My last post, The Hip Bone Connected To The Thigh Bone….. , started a discussion about systems, that is how things work, interrelate, and the dependencies they have on each other.  I focused specifically on how we acquire and retain customers, focusing on sales and marketing as separate, but tightly related systems.  Changes we make in components of our  marketing systems impact the overall marketing system and impact the corresponding sales systems — and vice versa.  For example, if we gear up a major new sales prospecting initiative to acquire new customers in a certain market segment, but we don’t have the corresponding marketing programs to support the sales initiative, we will probably not achieve our goals. 

Republished with author's permission from original post by David Brock.

No, I’ve not decided to convert this blog into a lesson on Anatomy, I actually want to talk about systems. But I don’t mean systems–technology, I mean systems–the way thing work, how things interrelate, specifically in acquiring and retaining customers.

The way we acquire and retain customers is a complex inter-relationship of different activities and processes. These processes occur within our organizations, for example through sales and marketing, with our customers–their buying processes, and in the surrounding community–our competition, opinion leaders, and others. All these “subsystems” are connected together, they depend on each other, respond to each other. Likewise, these systems don’t work well in isolation or without the other systems. For example, a selling process is meaningless unless aligned with a customer engaged in a buying process.

The complexity of these systems and their relationships cause us to break them down, focusing on subsystems and components. We start to specialize in these subsystems, for example, marketing may focus on demand and lead generation. We in sales focus on our selling processes. It’s a natural and probably the only way to manage the complexity and begin to design, develop, execute and manage our customer acquisition and retention processes.

Republished with author's permission from original post by David Brock.

I hear the phrase, “Pay For Performance,” all the time.  I think it’s a reasonable concept, that is, the better you perform, the better you get paid.  Naturally, we want to pay our top performers the best, who can argue with that?

Somehow, it seems as though Pay For Performance is getting distorted.  If we want the sales person to do something, other than get orders, we put a bonus on it or add it to the commission plan.  We want the CRM system updated, put a bonus on it.  We want forecast accuracy, let’s pay the sales people for accurate forecasts.  We want the sales person to participate in a task force, let’s put an incentive on it.  Somehow, things seem to be getting confused.  Too often, our solution to motivating sales people to do we need them to do is to put some form of compensation on it–a bonus, a commission element, an incentive.

I get into a conversation about this issue at least once a week.  A sales manager or business executive calls me to ask, “How do I get my sales people to do what I want?  What if I added something to their compensation plan?”  Throw money at the problem, it will motivate the right behavior!

Somehow that seems to be a temporary and, possibly, an expensive fix.

Republished with author's permission from original post by David Brock.

I’m participating in a discussion with a group of people I deeply respect.  It is about managing sales performance, particularly about getting sales people to do things they don’t like to do.  You know what those are:  Spending time doing reports for management, updating the CRM system, attending one more training class they think they don’t need, getting those expense reports in on time, participating on an internal task force……..   The list goes on.  The argument of sales people is always the same, “You’re keeping me away from the customer, don’t you want me selling?”  “This will keep me making my number.”

In the discussion, a suggestion has been made, “we should base some of their compensation on having them do this [activity].  What if we based X% of their bonus on doing these activities?”

I think this is a fundamental problem.  Sales people are motivated by compensation–aren’t all of us.  However, tying everything to the compensation plan is wrong.  It dilutes the plan–pretty soon the plan gets so confusing with the number of bonus elements, that it no longer becomes a motivator.  What are we saying our people should do?  Where should they focus?  Do we want them to sell?  Do we want them to do other things?  Which is more important?

Republished with author's permission from original post by David Brock.

Sales people are great at “reacting.”  The customer puts a hurdle in front of us, we know how to respond.  The competitor does something, we know what to do.  Our management asks us to do something, we immediately (well OK–almost immediately) jump on it.

Most sales people are proud of their nimbleness and speed in reacting, handling any challenge put to them.

I guess I have the problem with the “re” part of reacting.  If we are reacting, it means someone else is acting–demanding our response.  It means someone else is setting the rules, defining the playing field, possibly defining the outcome.  Reacting always diverts us, it sets us down a different path than the one we were originally on.  Reacting slows us down.

Somehow, that makes me uncomfortable, I want to be driving the strategy, I want to be setting the rules.  I’d much rather have competition be forced to react to what I’ve done than to be forced to respond to them.

How do we get out of reacting?  This is where that ugly four letter word–starting with P—comes in.  It’s the word no sales person likes, it just wastes time. 

Republished with author's permission from original post by David Brock.

I few days ago, I started a discussion with “What Are The 3 Characteristics That Set Great Sales People Apart?”  followed by “How Important Are ‘Techniques’ To Sales?”  I hadn’t meant to turn this into a series (or saga), but the discussion has been very interesting.  For me, it has been a bit of a journey of discovery.  I’ve always had an aversion to what I call “techniques”  — those 68 closing techniques, the persuasion technique and so forth. 

At the same time, there are techniques or tools that I have found very helpful, questioning approaches, storytelling as a means of illustrating complex points, using humor to offset my natural clumsiness, and so forth.   Somehow, these techniques have become “a part of me.”  They are natural, I never have to think about them, they seem to flow with what I am trying to achieve in engaging the customer.

Republished with author's permission from original post by David Brock.

The other day, I wrote a piece, What Are The 3 Characteristics That Set Great Sales People Apart?  It stimulated quite a reaction as people started suggesting their ideas.  I was surprised by the focus of a number of people on the “right techniques.”  These comments started to make me wonder about my own belief system and biases.

I guess I have a very negative reaction to the concept of sales techniques.  When I think of these techniques, I think of sales tricks and manipulation.  I did a little research:

• Persuasion techniques like, “the art of repetition,” “the foot in the door,” “the bait and switch,” “low-ball,”that’s not all,” and the lists of techniques for persuading people can go on.
• Closing techniques like, “the assumptive close,” “the puppy dog close,” “fire sales close,” “thermometer close”, “the ultimatum close.”  I actually found a site listing 68 closing techniques!
• Objection handling like, “the boomerang,” “pushback,” “deflection.”

I could go on with list after list of techniques I found in researching “sales techniques.”  I went to the dictionary to look up the definition:

Republished with author's permission from original post by David Brock.

Last Friday, I had the privilege of being interviewed by an executive on critical issues in buying and selling.  It was a great conversation, but one of his questions stuck in my mind.  He asked me, “What are the 3 characteristics that set great sales people apart from others?”

I responded, “Oh, there are so many……”  He interupted, saying, “Dave, you only get to choose the top 3, no more.”

This caused me to pause, any of us can come up with lists of characteristics of great sales people, sometimes it’s half a dozen characteristics, often a dozen, sometimes the lists go on and on…..  Brian’s question was really challenging, he only allowed me 3 characteristics.  I thought to myself, how can I combine several into one, maybe I can create a giant run-on sentence with all sorts of adjectives describing great sales people.

After a few moments of reflecting, I provided three carefully worded phrases:

1. Goal directed curiosity and a problem solving orientation.
2. A genuine interest in helping people achieve their goals and dreams.
3. An ability to embrace changes and to get the people they work with to embrace and own change.

Let me explain myself.

Republished with author's permission from original post by David Brock.

I guess as a blogger, twitter user, and sometime pundit, it’s natural to get into a lot of conversations about the impact of Social Media, and the Internet for that matter, on buying and selling.  In the past several days, I’ve had a number of conversations with people all over the world.  “How do we leverage social media to sell?”  “What should we be doing with social media?”  “What is social selling?”I have to admit that I feel a little awkward in these discussions, I don’t by any means consider myself a social media expert—it seems, I’ve just learned how to spell www….

Republished with author's permission from original post by David Brock.

A few weeks, ago, my post on The Most Used – Useless Metric In Sales created an avalanche of comments and emails.  Many of you commented on a variety of “useless metrics” you have experienced.  One of the most popular categories of “useless metrics” was Activity metrics.  Activity metrics are very popular, they’re easy to establish and measure.  There are all sorts of activity metrics:  Number of outgoing/incoming phone calls handled per day/week, number of customer meetings per day/week, number of proposals, number of sales opportunities in the funnel — the list is endless.

The problem with activity metrics is that all they measure is activity (dughhhh), they don’t measure the appropriateness, impact, or outcomes of the activity.   Activity metrics tend to measure what you’ve done, not whether you have moved the opportunity forward in the sales process.  In establishing activity metrics, it’s important to understand the behaviors they drive and to assess whether they are motivating the right outcomes.   It’s important to define the metric in terms of the results you are trying to achieve.

Republished with author's permission from original post by David Brock.