Categories
Change and Transformation
“The Beacon Group’s program proved to be a transformational experience for our staff, and has created a new, more open culture of creativity and collaboration that has given The Globe and Mail a marked and measurable competitive advantage.” — Phillip Crawley
“The Beacon Group’s thought provoking curriculum utilizes best practice tools and interactive media for evaluation, assessment and overall learning. It has helped us raise the bar on our calibre of talent.” — Ernst Lieb
“The Beacon Group was able to handle our 360 reviews across 9 offices in a manner that brought significant value to our partners, the firm and ultimately our clients.” — Judson Whiteside
“The human capital programs provided by The Beacon Group are best in class.” — Tye Burt
“The Beacon Group acted as a strategic partner and was instrumental in helping us raise the bar on candid dialogue and team performance.” — Robert Courteau
“The Beacon Group approaches very serious and difficult topics in an accessible and insightful way.” — Eric Siegel
“We engaged The Beacon Group when we needed to bring two cultures together after our first major international acquisition: the evidence of their success lies in both the subsequent growth in our business and our presence in more than twelve countries on five continents.” — Rupert Duchesne
“The Beacon Group excels in facilitating open & candid dialogue that has fostered superior team performance.” — Mary Ellen Carlyle
“Top-level thought leadership, combined with practical, cost-effective solutions—that’s the real value the Beacon Group team brings to bear on Foresters talent challenges.” — Suanne Nielsen
“The Beacon Group delivered cutting edge perspectives on many human capital topics that were tailored and customized to our company in a way that we could not have obtained at more generic, cookie-cutter advising shops.” — Doug Lord
“Doug Williamson and his team were of invaluable assistance in helping our organization navigate through a completely new strategic planning process and emerge with a three year plan resoundingly endorsed by our Board. Doug’s global perspectives and ability to drive consensus was an integral part of our success.” — Don Forgeron
“The Global HR & Communications senior team engaged the Beacon Group in shepherding us through a unique strategic planning process that involved an outside-in view of our current and future workforce and how this aligns to our business strategy. Thanks to Doug and his team it was a thought provoking process that sharpened our strategic thinking and, in the end, made our strategy stronger.” — Sylvia Chrominska
“The Beacon Group’s customized and personalized approach fit our needs perfectly. From the initial self-discovery phase all the way to recommending solutions, the work they have done has been consistently world-class. They combine strong analytics with a wealth of real world experience. They are focused, targeted and are experts at taking theoretic concepts and making them real. We look forward to working with Doug and his team as we continue to elevate our business and improve our internal performance.” — Don Romano
“I have had the pleasure of working with The Beacon Group and Doug Williamson for several years across several organizations and have always been impressed with their professionalism, work ethic and customer orientation. Doug's own highly energetic and highly customized approach to the specific needs of our business and our leadership team sets him apart from other strategic facilitators and objective "thought provokers" I have experienced. I am always grateful and impressed by the tangible results his interventions tend to produce.” — Lloyd A. Perlmutter
“The big contribution was The Beacon Group challenged our culture and our comfort level. We then arrived at a clear plan of concise deliverables that we needed to execute to move forward on our vision.” — Tony Ambler
“SKF approached The Beacon Group to develop our Talent Management program. The process implemented by Doug Williamson and his team was extremely important for us in determining how to execute the program on a clear, organized and systematic way. This was one of our most important projects that will enable us to ensure our sustainable growth.” — João Ricciarelli
“Through its sound and strategically practical business knowledge and experience The Beacon Group has and continues to assist SCI in better understanding and enabling our organization to build engaged teams and leadership capability to help make our supply chain clients more competitive.” —John Ferguson |
Provocative PropositionsIn the hyperactive and challenging world in which we all live, it is becoming harder and harder for business leaders to find time to read, reflect and gain insight from the many valuable sources at our disposal. In "Provocative Propositions", The Beacon Group attempts to fill that void by offering our opinion, often rather pointed, on a wide array of issues we believe are relevant to leading a modern organization. The articles are catalogued into 12 categories so you can quickly and easily find a topic of particular interest. We then offer three easy steps under the heading "In Our Opinion" to help business leaders take action on the key themes. Simply click on the category and read away. The Customer Imperative
It’s not enough to have a good product. It’s not enough to simply push that product on the market. Organizations need more in today’s harsh economic climate.
Author Ram Charan in his book “What the customer wants you to know” doesn’t usually write about sales. In fact, he doesn’t study the sales profession on a full time basis at all. Yet, the ideas he puts forward in this book can be applied across organizations and can reshape the way you perceive your business. The Fact is you may have the best products in town, but still be losing market share in your industry. Maybe you’re scratching your head and wondering how you will survive this economic downturn. The Problem is your people – and I’m not just talking about salespeople – may be having trouble helping potential clients understand how your products create value. The Outcome is that your company is losing deal after deal. Your people don’t understand why and you don’t understand why. The Solution is for your employees to ruthlessly gather information on your clients, learn their industry inside and out and learn as much as they can about the real advantages your product delivers. This isn’t about smooth marketing pitches. Everyone has to be involved. Value Creation Selling Your company’s approach may be outdated. Likely, your employees are focused on discovering a customer’s need and creating a solution for that need. What’s wrong with that? Well, you probably aren’t digging deep enough to actually discover what the consumer’s problems are. In turn, you wouldn’t know how they affect them or if the problems are significant or not. How much does it cost them in lost revenue? You wouldn’t know. When it comes down to it, a supplier tries to create value for a company and then take a share of that value as profit for itself. But, if your people don’t understand the value your product offers… Then what? What so many leaders fail to understand these days is that suppliers are no longer in control. The consumer has choices. They can look things up on the internet and there’s likely more than one supplier in your industry. Employees are not order-takers that just process calls for purchases. Your employees are ambassadors that need to understand your product and the client’s needs – very, very well. Many managers struggle with this, because they are so focused on their own company and its results. It’s not about your company anymore. “The heart of the new approach to selling is an intense focus on the prosperity of your customers. This is a radical departure from what most salespeople and selling organizations do. The entire psychological orientation is shifted 180 degrees. No longer do you measure your own success first. Instead you measure how well your customers are doing with your help,” argues Charan. Quite the departure from the way we see things today. Business Acumen What’s becoming clearer and clearer is that companies out there need to pay more attention to hiring the best talent. This new sales approach that Ram Charan proposes means that each individual employee and sales person becomes a team leader of various resources to identify a client’s problems. It requires that people in the field have P/L abilities and that they possess some level of business acumen. This is where the role of HR comes into play in identifying talent that actually understands the business world. You don’t want drones working for your company – even in places where you don’t think it matters. “The salesperson who can execute this approach is transformed into a potential general manager, with all the decision-making, analytical, leadership, and profit and loss (P&L) responsibilities that are part of that job”, says Charan. The value of taking this approach is quite obvious.
In Our Opinion The Beacon Group’s Advice for establishing value creation selling in your company Teamwork - Employees, and especially sales people, need to start seeing themselves as managers with several other team members at their disposal to make a diagnosis and identify a client’s problems. Don’t dismiss - Everyone on your team can benefit from this. Some managers may think that industries such as retail or maybe manufacturing don’t use value creation on the frontlines. You may learn, to your surprise, that Apple employees use similar probing and prodding elements in their frontline retail sales pitch when they speak with customers. Take the focus off yourself - Instead of asking employees how much they contribute to your company’s success, ask them to identify how much they can contribute to the success of other potential clients. Get employees to become passionate about this way of measuring value. |
|
About Us | Services | Press Room | Resources | Subscribe Home | Blog | Contact Us | Site Map |
|
