Huthwaite :: Creators of SPIN® Selling

The One Sales Trend That Demands Attention

2012-01-04T12:23:00.001-05:00

As we kick off 2012 with a heightened sense of optimism after the past few years, we all hypothesize what the new year will bring to our organizations, our people and our clients. And typical of this time of year there are no shortages of prognosticators who are allegedly spotting the trends that are going to take the sales and business world by storm. Having read many of these predictions and having had a chance to cross reference them against what we are seeing at Huthwaite as we look into 2012, there is one trend that we feel strongly all sales organizations would be foolish to ignore.

The traditional discovery or investigating skills that have been the bedfellow of top-performing sales people for the last twenty years are being totally redefined. That redefinition is being performed by your clients, with or without you.

The previous approach to sales quota-busting was centered on your ability to effectively diagnose the customer’s known pain, uncover their needs, and based on that discovery to then craft a targeted solution that addresses the needs as the customer articulated them to you. Sounds right, doesn’t? I mean, that’s the practice of the star performers, isn’t it? They have mastered the art of asking good questions.

Maybe...

Your customers have changed their purchasing behavior to make that approach a little antiquated. Customers have put in place strong buying systems, they are taking advantage of the availability of information on the web and social media, they’ve employed consultants, and their purchasing is more strategic, commercial-driven, transparent and professional than ever before. That means that by the time your sales rep gets to talk with a customer, the customer may have already moved far around the buying cycle on their own. A recent SLR report stated “on average, 57% of a purchase decision is complete before a customer contacts a supplier”. By this time a customer is quite clear as to what their needs are, what options are available to them to meet those needs, and what price they can meet those needs for. So a traditional discussion where a sales rep asks the customer about their needs (as understood by the customer) is of very low value. The customer already knows their needs and the unfortunate rep is forced to play the role of solution describer and price discounter. New customer buying behavior is driving traditional sales reps to a world where they are responding to demand, not creating demand. They are finding customers who are already in the market vs. making customers out of those who are yet to look for a solution.

Herein lies the key to the redefined role of the sales rep in 2012 and beyond - star-performers will be applying their skills in the opposite direction. They will increasingly create demand, not respond to demand. That demand will be created not through providing information about products and services, and not through asking the customer questions about information the customer already knows. It is through delivering insights to their customers in a way that creates value. But a critical question is - how are these insights to be delivered? Recent thinking proclaims that the best reps must “teach” customers, you must “educate customers on potential ways to change”, or deliver value by telling customers what insights are important to them.

Sounds compelling, doesn’t it? Even seductive – but it totally misses a critical point.

We must remember that there are two rules that apply to all human communication. These rules apply particularly to selling:

Customers value what they say and their own conclusions more than what they are told. (especially what they are told by sales people)
Customers value what they ask for more than what is freely offered. (Especially insights that are freely offered by sales people)

These rules of communication tell us that an approach based on telling, teaching or lecturing to a customer about the insights they need to be aware of may fall on deaf or suspicious ears. And there is factor that we must also take into consideration. With the increased sophistication of customers in today’s market, is there a risk that a sales rep’s attempts to teach or challenge may be perceived by an experienced buyer as a little obvious and even self-serving?

The reality is that the star-performers of 2012+ in the B2B world will still be the champions of investigating. It’s just that they are no longer only asking questions to uncover customer needs. They are asking questions that provoke and encourage deeper thinking about unrecognized problems and unanticipated opportunities for business growth. They are indeed educating about trends and delivering insights, but doing so by helping the customer arrive conclusions not through presentation but through discussion.

Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes and ask yourself which approach you would prefer?

Sales & Marketing Alignment: Define Before You Mandate!

2011-11-09T14:22:00.000-05:00

I have just finished reading the CMO Council's "2011 State of Marketing" report where Chief Marketing Officers and other Marketing Executives highlighted by a huge majority that the top mandates senior management have for Marketing in 2011 is unsurprisingly to "Drive top-line growth" and "Grow or retain market share". Of course we already know that on the other side of the house Sales is also being told to get new customers while holding onto and selling more to existing customers. In other words the exact same message. So at least we have alignment at the mandate level!

But herein lies a bit of a challenge, Christine Crandell writing in Forbes magazine argues that while just about every CEO desperately wants sales and marketing to align and team, "most are unclear as to the right questions to ask in order to understand how well Marketing and Sales are aligned". Crandell recommends adopting three metrics to measure alignment (which you can read more about in the full article) but leaving aside the prescription for a moment, I think there is a more fundamental issue to address. Erik Laurijssen, CMO, Luma Technologies in a article for Sales and Marketing Management states that "Instead of just giving an overall direction to increase revenue, senior management must take an active role in confirming how departments define their roles and their understanding of other departments." In other words, the first step on the road to Sales and Marketing alignment must be taken by the CEO and executive management. There needs to be a clearly defined and articulated outline of what successful alignment looks like. Once that has been clearly communicated and understood by both Sales and Marketing, then we can move to the metrics discussion Christine Crandell talks about.

If you reflect on this for a moment, I am sure you can recollect occasions where executive mandates were issued but with little to no definition of what success would look like on a tangible and tactical basis and indeed how it would be measured. And so it behoves all of us in executive management positions to take some time out to work through:

what will optimum Sales and Marketing alignment look like in our organization?
why it is important?
how will it positively impact our customers and prospects?
what difference will it make to our strategic and financial goals?
how will we define and measure success?
are we prepared to make the changes neccessary to ensure its success?
will we have the fortitude to stick with it during what could be a difficult transition phase?

And finally, given what we know about the changes in buyer behavior, do we really have any choice than to make this one of our organization's highest prioirities?

Can Sales & Marketing Change?

2011-10-25T12:57:00.001-04:00

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Sales & Marketing 2.0 conference in San Francisco (another great Selling Power event) where a lot of the presenters, including my good self, spoke about the changes in buyer behavior and the impact of this on sales and marketing. What struck me most about the audience questions and the discussions in the hallways was an acceptance of the need for both Sales & Marketing to change but skepticism on the ability of either to do so. Reflecting on this over the past week I decided to look at the whole notion of resistance to change in the context of Sales and Marketing Professionals.

In a 2003 Journal of Applied Psychology piece on Resistance to Change, Shaul Oreg of Cornell University reviewed the literature around this subject and the different traits associated with it, eventually coming up with a Resistance to Change Scale that had four major factors at its core:

1. routine seeking

2. emotional reaction to imposed change

3. short-term focus

4. cognitive rigidity

So let's look at each one of these items and apply them to Sales & Marketing professionals (albeit in a very generalized and non-scientific fashion!).

Routine Seeking: How many sales people do you know that love their job because it is predictable and every day is much the same as the last? Think about it, isn't sales (especially the complex sale) just about as unpredictable as it gets?

And on the Marketing side, if we take a look at the rapid changes in tactics and tools over the past few years, you would have to draw the conclusions that any routine work has been disrupted by social media, marketing automation and the ever increasing push for more measurable outcomes.
So I think it is fair to say that "routine seeking" should be a non-factor for both.

Emotional Reaction to Imposed Change: Let's face it, Sales is a rollercoaster of emotion at the best of times where the buyer imposes change on the seller constantly, for example: change of buying criteria, change of decision makers, not to mention the dreaded change of mind! And yes Sales people can often wear their emotions on their sleeves but any of them who have long and successful selling careers learn to bounce back very quickly.

On the Marketing side, while often not as dramatic or personal, buyers and the market impose change upon them constantly too. Such changes as how they want to be marketed to. Take the move, for example, from direct mail to email to social media that has happened in a relatively short period of time.

Any change will bring emotional reaction but in the case of Sales & Marketing given the fact that both operate on the leading edge of change as dictated by the buyer, they should be able to overcome any adverse emotional reaction relatively quickly.

Short-term Focus: This relates to the immediate inconvenience of change or the short-term adverse effects of it.

On the Sales side, again I would argue that both are part and parcel of the everyday sales experience. Often a sales cycle has to be recalibrated when sudden unforeseen changes occur with a prospect or they have to get up-to-speed with a new and improved product that has teething problems. In the latter case, this is often the one that causes most angst with Sales professionals, however, unless there turns out to be a fatal flaw in the new product or wholesale market rejection, the noise level drops pretty quickly as the product becomes stable and the sales people become comfortable with selling it.

While Marketing may have had a somewhat smoother ride traditionally that too has changed. The greater scrutiny on return on investment and the explosion of marketing automation tools has shifted the emphasis away from the creative and towards the scientific. Couple this with the ever increasingly savvy buyer who often relies more on third-party reviews and information than on anything Marketing produces, and you get a world where there is now a lot of short-term pain.
So yes the short-term impact of change will cause stress for both Sales & Marketing but Sales have always had to deal with that and Marketing is now quickly learning to deal with it too.

Cognitive Rigidity: This factor taps into the frequency and ease with which people change their minds. In the context of change it relates to accepting new ideas and ways of doing things. It is often talked about in conjunction with the "tyranny of experience" as new ideas conflict with the way things have been done in the past.

In Sales clinging to the old way of doing things usually has a pretty obvious and immediate impact on the individual, i.e. they sell less and their earnings shrink. So there is an inherent motivation to be open to new ideas, which is not to say, of course, that all are. There are as many beliefs among Sales professionals as there are proven methodologies. Many will still advocate that the relationship aspect of sales trumps all, while others will look more to the value creation piece as key. Despite the fluid nature of Sales there can be a certain cognitive rigidity when Sales people have to internalize a new way of selling when they have had success with the old way, hence the tyranny of experience.

Marketing in many ways is probably going to display a high degree of cognitive rigidity when faced with the prospect of having to learn and adapt many of the skills and tactics more traditionally associated with sales. This is going to require an openness to change far beyond adopting new technologies or new media.

In essence of the four, this factor is likely to be the biggest inhibitor to change for both disciplines but it will also likely be the greatest predictor of which organizations will come out on top in the future. The faster Sales and Marketing Groups can cognitively accept the changes, the greater the advantage they will have over their competitors.

Conclusion: Now having spent some time looking at the challenge of initiating change in how Sales & Marketing operate, their roles, their skills and tactics, the more I am convinced that both groups are much better equipped to adopt such change than many give them credit for. There are many other functions or job roles within an organization that if you measured against the four factors listed here would show a far greater propensity to resist change.

So without underestimating the challenges ahead I am feeling confident that Sales and Marketing can adapt to the seismic changes ahead, changes which I will address in a whitepaper to be published the next few weeks.

The Real Challenge

2011-08-08T10:57:00.001-04:00

There have been many examples over the last decade of great and innovative ideas and products (the Apple revolution with the iPhone and iPAD springs immediately to mind). There have also been many examples of established ways of doing things being cast aside in the name of progress when the reality was that the established way of operating were perceived by some as being too restrictive or simply too hard.

For instance the fundamental rules of business were ignored during the dot com revolution. Fundamentals such as comprehensive business plans were replaced by fancy PowerPoint decks. Focusing on a path to profitability was frowned upon as being so old economy in the new era where businesses were driven by concepts and ideas rather than spreadsheets.

Well we all know what happened. It turned out that those boring old profit and loss statements did matter and once common sense returned to the stock market and true valuations reasserted themselves, the so-called new economy bubble, overinflated with all that vaporware spectacularly burst. And yes the fundamentals of solid business practices returned and those dot com survivors who were able to adapt to them (or who had paid attention to them all along) went on to become big winners.

The dot com revolution was matched and even surpassed by the runaway housing market. This was a market that had operated for decades with solid, fundamental underwriting standards that minimized the risk for both the lender and the borrower. Once these standards were modified or even abandoned and new and innovative loan products quickly invented we suddenly witnessed a global property bubble of historic proportions. Again the abandonment of proven fundamental standards had catastrophic effects that this time went way beyond simply wiping out share prices to the point of almost collapsing the global economy beyond repair. There were of course some financial institutions that held firm to more traditional underwriting standards even as others were boosting earnings by going the other way. Such institutions have not just survived but have emerged stronger and in some cases have actually acquired their erstwhile more aggressive counterparts.

And so the dot com implosion and the housing market collapse have been followed by the collapse and near collapse of national economies across the globe from my own homeland of Ireland to Greece not to mention the now almost forgotten Iceland while here in the US we continue to struggle with at best an anemic economy. The problems faced by many of these governments are rooted firmly in the lack of fiscal discipline and just like proper business plans and tight underwriting standard, fiscal discipline on a national (or even state or local) level takes hard work and needs to be reinforced and monitored at all times.

There are many parallels when it comes to the fundamentals of selling. As Neil Rackham always reminds me in our conversations the fundamentals of good selling don’t change. As simple as that sounds the reality is that adopting and maintaining fundamentally good selling skills takes practice, patience and perseverance – three Ps sadly lacking in the examples above. When Neil and Huthwaite conducted its groundbreaking behavioral research and codified their findings into what became SPIN Selling, they created much needed consultative selling fundamentals. These fundamentals have helped organizations across the globe to reach greater levels of sales success and build exemplary buyer-focused selling cultures. Over the years SPIN Selling has evolved and adapted to multiple market phases and multiple segments while always staying true to the fundamentals established through its scientifically-based research. There have been and continue to be “new” techniques and methodologies introduced (some of which are clearly derivative in nature but again as Neil Rackham says one way of judging the quality of your product is the number of people who copy it!) but none that can point to an empirical research base on the level of Huthwaite or a track record of success to accompany it. Whether these new models are presented as being more “challenging” or built for the “new selling reality” of the new millennium, they cannot argue with the ongoing track record of success enjoyed by organizations who truly adopt the fundamental selling skills that SPIN Selling represents.

Such organizations are the ones who have the commitment to be patient, to persevere and to continually reinforce these fundamental skills and who are rewarded with sales organizations that grow and excel as these skills become a pervasive way of operating. Like those dot coms who adopted solid business practices when others were offering easier ways of starting up or the financial institutions who stayed with loan quality over loan quantity, the organizations that have adopted and committed to SPIN Selling are among those who have successfully weathered the recent recession and indeed some have even flourished.

Thankfully just like the flight to quality we always see when investors move their capital away from riskier investments to the safest possible investment vehicles during market upheavals, we have seen a similar phenomenon in our own business. More and more organizations across the globe are looking to Huthwaite to help them grow their way out of the recession and establish the solid foundations of proven selling skills. This has translated into record years for Huthwaite and put us on track for our greatest year ever in 2011 by any measure you want to use (top line, bottom line etc.).

It goes to prove what I quoted Neil Rackham on early in this piece that the fundamentals of good selling don’t change. We will certainly see innovation and evolution in our segment and indeed Huthwaite has been at the forefront of this and will continue to be (look out for a major new initiative in late 2011 that has been created in partnership with some of our top customers and validated through research conducted with thousands of professionals across the globe). We will also see “new” models emerge, some that seek to repudiate the fundamentals and established models such as SPIN Selling (and we know how that usually works out), some ironically will be sold and marketed aggressively using high pressure techniques more associated with the transactional end of the spectrum and a few will actually complement the fundamentals and be truly additive.

The real challenge will be to have the patience, and perseverance to continually practice the fundamentals of good selling and be able to separate what actually enhances that from new glitzy short-term solutions because as we have seen such choices can have serious ramifications in the longer term.

Sales Strategy and Customer Decision Making

2011-07-19T13:13:00.004-04:00

Brief background: Last week I conducted a webinar called “The Feel Good Funnel” which focused on balancing the quantity of opportunities in a company’s pipeline vs. the quality of those opportunities. Huthwaite’s position is that almost every sales organization’s pipeline is overweight on quantity – quantity of deals and quantity of dollars – at the expense of quality. If a more rigorous qualification process is applied to every deal we will see many of those deals either a) move back in stage, b) reduce in dollar amount, c) push out the close date – or d) taken out of the pipeline altogether. What is the cost of having sales reps working opportunities that are not properly qualified? Think about it in terms of travel costs, management time, lost-opportunity cost, supporting resources, etc. Answer – huge.

Question: During the webinar we received many questions. One interesting one was “can you talk more about aligning the sales strategy to customer decision making. I.e., what are the types of strategies you could deploy?”

What I really liked about this question was it joined two important points that are not commonly joined. That is, a) sales strategy, b) Customer decision making. So many sales strategies and processes are employed based on a series of actions that the sales person must take. A far more effective and successful approach is bringing in the customer’s reality, and examining the commitments that we need the customer to make at each stage. From that, a more realistic and accurate strategy can be developed.

I’m curious – as you look at the pipeline activities in your CRM, what percentage of those are seller-based activities vs. buyer commitments? Our research shows a far greater percentage of seller-based activities and milestones. What does your pipeline say?

Is Sales Six Sigma-proof?

2011-06-09T14:13:00.001-04:00

The great myth in business today is that sales organizations are Six Sigma-proof. That is, sales organizations are by definition immune from standardization because salespeople will not conform to a prescribed set of streamlined processes. The argument goes that in fact they should not even be asked to, or you will scare away the superstars who are comfortable with a maverick approach to their work. In other words, salespeople need to be coddled, not have their worlds interfered with, or they will flee to what they perceive as greener pastures. But it is a myth.

Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by finding and eliminating the deficiencies, inefficiencies, and defects in processes. It has been extremely successful particularly in manufacturing, but also in design, project management and even executive management. For the record, I am only talking about the principles—what Six Sigma represents—rather than a codified, black belt approach to perfecting the sales process.

During the recession, many companies have been seeking to become lean and agile. This requires not only trimming excesses, but streamlining processes. New technologies and IT innovations are rapidly allowing savvy users to accomplish almost anything.

So why should sales be exempt?

It shouldn’t. With a caveat. And that is that sales can be lean and agile and follow a particular process if, and only if, that process can not only be shown to be good for the salesperson individually, but actually proven to help sellers sell more efficiently and effectively. If the case can be made that the process can actually help sales or at least increase the time that can be dedicated to it, then salespeople worth their salt will follow it. So, if you are struggling to implement a CRM or drive acceptable adoption levels, then show how it not only provides visibility to the management (which doesn’t impress a salesperson), but that it eliminates busy work and duplicative reporting for the salesperson. Prove that if they follow the process they will be more successful.

More and more the push is on for predictability when it comes to revenue forecasting which can only be achieved by greater levels of insight which CRMs can supply. Predictability is the Wall Street mantra. Project the numbers, but do not fail to meet projections. Be predictable.

That’s why sales is theoretically so difficult to manage. Mavericks are by definition unpredictable but if you can show them how the CRM helps to increase their selling time and reduce ad-hoc reporting and duplicative review calls with management, then you are another step down the road to a lean and agile sales organization.

Showing the Way vs. Getting in the Way - how to avoid disintermediation.

2011-05-13T13:55:00.001-04:00

I spoke recently to Susan Adams at Forbes Magazine who was very interested in the role of the sales person today and we began by discussing the concept of the product that sells itself. Well as any of you in sales know, such products while not quite mythical are certainly few and far between. The Apple products iPhone and iPAD probably fall into that category for now although the strides made by Android phones and by other tablet makers have started to slowly erode that position.

So in the absence of a groundbreaking product or service or one with a major wow factor, (the one that makes all your friends and colleagues jealous), you are pretty much left swimming in a sea of commoditization and perceived sameness. And this commoditization does not only afflict mass market consumer products, indeed it largely pervades all products and services to one degree or another. The fact is we as vendors often look at ourselves as high differentiated but our customers see us as very similar to our competitors. In other when we look in the mirror we often see something very different from what the customer sees.

So what can we do to differentiate ourselves if we are largely seen as just another shade of white? Well one of the most effective ways is for the individual sales person to become a value creator during the selling process. Consider the four value drivers that Huthwaite has identified through its extensive research:

• The seller revealed to the buyer an Unrecognized Problem that the buyer or the buyer’s organization was experiencing.

• The seller helped the buyer realize an Unforeseen Opportunity for their organization that was not immediately apparent.

• The seller established for the buyer an Unanticipated Solution to the problems that the buyer or the buyer’s organization was experiencing.

• The seller served as more than just a vendor of products or services, but instead served as a Broker of Capabilities. Specifically, the seller served to make available to the buyer the full range of capabilities of the seller’s organization in such a way that these capabilities contributed to an expansion or redefinition of the customer’s success.

In others words you know your product or service, that is a given but what you need to do is uncover and truly understand the prevailing business conditions of your customer, their strategic initiatives, their challenges and their opportunities and then bring your value creating talents to bear as outlined above. If you are simply a conduit of product or service information then quite frankly you are just getting in the way as there are far more efficient ways for the customer to get that information e.g. online or from their professional networks (indeed the latter is going to provide more objective information that you are likely to!).

So rather than risk becoming another casualty of disintermediation start focusing on the value drivers and establish yourself as a truly valuable resource to your customer.

To learn more about the value drivers, read our whitepaper Creating Real Value for Customers.

Seeking Warm Weather or Real Differentiation

2011-05-05T13:40:00.010-04:00

A colleague of mine is in the midst of a rigorous search with her teenage daughter (we’ll call her Liz) to find a suitable college for next year. Over the past few months they have visited, interviewed and toured at seventeen different colleges up and down the east coast from Alabama to Vermont. In each of these interviews the college is selling the reason that they are the best and logical choice for Liz to attend. What is fascinating is how each college goes about differentiating itself from its competitors for the goal of student dollars. In every case they tout facts about the school that they are convinced will impress such as:

- Their library – eg: how many volumes, how many libraries, open 24 x 7, technology enabled.
- Credential of the faculty – eg: how many Phd’s, how many are published, famous.
- Safety of the campus – eg: blue light system, good relationship with local police.
- Number of clubs – they all have hundreds to choose from.
- How good their cafeteria food is. How many students study abroad.

Seventeen different colleges. All saying the same things. All think they are different. This has left Liz in the position of being not much further along in her choice than when she started. So what’s happened? Other criteria have bubbled to the surface for Liz such as the quality of the football team, weather can’t get below 50 degrees, the boys at the college must all be athletic, how long it takes to walk from the dorm room to the classes. Less important criteria that have now become very important due to an absence of any other real differentiation. And of course, another one has emerged from low on the list to front and center – cost. What Liz and her mother are going through is a very real metaphor for what happens every day in the B2B sales world. Companies tout their “differentiators” and are frustrated when potential customers focus most attention on price and other, seemingly unimportant, factors in their decision.

I’d be interested in hearing about any examples of this common phenomenon you may have seen in the business world.

Why is winning back to back Super Bowls so difficult?

2011-02-01T08:29:00.002-05:00

As we head into super bowl week it is interesting to note that both the Steelers and the Packers have won back to back super bowls in their illustrious histories. Winning one title is a fantastic achievement but many sports people will contend that coming back and doing it in consecutive years is even tougher.

Some of the reasons for this can be complacency, motivation dip, your opponents being more attuned to your strengths and able to counter them better. In other words getting to the top is one thing, staying there is quite another.

That is why I was delighted to meet with two organizations over the past couple of weeks who are both industry leaders and who both broke sales records in their respective market segments in 2010. It was refreshing to hear such success stories at a time when we are so used to hearing about struggle and decline. What I found even more impressive (and frankly uplifting) was the fact that the leadership of these organizations was anxious not to rest on their laurels but rather to look at ways of improving and continuing to evolve their sales organizations.

It is often erroneously assumed by some people that performance improvement initiatives are more geared towards remediation of problems and that a high performing sales organization should be left well alone. It has, however, been proven that in business as in sport staying on top is often harder than getting to the top. The smart, savvy companies like the ones I have spent time with recently understand this and realize that over time even top performing sales people can become over-reliant on relationships or can almost unconsciously begin to apply the same sales process to every customer and prospect rather than adapt to where they are in the Buying Cycle™ or they can simply plateau as motivation and drive gives way to complacency.

Sunday's match-up will be a fascinating one with two powerful teams both peaking at the right time. It will be even more interesting, however, to see how the eventual winner fares next year!

No Barriers

2011-01-24T09:32:00.001-05:00

Last week I attended the sales kick-off meeting in Orlando of a customer of ours where I had the great pleasure of listening to keynote speaker, round the world solo yachtsman, Neal Petersen. While there are several hundred people who have also achieved this feat what sets Neal apart is that he grew up a person of color in Apartheid South Africa, in abject poverty and suffered from severe hip disabilities in his early childhood.

Given the hand that he had been dealt, the likelihood of his being able to enter the somewhat elite and extremely expensive world of round the world sailing seemed remote at best and as many people told him, probably impossible. But succeed he did and while I am not going to recount his story here (I would encourage you to check out his website http://www.no-barriers.com/) what I will say is that he reminds us that is we refuse to accept the barriers in front of us we can succeed at anything.

A timely reminder as we head into another year of tough economic conditions with risk aversion now almost burned into the psyche of buyers. We can either accept these as barriers or we can choose to see them as ways of proving that we can articulate and deliver value, both of which will overcome the reticence of many buyers.

As Neal says "In life there are no barriers ~ only solutions!" and given what he ultimately achieved against the odds not only does he say it and believe it but he has proven it to be true. I can't think of a better mantra as we head into the business development challenges of 2011!

Rad eCommerce Experience

2010-12-03T00:05:00.002-05:00

I always like to use this blog to highlight a positive experience that demonstrates particular sales and service excellence, so today I would like to talk about Blackhole Boards. But first some context: recently my 6 yr old son took up skateboarding and shows some real aptitude for it. His first board has been put through the wringer and it is time (already!) for a new one.

Now buying a skateboard for a 6 yr old is not that simple as he can't ride full-sized boards yet and there are a limited amount of ones available for his age group (proper ones not play ones that is). So I bit the bullet as it were and after a couple of unsuccessful trips to local skate shops I went online and tried a few sites before settling on Blackhole Boards.

Thanks to a very easy interface I was able to custom assemble a board choosing the deck, trucks, wheels, bearings, screws and grip (yes every single component can be chosen from a mind boggling array of choices) and then I selected to have them custom assemble the board (believe you me, there is no way I am letting my son on anything built by yours truly!). Once I completed the board and hit purchase I succumbed to a moment of panic wondering if I had selected the right sizes etc. so I clicked on Live Chat and within seconds I was reassured I would be contacted immediately by the assemblers should anything not look right or be a correct selection. Feeling better I was then surprised to receive an email within 30 minutes of placing the order announcing that the board was assembled and had been submitted for shipping.

And one day later (yes one day!) I am staring at fantastic FLIP board with custom fittings – now that is what I call an excellent, efficient ecommerce experience. It certainly knocks the myth of the skateboard slacker on the head! We could all learn a thing or two from such ease of doing business! Now that is rad eCommerce.

Keep on grinding guys! (I am trying to learn the lingo…).

Eating Our Own Dog Food and Loving It!

2010-10-27T20:08:00.003-04:00

Working in Silicon Valley in the 90s meant being subjected constantly to a barrage of hip, dot-com buzzwords and phrases of which “eating our own dog food” was prominent. There were many others of course which gave rise to a game that was played at meetings called “buzzword bingo” where you could tick-off buzzwords used during that meeting for your own entertainment. Of course conference calls lent themselves perfectly to this activity (apparently, not that I’d know – although I will admit in our office there was once a pool on how many times the word “conceptually” would be used by Marketing during a call and the final score exceed the highest bet by some margin! – of course I am sure they had their own pool on the buzzwords we used too.)

But back to “eating your own dog food”, this phrase was popularized in Microsoft in the late 1980s and thereafter became a staple phrase for companies using their own products and services and advertising the fact to credential themselves with prospects. The actual origins of the phrase seem to be in some dispute – one internet source (and why would we question something posted on the Internet!) claims that a dog food company in Britain in the 50s actually had sales reps open a can of dog food in front of skeptical grocers and take a mouthful to prove how great it was and why they should stock it (this at a time when the concept of canned dog food was unheard of and so extreme measures were needed). It’s a neat story if not particularly believable – another explanation points to Alpo ads in the early 80s in which Lorne Greene talks about feeding the Alpo he was advertising to his own dogs – a much less interesting story.

So what’s my point you are probably wondering? Well it is simply this; in early 2010 we launched Huthwaite Dealmaker to the market to enable customers to leverage SPIN and other Huthwaite tools and strategies from within an intelligent sales force automation system that could be integrated within their CRM or used standalone. We have spent much of this year evangelizing this offering to the market and talking about how it can help to reinforce sales processes and skills and make them part of daily work practices, as well as providing tools and tactics embedded in their CRM, right at their fingertips, at the point of impact. We have shown line sales managers how to coach and mentor reps using the platform as their primary tool rather than constant emails and phone calls – showing them how to review opportunities and intervene when and where it can have the greatest impact based on the latest data rather than in an ad-hoc fashion so typical of many sales organizations. We have further demonstrated to executive management how forecast accuracy and pipeline velocity can be increased through Dealmaker and how intelligent business rules diminish subjectivity and educated guesswork.

What we have not done is to talk much about how we, yes wait for it, Eat Our Own Dog Food! When we brought Dealmaker to market we deployed it internally within our organization and integrated it with our CRM system. We have experienced firsthand the culture and process change it brings and how it has allowed us to institutionalize all of the best practices that we have long adopted through more traditional, manual means. For example our sales funnel is more balanced than before as we have systematically focused on early stage opportunities and examined them in detail, dissecting them to identify those where we and our customers are in alignment and where their business needs can be best served by our solutions. What this has meant is that we have not fallen prey to the “feel good funnel” syndrome where opportunities are loaded into the top of the funnel without proper qualification providing that false comfort that volume at the expense of quality can provide in the short-term until a high percentage of those opportunities evaporate in later stages. In other words less gets into our pipeline but a higher percentage closes and moves through the pipeline with a greater velocity.

Our sales managers now coach and mentor our sales people by reviewing the opportunities in detail without needing to bother the rep initially. Through the system they examine the history and progression of the opportunity and ensure that the proven success strategies have been adopted and followed, this means the sales manager can then have a higher value, more thoughtful and ultimately more productive conversation with the rep. The proverbial win/win for rep and manager is finally achieved.

I have saved the greatest benefit to last – this where that can of dog food tastes the best (if you can imagine such a thing!). Our sales people have long been our product. When they engage with a prospect they need to exemplify what consultative selling should look like. This is an area of great pride for Huthwaite and we work hard to achieve this and maintain these standards of excellence. We have the privilege of working with customers who also have this dedication to sales excellence and they inspire and push us to new heights as we witness how they implement our solutions and build their own sales cultures. By embedding Huthwaite’s sales skills, strategies, tactics and tools in the Dealmaker platform we have moved beyond applications that serve the purposes of others (database building for Marketing, reports for Management, financial information for Finance) and created one that empowers the sales rep and helps them navigate their way through the selling process in a more organized and systematic fashion. One that accentuates all the great things they already do. And the bonus is that all of those other constituencies still get what they need but it is more accurate and freely given.

When Huthwaite Dealmaker was introduced first at Huthwaite it promised to be a tool that provided for greater forecast accuracy and pipeline velocity and it is certainly has but the real strength of the system is that it helps sales people sell better. It augments, builds upon and enhances all of the skills we teach them. In short it enables excellence through technology.

So whether those reps chowing on dog food in Britain in the 50s or Mr Greene dishing out Alpo to his dogs in the 80s originated the phrase matters not, for us at Huthwaite we start our morning with big helping of it, snack on it throughout the day and often end with it featuring as the main meal and we love it!

Impacting the Recovery

2010-10-21T16:22:00.002-04:00

It has been a very busy time of late due to my being given a unique opportunity to run not one but two companies simultaneously. In addition to my role at Huthwaite, I am now also running Omega Performance, a sister company in the Informa family of Performance Improvement businesses.

This dual role has confirmed for me that the fundamentals of running a successful business are neither complex nor mysterious. There are in essence three components:

1. Understand your customer and evolve with their changing needs - i.e. stay close and connected to them.
2. Deliver high quality products and services that are aligned and constantly realigned to those changing needs
3. Be lean and efficient as an organization - keep your processes simple and effective and exceed customer expectations when you deliver

I am fortunate that both businesses are at the front end of driving economic recovery; Huthwaite by helping the direct revenue generating components of organizations, such as Sales & Marketing, drive more business and Omega by ensuring that financial institutions can source and qualify borrowers (whether large businesses or small) and match them with quality loans.

Being able to play a direct role in helping drive businesses back to growth whether through sales or investment is a great position to be in.

Let's Be Honest: Excellence Takes Hard Work

2010-09-13T17:08:00.005-04:00

Following on from my post on the Short Cut Culture some of you have emailed me to ask about whether I believe there is a broader context to this and indeed I do. We have begun to celebrate and tolerate mediocrity in all its forms as a way of avoiding standards that take hard work to attain and to hide behind it as some kind of great equalizer. Either way it has made the quest for excellence the path of increasing resistance.

Let’s stay on the Hollywood theme for a moment. How many high quality, excellent movies are really produced in a given year or has the bar been set so low that “the best movie of the year” is really one that is slightly better than the dozens of mediocre ones and the countless sub-standard straight to DVD releases? (As an aside: has there ever been a more mass produced and expensive product that is routinely launched into the marketplace with such moderate expectations of success?)

This creeping abandonment of the quest for excellence is a challenge that all of us in the sales performance improvement industry face. We are confronted too often with a desire for something “simple” or “easy to adopt”. It sometimes feel like the expectation is that we can deliver a miracle solution akin to those early morning infomercials which promise 3 minutes a day, 3 times a week will deliver you abs like Mark Wahlberg in Date Night. The trouble is they can’t – what these infomercials gloss over in the small print are the diet and other exercise requirements which when taken in totality require a whole lot more commitment and effort if you are even going to see any change let alone a rippling six pack.

The same is true of any sales performance improvement initiative worth its name. There is no 3 minutes a day, 3 times a week solution. There is a meal plan, an exercise plan and a lifestyle change. I believe it is imperative that we continue to be honest that equipping sales people to operate at an optimum level takes time and commitment.

On the other hand as a sales performance improvement organization we cannot afford to operate somewhat outside of the realities of how sales people function on a daily basis and the work-flows and work practices that inform this reality. There is an onus on us to make what we do simple to understand, easy to implement and to provide the support needed to deliver success. This is why we at Huthwaite created the Integrated Learning Experience to provide sustained support for sales people and sales managers as they work through a sales behavior change initiative and why we launched the Huthwaite Dealmaker solution to embed those skills into an intelligent sales performance automation system that works as part of their CRM of choice. These solutions are designed to increase productivity where the job happens which is at the interface between the sales person and the customer and the sales person and their organization.

It is after all one thing to say that you are committed to sales excellence and another to provide the roadmap and support to actually get there and then sustain such high standards. Huthwaite is completely committed to making a stand on the side of excellence and backing it up with the platform to achieve and sustain it.

How about you? Are you ready to take a stand for excellence?

The Shortcut Culture

2010-08-28T15:46:00.004-04:00

I have just returned from a short vacation in Los Angeles and while I was there it struck me how what I call the "Shortcut Culture" has pervaded the home of the entertainment industry. Once upon a time young hopefuls would get off the Greyhound in LA, find a job busing tables, save their tips to pay for acting lessons and endlessly trudge from one audition to another driven by the belief that their hard work and commitment just might make them a star.

Today some of those same hopefuls arrive in LA, look for the nearest reality show casting call and head straight there. Their goal is to be as noticeable as they can be regardless of the level of obnoxiousness they need to descend to in order to achieve it. The plan is a simple one, get on a reality show, any reality show and there are literally dozens and dozens to choose from. While most people are aware of the big mainstream ones like the Bachelor/Bachelorette, Survivor etc., the cable channels are awash with all sorts of nonsense like MTV's Disaster Date and VH1's Screams Queens where aspiring actresses battle for a part in SAW 3D. Like I said the plan is a simple one, get on the show and get noticed by a film or TV casting director or like Scream Queens win a role in a movie. In other words take a shortcut. Dispense with all those time consuming, and quite frankly difficult, acting lessons, get noticed first whatever it takes. Just like those thousands and thousands of American Idol hopefuls, putting in the hard work and developing their craft over time seems so last century.

It is easy to look at all this and sound like an old curmudgeon starting sentences with "Remember when...", however, I was reminded that all is not lost by a sales person in the Adidas store in Santa Monica. On last Saturday evening I ventured down the always bustling Third Street Promenade to get a new pair of sneakers at the Adidas store. As I wandered nonchalantly towards the training shoe section I was confronted by a smiling assistant who stuck out his and introduced himself (Matt, I think was his name). He did this in a very engaging and friendly way and despite being in the middle of helping two other people he said he was ready to help me when I needed it. I quickly noticed that while the other assistants stood around and were more reactive, Matt was running back and forth answering questions, delivering sneakers and generally keeping three customers attended to at a level that the others were struggling to achieve with a single customer.

To cut a long story short when I asked to try on a particular pair of sneakers rather than run off and get my size immediately, he asked me exactly what I would be using them for and once I told him, he suggested another pair (actually slightly cheaper) which he told me were more suited to my needs. He was doing this with all his customers including one who he informed that they did not really have the right sneaker for what that customer really needed it for and although he could go with something close, he might be better to go to a specialty store. This particular customer had spent probably 15 or 20 minutes trying on sneakers and talking with Matt and because of this he asked who Matt's manager was because he wanted to tell them how helpful Matt had been and what a great sales person he was and this despite the fact that he had not sold him anything but rather had invested time in providing excellent advice The other customer he was helping also decided he wanted to compliment Matt to the manager and when I was finished choosing my sneakers (the ones he recommended) I also spoke to the manager. I asked him was Matt his number one sales person to which he replied he was and when I then commented about how hard he worked and the manager said that was why he outsold everyone in the store.

As I walked out I reflected that the reality still existed that a salesperson who works hard, is attentive, asks good questions to find out what the customer's real needs are and provides good advice and stellar service still wins big even in this shortcut culture. After all in sales there are no shortcuts. Skill matters, commitment matters, hard work matters and that is why the top sales people are the top sales people and why they earn the big bucks.

E.I. is O.K.

2010-07-27T21:44:00.002-04:00

If there is one thing that most frequent business travelers fear is that dreaded delay on the tarmac especially when the actual flight is a short commuter one. Well this evening it happened at Dulles Airport in DC, we boarded the CJR 700 commuter plane, seating for about 60 people, on time only to be informed that thunder storms in Charlotte had shut the airport there. And so we began that open-ended wait for us to get the go-ahead or head back to the gate. In the end we spent 2.5 hours sitting on the hot tarmac (it was still in the 80s outside) in the small confined space of the full CJR 700 an experience that had the potential to be an extremely uncomfortable and frustrating one.

The reality, however, was quite different thanks to the crew of United 7262. Using Emotional Intelligence to a degree that would make Daniel Goleman proud, they carefully and calmly kept the cabin cool, served refreshments with a smile and dealt with passenger questions with empathy and sincerity. It resulted in the 2.5 hrs passing rather quickly and painlessly with relaxed passengers chatting, reading or even sleeping. There was none of the customary grumbling, anger or frustration that normally characterizes such captivity.

It was a timely reminder to me of how customers often judge and remember you by how you react when problems arise. The reality is that when you deliver exactly what a customer expected when they purchased you have simply fulfilled your part of the bargain. When you go above and beyond and over-deliver or when you reaction to problems or issues is empathetic, rapid and effective you distinguish yourself. The crew of United 7262 did that today at a time when we have become so used to negative air travel experiences.

As a footnote not only was the delay not that cumbersome in the end but when I arrived at my hotel I was "guest of the day" with a gift basket waiting for me! So as a good friend of mine likes to say "some days you get the bear and some days the bear gets you", well today the bear had a good go but emotional intelligence beat him back!

Insight & Foresight

2010-07-26T09:02:00.003-04:00

I recently launched a series of conversations with business leaders from across multiple verticals called "The Business Insights Series" and as I reviewed the first five interviews I tried to see if there are some consistent themes emerging. What I found is that although there is great diversity in terms of business focus, there is great consistency when it comes to outlooks and observations.

Some of the key insights provided by these business leades include:

Knowing your customer's individual business and their vertical on a much deeper level than before is critical to establishing credibility and persuading them that they should even enteratin listening to you.
You need to discover where your customer is "hanging out" (e.g. what professional or industry networking groups they frequent) and engage with them there - often providing input and insights without the prospect of immediate return.
Given the ever decreasing amount of face time a sales rep is getting with a prospect, the ability to add value during those interactions is an increasingly key differentiator.
Moving with speed is vital but you must first be able to select the targets you have the greatest chance of winning and over-resource them.

These are just a few of the wonderful insights from Neil Rackham, Ed Boswell of Forum, Donal Daly of the TAS Group, Chuck Lennon of Teamlogic IT and Dave Stein of ES Research. I encourage you to listen to more of what they have to say by visiting our Business Insights Series. We will be adding more in the coming weeks.

Are you ready to cross the Delaware?

2010-07-02T22:41:00.002-04:00

As we head into the Independence Day celebrations it is worth noting how in the winter of 1776 it seemed highly unlikely there would ever be any independence to celebrate. George Washington and his continental army had suffered defeat after defeat and had been forced to retreat through New Jersey into Pennsylvania. Morale was low, desertion high and the prospects for reenlistment remote. But rather than succumb to what seemed the inevitable, Washington decided that winning a victory, any victory and soon was critical to turning things around. To this end he carefully re-examined his options and found a target in the wintering Hessians at Trenton. If he could rally the continental army and get them to Trenton he was confident that surprise and superior numbers would carry the day. So he set off on that famous crossing of the Delaware and the rest as they say is history.

But what has this got to do with sales you might be asking yourself? It is simple really, sometimes in sales when you are in tough times and suffering one deal loss after another, you too need a victory, any victory. Too often the temptation is to redouble your efforts and chase every deal twice as hard in the hope that the law of averages or lady luck will carry the day. I liken this approach to Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg, throwing everything into grand but futile gestures when the chances of success are practically zero.

Rather you need to adopt the Washington strategy. First take a new, hard look at all the opportunities you have. Second dismiss all the ones that you really don't stand a realistic chance of winning. Third park the ones that you have a somewhat reasonable chance at, you can come back to them with fresh vigor when you are used to winning again. Fourth pick that opportunity that you have the best chance of winning and remember it doesn't have to be the biggest or the most strategic but it does need to be one that you have a better than average chance of winning if you over-resource it. Fifth over-resource it.

It has been proven time and again that winning can become a habit and as you head into the second half of 2010, find your Trenton, cross the Delaware and commit your resources to securing the win. Then use it as a springboard to conquer the rest of your territory or segment.

Happy 4th - and may you achieve independence this year!

Who Dares Wins...

2010-06-20T19:46:00.002-04:00

I arrived for a meeting in Toronto which is gearing up for the G20 Summit later this week and when I got to my hotel I was surprised to find the lobby thronging with people and a noise level that would rival most sporting events. No I hadn't come upon the Anti-Globalization crowd getting ready for whatever it is they will be protesting against this time, rather to my surprise it was the "G20 Young Entrepreneurs" who have a side meeting at the summit. If their enthusiasm and high spirits are any indication of their entrepreneurial talents then it is likely I maneuvered my way through some future innovators who will join the likes of Google and Facebook in the pantheon of the truly disruptive.

It was a timely reminder that it is the entrepreneurial spirit that will lift us out of this global recession and catapult us into the next phase of expansion. This spirit, however, cannot and should not be reserved for the basements and garages across the globe or be the preserve of the young and tech savvy. Rather everyone whether in organizations large or small needs to take a new look at how they do business and ask themselves the questions "Does my business model still work?" or "What can I do to shake up the segment I am in?".

We all need to have the same enthusiasm as the "Young Entrepreneurs".

We all need to imbue our organizations with a spirit of "can do!"

Whether it is the World Cup or your Sales Organization - Coaches Matter Hugely!

2010-06-08T10:41:00.003-04:00

The world's greatest sporting event (certainly in terms of numbers watching and participating before anyone starts emailing me about the Olympics or even the Super Bowl - perhaps I should say biggest because obviously greatest is in the eye of the beholder) begins this Friday in South Africa. 32 nations have made it through a two-year+ qualifying process in order to compete for the ultimate prize in international football (or soccer depending on where you are reading this post from!).

Naturally the bulk of the attention is focused on the array of playing talent that will grace this global stage in the coming weeks and the predictions are flying in households across the world about which player will be the ultimate star. Will it be Argentina’s Messi or England's Rooney or Brazil's Kaka or Spain's...well pick any of their midfield or forward line and fill in the blank such is their depth of talent. There is another major factor, however, in who will ultimately lift the 18 carat solid gold trophy and that is the coach!

England has the thoughtful yet no-nonsense Fabio Capello, while Argentina has the legendary player Diego Maradona whose phenomenal exploits on the field are matched only by his erratic and sometimes bizarre actions as national coach, Brazil likewise has a former legendary player Dunga who like Maradona has lifted the trophy as a player but is far more restrained as a coach than his Argentine counterpart. Spain has Del Bosque who must try to live up to his predecessor who won the first major international trophy for Spain during his tenure while Germany's Joachim Loew, pensive and disciplined, knows he has former greats both players and managers who have won the trophy for Germany second guessing his every move. I could go on through each country but my point is a simple one, the coach matters and matters hugely. He has to manage highly paid players with egos to match their pay checks. He has to manage the expectations of his national federation bosses not to mention a small matter of his entire nation. He has to approach each game with a strategy designed to overcome the particular opposition and he has to be ready with plan B and plan C if plan A doesn't work. But ultimately when whistle blows for kick-off it is players that are on the field and all the coach can do is hope they execute according to plan.

Sound familiar to all of you sales managers out there? Coaching sales people is not unlike coaching a world cup team. You need to equip them to be able to execute when they are out in field and you can't play the game for them. Great coaches know who to coach, when to coach and how to coach. At Huthwaite we have identified six characteristics of organizations that have world-class coaching cultures that deliver the trophy time and time again:

They establish the right balance of effectiveness and efficiency.
There is the right management involvement in face-to-face selling.
Consultative and transactional business is separated.
There is a focus on the early stages of the pipeline.
There is an emphasis and a commitment to building, supporting and sustaining a coaching culture.
They ruthlessly reward high performers.

For more detail, read our whitepaper "The Six Characteristics of World-Class Sales Coaches".

And watch out during the world cup because the coaches will make a difference - some will be tactically brilliant or great people motivators some will be tactically naive and others will oversee the implosion of their team's morale - it happens every time - just like in business!

Finding the Pulse

2010-05-30T21:37:00.001-04:00

It never ceases to amaze me how much time we spend on standard operating procedures, process mapping, documentation, flow charts and customer data entry only to find ourselves constantly supplementing it with human intervention to “fill-in the gaps” or to tell the “real story”. Now don’t get me wrong standardization and documentation is important (as long as it leads to greater efficiencies and greater quality control), rather it is the haphazard human intervention that I am pointing to as the problem.

We have struggled through many attempts at unlocking tribal knowledge within organizations and finding a mechanism to effectively enable inter- and intra-functional sharing of the valuable information and insights that exist within the craniums of our best and brightest. Within the enterprise we have witnessed a long line of mediocre and moderately successfully attempts ranging from intranets, chat/discussion boards, portals, email lists etc. And yet when employee surveys are undertaken communication and knowledge sharing always end up being highlighted as significant problems.

Of course the reality is that people mean information that is useful to them and communications that are relevant to them. This level of targeted information sharing and communication, however, has always been somewhat problematic even with the various iterations of personalization technology. Now that we live in world where we filter everything to the most granular level we can and are so used to placing our own explicit information needs and wants firmly at the epicenter of the communications flows we elect to participate in, our demand for instantaneous context and relevancy has become paramount. Everything from iPhone Apps to social media to multiple ways we can personalize the cars we drive in are feeding this desire to adapt the world to our circumstances and not vice versa.

Given this new reality, we face the challenge whether in sales or sales support or product development or any other discipline in an organization as to how we adapt our work practices to support the instant, filtered, personalized universe we now operate in as individuals. The good news is that the innovative use of social media by individuals has driven the next generation of enterprise application development and it is the grass roots if you like who are defining the product specs in a way seldom seen before (yes many organizations have claimed "end-user-driven" development but very few have really delivered on it).

Harnassing the power of professional networking and social media capabilities such a "friending, following, commenting and subscribing" to drive productivity, unlock tribal knowledge and create competitive advantage is not an easy proposition.

At Huthwaite we are delighted to announce Huthwaite Dealmaker 7 which incorporates Dealmaker Pulse, intelligent social networking for sales, with instant objective deal alerts. We believe Pulse will help organizations address the challenges of targeted, instant and relevant information flows and unlock the opportunities for speed, accuracy and execution that they provide.

There is a pulse and it is strong!

I’m Not Into You Being That Into Me

2010-05-23T18:05:00.001-04:00

Guest Blog from Bruce Wedderburn, Vice President, Global Channel Sales at Huthwaite.

Recently I had a call with a sales person, let’s call him Fred, who wanted to discuss how a partnership with his firm could be beneficial for Huthwaite. He was referred to me by a colleague and I was very open to speaking with him. In the first few minutes of our discussion he dropped into the conversation the names of two colleagues from my college drama class, the name of the high school that I attended in Australia and that he, like me, also admired the artwork from another friend of mine who happens to promote her exhibits through social media.

Needless to say, he had my attention. If personalizing the opening of your sales call is a good thing then Fred scored high marks. It was obvious that he had done his homework on who he was calling on. He used all of the available search engines, websites and social media to research his customer. As such, he differentiated himself from other sales person who has called on me. All good things and something that every person in sales should be striving to achieve within five minutes of a first meeting with a potential customer, right?

Maybe not.

Some knowledge isn’t power. While I admit that Fred had my attention I also felt another emotion - that my privacy had been violated. It aroused in me suspicion, and I began quietly asking myself (while Fred was talking about his firm and its advantages) if this was preparation or sneakiness? Was Fred professional or slippery in his approach? Do I admire his customer-focus or start to worry if he also has my bank account number? The more I pondered those questions, the more Fred began to lose a critical element to any sale - trust. It seemed the more he knew about me, the less credibility he had.

Yes, information about all of us is out there and available through clever navigation of the web. For better or for worse, anyone can find out more information about you than you are probably willing to share. But knowing personal information about your prospect doesn’t necessarily mean it will help you make the sale. It may actually do the reverse.

I have spoken about this to other business leaders recently and have heard almost unanimous agreement. It’s not that research before a sales call isn’t important. Just focus it on where it will help you create maximum value for the customer. Your customer doesn’t care if you know her personal interests, but she does care about any insights you can bring to help her manage her operations more effectively. When it comes to making a business purchasing decision, it’s irrelevant to your customer if you know his birthday, have also vacationed in Corsica, are also a member of the Northern Virginia Chamber, used to go to the same college or support the same football team. But he will see it as extremely relevant if you can leverage your research to ask Problem questions that will help him see his business problems in a different light.

What are your thoughts on the use of available media to learn about your prospects and customers? Is there a place for this and where is the line that can be crossed?

Demanding Customers! Aren't we all?

2010-05-21T10:49:00.004-04:00

Henry Ford once said that "a business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large" and many books and case studies have been written on how exceptional service has been a competitive differentiator for a whole host of businesses over the years. The "Nordstrom Way", for example, is one that immediately springs to mind.

Given that nobody will argue with the power of customer service and follow-up in building customer satisfaction and loyalty, I recently asked a gathering of sales professionals what was the one major change they were seeing in buyer behavior and their unanimous answer (and this was a gathering of about 30 individuals) was that the demand for instantaneous support and service had increased dramatically.

The interesting part of this equation is that the expectation of instant service did not just happen post-sale but was happening more and more in the pre-sales cycle. It appears that prospects want to be treated more like they are already customers and want to test things more, gather more information than ever and have any issues resolved yesterday. I don't, however, find this in the least bit surprising.

Our on-demand world with its ability to provide instant gratification by the nanosecond is reorienting our expectations of each other. If I can take a photo with my iPhone one second and email it to someone across the globe a second later then why can't I have a sales person answer a question I have at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon? It is running contrary to the way we operate in our everyday lives to wait until Monday for the reply. This is putting an immense amount of pressure on sales people and other support resources, but what to do?

Well I believe, just like anything else, you need to first accept the reality of the situation and secondly get ahead of it.

1. Pre-empt: Leverage the tribal knowledge in your organization and try to capture as many data points from all the different functions (from sales to legal and back) about what prospects are looking for during the sales cycle in terms of information, sample contract terms, demos, access to product etc. and make sure you are as prepared as possible to be able to supply this quickly and easily. Now more than ever is the time to be prepared and have everything at hand - this will reduce scrambling and increase response time.

2. Align: Make sure you spend time with the prospect/customer understanding their expectations of response times, and service and support follow-up. The more you can work with them to categorize and segment the different kinds of needs they will have in terms of urgency the better your organization can respond appropriately. If the customer knows that something they mark or refer to as "Urgent" will get your immediate attention whereas something they mark or refer to as "Important but not urgent" will take a day or two (or whatever timeframe you mutually agreed) their confidence in your organization will naturally increase.

3. Accept: The other important component is to accept that this is the world we live in and look at how you can configure your organization and its work practices to meet these increased expectations of instantaneous service. This may mean that even small businesses or those with limited resources need to look at having people on call in the evenings or weekends to respond not just to customers but prospects too. The beauty of technology is, of course, that this does not necessarily require them sitting at desk as long as they have the mobile tools and access to respond from wherever they happen to be. It also means that sales people need to over-communicate their whereabouts to prospects/customers so if they are out of pocket during a weekend or evening the prospect/customer already knows this and doesn't expect immediate response.

Again the reality (excuse my overuse of the word but I try to only deal with realities!) is that technology is continually evolving our response expectations and we in turn are projecting these expectations onto everyone we come into contact with whether in business or our personal lives. And so our business practices need to adapt to this evolution.

Demanding customers - aren't we all?

There is no future in the past

2010-05-12T07:59:00.004-04:00

Yesterday I was in Dublin, Ireland at a meeting of the Dealmaker Partner Network (DPN) along with the leadership of the TAS Group and Infomentis. This was my first visit to my native land since last year and gave me an opportunity to talk to people and assess the full impact of the recession on this former tiger economy. The prognosis is, unfortunately, not good for the short to medium term future as the country rebuilds (unfortunate choice of words I know) after the bursting of a property bubble that rivaled anything seen in the US or elsewhere.

The papers and the TV stations are full of backward looking introspective pieces on what happened to the economy and why and who is to blame, all valid questions and while I agree with Churchill's assertion that those who fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it there is a greater urgency and I would argue time better spent figuring out where to go from here. Thankfully some efforts are afoot, including a Government sponsored think tank of leading Irish business people and academics who are charged with identifying how to foster and support innovation in Ireland and what industries or market segments Ireland is best placed to service in the future. I am happy to add that my brother-in-law who is CEO of Merrion Pharma, an Irish bio-tech success story that continues to excel, is a member of this think tank.

There are many parallels at the individual business level to what is happening at the national level in countries large and small as they grapple with an uncertain future after the certainties of the recent past turned out to not be certain at all. Businesses need to quickly move from the initial reactive mode that is essential to survival during the first wave of a recession to a more future focused mode that repositions the business for success as a recovery (however slow that recovery may be) begins to take root. There is always a temptation to stay in reactive mode for too long or to forlornly wait for the return of the norm which of course never comes because business is a dynamic organism than evolves and changes, eventually settling into a new norm that marks a new cycle.

Equally sellers need to move out reactive mode and begin equipping themselves for selling in the new norm that emerges from the ashes of the last business cycle. So just as nations and businesses are figuring out where they should focus and what is needed to succeed during this next business cycle, so too should each individual sales person be asking themselves the hard questions:

Will my current skill-set enable me to be successful going forward?
What do I need to do differently?
What changes do I need to make to my daily work practices?
What changes am I seeing in buyer-behavior?

Some of these are addressed in previous postings Death of a Salesman 2.0 and The 21st Century Sales Rep Challenge but I encourage you to spend some time contemplating them. Now is the time to focus forward, be bold and position yourself to be a winner, don't allow too much focus on the past slow you down.

This can be your time!

Noise Annoys

2010-04-30T15:52:00.003-04:00

I have not posted anything this week as I have been away and now as I break that silence I am somewhat conflicted by thought that at least for a few days I added to the silence and not the noise.

My conflict comes from the sheer deluge of information that is flowing through the LCDs of our devices, coming at us from all angles with commentary added at each stop on each digital journey - useful, valuable insights spinning into a vortex along with the midly interesting and the downright inane. The end result of course being noise and when a thousand voices chatter nobody is really heard. And naturally we need to hear that which is worthwhile and could potentially help and enrich us. All of the media and channels of communications now available to us are gifts that we should cherish and use discriminately because if we don't we risk diminishing the importance of the messages they may carry.

But rather than simply draw attention to what I perceive as a problem (I am making no assumptions that you agree with me), I have decided to compile a list of considerations that I and my colleagues will review before blogging or tweeting in future:

Twitter may force brevity but a torrent of pithiness taken in the aggregate can still become a lot of noise
When do we cross over into saying far too much when we really have so little to say?
When something is retweeted and reposted multiple times does the value of the information become unintentionally diminished?
Do we actually pay less attention to something that we see posted/retweeted in multiple places than something we see in one place?
Is the race to be the first to relay a piece of second-hand information, a race always worth winning if it runs the risk of becoming more about the race than the message?
Are any of us listening or are we too busy “communicating”?
When we fulfilled our social media obligations today – did we really add value?

Tell me what you think!

Is it time to raise your head above the parapet?

2010-04-20T14:48:00.002-04:00

The National Bureau of Economic Research, the non-profit group of economists that decides on the official start and end date of recessions, still hasn’t reached agreement on whether it is ready to pronounce the current recession at an end. Naturally the significance of such a non-pronouncement is greater for those with a more academic interest in market cycles than to those with a more business focus who measure the end of a recession by whether their pipelines are showing signs of meaningful growth and deals are actually getting inked.

That is not to say that it wouldn’t be nice if recessions did have neat start and end dates so that you could plan accordingly. The reality is, of course, that those who are quickest to see signs of a downturn and then make the necessary business adjustments early (cost cutting being paramount among them) fare better during that downturn. Likewise those who are first to see signs of recovery and start to refocus on top-line growth early can gain real market advantage in an upturn.

The stronger than expected retail sales results that I talked about in an earlier post are obviously providing the NBER with some real recovery-supporting data, however, the more interesting story is how that sector itself is interpreting the trends.

Retailers are now scrambling to adjust from a bottom-line focus to a top-line one in order to take advantage of any upturn. The Wall Street Journal on April 19th reported that “In a bid to boost sales as consumers cautiously reopen their wallets, some retailers are putting more emphasis on top-line growth in employees' incentive pay and training programs.” The article goes on to report how JC Penny is trying to upgrade store managers sales skills, Home Depot is training cashiers as well as floor staff on selling techniques and Macys is tying more of their exec’s incentive pay to sales growth.

So here you have major players in one sector making bets on the recovery and adjusting their focus accordingly. The reality being that any recovery will likely be slower and less pronounced that we have been accustomed to over the last number of recessions and as a result competition for top-line growth will be particularly intense. As evidenced by JC Penny and Home Depot, some companies understand that the skills of their associates will make the difference. They also understand that selling is no longer a neatly demarked activity practiced only by those with “sales” or “business development” in their job descriptions. JC Penny recognizes that store managers have a critical role to play in coaching sales staff and modeling excellent selling (not to mention customer service). Home Depot has identified that cashiers can also influence buyers at the point-of-purchase.

The more expansive approach to selling that these organizations are embracing is one that I believe will become the new norm. But in order to execute on it organizations will need to equip those in roles adjacent to or supportive of sales with real selling skills. The WSJ piece quotes a consultant Craig Rowley, senior vice president of consultancy Hay Group's retail consulting business, (who) says about 20% more clients have requested his advice on sales training in the past six months, and that such training is increasingly for customer service—a big driver of sales—rather than tasks like restocking.

With risk of sounding self-serving (something I try to avoid on this blog) I can support Mr. Rowley’s assertion by reporting that Huthwaite, which provides sales training to a wide range of verticals, is also already in 2010 (very happily!) seeing a double-digit increase in organizations looking for help refocusing on their top-line and even more pertinent to this post: help in developing the selling skills of more than just their frontline sales people.

This supports my assertion that Sales 2.0 is not just about the technology, it is equally about the expanded nature of sales across roles and the blurring of those roles. Interesting days lie ahead!

Death of a Salesman 2.0

2010-04-14T14:28:00.001-04:00

I came across some interesting questions that are contained in a Teacher’s Guide to the Penguin Edition of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman - that timeless portrayal of the common man as a tragic figure. The questions that the teachers are encouraged to ask of their students before they begin studying the play are:

What is your definition of salesman?
How is a salesman different from someone in another occupation?
What attitudes do you think a salesman should have to be successful?
What attitudes would hinder him?

Interesting questions to which the answers would probably not have differed much were they asked in 1949 when the play debuted or in any subsequent decade up to quite recently. Of course the role has evolved during that time and different approaches and styles have drifted in and out of vogue but what has remained constant is the almost singular nature of the job. The salesperson (not the anachronistic “salesman” as referenced in the question) has always stood proudly on the frontier, eagerly pushing forward with a pioneering spirit, with a preference for working alone and a healthy disdain for bureaucracies or the latest fads that “get in the way” of closing the deal. (Willy Loman, the play’s central figure, would certainly have seen himself like this in the early part of his career).

But now as I reflect on the questions I can’t help feeling that they very neatly and very obviously go straight to the core of the challenges that face sellers in a Sales 2.0, Web 2.0, who-knows-what-else 2.0 world that we find ourselves thrust into. For example in my post on sales and marketing integration I talked about the blurring of lines and how traditional roles were morphing and the implications for the salesperson of the future as a result. If a salesperson needs to develop some online research skills, multi-modal communication skills, targeted marketing skills, and service-oriented skills in order to be able to get to a prospect, close a deal and retain the business then their role is no longer so singular in nature.

And while we have all likely lamented in similar fashion to the play’s central character Willy when he despairs "After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive." (Probably when we have just lost a deal, our flight has been cancelled and we are stuck in the only corner of O’Hare that has nowhere to eat), this is in fact a very exciting time to be in sales and business in general as we begin to engineer probably the biggest paradigm shift of recent history.

But for now – let me turn those questions over to you – how would answer them?

Puttin' on the Ritz

2010-04-12T14:30:00.002-04:00

When the monster in Young Frankenstein began tap dancing and singing "Puttin' on the Ritz" it was the absurd contrast that made the humor. The big hulking monster trying to be Fred Astaire was a riot. Now another former behemoth is trying to put on the ritz too in the effort to turn around its fortunes.

GM has just announced that it is sending some of it Cadillac dealers to sales and customer service training at the Ritz in order to learn from the luxury hotel chain how to capture and delight high end consumers. Don Butler, Cadillac’s newly appointed marketing manager, was quoted in WardsAuto.com as saying “Think about their (Ritz Carlton's) slogan, ‘Ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen,’” Butler says. “So we are working with them, having them help us talk to our dealer partners and emphasize the importance of how you treat your customer.”

Butler believes that the new buyer of luxury automobiles is now far more sophisticated and discerning. I agree as I have outlined in previous posts, however, I believe this holds true for buyers of almost anything not just luxury items. By sophistication Butler means to include education and income whereas my more broad definition of sophistication is centered on the new customer being very well informed about the choices before they ever engage with the vendor.

Either way, GM is obviously discovering that differentiation does not simply lie in the product but in the overall buying and post-sales experience and they cannot rely on brand loyalty if they want to grow again. Again this is something that I believe holds true for the future of the customer/vendor relationship in general.

Now while the experience in luxury car dealerships is often markedly different from that of mid-range ones, it is hardly Ritz-Carlton different wherein lies the challenge for the GM. It will be interesting to see if their investment in upgrading the skills of their dealers works and to see if this becomes a trend as more market segments look at how they can use customer service and experience as differentiators.

And of course what this does highlight for all of us is the ongoing challenge to deliver a highly integrated and encompassing experience both for prospective clients and current clients that brings added value to the products and services on offer - products and services which may not always be as obviously differentiated in the eyes of the client as we would like them to be.

In some ways GMs move may be a timely reminder that we should all consider reaching for our top hat, cane and tap shoes to make sure we are keeping our customers smiling and they can see us working our socks off to delight them otherwise as in the movie, they may well start running towards the exits…

Retail Therapy

2010-04-08T14:58:00.002-04:00

Given that we have almost become conditioned to bad economic news on an almost daily basis, the headlines today trumpeting the strong March results for the retail sector were a welcome departure. The Wall Street Journal reported that with about half of the retail companies on the Dow reporting earnings so far, all but one had beaten Wall Street projections. So considering that consumer spending accounts for nearly two thirds of the US economy perhaps we are seeing the first signs of the general public's inner shopper being released after nearly two years of incarceration.

This all bodes well for a resurgence of B2B spending, right? Well not so fast. The unfortunate reality remains that businesses do not return to discretionary spending as quickly as consumers do. After spending two or more painful years of downsizing, budget cutting and austerity measures in general, most organizations are reluctant to add back cost for two primary reasons. Firstly they want to see more obvious and sustained evidence of an economic turn-around and secondly they want to see how long they can maintain a greatly reduced cost base in order to maximize any profits the recovery may offer them.

What this obviously means for salespeople is that you are going to have to continue to sell in recession-like conditions even after the recession recedes and the recovery grows. By this I mean you are still going to have to continue to work extremely hard to create demand for your product or service and convince your prospect that there is a business imperative to purchase.

If you are waiting for businesses to turn on the spending spigot any time soon you are likely to be sorely disappointed. Instead continue to focus on maximizing and increasing your core business development skills and position yourself to create a steady drip of business – let the others misread the signs and forlornly wait for the deluge.

In Vino Veritas

2010-04-05T17:41:00.002-04:00

In the coming weeks wine buyers and speculators will start buying the 2009 vintage from Bordeaux but will not actually take possession of the final bottled wine for another two years. While this futures market is generally interesting only to a niche audience of wine enthusiasts and investors, there is a tradition that will be worth watching how it plays out this year. Once they set their price for their particular wine, the Bordeaux wine growers never drop the price regardless of the reaction - they will increase it if the demand is great but will never cut the price even when the demand is not there.

How many sellers of any product or service out there can claim to do the same? Given the fall in worldwide demand for wine last year due to the recession the growers will likely be especially careful in setting initial prices this year. Still, even if they end up setting them too high, in accordance with tradition, they will tough it out and hold the price. That takes some metal given that they have nurtured their product through all the variables that Mother Nature can throw at them all year.

So perhaps next time you are getting intense price pressure but really believe in the value of what you are selling, remember the Bordeaux vigneron and his/her determination to hold price and ask yourself why you should act any differently.

Then go buy yourself a nice bottle of Bordeaux to celebrate when you get your price and deliver the value to the client!

Sales & Marketing Alignment?

2010-03-31T10:14:00.002-04:00

Every time the subject of sales and marketing alignment comes up it seems like everyone is in violent agreement (regardless of which of the two disciplines they come from) that this needs to be a priority and the time has come once and for all to get everyone on the same page if not the same team. And yet, this rarely seems to actually happen and so year after year sales and marketing alignment continues to be a conversation topic rather than a strategic imperative. (Of course there are companies who have executed this quite brilliantly but they remain exceptions).

Why is it so hard to accomplish this alignment? It must be hard after all if everyone agrees it should happen but very few attempt it, right? But this is where I struggle because I don’t believe it is that difficult at all. There seems to be a level of deliberate inaction. The reluctance seems to be born out of a fear of role dilution and the steady erosion of traditional lines of demarcation resulting in the blurring of skill-sets and expertise.

In the traditional paradigm everything was relatively neat and tidy. Marketing with their creative talents and distribution channels (mail, email, web, conferences etc.) would create campaigns based around features & benefits and then channel the responses/leads to the sales organization. The sales organization would then initiate contact and begin a sale cycle - two very different skill-sets operating on two very different playing fields. Marketing was the king of the “one-to-many” communication and Sales was king of the “one-to-one” communication.

However, the times they are a changin’ to quote Bob Dylan. The traditional channels for distributing marketing messages are being usurped. Social Media with its intense level of both personal outreach and self-selected communities has created a world where firing off an email marketing campaign (or a snail mail one for that matter) and waiting for the response no longer has the same impact.

In this new paradigm Marketers have to get up close and personal with the target audience and engage directly with them. They have to become more adept at answering questions and providing information to that audience. The handover to Sales is less clean and defined because as I discussed in a previous post, the prospect may be looking to gather a whole raft of information before they ever want to engage with a “sales person”. So where does that leave the Marketer? In reality it means they are likely to have to develop some selling skills and at times kick-off the sales process themselves and if the sale is more transactional in nature it may mean they actually complete the sale. The lines as you see begin to blur significantly.

But what of the sales person waiting for that hot lead from Marketing? Well their world too is being changed by Social Media and professional networking. If the Marketer has kicked-off the sales process by their engagement through non-traditional media like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn groups, YouTube etc. then the sales rep needs to understand the history of that communication and be au fait with these new media and how they are being used by prospects and they need to speak the lingo (oh yes there is a social media lingo). In essence the Marketer and the Sales person need to work collaboratively and overlap like never before. Again more lines are blurring.

The Sales person’s prospecting and engagement with prospects is also changing as I discussed in the post on the 21st Century Sales Rep Challenge. Now that they are required to prospect and engage through all these non-traditional media they have to become adept at provocative, sound-bite sized communications to try and catch the attention of the well-informed prospect who is being deluged by information and outreach from all your competitors. It sounds like the Sales rep needs to develop some communication skills traditionally associated with Marketing doesn’t it? The lines are so blurred now I can hardly see them!

So is it really about Sales and Marketing alignment after all or is it about Sales and Marketing integration? If traditional workflows are being forever altered what does this mean for traditional roles? And let’s face it, there are no more traditional roles than the Sales rep and the Marketer…

Time to Rethink your Sales Force?

2010-03-29T10:31:00.002-04:00

In the ever increasing world of disintermediation where buyers can source information on products or services directly and bypass much of the traditional buyer/seller relationship the need to structure your sales force according to these buying patterns becomes even more crucial.

Neil Rackham and John De Vincentis explored this concept in their prescient book “Rethinking the Sales Force” which was published in 1999 but speaks even more directly to the challenges facing organizations today. One of the central arguments is that you need to segment your sales force according to whether it is a transactional or a consultative sale. This may seem on the surface to be a statement of the obvious but stop for a moment and think about how many sales organizations straddle both and how many sales people will grab transactional business to offset the longer sales cycles of a consultative sale. During the 1990s in sales organizations it was still common to have a percentage of sales people focused exclusively on transactional selling, another percentage focused on consultative selling and then a large chunk in the middle who did both. What has happened, however, over the past number of years is that the middle has started to get squeezed as the percentage of transactional buyers has increased due to all of the factors I listed in a previous blog entry (consumer buying habits infiltrating B2B buying and the ever increasing ease of purchasing driven by technology advances). Equally the consultative side of this equation has also expanded as buyers become more sophisticated at the higher end and look for greater value creation from vendors. They don’t just want to know how your product can help them but they want your insights on their business, the industry and they want you to become the illusive “trusted advisor”. Taken together this puts greater demands on the caliber of your consultative seller and greater strains on your support organization.

So as these two types of sales (transactional vs consultative) become more demarked not less, you need to ask yourself if your sales organization is sufficiently segmented and structured to support both? You further need to ask yourself if your transactional sellers should be more akin to marketers leveraging all of the different web 2.0 marketing channels to reach and service the transactional buyer (this will be a topic for a later post).

As you grapple with these challenges I would recommend reading (or re-reading) Neil and John’s book because the more I look it at it, the more I feel it was ahead of its time in 1999 and the time it was ahead of is now.

Oscar Wilde in the Twitter Age

2010-03-25T17:44:00.002-04:00

I read this article today about how GM is employing people to scour Facebook and Twitter and all the other social media venues in order to be proactive in their outreach to solving customer issues. The idea is to change poor opinions to good ones and good opinions to great ones by going out on the internet and engaging the customer on their turf- whether that is Facebook, Twitter, automotive discussion sites etc. This raises an interesting issue and puts a new spin on the famous Oscar Wilde quote “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about” – in our new social media world there could be something worse and that is being talked about but not being aware of it!

In the article referenced above, the GM “twenty-somethings” are being paid to spend their days surfing Facebook and the other social media (and then they apparently go home and to unwind they catch up with their friends on…Facebook – and our generation is the one who gets accused of never being able to switch off from work but I digress!). Anyway, my point is a simple one, how much information is being shared about our organizations that we don’t know about. How much of this information is influencing the decisions of potential customers that we never even get the chance to engage with. While most of us are not in the position to hire groups of millennials to diligently monitor tweets and posts, we ignore the free flow of information and opinion at our peril. In the end we will all have to dedicate some of time and resources to interjecting into the conversations and promoting/protecting our brand. We have to go where our current and future customers are if we want to engage with and influence them.

The 25 yr GM Social Media Agent quoted sums it up nicely "This is how people go about their lives; they may not want to call in or sit there on the phone," she said. "This is life now."

The 21st Century Sales Rep Challenge

2010-03-23T16:41:00.003-04:00

As a follow-up to my previous post, someone asked me what I thought the main challenge would be for the 21st Century sales rep as we head into the second decade. I see a number of challenges all related to the core issue of the torrents of information that are flowing through our lives on a nanosecond by nanosecond basis. Consider the fact that our consumer buying habits are beginning to inform our B2B buying habits – we comparison shop online, we use our professional and social networks (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter etc.) to get third-party opinions and reviews of the vendors we are considering. We are informed, we know almost everything there is to know about the vendor and their offering before we ever engage directly with them.

Meanwhile on the flip side of this equation, the sales rep is getting up-to-second intelligence on us. They are using business intelligence sites like Jigsaw, OneSource, and Hoovers to figure out who we are and how to connect with us. They are tracking us down on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. They are contacting those who know us (current colleagues, past colleagues, business partners even college roommates!). Their CRM and Marketing Automation systems are feeding them real-time information anytime we come within a click of their website. Just like the buyer knows almost everything about the vendor, they vendor in turn knows almost everything about the buyer before they ever initiate contact.

So back to the original question about what is the main challenge for the 21st Century sale rep – well it can be broken out as follows:

You need to filter all of the information available about the prospect to get to what is actually relevant to the sale (don’t confuse lots of information with useful information)
Maximize every communication with the prospect whether phone, email, face to face (or tweet for that matter) by demonstrating that you are using the information you have about them to create value by aligning your offerings with their business issues and drivers
Make sure all communications are clear and concise (there is too much information noise – buyers appreciate brevity)
Be open and transparent with them – respect the fact that they can pretty much find out anything they want about you so don’t waste their time being opaque or trying to be clever

In essence understand that we all struggle to find clarity in the wall of noise that this 24/7 torrent of information creates and if you can be a paragon of concise, precise, business-aligned communication you can cut through the noise and stand out from the crowd.

Sales 2.0 Conference Debrief

2010-03-22T08:30:00.001-04:00

While attending the Sales 2.0 conference in San Francisco last week a thought struck me. Here we all were gathered to hear about the latest technologies and automation of processes that are revolutionizing how sales & marketing is executed; It is all cloud-based, crowd-sourced, social-media enabled, driven by online tribal knowledge sharing and yet we were all gathered in a very traditional physical conference setting to listen, question, understand and network.

It really brought it home to me that the more we use technology in an intelligent way to automate the processes that underpin twenty-first century customer acquisition, the more we raise the bar for the still necessary occasions when the face-to-face interaction takes places during the complex, solution sale. In other words, because you know more about the customer and the customer knows more about you, your products, your competition, the more you need to differentiate yourself during your interactions by demonstrating a deeper level of understanding of the customer’s business drivers and be able to quickly and coherently outline how your solution can support those drivers.

The fact that you have so much more information at your fingertips about the customer that you have gleaned from Hoovers, OneSource, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Jigsaw as well as your marketing automation system and your CRM and a host of other sources, the greater the onus is on you to use this information effectively and to prepare even more (not less) for the sales call. It means you have to take all of this information and work harder to draw out the themes, read between the lines and even look at the career histories of your customer contacts to establish what is important to them.

Then once you are in communication with the customer regardless of whether it is through email, phone or face-to-face (or even Twitter for that matter) your line of questioning needs to be well-informed, well thought-out and laser-focused. Why? Because it is becoming increasingly clear that as all of these Sales 2.0 technologies and capabilities spread and as information about customers becomes as readily available as it is diverse, the final differentiation between sellers will often come down to their fundamental communication and core selling skills. Sales 2.0 will not compensate for lack of individual sales skills, on the contrary it is only going to expose them and make them more obvious.

So as technology advances and automates the selling and buying processes you need to make sure your sales people are advancing their skills in lockstep.