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!

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!

The other day, I wrote a piece, What Are The 3 Characteristics That Set Great Sales People Apart?  It stimulated quite a reaction as people started suggesting their ideas.  I was surprised by the focus of a number of people on the “right techniques.”  These comments started to make me wonder about my own belief system and biases.

I guess I have a very negative reaction to the concept of sales techniques.  When I think of these techniques, I think of sales tricks and manipulation.  I did a little research:

• Persuasion techniques like, “the art of repetition,” “the foot in the door,” “the bait and switch,” “low-ball,”that’s not all,” and the lists of techniques for persuading people can go on.
• Closing techniques like, “the assumptive close,” “the puppy dog close,” “fire sales close,” “thermometer close”, “the ultimatum close.”  I actually found a site listing 68 closing techniques!
• Objection handling like, “the boomerang,” “pushback,” “deflection.”

I could go on with list after list of techniques I found in researching “sales techniques.”  I went to the dictionary to look up the definition:

tech-nique  [tek-neek]  1.  The manner and ability with which an artist, writer, dancer, athlete, or the like employs the technical skills of a particular art or field of endeavor.  2.  The body of specialized procedures and methods used in any specific field, esp. in the area of applied science.  3.  Method of performance ; way of accomplishing.  4.  Technical skill; ability to apply procedures or methods so as to effect a desired result.

After reading the definition, I started to think, much of the “advice” I and others I respect offer are “techniques” — or methods — or processes.  After all, I’ve written a lot about effective questioning, listening, qualification, developing and communicating value.  I present tools (techniques) people can use to make them more effective in connecting with and engaging customers.  Likewise, there are a large number of other consultants and bloggers that offer great approaches that create real value for customers, sales professionals and others.

So why do I have such a negative reaction to “sales techniques?”  I think I my negative reaction to “techniques” is not the techniques themselves (though I saw very little redeeming in the list of 68 closing techniques), but the intent or use of the technique.

So often, underlying the use of technique is an intent to manipulate, trick, or deceive.  Anytime the person(s) on the receiving side of a sales person using “techniques” in these ways, everything sours.  What may have been good suddenly turns distasteful. 

On the other hand, techniques can be important to gaining insight and understanding about the customer.  They can help you engage the customer in a conversation about their problems, dreams and goals.  Techniques can be important in communicating complex ideas.  They can help people understand, they can serve to simplify.  Techniques can be important in helping facilitate the customer’s buying process, in helping present value, in helping manage change.  They provide structure for us to work with customers, improving the way we engage them.

I suppose any tool, tip, process, methodology, and, yes, technique can be abused.  Their use can be manipulative and misleading.  Yet we do need techniques.

I’ll have to mull this over a little while, I’m still uncomfortable.  I’m trying to talk myself into believing that techniques are good.  However, I just can’t help it, whenever I hear the term “sales technique,” I immediately think of scenes from movies like Boiler-room.  I think of sleazy sales people doing the “bait and switch,”  followed by the “boomerang” objection handling technique, capped off by the “puppy dog close.”  They trigger the worst examples of sales I can imagine.

Am I wrong on these sales techniques? Can any of you offer advice that can make me more comfortable?

I guess as a blogger, twitter user, and sometime pundit, it’s natural to get into a lot of conversations about the impact of Social Media, and the Internet for that matter, on buying and selling.  In the past several days, I’ve had a number of conversations with people all over the world.  “How do we leverage social media to sell?”  “What should we be doing with social media?”  “What is social selling?”I have to admit that I feel a little awkward in these discussions, I don’t by any means consider myself a social media expert—it seems, I’ve just learned how to spell www….

Social media, social selling, and the Internet are very powerful tools for buyers and sellers.  As with any tool, there are good and bad aspects.  As sellers, we can reach out to a far wider customer base, we can get our “message” to people that were difficult to find and reach in ways that are much faster and cheaper than before.  As buyers, we can be much better informed.  We can do a tremendous amount of research on the Internet, in discussion forums, through blogs, through a tweet here or there.  I recently bought my wife a new car.  I researched models on the Internet, researched pricing, researched dealers and was able to walk into a dealer armed with data to get the right car at the right deal.  We do this in the products we buy every day, our companies do that for the solutions they are purchasing, and suppliers they are considering.

I can’t imagine what we would do without all the information, data, and insight we can quickly get from the internet, social media, and through many of the tools that enable us go find information quickly and easily.  However, it creates a great challenge for buyers and sellers.

The explosion of garbage and bad information available seems to grow at a rate faster than anything else.  Sometimes we (as sellers and marketers) do it ourselves–the victims of our enthusiasm in communicating through this medium call that SPAM.  Sometimes the volume of messages, communications, and information is so much, it’s difficult to sort through the clutter and noise.  The reaction is to turn it off.

Buyers use social media to become informed—not necessarily well informed—just informed, or often misinformed.  Social media can create an illusion of validity.  After all, if it’s in a blog, it must be accurate!  If there’s a discussion about a certain product, company, or topic, it must be true–the words are right there on my screen, it’s the next best thing to being in the newspaper.  Someone has anointed themselves with the title “Expert,” or “Guru,” and they immediately become experts.  We must hang on every word they write.  The problem is so much of it is just wrong!  It’s bad data, harmful advice, or something taken way out of context or misapplied.

All of this makes us informed–not necesssarily well informed.

It brings new meaning to the concept, “Buyer Beware.”  Buyers have to sort through mountains of garbage, research and understand, validate to get “good insight.”  Just because it’s on the Internet, doesn’t mean it’s gospel.  Just because it’s written in a blog doesn’t mean it’s true (present company excepted

But sometimes buyers are naive and accept things at face value.  Sometimes they don’t have the time to dig and research–afterall, isn’t social media and social selling supposed to make things easier and faster.  Sometimes buyers to their homework and reach incorrect conclusions.

All this creates a challenge for sellers, “Sellers Be Aware.”  I get sales professionals and executives telling me they don’t have time for social media.  You need to make time.  You need to be Aware!  It’s critical to understand what customers are saying—about their issues, trends and business.  It’s critical to understand what customers and others are saying about you and your competition.  Some of it is accurate, lots of it is dead wrong.  If you aren’t aware of what is happening on the Internet, of how your products, services and companies are being reviewed, you will walk into your customers disadvantaged.  They think they are informed, but they may be misinformed.  As sellers we need to know that and address that–with customers and through social media. 

Social media, social selling, and the internet are powerful, we can’t function without them.  But it creates challenges for buyers and sellers.  Buyer Beware, Seller Be Aware!

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.

I meet with executives everyday.  They have great knowledge about their businesses–they can cite everything about their strategies, priorities, goals, key metrics.  They study their competitors incessantly, understanding their strategies and positioning.  They study their markets, and the best study their customers.  They have deep insight about everything in their industry.

But when I talk to them, a critical issue they always bring up is, “How do we innovate?”  “How do we start thinking out of the box?”

One of the problems with innovating and thinking out of the box is that we are prisoners of our own experience.  Most of us have long experiences in our industry.  We’ve been working with our company a long time, we may have worked with one of our competitors, we may have worked with one of our customers.  We go to “our trade shows,”  we read “our trade magazines,”  we have deep knowledge about our companies, industries and markets. 

That’s part of what makes us effective as leaders and business professionals, but at the same time, it’s exactly what limits us.  Our ideas and innovations are limited by this collection of past experiences.  We “know” what works and what doesn’t work, never reconsidering ideas that were “bad” in the past.  We look at what our competitors are doing, copying them, perhaps tweaking the idea to one up them.  We turn the crank on the tried and true programs of the past, sharpening them, reshaping them—sometimes it’s just like putting lipstick on a pig.

So how do we escape this?  It’s actually pretty easy (maybe I’m giving away the secret decoder ring of consultants), we need to look outside our own industries.  We need to look in very different industries to see how they approach some of the issues that we face.  For example, a few years ago, we put the executives of one of the leading high technology (B2B) companies together with the execs of an extreme sports company.  It was an interesting picture, on one side of the conference room, a row of execs in neatly pressed khaki’s and blue shirts, on the other side, guys in board shorts, torn tee shirts, lots of body ink and interesting piercings.  Each eyed the other warily, some started looking at me thinking, “Dave, what have you gotten us into?  Who are these freaks?” 

We tee’d off the session with a few key questions about their business models, key challenges, problems, and so forth.  Gradually, they found they had a lot in common.  All were struggling to grow their businesses.  All were struggling to get new and innovative ideas.  As they started to talk over different approaches, one of the exec’s said to his peers in his company, “They are doing something really interesting and different from what everyone does in our industry, if we co-opted their ideas, if we twisted them a little here and there, they would be really new and novel for our company!”

Soon everyone was discovering something “new.”  It wasn’t “new” to the presenter, but to the others it was new and innovative–when adapted to their industry.  Each side started seeing ideas presented from a source they never would have thought about before.

Innovation doesn’t have to be brand new and revolutionary. innovation can be artful adaptations of old ideas from very different industries and sources.  Try looking outside your industry–not just to adjacent industries, but to widely separated groups.  Try looking across generations–forget Gen Y–they are so old–look at kids.  Try looking across national borders and cultures.  Look at what other people do, how they handle similar issues, look at what you can learn and adapt from them.  Share what you are doing, let them learn and adapt from you.

Innovation is simple, you just have to know where to look, how to listen, how to artfully co-opt and adapt.  Tom Peters coined the phrase, Management By Wandering Around, MBWA.  Try IBWA–Innovation By Wandering Afar.

Last Week I wrote about “We Have To Call At The Top,”  suggesting the concept of right level selling.  There are many times when calling at the “C” level is critical for our sales efforts, yet we struggle to get appointments with these executives.  I was interested to read a Forrester Research report on this topic, presenting the executive perspective.  Only 15% of the “C” level executives surveyed felt their meetings with sales people were valuable and lived up to their expectations.  They went further, based on the outcome of the initial meeting, only 7% would accept follow-on meetings.  No wonder they don’t want to see us, we waste their time!

• The report goes on to look at the reasons sales people fail to meet executive expectations in meetings, several specific areas hit me:
• Only 27% felt sales people were knowledgeable about their specific business.
• Only 34% felt the sales person could relate to their roles and responsibilities in the organization, with 38% saying sales people understood their issues and how they could help.
• Only 34% felt the sales person had relevant examples or case studies to share with the executive.
• Only 38% felt sales people were prepared for the questions an executive might ask.

Clearly, sales people aren’t “connecting” with executives effectively.  In some ways it’s understandable–if you’ve never been in an executive role before, how do you relate to their roles, responsibilities and issues?  How do you know what to talk to them about, what examples to use, how to respond to their questions?  In a way, the sales person is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place.  How do you overcome this?

Many organizations try to do this through training–I think training is a key element–but training needs to focus on industry, market, and business training.  In addition to this, I think organizations too often overlook their own executives and their ability to help their own sales people understand the “executive” view.  For example, if you sell software to CIO’s, why don’t you leverage your own CIO to better understand the “real world concerns of CIO’s?”  If you sell to manufacturing execs, why not leverage your own VP of Manufacturing to help you understand the way manufacturing execs think?

The executives in your own organization can help you better understand the perspectives of their peers.  Companies could develop their own “executive training programs” by having the appropriate functional executives in their own organization.  Each functional executive and senior manager should sit down with sales people to help them understand what makes people like them tick.  They can discuss:

• Their role and responsibility in the organization.
• How they are measure and how their performance is evaluated.
• How they measure and manage performance in their function and organization.
• Key business issues that “keep them awake at night.”  What questions sales people should be asking them.
• Issues and trends facing their functions.
• What they look for when they meet with vendors and sales people.  Questions they tend to ask sales people and why they ask them.  Proofs they are looking for from sales people and why they are looking for that information.
• What sales people can do to conduct a meeting worth their time.
• Why they would even meet with a sales person in the first place.
• How to secure an appointment.
• Why they might delegate sales to a lower level.
• ….the list can go on.

I guarantee, the issues your own functional executives face are not that much different than those their equivalents in the customers face.  Businesses will be different, strategies will be different, but fundamental issues for the function are likely to be very similar.  These conversations help accelerate the ability of sales people to connect effectively with the customer.  There is are important side benefits to these discussions.  It helps the functional executive to better understand their own sales people and the challenges they face.  Every once in a while, you are also able to leverage functional executives in your own organization to help you meet their counterpart in the customer.

Connecting with executives on the things that matter to them is critical for saless effectiveness.  Are you leveraging your own company’s executives to help you learn how to connect with your customers?

A few years ago, I was talking to a sales manager.  He was expressing some frustration, “I’m doing my job of selling, my customers need to start doing a better job of buying!”  When you think about it, there’s actually a lot of truth to that statement — at least the “doing a better job of buying” part.

Our customers do a bad job of buying because they don’t know how to buy.  With the exception of purchasing professionals, it’s not our customers jobs to buy, they focus on doing their jobs whether it is building products, running an operation, providing IT support, whatever their function is.  They don’t know how to organize their buying effort, they don’t know how to define what they are trying to do, they don’t know how they should look at and evaluate alternatives.  Buying is something is a disruption to their normal work flow–they are already busy, often just trying to survive, now they have this new task — it takes time away from doing their normal job.  They probably recognize they need to change–they need to find a new solution, but they don’t know how to organize themselves to make a decision.  They also have to go through all that awkward stuff of managing a team, each with a different agenda, each with different views on what is needed, each with a different priority.  just coordinating the buying group, requires a lot of skill and time.

Customers worry about making a bad decision.  They are accountable to their management to do the right thing for the company.  They are held accountable for investing company funds well–they need to demonstrate their purchase creates a return for the company.  If they make a mistake, their management will be all over them, they may even lose their jobs.

Customers don’t buy very often.  In complex B2B solutions, they may purchase these once in their careers.  Think of it, a new piece of capital equipment–something that has a life of more than 5 years, a major new software system, outsourcing services, whatever.  Their lack of experience makes them apprehensive–both because of the “long life” of whatever they are buying, but they just haven’t looked at thse solutions very often.  They don’t know what’s out there, what’s good, what they should avoid.  Even if they buy more frequently, things are changing so quickly, it’s difficult for them to keep up.  Think of something that has become commoditized like PC’s.  The product life cycle of a PC is probably around 3-6 months.  So if I looked at PC’s last year, there have been 2-4 generations of new PC’s since then.  Everything that I knew about buying them a year ago has changed.

Procurement professionals help.  Their job is buying, they keep up with the products they are responsible for.  But it’s still difficult for them.  They aren’t making purchasing decisions on their own.  They are acting on behalf of people within the organization.  They have to make sure they understand and are satisfying the needs of their customers.  They face the challenge of helping manage the process, expectations and align the different agendas and priorities of their customers.

Finally, buying is about change—none of us like change, it’s always so difficult, it’s often easier just to keep doing the same old thing.

It’s no wonder that customers do a bad job of buying—after all their jobs aren’t about buying.  So they need help–and that’s where great sales professionals differentiate themselves.

See the peddlers don’t recognize that customers don’t know how to buy.  They blindly assume the customer is expert at this, they never ask questions to determine if they do know how to buy.  All they do is pitch their products hoping to dazzle the customer with Features Advantages Benefits, ghee whiz Technology, and large doses of Charm and Personality.  Peddlers are pitching their products but not solving their customers’ problems–one of which is “How Do I Buy?”

Great sales professionals recognize their job is to help their customers solve their problems–both operating their businesses more effectively and efficiently and addressing new opportunities.  Great sellers also recognize that part of solving customers’ problems is helping them understand how to buy–they work with the customer in facilitating their buying process.  They realize, that by helping their buyers buy, they are creating great value for their customers.

Are you helping your customers do a better job of buying?

(As a side note, my friend Sharon Drew Morgen worries about Buying Facilitation (TM) a lot.  I highly recommend looking at her site, and devouring her books and matierials.)

The other day I was having dinner with a close friend.  He’s the President of a division of a company.  Eventually, the conversation got around to social media (is it something about me?).  He said, “Dave, I just don’t get it, you keep talking about social media and how important it is, but I just don’t get it, I don’t have time for it, my customers aren’t using it.

As we continued our conversation, he started saying, “I don’t have time to blog, I don’t have time to read blogs—even yours—and I really like your stuff (my ego was bruised a little), I don’t get twitter, Facebook is for kids….,”  he went on, “I’m overwhelmed by information, I don’t need more….,” the litany went on.  I just let him vent.

He is not unusual, I hear this from many senior executives.  I think it’s a result of not understanding what social media is and how they participate.  I think some of what causes this confusion is a caused by some of us who are relatively active in social media.

One of the problems with social media is there is too much of it… and there is too much junk.  I can see how executives and others get frustrated when they dip their toes into the social media pool.  There is a bit of a learning curve to figure out what you should be doing. 

However social media cannot be ignored—primarily because customers aren’t ignoring social media—not just consumers, but B2B customers.

Let me go on with my conversation.  We spoke a little about information overload.  I asked him, “How do you learn what’s on your customers’ minds?”  He jumped all over that, “It’s important to me, I talk to our sales guys, our applications engineers; I try to talk to customers as frequently as possible.”

“That’s great, “ I replied, “How many customers do you talk to a week?”

“Maybe 2-3, if I’m lucky,”  he responded.

“What trade events do you attend and publications do you read?”  I asked.

“Well, I try to make 1-2 of the key shows, every once in a while I skim one of the trade rags, but I really don’t have much time for them,” he responded.

I started to see a problem—and a potential for demonstrating the value of social media.

This executive is like many others I meet.  Somehow, everyday problems and events overtake us.  As much as we want to, we don’t get to spend as much time with customers, learning about customers, immersing ourselves in the industry and our markets, as we should.  We are overwhelmed with information, much of which does not increase our knowledge and understanding.

Nothing can take the place of getting information directly from customers, either in meetings or in calls.  The sales organization and others involved with customers on a daily basis are important sources of information.  The reality, however, is this ultimately provides a very limited perspective.  Top executives need to cast a wider net.

In the “old days—remember way back to the turn of the century—2000,” I would consume as many trade magazines I could.  Since I was on planes a lot, I always carried a bag filled with them.  I’d skim them on the plane and leave them in the pocket of the seat in front of me for the reading pleasure of the next passenger.  In those “old days,”  I’d subscribe to these specialized clipping services—they’d aggregate news and stories, based on my criteria.  I’d attend conferences and trade shows, I’d do everything I could to be listening to the markets, industry, customers.

Every executive needs to “listen” as much as possible—understanding what’s happening with customers, their problems, where they are going, what’s happening.  Every executives needs to make time to listen.

However, this is where social media comes in, there are so many powerful tools that help you listen.  There are tools to that help fit your information consumption needs to your own personal style and time commitments.  There are great news consolidators like InsideView and Hoovers.  There are numerous blogs—covering every topic imaginable, some consolidating industry and market information, others by industry thought leaders.  There are all sorts of readers that enable you to consolidate much of this information, presenting  a custom, real time clipping service.  Even tools like Twitter, searching on certain topics, key words, give an interesting snapshot of the conversations happening among your customers and competitors.

What about the issue, “my customers” are not there—using social media?  I think this is really wrong!  In this specific case, I had an unfair advantage with this client.  I had spoken to his marketing, product management, sales, and support people.  They said all their customers were all over the web.  They cited all sorts of discussion groups, news sites, activity at their own web site, and other things.  Their customers are technical people who leverage the web for gathering information on issues, solutions, suppliers….  While my experience base may be limited, I have not found an industry in which similar things are happening.  It may not be the CXO blogging, writing, or being interviewed, but in every sector I look, people are leveraging the web as a primary source of information and to screen potential suppliers.

Listening to customers is critical for every business professional—first we have to make the time to listen and immerse ourselves in our customers.  Social media provides a tremendous tool to leverage your listening—but it’s just a starting point. 

My advice to this executive and all others in the same situation is social media is critical in leveraging your listening productivity.  There is a bit of ramp up time in discovering the credible sources and sorting through the junk, but once you’ve done that, it gives tremendous insight.  Start with listening, over time you will also see more that social media can do.

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?