We have all heard the saying, “practice what you preach.” I work with a consultant— Emily Estey—that has another way of making this statement. Her version is, “eat your own dog food.”
When you boil it down both statements mean the same thing: Do you practice the principles you teach your customers?
Resources for Consultants: The Eat Your Own Dog Food Audit
There is only one way to find out whether you practice what you preach: conduct an Eat Your Own Dog Food Audit! Here’s the process:
- Gather the members of your team—as many as possible—that will provide honest input during the audit process
- Create a list of the core principles you teach your customers as a B2B sales consultant or trainer
- Evaluate each item on the core principles list and ask members on the team to provide input, and come to a consensus to determine if your organization lives out the principle—score each core principle as one of the following:
- Always
- Sometimes
- Never
- Review the audit and discuss each category
- Celebrate the items on the Always list
- Develop a plan to move items to the Sometime and Never list to the Always list
The Eat Your Own Dog Food Audit—Reality
Here’s what the core principles list looks like for my firm, The Center for Sales Strategy:
- Talent: Does the organization have a recruitment plan and use a talent bank during the recruitment process?
- Talent: Does the organization use a statistically reliable assessment during the selection process?
- Training: Does the organization take the time to train all employees?
- Training: Does the organization use the sales training resources they sell?
- Tactics: Revenue Generation—Does the organization employ tactical revenue development initiatives to increase billing of the firm?
- Tactics: Lead Generation—Does the organization employ a lead generation system?
- Performance: Does the organization follow a system that evaluates performance beyond gross billing and net profit using KPIs?
- Strategic Elements: Account List Management—Does the organization use an Account List Management System?
I think my firm does a pretty good job of Eating our Own Dog Food. I’ll know for sure after we conduct this audit at a future staff meeting!
How would your B2B sales training or consulting firm do on the Eat Your Own Dog Food Audit?
