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Thinking: A “New” Old Skill for Sales

By Jack Malcolm / 10.29.2013 / 1 Comment

It is the #1 skill for salespeople.

I got the idea for this post while reading Dave Brock’s post about the importance of letting salespeople think, and the latest HBR offering from Matt Dixon and co., “Dismantling the Sales Machine”. Both articles were addressed to sales management, urging them to allow salespeople to use their own judgment.

While I agree with both of them, it’s important to stress that the individual salesperson also has a personal obligation to make sure that they are properly using their most important selling tool.

It reminded me of a story that Richard Feynman, one of the brightest and most interesting scientific figures of the 20^th century, told in his memoirs, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman! (Adventures of a Curious Character).

When Feynman was a kid, he was one of those bright nerds that liked to figure out how things worked, and he taught himself how to take apart and fix radios, which in the 1930s were cumbersome boxes full of vacuum tubes and electrical components. He quickly developed a reputation for his skill, and friends of his parents would pay him to come over and repair their radios. Most of the fixes were pretty easy, but one day a man showed him a radio that would make an ear-splitting noise when it was first turned on, but then gradually begin working normally.

Feynman listened carefully, but rather than opening the back of the radio, he then began to pace around the room. After a couple of minutes, the man impatiently asked what he was doing. “I’m thinking,” Feynman replied. What he was doing was trying to imagine what could cause the problem. He finally figured out that the tubes were getting power and heating up in the wrong order, so he opened the radio, rearranged them, and it worked perfectly.

Feynman said the man became his greatest word of mouth advertiser. He went around telling people the kid was a genius, saying “He fixes radios by thinking!” He never thought it was possible.

I wonder how many customers would think it’s possible for a salesperson to solve their problems by thinking? Most of them probably haven’t seen the feat performed. They tell the salesperson about their problems, but don’t see them hesitate before immediately pitching a one-size-fits-all solution. They encounter sales reps who have read their annual reports, but haven’t turned the knowledge gained into practical insights. They endure presentations that have been clearly cranked out by someone else.

If customers do encounter a salesperson who manifestly thinks before offering a solution, do you suppose they might tell all their friends about it?

Feynman’s story exemplifies analytical thinking, but complex sales require several other forms of thinking in addition. Here are a few, with some questions to help you think about them:

Flexible thinking: Can you thoughtfully plan a sales call, and then scrap the entire plan when an unanticipated problem or opportunity comes up? Can you deviate from company policy in a pinch, and then defend your decision back at the office?

Outside-in thinking: Can you think about the situation, from the customer’s point of view? Can you demonstrate the three levels of empathy? Can you truly listen with your brain and not your ears?

Win-win thinking: Can you figure out strategically how to grow the pie during a negotiation and not just tactically scrap for every sliver? Can you understand your customer’s business deeply enough to offer innovative ways to grow their profits?

Long-term thinking: Can you patiently build and follow an account plan that increases customer profits, builds barriers to entry and solidifies trusting relationships high and wide? Will you pass up the quick strike that is not in the client’s best interest?

Self-aware thinking: Jeff Immelt says you have to be “massively self-aware”. Can you take an honest inventory of your strengths and weaknesses and devise a continuous learning and deliberate practice plan? Do you make it a habit to conduct after-action reviews?

Clear thinking

In Defense of Reason

By Jack Malcolm / 10.28.2013 / 2 Comments

My animal spirits, especially the balance between fear and security, almost prevented me from writing this post, but I had to speak up against the herd when I read Anthony Iannarino’s post this morning: The Animal Spirits in Your Pipeline.

I also realize that my brief article will probably not sway too many people right away, but since I have a longer time preference, I do believe that over time my lonely lobbying in defense of reason may gradually win a few people over.

(If you don’t understand the italicized references, please read Anthony’s article first, then come back. I’ll wait.)

Let me first stress that I don’t disagree with Anthony’s theme, nor most of the details. I do believe, however, that the idea that buyers make decisions emotionally and then rationalize them after the fact is not new (in fact, Greenspan has arrived at the party about 30 years too late, unfortunately for the US economy). It was new in the 1970s when Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, among others, began publishing the results of their experiments, and was a much-needed antidote to the overuse of quantitative methods. We all know how Robert McNamara’s body count mentality in Vietnam worked out. Closer to our times, Greenspan’s dismissal of psychological factors distorted his own decision making and contributed to our current economic mess.

But it seems to me that the pendulum may have swung too far in the other direction. Everyone is on the bandwagon now, which is why stories are touted as a panacea for persuasive presentations, and why people like Robert Cialdini, with his cue-based influence tactics, are seen as the complete answer to persuasive communication. We’re told to sell the sizzle, not the steak, but that only works once if the steak turns out to be crappy.

All animals have animal spirits that determine their behaviors in the circumstances they find themselves in. For every animal but humans, the animal spirits are the only influence on their behaviors and “choices”. But humans are the only animals that have an additional tool to help them make those choices, and the only animals that create the circumstances they find themselves in. It’s true that emotions can affect our rationalizing, but it’s also true in the other direction: reason can affect our emotions. I’ll give you a highly personal example. When I was in my 20s, I had some chronic stomach pain, and went to various doctors to try to determine the cause. Finally, after an unpleasant procedure, the doctor told me he could not find anything physically wrong with me, and that it was probably related to stress. From that moment on, I never had a problem again.

In addition, emotions tend to wear off, but truth endures. That’s one reason that organizations have created buying processes to avoid impulsive decisions.

Moving away from danger and towards security matters a great deal, as Anthony tells us. But once we begin moving, reason can point out the best direction. Emotion moves, but reason directs.

Anthony also says, “all things being equal, relationships win”. I could not agree more. But usually all things are not equal, and reason is the best tool we have for identifying and communicating precisely what those inequalities are, and why they should matter to the person we’re trying to persuade.

My main point is that we still need both. Don’t throw out the baby just yet. If you think you can ride on animal spirits alone, just try making a presentation to a CFO without spreadsheets or ROI calculations. Or try recommending a complex piece of hardware to technical staff with pretty pictures alone.

Presentations - Uncategorized

Deliberate Practice for Presentations

By Jack Malcolm / 10.24.2013 / No Comment

Only 9,999 more hours to go…

I’m going to start this post with a commonly accepted premise: to achieve mastery of a specific skill requires 10,000 hours of deliberate practice. That’s the idea first propounded by expertise expert Anders Ericsson and popularized by Gladwell, Colvin and others.

There are actually a lot of things wrong with taking that statement too literally, but the general idea is not controversial: you have to put in a lot of time, and do a lot of the right things, if you want to reach the top levels of performance.

The problem is that if you want to be a great speaker or presenter, you will probably never have an opportunity in your entire lifetime to accumulate that much time practicing the craft, unless presenting and speaking to groups is practically all you do for a living. Just looking at the math, if you want to put in 10,000 hours in the first twenty years of your career, you’d have to present at least two hours every working day—and doing the same presentation over and over doesn’t count.

Fortunately, the second part of the premise—deliberate practice—is much more important, and it IS something you can control: quality is much more important than time.

Sales

Article Recommendation: Dismantling the Sales Machine

By Jack Malcolm / 10.22.2013 / 3 Comments

Dismantling the Sales Machine, by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon and Nicholas Toman in this month’s Harvard Business Review is a well-timed and well-aimed shot at what has become entrenched “wisdom” in selling today. If you’re in sales management, you should get your hands on the entire article. I would first like to summarize the main points of the article, and then give my own commentary.

The title is a bit misleading. The “machine” they urge to be dismantled is not the sales organization; far from it: sales today is even more important than ever. The machine that should be dismantled is the current sales process. The authors’ first point is that the current fixation on process discipline is broken, and is causing all kinds of woes such as lower margins, longer sales cycles, and less reliable forecasts. The reason is that buyers are engaging suppliers much later in their own process, so that they already have defined their needs and identified available solutions. What remains is a competitive process in which suppliers have little room to do anything but respond as quickly as possible with the lowest possible price. So in order to compete, managers stress strict compliance with sales process and discipline, to give the sales force a chance to respond faster and more efficiently than the competition.

Second, the only way to rise above this squeeze is to change the game by challenging the customers’ thinking and offering unexpected solutions, and this can only be done early in the sales cycle. The emphasis has to go from efficiency of response to the effectiveness of demand creation. While efficiency is best promoted by flowing the shortest distance between two points, there is no one best way to proceed through the sales cycle, so there is a premium on individual judgment and creativity in finding ways to shape the customer’s thinking about the situation.

The hard part, of course, is moving from the first point to the second, and this where sales management has to radically change its approach, in several ways. At the risk of oversimplification, they are:

First, managers need to learn to let go and become facilitators and coaches instead of enforcers, because salespeople who are smart and adaptable sales reps who have the confidence to challenge their customers will not submit to tight command and control.
Because insight-based sales require a longer-term focus, managers need to focus on long-term measurable results rather than a short-term focus on activity, and add value by helping reps think creatively about ways to change their customers’ thinking.
Measurements have to focus on outputs rather than inputs.
Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is no longer enough. Sales forces have to hire for IQ, critical thinking skills and judgment. Their own research shows that only 17% of current sales reps have the competencies needed to succeed.
The climate and incentives also have to change. These types of sales reps are not as “coin-operated” as transactional reps; they will thrive in a climate that provides the intrinsic motivations of autonomy and more meaningful purpose.

Commentary

First of all, I agree with and applaud the general theme of the message. I applaud the emphasis on judgment, critical thinking and creativity on the part of reps. In my more than two decades of sales training, invariably the members of the sales force who stand out are those who go beyond the confines of their job description and see themselves as business problem solvers for their customers.[1] Unfortunately, they haven’t always had the support of their management in their efforts, so the fact that an influential publication such as the HBR gave them a forum for these ideas gives me encouragement that—just maybe—life will become easier for these top salespeople, and by extension better for their customers.

At the same time, I don’t agree that sale processes need to go away. In fact, the authors themselves say, ”Our data do not suggest that process and structure are always bad.” (As in their past writings, they set up a strawman that helps them emphasize their points.) Process should not go away, but it does need to be modified. Sales organizations tend to begin with a general, loosely structured set of activities that emerge from successful sales efforts. When these are used as guidelines they are immensely helpful in disseminating effective practices and bringing up the general level of performance. But good processes go bad because they tend to be evolve into tools for management convenience than for sales effectiveness. They gradually shift their focus toward activities and precise inputs because they are easier to measure and track than more vague outputs and customer agreements. Eventually they become ends in themselves rather than a means to an end, particularly when they are housed in those shrines called CRM systems.

But I digress…the article actually advocates its own “new” process, which differs from the old bad process in two ways. First, the sales funnel should be “customer-verified”, meaning that progress in the sales cycle is tracked by meaningful steps taken by the customer, such as running a pilot application or agreeing that status quo is untenable. Second, process activities need to be front-loaded, so that more work is done early to create the right kind of demand, not simply to respond to it when it’s too late to do anything about it.

Finally, I enjoy it when a new publication comes out from this trio of writers, because they actually do a great job of eating their own dog food. Their entire approach to selling is to provide disruptive insights, and I predict this article will toss a few bombs into more than a few boardrooms. Regardless of whether you agree entirely with what they write, they always make you think, and that’s the whole point, isn’t it?

[1] As a student of military history in my other life, I also find it ironic that the US Army learned about the value of putting judgment into the hands of people out in the field long before most sales forces have.