Will Riley | How to Foster Innovation to Drive Company Strategy - 017

Jul 6, 2021

Will and Sean conclude their 5 for 15 RepOps series with the discussion of a critical (yet often unrecognized) component of business development: innovation. But how does innovation play into revenue operations? Check out today’s episode of Aligned to find out.

Innovation is integral to company success.

• A common thread throughout revenue operations - different people are responsible for understanding various customer aspects. Marketing might need to think about long-term strategy while sales develops one-on-one insights directly from prospects. And, of course, current customers provide innovative ideas you know your audience will like.
• The takeaway? Innovation needs to be a part of the revenue operations conversation because there are multiple stakeholders in the conversation. 

Innovation is a posture change. 

• You can have the right framework, alignment, and programming. But if you refuse to innovate, you’ll be the next Blockbuster - the shining star that burned too quickly.
• But what do we mean by innovation? Innovation is asking questions. How else could we build it? What else can we do with this? How else can this be applied?
• The command-and-control management model leftover from World War Two inspired this lack of innovation in the workplace. Moving to a distributed approval process for innovation can help you avoid this issue.

Idea-killing structures have to be shifted.

• As an executive, think about how an idea would disseminate through your company to be understood and seen. Is it accessible to everyone? Are certain people encouraged to participate over others? 
• Make your company aware of biases. People are taught to see something one way, and our brains will frame new ideas to fit that expectation. 

How to determine the most important thing to develop in the company? 

• Develop quarterly objectives with the execution maximizer system.
• Implement programs to generate innovation. Give each of your employees fake capital and see where they choose to invest in the company. 
• By avoiding a command and control top-down model, you recognize good ideas based on what has the most investments.
• What’s the key takeaway from this episode? Shift the way you drive innovation in your company.
• Check out Sean’s book Shift to learn how to develop your marketing strategy and skills.
• Aligned is a podcast for executives of emerging middle-market companies, executives of rapidly growing businesses, and executives pursuing growth and looking for new levers to pull. FitzMartin is a sales-first company driven by those things, and we want to pursue those things, and we know that you do, too.
• To connect with Sean Doyle, find him on LinkedIn, or learn more about FitzMartin on the company web page. 

You can also connect with Will Riley on LinkedIn.