Make Winning a Habit [с таблицами]
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One of our principals, Phil Johnson, was selling software to Amoco Fibers and Fabrics, an Atlantabased subsidiary of Amoco, whose corporate headquarters are in Chicago.
He asked them if Chicago would be involved in the deal, and they said, “No,” so he chose not to contact his guys in Chicago. He didn’t want to get them involved because he didn’t want to split the deal with them.
In the end, Phil won his deal. He sent over a contract on Friday afternoon. But on Monday, Amoco called and said they couldn’t sign it. Corporate headquarters had already signed a deal with his competitor for three sites — one of which was Atlanta.
Though Phil won his deal, he lost in the end because he didn’t communicate with the team in Chicago. He didn’t help them win, so they ended up losing the deal altogether.
The difference between amateur strategists and great strategists is their ability to test the plan before the battle begins. Great generals look at both sides of the battlefield.
Great chess players play from both sides of the board. Pool players and chess players can see their strategy three and four moves out.
Before every major investment of time and resources in an account — or move to a different phase of the sales cycle — there should be an investment of time by the sales team in a strategy review session. A strategy review session is not an exercise for the salesperson to sell the team on why he has a good strategy. It’s an opportunity to get the bad news early from your friends who want you to win the deal. It’s a test of your plan. Everyone — especially the plan owner — has to leave their ego at the door.
Leaders let everyone know what their role is in the execution of the sale, when each action item is due, and who is accountable for the results. Without a strategy session of this nature, you’re not a team leader — you’re a loner. And ultimately, you’re probably losing.
You can ignore a strategy and hope to win. In fact, you can win without a strategy at all—it’s called luck. (Don’t pay for luck. You can get luck cheaper on the Web.) If you want salespeople who make things happen through a team, though, they have to seek out bad news, blind spots, and assumptions early.
If you get bad news early, there are two things you can do: you can either withdraw from the account or change your strategy and actions. But bad news late is no good because you don’t have time to change, and you have spent your resources. The cement has set.
Until now, the people who have not had a voice have been the teammates — the product engineers and specialists — because the power in most sales teams lies with the salesperson or the account manager. But the product engineers are great sets of eyes and ears and can actually build better bonds at the lower levels. They are sometimes able to get information and actually validate a strategy and a buyer’s preferences when the salesperson has been screened.
The Blue Angels have made several documentaries about how they are so effective flying wingtip to wingtip—at the speed of sound—and how they manage to stay alive during these incredible aeronautical maneuvers. After every show or training exercise, they have a nameless, rankless debrief.
One of the principles we learned from our friends at Afterburner, Inc., a high-impact training firm that simulates fighter strike missions and teaches teamwork at the same time, is that it doesn’t matter who is right but what is right.
It’s not important to defend your strategy; it’s important to seek out criticism because, for pilots, when they’re not right, they’re usually dead wrong.
It doesn’t matter who is right but what is right.
Similarly, the support people who are in the account after the last sale also have great contacts. If they’re not included, you’re missing a great source of information and access. These people need to have a formal way to critique the account plan—especially the sales engineers, who are going to have to go in and give the presentations. If they don’t understand the plan, the stakeholders, the messages they are supposed to deliver, or the strategic pains they are supposed to link into, you are not going to get a very effective competitive presentation.
I’m a Veteran—Why Do I Need a Coach?
If you go to a professional golf tournament and stand at the practice tee, you see Tiger Woods with his coach — as well as most of the top golfers. The golfers themselves are the best in the world and are all qualified to teach.
Why do they need a coach? Because the unconscious competent does things by reflex and needs an out-of-body observer to pick up their flaws. The conscious competent needs to build consistency. The conscious noncompetent needs technique. And they all need the discipline that a coach provides.
Top tennis players have coaches, top track stars also have them, and they are very highly paid for the value that they bring. Sales managers need to make coaching a priority part of their job because competitive advantage comes not from awareness but from the consistency and discipline that tools and coaching bring.
Sales Managers—Too Busy to Win
Reinforcement and adoption of any process or initiative depend on the buy-in and consistent discipline of the frontline sales managers. They always have, always will. If this is so obvious, then why have so many client relationship management (CRM) and sales automation efforts failed from lack of adoption?
If front-line sales managers don’t buy it, they won’t sell it. If they don’t enforce the discipline necessary to adopt a sales process or technology, it will join the graveyard of failed initiatives.
Buy-in requires involvement. Getting sales managers trained first and involved in the design of the coaching template not only makes buy-in more realistic but also prevents the sales managers from sitting in the class like prisoners with their arms folded. They need to be team teaching with the instructor, linking each teaching point into a real deal that happened in their area.
If front-line sales managers don’t learn how to leverage themselves through coaching and strategy sessions, they can never really manage more than three reps at a time
Buy-in may not be as big of a problem as sales managers finding the time to coach—or, in reality, making the time to coach — because any quality improvement process requires for error prevention (coaching and strategy sessions), managers sometimes have to make time for both — growing the deal and growing the rep. Until they make the shift to growing the rep to gain control early, however, they will always be behind the curve.