Jim Keenan is a Senior Sales Executive, Enterprise 2.0/Web 2.0 Connector, an Entrepreneur still trying to get it right, and a PSIA Certified Ski Instructor for Vail Resorts. Husband to Big E and father to four great kids. In a nut shell, I'm a Sales Guy. Life is good!
Lou Gerstner said, “I came to see in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game — it is the game.”
Culture is a fancy way to describe how a group of people act. Every group, community, household, team, has a culture. Get people together and they will start acting a like. It’s how we are wired.
The hard part isn’t having a culture it’s creating one that aligns with what your trying to get done.
Organizations can’t succeed without the right culture. The right culture means everyone is acting right towards the goal.
Plans, strategies, processes, customer service, sales, all require us to act. How we act is the culture. Build the best plan, have the best product, recruit the best people, it won’t matter without the organization acting right towards the goals.
Lou was spot on. If you want a killer company, a killer sales force, a killer call center, start and end with the culture. It dictates how we behave and success comes from the sum of our behaviors.
The Weather Channel said it was 40 degrees out. That is too cold to play outside. I decided to take the girls to an indoor play place.
Outside we went, coats and all. As we stepped out into the sun, it became clear. It was warmer than 40 degrees. It was more like 55 and felt like 60 plus. We left the indoor play area after an hour and played outside.
Sales has it’s Weather Channel. It’s the CRM systems. It’s the pipeline. It’s the dashboard. It’s the metrics watched, and fretted over everyday. Like the Weather Channel, sales systems and metrics only tell part of the story. They take all the data, add it up and tell you what’s going on.
But also like the Weather Channel, sales systems can be wrong. The only way to know what exactly is going on is to get outside and see.
To know what’s happening with your sales team, you have to get outside. Dashboards, CRM, sales processes, and spread sheets only tell us so much. The rest comes from experience, and that only comes from feeling the rain drops, the sun, the wind and the snow. It may or may NOT be what the Weather Channel is telling you.
Sales teams need to be fixed; they stop performing, the market changes, the company launches new products, the team becomes complacent, the organization grows too fast and becomes beauracratic. There are a number of reasons why sales organizations need to be fixed.
If the sales team is broken, there are two places to look to fix it, the environment or the people. How to determine where the problem lies traditionally escapes sales leaders. Sales management culture almost always makes it a people problem.
The three areas were sales organizations break are the systems and processes, the people, and the activities the team focuses on.
If you want to fix your team assess what is hapening in these areas.
Systems and processes is a situation problem, not a people problem. People are people problems and the activities the people focus on could be either.
To get it right evaluate all three.
Does the CRM System make it easy to manage an account? Are good training and educational systems in place? Does the sales process enable sales? Are the systems the problem?
Are the right people in place? Do they have the skills necessary for the job? Is there a talent gap? Is the sales team hunters when it needs to be farmers? Does the team have the right people on it?
Is the team doing what it’s supposed to? Is it making enough cold calls? Is it spending more time doing admin work than selling. Is the team partnering or playing lone wolf? Is the team engaging in the right activities?
To fix a sales team the right levers have to be pulled. Evaluate each of the areas independently. Sometimes it’s a people problem,sometimes it’s a behavior problem, sometimes it’s a situation problem. Sales leaders need to know which it is. Not knowing makes it a people problem.
In Ancient China Confucius praised filial piety; the dutiful attention to the needs of ones family elders, especially parents and grandparents.
The Han Dynasty (200 BC-200 AD) took filial piety to a new level. Those who had the greatest reputations for filial piety were awarded choice government appointments. To gain a reputation worthy of such appointments men would perform exaggerated acts, such as refusing to end their mourning of their parents. Getting to the court of Han and getting a job of stature meant performing the virtues of filial piety at tremendous heights and this is exactly what the men of Han did.
The Han dynasty rewarded filial piety and that’s what they got.
Sales is no different. You get exactly what you reward for. The problem is most organizations don’t reward the actions they want.
Companies offer commissions, or “choice appointments” but they don’t align. They pay commissions on sales to all customers, when what they need are new customers. The result; no new customer sales. They pay the same commissions on all products when they’ve just launched a new product. The result; no new product sales.
Sales people follow the money. They are not going to read between the lines. They will move in the direction of reward.
What are you trying to sell? How do you want people to act?
Rewards and commissions are how you ask people to do things. Reward the behaviors that are important. Commission the things you want the team to sell.
You will get exactly what you ask for whether it’s what you want or not.
Glen Plake is a free spirit. He is a guy who has been changing the world of skiing from the inside out. He’s done it, not by winning gold medals, or Winter X games, but by traveling from ski hill to ski hill hanging out with the people that make them run; not the CEO’s, but the dishwashers, and the busboys; the best skiers on the hill that no one knows about.
I remember watching his first big movie; Greg Stumps, Blizzard of Ahhs! It was in stark contrast to the mainstream, conventional ski videos by Warren Miller. They pushed the limits. They were rough, no frills, extreme skiing movies, that got to the raw essence of what its like to strap two wooden boards to your feet and ski the ungroomed, untamed, natural terrain provided by mother nature.
The Glen Plakes of the world force us to remember what it is we do and why we do it. They don’t allow the conventional to anchor us in the mundane. They push the envelope and challenge what we accept as the norm. They remind us that it’s the dishwashers; not those in the big offices that make our world run and in many cases they know a lot more about our business than we do.
Is there a Glen Plake in the world of business? I can think of a few, but I think there need to be more. They keep us honest and this is exactly the kind of leadership we need.
My friend Jen Ward wrote a post the other day about how to change behavior. It had this great quote in it;
“sales reps need to become comfortable with making others uncomfortable.”
I agree with her.
Someone also agreed with her and left this comment.
“This makes sense. I rarely ever push for a sale from a client, yet I routinely see companies who do a lower level of quality take sales away from me because they push the clients really hard. I’ve ended up with many clients who went with someone else to build their site and then a year later came back to me to fix what the first company did. Pretty much, all of my business comes from recommendations from previous clients or people I have already worked with.
I have a client today that is struggling with the decision to rebuild his 8 year old simplistic website (and poor artwork) with a well designed site able to handle all of the features he wants. Money doesn’t seem to be a factor. He is nervous with change. It’s summed up with “The unknown is scary”.
There are tons of “opportunities” in this comment. My coaching side just wants to take over. I can see a bunch of ways “Toff” could improve the way she sells.
Sales can’t be commoditized. Sales isn’t paint by the number. There isn’t a one size fits all.
Sales is a giant “if then” statement.
Every sales is a series of questions. Each question taking you down a different road, until you come to the end; with a sale or with out a sale.
Every customer has different needs. Every customer has a different environment. Every customer has different objectives.
Creating one size fits all in anything leaves out the unique, those with special circumstances. In sales; everything is special circumstances. Sales lives in this space, thriving on the uniqueness.
Sales is not a paint by numbers profession. It’s “if then.”
“If this, then this” tells you what to do in a particular, specific situation and that is exactly what your customer is looking for.
They take your call. They golf with you. Dinner happens at least once a quarter. You have a badge to headquarters. They give you a chance to bid on most deals, especially the small ones. The customer likes you and that’s why they do business with you.
Or
They call and ask you what you think. They don’t move forward on big investments without getting your input. They don’t just ask you to bid on deals, they ask you to help write the RFP. They see you as part of the organization; a key holder of information. They consult with you. The customer respects your knowledge and expertise and that’s why they do business with you.
The first relationships is about who you are. The second relationships is about what you can do.
Innovation in sales was the topic during this weeks Sales Smack event. The question was; “Does sales need innovation?” It was suggested that we have been doing the same old things for the past 50+ years and little has changed.
I look at sales in 3 stages; access, influence and delivery. I think there has been a fair amount of innovation in the first and last stages. With the advent of tools, like social media, CRM, and the productivity gains from the internet, computing etc., there has been tremendous innovation in gaining access to prospects and decision makers as well as improving our delivery capabilities. Where I struggled with innovation in sales was in the meat of sales; the influence.
Influence is where sales happens. The influence stage is where we “influence” the buyers decision. Those who are best at influencing the buyer win.
I didn’t see any innovation in this area. To me, the methods hadn’t changed in a long time. Influence had always been, build the relationship, solve problems, understand the issues etc. To me, it’s always been an information, problem solving game. That is until Sales Smack.
During Sales Smack Jill Konrath and S. Anthony Iannarino threw out a few things that got my attention. Jill said, sales has lacked a culture of “thinking” and organizations who provide training around thinking are seeing results. Anthony suggested it’s no longer OK to “pitch” (which I have always agreed with) but sales people have to be diverse in their expertise. Beyond being sales people they have to be engineers, CEO’s, finance people, marketers etc. To be a great sales person your skills have to be far more expansive than just being a magnanimous, articulate, jovial personality.
I think they are on to something. Sales Smack has altered my opinion a little. Innovation in the influence stage of selling needs to target the behaviors of the sales people. Innovation in the influence stage is going to come from the psychology of buying habits and decision making coupled with training to instill new selling behaviors in sales people.
Critical thinking skills and broad skill enhancements are for sure two ways sales is innovating. Organizations that leverage these innovative approaches in their organization through training will have a competitive advantage.
I struggled to see where sales has been innovating, especially in the influence stage. Sales Smack gave me a smack and it’s a little more clear. Now, I’d like to see more.
Do you see more innovation in sales?
Check out the entire discussion, folks were throwing down some good stuff:
Fred Wilson wrote a great post the other day called, Role Models. In it he talked about the importance of role models for young entrepreneurs who are just starting out. I agree with him. No one makes it alone. Having a mentor can make all the difference.
Mentors are hard to come by. It’s not like they have a Walmart for mentors.
The mentor/mentee relation can take time to develop. Other times it’s a simple introduction. Despite how they are developed they are normally off-line, face to face, personal, relationships. One of the most difficult parts of finding a mentor is access. Successful, accomplished experts are hard to come by.
Fred’s post got me thinking. Social media is providing a new type of mentor, a “social mentor.”
Social media provides the two critical pieces of mentorship; access and information.
Mentorship is about providing guidance, experience, knowledge and support. Social media, through it’s blogs, comments, Tweets, Fan Pages and more allows an informal mentorship to take place. Blogs share experiences and information. The comments allow readers to ask questions. Overtime, the author and regular commentators build a relationship. The author becomes responsive to his or her regular readers and provides provocative, informative, answers to their questions. The same applies to other social media sites. The experts engage with the novices and share their experience and knowledge. Bang! A “social mentor” relationship is created.
I’ve seen examples of this all over the web. The best example I’ve seen is Fred’s blog. Fred writes great informative posts everyday. He receives 100’s of comments on those posts. He has a good following of regular commentators who comment often; asking questions, and engaging with Fred. I can’t prove it, but I’d be willing to bet a number of these people see Fred as an informal mentor.
Social media is changing a lot of things. How we define mentors is one of them.
Nothing will replace the power and benefits of an offline mentor/mentee relationship. But where it used to be all or nothing, social media is creating a very happy and beneficial medium.
I’m beginning to find a number of social mentors. What about you? Who are yours?
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