Customer-Centric Is a Decision, Not a Slogan — with Michael Skriver

Lee Levitt: Today it is my pleasure to have Michael Skriver joining me all the way from Copenhagen. Is that correct, Michael?

Michael Skriver: Denmark at least, yeah. Just outside.

Lee: Just outside. Where spring has sprung in Denmark, which is awesome. We're still getting winter here in New England. So Michael, welcome aboard. We've already had some initial chats about our perspectives on sales and leadership, and I think this is going to be a rich conversation.

Michael: Thank you. Looking forward to it.

Lee: Before — well, we're in it. So first question, Michael. Who is Michael Skriver?

Michael: I am this kind of special character who started in finance and IT and then converted it into an upgrade in sales. I've been working with leadership in complex B2B organizations my entire life, in Europe and in Asia, working with decision-making under uncertainty. It's been kind of an obsession for me to find out how to make better decisions. And beside that, if I was a teenager today I might get a diagnosis, because I love diving, sailing, golfing, hunting, cooking, whatever.

Lee: Very active person. You're a thrill seeker.

Michael: Exactly.

Lee: Have you jumped out of a perfectly good airplane?

Michael: Yes, I did, and I have to say that was kind of shocking.

Lee: I'll bet.

Michael: I did it, and I came down, and I could walk after. But I do prefer diving — smooth waters in Thailand, something nice and warm.

Lee: Nice. The scenery is absolutely fascinating.

Michael: It is, yeah.

Lee: I had a conversation with a salesperson. We were doing a profile on a prospect, and in addition to being a CIO at a Fortune 500 company, it turned out this guy is a diver, and he'd been diving for many, many years. So I said to the rep, "What do you think about this guy?" He said, "Well, he's a risk-taker. He dives deep into the water." Is that true? Michael, are divers risk-takers?

Michael: Definitely not. We have so many procedures and checks and precautions, and plans if this happens and that happens, and we train it.

Lee: Yeah.

Michael: We go down to twenty meters plus and we take off the equipment, just to be able to do that in case. So definitely not.

Lee: And how many timepieces do you wear?

Michael: Only two.

Lee: Only two. So divers are not risk-takers, they're risk managers.

Michael: Yes.

Lee: And that's a totally different caricature, a totally different persona. So the rep said, "Wow, that's a completely different conversation than I was going to have with him." That's right.

Michael: Yeah.

Lee: So let's get into it a little further. What attracted you to leadership as an area of focus?

Michael: First it was just about creating results as a team. I always enjoyed being part of a team. And I have to be honest, I got my first leadership position at twenty-seven, and I was crap at this. I was really poor.

Lee: As we all were.

Michael: Exactly. But this about learning that although it's great for you and the team to create results together, then as you mature, not having your hands on at all and still feeling confident that it's fine I don't do it. That was my moment.

And especially — I remember I hired a person when I lived in Asia, where I was very much in doubt. It's about European culture and the more Chinese culture. Can we work as leaders together? And then finding a person who actually wanted to learn to deliver to others, which is not so normal in Asia. In Asia it's a bit more, "I'm the boss, I'm the king." But these universal values, they exist, and I think that's a pleasure.

Lee: That's awesome. You know, those of us that have been through leadership — if you're paying attention, it's very humbling, isn't it?

Michael: It is.

Lee: If you're not paying attention, things are fine, until they're not.

Michael: Also this about saying, well, it's okay it's not my way. Of course I want influence, but it's okay to leave it. I gave you a result you have to achieve, and now you decide how to do it. Then feeling comfortable that they don't do it my way, they don't prioritize as I said, and still they achieve it. That's important.

Lee: Well, one is a leadership job, the other's a managerial job. "Do it this way" is the manager. What's the leader statement?

Michael: The leader statement is, this is the goal, this is what I want to achieve and why. Here are the resources. Let's talk in a week, and then let's discuss how you want to do it.

Lee: Right. The leadership sets the goal, the manager describes the path.

Michael: Exactly.

Lee: So I took a situational leadership course at IDG many years ago and I found it absolutely fascinating, because they distinguish between leadership and management, as we just discussed.

Michael: And especially this about situational leadership — you sit with the same person in one hour and you might have two different situations with that person. In one discussion, key account management, they might be much more competent than you. And then you discuss price setting, and they might not be.

Lee: So what brought you from finance into the CCO role, the chief commercial officer role?

Michael: Actually, all the way back since university I have worked with commercial in some way, because even when you're working with ERP systems you have to sell it to the client. When you work as a chief financial officer, you have to sell the result and the report to the board. So it's about engaging. And when I moved to Asia I was supposed to do M&A and find new partners, where you also sell your own company and the trust.

So then they said, "Oh, by the way, the guy you were supposed to lead — he doesn't want to be there because he doesn't like having a boss." Okay. So you have to do two jobs. I didn't mind.

And at the same time we got a new CEO globally who had worked in private equity and was tough and demanding. And he said, "You guys" — and I think we were, let's say three thousand people — "you have no clue how to sell. You are a bunch of traders."

So that was a great statement, and it turned out he was right. And he taught us this about saying that you're customer-centric and you actually care about it. I want to see that in your decisions, else it's just a slogan. And he pushed on that and many other things. He also said, "Selling is not magic. It's not a natural. It's something you can train, practice, and improve. Also sales leadership."

And so I joined that journey. Going back to leadership — creating results through others, but now engaging much more with clients. As you said, I always worked in complex sales, so you have a technical salesperson and a commercial salesperson as a couple. I found that fascinating. The technical seller is normally a scientist, in a white coat. And the commercial one might not even be trained in sales, because in Europe there is no schooling for B2B sales. So getting these people to work together — that lighted my fire, I have to say.

Lee: I started on the technical side. I was a systems engineer early on and then I moved over to the business side. At the time it was mostly selling through partners and channel people. We'd have interesting initial conversations, and then my salesperson and the partner would leave to talk about the business stuff, and I'd get stuck talking with the techies about the systems. I wanted to be in the other room, so eventually I made that shift.

The stuff doesn't matter. We can accomplish our goals with many different kinds of stuff — three-by-five cards, ERP systems, cloud-based data warehouses, a thousand people banging on typewriters. Doesn't matter. It's the results that matter.

Michael: But I would put a reflection on top of that, because you can also turn it around. If you passionately believe you want to create value for your clients — because that will give you the next business as well, and they will tell others about it — then understand that in complex sales it's normally not the commercial person who really understands what the client wants.

So if you prepare using SPIN Selling or Challenger, whatever, if you prepare as a team and then you let the technical person do the selling by digging into the pains, I found that extremely effective. Also because everybody knows the guy with the tie, he's dangerous — especially if his title is long. But the white coat, oh, you can trust him.

So there was a lot of energy in getting them working together as a team, and that was sometimes easier than you'd say. I also like to get the leaders from other functions out there in front of the client, because it's easy to sit at your desk at home and approve the account plan or the action plan. But this is about going out there and becoming a sponsor for a client, and then you have to put your own credibility at stake — which many leaders don't like.

Lee: A little skin in the game.

Michael: Exactly.

Lee: Any important account in the enterprise selling world should have an executive sponsor, for a couple of reasons. One, it tells the account, "You're important, because we're devoting resources beyond the sales team to you, for you." And it gives the customer other avenues into the organization that are not strictly sales-based. And then it elevates. That executive sponsor has to step up and actually do the work.

Michael: Yes, and then the sponsor can have an executive conversation on a more strategic business level with the client, and you create a relationship that's just so much stronger.

I tried once where we said, "We talk too much about production and products in our meetings. Let's discuss more clients. Let's put up an executive sponsor for our top five global clients." But this is about identifying, what is my role? Why should I do that? That was more difficult than I expected. Because if you come from sales and are used to it, it's obvious. But you have to formulate it quite well, and — oof — I didn't succeed completely on that one. I have to take that one.

Lee: You have to formulate it, and then you also have to support it. So the key account director or the national salesperson needs to be ready at the drop of a hat to brief that executive sponsor. "Hey, Charlie's going in to meet with the CFO tomorrow. He needs ten minutes of your time to bring him up to speed, so when he talks with the CFO he's knowledgeable."

And a lot of reps just aren't ready for that. They're too busy dealing with the urgent, not-important stuff on their desk, and they haven't thought about being ready for that out-of-the-blue call from the executive sponsor.

Michael: But if you truly want to convert your organization into being customer-centric — if you believe that's your competitive strategy — this is a really strong vehicle to accelerate it, because you bring that client intimacy and knowledge into the top floor.

Lee: Right. And then that tier of leadership can make better decisions about how to run the business. They have a voice-of-the-customer channel talking directly to them.

Michael: Yes. And if you don't have that, you fall back to your former bias — as we discussed, Kahneman, the Nobel in 2002. "Well, I'm used to focusing on this, and this worked in the past."

And the same with your KPIs. I worked in a team where the focus was on freight cost per kilo to the client, so we discussed that a lot, because it was part of the incentive for the supply chain guys. But that means we discussed when it leaves our factory. We hardly discussed, does it arrive at the client? Does it arrive with the full set of legal documents? Because if it doesn't, they can't get the goods free and they can't use it. So you have to watch out for the system you build around this, and the KPIs.

Lee: And the salesperson doesn't necessarily have that perspective, but they need to be thinking in broader terms — that systems-level thinking of, it's not just what I have in front of me or what my direct customer contact has in front of them. They live within a system.

Michael: Yes. And when the system is old and is part of the incentive system and bonus, nobody is questioning it. It's just there. But that is actually controlling how you make commercial decisions.

Lee: So Michael, let's talk about culture. In a previous conversation we talked about the difference in cultures around the world. Sometimes if you're in a specific region you have a heads-up that the culture's going to be different. And sometimes if you're working with a prospect, you might not know that the culture's different.

I'll give you a specific example. Years ago I did some work with a division of a Japanese company, and the general manager of that division said, "Lee, we need some help with sales productivity." And I said, "Sure, we can help you. We've done some research. Here are five different projects we can take on. One of them involves managing your sales team directly" — because they didn't have active managers at the time, they were just working informally. And I said, "I see room for substantial improvement."

And the general manager looked at me and said, "I want you to do a good job."

And I was questioning — what is he talking about? I just described that we were going to do a great job for him. And I said, "I think we're going to really be able to dramatically improve your sales productivity."

And he looked at me again and said, "I want you to do a good job."

Then I heard what he was saying. Modestly improving his results is great. Moderately improving his results would be good. Dramatically improving his results might reflect poorly on his peers.

Michael: Yes.

Lee: I realized there was a cultural background that wasn't obvious, and he was calling it out as best he could without being direct. He couldn't explain the cultural piece to me directly. I don't think it was done. But he gave me enough of an indication that I understood what he was saying, and I said, "We will do a good job for you." And he said, "Great."

Michael: Please make sure nobody's losing face.

Lee: Precisely. So those cultural things come up again when you get your passport stamped and you're in a new country. You kind of expect them sometimes, but sometimes you don't have that level of awareness — that the language is different, the expectations are different, the culture is different. How close to stand to someone is different. Whether you eat your salad before or after the meal is different.

Michael: Yes. And especially, if you come from Europe you want to shake hands with everybody. Don't do that in every country. In some countries they just want to behave in a different way.

One thing I also tried — we went to a client with my own boss, and he was a very energetic guy, full of action and decision. And I was actually also in Japan. When you come in there and you sit in the room, they put you in a soft couch, and you sit there and you just talk. And after forty-five minutes my boss was almost exploding. "Can we please talk business?" And he changed the agenda from all this small talk, soft talk, to business.

The meeting stopped in five, seven minutes, and it was a disaster. We never came back. Because you simply have to let it go for hours, and they are testing you. They want to see, who are you? Are you a trustworthy person? And it just takes time.

Lee: You don't even have to go across borders to see that. I have a coaching client who was at a pharmaceutical conference, and he bumped into the head of nursing at a hospital he was calling on. Now, this head of nursing is not someone that carried a budget. He's not someone that could have bought products and services from the three-letter company this gentleman works for. But they knew each other, and they sat down and had dinner.

And about twenty minutes into the dinner — after explaining that he'd started as a shift nurse and now has forty-five hundred people reporting to him — he asked my coaching client, "Tell me about you."

And my coaching client started with, "I've been with this three-letter company for a number of years..." And he said, "No, no, no, no. Tell me about you. What are you up to? What are your interests?"

And two hours later they finished that personal exploration on both sides. The client came to me afterwards and said, "Lee, why was he so interested in who I am?"

And I said, "This person is in a position of influence. He can introduce you to the chief medical officer. He can introduce you to the CFO. He can introduce you to the CIO. He has generous political capital inside the hospital system. What he is doing is evaluating you as a human being —"

Michael: Exactly.

Lee: "— to decide whether he should risk some of that political capital on you." So that was the most important test he could pass.

Michael: I assume he passed.

Lee: He did.

Michael: And I've seen that in many different cases. In some cases — I was sitting with, I think, twelve or thirteen Japanese gentlemen on the other side of the table, and we were only two on this side. And you still have to treat everybody in a right and polite manner, and you need to know who's the boss of who. And at the same time they are demanding. You have to be on the point, know what you're talking about.

But this about behaving and creating trust is very different. And also this about when you go out — the after-meeting experience, the dinner, or sometimes they want to go out and sing karaoke. And even — I don't sing. Okay, I sing, but I don't do it well.

Lee: It takes a Guinness or two first.

Michael: It does. And actually I noticed that some of them took a beer, almost a full one, and then they came over and asked me, "Do you want to sing with me?" I'd never tried that, and it was in front of sixty people or something.

Lee: Yeah.

Michael: And that was not a question. That was a test.

Lee: "If you're willing to look silly next to me, we will have more meetings."

Michael: Yes. And I have to say, we did fantastic — we think. At least we created a bond that I still feel and appreciate, because it gets real. It's genuine.

But working in the Asian culture, there were two things that surprised me. One was — you know, in Northern Europe you think you're so efficient. Everybody's to the point, we go ahead of the agenda and so on. Yes, we do that. We talk work and business a lot. But when they act in Asia, the speed is just so dramatically higher. They take decisions faster and evaluate faster. But first they have to trust you.

Another reflection was that in Denmark, saying that I work in sales is really not high prestige. It's like, oh, that's really not appreciated. When you go to Asia, they have much more realized that to get a profit you need revenue, and that's linked to sales. And these guys, they have to understand the human in front of you — like the situational leadership you mentioned. They have to understand your own business, and they have to understand the client's business. So actually you are the link — linking people and linking the two company strategies.

Lee: There's a famous management consultant, Peter Drucker —

Michael: Yes.

Lee: — who never said, "The purpose of a business is to create cool shit." He never said that. What he did say was, "The purpose of a business is to create customers."

Michael: To create customers.

Lee: And then revenue. If there's no revenue, they're not customers.

Michael: No.

Lee: There's an assumption there.

Michael: Actually, I have to ask him. He's part of my AI advisory board, so I talk to him several times a week.

That has been some of the learnings. And another of the learnings is that in any country you come to, any region, they will always say, "Oh, our market is different."

Lee: Ours is different.

Michael: Here competition is so fierce. Here price is so low. And I worked in Latin America and North America and Europe, Southern Europe. It's the same anywhere. You go to the Middle East, they say, "Oh, this is so tough. They only care about price." Well, when you work in business to business, that's what a purchaser says.

Lee: So when people say, "We're different," what are they asking for, Michael? What are they actually saying?

Michael: They say, "Listen to me. Understand me."

Lee: We want to be heard. We want to be understood. We're human beings just like everybody else. That's what they're saying. We want to be heard.

Michael: Well, I would say working in B2B sales, one challenge is that yes, they want to be heard, but they might not want to say that, because they also want to play a game of negotiations even from the first meeting.

I think purchasers are better at being educated and utilizing systems and IT than we are in sales. I think they do that to try to manage this and get a better price. Then when you have a ship getting stuck in Suez and everything, we all find out — it's not about price. It's about keeping factories running.

Lee: Unless we're talking about pure commodities, it's almost never about price.

Michael: No. But what I see is that everybody working even in value-based products that are really sophisticated and indispensable, they will try to commoditize it. And of course it will happen, as more competitors come into the game.

But I experienced this — one of the big giants in food invited three suppliers at the same time for a true specialty. They put us in three different rooms with glass at the top and the bottom, so we could see there were others in the other rooms. And it was in Singapore, so that's quite warm — that's on the equator. And then they turned the air conditioning down to very, very cold, and then they took away the remote. So they try any kind of technique to manipulate you.

Lee: That reminded me of an experience many years ago. I went with my sales team to call on a computer manufacturer. We'd been doing business together a long time, but this was a very specific point where we were going to do some negotiating.

We walk into the conference room, and all of the customer people are on one side of the table, and behind them is a window. And behind them is the sun. We couldn't see their facial expressions. We couldn't see their eyes. All we saw were dark silhouettes.

I think it was intentional. I'm not positive. It's the same way that if you're dealing with someone and they sit behind their desk and don't come out to the table that's in their office — that's a power position.

Michael: Yes.

Lee: There are salespeople who are fabulous at picking up body language and other non-verbal things. My first job out of school I was working retail in an upscale mall, and it was a quiet Saturday afternoon. Someone came in, and three of us just kind of acknowledged him. And the fourth person, John, looked over at this guy that walked in, and he kind of jumped over the counter and put out his card and said, "Let's go talk hi-fi."

And he took him into the back sound room, and they were in there for an hour.

Michael: All right.

Lee: And then they came out, and John was effusive. "Thank you so very much for coming in, looking forward to talking next time." And the customer leaves. And the three of us looked at John and said, "John, what's up?"

And he said, "Their shoes." Louis, which was a store in the mall. "Seven hundred dollars." And this was a long time ago, when seven hundred dollars was what I would spend on a car.

Michael: It's a fortune.

Lee: The three of us just looked at the person coming in and didn't make that connection, and John did. And John got that business because he was more curious, more informed around those non-verbal cues than the rest of us.

I've seen a few salespeople who really leverage that. "Did you see how he put his feet down and took an open stance and uncrossed his arms?" Or, "Did you notice she kept scratching her head at one point, and then you said something and all of a sudden her mood brightened?" Nope, didn't see it. Some people pick up on that, and it's a real art, and I think some of it can be learned.

Michael: Yes. One thing is about observing body language and learning to see it. What I also think is really a challenge to learn in complex B2B is — don't interrogate. Really ask a lot of open questions. Because if you don't do that, you will never find out what the real problem is, because sometimes your client doesn't even know themselves. But when they feel that you're the police guy and you're interrogating me, they — what do you call it? They shut up like a mussel. Or what do you say in English?

Lee: Clams up.

Michael: Like a clam.

Lee: There's an old line from Monty Python: "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition."

Michael: No, and they actually don't like it. But I think that's a challenge for many, when you say this about it can be learned and it can be trained. There were some of the salespeople I had where I decided quite fast, well, you're not the one. You don't listen, you don't observe. Because if you only want to talk about your product, and if you say, "Well, I already know how you should run an ice cream factory" — well, don't. Listen to his specific problems. You have a thousand solutions. Let them wait.

Lee: Well, some salespeople are extrinsically motivated. How much money can I make? And some are intrinsically motivated. How can I help this person? And it's the ones who are intrinsically motivated that show more curiosity, that build rapport faster, that really focus on the you versus the I.

Michael: If you have worked with a salesperson and tried to train them, when you want to move them up the ladder — one mistake I made in the beginning is I finished up giving them some questions. "These are the questions. Twelve words you have to ask." And what happens is they take it out and read it out. "Oh, okay, I have to..." No. Ask them to formulate three keywords themselves. Nothing more.

Lee: It's not an issue about doing. It's about being. It's a different way of being.

And some top reps are absolutely extrinsically motivated. They make a million, million five or more each year. They go to club. They're the rock stars. They carry the region's quota and get them over the line, but they're just in it for themselves. And then there's another group right next to them who are completely intrinsically motivated, who are there just to help customers, who will say to a customer, "We've spent some time talking, and I don't think what we have to offer is quite right for you. I have someone else I can introduce you to." That doesn't happen very often.

Michael: No. And okay, I agree — for me it might be a scale. You can say you are on one side or the other. I also think, well, we have a purpose. Working in sales, why are we here? It's not only to create value for you, it's also to create value for my shareholders.

Lee: I had Gerhard Gschwandtner on the podcast last fall. He's behind Selling Power magazine and Sales 3.0, and he said the number one question in sales is, who are you? To the salesperson — who are you? Not what are you up to, not what do you want to gain, but who are you? Who is the person showing up to have that conversation with the customer?

Michael: And just to elaborate, so you mean what kind of motivation you have, or what drives you?

Lee: It's who you are, what's your purpose, and then what's your motivation? Why do you belong in this office talking to this CIO or CFO? I'm here to make money so I can buy a second house in the Bahamas. Or I'm here to get the new AMG. Or I'm here because I want to help your company succeed in building solar panels more effectively. And making the world a better place.

Michael: Yeah, but then I think that's the part you should have. But you also have to say — in my own team, and when I come home to my company, who am I here? What is my role? Because nobody else is going to get the revenue or the income. Production will produce, supply chain will source and ship. But if you don't feel responsible — saying, we all together create value, and I'm the only one getting a profitable revenue — that has to motivate you as well.

Lee: I sure hope so. But it doesn't have to come at the cost of being authentic.

Michael: I fully agree. I assume they go hand in hand. I'm just saying I met —

Lee: They're not necessarily —

Michael: No, I agree, I agree. I just met too many who felt too much, "Well, I'm the customer spokesperson. I have the view of the client, and dot. That's it. Nothing more." Where I think, you have that, but you're also here to achieve something. And long term, yes, client value you have to build, but meanwhile you also have to share that value.

I don't know — the difference in cultures we discussed. Many in Northern Europe will not say that out loud. They think, "Oh, I'm a used car salesperson." But that's why we're here.

Lee: In much of the States, nobody has any problem saying that.

Michael: No, I know. That's a big difference. And here I think Asia and the States are much more alike in culture.

Lee: And even with that, you said the Danes are fairly direct.

Michael: Yes. I have to be honest, we don't have the word "please" in our vocabulary, so we go straight to the point. So that my boss in the example before could wait forty-five minutes to get to the point was impressive. No, we are quite straight. I think we're a bit like the Dutch, straight to the point.

Lee: But you do have a word for thank you, correct?

Michael: Yes. We can say thank you. We do that. We also appreciate it.

Lee: You can say thank you, but do you say thank you?

Michael: I've been educated by my English-speaking colleagues, so now I do it much more. But I have to say it was a learning. And of course we also say please — we don't use a word, but you can feel it's there still.

Lee: What's the Danish word for thank you?

Michael: Mange tak.

Lee: Oh, so it's similar to the Swedish word then?

Michael: Yes. I think the base of our language — without being a linguist — the English part and the Danish part are not that far away. I also thought once that a lot of the Danish words look like the English. And it turned out, no — a lot of the English words are Danish, because the Vikings were there.

Lee: That's right. What are you working on these days, Michael?

Michael: The last year I've been working on a new project, looking into how we can combine using science and creating growth in business. Copenhagen Business School and three other parties developed some research five, six years ago. A company has a strategy, and they know what clients, what channel, what products. But how to implement it in the most efficient way? Should I work on CRM, sales training, sales process, whatever?

So at this decision layer, they designed a model where they can analyze a company, make a diagnosis, and then spot out — compared to best in class, you are doing well here, and you're really doing poorly here. And if you lift this, we can prove that you most likely will have faster growth.

Lee: That's cool. What does an ideal corporate customer look like for you?

Michael: Ideal is mid-size to larger, where you have complexity in more business units, more regions. And then we try to get alignment within one unit or go across.

And what is really amazing — you come in with an instrument, an internal survey, and we check out let's say a hundred people or two hundred people, and we benchmark them to the best. And when we present that at a workshop, the kind of dialogue you all of a sudden have — it's not your opinion and my opinion. No, we are looking at a graph of our collective answers compared to best in class.

Lee: And that gap becomes painfully obvious, doesn't it?

Michael: That's the point a bit. But what you want in the room — this is a commercial tool, so it's not just sales. Of course you have marketing, technical sales, customer service. But you add in production planning, because they take decisions on the client. Or your audit or quality team. You put everybody in the room, and those who couldn't collaborate and discuss for the last ten years — in half a day you break that.

Lee: That's impressive.

Michael: I used it twice myself, so I knew this works. And the point is, now I'm trying to help the researchers take it from a white paper to something that's easier for a business leader to appreciate and utilize. Because as a business leader, I'm here to deliver growth. Profitable growth is my headline.

Lee: I have my OKRs, or my critical success factors, my metrics that I need to hit. And again, as we talked about earlier, I don't care what the tools and techniques are. I've got goals to meet. I've got objectives to hit.

Michael: And one of the learnings is that when people — and I've done it myself, I've been part of a team — they start too much. Action feels good, and the point is, you dilute attention. So I tried building the biggest CapEx and production expansion while let's go for a global ERP replacement and change the structure in all the commercial organization, all at the same time. People are so confused they don't deliver anything. It's like juggling with ten balls and nobody's progressing.

Lee: Some focus is good. I have a friend I competed with many years ago, and eventually he became the CEO of Iron Mountain — big organization. And we were chatting one day and he said, "Hey Lee, all this do-more-with-less stuff, it's bullshit. I'm telling my team to do less with less. Pick out the few things that really move the needle. Pick out the few things that really make the boat go faster, and do those things, and don't do anything else."

It's easy to come up with a long list of things you're going to try to do. It's really difficult to come up with a short list of things that will have fundamental impact. That takes a lot more thought ahead of time.

Michael: It does. And all these trade-offs — if you don't make them explicit so people can discuss them, they're still there, implicit. It's just, now I'll go back to my function or my business area and make a decision based on the bias I have.

And what I think is great fun is that working in a systematic way, and you explain to people this is based on research — well, that's not normal in sales. It just means the trustworthiness starts at a different level. And that means that after a workshop, when we suggest, "Only focus on these two or these three," we actually have constructive discussions. People actually do that.

Lee: Now it becomes, one, fact-based, and two, doable. If someone said, "Go climb all those mountains," it's like, I can't do that. Well, let's start with this one. Okay, I know how to get to that one.

Michael: Yes, exactly. And if you're in that room, you have the guy getting the equipment or transporting you there, and the climber, and you have all of them in the room, and they agreed let's do that mountain first. You just deliver much faster.

Lee: Michael, this has been a fabulous conversation. Where can people find you?

Michael: The homepage is called futuresalesglobal.com.

Lee: Futuresalesglobal.com. I'll put a link in.

Michael: Thank you. That was the name in Danish of the research originally, so we thought let's be loyal to that. A bit long.

Lee: Makes sense. Michael, this has been a fabulous conversation. Thank you.

Michael: Thank you. My pleasure.

Lee: Another deep dive into the topic of sales excellence and the performance mindset. If you found this conversation interesting, I would appreciate it if you would share the podcast with a coworker or two. And to explore this topic in more depth, send me a note via the contact form on podcast.thoughtsonselling.com, or find some time for us to talk at meet.acelera.group.

Thanks.