The Sales Ecosystem: Skip the Rubbish

Let’s begin with some definitions…

In some areas a ‘Skip’ may refer to, what is known in other areas, as a ‘Dumpster’. Thus, I was on my morning walk <around Garsfontein, Pretoria, South Africa> when I noticed the expression on the side of a vehicle that delivers skips to private dwellings. This allows the skips to be filled – typically with building or garden refuse - by the household occupant and then the ‘Skip Company’ returns to remove the skip and deposit the contents at a local dumping site. Quite a nice little business.

However, what really resonated with me was the expression of ‘Skip the Rubbish’ and the fact it could also relate to business environments. This may be in two forms, viz:

1. By-pass the rubbish <nonsense> in the organisation to work to a relevant streamlined way
2. Dump the rubbish <nonsense> in the organisation to produce a relevant streamlined way.

Both, of course, get to the same end result – although with point 1 it’s merely a temporary solution.

Let’s now sit back and ponder: Within most organisations there are lots of timewasting activities and many aspects are undertaken for historical reasons. <’That’s how we do things around here’ syndrome…>

A typical business situation would be:

• Business units running on disparate technologies that were selected as point solutions <impacting data integrity>
• Support systems and processes become increasingly difficult to maintain, with major <negative> operational impact
• Revenue erosion through unfocused and mis-aligned business unit activities.

 This is further impacted by, what may be termed, complications:

•  A rapidly changing marketplace with the emergence of many non-traditional competitors
• Lack of corporate perspective and view across all revenue generation support systems & processes in an organization
• Potential major investment to re-align revenue enablement elements to position for future value and benefits.

A quick-fix (usually temporary) would be to investigate issues raised by the users so that they may be quickly addressed/resolved and some form of solution implemented <just to get things moving>.

However, for a long-term sustainable solution, a well-designed formal intervention is required. This would typically take the form of:

• Implementing a formal Revenue Enablement review to identify a future vision and provide gap analysis & recommendations
• Formalising a brownfield/greenfield project to ensure the achievement of sustainable goals
• Infusing measurable Internationally accepted standards <Continuous Improvement as part of ongoing operational processes>.