By Verne Harnish

“…keeping you great”

HEADLINES:

On-Demand Online Seminars Expiring — the last day to purchase/view David Allen’s (Getting Things Done) online seminar is this Friday, January 22; the last day for Dr. Robert Cialdini (Influence) is February 17.

Double Sales — My Hope For All Companies the Next Three Years — I shot this 60 second video for Mike Maddock’s Maddock Douglas website (he’s using education-based content to drive marketing) outlining the two key focuses for the next three years — Going Global; Getting Lean. Take a minute to watch, then take the challenge. The video link is in the right hand column of Maddock’s website (www.maddockdouglas.com)

Improving Sales Productivity 10-Fold — speaking of Lean, “imagine what would happen if you melded the precision and predictability of process engineering to the big black box we call sales?” exclaims Guy Parsons, Lean guru. That’s exactly what Australian, Justin Roff-Marsh, a leader in applying Process Engineering to Sales has accomplished. Hosted by Gazelles Lean, Parsons is moderating a complimentary 30 minute conference call with Roff-Marsh on February 4th, 2pm ET, as he discusses some of his breakthrough successes. There will be a 15 minute Q&A that follows. Roff-March has also written a couple white papers you can download and he’ll provide a one-page “action” sheet for those that participate. Register to receive the phone number and pass code (http://www.gazelles.com/justin_guy_concall_4feb10.html).

Radical Stuff in Sales — Roff-Marsh suggests salespeople earn salaries and give up control of their calendars. In return, they get executive assistants and they get relieved of the responsibility for all activities other than face-to-face, business-development meetings. Their clients typically have very small bus-dev teams (why it interested me) but those salespeople perform 20 true sales meetings a week — 10x the standard. “We typically work in engineer-to-order environments — technical sales, in other words,” explains Roff-Marsh with Ballistix (www.ballistix.com). Here’s a link to his Blog: (www.salesprocessengineering.net)

VC Chuckles — and this note from Ed Sullivan, CEO of Aria Systems (www.ariasystems.com), “My new VC, VenRock (Rockefeller founded) chuckled when I explained to them the Rockefeller habits (we’re implementing)! The habits certainly contributed to our success and helped us expand into CA and make managing a geographically diverse company easier.” Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR), a key indicator of the health of a SaaS vendor, grew more than 300% in 2009. Here’s a link to more information (http://bit.ly/900DVs)

Australia National Growth Summit — Feb 17-18 in Sydney, the theme is “Going Global, Getting Lean.” Joining me on the stage is the famous German researcher Hermann Simon, author of my favorite business book of all time Hidden Champions; Guy Parsons, Lean guru that is showing mid-market firms how to double productivity, even on the service side of the business (including sales); and David Meerman Scott, the thought leader on Web2.0 implementation for business and author of World Wide Rave, will also beam in for the event. Hope to see all our Australian and New Zealand friends in Sydney for a fantastic two days (http://www.growthsummit.com.au/).

Topgrading Your Daugther — and this note from Bob Hubbard, Hubbard Family Swim School (www.hubbardswim.com). “After I attended a Topgrading event in Denver a few years ago, I actually came home and Topgraded my existing management team, including my daughter. It is one of the best management things I ever did. I learned a lot about our people. Yes, even about my daughter, who had a four year career as a college soccer coach in between working with us. I found out about talents that a number of our staff had that I would never have suspected. It has enabled us to bring people into new roles and responsibilities that matched some of their hidden talents and avocations. It also helped explain why some of them struggled in areas in which we thought they would have excelled. It was a little weird talking with people who had worked for us for five or six years about their first job, etc. Once we got into a rhythm it was great.”

Geoff Smart’s Topgrading Online Seminar — this Thursday, January 21, 2010, noon — 1:30pm ET (http://www.gazelles.com/ggs_geoff.html)

EDUCATION:

Growth Summit

National Growth Summit ’10
17 & 18 February 2010, Sydney
Fortune Sales and Marketing Summit
April 20 – 22, 2010, Las Vegas, NV
The Making of Asian Giants
April 27 – 29, 2010, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Fortune Growth Summit
Oct 19 – 21, 2010, Orlando, FL

Growth Series Webcasts

PEOPLE — Geoff Smart – 21 Jan ’10
STRATEGY — Jeff Jarvis – 18 Feb ’10
EXECUTION — Chip Heath – 25 Mar ’10

Growth Workshops – Four Decisions: SuperGreen Execution

Spring 2010

Jan 21 – Richmond
Jan 26 – Ft. Lauderdale
Mar 2 – Atlanta
May 25 – Houston
Sep 23 – New York City
Oct 7 – Portland

Summits & Conferences

Great Game of Business with Jack Stack

Gazelles DVD/Online Learning Products — Gazelles.tv

PEOPLE
Whats the Secret to Providing World Class Customer Experience
Topgrading

STRATEGY
High Stakes Negotiations
The Art of Advantage

EXECUTION
Mastering the Rockefeller Habits
Execute Without Drama

Did you miss previous insights? – read here (http://verneharnish.typepad.com/growthguy/archives.html)

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