Time is a problem. We never have enough. And regardless what we do, we never will. Whatever time we tend free up, is immediately filled with something else and we become time poor, once again.
We have endless tools and technologies, increasingly assisted by AI, enabling us to accomplish more in each hour. The goal of each of these is increasing our efficiency. If I think, for example, the evolution of “prospecting letters.” I started in sales, about 5 years before emailing became popularized. To send a prospecting letter, I had to write it in longhand and give it to the “word processing pool.” In a few hours or a day, I would get a typed draft of my prospecting letter. I’d revise it and send the corrected versions to them. Since they had “word processing technology,” I could have one letter that would apply to a number of people. The correct name, address, and personalization would be added. I’d get the final copies, I’d sign them, stuff them in envelopes and mail them. The whole process would take a couple of days, then it would take a couple of days for the prospects to receive them.
Since there were a small number of people in the word processing group, with about 75 sales people competing for their attention, we could only got through that cycle once every few weeks, seldom sending more than 30 letters a shot.
Then we got PC’s with word processing software. I could type out my own letters, print them and mail them. I became thankful my mom forced me to take a typing class in summer school. I’d type each letter, print it, stuff it in an envelope and mail it. I became a master of cut and paste, so I could get a lot more done in a shorter period.
Then mail-merge came. I no longer had to use cut and paste. I could create lots of letter, sending out dozens every week.
The advent of the web and email changed everything. I could use mail-merge for my emails, sending dozens each day, with no delay in the prospect receiving them. And things progressed, today, AI will compose thousands of emails in seconds, sending them out immediately. In 30 minutes, we could create thousands of “personalized” emails that could be sent daily. And we can automate sequencing to resend those emails a couple of days later with the sentence, “In case you missed this……”
During this time, response rates have plummeted. When I first started sending prospecting letters, I would get a response from virtually every one. I’d call a few days after I sent them, people actually picked up their phones, and we’d have a conversation. Many would not be interested, but enough would be and we would arrange a meeting.
And, over time, we’ve seen response rates plummet. Only a small percentage are delivered and opened, and a much smaller percentage are read, and even a smaller percentage generate a response. When we try to call in follow up, no body picks up on a number that isn’t recognized. And we’ve added social channels to our outreach, and more people are blocking us.
But we are massively efficient!
And this drive for efficiency, is not just with prospecting letters, it touches everything we do. We no longer actually have to talk to people, bots do that work for us. We no longer have to listen to people, bots do that work for us. As managers, we don’t have to coach, because conversational intelligence and other tools do the majority of that for us.
All in the name of efficiency.
And everyday, in my feeds, I see experts giving more advice, more templates, more prompt engineering to make us more efficient.
In the old days, to have 10 conversations, it usually took 10-15 letters and the follow up phone calls. Today, to have the same number of conversations, it takes 10-14K touches across multiple channels. And, if the trends persist, in the next year or two, it’s likely to take at least 5 times that much. But no worries, a press of an enter key and it’s solved (actually, AI will even eliminate the need for us to be engaged in any part of this process at all.).
And we are increasingly efficient.
The problem is, at the same time our results are plummeting.
The problem with efficiency is that it focuses on activities we do in a period of time. It doesn’t care about what those activities produce.
That’s effectiveness.
Effectiveness focuses on the outcomes our activities produce. Are we identifying the right number of high quality, qualified opportunities? Are we helping customers move those opportunities through the buying cycles and winning a sufficient number of those? Are we coaching our people in ways that enable the majority of them to achieve their goals? Are we maximizing retention to leverage the accumulated experience of those people to drive higher levels of performance and productivity? Are we creating value that is meaningful to customers, maximizing not only their retention, but also their desire to engage in conversations about what more could be achieved?
Effectiveness would force us to ask the question, “Why does it take 1000-1400 touches to get a conversation? What do we have to do to reduce that to 500, or 250, or 50?”
Effectiveness is hard work. It requires us to ask, “Why?” It requires us to consider, “What do we need to change,” rather than “How do we do more?” Effectiveness requires us to actually care about what we are doing and what we are achieving, where that is irrelevant to those driving for efficiency.
It’s interesting, as I look at my feeds in social media. The efficiency articles drive 10-100 more likes and comments than the effectiveness articles. I suspect it’s because the effectiveness articles challenge us to think and to the right work, where the efficiency articles just show us how to do more.
We have to be both effective and efficient. But there is a sequence that is important. Unless we focus first, and always, on effectiveness, all we do is create crap at the speed of light.
Brilliant. I think you’ve put your finger on one of the dilemmas of our time, and not just about, as you say, in sales. Creating crap at the speed of light (great line) is like multiplying by zero, or by one—you still end up with crap. Great post.
Sales managers striving for efficiency is relying on CRM to manage the sales process vs coaching (in the field) by observing the client conversation and having a candid debrief. The effectiveness of a salesperson will get better by receiving good feedback and striving to do better the next time. Also. technology tools are “robotizing” the coaching process which is causing win-rates the plummet (17-20%) and will likely continue to decline.
Ted Levitt defined efficiency as doing something right and effectiveness as doing the right something.
Great post, as always!
Efficiency is about the resources required to get something done – presumably something specific – on purpose.
If you’re not getting that something done then you’re not being effective.
There are 2 closely connected, seemingly identical yet quite distinct perspectives of efficiency at work here, and this might be in part why there is this focus on efficiency over effectiveness.
For a specific opportunity, I can either land it or not. Either way I can work to make the various process steps along the journey to sales success or failure more efficient – for example taking 10 touches instead of 20 to move things along to the next step of the process.
And for a funnel or pipeline there’s another measure of efficiency – how many of the opportunities I have in my funnel actually convert to a sale. And strictly speaking, at least in my book, how many of those convert to a full margin sale?
If I land 34 out of 100 then you could say my pipeline is 34% efficient. But what if for each and every individual opportunity I take 1 touch to move things along, not 10 or 20. Then at that level of focus I am being 100% efficient (not counting elapsed calendar time…) But for 66 of those opportunities I am 100% ineffective.
And for my funnel or pipeline I could assert that I am 34% effective at converting opportunities to full margin revenue.
Confusing? Probably!
And it gets worse if you don’t have a process or approach that you use consistently, against which you can gauge efficiencies and effectiveness in meaningful ways. And that means you don’t have the discipline to adopt a data-driven approach to continuous improvement. Hence the blame can be placed at the feet of the marketing department, the economy or the product development teams for either not getting the word out, stifling demand, or producing products with the wrong set of features and/or price points. All of which, by the way, might be true. But it more importantly in the mind of the seller, absolves them of the need & suitable focus to do any personal continuous improvement.
Oh, and all this happens with the unwitting support of sales management, who generally are yesterday’s salespeople with that same perspective… and because things aren’t ever 100% they are of the view that as valuable and useful as continuous improvement and data capture and analysis is, there isn’t time to do that now – times are tough (like that’s something new!) and every minute has to be spent on prospecting, dealing with objections, negotiating, and compliance actions over the CRM, usually by filling it with crap… a further nail in the coffin of data-driven continuous improvement.