The Sales Café

Here's something simple: how to read your customer's mind. Can you read it with certainty? Of course not. But can you read it with some insight? Absolutely.

Think about this for a moment: many of us rely on good psychics and fortune tellers who are right often enough to make a better living than most ordinary people. They're called stock analysts and brokers. When they're really good, we can make a fortune, or at least quite a few bucks on their predictions. How do they do it? There's nothing like a couple of well placed questions coupled with very good observation skills to predict the future.

What does this have to do with selling? Everything, really. The art of successful selling - and it most definitely is an art when it's successful - relies heavily on the skills of questioning and observation. We know that these are two pillars of selling, but what about before the sale, or aside from actual customer conversations?

Today, I'm going to focus on the most difficult customer mind-reading skill. This is the skill of preparation: studying public information, recognizing patterns, and making intelligent deductions (guesses) that more often than not allow you to peer into the mind of your customer before you ever meet them.
First, how do you prepare for a sales call? Do you psyche yourself up with positive self-talk? Do you spend your time on LinkedIn figuring out who the person is you're meeting and who you might know in common? Do you read 10-Ks and 10-Qs, shareholder letters and websites, competitive analysis and news reports?

Let's hope you're doing all of this and not winging it out there with all the other amateurs. Seriously - you are meeting at the buyer's pleasure, hoping to discover their needs and interests, so that you can earn the right to talk about your solutions. You need to be in the zone. You need to be on-message. And you need to be prepared. This is especially true during the opening minutes of an interaction with a buyer.

Download your customer's 10-Ks, 10-Qs and annual reports. In the management discussions and shareholder letters you will find your customer's view of the road behind and the road ahead - recent and long-term results, and short- and long- term goals. Did you know that you can also find out what your customer gets paid to do? Download the proxy statement and read the compensation committee report.

Now for the mind-reading part. What do the top executives get paid to do? What executive team (plus the direct reports, and the folks who report to those direct reports) ever focuses on anything other than what they get paid to do? The first answer gives you a significant glimpse into the mind of your customer. The second helps you check your assumptions.

While you're psyching yourself up and trolling LinkedIn for your next call, spend the time to research the public reporting and answer those two questions. Use your answers to prepare how you will explore your customer's interests when you meet them.

I'm interested to know how this works for you on your next few sales calls. If it does anything less than focus you and your customer on what's important to them and doesn't cause a few of your competitors to melt into the woodwork, I'll be very surprised.

We've been following the whole Apple "Antennagate" story today, mostly for fun (since we got the new iPhone 4 the first day, thankyouverymuch) and partly because we recently wrote about Apple being a company that espouses the Outside→In™ approach in its development.

Today's press conference about the situation and Apple's response to the problems of the antenna was part of the company's strategic management of its user base. It does beg the question (for us, at least): Is Apple Outside→In™ when it comes to customer service?

[Click here for the whole press conference as it was live blogged on www.engadget.com.]

First, we believe that, like the iPad, the iPhone 4 is the result of Apple's Outside→In™ approach to development and the market. It has features that answer our needs in a smartphone and more. Is it the best smartphone? After certain specific benchmarks, that title is subjective, and, the "best in technology" title only stands until the next leading edge product comes out. It seems that antennas are part of a design flaw in smartphones in general and something that everyone is working on. "Less dropped calls" is every cell phone company's marketing line, which indicates that there are some to begin with. Anyone that says that the Blackberry has no dropped calls is lying, whether your service is AT&T, Verizon or any of the other carriers.

For some people, Jobs' response was not enough of an apology and more of a reluctant, and arrogant, admittance to the problem. Let's get some perspective on this, Apple's faulty cell phone antenna is not akin to Toyota's sticking gas pedal or BP's gushing well. Those faulty designs require continued apologies. No one is dying due to a dropped call (we hope). 

From our perspective, Jobs was the mouthpiece for a large group of engineers who seem to be dedicated to their own mission of providing a well-developed product by listening to their customers. If they didn't listen, there wouldn't have been a press conference today.

Now, how do we get that free bumper case?

Today, Erik Sherman writes about Apple's success with the iPad on BNET.com and we think it's a perfect example of the Outside→In™ approach in action:

 Apple's iPad Is Wildly Successful Because... Apple Actually Thinks About Users

Though Mr. Sherman is referring to product development, Apple's combination of development and marketing translates to an enormous rate of sales for the company. He lists some of the reasons for Apple's home run with the iPad:

"Apple succeeds because it delivered the following:

• an easy interface
• uncomplicated operation
• relatively light weight
• long battery life"

It's not the first time Apple has struck a chord with consumers. (How many iPods do you have in your home? At last count, there are 5 in mine.) It's amazing what can happen when you listen to your customers--in this case, an entire marketplace--and act accordingly. Eventually, we will all be working on Pads, whether they carry the Apple logo or not.

Organizational silos. Every company - even relatively small ones - have them. And they can be insidiously destructive, resulting in behaviors or results that are inconsistent with the overall goals of the company, and almost certainly not aligned with delivering maximum value to customers. 

A simple example is the all-too-common customer "tell your entire life story again" experience when being transferred from the customer service center (set up to handle sales level issues) to the technical support organization.

You know the drill. You just finished plowing through the bewildering choices in the automated telephone system, supplying a myriad of product numbers, contact info, etc., and after all your efforts, you finally get transferred to the tech support team. The person who answers is very cordial and sounds genuinely interested in solving your problem, but quickly states, "Before we get started, can I get a few basic pieces of information?" Naturally, the questions she poses to you are the same ones you just supplied to the automated system. Sound familiar? Ah, the power of silos.

If such obvious hand-off issues are so prevalent, what causes them, and, more importantly, how can they be fixed? 

One of the biggest enablers of corporate silos is the relentless drive for measureable results, which drives management teams to set clearly defined metrics fully owned by a single executive or department. The trouble is, most interactions with customers cannot be handled by a single department, and that is when the silos begin to rear their ugly head in front of the customer.

The simple solution?  Walk a mile in your customer's shoes! 

This is easier said than done, however, since each functional organization is typically ‘maxed out' already, doing their best to perform against their own silo metrics.  And, to make matters worse, it is rare to find a single organization or manager that owns the entire customer experience until you get to the CEO, which is clearly too late.

Let's look at how one Global 100 computer manufacturer successfully broke though its own silo problem and set industry-wide advances in motion. A major business unit of this company produced desktop computer systems aimed at fairly technical customers such as research labs, testing facilities and scientific universities. Given the technical background of the target audience, little attention was paid to "ease of use," and a typical system would arrive at the customer site spread across seven separate boxes, with more than a dozen user manuals. The customer was expected to assemble all the components correctly to make the entire system work. Not too surprisingly, the company began to see a drop-off in market share as users began to share their customer experience frustrations on the company's technical forum website.

Immediate attempts were initially made to "fix" the problems, but a traditional (silo) approach was used, holding each functional executive accountable for fixing his or her specific piece of the puzzle. No appreciable progress was made on turning around the sagging sales until the business unit executive in charge of the P&L for the overall system made a bold move.

The executive presented each of his senior managers a personal challenge. He instructed the executives to place an order for a system, just like a customer would, have the system delivered to their homes, and then assemble the system without any external help. Out of a staff of 11 senior managers only 2 were successful in getting the system up and running at their homes. Many encountered errors in original order configuration, resulting in the delivery of a system that was missing critical components. Others had more luck, and all the right pieces did arrive. However, that is when the organizational silo effects became apparent. Out of the seven boxes that arrived, there was no box or manual marked "Open Me First." In addition, each component came with multiple cables, but no overarching picture showing where each cable was supposed to go. In short, a frustrating experience for even the most technically inclined customer.

As a result of this eye-opening exercise, each unit leader was able to witness first-hand the negative impact of optimizing business processes by silo. Implemented changes included using "Read Me First" shipping documents, plus the now ubiquitous color coded cabling and connectors. Within six months, market share not only recovered to previous levels, but grew by 2 percentage points.

The moral of the story?  Take a walk in your customer's shoes every once in a while if you want to quickly identify where to apply your energy.

People buy from people. Trite but true, whether it's B-to-B, B-to-C, complex or simple business relationships. Successful salespeople never lose sight of that little fact. Talk to one and ask them. Look in the mirror and ask yourself!

What complicates things is how many options there are for meeting people, from Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook to plain old networking meetings held by local organizations, and everything in-between. Perhaps no matter how much your company spends on marketing, sooner or later, the buyer is going to check YOU out, on their own, without your knowledge. They want to see if you're the kind of person they want to do business with.

Knowing that, how will you position yourself? Do you want to portray a conservative persona on LinkedIn and a cool one on Facebook? Would you rant on Twitter or "keep your powder dry" knowing that your potential customer might be shopping you instead of your company? One thing is for sure, when everybody shops the Web, your presence is required and your privacy is not the buyer's concern. 

Companies spend an enormous amount of energy and money trying to control the buyer-seller conversation on their websites. However the trip shoppers take, of their own choosing, on their way to a buying decision tells us an interesting story. When we analyze the traffic on our own site, we see people moving from the home page to the blog, to the team page and then out of the site, moving on definitely to LinkedIn and probably to Facebook or Twitter. I think this is common.

So, the moral is YOU, whether you are the owner, CEO, VP Sales, or an account executive, may have more to do with how enticing your product or service looks to the buyer than any feature, benefit or research paper that the marketing department can come up with.    

This past week I had a very enlightening conversation with a friend, Steve Diller, who is a well known market strategy expert and the author of Making Meaning, about go-to-market strategies companies need to employ in this stage of the economic cycle. I think, as many of you will agree, that we seem to have turned the corner toward recovery, and that some, or most companies are starting to see improving sales. His view was that it is fifteen seconds past midnight, or thereabouts, on the new day of the economy and it's time to get prepared for the expansion that is coming next. I think that is a perfect assessment of where we are right now.

The last time the economy was in this exact spot, at least in Silicon Valley, was perhaps June 2002. As I look back over the the past seven years of client work, I see a clear pattern. Companies that got their sales planning together early, and whose sales process, systems, and methodology were in tune, came out of the box early and benefitted the most from the last expansion cycle and have survived the downturn relatively well. Those that dithered, or who tried to squeeze the last ounce from their tired old strategies, are dying. Let's learn from them.

Sales Executives! Your companies are entrusting the successful road through the sales recovery to you. Many things you thought you knew are now in question. And we all know the world has changed in many subtle and not-so-subtle ways since late 2007. Most certainly, the sales methodologies of the big expansion will not work in the recovery phases of the cycle, or not work as well. B2B and B2C buying relationships are greatly altered today. Who would have thought that your credibility may rest in Linked-In or Facebook?

A solid vision, structured sales planning, and a healthy dose of Outside-In sales methodology is critical, perhaps more than anything else right now. If you want to take full advantage of the recovery, make sure you have these pieces in place, or get help from those who can help you most. Most of us prosper on the way up, so throw the covers off your head; it's very early in the morning but it's time to do something.

 Managing Outside-In selling means staying plugged into the real world

by Jeff Williams

In parts 1 and 2 of the blog series on Outside-In selling, we discussed the importance of putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and viewing everything your sales force does from an “outside-in” perspective. This includes the realization that the sales cycle must be aligned to the customer’s buying process, and that having a superior product does not always make you the winner. In this installment, we examine the ramifications that the Outside-In selling approach has on sales management behavior.

Although it may sound like a simple-minded cliché, in an Outside-In sales organization the customer is truly King. This can be unnerving for sales managers, who may have built their success on always having the answers to guide their sometimes fledgling sales representatives. However, in an Outside-In sales organization, everybody needs to listen to the customer. Yes, everybody . . . even the highly experienced sales managers. Since the world is ever changing, listening has emerged as one of the most significant skills that separates reasonably successful sales managers from stellar performers. 

Listening to customers directly is crucial to maintaining an understanding of what is relevant to the target customer base -- what business challenges they are wrestling with, and how your product/services portfolio can help address those needs. In addition, sustaining a close connection with customers is essential to understanding how your portfolio may need to change to continue to be relevant and competitive.  For many sales managers, face time with customers tends to diminish over time as internal administrative duties tend to consume more and more of their day, leaving less time for direct customer interaction. This raises two challenges for the sales manager. 

First, a conscious effort must be made by the sales manager to get out of the office and spend time with customers in the field. Scheduling a minimum number of sales calls per week is a good way to make sure these opportunities don’t begin to trend towards zero.

Second, and at times more difficult for the sales manager’s ego, the manager must begin to rely on what she is hearing from her sales reps as a window into what is happening in the real world. Listening to sales reps can bring much needed information “from the front lines” regarding competitive shifts and new unmet market needs. The trick is to develop a viable mechanism to encourage sales reps to share this information, without fear of reprisals.

One technique I witnessed that was very successful was the following: 

During the annual sales award dinner at a Fortune 500 company, impressive looking glass trophies were handed out to the top 50 sales reps, based upon criteria such as highest year-over-year growth, most dramatic competitive turnaround, and best team player. OK, so far, nothing out of the ordinary, every company bestows these awards to motivate its sales reps. What came next was different, however.  Following the individual recognition awards, all 320 sales managers in the region, from district managers to the region EVP were called up to the stage to receive a smaller, but nevertheless substantial looking trophy. On each trophy was a short, but revealing sentence:  “Sales Rep Opinions Valued Here.” The sales managers were instructed to go back to their offices and place the trophy in front of their telephones as a constant reminder to the importance of listening to their sales reps.  Needless to say, the distribution of the trophies brought a cheer from the entire audience of sales reps, and ushered in a new era of communication between sales managers and their representatives.

Let us know how you view the topic of sales managers staying in touch with their sales reps and customers by taking just a few minutes to answer this quick 5- questions survey.  In return, we will send you the results.   

Pleae click here to take the Outside-In Survey!