Why B2B Sales Productivity Could Use a Dose of Design Thinking

Tim Brown's TED talk in July 2009 at Oxford argues the case for designers to think big. In his view, much of what now passes for design isn't that important - it's too incremental and has too little effect. It's become a tool of consumerism, creating amusing products, but not ones that are very important.

He contends as the pace of change and uncertainty quickens, there's a need to solve much bigger problems and, in doing so, create world changing innovations. In his view, it requires bigger thinking, as enabled by the discipline of Design Thinking. Brown's points are reminiscent of Peter Senge's on systems thinking back in 1990.

In both authors' views, big changes occur when thinking is provoked which helps the players in a system discover the impacts of their efforts on system performance. Products which trigger such thinking, simplify choices and provoke improved outcomes. In my experience, solutions which reveal the impacts of existing system dynamics trigger design thinking. They become perspective shifting, change provoking, and performance improving.

Others have noted the implications for product innovations of Brown's ideas. A recent blog posting from Harvard Business notes that, in a savagely complex world, breakthrough ideas in business most often come from enabling a diversity of viewpoints and perspectives to be brought to bear on whatever challenges lie ahead. Jim Estill (a member of the Board of RIM) contends, in his review of the Design of Business, that successful business requires more design thinking.

Where might such thinking apply, best? In my view, where a problem's complex, the players don't directly control the impacts they have, and indigenous efforts haven't eliminated the problem. B2B sales productivity is an example. It was the number one issue for CEOs in 2008. Since then, quota attainment has continued to decline, according to CSO Insights, and firms have responded by raising quotas. In addition, in planning for 2010, some firms have apparently decided they're better off retaining mediocre sales people than replacing them. Perhaps, with bigger thinking, there's a better way.

Implications for Sales Productivity of Avinash Kaushik's Call To ReThink Web Analytics

Recently had the pleasure of hearing Avinash Kaushik, the head of Google Analytics, share his views on the need to re-think (web) analytics. His perpsectives added resonance to Peter Nicholson's contentions that we've become data rich and attention poor.

Avinash's mantra for capturing and using analytics is, on reflection, a valuable take on how analytics must evolve to contribute to improved sales productivity:

• focus on outcomes. They're what matter, and today they're buried in a sea of activity measures that don't matter unless they affect outcomes.
• as a core outcome, don't stink. Dig for any stats that might suggest you do stink, then drive the odor away by the actions you take to improve your business.
• conversations are key to marketing and sales outcomes and growing in importance. Look for new measures, including via social media, that gauge how effectively you're participating in conversations.
• learn to be wrong, quickly. Be curious; resist the temptation to let the Highest Paid Person's Opinion persist; test hypotheses; make changes, fast. Mistakes are key to gaining deep insights. Velocity makes the cost of mistakes matter less.
• segment or die. Aggregate metrics rarely reveal anything that can drive learning + improvements. Compare things and, from comparisons, find new performance benchmarks to strive for.
• magnificant successes will come from deep strategic thinking that people engage in with the help of data, not tactical reactions to raw data themselves nor tools that deliver the raw data.

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Based on his presentation to the Internet Marketing Conference in Vancouver, and points made in his forthcoming new book Web Analytics 2.0. The wisdom in these observations is Avinash's. The mistakes, if any, in this summary of his remarks, are mine.