The Zero Cost Productivity Boost

There's quite the talk in Blighty about the infamous productivity puzzle. Acute as an imminent horror budget seems set to summon the suffocating spectre of socialism. Anti-aspiration, anti-growth, and naturally, anti-Sales.

The British 'puzzle', being that productivity is, at best, static. The government's own watchdog says it is falling, with further depths incoming. This matters. As I read broadsheet economics editor, David Smith, quip;

"Productivity is important for the public finances ... and also important for prosperity, for competitiveness and, to paraphrase a famous quote from Paul Krugman, the Nobel prizewinning economist, for just about everything."

Yes, I am a capitalist. Of all the ways of organising mankind for the common good, so far found to be the least bad, runs the gag.

Yet corollaries ring true. You cannot alone spend you way out of the mire. There is no 'magic money tree'. Get out the way of the growers. All rather Smithian, of Adam fame.

So how have I seen many a salesforce tackle their drive for growth? Overwhelmingly, they throw bodies at the problem. They recruit in the hope that more salespeople equals more sales. Revenue may well have grown. But profits, not so much. In fact, productivity can be seen to have dropped.

Results per person being if not appreciably less than before, then certainly less than planned for.

There's an emerging economist signal - and boy does their creed need a win these days - that when you have more administrators than doers, you're in big trouble.

One UK example concerns the size of the nation's armed forces. For the first time, outstripped by civil servants behind them back in the office. Pen pushers outnumbering soldiers. In defence clamouring apologists rail. For every bullet fired you need someone at base who does this, that and whatever. Trying to change the frame away from the obvious.

The difference between output quantity and quality barely gets a look in. The former being very much productivity. But the impact of the latter should not be ignored.

It can provide the platform to fuel productivity rises. And in Sales we have a classic such power.

Process.

What's the point of loading more into your effort if what you're doing now is not optimal? Who needs a swelling error rate?

Take care of your ideal deal winning system and the goals will accrue.

In our case, meaning the pattern of events that when in train virtually guarantee we prevail.