Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream by Steve Van Remortel

I’m pretty sure this book was sent unsolicted to me by the author. That happens sometimes. A business consultant has a new book out, and it gets sent to me in the hopes that I’ll read it and hire the consultant for my association, or more likely, to speak at one of the conferences my association conducts.

This one came with a hand-written note from the author.

Eric,

I am confident Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream will bring tangible value to you, your association and its members. I look forward to the opportunity to meet with you.

Those who plan -- profit!

Steve Van Remortel

5/9/13

Well, sorry, Steve. Not only did it take me about six years to get around to reading the book you sent me, but now that I have, I’m pretty sure I won’t be asking you to speak at any of my association’s conferences.

That said, Steve’s hook is still a good one. He says it’s all about radically differentiating your company’s product or service from the “vanilla ice cream” served by your competitors. “Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream,” then, is a call-to-arms, to get you as the business owner to create and deliver a competence that creates a clear differentiation for your organization. And the only way to do that, he says, is to optimize the talent in your organization.

That’s the concept. Define your business in a way that clearly differentiates it from its competition, and then develop the people in your business so that they can most effectively deliver on that differentiation. And, like most business books I’ve read, that comes in the first ten pages.

The remaining 280 pages are then focused on a detailed process -- the Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream Process (which he never, ever abbreviates or refers to as anything else but the Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream process) -- which, frankly, includes just about every conceivable strategy-setting and/or management technique that we’ve all read a hundred times before.

He treats it very much like his system -- but in fact, it is everyone else’s system, cobbled together into one mega-system. Maybe that has some utility, but, frankly, I sometimes got lost in all the steps and exercises.

Here’s something that jumped out at me.

Finalize the values and beliefs statements of the organization.

This is from fairly early on (page 122 of 283), and appears on one of Steve’s chapter-ending lists of “Action Items to Complete the Process.” He did talk about the importance of values and belief statements in the aforementioned chapter, but only in a kind of passing way. When I saw this on the list of action items, I immediately asked myself: “Why? Why does Steve want me to do this? Will he have me use my values and belief statement as a filter for decisions that I will need to make later in the Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream process?”

I decided to keep my antennae up, looking for further mentions of values and belief statements. He has them in his system, but what purpose will he have them serve?

As far as I can tell, there is only one more mention, 28 pages later, in the context of one of the sample clients that Steve profiles in his book to better show Stop Selling Vanilla Ice Cream in operation.

Rashelle suggested action plans to “live” the values: Connecting Cultures would post the values and beliefs on the office walls and website and make them part of the orientation process for new employees. I captured those action plans and added them to the sixty or so already on the list, reminding the team of the importance of verbalizing the insights and action plans that pop into their head as we work our way through the process. It is extremely important to document all the action plans as we proceed through the process: at the end of the process we will use them to build the department plans.

“It’s important that these values and beliefs are presented for everyone to see,” I said. “One of the action plans I would suggest is determining how to communicate and use these values. This is an awesome start, and it provides us the opportunity to provide more role clarity for our team in executing the plan.” The team agreed with the values and beliefs statements Rashelle presented and accepted responsibility to see them carried out.

Is that it? Is that all you have to say about values, Steve? Have them, post them on your website, and use them in the orientation process for new employees? Oh, and write down on your action plan “determine how to communicate and use these values.”

That, truly, is an awesome start. Now, can we get back to Not Selling Vanilla Ice Cream?

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.