Zach Selch argues that CEOs obsess over singular focus at the cost of growth. He shares how one client lost its entire sales pipeline when its sole distributor faced legal trouble and liquidated, and how his own company survived a 2014 oil-price crash because 40% of revenue came from non-oil markets.
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So this is me. I'm in Kigali, in the market in Kigali. These are all of my eggs. This is my basket. I have all of my eggs in one basket. And you know what happens when you have all of your eggs in one basket. I'm going to go to the store. You never want to put all your eggs in one basket. I have this argument all the time. I think this is the single biggest argument I ever have with CEOs is over whether or not you should have your eggs in one basket or not. And I think CEOs are addicted to the concept of focus, and I can understand that. I think it comes down to a story that's told about Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and Bill Gates at a party once, and somebody asked what the single most important thing for success was, and they all said focus. So people have taken that, CEOs have taken the idea that focus is important, and they think any attempt to spread risk is diluting focus. I can give you 2 examples of why spreading your risk is really important. And it's been something, it's been almost a religion for me for 30 years. But a while back, somebody told me he was giving his exclusive international global distribution rights to one company. And I said, I think that's a mistake. And he said, this is a fantastic company, they're a great company, they're huge, they have all these sales assets, they're in 100 countries. I said, I think it's a mistake. We talked about it, went ahead. It turns out the main shareholders of this company got involved in a legal battle and they had to sell the company. They were legally obligated to liquidate the company within 30 days, which meant pandemonium in the company. They let go of about 75% of their sales force. It created a lot of uncertainty and it really killed off their sales. Okay, and here's this company, their global distribution rights, exclusivity, are all with one company. Wow. assets, they don't have any distributors, everything is tied up with one company. Another example is that in 2013, most of my sales were going— about 60-70% of my sales were going to oil-producing countries. And my CEO said, why are we putting efforts into other places? We should be focused on the oil-producing countries. Pull out of the other countries, put your resources into the oil-producing companies— countries. I think that's a mistake. We'd be putting all of our eggs in one basket. And sure enough, 2014, oil prices dropped. Now, I had no way of knowing that, but my sales died in the oil-producing countries. What I was able to do, because I had about 40% of my sales from non-oil-producing countries, I was able to shift a lot of resources to those countries, and I was able to save my year. It was one of the worst years of my life in terms of sales. But at least it wasn't zero. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help. When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.
