Category: sales effectiveness

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It’s People!

Over the past couple of weeks, have been fortunate to have had conversations with nearly two dozen C-level execs, about how they choose their business partners (in this case, suppliers). And from this set of conversations, what’s important to them?

  • Is it “price?” Somewhat, but not so much. “Just be in the ballpark.”
  • Mind-blowing technology? Not really. Not so much.
  • Process. Yes, to a degree. Have a plan to show what’s going to get done by when, and how it’s going to get measured.

But, almost across the board, they’ve been saying things that are much more surprising. Talking about “cultural fit” and using words like “comfortable.” Saying they chose Company A over Company B because Company B’s people “put on airs.”

Relationships aren’t dead. Not by a long shot.

Offtopic Shiny Thing: With a headline like that, how could I not link to this?

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Persistent Conversations And Relationships

A few thoughts, continuing the discussion started here.

  • A conversation is a set of exchanges of information.
  • A relationship is an implicit or explicit agreement to have continued conversations in the future.
  • Persistent conversations can form the basis of the relationships between members of a social network.

In the article Managing Long Term Communications: Conversation and Contact Management, the authors note a wide variety of techniques that their interview subjects used in order to remember what they had committed to doing next to hold up their end of the conversation. All of the typical modes you would expect were exhibited: everything from handwritten notes to online diaries to sticky notes to writing crib notes onto body parts (hands, usually, but I s’pose other parts would work as well).

This is where the tools come in. Contact Management or CRM systems, etc., should be used to manage these conversations. But that’s not how these systems are thought of or, frankly, used. Contact management systems are typically used as a Rolodex; stagnant, frozen, and one-dimensional — what are the person’s digits? A subtle shift in thinking, however, leads to show that instead of merely acting as repositories for the mechanical contact aspects (phone number, email address, etc.), these systems could be used to understand where one is in an ongoing conversation, what has been said, who’s turn it is to speak next, and when it should be said. Subtle, but critically important. Most of these systems have the capabilities to track notes…but the big “a-ha!” comes in when those notes are no longer thought of solely as relics to be filed away, but instead are thought of as the “placeholder” in an ongoing dialogue.

Now, that being said, equally important as the ongoing conversation is that same past record of conversations. Why? Because that conversational record may be important to other members of the network. An example, from the Long Term Communications paper:

“We had a housewarming party where we sent out an invitation and gave everybody three by five cards, and they had to come back with a recommendation. Because we moved into the new neighborhood and we didn’t know plumbers or dentists or doctors or anything…All the recommendations are in here. And people know we have this list now, and so they call us up to recommend an X. And so we’re becoming sort of a local knowledge group because we did this at our housewarming.”

So, in this case, the fact that these participants held onto the conversational record transformed the newbies in the neighborhood into the neighborhood experts for all things domestic.

What does this all mean? Once the conversation’s started, keep it going (and know if you have the responsbility to do so). And as it unfolds, know where it has been, as that knowledge can easily be the basis of the next conversation.

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Then Again, Maybe This Would Work If You Were Selling To Squirrels

(or, “Everything That’s Wrong With Sales, All Wrapped Up In One Piece Of Spam From My Inbox”)

Company name changed. Everything else verbatim.

“Build lasting business relationships with Manassas Roadhouse Peanuts!

Have you noticed that as the economy picks up, prospects are harder to reach? A recent study shows that it often takes salespeople seven to ten phone calls to get a prospect to return their call. Manassas Roadhouse offers a better solution. We can help you.

1. Get to new prospects faster, shorten your sales cycle and book more business
2. Establish trust and credibility, before you even get your face-to-face meeting
3. Quickly re-awaken a prospect’s interest in your proposal or lead reluctant customers to take action

Since 1929 our family-owned and operated business has delivered delightful surprises to the taste-buds of our customers around the country. Take a look at the world-class gourmet nut gifts and discover the secret to getting your prospects out of their shells.”

Yes, that’s right. These people are telling us that you can build business relationships…you know, things that take years to develop, are based on mutual trust and respect, collaborative listening, conversations, and the like…by bribing people with salted snack foods (and bad puns, apparently). Greeeeaat.

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Holding Up Your End Of The Conversation (Part 1)

“Fezzik…jog his memory.” – from The Princess Bride

Was tipped off to the BlogPulse “Conversation Tracker” feature today, and yes indeed, it’s nifty. (hat tip: nevon, shel) This is a capability that shows how, where, and when a “conversation” is moving through the blogosphere, by tracking links and how they are disseminated over time. Very sharp.

But then, started thinking more about some of the things discussed here, and started doing some poking around…and tripped across a very interesting bit of research that came out of AT&T within the last couple of years (couldn’t find a pub date in the doc, but some of the cites were as late as 2001, so I’m guessing it was published around ’01 or ’02). Entitled “Managing long term communications: Conversation and Contact Management,” this piece focuses on the different challenges that arise when individuals attempt to have conversations over time, and the coping mechanisms that they employ in order to do so. (No, you’re not the only one who re-sets the “unread” flag on emails in an attempt to remember what to do next.) Fascinating stuff. The key pull-quotes right from the first ‘graph:

“Contact management and conversation management are linked. Many busy professionals discourage voice calls and messages, because email enables them to better manage their time, conversations, and contacts. People also spend large amounts of time transcribing voicemail, browsing email archives and writing todo lists – all of these activities are intended to help track the content and status of outstanding conversations.” (emphasis added)

and

“Key properties of technologically-mediated conversations identified were: (1) they are extended in time, which means (2) people typically engage in multiple concurrent conversations, and (3) conversations often involve multiple participants. These properties led to a significant memory load for our informants: they spoke of the difficulty of keeping tracking of conversational content and status, as well as the identity, contact information, and expertise of their conversational partners.“

Bam. That’s it. That’s the core of what’s wrong with so-called “Customer Relationship Management” or “Contact Management” systems today. It’s not a technology issue. (Well, duh. It rarely is.) It’s a mindset issue.

There needs to be a movement away from the “pipeline” mentality which, by definition, thinks about using a CRM system as solely the means to “manage” the relationship interaction between a customer and a representative as a closed-ended transaction (“the prospect gets to the end of the pipeline, and a discrete, one-time transaction, either a win or a loss, occurs”). Instead, we need to start thinking about these tools (CRM, Sales Force Automation, etc.) as ways to augment our capabilities in remembering where we are in the ongoing conversation with a particular customer.

Update: Conversation continues here.

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Customer Conversation Management?

Doc just served up a softball with this headline:

“Because ‘Customer Relationship Management” is about management more than customers‘

I’m originally from Chicago, where softball is a religion. Where “softball” is anything but. Where the ball is the size of a grapefruit, hard as granite, and gloves are not allowed (do a search on “mallet finger” some time, if you want the full effect).

I know from softball.

And to that headline I say…absofrigginlutely.

Now, “Customer Relationship Management” is typically thought of along the following three dimensions:

  • Sales Force Automation
  • Marketing Automation
  • Customer Support

And Doc is spot-on. It is the rare occasion that any of those three dimensions is considered from the customer’s point of view.

Focus on just the first point, where “Sales Force Automation” is oftentimes equated with “Customer Relationship Management.” And again, the point is spot-on…SFA is about tracking numbers of leads, it’s about “managing the pipeline,” it’s about pushing a customer through the defined selling process of the vendor. It’s not about the customer at all. It’s about management, and quarter-end roll-ups, and “30% probability of closing.”

We’re at a time where we have the opportunity for a fundamental shift in this thinking, even using the same underlying technologies. And here it is:

Vendors: Stop thinking about moving customers through a “pipeline.” Start thinking about holding up your end of the conversation. Literally.

Yes, the “conversation” term is being overused, and runs the risk of becoming a cliche. (And if anyone has a thought of a better way to distill this concept down, please share it.) But there is the opportunity here for a shift in thinking that doesn’t require any change in the underlying technologies that are in place in order to do this.

How do we do this? Start using these types of systems more, but in a totally different way. Start keeping actual track of the actual conversations that you, as an individual, are involved in. Not from an “I checked off these three steps in the selling process” sort of way, but rather in a “here’s what we were talking about” sort of way.

Danah Boyd has pointed out that there is an increasing amount of research being done in the area of how we, as individuals, can use technology to involve ourselves with persistent conversations. And that’s exactly right.

Christopher Allen (and if he’s not on your blogroll right now, you’re missing a lot) states:

“For instance, my experience with most politicians and many salespeople is that I will be forgotten as soon as I leave the room.”

Bingo. And why does that feeling exist? Because those salespeople and politicians are not really embracing the concept of a relationship. A relationship is a series of linked, persistent conversations.

To be involved, one needs to make a commitment to hold up one’s end.

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The Cowards And The Clueless

The CEO Blogger’s Club had a nice bit on “sales people who are afraid to blog.” (hat tip: scoble). The gist of this group of sales folks:

“The first reaction of the sale team was negative, as they are afraid to see their client talking about prices or problems they might have when using company’s product, rather then sharing together feedback that might be much more constructive and usefull for the sale team itself.

What better CRM tool can we provide than a blog to get immediate inputs, feedback from users ? If a company has to choose one single kind of public to talk to , who should it choose ? Client of course. And who speaks to the client: sales team.”

I agree. Hang it out there. Learn. Listen to what the customer has to say. Implement the suggestions if they make sense. Say “no” if they don’t, and then explain why. Have a rational discussion.

Now, there are some sales people who are blogging…and who I would be hard-pressed to do business with. From a quick skim of his blog, Frank Rumbauskas appears to be one of those people. Don’t know him, never met the guy…but I was so put off by this piece that simply seethed with utter disregard for his customers that he’d have a hard time ever gaining my trust:

“Not in my house. My company gets calls all day long from people who want extra guarantees, names and numbers of references, previews of my book, etc etc before they buy. Instead of catering to these people, my customer service reps are instructed to say, “I’m sorry, but we cannot provide that. If you feel that way then don’t buy it.” Why? Because I would lose money having my staff spend time on these people.

When I sold telephone systems there were those customers who paid full price and those who drove hard bargains and wound up negotiating the price very low. Guess what – the customers who paid full price had my full attention whenever they needed help. I was always happy to drive out to their offices to assist them. Those who got deep discounts were simply told to call the 800 number. Not my job, sorry.”

I read this and I think “this guy is out for the quick buck, not the relationship.” I think “he’s trying to sell units of whatever he’s selling, he’s not trying to help me solve my problem.” I think “he’s not trying to partner with me. He’s not going to be there for me down the road, he’s going to be thinking about whoever his next ‘big kill’ is.”

I also note that he has trackbacks turned off. Pity. He might not even know this conversation is taking place.

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Killing Marketing As We Know It

I love how SUN’s President & COO, Jonathan Schwartz, dispenses with the boring, uber-sterile traditional glossy marketing approach and just tells customers what’s going on.

For example, the organization has recently begun selling their systems directly on eBay. Instead of overdone PR, he states what they are doing, why they are doing it, and how it affects their strategy, customers, and partners (and, not incidently, this move also gives them perfect information on the true market price of their systems). Schwartz also uses it as a bully pulpit to raise doubts about SUN’s competitors. He also dimisses a minor confidentiality leak that took place when the marching orders he gave ended up on a t-shirt wearing dog.

What SUN has done goes beyond simply giving their fromage grand a microphone, however. They actually have set up an environment that is is accessible to any Sun employee to write about anything. Sports. Music. One of their bloggers, “Mary,” even states “I use this blog to explicitly and without apology market to you.”

SUN is in the process of killing Marketing as we know it and, in the process, is getting closer to their customers

(thanks to Rick Klau for the lead)

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Sales Effectiveness Increases In Importance

Today’s CRM Daily has a great article on the increasing (re-)focus on sales effectiveness with respect to Sales Force Automation and CRM.

According to the article, derived from data collected by the Yankee Group, sales people are most concerned with:

  • increasing the rate of deal closure
  • decreasing costs
  • improving solution selling

Also stated in the article was that, from the sales person’s perspective, “reducing administrative burdens falls nearly at the bottom of their list.”