Are You Achieving Your Potential?

Every month, one of the most important conversations I have is with Lahat Tzvi. While we schedule a 60 minute discussion, they usually last about 2 hours, we have to stop ourselves because they can go on. (Both he and I have taken to blocking our calendars because we know we will go on.)

We go from subject to subject, generally focusing on a couple of areas. Today, Lahat was wound up. Earlier, he had a conversation with a prospective client. The client was focused on “the numbers.” Lahat realized the client was missing something, they weren’t focused on the potential.

It struck a nerve with me. I can’t begin to count the number of similar conversations I’m in. But the same issue comes up in too many conversations.

Before I go on, let me give some context. Our clients tend to fall into two categories. The majority are very high performers, often the market leaders in their segment. They are driven to continue to innovate and grow, to achieve their full potential. Another category are organizations that are struggling. They may be missing their goals, but they aren’t achieving what they want to and need to. They need to turn things around.

There is a third category, we get a lot of inbound queries from them. It’s rare that we do business. These are the people that are achieving their goals. If you look at their performance over the past few years, they have been hitting the numbers. Usually, it’s not easy, there’s a bit of a struggle, but they hit their goals. Sometimes, they call out of curiosity, they may have seen what we are doing with their competitors, seen one of these posts, or seen me on a podcast.

As we talk, I ask a lot of questions about performance. Are they hitting their revenue, growth, profitability goals? We dive in deeper, I ask, “What’s your win rate? What’s your average deal size–what’s the size of your average win, your average loss? What’s your sales cycle? How’s retention/renewal? How are you growing your share of customer, share of market? What’s your voluntary/involuntary attrition?……”

You can see how these conversations go, I keep drilling into their performance, deeper and deeper.

They usually answer the first couple of questions with great enthusiasm. We met our revenue goals, again! We are growing according to plan! Everything is great.

It’s the other questions, starting with profitability, going on to win rates, deal sizes, sales cycles, and others that my questions start to gain intensity and then go crazy.

“Our win rate is 17%, our deal sizes a declining slowly, our sales cycles are increasing……. but we keep making our numbers, we are providing tools to improve productivity, we are hiring more people to drive greater volumes, we know how to scale!”

I respond, “I get it! You have a machine and you know how to scale to hit your revenue and growth goals…… Is it getting more difficult?”

They respond, “Of course, but we have the formulas, we keep scaling and hitting our numbers……”

They have the answers, they know what’s worked in the past, all they have to do is more of the same thing.

At this point, I shift gears, asking, “Are you achieving your potential?”

They look at me. In their eyes, I can see what they are thinking, “You’re a crusty old fart, why are you asking these philosophical questions?”

I keep going. “It seems to me you are finding and qualifying a huge number of opportunities. You are investing a lot of resources in those opportunities, but you are losing 83% of them…..”

They respond, “We know where you are going with this. But our win rates are right in line with everyone else’s!”

“I get it,” I respond, “but what if you could do more with the opportunities you are already competing for? You have a potential to do so much more than you are currently doing, all you have to do is win more. It seems to me you don’t have to invest so much in finding and qualifying more opportunities, you just have to win more of what you have already qualified!”

I keep going on, “You are struggling with profitability, your investors are beating you up. What if you could simply double the number of deals you win? You are already investing the resources in those deals, you don’t have to spend more, you just have to figure out how to win. How would that impact your top and bottom lines?”

“Someone else is winning 83% of the deals you compete! It may be spread across several competitors, but I bet one is doing more and better than you!”

Usually by this point they are exhausted. They’ve run out of explanations and excuses.

And I ask them, “I know you are hitting your numbers. That’s not my question, are you achieving your potential?”

As Lahat and I talked, Lahat said something very powerful, “Quota is something we pass on the way to achieving our potential!”

We are approaching the Holidays and all those celebrations. But take the time to reflect a little, particularly as you look to the coming year, “Are you achieving your potential?”

Perhaps, talking past the close, we need to move beyond the mindset of “good enough,” to imagining “what’s really possible.”

If you are interested in that question, call Lahat or me.

Afterword:  Below is the AI generated discussion of this.  They take the discussion beyond organizational potential, also looking at our individual potentials.  Enjoy!