Meet Doug Davidoff

Doug Davidoff founded the agency Imagine Business Development. As the CEO, he’s directly advised more than a dozen companies who have successfully sold for a combined value of more than $1 billion. Imagine is also a HubSpot partner.

For more than 20 years, Doug has advised small and mid-market companies that are committed to serious growth who want to hear the truth about achieving it. Doug’s worked, firsthand, with more than 1,500 companies (and seen their financial statements), so he knows the difference between what works, and what sounds good and doesn’t work.

What we love about Doug is that he takes a "no-holds-barred, no bullshit approach" to business growth. He's a true wayfinder and natural explorer.

Doug’s both quick to adopt new ideas, methods and technologies; and remarkably cynical of products and strategies dubbed “the next thing.” As you'll here in this Wayfinding Growth episode, he combines an in-depth knowledge of sales and marketing theory and strategy, with front-line execution expertise to know what works, what doesn’t and why it is so.

Today's Episode is Brought to You By:

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What is BFSC?

BFSC is something Remington has rattled off over the years. The letters stand for Better, Faster, Stronger, Cheaper.

How does BFSC apply to business growth?

Remington describes this BFSC idea as a bit of an alternative to a SWOT analysis. It's a different way to think about your business, about projects and about the growth journey. 

Pat of Doug's culture at Imagine is that every employee is encouraged to look around and anything they see that could be done better, faster, stronger or cheaper (less expensively, but cheaper works for brevity) to speak up. Regardless of whether it's directly related to their job, they're all given permission to speak up.

Making it a team culture helps everyone buy into the business's growth.

Listen to the full discussion starting at about 22:00 into the episode.

The Flawed "Only Bring Me Solution" Mentality

Don't bring me a problem unless you have a solution. It's a common idea in business. But it's flawed. 

Sometimes we have a problem we can see, but may not have the right solution, which means we can't approach leadership or management. 

Too often a manager will say "Here's the problem," and the employee will say, "Yes I knew that." 

When the manager asks why nothing was said, the natural response is because the employee was told only bring solutions, and they had none. 

We need to foster solutions while staying open to team members bringing us problems without a solution so we can collaborate.

"No one know how to do a job better than the person doing it. But that doesn't mean they know how to do their job." Doug Davidoff

It's a Trap!

The phrase "This is the way to do it" is a trap in sales.

Doug says there's always more than one way to do something in sales. 

You have to be curious and open to suggestion. 

This is especially obvious when a leader hires someone from a company who had success in a specific project or tactic. Because this person was at that company and involved in it, we often think they figured out how to do it. 

The fact is they learned one way to do it in that particular situation, but may not understand all of the nuances that went into the entire situation. 

"You do have to be an observer," Doug says. "You have to be able to ask a lot of questions. If you ever say 'The way to do that [in sales] is...' then you don't know enough about sales and you're going to run into problems. There is no one way to do it." 

The right path in sales for you is determined by many factors. 

Chill Out About The Path and Obsess Over the Destination

In a business's growth journey, leaders often focus on how to get somewhere, The Path. This means they're often afraid to make mistakes because they get hyper-focused on how each decision impacts the micro-moments, the how. Instead, David offers, focusing on The Destination, the where, and getting there through mistakes and learning opportunities, is a better strategy. 

We've heard it said "Fail fast, fail often." Another cliche is that it's only a failure if you don't learn from it. Doug adds his own spin, because he's confident in where he's going and knows the how will work itself out as he works.

"I may be wrong often, but I'm rarely in doubt." Doug Davidoff

David says it's not perfect of course. Some years "we kicked you know what, and other years we were kicked." But when you fix the issues and you're on the right trajectory, growth happens purposefully.

Get to Know Doug:

• Imagine Business Development (Doug's agency)
• Doug on LinkedIn
• Doug unfiltered - on Twitter
• Doug's writing on HubSpot

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