At Platformax we regularly handle complex sales improvement projects. Usually many at the same time, helping our clients find that needle in a haystack that’s keeping their sales numbers low. Over the years our team has perfected a delivery process that helps us stay ahead of the pack. In this article I’ll be sharing them with you. We weave the following in every project that we run at Platformax.
Communicate, Communicate & Communicate
Time and again I have seen that the success of the project depends on how well the team members communicate not only among themselves but also to anyone likely to be affected or interested in their activities. For example, if a team was about to collect data from a working production line, team members should notify all supervisors and operators in advance and tell them when the data will be collected. Similarly, a team studying how employees in an office use their time should explain that the goal is to identify inefficient systems and not lazy employees. By following this mode of communication, we at Platformax get cooperation from our colleagues and often get suggestions for improvements along the way.
Whenever we are implementing Platformax sales improvement projects at our client’s office, we make sure that we don’t stick to notifying people about the changes, but go beyond and explain why the changes are being done and how it will impact them for good in the short as well as long-term.
Don’t wait to plug the hole
Over the years after handling multiple sales improvement projects, I know for sure that when you get better at studying processes, you start unearthing a lot more problems that need to be fixed. Our approach at Platformax is to explore issues in depth and collecting enough data for solving it once and for all. However, many times, some problems are easily fixable and don’t need elaborate analysis, this is what our team calls “Platform-sense”, we fix it then and there without getting into a paralysis of analysis. Our sales Jedi recommends that our team answers these questions before applying their “Platform-sense.”
- What’s the worst that could happen if this solution doesn’t work?
- How easy is it to undo the change?
- Will this delay other actions?
- How expensive will this change be regarding money and time?
- How much disruption will this change cause to our colleagues and clients?
In case most of these answers tread on the downside, we don’t implement the solution in haste. If the solution is simple to put in place and can be undone easily, we give it a shot.
We swim upstream, like salmon do
Most of the problems we see are symptoms of other problems buried upstream in the process. For example variation in the product line may be due to the variation in raw materials; mistakes in customer’s bill may be the result of errors in the original order. To make improvements that stick, you must seek out these causes and find ways to prevent them. Whenever your team is faced with a problem, mentally walk through the entire process and see if you can identify upstream conditions that could be the cause of the problem.
Documentation wins, hands down
In most of the organisations the same problem gets solved over and over again, and every time a hero gets created. At Platformax we are lazy and get bored if we have to solve the same problem twice, to feed our laziness we have created a log of the all the problems that we encounter and the proposed and implemented solutions along with end results. This has created a treasured repository for us, and we pride ourselves in discovering and solving new problems.
If you don’t measure it, it is smoke and mirrors
At Platformax we are great fans of Einstein, he said, “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” We are not obsessed with measurement, and we have banned people from carrying measuring tapes to our client’s office, however keeping track of where we are and what we do is a part of our core ethos.
Rarely do things turn out exactly the way you plan, and you have to make multiple changes to the process before hitting the optimum point. We monitor all our actions so that we can quickly catch errors and prevent them from snowballing into blunders.
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