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.

I have to admit, I’m writing this out of a little bit of frustration.  I have a prospect, it’s virtually impossible to communicate with them — at least through the normal channels.  Now, you may say, “Dave, don’t you get it–they don’t want to talk to you!”  But they really do want to talk and communicate with me.  They say so, they get upset when it appears that I’m not communicating with them.

They originally contacted me a couple of months ago.  I got an email from a mid level executive in the company.  He wanted some information, I responded–rather than doing a simple reply, I wrote a new email, using his email address, and sent it.  30 seconds later, I get it bounced back, saying it is undeliverable.  I call the guy on his mobile, apologizing and explaining the problem to him.  He groans and say, it’s our security system.  You can’t send emails to us, we can only send you emails.  It’s best for you to email me at my personal email.  I’ve been using his personal email to send him emails, he always responds from his company email.

As I’ve met other executives in the company, the same thing happens.  They can send me emails, but the only way I can communicate back is to respond to their personal email.  Now whenever I meet someone new, it’s one of the first pieces of information I get.

I tried calling one of the executives once.  I didn’t have his mobile number, so I called the office switchboard.  I did the “spell the name” thing, the response was, “No one by that name works here.”  I was surprised, I called someone else to get the story.  “Oh, we have trouble keeping our name directory updated (The person I had tried to reach had been with the company over 3 years.).  He gave me the guy’s mobile number and his extension for future reference.

Recently, I met with the management team.  We talked about a project and got a lot done.  At the end of the meeting, I said, “I have another topic I’d like to talk about.”  I went on to describe the email and telephone problem.  They chuckled, looked at each other sheepishly, and said, “Yeah, it’s a real pain.  We just work around it, you’ve figured it out too.”

I looked at them and said, “What if I were a customer or a prospect?”  The room went silent for five minutes.

I’ll stop the story here.  It sounds outlandish, but it is–was–true.  Perhaps that was part of their sales growth problem.  While that was an extreme case, consciously or unconsciously, too often we make it impossible for our customers to reach us.  We may steer them through a specific channel.  This company had a form at their website, that someone was supposed to fill out and submit—but what if your customers don’t feel like filling out a form.

There’s another example, this time I was the customer.  I was trying to buy a pretty significant piece of software for our company.  I had made the purchase decision, but then I had to buy.  The sales rep presented me with a 27 page contract.  It covered all sorts of things.  Then there were the forms I had to fill out.  Not only the normal credit information, but information about each user of the system, all sorts or unnecessary information about our company—I think it was for the marketing people.

I had my lawyer look at the contract.  It was OK, though it was so long and poorly worded, it just took time for both my lawyer and I to go through.  On the other information, I called the rep.  I said, I’ll give you the credit information, but nothing else.  You want the order, make it happen!

Often the only differentiator we may have is how easy we are to do business with.  Selling is hard enough, but if we make it difficult for those who do want to buy, then we’ve made it much more difficult.

Are you easy to do business with?  Look at your phone systems, look at your email systems.  Do you have guidelines for responses to phone and email queries?  What about your contracts and all the other things needed from those who have made the decision to buy?  Are you making it easy for them?  Finally, when there is a problem, does the customer know how to get it resolved?  Are there people that own the responsibility for solving the problem?  Is it clear, simple, easy?

The media business is changing.  Traditional media–newspapers, journals, and magazines are struggling to refine their business models.  Figuring out how to make money and continue to grow is a challenge for all in the media business.  As a consumer of both traditional and new media, I want to see them survive, grow, and thrive.  I subscribe to a lot of “traditional” media as well as new media.

One of the great trends I see is publishers adopting “any time, any place, any device.”  For example I can read some of my favorite newspapers in hard copy, or, when I’m not home, I can look at that content on my laptop, Ipad, or phone.  For one simple subscription, I can get to the content in a manner that’s most convenient for the moment.

Companies are experimenting, some charge a premium for digital access, many provide it free with the hardcopy subscription. I’m not sure where I stand on that, but I know they need to make money, so I’m probably OK with a small premium for the combined digital and hardcopy access.

 The problem I have is when the company thinks its subscribers are stupid.  When they go beyond making money, to treating their customers with total disrespect.

I’m a long time subscriber and avid reader of the Harvard Business Review.  For years, I have anxiously waited each copy to be delivered to my office.  I devour it in the first evenning.  For years, with my subscription, in the past roughly $79/year, I have had free access to HBR online–along with archived articles (I no longer have to save all my old copies–it’s opened up three book shelves for me.)

This year, I get my subscription renewal and am a little shocked.  I can renew my hardcopy subscription for $79, I can get an online subscription only for $99 (wow, that used to be part of my hardcopy subscription–guess times are rough in Cambridge).  Or I can get a combined subscription for about $149–about double last year’s subscription.

Furthermore, to get content on my Ipad, I have to pay an additional $79.99!

This certainly isn’t content on any device, any time, any where!!

Well, the Ipad application is out!  There are so many equally good, even better,  subscriptions I have there-Business Week, Forbes, McKinsey Quarterly, Fortune, Wired, Fast Company, journals from INSEAD,  and more.  I can live without the Ipad version.

I swallow hard and look at the combined price of the online and hardcopy version—I really like the convenience of both, but the renewal rate—after I don’t know how many years of subscribing— is $149.

I research further, I discover, if I just let my subscription lapse, and start a new subscription, I can get the same deal for $129–$20 dollars less!  It’ snot a lot, but I’m glad to take it.

But I reconsider.  This is really shameless manipulation.  The publishers must really think the readers are stupid.  First, doubling the price on me.  Maybe I could swallow that.  But now I’m offended.  For weeks, my mailbox has been filled with “such a deal” renewal notices from them–all at $149.  Didn’t they think I’d check the price on line? 

Maybe there’s something I don’t understand about the value proposition.  Let me see,  a loyal subscriber for many years, OK, times are tough for publishers, so I’ll pay a super high premium for the convenience of hard copy and online, though doubling the prices seems a bit much.

BUT WAIT!!

I could get the very same thing for $20 less, just by being a new subscriber—yes their costs increase marginally, but why should I care?  They have to process me as a new subscriber.  And I’m sure, I’ll get another dozen, “last chance,” “sure hate to lose you,” offers at $149.  Then they probably have to purge my old subscription from their data bases, which has some cost.  Perhaps they make it up by selling that data—I’m not sure, guess I have to go back and review their privacy policy.

I’m confused, which deal should I take?  What’s the difference in value propositions?

As I look at the pricing policies, I can only come to the conclusion they must think I’m stupid, a sucker, or both.

Now I’m reconsidering everything.  I think, I’m in Manhattan quite frequently–maybe I can go downtown, stand on a street corner with a cardboard sign, “Hey buddy, spare a copy of HBR?”  Or I know the neighbor a few doors down, also subscribes, maybe I can borrow his copies after he’s finished.  Or maybe I can rely on other sources of really great content.  After all, many of their featured authors have their own blogs.

The Harvard Business Review isn’t alone in it’s practice, though it does stand out as the worst, at least of all the journals, papers, and magazines I subscribe to.

With policies like this, it’s no wonder media is in trouble!

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.

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?

I sit in hundreds of review sessions every year.  Pipeline reviews, territory reviews, account reviews, opportunity reviews, call reviews.  An odd thing happens in about 90% of the reviews, they all become deal reviews.

Think about the last pipeline review you participated in.  It starts out with a review of the pipeline, pretty soon, someone–perhaps the manager, perhaps a participant, perhaps the sales person doing the review, focuses on a particular deal.  All of a sudden the conversation shifts and becomes a deal review.  Seldom do we get back to reviewing the pipeline, if we do, it’s only for a moment.  Soon another deal is highlighted and we get into another deal review.

The same thing happens in account or territory reviews.  We start talking about the account or territory plan, and within a few minutes, a deal pops up and we shift our focus to a deal.

I see this in review session after review session.  We start with one type of review and soon the review shifts to talking about deals.  It’s no wonder, as sales people or managers we’re continually focused on doing deals–chasing opportunities.  It’s natural that we shift, almost unconsciously into deal reviews.  We end up never completing the review we had intended.

Deal reviews are important–we want to look at what it takes to win, how we can maximize the deal profitability, how we can reduce the sales cycle.  We all gravitate to talking about deals.

But we can’t overlook territory, pipeline, account, and call reviews.  These are important–each serves a different function, each important to achieving our goals.

Reviews serve two important purposes–both for the manager and sales person.  First, they help us manage the business.  They help us understand what’s happening, whether we are going to achieve our goals, or to identify problems or obstacles.  The review process is a powerful coaching opportunity.  Managers need to leverage these reviews to help develop their people, sales people need the coaching, help, insight to help improve their performance.

Each review has a different focus and objective.

Deal reviews:  We spend a lot of time on deal reviews–rightfully so, this is where we spend most of our time.  The objectives of a deal review are to determine how we maximize our probability of winning, how we compress the cycle, how we maximize deal profitability.  As managers or sales people, we want to make sure we are positioned to win, that we are aligned with our customers, creating the greatest value possible.

Pipeline reviews:  Funnel or pipeline reviews are critical.  They enable us to look at all the all the deals we are pursuing.  Do we have enough deals to achieve our quotas?  Do we have good flow through the funnel?  Is anything getting stuck?  Are we feeding enough new deals into the top of the funnel?  Are there systemic things that impact our effectiveness.  A pipeline review looks at the overall state of the business, not at specific deals.

Account review:  In any account, we may have many things going on.  Lot of deals, projects, extending our relationships into new parts of the account.  An account review focuses on all aspects of the account.  In some cases, it is similar to a pipeline review–we may want to look at the number and quality of deals we are pursuing.  The account review also represents an a prospecting plan.  What are we doing to expand our relationships in the account, how do we leverage these activities to identify more opportunities to pursue.  An account review allows us to focus on the quality of our relationship—are we maximizing our value to the customer, are we important to the customer?  It allows us to look at is the customer good for us, are we maximizing the profitability of the customer.  It allows us to look at the strategic relationship we want to have with the customer.

Territory reviews:  Territory reviews are similar to account reviews, but rather than focusing on a particular account, we look at the territory.  Are we maximizing our penetration of the territory?  Where are there new opportunities?  What can we do to maximize our share of the territory.

Call reviews:  Call reviews are very closely tied to deal reviews.  We execute our deal strategy by making calls.  In a call review, we want to debrief a particular call.  In addition to the “to-dos” and next steps in the sales process, we want to take the time to assess our effectiveness in the call.  Did we accomplish everything we had planned?  Could we have accomplished more?  Is there anything we would have changes?  What did we learn and how do we apply it to future calls.  The problem with call reviews is usually we focus on the “to-dos” and miss the opportunity to discuss our impact and effectiveness.

Each of the types of reviews is very important to managing our effectiveness, performance, and impact.  We need to do each–generally we do deal and call reviews quite frequently, every week.  Pipeline/funnel reviews–unless you have very short sales cycles, don’t need to be conducted as frequently.  Territory and Account reviews–unless there’s a lot of change, usually need to be done once a quarter, sometimes even less.

To maximize the value of each review–keep focused on what you are trying to achieve in the review.  The temptation is always to talk about deals, but unless you are doing opportunity reviews, you need to focus on what you are trying to achieve in the review process.

Lori Richardson posed a very challenging question at Focus.com:  “What is your definition of a “sales influencer” in a B2B organization?”  I struggled with this for a while, all the natural answers came to me–it has to be the sales force, but we can’t forget marketing……

The more I thought of this, the more I became convinced that while that may be the current answer, it really shouldn’t be “the answer.”  The answer really needs to be everyone in the company.  Sales and marketing are really the last mile, or perhaps the most visible people within the organization, but we really need to create sales, or more importantly, customer focused cultures within our organizations.

We need to create cultures where everyone focuses on the customer and the customer experience.  We already know how sales and marketing are “sales” or “customer” influencers–sure we can always argue they need to get better, but I don’t think anyone would argue this.  But the issue is, they can’t be alone in the process!

The entire organization needs to be customer influencers, everyone has a role.  Product management, engineering, and development have to develop compelling products and services that captivate customers and help them more effectively build their businesses.  Manufacturing and operations need to build high quality products or deliver high quality services, shipping/delivering them on time.  Finance needs to create accurate invoices, they need to handle collection and billing issues in ways that enhance the relationship and are responsive to the customer, not just administering the company policies.  Likewise, legal needs to be perceived as adding value, not the business prevention department. 

No part of the organization is sheltered from influencing sales or the customer experience.  The customer experience starts with the first phone call, email or customer query.  It continues through the entire relationship–not just their buying experience.  Customer focused organizations know that everyone influences the customer experience and sales.  They make sure everyone understands their role, their cultures are rich in stories about customers and customer experience.  The voice of the customer is critical to every decision–in fact, every day in every facility the conversation is about the customer—and lots of those conversations are with customers who are visiting.  It seems these organizations revel in having customers visit, not just the briefing centers, but visiting and working with everyone in the organization.

Too often, too many organizations say the sales influencers must be sales, marketing, and perhaps customer service.  They wash their hands of the responsibility for the customer, thinking “That’s not my job.”

There’s another aspect to this issue, it’s the attitudes our organizations have about the customer.  Each of us has seen organizations with attitudes, “things would be great if those damn customers weren’t bothering us all the time.”  We hear conversations in which internal conversations talk about how unreasonable, how stupid, or what pain customers are.  We see people so pressured for performance and their specific goals that they forget their role in creating, growing and serving customers. 

These attitudes shape the way everyone works, the way they respond.  They can’t be “contained” within the organization, but are manifested in every interchange with people outside the organization–in the way they treat suppliers, in casual conversations with others in the industry, in overheard conversations in restaurants, on planes.  Disgruntled employees write letters to the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, or just complain to their friends and neighbors.  Gradually a perception and reputation is built.  Each of us can probably name a number of companies that we perceive to be customer unfriendly, even if we have never interacted with them, but only know them by reputation.

Sales, marketing, and customer service are just the point of the spear.  But they can’t stand alone, our organizations cannot exist without customers.

The question really isn’t “Who are the ‘sales influencers,’” but rather, “How do we make everyone in the organization a ‘sales influencer.’”

Differentiation is critical to sales.  It sets us apart, enabling our customers to distinguish between alternatives.   In the absence of differentiation, it becomes difficult to win—often the differentiator is the price.

Differentiation is increasingly difficult.  Products increasingly look the same.  Any alternative the customer is considering will probably do the job.  There may be small differences in features, functions, capabilities–but these are wiped out with the next new release of a product from our competition.

Company reputation—it’s size, strength, position in the market, and other things may be differentiators.  But in today’s world of buying, it may not be.  When customers develop a short list of alternatives to consider, largely any alternative will satisfy them–so company reputation has probably been neutralized by this point.

Don’t get me wrong, all the things we have thought of as differentiators in the past are important–strong, compelling products, quality, great company reputation, strong awareness and visibility.  These are the things critical to get into consideration and to earn the right to be shortlisted.

But if those are table stakes, where do we differentiate ourselves?  How do we avoid falling back on pricing as a differentiator?

What we do is the ultimate differentiation!

Let me repeat with emphasis, What We Do is the ultimate differentiation!  It’s not what we say or what we claim–it’s what we do.

What we do is critical to differentiation and winning.  How we engage the customer, how we work with the customer–whether challenging, facilitating their decision making processes, or proving ourselves trustworthy; it’s what we do that sets us apart.

What we do delivers on what we say or claim.

What we do is the active demonstration of what we stand for.

What we do is the manifestation of our customer experience.

What we do puts substance behind all our marketing, all our positioning, all our claims and promises.

What we do creates our reputation–personally and as organization.

What we do has nothing to do with a sales or marketing program.  It is not a strategic initiative.  It’s composed of the little things.  Showing up to a meeting on time–prepared.  Being genuinely interested in customers and what they are trying to achieve, demonstrating that through thoughtful, perhaps provocative conversations.  It’s delivering on our commitments–both before the sale and after the sale.

We are constantly being evaluated and judged–by our customers, our peers, our managers, our community.  In a world where differentiation is critical, where setting ourselves apart–distinguishing ourselves, our performance, out solutions, our companies–what we do is our differentiation.

What we do differentiates us, both positively and negatively.  If what we do doesn’t align with what we’ve said; if what we do is to fail to meet our commitments; if what we do doesn’t match with the expectation we have created; then we will lose.

What are you doing?  Is it helping you or hurting you?

Business is tough everywhere.  As sales professionals, we struggle to find business and meet our quotas.  Losing business that you had previously won is tragic.  Over the past couple of weeks, a couple of companies that I have done business with have lost mine–perhaps not forever, but as a potential buyer, I will be very cautious about doing business with them again.

The first is one of our company’s banks.  We keep accounts in a few banks around the world.  Originally, we established multiple accounts to help make it easier for our people to do business.  Each account is a reasonable amount (read six figures).  Over time, I had noticed, things that we previously got for no charge, we are now being charged fees for.  Additionally, there is wide variance in interest rates between the banks.

So I decided to start consolidating accounts.  I called one bank, got my “relationship manager,” a person I had never known about before, but I suppose was assigned because of the type of account we had.  I said I wanted to close the accounts we had with his institution.  He was very polite and efficient in the transaction, at the end, he shook my hand and wished me a good day.

He missed something, he never asked me why I was leaving.  He never tried to understand if he could do something to retain my business.  He never tried to learn if there was something they might do to improve their service for accounts like ours.  It was a tremendous missed opportunity.  I suspect, he could have retained our business.  I suspect, if we shifted the kinds of accounts we had with his bank, we might have reduced some of the fees we were incurring, or if we changed some of the things we were doing, we could avoid other fees.

But he never asked, he and his management will never know, never be able to avoid similar defections.

We’ve also done business with a computer company for close to twenty years.  Virtually all our computer purchases have been from this company.  Granted, we aren’t a huge customer, we’ve bought dozens of computers over the years, but not hundreds or thousands.

A few weeks ago, on a business trip, I had a problem with my laptop–it’s batter wasn’t charging.  One evening in a hotel, I spent over an hour on the phone with a technician diagnosing the problem.  We determined I needed a new battery and charging pack.  I said it was critical that I get these as quickly as possible.  I spend 80% of my time traveling and the battery is critical to keeping me functioning on the road.  He assured me it would be delivered within a couple of days.

You probably can guess what happened.  It didn’t arrive.  I had the tracking number, found it was stuck somewhere, also learned it had been shipped the slowest least expensive way.  I called the customer service department anxious to see if there was a way to accelerate the shipment.  They couldn’t do anything.  To their credit, they called me a couple days later, telling me that it would be delivered that day–I appreciated their tracking it and the personal touch of a phone call.

The battery arrived, I put it in, immediately started charging it, because I knew I had another trip the next morning.  It didn’t charge.  After a few hours of seeing nothing happen, I called customer service.  I gave them the case number but the agent had to take me through the whole process again–my name, contact info, the computer serial number, the problem, everything.  I asked, isn’t it in your notes on this case.  He ignored me.  After some time trying to diagnose my problem, he said he’d have to send me to another department.  I was transferred, the agent went asked me to go back to “Go,” not collecting $200, asking me all the same things again, frustrated, I said, “I was just transferred to you, don’t you see all the information in the notes?”  He reviewed them saying, “Oh, I can’t help you, you need a different department.”  Now I’m talking to the third agent, going through the same conversation……  Well, they said I needed to get a new battery and they would ship it immediately.  I sighed, defeated, gave them the information and hung up.

Anticipating another few days, being crippled on another trip, I decided to call a competitor.  I explained the situation, told them the urgency of my need, they had an immediate solution.  They sold me a computer–they even offered to transfer all my files and data that day so I could take it on my trip the next day.

I’m still waiting for my battery, but as I type this post, I’m sitting in an airport lounge, between flights, thoroughly enjoying my new computer.  Their understanding of my situation, going the extra step of helping me out with my programs and files has won them a customer for a long time.  The other company–the one we did business with, by default, well I’ll use my old laptop as a backup machine.  However, as we make new purchases, they will all be with the new supplier.

Business is tough, serving your customer post sale is important to earning their continued business.  If they leave, try to understand why, see if there is something you can do to retain them.  If you can’t at least learn.

Clearly, the second case was a failure of customer service.  They were following their procedures–the problem was they were following their procedures.  Their focus was on the repairing the computer, but they were insensitive to helping solve my problem.  They didn’t have the ability to, even for a fee, deal with a customer that had a crisis and needed the problem solved.

n the first case it was sales error.  There were no penalties to the sales person for losing my account.  All he was measured on was new business.  Perhaps we should measure people on lost accounts.  If they earn commissions for winning business, perhaps they should lose commissions for not retaining business–there are some organizations that do this and it makes a difference.

What are your strategies for customer retention?  Do you see if you can keep them?  Do you learn from them if you can’t?

What are your strategies for customer experience?  Do you have the ability to respond to their need, or do you follow your policies?

We organize our companies by function–sales, marketing, customer service, finance, manufacturing, development, an so on.  I suppose the management science guru’s thought it the most efficient way to organize and run a company.  Each function has their goals and performance measures, each naturally optimizes what they do to achieve those goals.  The senior executive team seeks to make sure the sum of each function’s performance enables the organization to achieve it’s goals.  It’s a model that works pretty well.

But then there’s the customer.  The customer may first become aware of our companies through our marketing outreach.  It may be an ad, commercial, something they heard from another customer, an email, or a search result from Google.  They first start to get to know us through our marketing messages.  Marketing executes their strategies–engaging the customer based on their plans and programs, all designed to optimize marketing’s attainment of their objectives.

They get more interested, they reach out, “We’re interested in your products and services…”  Sales jumps in.  They engage the customer and work with them through their buying process.  At the end of that process they like what the sales person has done, they say, “We want to do business, we want to buy…..”  Sales has worked with the customer, achieving their goals.  The sales process, the overall model is optimized by the sales function–achieving it’s goals, hitting the numbers, maximizing productivity.

Order entry gets involved, perhaps our legal department, if there are contract, other functions get involved.  The order is eventually placed, the customer may deal with our shipping departments, or possibly our implementation and delivery teams.  We have our order management, contracting and other processes—all well tuned efficient in their operations and workflow.

Then finance sends them the bill, the customer starts dealing with a receivables person in paying the bill.  Finance is very efficient–after all they are really numbers driven.  The billing, collection and all other functions are well tuned organizations.

Our customers buy the product, pay for it, now they are using it.  They have a problem or question.  They call customer service.  Customer service is responsive.  They work with the customer to solve the problem.  The customer may have waited on hold for a while, the customer may have had to call back a couple of times, perhaps dealing with different people, but their problem is solved.  Customer service has met their problem resolution metrics, their turn around time.

Our organizations are working as we designed them.  Each function is efficient, effective, meeting it’s performance goals and objectives.

Then the customer needs to buy more.  They start their cycle again—we send them back go “Go,” they don’t get to collect $200 and they go through the same experience again, it may be a little faster, slightly different because they know us and we know them.  But they walk through our functions and silos.

Things are changing, customers aren’t feeling comfortable with their experience with us, they think, something has to be different, they start considering alternatives, or suggesting we change our approaches.

The problem with customer experience today, is we’ve designed customer experience around the efficient operation of each function in our company’s  organization.  We’ve designed the experience to focus on each silo achieving their goals, operating efficiently and effectively.

The problem is, this customer experience design isn’t very customer focused.  It’s internally focused on our own structures, functions, and operations.

Customers are questioning this design, they are questioning their experience.  They are wondering why the experience is optimized for us and not them.  They are challenging us, “Shouldn’t you be optimizing my experience?”  They are voting with their pocketbooks, working  with suppliers who create great customer experiences.

We’re all struggling.  We recognize  customer experience has to  be designed for the customer, not for us.  We’re struggling with understanding what great customer experience means and how to organize ourselves to deliver it.  We struggle with what it means to our own operations–what’s the impact on our effectiveness and efficiency?  What’s it mean to our growth and profitability?

Creating great customer experience—based on the experiences customers want is not in conflict with the efficient, effective and profitable operations of our own companies.  We can create and deliver great customer experience while meeting our goals–after all, that’s also in the customer interest.

The only issue is the design point.  Great customer experience design starts with the customer, not with our internal operations.  If we start our design from an outside-in perspective, we can simultaneously created differentiated customer experience and have lean, efficient and effective operations.

It’s only a matter of where you start.