Improving sales productivity is the Holy Grail of all sales professionals, executives, Sale 2.0 solution providers and every sales consultant.  We look for all sorts of tools and mechanisms to improve productivity.    Sometimes, it becomes very gimmicky.  Maybe we are making it too complicated.

I was apalled in reading IDC’s Sales Enablement Service’s recent survey of IT Buyers.  In this survey, 54% of IT Buyers said sales people were unprepared for their initial customer meetings.  For those seeking a silver lining, the 2010 survey indicated 54% were unprepared versus 57% for the 2009 survey.  Nothing to be proud of. 

While I don’t have the data, my experience indicates this probably extends far beyond IT Buyers to buyers in all disciplines.  Our own research, not just limited to the initial meeting, indicates that sales people tend to make 2-5 times more calls than necessary to close a deal.  A key finding in this research is they did not prepare or plan adequately for the call.

Why prepare?  Most sales people I meet are very bright, they are nimble and fast, why not continue to shoot from their lips?

I think the answer is simple, perhaps too simple.  When we aren’t prepared, we waste our time, more importantly we waste our customers’ time.  At a high level, we get it, but there are some important derivative impacts which we tend to overlook.

One of the biggest complaints I hear from sales people is they can’t get meetings with customers.  Sales people call to set meetings, leave voicemails, send emails—none are returned.  Sales people are looking for the secret of “How do we get customers to return our calls?”  I think the answer is simple, stop wasting their time!  Make sure the meeting is valuable to the customer.  How do we do this?  Again the answer is simple, preparation and planning—-doing your homework.

When we do get the chance to meet with customers, how well do sales people use this opportunity?  Too often, it’s not well.  Sales people are intent on pitching their products, customers are intent on describing their problems.  It’s difficult to connect.  What would be the impact if sales people could lead high impact meetings, where customers and sales people could really connect.  Customer’s would stop avoiding the sales person’s call—they would know their time won’t be wasted.  Sales people would probably have to make fewer calls, they are getting the information they need and connecting with the customer more effectively.

Sales productivity is simple, it’s all about being prepared  (The Boy Scouts have something here).  I don’t know if you will double your productivity, but I know you will improve it.  I know you will improve your ability to connect with your customers and create real value.  I know you will be more successful in selling.

To say things are changing is almost trite, with the confluence of the new economy, globalization, social media, globalization, new and different competition, new and different growth opportunities, we must rethink everything we do in business.

For some time, I have been thinking, reading, researching, and talking a lot about the future of selling.  Where are we going as a profession?  What’s the next step function change in how we sell and create value for our customers?  What are the critical skills, processes, methods and tools we need to embrace to perform at a higher level?

There have been some interesting discussions about this in the “blog world,” but often, I feel like Bill Murray in the movie, Ground Hog Day.  Much of the conversation revolves around doing what we are doing, only faster, better and with fewer resources.   To some degree, that’s true.  There is always room to improve what we do and how we execute.  But I’m convinced we are on the brink of some very significant changes in selling–many that may be thrust on us, without being prepared.

I have realized asking “What is the future of selling,” is the wrong question.  Also, I’m  probably asking many of the wrong people–sales people and executives.  Please, don’t get me wrong, there have been many great ideas and thought provoking discussions, but to some degree, we are prisoners of our own experience.  The discussions seem to be incremental improvement of what we already do, or how to execute consultative/customer focused/solutions/provocative selling more effectively

I have realized that I need to change the question, broaden the audience, and look at things differently.  I think the way we will discover the future of selling is to look at, “What’s the future of buying?” Duuuuugh!  No I mean it, why don’t we engage “buyers” in the discussion?  Why don’t we step back from the transactions and deals and start looking at the overall process and business environment differently?

I started writing a little about this last month:  Rethinking The Customer Buying Experience.

I’ve started having some conversations with some other folks and have decided to kick-off a kind of open source project called The Future Of Buying.  My vision is to have a 1-2 day conference, probably in May-June, where we get some smart people in a room (maybe several rooms) and we kick around the idea in a semi-structured way.  We will video and write about the results, and each participant can leverage the results in whatever way they want.

I want to engage any of you that want to participate! I also want to bring in great thinkers in procurement, supply chain management, product marketing/management, finance, OD, social media/networking, partnering/alliances and customer experience design.  This will not be a session for consultants to pontificate, but it is an open brainstorming session to look at the future of buying–consequently the future of selling.

We all know that collaboration is going to be critical in whatever that future is, so wouldn’t it be interesting if we started collaborating on it now?  Wouldn’t it be interesting if we applied some design thinking to looking at our future.

Now all this build up is to ask you for something.  I’d love your ideas and thoughts on the topics:  What’s the Future of Buying (and Selling). If I am crazy or looking at this the wrong way, please let me know.  If you want to participate in this crazy endeavor (thinking of the conference in May/June), let me know.  If you know someone who should participate, let me know.

To help capture your feedback and ideas, I’ve set up a form What’s The Future Of Buying? Please give me your thoughts and input.  For those of you providing feedback and ideas, I’ll provide a detailed report of what others are saying (anonymous, if requested).

I’ve talked about this idea with a number of you already.  I’ve gotten extremely enthusiastic support.  It can be an exciting project with great ideas each of us can apply to our own organizations.  I look forward to your feedback, ideas, and participation.  Thank you so much for your help!

Last week, I wrote about inspirational customer service.  This weekend, the pendulum swung to the other extreme.  I went out looking for new cars.  No blog is long enough to contain my rant on how disfunctional the process of buying a car is, so I won’t go through the whole thing, but focus on a few low points-and not the lowest, I have to keep this reasonably civil.

On Saturday, I went to look for a new car, I had settled on 4 different models, done my research, knew what I wanted in each and what a fair price might be.

The first dealer, things started out great, he asked me what I wanted, showed me the car, answered all my questions expertly, then we start talking about the deal.  Some manager, I hadn’t met, comes in to take over.  He starts with “Are you committed to buying this car?”  I was a little surprised, responded, “I’m interested enough to ask you to give me a serious proposal on what it would cost to get this car.”  I had hoped he would read that signal and present me a price.  His response, instead, was, “It doesn’t make sense for us to present a price until we know you are serious.”  At this point, I’m starting to get a little angry (Why should buying a $100K car make me angry?).  As calmly as I could, I responded, “I’ve come into your dealership and invested my time trying to buy a car.   The lease on my current car is ending, I need a new car.  I’ve told you exactly what I want, you have a car I like, now isn’t it reasonable for you to tell me how much it will cost?”  I went on, “My time is valuable as is yours, I don’t want to waste it, so let’s try to get to your best offer as quickly as possible.”  Well, he read my signals and said, “OK, I respect this, let me give you the best deal, we want you as a customer.  Here’s what we can do….”  I said, “Clearly, you must understand I’ve done a lot of research on the internet.  This price is far above what the a good price is.  If this is your best deal, I’m not sure it makes sense.”  His response was, “Well we can do better on it, but we need to know that you are serious about buying the car.”  I said, “How could I be any more serious than sitting here right now trying to understand what you are going to sell the car to me for?  Thank you for your time, I take it this is your best offer, I am considering some other models, I will get back to you later.”  “But Mr. Brock, please give me a chance…..”  “I thought I was giving you a chance, I’m interested in buying this car, but I don’t know what the price is, I keep asking you, but you seem reluctant to answer my question, what am I missing?”

It couldn’t get worse than that.  I went to the second dealership, after the test drive and the initial stuff, we went to the sales person’s office.  I sat down, without a word, he walked out….OK I thought, he needs to get something….15 minutes later…I’d finished my obligatory bottle of water, I went to another sales person, “I seem to have lost my sales person, could you find him, I’d like to talk about buying a car.”  5 minutes later, he returns, I’ve found the perfect car for you.  It’s got $10K more in features than I had asked for, I asked him what the features were, he refused to tell me, instead he said, “The features aren’t important, let’s talk about the deal.”  “But, but…I’d really like to know about those features, I’m not sure I want them, I don’t know why I should buy a car with features I don’t want.”  “Don’t worry about that Dave, here’s the deal……”  At that point I apologize, “I’m sorry, clearly you don’t want to sell me what I want, thank you for your time.”  I stood up and walked out.  All of a sudden the sales manager comes up to me asking if he can help.  “I responded, I have another appointment I have to be at, I sat 20 minutes waiting, your sales person won’t present me the car I want, I’m not sure you can.  You have my email, if you want, you can email me an offer on the car I want to buy, that you have in stock.”

The other two dealers weren’t any better, fortunately they weren’t worse.  I’d spent an entire day, talking to people who were selling me what they wanted to sell, not what I wanted to buy.  I spent the entire day telling people I needed to make a decision on a car within a few days, the lease on my current car was ending.  I tried to explaing that I had done my homework, I wasn’t necessarily looking for the “best deal” just a fair deal for both of us.

Sunday was month end.  Early in the morning, the calls started coming in, “Mr. Brock, thank you for visiting us, we’re now prepared to have a serious discussion with you, can you come in?”  My response was, “I thought we were having a serious discussion yesterday, why were you wasting my time?”  Silence…….  Each dealer seemed to be thinking the same thing, some tried to argue they could be serious now, none could explain why they couldn’t be serious when I was in the showroom.

It’s no wonder the automotive industry is in such trouble.  The entire process is broken. It’s built on an old model of manipulating the consumer.  It doesn’t recognize the impact of social media in helping make sure customers are informed.  It’s not just a dealer problem, it’s also a result of the manufacturers, their policies, and how they train the dealers.

I’m a salesperson, I don’t begrudge a salesperson getting a commission or the dealer getting a profit, they have to.  However, I resent having my time wasted, I resent being manipulated, I resent not being able to buy what I want to buy, but being pressured into buying what they want to buy.

There is a happy ending, yesterday a salesperson from another dealership called.  I told him I was sick and tired of dealing with the manipulation.  I told him what I was looking for, I told him I had shopped several dealers, I told him how frustrated and angry I was.  I told him I wanted a fair deal for both of us and that he had one chance to present me a fair deal.  He asked me if he could call me back in an hour to tell me what he could do.  He presented me a good deal, yes I probably could have argued another $500-750 from him, but I felt good about the deal.  We did the deal in about 20 minutes, all over the phone.

Postscript:  The sales manager for the second dealer called me up today, apologizing for my experience.  We had a good talk about what happened and my frustrations.  Despite what happened, it takes courage for someone to admit they made an error.  I really respect that.  In the future I would try them again.

All too often, we hear nightmares about customer service and how abysmal it is.  No one listens, no one cares, they just want to take our money and screw the customer.  It’s great fodder for cocktail party and bloggers.  Overlay this with the news reports on Toyota and their lack of responsiveness to customer complaints about problems, it’s no wonder no wonder we are terribly cynical about customer service.

However, just when cynicism starts to take over, all of a sudden, we experience these moments of absolute surprise that enable cause us to pause and reflect.  Customer service is not hard, it starts with caring about your customers.  It continues with listening to what your customers have to say, not necessarily agreeing with them, but trying to understand the issue and helping them understand.  That’s great customer service.  Sometimes we experience the awesome, customer service professionals who surprise and delight.

I have just had one of those experiences.  For those of you who follow me, you know I’m an avid road biker.  Yes, I’m one of those annoying people zipping through traffic, clad in lycra and bright colors, hoping I look halfway as cool as Lance Armstrong.  Over the past year, I’ve been having trouble with my bike shorts.  I’ve been wearing a hole in them in exactly the same spot (I’ll stop the description there, describing further gets a little embarrassing).  I carefully inspected the shorts, I bought new shorts and watched carefully what was happening.  Somehow after about 15-20 rides, the mysterious hole would appear in exactly the same spot.  I was really concerned, at $125-150 per pair of shorts, I could be burning through a lot of money.

I knew it wasn’t a manufacturer’s defect, but thought maybe the manufacturer had changed fabrics.  I even admitted the possibility I might be sitting on the bike incorrectly.  Last night, I had some spare time, so I went to the customer service tab at the manufacturer’s web site.  I left a polite, but concerned note, saying it didn’t appear to be a quality problem on there part, but I couldn’t afford to buy their product if it wore out so quickly and wondered if they had any suggestions.

Today, I was surprised—no shocked.  Jeremy from Pearl Izumi called.  He said, “Dave, I read your note, I’m really concerned about what’s happening.  Would you mind talking to me about the problem you are experiencing?”  My first reaction was that I was blown away that someone had paid attention—I guess the poor experience most of us have tends to cause us to have low expectations about responses.  Second, I was surprised about the speed of response, and Jeremy apologized about being slow, but said he had wanted to research some things before calling me.

We talked about the problem.  Jeremy was upset that I was wearing a hole in my shorts so quickly.  He said he hadn’t heard a story like mine, and the shorts should last for years.  He was worried about what was happening and wanted to help me.  We talked for a while, he asked some great questions.  I wanted to make sure that he understood that I really didn’t consider it a Pearl Izumi problem, clearly it was something about the way I rode my bike.  After a few minutes, he said, why don’t you check the saddle, with the amount you ride, there might be something with the saddle that is causing abnormal wear on the short.  He went on to explain checking spots that weren’t obvious, but with my full weight, pedaling like crazy, might cause problems.  His recommendation was a stroke of genius, I told him I’d check.  He asked me to get back to him, he really wanted to make sure we were addressing the right issue. 

Sure enough, it was the saddle, there was an alignment problem of less than a sixteenth of an inch, but it was enough that it caused the excessive wear on the shorts.  I  quickly fixed the problem and know that I can now ride without wearing out these expensive shorts.  I sent Jeremy a note, thanking him for helping me out and expected that to be the end of the story.  To me it was a great customer service experience.

Imagine my surprise, I just got a note from Jeremy:  “Dave, we’re shipping some new shorts out to you tomorrow–we want you to look good out on the road.”  What an incredible response!  Clearly, the problem was not caused by them, it was caused by me and a small problem with the bike saddle.  I was happy with solving the problem, but astounded by Jeremy and Pearl Izumi going way over and above what they needed to do help me out.

Fantastic customer service is not hard.  It starts with caring about your customers.  It continues with listening to them and helping them.  Too many companies think customer service is about proving that it is not their problem, but the customers.  They forget to help the customer solve the problem.  Fortunately, the management team at Pearl Izumi and Jeremy believe customer service is about serving customers.  What a novel and refreshing concept!

Jeremy and Pearl Izumi have created a lifetime customer and a raving fan!  Those of you who are bikers or runners, buy their product–they stand behind it.

I only have one concern.  I’m worried about lettng Jeremy down, it’s the part about making me “look good out on the road.”  I’m not sure new bike shorts can do it–unless they have a burkha model in lycra–at least covering me up completely might help.

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.

Do great sales people make great sales managers?  This is a debate that never seems to end, I’ve written about it before, over the past few weeks, I don’t know how many posts I read about the topic.

There is a real problem, too many times, we take great sales people and move them into sales management roles.  Some succeed, some fail.  Move anyone into any management job, some succeed, some fail.  The real issues are: 

• Do we know what skills, capabilities, experiences, and mentality do we want in a sales manager?  Do we have a profile of what the ideal sales manager looks like?
• Do we look for candidates that match our requirements or profile as closely as possible?
• Do we have an “on-boarding” or development plan for the new manager?  Are we providing them the right training, coaching, and development to enable them to be successful?
• Does this job change make sense as the next step in the person’s career?

Evaluating candidates against these criteria helps us make better decisions about sales managers.  Great sales people matching these criteria are likely to be great sales managers.  Great sales people that don’t match these criteria are best left to be great sales people.

The question is not Do great sales people make great sales manager?  Let’s move on and focus on hiring and developing great sales managers, wherever we source them.

The web provides endless amusement in understanding new approaches to selling.  I recently found the following post in a sales training discussion blog I participate in.  It was posted as “Huge Favor:”

Recently, I’ve been engaged in a number of discussions about how tough a job sales is.  The issues usually involve:  “We have the highest risk job in the company, if we don’t hit our numbers, we’re gone!”  Or it is:  “Our performance is visible to everyone in the company, they see whether we make our numbers or not, no one else has that visibility.”  Or it is:  “Without us, nothing happens, we are the most critical and criticized function in the organization?”

I worry about these claims–complaints.  In the best case, they are ill-informed, in the worst they are arrogant and elitist.  Make no mistake, sales is a tough job, it is critical to any organization.   But is this posturing justified?

The conversations where these comments come up is always the same, it is a group of sales people feeling under appreciated and misunderstood.  I never hear these comments when I talk to a bunch of manufacturing folks, nor when I talk to development engineers, or finance folks.  Funny thing, when I talk to then, the issues are the same–but do a global replacement for the function.   Manufacturing says, “We have the highest risk ob in the company, if we don’t make quality products, or miss shipments, we’re gone.”  Engineering says, “Without us, nothing happens.  Imagine if we didn’t develop these new products that customers want, no one would buy anything.”  Finance says, “Our performance is visible to everyone in the company, everyone sees budgetary reports, everyone understands DSO, our performance is judged by the street every day!”

In reality, every job in an organization is tough and presents it’s own challenges (Even the show “Undercover Boss” showed this with the COO’s inability to pick up trash, sort recyclables, clean toilets).  None of us can be successful without the others in our organization performing at their highest levels.  We can’t perform at the highest levels unless each person is held accountable for their performance and has tough metrics against which their performance is measured, regardless of whether it is quota performance, on time delivery, meeting engineering milestones, reducing DSO.

Another complaint I hear from sales people is, “They just don’t understand what we do and how challenging it is.”  But do we really understand what they do and their challenges?  I really like this issue, it is a platform for understanding and real change.  It can be a source for accelerating the success of sales professionals.

Imagine this case, we sell solutions manufacturing automation systems.  We’ve been well trained in the products, their features and functions.  We’re smart and we can speak intellectually about manufacturing productivity and effectiveness, but we don’t really understand who they are and the pressure of their jobs.  Wouldn’t we be much more effective if we went to our own manufacturing people and learned more about them, the pressure of their jobs, and what worries them about performance?  Couldn’t this be a fantastic conversation–we understand them better, they understand us, we learn to appreciate each other within the organization.  PLUS the great added bonus is now we’ve seen manufacturing through their eyes—we can now better understand our manufacturing customers.  They probably have a lot of the same issues our own people have—or at least that’s a great starting point for engaging them.

While I’ve held a lot of jobs in different functions, I basically consider myself a sales professional.  Selling is a tough job, every deal stretches my capability and forces me to learn and perform at higher levels.   But every other function in the organization is as important–without them performing at the highest levels, we have nothing to sell.  Without understanding them–and appreciating them, our jobs are harder than they need be.  Without understanding them, we cannot connect with our customers as effectively as we can.

Last night I participated in a fascinating discussion on engaging sales people.  The conversation was one of our bimonthly Sales Smack’s.  If you are interested in vigorous discussion, you ought to join these, I always learn a lot, both from what’s said, and how the discussion stimulates my thinking.  All the information can be found at our LinkedIn Group.

The conversation started with the topic, how do we get sales people more engaged?  There was discussion about sales people being lazy, discussion about Sales Process and how it restricts creativity and innovation.  One of the most interesting parts of the conversation was a discussion of military strategy and how teams focused on a mission, but given the freedom to innovate and adapt to conditions on the ground create great results.

The example of high performance military teams adapting to conditions on the ground is a really interesting example–there are countless stories about how teams accomplish tremendous things, seemingly inventing what should be done on the fly .  What is overlooked, is how did they get to this level of performance?  It certainly isn’t random–in fact it’s the furthest thing from being random.

My experience in looking at the military, is a tremendous process focus.  There are defined methodologies (at times overy defined and rigid–but this is changing), there are ways to act, react, and perform.  They are carefully thought out, continuously revised and improved based on actual field performance and results.  But ask a soldier about their process, they might not be able to respond.  They are more likely to say, “We just do it!”  (Thank you Nike). 

“Just Doing It,” is the trick to process, and I think it’s what we miss in looking at selling processes.  What we forget about the military is they constantly train–rehearse, so as not to confuse this use of training with training classes.  They rehearse the process dozens to hundreds of times.  They rehearse variants of the process constantly.  They rehearse the process so much that it becomes a natural, unconscious act.  It becomes “just doing it.”  It is the framework for them to quickly analyze, assess, and act.

Internalizing the process so it becomes natural is critical to adapting and innovating in the field.  You adapt and innovate, based on a framework of success.  Adaptation and innovation in this context is more likely to achieve success than random creativity.  Whenever I interview high performing sales people, I see the same thing.  They have an internalized framework or process based on their past experience.  They apply that process, adapting and innovating within it, using the process as a foundation to improve their liklihood of success.

We see this in every area that demands “mastery.”  Whether it is the high performing athlete that spends days and months in practicing and drills, just for that hour performance in the Super Bowl.  It could be the jazz musician that spends hundreds of hours practicing in order to be free to improvise–making great music rather than just noise.

I have to admit I have little patience with the anti-process crowd  (I still get lot’s of comments in my blog posts on this).  I think it’s an excuse.  There is too much evidence that process drives performance.  Process, effectively internalized becomes natural.  Process, effectively internalized frees you up to innovate, create, and adapt.  Process, continually updated and revised based on actual results maximizes performance.

When will we start looking at high performers in other areas, and learn what drives mastery?  When will we stop finding excuses not to use process, but instead learn how to master process, tune it, adapt it, and free ourselves for responding to conditions in the field in a way that is likely to produce success rather than being random?  None of this is easy, initially, it seems unnatural and difficult.  With practice and experience it seems easier.  With practice and experience, it frees us up to be creative.

Sometimes, we make it too complicated, soemtimes we let our excuses deter us from execution.  I’ve written before, Sales Process:  Elegant In It’s Simplicity, Natural In It’s Execution.  Additionally, a must read on this topic is Geoff Colvin’s:  Talent Is Overrated!

I love competing and I love winning!  Watching the Super Bowl was great, two great teams who left everything on the field.  No this is not a post about what we can learn from the Super Bowl, but the Saints and the Colts are good examples of great competition.

Competing against a great competitor is great, it raises the level of play, it forces us to compete more strongly–bringing our best game to the situation.  It helps our customers, strong competition should bring better solutions.  Even if we lose, strong competition helps us, we learn from losing, we learn where we can improve and how we get better.  Without this, our performance slips–often to the point that we are beating ourselves.

Too often, I’m not sure that we are beaten by strong competition.  I tend to think we beat ourselves more often—this happens both at an individual performance level and at an organizational level.  Business history is littered with companies that beat themselves–they took their eye off the ball, they failed to understand what customers needed and would buy, they failed to understand who their competition really was, they failed to deliver on their promise—to the customers, shareholders, and employees.  Some chose tragic shortcuts–the Enron’s, Worldcom’s, and others.  Some should have been the best, but didn’t recognize changes in the markets, competition, and customer needs–the DEC’s, Wang’s, and hundreds of others.  Some are struggling, the jury is out about whether they will get it or not, GM, Citibank, and too many others.  You get the point, the list can go on.  These companies lost or are losing, less because of competition, and more because of failure to be able to respond to their customers or the competition.

Sales people do this everyday–in less dramatic ways, but still in important ways.  The sales person who hasn’t really probed and understood what the customer wants and needs.  The sales person who isn’t listening, the sales person who is resting on their past successes–with this customer or in general.  The sales person who fails to develop and execute a winning strategy, but reacts. 

Too often, sales people are careless and sloppy.  They don’t understand what the customer is trying to achieve.  They don’t realize who is really invovled in the decision and how they are perceived, choosing instead to call on their “friends.”  They don’t understand who their real competition is.  They are slow in responding to the customer, they present a standard boilerplate proposal.  They chase the wrong opportunities.  They fail to demonstrate to the customer that they have earned the customer’s business.  They have no strategy, but are doing a random walk through the deal.

Business and sales is tough.  To win, you have to bring your “A” game, every day.  If you don’t, it won’t be your competition that beats you, you will be beating yourself.