Beacon Client Stories


The following are 4 examples of how CAN’s Beacon system has been deployed to help companies.  When reading this post it will become obvious that CAN’s systems are catalogues of intellectual property that are used to help people sell, market, retain, manage and plan smart.  Since we are constantly developing new technology, surveys and mathematical models it is easier to focus on solving our customers’ needs, instead of on our technology.  At the end of the day no one cares how we do it, they just want solutions to their problems.  Here are some of the solutions we have delivered using our Beacon system:

  • Client Match Making: CAN built a survey to match managers and clients based on personalities, the needs of the clients and the strengths of the managers.  This resulted in increase client satisfaction and high project profitability.

 

  • Reseller Program: One of our clients had a reseller network to distribute their products.  They competed against other providers to become a core provider of different products.  CAN utilized our Beacon system to determine what would help our client become vendors preferred provider.  The result was a plan that segmented different resellers by what they valued, as opposed to wanted, in new products, marketing support, provider support and compensation.

 

  • Project Management: One of our clients, an architecture/engineering company, used CAN’s Beacon system to determine how to optimize their project management strategies.  We segmented projects by type of project and type of client to build a model that determines what they should bid on the project, who is the right project manager, and how many employees should be involved.  The model also provided a risk factor for each project to determine what the risk of the company losing money on the project.

 

  • Feedback from the Field: One of our clients with thousands of salespeople has used Beacon to improve their lead generation process by having their salespeople complete an 8 question survey after each client interaction, and completing a long survey each quarter.  The result is a monthly report of what leads are effective with different segments of salespeople, what types of leads should be generated next month, and whether the leads are delivered and called in a timely manner.
May 30, 2011 News No comments yet

Improve your Sales Calls by a Meeting Contract for Each Call

One of the easiest ways that I have found to improve my sales calls is by establishing a “Meeting Contract” at the start of each call  that states the purpose of the meeting, what each participant is looking for out of the meeting, and how much time the meeting will take.

Using a Meeting Contract has helped me:

  • Improve the customer experience, because within the first minutes of meeting me my clients know that I respect their time by asking them how much time they have and what they hope to accomplish from the call.
  • Gain the complete focus of my customers, because the Meeting Contract clearly states that I have their focus for the agreed upon time. You and your prospective client know exactly when you both can get back to work, email, phone calls etc.
  • Focus my presentation, because I know the client is interested in improving their marketing and they want to know about our past work and next steps.
May 21, 2011 News No comments yet

How to Adopt a New System

I am biased towards systems because CAN builds simple systems to help people work smart.  The other day I noticed that a new employee wasn’t using one of our systems to complete his work. When I confronted him about this he responded, “I am not an systems kind of guy”, and my response what “No one is naturally a systems kind of guy.” I have never met someone that enjoyed using systems at first, because it feels unnatural or the person feels that the system is creating unnecessary amounts of work. All of this is true.
Systems feel unnatural because they force people to work in standard ways, and well designed systems are built to create standards based on best practices. Systems do create more work because they require us to put our thoughts into data that can be stored and transferred, however this allows us to handle more work since we can focus on processing information as opposed to storing information.
Some of the keys to adopting a new system in your organization are:

  • Marketing/Selling the New System: People don’t like change, and it is likely that most of your employees feel that the current system works just fine.  Make sure to market your new system so that your employees understand what problems the new system solves, and what the features of the new system are.  Make posters, videos, websites and emails explaining why it is important to adopt the new system, and host user groups so that people can learn from each and offer ways to improve the system.
  • Single Point of Failure: If you adopt a system, anything that doesn’t happen within the system should be treated as if it didn’t happen. You have to be firm and not backdown. Any exceptions will erode the adoption. When it comes to systems adoption three legs are better than four.
  • End Support for Old Systems: When you officially adopt a new system, cut support for the previous system.  Your new system will be undermined if any employees are allowed to continue in their old ways.

What experiences have you had with adopting new systems? Any interesting tips/tricks?

May 20, 2011 News 4 comments

How to Increase Your Capacity for Change

Tadd and I have experienced a lot of change over the last three years in business as we have had to learn to run a business, increase our technical skills, and adapt to a rapidly changing industry. Consequently, we have had push ourselves to explore new opportunities, viewpoints, ideas and ways of doing things. In other words, we are constantly working to increase our Capacity for Change.
There is no shortage of brilliant ideas. However, successful implementation is rare. Implementation faces many barriers to success, which include, but are not limited to: politics, complexity, budget constraints, and counter productive habits. However we have found that the most common barrier successful implementation of a brilliant idea are individuals’ capacity for change.  Typically, capacity for change is a function of creativity, resources, intelligence, education, flexibility, values, risk tolerance and beliefs.
Tadd and I have tried to increased our capacity for change by:
– Being Patient: Successful implementation doesn’t happen over night. It takes time, and sometimes years. We learned that if our goals were constantly changing we would never be able to accomplish any of them. Now when making goals we try to take a Long-range Focus and set goals carefully and accept that it might take a couple years to accomplish our goal. While we try to have patience we also are constantly looking for incremental progress towards our goals.
– Make Space: We have reduced the clutter and commitments so that we can make space for new things. Right now we make space by setting aside time during Saturdays and holidays to explore and implement new ideas. We also try to systemize as much as we can so that we don’t continually have to do the same things over and over, and instead spend our time implementing new ideas.
– Develop Horizontal Friendships: Everyone needs best friends. However, having a large number of horizontal friendships can also be valuable. Horizontal friendships are friendships with people that you wouldn’t be friends with naturally. Horizontal friends typically have different interests, lifestyles and personalities. If you spend time with these people they will increase your capacity for change by introducing you to new ideas, products and people outside your normal sphere of influence.
– Stumble Upon Ideas: Some of the best advice I ever got was to just read everything I can, and not worry about retaining what I read. This sounds counter intuitive, but my mentor explained that I should make it a habit of stumbling upon knowledge. Everyday I try to scan Twitter and LinkedIn for interesting articles or ideas. Weekly I try to spend time reading a biography, a business book and a technical journal. I don’t care about when I finish, but only that I expose my self to the opportunity to learn something.
 

May 16, 2011 News 3 comments
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