FSMM – TSP’s Four Pillars of sustainable Sales Performance

FSMM was born in 2002, a year after the release of A Beautiful Mind, the wonderful film starring Russel Crowe as John Nash. Nash was a brilliant mathematician who sadly developed schizophrenia whilst studying at Princeton University.

It was whilst watching the film that the idea of SFMM was seeded. In the film there is a line where Russel Crowe says ‘everything in life has a mathematical formula. Everything’.

So I decided to look up famous mathematical formulas. For fun!

E=MC2 is obviously the most famous one. Energy = the mass times the speed of light squared. Einstein’s theory of relativity. There were others. Interesting but not exactly my idea of fun I quickly discovered. So I forgot all about it.

Or, at least, I thought I did.

Around that time, I had just taken on a leadership role of a sales division for a large company with many direct and indirect sales reporting lines. As I seem too often have found in my career, I joined at the point where the team had lost its way and was way behind its numbers. Time to get the cape on and put my pants on the outside again! Nothing new really. Done it many times before.

But this one proved a real challenge. The reasons for the decline were many; from people to culture to customer to proposition to competitors to, you name it. The rot had well and truly set in.

A few weeks after concluding my investigations into why things had gone off track I was armed with bundles of notes and lots of reasons why it was broken. Lots. A proper challenge. I wanted (needed) to find a way to simplify all the things I'd learned and ‘bracket’ them into common areas in order to explain my findings and, first step, create clarity out of the confusion.

And then, if I could, use that same bracketing format to set out the way forward.

If only there was a simple formula!! After all, everything in life has a formula apparently.

FSMM was born. I used it then and I have used it ever since. I have literally used it in dozens, scores of situations to recover, balance, clarify, simplify, investigate and challenge. I’ve used it to plan and present complex ideas or direction into a comprehensible format; to coach and train individuals and teams, and to explain thought processes and capture strategic themes into deliverable plans.

FSMM - it doesn’t need to be complicated

I have worked with many templates and formats over the years in my career. Some are brilliant, some are complicated, and some are both. It bothered me that whilst it may be fine for me and my peers to be exposed to complicated templates and processes, why does it have to be the same for everyone else. It shouldn’t have to be this way. I pretty much push everything through the FSMM process to sense-chheck it first.

FSMM stands for Focus, Structure, Motivation and Management. In its simplest form it provides the pillars that I have discovered are often fractured or eroded when performance is not as it should be.

Here's an overview:

Focus - the goals and objectives

Structure – the structure of the team responsible for delivering the goals and objectives. The structure of the customer/market profile (where will the desired results come from?), the way individuals manage their time and focus to deliver on the objectives. How do you structure your day/week/month, priorities, primary and secondary goals and so on.

Motivation - the reasons why people will be motivated and inspired to deliver – let’s call it ‘greed’ for ease; and the consequences of failure to deliver - let’s call that ‘fear’. And the methods used to create an appropriate environment for both.

Management – the management/leadership, processes, culture, metrics, reports, systems, communication, inter-departmental relationships, tools and other support from across the business

Alignment

Using this format, I will always discover at least one area that is completely absent or neglected or completely out of sync with the rest. Always. I will often discover several areas that are unclear or not as well understood as they really should be. Never have I not.

But most of all, even if these are in place, I will find a lack of what I call ‘alignment’ across all four. By that I mean they do not complement one another and ‘fit’ together.

A typical example would be the alignment between the goals and objectives (Focus) and the structure of the teams charged with delivering them. Quite often there is not the required level of resource or time needed in the current team. When faced with an inability to expand the resource (cost, time etc) you have to ask yourself if the goals and objectives are realistic. If not, are they important? If they are important (they normally are) what can you / do you need to change with your current set-up to align with the goals and objectives? What is the risk? Is the reward worth the risk? And so on.

Alignment between the Focus and Structure is where I will normally start. It doesn’t matter which one you start with as they have to knit together to work.

Moving on to motivation this is where you address both rewards and consequences of failure (at an individual and team level). I have often, too many times, worked on situations where unrealistic goals and objectives (targets) mean any incentive plan is not worth the paper it is written on, especially a threshold-based plan.

The same applies for team-based incentives. From ‘star pupil’ badges to Danish pastries to trips away, it doesn’t matter how glamorous – or otherwise - the incentive is, if it’s not achievable and in line with the goals and objectives it becomes a demotivating reminder.

Consequences of failure are the less palatable part of motivation. But ‘fear’ (sorry to use such an extreme word) is and can be a motivator. Ultimately fear is dismissal. But there are scales and rungs before you reach that part of the ladder. Peer success is often a great driver for some; wanting to be the best of the bunch. That sales leaderboard that X is not top of. Not getting a mention in the sales meeting. Seeing others be asked to be part of a project and not you. There are many ways to achieve motivation that could be a feature.

So alignment of any incentive plan to the Focus and Structure - individual or team – is a logical next step for me.

By now, you will start to see alignment between your goals and objectives (Focus); the way your team is set-up (Structure) and the way they are rewarded (Motivation). The final simplified part of alignment using FSMM is Management. This can often be the most complex part but alignment of the ‘management’ part should not be ignored.

When I start a sales performance improvement programme using FSMM I will put anything to do with process or procedure or systems or tools or regular meetings, communication, reports, KPIs, etc into ‘management’: The stuff that you have to have or have to do. I will then apply a simple ‘stop, start, continue’ process to all of them, with the focus being the goals and objectives we have set. i.e. do these things we have to do complement and align with the goals and objectives. You will be amazed how many habits have become just that: habits! Stop them if they don’t align. Keep the ones that do align. Create new ones that will align and complement all the above.

Starting with FSMM

As someone who is usually engaged to help support a sales performance issue or initiative, I have used FSMM many times in many situations, for individuals, teams or a wider business requirement. As a framework it simplifies challenges, clears away the noise and provides a clear template for others to understand and buy in to.

If you want to try FSMM you don’t need me or anyone from TSP to do it, you can do it yourself. Grab a flip chart or a whiteboard and start. Put all the things that you or your team are saying is preventing progress into the four categories (Management will be full up!) and just test whether they look ‘aligned’ or not.

I bet they won’t!

You may find some things sit in two categories. That’s fine. Sales meetings for example; are they a motivating factor (they should be) or a management process. I’d say both.

And if they are aligned and things are going swimmingly right now, what about what’s next? How do you move your team or business forward from here? What’s the next step in your evolution? What plans can you start to work on? Is there a template or format you can use that helps you clarify your next steps and recognise (or prevent) the growing pains that come with it?

FSMM works for that too - set new goals and objectives (Focus) and then line up the other three!

Gary Naphtali has enjoyed a 30-year career in sales and sales leadership roles and led businesses and teams from start-up to mutli-channel organisaitons. Gary has advised businesses and organisations at a regional, national and international level, and coached, mentored and trained individuals - from trainee to board level - in more than a 100 businesses.