How We Express Ourselves, Our Words Count!

Any of you who have followed me know that one of my soapboxes is raising the level of professionalism with sales people. Too often, it seems we take one step forward and too giant steps backwards.

I hate to criticize other bloggers, but I just saw something at BNET that has caused me to comment. The title is "Five Ways To Lure Recession Battered Customers." The article has some good concepts, but I do get concerned about some of the words used both in the title and in the article. This article is a great example of what all of us sometimes do, probably unintentionally, sometimes to attract readers. I fall victim to this myself---but then I remember what my father says: Don't do as I do, do as I say.

If we want customers to stop thinking of sales people as manipulative, we have to eliminate the use of manipulative words on our communications. My first reaction to the concept of "luring customers" is one of manipulation. The picture of luring, hooking and reeling in a customer is not a great image. The only thing left is gutting and filleting them---I would imagine sales is not into catch and release. I'm certain that is not what the author intended, but the words used and the way customers were described as being lured and reeled in don't convey what trusted advisors are trying to achieve with their customers. These words, when read by sales people, reinforce bad practice by sales professionals and lack of trust by customers.

Our words are important--both when we communicate with our customers and when we communicate in our community. If we want to establish trust, value, and confidence, we have to use words that reinforce that. We have to eliminate words that reinforce manipulation, trickery, deception and all the bad attributes we are accused of (justly or unjustly).

Words, as are actions, are important. We need to be careful with how we use them.

Leadership and Narcissism

Narcissistic Leaders, we've seen too many of them. In good times, their visions can be compelling. They can be charismatic, inspiring followers. Those positive characteristics are overshadowed by their terrible weaknesses---and these challenging times are likely to accentuate these weaknesses.

Ben Dattner, of Dattner Consulting, has an outstanding summary of characteristics of narcissistic managers. These include:

1. Grandiose sense of self importance, tend to exaggerate achievements and talents, expect to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements.
2. Preoccupied with fantasize of unlimited success, power, brilliance.
3. Believes he/she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by or associate with other special or high status people.
4. Requires excessive admiration.
5. Has a sense of entitlement or unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations.
6. Is inter-personally exploitative, takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends.
7. Lacks empathy, is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings or needs of others.
8. If often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him/her.
9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

We know how to recognize them---they focus only on themselves. Their primary goals are what makes them look good, what gets them ahead, and how they can use others to get them what they want.

Narcissistic managers can't be wrong. It may be difficult for them to be accountable, errors are usually someone else's fault. They become blind to the real issues around them. They don't listen well, so they may not understand what's going on in the organization. This can cause the manager and the organization to be dysfunctional or desperately out of touch.

Because they exaggerate their own importance, downplaying the contribution of others, they need to be at the center of things, seeking constant attention and positive reinforcement of others. They may be threatened with any disagreement or when they perceive they are being kept out of things or not getting the credit.

When things go wrong, they tend to go into denial or to start rationalizing. They tend to over-react to criticism, becoming angry and lashing out. At worst they can act without integrity and compromise ethics--they tend to believe they are above the rules.

Their lack of empathy and extreme Independence make it difficult for them to mentor or be mentored. As Michael Macoby in his classic HBR Article: Narcissistic Leaders, The Incredible Pros, The Inevitable Cons, says, if they provide mentoring at all, they tend to instruct rather than coach.

Recognize anyone? We've seen too many of them making headlines in recent months. We see them in our organizations, at all levels. All of us have egos--even some level of narcissism, but the narcissistic manager can be challenging to work with.

Macoby offers some suggestions:

1. Always empathize with the narcissistic manager's feelings, but don't expect anything in return.
2. Be careful if asked for your honest evaluation. They want information that will help solve problems with their image. They will resent anything that threatens their inflated self image and are likely to retaliate.
3. Give them ideas, but let them take credit for them. If you think your manager is wrong, show an approach that is in the manager's best interest and how they will benefit.
4. Use your time management skills, your manager may give you more than you can execute. Forget those that don't makes sense, he probably will.
5. Narcissistic leaders will call you when they need you, anytime day or night. Make yourself available, be sure to fit their schedule.
6. If your narcissistic manager becomes too difficult to deal with, be prepared to look for another job.

All leaders have egos--some very large. But extremely narcissism and true leadership do not go together.

Should Sales Professionals Be Certified?

First let's agree that many sales professionals (and others) are certifiable. My wife reminds me of this with every crazy idea I come up with. But that's not what I mean. I'm talking about whether there should be a certification process for sales professionals.

Over the past week, I've raised a lot of debate with my Posts On Sales Force Ineffectiveness, Conjecture On The Future Of The Profession:

• Part 1: Sales issues.
• Part 2: General business/organizational issues that
  impact sales effectiveness.
• Part 3: Recommendations for the future.

Over at The Customer Collective, Donal Daly of the TAS Group, suggested we look at developing a Sales Certification platform to start doing something about the level of professionalism in sales. He has been generous in offering TAS Group resources in developing something. Others, Christian Maurer, Niall Devitt, Neil Warren, Dave Stein, Paul McCord, and others have weighed in on the topic.

It may be time to look at sales certification and how we might improve our practice---if only to save ourselves from ourselves.

Many professions are required certification/licensing to practice their professions. Doctors, Pharmacists, Lawyers, Accountants, even certain categories of Engineers are required to pass rigorous studies, testing, and proof of experience in order to practice. These requirements for certification are mandated legally and have central "certifying" bodies that set the standards and administer the certification process.

There are other types of certification that act like "Good Housekeeping Seals Of Approval," and indicate some level of training and experience "certified" by a sponsoring organization. In the IT world, Microsoft and Cisco certified people are highly sought after.

Many other professions offer "certifications," though I, somewhat cynically, think they are more oriented to maintaining membership (while they do have certain knowledge and ethics requirements).

For example, there are "Certified Management Consultant" and "Certified Professional Speaker" certifications. I've actually considered both, but when I start talking to current and professional customers about it, their responses were: "Say what?????" or "Who are they to tell me whether you are any good or not?" of "Never heard of it, who cares!"

There are actually several organizations that offer some kind of sales certification, but I have to admit that I've never asked any of the thousands of sales people I work with every year whether they are certified.

Recently, after all the corporate scandals, there have been people in the government and august organizations like Harvard, proposing some types of certification for executives.

With all this as background, I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about "certification" --whether legally mandated or industry driven. I'm one who believes the tag line of an old joke "What do you call 200 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean.....A good start!" We've seen lots of "questionable" practices by lawyers, accountants, doctors and others. Sometimes it means you jumped a series of hurdles, but it doesn't necessarily make you any better as a professional, more trustworthy, or more ethical.

Others--like the Microsoft and Cisco certifications sometimes seem to have greater value in enhancing a resume and getting a job. There is a level of knowledge, but there are equally knowledgeable, sometimes better people who have not gotten the certification.

And, in my own case, no one has ever asked me whether I am a Certified Management Consultant or Professional Speaker---though a frustrated customer did call me certifiable (reconfirming my wife's claims).

I do think we need to raise the level of professionalism in the practice of selling. I hear this from everyone I talk to--both on the sales side and customer side. While I'm not certain certification is the answer, I don't have any better ideas.

Perhaps we can start another discussion. What do you think? I'd love your comments. Even better, I put up a quick survey to collect opinions and ideas. It will take you no more than 5 minutes to complete. The survey has two tracks: What do we as sales professionals think? What do our customers think? Go take the survey, encourage your peers to take it, ask your customers to take it. I'll report the results in a few weeks.

Here's the link for the survey: Should Sales Professionals Be Certified?

Thanks both for your comments and for participating in the survey!

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?

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

Let me start with an apology, I will probably gore everyone’s ox in this post. My intention is not to pick on any group of sales professionals, but to start a discussion about the state of the profession and to stimulate ideas on how each of use—as individuals, leaders, influencers might improve the practice of the profession. I’ve actually split this post into two, Part 1 addresses issues that are primarily driven by sales. Part 2 looks at systemic business issues, beyond sales, that impact how we perform. Part 3 focuses on what we can do about these issues, both as organizations and individuals.

I hope you take the time to read and comment on all three. I may just have gone off the deep end and be mumbling nonsense, I hope you correct me (I know you will ;-)

Over the past week, there have been a number of blog posts, comments, and discussions by people like Dave Stein, Niall Devitt, Christian Maurer, Paul McCord and others touching on various aspects of professional selling and why we as a profession are not improving our effectiveness.

Dave Stein lays the groundwork, with a lot of great data on sales training programs, books, blogs, and surveys on sales effectiveness in his post How Do You Fix Sales Ineffectiveness? If you haven’t read it, you should.

Billions of dollars/euros/yuan/yen are spent by companies in sales training, tools, conferences, seminars and other things to improve the effectiveness of their sales people. As both Dave and Paul point out in their posts, everyday some new book, blog, podcast or other offering promises the “silver bullet” to improving sales performance and effectiveness.

Yet, on the other hand, several months ago, one of my posts, Why Do Sales People Have Such A Bad Reputation, stirred up a huge amount of controversy and discussion with some people claiming there was little future for sales people, that customers buying processes were changing and the need or contribution of sales people was being minimized.

So where are we, what does this mean, where are we (sales professionals going), where does “fault” lie—if you want to lay blame. Some thoughts, observations:

Sales people have been the butt of jokes, complaints, and stories since through history. (I think this is a vicious conspiracy fostered by lawyers to take the heat off them.) We always will be, so why waste time on this?

The buzz words for professional sales today is “consultative,” “customer focused,” “solutions focused,” “value-based.” If only we became more consultative and customer focused, we would make the buying/selling experience more acceptable and make customer enthusiastic to see us. When I first started selling, in the late 70’s, the buzz words were “consultative,” “customer focused,”……. Nothing’s changed, so clearly we aren’t executing the practices that enable us to be customer focused.

It always intrigues me that we have continued to have this discussion about the importance of being consultative, but we have made no substantive progress in this area. It is not for lack of training programs, books, articles, testimonials. On the one hand, if we are selling and producing results without it, why bother? To those that claim this, I tend to claim you are underperforming your potential. You can sell more---more effectively, increase customer retention and grow your share of customer with consultative approaches---there is plenty of data to support this.

Consultative selling is difficult—it is disciplined, process based, and requires commitment and follow through on a sustained basis. Our focus on now (at all levels) makes this difficult. I think the issue about consultative selling is more about committed leadership than about skills development. Getting sales management to commit to integrating this into their day to day leadership style is the only way we will make substantive progress. Without this, we are wasting time and money.

Sales, by its nature, is about change. We are trying, for good or bad reasons, to get people and organizations to change. Most people are resistant to, or at least uncomfortable with change—they will tend to be resistant to the agents of change, as well. We have to live with this---maybe even revel in it. As a profession, I don’t think we talk about change management or change leadership enough. If I had to make recommendations for skills development, I would recommend something around leading change initiatives.

For too long, we have treated sales as a “black art.” We have let others wrap sales in a “mystique.” Part of this is the act of selling is usually done at a distance from the rest of the organization---it is done at our customers (Duuuuhh!). So people in the organization don’t see what we are doing. With other functions, you see people every day. You see the factories and talk to manufacturing people, you see materials going in one end and products coming out the back. It may or may not be a good process, but at least you can see something going on. You can say this about most other functions.

We as sales people have reinforced this, keeping people out of our accounts (or shepherding them in carefully orchestrated visits). We have also reinforced mystique by being less accountable for forecast accuracy and other things. “Just trust me, we’ll get a purchase order.”

Related to the previous point, we resist treating sales as a disciplined process. Recently, I have been involved in coaching a new Business Development VP. He did not have a sales background, but he was the best candidate for the job. He had a very rich and successful project management background. As you might expect, he was very concerned with his success in this role. I counseled him to think of sales as a specialized application of project management: You establish goals and objectives, you identify the critical activities to meet the goals, you set milestones and schedules to make sure you are making progress. Five months into his new role, he is well on the way to creating one of the most effective sales organizations I have encountered---all because he is applying the discipline, focus, and process orientation from his project management background to the sales organization. He has had to pick up some new terminology, some new skills (prospecting was his biggest worry, but he is doing fantastic).

While this is not new, I think we need to upgrade our thinking and skills around basic project management, process design/management, and systems thinking. All of what we do is a specialized application of those disciplines.

On a related point, much of what has been done and many of the tools in the quality movement, whether it is TQM, Six Sigma, Kaizen, or something else. These offer tremendous capability to improve performance and put discipline to what we execute.

Customers can be more informed and less knowledgeable: The internet, Web 2.0, Sales 2.0 provide the potential for customers/prospects to do much more research and to be both more knowledgeable on your products, competition and alternatives. At the same time, these tools have eliminated market entry barriers for everyone so there is a lot of crap available as well. Immediately, anybody posting a comment, writing a blog, sending a tweet, knowing how to spell www, becomes an authority.

The noise level---the stuff everyone has to sift through is skyrocketing. Will your customers take the time to sift through the pages of garbage and find good information from credible sources? Are we providing good information that is easy for the customers to find and absorb? The answer to both questions is probably not. This creates great opportunity and challenge to all sales people. The bar for performance is being raised by the sheer availability of information. The challenge to correct mis- or bad impressions is even greater. Sales people are going to have to be much more nimble in understanding and leveraging these tools, as well as making sure customers are truly, accurately, and well informed.

We have done too good a job in training our customers to have a low expectation of sales. Over the years, through our performance---pitching products rather than solving problems, focusing on the deal rather than producing value, getting the transaction done rather than building relationships---our customers have become conditioned to a lower level of buying behavior. I’ve been involved in situations where the customer just doesn’t have the time for a “value based” buying/selling process. Combine this conditioning, their natural wariness of sales people, and the fact they are time poor and pressured themselves, it creates great challenges in responding to the customer needs in a value added manner.

Let me stop here. In the next section addresses systemic business issues that overlay these issues, making the job of a sales professional even more difficult.

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 3 of 3 – What Do We Do?

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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.

WIIFT -- The New Sales Mantra

Every sales person (and business professional) knows the acronym WIIFM -- What's In It For Me. Sometimes, unfortunately, I think we have become great practitioners of that mantra --- and that's what does us in, both in how we connect and bring value to our customers, and in the result we actually produce.

While every sales person is driven by accomplishing their goals, making the number, we can only achieve success by focusing on our customer. Only when we truly ask the question "What's In It For Them" can we know what the customer values and how we can fulfill their requirements.

I think WIIFM is important, to be honest, it drives all our behavior. However, it is only meaningful when we have answered WIIFT. Without this we don't achieve our goals---more importantly our customers don't achieve theirs, or they achieve them with someone else.

Moving Beyond Selling To Building Collaborative Relationships

I'm reading Price Waterhouse Coopers 12th Annual Global CEO Survey. It has a lot of good information and I encourage you to read it. One issue that leaped out was the importance in the CEO's minds about the importance of building more collaborative strategies.

Some interesting data points:

• 57% of the CEO's agree or agreed strongly that collaborative business networks would be a defining organizational principle for business.
• 71% believed collaborative relationships are critical with customers and clients.
• About 40% believed collaborative relationships with supply chain partners was critical. (This is a disconcerting issue I will talk about later.)
  

We've always felt that developing close, collaborative relationships is critical to sales. However, to be successful in doing this requires a profound shift in the way we interact with our customers. Traditional approaches to selling will no longer be sufficient. Collaboration means a higher degree of interdependence between organizations. In partnering with our customers, we become important to each other's success and we can only be successful by working together. Partnering and collaboration demand loyalty, relationship integrity, and trust between partners.

Today, the term "partnering" is tossed around too casually by sales people and buyers alike. Rather than simply buying and selling, we talk about "partnering." Too much of the time, the focus, both by sales and buyers, is on "What's in it for me." The seller simply wants to close the deal and move on, the buyer simply wants to close the deal at the best price and move on.

Until we start looking at "What's in it for our partner," we will never be able to create real value in the partnership, and will have great difficulty in sustaining long term, loyal relationships.

I believe sales can offer a tremendous leadership in developing collaborative relationships with customers. It's interesting in the PWC survey to note CEO's have greater focus on these relationships with customers than they have with suppliers. Consequently, if we are going to develop these relationships, sales must take the initiatives.

True partnering demands a different mentality and different set of skills from sales people. I won't go into it in this post--it will be too long. I'll be glad to send you white papers, additionally, some of the thoughts are in a Selling Power article (July//August 2009) in which I am interviewed. However a good way to start thinking about developing successful collaborative relationships is to start thinking the following equation (sorry, I'm a physicist by training):

Translated, effective partnerships are a combination of : Shared Resources + Shared Risk + Shared Rewards + Shared Vision + Shared Values. Without a healthy balance of these factors, the relationship has a high risk of failing.

Collaboration and partnering---true partnering will become increasingly critical to sales. The CEO's have spoken, buyers will not drive this, so it is up to sales professionals to drive the development of these relationships.

Moving from traditional selling to true partnering requires new attitudes, skills, processes, and metrics. Sales professionals need to begin to understand these and develop the capabilities.

(For any of the materials I have referred to, please feel free to contact me at dabrock@excellenc.com, or call at +1-949-305-7146.)

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.

Do Great Sales People Make Good Sales Managers?

There was an interesting thought posed in LinkedIn today: “Good sales people make good sales managers.” It went on to ask the characteristics of good sales managers. The question struck a chord, a dissonant one, provoking me to respond. I’m sure I have missed a lot of characteristics of great sales managers, and would ask for your addition, deletions, edits. Here’s my response and the list I started with:

Great sales people are sometimes the worst sales managers. Likewise, some mediocre sales people end up being stellar sales managers.

There is a long list of leadership skills/traits that are important for managers. I will stay away from repeating these.

Some specific areas that I think are often overlooked for sales managers:

1. Very process oriented. Today's sales manager cannot be involved in every deal, issue or transaction. They have to have a strong process in place, make certain their people understand and are executing the process. The sales manager has to continually monitor the process, taking deep dives in problem areas to help their people address them.

2. Disciplined and performance oriented. Closely tied to the previous point, the sales manager must have a strong focus on performance and performance improvement. This requires having the right metrics in place, making sure people understand what they are accountable for, giving them the opportunity to perform, being there to coach them when they have problems, and being prepared to take the appropriate actions if performance problems are not resolved.

3. Loyalty to the organization and their people. The sales manager is often caught between a rock and a hard place---the objectives of the organization sometimes come into conflict with what is best for the team. Effective sales managers are actively involved in setting organizational strategies and priorities (at least in terms of sales) and engage the sales people in executing them--though they may resist---which requires strong engagement and coaching. At the same time, sometimes the "organization" is insensitive to the sales people. The sales manager needs to defend the sales people to the organization, making sure they are heard.

3. Strong business orientation and focus. Make the right business decisions—both for the customer, for the sales organization, and for the business. Understanding how businesses work and what drives them.

4. Incessantly customer focused. If I have to say more, then we really don’t understand the point of professional selling.

5. Incessantly curious---driven to learn and improve. Incessantly curious about solving customer problems. Incessantly curious about the art and science of professional selling—driven to improve the performance of each individual in the organization, the organization as a whole, his own personal performance, and the business. This means they probably spend much more time asking questions and listening then they do talking.

6. Appropriately compassionate. Understand what drives people—customers, sales people, support people, others in the organization. Able to understand their points of view and what drives them. Able to communicate and work with them in a matter that demonstrates respect and trust. At the same time, able to make tough decisions—but with compassion based on the impact on individuals.

7. Able to sublimate their egos. Sales management is about leadership, growing and developing people, growing and developing the organization, growing and developing the business. It is not about how great you are and your past victories. It requires admitting you are wrong when you are. It requires being able to change your point of view.

8. Problem solvers. Driven by solving problems, finding ways to overcome obstacles, not being wed to the past. Creative and innovative in adapting new approaches to address issues and improve the business.

9. High energy. Constantly moving forward, setting strong examples for everyone around. Note, I am not saying high activity, high meeting orientation. High energy is different than meaningless activities.

10. Value, principle driven. Without a strong value system, a manager has no context in which to make decisions and drive the organization. Without sticking to the values and principles, the organization will wander and not produce results.

11. Thoughtful, reflective, good sense of humor. Self explanatory.

12. Able to leap tall buildings without tripping. Sales managers don’t need to have a big “S” on their chests, but they need to inspire and motivate others.

I’m sure I’ve missed some and could go into much more detail on each item. But I look for all of these in hiring great sales managers!

What would you add? Are there any you would eliminate?

Social Networking---Lot’s of Friends, No One Wants To Know Me

I’m ashamed to admit it, but I am a relative newbie in Social Networking. I’ve belonged to LinkedIn for years, but really haven’t paid attention to it until the past 6 months.

About 18 months ago, at Jeff Pulver’s suggestion, I joined Facebook, I’m still trying to figure out how to use it, though it has enriched my relationships with my nieces and nephews—somehow they think I am marginally cooler. I know what a wall, is, I’m still struggling with pokes. Someone poked me for the first time the other day, I didn’t know whether to say “Ouch,” jump, poke back or what.

I’m a late adopter, I’ve just gotten into Twitter, joining about 2 weeks ago. So far, I’ve only sent 3 tweets, I think I’m concerned about dropping my phone into the urinal?????? In any case, I’m still struggling with Twitter.

Every week, I get invited to join at least one other social networking tool—I used to accept, but now turn all those down---I don’t know how to keep all those social networks current. I’ve decided to focus everything on LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.

The most confusing phenomenon is that I get lots of requests to be “friends.” These really confuse me. The one’s from people I know who are just finding me are great. But 80% of the requests come from people who I don’t know. I have no idea how they found me and when I look at their profiles, I don’t know why they would ever want to friend me or follow me. It’s great for my ego---imagine someone wants to follow my every tweet or wants to have someone like me in their network. I never knew I could have so many friends!

People have already told me I’m strange---I’ve accepted this, but I have this “unusual practice” with these friend requests. Before I accept a request from people I don’t know, I ask to spend a few minutes on the phone with them. I want to learn a little about them, what they do, what they want to achieve and how I might help them. I want them to know the same about me.

I take networking seriously. My Rolodex (I wonder what term will take the place of Rolodex as that concept goes into decline) is large with very deep, quality relationships. Colleagues call out my networking capabilities and my ability to make quality connections with people. I value my network deeply and guard the relationships carefully.

I extend this practice into the world of social media and networking. That’s why I ask my potential “new friends “ for a phone conversation. The reactions to these requests is what really interests me.

About 10% of the people respond and we have a great phone call, they become my friends. I’ve actually been able to leverage a few of these relationship to mutual benefit, for example introducing a talented new friend to someone I know is looking for their services.

Many of my new friends are “surprised” by the request, but want to adopt it as a best practice.

The most distressing thing is that 90% of my requests go unanswered. It’s ego shattering! What’s happening to my potentially new friends? We haven’t gotten to know each other and already they are abandoning me! Why did they ask me in the first place, didn’t they really want to be friends after all?

Also, I’ve been unfriended once—but the individual sent me a nice note, saying he wanted to focus his Facebook relationships on personal relationships. We transferred our relationship to LinkedIn. But I’m worried, are my expectations going to start having my current friends abandon me? Should I take it personally?

I don’t understand, can anyone help me? As a newbie, it's a real struggle!

Dramatically Increase Sales!

Seth Godin seems to come up with the simplest and thought provoking ideas. I can't improve on it, so I will only repeat it. But I encourage you to go to his site, and read this and the 100's of others he has.

Seth's idea for the "Easiest Cheap Way To Dramatically Increase Sales:"

Call or write your customers, saying:

"I know that times might be tough for you. Is there anything I can do to pitch in and help?"

Thank you, Seth!

The Giant Wake Up Call

I'm spending the slow time of the Holidays catching up on neglected reading. I just read (or rather re-read) Peggy Noonan's opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal: Who We (Still) Are...A Little Perspective For The Pessimistic "Age Of The Empty Suit." It's a great piece, you should read it.

In reflecting on the article, I agree with her. Despite the litany of bad news from so many sectors, we have so much to look forward to. In the past weeks, I've noticed a change in talking to friends, colleagues, and even strangers. I've noticed a much greater thoughtfulness. There's been a shift to living----behaving within our means.

Somehow, with the New Year, there is a feeling of starting things with a clean slate. We have been living and behaving excessively--not just in how we spend, but in how we behave and treat one another. It has reached extremes. Fortunately (that may sound odd), we have had a giant wake up call. With the New Year, we have the opportunity to start again.

I have the arrogance to name this blog, Making A Difference. I truly believe each person has that opportunity and obligation. Ms. Noonan ends her with a sentence that should inspire each of us to make a difference:

In January we have ....."the return of the person who will take responsibility and lead."

If each of us accepts this responsibility, we have the intelligence, capability, resources, and desire to emerge better, stronger, more open, and perhaps more compassionate.

It's All About Trust

I've been reading and thinking a lot about trust recently. Everyday, the news brings more reports of breaches of trust. The leaders and institutions I have thought I could trust have failed.

All around, I see erosions of trust---little things, here and there, a commitment made and missed, a confidence betrayed, selfish or thoughtless actions. A close business friend took many months to pay a large invoice and decommitted on a project, in the middle of the project --- costing me thousands of dollars. He has told my how badly he feels, but it was a rather large betrayal. Another friend made a commitment to meet with a major client --- then backed out at the last minute. In reality, none of these was malicious, but each represented a lowering of standards by these individuals I had trusted.

I was starting to feel a little down about things, almost feeling like pointing a finger and blaming all the people that were no longer trustworthy. Then I start to think, am I trustworthy? In the everyday rush of business, have I started to lower my standards? Am I starting to betray trusts, unconsciously, and certainly not maliciously, but am I no longer trustworthy.

I thought of the colleague that, over the past several weeks has left several telephone messages --- I've failed to return a single one. I'm embarrassed and ashamed, my standard it to return every call within 24 hours. I thought of the report a client was waiting for, I delivered it several days after I had committed it. I had good reasons --- maybe excuses, but I still caused him great difficulty in meeting commitments he made to others.

I've made a decision, I can't control what others do, but I can commit to being trustworthy. I where I have betrayed trust, I must start to repair it. If I start taking personal responsibility for being trustworthy ... and someone else (perhaps someone reading this article) ... and someone else ... and so on, collectively we might make a difference.

Several years ago, Stephen R. Covey, wrote a great book, The Speed Of Trust. I've been re-reading it recently. It's a powerful and important guide. Everyone should read it.

In the end trust starts with me, I can't be angry or bitter about others. I have to focus on being trustworthy, I know it will have an impact on me, perhaps it will on others.

Does Your Behavior Foster Or Limit Trust?

Trust is at the core of all relationships. It can take years to build trust and only a fraction of a second to destroy it. Maintaining trust in the face of tough business or personal circumstances can be extremely difficult. Too often, as leaders we succumb to behaviors that destroy what we seek to preserve.

The Slow Leadership blog has one of the best articles I have read recently. I won't repeat it here, but I have copied their list of 30 leadership behaviors that create mistrust. Make sure you read their article!

1. As leader, you fail to keep your promises, violate agreements and ignore commitments.
2. You look after yourself first and others only when it is convenient.
3. You micromanage and resist delegating.
4. You demonstrate inconsistency between what you say and how you behave.
5. You fail to share critical information with your team and your colleagues.
6. You choose to not tell the truth.
7. You resort to blaming and scapegoating others rather than own up to your mistakes.
8. You judge and criticize rather than offer constructive feedback.
9. You betray confidences, gossip and talk about others behind their backs.
10. You choose to not allow others to contribute or make decisions.
11. You downplay others’ talents, knowledge and skills.
12. You refuse to support others with their professional development.
13. You resist creating shared values, expectations and intentions in favor of your pursuing own agenda.
14. You refuse to compromise and foster win-lose arguments.
15. You constantly remind everyone of your status and make it clear that you will not be questioned or criticized without inflicting punishment in return.
16. You refuse to be held accountable by your colleagues or subordinates.
17. You resist accepting your vulnerability, hide your weaknesses and won’t admit you find anything a challenge.
18. You practice sarcasm and put-down humor and rationalize off-putting remarks as “good for the group”.
19. You fail to admit you need support and prefer to mess up rather than ask anyone for help.
20. You take others’ suggestions and critiques as personal attacks.
21. You fail to encourage openness in team meetings and allow others to avoid contributing constructively.
22. You refuse to consider the idea of constructive conflict. In fact, you usually avoid conflict at all costs.
23. You consistently hijack team meetings and move them to your personal agenda.
24. You either ignore or fail to follow through on decisions agreed at team meetings.
25. You secretly engage in back-door negotiations with favored team members to create cliques and political alliances.
26. You refuse to give others the benefit of the doubt.
27. You judge people without allowing them to explain their position or actions and won’t reverse incorrect decisions.
28. You refuse to apologize for mistakes or misunderstandings.
29. You use your position to indulge in inappropriate behavior.
30. When things go wrong, your first response always to defend yourself and protect your reputation.