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.

Designing High Performance Organizations, Designing High Performance Selling Processes

I'm a tremendous fan of Whitney Hess. Whitney calls herself a User Experience Designer. When I look at her stuff, I see principles that apply to successful organizational design and to developing high performance selling processes. Some translation is needed---but really obvious. Whitney gives us important lessons not just for User Experience Design but for creating high performing, aligned organizations.

This is a great presentation on the 10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design. If you are a sales or marketing professional, just do a global replace for User Experience Design With Customer Experience.

Pay attention to Slide 22, in sales and marketing terms, what Whitney has defined is the one of the secrets to establishing a sustainable and differentiated value proposition.

10 Most Common Misconceptions About User Experience Design

View more presentations from Whitney Hess.

Sometimes All We Want Is Good Customers. Sometimes All Customers Want Is Good Vendors.

With this post, any doubt you may have had about me will be eliminated. You will know that I am schizoid, have multiple personalities, or some other disorder. In the last couple of months, I have written a number of times about establishing rich collaborative relationships and partnering with your customers. In this article, you may perceive me as reversing my position.

I'm reacting to a lot of things I hear sales and marketing people talk about these days. "Partnering" is the "it" word for sales and marketing these days. I've just been watching a marketing campaign and commercials by the CMO of a major corporation, a guy I really respect, announcing some new products. The tag lines focus on "partnering," and "we partner with you, not compete with you." I look at the materials, and they really are a pitch to get me to buy more stuff.

Not being one to pick on just one person, virtually every conversation I have with sales people and managers contains the "p-word." Everyone wants to partner with their customers. They talk about establishing partnerships, yet down deep, all we really want to do is sell more stuff.

Somehow, it seems the "p-word" is better than going to a customer and saying: "I think I understand what you are trying to achieve, your goals, needs and priorities. I think I have a solution that will exceed your requirements and provide you great value. If I can demonstrate our solution produces superior value, I would like you to buy it." I guess that's too sales-y. Somehow, it seems better to say we want to be your partner and to dance strangely around the fact that we just really want them to buy our stuff.

Sometimes---in fact more often than not, all we want to have a great customer-vendor relationship. One in which we provide products/services that solve a customer problem and create great returns for their investment. Sometimes---more often than not, that's all the customer wants. So why don't we just be direct and not complicate what we are trying to achieve with meaningless language, "we want to be your partner." Why don't we focus on providing great customer service, great products, and great buying experiences?

When I speak of establishing deep collaborative relationships/partnerships, I am thinking of relationships in which there is a deeper degree of commitment and interdependency between organizations. Partnerships are tough---70-80% fail. They require deep commitment, strong support at all levels, and lots of work. They can produce tremendous value and returns for each partner. However, no customer can afford to partner with all their vendors. No vendor can afford to partner with every customer. It is simply too expensive, too difficult to manage and does not produce the required returns for each side of the relationship.

Partnering and rich collaboration should be reserved for your most important and strategic suppliers. It should be reserved for the most strategic customers. I believe these relationships are critical to all organizations, but they don't represent the majority of relationships.

Sometimes, all we want is a great supplier, or a great customer. Many of the underpinnings to partnerships also apply to these relationships: creating value, great service, win/win, and many of the other principles.

Sometimes, as a customer, I want to go to people like this CMO, and say, "I don't want to be your partner. I just want to buy good products that meet my needs. Can you demonstrate your products does this better than the others I am considering?" Then I want them to sell to me.

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!