Len Tinkoff is the founder of Corporate Performance Partners Inc., a sales and marketing firm based in East Greenwich.
PBN: You say that much of the money companies spend on traditional strategy, marketing and sales efforts are a wash at best. What makes you say that?
TINKOFF: It’s not only me who says this. If you look at the research, after 25 years of business books, consulting and transformation initiatives like information technology, branding, outsourcing, the Web, and Process Reengineering, only “20 percent of top decision-makers believe they’ve been highly successful at driving profitable growth” (2007 IBM Global CEO Study, 750 of the world’s top CEOs); “fewer than 10 percent of public companies consistently outperform their peers” (Accenture’s High Performance Business Research); and “70 percent to 90 percent of organizations fail to successfully execute their strategies” (Balanced Scorecard Collaborative).
The reason for this is twofold. First, everybody’s copying what everybody else is thinking and doing. Companies find themselves trapped in an unending, high-cost race to competitive parity. Second – strategy, selling and marketing have never been more complex and costly … and, for most companies, less differentiating and sustainable.
Apple and FedEx, as well as TACO and Andera right here in Rhode Island, are exceptions to the norm, but most companies and employees star every day in a horror movie from which the existing rules permit no awakening.
PBN: You say the answer is something called the Revenue Engine Model. What is that?
TINKOFF: The Revenue Engine is an iterative business model that connects the best learnings of the past 25 years to new thinking and a go-to market structure needed to change the game and sustain growth. It really is an engine – one that spins faster and faster as learning converts to doing.
It all starts with the definition of what a firm’s strategic focus should be. “What’s your big idea? What high magnitude pain do you cure better than anyone else? Why does the kind of company you are make competitors irrelevant? What transformation do you make possible? With what results?” Only after these questions are answered are you qualified to build the other cylinders of the engine.
These involve new ways to create awareness and opportunities among those who should be your customers. New approaches and tools for selling and building relationships. Forward-looking metrics that show what’s likely to happen to you versus seeing what happened last month. It then touches on the infrastructural and cultural crankshaft on which the engine turns. Each time you take what you’ve learned by running the engine, you revisit strategic focus and get stronger. Fast-follower competitors can’t keep up. Your relationship with customers moves beyond an outmoded seller-buyer construct into something different.
It all comes down to the ability to answer four questions that define success or failure. The first is the single most important question in the world of business: “Why should I take the time to listen to you?” Next come: “Who says so; what’s your credibility? How do you do what you do?” And, lastly: “What’s in it for my company and for me personally?”
PBN: Can you give an example of how a company has successfully implemented this?
TINKOFF: A national association of 125 companies that build and furnish the interiors of businesses, hospitals, schools and more is featuring the success of one of its larger members in this month’s newsletter. To quote the co-owner of BKM Total Office of Texas: “At a time when the industry as a whole was going through one of its steepest and fastest downturns in a long while, 2009 was a record year for us and a lot of that is due to Len Tinkoff and the Revenue Engine.”
Their goal was to reinvent an already strong company and reintroduce it to the market in a new and different way. The process of building their Revenue Engine took about 60 days. It started with an on-site workshop in which they learned the Revenue Engine’s concepts and described their aspirations, strengths, and impediments. Then came lots of back-and-forth dialogue as we created their Revenue Engine and the process through which they’d bring it to market. Next came on-site sales and marketing training needed to sustain its never-ending go-to-market campaign.
The new business they’ve achieved has been in the multiple millions. The first big win occurred less than 30 days after launch. They’re united in a common cause with their clients. They’re accomplishing what Alan Kay, the originator of the Windows User Interface, prescribed: “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
PBN: So do you see this as something any company can use, or is it targeted at a certain size or type of firm?
TINKOFF: Companies from one person to a division of the BBC have used the model to great effect. IT, publishing supply chain, organizational consulting and Internet firms, ad agencies, industry associations and others employ it. Startups and mature companies, leaders and companies who want to lead use it.
PBN: Your company doesn’t have a Web site, which is pretty rare in this day and age. What is your thinking there?
TINKOFF: It is rare, but it’s right for me today. I don’t have my “own” Web site, and that’s exactly the point of The Revenue Engine Model and its attack on conventional thinking.
Let’s take a step back. Most Web sites start out with a major disconnect with the visitor. The message of all sellers is “We’re the best!” But, all buyers have been burned. They expect and get the usual big-promise headlines, irrelevant graphics, me-too ideas, commoditized solutions, cherry-picked testimonials, ancient news, arcane buzzwords, and invitations to yet another webinar. It’s no wonder people looking for help at today’s business speeds drive right by these highway billboards. Worse, competitors mime them so they can promise the same things.
For me, word of mouth, speaking, and articles generate awareness. Anyone who wants to know about me and the Revenue Engine can just Google us. They’ll go straight to the R.I. Economic Development Corporation’s Every Company Counts Web site where the only thing they’ll get from me is relevant content laid out in a purely educational and entertaining format. No hype. No outmoded sales training concepts. No recycled branding and marketing communications commandments.
There are bigger issues at play here. Things are getting worse in American business. The recession has made the need to cure our weaknesses more urgent, yet “80 percent of CEOs believe their ability to manage change has fallen by 300 percent since 2006,” according to an IBM Global CEO Survey from two years ago. The problems that the Revenue Engine Model addresses need to be solved if we’re going to restore the jobs we’ve lost and reenergize the competitiveness of our state and country in a new, knowledge-centric world. •
