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3 ways to get employees to play nicely together

Jan 2014/in /by

Too often, salespeople get a bad rap. When the average person thinks of a sales rep, they imagine pushy, inconsiderate and generally insincere individuals who will do or say anything to close a deal. Popular culture only perpetuates these negative images. In movies like Wall Street and Glengarry Glen Ross, salesmen are depicted as ruthless, sociopathic and criminal.

However, it doesn’t have to be this way. Truly successful salespeople know that honesty and empathy are key to making great sales.

Understanding your customers

To be a great salesperson, you have to know where your customers are coming from. Use CRM intelligence to get a better handle on your potential buyer’s world; however, don’t use customer analytics to hurl data points at your prospects. Yes, it may communicate to them that you’ve done your homework, but it probably won’t help you make a sale. Use this information to truly understand what it is your customer needs. Then you can think about your role in helping them achieve it.

Empathize

Understanding your customer’s background is a little different than actually being in the room with him or her. Being keyed into your client’s emotional state can help you better guide the conversation. Emotional intelligence can be hard to learn, but there are some ways to practice. According to Natalie Grace for the Houston Chronicle, practicing self-awareness can help you to better understand the thoughts and feelings of others. When you can identify your own emotional triggers, you will become better at noticing them in others.

Be a good listener

Part of being an understanding salesperson is knowing when to stop talking. As S. Anthony Iannarino puts it on the Sales Blog, a huge part of emotional intelligence is the ability to listen. Salespeople often put a lot of effort into changing people’s minds. However, without really understanding why someone believes what they do, these efforts are going to be in vain.

Ask good questions

If a prospect has already decided they don’t want what you’re selling, they may not say what they’re thinking. A good salesperson knows how to ask the questions that will make prospects open up.

Know when to stop

Not every pitch will end in a sale. Some clients truly don’t need or want what you’re offering, at least right now. An empathetic salesperson will know the difference between hesitation and determination. For prospects that truly have no intention of buying, persistence can be a waste of time. Being too pushy will certainly not make you look good. End on a pleasant note–it’s possible you may hear from them again in the future.

offsite meeting

Progressive states of long offsite meetings

Jan 2012/in /by

Long meetings can progressively sap energy and create altered states of being. Yes they can.

We went offsite as a management team for 2 days this weekend to talk through our strategy and 2012 planning. 11 of us in 2 houses at Pajaro Dunes, lots of flip charts, heated discussions, cooking together, walking on the beach and generally spending time together thinking about our business. It was really fun but, even so, it was intense and, combined with long discussions late into the night about the state of the world accompanied by some excellent wines, pretty tiring for some.

Two of our jokesters memorialized their progressive states of mind as they helped clean up after the meeting. They sent me the photos – the editorial is all mine.

Yeah! This two day offsite thing is a great idea, they’re ready.
A few hours in and Ryan is already wondering, he’s seen enough of these type of meetings to be healthily cynical, but Nima’s still gung ho.
Second day and Ryan’s mind is wandering but Nima’s using caffeine to push through – “There’s the mountain guys let’s go for it!”
Ryan’s rolling his eyes at Nima’s enthusiasm, just as Nima starts to wind down .
But as Nima finally falls asleep in response to Penny’s energizer bunny, Ryan stoically keeps pushing forward.

Thanks Nima and Ryan – it was fun – and despite the warm sun and sand, amazingly productive!

food bank

FirstRain Continues Annual Tradition of Volunteering at Second Harvest Food Bank

Nov 2011/in /by

One of the best ways I’ve found to build community in the office is by working together to give back to the greater community.  Last week, the FirstRain team and I continued our annual tradition of volunteering at the Second Harvest Food Bank.  SHFB is a fantastic organization that strives to end local hunger around the San Francisco Bay Area.  I was pleasantly surprised (and impressed with the massive amount of food to sort) to learn that gathering and collecting enough food was not the organization’s main concern.  The great need for volunteers, like those of us from FirstRain, is necessary in order to help sort the food.  Kristin Sulpizio, the Director of Volunteer Services told us the “the food is there, it’s finding people to help figure out what to do with all of it, is our problem”.

FirstRain participated in this event not only to give back to the local community but to hopefully encourage others to follow in our footsteps. I know activities like this strengthen our own FirstRain community. Working together outside of the office allows my team to engage in an experience that deepens their sense of shared values, such as social responsibility and caring for others. Every year, I know I can count on our team to clear their busy schedules, to show up and to work very hard.  This morale is later translated inside the office, all part of the many reasons why FirstRain’s company culture is so dynamic.

Everyone got his or her hands dirty that day. Working as a team, we were able to quickly and successfully sort through a hefty amount of food in our two-hour time slot. Thanks to the entire FirstRain team’s effort, we helped 236,000 people receive food this month! The day was a huge success and everyone left the bank in great spirits. As always, I was pleased and proud to see my team come together for such a great cause –and one we will continue to support!

ridge winery

FirstRain picnic at the Ridge Winery

Oct 2011/in /by

At FirstRain many of our technical and support team are located in Gurgaon just outside of New Delhi in India. Because it is very important that the US based team and the India based team work closely together we  not only travel to Gurgaon several times a year, we also bring Gurgaon team members out to San Mateo from time to time for product design sessions, for training and to improve our support process.

Earlier this month Sagar and Nitin came out for 2 weeks and since they were here over a weekend we decided to take them for a classic California experience – wine tasting at Ridge Winery. Ridge is in Cupertino up on the Montebello ridge and offers spectacular views of the Bay Area, plus a warm garden to picnic in and wine tasting for those that drink. We put together a picnic and took family members with us, including one who was 15 months old, and one who was 82. A great way to get to know one another better in a relaxed atmosphere.

Cory, our resident sommelier, sampling the cheese selection with his grenache

Our littlest rainmaker, Sebastian, enjoying the picnic with Sagar and Nitin

Towards the end of the picnic our families persuaded us to pose together and toast a lovely day

Raising over $31,000 for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund

Sep 2011/in /by

Earlier this year I set out a challenge for myself to do a really long swim for my mother, and on Monday that crazy idea grew into something really big for FirstRain and for the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund.

We started doing athletic competitions at FirstRain back in 2008 as a way to build stronger teams inside the company and this Summer I decided to encourage Rainmakers to get involved in a series of events building up to my personal challenge of a 2.4 mile ocean swim off Maui.

And to my delight many of my coworkers have been with me all the way – and into the race! All summer Rainmakers have been training with me in the pool, competing in the Splash and Dash series and yesterday two of them did the Maui ‘Aumakua Swim too. We’ve been doing relays, running, teaching each other how to swim better and generally having fun and becoming friends.

The race yesterday was on a spectacular, perfect Maui day. The water was crystal clear and we were swimming over coral reefs, fish and the occasional turtle. Thomas and Jordy did the 1 mile distance and were both very pleased with their times and I beat my time goal in the 2.4 mile distance.

Jordy, Thomas and me – we were ready!

2.4 miles is a very long way to swim if you don’t compete all the time. It was a huge personal challenge for me but once I set my pace I pushed through, absolutely determined to finish because I was raising money for OCRF, I was on a mission and I was supported by so many coworkers, friends and family.

My mother was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer 18 months ago. She has been through treatment and is in remission but we know the fight is not over. Unfortunately today there is no effective early detection method for this disease and so the statistics are tough. Over 22,000 women are diagnosed with the disease each year in the US and over 15,000 die from it. My goal was to raise as much money as possible for OCRF to help find a detection method and ultimately a cure.

And the result was donations of more than $31,000! Truly fantastic generosity from many, many people. We put out a FirstRain press release on the news because the achievement is, to a great extent, the result of my coworkers wonderful involvement and support. It’s a privilege to work with such terrific people.

Several Rainmakers have asked me what we are going to do next Summer – any suggestions for what we should do next?

energy

Are you an energy source or energy sink for your coworkers?

Aug 2011/in /by

Everyone interacts differently in the office, based on their role and personality, but most people sort into one of two types with respect to their impact on other people: energy sources and energy sinks. The CEO has to be open to all, and to motivate and energize all, and so I become very aware of the net gain or drain of interaction with my coworkers – and everyone at all levels of the company is consciously or unconsciously impacting the energy level of the people around them.
Energy sinks:
- Bring you problems for you to solve. They’ll arrive with a problem, dump it on you and ask what you are going to do about it. Particularly sink-ish when they phone you up with the problem on Friday afternoon and get it off their chest so you can worry about it all weekend.

- Have a negative outlook. Every solution you come up with they shoot it down without chewing on it first, and they drag down other people in the discussion who are trying to find a positive solution. Some people are consistently negative – about movies, about food, about their spouse. It’s exhausting!

- Take cheap shots up. Some people think it’s OK to be positive down their organization, positive to peers and attack up. The logic is something like “well you wanted the job so you just have to take it”. Very negative to other people in the room and, inside, very tiring for the leader. Equally draining are people who are obsequious – also does not move the business forward.

- Are non interactive. They sit silent in a problem solving discussion. Especially frustrating when you know they are smart and have ideas to contribute so you work extra hard to help them participate and overcome whatever inhibition is holding them back.

In contrast energy sources:
- Bring solutions with the problems. Even if they don’t have a good solution to some killer problem you are facing together, they try get the brainstorming going until the team comes up with a reasonable idea.

- Bring smart, out of the box solutions. The people who are willing to listen to an issue, think and then take the risk of an unusual or creative solution are particularly energizing, even if half their ideas are bad ones. They open up the solution space for everyone.

- See issues as bumps in the road, not roadblocks.

- See you a fellow traveler on the road (whatever level of management you are at), working together to move the company forward. They don’t take cheap shots or kiss up.

- Have a positive outlook. Some people know how to look for the silver lining – it’s in their nature – and these people often become leaders of their teams, whether they have an official manager role or not.

- Understand that executives are human. Everyone makes mistakes, everyone gets stumped at times and energy sources know that and detect when to be demanding and when to offer an ear to listen. As CEO you can never expect support from below, you need to be self reliant, but it sure is helpful sometimes when it’s offered no strings attached.

Think about which are you in what circumstances – and is your behavior and impact on your coworkers conscious? And if you behave differently with co-workers who are at or below your level in the org chart than you do with coworkers above you why is that and is it justified or helpful to your company?

The top image is of Centaurus A which is two colliding galaxies around a super massive black hole. The bottom image is our Sun.

teamwork

Teamwork: Moving contempt to respect

Jan 2011/in /by

I’m reminded of something I learned a long time ago about relationship dynamics in the workplace – from the Zen master of leadership Renn Zaphiropoulos.

Teamwork is critical to moving fast. I wrote in the past how trust is simply more efficient. It allows people to share risky ideas, make decisions quickly-learn-change, and to be safe so they do so again and again. I have no respect for attacking behavior in the workplace – it’s immature and destructive and hurts the team. I’m frustrated sometimes in silicon valley with the cult of the technical jerk savant (ref The Social Network film – note the object of the cult is almost always a white male – and I guarantee they are not always white). The vast majority of hard working technical professionals are not like that and quality companies follow the No Asshole Rule (ref the book on Amazon) and don’t tolerate the behavior.

Attacking behavior often arises between people who have not developed a conscious relationship of mutual respect and so the relationship deteriorates to one of mutual contempt. This is because the Respect-Contempt imbalance is inherently unstable. It’s too caustic for the one held in contempt to sustain so survival skills require the relationship degrade into mutual contempt.

The leader’s role is to help each person see and learn to respect the strengths of the other, even if their role and contribution is very different. Everyone has a role to play and value to contribute or they would not be here. (It’s also important for us to try to weed out the bad behaviors during the interview process; looking for arrogance and disrespect for others being subtly communicated as the candidate reviews their history.)

The hardest role to be playing is the person who is being attacked by an intellectual bully in the team. I have seen this at the peer level, rarely see it down the power hierarchy these days in technology (good people simply leave) and see it surprisingly often up the power hierarchy. It’s easier to take cheap shots up at your management because they just have to take it – they should not attack back (although that’s a matter of style choice – I know one former CEO who would intentionally verbally obliterate disrespectful employees – but it’s not my style choice).

In all cases my advice to the person being attacked is take the high ground. It’s unlikely to be personal and it’s more likely to be about the other person and some threat they are feeling in the moment than it is about you. I was in a situation recently where this happened to me where I am a board member (it was a very difficult conversation with a member of management) and I worked hard to stay calm, listen, let the energy run it’s course, and then return to the problem at hand.

Respect builds over time, as does trust. And if you find yourself in a contempt-respect or contempt-contempt relationship ask for help. Your manager’s job is to help you with it.

elephant-31706__180

White elephants and food…

Dec 2010/in /by

We have a fun tradition each year around the Holidays – a white elephant gift exchange and a pot luck lunch. This year we twisted it up a bit. Not only did we do the usual fun of each person opening a gift or choosing to steal another, but this time we had plenty of stealing until the iterations finally stopped and then the Surprise.

First, we voted on the worst gift – and gave out some fun FirstRain clothing as a consolation gift to Cory who had ended up with the Snuggie. Then we voted on the best gift – which was a new Apple TV – and gave Dave (who had ended up with the Apple TV) the choice of keeping that or opening a mystery gift. When he chose to keep the Apple TV the mystery gift went to the holder of the second worst gift.

Which would you have chosen? (see below for what Dave missed).

Nick modeling the “worst” gift  – the camouflage Snuggie

Jordy doing the Vanna White for the laptop desk.

Nima (not single for much longer…) picking a guy gift – binoculars.

The team chilling after eating too much great food and chatting with our sales offices on Skype.

When Prashant opened the mystery gift – it was an iPad – and Dave was kicking himself!

The other kicker to the pot luck – we probably all gained 5 lbs not only from the bundt cake, dripping ginger cake, thai shrimp, ribs…etc… we also sampled David’s homemade wine and Nick’s homemade beer. Yum.

MB

Using pop psychology for team building

Mar 2010/in , /by

Diversity is a strength – especially in management teams – but it can also lead to tension, misunderstandings and all the challenges that can appear when two people are very different and don’t “get” each other.

Years ago it was popular to hire expensive consultants – often called coaches – to work with executive teams and help them form tight bonds and appreciate one another but having been put through that type of coaching several times in my career at different companies I am now a great believer in the home grown use of personality based team building to develop an appreciation of the differences.

The method I advocate is going through Myers-Briggs Type testing as a team and sharing and talking about the results.

First step is everyone takes the test – online and together in a room – you can take the test here.

Next I explain (in lay terms) what the Myers-Briggs Type Indicators are – what they mean and what they indicate about each personality and how it influences and decision making. I’ll walk through the 4 dimensions and I use simple anecdotes to explain the differences – as I show here. (Each is a scale where you get a percentage along the scale to one end or the other as a measure of your personality type along that dimension.)

Note a healthy dose of humor and self depreciation at this stage breaks the ice and gets the team to relax.

E————-x————I
Extroverted vs. Introverted: what energizes you – being with people or being alone? To make a decision do you go and talk to other people or go for a walk? Are parties exciting or a bit of a chore?

S————-x————N
Sensing vs. Intuiting: Do you gather data and then make a decision – or do you intuitively make a decision and then use data to validate or invalidate your decision?

T————-x————F
Thinking vs. Feeling: Do you decide with your head or with your heart? Where are you in your body as you work through tough decisions.

J————-x————P
Judging vs Perceiving: This is a desire for structure – do you make lists, organize into spreadsheets, like operational process or do you prefer being open ended? Do you take a list to the grocery store or buy as the mood takes you? Do you plan your vacation down to the hour, or get in the car and just drive?

This is a layman’s view – Wikipedia has a much better description here.

And then – it’s time to share. I look for the extroverts in the team to start to talk – to share their type and talk about what it means and how it affects them in the team.

At this point I am at the white board and draw the chart (below) – and start putting names into the boxes so everyone can see where they fit – and how they are like, or unlike other people in the team. It’s really important at this point to make sure everyone understands there is no right or wrong, no one type is any better than any other – and that the strength lies in diversity. It’s much better in a team to have some P some J, some E some I , some N and some S. If you can leverage each other you can quite simply make better decisions because you can cover each others blind spots and biases.

I ran this process with our whole US team a month ago – and then our India management team last week. It was great fun both times. Lots of laughter (led by the Es) and some very insightful discussions about where the tension comes from. For example – a strong J can really annoy a strong P. J’s often state opinion as fact – they are putting structure on the opinion and testing the idea – but for a P this can seem arrogant and over constraining.

So how did my team come out? As you can see from this diagram we have a strong collection of leaders in the ENJ – they are extroverted, very intuitive and operational. Surprisingly this is not at all representative of the population at large. 63% of FR management are NJ, and yet only 7.8% of the population are NJ. So we have a very unusual concentration – and I think this is characteristic of the type of people who enjoy high growth, hurly burly opportunities where they can make decisions fast, based on intuition, and operationalize the execution.

If you are my competitor and you are reading this you may be able to figure out our inherent blind spot… except that I am not an NJ. My personality type is ESFJ. Very strong E (I like people a lot) and am a slight S, but I will challenge intuition by talking with customers and prospects. Knowing I am an ESFJ you can probably understand why I like to talk to customers every single day. That’s both where my energy comes from, and how I gather the input to steer the ship.


The end result of this exercise was very positive, especially within the executive team. We talked through some of the times when we don’t work as well together, and what triggers it – and it is personality related. Just reflecting together and reviewing tough conversations has now been very powerful to defuse the tension the next time it happened. I have the M-B chart on the wall in the office with everyone’s name on it and any of us can refer to it an any time to help understand a team mate – and the only rule is that we all have to remember to use it with a smile – it is just pop psychology after all.


san francisco

Team building in a small company

Aug 2009/in /by

We just passed through our half year point at FirstRain and I brought the whole US company together here in San Mateo this week. My purpose was two fold – first for training on the new research engine, how to sell it, where to sell it, and what’s coming next – and second team building across the company and some celebration for the success we are already seeing with the new research engine – just a few weeks into it’s beta.

The second purpose was by far the most interesting and fun. I wanted to team build both at a professional level by working problems together and also at a personal level to develop stronger relationships between people who work in different offices and across different time zones. So Sunday was family bonding, Monday was training and planning, Tuesday was everyone team building.

Here’s an overview of the agenda – it really worked well.

Sunday afternoon – Bar-be-que at my house for all employees with families and swim gear. Food, wine, beer, music, swimming, teenage life guard, dogs overeating – everyone had fun.

Monday all day – Sales training
Each rep – present on 1H results, Q3 pipeline, key learnings, top 3 accounts
Marketing – training on market segments and how to work our value in each segment
R&D – next 90 days of product enhancements
Discussion – deep dive on a key capability sales needs and R&D is developing – ensure they are on the same page

Monday afternoon – Ops planning (separate from sales)
Ops team (R&D and analytics) working through near term and long term product and IP plans

Tuesday morning – Everyone together
1H review – financial results, major milestone – releasing the research engine
Problem solving #1 – teams of 2 – each speak uninterrupted to the other for 3 minutes about what is challenging right now
Problem solving #2 – group into teams of 6 – share what each heard – pull out the top 3-4 challenges we face right now
Problem solving #3 – new teams of 6 – chose 2 challenges to solve – bring back the solution
Long term technology and product vision – passionate and interactive discussion about where FirstRain is headed

Tuesday afternoon – Treasure Hunt in San Francisco
Tuesday evening – Dinner at Fior d’Italia – and awards

The whole session was great fun but the best part was the problem solving exercises. Everyone threw themselves passionately in and not only was it important to hear the challenges people are facing but it was also terrific to hear the ideas and solutions the teams came up with for some of our more pervasive challenges.

And the treasure hunt in San Francisco was absolutely fantastic. We broke up into 5 teams – each team was given a set of clues to solve and a map of the area – we did the hunt in North Beach. It was run by Mr Treasure Hunt and it was much, much better than any of us had imagined it would be. The clues were mentally challenging and winning took strategy and the willingness to hoof it fast around the city. Now maybe I enjoyed it so much not only because of the team building but also because my team won and brought all the right answers back 30 mins ahead of the nearest team – but I did have some big brains on my team (not including me)!

Finally dinner at Fior – the oldest Italian restaurant in the US (hard to believe it is in San Francisco and not New York or Boston but it is). We had created awards and plaques for all everyone who had worked so hard to bring the research engine out in June and made it such a hot product for us. Great fun, and much wine, for all.

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