Dave Kurlan wrote an outstanding post:  Bench Strength – The Key To Replacing Salespeople.  He mentioned that managers must always be recruiting.  It’s such a simple concept, but I am constantly amazed at how few managers–at all levels do this.

Here’s how the cycle goes.  We have a bad performer in place, we worry about firing the person, because it leaves an open territory….too often we think coverage is more important than quality.  Maybe the manager might start looking casually for someone, but the normal day to day events slow the process down, consequently nothing is done for too long.

Or it may go like this:  One day, our star performer walks in and resigns.  We panic–she’s going to leave a huge gap in our organization.  We immediately look to back-fill the position.  In our haste to fill the position, we may reduce our standards recruiting the wrong person.  The death spiral accelerates…..

Recruiting high quality people–even in this candidate rich job market takes time.  In my world, B2B, finding top notch sales people takes at least 90 days, often longer.  Add to that the onboarding time and you have a cycle of as much as 18 months before a person gets fully productive.  Great managers significantly reduce that time by always having candidates to back fill jobs in their back pockets (and by having great on boarding programs—but I’ll write about that later.)

Organizations like GE and IBM have long been famous for the succession planning.  For every role–at least in the executive and senior management levels, they have identified candidates that can potentially fill the each job.  In every managerial or executive role I have held, I maintained a list of people that could back fill me (as well as succession plans for all the managers reporting to me).  With each of those people, I had a development plan in place—I wanted to prepare them to be able to step into the new role when and if the time came.  That development plan included not only coaching, but developmental experiences (e.g. special projects), training and other activities.  Every manager must have a succession plan in place–not only for managers, but for everyone in the organization—”who will I bring in if I need to replace a sales person?”

Managers must always be recruiting–even if they don’t have the headcount or a “req.”  By recruiting, I don’t mean a formal posting of a job or engaging a head hunter.  The manager should always be networking, looking for great talent.  At conferences, in meetings, maybe through tools like LinkedIn.  A manager should always have at least half a dozen people they would like to hire, if the occasion presents itself.  This doesn’t mean offering them a job, it just means getting to know them well, understanding what their strengths and weaknesses are, exploring their own aspirations, exploring how well they might fit into your organization.  When the time comes (it is never if), you will be able to pick up the phone and call one of these people.  Some may be happy in their current roles and not willing to move, but several may be interested in a new opportunity.  You get a great replacement, months sooner than you normally would.

Great managers have succession plans in place for every role in their organization.  Great managers are always recruiting.  If you lost one of your key people today, can you pick up the phone and call half a dozen potential replacements tomorrow?  If you can’t, you need to start recruiting.

I was having a conversation with  close friend this morning.  He was expressing frustration with a customer not moving forward on a particular deal.  At the height of his frustration, my friend said:  “We can have such a Monstrous Impact on the customer, why won’t they go through this  Change?”

As we drilled down, quickly we discovered the customer agreed the impact could be tremendous, but the change was also Monsterous.  Their reality was they were so focused on the day to day activities that regardless how compelling the benefit they could achieve, they chose to ignore it. 

The other day, I was involved in a similar conversation with another sales person.  She couldn’t understand, “we offer such superior value to what they are doing now, why won’t they change?”

It somehow seems illogical, if we can get a tremendous benefit for our companies, if we can manage the risks of the project, why not invest, even though it is a very big effort?   What’s keeping the customer from moving forward?

Customers, however, may see it differently.  It’s a natural reaction, customers equate Monstrous Impact with Monstrous Change!

The reality of our customers’ lives is very difficult.  Customers are time poor, they have too much to do, too few resources to do them.  Customers don’t have time to consider major initiatives or monstrous change.  To many, getting through the week, the month, the quarter is all they can see or do.  I don’t think I’m overstating it, by saying that most of our customers just want to get by.

Getting the “Big Things” done, regardless how compelling, is just not in the cards.  Stated another way, they are so busy fighting the alligators, they don’t have time to drain the swamp.

So how are we going to be successful?  We have to present our solutions in a context that fits their current reality.  We have to recognize they are fighting to survive.  We have to simplify, eliminate the complexity.  We have to provide leadership in showing a series of  little steps they can take to get Monstrous Returns.  Most importantly, we have to be there helping them take these little steps, assuring their success and moving them on to the next little step.

Our path to sucess is meeting the customers in their reality and showing them the little steps that can produce Monsterous Results!  Until we do that, we are spinning our wheels and frustrating the customer.

As a side note, there are two outstanding books that give great advice on dealing with this issue.  The first is Jill Konrath’s Snap Selling.  The second is Tom Peter The Little Big Things.  Both are valuable and insightful reads.

I have to admit to being a little bit more than impatient–my wife says I have to be more tolerant.  But there are conversations that just drive me up the wall—-”We’ll just wait it out” is one of those conversations that drives me crazy.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve heard that about the economy, “Things will get back to normal, we’ll have to wait it out.”  But I hear it about all sorts of thing—major changes within a company; we don’t have the right products now, but new products are around the corner; our customer is going to let things settle down; changes with the way our customers buy—-the list goes on.

Underlying this statement is the assumption that things will go back to normal, if we just wait, the “good old times” will return.

Frankly, it’s a defeatist attitude.  How long have we been repeating the maxim, “the only constant is change?”  But it’s accurate.  Business is about change—as sales professionals, we are driving our customers to change.  We can take different positions about change–whether our organizations are driving change, whether we respond to it, but if we don’t change, we will be left behind. 

This impacts us as individuals, as well.  We have to constantly change, learn, and grow.  Our companies, products, competitors, and customers are changing.  If we sit around to wait for thing to get back to normal, we will be left behind forever.

I think Fleetwood Mac had it right:

Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow,

Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here,

It’ll be, better than before

Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.

My friend Skip Anderson wrote an outstanding post, “The Race To Sale Competence, A Case For Sales Training.”  He raises a critical issue:

As sales managers, are we so focused on managing expense that we lose sight of the opportunity?

 Skip speaks to the issue that many sales managers fail to invest in sales training, consequently lose the opportunity to increase revenues and sales success.

I see this in too many aspects of business.  Managers have become focused on managing expense, not managing opportunity and the inherent risks.  Managing expense is important–but it’s easy.  In the words of Nancy Reagan, manager’s just say “No.”  Business growth rarely occurs by focusing on managing expense, bur rather from adroitly addressing opportunities and managing risk.  It’s the manager’s job to assess new opportunities, understand the investments required, assess risk, develop and execute plans to win.

Sales leaders are under great pressure, as all functional managers are.  Corporate executives constantly press for expense reduction.  Too often, some accountant, somewhere in the organization stops a critical project because of budget.  But isn’t it the job of sales managers to fight for those budgets, to invest in new opportunities to grow.  Whether it’s sales training, new tools, people, programs or other things that drive new business.  Not all of these will be approved, but even winning one drives growth and improvement.

As sales professionals, we go to our customers, asking them to invest in our products and services.  We create great arguments about how the value exceeds the cost and risk.  Seems to me, the same should be done within our organizations.

I’m not being naive, I understand the challenges and constraints.  It seems, however, that too many managers have succumbed, just focusing on expense and not addressing the opportunity.

Am I being too simplistic?

It’s Friday afternoon, the end of an incredibly busy week, I’m taking a few moments to reflect on some of the most interesting discussions of the week.  With several clients, and some of my good friends, including Keith Bossey, John Cousineau, Jim Keenan, and Jonathan Farrington, I’ve found myself in discussions about handling serious, often critical, and sometimes impolite customer feedback or objections.

One of the greatest challenges sales professionals face is engaging our customers.  We try but can’t catch their attention or gain their interest in our offerings.  Then suddenly some feedback comes in, often some variant of “your company and products suck!”  It may come in the form of feedback to customer service, feedback in a market survey, or an objection a customer raises as we meet with that customer.

Our knee jerk reaction is usually to be defensive, sometimes to lash out in return.  Sometimes our reaction causes us to lose sight of the tremendous opportunity the customer has given us.  The fact they cared enough to let us know that our products, company, or even us as individuals is tremendous!  Think of all those customers that never provided feedback, never raised and objection, and never gave us the opportunity to understand or respond to their point of view.

Objections and feedback (positive or negative) should be treasured.  They are indicators that we have engaged the customer and they care enough to want to engage us.  Engagement is what we are striving for in reaching out to customers.

How we respond to objections and negative feedback (we seem not to have problems responding to positive) is critical to our success in continuing to engage the customer.  Too often, we have a knee jerk reaction and respond in a manner that cuts off further discussion and engagement.

In dealing with objections or negative feedback, it is critical that we first acknowledge the legitimacy of someone having a differing opinion or point of view.  We should put ourselves in their shoes and try to see it from their perspective.

Next we need to explore the issue and their view–not defend our position, but to understand where they are coming from and what is causing them to respond in the way they are.  Until we do this, it is impossible to respond and address their issues.  Until we really probe and understand, we are in danger of addressing symptoms and not the real problem.

As sales professionals, once we take the time to understand the issues, we can be pretty good about responding to them, correcting misunderstandings of our capabilities, apologizing for service lapses of whatever.  There are however, some cases where we aren’t very good.

There are legitimate differences in points of view.  Regardless of how compelling our argument is, people will have legitimate differences.  If these differences cannot be reconciled, or if the differences stand in the way of our doing business, then we need to part ways—doing anything else is a waste of our time, our customer’s and will only make things worse.

Now here’s the toughest one, sometimes, we have to may have to change our position or point of view.  It’s tough to admit we have made a mistake, or that we are wrong (I thought I was once–then realized I was mistaken).

It’s particularly tough for many sales people, we want to be right  –  sometimes we want to be right so badly that we prove the customer wrong.  This cuts off all communication and engagement.  Being right may assuage our egos, but may not win business or enable us to enrich our relationships with customers.

It’s curious, when customers care enough to tell, us that we, our products, or our companies suck, they are telling us they really want to find an opportunity to understand and resolve our differences and move forward.  If they didn’t, they wouldn’t wast the time giving us feedback or raising the objection.

Feedback, positive or negative, and objections are things to be treasured.  They indicate our customers care enough to be engaged, and they want to work with us.  Seize the opportunity.

I’m continuing my barnstorming tour of Ireland and meeting with Irish Technology Executives.  Yesterday I was hosted by the very gracious people at the NSC Campus in Cork.  I had the privilege of sharing the podium with another inspiring CEO–Pat Phelan of MaxRoam.

Pat’s presentation of the MaxRoam story was fascinating.  I was really struck by Pat’s description of having to completely change the direction of MaxRoam early in their formation.  At formation, the team had a strategy of establishing the MaxRoam brands and products around the world.  He and his team pursued those strategies aggressively and he continued to reassure is investors they were on the right path.  A little more than a year into the execution of the strategy, Pat recognized things weren’t working.  While their products and services were solid, their go to market strategies just weren’t producing the results they should have.  The entire approach to the market would have to be refocused and relaunched. New funding was needed to support this.  Pat described meeting with his investors and saying “I was wrong……”  Needless to say, the refocused strategy is producing tremendous results with great growth in market presence and revenues.  The future is extremely bright.

It takes tremendous courage to admit you are wrong.  Telling your people, your investors, your customers and your community that you have made a mistake is one of the most difficult things for any leader to do.  Failing to recognize you have made a mistake is one thing—too many companies fail because they haven’t recognized this.  The more challenging thing, though, is when you have recognized you have made a mistake, admitting that you are wrong.  The mark of real leadership is having the courage to admit the mistake, putting it behind you, and moving on by taking the action to correct it.

It is always inspirational to meet an executive who has been through this experience and to learn from them.  Pat is really an outstanding leader!

By the way, MaxRoam’s offerings are very interesting.  Make sure you take a look at it!

I was struck by a letter from Steve Ballmer yesterday.  It was entitled, the New Efficiency.  I agree with many of the thoughts he expresses, particularly the notion of “The New Normal.”  However, in his article he goes on to talk about the concept of “with less, do more.”  (There is some subtle wordsmithing trying to say the concept is different than “doing more with less,” though I really couldn’t follow the article.

Regardless of how you position it, the thinking of with less doing more or doing more with less, has the potential of making us blind to new opportunities, as well as continuing the rhetoric that is exhausting everyone. 

We’ve gone through years of cutback and increasing demands for productivity and efficiency.  The reality of what this means in most organizations, is the work that was done by 10 people must now be done by 5–or less.  Too many are addressing this challenge by working longer hours, by taking needless shortcuts, by executing the same tasks only faster.

I think the notion this notion of doing less with more is wrong and orients us to searching for the wrong solutions.

I like the ideas of the new normal and the new efficiency.  I think to exploit these we have to  do new thinking.  We shouldn’t focus on doing more, but we should focus on “how can we do things differently.”  We should look at, turning things completely upside down.  We should consider redesigning organizations, processes, and work from a blank sheet of paper.  These approaches will open us up to new ideas where we don’t necessarily do more, but we do differently and better.

I’m tired of hearing the continued mantra of we have to do more with less (or however one chooses to wordsmith it).  I’m tired of solutions that focus on speeding up or making more efficient the current work processes.  The silver lining behind the new normal and the new efficiency is that we have the opportunity to think of new ways of working, organizing and doing business.  Let’s take the opportunity to discover these, exploit these, energize ourselves, our customers and our people.

I was reading a blog post the other day, it posed the question:  “What’s the worst objection?”  There were a lot of interesting responses and amusing war stories, but I was surprised that one, the one I think is most significant, was not raised.

To my mind, the worst objection is the objection (or issue or concern) that is never asked.  Too often, I think this may be why we lose sales, we have created an environment where the customer has not raised a key concern or objection.

Objections are great, they create a forum for discussion.  They demonstrate the customer is engaged.  Objections tell you where you stand with the customer and give you an indication of what you need to do to improve your ability to win.

There are varying schools of thought about whether sales people should pre-empt objections by raising them and addressing them before the customer poses them.  There are others about stimulating objections, perhaps through being provocative.  I’m not sure where I stand on those issues, or whether they are really important in the overall scheme of things.

What is important is that the sales professional creates an environment, a dialog, that makes the customer comfortable in raising whatever issues or concerns they have about the solution or the situation.

While, I’m on the topic, let me spend a few moments on objections.  I am constantly amazed by the fear and avoidance reaction I see with many sales people.  Objections are great, I am excited to get objections—which doesn’t mean that I can always respond to them adequately—but at least objections tell me the customer is listening, engaged, and is interested enough to challenge me.

Generally, I find 98% of all objections fall into one of these categories:

• We have failed to understand the customer, their needs, priorities, and what they are trying to accomplish.
• We have failed to communicate adequately to the customer, so they haven’t understood us or the solutions we are proposing.
• There are legitimate differing points of view that need to be reconciled.

These are all great opportunities to engage the customer and test how you stand in creating a valuable solution for them.  It’s a deadly mistake to think the customer is being stupid when they raise an objection–more often it’s the stupidity of the salesperson thinking this.

The final 2% of objections fall into the category that the customer is being a jerk.  In my experience, it’s rare, but it does happen.  Often it’s an indicator they should be disqualified–you may be wasting their time.  Sometimes they are trying to prove how smart they are to you, their peers, or bosses. 

Make sure you create an environment that engages the customer in a dialog and makes them feel comfortable in raising all their concerns, regardless of how trivial they may seem to you.  You’ll establish deeper relationships and win more often.

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