Doug Theis Leave your comfort zone.

CIO — In most product-driven firms, product planning is one of the highest leverage processes in the whole company. There’s a huge difference in the profitability of a “hit” vs. a me-too product, and a dud is worse than just unprofitable. By its nature, product strategy is as much art as science, but bringing more hard data into the process improves the quality of prioritization decisions.

Product strategy needs to be a mix of engineering/operations plan and market survey, but most market survey techniques are quite vulnerable to big procedural and statistical problems. The iconic bad product of the 1950s was the Edsel, yet it was the result of the most thorough surveying processes of its era.

Fortunately, CRM systems naturally contain information about products, customers, and features. Further, modern CRM systems store a sequence of interactions that make the data support richer inferences about “what’s important to customers.”

The most essential data for product planning is transactional: what products sell where, at what discount level, to whom. While the core of this data may be available from your accounting or order-entry system, the CRM system adds color to the transaction, such as the vertical market, the names and titles of the (likely) users, and the length / complexity of the sales cycle. From this data, you can understand which products tend to be bought together, what are the messages, campaigns or offers that tend to stimulate sales, and which competitive situations are the most favorable. From this, you can infer which feature improvements can help you win more often.

More of the CIO Magazine article from David Taber

This morning, I’m kicking off an engagement with Harry Howe of Howe Leadership. Harry is helping me tidy up the processes of my business life so I can do a better job serving my clients and Lifeline Data Centers, the company that I represent.

My sales team and I market via a website, a blog, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, local networking and in-house telemarketing to generate leads.

We meet with clients to talk about requirements, conduct tours, and sometimes respond to RFPs to convert bona fide opportunities into monthly recurring revenue streams.

We publish newsletters, co-host seminars, and meet periodically to provide ongoing value to our clients.

I have enough irons in the fire that it’s become difficult for me to keep all my work organized. It also has become more difficult to step back and evaluate my processes without a little outside help. So Harry is helping me. I’ll write more about the process as it unfolds.

This summer I attended a Winning Minds seminar with Matt De La Cruz. The subject of the seminar was goal setting. Matt said he uses Black Friday as his day to do most of his 2011 planning. I have decided to use Black Friday as a goal setting day as well.

Matt’s goal setting methodology uses separate sheets of paper for each goal, with very specific metrics and milestones for each one. This is coupled with a weekly and sometimes daily review of progress. How specific are your goals? Mine were pretty non-specific before I took the Winning Minds seminar. How specific are your goals?

The tagline of this blog is practical overachievement. An overachiever is generally defined someone who performs better than their peers when compared for background, intelligence or talent. The practical side of overachievement is, in my opinion, work effort, or a relentless pursuit of well-defined goals. It doesn’t matter if the goal is business development, IT strategy, bowling, or overcoming fear. Here is a great article on managing overachievers.

Overachievers have the drive, determination, passion, and energy needed to move huge projects forward. But they’re not like other employees. You need to lead them differently if you want to take advantage of all they have to offer. You also need to watch out for characteristic quirks that can undermine their success: They sometimes set unrealistic expectations, work insane hours, and take risks to succeed at any cost. Without some savvy supervision, many can lose perspective and become obsessed, dysfunctional, and ultimately unable to perform.

In order to manage overachievers well, you need to understand their personality type and build a relationship on trust, so they know you have their best interest in mind. Here we’ll show you how to curb the destructive tendencies that can disrupt a star performer’s productivity and develop positive management skills to keep them — and you — happy.

* None. You can’t put a price on a well-managed relationship.
* Keeping a super-achiever on track demands constant communication. Schedule an hour or two per week for pep talks, dealing with obstacles, and discussing personal goals.
* Interpersonal Skills: You’ll need fundamental skills like listening, observing, and communicating to understand overachievers and the objectives they value most.
* Mentoring Program: Develop a mentoring program such as IBM’s (see “The Nitty Gritty,” below) to guide overachievers — and to let them provide insight and information to other employees.
* Patience: Overachievers demand a lot from their managers, but if you give them the time and attention they need, they can accomplish twice as much as other employees.

Identify the Overachiever
Goal: Recognize overachievers on your team and during job interviews.

more of the BNET article from Laurie Sullivan