Introducing the Huthwaite Center for Research!

We are so happy that you found us, continue to follow us, and want to stay updated with all of Huthwaite's "happenings."

We have decided to focus our efforts on our new Center for Research, and will be posting blog updates on it's homepage, along with tips on how to deal with the new buyers out there today.
  

The Huthwaite Center for Research website and blog can be found here: http://huthwaiteresearch.com/

Full details and Press Release can be found here: http://www.huthwaite.com/content/announcing-huthwaite-center-research 

Our blog might have changed, but our mission stays the same. Focus on the Buyer.

Your Biggest Competitor Revealed....

And its name is INDECISION!

While there are many things that impact a sales cycle, indecision can be one of the most negative. Why? Well for a number of reasons:

• it often takes a long time to reveal itself
• it is often embarrassed about itself and so disguises itself with continuations that create a false sense of momentum in the sale
• it can strike unexpectedly at the very last moment of the sales cycle when the contract has cleared everyone including legal but never gets signed
• it is constantly heavily influenced by the dynamic nature of internal and external business conditions

None of the above is news to you, I am sure, so why am I highlighting INDECISION as your biggest competitor? Well let me take a quote from a Reuters news story that appeared online this morning at 10am:


"The benchmark 10-year Treasury note, flat in early dealings, rose modestly after news that new jobless claims last week were higher than forecast and firmed again on lackluster data on regional manufacturing and home sales. It was up 7/32 in price at mid-morning, with its yield easing to 1.95 percent from 1.98 percent late on Wednesday.


On the other hand, the March leading economic indicators index rose 0.3 percent. Economists had forecast a 0.2 percent increase. The index rose 0.7 percent in February."


Huh? A couple of weeks ago there seemed to be a lot of good, leading indicators that the economy here in the US was starting to improve but in the last few days there are signs of another slowdown. And yet the quote above seems to say that some indicators are down but another set are slightly up on forecast but down on the previous month...I hope you are following me as I am beginning to confuse myself!

The point of all this is simple; how do you make decisions in a climate like this? Its like riding on the roller-coaster "Space Mountain" at Disney (which for those of you who have not had the pleasure is completely in the dark) you don't really know until the last second whether you are about to go flying down, up or around.

So it is pretty obvious to see why INDECISION has taken over as our toughest competitor. What's the solution? It really comes down to whether your sales people have the skill and business acumen to be able to demonstrate to prospective customers the imperative for taking action and the value that will be derived from it. You can only overcome INDECISION if you are credible and knowledgeable and can demonstrate that you understand their business, the sector and the constraints they are operating under. Building upon that you need to be able to work with them to uncover the issues or opportunities that have enough urgency or upside for them to take action on and then you must follow through with speed and efficiency to ensure INDECISION doesn't get a chance to reinsert itself into the process.

Vigilance is everything so go into each sales cycle with your eyes and ears open, watching and listening for the tell tale signs of  INDECISION because believe you me, it's lurking there somewhere...

The One Sales Trend That Demands Attention

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!

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!

Can Sales & Marketing Change?

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!).

The Real Challenge

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.

Sales Strategy and Customer Decision Making

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?

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.

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

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.

Seeking Warm Weather or Real Differentiation

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:

Why is winning back to back Super Bowls so difficult?

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.

No Barriers

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.

Rad eCommerce Experience

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.

Eating Our Own Dog Food and Loving It!

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.)

Impacting the Recovery

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.

Let's Be Honest: Excellence Takes Hard Work

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.

The Shortcut Culture

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.

E.I. is O.K.

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.

Insight & Foresight

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:

Are you ready to cross the Delaware?

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.