Lest you think all I do is snark about my employer (and I don't; I'm more than willing to snark about anyone's employer albeit sometimes with the snarkee being anonymous), allow me to opine on two separate customer service experiences I've had recently, both automated and both telephonic.
Now I'm not usually a huge fan of automated customer service, not because I'm a technophobe, but because they're so rarely done well. I particularly hate voice mail trees. Oh sure they're sold internally as a customer service, "so that consumers are directed to the correct department", but we all know that they are usually extremely frustrating. The thing that galls me the most is the widely held opinion inside firms that everybody else's voice mail tree is voice mail hell, but ours is OK. If you don't like them when you call your phone company, why do you inflict the same thing on your customers?
OK, scenario one - the good one (change of pace!!) is CIGNA's Tel-drug prescription ordering system. Obviously someone took the time to actually use this before installing because it has just the right little touches and ease-of-use to be really good. Everything is logically explained, prompts make sense and actions are acknowledged. Additionally they add touches like "if you want to order another refill, press 1, if not, press 9"; normally it'd be press 1 for yes or 2 for no, but asking you to press 9 prevents you from accidentally pressing the wrong key. I know you're thinking "big deal", but when it come to things like automated customer service if you want people to use it and not feel abused by it, you really have to pay attention to the details.
Which brings us to scenario two - the bad one. Here I'll name names, Fidelity Investments, because I didn't ask to open an account there, my kid's 529 plans were moved there by the State of California. Never having done business with Fidelity before, I had a pretty good impression of them. Now, not so much.
First, I have two separate accounts for two separate children. Fidelity makes me activate each account before I can do anything. OK. I go through the 5 pages of information for the first one and the system blows up. Fine, glitches happen. Do it again - same result. I wait until the next day to try again and this time it works. Probably overloaded from everyone whose plan moved. I'm ready to start using my accounts - wait what's this? Only one is activated? Hmm. OK, I'll go through the steps again because surely all the information I filled out before (address, employer, etc) will be pre-filled, right? Wrong. Look, if I wasn't the same person that filled out the info before, why is this my account?
And I haven't got the telephony part yet. The on-line system doesn't let me do something fairly minor but asks me to call their 800 customer service line. You know the drill - "Please say or enter your social security number", cool- voice recognition! so after the pause I start to speak. She's not done speaking yet: "If you are using a customer identification number instead, you can enter that". Naturally since she and I are speaking at the same time my SS# isn't recognized. Now who inserts a pause long enough between those two phrases that the listener is faked out? So I do it again, correctly, after the second pause and after going through the tree and deciding that none of those options will fix my issue, they finally connect me to a rep. Who asks my account number.
Oh, and just one more - this one is short (I know I said two, sue me). I have about three or four different Earthlink accounts for different websites and such. Every once in a while they send an e-mail telling me account # such and such has a credit card expiring, please log on and fix it. Here's the thing - when you log on to Earthlink's My Account page there's nowhere to enter the account number - it asks for your e-mail address. Well my e-mail address points to only one of the accounts and there's no way to change that. Why bother to tell you to fix this account number on-line if you can't access it by account number?
Yes, automated systems can save money, but if you want customers to actually use them, rather than automatically hitting "0", you have spend some time to make them user-friendly, a greatly overused phrase but greatly underutilized action.
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
What we have here is a failure to Communicate
Folks, it's all about communication. So, we're still working on the billing issue I talked about a couple of posts ago. In the conference call with the client we promised that we'd have the billing corrected and a complete audit of bills sent and money received by last Friday. Friday at 3 PM, I get a call telling me that it's not going to happen until Tuesday. Remember, the original conference call was a week and a half ago. Did they just discover Friday that it wasn't gonna happen? I'm guessing that's not the case. They should have let me know it wasn't going to happen when they first realized it. Client is beside herself.
Okay, so now it's Tuesday, the drop dead date for this fricking billing, and a cast of thousands have been huddled in a conference room all day, after having worked on it over the weekend, and I get a call at 12:30 my time (I'm on the West Coast, the cast of thousands on the East Coast) telling me they'll be back to me within the hour with the final result. BTW, why this is taking so many people so long on what should be a fairly simple issue (after all, billing for product should be something we do routinely, no?) escapes me.
The afternoon passes - I got nothing. At 2:30 (5:30 EST) and every 15 minutes thereafter I call the 3 principal players and get no answer. Leave messages. Nothing. At 4:35 (7;35 EST) I fire off a scathing memo to my boss because I, naturally, assume that everyone has bolted and they were too scared to call and tell me they were packing it in for the evening. I'm pissed and call the client to tell her that we have, once again, missed the deadline.
While I'm on the phone with the client at 5:10 (8:10 EST) I get a call from my HO and it's half the cast of thousands to tell me they've got something. Now of course your initial inclination is to say, "Wow, Rich they stayed till eight o'clock to make the deadline", and normally I'd agree with you.
But.
Number one - I'm out here, by myself, freaking out all afternoon not knowing what's going on. Communication. I should have gotten a call (or 2) telling me they were still working, so I knew and could tell the client. Instead, my blood pressure is through the roof.
Number two - did I get what we needed? Well, of course you know the answer to that - No. The audit we promised them a week and a half ago? Not until Friday at noon. Why? "Because this is a lot more involved than we realized." And you just realized that it was "involved" now, at 5:30 on Tuesday? Communication.
And the icing on the cake was when, after I complained about missing the deadlines, I start to get a lecture about "managing expectations". Please. Tell me something's gonna take two weeks, I'm fine. I'll make sure the client understands and usually I'll get us a few more days. But I'm not the one that told the client when this would be done - HO did in the conference call and follow-ups.
Point of this is that when you're not going to get something done when promised, let everyone know as soon as you know that. People understand. Everyone gets in these situations - things interfere, problems arise, systems go down. It happens. But you've got to let everyone know. You've got to communicate. The problems end up to be far worse if you don't.
Okay, so now it's Tuesday, the drop dead date for this fricking billing, and a cast of thousands have been huddled in a conference room all day, after having worked on it over the weekend, and I get a call at 12:30 my time (I'm on the West Coast, the cast of thousands on the East Coast) telling me they'll be back to me within the hour with the final result. BTW, why this is taking so many people so long on what should be a fairly simple issue (after all, billing for product should be something we do routinely, no?) escapes me.
The afternoon passes - I got nothing. At 2:30 (5:30 EST) and every 15 minutes thereafter I call the 3 principal players and get no answer. Leave messages. Nothing. At 4:35 (7;35 EST) I fire off a scathing memo to my boss because I, naturally, assume that everyone has bolted and they were too scared to call and tell me they were packing it in for the evening. I'm pissed and call the client to tell her that we have, once again, missed the deadline.
While I'm on the phone with the client at 5:10 (8:10 EST) I get a call from my HO and it's half the cast of thousands to tell me they've got something. Now of course your initial inclination is to say, "Wow, Rich they stayed till eight o'clock to make the deadline", and normally I'd agree with you.
But.
Number one - I'm out here, by myself, freaking out all afternoon not knowing what's going on. Communication. I should have gotten a call (or 2) telling me they were still working, so I knew and could tell the client. Instead, my blood pressure is through the roof.
Number two - did I get what we needed? Well, of course you know the answer to that - No. The audit we promised them a week and a half ago? Not until Friday at noon. Why? "Because this is a lot more involved than we realized." And you just realized that it was "involved" now, at 5:30 on Tuesday? Communication.
And the icing on the cake was when, after I complained about missing the deadlines, I start to get a lecture about "managing expectations". Please. Tell me something's gonna take two weeks, I'm fine. I'll make sure the client understands and usually I'll get us a few more days. But I'm not the one that told the client when this would be done - HO did in the conference call and follow-ups.
Point of this is that when you're not going to get something done when promised, let everyone know as soon as you know that. People understand. Everyone gets in these situations - things interfere, problems arise, systems go down. It happens. But you've got to let everyone know. You've got to communicate. The problems end up to be far worse if you don't.
Monday, December 04, 2006
De-Motivating Sales Reps
I know you're thinking "Jeez, what a stupid title, who'd want to de-motivate a Sales Rep?" The original title was Why Salespeople Don't Sell but then I realized that there was a whole myriad of reasons that could be true (personal problems, looking for another position, just isn't good at her job, etc) so I decided to focus on the one area you, as a corporate executive, have some control over - keeping reps motivated, or rather not actively de-motivating them.
Now I know it'd be stupid to actively try to encourage a Sales Rep to not sell and of course most de-motivation is inadvertent. It's well known that professional Sales Reps can only be effective when they believe in what they're selling. The opposite of that is true, too: if I don't believe in what I'm selling, I'm either A.) not going to be very good at it or B) I won't sell it at all. So, as noted in the previous post, things happen that cause reps to believe that the things they're supposed to be selling are lies. I clearly won't be trying to get business from that client for a while, because they won't believe what I'm supposed to tell them and neither will I.
Am I going to cut out selling every time the billing goes sideways or some customer service reps have a bad day? Of course not. If that was the case no one would ever sell anything. Accidents happen. If, OTOH, the billing issues, service problems, product failures or brain-deadness of the organization is an on-going and constant thing, you can be damn sure that your reps will shut down (and look for a way out). Again, I'd hope that if these problems were that bad, they'd be apparent to you and you'd have them fixed, however knowing the speed with which a giant organizational ship can be turned, sometimes even knowing the problems isn't enough. And then there are those firms that refuse to address the problems. The situation noted in the prior post (and I would venture to say, most good large corporations) fall into the former category. We know we've got issues; it's just that addressing them takes time and resources. In the meantime, no sales, because the reps aren't willing to throw their reputations under the bus. And note: asking a salesperson to burn their reputation so that you can get some sales is a surefire way to lose reps rather than gain sales.
Back to the issue of those that refuse to address the problem, let me pass along an anecdote from an an anonymous correspondent. This woman works for a firm that produces tradeshow graphics and booths. Now in her business everything is time-sensitive (getting the booth the week after the show is kind of a non-starter), so her clients are very specific as to when and how the products are delivered. The problem is that the boss is very scattered, disorganized and consistently over-promises and under-delivers. So the rep will have an order due, say, December 6th at 5PM. On the morning of December 6th, the boss will clear all the scheduled jobs in order to rush through the one that either he A) promised and forgot about or B) thinks is more important. The rep's job is now late. As before, if this was a once-in-a-while problem, no big deal, but at her firm it happens so often (and no one dares confront the boss) that she can never be sure that the promises she makes can be kept. She can never be sure that the job will be done on time. How can someone sell in that situation?
The bottom line is that, as a rep with any sort of pride, we need to be able to deliver what we promise on a fairly regular basis. That's what our clients count on and that's what our reputations are built on. If we don't believe that our promises will be kept, we won't be able to make them, and that's really all sales is - making a promise we know will be kept. If you can't make that happen for us, we can't sell for you.
Now I know it'd be stupid to actively try to encourage a Sales Rep to not sell and of course most de-motivation is inadvertent. It's well known that professional Sales Reps can only be effective when they believe in what they're selling. The opposite of that is true, too: if I don't believe in what I'm selling, I'm either A.) not going to be very good at it or B) I won't sell it at all. So, as noted in the previous post, things happen that cause reps to believe that the things they're supposed to be selling are lies. I clearly won't be trying to get business from that client for a while, because they won't believe what I'm supposed to tell them and neither will I.
Am I going to cut out selling every time the billing goes sideways or some customer service reps have a bad day? Of course not. If that was the case no one would ever sell anything. Accidents happen. If, OTOH, the billing issues, service problems, product failures or brain-deadness of the organization is an on-going and constant thing, you can be damn sure that your reps will shut down (and look for a way out). Again, I'd hope that if these problems were that bad, they'd be apparent to you and you'd have them fixed, however knowing the speed with which a giant organizational ship can be turned, sometimes even knowing the problems isn't enough. And then there are those firms that refuse to address the problems. The situation noted in the prior post (and I would venture to say, most good large corporations) fall into the former category. We know we've got issues; it's just that addressing them takes time and resources. In the meantime, no sales, because the reps aren't willing to throw their reputations under the bus. And note: asking a salesperson to burn their reputation so that you can get some sales is a surefire way to lose reps rather than gain sales.
Back to the issue of those that refuse to address the problem, let me pass along an anecdote from an an anonymous correspondent. This woman works for a firm that produces tradeshow graphics and booths. Now in her business everything is time-sensitive (getting the booth the week after the show is kind of a non-starter), so her clients are very specific as to when and how the products are delivered. The problem is that the boss is very scattered, disorganized and consistently over-promises and under-delivers. So the rep will have an order due, say, December 6th at 5PM. On the morning of December 6th, the boss will clear all the scheduled jobs in order to rush through the one that either he A) promised and forgot about or B) thinks is more important. The rep's job is now late. As before, if this was a once-in-a-while problem, no big deal, but at her firm it happens so often (and no one dares confront the boss) that she can never be sure that the promises she makes can be kept. She can never be sure that the job will be done on time. How can someone sell in that situation?
The bottom line is that, as a rep with any sort of pride, we need to be able to deliver what we promise on a fairly regular basis. That's what our clients count on and that's what our reputations are built on. If we don't believe that our promises will be kept, we won't be able to make them, and that's really all sales is - making a promise we know will be kept. If you can't make that happen for us, we can't sell for you.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Lose the Attitude or Lose the Client
I want to share something that happens to Sales Reps waaaaay too often.
I have a client with a billing problem and she's been trying to work it out with the Home Office for 2 1/2 weeks. This is not a little billing problem, this is a really big billing problem and it's an important client. Here's my first concern - guess how I found out about this? That's right - the client emailed me. I should not be finding out about these things from my clients. Too much trouble for the HO to shoot me a note or call me to say "We've got a problem on XYZ Co., this what it is and we're working on it and will let you know if you need to do anything"? Now, I don't want to hear about every little problem but please use a little common sense to say "Rich needs a heads-up on this" for the big things. This lack of communication makes us both look like idiots.
But wait - there's more. We had a conference call, me, the client and four (count 'em) Home Office staff. Good thing I was there to referee, because the HO people were very defensive about how they'd done things. Apparently, it was the client's fault for not understanding how we were charging them. Notwithstanding the fact that a lot of the charges made no logical sense or that nowhere did we attempt to explain how we arrived at these odd numbers. Clearly, the client was wrong and they should just take our word for it that the charges were correct. Guess what didn't happen.
OK, let me make this perfectly clear: the client is not lucky that we let them do business with us, we are lucky that they have chosen to do business with us. I have seen this attitude for years, at many different companies, that somehow our clients should be thrilled that we allow them to buy our products. Where does that come from and how does it possibly make sense?
We shouldn't put people in a position that they need to change their procedures to match our internal processes. We should know what the clients need and expect. We should be accommodating to them, not the other way around.
There are very few companies in the world who make or do something so unique that a client can't go elsewhere, and get something just (or almost) as good without the condescending attitude. Everyone does it all the time - Bank of America treats you badly? Well, Washington Mutual is right down the street. Is Cingular constantly overcharging you? Switch to T-Mobile. The point is that if your employees are doing that to your clients, your clients will leave. And my reputation gets tarnished in the meantime and, really, that's all I have.
</rant>
I know I'm not saying anything new here. Everyone knows you're supposed to treat your clients well, right? Well, apparently everyone doesn't know this because this little scenario happened just this week and I'll bet it happened a thousand other times this week to other reps.
Think this doesn't happen in your company? It does. Call any one of your sales reps right now and ask. That's OK, I'll wait. Do do do doooo do. See, what did I tell you? Maybe it doesn't happen a lot, but it shouldn't happen at all. Make it stop!
I have a client with a billing problem and she's been trying to work it out with the Home Office for 2 1/2 weeks. This is not a little billing problem, this is a really big billing problem and it's an important client. Here's my first concern - guess how I found out about this? That's right - the client emailed me. I should not be finding out about these things from my clients. Too much trouble for the HO to shoot me a note or call me to say "We've got a problem on XYZ Co., this what it is and we're working on it and will let you know if you need to do anything"? Now, I don't want to hear about every little problem but please use a little common sense to say "Rich needs a heads-up on this" for the big things. This lack of communication makes us both look like idiots.
But wait - there's more. We had a conference call, me, the client and four (count 'em) Home Office staff. Good thing I was there to referee, because the HO people were very defensive about how they'd done things. Apparently, it was the client's fault for not understanding how we were charging them. Notwithstanding the fact that a lot of the charges made no logical sense or that nowhere did we attempt to explain how we arrived at these odd numbers. Clearly, the client was wrong and they should just take our word for it that the charges were correct. Guess what didn't happen.
OK, let me make this perfectly clear: the client is not lucky that we let them do business with us, we are lucky that they have chosen to do business with us. I have seen this attitude for years, at many different companies, that somehow our clients should be thrilled that we allow them to buy our products. Where does that come from and how does it possibly make sense?
We shouldn't put people in a position that they need to change their procedures to match our internal processes. We should know what the clients need and expect. We should be accommodating to them, not the other way around.
There are very few companies in the world who make or do something so unique that a client can't go elsewhere, and get something just (or almost) as good without the condescending attitude. Everyone does it all the time - Bank of America treats you badly? Well, Washington Mutual is right down the street. Is Cingular constantly overcharging you? Switch to T-Mobile. The point is that if your employees are doing that to your clients, your clients will leave. And my reputation gets tarnished in the meantime and, really, that's all I have.
</rant>
I know I'm not saying anything new here. Everyone knows you're supposed to treat your clients well, right? Well, apparently everyone doesn't know this because this little scenario happened just this week and I'll bet it happened a thousand other times this week to other reps.
Think this doesn't happen in your company? It does. Call any one of your sales reps right now and ask. That's OK, I'll wait. Do do do doooo do. See, what did I tell you? Maybe it doesn't happen a lot, but it shouldn't happen at all. Make it stop!
Monday, November 27, 2006
What are we waiting for?
One of the most frustrating things, both for you in the Home Office and for us in the field, is waiting for stuff to happen. But it's frustrating in different ways: for the field rep, once a problem has been identified or a procedure needs to be changed, well, just fix it and lets move on. Naturally, you know, I know, anyone who's ever had to actually fix a corporate problem or change a procedure and probably the rep herself, knows that it's usually just not that easy. Most of the time the issue is around either money or how to fix this one issue without breaking everything else.
To the rep, where everything has to be done right now (calls, sales, closes) waiting sucks and since reps for the most part run their own little shows, when something needs to be tweaked we can just do it on the fly. We just don't understand what takes so long, especially when the solution is obvious.
Two ways to combat this are to : 1) as often as possible, fix the little problems as soon as possible, immediately if you can, so that it doesn't appear as if the organization is paralyzed and 2) take a little time to explain what's involved in solving the problem. If the rep's proposed fix would break something else that's near and dear to her (the comp system?), that should definitely be pointed out.
The really frustrating part from the Home Offices perspective is the fact that, God Forbid, you rush the fix and get it wrong. The complaining will be unbearable.
So the trick is to make everyone understand that you, as a company, would rather do it right than fast but also disabuse us of the notion that Home Office folks spend all their time in meetings, accomplishing little.
To the rep, where everything has to be done right now (calls, sales, closes) waiting sucks and since reps for the most part run their own little shows, when something needs to be tweaked we can just do it on the fly. We just don't understand what takes so long, especially when the solution is obvious.
Two ways to combat this are to : 1) as often as possible, fix the little problems as soon as possible, immediately if you can, so that it doesn't appear as if the organization is paralyzed and 2) take a little time to explain what's involved in solving the problem. If the rep's proposed fix would break something else that's near and dear to her (the comp system?), that should definitely be pointed out.
The really frustrating part from the Home Offices perspective is the fact that, God Forbid, you rush the fix and get it wrong. The complaining will be unbearable.
So the trick is to make everyone understand that you, as a company, would rather do it right than fast but also disabuse us of the notion that Home Office folks spend all their time in meetings, accomplishing little.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
We sell - What?
Do you remember Donald Rumsfeld's "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you want"? Please remember that saying when you're hiring sales reps. My point - don't hire sales reps for things you want to sell, hire reps for things you actually do sell. More than once, I've been interviewed for sales positions and been told that the company wants to go after "Fortune 500" size clients and we have this and that product and/or capability. However, after doing a little DD, it became apparent that there was no way either of these companies had the capabilities required for those size clients.
The two firms had different reasons for their actions and so in the interest of clarity, I'll explain them.
The first was a recently-acquired subsidiary of a huge corporation and, naturally, the bug was placed in someone's ear that cross-selling was a good thing and ought to be pursued. As it turns out, the subsidiary that was going to hire me was once a company that specialized in small business, but had been bought by a larger firm and in turn the two of them were both swallowed by a huge multi-national. Since the mother ship had always dealt with firms it's own size, they just naturally assumed that it's new acquisitions would be able to do the same. Unfortunately all the employees of this subsidiary, their training, mindset, and more importantly their systems were all geared for small clients. It's not that they were never going to get there but they needed to do a lot of infrastructure work and employee training in order to do it. They did, in fact, do some elephant-hunting in conjunction with their larger brethren for a while and failed miserably. Cross-selling has been tabled for now.
The second firm was moving into a different facet of it's business with a different client base and didn't do enough research to find out product differences that were industry standard among it's new prospects. When you are a new player in an industry and show that you don't really know what every one else is doing, or why, or how the client is affected, it makes the whole sales process a horrible sight. Worse, they didn't know what they didn't know and so the new reps were led to believe that the company had it's act together. When the skin was peeled back on procedures and processes, it was "WTF?",
Now maybe you're just saying that these are isolated instances. I don't think so; there is much anecdotal information about firms entering markets and failing miserably because they were unprepared to handle the needs of that market.
Hiring a rep to sell to clients you have no business going after does a disservice to the rep, damage to their reputation and to the credibility to your firm. Yes, there are always new markets we would like to get into but before you hire someone to crack them, make sure you do your homework to make sure you have the systems and deliverables to make your foray a success. If you do hire a rep that's knowledgeable in a market you want to get into and want them to help you do it, make sure to adjust their sales quota until you are ready to deliver the goods.
The two firms had different reasons for their actions and so in the interest of clarity, I'll explain them.
The first was a recently-acquired subsidiary of a huge corporation and, naturally, the bug was placed in someone's ear that cross-selling was a good thing and ought to be pursued. As it turns out, the subsidiary that was going to hire me was once a company that specialized in small business, but had been bought by a larger firm and in turn the two of them were both swallowed by a huge multi-national. Since the mother ship had always dealt with firms it's own size, they just naturally assumed that it's new acquisitions would be able to do the same. Unfortunately all the employees of this subsidiary, their training, mindset, and more importantly their systems were all geared for small clients. It's not that they were never going to get there but they needed to do a lot of infrastructure work and employee training in order to do it. They did, in fact, do some elephant-hunting in conjunction with their larger brethren for a while and failed miserably. Cross-selling has been tabled for now.
The second firm was moving into a different facet of it's business with a different client base and didn't do enough research to find out product differences that were industry standard among it's new prospects. When you are a new player in an industry and show that you don't really know what every one else is doing, or why, or how the client is affected, it makes the whole sales process a horrible sight. Worse, they didn't know what they didn't know and so the new reps were led to believe that the company had it's act together. When the skin was peeled back on procedures and processes, it was "WTF?",
Now maybe you're just saying that these are isolated instances. I don't think so; there is much anecdotal information about firms entering markets and failing miserably because they were unprepared to handle the needs of that market.
Hiring a rep to sell to clients you have no business going after does a disservice to the rep, damage to their reputation and to the credibility to your firm. Yes, there are always new markets we would like to get into but before you hire someone to crack them, make sure you do your homework to make sure you have the systems and deliverables to make your foray a success. If you do hire a rep that's knowledgeable in a market you want to get into and want them to help you do it, make sure to adjust their sales quota until you are ready to deliver the goods.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Everybody knows Sales, right?
Everybody knows Salespeople – they’re everywhere, and everybody thinks they know what Salespeople do. Now your experience with Salespeople probably depends on what sort of experiences you’ve had with them. Everybody’s got a Bad Car Salesperson experience, and a boring Insurance Salesperson experience and I’m pretty sure nobody likes telemarketers. Having been in Sales for a really long time, I dislike sleazy Sales folks as much as, maybe more than, the next guy. But if you deal with professional Salespeople in your working life you know that Sales is what makes the business world go ‘round.
In business, the problem is that everybody knows Salespeople, but very few people who aren’t in Sales don’t know what Salespeople really do. Since, as someone much smarter than me once said, “Nothing happens in business until someone sells something”, not knowing how that happens is a problem.
If you went to Business School, you learned about lots of interesting things and one of those things was Revenue (often referred to as the “Top Line”) and obviously, Profit (the “Bottom Line”) and one of the big items between those two Lines is something called the “Cost of Sales”. Now your Salesforce isn’t all of that line item but it can be, and usually is, a big chunk. My question (and Tom Peter’s question and a bunch of other folks question) is – since the Sales job is both the major driver of Revenue and a large chunk of Cost, how come they don’t take more time explaining what, exactly, the job of Sales is? And I don’t mean “the job of Sales is to produce Revenue”, I mean “what do Salespeople do and how does one help them better produce Revenue”. I mean if, as a businessperson, your job is to maximize Revenue & Profits, how can you not know, intimately, how those things are produced?
This blog is an outline of a textbook that will attempt to rectify some of the shortcomings of the b-school curriculum by providing a firm appreciation of what Salespeople bring to an organization.
Because, like it or not, businesses live or die by the sales force.
In business, the problem is that everybody knows Salespeople, but very few people who aren’t in Sales don’t know what Salespeople really do. Since, as someone much smarter than me once said, “Nothing happens in business until someone sells something”, not knowing how that happens is a problem.
If you went to Business School, you learned about lots of interesting things and one of those things was Revenue (often referred to as the “Top Line”) and obviously, Profit (the “Bottom Line”) and one of the big items between those two Lines is something called the “Cost of Sales”. Now your Salesforce isn’t all of that line item but it can be, and usually is, a big chunk. My question (and Tom Peter’s question and a bunch of other folks question) is – since the Sales job is both the major driver of Revenue and a large chunk of Cost, how come they don’t take more time explaining what, exactly, the job of Sales is? And I don’t mean “the job of Sales is to produce Revenue”, I mean “what do Salespeople do and how does one help them better produce Revenue”. I mean if, as a businessperson, your job is to maximize Revenue & Profits, how can you not know, intimately, how those things are produced?
This blog is an outline of a textbook that will attempt to rectify some of the shortcomings of the b-school curriculum by providing a firm appreciation of what Salespeople bring to an organization.
Because, like it or not, businesses live or die by the sales force.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
The 7 Types of Sales People
It’s a mistake to assume that a sales force is homogeneous, since sales people come in unlimited flavors but they can be generally classified into a few discernible categories:
• the Sales Pro – this is what people think of as the prototypical “can sell ice to Eskimos” sales person. They are sociable, aggressive, energetic and can remember names, faces & birthdays. They will ask the CEO’s secretary about her daughter’s soccer game and be interested in the answer. This type of rep is also why many people think they can’t be in sales. They generally know enough about the products to make the high points sing in a particular sales situation, but aren’t usually all that technically proficient, and will call in an expert to explain the details. To these reps the Sale is the thing, the bigger the better, and they can be extremely tenacious on both sides of the desk. They tend to have very good relationships with rank & file workers inside the company and usually only unload on the higher ups (you).
• the Marriage Broker – this type of rep is an expert at discerning the needs of the buyer and finding just the right person or people to pair them with to address their particular requirements. Rather than being any type of product specialist, they tend to have a good grasp of the company as a whole, your products, strengths and weaknesses and, most importantly, potential market opportunities. These are usually the reps who bring in the largest but most complicated deals. “I’ve got a guy over at GM who can hook us up if we can figure out how to give him 2 million 2 3/16” glommets in 3 days.”
• the Technician – Technicians know the product inside and out, what it can and cannot do and what all their competitor’s products can & cannot do. Many technicians are the experts in the product line for their location, help the others in their office and often get calls from people even if they don’t own (or want) your particular brand. These folks often come from the ranks of engineers, underwriters or other internal product specialists. Technical sales reps are successful because their clients know and trust them to have the best and most current information to address their needs.
• the Schmoozer – generally, the exact opposite of the Technician. This is a pure people person tending to be light on in-depth product knowledge but pretty good at golf and knowing where to eat. These folks are very good at putting clients at ease, getting to know the movers and shakers and zeroing in on decision-makers. Unfortunately, Schmoozers can sometimes over-promise in an effort to make the client like them.
• the Service Pro - often comes from the ranks of those they’re selling to. They know the pain of implementation, of using products that don’t perform as advertised and most importantly the job pressures faced by the person using the product. They empathize, they research, they explain, they hand-hold. Service pros are successful because buyers believe that the rep will make sure that the product does what it’s promised to do or die trying.
• Sad Sack – “Woe is me!”. Nothing is ever this person’s fault – the product is lousy, the Customer is an idiot, the guys on the factory floor screwed up the order, it’s raining. Not to be confused with:
• the Annoying Ass – unfortunately, at any given time every organization has one (hopefully not more than one) of these. The main characteristic of this type of rep is his inability to take “No” for an answer, constantly calling folks who have no interest in buying your product (or at least in buying from this rep) and offering little to the purchasing community save tenacity. This person generally doesn’t know a lot except product specifications and doesn’t know how the product can help the particular customer, but does know that he needs the sale. The general sales approach of the Annoying Ass is “show up and throw up” where the rep unloads a litany of product features and specifications, rather than spend any time actually, you know, finding out what the client needs or wants.
Any others you can think of?
• the Sales Pro – this is what people think of as the prototypical “can sell ice to Eskimos” sales person. They are sociable, aggressive, energetic and can remember names, faces & birthdays. They will ask the CEO’s secretary about her daughter’s soccer game and be interested in the answer. This type of rep is also why many people think they can’t be in sales. They generally know enough about the products to make the high points sing in a particular sales situation, but aren’t usually all that technically proficient, and will call in an expert to explain the details. To these reps the Sale is the thing, the bigger the better, and they can be extremely tenacious on both sides of the desk. They tend to have very good relationships with rank & file workers inside the company and usually only unload on the higher ups (you).
• the Marriage Broker – this type of rep is an expert at discerning the needs of the buyer and finding just the right person or people to pair them with to address their particular requirements. Rather than being any type of product specialist, they tend to have a good grasp of the company as a whole, your products, strengths and weaknesses and, most importantly, potential market opportunities. These are usually the reps who bring in the largest but most complicated deals. “I’ve got a guy over at GM who can hook us up if we can figure out how to give him 2 million 2 3/16” glommets in 3 days.”
• the Technician – Technicians know the product inside and out, what it can and cannot do and what all their competitor’s products can & cannot do. Many technicians are the experts in the product line for their location, help the others in their office and often get calls from people even if they don’t own (or want) your particular brand. These folks often come from the ranks of engineers, underwriters or other internal product specialists. Technical sales reps are successful because their clients know and trust them to have the best and most current information to address their needs.
• the Schmoozer – generally, the exact opposite of the Technician. This is a pure people person tending to be light on in-depth product knowledge but pretty good at golf and knowing where to eat. These folks are very good at putting clients at ease, getting to know the movers and shakers and zeroing in on decision-makers. Unfortunately, Schmoozers can sometimes over-promise in an effort to make the client like them.
• the Service Pro - often comes from the ranks of those they’re selling to. They know the pain of implementation, of using products that don’t perform as advertised and most importantly the job pressures faced by the person using the product. They empathize, they research, they explain, they hand-hold. Service pros are successful because buyers believe that the rep will make sure that the product does what it’s promised to do or die trying.
• Sad Sack – “Woe is me!”. Nothing is ever this person’s fault – the product is lousy, the Customer is an idiot, the guys on the factory floor screwed up the order, it’s raining. Not to be confused with:
• the Annoying Ass – unfortunately, at any given time every organization has one (hopefully not more than one) of these. The main characteristic of this type of rep is his inability to take “No” for an answer, constantly calling folks who have no interest in buying your product (or at least in buying from this rep) and offering little to the purchasing community save tenacity. This person generally doesn’t know a lot except product specifications and doesn’t know how the product can help the particular customer, but does know that he needs the sale. The general sales approach of the Annoying Ass is “show up and throw up” where the rep unloads a litany of product features and specifications, rather than spend any time actually, you know, finding out what the client needs or wants.
Any others you can think of?
Monday, October 30, 2006
The Rep is Your Company
To the outside world we not only work for you, we are you.
It’s extremely important that you and everyone else in your organization remember that, to customers, your salesperson is your company. Yes, this is a cliché and everyone knows it, but on a day-to-day basis this fact is overlooked all the time. In the real world of professional sales where your representatives (note the word) are calling on and selling to other professionals, we are Sony, we are Blue Cross, we are Conde Nast, we are Stanley Tools and how the client’s experience goes with us, the sale and it’s implementation, goes their experience with Sony, Blue Cross, Conde Nast, etc.
Now that you’ve got that message, what does this mean on a practical level? What it means is that you may have thousands of employees, a well-known brand and spend millions on advertising but, on an individual customer basis, none of that matters if we can’t deliver what we promise.
So there are two lessons here: 1. your company should be organized around delivering what your sales reps promise and 2. you’d better have sales reps you trust enough that delivering on our promises doesn’t become a problem. If you can’t trust us to make realistic, reasonable and, ultimately, profitable promises, you shouldn’t have us.
The inability to follow through on a promise, ugly or confusing marketing pieces, bad customer service, mistakes and delays in the delivered order – all these things reflect badly on your person in the field and, therefore, the company. It’s the sales rep’s inability to control, manage and foresee these glitches that is the most frustrating aspect of a rep’s life. Yes, we’ll bitch and moan when something goes sideways, but you’ve got to let us know as soon as humanly possible that something we’ve promised is delayed or sidetracked.
It’s fairly common practice for Home Office folks to assume that the sales rep can, and should, just go back and change something previously promised. This is not easy and can damage the long-term credibility of the rep and, really, that’s all we’ve got.
Your brand, your products and your service can go a long way to having your client be committed to your organization, but in the end it’s the rep whose relationships can make or break the client’s bond with you.
It’s extremely important that you and everyone else in your organization remember that, to customers, your salesperson is your company. Yes, this is a cliché and everyone knows it, but on a day-to-day basis this fact is overlooked all the time. In the real world of professional sales where your representatives (note the word) are calling on and selling to other professionals, we are Sony, we are Blue Cross, we are Conde Nast, we are Stanley Tools and how the client’s experience goes with us, the sale and it’s implementation, goes their experience with Sony, Blue Cross, Conde Nast, etc.
Now that you’ve got that message, what does this mean on a practical level? What it means is that you may have thousands of employees, a well-known brand and spend millions on advertising but, on an individual customer basis, none of that matters if we can’t deliver what we promise.
So there are two lessons here: 1. your company should be organized around delivering what your sales reps promise and 2. you’d better have sales reps you trust enough that delivering on our promises doesn’t become a problem. If you can’t trust us to make realistic, reasonable and, ultimately, profitable promises, you shouldn’t have us.
The inability to follow through on a promise, ugly or confusing marketing pieces, bad customer service, mistakes and delays in the delivered order – all these things reflect badly on your person in the field and, therefore, the company. It’s the sales rep’s inability to control, manage and foresee these glitches that is the most frustrating aspect of a rep’s life. Yes, we’ll bitch and moan when something goes sideways, but you’ve got to let us know as soon as humanly possible that something we’ve promised is delayed or sidetracked.
It’s fairly common practice for Home Office folks to assume that the sales rep can, and should, just go back and change something previously promised. This is not easy and can damage the long-term credibility of the rep and, really, that’s all we’ve got.
Your brand, your products and your service can go a long way to having your client be committed to your organization, but in the end it’s the rep whose relationships can make or break the client’s bond with you.
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