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.

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.

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.

When it comes to building sales, a structured 12-18-month plan pays dividends.

These days, it’s tough out there. In a lukewarm or sluggish market, it is tempting, perhaps even desirable if you have an antsy Board, to hire your way to growth. Recruiting and retaining top sales talent is a tricky and expensive proposition that only the largest organizations can afford to do well. The reality is that many successful salespeople in these environments are little more than conduits in a chain of well-orchestrated events generated by successful marketing and product development departments.

I’ve heard many sales vice presidents say, “Success has a thousand fathers.” Their success often depends on keeping feet on the street, hiring people who have strong personalities and are good at pushing product in front of customers. In hot markets, it’s hard to fail. However, despite close to 100 years of sales skill development seminars and publications, many people still push what to them looks like, and indeed may be, a hit product. But what if you don’t have the latest greatest “sells itself” product? Or if your “product” is really a service offering, what do you do with sales people who only know how to push product?

We’ve recently gotten reports from two clients that do business with currently distressed sectors of the marketplace—temporary staffing. The sales results for both companies over the past twelve months were rather startling given the doom and gloom we all read in the papers: national accounts are up 15%; there are week-over-week increases in new account acquisitions; and major accounts are up over 25. These are results that would be astounding even during a hot market, not like now, when the bread-and-butter market of their customer base (the construction industry) is lagging.
Two things stand out about these companies: their service offerings are very straightforward—providing workers—and easily copied so there is plenty of competition; and, they have both taken methodical, almost textbook approaches to developing their salespeople and sales managers. The approach has been the recipe for their success.

For those companies that don’t currently have products and services that sell themselves, acquiring new customers and growing existing customer relationships requires a consistent methodical approach—and a heavy dollop of strategy (which we won’t tackle today). This path requires planning, patience—and, most importantly, getting your CEO on board.

Here are a few of the steps toward laying out an approach that provides results:

1. No matter what sales process you choose, successful implementation requires first that you plan the journey well. Define your vision and mission with the mindset of an entrepreneur and customer’s point of view. Set solid, and real, twelve-month objectives that are measurable, and that you’re willing to stand behind. Develop real strategies that will inform your organization how to meet the objectives. And plan your projects and initiatives well, so that you stay focused on those strategies—not the shiny balls that appear along the way.
2. Train your executive and management team in your sales process first, and then train them on how to coach and manage the process. Inevitably, our initial conversation with the Vice President of Sales starts with a request to train the salespeople. Since a large part of what we do is training, this is of course a natural request. However, we find that in close to 100% of situations that we could train the salespeople till the cows come home and nothing much will change. It’s the sales managers and sales executives who must get out front of the curve, learn the process, learn how to coach the process and lead the way. Once your management team is up to speed, then, and only then, roll out your sales process and train the salespeople.
3. Even though your sales managers have become process experts, measure and pay them for their coaching capability, not their ability to rescue the deal. Your sales managers are first and foremost your coaches. Nothing kills momentum and dumbs down your sales force quicker than a team of heroic sales managers.
4. Don’t create process silos where none currently exist. CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and HRM (Human Resources Management) need to be tightly linked to your company’s sales process. In other words, measure and compensate only for the behavior you desire. Salespeople are coin-operated. They will do what you pay them to do.

You should count on a period of 12-18 months from conception to full implementation. This may seem unreasonably long in a dynamic market, especially when it’s so easy to just go out and purchase a training class, but following a well-planned process and not skipping the steps will pay dividends you can only dream of today. In company after company, in industries ranging from software to staffing to agriculture, over the past 28 years, we have found that taking this type of methodical process produces both change and big results.