Bob Schultek

Bob has more than 30 years of service as a senior sales and business development executive, CEO and business owner. His expertise includes customer-partnered business development, strategic planning, sales management, customer service, operational alignment, lean process analysis and improvement, quality assurance, and performance management. He has worked in the energy, medical device, bioscience & pharmaceutical, discrete and process manufacturing, packaging and distribution, communications and information technology, and business-to-business service industries.

Improving Innovation Success

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Significant time, energy and money are invested in the pursuit of innovation so organizations strive to improve their success rate. Optimizing the efficiency of their innovation process begins with their expectations about the outcome.  Dr. W. Edwards Deming, the renowned quality and management expert, observed that every process is perfectly designed to deliver the results it gets.  If an organization expects its pursuit of innovation to be imperfect and unpredictable, then its innovation process will …

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Two Paths for Accountability

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The recent celebration of our nation’s birthday prompts reflection about our distinctive idea of individual freedom, and our persistent pursuit of the aspirational vision and values so perfectly expressed in our founding documents. During our journey, we’ve celebrated achievements and suffered failures, but we persevere, continuing to experiment, to learn, to evolve and to improve as we strive to fulfill the promises that sustain our unprecedented liberty.  Being a free people, we have the option of choosing, …

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3 Ways to Help Leaders Coach

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Leaders who invest time to coach their team strengthen the company’s culture, elevate performance and improve results. But in our dynamic, highly competitive economy, it can be challenging to carve out time for the deliberate, sometimes tedious, work of mentoring those we ask to follow our lead. And the process itself can become complicated and prolonged, raising concern about failing. Yet, for leaders, coaching is a crucial priority, and an essential driver of improved performance. Here are …

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3 Factors For Leaders Driving Change

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Three factors enable leaders to drive change:  The leader is perceived as genuine and credible, consistently demonstrating conviction and modelling values-based behaviors, while being positive, transparent and open to feedback.  People trust that their leader has their back – that he or she understands what motivates and concerns them, and keeps this in mind when setting high, but realistic, expectations of them.  People feel respected and appreciated for their contributions, driven by the leader’s confidence …

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Promise Makers and Keepers

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For customers, it’s your sales person who creates the first impression of your business. If that person listens more than talks, probes to discover why resolving a need is important, and proposes multiple viable solutions that address the customer’s aspirations as well as their stated need, then it is highly likely that the customer will want to do business with your company.  The effective sales person appreciates that she or he will continue to be the primary face of your …

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Make Things Better

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The objective of change is to improve something – a product, service, process, etc. – so that value is created for our customers, our employees, our business, or hopefully, all of these.  The positive benefits of changing for the better are evident around us. Our products and services, our food, our environment, our communication tools, our number of options and many other things have improved because someone decided to make them better. Our survival in a competitive world demands …

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The Genesis of Trust

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We know that trust is the basis for enduring customer relationships.  The depth of that trust goes well beyond the reliability of your offerings, or even the fulfillment of your promises. It largely depends on how well your people create a human connection with your customer’s people, enabling a personal touch when it’s most needed, i.e. to resolve a problem.  So before there can be trust, there must be a personal connection. Connections develop when people share stories, discovering …

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Do You Value Innovation?

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If your business is customer-centric, then you appreciate that your growth is linked to how well and consistently your products, services and people create strategic value for your customers – generating quantifiable benefits, strengthening their competitive advantage and accelerating their progress. Creating that value transcends the fulfillment of an immediate customer need, to ensuring that your solution also contributes to their future, to the achievement of their goals. This is only possible if you’ve discovered what …

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3 Keys to Evaluating Culture and Value Creation

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Multiple studies agree that value creation is more dependent on successful culture integration than on any other factor; they cite poor cultural compatibility as the root cause for the high rate of acquisition failure. Without a timely and extensive integration of cultures, creating value will not be possible.  The traditional due diligence process evaluates multiple quantifiable parameters to validate the intuitive sense that a specific deal will create value, but often, the least attention is paid …

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Your Business Lives on the Street

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The primary challenge for every new business is to win that first customer. Your product or service may be exceptional, but if its value proposition fails to attract customers, then there is no business.  Once you’ve earned a customer’s trust, the challenge shifts to retaining it. Your customer evaluates your relationship by asking: does your offering deliver the promised value? Is your quality reliable and your service personal? Are innovation and improvement, guided by their input, key components of your …

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