A  week ago, I posted, “I’ve Succumbed–I’m Talking About Sales 2.0.”  Last week, I had the opportunity to participate in a webinar hosted by Tom Scontras of Glance Networks on this topic.

We had a great conversation!  In case you missed it, you can still listen to it at Glance. If you missed it, take some time to listen sometime this weekend.  It’s only about 45 minutes long.  I’d love to get your comments and feedback.

Your Help!

If you are a regular reader, you know I have no shortage of opinions about sales, business, and leadership.  However, I want to pause and ask for your input and ideas.  I’d really appreciate it if you would take a moment to comment suggesting topics that I should write about.

In the past year, I’ve written extensively about sales process, value propositions, sales management/leadership, metrics, and customer focus.  I have more that I want to add to those topics.  I also plan to write quite a bit more on coaching and developing sales professionals, channels, collaboration and partnering in sales, funnel and pipeline management, sales on-boarding, and sales strategy development.

What would you like me to be writing about?  Thanks for taking the time to give me your ideas.  I so appreciate your comments and support, either on the blog, through your emails, or at the other sites these articles appear.  Thanks for your continues support, encouragement, and ideas!

Collaboration is the new buzzword.  It seems everywhere we turn, we read about collaboration–it’s critical to Sales 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and just about everything else that’s 2.0.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m on the collaboration soapbox as well, but I wish the focus wasn’t just on Shiny New Collaboration Toys. 

I’m attracted to any article that has collaboration in the title, but am often disappointed because it is another article on technology–whether a new telepresence approach (Yes Cisco, your advertising is working), a new software/social networking tool, or something else.  These are interesting and provide new ways to extend the way we collaborate, but seem to gloss over the essence of successful collaboration—or even the fact that collaboration isn’t necessarily the right answer for everything.

I remember when collaboration used to be called teamwork, but I guess that’s not as sexy a term.  Plus we all know about teamwork–it’s really hard.  Collaboration is hard too, but we spend more time talking about shiny new toys than about how to collaborate effectively or whether to collaborate at all.

So let me talk about teamwork.  For great teamwork, we have to align goals and objectives.  We have to have a shared vision about where we are going, how we know when we get there, and why we are going there in the first place.  If the team is aligned in it’s goals and objectives, then chaos results–we create a lot of activity, but it’s aimless.  We get frustrated with each other and tend to stop working as a team.

Teamwork limits our freedom.  We tend not to talk about this, but to be effective on a team, we often have restrictions on what we do and how we do it.  We must work together with others, not just do our own thing.  I was struck by a piece on collaboration by David Byrne (yes, of Talking Heads Fame).  He says that sometimes there is great joy in being limited — it helps to let others participate in making decisions, not to have the responsibility solely to ourselves.

He also raises the point that working together is to expose ourselves to ideas “outside and beyond what one would of come up with oneself…. It gets us outside our own self created boxes.”  Isn’t this one of the points of effective teamwork, that working together we can accomplish so much more than we could be working as individuals?  We can possibly get things done faster.  We can possibly come up with much better ideas, methods and approaches.  We can explore the concept that 2+2 is sometimes more than 4 (God forbid I use another buzzword–synergy).

Teamwork is tough, it’s a double edge sword–for every positive benefit, there can be a negative.  But if we can organize ourselves to overcome the negatives, the results can be tremendous.  As leaders, we build ”teams” in our organizations.  But creating effective teams is more than a buzzword.  Morten Hansen has written a great book on this, Collaboration.  It focuses on internal collaborations—teamwork, and when they are effective and when not.  It’s a must read for anyone involved in teamwork.

Teamwork outside of our organizational walls becomes “partnering.”  Partnering is all the rage, it seems to be a higher form of selling  (maybe it removes the stigma of the act of “selling.)  Like teamwork, partnering is very difficult.  It isn’t right for every customer or supplier, it isn’t right for every situation.  Effective partnering requires the same open-mindedness as teamwork.  Effective partnering limits our freedoms, but exposes us to opportunities that we might not otherwise be able to pursue.  No organization can partner with everyone–we can’t afford it, we don’t have the resources to support it, it creates organizational schizophrenia.

Partnering requires new skills, discipline, processses, and methods.  Partnering requires sharing—shared values, vision, risks, resources, and rewards. 

Teamwork, partnering, collaboration is about working together–differently–to achieve things we can’t do as individually.  The tools are just aids in helping us do this, they are not the ends.

I was listening to a web-conference today, one of the speakers discussed the importance of collaboration in sales, citing the higher use of web conferencing, webinars, Webex, and other tools.  While I have great respect for the speaker, I wanted to scream!  Absolutely, collaboration is critical to sales, and business, professionals.  It’s always been important, new forms of collaboration are increasingly important.  But web conferencing ,  webinars, Webex are not collaboration — they have little to do with collaboration!

Effective collaboration is about alignment of goals and objectives.  It’s about working together, perhaps in different ways than we have in the past.  To collaborate effectively, we have to look at how we realign our work processes, how we share risk, resources, rewards.  Effective collaboration requires shared values and vision.  Collaboration changes the way we look at control and independence.  Collaborating means that we have to surrender some levels of control and increase our dependence on those people we are collaborating with.  At its core, it requires much higher levels of trust.

Collaboration can profoundly change our relationships—within our own organizations, with our customers, suppliers, and stakeholders.  It can deepen and enrich our relationships, enabling each of us to achieve our goals, execute our strategies, grow and innovate more effectively and efficiently.

Having said all this, collaboration is not the be all, end all.  There are many cases where collaboration is inappropriate or ineffective.  If we cannot align our goals and objectives, our “our collaboration” is not likely to be effective, it’s more likely to increase conflict than produce results.  If the organization/function we are collaborating with does not bring critical capabilities that complement ours, then we are possibly wasting money and resources.

Collaboration is one of those words that is fashionable to toss around–it’s the politically correct thing to do.  Vendors can sell a lot of hardware, software, systems that enable us to communicate—not necessarily collaborate.  Social media tools provide us platforms that can facilitate communication and collaboration.  Using these tools does not mean we are collaborating.  Collaboration is important, but let’s not confuse the tools with what it really is, what we must do to be effective in collaboration, when it is appropriate to collaborate, and how we produce results through effective collaboration.

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In May-June of 2009, Partners In EXCELLENCE conducted a market research survey to learn more about the importance of Strategic Alliances and Partnerships With Customers and Suppliers.

We conducted this study after seeing some disturbing trends reported in the PWC 12th Annual Global CEO Survey.  In that survey, one of the issues the CEO’s identified as a priority was building stronger strategies around collaboration.

There were a few interesting data points in the PWC Survey:

• 57% of the CEO’s agreed or agreed strongly that collaborative business networks would be a defining organizational principle for business.
• 71% believed collaborative business relationships are critical with customers and clients.
• Only about 40% believed the same about supply chain partners.

We found the gap of more than 30% between customers and suppliers to be very disconcerting.  Depending on your point of view, everyone is a customer or a supplier.  We believe there needs to be alignment in partnering strategies throughout the organization–with both customers, clients, and suppliers.

As a result, we conducted a survey to test our thoughts.  Happily, we found the participants in the survey confirmed much of what we thought.  A few summary observations are below.

• Partnering and collaboration with both customers and suppliers is a key strategy for the respondents. 
• The primary results from partnering were much deeper relationships and far better understanding of customers.  A second result was increased revenue and share of customer.
• The importance of establishing collaborative relationships is more important now, in the downturn, than it was before the downturn, though it has been important to the majority of the respondents for some time.
• There are only minor differences in views based on company size (Companies over $100M in Revenue, and those less than $100M).
• The results, particularly the importance of working with closely with suppliers is sharply in contrast to the results expressed in the PWC CEO survey.  They had a much lower priority in working collaboratively with suppliers than the respondents to this survey.
• The big surprise is the respondents felt strong relationships with suppliers contributed positively to their ability to sell to and support their customers.  Stated differently, each level of the value delivery chain can have a positive impact in value delivery to the customer.  With supplier consolidations and pressure for concessions (price, delivery, etc.), we had expected a neutral to negative impact.

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To get this promotional offer, just Follow This Link, make a tax deductible contribution, supporting Dave Brock’s ride, then send Dave an email saying you have made the contribution and requesting the report.  You can reach Dave at dabrock@excellenc.com

I just read To Sell More, Scare Customer Spitless by Geoffrey James at BNET.  The headline catches your attention–It’s a discussion of Geoffrey Moore’s Provocative Selling.

In case you have missed the discussion, Provocative Selling is the latest gimmick to catch your customer’s attention, making them aware of problems and opportunities to improve their business.  In the case made by Moore, you are making the customer aware of things they may not have been aware of in the past.  You surface areas of under performance relative to the industry or competition, you surface opportunities for growth or improvement.

While I have the greatest respect for Geoffrey Moore, for months I’ve been trying to figure out what all the hoop-la is about.  After all, isn’t it the sales professional’s job to help their customers improve their businesses, to discover new ways to grow, or to discover opportunities to improve performance?  So what’s new here?

Using a possibly painful analogy, it strikes me that Provocative Selling is now becoming the “Shock and Awe” of selling.  Let’s remember a few things, Shock and Awe doesn’t win the war, it gets things started.  We still have to win the war.  Shock and Awe comes at tremendous cost–to all involved.  Finally, Shock and Awe is usually the last resort, after you have exhausted all other alternatives.

I’ve spent some time trying to understand Provocative Selling and what’s really different.  There are some valuable concepts, though not necessarily novel ideas.  I have great respect for Mr. Moore, and perhaps, many of his ideas are being twisted by different interpretations of them, but here are some of my thoughts and reactions.

Provocative Selling focuses the sales person on identifying opportunities or problems the customer is unaware of.  Too often, sales people respond to a known customer need, pain, problem.  If we execute a consultative sales process well, we work with that customer in really understanding the dimensions of that problem, its costs and impacts, and present solutions to that known problem.  Sales people need to help their customers identify what they don’t know and understand the impact on the business.  Sales people need to help the customer understand problems they have been previously unaware of or new opportunities.

Provocative Selling focuses on creating a crisis.  Crises are great for grabbing management attention and sometimes as sales professionals, we need to do this.  But should that be the normal course of the relationship?  The best sales professionals offer leadership to their customers–on an ongoing basis.  They naturally help their customers think about their businesses differently and constantly engage their customers in presenting new ideas, opportunities, and ways to improve and grow their businesses.  Sales people who do not do this on an ongoing basis are doing their customers a disservice.   We shouldn’t be looking to create an event or crisis, but we should nurture relationships with our customers where we are constantly advising them on improving their business.  That is real and sustained value in building the relationship with the customer.

Provocative Selling creates the crisis and captures attention.  In all the conversations I have had with people implementing Provocative Selling, the focus is how do we capture the customer’s attention and create a new opportunity.  That’s fantastic, but what’s next?  The sales process must continue.  These are not one call closes (with the carefully orchestrated call that is outlined in the article).  These create the opportunity to compete, perhaps in a most favored role, but still you have to compete and manage the process to a successful conclusion. 

Provocative Selling is waking complacent companies up.  Too many organizations have become complacent in their success.  They have strong products, strong brands and reputations, and lots of momentum based on their success.  They may have lost their edge.  Think back to much of Mr. Moore’s orginal work.  It focused on new companies introducing new technologies and trying to grow their success.  Provocative Selling is at the core of any entrepreneurial company or those introducing new technologies.  They are often solving problems or creating opportunities their target markets have never thought of.  Each successful company achieved its success by being Provocative.  Somehow, success, size, and inertia cause many organizations to become complacent, not bringing new ideas to their customers.  Mr. Moore introduced us to the product life cycle curve and how to be effective at different stages.  Part of what he is doing in Provocative Selling is getting both sellers and customers to focus on that mature phase of the life cycle. 

In it’s current incarnation, Provocative Selling requires a major expeditionary force.  I’ve been talking to a lot of people implementing Provocative Selling.  Most of these are very large companies.  They make major investments in research and analysis.  They make major resource investments in both understanding markets and specific customer issues.  While it begs the question, why haven’t they been doing this on an ongoing basis, let me put that to the side.  As these companies implement Provocative Selling, they undertake major initiatives and investments, usually focused on their very most important current or potential customers.  While these have great short term impact on results and create dramatic case studies, the challenge is, “How do we make this part of the fabric of the business?”  Not only in how each and every sales person works with their customers, but how to our organizations continued to innovate in improving our customer’s businesses.

Related to this, the heavy investment in Provocative Selling can preclude many companies from investing in it.  We need to remember the pioneers of this approach, the small, underfunded, entrepreneurial organizations introducing new technologies and ideas to the market.  We need to capture their focus, intensity, rabid enthusiasm and best practices in achieving a foothold, crossing the chasm, and moving forward.

To the degree Provocative Selling is becoming a “fad,”  I’d hate to be a customer!  Imagine it, all these companies getting inundated with provocateurs—getting pummeled from all sides.  Where were you when I needed you?  Why did it take a business slow down to get you to do what you should have been doing all these years?  Which of the five provocative opportunities am I going to select?  Sorry, my cycnism is showing.  I actually think the concept is great, since it is waking us up to do our jobes.  I just worry about Provocative Selling being the current “in thing.”  I been both at the giving and receiving end of these efforts, sometimes it’s painful.

I’m actually quite excited about the conversaton Provocative Selling is causing in the sales community.  I see it as a wake up call for all professional sales people.  It is not a new concept, start ups have been doing it for years.  Consultants do it all the time.  Great sales professionals do this every day.  If anything, Provocative Selling reminds us of what we should be doing every day.  We need to move it from a “crisis” to standard execution.

More than having sales professionals embrace it, I hope customers embrace it.  I hope it becomes the standard expectation that all customers have of their suppliers and vendors.  I hope each customer expects the people selling to them should be bringing them ideas and solutions for growing and improving their businesses.  It raises the bar on sales perfromance, sets a nes standard.  Those sales people that can meet that new standard will separate themselves from all others, creating differentiated and sustained value!

If your partners are not adding value and improving the total value proposition to the customers, they are adding cost — detracting from your value proposition and competitiveness.

There are many ways partners might add value: relationships with customers is one area. Skills and capabilities that complement yours–for example implementation, installation of your products, local support, the ability to integrate complementary products for a richer solution, and others all represent potential value they might provide.

When building a channel that complements and enhances the total value of your offerings, make sure you understand one other element of value. What is the value that you provide your partners? If you are not providing them value, it is very unlikely the relationship will produce results. A way to think about this is illustrated below.

The decision to use partners should be driven primarily by filling gaps in your value proposition. If your partners add value in reaching your customers, and you add value to them, you will probably have an effective, efficient and high performing channel–creating great results for your mutual customers as well as for each other.

Partners In EXCELLENCE is the recognized leader in helping organizations develop and communicate differentiated value propositions. We are also recognized for our expertise in developing and implementing high impact partnering and channel strategies.

If you need to sharpen your tools, processes, thinking, and skills in value propositions, look at our Value Proposition Solutions, follow the link. For a copy of our free Value Proposition eBook, follow the link.

For our eBook, Partnering for Profitability, follow the linkg

For any other information about how Partners In EXCELLENCE can improve your organization’s capabilities in understanding, developing, communicating and delivering differentiated value, or i ndeveloping and implementing your channel strategies, please contact us at +1-949-305-7146 or dabrock@excellenc.com