The Bottleneck
What is happening today that wasn’t yesterday? What are we doing in the new sales office that I forever thought was impossible? What is the new strategy of Logo Brands these days?
Getting rid of the bottleneck. Every business has one. Usually it is a process, a policy, a facility issue, etc. Here at Logo Brands, the bottleneck was one person. It was me. The way the sales structure was set up, our company could only be as big, good, successful, as I could take it. If I could run faster, do more, travel more places, keep just enough plates in the air as I juggled life, then we could continue down our path of success. I kept challenging myself to work harder, smarter, and better than our competition so we could win. It was fruitful. Over the years, we have been a force to reckon with in our industry. Our name in lobby sign-ins all over the country give the other guys pause, “dang, they got here before me”. The trail of our footprints through airports, hotels, and rental cars left marks that said we aren’t mailing this thing in. We are going to do whatever it takes. You know, that is a scary reality. When you are facing someone that just won’t give up, give in, allow an inch, for the smallest of things…
Then you look in the mirror. After a million miles (I am guessing here), hundreds of nights on the road a year, and time away from the family, you look up in a moment of clarity to say out loud, “if I don’t change what we are doing not only will we eventually get beat by our competition but I might one day get tired”. Then what? I don’t want that… I love to win. Some of us hate to lose, I get that, but others love to win. The feeling of breaking that ribbon at the finish line or the buzzer going off, whistle blowing, and your team is up one. You win. It feels great. It’s contagious. It fuels me. If I don’t get that feeling I double down and come back for more. It is one of the driving forces in my life. Winning… I don’t like to lose, but I love to win. So (with this in mind) I thought, something has to change. For 18 months, I worked on different structures. I thought, what can we do to be a better team? How do we divide and continue to conquer at a higher level? If I can’t be everywhere, which we all know is impossible, how do we achieve this? How do we break up the bottleneck? Sitting in a meeting, a colleague says, “if we could get what is in your head on paper or something so all of the rest of us could soak it in and use it for our work, we would be unstoppable.” He was right. He was really onto something. I don’t have to be everywhere. Our team is good. Our team is getting even better. We have stockpiled talent. Some of the best vets in the industry and talented new young up-and-comers. We made a couple of more hires, moved some people around, allowed our talent to spread their wings and you know what? They are responding. They are flourishing.
Since then I have been teaching. I have been writing. I have been sharing, coaching, instructing, assisting, working alongside, illustrating, and demonstrating what it is that has made Logo so successful for the last 15 years. They are not only getting it, they are pushing me. We are getting better. The young. The old. The new. The experienced. We are becoming a better team. Some of us push hard. Some are great with details and organization. Some are so good at building relationships it’s scary. Others have this wisdom of all sides of our business. We are a group of eclectic talents with one thing in common: We want to win. And guess what? Collectively, working with and learning from each other, we have what it takes to continue our streak. The bottleneck is all but twisted off… Like Gremlins who eat at night or get water on them during the day, I am multiplying. This is good news for our licensing partners. This is great news for our retail partners. This isn’t such good news for our competitors. I now get to think. I now get time to plan. I am now teaching 14 others how we have won and will continue to win. It’s quite exciting. We will be everywhere. It is the Logo way.
-Kris Talley, Senior VP of Sales
