salespodder: sales blog with musings and tips from inside sales

This is a book written by an American academic called Joseph Stiglitz.  I came across a podcast of the author talking about what he was trying to get across, citing numerous examples of his proposed reform agenda.

He’s canny, in maintaining a nice balance of argument, so that you never quite tell if he’s for or against.  Taking it as an inevitable force, he instead focuses on how to make it work ‘better’’.

I listened originally stimulated by a module I myself studied eons ago at uni on ‘international business’, in the days when my only exposure to China or India was their wonderful food (Peking duck pancakes & Baltis simultaneously changed my life!) and bewildering spin bowlers.  Yet it wasn’t long before I spotted a useful concept to help my selling.

I’m aware of a recent drive by one of my customers to develop their sales people.  They’ve identified eleven elements of the role where capability can be measured and so improved.  One such element is “Be A Trusted Advisor”.

Stiglitz believes Globalisation should bring innovation and creativity.  He cites the area of intellectual property as being what economists call “inefficient”.  (As I’m loving Tim Harford’s book, Undercover Economist, at the moment, I’ll use his definition of an inefficient market; one where “we can think of something that would make at least one person better off without making anyone else worse off.”)

Why restrict knowledge?  What’s the benefit of giving a single firm monopoly over use of knowledge and so by definition, give them a monopoly?  We all know monopolies are bad, right?  Bad for society yes, but the large corporations that hold them? Not really….how many monopolistic outfits are places of dynamic innovation, where profits allow more creativity?  Can’t really think of one myself…… and he examines drug developers that focus more on lifestyle, rather than life-saving pills, when a malaria drug should benefit us more than hair-replacement therapy.

He then quotes an American President, Jefferson; ‘Knowledge is like a candle, when one lights another it does not diminish light of the first’.

So I got to thinking how being seen as a trusted advisor fits in with this ethos.  Your client gets to view you as someone to work with long-term when you start benefiting them from the knowledge you pass on.  Even better when your knowledge spurs their innovation and creativity, and you can demonstrate that fact.

Battling against 70 mile-an-hour gusts in London the other day was a bit like walking at 45° when Cape Town’s Doctor visits, in that it wasn’t at all cold.  But I thought I’d treat my self to a proper coffee at a place called Madiera Cafe near Waterloo East station.  The Undercover Economist would love to know about this place, given his constant reference to the Waterloo coffee trade, as the coffee is great, yet stunningly inexpensive.

I noticed something new on the wall there, which was a quote from Gandhi.

“A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favour by serving him. He is doing us a favour by giving us an opportunity to do so.”

What a belter to remind people of when they lose site of what will keep them in bread and water over some typically ’sales prevention’ behaviour.  I naturally wondered if this could indeed be by the man himself, so googled more decent background from about:quotations, and happily found it is indeed so.

I’ve used a particular Gandhi quote myself since coming across it in a purpose-built training centre at an email security business, where on every wall they had a huge lettered quote from someone inspirational.  Their Gandhi contribution was the “Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress” one, which I always use to encourage my guys to challenge me.  Interestingly, I was at a place the other day where the in-house staff development-cum-recruiter guy (called Simon) spent 25 minutes trying to persuade his Head of Sales to promote someone.  It featured the contrary-argument style which would make Radio 5Live’s Nicky Campbell gush with pride.  Simon simply never took no for answer, challenging his boss by giving the other side of the coin view at least a dozen times.  I was very impressed.  And at the end, he accepted he wouldn’t get his way, but gained respect from the big man and went away wondering how to re-convince at a later stage.

It’s a cliché for sure, how many times have I heard someone in sales say “I learn something everyday”.  And then I wonder, ‘yeah? what did you learn yesterday?’

I got a spam-type mail from an English outfit called Sales Sense written by a bloke called Clive Miller.  They seem like trainers, although I can’t remember subscribing to their ‘ezine’!  Anyway, I did read down for the 11 tips on personal development.

They mainly tried to jolt you into action with things like half of what you know in your chosen field will be obsolete inside two years, China & India are pumping out grads that’ll take food from your table, that kind of thing.

But then one point did strike me as a winner.  It was point 11:

“Keep a learning record. Write down headings to represent the things you learn and re-visit your log regularly. Doing so will freshen your memory. After a while you will own the learning.”

Through my subscription to cool US rag Selling Power, I got an enticing offer to read all about the 100 key questions SFA consultants are paid to ask, courtesy of one of the plethora of crm vendors; Entellium.

Was this was an innovative angle in the tired marketing world of crm, or was it merely re-pumping an old trombone? So I downloaded. I’ll try an make this next bit as objective as possible. Mainly because someone, somewhere, probably fairly junior, sweated blood and tears, more than likely a lot done in their own time, to craft this. And endeavour is something I always approve. As for impact? Geez. Here’s the twelve categories into which questions are sorted:

1. Solution Depth & Deployment Options
2. User Interface
3. Activity Management
4. Marketing Capabilities (getting bored yet?)
5. Customer And Contact Management
6. Lead Management
7. Sales Process And Opportunity Management
8. Tracking Revenue And Forecasting (please stay awake)
9. Business Intelligence And Reporting
10. Document Management And Collaboration
11. Set-up And Customisation
12. Support & Help

I wonder what the compiler’s target market is? The only people that would think in these terms, or more pertinently, feel thinking in such terms right, would be precisely the people that render most sales software installs disasters. Namely marketing or IT guys. And it’s not their fault, after all, they are not paid to understand ‘sales’.

I’m bashed and bruised through seeing literally hundreds of sales force technology implementations go sour. Nowadays I’m mainly a close-by observer without a vested interest, but occasionally it’s my kit involved and let me tell you, following the checklist in the above categories would not have made a slight bit of difference.

I really believe the technology-based approach of the above is folly. Salesforce.com Chief Exec Benioff himself when presenting clearly doesn’t feel features and technobabble are important. Knowing that many of the people that sign his orders like that kind of thing means they will talk such nonsense of course. But, and call me old-fashioned here, any implementation of anything, whether it’s a pro forma spreadsheet or a million dollars worth of bespoke hand crafted code, that doesn’t have the CSO’s stamp on it is doomed. And one way to get this focus, is by asking a different set of questions:

Payback:

• How Will It Make Me Money?
• How will it reduce my sales cycles and increase my close ratios?
• Which one closest resembles my guys’ routines?
• Which one will save them the most time?
• Which one will encourage my guys to use it the most?
• Which one can I live with the smallest number of keystrokes being used in?
• When my boss asks me how we’re doing, which one can give me the best answer with the minimum clicks?

I could go on, but you probably get the picture.  I’m off for a “Klippies & Coke” to wind down and wonder when England will ever be able to play one-day cricket

Another day, another flight, this time suffering S African Airways.  (It’s amazing isn’t it, when you complain in writing, all they do is send you a letter saying ’sorry, hope you will use us in future’ - idiots, the answer is an emphatic “no”)  In my seat pocket was their lightweight mag, and flicking through found only one article with any juice.  It was all about Spin-Free Sales Pitching.  Apparently, the ‘yoof’ in particular see through spin and run away from it.

The standard bearer for the new age approach was hailed as those two YouTube guys who, having sold out for over a billion dollars, posted a home video to announce the news.  At one stage, they realised they’d slipped into biz-babble and started giggling, when someone off-camera apparently urges them to keep going so they move onto telling Burger King jokes.  This, it seems, is what the younger consumer relishes.

Another mover and shaker in this space was said to be Siamak Taghaddos of GotVmail who promotes the thinking “we are not a sales based organisation - not in the typical sense.  We educate people, let someone make their own decision.”

And blogs also aid this drive, with a beacon being tech blog Signal Without Noise, I think since renamed “How to Change the World”, who’s author (Guy Kawasaki) suggests these six steps to authenticity:

• jettison the stupid
• be anti-sales and slip under the radar
• start conversations, do not deliver canned speeches
• find people who need you
• focus on the information
• be true to yourself

With the abundantly destructive voicemail culture prevalent in the global buying community, one way around this cold-calling prevention malaise is through the classic out-of-hours approach.  Calling before 9 and after 5:30 will often lead to someone other than a doorman-bouncer-esque receptionist fielding your call, and putting you straight through.

You should clearly always ask for a mobile, after all “if you don’t ask, you don’t get”.  The problem is though that in general, people are loathed to give out a colleague’s cellphone number, especially if that person in question is a superior.

If you don’t get put through (maybe for instance because your prospect ‘doesn’t take cold calls’) a way to grab your prospect’s mobile phone number can be by asking for a direct line so you can leave an introductory message.  You’ll then hopefully either be put through, be given a direct landline, or make a cheeky request for the mobile seem fine.

With voicemail, another way, is to leave a message on their voicemail at the office, in such a way that you tee up a telephone appointment and focus on what you’re required to do to earn that vital 5-minute audience.  Most advice on voicemail message leaving suggests your normal pitch, truncated if necessary into a 30-second soundbite.  I’m not sure this is the best way ahead.

If everyone else is doing this, and results appear patchy, then you should do something different (& better) shouldn’t you?

My recommendations are along these lines, and I’ll be testing them out with my cold-callers over the next few days:

1. intro yourself,
2. half-a-dozen words only on what you can do,
3. re-iterate they’re slap-bang in the middle of your target market - similar to the vast majority of your other customers
4. ask what you can provide to earn a five-minute phone conversation about opportunities for them to progress ideas
5. give a path of actions that’ll create engagement, such as things that’ll progress your cause, like perhaps let a receptionist know a different number when I next call, email me what you’d like to know, suggest a colleague to talk to first

As a post-script to this, I sell to sales people and recently came across a survey of where sales team priorities lie during the coming year.  So my approach will involve something like “hopefully you’re in a similar position to the 1-in-3 sales teams that this year wants to progress…..”

Ever since reading a couple of days ago about ‘sales knowledge management’ being a key issue for sales team leaders (the foot of this post), I’ve noted a couple of entertaining happenings about the drive to get best-practices spread across sales teams. 

At one label-printing outfit, they’re so used to sales guys not selling new stuff all that quickly, that they introduced a team full of marketers to constantly spread the word.  They called this their “Plus” team.  It all sounded like a step in the right direction, until I delved deeper, and the concept was indistinguishable from any normal marketing department remit, so yet again it was an example of a well-intentioned sales initiative that got hijacked by marketing ambitions…. 

And then there is a huge European paper and packaging distributor that have split their sales team up into three sectors.  One is aimed at automotive needs.  They’ve a whole bunch of new products that again, are new to the sales people and they decided to employ one euro-wide specialist to disseminate the valuable learnings as they occur.  The thing is though, that he’s being seen as nothing more than a ‘busy fool’, with precious little to show for twelve months of expensive efforts….

So, two different approaches, neither delivering.  Two immediate pitfalls present themselves; firstly, there’s a lack of mandating the sales people to engage with the acquired best-practice, and secondly, the way the intel is spread is one-to-one, in isolation, rather than becoming part of the fabric of the sales person routine.

The age old question How To Get More Leads, has been the starting point for increased revenue drives for nearly 30 years, but times now must change.  This is the message from a research paper by www.csoinsights.com I got sent by a currently courting salesforce.com.  They report salesrep productivity falling, sales activity sticking to the same old routines since the 70s and buying cycles changing with the advent of sophisticated pre-tender web-enabled research.

The new questions should be how to integrate people, process, technology and knowledge.  Focusing on new resources to be harnessed, true (preferably strategic) selling innovation, and make selling methods sustainable competitive advantage are all paramount today. 

The message in short, is that the objectives have remained the same for donkey’s years, and with results dropping off the graph, a significant change in approach is mandatory.  Some of the more entertaining findings are:

Ramp-up Time Worsens – in 03, almost 60% of all new reps were producing six months in.  By 06 the number had alarmingly halved.
Selling Time Falls – in 01, 38% of reps’ time was directly talking with prospects.  Despite increasing in the meantime, by 06, the proportion dropped a couple of points, to 36%.
When You Want Something Done…  Do It Yourself – over 40% of all leads are still generated by salesreps themselves.
Communications – the number of firms wanting to improve comms around the sales team has doubled in twelve months, and a huge chunk, an incredible half of all firms, hardly share or build upon any best-practice at all.
CRM Isn’t Ubiquitous – only one in two firms have a formalised crm in place, and of these a surprising third had hands in developing their own, and stunningly half had only got one going in the past two years.
Sales Knowledge Management’s Back On The Agenda – the top 3 priorities for intel improvement are where ‘How’ to do things is vital; best-practice from around the salesforce, competitor intel & shared (strategic) account plans.

7-8 March saw the 2-grand a ticket Gartner crm conference in London.  I spoke to a highly experienced fella the day after that’d been one of the speakers.  His slot examined current implementation issues with a case study from his own purchase of SAS kit.

What was interesting, given his 18-year accumulation of wisdom in this field, was his insight that two areas are getting all the airtime at the moment.

The first relates to data integration, the other to how you get your salesguys interfacing with the software.  It’s all very well having a customer relations tracking system, but how do you make sure you give your sellers the right support to utilise it effectively?  What are you going to do to make it as easy as possible to get your charges using it as you see fit?

Two things for you to consider if you’re about to push the button on a new piece of kit….

Here’s a tale I picked up late Friday night, when speaking on the phone with a recently recruited sales manager at one of my customers.

He has two particular charges tasked with penetrating a prospect community of around 60 organisations.  To track what’s occuring with them, the pair of reps created a spreadsheet to record such activity.

This is a classic scenario, where it’s easier to do this than ‘tweak’ some sales software already in situ.  What happens next, is that the reps fill in progress each month and fire off the updates via email.

In just a few short weeks, the process is already on shaky ground.  Another view would be ‘failing’.  And the reasons why this has happened apply in my experience to just about every instance I’ve encounterterd where a brilliant idea for tailored documentation aimed at collaboration and reporting has fallen down…..

The reps lose interest in filling in the spreadsheet - the scale meanders between outright hostility to typing up progress through to ambivalence meaning requisite details are reduced to a few indistinguishable abbreviations and words

History is lost so trends cannot be acted upon - as when an entry is made, it typically overwrites anything previously recorded

The Big Boss catches you out - When the manager is asked by someone yet more senior what’s been going on with prospecting recently, he draws an embarrassing blank, as he can’t collate the data quick enough, and there’s holes in it that are quickly exposed

Reps do their own thing - everyone appeared to buy into the new idea a couple of weeks ago, and a central ‘master’ spreadsheet was born, yet within the blink of an eye, one of the reps decides he can do a better one, so adapts his copy for his own purposes, the major impact of this is that he actually records less, not more intel, and the chances of easy collation for the boss are now non-existent

So, how do you avoid all these pitfalls?  It’s a wonder anyone sells crm at all isn’t it…..