What does Ogburn Solutions offer to clients?

Three components are necessary for a business to be successful long-term:

Leadership Effectiveness, Employee Engagement, and Sales Excellence. These components are like the legs of a stool that support the business. However, without something to tie the legs together, the stool will collapse. Ogburn Solutions ties these three components together by helping your company improve Strategy, Execution, and Communications.

Leadership Effectiveness

Need Help Communicating Your Organization’s Vision?
Are your employees frustrated because they don’t see or understand “the big picture”?

Businesses owners often struggle to clearly communicate their vision for the organization. When the vision only exists in the mind of the owner, or when the owner has shared the vision with “the leaders” of the organization but hasn’t shared it broadly throughout the organization, employees are left wondering if there is a vision. The result: the people doing the work get frustrated with the leaders’ directions or demands because they don’t see or understand “the big picture”.

Feel like you know how to do “the work” but not how to plan for growth?
Would you like to sharpen your managerial skills?

Many successful businesses have grown to where they are today with little formal strategic planning. The original owners were successful enough to pass the business on to the next generation, but the new owners don’t have the experience or training to lead or manage. The business has been successful because of the owners’ hard work and the skills they have acquired. Hard work isn’t enough anymore, formalized managerial and leadership skills are required.

Is your strategic plan out of date?
Do you need a communication plan of action?

Walt Ogburn has worked with many companies that have used a consultant to help them build a strategic plan. This exercise energizes the entire organization temporarily because everyone can see where the business is going. Eventually the consultant leaves and the organization begins to execute the plan on their own. Over time people change, customers change, and the economy changes. Who keeps the plan up-to-date and who shares the plan and the vision with new colleagues? A year or two down the road everyone has lost track of the vision and the strategy. It begins to feel like the investment in building the strategy was a waste of time, however, had the leaders invested small amounts of time and money each year the original investment would have paid dividends for a long time. Without the additional investment eventually the company has to start all over to define the strategic plan.

Customized Solutions

Walt Ogburn has over three decades of experience working with the owners and leaders of businesses ranging in size from small family run businesses to multi-million dollar organizations. Walt understands the unique challenges and opportunities that face the owners and leaders of small to mid-size businesses. Ogburn Solutions designs customized solutions to address the specific challenges facing the leadership team then Ogburn Solution’s consultants then work with the leadership team to develop a plan to deliver the solutions.

Employee Engagement

Does this sound familiar? “It seems like our employees don’t really care about their jobs. Every year during annual review we discuss their weaknesses and what they need to improve and the next year nothing has changed.”

Everyone has parts of their job they love and parts that really drain them. Would you like to find ways to get employees spending more of their time doing the things they love and less time doing what they hate – and still get everything done that needs attention?

Every organization has a culture. It develops whether or not you intentionally focus on your culture. A culture of engaged employees will lead to greater productivity and profitability, and reduced employee turnover.

Employee Engagement Workshops, Interactive Plans, and Independent Learning

Tools and resources are selected to fit the needs of your organization and your employees. A plan is then developed to introduce these tools to your employees in an interactive and enjoyable format. The need to allow people adequate time to “do their work” is taken into consideration when a plan is developed.

The solutions involve independent learning as well as active participation in workshops to put the learning into practice. These can be delivered at times and locations that fit your organization’s needs.

For businesses with remote employees, highly interactive web based learning can be employed to replace or supplement in-person classes or workshops.

Walt Ogburn has spent the last 15 years helping organizations create cultures of engaged employees, leading workshops of 6 to 60 people, designing programs to sustain the focus on engagement, and coaching managers and leaders on how to build engaged teams.

Sales Excellence

Need a framework for recruiting and hiring?

When it’s time to add a sales person many organizations simply advertise or pass the word around that they are looking for a sales person. The job responsibilities are not well defined and the skills and competencies needed for success are not clarified. Interviews are then focused on finding good “people skills” or past sales success. Because the criteria for success are not defined in advance and assessed during the interview ales people begin the role without the skills or experiences needed to ensure success.

Sales managers commonly come from the ranks of successful sales representatives. This seems to make sense since the roles are both focused on sales. However, when sales reps love the customer interactions and they don’t like managing people or have no experience managing, they may not be the right choice. Sales managers who would rather be selling than managing spend too much time “helping close the sale” rather than “developing effective sales people”.

Do you have a system for onboarding and training?

When a new sales person joins the company what do you do to prepare them for success? Do you just give them a price list and a customer or prospect list and say, “go sell something”? If that’s the case, they don’t fully know the company and the processes in place, and they get frustrated because they feel like they are an “outsider” in the company. If there are experienced reps on the sales team you may be tempted to ask the experienced rep to train the new rep when in reality the experienced rep has no skills or interest in training, and may even feel threatened by the addition of the new rep.

Sales managers often have no defined sales process to help them develop the effectiveness of their sales team. When they observe sales calls they have no framework to assess and give feedback. If the manager has a technical background he or she may only coach around technical knowledge. Few managers have been trained on how to observe, assess, and coach their people to become more effective.

Plans, Tools, and Processes for Recruiting, Hiring, Onboarding, Training, and Managing Your Sales Force

Ogburn Solutions can help define the role, skills, and competencies needed for success in your sales force. Recruiting and training documents are reviewed and edited to assure they are aligned to the needs of the customer, the company, and the sales person. Your organization can benefit from a defined interview process that ensures candidates are screened consistently, and for the skills and experiences needed to be successful.

Walt Ogburn has spent his career in sales and sales management and can help define the most effective sales process for your company, then develop a training and coaching plan to ensure that all reps understand and can follow the process. Observation and feedback tools can be developed to allow the managers to be more effective in developing effective sales teams.
Walt has sold commodity products as well as highly technical products and understands the different approach needed to meet both the customer’s and company’s needs with a variety of different offerings. Walt can help your company tailor your sales approach to fit your products and customers.

Contact

Walt Ogburn
4630 McDonald Dr. N, Stillwater, MN  55082
P 651 485 2686