Think About It… the e-book version

by Todd Youngblood

I don’t know enough. (Notice the first sentence is the same as last month???) The pace of change in the world of sales, sales management and consulting is such that my traditional process for learning simply can’t keep up. I know you’re in the same boat. Guess what? We can help each other.

Anyone who has been successful in the sales game is a good student. To solve our customers’ problems, we need to know – therefore we first need to learn – more than they do about not only the problems, but also the solutions. But my goodness… new ideas, technologies and applications are flooding into our world faster than ever. Something’s gotta’ give. We need to change the way we learn.

I hate to use the old three-legged stool analogy yet again, but if fits anywhere, if it fits with regard to constantly and rapidly increasing our personal knowledge and understanding. A little research reveals that virtually all of us use a two legged approach to learning. We first absorb information from web pages, books, blogs, podcasts, other people, etc., then roll that information around in our brains, combine it with what’s already there then move to the second leg, apply. Next we observe what happens, absorb yet more information from the results produced and continue on with the two-step learning process.

Not good enough!

One of Albert Einstein’s pithier comments was, “You don’t really understand something until you can explain it to your grandmother.” Think about that and recognize that you are not very good at teaching many of the things you are quite good at doing. Why is that?

Quite simply, it’s because you don’t really understand. Now – think about things that you can not only do well, but can also teach well. Again, understanding is the difference maker. So how can we deepen our understanding?

The answer is contribute. There is absolutely no better way to learn something than to be put in the position of needing to teach it to someone else. There is absolutely no better way to teach something than to first put it down in writing. If you don’t believe me, call grandma right now and teach her how to articulate the value proposition you used for your last really big sale.

After apologizing to grandma for confusing the daylights out of her, take the time to write down the customer’s “before” and “after” situations and why and by how much “after” is better. Write out that winning value proposition. Write-down specifically how it highlights the key improvements made to the customer situation. Keep it all to 150 or so words. Revise and rewrite it at least two or three times.

Assuming your grandma is still speaking to you, try teaching her again how to articulate your value proposition. Pretty amazing difference, huh?

Don’t have time to expend that much effort? Well, of course you don’t. Not for everything… But what about those dozen or so things that are fundamentally critical to your success? To state the obvious, you simply cannot afford to not deeply and thoroughly understand those things. For them, absorb/apply only doesn’t cut it. So do it! Contribute/Absorb/Apply!

Better yet, after you write it – publish it and invite others to comment on it. You can publish it easily at the unique website of the Sales Knowledge Xchange. (Think of it as the Wikipedia for sales and sales management.)

It’s a brave new world out there, folks. To continue our personal success, each of us needs to adopt this 21st-century model for learning.

by Todd Youngblood

A recent study conducted by CSO Insights indicated that poor sales knowledge management is hitting the top and bottom lines of companies in extremely negative ways. These included high sales rep turn over, longer sell cycles and lower win rates.

What a paradox. On the one hand we’re absolutely drowning in information. On the other hand key information that sales reps need to sell effectively is still routinely hard to acquire. I hear this all the time from sales reps and executives, and the complaint is supported by the CSO Insights study.

Without a doubt, information on almost any topic imaginable is available virtually instantaneously. It’s useful, therefore, to think about the kinds of information that are not readily available even with today’s technology. Perhaps not surprisingly, much of it is directly related to sales issues.

Consider Wikipedia with its more than 2.8 million articles. Does even one of them address how one of the solutions your company provides could help a customer in industry X? Is there one that explains how to differentiate your offerings from those of competitors? How about one that provides responses to common objections heard from consumers of your products and services?

These are pretty basic questions, and the largest single collection of knowledge in the history of the world doesn’t touch on any of them! How can this be? Is wiki technology one that simply does not apply to sales? Or is there something else going on?

Well, as Pogo would say, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” It’s not Wikipedia, and it’s not the wiki technology that supports it. It’s the source of the information. It is totally unreasonable to expect that some anonymous web surfer could have even an inkling about the highly specialized, often unique situations faced by our prospects and customers. The knowledge, experience, insight and information needed by a sales rep cannot possibly be provided by an outsider. It has to come from an individual or group intimately involved with and knowledgeable about not only your specific target markets, but also your specific products and services and how they can be applied.

In other words, you! (…along with your entire sales and sales support team)

What if your organization had a Wikipedia-like thing where sales, technical support, … actually everybody in your organization could record bits of information they deem potentially useful? Maybe some folks from vendors and customers could be invited to participate. It would be interesting to see how much could actually get collected and how quickly. It would be even more interesting to see the impact on sales results. (The CSO Insights study shows a turnover rate 25.4% less for companies with good sales knowledge management and similar differences for sell cycle and win rate.)

Too expensive and difficult to implement you say? Guess again. I personally set up a wiki platform for The YPS Group. The cost of the technology platform is $71.40 annually. The cost of the software is $0. (We using TikiWiki.) I e-mailed a request to our web hosting provider and within 15 minutes everything was up and running. It took me about two hours to customize the system, set up security etc. It takes less than five minutes to teach someone how to create a new page, edit one, upload and download files, search the content and become generally adept at using the system.

It’s too early for us to fully assess the impact and value of what we call our “Sales Knowledge Mine.” I can tell you though, that it’s already loaded up with information and that I add and refer to it on a daily basis. We’ve just started enabling more people to use it. The quantity, quality and value of the content is increasing dramatically.

It’s going to become – maybe already has become- an indispensable sales tool for us. But then, how could it not? Those of us out there selling, closest to the customer; are feeding our observations, insights and ideas into a common pool that is being used and continuously updated and improved by all of us. Shouldn’t you be facilitating the same kind of knowledge exchange?

by Todd Youngblood

GE says that Six Sigma has saved the company $8 Billion over the last three years. Is anybody smart enough to apply that kind of power to the sales process?

A recent Business Week article noted that, “In the world of manufacturing, Six Sigma has become something akin to a religion…” In addition to the $8 Billion saved at GE, Dow Chemical calculates an average savings of $500,000 per project and there’s a laundry list of other manufacturers with similar success stories.

Even more intriguing, Dell estimates that a six sigma project took $2.4 Million out of their Accounts Payable process. Not a manufacturing process, but one executed by knowledge workers. (Your sales reps are knowledge workers, right?)

Wellmark used six sigma and reduced the time to add a new doctor to its medical plans from 65+ days to 30 or less, and was also able to reduce the headcount required to do it. Again, that’s knowledge work substantially improved with this “manufacturing” tool.

Here’s a disturbing/humbling perspective… Many (if not most) sales execs would be thrilled if 30% of all leads could be turned into sales. That would translate to One Sigma performance!

Three sigma performance (which, by the way, would get you summarily fired from any GE factory) equates to turning 93% of your leads into revenue producing customers.

No more math for now. It’s too depressing. Unless, maybe, we could view this as an opportunity.

What if the process engineering principles of six sigma could be applied to your sales process? What if the define, measure, analyze, improve, control philosophy really does apply to knowledge work like selling?

What would the bonus check look like if you could lead your team to two sigma? or three sigma? even 1/2 sigma?

by Todd Youngblood

Everyone in sales remembers bits of wisdom from their very first sales manager. I was fortunate enough to be assigned to an old pro named Charlie Aimone who is the source of this month’s idea.

For the last 15 minutes of each monthly sales meeting, one of us was assigned our turn “in the barrel.” What we had to do was tell our peers about a tactic that backfired, a really poor call we had made or some other failed attempt at moving toward a close.

Several things happened (every month!!!). First, the “victim” thoroughly thought through what led up to the failure, how it occurred and what follow-up was needed to repair any damage. Second, sheer empathy pushed the rest of us to think hard and make a genuine effort to offer suggestions that could have reversed the situation’s outcome. Third, failure – which is inevitable in our chosen profession – became a game …a challenging game. That’s the part that really had an impact. We all developed the habit of turning mistakes into assets. We all got quite good not only at bouncing back from, but also exploiting, the learning value of our errors. We all became students of sales tactics and strategy.

More than twenty years have gone by, and last time I checked, each of the old crew is still bringing an amazingly productive barrel to the monthly meetings.

Buy a barrel! Do it now!