MINI FRONT-OF-HOUSE DESIGN WORKSHOP
Rethink the design of your organization’s Front-of-House
We have two workshop options
Mini Front-of-House Design W’shop
90 minutes, via video conference, with Justin and your management team. (No charge!)
Described on this page.
Solution Design Workshop
Two days onsite with Justin and your management team (investment required).
For qualifying organizations Justin delivers mini workshops at no charge.
These are intense, 90-minute workshops, delivered via video conference, designed to review and upgrade the design of organizations’ Front-of-House.
To request this workshop for your management team, just complete the form.
What do you mean by “Front-of-House”
The Front-of-House is the customer-facing side of a business.
Traditionally, salespeople were the organization’s Front-of-House, but we argue that the Sales department should be focused exclusively on the pursuit of new business. This requires a rethink of the design of the Front-of-House.
Conceptually, it requires that Operations has both front-of-house and back-of-house responsibilities. But in practice, it requires that Operations assume responsibility for what salespeople commonly call account management (a sacrilegious idea within a typical sales department!).
While it’s not commonly recognized, three discrete processes operate within the Front-of-House. There’s the pursuit of new business and the management of existing accounts, of course. But there’s also the onboarding of new accounts (or new categories of business for existing accounts).
In all but the simplest of businesses, each of these processes requires the involvement of multiple individuals. (A coordinator, a technical specialist, and a commercial specialist, perhaps). And some of these individuals (particularly technical specialists) are in short supply, with demands on their time coming from both the front-of-house and back-of-house.
This is a recipe for complexity, necessitating a disciplined approach to the design of the Front-of-House, which, of course, is the purpose of this mini workshop.
What are the conditions?
01
One workshop per organization
There’s a limit of one workshop per organization, though we may make an exception if there’s a material change to your organization (an acquisition, perhaps).
02
Business eligibility
The other condition is that you must be operating a genuine business, with at least 20 employees — not an idea or a startup! We’ll take a look at your website to confirm this and to confirm that we can, in fact, add value to your organization with this workshop.
What’s the agenda for this workshop?
After 30 years of consulting to a vast array of companies on almost every continent, Justin has a surprising ability to zero in on the one factor that’s constraining an organization’s growth.
But there is some method to the madness! Here’s a brief agenda (or, at least, talking points).
Context
- What do you sell, and to whom?
- How do you get to market (distribution)?
- What are the competitive dynamics of your marketplace?
Growth
- At what rate are you growing, currently?
- What internal resource (or department) limits growth?
- At what rate do you need to grow, in order to make stockholders happy?
Operations
- What is your on-time delivery performance and how does it compare to competitors?
- What is your proposal turnaround time and how does it compare to competitors?
- What is the lifetime value of a customer?
Sales
- How many hours a week do your salespeople (in aggregate) spend on the pursuit of new business?
- Who, in your organization, believes that they have primary responsibility for the happiness of existing customers?
- How compelling are your salespeople’s propositions, relative to those of your competitors’ salespeople?
Front-of-House Design
- How should we assign responsibility for:
- The pursuit of new business (new customers and new categories for existing customers)?
- Onboarding (getting new customers to “steady state”)?
- Account management (optimizing both size and duration of spend)?
- What is the cast of characters that contributes to these processes, and how should it be resourced and orchestrated for optimal results, without inflating costs?
Book a Mini Front-of-House Design Workshop
No fluff, no sales pitch. Just you, Justin, and your leadership team working to solve your growth puzzle.