Celebrating “clarity” after 17 years in business

This year I am celebrating “clarity” as my cornerstone in business. I believe clarity is the most important idea in any business. Vision, strategy, purpose, product, plans, people and all factors of successful business stem from clarity.

It has taken me many (frustrating) years to clarify and define my true goals and intentions when I launched Barrett Consulting Group, 17 years ago on Monday January 9, 1995. With just $3,000 as my seed capital, a home office with a phone and computer and an idea based purely on a strong feeling, a hunch and passion, I set out to build a business that would ultimately aim to reshape and reform the profession of selling for the 21^st century.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s I saw signs and glimpses of how selling was undergoing changes and how businesses and sales people needed to rethink selling and working with customers. At this time there was no documented evidence I could use to reference and confirm my hunch that things needed to change. No evidence I could use to show and validate my findings to business leaders. I could only rely on my own (unofficial) references.

I individually screened tens of thousands of phone calls and resumés from sales people and managers and conducted over 8,000 face-to-face recruitment interviews with sales people and sales managers. My previous experience as a recruitment consultant (what I call my unofficial PhD into sales people) and my large network of senior managers with their individual insights and difficulties finding good sales people helped me to build my own research and prove that my hunch was real and warranted effort in reshaping the sales world.

I knew something was there but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I couldn’t clarify it. I had to simply rely on my gut instinct and trust that a need and desire for change in the sales profession was emerging and that this was worth building a business around. Thinking back now, 17 years later, I see that I started Barrett Consulting Group on a hunch, stabbing in the dark, hoping I was moving in the right direction, and here we are with a business that has achieved clarity.

Our clarity of purpose did not come about quickly or easily. It has taken years of experimentation and refinement, learning from our successes, setbacks and mistakes. It was frustrating and difficult to cultivate because I didn’t want us to be trapped into a linear framework that would see us become redundant.

I know that over the years I too have frustrated people with my own desire to achieve clarity; a sense of clear purpose that would not box us in and limit us. I knew Barrett needed clarity of purpose that wouldn’t narrow our vision but would widen our awareness and horizons while remaining sure of our target. Some of those people over the years clearly thought I was nuts.

But I’m not alone in this need for clarity; many businesses, business leaders, their teams and especially their sales teams struggle with achieving their sense of clarity. They struggle to answer the following questions:

• Why do we do what we do?
• Who do we do it for?
• How do we do it?

This is precisely what we all need to do: ask and answer questions to uncover our real intentions, our real talents, our real desires and our goals. Without the answers to these questions, little else matters in business because anything we try to do without knowing these answers will lack clarity of purpose. The retiring CEO of IBM, Samuel J. Palmisano, turned the corporate giant around to be the success it is today, by focusing his team on some simple yet critical questions. The answers to these questions changed the course of IBM forever. He says his guiding framework boils down to four questions:

1. “Why would someone spend their money with you – so what is unique about you?”
2. “Why would somebody work for you?”
3. “Why would society allow you to operate in their defined geography – their country?”
4. “And why would somebody invest their money with you?

In a recent article in The Age Palmisano stated that his four questions focused thinking and prodded the company beyond its comfort zone to make IBM pre-eminent again.

He presented the four-question framework to the company’s top 300 managers at a meeting in early 2003 in Florida. “The hardest thing is answering those four questions,” Palmisano says. “You’ve got to answer all four and work at answering all four to really execute with excellence.”

Besides our own business, the Barrett team has found that we are working more and more with companies, their leaders and sales teams to help them answer these and other questions and bring about a sense of clarity in everything we begin their sales transformation journey. It’s truly impressive to see the results of your efforts and actions when you start to focus and gain clarity of purpose. By asking these questions and being prepared to listen to the answers we can all begin to unearth the essential ingredients that give us clarity of purpose. It will not happen overnight and once you have the answers you then need to work out how you are going to implement your clarity of purpose.

At Barrett and other organisations where clarity of purpose exists, a new energy emerges, the inner flames of purpose are fanned and a real desire to get out there and contribute honestly and constructively comes alive and becomes the new reality. It’s a continuous work in progress but worth every moment.

So wherever you are at in your business journey, start 2012 by finding, defining or refining your clarity of purpose; it’s a liberating experience.

For what it is worth, here is Barrett’s clarity of purpose highlights and if you would like to read more about what we believe see here.

Our philosophy: We live by the philosophy “That selling is everybody’s business and everybody lives by selling something”. We believe that selling is about the fair exchange of value.

Our vision and purpose: To create a seismic shift in the way people sell, communicate, lead and do business with each other. We aim to give everybody access to life skills, tools, knowledge and personal insights so that we are all able to clearly communicate and proactively sell ourselves effectively, ethically and confidently in any situation – offering and exchanging our talents with the world.

How we do it: We instill the belief that in a 21st century world selling is everybody’s business and everybody lives by selling something. We challenge thinking and create compelling reasons and continuous learning pathways for people and organisations to develop their skills, knowledge and mindsets to create the shifts they want and ensure they are well informed and equipped for the journey ahead.

Our goal: To positively transform the culture, capability and continuous learning of leaders and teams by developing sales driven organisations which are equipped for the 21^st century.

What we do: Barrett produces and provides people with access to 21^st century sales knowledge, resources, education, tools, expertise, philosophies and wisdom. We consult, assess, train and coach across the complete lifecycle of an employee in sales, sales leadership and internal stakeholder roles, where genuine communication and exchange of real value are critical to business success.

Remember, everybody lives by selling something.

Sue Barrett practices as a coach, advisor, speaker, facilitator, consultant and writer and works across all market segments with her skilful team at BARRETT. Sue and her team take the guess work out of selling and help people from many different careers become aware of their sales capabilities and enable them to take the steps to becoming effective and productive when it comes to selling, sales coaching or sales leadership.To hone your sales skills or learn how to sell go to www.barrett.com.au.