Sales -- The Thinking Person's Profession!

I love being in sales, I love talking to great sales professional. I think a large part of it is that success in sales requires you to really think.

Many people make a mistake when they think about sales. Some think it is all about the product--success comes from good product knowledge and a great pitch. Good product knowledge is important, but that's not what sales is about. And the pitch really has nothing to do with it, unless you are in the infomercial business.

Many think it is about the relationship. The image of the glad handing, back slapping peddler, whose motto is "when the going gets tough, the tough go to lunch." Deep, trust and integrity based relationships are important, but that is not sufficient.

The best sales people I have met are really great thinkers. They are constantly questioning, exploring, learning, evaluating. They are insatiably curious--about everything.

Consider:

Great sales people know their customers' businesses---often, it seems better than their customers. They understand their customers' markets, competition, business drivers, business strategies, financial performance, operational strengths and weaknesses. They constantly look at what's happening with their customers and how they can help customers improve.

Great sales people know (and care about) people. They study the people they work with, customers, peers, others in the organization. They understand what drives each person, their aspirations, dreams, what keeps them up at night. They think about how they can help them achieve their goals and dreams.

Great sales people are fantastic strategists. They think with the end in sight. They analyze people and situations. They assess competition. They assess their own positions, strengths and weaknesses. They weave together all kinds of information and develop an action plan, enabling them to achieve their goals. They constantly reassess and adjust the plan based on things that change. They constantly evaluate alternatives.

Great sales people are problem solvers. They know how to take an incredible number of factors, analyze and synthesize them, and develop a solutions. Whether it is solving the customer's problem or developing a sales strategy. They are change enablers. They know how uncomfortable change is for people and organizations, and help people understand and embrace the change to better achieve their goals.

Great sales people think about themselves. They are very introspective. They have a realistic view of their capabilities, strengths and weaknesses. The best are constantly learning--they read incessantly, they train themselves constantly, they watch others and learn from them. The status quo is never enough, they constantly seek to improve themselves and to get an edge.

Sales is exciting, the intellectual challenge, the ability to deal with disparate pieces of information, abstract ideas, constant change and to see your way to achieving goals--for your customer, your company, and yourself is such an adrenaline rush!

Great professional selling is only for thinking people. The other thing about great professional selling is taking that thinking and translating it into action and execution.

Can you imagine anything more exciting?

Sales Performance Management -- Two Key Levers

It's approaching that time of year. I'm getting calls from clients: "Dave, we will be starting our planning process in September. We will have to commit to 2010's numbers and budget, we will have to develop a commission plan that motivates our sales people to hit the goals..... We're going to need your help."

These conversations got me to thinking about a mistake I think many organizations make in thinking about sales performance management. Too often, people make the mistake of thinking the cornerstone to sales performance management is the commission/incentive plan. "If we get the sale incentive plan right, then we will get the right behaviors, actions, and we will hit the numbers. Performance management is all about getting the right compensation plan in place."

The incentive plan is an important element to help drive sales performance, but it is just one of the levers the organization has. The incentive/compensation plan is somewhat limited in driving performance. It basically focuses on the issue, "here is how you will be paid for what you sell." To the degree that people are money motivated, it is a powerful element to sales performance management.

The more important lever, is the Performance Plan.

Unfortunately, performance planning is not taken as seriously, both as a tool to drive performance and a tool to drive individual development. It is a powerful and underutilized tool that every sales manager should leverage to drive performance.

The performance plan should set the expectations of sales people in a number of areas. The performance plan sets baseline expectations and behaviors that I sometime call "conditions of employment," for example showing up for work is one of them, perhaps keeping the CRM system might be another (I'm not trying to provoke a CRM discussion, just some examples that I've seen.).

But the performance plan can go far beyond that, it should set expectations about how we want to see people sell, the types of relationships we want them to establish, it can talk about how we want sales people to collaborate with their peers and others in the company.

The performance plan is where management has the opportunity to establish the ideal behaviors and best practices for selling, establish goals and metrics (both hard and soft) to drive the highest levels of performance. It becomes the road map to the sales person for outstanding sales performance.

Too many sales managers don't understand the power of the performance plan as a tool for developing their people and driving performance. Most tend to look at it as "one of those tasks HR forces us to do."

Properly utilized, good performance plans, coupled with well designed incentive/commission plans can be two of the most powerful tools for sales managers in driving, measuring and evaluating performance.

Sales Is Changing, Are You Maximizing Your Impact?

Webinar: Driving Demand in a Demanding Market

July 15 11 AM PST / 2 PM EST

As a sales executive, you know how difficult it is to increase revenue while decreasing costs in today's selling environment. You’re under pressure to produce sales. Missed deals are costing you money. You need new ways to get smarter and more productive quickly – not more of the same. But which new sales strategies will help you uncover hidden demand and maximize revenue potential without breaking the bank?Tune in to our live webcast to hear a panel of experts discuss strategies on how to boost sales and cut costs to impact your bottom line right now.Join our panel of specialists to discover:

Tips to get your sales team smarter and more productive
How to identify the right deals and avoid wasting time on dead ends
Tools that help manage and measure critical sales performance metrics
The role Technology can play in making an impact on your bottom line

Brent Leary is a CRM industry analyst, advisor, author, speaker and award-winning blogger. He is co-founder and Partner of CRM Essentials LLC, an Atlanta based CRM advisory firm offering tools and strategies for improving business relationships, with a client list including RIM, Sage, Microsoft, Intuit, and Cisco. Recognized by InsideCRM as one of 2007's 25 most influential industry leaders, Leary is also a past recipient of CRM Magazine's Most Influential Leader Award. Leary blogs at http://brentleary.com/.

Dave Brock is President and CEO of Partners In EXCELLENCE, a global consulting company focused on performance improvement in sales, marketing and business strategy. Partners In EXCELLENCE has trained over 100,000 sales professionals, globally, in how to outsell and outperform their competition. Dave is a trusted advisor to executives in the high technology, industrial products, and professional services, and has worked with the largest organizations in those sectors as well as start-ups. Brock blogs at http://partnersinexcellence.blogspot.com/, Partners In EXCELLENCE website is http://www.excellenc.com/.

David Bonnette is Group Vice President of Oracle's North American CRM sales organization, overseeing Oracle’s market-leading CRM portfolio for North American commercial markets. He leads a team of nearly 150 people and has built his organization around industry, segment, and product specialization. In transforming the culture to emphasize Innovation, Collaboration, his team is acutely focused on developing communities that create sustainable, material value for Oracle’s customers.

To register for this Webinar, click on this link: The Sales Game Has Changed, Are You Playing To Win?

Setting Yourself Apart, Developing and Communicating Differentiated Value

A compelling and differentiated value proposition is critical in selling—we all know this, yet this remains one of the biggest challenges facing sales professionals.

This post examines 5 critical elements about developing and communicating differentiated value propositions.

1. Numbers count, quantifying your value is critical. We know the structure of value proposition, it states a problem area or issue your customer has, addresses what you can do about it, and ideally provides quantification of the result.

For example, in working with sales executives, I often say: "We can reduce the number of calls your people have to make on each deal by 30-40%, dramatically improving productivity." Sales productivity and the effective use of time is usually a high priority for sales people and executives, and a 30-40% call reduction is usually compelling to the executive, they usually want to hear what we say.

While most sales people know the structure of a value proposition, very often, we don’t see sales people quantifying the magnitude of improvement or result the customer might expect to achieve. They present the product feature and generalized benefits, but leave it to the customer to guess at what improvement will result. The best sales people make this result very obvious as a part of their value proposition.

2. If your value proposition isn’t differentiated, the only differentiation apparent to customers is price. Product based value propositions are undifferentiated. Today, differences between competitive offerings are often very small. Too often, I see sales people developing value propositions based on the features, functions, and benefit of their products -- but they look similar to the competition’s.

Do this test: Look at a product in your company’s web site and how its value is presented. Go to your top 3 competitors and look at their value propositions---are they almost exactly the same as yours?

To differentiate yourself, you have to take a broader look at your offering. Elements that drive differentiation include company reputation, ease of doing business, the total customer experience through the buying and implementation process, your personal relationship with the customer, and many other issues.

3. The value proposition must change as you progress through the customer buying cycle. Early in the cycle, a relatively generic or undifferentiated value proposition is perfectly sufficient. All you are trying to do is to get the customer interested in you and to commit to consider your offering, along with competition.

Too often, though, sales people stick with these generic value propositions. To win, the value proposition must change. As you discover the customers’ most critical issues, problems and priorities, you must adjust your value proposition to address those specific issues, in the customer terms.

For example in my sales productivity above, as I work with the customer, I might change my value proposition to: "Based on our discussions with you, we have found your people are spending too much time pursuing unqualified or bad deals. We believe by helping your people better disqualify bad opportunities, we can improve your win rates by as much as 15%, and improve resource utilization by 22%."

In the beginning of the deal, the general sales productivity improvement was interesting enough for the customer to consider us. As we understood the customer‘s challenges, we focused on a specific issue impacting their performance and our value proposition focused on the results in addressing their specific issues.

4. You have to address the customers’ top priorities and issues. We tend to treat the customer as the enterprise or company. People make decisions, not enterprises. To be effective, our value propositions must address the priorities and needs for each person involved in the decision making process---in their terms. While they may have some common priorities, there will always be differences.

Using my value proposition example, the sales executive is most concerned with win rates, resource utilization, and cost of selling. A regional sales manager might be concerned with win rates, and improving the quality of the funnel. A training manager will be more concerned with the delivery of the program, the coaching and sustainability, and the learning pedagogy.

To be effective as a sales person you have to focus on each person involved on the decision and address their top priorities and requirements. The one individual you have not satisfied may be enough to cause you not to win a deal.

5. You win by focusing on each customer’s top 5 priorities. I talk to people who have generated long laundry lists of issues they have to address. While you can’t ignore all the issues, generally addressing the top 5 priorities for each customer and setting yourself apart in those areas will be what causes you to win. Make sure you have compelling and differentiated value propositions for those and make sure your customer acknowledges them. Addressing their 20th issue is not likely going to be what causes you to win or lose the deal.

However, be careful to re-validate the customer priorities through their buying cycle, their priorities may change and you will have to change your focus to stay aligned.

6. Bonus---I couldn’t resist giving you a bonus tip: None of this counts until the customer acknowledges the value, confirms that it is differentiated and agrees it addresses their most critical needs. However differentiated and valuable you think you are, until it comes from the customer’s mouth, you are just guessing.

Partners In EXCELLENCE is the recognized leader in helping organizations develop and communicate differentiated value propositions. If you need to sharpen your tools, processes, thinking, and skills in this area, look at our Value Proposition Solutions, follow the link. For a copy of our free Value Proposition eBook, follow the link.

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

How Important Are Partnerships To Your Sales Strategies?

I have written a lot about Strategic Partnerships and Alliances as part of your sales strategies. Over the past tow weeks we have been conducting a survey on the importance of partnering to sales strategies. We gotten good participation and, on a preliminary basis, some very intriguing results. Some of the results are actually a bit of a surprise to me---I think people will be quite intrigued with what the final outcome.

We will be closing the survey on June 12 and publishing the results soon afterwards. We wanted to give people a final chance to participate in this important research. To take the survey, please click on this link: Survey On Customer Partnering And Supply Chain Relationships.

The survey should take less than 15 minutes to complete. Everyone completing the survey and requesting a copy of the results will get a copy of the report at no charge. As an additional incentive, we will be conducting a drawing for a winner to choose one of the following, a 32GB iPod Touch or Kindle 2. One of those will be awarded to the winner.

Again, please take the time to complete this survey. All results are completely anonymous. Follow the link: Survey On Customer Partnering And Supply Chain Relationships.

Thanks for your help with this survey. It is open for anyone to take, please forward this mail to colleagues, customers, and suppliers who may be interested in this issue. We will close it on June 12 and all participants will receive a free copy of the final report afterwards.

Can Someone Help Me Diagnose This Sales Call? I Don't Get It.

It's 7:00am, I'm busy disposing of email and getting my day started. I'm already on my second cup of coffee, the phone rings.....

Most of my clients and colleagues know I start my day in the "office" at 5:00am, so I am anticipating it is one of them.

Dave: Hello, this is Dave Brock.
Other Party (OP): May I speak to your office manager?
Dave: Well, my name is Dave Brock, I own the company so I guess I'm the office manager, how can I help you?
OP: I'm John Doe from XYZ company and I'd like to know when your office hours start.
Dave, slightly confused: Excuse me, who are you and what are you asking?
OP: I'm John Doe from XYZ company and I'd like to know when your office hours start.
Dave, still confused: Well, since we are speaking on the phone right now, clearly they have already started.
OP (I guess I should start calling him John Doe): OK, thank you. Good bye.
Dave, very confused: Wait a minute, can I ask you why you want that information?
OP (John): Well we are an IT services company...... I wanted to see if I could set an appointment to talk to you about your IT needs.......
Dave, no longer confused but now perplexed: Well, why didn't you ask?
OP (John): Well......... What's your name?
Dave: That's OK, thank you for calling, I'm not interested in your services.

I think that was supposed to be a prospecting call???? I've done thousands in my career and have seen lots of sales people doing them.

But I'm not really sure. John had reached me, I clearly identified myself as the person he probably wanted to talk to, but clearly he wasn't prepared to execute his prospecting call. Why did he make the call? What was he trying to accomplish? Is he aware of the impression he made? Is he being paid to do this?

Some things I think went wrong:

1. He didn't know anything about the company. Before I make calls, I use this new thing called Google.....(you know what I'm going to say).
2. When he reached me, he didn't clearly introduce himself and his reason for calling.
3. I'm not clear that he had a script, but he really wanted to know when we started work. Even if that is in the script, it seems that when he heard he had the right person on the phone he might launch into the reason for calling and asked for an appointment, but I had to pull it out of him.
4. I raised an objection (Why didn't you ask?)and didn't even try to respond.
5. He wasn't listening, I told him my name twice, but at the end of the call, he still was asking for my name.

Yes, I still make prospecting calls myself. I do my homework before I make the call, so I know a lot about the company, their situation, and, if possible, about the individual I call. So often, when I call, I reach voicemail--I'm prepared for handling that. Sometimes, I reach an assistant--I'm prepared for talking to assistants, and every once and a while, I actually reach the person I want to talk to---I leap on those opportunities. I want to capitalize on those few seconds I might actually be talking to a prospect, I want to use their time well, make a great impression, and make the first step in achieving my objective.

Do I have it wrong? Am I missing something? Am I being too critical.

Unfortunately, these days, I get too many calls like the one from John Doe---no wonder "cold calls" don't work.

Sales Force Ineffectiveness, Conjecture On The Future Of The Profession, Part 3 of 3 – What Do We Do?

If you’ve made it this far through the series of articles, you probably want to quit your sales job and become a hermit in the mountains. I’ve certainly created a bleak picture. Thank you for your patience and dligence in hanging in with me!

However, I am tremendously excited about being a sales professional and for the future of sales professionals. I think the dismal picture I’ve portrayed, also provides an opportunity for real progress and growth for sales professionals.

Note---I’m focused on a small audience—people who are or who are committed to becoming the highest levels of performance in sales. I’m not talking about people that sell. I am neither naïve enough, ambitious enough, now willing to waste my time on changing sales. As with every function, there will be a tremendous number of “schlock” peddlers (call a New Yorker for translation). There will also be a large number of people who are in the middle---I see great hope for them, but led by inspired sales professionals.

I think the problems and challenges provide the opportunity for true professionals and those that aspire to be professionals to separate themselves from the rest of people who peddle.

How do we improve, how do we focus on becoming truly effective and high performers? Where does the leadership responsibility lie? I believe each of us can take ownership in driving change.

First, we can't be naive, a lot of the structural and systemic issues I identified in Part 2 can't be fixed --- will take more people working together (within and organization or across organizations. But, we don't have to let these constrain us, we can still get a lot accomplished and drive a lot of change that will improve our effectiveness --- as groups, teams, or individuals. We can't let these constraints become excuses for non performance.

To be honest---at least from an organizational point of view, I am tempted to point the finger at management—not just sales management, but corporate management. I do believe that poor leadership or no leadership is one of the key reasons sales (and organizations) perform at a far lower level than they could. I think leaders must set better personal examples, invest in getting things done through their people---which means coaching and developing them. I believe they must fight the systemic issues that block them from driving sustained performance improvement.

At the same time, only the top executives will be able to have any significant impact on the systemic issues. What does this mean for most of sales management? If I got my wish, I would hope that sales managers focus on three things: Doing their jobs as leader/coaches. There are coaching opportunities in every meeting—just the questions you ask have a tremendous impact your team.

Second, rather than reacting, changing priorities and strategies on a daily basis; stick to your principles, processes, and tools. Use them, presumably you implemented them because you believed in the results they could produce, give them a chance to work, monitor, adjust, modify. Follow through on them, diagnose what’s working and what’s not working. There are a lot of good processes, tools, and programs out there. Choose those that work best for you and use them. Don’t become victim of the program du hour mentality.

Finally, execute your processes and lead with passion and excitement. Inspire your people, your peers, your management to follow your example.

Individual contributors have a responsibility as well. Seek to become the best in your profession. Constantly learn, seek out the best professionals you can find, network with them, and learn from them. Develop your own processes, or internalize your company’s selling processes—adapting them for your use. The processes and tools work! They produce tremendous results, learn how to leverage those results for yourself. Invest in planning and thinking. It will get you to your end goal more effectively and efficiently then by reacting to your competition, customer demands, or your management. Set an example in your own performance for your peers.

Whether you are a leader or individual contributor, becoming disciplined and process focused, committing to follow through on these, exploiting the tools produce results. Leverage these processes and tools, not because your management tells you to, but because they help you become more effective.

I don’t believe change only comes from the top. I believe change comes from committed, passionate people at all levels of the organization.

Thanks for your patience in working your way through my diatribe. I have not hit all the issues, I think I may have a bit of a warped view on many issues. My greatest hope is not that you agree with my ideas, but that it stimulates a healthy discussion. Your discussion and comments will be better than my rambling posts! If I'm off base, please correct me.

In case you started at the end and want to go back to the beginning, here are the two previous posts.

Sales Force Ineffectiveness, Conjecture On The Future Of The Profession, Part 1 of 3

Sales Force Ineffectiveness, Conjecture On The Future Of The Profession, Part 2 of 3 -- Not Just A Sales Problem

Sales Force Ineffectiveness, Conjecture On The Future Of The Profession, Part 2 of 3 -- Not Just A Sales Problem

In the first part of this post, I focused primarily on the sales function and challenges we have created for ourselves. However, what we face is not just a sales problem.

There are some things that keep us from being as effective as possible that are not just the “fault” of sales people, but which do contribute to our inability to sustain high levels of effective performance. Some of it is “business culture”—in general, some of it is “regional culture”---that is North American, European, Asian, and so forth. Some of it is “industry culture.”

These represent attitudes, behaviors, practices, expectations by all business professionals, but which applied to selling, adversely impact our performance and effectiveness. I can’t review all of these, but will highlight a few of the issues that impact sales effectiveness.

The focus on the short term is one of the biggest issues impacting organizations, in general, and sales specifically. CEO’s and Boards are concerned about today’s stock performance. Decisions are biased to what impacts our stock now—not what will increase our market cap in 2-5 years. If the strategies, tactics, and actions we have adopted don’t impact stock price today, then tomorrow we will change them.

This has a terrible impact on all parts of the organization, but perhaps the biggest on sales. Strategies, tactics and actions are oriented around booking the order today. If we aren’t tracking at or above plan, then we will change our strategies and tactics. We confuse the sales people, we confuse our customers, and we don’t produce results. We push our customers to meet our schedule for booking orders rather than their schedule of producing results. In this environment, the “program du jour” rules---at least for today, who knows about tomorrow?

Sales people become numb to this, they often ignore everything and just keep doing what they have been doing in the past. They keep their heads down and stay out of trouble.

Speed of execution is favored over planning. We are too busy doing activities, to focus on doing things right. We always have time to do things over (after all, our programs and priorities will change tomorrow, anyway). Taking the time to plan, takes away from time we can spend doing stuff—regardless of whether it moves us forward. We have studies, as do others, which show tremendous improvements in productivity, results, and effectiveness by investing time in planning. Clearly, we can’t go overboard, but there is a mentality/culture in most of the business world that favors activity and speed---any motion/activity is good motion/activity over doing the right thing at the right time with the right people.

We live in a disposable society: Rather than fixing something, repairing it, tuning it, we get rid of it, replacing it with something new. As consumers, when something breaks, we throw it out and replace it with something new. As business people, when something “breaks,” we throw it out and replace it with something new. When our people don’t perform to our expectations, we replace them with someone new. When our managers don’t accomplish what we want, we replace them with something new. When our CRM system, Sales 2.0 tools, sales training don’t produce what we want, we get something new. We don’t look coach or develop people for improvement, we don’t look at processes and analyze what is wrong, correcting that, we don’t learn from our problems and look at how we can repair, tune, or fix them---even though the path to good results by doing this is probably faster and cheaper than a replacement strategy. We deal with symptoms and don’t address root problems. Fixing the symptom doesn’t eliminate the problem.

We forget the Lone Ranger really didn’t exist. We look for the silver bullet, we believe in the magic solution—whether it is weight loss, or the 10 techniques to get anybody to buy anything. We are susceptible to fads and move from fad to fad. There are no silver bullets. Business and sales is hard work. It requires passion, creativity, discipline, follow through, and learning from our mistakes. There are no shortcuts.

All that counts is results. I’m all for results—they represent the ultimate scorecard. But results are produced from strong processes, disciplined execution, and focused action. Just demanding results without looking at the root issues that impact the ability to deliver results doesn’t produce sustained improvement.

Managers aren’t leading. In all functions, managers are spending more time administering than leading. Managers get things done through their people. Their responsibility is to remove barriers to their people’s performance, coach and develop people to perform at the highest levels, developing and managing the process. Unfortunately, few managers—from the CEO down do a consistent job at doing this. Many don’t know it’s their job, many don’t have the skills to do their job. Without leadership, without management setting the expectations and the example, how can we expect sales people to raise their standard of performance. As my colleague, Christian Maurer, likes to say, the fish rots from the head.

It’s better to look good than do good. We seem to honor image more than true accomplishment. What better example than the cult of personalities led by people like Paris Hilton who have contributed nothing. By contrast, a person like Greg Mortenson is relatively unknown, yet he has had a deep impact on dozens of communities and thousands of people. This translates into our business world. Executives spend more time cultivating their personal image/brand—often hiring personal media consultant, than letting their work speak for itself. A fantastic presentation or elevator pitch, a great PowerPoint is more recognized than a simple whiteboard discussion with a customer.

We are time poor. Nobody is “fat” in business these days. To be competitive and to survive, companies must be lean (remember lean is different depending on where you are). In a world of cutbacks and layoffs, the funds and number of people available to do the work have been reduced significantly. Too few people, too few dollars, and 7/24 availability --- thanks to our Blackberry’s, have given us no time to think, plan, organize. We can only react.

There have been too many breaches of Trust. All the items above, and others I haven’t suggested have created very low levels of trust---within the organization, and even lower levels of trust across different organization. We’ve heard and seen too much focus on your personal brand. We’ve seen too many commitments broken. We’ve seen too many of the top executives rewarded for destroying the organizations they were supposed to lead.

These are problems that pervade business. They are not just sales problems, we see these issues in virtually every part of every organization. They impact how we, as sales professionals, act within our organizations and with our customers. They impact how we are perceived by our own organizations and by our customers.

Sales Force Ineffectiveness, Conjecture On The Future Of The Profession, Part 1 of 3 (in case you came in on the middle of the story)

Sales Force Ineffectiveness, Conjecture On The Future Of The Profession, Part 3 of 3 – What Do We Do?

Tips For Selling To Manufacturers

Thanks to the folks at TheCustomerCollective and Oracle for sponsoring a terrific eBook, Selling Through A Slump. It's a great resource for every sales professional. You really should download the eBook and use it as your playbook to help you in growing your sales within different market segments.

I was asked to write the section: Selling To Manufacturers. To tantalize you to read more in the eBook, I've published the tips I recommended below:

Selling to Manufacturers

Yes, we know the story, the manufacturing sector is had hit. Plants are closing, companies are looking to get rid of excess capacity, and no one seems to be buying. Yet manufacturers are our customers, how do we sell to them, how do we find ways of creating revenue in this sector.Let’s look at Dave’s Top 10 Tips For Selling Within The Manufacturing Sector. Actually, there are a couple of ways we can look at it---you may sell products, services, or solutions to help manufacturers design, develop, manufacture and support the products they develop. You may sell components, parts, or subassemblies that are embedded into the products the manufacturer builds. I’ll try to look at both aspects of this challenge:

1. If you normally turn right when walking in your customer’s front door, on your next visit turn left. Too often we call on the same old people all the time. Explore your customer, call on new people, new functions, new divisions. If you sold to the manufacturing/production lines, go to development/engineering, meet them and see if you can help them solve problems. If you normally dealt with a certain engineering group, call on the engineers one cubicle over, you may find new opportunities.

2. Look upstream and downstream in the process flow. If you supply products or services to support the manufacturing (or engineering design/development) processes, look at how you fit into the process. Can you extend your reach upstream or downstream to make the process more efficient and better integrated. If you supply component parts, look at the parts you connect to (Think the hip bone connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone connected to ……) Can you supply those components or even a subassembly? Can you increase your part count in each product?

3. Look at key/hot issues the industry faces and present how your products/services help the customer address those issues. For example, if you can help make peanut products safe, you are gold! Are there safety issues, environmental, regulatory, compliance issues your customer must address that you can solve? Can you help them with sustainability/energy issues?

4. Leverage plant consolidation and downsizing to your advantage---and to help the customer. In shutting down plants, they have to consolidate operations into fewer facilities. This creates a whole raft of nightmarish problems for the manufacturer. How do they handle the logistics? How do they make their lines more flexible? How do they transition products? How do they do better planning/forecasting for the combined workloads? How do they better manage productivity, quality and efficiency in a smaller number of plants that are doing more. This is a terrific opportunity if you can solve those problems.

5. Make sure they are using your products and services as efficiently and effectively as possible. Are they getting the most bang for the buck/euro/yuan? Audit the use of your products/services to see they are operating and top efficiency. Look at the parts you supply, can you suggest other parts that would be more effective/efficient? This is also a terrific opportunity to look at additional services you might provide (and charge for). It’s also a terrific opportunity to educate your customers about how get the most out of your products/services making them more knowledgeable, productive, and comfortable with your offerings. In the very least, when they start buying again, they will tend to buy what they know and trust.

6. Focus on supply chain efficiency, can you wring out costs in the supply chain/procurement processes? If you supply parts, can you take over more of the logistics management headaches? They probably have gotten very lean and supply chain management may be a big problem. If you supply equipment/systems/services sometimes common tools used by suppliers help dramatically reduce costs and improve efficiency through the whole value delivery chain.

7. Ask your best customers to introduce you to their most important suppliers. If you have created great value and efficiency for your customer, it only serves them to have suppliers that that are achieving the same value and efficiency in their operations---it can reduce your customer’s costs.

8. Look at what is happening to your customers’ customers. Can you identify things that are happening there that present opportunities for your customer to grow their business---which may drive demand for your offerings? Helping your customer grow their business is the surest way to grow yours.

9. Become best friends with the finance/controller functions in your customer. Make certain you understand how they evaluate investments. Make certain you understand ROI/Payback hurdles they apply in their analysis. Look at where they are trying to take cost out of operations or how they are trying to improve the financial position of the company. Make certain you are conversant in their language and lingo.

10. Focus on rich collaboration with your customer. Become an integrated part of their team. If you sell parts, become part of their engineering and design teams to help design better products, reducing their design time and costs. If you sell equipment/systems services, look at how you establish a deeper relationship with the customer.

I’m giving you 11 instead of 10 for two reasons: First, I always try to give my customers more than they ask for. Second, prime numbers have a certain elegance—so I had to end this list on a prime number.

11. Ask your customer how you can help and listen to what they say. Sometimes, that’s all the help they need, but no one ever paid attention.

I believe opportunities abound in the manufacturing segment. Those that take advantage and dig deep will find those opportunities and succeed!

There is a lot more good stuff in this eBook, download it now: Selling Through The Slump

Sales Managers Must Set The Example To Drive Change

We read everyday about organizations not achieving what they want in leveraging sales training, implementing CRM, implementing Sales 2.0 tools, new processes--whatever. While it may sound surprising, one of the key reasons organizations don't get what they want from these programs is that managers, at all levels don't set a visible example in utilizing the tools, training, or processes themselves. Somehow, they become things that the sales people must do, but managers don't.

If managers are not committed to set a visible example in any initiative, the organization is probably better off not doing it--saving the money and time.

Many years ago, I was brought into run a troubled sales organization. We had to go through a major reduction and completely re-examine everything that we were doing. We instituted new sales processes, brought in new training programs, and implemented a CRM system (almost before CRM was CRM). As we made these changes, I started getting push back from the managers and sales people---it was natural, change is tough for all people and there is a natural tendency to resist new initiatives and change--even when what you have been doing doesn't work.

Managers came to me and said "We don't have time to do these things, we just need to get out an sell." Sales people said, "You don't understand, I've been selling for years, planning is bureaucratic and wastes my time." There were lots of excuses, some legitimate, most not.

I decided to simplify things. I told everyone, they were accountable for making their numbers and achieving their goals. I told them they could do whatever they wanted, that they were responsible for their own success.

There was one big caveat: While people could do whatever they wanted, when they engaged with me, they were required to do things a certain way.

I told people I was available 7/24 to make sales calls with them--my highest priority was to be with customers helping them close business. However, in order to get the most out of the customer's time and my time, I said I had the following requirements: I wanted a written sales call plan--using the tools we had introduced in the sales training. I wanted a decision process map, and I wanted an opportunity plan. I told people that if I didn't have those before I jumped on the airplane, I would personally call the customer and reset the meeting, apologizing because we were not prepared to use the time well.

I got some grumbling. It only took two cancelled customer meetings to get people to realize I was serious. They started completing the plans---though only for me. For every plan I got, I would take the time to call the sales person review the plan, we would revise it and come up with a stronger plan---all using the tools and processes we had invested in. It didn't take too long before people started seeing that using these produced results. Soon they weren't using them just for me, but they were using them to improve their own productivity and effectiveness.

We did the same thing with funnel, account, territory and opportunity reviews. I told the management team they could use whatever process they wanted, but in doing the review with me, they had to use the tools and processes we had invested in. In the first few review meetings, people would try to avoid this, I stopped the meetings, sending them out of my office to do the work the way we had agreed. Over time, people started seeing the value of this. Our meetings were shorter, much more productive. We had common languages, processes and disciplines. We were becoming more focused, more efficient and more successful in building the business.

None of this would have happened if I hadn't set the example of using the tools and processes myself. If I hadn't cancelled meetings, thrown people out of my office, we never would have made the changes necessary to achieve our goals. There were some painful times, there was some grumbling. I had to invest a lot of time in coaching people in how to use the tools and explaining why they would produce result----but in fact that was my job!

My responsibility was to set an example for my team. To demonstrate my confidence in the tools, training, and processes by using them every day. To develop my people and their people, showing them and working with them in how they could improve their performance with the tools.

Over the next 12 months, we were remarkably successful, we took a terrible situation and turned it into a great success. We were benchmarked as "best practice." The team was positive, they used the tools, not because I required it, but because they produced value to them and improved their results.

Change is difficult. It's the manager's responsibility to lead people in change and to set a personal example. When are driving change in the organization, it's not them that we are changing, it's us.

Sales Managers, Use It Or Lose It.

I work with sales executives and professionals everyday. Many of the organizations have invested millions of dollars/euro/yuan/yen in tools (CRM, Sales 2.0) and training. Yet the results aren't there. The expected improvements in productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness just aren't there. What's wrong, why aren't organizations getting the results? What does it take to get real performance improvement.

At the risk of biting the hands that feed me, the problem is not with the vendors, it's even not with the sales people themselves. The problem rests with sales management.

Let me give an example. Just a couple of days ago, I met with several sales leaders for a Fortune 100 company. Over the years, they had invested millions of dollars in several sales training programs and a coaching program. I knew these programs well, they are truly outstanding programs (second only to those we offer----sorry, I had to throw that in). Yet in meeting with these leaders, they said the sales people weren't performing, they weren't spending enough time planning or in front of customers, they weren't getting the expected results from what they had done.

I expressed my surprise. I asked them: "What happens when you review opportunity, account, or territory plans with your people? What are you seeing on the templates your training company provides?" Their response, "We don't look at those, we trained the people and hope they use them, but we don't use them in our reviews."

I went on and asked, "What about your coaching? That program has some guides and templates, aren't those working for you? Are you using the review process they recommend?" I got the response I expected, but hoped not to hear, "Those are too time consuming, we squeeze coaching in when we can, but the business is too hectic. The program gave us some good concepts to think about when we do talk to our people."

These executives were seeking my recommendations about how to improve performance---and as part of that they wanted a training program and some tools that would fix the performance issues.

As much as I wanted to propose a program to them, I had to tell them, "You don't have a training problem. No training program I could recommend will address the issues that you raise. The 'fix' to this problem is easy---it's you. You need to change your behavior, you need to change how you conduct reviews, you need to start leveraging the tools you have invested in, and expect the sales people use them as well. Use what you have or lose it!"

This isn't unique to this company, I see it in too many organizations. If management isn't using the tools that have been introduced to the sales people---tools intended to improve productivity and results, why should we expect our people to use them.

Management and executives have the obligation to use and reinforce the tools, training and processes put in place to improve performance. If you don't use them, your people will never use them. It's not their problem, it's management's problem. If you don't integrate the tools, processes, training into the fabric of your business; if you don't make it a part of your daily management process, you are wasting your money and your people's time. You will not get the results you expect.

I feel bad about this opportunity, I hate turning away business. But they already had solutions in place, they just weren't using them. The 'fix' didn't require time or investment, it just required a change in management behavior.

Tomorrow, I will give another example of how easy it is for management to set a tone to drive major changes in results and to get the most out of your investments in tools, training, and processes.

Shooting From The Lip, Just In Time Sales Call Planning

I love hanging out with sales people. Most of the sales people I've met are very bright, personable, and very fast on their feet. All of those are characteristics of great sales people. They also represent a critical weakness. They make us sloppy or in the pressure of time, we tend not to prepare, relying on our experience and ability to think on our feet to make sales calls. After all, we've made 100's of calls over our careers and we're successful. We can just shoot from the lip.

Too often, planning for a sales call goes something like this:

• I'm in an elevator, thinking about the meeting I'm going to. Thank goodness it's a skyscraper in Manhattan---gives me a little more time to plan my call.
• I'm meeting with Ms. Smith at XYZ company, we've been talking about a deal, I think I'll focus on these things.
• I might stop by and do a "Howdy call" to a few people while I'm there.
• I've got a briefcase full of the latest brochures, so I can talk about anything.
• I know that Angel Cabrera won the Masters in a 3 way playoff on Sunday and that Tiger's putting was really off.
• In the worst case, we can always talk about how bad the economy.
• Elevator doors open, I'm ready for anything. I can talk my way out of any objection.

Over the years, I've interviewed thousands of sales people, inevitably, planning for most of the sales calls is pretty much like that. I talk to these same sales people after their call.

Dave: How did the call go?
Sales person: Great, we really bonded, I told them about our new products, gave them some brochures, talked a little about the deal and what they needed.
Dave: Did you accomplish all your objectives?
Sales person: I did pretty well, they really understand our product.
Dave: Did you accomplish all your objectives?
Sales person: I did pretty well. I wanted to learn if they have gotten the budget for the project, they're working on it. I'll call back in a couple of weeks and check again.
Dave: Could you have accomplished more in the call?
Sales person: (Pausing for a moment) Well we really are bonding, I can always call and arrange another meeting to get more information.
Dave: Did you forget to ask them anything?
Sales person: Well now that you mention it, I wanted to find out what they thought about the competitors. But I can always call and ask them again.
Dave: How many weeks did it take to get this meeting?
Sales person: Well Ms. Smith is very busy, it took a couple of weeks to set this meeting.
Dave: So it will take you at least a couple more weeks before you can move to the next step?

And the story can go on. Many of you may think I'm exaggerating, but think about the last 10 meetings you had---not the one's that were the final presentation to close the deal, but the meetings you have to get to that point. Do they look something like this?

In our research, we have found sales people tend to make almost 2 times the number of calls they need to make to close the deal. Lack of good planning, preparation, and poor execution lengthen the sales cycle. They cause us to make more sales calls because we forgot to get critical information, we didn't accomplish all our objectives, we could have accomplished more in the call, we were blindsided by something the customer asked.

In the example above, the failure to accomplish all they could have accomplished---because of lack of planning has caused the sales person to make at least one more call to accomplish what should have been accomplished. It will probably take at least another couple of weeks to arrange the meeting.

It's easy to see--the number of calls that are required increases dramatically. The time it takes to close a deal stretches out. This puts the deal at risk---the competitor may be moving faster, the project may be cancelled, the longer it stretches out, the greater the risk is of losing.

Imagine your own personal productivity. What if you could reduce the number of calls you make by as much as 50%? What is you could reduce the sales cycle by months? How could you use that "new found time?" To sell more? Spend more time with your family?

Before I wrap up, let's look at it from the customer point of view. They've probably had a pleasant meeting with the sales person. They may think not much was accomplished. They may think, the sales person keeps coming back to me for endless meetings.

Customers are busy people. They don't appreciate having their time wasted. One of the reasons sales people have such a difficult time getting meetings with customers is sales people waste the customers' time.

Improve the results you produce. Improve your win rate. Improve your customers' perception of you. Spend some time planning your calls. Write the plan down and use it as a guide during the meeting so you don't forget anything. When you finish the plan, ask yourself "What value am I creating for the customer in this meeting?" If you can't answer that question, you aren't prepared for the call. Cancel the meeting until you can answer that question.

A good friend of mine Dave Stein (ES Research Group) is a great fan of checklists (as a pilot he understands their importance). I am too. I've put together a call planning checklist to help me improve my results with each call. I'd be glad to send you a copy of it, just email me.

Have You Heard The One About The Sales Person Who Recommended A Prospect Buy A Competitor's Product?

There's a great article in today's New York Times, Start-Up Course In Survival. It's a great article, but some of the lessons for sales professional are fantastic.

The article reviews Jive Software's overhaul of it's business and sales efforts to face the new realities brought on by the economy. John McCracken, Jive's new SVP of Sales reinvented their sales processes to improve focus and results.

Previously, the sales people would try to sell to anyone. McCracken put a disciplined process in place, having sales people viciously disqualify customers who didn't fit their sweet spot. "McCracken considered it a waste of time to chase customers who really didn't want Jive."

Salespeople questions and challenged customers on things that didn't make sense. In cases, where Jive's products weren't the right fit, they would recommend other company's products and walk away. Instead of pitching technology, the sales people focused on how the software would save their customers' money and help win deals.

All of this sounds counter intuitive--in this day, when sales people are starved for leads and opportunities, why turn away any opportunity? When you have an opportunity, why not try to find a way to shoehorn your product in? Why would a salesperson ever recommend another company's products?

Clearly, Mr. McCracken recognized the things that drain productivity and profitability from the sales organization and company. Sharply focusing on customers in your sweet spot, viciously disqualifying bad opportunities, focusing on qualified customers that have high urgency and a need to buy, and demonstrating real business value are clearly the secrets to success. These are critical to driving the highest levels of sale performance in all economies.

Jive Software is a great example of high performance. Congratulations to Mr. McCracken and his team.

Where You Are Depends On Your Point Of View, A Fragile Sales Ecosystem

I've gotten a number of very positive comments on my post last week: If Your Suppliers Are In Trouble, Then You Are In Bigger Trouble!

I wanted to expand on it, and to see if I could expand the dialog in the community----meaning, Please Send Comments---regardless of where you see this, at my blog site, the Customer Collective, Sales Management 2.0, Top Sales Experts, SalesMarks, or wherever. If you are a blogger, feel free to publish this as a "guest post."

The comments confirm my thoughts in the original post. This is an important issue for all businesses, and sales can take a great leadership position. Within our companies, from the top down, we have great focus on intensifying and deepening our relationships with our customers. The motivation is clear, we want to sell more.

At the same time, the same organizations are putting the screws to their suppliers, tearing up contracts, making very tough--possibly unprofitable demands, and making survival of suppliers difficult. And the sales people for your suppliers are trying to do the same thing as you, they are tyring to establish deeper relationships with your organization.

If we force unrealistic, unprofitable conditions on our suppliers, they can no longer afford to to business with us. We may be left with those that can---and they may not be the best suppliers, you know the old story, "I'd hate to be the astronaut flying in a space vehicle assembled by the lowest price suppliers."

Now that I've teed the issue up, I have some questions:

1. As sales executives/professionals, are your company's actions to it's suppliers impacting your ability to sell and deliver quality products and services?
2. What are you/can you do to change this?
3. As a supplier, are you engaging the sales executives in your customers to help build deeper relationships?
4. Is this helping you achieve mutually beneficial results?

I'd love your feedback and anything you can do to broaden the discussion!

Delivering Happiness! Zappo's

Zappo's is one of the hottest and most innovative companies around. This is an inspirational presentations by Tony Hsieh, their CEO. There are important lessons in this for any business professional.

Zappos - Startup2Startup - 03-26-09

View more presentations from zappos.

What Commoditized Products Can Teach Us About Selling

I have a confession, I grew up selling high tech systems, software and complex solutions. I spent much of my career in selling very complex capital equipment. For years, I had an arrogance that real sales people sold these solutions, everything else was order taking.

A number of years ago, several companies having commoditized products managed to overlook my arrogance and asked me to help improve their sales processes. I think may have gotten more from them than they may have gotten from me.

For so many years, we systems guys relied on great products. We would go to great pains to differentiate the features, GUI’s, and whatever product capabilities we had to win deals. Imagine the plight of the sales professional who sells a commoditized product. One tank of chemicals from one company is pretty much the same as another tank of the same chemical from another company, isn’t it? One electronic component is pretty much the same across suppliers, right?

How do you differentiate yourself when the product is not differentiated? I’ve written a lot about needing to look outside the product---people who sell commoditized products know this as second nature. They look at how the customer uses the product, their processes, the logistics management systems, different packaging alternatives and many other things.

They look at the process of acquiring and using the product, finding ways to make this easier, more efficient and more cost effective for the customer.
They engage their customers in different conversations. They talk about partnerships in different ways. In working with basic materials companies, many of the sales people work with their customers in looking at “special formulations” that address the end customer in different ways.

For instance with a detergent company, the proposition might be, “can we work with you to develop unique formulation of your product to make ‘whites white, colors brighter?’” I worked with a client on this problem, they established great value with their customer by helping them use the “chemicals” more effectively, producing a better detergent product.

In the electronics components business, companies are taking more responsibility for design, development, along the way adding to the product content they sell to a customer and creating much greater value than the sum of the components they supply.

In this world, you can’t get past the price competition, it’s a given, you compete on milli-$’s in price difference. The great sales people I have met who sell commoditized products are creative in doing very sophisticated business analysis—note I didn’t say price analysis. They know their customers processes and the costs of using the commodities, they know how they can reduce customer costs, without reducing their price. They are very sophisticated in leveraging strong financial analysis as part of their negotiation process.

Customers buy value! Too many of us have focused just on the value of our products, not on other elements of value that are important to our customers. Those of us who have sold complex systems products can learn a lot from our peers that sell commoditized products. It helps you be even more competitive and differentiated.

As a side note to those who sell commoditized products, the reverse is true. There are great lessons you can learn from the “systems cowboys.” I’ll write later on this.

Secrets To Success In 8 Words And 3 Minutes

With that title, you know I couldn't have come up with this. Why use 8 words when you can use a 1000;-)

Great TED presentation by Richard St. John on the secrets of success.

Akamai Has It Right! Engage Customers In A Different Conversation

I've been fascinated by Paul Sagan's interview in Network World. I've written many times about how sales people need to go to customers and ask "How can we help?" We need to engage customers in a different conversation.

Akamai is engaging it's customers in these new conversations. Sagan "want his sales team to spend more time with customers." They are continuing to be aggressive in finding new business, but the have also "upped the expectation for how often we're going to touch the customer and talk to them.....understand what's going on in their business, what's their pain point and can we help with it."

In a time when many organizations are cutting back and reducing customer contact, Akamai is doing exactly the opposite--and guess what, they'll win. Don't use cutbacks and layoffs as an excuse to abandon customers. Keep the dialog going, learn what they are doing, be creative with them in finding ways you might solve their problems. Even if they are not buying now, they will be. If you aren't talking to them frequently, you won't be there when they do buy.

Is Everyone In The Same Boat, Rowing In The Same Direction?

So we've completed all the layoff's, we've re adjusted our strategies to recognize the new realities of the global economy, and we are rushing forward at 200 mph to drive business. All of a sudden, confusion, crises, and miscommunication dominates our waking moments. Who does what, to whom? What are our priorities? What about the things that Jill used to do, but she's gone? I thought this was my job, but now you're telling me something different? You're asking me to do the work of all the people you just laid off---I can't cope!

Too often, we are seeing this with our clients and other organizations struggling to adapt with the rapid changes and adaptations the new economy creates. Executives are moving fast, sometimes too fast, and the organizations are left behind. Most often, we see reductions and layoffs, but no change in priorities and workloads. Too few, already overburdened people are forced to pick up the workloads of those that are left. Or, executives have shifted the priorities and strategies, but these changes have been accompanies with clear expectations of what it means to each person in the organization and their job responsibilities.

The outcome:

• Changes that were hoped for are not implemented.
• People are more confused, more overworked, and demoralized.
• Customers are confused, they don't know who to work with, what to do.
• Things that were supposed to speed things up, making the organization more efficient are actually bogging things down.
• Organizations are not producing the results management expected, so now
  management starts looking at further reductions---the death spiral continues.
  

Organizations are going through massive changes. Leaders need to help their people understand those changes and their role in executing the changes. Leaders must assure everyone is in the same boat, rowing in the same direction, and that everyone is in stroke! Organizational Effectiveness in executing the changes should be the focus of management.

In implementing these shifts, leaders should:

• Stop and make sure they and everyone in the organization knows, understands, and has internalized the changes and their roles in implementing them.
• Clearly identify those things that were important and used to be done
  that now must be stopped. What you stop at this time is more important than what you continue doing.
• Explicitly redefine roles and responsibilities of everyone on board. They simply can't pick up the workloads of others. The organization's priorities have changed, make sure everyone knows their role in implementing the changes.
• Redefinition of the roles and responsibilities helps to keep important things from falling through the cracks. It eliminates the issue "I thought that was Bob's job." It eliminated wasteful redundant efforts---two people doing the same thing.
• Communicate your new strategies, priorities, roles and responsibilities to your customers. Make sure any changes you implement make it easier for your customers to buy from you, to get their questions answered, and to get service from you.
• Identify and establish new metrics that support the changes in strategy, priorities, and roles. The old metrics are probably no longer appropriate. After all, they were based on a completely different set of organizational assumptions.
• Monitor--but don't micromanage, but be aware people may still be confused, feel overwhelmed, or haven't internalized the changes. The moment you see problems cropping up, jump on them, clarifying priorities, strategies and the new roles.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate---to your people, your customers, and suppliers. Make certain they aren't confused, make sure they are aligned.

Alignment is critical to every organization. When making changes that many organizations are doing, making sure everyone in the organization, your customers and suppliers are in the same boat, going in the same direction ---- aligned----is critical to success. One of the best tools we have seen to help organizations do this quickly and effectively is the Organizational Effectiveness Profile (OEP).

Organizations are going through massive changes. Speed is critical, but only if everyone is aligned, focused and working together as effectively as possible. Make sure you take the time to get everyone in the boat!

When All Else Is Equal, How Do You Differentiate Yourself

This morning, I had an interesting discussion with a client. He was talking about a specific sales situation. Basically, he said that customers were saying there was no differentiation between the products and services his company offered, versus the competitors. He went on to say, they are seeing this response in more and more sales situations. He was at a loss to deal with it --- or at least wanted to avoid the ultimate differentiator -- at least in this situation -- pricing.

I thought I'd throw this issue out there for your ideas and thoughts. I'll provide a few of mine as a starting point (but by no means complete):

1. I fundamentally don't believe, "everything is equal," this is the ultimate point of commoditization. Even in commodity areas, there are differentiators, but they may not be based on product differentiators. I think the problem here is sales people tend to focus too much on the product, and not the total offering or capabilities of a company. When one considers the total offering, the product, the capabilities of the company, the services, etc, things are seldom equal.

2. Often, this view is the result of an inward-out orientation. That is, we present the product features, functions, feeds, speeds to the customer. The "sophisticated" sales person may add some company capabilities. But we dump these facts in the customer's lap, and let them make the assessment. First, that's not their job and if we force them into that, then we aren't doing our job. We need to start with the customer, understanding their business needs, drivers, goals, priorities and challenges. We need to drill deeply into their business issues and prioritize each one -- for each person involved in the decision making process. Only when we understand it is it possible to position our offerings in a context that has real meaning and impact to the customer. Done properly--customer by customer, in my experience, it is virtually impossible for everything to be equal.

3. The previous point addresses the customer business drivers. We cannot forget the personal drivers --- things that concern each person involved in the decision process, but which we often overlook. People make don't make rationale business decisions. Often they rationalize deeply personal decisions with a business argument. We need to understand their personal drivers. It may be getting a boss off their back, getting home on time, getting a promotion or bonus, keeping their job. Like the previous point, only when we have understood the personal drivers of each person involved in the decision process and position our offering in the context of "What's in it for them --- personally," can we differentiate ourselves. Again, from this point of view, it is virtually impossible for everything to be equal.

4. Finally, at least for my comments, I think we under estimate the value we bring to customers in facilitating the customer's buying process. A strong, consultative sales professional adds tremendous value to the customer as they execute their buying process. My personal experience is this is often the strongest differentiator. Many people have bought from me, simply because I cared about them and their companies. They wanted to invest in a partner who was committed to their success. Maybe it's my ego, but I am never equal to anyone else!

Enough of my ramblings, what are your thoughts? Can everything else be equal --- is our world becoming increasingly commoditized, where the only means of differentiation is price? Please join the discussion.