Top Ten Truisms of Business

Over the last 20 years, I've had the opportunity to work with some of the best...and worst companies in the world. One of the things that I have found most interesting is that certain themes seem to be consistent regardless of the company, industry or geography.

The TOP 10 Truisms

1. Corporate Culture - is a direct reflection the CEO. He or she sets the tone that everyone else emulates.
2. Trust - is the difference between a dysfuncational and a high performance team. If you can not trust the people you work with and/or who work for you, you can not perform at the highest level.
3. 80/20 Rule - the Pareto Principal always, ALWAYS applies, whether it is revenue, profit, sales, etc. The question is, as an organization how much time, effort and resources are being dedicated to the top 20% of customers?
4. No New Customers - if you are an established company that has been in business for 10 years or more you can achieve your revenue and profit objectives solely based on doing a better job of capturing the opportunity in existing accounts (see the 80/20 rule).
5. 10-15% of Revenues- if you are in a mature marketplace and you have to use marketing to acquire new customers, sell new products, etc. know that it will not product more than 10-15% of your total revenues. The other 85-90% will come from the sales channels.
6. The Rule of 70% - given the speed of today's market, competitors, and customers, getting a product and/or marketing campaign/program 70% complete and out the door is good "enough." Let customers/prospects complete the rest of the 30% for you. Less internal debate and more customer feedback makes for successful programs and products.
7. NEW does not mean BETTER - everyone loves something new but it is the last thing that any company should focus on. Building/ selling/thinking NEW takes too long, cost too much and will have the lowest ROI. Focus first on getting more out of existing...and then invest in new (see 80/20 rule..again).
8. The Elephant in the Room syndrome - there are big problems impacting performance in every organization that everyone knows about but no one talks about or attempts to fix. They will treat the symptoms but not the core problem...call it career preservation.
9. Risk Tolerance - fast growing and "best in class" companies have a culture of tolerating risk and/or failure. It is a HIGHLY valuable and a very real competitive advantage.
10. Performance Dashboards - we recently completed a research study with the CMO Council that surveyed over 400 CMO's in companies over $500 Million in revenue. 50% of the responders said that they have a Dashboard and 38% said that they were working on one. Here's the truth...they don't have a dashboard; they have an excel based "Report Card" of what they did, where they spent marketing dollars and what they got in return (hopefully). The reality is that a real Dashboard has real time information and can allow you to forecast at least 30 days forward. If you are part of the 38% who is actively working on building one, figure out how to move the needle on the dial before you expose your performance to the rest of the organization. Don't show everyone in the organization your "numbers" until you know how to move them in the right direction.