Sean McCoy shares an article on the importance of maintaining a measured approach to promoting new customer growth.  Sales commissions and incentives are a major part of the sales culture in many industries, and insurance agencies are no different. Agencies are considering what’s best for the policyholder when they offer a variety of plans from a variety of carriers. But this consideration on the policyholder experience is often neutralized by the incentive structures that carriers and the agency itself are…

Sean McCoy shares a post that takes a look ahead at the value of 3D printing homes.  For a technology to disrupt an industry, it must be technologically feasible and commercially viable. The 3D printing of homes has satisfied the first condition, and entrepreneurs are working to satisfy the second. Every construction company should ask itself: what will the world of 3D-printing homes look like, and what is my role in it? The first step is to understand where 3D…

Sean McCoy shares the second post in a series on how to incentivize teamwork.  Our second article in a series about incentives. Incentives are powerful levers for business leaders to change behavior. Sadly, incentives are often under-utilized and mis-used tools. Everyone pays lip service to teamwork. And with good reason, because these days, most activities, including selling, are more and more a team sport. Executives are right to ask their teams for team selling, but how many executives employ the…

Sean McCoy shares an older but always relevant post on why marketing departments need to align marketing spend with direction.  The CFO says to the CMO, “Let’s boost marketing spend by 1% this month. Where should we spend it?” The ability to answer that question is true north for Marketing departments in B2C industries. With big data and analytics radically reshaping the marketing function, CMOs now have the power to answer the CFO’s question almost instantly down to the specific…

  In today’s accelerated pace of business, there are benefits to going slow on strategy execution. In this post, Sean McCoy explains why. Leaders of all types of organizations – businesses, non-profits, government departments – often want their organizations to move faster. Once leaders develop clear vision and strategy, they want the organization to move as fast as possible in executing the strategy. We have worked with numerous organizations across various industries on their “speed of execution”, and some patterns…

  Sean McCoy shares a concise post from his company blog that identifies six levers to influence behavior. Our third article in a series about incentives. Incentives are powerful levers for business leaders to change behavior. Sadly, incentives are often under-utilized and mis-used tools. Employee behaviors are a crucial element to every aspect of a business. In some regards, the only way to implement a CEO’s strategy is to change behaviors. If behaviors are not changing, plans are not being…

  Sean McCoy identifies key steps a business may take to alter the operation model and improve  productivity. We are in the initial stages of a productivity mega-trend. Forced by wage growth and enabled by technology, leading companies are already redesigning their operating models to make their people more productive. The forces creating the productivity mega-trend Wages are rising and look set to continue rising. Labor’s share of GDP is at a 90-year low, and we are seeing a reversion…

  Sean McCoy shares an article that explains why most post-merger integrations fail. Most mergers and acquisitions fail to achieve their intended synergies and deal rationale, because most post-merger integrations (PMIs) fail. Most post-merger integrations fail because they did not beat The 4 Clocks. There are 4 clocks counting down in PMI, a clock each of the four major stakeholders in a PMI: employees, vendors, owners, and customers. The clocks also largely parallel areas of synergies. The name of the…

  Sean McCoy shares a blog post from his company website that presents a case for and against spending resources on ‘innovation’.  Innovation is hard. Most companies do not do it well. Long is the list of established market leaders that were The Disruptee instead of The Disrupter. But firms are not to blame. Most innovations fail period, regardless of who is doing the innovation. Innovation is a high-failure sport. Nevertheless, conventional wisdom holds that large businesses should be more…

  This article on Sean McCoy’s company blog explains why long-term forces and trends are forcing many heavy industries to reshape value chains, change economics, and disrupt business models. Digital technologies are making it possible for firms to expand their offering and meet new customer needs and serve new customers. For a manufacturer or heavy industrial company, this means companies that were not your competitor yesterday are your competitor today and tomorrow. The executives at GM and Ford lose many…

  Sean McCoy idenfities three common denominators behind unsuccessful commercialization efforts. After your Go-to-Market (GtM) strategy is designed and the planning is complete, it is time to move into execution. Implementation is when a strategy finally impacts the bottom line, which is why it is so vital to get the implementation right. Because Go-to-Market strategies are among the more transformational and comprehensive changes at a company, their execution is more complex, nuanced, and impactful, further increasing the stakes in implementation….