Podcast interview with the Consulting Success®
I recently had an interview on the Consulting Success® Podcast where I talked about the roadmap to mastery in consulting.
To listen and read the full interview click HERE
Revenue Growth Hacking
Every company wants massive growth, like now! I’ve worked with over 100 companies and here is a list of the top growth hacks [in order of importance] I have seen that actually work.
Staff Up – the top reason companies fail to achieve the hockey-stick-graph-growth is they don’t have enough dedicated staff selling all day, every day. Dual sales & service roles diminish the focus on new revenue acquisition. Hire more sales bodies now. If paying for extra salaries is onerous, scour the landscape and you will likely find either free or matching money to help get interns, or the like, manning a desk at your office.
Divide and Conquer – the sales job consists of several discreet tasks. a) finding leads and nurturing them; b) reaching out to them and scheduling an appointment to talk; c) moving them through the sales process to closure; and d) on-boarding those new customers and up-selling them. At minimum, have one Biz Dev person filling the top of the sales funnel, a Sales person closing them and a Customer Success person on-boarding them. Reengage sales to up-sell when appropriate.
Automate Your Sales – it’s mind-bending how many intuitive tools are available to automate every step of the sales process. Map out your process, then Google “what’s the best app for automating the [insert sales micro-function here] part of your sale?”. Pick your sales stack components, turn the key and fire it up.
Configure Your CRM – bake your sales methodology, language and processes right into your CRM. This is the ultimate scaling growth hack. When your CRM is your sales process, training a new hire on one aspect immediately trains them on the other. CEO’s love the revenue growth that follows.
Stomp on the Sales Gas Pedal Now – if you don’t have a robust Sales Staffing and Process & Tools infrastructure plan, create one asap. You can’t build a thriving business on a non-existent or shaky foundation.
You will definitely have to iterate to optimize all of your systems as you grow, so prepare to iterate over time to iron out the kinks. This way, when your revenue grows, your systems can scale with it.
The Best Way to Handle a Price Objection
The absolute best way to handle a price objection is to structure your sale so you don’t get one. Price objections arise because buyers are unaware of the price range they are looking at for their purchase, or don’t see enough value in your offer to pay your price. Take a value-based approach to your selling and you can short circuit both of these.
In business to business selling there are many ways to handle the price conversation. The worst is to address it late in the game, with trepidation. This generally causes sticker shock in the buyer’s mind – an irreversible condition. Once afflicted they – and you – can never get past it. Your deal digresses into a haggling session you’d rather not have.
The best way is to address price early in the sale, in a comfortable and candid way. Dip your toe in the water and check the temperature. If things look good, carry on with the sales conversation. Address price thoroughly after your buyer’s Pain-Gain-Value needs have been diagnosed [for more on value-based selling click here. When a price or fee is put beside a buyer’s expressed needs it makes much more sense to them. They can most clearly see what they are getting for what they are paying.
Here are some sales approach specifics you might find helpful…
Your first sales conversation with a buyer should consist of a hearty diagnosis of their Pain points, a clear statement of what they are trying to achieve by fixing them [Gains], and a list of the Value they are looking to get by doing so. Once all of this is on the table it’s a good idea to say something like “Thanks for sharing that with me. If I’ve heard you right where you are at is [repeat what they told you].”
Wade into the price conversation with “Given what you want to fix, what you want to accomplish and the value you are looking to get, the price range you are looking at is approximately $XX/between $XX and $YY. How does that sound to you conceptually at this point? I’m not looking to nail anything down just yet. I just want to see if we’re on the same page regarding the spend.” This approach will get you into the price conversation early on, and help you determine if your buyer is operating in reality or if they want a Cadillac at Ford Fiesta prices.
If you and the buyer are miles off on price range, you’ll need to have the “I think what you want to accomplish and what you want to spend aren’t in line right now” conversation. This will end with your buyer adjusting their purchase objectives, you adjusting the scope of your solution or you referring them to a lower cost provider.
If you are both aligned on the price range carry on with your sales conversation. Learn the specifics of their needs to the point you can build your solution. When it’s been built and the time comes to present your final price/fees do it this way… “The major Pain points you outlined to me were [insert Pain point here]. What you are trying to achieve by fixing them is [insert Gain here]. Underneath it all, the Value you want to get by doing so is [insert Value here]. Am I correct with my summary?”
This question will help confirm if your assessment of their situation is accurate, and sets up your presentation of the price.
If your assessment is in fact correct, carry on to say “Given all of that, the feature[s] of our solution that will deliver on that are [outline your solution features here].” Then ask “does that make sense to you so far?” If it doesn’t, take the time to review things with them until you get aligned. Once you get aligned then say, “here is the price for this solution [state price here].”
This approach takes your buyer through a very distinct journey prior to getting to the price destination. They get refreshed on where their Pains lie, what good looks like when the Pain goes away and the Value they’ll get by proceeding with their purchase. They are totally clear on what they are getting for what they are paying as they consider the final price.
This sales approach significantly lowers price objections. First, you have weeded out buyers up front whose budget is below what you’ll charge. Second, for those that make it through the sales process you’ve clearly connected value to price paid.
Of course, there will still be buyers who will balk at whatever you charge. If haggling is an accepted part of your sale then have your strategies ready to deal with that. Otherwise, stick to the value-based road. It’s a much smoother ride.
The Heart of Motivation
Selling is a funny job. It seems to require an unusual amount of motivation for one to perform consistently at a high level.
I’m not sure why this is. Does accounting require a high level of motivation to do it well? How about Human Resources? I don’t know – I’ve not done either of those jobs. I do know I can name many motivational sales speakers, but no accounting motivational speakers come to mind [if you know of any, please let me know!].
Maybe it’s the self-starting nature sales. Many of us work from home offices or are on the road flying solo, tasked with bringing home the bacon. One needs to be organized and active, efficient and effective and at the end of the month reach your sales quota.
With little [or more often no] supervision, sales people must find opportunities, sift out the bad ones and then close the good ones.
In most job roles the work is brought to you. In sales you have to go find it. Anyone who has opened a new territory or struck out on their own know this challenge well.
At any rate, I get asked so often how to motivate sales people I thought I’d address it here. Over 14 years and across 22 different industries here is what I have learned…
First, hire motivated sales people [duh, right!?]. It sounds obvious but many fail to do this. In doing some digging I’ve found that questions like “what motivates you to work hard to beat your sales quota” and “what jazzes you up about selling day in and day out” are not in the top 10 questions hiring managers ask. I’d take a highly motivated unproven salesperson over a non-motivated seasoned vet any day of the week. Start asking these questions early in the hiring process if you haven’t done so already.
Once hired, train your salespeople weekly – yes, weekly! Think coaching, sales skill practice, sales book of the month club discussions and the like. Motivated people eat training for breakfast, they love it! They want to consistently improve because that’s just the way they are wired. Plus, it helps them to earn bigger commissions. Ignore training at your peril, it is a primary motivator.
Finally, de-hire non-motivated salespeople now! Move them to a different role in your organization where they can soar with their strengths, or exit them from the company. If they are non-motivated keeping them in their current role is unfair for all parties. I will share with you that this is the one piece of advice my clients are slowest to take, but after they do their response is universally consistent, “why did I not do this sooner?”
Once you have your team of champions in place, here are some ways you can inject some additional motivational mojo over the course of the sales year…
Sales contests
You know the drill on this one. The new spin? Have the team select the prize they want. Some want cash, some want gift cards, others want time off. Create a menu of prize options and let each team member decide what they want to run hard for. Winning a big screen tv might pump up one rep, but leave others totally flat.
Trophies
I had a client with an all-female sales team, selling into the spa industry. They jokingly had a sales tiara that sat on the desk of the previous month’s top seller. The competition for the tiara was friendly, but surprisingly fierce. Another client had a sales gong in the office that those who closed a deal could drop the hammer on as soon as they hung up the phone. Interestingly, I find the more quirky the trophy, the more people like it. What would your team’s equivalent to the sales tiara be?
Added Responsibilities
What?? Don’t people want less work, not more? I’m not saying pile more work on your successful sellers, I’m saying add some cool new wrinkles into their role that stoke their internal motivators for personal and professional growth / role enrichment. Give them Key Account selling responsibilities. Entrust them with mentoring your newest and brightest. Bring them to the table for new product development meetings. Include them in marketing meetings and solicit their input on next year’s campaign.
Underneath it all, the true heart of motivating your people is getting to know them outside of their job role. It is proven that one of the top motivators around job role performance is an employee’s relationship with their direct superior. What have you done lately to fan those motivating flames?
Measure These Things Now
With the ubiquity of CRM sales has become like baseball — you can measure your stats six ways to Sunday. The trouble is, some people do! Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis. There are but a few things you need to measure to predict your sales future.
Sales is an efficiency and effectiveness game. How much of something do you need to do, and how well do you need to do it to reach your sales quota? Let’s start with the efficiency, or ‘how much’ part.
Measure the number of sales interactions [conversations, the primary focus of which is to move a deal forward. Customer service calls don’t count] executed by your team daily and weekly. Sales interactions are the number one thing for most businesses that cause sales to happen. They are a leading indicator to future revenue generation results.
A quick word about salespeople who don’t want their activities measured. Any resistance you get to weekly sales activity reporting that smells like “that’s a waste of my time” is grounds for a serious conversation. Would your production department balk at measuring their inputs? Of course not, that would be ludicrous. Sales people are in production, they produce sales. You need to know the typical inputs required in your market and industry and geographic location to generate a sale. This is the only way you can embark down the sales process/results improvement road.
Okay, so back to measuring… In only a few weeks you’ll quickly see trends around who is having how many meetings, and can then connect that to the revenue those efforts produce. Use the data to discover what the magic activity levels need to be on a per rep basis and set these as your benchmark. Manage to these benchmarks.
Shifting now to the sales funnel… When it comes to sales funnel measures, most managers and reps work from the end of the sales funnel backwards. They measure the number of closes this week, how many proposals went out the door, etc. The most successful teams I’ve worked with do the opposite. They measure from the very front end of the sales funnel forward. Interesting.
Early stage sales funnel work [finding leads, contacting them, trying like crazy to secure meetings] is the grunt work of selling that most sales people do willingly only when pressed. Sure, they will lilly dip along the way but they’ll only apply nose to sales grindstone when their sales funnel is dry. These folks experience sales peaks [Hurray!!] and dreaded sales valleys [Booo!!] for this reason. Those in the know track their early stage selling activity daily-weekly. They never, ever lose sight of the fact that sales seeds they plant today can take awhile to take root so they sow every day.
Start with measuring Net New Sales Lead Acquisition. How many raw names have been added to the master list this week of sales leads to reach out to? The optimal number is of course based on your product, industry and sales cycle. Generally, the shorter the sales cycle and simpler the sale the more raw leads you need weekly.
Next, measure the number of Sales Leads Researched per week. This is the number of raw sales leads for whom their website, Linkedin and other social media have been scraped to determine if they might be a fit for your products and services. Note – I consider new leads acquired and then researched as being above the sales funnel. They are so raw you simply can’t assign any probability around the amount of revenue they might generate.
Following the research stage is Sales Leads Activated per week. Now we are into the sales funnel. Activation means you have reached out directly [voice or email] in an attempt to book a meeting. The purpose of the meeting is to conduct a diagnosis to determine if your products and services can be of help to them. Bear in mind that it might take several attempts to reach a potential customer. So, each week you’ll need to activate new opportunities as well as reach out to those from last week [and the weeks before] that have not responded.
To stay on top of this, track the Number Of Connection Attempts Per Activated Sales Lead. Now you are going to start measuring sales effectiveness. These days everyone gets either their email, voice mail, or both, regularly. If they are not responding there’s usually a good reason for it. The rule of thumb is if after 3 connection attempts there has been no response you should either try a new tactic or jettison that lead and move on.
Successful lead activations lead to Diagnosis Meetings. These are golden. Measure them actively. Then measure how many convert into viable sales Prospects. The higher the conversion rate, the better. A low conversion rate might mean you are selecting the wrong leads to call on in the first place.
Look at all of the above measures and assess the following:
a) are the results good or bad?
b) if good, why are they good and what can you replicate to get better?
c) if bad, why are they bad and what’s the fix?
d) decide how you’ll implement fixes and optimizations and stick to it going forward.
Getting to great at early funnel stage work is the road to having more revenue pop out the other end reliably and predictably. Measure, optimize, do, repeat. That’s the magic.
Like what you’ve read here? Totally disagree? I’d love to hear from you either way at [email protected]
Social Selling Using LinkedIn Part II
In my last blog post I showed how investing 10 minutes in Social Selling per day can improve your prospecting effectiveness and eliminate cold calling. [If you haven’t read it, click here]. In this posting I’ll share two effective ways to build the targeted list of buyers you want to be introduced to so you can begin filling the top of your sales funnel.
The path to eliminating cold calling begins with increasing the number of first-degree LinkedIn connections you have in your network. The more first-degree connections you have, the more second-degree connections [and opportunities for connection requests] you will likely have to the buyers you want to speak to about using your products and services.
To make the jump from cold calling to Social Selling you need to tap your first-degree connections and ask them to introduce you to the buyers you’d like to meet. To start down this path you first need to make a list of the buyers you want to be introduced to so you can then ask to be introduced to them. There are a couple of ways to build this list.
The first is for you – or your Virtual Assistant – to do a Google search and create a list of potential companies that fit your Ideal Customer Profile. You can also choose to buy such a list. Buying is faster, but more expensive. There are pros and cons to each approach to list acquisition.
Next, go to LinkedIn and enter the name of each company on your list in the search window. Click on the company name, and LinkedIn will tell you how many first, second and third-degree connections you have within it. Look for the person within that company that, by title, is the right one for you to speak to about using your products and services.
Are they a first-degree connection of yours already? If yes, go ahead and request a telephone meeting with them to talk about using your products and services. You are off to the races!
If they are not a first-degree connection, open their profile. Which second-degree connections do you share with them? Of those second-degree connections, which is the best one to ask for an introduction to your prospective buyer? Generally the “best person” is the one with the optimum combination of a strong/close relationship with you and a strong/close relationship with your prospective buyer.
The second way to create your prospective buyer list is to find someone in your first-degree network that you consider to be well connected within your industry/territory, with whom you have a close relationship, and who would be happy to make introductions for you. LinkedIn gives you access to their first-degree network. Scan it and create a list of people that fit your Ideal Customer Profile who you would like to be introduced to.
The first and most critical step when using this method is to speak to this person directly and confirm that they would be OK to refer you on a regular basis [you don’t ever want to stress your network by “over asking” for referrals]. You might pose the opportunity to them using the “give to get” method.
Say something to them like, “I’m in the process of looking for new business. You are very well connected in my space. Would you mind if I looked through your network for connection opportunities? I’ll then let you know who I am hoping to be introduced to. In return, I would like you to do the same within my network. I want to help you as much as I possibly can.” If they agree, go ahead and begin building your list.
With your list built, it’s now time to proceed with asking for those valuable introductions. Details and scripting around how to do that will be the topic of my next blog post.
Social Selling Using LinkedIn
Social selling has become an integral part of the sales and business development landscape. It presents an opportunity for you to eliminate cold calling – the most soul sucking activity in sales – from your business development function. How are you at social selling?
To my mind, LinkedIn is the strongest social selling tool currently out there for business-to-business sales people. This is because business people join LinkedIn for the purpose of being connected to other ethical and like-minded business people like you.
The big challenge with cold calling is that a huge trust gap exists. People you cold call don’t know you, and therefore don’t trust that investing time with you is worthwhile. Thus, they don’t take your call.
With LinkedIn, rather than cold calling a prospect you can ask to be connected to them by someone you mutually know and trust. If that person in the middle says you are worth connecting with, then the trust gap is bridged and the prospect has a higher likelihood of saying yes to your request to connect.
In order for prospecting via LinkedIn to be effective you need to have as many first-degree connections as possible. This in turn increases the number of second-degree connections you have – which increases the likelihood that someone you are connected to currently knows someone who you would like to connect with for business development purposes. [In my experience, third-degree connections are very weak and are hard to convert into introductions/first-degree connections.]
Increasing your connection base is not hard. It is astounding how many people you interact with over the years. A few years ago I followed a system to increase the amount of quality first-degree connections [people I know on a first name basis]. I have tripled the number of those connections over the span of a few months.
The positive business result of doing this is that I found I now have over 500 second-degree connections to business owners and CEOs at companies of the type that fit my ideal customer profile. This is a great pool of prospects for me.
Here is the process to follow to beef up the number of quality connections you have on LinkedIn…
Start by scheduling an appointment with yourself to spend 10 minutes each day to focus on building your LinkedIn network. During this 10 minute block of time…
- Look back at the previous work day. Are you connected on LinkedIn with everyone with whom you interacted? If not, send them a connection request.
- Look at your current customer base. Are you connected on LinkedIn with everyone within that account that you interact with or have interacted with? If not, send those people a connection request.
- Look at your current suppliers. Are you connected on LinkedIn with everyone there that you interact with or have interacted with? If not, send those people a connection request.
- Look at your current friends and family. Are you connected on LinkedIn with everyone there that you interact with? If not, send those people a connection request.
- Look back at your previous job roles and other companies you have worked for. Are you connected on LinkedIn with everyone there that you interacted with regularly? If not, send those people a connection request.
- Look back at your post-secondary education. Are you connected on LinkedIn with everyone there that you interacted with on a regular basis? If not, send those people a connection request.
- Look back at your high school days. Are you connected on LinkedIn with everyone there that you interacted with on a regular basis? If not, send those people a connection request.
I suggest 10 minutes a day on this activity so you can tackle it in small chunks. If you simply want to spend one hour a week – you can do that too.
If you have not previously taken the approach outlined above, my guess is that you can increase your number of quality first-degree connections [people you know on a first name basis] by 30% easily.
Start building your LinkedIn network immediately. Track your progress week to week to see if you’re getting traction.
In a follow-up blog post I’ll talk about how to ask your first-degree connections to introduce you to prospects you would like to get connected with.
How to Eliminate Sales Peaks and Valleys
“OMG, my sales funnel is bone dry!!”
Panic sets in. You sell like crazy, get some sales traction and start nursing your new found opportunities to closure. You focus on nothing else for weeks. A few of them close. Champagne corks pop and commissions are calculated. Finally, you pause for breath and look at your CRM.
“OMG, my sales funnel is bone dry… again!”
The sales rollercoaster is the number one selling Pain chosen in a recent survey of my blog readers. The peaks of the ride are a blast, but the valleys totally suck. There is, however, a way to tame this 5 ticket ride and carve a path to steady, reliable and predictable revenue.
Here’s the thing – every sales person knows about the rollercoaster. Strangely, they seem to readily allow themselves to climb on board. They know if they get so busy closing business [or implementing new deals] and stop prospecting for net new customers their sales funnel will run dry, yet they repeatedly make this fundamental mistake. How come?
I think it’s the dopamine effect. Dopamine is the chemical in your body behind the feel good rush [pleasure] you get doing whatever your favorite thing is. For sales people, the mere thought of closing business feels good. Closing sales feels even better – hello dopamine!
Contrast this with the grunt work behind finding brand new clients. Cold calling [lots of rejection], endless web research [boring!] and completing CRM fields [mind numbing] is super low on the dopamine producing scale. It’s no wonder many sellers gravitate away from Prospecting.
To keep the dopamine flowing and get off the roller coaster, try some of these road tested and proven methods to minimize the valleys of the ride…
Hire someone else to do the heavy lifting prospecting work for you: This one is road tested by me personally. There is a market of highly qualified virtual assistants today that did not exist even 5 years ago. Select one and pay them to do the part[s] of the prospecting process you don’t enjoy, are too busy to do or are just no good at. Have this work done while you are busy closing your current sales opportunities. When you are done with them, there will be fresh opportunities to close. This investment will put money in their pocket, hours back into your day, and new prospects into your sales funnel. It’s a win – win!
Set and keep a 45-minute appointment with yourself every day: For most sellers 45 minutes a day focused on acquiring net new sales opportunities, will more than meet their sales productivity needs. Imagine, 240 [or so] focused prospecting sessions a year! The secret[s]? First, find the 45 minutes. Even if you are quite time efficient my bet is you can tighten up here and there and create this golden chunk of time. Second, be focused [no personal phoning, texting, Facebook, inbound email alerts, etc] when prospecting. Third, use CRM to record your work religiously. This will allow you to get productive the first few minutes of your session and not burn time getting organized.
Set and measure your prospecting productivity goals: Something like “Each week I will generate a total of ‘X’ number of net new prospects” will do. Next, tell someone else about your goal. Sharing goals has a way of cementing them in our minds, and firming our resolve to meet them.
Refine your prospecting methods: Cold calling is dead. If you are still performing this soul sucking task you need to stop… Now! Search your favorite book store and select a book that will teach you how to get your prospecting into this millennium. There are many more effective, efficient and enjoyable ways to find your next big client than cold calling. Hint…it’s called social media.
With just a little discipline and stick-to-it ‘ness you can get off the sales rollercoaster. If you adopt any of the above strategies my prediction is you will flatten the peaks and valleys, make more money, and have a great time doing so. Have fun!
Customer Relationship Management for Sales Part 2: Microsoft Dynamics CRM
Microsoft has their own Customer Relationship Management tool – Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Starting at $60 per month with a 30-day free trial, Dynamics CRM is a helpful tool for sales teams.
The strongest selling feature for Dynamics is the integration with other Microsoft products. This is great if you use Office 365 with Outlook and SharePoint, etc. If this is the case then Dynamics can work well for managing your sales process from start to finish.
A handy feature is the Outlook integration. It has the ability to track emails, appointments, tasks and contacts. For legacy Outlook users this keeps things familiar and makes life very easy. I also like the ability to take notes with OneNote during a call and have that saved with the contact’s record.
Mobile capabilities are impressive with the right tablets and phones. It’s great for outside sales reps on the go. Team collaboration with the integrated Microsoft products is also helpful for closing more deals.
For managers Power BI is a tool that has informative, interactive dashboards with customizable reports. It’s easy to use and an excellent tool for Sales Managers to monitor results and provide feedback to reps.
Unfortunately, Dynamics CRM can be complicated to learn and clunky. My personal experience in learning to use it was somewhat painful. It was one of those “once you know how to use it, it is quite easy” experiences. In short, I did not find the software to be intuitive. This can definitely be a roadblock to adoption by your sales team.
The product has a significant customization capability, but that can get costly to set up. One of my high tech clients took it upon themselves to do their own customizations. Even they found it challenging to make them, so beware. If you do decide to purchase Dynamics CRM, make sure that you hire assistance for the setup and customization.
Overall, if you like Microsoft products and currently use them, this may be a good tool for you. However, setup time and cost, plus the time involved to get a sales team up to speed are factors that must be considered before making a buying decision.
Rating: 3 / 5
Customer Relationship Management Options for Sales Part 1: Salesforce
For salespeople and managers, tracking sales efforts is vital to success. At its most basic, using CRM allows you to track sales activities and corresponding results. Used effectively, using CRM will allow you to refine and optimize your sales and revenue generation processes towards reaching your sales goals on a reliable and predictable basis.
Over the course of the next few months I’m going to review several CRM options. Hopefully this will be helpful in pointing you in the right direction toward choosing the one that is the best fit for you and your team.
Let’s start with Salesforce.com, one of the most widely used and recognized sales tracking tools.
Salesforce starts at $25 per month with a 30-day free trial. The fees vary based on number of users etc., so get clear on that so you can derive your costs.
The dashboard allows users to see an overview of their day at a glance, including their tasks and calendar. There are a variety of reports available which reps and managers can run to see their sales opportunities, new business won, and existing accounts. I find the dashboard to be quite readily customizable. You don’t need any technical knowledge to do so, just some patience with clicking on drop downs.
It is easy to add new leads, and track tasks and activities connected to them. Because it can integrate with Outlook, all correspondence can be attached to that record for easy reference and increased productivity.
Excel tracking can be eliminated by using the opportunity forecasting tool. Reps can identify where to focus their sales efforts based on what is in their sales pipeline.
Collaborating with other reps can be done through the Salesforce Chatter tool, which works far better than email.
Managers are able to readily analyze sales activities and results across the business and eliminate the need to track down individual reps for information. They can also easily communicate where sales are now and where they are trending.
The bottom line… Salesforce is a robust CRM tool that will do just about anything you ask it. It has numerous bolt-on options to increase functionality and just about every sales automation app out there will interface with it. The only downside I’ve experienced is that to make it really hum you’ll need a third party integrator to ensure all of the bolt-ons you want are connected properly so they function as desired.
Rating: 4.5 / 5
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Podcast interview with the Consulting Success®July 9, 2021 - 7:17 pmI recently had an interview on the Consulting Success® Podcast where I talked about the roadmap to mastery in consulting. To listen and read the full interview click HERE
A bit about Rob
Based in Vancouver British Columbia Rob Malec has been helping his clients increase the revenue their companies generate while operating more effectively as an organization since 2001.