How do your sales managers approach innovation and new ideas?

That's getting challenging :-)

Okay, let's first have a look on the terms innovation and improvement:
See also my response to that question: http://www.focus.com/questions/continuous-improvement-and-innovation-are-crit...

Innovation is revolutionary, improvement is evolutionary.
Innovation is challenging the current state, improvement is embracing the current state.
Innovation is implementing a new creative idea and bringing it to reality, improvement is focused on making existing products, services or processes better.
Innovation is creating something new, which leads to differentiation. Improvement is optimizing existing products and processes, helps to secure competitive advantages and helps to increase margins.

What does it mean for the sales managers? They are often focused on improvements along the current sales process, in order to shorten sales cycles, to increase volume, to increase win rates., etc.
Additionally, some of them are challenging the current state, e.g. the selling strategy, and try to work differently, maybe driven by the customer's desired outcome, not by their own product driven push campaigns. So, they try to establish new behaviors in their teams, new ways of working with the customers. Perhaps, another kind of contract will be the result, maybe an outcome based contract with shared risks, the vendor hasn't seen before. So, that's a business innovation.

We need both, improvements to permanently optimize our products, services and processes, and innovation to challenge the current state, to bring new creative ideas to the market, to create differentiation and to secure potential for future growth.

Great question Lauren. A couple of thoughts:

1. People are naturally resistant to change. The fear of failure, the philosophy of "if it isn't broken...." are all ipediments to change and innovation. Corporate cultures that don't reward risk taking, and innovation don't help.
2. In sales, I think we tend to make innovation too complicated. We tend to look for the "big idea." Those are tough to find, tough to implement, etc. Instead, I think we should be looking for hundreds of little ideas. Things that don't require corporate approval or years of study. But the little ideas that can be put in place very quickly at virtually no cost. Maybe it's taking a something one sales person is doing that is unique and getting others to do it. Maybe it's taking an idea you've seen another company do, trying it with your organization. Maybe it's talking to customers and approaching things differently. If you try lots of little ideas, some will work, some will fail, but collectively they start driving big results.
3. I don't think innovation is optional. The last three years have changes sales more than the 1000's of years that have preceded it. A lot of change is drivne by the customer. If managers aren't constantly innovating, and encouraging their people to innovate, they will quickly fall behind.

Thanks for the provocative question!

The "Innovation is challenging the current state, improvement is embracing the current state." is measureable.
This link gives a good overview and why its important.

http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/archive/ci/31/i11/html/11hipple_box3.ci.html

The difference between an 'Innovator' or 'Adaptor' Sales Manager can determine your Firm's Sales Performance and your success.

Great insights Tamara! You must feel strongly, posting it 4 times -- sorry couldn't resist ;-)

When you think about it, innovation is simply continuous improvement. Continuous improvement has to be a cornerstone to every business and functional strategy--regardless of how outstanding current performance is.

The one nit picky point is the major paing point being in sales. Even if sales the sales function is best in class--innovation is a must. Funny, these organizations never need to be reminded of this. It's those at the other end of the spectrum that resist it--at all levels.

Also, somewhat rethinking my original response, innovation is not just the responsibility of management, it's the responsibility of each person. We need to constantly be looking at what each of us do, improving how we each execute. Imagine the power of every sales person in the organization trying little ideas that cost nothing, and can be implemented almost overnight--then sharing those ideas with their peers (which makes an argument for strong knowledge management and sharing tools in the organization.)

I think we are in "violent" agreement Tamara;-) Clearly, both innovation and improvements are needed. I may have gotten a little off track thinking they were the same, I can buy the difference you outline, though the word "revolutionary" makes me shutter.

I think that's where we lose a potential opportunity for great change. What may be one organization's improvement may be an innovation to another. As an example, a number of years ago I ran an "innovation" session. It consisted of sales and marketing executives from two companies in dramatically different industries (the fashion and semiconductor industry). Each group was able to take ideas and practices that were common place in the other industry, but were novel and completely different in their own industry. The innovations weren't massive "shake the world" innovations, but very simple practices adapted in a new industry/setting that caused people to look at things differently.

I guess my big problem with discussions of innovation is when we talk about it we talk about Amazon, iPhone --though I have a slightly different view of the innovation in the iPhone, the Toyota production system.

To be successful in making innovation a habit, we have to talk about the smaller, simpler ideas. A practice a particular sales person has in improving the way an opportunity is qualified, a way to execute a sales call thar reduces calls/close by 50%, what ever.

We need to put innovation in the grasp of what each of us does every day, what sales people can do in looking at their own personal productivity, what managers can do in leading their teams.

I don't disagree with the importance of both innovation and continous improvement. I'd just like to see organizations creating dozens and hundreds of innovations and improvements--some successful, some misfires that we learn from. Innovation and improvement need to be a daily habit for all of us.

Does that make sense?

Tamara, that was an interesting article, but I think it was dead wrong. I think innovation and continuous improvement are very similar.

The author focuses on "The Big Idea." He can only cite a few examples--and in fact is incorrect in his analysis. For example, the Toyota Production System, was an outgrowth of their continous improvement programs. The TPS is not a single big idea, but a culture in which continuous improvement is a matter of habit. It provides the worker on the shop floor the power to improve the processes they are working on--to share that with everyone else. Collectively, these little improvements have a profound impact.

It's easy to look at history and repackage a systematic program of improvements and little innovations as the Big Idea. But if we are to focus innovation on The Big Idea, those are so rare that we are lost. The author can only cite a handful of Big Ideas (which he has actually not analyzed well) If that is what innovation is, then innovation is very rare.

I think it was great for you to point out the article. If you start thinking of both the examples cited by the author, and how they really happened, I think that we see innovation and improvement may be a difference in point of view (innovation in a laggard to catch up with a competitor is called improvement, where the same thing for a leader outdistancing their competition is called innovation. Or it may be semantic.

I think when read critically, the article actually builds an argument of constant improvement and small innovations.

Thanks so much for calling our attention to the article.