It doesn’t take much to send a good organisation into a tailspin. The organisation could have great products and people which have propelled it to success overnight. The issue is that the leadership in these companies is often more focused on delivery and operations than business development. Here are three of the common problems I see in organisations of all sizes today:
1. Growth is reactive, not deliberate
Leaders don’t take the time to plan . They are reactive and as a result growth is down to luck or chance and not as part of an overall strategy. They aren’t clear on what they want from the business in both the short and long term, which is confusing for their staff. They also pay little or no attention to the competition around them. This results in poor win rates, wasted effort and a lack of growth.
2. Leaders are stuck in the day-to-day
In SMEs, leaders are stuck in operations or regularly pulled into resolving disputes over minor matters. In fact, they want to be stuck in the bowels of the business. It’s what they do. Don’t ask them to think about strategy and growth. In larger firms, senior sales leaders are being pulled into meetings left, right and centre that have nothing to do with business development. Again, they don’t have the time, or support, to prepare for major contract opportunities. This lack of focus and coordination leads to underperformance in competitive processes.
3. Built on heroics, not systems
A small number of key leaders and under-resourced teams shoulder most of the effort which leads to poor health, burnout and resignations. They don’t have good business development playbooks which provide tools such as how to prequalify opportunities and how to run a bid campaign. This results in sloppy and inaccurate proposals which fail to standout. The galling thing, for what are otherwise really good businesses, is that they lose out to better storytellers or more polished competitors.
The Sucker Punch that Starts the Tailspin
This scenario shows how the three problems compound to devastating effect.
Everybody seems to be busy and hard at it in these places. Head down, they’ll chug away delivering what they think is a great service and, like the boiling frog, are oblivious to the sucker punch that’s heading their way. They forget to renew and revitalise their products and services, which leads them to offering up more of the same. As a result they can be sucker punched with an unexpected contract loss.
A loss out of the blue erodes confidence and financial stability. It places considerable pressure on the organisation to win the next opportunity. The stressed environment is unpleasant and contributes to a spike in sick leave and resignations. Conversations such as “who do we have to get rid of?” become the norm.
These organisations are traditionally weak when it comes to prospecting for new business, and as I mentioned above, they rarely have playbooks for this type of activity.
If they have lost a contract or are struggling in other ways they may not be selective about what opportunities to go for, perpetuating a cycle of working with less than ideal clients. This can result in a downward spiral of misdirected effort, poor operational health, burnout, most lost contracts, lost jobs and ultimately, a lost company.
This is how good businesses fail.
What next?
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