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  This is the easiest concern, probably the majority of stuff on the web is wrong or out of date.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 was struck by this comment from John Chambers, Chairman and CEO of Cisco, “ We got knocked on our tail last year. Market transitions wait for no one. The ability to recognize and move on these is critical. If we don’t change, we won’t make it through these transitions and if you don’t change you won’t either. It’s happening at a faster pace in every industry.”

We all talk about how our customers are changing–what they do, how they buy, their expectations of suppliers is changing.  No business or individual can afford to stand still and survive.  Every organization is constantly string to innovate and improve.

This presents a special challenge for sales and marketing professionals.  Too often, we’re playing catch up–our customers are changing faster than we are.  We are still using our old techniques, approaches, and methods.  We’re marketing to them in the traditional ways.  Too often, we find our efforts are producing the results we need, our demand generation programs aren’t generating enough leads, we can’t get into customers to talk about their needs and requirements, our customers are leveraging the web and other sources to identify and narrow solution alternatives for their business.  We struggle to be relevant and create value for our customers.

But for many top sales and marketing professionals, this is a tremendous opportunity to provide leadership to our customers.   Imagine if we could help the customer recognize the transitions earlier–and help them take advantage of them.  What about helping customers create the transition?

“But Dave,” some of you might say, “the transitions Chambers speaks of are major structural changes in the world markets and economy, you can’t expect us to be driving those!”  In reality, they missed some major transitions as well as lots of smaller, more subtle transitions.  Cumulatively, they had a tremendous impact on Cisco, as they have had on many other organizations.

But I still maintain, “we” have the opportunity to help our customers anticipate and even drive transitions.  At an individual level, there are all sorts of things our customers may be blind to.  After all, too often, they are just caught up in the day to day.  They may not take the time to look around to see what’s happening to their customers, market, or with their competitors.  Or some of the things may just be beyond their experience base. 

We set ourselves apart by helping our customers recognize these transitions—by helping them understand what’s changing, how it might impact them, what they could achieve if they took advantage of the opportunity.

At a broader level, our companies should be providing leadership.  If the company is truly customer focused, we spend lots of time not just responding to our customers’ needs, but anticipating changes they may be facing and developing compelling solutions for them.  Product development people who look beyond our customers and their needs, to their customers and what they are doing. 

We and our customers can’t wait for the transitions and respond—we must anticipate, create and lead the transitions.  We must constantly be innovating.

When we see transitions happening around use–whether it’s to our customers or within our organizations, we can’t ignore them, we can’t resist them, we have to recognize them, embrace them and change.    There is no option, as Chambers says, “If we don’t change, we won’t make it through these transitions and if you don’t change you won’t either. It’s happening at a faster pace in every industry.”

One of the key roles of any leader or executive is to teach, coach, develop our people.  Our people are all too eager to learn from our experience, to learn what we did to be successful, as well as to learn what mistakes we may have made, so they can avoid them.

“Teaching,” whether formally or through coaching or mentoring is a privilege for any executive.  It’s a powerful way, not only to work on specific skills development, but to pass along values, to build the culture, to provide our people a broader context in which to position their contributions.  In growing our people, it’s our number one responsibility.

But often, we forget another key component of teaching/coaching/mentoring our people.  We forget the tremendous value we get in learning from them.

Today, I’ve been carrying on a couple of email conversations.  One with a sales manager in the Far East, another with a sales person in the Midwest.  With each, it became clear a telephone conversation would be valuable.  But each was reluctant to ask me to invest some time in it–not sure if there was a “business outcome” for me.  While I appreciate their sensitivity to my revenue generation, I told each, that I really value these conversations and learn a lot from them.  Each was overly humble in replying, “I can’t possibly imagine what you can learn from me.”

Learning–whether it is formal or through coaching or mentoring is really two ways.  I know what I can share as a sales executive or consultant — what people, whether they are sales people in my organization or clients, can learn from me.  But the value we get from them teaching us can never be over-stated.

It’s an opportunity for any executive to learn what’s really happening in the organization and the world.  We get the privilege to talk to people who are struggling to implement our strategies, to achieve the goals we have set, and who help make us successful.  We get an unfiltered view of what’s really happening–not the sterile numbers or text that may be in a report, but the context, emotions, and color commentary on what’s really happening.

We get much more than that.  For example, in the email conversations I was having with these two individuals, they were asking questions differently than had been posed before.  Each was asking about prospecting, demand generation, and sales process, but they expressed the questions a little differently–the questions were challenging and caused me to really think about my response.  They gave me the opportunity to look at what I thought I already knew, but to look at it a little differently.

The questions didn’t cause me to change my mind or point of view.  They didn’t create an “A-HA” moment, but they caused me to reflect and think about the appropriate response.  They forced me to consider something I thought I knew, but from a slightly different point of view.  It was something I could learn from.

Often, it’s the naive questions we may get from our subordinates.  We tend to think everyone understands things the same way we do, that just because it’s something we “get,” that everyone else does as well.  Then you encounter a sincere, but naive question, that causes you to sit back and realize you’ve been alone, that others simply may not get it.

Or, like any human being, we beome blind.  We don’t see what everyone else sees, we become a little disconnected from what’s really happening.  The questions and discussions with our subordinates or people deep in our organization are often a giant wake up call–but only if we are open to learning.

I, along with others, write often about how critical it is for executives and leaders to teach, coach, and mentor their people.  Almost always, we focus on the importance of it in developing our people and helping them perform at the highest levels.

One of the greatest values of teaching, coaching, and mentoring is what we learn from the person we are coaching.  It helps us grow and to perform at even higher levels.  When you are coaching, don’t cheat yourself of the opportunity to learn from those who you are coaching—that may be where the greatest value lies.

We struggle to get customers to see us.  There are hundreds of blog post, articles, training programs, and other sources that offer ideas in getting customers to respond to our emails or calls.  Hundreds on getting meetings with customers.  They range from sound advice, to various “time tested techniques,” to trickery and manipulation, to “miracle cures.”

It seems customers have an equal number of techniques to avoid meeting with us.  They just don’t respond, they put up barriers, they create gate keepers, they make it difficult to identify who in the organization we should be talking to.

We wonder, “Why do they do everything they can to avoid us?”  After all, we have wonderful things to talk about!  We have all sorts of great products they have to be interested in.  We’ve got lots of stuff to “help them.”

Or we want to meet to help them.  If they’d just sit down to tell us their priorities—we’re interested if they involve us.  We want to understand their need, probe their pain.  We want to learn what it takes to earn their business.  We just know our solutions can help them, if they’d only take the time to meet with us.

But the problem is, customers seldom see it the same way we do-which shouldn’t be a shock to anyone.  Too often, we’re an interruption.  We divert them from the stuff they need to get done today.  We spend all our time talking about ourselves, our products, our companies.

Worst, we waste their time.  We aren’t prepared, we don’t understand their business.  Only 13% of customers believe sales people really understand their businesses.

So we become an interruption.

But then there are those few sale people who are different. The one’s that customers call and ask to visit.  They’re the one’s that help the customer see their businesses differently.  They help the customer understand new opportunities to grow their businesses.  They have insight and opinions that are meaningful to their customers.  They understand their customers’ businesses–their markets, their customers’ customers.  They are focused on results–not theirs, but those the customers will achieve.

They can talk about solutions without obsessing about products.  They know the products are just a vehicle for the customer to achieve results.

These sales people don’t have trouble getting the customer to meet with them.  They have no need for tricks or manipulation to see the customer.  They don’t waste their time or the customers’.  They focus only on opportunities where they can make a difference for the customer.

These are the value creators.

Which are you?

Do you know what it takes to be a value creator?  If not, ask me!

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.’”

I commented on the results reported in IBM’s outstanding  survey of CMO’s.  The absence of concern about aligning and working with sales was alarming.  It generated a lot of discussion an comments.  My friend Bob Thompson at CustomerThink commented that absent anything else it would take 10-20 years for marketing and sales to get aligned.  He suggested the only other alternative was a strong CEO, taking action to align the functions.

I agree with Bob–perhaps I am more pessimistic.  The wall that’s existed between sales and marketing probably dates back to the formation of the first sales and marketing departments.  Each has had a different function, each has performed those functions.  Executive running sales and marketing focus on optimizing the performance of their own organizations.

In truth, marketing and sales have worked together, though not always in sync or in total alignment.  But absent any stronger incentive, it’s highly unlikely that on their own inertia, sales and marketing will ever get better aligned—it’s natural, each has differing goals and objectives.  Each is focused on achieving those goals in the best way possible–for them.

Another reader commented on the wasted resources and money resulting from the lack of alignment between sales and marketing.  This is a critical issue.  As long as marketing and sales aren’t aligned, aren’t working hand in hand, they can’t optimize their impact with the customer.  The investments made in both sales and marketing will not create the return they might.  It’s kind of like 2+2= 3, when if integrated and aligned it might be 5 or 6.

So what’s going to get sales and marketing together?  Does it take a visionary CEO to understand the organizations need to be aligned, they need to share common goals, measurements, and rewards?  That’s great, if that happens.  Historically, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of evidence for that.

I don’t want to overstate the problem.  There are many leading organizations taking major steps in aligning sales and marketing. They’re seeing tremendous results.  But they are the exception.

I actually think sales and marketing will start getting aligned and integrated more quickly.  The forcing function for the alignment will be the customer–the markets.  Customers will no longer accept or respond to differing messages, disparate conversations, clumsy engagements.  Customers will not waste their time—it’s too precious, they can spend it and their money in better ways.

Customers don’t differentiate between our marketing programs and sales programs.  They want a seamless customer experience.  Customers will respond to those organizations creating the best buying experience–through the life cycle of that experience.

Marketing and sales will align out of survival.  If customers are buying from companies that have an integrated and aligned customer buying experience–then out of survival, marketing and sales will start working more effectively together.

Don’t wait for the customer to vote with their pocketbooks.  Customer experience matters.  Drive alignment between marketing and sales in your organizations.  Align your goals, align your programs, align your metrics.  Look at how your customer engagement process–not just from the point of view of marketing, or sales, but look at the total customer experience.

Design your marketing and sales programs to optimize that experience.  Take a leadership position.

I’m amazed by many of the discussions I read about sales performance management.  At some point the “bell curve” is introduced, it’s sliced into “A’s, B’s, and C’s.”  Then the discussion focuses on how you shift or bias things to the right (the high performance side) of the bell curve.  There are endless debates about what you do, who you coach, how to hire, where you spend your time, how to maximize performance.  Taken to an extreme, the focus is “get all A’s, then everything is perfect.”

These discussions are good discussions, but the present a relatively static view of the organization, of sales strategies, and of performance management.   In reality, top executives must continue to shift the curve to the right, continuing to raise the bar on performance.  We have to look constantly at improving sales performance, effectiveness, and efficiency.  We must look at constantly improving and innovating, enabling each sales person to continue to grow in their abilities and in their contributions to the business.

Whether it’s “shifting the curve to the right,” or “raising the bar,”  it’s critical for sales executives to focus on this.   Nothing stays the same–what we do must continue to evovle and change.  It’s critical to have a clear picture of where we are moving the organization, and how we will achieve it.  It’s critical to have a establish and execute a plan to “move performance to the right.”  Our goals, strategies, structures, and sales deployment strategies will shift and change.  Our processes, systems, tools need to change to support our goals.  Our hiring profiles, our performance expectations, our metrics, our compensation and incentive systems will change. 

Outstanding performance today, may be just OK tomorrow, and unacceptable the day after.  Today’s “A’s,” may become tomorrow’s “B’s” unless we are coaching them and developing them to support our future needs.  Likewise for “B’s and C’s.”  We can’t afford not to address these performance issues today, because they will become bigger challenges in the future.

• What are you doing to shift the curve to the right?
• What does this mean for your strategies, organizational models, priorities, and programs?
• What does this mean for the skills and capabilities of your people?  Do you have the right people?  Do you need different people?  Have you changed your recruiting profiles?  What are you doing to prepare your people to shift to the right?
• Do you have the right processes, systems, and tools to support this shift and your people? 
• Do you have the right performance expectations, metrics, and incentives?
• Do your people understand the “shift?”  Do they understand their role?  Do they understand your expectations? Have they bought into it?
• What are you doing to coach and develop your people do drive the shift?  What are you doing with those that can’t?

Life and business never stands still.  We must constantly change and improve.  Are you shifting your curve to the right?

I’ve been reading a lot of different stuff about coaching recently.  It’s good to see the different points of view, I learn something from each of them.  But in the end, sometimes I wonder if we are taking something that is already very tough and making it more complicated than it need be.

I read endless debates about who we should spend our time with, A’s, B’s, or C’s.  Everyone has a different view.  Some people even try to measure the optimal time spent coaching each person each week—it’s 15.23675899 minutes per person per week–OK I made that up, but you can find similar statistics in various posts.

There are lots of discussions about coaching approaches–directive, non-directive, and so forth.  Actually, I think these are very important discussions because they focus on maximizing the impact of each coaching discussion.  But some of them take the approach too far and are too formulaic, “use these words, with this emphasis, at this moment…”

In the end I’m more confused than I started (and I’m actually a pretty good coach).

I guess I subscribe to the KISS approach–Keep It Simple Stupid.  I like it because I can really relate with the Stupid part.

Here are some principles that have worked on me and for me.  Some will be helpful to you–by all means adapt them (send me royalty checks), for those that aren’t don’t worry about them.

1. The manager’s job is to get thing done through their people.  The only way we achieve our goals is through our people.  Our job then becomes maximizing the performance of our people.  Virtually everything else that manager’s do is supportive of this primary function.
2. If our job is to maximize the performance of our people, then coaching is the highest impact activity that we can engage in.  Sure there are things that help–training, systems, tools.  But coaching is where we as managers maximize our impact.
3. Everybody needs coaching–EVERYBODY, even you.  Make sure your manager is coaching you.  Coach the people who report to you, make sure everyone is coached.
4. Now for the first contradictory guideline.  This is in direct violation to 3.  Don’t waste your time on people who aren’t willing to be coached.  In fact, go one step further, get rid of them.  People who are willing to be coached aren’t willing to grow and improve.  Even if they are top performers today, tomorrow they’ll be dinosaurs.
5. Now we’ve reduced this to a simpler problem and we can re-invoke item 3, everyone needs to be coached.
6. Go where the problems are!  We tell our sales people to go where the money is, so likewise, if we want to maximize performance, go where the problems are.  This means we probably have greater impact by working with our C’s and B’s.  (But remember rule 3–and I’ll come back to A’s).
7. Spend whatever time it takes and is appropriate for the situation.  Sometimes great coaching is one or two questions/observations expressed in a casual hallway conversation.  There is no quota for coaching, 15.23675899 minutes per person per week is not the answer or the goal.  Having an impact on performance is the goal.  Do you coach A’s for 12.5267 minutes, B’s for 15.23675899 minutes and C’s for 4.237 minutes?  No, spend the time you have to–after all it’s the best way to use your time.
8. Every conversation and discussion is a coaching opportunity.  After a meeting, you have coaching opportunities, in a pipeline review, in a territory review, windshield time, in the hallway or drinking a cup of coffee (substitute the beverage of your choice).  We don’t schedule coaching sessions or meetings, we look for every conversation and interaction as an opportunity to coach.
9. Timeliness is key.  Coach when you see something happen if you want to have an impact.  Recalling that sales call 30 days ago where someone could have done something differently is a waste of everyone’s time.
10. In looking at 8 and 9, everyone needs coaching, everyone can sharpen their performance–so don’t forget your A’s.
11. Sometimes your best coaching for low performers is coaching them to move into a role where they can maximize their performance, where they can become A’s or B’s.  It may be a different sales role in the organization, it may be with another company.  C’s and low performers can’t be ignored.  You have to deal with them and you deal with them by coaching–improving their performance in their current jobs, or moving them into other roles–it’s part of what coaching is.
12. Here’s one for everyone, but it’s a way to really rocket A performers to even higher levels of contribution.  Remember you aren’t just maximizing current performance on the job, you are also maximizing the ability for them to achieve their full potential–maximizing their contribution over time to the company.  For example, you may be coaching some of your better performers to prepare them to step up to greater levels of responsibility–perhaps broader or different sales responsibilities, perhaps moving into management.  So we coach for both current performance and future performance.
13. When coaching, ask more questions than tell, listen more than you talk, probe and understand before leaping to conclusions, understand their point of view, be prepared to admit you are wrong.  Get them to think, get them to explore.
14. Here’s the second exception, sometimes the most appropriate coaching might be, “You really screwed that one up!”  In the right situation it is very powerful.  Sometimes telling is right–I’ll leave you to figure that out (or you can hire me to tell you).
15. Be human–no one is perfect, no one has all the answers. Sometimes shit happens.  Laugh!
16. Set an example, sometimes the best coaching is what they see you doing — and not doing.
17. Realize and revel in opportunities where your people may, in fact, be coaching you.  It’s subtle, it’s to be treasured.  It means they care.
18. The corollary to 17 is you have to care!  You have to care about your people as people, you have to care about their success.  If you don’t, you have no business being a manager, and you will never be successful as a coach.
19. Above all KISS.

 (If this isn’t enough for you, email me for our Coaching eBook., I’ll be glad to send it.  Just give me your full name and email address, send the request to me at dabrock@excellenc.com)

Sales management is one of the toughest jobs around—particularly that of the first line sales manager.  Fundamentally, our job is to maximize the performance of our sales teams–both tactically and strategically.  I read a post, How the VP of Sales can Inspire their Sales Team with 4 Simple Habits.  It got me reflecting on how managers maximize their impact, and where managers should spend their time, not just the Vice President of Sales, but all levels of sales management.

The post offers some interesting suggestions, frankly a number of them I disagree with very strongly.  Let’s start with the areas in which we are in real alignment.

The biggest impact a sales manager at any level can have is by being out with their people in front of customers.  Yet too often, exactly the opposite thing happens–managers spend too much of their time internally focused.  They are chained to their desks, conducting internal meetings, conducting internal reviews, spending time reporting on what’s going on.  Some of this is necessary-we need to communicate to the rest of the organization, we need to get resources and support for our people, we need to get help for our customers.  But too often, managers are consumed with this.  They stop visiting customers, they stop visiting their people.

Being chained to the desk, being focused on reporting, staying internally focused on internal politics do not produce revenue or improve the capabilities of sales people.

Without a doubt, the number 1 and the number 1 priorities of sales managers are Customers and Your People!  If the majority of your time isn’t spent in the field working with your people and visiting your customers, you are prioritizing things incorrectly.  Nothing trumps spending your time here–period.  A number of years ago, I was EVP of Sales for a large organization.   I was scheduled to do a presentation at our Board of Directors.  It was an “important” presentation.  As the day approached, a critical customer situation arose.  It was clear that my involvement was needed and, unfortunately, the only time available with the customer conflicted with my ability to present to the Board.  The decision was easy for me–I conveyed my apologies to my boss, the CEO, and to the Board Members, saying Customers and this situation were more important.  Fortunately, my boss and the board applauded that decision–and we did get the order.

So managers need to prioritize time with customers and with their people.  We need to unchain ourselves from our desks and spend the majority of our time in the field.  Take a moment right now and look at your calendar for the past 30 days.  If you haven’t spent a minimum of 50 percent of your time in the field with your people and with customers, you’re not maximizing your impact.

Now once we’ve committed to spend our time in the field, where do we have the most impact?  This is where I think the article is dead wrong.  It suggests that managers spend the bulk of their time with A players and calling on their customers.  I don’t want to ignore the A players, but this is not where the problems are, this is not where managers have the most impact—both in driving performance of sales people and in contributing to closing business.  By definition, the A players really don’t need your help, so it’s irresponsible to focus the bulk of our time with them, unless all you want is “feel good” meetings.

Where we as managers have the greatest impact and leverage is with our B and even C players.  Maximizing the performance of that huge middle range of our people—the B players has the highest return on a manager’s time.  Working with them, we have so much more impact, so much greater room for helping them improve.  Likewise, the impact we have working with them, on their deals, helping strengthen their competitive positioning and moving the deal through the customer’s buying cycle.  (For a different perspective the value of focusing on your B players, look at what the authors of Challenger Selling have to say.)

It may be more fun hanging out with A players and their customers, but that’s not our job as sales managers.  Our job is to maximize the performance of our organization.  We have to invest our time where it has greatest impact, and frankly where we’re needed.  By  definition, it won’t be with our top performers.

This doesn’t say we ignore our C players either.  Our job is to maximize performance, this includes dealing with performance problems.  Coaching our C players–either getting them to be B’s or A’s, moving them into roles where they can be B’s or A’s (and that may be out of the company) is our responsibility as managers.

Whatever level of manager you are, spend your time where you have the greatest impact–it’s always with customers and sales people.  Once you get out to the field, don’t hide out–head straight for the people and customers where you can bring the greatest value and impact, and where you are most needed.  Don’t ignore your A players or your great customers, but they don’t really need you as much.  It’s your B and C players that need you and your attention.  It’s the tough customers where you can help both your people and the customers the most.

Serve your people, serve your customers, the rest takes care of itself.

I’ve written quite a bit about Challenger Selling and it’s many related concepts–it is after all a different articulation of the solution, customer focused, consultative, value based, provocative selling approaches we all know.  Every once in a while, I think–wouldn’t it be novel to look at things from the customer’s perspective?  What might Challenger Buying look like?

There are a couple of perspectives we might think about.  One is Challenger Buying has existed for a very long time–we, as sales professionals are waking up to the fact and addressing it.  The other is how difficult it is to do Challenger Buying–from a customer perspective.  I’ll talk about both in separate articles.

I’ll start with the second–we can’t underestimate the difficulty of doing Challenger Buying.  The premises of any kind of solution selling, including Challenger, is that we are bringing the customer new ideas.  We are challenging them to think about their businesses differently.  We are helping them to discover new opportunities.  There is no doubt, we create the greatest value for our customers when we are engaging them in this manner.  Customers don’t need us pitching our products, spewing all sorts of data about features, benefits, and so forth.

But Challenger Buying is, to say the least, very challenging for the customer—more so than it is for the sales person to do Challenger Selling.  At it’s core, it’s about risk, change, readiness, and priorities. 

As sales people, I think we often lose sight of what we are doing to the customer.  We’re doing the best that we can to help them discover ways of improving their business.  We get our customers excited about the opportunities, we show them how our solutions can help capitalize on the opportunities.

But then, from a customer point of view, reality starts to set in.  How do we (the customer) make this happen?  What are the risks?  How do we manage those risks–can we manage them?  What are the consequences of failure—or even a slight miss?  What does this mean to our organization?  What does it take for us to do this?  Are we ready and prepared?  How do we manage the change?  How does if fit into our priorities–often it may mean a complete shift in priorities.

The challenge of Challenger Buying became very clear in a conversation I had with a top executive recently.  He was struggling and called me for some advice.  It seemed that a sales team had done an awesome job in helping him see new opportunities for his business.  He shared with me how exciting the concept was, how clearly he could see the impact on the future of his company, and how he could see the value of the solution the sales team was presenting.  He said the business case was obvious and compelling.

I asked him, “So what’s bothering you?”

He responded, “I worry about our ability to make it happen.  There is so much more than just the solution the sales team presented.  We have to make it happen.”  He went on to talk about the risks of failure–he could see ways to manage those and accept those.  He was worried about the change and how to prioritize this initiative with the other priorities they faced.  He clearly understood he’d have to shift the priorities, but there was a very high risk in the short term (about 9 months) revenue impact.  These impacts were in other parts of his business–not related to the challenging idea, but in shifting his priorities the ripple through the organization had impacts far beyond the idea itself.

I asked, “What’s the sales team doing to help you find answers to this?” 

He said, “They can’t do much.  The things risks, shifts in priorities, and change management involves things far outside their ability to contribute.”

This example is pretty dramatic, it involved a fairly substantive shift in the company strategy.  Most Challenger Sales may not be that dramatic, but we have to understand Challenger Buying!  We aren’t doing our job and we won’t be successful unless we help our customer in their buying (funny how it always comes back to helping the customer buy).  We have to help them understand the risks, change, readiness, and prioritization issues.  We have to help the customer solve and manage these.

Challenger Buying is tough–if we are going to be successful with Challenger Selling, we need to shift our focus to Challenger Buying.