Times are tough. And sales are down. It’s time to get the sales team back on track to meet the budget shortfall. Jim Baldwin has recently joined RKD Consulting Solutions as the new sales director and in his first three months on the job put a plan in motion to increase sales:

• Launched campaigns targeted at sectors which were less impacted by the downturn
• Established weekly activity management targets with regular tracking and reporting of all sales reps
• Insituted account review sessions to determine account penetration in key accounts with a view to gaining market share
• Held weekly pipeline reviews to accelerate deals through the sales cycle
• Engaged in channel promotions
• Engaged in aggressive sales tactics, in some cases resorting to predatory pricing

And not much happened.

Sure, Jim had better visibility into the pipeline and the activities being worked by the sales team. But the increased focus on sales yielded very little of what Jim needs – more sales. This came as quite a surprise as these approaches worked well at Jim's last company. He can only conclude there must be bigger problems with sales, but he can’t help wondering why a handful of sales reps (less than 20%) always seem to perform better than the rest, even in tough times. Over the course of the last three months he has got to know his entire sales team quite well, but without question the high performers consistently demonstrate a good understanding of their customers and RKD's solutions. In and of itself, this is not a big surprise. What surprises Jim is how the top performers explain precisely how their customer’s problems were affecting them before they applied an RKD solution, and in simple terms how the RKD solution solved the customer problem. Many from this high performer group easily identified the key tipping point in the sale when the customer agreed their need was best addressed by an RKD solution.

Jim hopes to gain more insight in a meeting he sets up with Jennifer, the company’s top sales performer. In the past three months Jim has formed an impression of Jennifer based on her terse contributions during the weekly sales meeting. Nor did she seem overly enthusiastic when he organized a time to ‘chat about sales’.

Jim wasn’t looking forward to this meeting. It didn’t help that he was ten minutes late for the meeting, which gave Jennifer a great opener for the meeting… “Look Jim, you’re ten minutes late. Do you know that I ended a call with a customer so I could be here on time?” And before Jim can offer an apology Jennifer lets him off the hook. “Don’t worry about it. I have heard from my teammates that you have been asking some good questions about our approach to sales. How can I help?”

Jim decides on a brief introduction. “Yes Jennifer, I have been discussing sales approaches with our top performers and have noticed a definite pattern. They have an excellent ability to uncover high priority customer problems and the impact of those problems. They work with the customer to prioritize the problems into needs so they can…”

Jennifer becomes impatient and cuts Jim off. “Jim, Let’s make this simple. Describe your last positive buying experience.” Anticipating Jim's answer, Jennifer continued. “It’s tough isn’t it? In fact, sometimes it's almost impossible. Think of the number of times you have been called by your cell phone company and offered yet another free upgrade to another device you don’t need. The standard sales approach is still pretty much –‘ Here is my product and all of its great features’.”

“And yet buyers are more knowledgeable than ever. The products and services we sell are constantly being discussed online in various forums and communities. Comparisons to our competition, which in most cases are highly biased, are readily available. I can hardly keep up with it myself and yet I do my best. What I know for sure is that every prospect and customer on whom I call on has more knowledge at their fingertips than our company provides to me. And even if RKD could provide me with all of the information I wouldn’t spend all my time reading it because I would have no time left for selling to customers.”

“And yet, for every buyer that has a clear path forward, I find ten that are missing the keys to making a buying decision. For these buyers I need to work with them to create the path forward. Doing that means I need to put myself in their shoes. I need to gain their trust so they can talk to me about their business. I need to understand their buying style and get them to disclose their preferred buying process. Each new step me and the customer take in the process together needs to take place because they want it to, and not because I am trying to push them to close a deal. And sure, I am always working to accelerate the process, but only with the customer’s agreement. There is no doubt on the part of the customer I am working to get a sale, but in a way that works for them.”

And feeling the need to join in, Jim interjected, “And so you build the credibility to become a trusted adviser. That way the prospect will freely share their business problems with you.” Jennifer seemed to be ready for that one. “I suppose so Jim. But when you are making a buying decision, do you really think of the sales person as a trusted adviser? As a buyer , would you call up the sales person at some point in the sales cycle and say ‘I think you are now my trusted adviser’. What were you before you achieved that status? The advisor who was not-yet trusted? And Jim, I am sorry if I am coming across as pig-headed. But we sales people are so sales-centric in our approaches we come up with our own vernacular to justify our existence – trusted adviser, foxes, power maps, solution selling, strategic selling. While I think there are many valuable concepts in these sales approaches which apply to how we should sell, selling is the flip side of the coin to buying and needs to adapt to using the language of the customer.”

Jennifer looked contemplative for a moment and then posed a question to Jim. “You started by saying you think we have a systematic problem that is affecting the performance of the majority of our sales reps. Does any of what I have said so far help you to understand the reason why?”

Jim was not ready for Jennifer to come back with a question, but not one to back down from a challenge Jim started slowly, thinking and talking at the same time. “Well Jennifer, I have read the books on Customer Centric Selling which talk about changing selling behaviors from "selling" to "supporting customer buying"¹.   So I think I follow where you are going. And I can see that over 70% of our sales reps still lead with product and features. So getting them to be more customer-centric will definitely help. But that’s a big challenge. Can it be taught? Is it something that is some people’s DNA and not in other’s?"

Jennifer seemed to think about what Jim said before responding. “That's a good question Jim, but before we talk about it, we need to be sure this is where we believe our biggest problem lies. Is it preventing us from selling? If so, how big a problem is it?” Jim felt quite comfortable saying, “I can’t be sure at this point. It seems our sales team could benefit from a more customer-centric approach, if I could figure out a way to get them to understand how to execute differently.”

Jennifer seemed to anticipate Jim's response. “Let me put it another way Jim. Do you think this is simply a problem that sales is struggling with? Do you believe that our go-to-market approach is customer-centric? Do you think our service people understand the concept of customer driven buying? In the executive meetings in which you participate, where does our approach to customer centric selling enter into the discussion?”

At this point Jennifer is clearly going outside of Jim's mandate. Jim feels the need to get the conversation back on track. “Jennifer, I can’t change the whole company. I am responsible for sales.” Once again Jennifer seemed to anticipate what Jim said and responded, “I understand, but right now you and I are trying to figure out the size of our problem. Knowing that this is a problem which begins in our executive suite and extends to marketing, sales and service, helps us understand just how big of a problem we have. Make sense?"

Jim is starting to catch on and replies, “Right. I get it. This is not just a sales problem, but a company-wide problem. All of our different departments which work with customers have their own terminology and ways of dealing with customers. When we get together to talk about customers we see the customer from each of our own departmental perspectives and we certainly don’t have a shared appreciation of how you or any other sales reps are working with the buying process of any particular customer. So it is likely a significant problem. I am not willing to say it is the primary reason why sales are going nowhere, but it has to be a factor. But let me challenge you. You seem to be successful in spite of it.”

Jennifer was quick to respond, “I actually spend a lot of time communicating with all of the other teams to present a unified front to the customer, but it took me years to build the relationships internally and set the expectations of my colleagues. Also, I was able to build a significant understanding of our customers in that time period and how our solutions solve their problems. I couldn’t imagine being a new sales person coming into the company and having to make sales without those relationships and knowledge, especially given how tough it is out there right now.”

And Jim thought to himself, ‘if she only knew’. The new sales reps attend a one week boot camp where they are subjected to 50 hours of presentations from different people in the company and usually because of scheduling conflicts the training takes place after a couple of months and many customer sales calls later. And 80% of the training is solution information delivered with Powerpoints. Jim decides he has enough to think about for now and thanks Jennifer for her time.

Before leaving, Jennifer offers, “Look Jim, I am very pleased to have had the opportunity to share my thoughts with you today. It’s been a long time since anyone has asked. As you are identifying your next steps, if there is anything I can do, whether it is providing feedback or kicking around some ideas, let me know.” Jim gladly accepts her offer.

Sitting in his office, Jim has more questions than answers.

• Can Jim bring together the customer-facing groups in the company and change the way they work together with customers?
• Can he move the sales team to a customer-centric buying focus to emulate Jennifer's success?
• How can he make the knowledge that Jennifer and other top performers have about customers, their problems / needs and our solutions available to the entire team?
• Should Jim be thinking of an approach where junior reps can mentor Jennifer?
• What should Jim do first so that he can make biggest impact on sales in the shortest time frame?
• What else should Jim be doing?

1. On the topic of Customer Centric Selling, the author's favorite book is Customer Centric Selling by Bosworth and Holland. And in the March 2009 HBR Magazine there was a great article on provocative selling http://hbr.harvardbusiness.org/2009/03/in-a-downturn-provoke-your-customers/ar/1 [Sorry this is the executive summary – you need a subscription to read the entire article]