Newsletter # 17 - The Power Of Changing Time

My supervisor keeps telling me to “think about the big picture” when I am creating Salesforce reports and dashboards. Can you give any advice? W.

I would be happy to help W.

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Let’s start small. (VASTLY SIMPLIFIED. Ask me if you want more detail.)

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For those that do not use Salesforce, an “Opportunity” in Salesforce is how you record a potential for a sale in the CRM system.

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The difference between a “Lead” and an “Opportunity” is that an Opportunity is a qualified Lead – something that you have checked out and found to be achievable.

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A “Lead” could be as simple as “I saw a person named ‘John Doe’ in the grocery store and he would like a salesperson to call and answer his questions.” – Not necessarily going to result in a sale.

Let’s say you created a report looking back at the Leads and Opportunities from the last quarter of the calendar year. This is valuable information in and of itself, and allows a RETROSPECTIVE view of how you arrived where you are.

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But, without more information you are ONLY looking backwards.

If you want to look forwards, you have to change the scope of Time you are looking at.

How do we already have this experience and/or knowledge?

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You’re young, it’s your first love, and they broke your heart.

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Nothing will ever be the same again.

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At least that is what it looks like from that tiny slice of time you are looking at. But what if you look at a bigger chunk of Time?

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The average age of a healthy adult is approx. 70+ years for ‘natural death’ on this Earth no matter where you live.

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If we assume that you WILL have joy, happiness, and sadness throughout the rest of your life, then you will have missed over 3/4s of the “good” events of your life should you ONLY consider that early heartbreak.

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By opening up our scope of Time and considering more of it, we are able to draw different conclusions.

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….

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Let’s consider a different scenario that many of us have had the displeasure to experience.

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Many of us have had scammers call our phones. It may be for ‘extended car warranties, something for your home, or fraudulent ‘collection’ activities.

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In most scammers decision-making, they look at their Success Rate vs. Risk:

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- If we call 10,000 people in a month with our scam, and

- They average a 1% Success Rate, where people they call give over Data or Money to the scammers

- If they are in a country that does not extradite criminals to the area they are targeting, there is very low risk if they take precautions

- So why NOT continue to do this???

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But if they looked at the longer-term implications of their actions, they might have realized that THEIR ACTIONS would have the consequence of TEACHING most people NOT TO ANSWER THEIR PHONE when it rings, unless they know the number calling.

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Almost everyone I have been in the presence of during the last three years I have seen ignore most phone calls on their phone.

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Short-Term Thinking: “We are going to make money”

Long-Term Thinking: “We are going to hamper our efforts by these actions. We should have a plan for the next step.”

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….

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This can also be seen in the manner in which most companies are treating both employees and consumers right now.

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Ghosting, fake job postings, mass layoffs as the first cost cutting step making those remaining ‘doing more with less’, un-paid interview work, bait-and-switch remote work advertising, discrimination and illegal acts in an effort to minimize COSTS and maximize Profit, while at the same time providing worse or intentionally hampering ‘customer service’, making lesser quality but higher profit margin products, shortcuts in service and work quality in an effort to again, maximize profit.

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ALL OF IT is short-term thinking.

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But if you study ANY of the businesses that have been in existence for the last 1,000 years, you see that they have LONG-term thinking built into their DNA.

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- Provide a product or service that will always be in demand.

- If times change, shift with them, in alignment with how we have always acted.

- Always treat your employees well, so they will authentically treat your customers well.

- Always realize you are ONLY in business because of your customers.

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Apple has approx. 57% of all of it’s stock held by institutional investors, not individuals. Approximately 5,074 institutions of which hold over 9 billion shares of stock.

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Versus the amount of customers which have purchased JUST the iPhone 15 models in 2023, which according to some estimates is around 69 million.

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Short-term thinking focuses on the investors, all 5,000+ of them. Because they may buy your stock.

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Long-term thinking focuses on the customers. All 69 million+ of them. Because they have proven they will buy your new product if it meets their wants and needs.

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Which one do you think has more potential life-time income ability for Apple?

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Wouldn’t you want to focus on THAT group?

How can I apply this knowledge?

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So now, back to your Salesforce reports.

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1) A Report/Dashboard should be clear about it’s purpose.

?????? a) Is this report ONLY to provide context for what HAS happened, and allow us to replicate the good results and avoid the bad ones in the future?

?????? b) Or is it intended to give actionable intelligence for future planning and actions? Knowing this will allow you to select the proper framing in Time.

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2) A Report/Dashboard should have value that can be used to:

????? a) Understand your current situation

????? b) Understand WHY customers made the choices they did – either for or against your solutions

????? c) Provide some illumination for the path forward

????? d) Be relevant to each person that looks at it, WITHOUT ANY EXTRA WORK ON THEIR PART!!! If they have to ‘work the data’ to get something out of it, the report/dashboard should be fixed.?

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3) In a perfect world, and this will require refinement, a Report/Dashboard should be able to accurately predict certain things, IF you pull in enough ‘other’ data. This depends on your particular circumstances.

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For instance, in the past reports and dashboards I created in the maritime industry included the almost universally mandated checking and certifications of ships at around every five years.

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Since we KNEW when this re-inspection time would be occurring (barring any mishaps, crashes, or other ‘issues’,) we also knew when they would have time for longer retrofits and upgrades. So these become qualified leads that were automatically identified and automatically assigned to the proper sales person/team to follow up and try to convert to actual sales.

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This allowed us to proactively generate quotes and documentation to sway the key decision makers prior to when they reached out to us. This made us more PROactive, and allowed us to anticipate future concerns of the customer.

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Big-Picture thinking I have found to mostly consist of different scopes of Time being considered.

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- “We have to lay off this many people right now.”

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????? a) Because we need to cut costs and survive this global pandemic? – Then should we have been working differently to not have to shift now? (Short-term)

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????? b) Because we are trying to position ourselves to be acquired in 12 months. So, we HAVE to take actions now to make ourselves look more attractive and profitable to increase the sales price. (12 month, longer-term)

Ultimately, following this three point guideline should help you do more with your Reports/Dashboards:

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1) A Report/Dashboard should be clear about it’s purpose.

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2) A Report/Dashboard should have value that can be used to:

????? a) Understand your current situation

????? b) Understand WHY customers made the choices they did – either for or against your solutions

????? c) Provide some illumination for the path forward

????? d) Be relevant to each person that looks at it, WITHOUT ANY EXTRA WORK ON THEIR PART!!! If they have to ‘work the data’ to get something out of it, the report/dashboard should be fixed.

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3) A Report/Dashboard should be able to accurately predict certain things in the future, IF trends continue.

At the end of the day, at least think about this:

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If your report is read by 20 employees on the regular and requires them to spend more than 3 minutes “massaging the data” and getting it to where THEY can use it, your report is costing the company ~ one hour of labor. Any more than 3 minutes per user and the Report/Dashboard should be re-done to avoid waste.

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I hope this helped W.

Don’t forget to submit any of your questions to me if you want an answer.

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Stay Safe, and Stay Sane.