B2B Reads: OKRs, Quiet Quitting, and Insular Selling

In addition to our Sunday App of the Week feature, we also summarize some of our favorite B2B sales & marketing posts from around the web each week. We’ll miss a ton of great stuff, so if you found something you think is worth sharing please add it to the comments below.

Today’s B2B Customers Don’t Want to Talk to You. Is That OK?
In this article, Jason Ball explores why today’s B2B customers are “decidedly aloof, and increasingly independent.” This shift in buyer behavior poses a new set of challenges for B2B sellers, which Ball outlines and offers guidance for.

Why You Should Maintain a Professional Journal—Twenty Prompts to Help You Get Started
In this blog post, Art Petty lays out several reasons (and 20 prompts) for a keeping a professional journal. Unlike a personal journal, this record helps to track discussions, intentions, feedback, and reflections from work. Petty explains that this daily, ritualized reflection can really help enrich and develop one’s work life and career.

Why you don’t have a high-performing team
In this piece, Alaina Love identifies three common issues that stagnate team performance. Among these are “falling prey to the responsibility myth, the fallacy of entitlement, and ‘pouring into a sieve.'” These are often psychological realities of teams, and ultimately hold back performance, efficiency, and accountability.

Financial Forecasting in the Age of Uncertainty
In this article, Dan Fletcher offers thoughts and strategies on how to best forecast for financials in today’s market and environment. He notes: “As unpredictable events rippled through the economy, finance professionals saw their usual approaches to planning – and their most recent annual operating plans – rendered obsolete in just a few weeks.” Among his advice for the future is sticking to three types of trusty forecasts: budgets, rolling forecasts, and long-range projection models.

OKRs, Why I Like Them
In this blog post, Rico Surridge explains OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and why he likes them as a goal setting framework. Surridge explains that OKRs are about “focus and alignment,” and that they should be the top priority for most organizations. He explains further: “The Objective is the outcome you want to achieve, the destination, or where you want to get to. The Key Result is how you measure progress towards achieving your Objective, or how close you are to your destination.”

Speak for Success! How to Make Your Ideas Come to Life
Gary Genard in this piece offers some high-level advice about how to make “your ideas come to life.” For Genard, this looks like making your topic “live in people’s hearts and minds” along with using more subtle communication strategies to be more engaging and illuminating in your public speaking.

The Challenge Of Insularity In Selling
In this edition to his blog, David Brock speaks about how the phenomenon of insularity in selling can hold people back from their “ability to learn, grown, and perform at levels we had not imagined.” He outlines how he believes this insularity usually propagates, and how one can best reduce it.

Resilient Organizations Make Psychological Safety a Strategic Priority
In this contribution to the Harvard Business Review, Maren Gube and Debra Sabatini Hennelly write about the importance and pertinence of psychological safety in an organization. They describe this as “a culture where employees can comfortably raise concerns, contribute ideas, and share unique perspectives.” Gube and Hennelly also identify three cultural dimensions for resilience: “integrity, innovation, and inclusion.” The authors explain that psychological safety plays a large role in each of these dimensions, and should be prioritized accordingly.

Get Ahead of ‘Quiet Quitting’ By Embracing Individual Passions
In this article, Dr. Tianyi Jiang digs into the idea of “quiet quitting,” or, “putting in the bare minimum required to keep [one’s salary].” He offers that “Disenchanted employees are vowing not to ‘go extra’ when it comes to their work, but if leaders re-invigorate them with opportunities to learn and pursue passions, there is hope.”

An Overarching Aim for Your Leadership
In this blog post, Bob Vanourek and Gregg Vanourek present that leaders today need to “commit to the overarching aim of being excellent, ethical, and enduring.” These three foundational characteristics help to govern a good leader and offer a better path forward through conscious, empathetic leadership.