Think About It… the e-book version

by Todd Youngblood

Rapid reaction to customer issues is critical. It’s an essential component of a sales rep’s responsibility that cannot be ignored. We all know, however, that the “eagles” among us take a leading role with their accounts. To use a cliché, they’re proactive. They avoid the comfort zone of reactive activity. Which are you?

If you’re working to solve customer problems in 60 days or less, you might be a reactive sales rep. Tough demands for short time frames usually indicate that the real decisions have already been made without your involvement. You want other people in a big hurry carrying out the plans you put together.

If you’re working on well-defined problems, you might be a reactive sales rep. The heavy-lifting of business is figuring out the root cause of problems and inadequate performance. The source of highly differentiated value is problem identification and definition. The also-rans are busy fixing problems that eagles found and got paid big bucks for.

If your customer contacts are mostly operational managers, you might be a reactive sales rep. Operational managers report to functional managers who report to executive managers. As you raise your contact base up the customer food chain, you get involved in games with bigger stakes, greater impact, more risk and much larger commissions. (Did you really need me to tell you that?)

If your customer conversations are focused on tactics, you might be a reactive sales rep. Executives are concerned with vision, strategy and the long term. Every minute spent on short term, tactical customer issues is a minute not invested in becoming a strategic partner.

If you spend lot of time talking about features and functions, you might be a reactive sales rep. Product and service features and functions are the core of solving well-defined, operational level problems. The eagles are finding and defining the root causes of problems for customer executives, remember?

If price is consistently the major objection you face, you might be a reactive sales rep. Price is ALWAYS the key issue for a commodity buy. Customer executives and their strategic suppliers are wrestling with ill-defined, imprecise, high-risk issues, problems and initiatives. Commodities are nowhere to be found in those conversations and price is only one tiny component of a very complex financial value analysis.

If your customer’s requirements are really tough to modify, you might be a reactive sales rep. Early on in a decision cycle (like one you initiated on behalf of your customer), there’s lots and lots of opportunity to mold the requirements definition to fit your core competency. The rep that gets there late in the cycle has to mold his competency to fit the requirements.

If you’re always busy, busy, busy, you might be a reactive sales rep. Ever notice that executives are really demanding about getting things done? And yet they are quite thoughtful and deliberative with their own responsibilities?

You might be reactive. The fact of the matter is, the majority of sales reps are reactive. It’s easier to be reactive. You can make a decent living being reactive. If you get lucky and a bunch of your customers happen to have a good year all at the same time, you can become “sales rep of the year” and still be reactive.

But I doubt you’re willing to settle for that. When’s the last time you really examined your reactivity vs. proactivity? Track it today. Every time you complete a task, rank it on a scale of 1 to 5. Track it again one day next month, and the month after that. Is your proactive score going up?