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.
Would you buy what he’s selling?
I generally agree with the premise of challenger selling, that you should be willing to provide sometimes uncomfortable insights to your customers. Sometimes customers don’t know what they don’t know, and you provide value by educating them in ways that they can be better off.
But doing so requires a certain amount of tact, a quality totally lacking from the email I received last night. Here’s the first part:
Jackmalcolm.com Team,
I thought you might like to know some reasons why you are not getting enough Social Media and Organic search engine traffic for Jackmalcolm.com.
1. Your website Jackmalcolm.com is not ranking top in Google organic searches for many competitive keyword phrases.
2. Your company is not doing well in most of the Social Media Websites.
3. Your site is not user friendly on mobile devices.
There are many additional improvements that could be made to your website…
What’s wrong with this message? For all I know, it’s probably true, and I would probably benefit from some of the services this company can offer, BUT…
I’m human, and my immediate reaction to being told I’m doing something wrong is to either defend what I’m doing or to take offense at the messenger. In this case, my gut reaction was a combination of both of those. (Then I was thankful for having a blog topic idea dumped in my lap, but that’s not the main point.)
If you’re going to give someone an uncomfortable truth, you have to prepare them to receive our message, and earn the right to deliver it.
How could he have improved his message so that I would be willing to engage further?
First, make the salutation personal. Some companies make it difficult to figure out who the decision maker is, but it’s obvious from the name of the site to the home page that my web site is about one person, so why not address the email to that one person? The fact that he did not indicates to me that he really didn’t study my site, as he claims later in the email.
Second, begin with a compliment or two. Quite frankly, flattery works. At the very least, it will get me in the right frame of mind to read the rest of the message. He could have said he was impressed by my web site, tossed in one or two specific things he liked about it, and then given me the message about how he could make it even better.
Third, earn my trust. Here’s another part of the email:
Sound interesting? Feel free to email us or alternatively you can provide me with your phone number and the best time to call you. I am also available to meet you in person and present you this website audit report.
PS I: I am not spamming. I have studied your website and believe I can help with your business promotion. If you still want us to not contact you, you can ignore this email or ask to remove and I will not contact again.
There are two things wrong with this. First, if he really had studied my website, he would have known my phone number. He also says if I ignore the email he will not contact me again, but in fact this is at least the second message I’ve received.
There is tremendous value in being able to bring challenging insights to potential clients, but truth is not enough. Truths that are ignored don’t do anyone any good. When doctors have a good bedside manner, their patients are more likely to trust them and follow instructions, as well as less likely to sue them for malpractice. Wise doctors know that it’s not only what you say, but how you say it.
The bottom line for this guy is that he probably just made a sale—for someone else. I’m intrigued enough to consider hiring someone to improve my web site, but it will probably someone else. That’s probably irrational, I know, but then isn’t that how most decisions are made?
As should be obvious to my readers by now, I’ve recently been on a kick to apply lean principles to sales and personal productivity. The core of lean is to reduce muda, or waste, and waste is defined as any activity that does not add value to the customer.
If you work in sales for a company, you probably have to enter an account plan into a CRM system, and you are very likely less than enthusiastic about it. Companies love CRM systems because it helps them capture information about their customers, but one of the major challenges is to get salespeople to consistently supply accurate information.
Why is that? There are actually three customers for the activities that salespeople perform: their customers, their employers, and themselves. In many cases, the only one of those three who receives value from many CRM systems is the employer.
Salespeople naturally would rather spend their time in front of customers than in front of computer screens filling out forms, so they’re naturally reluctant to take the time. In addition, they often see the systems as a surveillance tool that their management uses to keep tabs on their activities.
Customers don’t care if the account plan gets into the seller’s CRM, because to them that is not an activity that adds value. In fact, if they can’t reach the account manager because he or she is busy filling out their forms, they see it as worse than waste.
Fortunately there is a way out of this. The trick is to design the plan so that it adds value to all three stakeholders. A properly designed account plan does more than capture static information about a customer. It allows for the salesperson to think critically and plan for ways to deliver insights, consulting, or solutions[1] to help their customers improve their business.
Salespeople will get value from the plan if it helps them focus their thinking on what they know and don’t know about their customers’ needs and decision process. Probably the major benefit that participants in my account planning workshops get is uncovering the “unknown unknowns”, those hidden land mines that often turn out to be the difference-makers in winning or losing business. Most salespeople are way overconfident about how much information they carry in their heads. They think that they know everything they need to know about the customer’s situation, and the only way to expose the fallacy is to force them to write down the answers to hard questions. When they uncover what they know and don’t know about the customer’s needs, the solution fit and the decision process, their action steps become much clearer to them, which leads to less wasted activity and shorter selling cycles. Well-designed account plans also share information within the various members of the sales team and help spark additional ideas.
How does the customer benefit from well-designed account plans? When salespeople are sincerely using plans to figure out better ways to provide value, solve problems, or help the customer achieve their business and personal goals, they will bring better solutions. They will also waste less of the customers’ time.
In fact, if the employer designs the account plans from the point of view of helping salespeople better add value to the end customer, their own value will take care of itself, because salespeople will embrace the process and consistently provide accurate and valuable information.
Actually, you could apply this approach to any sales activity. Simply ask yourself how much value each customer of the activity is getting from it. Those that help the end customer and the salesperson, usually end up benefiting the employer as well.
[1] I’m covering my bases with the Challenger Selling and Solution Selling camps here. Just call me Switzerland.
Same duck, different day?
There is an article in the most recent issue of Harvard Business Review titled “The End of Solution Sales” by Brent Adamson, Matthew Dixon and Nicholas Toman. Their premise is that customers today are so well informed that they already know how to solve their own problems, so they don’t need sales reps to sell them solutions. Instead, the top performers sell “insights” to customers who have emerging needs or whose organizations are in a state of flux. They then go further, coaching their customers on how to buy.
Dave Brock took exception to their premise in his latest blog post. He offered an eloquent defense of the concept of solution selling, saying that the article is “wordsmithing and positioning”, and that insight selling is just a form of solution selling. As he said, “…if it looks like Solution Selling, smells like Solution Selling, sounds like Solution Selling, then it must be Solution Selling.” So, he lumps the two concepts together and then also throws Consultative Selling into the same pile for good measure.
My own perspective on the debate is that selling insights is different than solution selling, but that solution selling is still far from dead.
Definitions do matter…
I believe it’s useful to distinguish between the approaches,
