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Sandra Powers Murphy discussed her book, The Road to AUM: Driving Assets Under Management through Effective Marketing and Sales.
Sandra is a globally recognized investment management marketing and sales consultant. After more than a decade serving in a marketing and sales capacity on behalf of State Street Global Advisors and State Street Corporation, Sandra founded ARK Global LLC. As CEO, Sandra drives product and business development initiatives on behalf of a diverse group of clients. Sandra has helped numerous managers expand their investor base, add product structures, secure strategic partnerships, define business plans, create market presence, and improve profitability.
The following transcript has been edited for space and clarity.
Sandra Powers Murphy: It’s a real pleasure to be with you today to talk about The Road to AUM: Driving Assets Under Management through Effective Marketing and Sales. After many years of providing marketing consulting and distribution services and screening hundreds and hundreds of managers, it is clear that there’s a lack of content in this area for managers. Regardless of their size, time in market, product structure, and channels, a basic blueprint for business development is required. Having spent over a decade working with these managers, we sought to determine what is out there for them and realized there’s very little.
There’s a lot of great theoretical ideas you can read about and get passionate around, but when it comes to the implementation – the doing of business development around investment management – there is very little in the marketplace for managers to quickly and efficiently integrate into their business. I was pleased to be able to bring The Road to AUM to that audience for that express purpose.
John Mihaljevic: How would you summarize the core message of the book?
Sandra: It breaks the marketing process down very efficiently into 12 core elements. Many readers of the book who are running different kinds of businesses – not only investment managers but wealth management practices and other types of businesses outside the field – found that the blueprint truly defines a path for managers who need to be able to answer questions such as “How do I establish a firm’s framework? What is our value proposition? Who are the competitors? Who are the prospects?” The book goes through the process step by step.
Oftentimes, managers are guided by an incredible passion for what they do in managing portfolios, but that does not translate well into business development and running a firm. What this book provides is truly a blueprint – an actionable, immediate blueprint for managers who want to figure out, “What do we need to do? What do we need to do better? Why are we stuck in neutral? How do we access an additional channel? How do we launch an additional product? What are the actionable steps we can take today to be able to deliver that to the marketplace efficiently and effectively?”
John: Starting close to the beginning, tell us about what you call “the institutional lens.”
Sandra: That’s an extremely important question because this book was written after a decade of marketing to large institutional investors. For the purpose of the book, we’d identify that as any organization with a structured research team where they are taking an active look at investment policy and decision and determining how to fit managers into that construct. This can happen at a family office, a wealth advisory firm, all the way up to larger institutional corporate plans, DB, DC, the institutional consultant market, bank trust, and platforms where advisors turn around and market those products to clients.
This book is targeted at anything beyond an individual sale where there is a research component, aiming to help managers understand what the moving targets are to assist them in best positioning themselves to pursue assets under management.
John: Tell me whether this is correct, but it sounds like the institutional lens comes in where it’s not just a one-on-one relationship with an individual who also happens to be the owner of the assets and can pull the trigger – just on sympathy, if you will – but where there is a more formalized process around picking managers and allocating capital.
Sandra: Yes. If you have a team spinning out of a larger firm or a homegrown organization that came out of a family office, an individual portfolio manager with a fantastic idea will typically start with money from family and friends. They may then go to colleagues and their network from college or graduate school days. Ultimately, once they get beyond that direct sale, they need to go to organizations that can move the needle more broadly for them – for reasons of efficiency, scope of capital, and diversification.
When you sell institutionally, there is more of a process. It’s not done through get-togethers, dinners, golfing, or any sort of conversation. It’s done through a more structured process. Managers who are very passionate about the underpinnings of their portfolio tend to be able to tell that initial story well, but the ability to translate it into an investable investment on behalf of a larger institution is extremely difficult. It is a highly structured process managers need to follow in order to be successful – bigger picture.
John: I like how you structured the book in terms of communicating these 12 steps. You call it stepping back, in, up, and out. Maybe we can start with stepping back, or getting in a position to win. What do you mean by that? What are the key messages there?
Sandra: Everyone hates this part. You’re an excited manager. You want to go raise assets. You’re running a wealth shop, and you want to go and attract clients. You want to dive in and tell your story.
The book is based on us having spent a decade in the market and still feeling like maybe there’s part of the story we don’t understand. We’ve been doing a lot of marketing, consulting, and sales, but what is it that the institutional buyer perceives? What’s valuable to them? Where do they step in? Where do they get engaged? What works and what doesn’t?
We started that conversation with the first introduction – whether it’s through a connection, an email, a meeting, or an event. There is that first introduction that begins the process. However, what we found was that most managers should not have stepped in as quickly as they did. The reality of it was that maybe their performance was excellent, and most managers can demonstrate a phenomenal growth of $10,000 chart. You might have to step further back for some versus others, but you can make your data look fabulous against a self-defined benchmark.
However, what these firms look for is an entity they can invest with. They’re worried about risk management and process and how that strategy will change and morph as time goes by. What changes have occurred in the past? What are likely triggers for changes in the future? They’re worried about fit – how it fits within an existing portfolio – because these institutions don’t have a raw pool of capital. They’ve already made an allocation. They’ve got an investment committee. They are looking for very specific things, and the manager is trying to come in and say, “Wait, this idea, this opportunity is different, and here’s why.”
The ability to step back initially and say, “Are we indeed providing the right thing to the market? Maybe we do have the performance, but is the offering correct? Is it structured correctly? Are the terms viable?” Some managers come to us with lights-out performance, but because of the structure of the product, the fees they’ve applied to it, or the team they have in place, they are not going to be successful in the market because there’s too much risk inherent in the model.
Taking that step back and saying, “Are we sure that this is the team, that this is the offering, that this is the brand and how we want to position the firm, and, most importantly, that we are committed to this business development process not for three or six months but for the next two to three years so we can really build ourselves into the market where we want to be?” That step back assures that when the first outreach happens, it is so much more likely to be efficient in finding quality prospects because it’s clear, concise, targeted, and built upon a firm, a product, and a structure that is viable to these institutional buyers.
John: What are some common pitfalls? You alluded to managers who may have strong performance but somehow trip themselves up in other ways. What have you seen many times that is perhaps not too difficult to correct?
Sandra: Excellent question because you can trip up anywhere across these 12 core elements. While we have created this research prioritization matrix about what is de minimis versus a game changer so that managers can quickly say, “This matters more than that,” it all matters. Red flags can be raised anywhere across the board.
Where we see managers most often tripping up is in their structure and the terms around that structure. They may have a great performance track record, but if there are many competitors out there offering it in a more viable, liquid, and accessible structure at significantly lower fees, it takes a lot of outperformance and some comfort level that there won’t be significant underperformance because once you have underperformance, fees are exacerbated in terms of what that looks like. From our perspective, one of the places we see managers trip up initially tends to be carefully considering the offering in all of its terms against a competitive matrix, not just the performance.
Another area where we see managers falling down is presenting. Often, managers are deeply passionate when telling their story initially, but when it comes to answering questions, being responsive to specific inquiries, and providing ongoing commentary related to the market, they tend to have a much more difficult time. Maximizing the interaction time they do get, building confidence and a relationship, and answering questions – directly, succinctly, and clearly – is a place we think managers generally can improve a lot.
Often, there may be a manager or a business development person who’s highly adept at telling the story, but what institutions tend to want is to get comfortable with the firm as a whole over time. You absolutely want to make sure the whole team is up to speed and fully understands the philosophy, the process, the positioning, and how specific questions and answers can be addressed. It’s surprising how many managers don’t have a written Q&A where they understand exactly what questions are likely to come up. They’ve had a devil’s advocate work with them to make sure they’re strongly positioned to turn that answer into a positive on behalf of the firm versus a question they struggled with.
The third and final place where we see the most problems is ongoing communication. Typically, firms are hugely excited initially to get their story out, have an initial presentation, but their ability to define how the strategy is working and what it is doing over time so that institutions can think where it fits is a place where most managers – regardless of size – tend to have greater difficulty providing content on a timely basis that is truly differentiated, that tells the story about their strategy, their team, and their approach.
John: How should a manager think about that relationship over time? I believe you also talk about the marathon that’s involved a lot of the time because it seems like there are some smaller allocators who may be nimbler and can come to a decision quickly, but then there are also those who just meet with hundreds of managers a year to make one investment and that can be frustrating for managers because it seems like everything went well in a meeting, but then there’s no real check being written. How should one think about the time investment in that kind of a relationship, how one gets the allocator on board over time?
Sandra: The institutional marketing effort is a marathon. It’s a two- to three-year process. Nobody wants to hear that. Nobody wants to talk about it. Can you get lucky and get an allocation within the first few months of marketing? Absolutely. If you do a great job defining your prospect list – which we dedicate an entire chapter to – understanding those prospects, and being very channel- and prospect-specific in your communications, you can be more efficient.
If you believe you are a good manager for larger institutional mandates, the reality of that process is you are trying to replace an existing manager more often than not. These institutions don’t have a lot of dry powder for new ideas. They tend to have already allocated in the spaces where most managers are and it is very difficult to find new pools of capital. Where you will more likely find them is family offices, smaller wealth advisory firms, and bank trust departments. You will find those organizations, endowments, and foundations – particularly the ones that go direct and do not use consultants – to be the nimblest investors. Those and, of course, your ultra-high net worth individual investors.
From the perspective of institutional marketing, it is essential to see it as a marathon. The whole reason to name the book The Road to AUM is that it is a road. Over time, adjustments will need to be made. There will be stop signs. There will be fantastic thrill rides of working with these entities, but it is a path, and managers typically make the mistake of going full bore at the beginning, putting a lot of resources in upfront, and petering out way too soon.
They make it six months, then they’re deeply frustrated, and they tend to try to change what they’re doing on the marketing front, which may be necessary, but it would be so much more efficient from a cost and time perspective and result in better asset flow to step back, have a very clear and structured perspective on where the product is differentiated and who the market is, go to that market, and remain laser-focused on it for a period of time until there is a relationship built and that interaction of trust where they find a slot and can put that manager to work.
John: How do you think about differentiation or the concept of edge when it seems like some allocators meet with hundreds of managers and they might, over time, all sound alike? How should one think about what’s truly a differentiating point?
Sandra: You hear these trite used words over and over. “We have integrity. We are risk managers.” Those tend not to mean anything to the market. What matters to the market is your ability to demonstrate your fit in a portfolio, how your specific holdings added value in periods of market stress, exactly where you’ve taken advantage of opportunities, where you’ve been forward-thinking, where you’ve been active, and where you’ve chosen to step back.
Being an active manager doesn’t always mean jumping ahead. In some cases, it means pulling back. Having the ability to tell those stories with great specificity, we find that managers are perhaps worried about giving away their secret sauce, or feel that it’s too complicated to get into, or they’re concerned that if they mention a holding, they have to take this deep dive and may get pushed back about the value of it.
Institutional research people are closet portfolio managers. They love the notion of managing money. They love a good story about a security, and they love a contrarian thinker. They said over and over again in the interviews, “Who we read most, who we’re most interested in are those that are contrarian, that have a different way of thinking about things, and that we feel can give us an edge or some value because they’re different.” Whether that difference is sticking to their knitting in times of market stress, having a peg of one and never going away from that, going completely to cash when they feel that’s appropriate – whatever that is, to not only say it but demonstrate it through case study examples.
That’s where we see managers fall. Sometimes, they can articulate some differentiators. They very rarely can back it up with specific examples in their portfolio and in their process. I will make one other comment about these firms that are seeing hundreds of managers across areas. Managers have to spend time on prospect identification and competitive analysis. It is not useful for them to go to 80% of the market they choose to go to because they’re not the right size and the right fit, they don’t have the depth of team, and they don’t have sufficient brand.
It is valuable to identify selectively institutions that, for a variety of reasons, the firm feels it might meet their criteria or might be a good fit – culturally or in terms of the types of asset management philosophy the firm has – but it is not a good use of time and resources for managers to keep trying to get into large institutions that tend to allocate to the same big brand firms over and over. They will generally take a meeting if they’re in research although that has gotten more difficult, but at the end of the day, they’re looking for nuances and for interesting facts and figures. They are not in a position to invest in that management firm because it doesn’t meet their base criteria.
Upfront, defining a prospect list and asking those prospects, “What is your criteria? What is the smallest investor you’ve invested in? How long of a track record is required?” and making a decision. “Are you more growth- than value-oriented? Do you even consider core managers? How much are you doing active versus passive? Where are you active?” Getting a better sense of whether they’re even thinking to allocate where you have expertise can save a lot of time.
Managers typically want the meeting. They want the chance to go and present. It usually goes well because it’s human nature to make a nice dialogue happen. It’s very rare that the manager leaves thinking it didn’t go well. However, the picture may look different if you ask managers to take out a piece of paper and write down the answers to questions like, “Over the last year, who did we meet with, how have we followed up with them over time, and who is invested? Over the last three years, the same thing – who have we met with, how have we followed up with them, and how many of them invested?”
What managers will find is they had a series of good introductory meetings, a big chunk of them were probably not the right prospects, and their ability to follow up was not as strong as it needed to be to keep telling their story in front of that firm. You get so few chances for these excellent introductions. It’s critical to maximize them by confirming it’s the right type of prospect, being diligent about preparation to maximize the meeting time, and then being incredibly vigilant about ongoing communication with that audience so as not to lose them.
John: You talk about creating a content library. What is some of the core collateral that needs to be in place to truly have a chance out there in the institutional world?
Sandra: We feel such a body of work is a critical statement about the manager, and most managers will sort of check the box. “Yes, we’ve got the numbers. We’ve got a pitch book. We’ve got a fact sheet. We’ve got a website.” However, a true content library is a body of work that clearly defines every aspect of the manager, the manager’s team, the manager’s philosophy, and the manager’s process, and then utilizes that content library to feed a whole bunch of different marketing collateral and media interactions.
The reason it is so pivotal is that, typically, managers will have a fact sheet and a presentation. If you then look at their website, the fact sheet and presentation often don’t match the content in the website. If you look at the data they’ve put in a database, the answers in the database don’t often match what is featured on the website or in the collateral. If you ask them to respond to an RFI, they will provide different answers yet again. There is no common portal of real, clear language around the firm’s philosophy, process, team, the way it thinks about managing money day to day, and the way its investment committee works, if it has one.
It’s about truly going through this exercise of putting that in writing, making sure the whole team understands it and is on board with it, and that every communication coming out of that firm utilizes the core messaging – whether it’s visible online, whether it’s how someone presents the firm in a meeting, whether it’s what someone says to a colleague at a networking event – and that the message about the firm is so consistent, clear, and concise as to leave no room for poking holes in the story because institutional research people in particular, especially in today’s day and age, keep their databases for years.
We will walk into a meeting with a manager or call them on the phone and they’ll pull notes out from five years ago. Five years ago, the manager was significantly less polished. The story wasn’t anywhere near as good. It wasn’t as concise and clear. That is in their databases. That is what any analyst from that firm is going to read – the impression of that initial meeting.
It is very critical that you determine ahead of time what the messaging and core content of the firm are and that they’re consistently applied in database responses, RFIs, fact sheets, presentations, and websites. Every touch point with the market needs to be consistent and driven by this content library.
John: Some firms or managers like to write up every idea in detail and share it freely or have lengthy letters. Is there such a thing as too much information? It seems like the managers that get a lot of interest sometimes have a mystique around them where maybe not everything is out there for public consumption.
Sandra: Yes, I think managers culturally have to make a decision about who they want to be in the market. I mentioned earlier that a lot of institutional research consultants talk about folks who are very contrarian – maybe a Grantham from GMO or voices that are very active in the market, typically of a contrarian nature. What they like is that they’re willing to put out an opinion. Jeff Gundlach is another example of someone who’s very active in the market.
Most managers need to keep in mind that they are not going to have the budget, time, or resources to be that prolific in the market. They don’t have that behind them to be able to constantly push themselves out. As a result, it’s going to be more targeted and specific communications. One thing we see managers do that is a mistake is vomiting on the page. They just want to write, write, write, and provide so much information. The other is minimalists. In the book, we talk about the concept of minimalists with communications where they don’t want to tell you anything because they’re afraid they’re giving away some secret sauce or some great stock idea.
Managers need to find that happy medium where it is a bite-sized but meaningful piece of communication that doesn’t stretch beyond six to eight pages, preferably keeps to two to four, but is still a meaningful piece of information that speaks to their philosophy, process, and unique edge in finding names. It doesn’t necessarily have to be done at the individual security level. For regulatory reasons, some firms are very hesitant to talk about individual securities, but it can also be done at the industry level, the sector level, or the country level if you’re a manager in the global market.
Managers can be creative in realizing that research entities are looking for content they can utilize in their own thinking and in their own presenting internally, how they’re positioning to their clients, and what is unique and value-added about them. Give them some content so that they think of you as a source of value. That’s not going to be done with a 10- to 20-page write-up on a specific stock, nor with a one-paragraph write-up.
Somewhere in the middle is a sweet spot – ideally two to four pages of a meaningful conversation about a topic that matters to the manager or where the manager has some specific expertise. It doesn’t have to be overly involved, but it also needs to have enough detail for the research person to take some bite-sized pieces of information from it and integrate it into their own thinking and process and look forward to the next thing they receive from that manager.
John: Tell us what you mean by establishing active voice with commentary.
Sandra: One of the challenges a lot of managers have – particularly managers that may not be as large – is they have come from a wealth management framework and perhaps even have wealth management as a construct of their business. It seems they want to provide this global macro content that is pretty mundane and repetitive from manager to manager. Some even outsource it to organizations that produce content that they can basically private-label. It is understandable because it is macro, and that’s not what most of these managers are.
You might need that because you may have some readers who look to you for the broader picture, but what we suggest to managers consistently is to make sure that, right on the first page, they put something of real meaning about their portfolio that isn’t general in nature – some idea or some perspective they can at least start in a sidebar or in a column and then carry that over into the rest of the piece because that is what’s differentiated about them.
Nobody – particularly in the institutional market – needs the majority of managers to provide them with the macro outlook. That’s being done by the largest firms in the industry that have paid economists who do nothing but opine on that in the market. What they want from managers is specifically what is happening in their space, in their portfolio, in their little corner of the world. Managers tend to want to hide under the shell of general macro perspectives when what the market is truly excited to hear from them is what they see in their area of expertise.
John: You have a chapter called “Games Managers Play.” Tell us more about that.
Sandra: That was probably the most fun chapter of the book to write because institutions play games, too. Let’s be honest about it. It’s human nature to want to look good, to want to demonstrate high integrity, and to want to tell a good story, but there are some things managers consistently do that are particularly obvious to institutions, and they kept coming up over and over in my discussions in the interview process.
I felt that a great way to capture them would be to create this chapter, which talks about games like Capture the Flag and Battleship where you are trying to figure out where that manager is, and you can’t quite pinpoint, and you keep guessing. It’s like 20 Questions, and you can’t quite get the coordinates right. There are many other examples of games managers play in terms of trying to either not answer questions directly or clearly or trying to come across as bigger, more experienced, or more differentiated than they are.
Unfortunately, from an institutional perspective, that’s very harmful because these institutions generally see hundreds of managers a year – maybe not hundreds of managers for a specific search, but hundreds of managers a year. They are adept at understanding, and so are we because we screen managers every week. You can take a quick look at some materials and determine very quickly what makes sense and what doesn’t within that collateral system.
“Games Managers Play” is about poking fun at the notion of the humanistic nature of trying to be effective at business development, marketing, and sales. It’s meant to remind managers of things to avoid because there’s what to do in marketing, but there’s also a lot of what not to do. A lot of being successful in this marketing run is not getting yourself thrown out of the process. It’s staying in the game. It’s musical chairs. It’s staying put long enough. It’s survivor. To do that, you can’t raise flags along the way.
Institutions know right away when managers work hard to cover up periods of underperformance, issues with individual team members, a benchmark that’s not the right one they should be using (although they look great against it, it’s not realistically what the portfolio should be compared against), or a whole number of things. You get a lot further with investors by having an effective marketed positioning but also one that is accurate, truly demonstrating integrity, and honestly portraying the team, what value they bring, and what they’re passionate about.
John: Given your experience in this business, to the extent we can generalize a little, what is the type of manager you’ve seen succeed over time? What’s the type of manager you personally like to work with?
Sandra: We love managers. That’s why we’re in the business. Who is the easiest person to sell? A salesperson. We love the stories. We get excited for managers to come and tell us what they do that’s different, and they’re so passionate and engaged.
The managers we like to work with that we believe are ultimately the most successful are those willing to take these steps. Most managers you talk to say, “Our performance is great. It’s better than BlackRock’s. Why can’t we raise money?” They’re dogmatically focused on performance as if it’s the only criteria. It is absolutely not the only criteria. It is required. Without good performance, it’s extremely difficult to move the needle, but it is one of many criteria.
We most enjoy working with managers with the ability to self-reflect and willingness to engage their team around the thought process of “What are we as a firm? What is our philosophy? What is our process? Who are our competitors? Have we done a full enough analysis? Who’s the right prospect for us? We’re going to stick with it, we’re going to produce content, and we’re going to get out there with our messaging with a high amount of integrity, honesty, and clarity. We’re going to do that for the period of time it takes, and we’re going to understand how the process works.”
Ultimately, they’re the managers that get hired. At the end of the day, institutional researchers are human beings. They don’t want to work with people who get thrown off by a question or become confrontational if they don’t get a response quickly enough. It’s very much a dance of trying to stay in front of them without pushing at the wrong time, trying to provide meaningful content without bombarding them with too much. Managers willing to do that self-reflection and think cautiously and carefully about the best use of their resources but then commit to that process for a two- to three-year run make the best clients. They are also the most likely to succeed.
John: There’s obviously the question of what kind of time investment is required by a manager who does have a day job of running a portfolio and choosing investments. What would you say is the level of commitment you need to see to invest in this process before it can be successful?
Sandra: There are two answers to it – one is the capital commitment, and the other is the time allocation.
One of the reasons this book was so important for me to write was that I am a business owner. I understand that you have a lot of economic pulls at your time and resources. You have a certain amount of team. What do you outsource? What do you insource? Some firms should outsource more than they do; some should outsource less and build more inhouse. That’s a constantly changing model as firms grow and develop.
From the perspective of what is it that managers need to be thinking about in terms of capital and resource commitment, in terms of time commitment for portfolio managers, we define 20% of portfolio management time. It does not need to be one person. It could be split across two or three PMs, but that’s the amount of time needed to drive effective relationships and thus business development. When it comes to resources and capital commitment, many organizations have existing resources. What they simply want to do is add these very different tasks and business development requirements onto resources that often are not well enough trained or prepared to deliver on them.
Firms have to think about two things. One is the simplicity of training. Most organizations will make sure their lead PM can tell the story, and if they have a business development or sales person, that person can tell the story. However, everyone in the organization truly needs to understand what the organization is driving for, what that philosophy is, what that process is, and how it should be articulated because there has to be a consistent and clear response, whether it is institutions coming through the office for an onsite visit, whether it’s just a phone interaction related to follow-on questions, or whether it’s the junior person filling in the databases.
Thinking about team training and making as many team members as possible engaged in the outcome of the business development trained to present the firm most efficiently will both free up time for the portfolio manager and ensure that every interaction an entity has with that organization is consistent.
We also suggest a capital commitment of being able to fund the marketing and sales effort for two to three years. Many firms will make the investment for 3, 6, or 12 months, then they get frustrated with the lack of results. Right at the time when they’re starting to create some groundswell of at least brand awareness and opportunity to get into searches, they pull the plug, saying, “This didn’t work.” For managers to truly have a longevity approach, to make the effort sustainable, it’d be better if it’s a lesser effort, more targeted but sustainable versus trying to throw too much against the wall to see what sticks, and then planning to just continue in that vein. Careful planning of resources is critical.
The other factor to consider is that portfolio managers obviously need to be managing the portfolio. Some portfolio managers are great presenters, others not at all. They have a difficult time answering questions and can be confrontational in their response. They don’t understand why the question is being asked. They think they should be able to focus on the high level. They don’t want to talk about historical performance. They struggle greatly. In that case, firms need to make an honest assessment about who the best person is to go out and position that firm and/or work with that portfolio manager to get them more comfortable answering those tough questions, and – better yet – building more of those answers into the presentation so that the manager is not on the defensive when the question gets asked.
So, training, training, training around portfolio managers. It’s nothing they enjoy doing, but portfolio manager after portfolio manager we have trained are significantly more successful because they are more prepared to have an engaging, positive dialogue that the institution feels it’d like to continue after the initial meeting.
John: Sandra, are there any concluding remarks you’d like to make? I know you’re involved with a couple of different entities. It would be terrific if you want to delineate that or tell us a little more.
Sandra: When I put the book out there, the first piece of advice I got was, “You do know that 85% of people don’t read books.” I thought, “This book is not a ‘put your feet up and take in some philosophical thoughts’ exercise. It is a tactical game plan.” When I meet with managers who have read it, they will have dog-eared or flagged hundreds of pages, and they can’t wait to figure out what’s working and what’s not in their organization. There are checklists, matrices, actionable steps that can be implemented, and it is very bite-sized. You could do an element a month. You could do all the elements in one review with the team and then split up who will be responsible for carefully looking at them. You could work with a consultant to maximize that game plan.
What we did do out of the book was create an entire curriculum series for managers the book is not sufficient for. It’s on Audible. It’s an ebook. It’s Kindle, but how do you get a team to truly engage around it? There is a full curriculum series that allows managers to take one unit at a time, to self-facilitate, to have it facilitated.
The bottom line is to stop the practice of saying, “Our performance is great. Our problem is we don’t have the right marketing. Our performance is great. It’s just that we don’t get out enough.” It is bigger than that. It is about saying, “What will make our business the most sustainable and successful it can be, where we’re diversifying our revenue stream while putting in place a plan that will last beyond the next 1, 3, 5 years?” and committing to that process, which doesn’t have to take much time but is critical for long-term success.
John: This has been terrific. Sandra, thank you very much for taking the time to share your insights into this critical topic.
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