Think About It… the e-book version

For years, I’ve ranted at sales reps and managers about how utterly dumb it is to “submit a quote” to a customer.  A traditional quote does nothing more than list items for sale, prices, totals, discounts and net price.  It provides no differentiation whatever and reinforces the fact that you have nothing more to offer than a catalogue-full of commodities at really, really good (i.e., low) prices.

“Submit proposals!” was my sage advice.  “Make sure the opening sentence or three clearly states the value to the customer.  If you have any real sales talent, you’ll also put that value in terms of dollars and cents.  You’ll paint a ‘Before’ picture, a picture of the ‘Transition’ to your vision and an ‘After’ picture; all of which make the brilliance and value of your proposal intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.

If you and I have ever worked together directly, chances are you’ve heard me state the above with emphasis, enthusiasm and arms a-wavin’ in your face. 
I was wrong.

This past Friday, after an intense, long customer meeting, two colleagues and I decided we had earned a few beers.  In the course of conversation one of them mentioned that he’d like to make a video of me and the other debating the value of proposals.  That was the beginning of yet another epiphany.

I was asked to consider the definition of the word “propose” which means “to submit for consideration.”  Is that really what I want to do?  To passively, more or less hat in hand, pass along an entreaty hoping the all powerful decision influencers and makers will take a few minutes out their busy days to possibly, maybe take a look at my suggestions?  AGGGHHHHH!!!  That’s not at all what I want.

What I really want is “Recommendation Summary” (or “Statement Of Work”) that reflects the research, evaluation and creativity of a relevant, trusted group of customer personnel.  (NOTE:  I just happen to be a member of that group.)

Put yourself in the shoes of the final decision maker and consider how you’d perceive each of the three documents:

• Quote – How did this make it to desk?  I don’t get into this level of detail & don’t know or care what it means.
• Proposal – Wow!  These vendors sure dump a load of effort into these things.  And come to think of it, I really liked these guys.  This proposal might make sense, but I don’t have time to read all this right now.  I’ll put it in my active To-Do file and get around to it just as soon as I can.  But first I need to do this, and then that, and there goes that darned phone again…
• Recommendation Summary – Ah-ha!  My team finally got this finished.  Just in time for the board meeting.  Let me flip to the action plan at the end…  Yep, that’s exactly what I thought from the beginning.  We need to get going on this ASAP.

It’s clear by now that the distinction entails a whole lot more than semantics.  A quote can be submitted by a total stranger.  You can’t be part of a Recommendation Summary until you’ve earned the right to be considered an insider; until your opinion carries enough weight to be sought out and respected by the powers that be.

So focus on moving up the food chain!  If you’re submitting quotes, you’re either a rookie or not very good.  If you’re submitting proposals, you’re a journeyman.  If you’re contributing to (even better, leading) development of Recommendation Summaries, you’re finally doing your real job as a sales rep.

Thanks to Stone Payton and Todd Schnick for the insight.  Also see:

• Think and Act Like a Business Manager
• Cut Your Credibility (and Revenue) by 50% With One Word: Proposal

by Todd Youngblood

When your customers and prospects start their research in anticipation of buying something, they go right to Google, right? Do they find you? Unfortunately, probably not. They only find you or your company when they specifically include you in their search. Do you want to rely on them to do that? Are you crazy???!!!

I could suggest that since Google keeps hitting home runs, you ought to brush up on the newly announced Google Social Search. That wouldn’t be bad advice given that quite a few, pretty obscure early adopters of their past technologies have become famous and made a fortune. I won’t, though. I will, however, assert that social search, and therefore social media and web 2.0 just became absolutely essential for effective B2B sales. (Notice I said, “sales,” as opposed to, “marketing.”)

To begin to understand why, consider the diagram below which shows the all-so-familiar exercise of “googling.” Your customer searches for “X” trusting in Google to sort through the gazillion pages out on the internet to deliver the most relevant results. That’s what they do all the time. (That’s what you do all time! That’s what we all do all the time!)

What are the odds your stuff will be listed on the first page of the search results? Second page? An “early enough” page?

Now consider the next diagram, and the fact that any searcher will have more trust and confidence in information from a known source. The better I know the source, the more I trust the information.

In this case, the searcher decides to “toggle the social search switch.” Good ole’ Google then takes the first set of results and passes them through another filter. If the result did not come from a web page, blog post, tweet, or some other social media “share” thingy specifically connected by the searcher to one of his or her contacts, it doesn’t show up.

Did you get that last sentence? Did it sink in? If the searcher has not already voluntarily “connected” to you, your content does not show up.

OK, the negative spin there was to get your attention… The real question is how to harness this new set of tools to enhance your visibility, credibility and profitability. There are three key pieces to the puzzle. The first takes lots of real effort, sustained indefinitely. And it’s not traditional sales work. It is, however, what will become the guts of the selling process in our brave new world. The second takes a good bit of continuing work, but entails just a minor wrinkle on something most reps are already pretty good at doing. The third is quick and easy.

Puzzle Piece 1: Your Content

Everything you’d talk about to a customer needs to be embedded into internet-based media. Everything. (I told you it requires a lot of real effort!) It can (& should) be text and/or images and/or audio and/or video. It can (& must) be on a mix of your web site, blog, LinkedIn?, Twitter, etc., along with whatever other new technology becomes available.

Content creation is NOT something an individual rep or sales manager can afford to avoid or delegate. You can only depend on the marketing department and others on your sales team for some of it. They can handle the general, overview stuff; the overall value proposition. Only you can provide the nuances and unique intelligence required by your specific prospects and customers. (WARNING: “In-your-face” comment coming here… If you disagree with this paragraph, think again. I’ll blog more on this topic. I’m pretty certain you’ll agree eventually.)

One last note on content; and it’s really, really important… The content you develop must be of interest and value to the key decision makers in your territory. This is much easier said than done, and is the true test of your sales skills. What do you have to communicate that will resonate instantly with the customer?

Puzzle Piece 2: Your Connections

Think in terms of LinkedIn to get the basic concept. Establish LinkedIn? connections to all the decision-makers and key influencers in your territory. Do it! It’s not all that difficult. It’s where all those traditional selling skills come in. And remember, without the connection, they’ll never see your content! (Maybe connect up via Plaxo too.)

Puzzle Piece 3: Your Google Profile

Create one and keep it current. There’s a subtle message in the “Add custom links to my profile” section. It allows for multiple links to places you post. How many places on your list? Mine has 11.

Have a sneaking feeling Google just invented something that’s about to hurl you out of your comfort zone? If you don’t, you should.

by Todd Youngblood

Technology has changed everything. It used to take multiple face-to-face sales calls to get a prospect up to speed on the potential value of our products and services. More importantly, those calls enabled us to acquire a broad, deep understanding of their issues, requirements and problems. Now, web 2.0 makes our info available 24/7. They don’t need us to learn about us. AND, they now refuse to take the time to educate us regarding what they need.

Notice I said, appear to be an order-taker. Yes, I do want my peers and competitors to think that I’m just lucky. And yes, I do in fact want a steady stream of phone calls from decision-makers I’ve yet to meet who are on the brink of placing an order with me. But no, sadly, I still can’t afford to sit back and expect that to happen without a whole lot effort on my part first. So here’s the situation:

• They think they already know everything they need to know about me, my company and my products and services
• They won’t (and in many cases simply don’t have the time to) explain to me what they need
• They need, want and are ready to make a decision right now!

Let’s start with the fact that they’re ready to make a decision right now. (Before they consulted you! Horrors!) They’re not dopes. They didn’t just wake up this morning with a deep understanding of their organization’s strategies, issues and problems. They’re smart. They’re experienced. They’re hard-working. They’ve been thinking about it for a long time. They’ve been doing research.

They probably started with a Google search that led to an article, and then another, and then a blog or two or three, and then a few podcasts, videos and webinars. That stuff they read, heard and viewed was produced by their colleagues and peers; by your competitors, college professors, consultants and all kinds of so-called “experts.” Each of those came complete with comments, comments on the comments and links to a whole series of other resources.

That’s exactly what you do when you want to buy something isn’t it?

So here are the critical questions:

• Are you the source of the information they’re getting electronically?
• Are you doing you own “starting with Google” research to know what’s on the mind of your customer decision-makers?
• Are you plugged into and constantly working THE most common buying process in use today? Are you?

The correct answer to that last question is something like:

• Well…
  • I author a blog that I update five or six times a week, and
  • I host or participate in six or so podcast episodes per year, and
  • I have a LinkedIn? account with a detailed personal profile, belong to a dozen or so groups and regularly post comments and conscientiously work to expand my number of quality connections, and
  • I e-publish at least four articles or white papers per year, and
  • I just started a YouTube? series about how my customers creatively use my products and services

• …but of course I know that’s not enough, what would you recommend I do next?
  • Create a YouTube? video of me delivering my fundamental value proposition? (…obviously I’ll do a slightly different one for each market segment I serve.)
  • Implement and moderate a wiki for use by the VPs of X in my territory so they can ask questions, share insights, help one another get smarter and convince each other just how valuable I really am to them?
  • Write an e-book that clearly demonstrates my superior expertise and knowledge to all buyers of my products and services?

If you’re thinking any of the following: not my responsibility, not my job, not my skill set, not what I want to do, not what I have the knowledge to do, not what I’m smart enough or intend to learn to do, not needed to compete in my industry or this article is such a load of hooey; I sure hope you’re my competitor.

All, or at least a significant portion of the above, is what it’s going to take to just be in the game. You’re not going to get a meeting at the C-level without a solid, credible online reputation. Somebody that has done a significant portion of the above – some “order-taker” – is going to take that order from you.

by Todd Youngblood

There is a reason some concepts stand the test of time. They work! The notion of analyzing customer strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats is one of those concepts you can’t afford to ignore.

The logic underlying SWOT analysis is so obvious that it’s often easy to lose sight of its power and value. The newest, least experienced sales rep in an organization can easily grasp what a sales manager means by a customer’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats; and it’s not very difficult to actually identify them. It’s also not very difficult to engage customer personnel in discussing them. In fact, they tend to love it.

Since a firm grasp on a customer’s SWOTs establishes you as someone truly interested in improving business processes and performance, it can dramatically improve your odds of closing deals. So here’s a quick review:

• Strengths are business processes at which your customer truly excels. Remember that these aren’t necessarily the strengths listed on their website. Don’t take their word for it. They might be kidding themselves. Challenge them; make them explain it to you. Always steer the conversation to position your products and services as things that can help them exploit their true strengths.

• Weaknesses are business processes, at which your customer is average or below average. They’re typically not too hard to identify, but discussing them could be a delicate matter. Be diplomatic! One good way to point out weaknesses is to talk to your customer’s customers and get their perspective. Ask your customer about how those folks might have come to hold that opinion. And again, remember to position your products and services as things that can help address their limitations.

• Opportunities are situations out in the marketplace, tailor-made to require use of your customers’ products and services. I’ve always been amazed that as an outsider, I’ve been able to identify opportunities that my customer’s employees just don’t see. It’s a simple matter of having a different perspective. By definition you as a sales rep, are an outsider, and therefore can’t help but think outside the proverbial box. Don’t worry if this doesn’t produce immediate results for you. Your reward will come in its own good time.

• Threats are situations out in the marketplace that can cause real trouble for your customer. As with opportunities, you as an outsider are frequently able to discern a threat more quickly and easily. Again, your reward will probably come later, but it’ll be worth the wait.

In all my years of selling I have never come across a simpler, more effective tool for creating and sustaining meaningful dialogue with my customers. Have you taken a SWOT at your best customer this week?

by Todd Youngblood

Every now and then it’s a good idea to re-visit one of those “everybody knows that” concepts and do a hard-nosed self-assessment regarding our personal sales performance. Always, always pre-plan every sales call, right?

Scheduling and getting a face-to-face call with a decision maker is a non-trivial exercise. Well executed calls on decision makers are the stuff of which sales “living legends” are made. Poorly executed sales calls (i.e., those that accomplish nothing and therefore waste a decision maker’s time) are the main source of “former sales reps” now embarked on a new – less challenging/rewarding – career.

Those three facts, along with plain old common sense demand that we plan out every call beforehand. Here’s one format that’s simple and gets the job done:

• Who? Name, company and title of the callee
• What? The main topic of the call
• When? Obvious, but significant (First thing Monday morning requires a different approach than last thing Friday afternoon, for example)
• Where? Ditto (Customer’s office or conference room? Your office or conference room? Neutral site?)
• Why? This is the biggie… What is your objective? What actions do you want the customer to take as a result of this call?
• How? One-on-one conversation? PowerPoint? Sales Aids? References?
• Major Points? What are the three to five major points that you must make?

Personally, I have the above outline saved in a Word document named “aashell.doc” in a folder called “CallPlans.” Every time I plan a call, I pull it up, rename it something like “JoeCustomer0704.doc” and then type out and save my plan.
Also, as always, no best practice is worth beans without a metric or two to measure its and our own effectiveness. Classify your calls. For example:

• Doughnut Drop – Any call with a primary objective of “relationship-building”
• Routine Call - Calls that are necessary, important or required, but if screwed up, won’t kill me
• Critical Call – I better be good on this call, or I’m in deep yogurt.

What % of your calls fall in each category? Is the trend what you’d like it to be?

One last thought; question really… How much planning time is appropriate for each type of call? A doughnut drop might not require any. (So tell me again why you’re making that call in the first place?) A routine call might deserve a 1 to 1 ratio. That is, allocate one hour of planning time for a one-hour routine call. A critical call is probably at least 4 to 1. Four hours of planning for a one-hour call.

Yeah, I know. You already knew all of the above. But do you practice what you preach regarding pre-call planning?

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?

by Todd Youngblood

About fifteen years ago, I ran across a paper written by Arie De Geuss, then chief of corporate planning for Royal Dutch Shell. In it, he made one of those pithy observations that really capture the essence of sustained excellent performance. Insightful as he was at the time, it’s just not enough any more.

“The only sustainable competitive advantage is the ability to learn faster than your competitors.”

There is no doubt that this 20th century insight from Mr. de Geuss still has great value for sales reps. It builds on Isaac Newton’s 18th century, “If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants” and Francis Bacon’s 16th century, “Knowledge is power.” Their core idea as applied to sales is to become the source of essential information and know-how that our customers need to solve their most pressing problems.

That concept certainly makes sense. So much so that maybe we ought to think about “standing on its shoulders.” Even if we already continuously and aggressively learn and acquire new knowledge, so what? How can we take it to the proverbial next level?

Consider learning in terms of building capabilities and then linking capabilities. Every time you learn something new – whatever it may be – focus on finding a way to apply that knowledge and therefore to also create a new capability. Take a classic selling scenario. You just learned a more efficient way to identify bottlenecks in manufacturing processes. By applying that new knowledge to one of your customers, you exercise your new bottleneck-spotting capability. By linking this new capability to your existing product application capability, your customer learns about a new way to extend his capability. Then take it to the next level…

Teach customer personnel (for a fee, of course) your new bottleneck spotting technique. Passing on the knowledge helps your customers learn and therefore create yet another new capability within their organization. With more people to spot bottlenecks, more opportunities to improve the process are identified along with more potential uses for your products and services. Then take it to the next level…

Take one of the improvement opportunities that is not currently addressable by your company. Think “link” instead of ignoring it. Even though you have no relevant offering, you probably do know – or could quickly learn about – someone else’s knowledge or capability that is relevant. Link your customer up with the source of that knowledge or capability. Then take it to the next level…

Learn about what your customer and that third party learned about each others’ capabilities. Learn about how they combined their mutual knowledge and capabilities to create yet more capabilities. Did the third party reach out to a forth party? Learn about how their knowledge and capability contributed to capability creation. Learn about how all parties involved enhanced their overall capabilities and applied them elsewhere.

Pause now, and visualize how you could learn about the value of this ever-expanding daisy-chain of knowledge and capabilities; how you could leverage the increasing number of linked capabilities to create knowledge about an ever-expanding set of new capabilities for yourself and for your customers.

Visualize how this could super-charge your value proposition. Your real value could be – should be – orchestrating the complexity involved with learning, capability building and capability linking on behalf of your customers.

Consider the fact that maybe the only sustainable competitive advantage is the ability to orchestrate capability building faster than your competitor.

Think about it…

by Todd Youngblood

It’s one thing to make decisions without all the facts. It’s quite another thing to make them without any. No sane business person would expect to be consistently right relying solely on judgment. But sales execs do it all the time…

Write down your top three answers. Don’t rack your brain. The first three things that come to mind are most likely the three activities that should comprise the bulk of the selling time of the reps in your company; the activities that – according to the prevailing wisdom – are your sales “best” practices.

As with most “simple” questions, your answer prompts another question. Is your opinion about the three practices you just wrote down based on judgment or fact? It’s based on judgment if you just “know” that you’re right; because you have learned it through your personal experience and study of other successful sales people. It’s based on fact if, and only if, you have hard, empirical data that clearly supports your opinion.

Overwhelmingly with sales execs, judgment is the foundation upon which sales best practices are built. What’s most troubling about this is that history has proven time and again that judgment alone is an extremely unreliable driver of progress. Real, sustainable progress is possible ONLY when judgment is tightly coupled with hard, data-based proof.

Here’s another perspective. Sarbanes-Oxley? is a hot topic these days because it requires CEOs to personally certify the accuracy of information from their finance departments. The investing public demanded it, and Congress delivered the law.

How long do it think it will take CEOs to get used to having additional detail, additional backup, additional analysis? Might they conclude that additional scrutiny is a good thing? (Do they have any choice?) Might they conclude that other business functions could also be dramatically improved by applying the same level of scrutiny? Why not start with what has traditionally been the most expensive, yet least accountable department – sales?

Might smart sales VPs decide to get a head start? They might. They might begin to:

• Collect hard, cold facts about their sales “best” practices
• Mathematically correlate those practices to the results produced
• Mathematically correlate various combinations of practices to results
• Compare that analysis to industry benchmarks
• Develop and implement action plans based on the resulting facts

Different mind-set. Different approach. As soon as your CEO hears about it, you’ll be asked (told?) to adopt that style of sales management. Are you ready for it? Maybe it is time to kick-off that Sales Process Engineering project…

by Todd Youngblood

All too often, good ideas get stuck in the “talking” phase. Their real value can only be realized after implementation and measurement of effectiveness.

Continuous improvement methodologies like Business Process Management, Six Sigma, etc. have become so widely endorsed because they are based on common sense and produce results. While very few executives will debate the value of such practices, not many have been able to instill their spirit throughout the organization. If only there were a way to harvest at least part of the benefit without all the up-front education, disruption and cost…

Well, there is a way. And when you come right down to it, it’s one that is surprisingly painless to implement. Relentlessly document, implement and measure your best practices.

Start by asking each first line manager in your organization to collect three “personal best practices” from each of their professionals. Define personal best practice as a habit, skill or technique that each individual feels is most responsible for his or her own career success to date. Insist that each is well-written and no more than two or three sentences.

You’ll find that it’s easy to get one of your managers to volunteer to compile and organize the ideas. (Typically, it’s an individual anxious to learn and interested in career advancement.) Publish the organized list internally and then follow it up with visible action to broadly implement at least two or three of them.
Repeat the process every six months. Establish a few easily trackable metrics and begin to determine just how effective – quantitatively – these best practices really are.

The key is to stick with it. Discipline! Over time, the ideas with real staying power will emerge. In addition, you’ll build an extensive collection of best practices, a team of people with the habit of thinking about better ways to accomplish tasks and an excellent base for implementing one of the more formal methodologies when the timing is right.

by Todd Youngblood

Check your calendar. When did you last participate in a loss review? You know how effective (and important) it is to learn from your own mistakes, right?

Virtually every sales manager I talk to agrees that conducting a Loss Review after a significant “non-win” is a good idea. The logic is simple. By doing so immediately following the prospect’s final, “No,” the details of the whole sales effort are still fresh in the minds of all involved. Passion is still high and the “agony of defeat” still stings. In other words, it’s the perfect setup for honing sales strategy and tactics aimed at shortening sell cycles and increasing the close rate.

Ah, but it’s so easy to delay. “She’s one of our best reps, no need to drag her through all that right now.” “He’s one of our weakest reps, what could we learn anyway?” “We had a rep, a consultant, a product manager, a tech support manager and two of our best IT professionals assigned to that opportunity. We can’t afford to drag them all back together.” Pretty soon all parties have moved on to other priorities and really are too busy to rehash old news. The learning opportunity is gone.

But… I know that you are the exception. You get the entire team that lost the deal together within 30 days. A knowledgeable person or two not connected with the sales effort is invited. Everyone knows it’s not a witch hunt, but a concerted focus on Continuous Improvement & Defect Prevention. Your lead rep prepares an agenda something like this:

• Prospect & Opportunity Background
• Sales Strategy
• Timeline of Key Events
  • What worked?
  • What didn’t work?
  • What was missing?
  • What was unnecessary?
• Key Reason(s) For Loss
• Lessons Learned

You document the key points in the discussion and share it with the rest of your sales force. Finally, you keep track of the mistakes to avoid repeating them.
So how long has it been since you participated in a Loss Review?