if you don’t have a system, or your system isn’t working, this book might just begin to teach you a system worth trying.

Click the link below to read my full review.
https://clearpurpose.media/book-brief-you-cant-teach-a-kid-to-ride-a-bike-at-a-seminar-994d3987306b?sk=674bb9ccf4555070be7ee3ef8483a748

It used to be that almost all sales involved interpersonal interactions. A salesperson approached a potential customer and offered products or services, or a customer walked into a retail store and made a purchase. Today, many business-to-business transactions still involve a traditional salesperson-client interaction, but both consumer and business transactions are increasingly moving online with little or no human-to-human interaction. 

In the article linked below, I look at sales under two different models – relational and transactional. For each, I discuss tools commonly used to effectively manage through different phases of the sales process and, along the way, identify 42 different specific steps you can take to increase sales. Bottom line, “selling more” does not require “more selling”, but rather often involves better listening. If you better understand your customers and their needs, better meet those needs, and act in a way that builds their trust in you, you will sell more.

Read the full article here and see the 42 ways to increase sales.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about category making. In it, I suggested that there are three distinct challenges that must be tackled when creating a new category. In the article linked below I look back in history at a few of the more iconic category creators that have not only defined new product categories, but in the process, changed our lives. Understanding the decisions they made and the actions they took related to each of those challenges, and how their efforts paid off could be helpful as you consider your own category making journey.

Intel created the microprocessor category in 1971 that, in time, powered the microprocessor revolution. Google created the ranked web search category in 1996 which helped all of us discover the Internet revolution. In 1992 ARM created the mobile processor sub-category that enabled the mobility revolution. In 2010 Uber built upon the power of those three revolutions to create the mobility-as-a-service category.

Read each of these company’s stories through a category making lens and to see what lessons today’s category-makers can learn from them.

Play Bigger, by Al Ramadan, Dave Peterson, Christopher Lochhead, and Kevin Maney, is probably the best book on the market teaching innovators how to create new product categories and become the category king. It’s not a perfect book, and I don’t agree with everything the authors say, but if you are wondering whether or not you should be creating a new category, I’d recommend you read this book so that you understand what it would take, and then make your decision.

If you do decide to go for it, Play Bigger does a good job of explaining how to go about creating a new category and what to do after you’ve successfully done so.

The biggest issue I have with Play Bigger is that it seems to present the whole process as simply a matter of following each step contained in each chapter. They don’t hide the fact that some of those steps are really hard (which is good), but I honestly don’t think that’s how it works. I get the sense that the Play Bigger team never walks into a company and says “okay, here’s the project plan. We’re going to make sure you follow all these steps and, at the end, you’ll be king of a new category.” I think that every company and every situation is unique. What you do when and how varies dramatically from case to case. The reason the Play Bigger team is so good at what they do is because they sense and respond to each unique situation, and they work with their clients to do what’s needed to be successful. It’s not “paint by numbers” but the book makes it feel like it is.

Bottom line, Play Bigger provides an excellent guide to what is involved in creating a new category and owning it. While I seriously doubt that any company could simply follow the steps outlined in the book and be successful, laying it out in this structured way makes it easy to get a sense for the level of commitment required to be successful. Most companies will need to work with someone who can help them navigate the still uncharted waters of their new category. The stories throughout the book help the reader sense both the excitement of what is possible and the complexity of achieving it. I heartily recommend Play Bigger to anyone considering creating their own product category.

Read my full review here.

If you need help with your category strategy, I’d be happy to talk.

The concept of category making is popular amongst tech innovators, and for good reason. So, it’s not unusual for startup leaders to be asked whether or not they are going to create a new category. It may be tempting to quickly answer “of course”, but I’ve written the article linked below to help you understand what that even means and what’s involved in category making.

Read the full article or watch me present the content as a video tutorial here.

HYPERGROWTH by David Cancel teaches the Responsive Development (RD) methodology the author pioneered at Performable, scaled at HubSpot, and now has built into products at Drift. 

The book provides an unexpected answer to a common question. Leaders want to know — how do we grow our business. Cancel’s answer, at least for SaaS companies, is to let (or perhaps force) the engineers building your product to regularly talk to customers, and then trust them to do what is right for the customer. Responsive Development is an approach to software product development that challenges the traditional Waterfall and newer Agile approaches. 

The book is short, with large font, so you can easily read it in a couple of hours. If you are responsible for software product development, especially at a SaaS startup, it’s worth a read. 

Read the full review here.