Carrots aren’t just for salespeople
In the first two articles of this series, we addressed two major stumbling blocks to getting technical staff to sell: making it acceptable and accessible to them. In other words, showing them why it’s OK to “sell”, and why it’s not some mysterious skill that is beyond their capabilities. These first two steps can be seen as removing negatives; the final piece is to make appealing, so that they have positive reasons to actively be on the lookout for sales opportunities.
The following ideas, you will notice, actually apply to any change management initiative within an organization. When the change is substantive, it’s never enough to run an event, such as training, and then expect complete and lasting change. It has to be embedded into the fabric of the business, to use an elegant term suggested by my friend Dave Brock. In fact, I owe some of the specific points below to an enlightening conversation on this topic that I had with him this morning. (It’s hard to tease out the respective credit, but the parts that sound unusually cogent are most likely his.)
Make it part of the regular conversation. It’s one thing for managers to tell their technical staff that they should be alert for opportunities within their client accounts, but it’s quite another for those managers to include the topic on the agenda of their regular project management meetings, or to ask the questions that keep engineers focused just a little bit wider than their day jobs. On occasion, technical staff may be brought in to participate in account planning workshops. You won’t want to pull them away from their day jobs for all the meetings, of course, but it helps to remind them of the larger context that they are key contributors to.
Measure the right things. Ultimately, you tend to get what you inspect and what you pay for. You can measure new projects or opportunities, or heightened profitability in existing projects through change orders and scope extensions. Unfortunately, measurements and compensation can also distort performance and lead to unintended consequences, so you have to calibrate the measurements of observable behaviors carefully. For example, one such measure could be the number of referrals to members of the formal sales organization. It has to be a solid hand-off, in which the engineer uses her access to the right people to facilitate an introduction, but then there should also be a clear understanding that the salesperson takes the ball and runs with it from there, so that their engineering objectivity and integrity are kept intact. For the same reason, I’m uncomfortable with formal quotas—but there’s nothing wrong with making sales measurements a formal component of performance appraisals.
Compensate accordingly. It may seem hard to believe, but salespeople aren’t the only people who respond to incentives. Again, without subtracting from their performance of their core duties, you want to incentivize them for new projects and for profitability. Project managers on professional services contracts can be a crucial factor in the profitability of the project, so it pays to keep them attuned to it. Also, don’t forget that there are non-monetary ways to motivate people, such as giving credit and recognition where it is earned.
Finally, if you want engineers to have your back, make sure you have theirs. To paraphrase Kennedy: “Ask not what your engineers can do for you—ask what you can do for your engineers.” What can you on the sales side do to help make their jobs easier, such as use your influence at the right levels to manage difficult clients, or to avoid making unrealistic promises that they may be blamed for not fulfilling?
Part 1 of this series dealt with making selling acceptable by removing the “ick factor” about selling from the minds of engineers and technical staff. While that’s an essential start, it’s just as important to take the mystery out of the selling process for them. No one will enthusiastically jump into an activity that they don’t think they can succeed in. (In fact, I suspect that some of the high-minded criticism that engineers make about selling is meant to hide the fact that they’re afraid to try.)
There are three general points that will make selling more accessible and easier to grasp for technically-minded people who are new to it:
Sales is a process. While sales may not be as predictable as a physical system, in general all sales opportunities follow a pattern, in which specific inputs yield predictable outputs. The pattern is founded on how clients make decisions to invest in new solutions—they go through clear mental and organizational steps in becoming aware of needs, searching for solutions, deciding to act, etc. Processes can be codified, learned, and applied, and as I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, engineers and technical staff are frequently in closer daily contact with the client and thus better positioned to participate early in the process.
The sales conversation is an extension of a problem-solving discussion. The first way to make selling accessible to engineers builds off the point made in part 1 of this series: selling is about solving problems for customers. Engineers are good at finding and solving problems, so it’s not a huge leap from what they’re already doing. They find problems by first, asking questions about what the client wants to achieve, and what’s working and what’s not; second, by diagnosing the problem and finally by recommending a solution. So far, that’s exactly what consultative salespeople do. Where they go further is in asking questions to bring out the cost or impact of the problem, which increases urgency to solve it, and in getting the client involved in suggesting the logical solution. This type of questioning, of course, is just another process that can be learned.
Sales is not just for extraverts. You don’t have to be loud, gregarious, and attention-seeking to succeed in sales. In fact, for complex systems sales too much extraversion can be a disadvantage. While being too introverted can definitely hurt, introverts tend to be better at asking questions, listening and analysis, and these are key skills for complex sales. I’ve written about this before, but soon-to-be-released research highlighted by Dan Pink in To Sell Is Human
So far, we’ve talked about how to make selling acceptable, and if you provide training and guidance to your engineering staff in these sales processes, you will make selling accessible. The final step is to provide the environment and incentives to make it appealing, which is the topic for part 3.
Calculating the profit contribution of the next deal?
Key point: Turn your engineering and technical staff into a hugely valuable selling asset by making selling acceptable, accessible, and appealing.
Companies that sell high-tech systems, or professional services such as engineering and consulting services, will often have more non-sales people interacting on a daily basis with their customers than their own formal sales force. These non-sales staff are often physically located in the client’s location and work closely with users and influencers every single day; when they do their jobs right, they develop strong relationships, deep credibility, and intimate knowledge of their clients’ operations, viagra culture, problems and opportunities, often in advance of anyone else knowing these things. In fact, some companies even dispense with salespeople and rely entirely on their engineers to serve clients and generate additional revenue.
Relationships, credibility and knowledge are priceless assets that any salesperson would kill to have, because they are the foundation of stellar sales success. Time after time in training sessions where the client includes technical staff as part of the sales team for the class, I’ve seen non-sales staff come up with some of the best insights and suggestions to advance the sales strategy or opportunity.
In addition, engineers and other technical staff can be your advance scouts into potential opportunities. The Corporate Executive Board tells us that buyers are about 60% of the way through their buying process before they contact potential suppliers.[1] In other words, most sales opportunities form long before they are visible to the outside world. They form within daily processes and operations, when things don’t work as well as they should, when things change and companies need to adapt and respond.
Yet these assets often go untapped and quite frankly, wasted, because the people who have them don’t use them to advance the revenue goals of their employers.
Why aren’t they doing it now? Engineers either:
- Don’t want to do it because they see it as distasteful. Make selling acceptable.
- Don’t want to do it because they see it as difficult or specialized. Make selling accessible.
- Don’t see the need to do it. Make selling appealing.
I will address each of these issues in a separate article. Here, we will discuss how to reframe selling so that it is acceptable to engineers.
Make it acceptable
The first hurdle to get over is the negative perception of selling that the typical engineer has. If you asked them the following question directly, which do you think they might check?
What is selling?
- A sleazy activity that tricks people to buy things they don’t want or need, or:
- Two parties agreeing to exchange resources in order to leave each party better off.
Nothing you do will have much effect until you can reframe their view of selling to something approaching the second option. [2]You have to show them that selling is a perfectly acceptable and even admirable activity. Very few people will wholeheartedly pursue an activity that contradicts the way they see themselves, regardless of how many carrots or sticks you use.
Here’s how engineers see themselves:
- Engineers solve problems.
- Engineers make the world a better place.
- Engineers are objective, honest and direct.
- Engineers are smart.
How does the ideal view of selling jibe with this self-image?
Engineers solve problems. Solution and consultative selling are both about solving problems for customers. Solution selling solves known problems, and consultative uncovers and addresses hidden problems. Learn how customers do things, find ways to improve them, and make the suggestion—that’s real selling!
Engineers make the world a better place. Selling is about making the world a better place. When two parties agree to exchange resources, it is because each intends to benefit from the transaction. While this is no guarantee that things will work, it’s an honest effort to make things better. As long as the discussion and the transaction are conducted honestly and with good intentions, both sides win, the relationship is strengthened, and the world is a better place. Plus, for those who would rather work on important problems and not trivial ones, trying to sell the solution is the most brutally clear way of finding out its true value.
Engineers are objective, honest, and direct. So are the salespeople who are most successful in the long run. They know that the only way to develop long-term, trust-based relationships is to deliver on their promises, and they can only do this when their promises are based in reality. When they can’t do something, they will tell the client. They may lose business by telling the client that there is a better alternative for them, but then this is business that they probably should not pursue anyway, and they will get other chances. Salespeople who are not afraid to (tactfully) challenge their customers’ view of the world will earn their respect and their attention.
Engineers are smart. This is definitely true for most of the ones I’ve met, but technical brilliance alone won’t make the world beat a path to your door. To paraphrase what Plato said about politics: “Those who refuse to engage in sales are destined to be ruled by those who are dumber.” Besides, the ability to deal with the complexities of personal perception and decision-making, at the pace of human conversation, is not trivial.
In part 2 of this series, we’ll see how to explain the sales process so that it is accessible. Part 3 is about how to make it appealing.
Most consultative sales approaches, my own included, rely on the salesperson being able to sell the economic value of their solution, by connecting the solution to measurable financial and operational results. The value the customer uses to make the decision is extrinsic, and usually measurable in some way. In some cases, intangible or “soft” benefits that are not directly measurable can be important factors in the customer’s decision, even if they may need to find creative ways to justify these benefits numerically.
But even if we include these intangibles, we’re still dealing with the WIFM model, in which people are looking for some extrinsic reward or benefit in exchange for a favorable decision. Value is expressed in extrinsic and transactional terms.
Yet people also make decisions based on values, even to the extent that they will act against their own economic best interests, or willingly undergo pain or sacrifice in pursuit of some larger goal than extrinsic reward. Persuaders who can enlist the power of values can tap into the powerful force of intrinsic motivation.
In The Art of Woo
Leaders and organizations have long used values to instill commitment instead of mere compliance: to guide and motivate their behaviors and decisions without needing to be constantly monitored, directed and rewarded. Some might say that’s the key difference between leadership and management.
As a salesperson, connecting your idea or solution to your customer’s values can be tremendously powerful: it can show a deep understanding of who they are; it can get you willing champions who will sell your idea internally when you’re not there; it can even win over those who stand to lose out in the short term if your idea is adopted. Best of all, it’s a gift to them, because it helps people bring out the best in themselves. If there is such a thing as a perpetual motion machine of persuasion, that’s it.
But values-based selling can be like TNT, very powerful yet tricky to use. It’s tricky because as an outsider it can be difficult to find out what the customer’s governing values are, and clumsiness in your approach can easily backfire on you.
You have to really understand your customer to know what they truly value. It’s not enough to go to their website and copy down their vision and values statements—too often these are the stuff of plaques and platitudes that no one takes seriously; I used to refer to them in my sales training classes until I quickly realized that most of the participants couldn’t even pick out their own corporate values statements in a multiple choice question. In some companies they’re actually held in contempt, and woe to the salesperson who tries to spout them.
In addition, trying to combine values with value can backfire on you. In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath tell the story of a marketer of a fire safety video who tested an identity appeal against an incentive appeal. The first question was “Would you like to see the film for possible purchase for your educational programs?” The second question was “Would your firefighters prefer a large electric popcorn popper or an excellent set of chef’s carving knives as a thank-you for reviewing the film?” The first question received unanimous “yeses”; the second question was discontinued after receiving the first two replies: “Do you think we’d use a fire safety program because of some #*$@% popcorn popper?” Because the firefighters valued their role as safety educators, they resented the implication that they might need external rewards to recommend the film.
HOW TO SELL ON VALUES
To use values as part of your sales message without getting burned, it’s critical to know your audience and then to apply just the right touch to your message.
Know your audience: how to discover their values
- Start with their written values. Sometimes they are what people really value, and it can help to at least open the conversation and improve your questions.
- Research beyond the customer’s web site; check out articles written by others, speeches by their top executives, etc.
- Ask your champions and coaches: if you want to try something in a presentation or a sales call, run it by one of them first to see what they think.
- Ask and listen: when you’re asking your questions to uncover their business and personal goals, listen for stories, examples and words that indicate personal or corporate values. If you don’t hear any, you can probe a little deeper, by asking whya certain goal is important to them. Listen carefully for things such as:
- Why and how were previous important decisions made?
- Who are their heroes and why?
- What do they measure and reward?
- Get them out of the office. In social situations, people are much more apt to open up about their personal motivations and values.
Apply the right touch
Even if you get their values absolutely spot-on, you may provoke pushback by tying your message too explicitly. People tend to resent being reminded about their obligations to higher values from outsiders, so it’s better to get them to think of these values on their own and make the connections themselves. Fortunately, the process you go through in discovering their values has the added benefit of bringing those values to the top of their minds as you’re talking to them.
During your situation questioning, it’s appropriate to get them to talk about what’s important to them. You can ask about their business goals, and when told, go a step further and ask why a particular goal is important to them.
If you have a good enough relationship with someone, it’s easier to be more transparent in your appeal, so you can be more direct by getting your coach or champion to make the appeal for you.
