Winners Dream: A Journey from Corner Store to Corner Office by Bill McDermott (Book Summary)

The following is summary of the highly inspiring book Winner’s Dream by Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP. I’ve stripped out his actual story, arguably the best part, to distill his wisdom; hence, I encourage you to buy and read the book.

 

Professionalism

• The secret to success is not all that complicated: ”You’ve got to want it more. “
• I developed a bias for truth, especially news no one wanted to hear, because the more I knew, the more quickly I could find a solution instead of dwelling on a problem.
• Work is sometimes doing what we do not want to do
• Professional work habits alone wouldn’t get people promoted, but a lack of professionalism wouldn’t get people anywhere
• My mother would tell me that as long as I could put my name and photo next to my actions if they appeared on the front page of the New York Times, I shouldn’t hesitate to go for what I wanted
• I wasn’t smarter than any of them, and my tactics weren’t complicated. I just hustled. For me, hustling began with a will to win backed by a strong work ethic and integrity. Although I hustled, I wasn’t a hustler.
• My dream was not about being rich, but about high achievement. It was about significance.
• No one would ever care about my career as much as I did. Careers had to be nurtured and protected, and that was how I would go after my dreams. As long as I acted with integrity — I wouldn’t badmouth or offend others — I felt comfortable, and unapologetic, being my bold self.
• There [are] three things that we, as Americans, can choose to do with our lives: we can be better, we can be bored, or we can be broke.
• Winning was not about a specific end but about how an end was met, moment after moment. Winning was the process, not the destination. A journey of striving to be better — to be kinder, more compassionate, hungrier, humbler, more audacious, more inspiring, more rigorous
• Despite my mounting interest in working for SAP, I do not steamroll into the interview hyped to sell myself. I want to listen to what [SAP Chairman] Hasso has to say about his company and the position.
• Make the news, don’t report it.
• If you’re busy, know what you’re getting done.
• Excuses never built a single stair step to success.
• I recognized that [successful people] shared a respect for the fundamentals of play, each practicing behaviors that were the foundation for their recurring successes.
• There’s no replacement for human interaction.
• “You must be proud of whatever organization you choose to work for,” I offer, “then pour yourself into it completely, and do not let anyone else but you shape your future. “

 

Leadership

• None of us is as talented as all of us
• Effective leaders, I was realizing, didn’t spend their time supervising highfliers but rather investing time with people who asked for and required support.
• I will tolerate the skeptics, but not the cynics. Being a cynic took no courage, and cynics certainly weren’t dreamers. Worse, they were toxic, diluting the optimism that made people believe they could make the impossible possible.
• [Roy Haythorn, VP & GM of Xerox’s eastern region was] relentlessly upbeat
• I would try to lead with the kindness, optimism, teamwork, and discipline that winning demanded.
• I would make the work personal by asking everyone to write down his or her own aspirations. “What do you want to achieve this year? In this lifetime?” Whatever their desires — to buy a new car or make a down payment on a house — I needed to know what mattered to them, and so did their coworkers.
• [We have to] go for the gold. Who leaps out of bed to win the silver? Audacious goals motivate me, but they also get other people’s attention.
• The people in our district did not fear change. What they feared was what most people feared, which was change without well – defined expectations, change without a plan, and change without a goal. Ambiguous change, that’s what turned people off.
• People get most inspired not by money but by purpose.
• [Leverage] the power of pageantry to inspire people. A nod of ceremonial splendor instead of a second-rate affair showed respect for all invited, and that respect was reciprocated. More than spectacle, the three – day event would also give people the tools to perform. Two full days would be packed with education, training, and certification courses, so people would know what they needed to do once they returned to their offices. Plus, they would be held accountable for what they learned. Then, on Sunday, we’d cap the event with an awards ceremony honoring our top performers. Giving our people a voice was imperative. The kickoff was not about me or other leaders doing all the talking. We wanted people in the trenches to be heard and to hear one another. The message had not been diluted. People knew what to do, and why.
• Rick [Thompan] came to the CEO role [at Xerox after years of success at IBM] with bold plans, but his execution, I believed, faltered because he did not embed his own brand of passion into the organization before he acted.
• With almost every interaction, I encouraged people to share their opinions about what SAP needed to do better. But I also asked what they would do about the problems if they were me.
• When someone came up with a good idea, and people around the table sat back in their chairs debating if it could be done, I leaned forward and asked when it could get done.
• The most powerful thing a leader can do is change minds. To begin to do this today, my tone must be positive yet as serious as the situation.
• I also held people accountable for the ultimate outcome, as well as their behaviors. It was my spirit to want everybody to perform, but it was my responsibility to ensure there were no chronic underperformers.
• Neither of us [SAP co-CEOs] was the type to hole up in a corner office, playing office. We preferred to be out among our people and our customers.
• If leaders do not themselves believe in their potential to succeed, how could anyone else?
• As co-CEOs, we vowed to show each other respect in all of our interactions, even when the other was out of earshot.
• [SAP Chairman Hasso’s interaction style is] sincere, curious, passionate.
• A leader’s role, however, is not just to dream but to architect dreams into reality.
• Many of my work habits had not changed much over the years. I was as hungry and as hardworking as ever. I still stressed the importance of selling value versus products, I still liked to be in the field, and I monitored SAP’s sales pipelines daily.
• Victories should be celebrated
• “People don’t quit companies, they quit managers.”
• My “abundance mentality,” which was the notion that every individual at a table has something meaningful to contribute.
• Leadership, I also had come to believe, was not about providing all the answers but about looking for and presenting the next questions

 

Strategy

• If my interests were aligned with [my customers’] desires, we’d both win. Once I knew my customers, what they wanted, and what I was good at, I focused on it relentlessly. The customer and the customer alone determines whether or not each of us has a job.
• Mimicking the competition was a losing strategy.
• I never stopped looking around corners for what was next.
• Simple language expressing a big idea could communicate a vision while elevating the mundane to something special
• Simplicity [of strategy] was sophistication in disguise. Simplicity prioritized. Simplified ideas invited everyone in and freed people to see the world from a sharper but shared lens.
• [Ensure] buy-in [to strategy] at every level. If a vision is not supported by the workforce, even the most brilliant ideas risk being nothing more than lightbulbs in a basket.
• More than inspiration, they need action bolstered by conviction.
• A leader’s job is to provide air cover for the troops, and the first form of air cover is a bulletproof strategy.
• A good strategy had to be easy to understand. It must (1) be true to an organization’s core strength (2) cover which markets our organization entered (3) identify our target customers (4) articulate what our customers want
• We were taking calculated risks — acquiring companies we trusted. We did not acquire companies for their revenue or for their profits but for their DNA, because it either matched or needed to replace ours. “What we try to do is buy ’crown jewel assets’ that have attributes that either in their own right or in combination with SAP allow us to lead in a category.”
• [Leverage] the power of ecosystems to grow a business.
• Design thinking’s approach [dictates] that creators of any product, technological or otherwise, answer yes to three sets of questions to determine if an idea was worth pursuing: Is the idea desirable? Do people want it? Is it feasible? Could it be built to work? Is the idea viable as a business? Will people pay for it?
• Cultures eat strategies for breakfast
• No single tactic or area of the company could be credited with transforming SAP. Sales and development were fueling each other
• We repackaged some of our standard software into specific, simplified solutions that were easier to sell and easier to deploy and faster to return value

 

Sales (individual contributor)

• The faster we chase leads the better chance we can close a deal
• I would walk into an office and try to figure out people’s moods, their needs, their desires. The intent in sales was making sure I found out what their desires were and making the connection between that and what I had to offer, fast.
• From day one, I knew that sales was about people, not just products.
• The best [salespeople] genuinely wanted to help other people find solutions to problems.
• I was surprised by how much time other salespeople spent in the office, at their desks in the bullpen, instead of on the streets.
• I was willing to talk to anyone and aimed for as high up in the company as I could get
• After every sales call, I followed up within twenty – four hours. After a meeting, I immediately wrote a letter to people thanking them for their time and summarizing what we’d discussed and agreed to do next.
• One thing I learned was that for all the different selling styles, it was self – confidence [esp. to ask for the order] that distinguished high performers from those who barely met their quotas.
• We also rehearse how to talk about competitors. “Don’t try to hide their advantages,” I say. “State them up front, get them out of the way, and then move on to our strengths.”
• Transparency builds trust.
• “Find the decision maker and shake his hand, but be the last one to let go.”
• Feel – Felt – Found is my own twist on Xerox’s S.P.I.N. technique. “I know how you feel, others have felt the same way, and they have found
• I told my salespeople that their job was to look at Xerox’s entire portfolio of products for ideas that could help the customer perform better and offer solutions beyond what the customer originally thought she needed.
• The Great Document Hunt [, a Xerox approach to focusing on solutions & value] began with a rep asking a customer, or a prospect, a question: “Which of your company’s documents most control your success?
• At any given moment, each sales professional has to have three times his quarterly revenue goal in his pipeline.
• “I believe that sales professionals that undersell their products are only underselling themselves. I think this is lazy. People discount when they can’t tell a potential customer the specific business benefits of the product.”
• Our new challenge is to give our customers what they want. What they want is not to buy more software but to make more money. More than ever, companies wanted a concrete business case to justify every purchase, and they wanted to see quick returns.

 

Sales Leadership

• Five days a week, I am in the field. At least once a month, I travel with each rep for a day. “Don’t schedule the no – brainer accounts,” I insist. “Schedule the ones you can’t get done.” After joining reps on a call, I begin my debrief by praising at least three things they did extremely well. Then I pick one thing — not five, just one — that can be improved.
• Every morning, I bring the team together and state our goals and our plan for that week or for that day.
• Every day, we will measure individual as well as team performance. My reps will make more calls than the company requires [per day]. My people will also knock on more doors and send more letters.
• Each week, I will evaluate everyone’s forecasts and his or her pipeline to validate if the marketing representative and the team is on track.
• I will have monthly planning reviews with each sales rep on my team at the beginning of each month; each salesperson sits down with me, and together we revise his ( or her ) revenue and unit sales goals based on what he has, or has not, achieved. We also agree on how he will work his territory — Which companies will he target? Which aren’t worth it?
• [At the beginning of each quarter,] every rep had to get in front of his manager and pitch his own plan to achieve his individual goals. I called these sessions “pit stops.”
• I will hold people accountable for results, and if they don’t deliver, I will write a letter of concern, issuing a formal warning, in case we have to walk someone out the door.
• “These are the plays you will run. So incorporate your style, use your skills, but don’t rewrite the plays.“
• I divide my sales force into four mini-teams led by our most talented reps. But neither the mini-team leaders nor I are held up as stars. Everyone is asked to showcase his or her favorite techniques.
• Whenever people hit or exceed their sales goals, they must spend 10 percent of their time assisting teammates who are missing their targets.
• I put my twist on the blitz. On a designated day, I pick my team member whose sales need the biggest boost, and we all pounce on his territory. The mass effort generates new leads and business, lifting the blitz recipient’s sales as well as his spirits.
• If someone anticipated $ 10 million in software revenue from, say, Acme Inc., I followed up with questions. My inquiry hit some managers like a fire hose. “Who is the highest – level executive at Acme that told you that?” “Bill, the chief information officer told me.” “Does the CIO have the authority to approve a ten – million – dollar deal? Or does that have to go to the board? And if so, does the CIO have direct access to the board, or do those requests have to go through the CEO? And if so, who at SAP has the relationship with the CIO, and have we even spoken to the CEO? And if so, do the CIO and the CEO both agree SAP is a central element to their business strategy? And please articulate the specific solution that we’re selling for that ten million, and the business outcome Acme expects to get for its investment in us? Thank you. Have we given them a one – sheet document explaining that so they can take it to board members and get it done?”
• A new “Value Engineering” team would send our top industry experts into select clients’ companies to understand their business models, operations, and issues at a much more detailed level than SAP usually engaged. The team would compare aspects of each company’s performance — such as profit margins and inventory turns — to those of its competitors, and create industry benchmarks. The Value Engineering team supplemented our marketing efforts, and taught our tech – savvy account executives and salespeople how to be more business savvy.
• We initiated a weekly process that became known as the Top 20 Call. The call was similar to how we dissected deals during the fourth quarter of 2002. Each week, our head of sales identified the largest twenty deals in progress, and everyone associated with them — from the regional manager to the sales reps — was on the “call,” in a room with me or via phone. I asked people to bring to the meeting their most difficult account situations, so that the collective forum could help untangle the knots. The Top 20 Calls were not about figuring out how SAP could avoid a loss but how SAP could ensure a win. “What’s the business case? Have we presented it to the CEO? When is the next meeting? What, you just found out the company can’t sign because its purchasing director went on vacation? What’s your plan to backfill the loss?” If someone didn’t know his next move, he wasn’t doing his job. If she couldn’t articulate an ROI, she wasn’t doing her job.
• We also held firm on limiting discounts