A few years ago we were entering a large engagement for a business
process outsourcing company. As part of the engagement, we did a number of
interviews with their customers, key contacts in significant accounts. One of
the interviews revealed a very interesting insight about our account, but also
about what is expected of the modern supplier (or “trusted advisor” or
whatever).
“They are terrific,” our account’s customer said, “Whatever
I ask them to do, they do it flawlessly.” This is going well, I thought to
myself. Clearly, our account is a great and much-loved supplier to this
company. He had more to say, though.
“But, you know,“ he added, after I had given him some
silence in which to think further about the situation, “in the seven years we’ve
been working with them, they have never brought a new idea to me. By now, they know
our processes better than I do. So they should be able to point out where I
could do things better, more cheaply, etc. They haven’t done that.”
What started out as a very complimentary comment, one that
you’d be tempted to put on your website as a reference, ended up as a
consistent theme in our consulting work: just doing good work is not enough.
Today’s customers expect a supplier to be proactive, evaluating their business
and coming up with ideas for how to improve it. And whether you call it being
proactive, challenging, “creativating”, or any other term, that result is the
same: if you don’t bring new ideas to your accounts, you’re letting them down.
Being proactive can be a little bit tricky, though. It is
critical to maintain your core customer-centric sales philosophy: it should be
about *them* and not about you. Any ideas should be focused on solving one of
their business challenges, taking advantage of their opportunity, etc. To be
successful, you must not be pushing your own product or your own agenda.
Proactivity comes naturally to some salespeople, but it can
also be developed. Creating a structure can be useful, encouraging salespeople
to be proactive, and even creative, in a structured and organised way. I’ve
discussed in other blog posts specific tools that facilitate creative idea
generation, and I’m sure I will in future posts as well. So, for now, we’ll those
tools aside.
So what should YOU do?
How do you build a proactive
sales team? Here’s a few ideas that I’ve seen work well.
- If you have regular meetings with your existing accounts, include one agenda item that is outside the current project or process. Even if the meeting is a progress meeting, you can add one point at the end of the discussion that is focused on “Additional ideas” or similar. One client suggests that each quarterly review meeting must include at least one new business idea.
- Schedule a regular meeting that is NOT about current work. One of our accounts requires its sales team to schedule one “Agendaless Meeting” per year. This doesn’t mean that there is no preparation, of course. But it signals to the account that the conversation is wide open, new ideas, and new opportunities. During the meeting, try to defer discussions about current work until the regular meetings.
- Make sure that the internal team is meeting periodically, and include as many parts of the organisation as possible. Brainstorming with account teams is a great idea, and you will often find that your own team brings up ideas that you’ve not thought of for the account. Involve as many people who touch the account as possible, as they are more likely to bring new ideas. One of our office product accounts created a whole new business opportunity when a service person, who had been onsite to fix a hardware problem, noticed client personnel going through a tortuous series of steps to complete a process. It turned into a new service, and relieved a lot of pain of which the organisation wasn’t even aware.
- Share new ideas internally. Those of you that know me know that I am not a fan of generic ideas or scripted solutions for customers. However, there is a lot to be learnt from good ideas that succeed at other accounts, and good ideas should be leveraged. When you bring the idea to another account, though, don’t forget to tailor it!
Encouraging a salesperson to be proactive can be tricky. As
I said before, some just do it naturally. But with a bit of coaching and a bit
of structure, even those who do not can start be a proactive, value adding
partner to their accounts.
Does anyone else have ideas for how to increase proactivity –
particularly in bringing new business ideas to accounts – in your sales team?
I really agree with the idea that "It is critical to maintain your core customer-centric sales philosophy: it should be about *them* and not about you." With suggesting new ideas, it's so easy to come across to the client as up-selling or not focused on the problem that they want to solve.
ReplyDeleteAnd making suggestions to a client brings with it the issue that you are defining the customer's problem rather than the customer themselves, which can be fraught. I find the outcome tends to be more successful if the client defines the problem herself. But maybe that's just process improvement.
The easiest way I've found to be proactive - especially for organisations whose core product is knowledge - such as consultants and process engineers - is to write up and share a collection of solutions which you've done for other organisations.
For example, a collection of:
* case studies of what's you've done in other organisations
* problem solving patterns which follow the structure of "if you're suffering from this, doing this produces the following results"
* a list of problems that you've solved that the customer can relate to
It's easy to construct such a list - as it's just descriptions of work you've done. It's also easy to distribute, via web, email newsletter, conversation or paper. For I tend to put a few bullet points in my about me section of every proposal a list of projects I think may help a client, and have working versions of old projects I can show people.
As it is indirect, I also think it doesn't come across as threatening to someone who isn't wanting your input into projects other than the one at hand. It's less proactive than addressing the client's issues directly, but it does allow the client to define their own problems for themselves.
My question is, in your experience, ignoring process improvement (which may be a special case), does it matter who defines the customer's problem? Is the outcome better if client does rather than an outsider? Does it lead to better sales outcomes?
If so, what sorts of things should a sales person do to help a client define her own problems?
David, you make a few good points here, and raise good questions (as always!).
ReplyDeleteI think the answer to whether to help the client define the problem or to bring an outside and new perspective is that they *both* are effective. Sometimes it does take an new perspective to jolt a customer out of their present way of thinking.
But the two ideas converge quite quickly.
First of all, when bringing this outside perspective it is critical to keep the salesperson's mind on the customer at hand, not the neat new idea. Being a "challenging" salesperson can often turn into a lot of talking about you and your ideas, your solutions, your past. I've seen this happen a lot, and an interesting idea that could have added a lot of value for the customer gets lost in a lot of trust-destroying self-oriented blabbering by the salesperson.
So this is where the two ideas converge: whether helping them to better understand their known issues, or introducing new ones, the sales team needs to be able to ask questions that force the customer to revisit their own assumptions, to really consider the business impact of the current state, and to think about the implications of not changing. So we're back to asking good, business-focused questions, the get the account thinking and talking.
Oh, and the sales team has to *listen* to the customer! Often with sales teams that are trying to bring in "new ideas", they are too focused on sharing their big story, or the case study, that they don't actually listen to what is being said!
"the sales team needs to be able to ask questions that force the customer to revisit their own assumptions, to really consider the business impact of the current state, and to think about the implications of not changing."
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about it that way, but I can see that you're right. To succeed in sales you need to make some sort of change in the mental processes of the client.
I also really like the idea of getting people to see the implications of not changing. I haven't focused to much on this in the past as I've always focused on the benefits of changing. But I do see it as another way to change accounts' assumptions - to ask the question "What would happen if you didn't [insert change here]?".
Thanks!