No, I’ve not decided to convert this blog into a lesson on Anatomy, I actually want to talk about systems.  But I don’t mean systems–technology, I mean systems–the way thing work, how things interrelate, specifically in acquiring and retaining customers.

The way we acquire and retain customers is a complex inter-relationship of different activities and processes.  These processes occur within our organizations, for example through sales and marketing, with our customers–their buying processes, and in the surrounding community–our competition, opinion leaders, and others.  All these “subsystems” are connected together, they depend on each other, respond to each other.  Likewise, these systems don’t work well in isolation or without the other systems.  For example, a selling process is meaningless unless aligned with a customer engaged in a buying process.

The complexity of these systems and their relationships cause us to break them down, focusing on subsystems and components.  We start to specialize in these subsystems, for example, marketing may focus on demand and lead generation.  We in sales focus on our selling processes.  It’s a natural and probably the only way to manage the complexity and begin to design, develop, execute and manage our customer acquisition and retention processes.

Designers and engineers try to manage the complexity of the interrelationships between subsystems by trying to define clean interfaces–defined inputs and outputs.  The theory being as long as we keep the inputs and outputs the same, we can change anything within the subsystem and not have an impact on the overall system performance.  We try to do that as we define our marketing and selling processes — it’s perfectly reasonable and puts some manageability to what we do. 

Designers and engineers design subsystems, trying to keep clean interfaces, optimizing the overall system.  Here’s where some of the challenge comes in.  First, as much as we try, it’s very difficult to keep clean interfaces — even in designing “products.”  For example, when we develop mechanical assemblies, we design within certain tolerances.  As we try to fit those parts together, each subsystem that worked on its own–used the expected inputs and delivered the expected outputs, now the system as a whole doesn’t achieve it’s objective.  In the case of mechanical assemblies, this problem is called “tolerance stack-up.”  Each part meets its tolerance requirements, but when I try to fit them all together, they don’t fit.

We see the same thing in out processes for acquiring and retaining customers.  Marketing may define a perfect lead nurturing and qualification process, it may fit the “specs” perfectly; but when it is “assembled” with the sales lead/qualifiation process, it blows up and doesn’t work.  Something is lost in the interfaces, something is lost in the interrelationship of these processes.

The problem gets more complex — at least with sales and marketing.  Designers and engineers know that all the subsystems must come together and work as a whole.  They understand that missing major subsystems means the thing doesn’t work.  A car without a braking system doesn’t works very effectively as a car.

We seem to forget the need for “clean interfaces” and the view of the “whole,” looking at our customer acquisition and retention processes–sales and marketing.  CSO Insight’s 2010 Sales Performance Optimization Study provides some interesting clues about these issues.  We design our sales prospecting strategies around achieving certain goals and objectives, yet we cut marketing budgets for lead generation.  We base our quotas around certain sales performance levels, but we cut training budgets so we don’t develop the skills of sales people to perform at the expected levels.

Now let me add another level of complexity.  In sales and marketing, the interfaces are never clean.  Moreover, they are constantly changing.  Using my car analogy, it’s kind of like installing a new braking system while driving at top speed on a curvy mountain road–covered with ice.  It’s not a trivial problem to solve.  One of the ways we start managing this is simple, we start talking to each other.  The days of marketing and selling “silo’s” are over.  We have to have to coordinate our programs, processes, goals, investments.  We need to start collaborating.  We need “interlock” what we do with the other functions in our organization.  (As a side note, Andrew Rudin is looking at this same issue from a slightly different perspective, “Fools Gold:  Searching For The Most Important Step Will Ruin Your Sales Process.”  Take the time to read it, it reall compliments some of the points I am making.)

I’ll stop here — but there’s more, so far I’ve been focused on our marketing and selling subsystems.  Now imagine adding the customer buying and community subsystems into the mix.  I’ll talk about these in the next blog post.  I’ll leave you sitting at the edges of your seats for now.

There are a couple of things that I’d like to conclude with:

• We do have to break down these processes, developing high performance subsystems.  There is so much that can be gained by optimizing these subsystems and processes.  All the work that is being done to improve marketing effectiveness and processes is critical to our organizations.  Likewise, all the work that we do in improving sales processes, performance and effectiveness is critical.
• While we are “solving” those problems, we must be cognizant that what we do with these subsystems may not work when you look at the system as a whole.  Ultimately, we have to look at how all the pieces – parts fit together.  Does the “whole” work together to achieve the results we want?  Are we making changes to one subsystem that adversely impact another subsystem? 
• As sales and marketing professionals, we need to be thinking in “systems” terms.  We need to think how subsystems fit into the overall system and how we interlock on programs, processes, goals and objectives.

What do you think?

Stay tuned, the real challenge is still ahead!

I hear the phrase, “Pay For Performance,” all the time.  I think it’s a reasonable concept, that is, the better you perform, the better you get paid.  Naturally, we want to pay our top performers the best, who can argue with that?

Somehow, it seems as though Pay For Performance is getting distorted.  If we want the sales person to do something, other than get orders, we put a bonus on it or add it to the commission plan.  We want the CRM system updated, put a bonus on it.  We want forecast accuracy, let’s pay the sales people for accurate forecasts.  We want the sales person to participate in a task force, let’s put an incentive on it.  Somehow, things seem to be getting confused.  Too often, our solution to motivating sales people to do we need them to do is to put some form of compensation on it–a bonus, a commission element, an incentive.

I get into a conversation about this issue at least once a week.  A sales manager or business executive calls me to ask, “How do I get my sales people to do what I want?  What if I added something to their compensation plan?”  Throw money at the problem, it will motivate the right behavior!

Somehow that seems to be a temporary and, possibly, an expensive fix.

In a comment on this blog, my friend Jim Keenan, reminded me that much of this is all about leadership.  Jim’s right, somehow, the issues, seem to be rooted in leadership.  Leadership–getting people aligned to achieve the organizations goals and objectives, providing them the skills and tools to achieve them, motivating and inspiring them, coaching them–helping them improve their performance.  Leadership is all tough stuff.  It’s demanding, it takes time and patience.  It’s dirty work, a leader actually has to get engaged with their people, they have to set expectations, they have to manage performance–both good and bad.

Getting a sales person to keep the CRM system updated is not just something managers can dictate, we’ve seen the failure of these strategies.  Leaders have to show sales people how the tool helps them–the sales people–become more productive and effective.  They have to help the sales person understand the impact of this information on the rest of the company.  Producing accurate forecasts is important for the company–other functions set their plans and schedules around the forecast, they allocate resources based on the forecast.  Accurate sales forecasts are a cornerstone to overall company performance–leaders need to make certain their people understand this importance of this to the organization.

Leadership requires the leader to clearly identify roles, responsibilities, expectations.  It requires the leader to define expected behaviors, and to model them in their own performance.  It requires the leader to clearly communicate these to the sales person, making sure they understand and own these responsibilities and expectations.  Leadership requires leaders to manage performance.  Thise means they need to invest time in their people, coaching, developing, and helping them achieve the highest levels of performance.

To borrow a term from Jill Konrath, in the “crazy busy world” of sales managers, it’s often tempting to take the easy way out, to substitute pay, an incentive, a bonus to get what we want.   Rather than doing the tough and time consuming work of leaders, we throw money at the problem.

Don’t get me wrong, I think bonuses and incentives are very powerful in motivating certain actions and behaviors.  I think they are best applied over a short period of time for very specific and short term goals.  For example, in a new product introductions, an accelerator or incentive around the sale of that product can give a quick start.  Accelerating penetration of new markets by leveraging a bonus for sales into those markets can be very powerful. 

However, in my experience, bonuses, commissions and incentives are not effective in driving sustained behavioral or performance changes.  Bonuses or commissions to get the sales people to do things that would be considered “conditions of employment,” set the wrong tone for the organization – both the sales organization and the overall organization.

None of these are substitutes for solid leadership!

I’m participating in a discussion with a group of people I deeply respect.  It is about managing sales performance, particularly about getting sales people to do things they don’t like to do.  You know what those are:  Spending time doing reports for management, updating the CRM system, attending one more training class they think they don’t need, getting those expense reports in on time, participating on an internal task force……..   The list goes on.  The argument of sales people is always the same, “You’re keeping me away from the customer, don’t you want me selling?”  “This will keep me making my number.”

In the discussion, a suggestion has been made, “we should base some of their compensation on having them do this [activity].  What if we based X% of their bonus on doing these activities?”

I think this is a fundamental problem.  Sales people are motivated by compensation–aren’t all of us.  However, tying everything to the compensation plan is wrong.  It dilutes the plan–pretty soon the plan gets so confusing with the number of bonus elements, that it no longer becomes a motivator.  What are we saying our people should do?  Where should they focus?  Do we want them to sell?  Do we want them to do other things?  Which is more important?

This is a common problem, I think too often, managers try to leverage the compensation plan to drive the behaviors we want.  It’s kind of like a parent, giving a child a reward for doing what they have been asked.  Over the long term, it drives dysfunctional behaviors  –”You want me to do this, you have to pay me for it.”

We need to remember, there are several dimensions to performance management.  One is the compensation plan.  It should focus on the 2-3 major behavioral and performance expectations you want the sales person to focus on—in the case of sales people, that’s probably something directly related to sales.  We want to keep this clear, simple, unambiguous.

There is another side to performance management, that’s the performance plan or review process.  Too many managers don’t use this–frankly they do a bad job of managing this process and reviewing performance.  Just a point of clarification, many think a performance plan is something you put in place for people who are on notice and must improve their performance or be terminated. 

The performance plan is (or should be) something different.   It should set the basic standards of performance we have for each person in the organization.  It should establish each person’s goals and objectives for the year–not only their quota, but other expectations we have of the person and their expected contribution to the organization.  It provides a framework for the behavioral standards of each person.  The performance plan is where managers need to address expectations of the job that may not, or should not, be covered in the compensation plan.  If we expect CRM systems to be kept up to date, we don’t want to compensate them on doing this, we want to set it as a performance objective in their performance plan.  If we want them to do certain developmental activities, these should be covered in the performance plan.

I think a performance plan is critical for everyone.  It sets overall goals and objectives for each person in the organization, it outlines areas of personal development, it establishes “MBO’s.”   In many organizations, the performance plan and subsequent review is the basis for establishing raises, promotions and other things.  Every organization should have a performance planning process, every person should have a performance plan.  Managers should periodically review performance against the plan as part of their normal coaching process.  The goal is to make sure people achieve their performance objectives, that they are continuing to develop and perform.

It’s important for the sales person and the manager to develop the performance plan jointly–it provides the framework for them to work together, making sure expectations are being met, for aligning priorities and objectives, for growth and development.  It provides a road map for both the sales person and manager to inspect throughout the year.  It provides the basis for a coaching plan for managers.

In managing performance, we need to leverage both the compensation plan and the performance plan.  Without both, managers aren’t leveraging the tools necessary to develop their people and drive the highest levels of performance.

Sales people are great at “reacting.”  The customer puts a hurdle in front of us, we know how to respond.  The competitor does something, we know what to do.  Our management asks us to do something, we immediately (well OK–almost immediately) jump on it.

Most sales people are proud of their nimbleness and speed in reacting, handling any challenge put to them.

I guess I have the problem with the “re” part of reacting.  If we are reacting, it means someone else is acting–demanding our response.  It means someone else is setting the rules, defining the playing field, possibly defining the outcome.  Reacting always diverts us, it sets us down a different path than the one we were originally on.  Reacting slows us down.

Somehow, that makes me uncomfortable, I want to be driving the strategy, I want to be setting the rules.  I’d much rather have competition be forced to react to what I’ve done than to be forced to respond to them.

How do we get out of reacting?  This is where that ugly four letter word–starting with P—comes in.  It’s the word no sales person likes, it just wastes time. 

To stop reacting, we have to develop a Plan, yes that’s it, a Plan.  In fact before we even act, we need to have a plan in place. 

When I start talking to sales people about planning–whether it is an opportunity plan, an account plan, a territory plan, or a sales call plan, there eyes roll back.  I know what they are thinking, “Here’s a guy that doesn’t understand the time pressure I’m under, he doesn’t understand how hard it is to get things done.  He doesn’t know how nimble I am, how I can handle anything that comes up.  He’s just going to slow me down!”

It gets worse, I ask them to write the plan down — they can barely suppress the groans.

Well, I’m sorry, I’m not very sympathetic.  I get it, I get the pressures everyone is under–I see it every day, I have similar pressures.  But if we want to control our destiny–if we want to manage sales opportunities to have the shortest sales cycles and highest probabilities of winning, if we want to make sure we are maximizing our impact in the territory or account, if we want to make best use of our time and the customer’s, we have to have a plan.

Planning is nothing more than a disciplined way of thinking about how you are going to achieve your goal.  It is simply the process of laying out exactly what you need to do to reach the endpoint as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Planning makes our actions purposeful, not random.  It gets us out of react mode — it causes others to have to react to us.  Good planning accommodates shifts in course.  The plan is living, not just something we do at the beginning of a sales opportunity, or once a year when we are asked for a territory or account plan.  We update our plans, based on changes that occur as we have executed them.  I guess if you are nit picking, you might call this a reaction, but in reality, it isn’t.  When we react, we simply respond to the action of a customer, competitor, or someone else.  In adjusting our plans, we take stock of where we are, what has changed, and what we must do to most effectively achieve our goals.  It is always forward looking and goal oriented.  It keeps us focused on being effective and efficient.

Are you acting purporsefully, with a plan; or are you reacting?  You will more likely get to your goals if you have a plan of how to do it and thoughtfully execute that plan.

A few weeks, ago, my post on The Most Used – Useless Metric In Sales created an avalanche of comments and emails.  Many of you commented on a variety of “useless metrics” you have experienced.  One of the most popular categories of “useless metrics” was Activity metrics.  Activity metrics are very popular, they’re easy to establish and measure.  There are all sorts of activity metrics:  Number of outgoing/incoming phone calls handled per day/week, number of customer meetings per day/week, number of proposals, number of sales opportunities in the funnel — the list is endless.

The problem with activity metrics is that all they measure is activity (dughhhh), they don’t measure the appropriateness, impact, or outcomes of the activity.   Activity metrics tend to measure what you’ve done, not whether you have moved the opportunity forward in the sales process.  In establishing activity metrics, it’s important to understand the behaviors they drive and to assess whether they are motivating the right outcomes.   It’s important to define the metric in terms of the results you are trying to achieve.

As I mentioned, Activity Metrics show up in various forms.  They can be goals that management sets on number of calls, meetings, proposals.  Activity also shows up in sales processes, one of my favorites is “Meet with decision-makers.”  For what purpose?  OK, I met them, I said “Hi,” they know who I am and what I am selling.  Did I bother to ask them their needs and priorities?  Did I determine their role in the decision making process?  Did I ask them about their attitudes toward us and the competition?  Do I understand why they are involved and what a personal win might be?

Another example of activity oriented metrics run amuck, requires me to reveal a deep dark secret from my formative years as a sales person.  Early in my sales career, my manager in the hopes of motivating the team to spend more time with customers, set the following metric:  There was a $10/day fine, if you were in the office between 8:30-4:30, unless you were entering an order, attending a meeting, or researching a sales opportunity.  You can guess what happened, we were already spending as much time with customers as we could–the team was good, we were really driven to make our numbers, we knew that we had to meet with the customers, but they only had the time to see us a certain amount of time, try as we might, we couldn’t fill all that time with cusotmer meetings.  Well, we solved the problem, the reality was, at least one day a week, we would have to pay $10 to our manager.  My teammates and I thought about it, we figured, why not spend that money in a way that we wanted to—that summer, every Friday, we ended up going to the movies–I’ve never seen so many movies.

Our manager’s intent was right, but the way the measure was implemented motivated unanticipated behavior.  When she understoond what we were doing, she quickly  stopped the metric, we started coming back into the office and doing things that would get us more meetings.

Often in doing reviews with sales people who have strong activity measures, I see much of the same thing.  People say similar things, “It’s easy to make my ‘call number,’  I can dial the phone so many times, I can talk to someone, they are often people that I know will never have an intention of buying, but I talk to them because I make my number.”  It’s hard to criticize them, they are doing exactly what their managers want them to do.

The problem is the way the metric is defined.  I actually like activity metrics.  Activity metrics, properly structured are great forward looking indicators.  Good activity metrics can give you great insight into your likelihood of meeting your overall business goals.  As an example, I measure myself on a couple of key activity metrics, but they are defined in a way that focuses me on achieving my objectives, not just accomplishing the activity.  For instance, I have to have a certain number of calls or meetings each week.  Those calls have to be with a certain type of person and produce very specific outcomes.  It’s a key metric for me.  I know if I achieve my goal, that I am highly likely to achieve my overall quota.  What makes this different though, is the activity is very well defined in terms of its purpose and the outcome.  Without this, it could be useless.

There’s another problem with activity metrics, it’s the way managers use them.  Too often activity metrics are used as a weapon (Metrics — The Secret Weapons Of Sales Managers) rather than as a diagnostic.  Since Activity metrics give you a forward looking view of the business, when an individual or team is not achieving the metric, it’s important to look at the underlying reasons.  Have there been fundamental shifts in the business or markets that are causing people to not achieve the activity goals?  Are there specific skills problems that might indicate a need for coaching or training?  Does the person understand the selling process, are they executing it well?  Activity metrics are great indicators and warning signs, they are not ends in themselves.

Too often, we also see too many activity metrics.  A sales person has to make a certain number of phone calls, have a certain number of meetings, submit a certain number of proposals, have a certain number of opportunities.  Too many activity metrics confuse the sales person on what the real priorities are, the key goals.  I believe there should be, at most, 2 activity measures.  The trick is determining the 2 that have highest impact on what you want to achieve.  It requires real study to understand what really drives your business.

Activity metrics can be very powerful.  Great sales professionals establish personal activity metrics to guide themselves, improving their impact and productivity.  Great leaders put in place appropriate activty metrics and use them as diagnostics.  When you are putting in place these types of metrics make sure you:

1. Clearly define what you are trying to achieve with the activity–what outcomes, what results?  Make sure the activity focuses on achieving something, not just getting a “tick mark.”
2. Re-assess activities you have in your sales process.  Make sure they are clearly defined.  Again focus on achieving outcomes, not going through the motions.
3. “Game” the activities.  Look at how the sales people might behave in achieving the activity goals.  You don’t want them spending afternoon’s in the movies.  If in gaming them you are getting the behaviors and outcomes you want, then you probably have a good metric.
4. Realize the activity metrics are powerful indicators and warnings–they are great diagnostics.  Use them for this, look at the underlying reasons for not achieving a metric.
5. Keep them to a minimum, use no more than 2.  Make sure you have identified the 2 key activities that really drive your business.

Make your activity metrics useful and you will really drive business growth!

I’ve always hated the term, Sales 2.0.  I don’t know what it means, to me it’s always a conversation about great new tools and software systems, but not really about selling.  But I’ve succumbed. 

On Tuesday, August 24, 1:00 PM EDT, Tom Scontras, VP of Marketing for Glance Networks and I are having a discussion:  Learn The 3 Keys To Making The Successful Shift to Sales 2.0!  It would be great to have you join us in the discussion–click the link to register:  Register.  We’ll be talking about Sales 2.0 — as much as the whole concept bothers me.

Why am I so bothered by Sales 2.0?  It may be a bunch of my own mental blocks.  To me if we are talking about Sales 2.0, it seems that we have mastered Sales 1.0—whatever that was.  Was it CRM, but then why do we talk about CRM 2.0?  I look at much of the current sales literature and writing, including my own, and we are talking about the same issues we were talking about when I first started selling:  How do we become customer focused?  How do we establish deep relationships with our customers?  How do we become trusted advisers?  How do we create differentiated value?  Why do people dislike sales people?  The list goes on…….  I’ve written before about the “Ground Hog Day” effect, sometimes I feel like I am reliving the same conversations about the same issues year after year.  We change the buzzwords to make it sound new, but we still are working on fundamentals about our profession.

I think one of my problems with the discussion about Sales 2.0 is the discussion is always about a tool—a great piece of software that improves our effectiveness and efficiency as sales professionals.  Often, it seems that by simply using one or several of these software packages, our results would immediately change for the better.  But then I think back to CRM–then presented by many as the panacea to developing and managing customer relationships and improving sales productivity.  I looked up “tool” in the dictionary.  One of the definitions that really struck me was, “a device that aids in accomplishing a task.”  Don’t get me wrong, we actually use a huge number of software tools.  I couldn’t imagine running my business without a CRM system.  We couldn’t manage our communications with customers, prospects, and the larger business community without powerful marketing tools.  I would never pick up the phone and call a customer without using some of the great research tools.  Collaboration, conferencing and related tools improve our productivity tremendously. 

However, these tools are aids to our business.  We’ve focused on the fundamentals of our business:  What are our cores strategies?  What do we want to stand for, how do we want to be perceived by our customers and prospects?  Who are our target customers?  How do we help them?  What sets us apart from other alternatives the customers may be considering?  What are our core processes?  Do they represent best practice, have we refined and updated them?  How do we measure ourselves to make sure we are performing at the highest levels possible.  The list goes on, but our focus is on the core strategies and processes in our business.  We choose tools that aid us in the execution of those strategies and processes.

What about Sales 2.0?  Some of the tools are old school tools–we use handwritten notes a lot.  Is something wrong, should we be abandoning that and tweeting the customers (Hmm, what if they aren’t on Twitter?).  The telephone (albeit a mobile) is critical to communicating–within our team and to customers and clients.  I suppose we should be abandoning voice communication and moving to texting.

Where does Sales 2.0 begin and end?  Did we do a good job on Sales 1.0  (what was it?)?  Should I just skip Sales 2.0 and move to Sales 3.0?

Join us in the webinar, I’m looking forward to discussing these issues with you!  Register.

Several days ago, I wrote a post, The Most Used — Useless Metric In Sales.  It’s generated quite a bit of discussion in the various sites where it appeared.  In the post, I attacked the weighted probabiliy — based on progress through the sales cycle (you know –Qualified is something like 25%, Discovery, 50%, Proposal 75%, and Closing 100%).  A series of discussions on sales forecasting started, so I thought I would toss more wood on the fire.

Accurate sales forecasts are critical—not just for sales, but for the entire organizattion.  Resources, funds, schedules, expectations are set, based on the forecast.  Forecast accuracy is usually one of the top 5 concerns virtually every CEO, CFO, or Sales Executive has when talking about the sales organization (surpassed only by making the numbers, productivity, etc.). 

Try as we might, the sales forecast will never be 100% accurate (unless we forecast after we get the order).  At best, the sales forecast can be thought of as an “informed guess.”  Some of you, justifiably, are thinking  –  Dave, you’ve really gone off the deep end on this one, you can’t be advocating that we “guess.”

Let me break “informed guess” down a little.  We want to focus the weighting in those words to the “informed” piece.  This means using real data and analytics to develop the forecast.  Most companies have rich historical data that can provide a baseline for forecasting.  Couple this with external data, market information, real time feedback from customers, demographic, behavioral, psychographic, and all sorts of other information, we can develop very rich models that provide greater insight into likely behaviors of customers — consumers and enterprises alike.  In the end, people make the forecast, so this data informs us.

On the “guess” side, the challenge is that everyone comes to the table with different assumptions, biases, expectations, and beliefs about the business.  On the “guess” side, we need to reduce variability in the “guess” element.  We do this doing a number of things.  First and foremost is a strong, well defined, and well executed sales process  (but you knew I’d get sales process into this).  If everyone is doing their own thing, executing the way they want, we have no ability to predict the outcome.  Second, we must have a common set of assumptions, rules, processes, and expectations by which we come up with our estimates.  If we come to the forecasting table with different assumptions regarding risk, timing, and so forth, it is impossible to develop a forecast that everyone buys into.  This variability of approach creates challenges to the accuracy and acceptance of the forecast.  Extend this over time, forecast to forecast to forecast, and we can have wide swings in approaches and accuracy or meaning.

So the forecast will always be an “informed guess.”  We increase the accuracy both by leveraging data and analytics to be better informed and putting in place strong processes and ground rules to reduce the variability of our guesses.  I can, and have, gone much deeper into this, but will stop here and pose the questions:  Does this ring true in your experience?  is the sales forecast an “informed guess?’  How do you increase sales forecast accuracy?

If you are curious, I’ve written a much more extensive white paper on this:  Moving Beyond The Crystal Ball:  Improving Sales Forecasting and Increasing Odds To Win.  If you’d like a free copy, send me an email at dabrock [at] excellenc [dot] com.  I’d be glad to send it to you.

Sales people are trained to be problem solvers — we ask questions, probe — once we find a problem we attack like a pit bull and don’t let go until we’ve wrestled the problem to the ground and gotten the order.

So what’s the problem with that?  Too often we leap to solutions before we understand what the “real problem” is.  It’s a real problem, I wrote about it in a post almost a year ago: “The Evolving Role Of The Sales Person–The Sales Person As Diagnostician”  It addresses the issue of sales people leaping to solutions and not solving the right problem.  Customers get frustrated with this approach, they complain, “they aren’t listening, they don’t understand my real issues.”

There’s another aspect of this problem — often, our customers leap to solutions.  Like sales people, business people are trained problem solvers–that’s what we learn in the university, and every aspect of our jobs reinforce that.  Customer are often certain they know their problems and tell the sales person, “this is what I need.”  And we tend to accept that and sell to that need.  The problem is they aren’t solving the right problem.

A friend of mine, Steve Bowles, had a great example of this.  He was meeting with the CEO of a small company, and the CEO said, “This is the issue I’m having with the sales organization and this is what I need you to do…”  And as CEO’s are prone to do, he said it with great authority and certainty.  Steve could have done what the CEO asked and gotten the order.  Instead, Steve did something else, he asked the question, “What do you think is causing this issue to happen with the sales organization?”  Steve resisted the temptation to take the leap with his customer, get the order, and provide the right solution to the wrong problem.  Instead, Steve decided to probe.  He wanted to understand if the CEO was describing the real problem or if there was an underlying issue.  He got to the underlying issues — it wasn’t pleasant, in fact to a large degree the CEO was creating the problem himself.  Steve politely pointed that out and suggested a different solution.  Oh by the way, Steve got the order.

Mediocre sales people let the customer dictate the solution, only responding the the needs the customer outlines and the solution they want.  That’s often why it’s difficult to differentiate.  The customer has determined the solution and everyone is fundamentally providing the same thing.

Great sales professionals–those that create real value for their customers and stand out are those that find and solve the right problems.  They take the time to probe and understand.  They care enough about doing the right thing for the customer that they challenge the customer’s preconceived notions about the problem and solution.  They get the customer to think differently, to see and solve the real problem.

It takes great knowledge of your customer’s business, it takes great knowledge of your solutions, it takes the patience and diligence to probe and understand.  Finally, it takes great courage to suggest to the customer that there might be a better way.

Too often, inertia, time pressures, the push to do a deal quickly, or simply our conditioning as problem solvers push us to leap to solutions.  We as sales people do this, our customers do this. 

Our greatest value add as sales professionals is to help our customers solve the right problems.  Are you taking the time to work with your customers to do this or are you leaping to solutions?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’m sitting in my office–it’s 97 degrees in the office, I’m fuming, it’s been one of those weeks.  I was traveling all week, thinking I was fortunate enough to miss the very hot weather we are having in Southern California (OK, some of you may think I am whining). 

On Friday, I called my wife, both air conditioning systems in the house had failed — we had just replaced them last October with completely new systems.  I told her to call the air conditioner company to get out to the house.  That evening, I called her again, “had they fixed the problem?”  “No–they haven’t shown up yet.  They said they would be here by 1:00, it’s now 4:30,” she said.  I told her, I’d call the owner of the company to see what was up. 

I called him, didn’t get him, but talked to the office manager.  She apologized, saying that they were running behind schedule, but someone would be there Friday.  Saturday morning, before jumping on the plane, I called my wife.  “Are things back to normal?”  “They haven’t shown up yet……”  She had that tone in her voice, I thought I was about to get a performance review.  I put in a hasty call to the company–got their voicemail and left a polite but urgent voice message.  When I landed, guess what —-yes, you know the drill—they still hadn’t shown up.  This time, I got the owner on the line.  He said that he would personally come by to look at and fix the systems.  I told him that I would re-arrange my schedule so that I could be home all afternoon for him.

Well, that was yesterday, today’s Sunday, no messages, no air conditioning, nothing.  I spent much of my time preparing letters to the Better Business Bureau and other organizations—I guess the heat is getting to me.  Now tomorrow, I have to re-scheduled my business meetings so I can get this guy to meet his commitments (by the way–it’s all warranty work, he doesn’t appear to want to honor that.).

I wish this was an isolated case.  But we encounter it every day–in both big and little ways.  It’s the sales person that committed to call you at a certain time, then 30 minutes later–when you are in a meeting, he calls offering some excuse but expecting to take your time.  It’s the team-mate who has committed a certain set of deliverables on a certain schedule, but fails to meet the commitment–not just late, but no deliverables.  It’s the person that’s constantly 10 minutes late to a meeting, keeping everyone else waiting….   I’ll stop there, I could get carried away.

This afternoon, as I’ve been reflecting, I’ve realized how common place it is for us not to meet our commitments.  Sure we tend to make the “big one’s” — at least when they serve our self interests.  But, it’s unusual for us to meet the little commitments.  I happen to be a little obsessive about phone calls and meetings.  It always strikes me as strange when at least 90% of the people I’m calling exclaim, “Wow–right on the dot!”  They think it’s unusual, to me it’s meeting my commitment.

I few years ago, I was talking to a friend.  He’d built a very good contracting business in our community.  I was asking him his secret, he replied, “I wish it was my ‘craftsmanship,’ but really it’s about meeting commitments.  I show up on time, I do the work they contracted for, I clean up afterwards—just the basics.  That’s really 80% of what’s made me successful and why they hire me over other very capable contractors.”

Just the basics—-showing up on time—-meeting your commitments—–80% of customer satisfaction and differentiation.   It’s a shame it’s not the norm–why do we settle for it?

I’m tempted to end this post with something to the effect of “sweating the details….”  Sorry, the heat is getting to me.