Sometimes a Cliché Is Just a Cliché

But Sometimes It Leads to a Better Way of Thinking About Business Consultants

Clichés are a bane of clear business thinking, once the pillars of effective business consultancy. In a pile of more apt, more original and more memorable ways of making a point, they’re the ones on top (or maybe they’re the “low-hanging fruit”). Clichés are the reason that so many of us are “thinking outside the box,” presumably so we can then “push the envelope” and, “at the end of the day,” “take stock” of all the ways in which we’ve “maximized customer satisfaction” and “boosted the bottom line.”

Did any of that stick? Or did it all just float through your head, “in one ear and out the other,” leaving nothing behind but the “fresh scent of pine”? I’d like to urge all of us – I included – to “eighty-six” every cliché we stumble on, but then that’d be “throwing out the baby with the bathwater,” wouldn’t it?

Take the timeworn phrase “catalyst for change,” for example. Unlike boxes that must be thought outside of and envelopes that beg to be pushed, this cliché is a black box that hides a lot of deep meaning, particularly when it’s used to summarize what a business consultant does. You might – but probably shouldn’t – say it “hits the nail on the head.” So let’s open it up, get a good look at the “nuts and bolts,” and finally give this one a new name (which will eventually become a cliché, but until then, “we’re golden”).

The Chemistry of Business Change

So what is a “catalyst,” really? Let’s start with the classic definition from basic chemistry: A catalyst is a chemical substance that increases or decreases the rate of a chemical reaction without being consumed itself. A positive catalyst speeds up a reaction; its negative counterpart slows it down. Then there are promoters, substances that increase the activity of catalysts, and catalytic poisons to hamper the reaction even further. When we use a catalyst, we’re saying we’re not content to let Nature take her course. We don’t have time to let those uncatalyzed chemicals eventually create the compound we want. We’re taking matters into our own hands. We’re taking an active role in orchestrating our rate of change, saving ourselves time, frustration, and in many cases, money.

To my mind, all this could just as validly describe what a good business consultant does. Here’s my thinking, point by point:

Catalysts change the rate of reaction without being consumed. When businesses bring in the hired guns, they show they’re serious about change, serious enough to turn it over to an outsider whose sole mission is that change. Companies see positive results faster, without suffering the blowback that can result from purely internal efforts. A business consultant can be the bad cop to your good cop, holding staff accountable for timely results while insulating management at the same time.

Catalysts can be either positive or negative. Every organization suffers from at least one negative catalyst, whether it’s the economy, institutionalized morale problems, weaknesses in the sales process, or any of dozens of others. Often, the positive resources a business has at hand are only enough to bring the reaction back to normal levels. To move ahead, these businesses need to inject a positive outside catalyst into the mix. Once the reaction has stabilized at a higher rate, management -- which has received new catalytic tools and techniques as part of the process -- can sustain the reaction on its own.

A catalyst works faster in the presence of promoters (and slower when catalytic poisons are added to the mix). To achieve the quickest and most lasting results, consultants and management must act in tandem and present a unified front. In this sense, management functions as a promoter, supporting the efforts of the consultant without becoming so involved that it loses the good cop/bad cop insulation I mentioned earlier. Without this support, though, management can poison the process, increasing time to positive ROI or possibly sabotaging the consultant’s work altogether.

Catalysts save us time, frustration, and money. Nearly every organization is capable of significant positive change without outside intervention, if they devote the necessary manpower, patience, and fiscal resources. But even in the best of times, all three can be in short supply, especially considering that management might spend most of its resources simply putting out fires. By speeding the rate of reaction within an organization, a business consultant delivers a positive ROI sooner, which, of course, makes the ROI even greater. Consider an organization that’s underperforming by $200,000 per month, for example. Using strictly its own resources, a business might be able to rectify the situation and begin seeing a positive ROI in a year’s time. A business consultant, on the other hand, can often achieve the same results in one-third the time, meaning that the business gets an eight-month ROI head start, easily enough to defray the cost of consultancy and secure a lasting competitive advantage.

So a business consultant really is a catalyst for change, but again, that’s a cliché, one of those phrases that are so overused that it’s become near meaningless. In its place, I prefer company change conductor. Like a symphony conductor, the CCC directs the music of your organization, marshaling the collective talent of the orchestra and shaping the individual notes from all the players into a coherent, creative, and cooperative concert. And like all good conductors, the CCC takes a bow and leaves the stage at the end of the show, but not before turning the audience’s attention toward the musicians whose efforts made it all possible.

And that, as they say, is a “win-win situation.”

Bio: Danita Bye

Nationally recognized sales management and leadership expert Danita Bye has built her reputation on building and inspiring intentional, no excuse, high-performance sales teams that deliver bottom line results. With her unique Fortune-100 turned-entrepreneur perspective, Danita helps CEOs and company presidents take their national and international businesses to the next level. Her excuse-free approach to sales management, combined with her leadership acumen, enables sales staff and sales management to increase sales, boost profitability and create predictable revenue streams, all while reducing sales costs.

As a 10-year veteran of the Xerox Corporation, Danita consistently achieved award winning sales performance before leaving Xerox to become an equity partner and national sales manager for Minneapolis-based Micro-Tech Hearing Instruments, where she increased annual revenues from $300,000 to $10 million in just seven years. Danita has authored articles in Upsize Magazine, The Hearing Review, the Star Tribune, and Business Journal, where she was recently honored as one of the its Top 25 Women to Watch. Danita also featured as a guest on “The Ruthless Entrepreneur television show” which will begin airing on Oxygen Network in 2010. Her new book, Sales Management in the No Excuse Zone, is due for release in 2010.

Danita can be contacted at Danita@SalesGrowthSpecialists.com or 612-267-3320

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