Classically, as we qualified and engaged our customers in solving their problems, sales people focused on understanding our customers’ needs.  Our questioning process was focused on identifying pains, needs, and problems so we could present a justified solution addressing those issues.

Don’t get me wrong, these are still important parts of the selling and buying processes, but if this is where we are first engaging the customer, then we aren’t maximizing the value we can create, and we aren’t maximizing our ability to win.

Intercepting our customers at this point of the buying process is too late.  By this time, the customer has already well defined their problem, they’ve organized to solve it, they have probably done a lot of research in assessing alternatives.  In fact, unless you are on their short list, there’s a high likelihood they won’t even want to see you or give you a chance to assess needs.

Sales people create the greatest value by engaging customers much earlier—before they even recognize they should do something.  Customers may be so busy or so sheltered they may not recognize they have a problem or there is a different way of doing things.  They are focused on their day to day operations and may be blind to the fact they might be missing opportunities.

Sales people get to see lots of customers and different ways of doing things.  Sales people have the time to look at emerging opportunities and understand how the customer might take advantage of them.  Removed from the day to day chore of running the business, sales people has a different view and may not be blinded as customers might be.

Customers expect sales people to provide insight, to help them learn how they might improve and grow.  Customers may not know they should have needs or what those needs are, because they haven’t recognize the opportunity.  They may be numb to the pain, so they don’t know their pains.
Sales people must engage their customers earlier, creating the awareness or vision to do something different, helping the customer discover they have needs and pain, helping the customer define the problem and what they want to do, helping the customer organize to solve the problem, and define their needs, requirements and priorities.

We need to understand our customers’ needs and priorities.  However, if that’s the first time we are engaged, your competitor may have been there before—creating greater value and positioning themselves to win.

Are you engaging your customers appropriately?

Let’s face it, customers really hate us.  They will tolerate our marketing content—as long as it isn’t too promotional—just the facts please.  Sales people, well that’s another story, we’re really a total waste of their time, unless the are looking for lunch or a golf game.  With the exception of the lunch and golf game, the web now can solve virtually all our customer problems.  Customers can find peers, other people who have the same interests, concerns, problems.  “Trusted sources,” that can provide much” higher quality information and insight” about vendor products than the we can.  Our role as suppliers is now to sit politely by the phone, wait for it to ring, then answer any remaining specific questions the customer may have, process their order (if we are fortunate enough to be the supplier selected), smile and thank them for their business.

Our buyers are so fortunate.  We know all that information is totally accurate.  We know those users or people who have experience know everything there is to know about our products and services, and how they apply specifically to the problems other companies have.  We know these are totally without agenda (or even being compensated).

We also know that our customers know exactly what they are looking for.  We know they have all the right questions and just need answers.  We know they know how to solve their problems, so they are just looking for data and information.  We know they have the time, ability, and judgement to invest in searching the web, engage in conversations with people they have never met, talk about their proprietary information and problems.  Imagine a web based conversation, “Our manufacturing process really sucks, we have too much scrap, bad quality, and poor customer satisfaction and are looking to reduce those problems…in your experience, what are the best solutions to that?”  Or “Our financial systems are a mess, we can’t close our books, we don’t know if we are properly reporting our results, if we are in compliance with government regulations…. what have you done to solve that problem?”

Yes the web is the answer to our customer prayers.  We need to transform our organizations to better serve our customers and to more effectively process those orders.  We need to spend more time encouraging our current customers to spend less time doing their jobs and more time participating in web based forums, maybe we can even provide them some copy they can use in their discussions.  (Perhaps this is the role for all the displaced marketing and sales people).

Frankly, I am getting PISSED OFF with all the apologists for sales and marketing.  I’m angry with all those naive enough to think that marketing and sales can bring no value or insight to our customers and they should be displaced by web based forums.  Finally, I am terrified for our customers who may not even recognize they have a problem or may be so busy just surviving they can’t spend the time solving their problems.

Sure, we deserve much of the criticism that is leveled at marketing and sales.  Every day, we are bombarded with an ever escalating volume of messages, promotional content, and stupid sales pitches.  Too many organizations seem to see the solution to this move to the web is to turn up the volume.  This only serves to piss customers off, rather than turning up the volume, we need to turn up the quality and customer experience.

If we can’t turn up the quality of the customer engagement, if we can turn up the quality of the customer experience, if we cannot offer real insight and value to our customers, then the web is probably the best solution.

But I think too much of our customers to succumb to that.  I think too much of our companies and shareholders to to succumb to this.  I think too much of the value we as sales and marketing professionals can offer to succumb to that.  We have to change and we are changing.  We have a huge amount to offer to our customer and can create real value.  We can provide our customers insight they can’t get anywhere else.  We walk the halls, visit the plants, talk to lots of people in our customers.  We see new possibilities, we see opportunities to help them grow and improve.  We can offer help and advice, we can create real meaning in helping them outPerform their competitors and better serving their customers.

If we aren’t prepared to change, we deserve what we get — but that’s always been true, the web hasn’t changed any of that.

Let’s stop apologizing for our professions, let’s not abandon our responsibilities to our customers, our companies, and ourselves to create great value.  It’s not time to give up, it’s time to get more aggressive in the changes we have to make in ourselves and how we engage our customers.

There are a huge number of tools available to help sales professionals be more effective and efficient.  Properly used and implemented they can have a profound impact in improving sales performance.  At the same time, used improperly, the provide the potential of causing great problems or creating crap at the speed of light.  Every tool has the opportunity, properly used to have great impact or improperly used to have great negative impact.

Too often, however, it seems the implementation of the tool in itself, is the end rather than just a means.  People implement CRM thinking “because we have CRM, we have much greater insight into our customers, pipelines, opportunities, and so forth.”  Or implementing powerful research tools to provide great sales intelligence–without providing a foundation the sales people can intelligently use these tools.  Or providing great content and email marketing tools that are used to blindly inflict content on people who have no interest or desire to get that content.

 We too often forget about the fundamentals–the basic blocking and tackling, the foundations of sales effectiveness.  None of these tools replace the need for this, but the amplify the impact of the sales person using it.  A high performing sales person, executing a well defined sales process will get phenomenal benefit and create much more value using these tools.  They will be able to leverage their time and presence in ways they couldn’t without the tools.

We have to continue to focus on building a sound platform based on the fundamentals:  Do we have a well defined sales process aligned with the customer buying process?  Do we know how to develop and execute high impact sales strategies?  Do we have the knowledge and business acumen that enables sales professionals to connect with their customers discussing their issues, concerns or helping them discover new opportunities?  Do we understand what customers value, how we create, communicate, and deliver differentiated value?  Do we understand how to listen and really understand?  Do we have the ability to confront the customer–appropriately, to ask for money in exchange for value and to defend that value without resorting to discounting?  Do we understand how to manage our time, leveraging it for maximum impact?  Do we understand how to prospect and gain the attention and interest of people we may have never met?  Do we understand how to create, build and maintain relationships?  Do we understand how to trust and be trusted?  As managers, do we understand how to analyze performance, how to coach and develop people to achieve their full potential, how to measure performance and hold people accountable for that performance?

All of these are the foundations of high performance selling.  Implementing tools, whether they are CRM, sales intelligence, analytic, content management/delivery, presentation or other tools on this sound foundation can magnify the impact and effectiveness of the sales team.

Absent these foundations the tools can be harmful.  Not only do we waste time, resource,  money on tools that aren’t used, used well, or used properly.  But we run an even greater danger–used improperly they can have exactly the opposite affect.  They can alienate and create great distance with customers.  They can magnify poor strategies and stupid execution.  Recently, I encountered a sales person selling a marketing/lead development tool–his thoughtless use of the tool he was selling caused him to spam 1000′s of people.  My feedback to him was that his use of his tool made me certain that I would never use his tool and would actively recommend people avoid his company.  He didn’t seem to understand.  This week, I get prospecting calls from a person selling a tool that was to provide great insight into customers.  His first question was, “What does your company do?”  I get endless offers for content, newsletters for thing I never requested, things that I have no interest in. 

I talk to people who are considering the acquisition of very powerful tools.  I ask a few questions.  For example, powerful analytic tools–but are you asking the right questions?  The quality of the analytics is dependent on the quality of the question you are applying the analytics after–or the quality of the data being analyzed.  Bad questions, bad data give you terrible answers.  The greatest presentation, storytelling, whiteboarding tools are meaningless if your people do not understand the customer, what they value and how to create value.

I can’t imagine any high performing sales professional not leveraging these tools to their full potential!  They are very powerful.  But the tools are the means, not the end.  If you don’t have a strong foundation in place, they are worse than useless.  Before wasting time, resource, and money on these tools, make sure you are building on a strong foundation.

These days, so many of the conversations among sales professionals and pundits is about challenging our customers, about getting them to think differently, about creating superior and differentiated value.  I talk and write about it a lot, as do many others. 

Sometimes, when I sit back and re-read what I write, or some of what others write, I get the impression that what we challenge ourselves and all sales professionals to do is the functional equivalent of “solving world peace.”  Sometimes we make the process of challenging, changing the conversation or creating value just too complex (I guess that’s what keeps many consultants and trainers employed).

In reality, our differentiated value only has to be “Just Good Enough.”  It has to be better than the competitors or the alternatives, but it doesn’t need to be earthshaking.  It’s probably valuable for us to start thinking of simplifying the process–it makes it more achievable for each of us and better for our customers as well.

Let’s look at some examples.

Often, I’ve stated, that we have to create “Value” in every interchange with the customer.  This doesn’t mean we have to solve complex problems, or have the customer have a giant “Aha moment” in each call.  The test for creating value in every interchange is if the customer can say, “That was a good investment of my time!”  We may not have shared any great insight, we may not have shown the customer how they could save millions, it is just as simple as the customer saying, “You used my time well.”  They might say “I learned something new,”  or “I had never thought of things that way,” or “You were able to confirm that I am on the right track,” or “Thank you for listening and hearing me.” 

In a time when customers avoid seeing sales people because sales people waste their time, the greatest thing that sets us apart is the customer that can say “That was a good investment” in my time.  Over a customer buying cycle, if all else is roughly equal, the sales person that makes the best use of the customer’s time through their whole process will be the sales person that wins!

Sometimes the value that sets us apart is making things simpler for the customer.  We are overwhelmed with complexity and difficult choices.  Sometimes the greatest value we can create is to make things simpler for the customer.  It could be being the easiest to do business with, it could be taking a problem off the customer’s hands and helping them, it could be being dependable–doing what we said we would do. 

We can create tremendous opportunities and value for our customers.  We can provide profound improvements in their business, help them identify and seize new opportunities, find ways to dramatically increase revenue or profitability.  Our competitors are also trying to do the same thing.

Often the greatest value is just simplifying things.  Often, it’s just using their time well.  Value can be created and aggregated by dozens of small acts, when taken together are just good enough.  Just the differentiation we need to be better than the alternatives.

It’s all the little things that count.  Pay attention to them, use your customers’s time well, make their lives siimpler.  If everything else is roughly equal, these become the margin of victory.

My colleague Anthony Iannarino wrote an outstanding post:   “Mismatched Skills And Value Creation.”  Usually, Anthony and I are so aligned in our thinking that we tend to complete each other’s sentences.  But I had to disagree with part of his post, it was the perspective he presented on Commodity Buyers.

Virtually every product and service, at some time in it’s life cycle moves to commoditization.  As differences between offerings become smaller; as buyer familiarity with the products, solutions becomes greater; as perceived risks to the purchase decision become much smaller; then there is the potential that our offerings become commoditized.  Given no other differentiation, the only way to win is based on price  — or is it?

Don’t get me wrong, there are people that will always buy on price–regardless of whether our product has significant differentiation or it is a commodity.  Price is important to every decision.

But as sales people, I think it is incumbent on us—both for our success and the customer’s to always focus on value creation and to aggressively seek to create value in every situation. 

Value can be created with commodity buyers–it’s just different than what we may have seen before.  While commodity buyers may be driven by price, they are also seeking other things–they may want to have an easy, painless, hassle free, procurement process.  They may want to look at reducing the overall cost of the transaction–not just the price. 

As an example, a number of years ago, I worked with the Chief Procurement Officer of a very large procurement organization.  They were responsible for procuring everything from basic chemicals, office supplies, “nuts and bolts” (literally), to complex computer systems, communications systems, development tools, machine tools and thousands of other items.  They managed billions of dollars in “spend” every year.  When we started to analyze their procurement processes, we started seeing very surprising data in the “costs of procurement,” or the costs of doing a transaction.  In some cases, the costs of procurement started to approach the purchase value of the items being procured.  Clearly, they had a problem that reducing the price of the commodities they were buying would not solve.

Some of their really smart suppliers recognized this as a problem.  They started working with the customer in seeing how they could reduce the cost of procurement.  Clever vendors realized there was value they could create in helping the customer reduce these costs–while still maintaining superior (but competitive) pricing.

Procurement organizations are very sophisticated–they are shifting to be strategic sourcing organizations.  They realize there is more to “save”  than just on price negotiations.  Supply chain management, vendor managed inventories, contract simplification and management all become critical elements of value that can be created for “commoditized products.”  In their book, Challenger Sale, Dixon and Adamson cite the example of W.W. Grainger challenging their customers on their process of procuring commoditized products. 

There are hundreds of other examples.  Indeed, some of the best thinking of creating value that I have encountered is from organizations who sell commoditized, undifferentiated products.  The sales person who sells carbon black and commands a superior price has to think about value creation differently.  The sales person that sells commoditized electronic components needs to be innovative in how they create value.  Sometimes those of us who sell more “complex or differentiated solutions,” are a little lazy about value creation–we still can rely on the differentiation of our solutions.

As sales people we have to be leaders, for our customers and with our organizations.  We have to constantly focus on value creation–in every sales situation.  Value can be found and created everywhere.  It’s our responsibility–not the customer’s, to create, communicate, and deliver that value.  We cannot succumb to the commiditization of our offerings — even if they are commodities. 

If we allow ourselves to be commoditized, if we allow ourselves to stop searching for and creating value, then we deserve the outcomes we create.

Are you constantly looking to Create Value?

(For extra credit, as you think about this, study and learn about Strategic Sourcing.  Go talk to the top sourcing and procurement executives in your customers and understand what they are trying to achieve.  They are hungry for value, you just have to learn how you can create value for them!)

We all know the shifts in buying.  The web offers a tremendous resource to all of us.  There is an overhwelming amount of information available on virtually every topic.  There’s a lot of data that says customers don’t want to see sales people until later in their buying cycle–presumably the final phases, as they have developed a short list of alternatives.

Many think this is wonderful–certainly on the customer side they get to avoid all those terrible sales people.  From the sales side, we now get involved with really serious customers and our sales cycles can be much shorter.  So somehow people seem to think we create this terribly efficient buying and selling environment.  From the sales side, we shift our focus to high quality content, SEO, and all sorts of things that increase our visibility to customers who let their fingers wander their keyboards.

But you have to pause and wonder, is this really a good thing for customers and for sales?  Perhaps for simpler transactions, or where professional well informed buyers are invovled, this may be OK.  But in the world of complex B2B solutions, one really wonders.

What are the problems with self education?  Is it really the “right” thing for customers?  Perhaps this is an arrogant view, but as sales people are we fulfilling our responsibilities in creating great value for customers by succumbing to this self education/information?

Here are some of the challenges:

First, we all know that if something is on the web it must be 100% true, right?  This is the easiest concern, probably the majority of stuff on the web is wrong or out of date.  So how do our customers determine what’s good, what’s accurate, and what information they can rely on?  I suppose if you wander around enough, perhaps participate in discussion forums (but who knows who those people really are), we can sort through the piles of information– perhaps finding things that are more accurate than not.  Perhaps is we narrow our search to “trusted” suppliers, then we can feel more comfortable that we are getting accurate information — but how do we know who is to be trusted?  Just as with working with sales people, smart buyers need to be skeptical.

Second, “my problem is different.”  In complex business decisions, everyone has a different problem or need.  Yes, 80% of the requirements may be the same, but it’s the last 20% that really make the difference.  Companies are different, strategies, culture, priorities are different.  Their goals, objectives vary.  Their processes, history, legacy systems (in the broadest sense) are different.  That last 20% is probably the most critical to the success of any project the customer is undertaking.  Where are they going to get the answers specific to them, where are they going to get the answers specific to that critical 20%? 

Third, do they know what to look for?  Do they know what questions they should be  asking, what they should be researching?  This, to my mind is probably one of the most important concerns customers should have about self educating.  In the complex world of B2B solutions, knowing what questions to ask, what things they should be looking for, what things might be possible is critical.  How do customers know what they don’t know?  A CFO and her staff may be very knowledgeable about how they run the financial operations in their organization—but what do they know about buying a new financial system?  How many times have they bought financial systems in their careers?  What are the capabilities of these systems?  What should they be looking for and why?  How can they change their operations and processes to get much better results? 

We’r all prisoners of our experience.  We know what we know, we don’t know what we don’t know.  If we are self educating, we are constrained in our search to what we know and think we need to know.   Our ability to solve our problems is constrained by the quality of our questions.  Sure, we might stumble upon some interesting content on a web site, we might talk to people and learn new things we should be considering–but that takes a huge amount of time and can really be hit or miss.  Is this the most effective way to buy?  Is this the most effective way to drive tremendous improvements in our operations? 

Fourth, to the customers know how to buy?  Do they have the right people involved, do they know how to organize themselves, do they know how to align their objectives and put together a project plan to identify, select, and implement a solution?    After all, unless they are professional buyers or sourcing people, their jobs aren’t to buy (which, as a side note, is why we are seeing strategic sourcing being involved in more decisions where they haven’t had a presence in the past).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, do customers even recognize they have an opportunity to change, and opportunity to improve and grow?  Do they realize they are missing opportunities, or understand how they could seize them?  Simply put, from a sales point of view, we are being irresponsible in serving our customers.  Our job is to help customers identify new opportunities to improve, to grow.  We can’t let our customers cheat themselves of the opportunity to achieve their dreams.  We have to bring them new ideas and insight.

Self education and self directed learning works — after all, there has been great progress in distance based learning.  But the reason those programs work, is they have very clear objectives, very clear methods, and are well structured–not random.  Self education and self directed learning can be very effective in buying, but only in well structured and well defined environments, and in using trusted sources.  For certain types of purchases this is very effective.  But in complex B2B solutions and complex business problems, things are seldom so clearly defined.

One of the major roles of sales people has been to teach.  Too often, our teaching has been misdirected, we focus on teaching/pitching our products.  The greatest value we can create is to teach our customers about different ways of doing things, about new opportunities, about things they may not even realize.  We have to help our customers learn.  We have to help our customers understand the questions they should be asking.  We have to help our customers learn what they should research, what they should be looking for. 

It’s important that we have high quality content, that we continue to create great web/social presence.  But this is most impactful when we have an educated buyer, a buyer who knows the questions they should be asking, a buyer who knows what they should be looking for, a buyer that can critically evaluate the alternatives.

Are you prepared to teach your customers?  Not about your products, but about how they can improve their operations and businesses, how they can better serve their customers, how they can outperform their competition.

What are you doing to help your customers learn?  What are you doing to prepare yourself to teach?  What are you doing to prepare your customers to buy?

Recently I was in China in a series of meetings with CEO’s of Chinese companies.  The meetings were great, but we each struggled to maximize their impact.  My Mandarin is very limited–basically to “Hello,”  “Thank you,” and a couple of other words.  Many of the executives spoke some English and were very polite in trying to communicate in a way that I could understand.

Mostly we relied on an interpreter.  The problem was, the interpreter interpreted the discussion–that is he describe things based on how he heard them, not necessarily what was intended.  So we had to be very careful in what we were saying and in verifying that we were aligned in our discussions and what we were trying to achieve.  Fortunately, our shared intention allowed us to be effective in our meetings.

Often, when I go on sales calls with sales people, I think that we are speaking different languages.  The customer is speaking their language, the sales person is speaking their—and there is no interpreter.

Each of organization and industry have their own terminology, jargon, buzzwords, and shorthand.  We have ways of expressing things, that others may not understand.  Too often, I see sales people reeling off terms and acronyms–often to make them sound important, but meaningless to the customer.  Or sales people don’t take the time to understand and communicate in terms that are meaningful to the customer.

A very simple example–many years ago, I managed an organization whose key customer segments were automotive and aerospace design engineers.  Even though the design processes were very similar, the terminology used in each industry were profoundly different.  Automotive engineers tended to talk about “flow lines,”  aerospace engineers tended to talk about “aerodynamics.”  Same concepts, but if we used the term “flow line” with the aerospace guys, we would both lose credibility but we would lose the customer–they wouldn’t understand what we were talking about.

As sales people, we want to maximize our impact on the customer.  We want to make sure our customers understand us and that we understand the customer.  It’s not the customer’s job to speak our language—we have to speak the customer’s language.

This goes beyond the words we and our customers use.  Each industry has key processes, metrics, practices, business drivers.  These are ingrained in everything the customer does.  For us to be impactful, we have to understand all of these, what they mean to the customer and how we can impact them.

Do you understand your customer’s language?

Do you speak the customer’s language?

Do you understand the key metrics, processes, practices, and business drivers for your customer?

I received a frustrated email from a colleague the other day.  He described a sales situation—he’s selling a solution that creates a tremendous return for this customer.  The return is about 4 times the investment –  a business case that seems compelling on the surface.  But he’s frustrated because he can’t close the deal.

It’s actually a situation B2B sellers encounter quite frequently. We develop great business cases for “The Customer,”  a company or an enterprise.  But the reality often is, the value or the return accrues to one department or group, and all the cost and risk accrues to another group.  For example, in the case of my colleague, all the benefits accrued to an end user group.  The solution produced tremendous cost savings for a specific department.  The challenge, however, was all the expense, work, and risk was in the IT group  — and the IT Vice President simply was deciding not to make the investment.

Frankly, I side with the IT Vice President on this issue, his reluctance to agree to the solution is perfectly rational.  There was no value proposition for him, there was only cost, risk, and hassle.  One might argue that he should invest in this as a “good corporate citizen.”  But it’s a meaningless argument if it puts the attainment of his other goals and objectives at risk.  Why should he divert his resources and budget from a set of projects that he has committed to, and for which he and his organization are being measured?  Just because it’s a priority for one organization, is it a priority, is it more important than all the other initiatives the IT executive has on his plate.

This is a challenge to every B2B seller.  Too often we can create great business value for one group in an organization, but if all the stakeholder invovled aren’t aligned in the priority, if all the stakeholders don’t get value, then our deals get stalled.  And we are actually seeing this happening more and more in B2B sales.  Deals are getting stalled not because of the business case, but because the customer–the individuals, not the enterprise, aren’t aligned in their priorities.

There are a couple of challenges in these types of deal.  Consider:

How does the Vice President of IT get value out of this?  There are lots of ways to start addressing this–can the end user, getting all the benefit provide the funding/budget to the IT group so they can invest in this project and still meet their budget goals?  Can they get IT projects reprioritized so it is a top priority–by which IT is measured?  (Of course then there’s the risk of upsetting all those whose projects were deprioritized)

A great business case is insufficient to win.  Great value for the customer is not just value created and delivered to the enterprise, but value created and delivered to each stakeholder in the decision.  We can’t just create value for one and ignore the others, we have to have a compelling value proposition for everyone involved in the decision.  It’s our responsibility as sales people to make sure we understand what each individual values, and we that we align what we do with what each individual values.

This situation illustrates another major problem.  The most important stakeholder is probably the stakeholder who pays the bill—the stakeholder that has the greatest at risk in the decision.  The beneficiary of all the benefit — the customer we are selling to, may have only upside in the decision.  But the most important people are likely to be those that are paying the bill or have the most at risk.  We find this very frequently in IT project.  Much of the benefit accrues to the end user organization, all the risk, expense, hassle accrues to IT.  IT has to have a win in the decison to move forward.

Often, this problem is made more complex because many customers simply don’t know how to buy.  We may be working with a particular department or group of users.  We might get them excited and wanting to buy—but if other people need to be involved in the buying decision and aren’t, however much our “customers” want to buy, they just won’t.  Often, we have to help our customers know who should be involved in their buying decision and why.  Often we have to help them learn how to buy and organize themselves to buy.  In every sales situation, we need to assess the customer’s buying process–do they have one?  Are the right people involved?  Do they know how to buy, do they know how to make a purchase decision, and to they have all the people who are involved in that participating? 

There are very few complex B2B sales that don’t cross organizational boundaries.  If we are only selling to one buyer, we may win that buyer, but fail to get the order.  We have to sell to all the stakeholders. 

Finally, things have changed substantially in recent years.It used to be that if you created a compelling business case, the company would find the money to fund the project.  That’s no longer true.  Companies are being very selective in their investments, they aren’t investing in every project that has a great business case, they are only investing in projects the are aligned and directly contribute to the top 1-2 strategic priorities of the company.  Even if you have all the stakeholders aligned–if this specific project isn’t directly tied to the top 1-2 strategic priorities, the project will most likely not go forward regardless of how compelling the business case.

For each of your deals, consider:

• Are you selling to all the stakeholders?
• Is there compelling value to each one?
• Can you clearly state what’s in it for the person paying the bill or incurring the risk?
• Does your customer know how to buy and have they organized themselves to buy?
• Does your initiative directly contribute to the top 1-2 strategic initiatives in the organization?

You have to meet all these criteria to succeed.

A strong sales process is critical to our effectiveness as sales professionals.  Without a strong process, it’s comparable to an aimless walk—we may reach our destination, but then again we may not.  Or we may reach our destination after an overly long journey.

As much as has been written about sales processes, I am constantly amazed by the number of organization that either have no process in place, their process is hopelessly outdated, or the sales people and managers don’t use the process.  We can never achieve the highest levels of performance without a process.

So since our goal is to develop the sales process that maximizes our personal effectiveness as sales professional, I thought it useful to outline five conditions your sales process must satisfy to enable you to be best in class.  I’ve restricted this to five, I’m interested in differing views.  Have I chosen the right five or should a different five be selected? (Please, out of pure arbitrariness I’m restricting this to five.  So if you have a sixth or seventh, you have to eliminate some of the original items.)

Condition 1:  Your sales process must not only be aligned with the customers buying process, but it must enable you to help lead and facilitate the customer’s buying process.  Too often we’re glib in talking about the customer buying process, when we really are talking about our sales process.  But buyers rule.  Buying is very complex.  They have to organize themselves to recgnize a problem or opportunity.  They have to get people invovled, define their goals, define how they will make a decision, align themselves internally, and do all sorts of other things.  In the world of complex B2B solutions, customers don’t know how to buy, they may not know they should buy (that is they have an opportunity or a problem).  Sales demonstrates it’s leadership and creates great value by aligning everything they do with the customer buying process.  If your sales process doesn’t drive this kind of behavior in your sales people, go back to Go, do not collect $200 and start all over again.

Condition 2:  The sales process is for the sales people, not anyone else.  The sales process is focused on helping sales people develop and execute high impact sales strategies. It focuses on deals and how sales people win deals.  The sales process is not for sales managers—though managers must use the process in coaching their people, and can get tremendous insight into deals, pipelines, and performance; but all of that is icing on the cake.  Sales people have to be involved in the design and development of the sales process, after all it’s for them and they must own and execute it.  There is no reason to have a sales process other than making sales people more effective.  If your sales people aren’t the center of your focus in your sales process, Go To Jail!

Condition 3:  The sales process must help your sales people improve their ability to win.  It has to be based on your best experience–things your best sales people consistently do to win.  It is unique to your organization, not something generic to all sales people.  You win and lose for specific reasons, there are uniqe trigger events or activities, that dramatically improve your ability to win.  If your sales process is not based on your sales people’s own experience, deep analysis of why you win, why you lose, what events amplify your ability to win, tear it up and start all over again.

Condition 4:  Your sales process should help your sales people compress the sales cycle. We know that wandering aimlessly through the sale results in sales cycles that never end.  The sales process provides structure and focus to the activities sales people undertake.  Sales people should constantly be looking at each opportunity, identifying where they are in the sales process and seeking to compress the process as much as possible.  The salles process provides a framework for the sales person to look at the next steps or critical activities, they can analyze them, they can consider “How many can I accomplish in my next step with the customer?”  Managers in coaching sales people on their deals should look at this, helping the sales person understand where the cycle can be compressed.

Condition 5:  Your sales process must maximize your deal value or profitability.  I know those sales people and organizations whose sole strategy is to win on price don’t read my blogs.  There’s no skill in winning by price, there’s no value creation if you compete by being the lowest cost supplier (all other things equal).  So if you are reading this, you are interested in maximizing your deal value or profitability.  This means how you create value, how you communicate it, how you deliver it needs to be integral to your sales process.  It requires that your process focuses you on customers in your sweet spot, who demand and appreciate the value you create.  It demands that you can differentiate that value from the alternatives the customer is considering–if you can’t your only option is to win by price.

Does your sales process match all these criteria?  If it doesn’t, then you have a bad process.  You will never be able to maxmize the performance of each sales person, you will never maximize the performance of your team or organization.  It isn’t tough to design, your top performers already know it, though they may execute it unconsciously.

Does your sales process match some of the criteria?  Reassess it, tune it, improve it.  No sales process is forever.  How customers buy evolves, your value proposition and value creation evolves, competitors and customers raise the bar.  What worked a few years ago, may not be the most effective now?

If you don’t have a sales process, then you already know you aren’t performing at the highest levels possible.  In fact there is huge room for improvement!  Put together a team of your highest performers, lock them in a room for a couple of days, do some analysis. develop an initial cut of your process–making sure it satisfies all five conditions.  Roll it out, use it for six months, then tune it based on your experience.

If you have a good sales process in place and you aren’t using it, shame on you!  If you want to be a top performer, you have to use everything you can, you have to maximize your performance.  The sales process is the biggest lever a sales professional has to improving performance.

Do I have the right five?  I think so, but I’d love your views.  Remember, I’m arbitrary, I’m not interested in six, seven or more condition, I am only interested in the top five.  What are your thoughts?

To be fair to my readers, this is a rant, if you aren’t prepared for my whining, you may want to forego this post.

It seems everything these days has to be a “collaboration.”  Rather selling our customers something, we look to collaborate or partner.  When we want something from someone else, it’s a collaboration.  In establishing a new relationship, we immediately want to collaborate.

I must field at least a dozen emails or phone calls, each week, with someone or some organization that wants to collaborate with my company.  When I respond to the call, I come to learn collaboration generally means:

• You are in a business that can really help me, it looks like your clients would be great for us, can you please give me leads and introductions to your clients.
• As you are out talking to people, would you please look for opportunities for us, and where appropriate give us an introduction.
• I have a great product I want that I think you will want to buy!

Not long ago, out of curiosity, I invested 30 minutes in a call with someone who saw great opportunity in a collaboration.  I looked at the website, I saw absolutely no connection between our organizations–what we did, what they did, our target markets–however, I decided to take the call.  (To be honest, I’d been mulling this post for some time, this call appeared to provide great fodder for the post).

Here’s some analysis of the call:

• The call lasted 28 minutes.
• During the call, I spoke a total of just less than 2 minutes.
• I was able to make 1 statement at the beginning of the call and able to ask 2 questions through the call, and make one observation 3/4 of the way through the call.
• During the remaining 26 minutes, the caller didn’t ask a single question.
• The caller spent time talking about what they did, wandered about key issues facing their prospects and why their services were important, and discussed what I could do to help his company (I guess this was the collaboration part).

At the end of the call, I politely thanked the person for the call, wished him luck and hung up.  You can guess what might happen in the “collaboration.”  Not only was this a terrible discussion for collaboration, it was one of the worst sales calls I have experienced.

I wish this call was the exception, unfortunately it isn’t.  Every collaboration email or phone call goes exactly like this.  (The calls don’t last longer than 90 seconds, I guess I had a bit of a sadistic motive in listening to this call for 30 minutes.)

Collaboration is something very different.  Collaboration involves deep alignment of goals, values, priorities and outcomes.  Successful collaboration requires Shared Vision, Shared Values, Shared Risks, Shared Resources, and Shared Rewards.  Each partner must be aligned across these dimensions for collaboration to  succeed.

Collaboration is tough.  Morten Hansen writes of internal collaborations, stating “bad collaboration is worse than no collaboration.”  He goes on to discuss the high failure rate of internal collaborations because the initiatives were not collaboration worthy.  In our research (and others) on external collaborations (partnering), we find 72% fail!

Collaboration can be very powerful, but it has to be right and purposeful to be successful.

If you want to collaborate (at least if you want to collaborate with my company):

• Make sure it is the BEST way for each of us to achieve our objectives.  Oh by the way, to make this assessment, it’s useful to know what my objectives are.  You have to ask me, you have to explore them with me, you have to develop a relationship with me.  Likewise, I have to do the same with you.
• Make sure we are aligned in our vision of what we are trying to achieve and our value system.  The former is obvious, the latter is critical because it reflects directly on the customer experience we want to create.  To do this, we have to invest time in each other, we have to develop a relationship, we have to understand each other’s vision, dreams, goals, and value systems.
• Be clear that we both have to invest and we both have to get a return.  Explore that explicitly; what are you going to invest, what do you expect me to invest–both in resources, people, funding, etc.  Make sure we are aligned in these investments.  Explore what each of us will get as a result of this collaboration.  Does the return meet my objectives?  Does it meet yours?  We don’t know unless we talk about it.
• Be clear about the risks, are they acceptable to each of us?  Do we understand them?  Do we have a process to manage them?
• Be clear about what might derail the relationship, talk about these explicitly, talk about the show stoppers, talk about how we will handle conflict, disagreement.
• Make sure we have a well defined process for managing the collaboration, keeping focused and on target.
• Make sure it’s important to each of us.  If it’s not important to me, I won’t invest in making it successful–not because I’m a bad guy, but because I focus on what’s important to me.  Likewise, I expect you to behave in a similar way.

If you want to sell me, then sell me.  Don’t mask your intentions in the collaboration cloak.  I know what your job is, I respect it, if it’s something that I think we may be interested in, something that creates value for me, then I welcome your efforts to sell me.  And, if you are successful, I may buy.  If you want to sell me, it’s always useful to know a little about me, what I want to do, what my problems are, so that you can position your solution in a context that means something to me.  You won’t sell me by not asking me a question.  You won’t sell me by not understanding what I do–or presuming you understand what we do without having asked.  You won’t sell me by pitching me.

I’m open to collaboration.  I’m open to being sold.  Make sure you know what you are trying to achieve if you want to engage me.  Be clear about this when you try to engage me.

Consider this—this approach not only works for me, it works for most other people and organizations, as well.  Try the same thing with them.  It might improve results.

Thanks for your patience with my rant.