The Sales Café

By Jim Horan

It must be something about my background or upbringing. When I hear “supervision” and “accountability,” I go to the negatives. When I think of supervision, I think of hall monitors, playground supervisors and prison guards. When I think of accountability, I think of disappointment, warnings, bruised egos, reprimands, enforcement, retribution and big brother.

If you find yourself obsessed with accountability and supervision, I question five things:

1. Did you hire the right people?
2. Do your managers know how to lead?
3. Are you focusing on the right things?
4. Does everyone in your business understand who the customer is and what benefit the customer is expecting from your products and services?
5. Does everyone in your organization understand his or her role, responsibilities and outcomes?

These are big questions. Few of us, if pushed to answer honestly, would be able to give a resounding yes to all of them. So the question is, do you have processes to assess these issues, and action plans for continuous improvement? If not, are you just hoping the problems will go away?

So how do we manage a sales force we don’t see eight hours a day? What is the proper role of supervision and accountability in this 21st century?

My philosophy is simple: Help people be the best they can be and find the right work! I believe when people find the right work, in the right environment, properly encouraged and supported, they need little supervision. They manage themselves and hold themselves accountable to a much higher standard than you or I ever would. Your top producers do this; you just wish everyone did.

This type of relationship, in my opinion, starts with ensuring the people you select truly understand the nature of the work they are going to do and know it’s a good fit for them. How do you do that? Explain the job, the role, the work. Explicitly describe who your business serves and what your clients expect. Be very clear about the outcomes and results you expect, and share stories about people who have been successful and why.

Now here is a radical suggestion! When you think you have found the right person and you’re ready to make an offer, ask him or her to write a business plan — concise and to the point — for the new job. Buy a day’s worth of his or her time at market rates, and don’t be cheap.

Here is what you will learn from this process. The individual will either embrace this process or not. That alone will tell you a lot. When you read the plan, you will learn if he or she heard, understood, agreed and knew how to pursue the opportunity. You will also learn a lot about how he or she thinks and plans to act. You will be able to make a much more informed decision about whether this person is a good fit for your company. And you will have a much better idea of how much energy you will have to spend supervising and holding this individual accountable.

Enforcement is a drag; leave it to the police! Encouraging, supporting and watching your people grow and prosper is the ultimate work. Make better hires, and maybe “supervision” and “accountability” will drop from your vocabulary.

Jim Horan is the president and CEO of The One Page Business Plan Company.

ELA's lead generation survey results are in!  Nearly all respondents are from or with sales organizations where they are responsible for the relationship or partnership with their customers. Everyone expects salespeople to generate new leads, every month.

The best return on time invested included local networking/public speaking and asking for referrals.  Over 80% thought the lead generation approach used was vital or important to developing trust.

Respondent advice on lead generation ideas sorted into four primary buckets.

• 1) Reward lead generation activity as part of overall sales process
• 2) Focus on the Customer in all interactions
• 3) Be professional including making and keeping commitments to prospects
• 4) Always provide value by knowing your product and value proposition

Since relationships are based on trust, then the lead generation approaches like asking for referrals, networking, and public speaking must cultivate trust between the prospect and the sales person.  Let's create a list of tips for each approach that are both effective and build trust.  I will post a short ELA RTG blog entry on each approach over the next few weeks.  You can enhance the approach by adding your comments and ideas. 

Thank you to all who participated.

 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!

Outside-In selling -- may the best product win . . . not always!
by Jeff Williams

Second in a Series
As part of the on-going discussion about how an Outside-In sales organization operates, let’s talk for a moment about the importance of the product. 

Many companies -- more than would like to admit it -- believe that customers buy from them because they have the best product in the market.  Well, in some cases (like advanced technology) this philosophy can appear to work for a while, luring the unwitting company down the road of complacency (best case), or the road of arrogance (worst case).  In either situation, the sales successes that are enjoyed early in the game tend to disappear, leaving sales management scratching their heads and asking, “What happened to our lead?”  

The piece that can be easily overlooked during the “we have the best product in the market” exuberance phase is that customers rarely buy based upon who has the best product.  Instead, we find that they are more often looking for a supplier who demonstrates a true understanding of their business and can help them solve underlying business problems.  And, solving complex business problems requires more staying power than simply having the current hot product.  

An Outside-In sales organization builds an understanding of the customer through active listening, and finds ways to strengthen the relationship with the customer over time.  By building trust with the customer, the Outside-In sales team can effectively remove perceived risk in the customer’s purchase decision-making process.  Whether the sale is for something as simple as a single copy machine for the shipping dock, or as complex as a new company-wide accounts payable system, the customer is interested in a lot more than just the initial purchase.  Aspects like long-term reliability, serviceability, and alignment to company values can all play a big role.  Many times the deciding factor comes down to something as simple as how easy it is to “do business” with you.  Rather than the performance attributes or feature set of your product, a mundane thing such as flexible credit terms that fit the customer’s buying process could spell the difference between Deal or No Deal.  

As a case in point: a Fortune 50 computer company I worked for was being consistently beaten by its arch rival in the scientific server market place. Despite having a superior product, customers were beginning to turn to the competitor as a better alternative, and this was causing some consternation for our sales and marketing organization, since we could not fathom why customers were gravitating towards a clearly inferior product. Well, as it turned out, our quoting process had become so bureaucratic that turn around time on new quotes had grown to longer than 14 days. By asking customers what was important in making their purchase decision, our competitor discovered our Achilles heel, and quickly developed a streamlined quoting process that could produce a quote to customers in less than 48 hours. Needless to say, the competition continued to take away market share until we woke up and addressed the real underlying issue. Thus, by steadfastly staying in tune with the unique needs of customers, the Outside-In sales organization – in this case, our competitor – stayed one step ahead of us, even though we had the best product.

I would love to learn about your own experiences with an Outside-In sales organization, so please let me know your thoughts, and what examples you have seen.

At some point in their evolution, all sales organizations go through a thorough analysis of their sales process, with the goal of maximizing the efficiency of pulling customers through their new and finely tuned sales cycle. The prevailing notion is that if we just understood our selling process better – what the steps are, who performs them, the timing of each step, etc. – then we could optimize our selling process, thereby improving our closure rates and overall quota achievement.  Viewing the world in this way – what is best for us – is what I call an Inside-Out approach.

Instead, we should recognize that the only reason that our selling process even exists is because our customers have a buying process that they are trying to get through as efficiently as possible.  Once we make this realization, things can really start to fall into place.  Rather than trying to find all the ways to more efficiently pull our customers through our selling process (Inside-Out), we should focus on how well our selling process aligns to our target customer’s buying process, which is what I call Outside-In.

Let’s take an example of a potential sale near the close of our fiscal quarter (end of January) for $150k worth of forming equipment for a small lamp shade assembly plant.  In the normal Inside-Out (sales cycle) approach, our sales team would naturally be fixated on convincing the prospect how our forming machine is superior to anything on the market, and at a price that beats the competition.  We would focus on moving the customer through the stages of our sales process, including: 1) confirming that they need a new forming machine, 2) verifying that our machine meets all their requirements,  3) checking that the price of our solution fits within their budget, and 4) that we can deliver our solution in a timely manner.  Sounds like we have this deal in the bag, right? 

Wrong. 

If we had been focused Outside-In rather than Inside-Out, we would have put ourselves in the shoes of our customer.  Doing so would have indeed verified all the steps above, but would have also uncovered the fact that any purchase for over $100k requires Board approval, and that the Board only meets four times per year, just after the close of each calendar quarter.  Since that meant the Board held their recent meeting about a week ago, we now have no chance of closing this deal until next quarter!  Bummer . . .

This is Part 1 of a continuing series on Outside-In thinking.  Please let me know what you think – post your own “ah-ha” moments in the comment field – and stay tuned for more to come.  

While economists have recently announced that there has been a global recession, and that it will extend into 2009, most business people have seen two dramatic dips, one last year and one now.

As with all recessions, amidst all the doom and gloom, there are interesting opportunities. For entire sectors of the marketplace, in all lines of business, companies and people are taking the steps to remake themselves now, launching the necessary strategies that will initiate a strong recovery. These are smart moves, because any company that wants to stay in business beyond this current economic maelstrom needs to create a plan to find new business and grow.

It could be the recession or just the usual forces that propel change that are stressing your company. Telltale signs might include:

• Sales opportunities of any size become challenging to close, because the market is so volatile;
• Customers are not buying at all; and,
• High commissions have spiraled downward, adding a level of personal stress to salespeople and resulting in them not keeping an eye on the ball.

When times are tough, companies basically fall into two camps: either 1) they cut back to stay profitable; or, 2) they lose the ability to make a profit and have few prospects in the pipeline. Obviously, it’s better to be in the first camp.

Take Action
Here are a few steps you can take during the next six months to navigate this uncertain economic climate.

1. Put together a good plan that deals with reality and determines your next arc of growth. Be honest about your company’s current strengths and weaknesses. This is essentially a recovery plan. It needs to be well thought out and well researched. This is a very shrewd investment of time and resources.
2. Assign your sales force the tasks to execute this plan. Make this a team effort. Have your sales people use the extra time they may have now to find new markets and do the critical on-the-job research.
3. Assess your people and fill the gaps. But, only fill the gaps, focusing on your plan instead of general “need to get better at selling” initiatives.
4. Invest in your personal leadership development. This is not the time to start building basic skills in your people – you need to lead them through the battle.