by Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Leadership Solutions, Inc.®

“50-90% of start-ups don’t survive more than four years; depending upon which studies you follow.”

Alex, a professional business facilitator, was having lunch with a business friend, Susan, when she shared her intention to build a business from scratch. She knew there was great frustration within companies at the failure rate or disappointment with newly hired salespeople. She felt this could be significantly changed by more professional on-boarding and educating of new sales hires. Many sales leaders don’t have the know-how, time and/or patience to do this properly during the early months. It’s pretty frustrating for the sales “newbies,” too.

Through her own career in sales and sales leadership, she had become an expert in the SMART selling technique – where S= Sales Strategy and M= Memorable Customer Relationships.  Also, A=Astute Customer Issue-Option Solving and R=Reasonable Negotiations. Finally, T=Tenacious Follow-through. Pursuit of these acronym principles and practices enabled salespeople to become real marketing and sales professionals. Alex became intrigued.

It was clear Susan had done her homework, since she could rattle off a host of sales training organiz-ations. However, even though they vacuumed-up many client invested $s, their results weren’t that spect-acular; other than relieving sales leaders of their on-boarding and coaching responsibilities. She felt there was something missing, since sales staff turnover was still embarrassing and inadequate performance was forever pervasive. She felt that if sales people were properly oriented during their first three months – even those of more marginal potential – their initial results and retention would more than offset any reasonable initial investment. Alex became even more interested in her ideas. Have you borne witness to these issues, too?

Based upon the above paradigm of Sales Strategy, Sales Talent and Sales Leadership, Susan knew there were significant shortfalls in one or more of these three vital sales success factors in almost every company’s approach to hiring competent sales professionals. She reckoned that with proper grounding in the SMART Sales approach, along with sufficient sales talent, and effective sales leadership, retention and performance would be significantly better for most sales organizations.

As a friend, Alex offered to collaborate with her to put together a preliminary business vision and set-up a Start-Up Venture Team (SVT). At some point, based upon the possibility of high-success, he knew she would handsomely compensate him for being an objective facilitator and sounding board. So they agreed to meet the following week to discuss her preliminary business vision, which would follow enlightened leadership’s (EL2’s) five-phases: Envision, Position, Engage, Collaborate and Orchestrate. These factors would also complement the conventional management (CM) five-steps of: Project, Plan, Organize, Direct and Control…more about these differences in a subsequent chapter of this story.

When they met over lunch a week later, they agreed that, apart from registering SalesSMART Advisors brand name with the proper authorities and assembling some preliminary marketing materials, Susan would start testing the concept with local companies. As an expert educator for many well known training companies, she could quickly put together appropriate materials. At the same time, she would join the local Chamber of Commerce and other networking groups to connect with potential clients and likely Start-up Strategists. She met with her local Chamber President soon thereafter to get an invitation to its next lunch meeting.

By keeping Alex in the picture, she drew upon his insights about the six vital volunteer SVT leaders she needed to build a strong start-up team around her. These would be volunteers, with confidentiality agreements, as her starting point; since she didn’t have the funds to hire anyone. However, their promise would be that, if they helped to get SalesSMART off the ground, they could either join her venture part or full time – when funds became available – or join-in as eventual advisory board members with stipends. In fact, she had already bumped into Julia, an operational expert in building educational programs, at that first C of C lunch. They hit it off almost immediately, which meant Susan had her potential Operationist already. (NOTE: The “ist” expects Julia to be a Strategist just as much as an operational leader of advisory programs.)

Between them, they quickly latched onto Mark as a potential Provisionist, since he was well experienced in finding the resources that were essential for building businesses. Through his channels, he introduced Jeff who was a readymade Promotionist; drawing upon his sales talents to promote products and services, as well as the ability to formulate associated strategies. At this point, Susan presented her preliminary business vision – that Alex had already endorsed with appropriate suggestions – to gain their interest and willingness to sign those volunteer confidentiality agreements. They also increasingly viewed her as SalesSMART’s most likely Visionist; the visionary catalyst, integrator and orchestrator of this emerging venture.

While Susan set forth to make contact with company sales leaders, who would likely be interested in the SalesSMART Advisor’s concept; they also found Sheila as their Humanist – the Strategist to help focus on bringing the right people-talent into their venture. Sheila had great experience in creating cultures where “people count more than numbers.” She also introduced Malcolm, who would make a great Innovationist; due to his creative talents in packaging products and services that would place their venture at the leading-edge.

They now just needed to locate an Expansionist, the hardest talent to find owing to its unique ability to discover Blue Ocean niches and position products-services in a compelling way. The team’s approach to unearthing this person will be revealed in enlightened leadership’s (EL2’s) Phase 2 – Positioning and Pathfinding installment in two weeks from now. By having a team of the right, seven complementary leadership talents, their chances of quickly building a successful venture will increase many times over – a considerably better bet than the traditional lone founder or co-founder arrangement that so often fails.

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Author, Peter A. Arthur-Smith, Founding Principal with Leadership Solutions, Inc., is based in New York, and author of Smart Decisions: Goodbye Problems, Hello Options. He has drafted a potential new publication, Leadership Re-Envisioned: How to Assure People Count more than Numbers?, that offers a slew of fresh leadership concepts and practical models. Feel free to follow author at: Linkedin.com/in/peter-arthur-smith-2115722/

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