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“Why” You Want to be CEO Has a Huge Impact on Team Results

By Mark Allen Roberts

 

Why do you really want to be the CEO, CFO, or VP of Sales? Have you ever given that much thought? If you are like me it’s just what you do. You climb the corporate ladder and one day take a leadership position then strive to perform and win the next promotion. But why? What is your motive? What impact does the reason behind your wanting to lead have on the teams’ results? I just read the book: The Motive by Patrick Lencioni and this book helps leaders really dig deep into their personal “why”(motive) behind wanting to be a leader. Leaders who chose to lead based on the right Motive outperform those who chose the wrong one.

 

Early in my career I was… let’s just say… I was “very driven”. I was first hired as a route salesperson at Frito-Lay after graduating college. I quickly wanted to earn a promotion to be a sales manager. Once I became the sales manager, I strived to be the key account manager and with each new role came a new title, greater expectations, more responsibility, larger teams and more compensation and benefits. Growing sales effectiveness with my teams for me was my sport and I desired to get stronger. Each new role, each new challenge forced me to improve and gain new skills. Early leaders I reported to in my career provided training in leadership and management skills.

 

The greater the sales growth challenge the more exciting the opportunity so it should not surprise me looking back I spent the majority of my career fixing sales problems. I enjoy serving teams, their customers and their investors. I enjoy helping sales teams improve their skills and processes to be more customer centric leveraging the voice of their customers. I have a passion to help sales reps to become trusted advisors .

 

At one point in my career I served private equity firms and they asked I help lead teams at some of their investments that were underperforming. I received a call from a PE firm I had not served prior and they asked if I ever wanted to be the CEO of a company? I believed the right answer was supposed to be “yes” so I agreed to meet over coffee and discuss their expectations.

 

The PE firm invested in an innovative new technology that solved a number of market problems. The company was not scaling a quickly as the PE firm expected and they wanted someone to come in as CEO and scale the company profitably then position the business for sale in 24 months. I had never been a CEO of a grow and flip. The partner at the firm must have sensed my hesitation and started sharing the compensation, benefits, and what I could receive at the time of sale. I knew I could lead this startup’s sales and turnaround and grow sales but being the CEO of a turnaround and flip was something I had never done.

 

My gut said to say no, but when their offer for compensation rewards at the time of sale was so great, I could not turn it down. After all, that was the next logical role in my career growth, right? I have been a VP of Sales a number of times, Worldwide Sales Leader, President of a couple of companies… I should want to be the CEO, right?

 

Within a few months I was miserable. I took the job for the wrong reasons and I was not living in my area of gifts. I was not recruiting coaching and training a team. I tried very hard to grow this company and turn it around, but the reality was I never grew the company to what the investors desired and we sold the company for much less than we originally planned. I accepted the role of CEO without asking myself why I wanted it.

 

For years this failure has haunted me. What could I have done differently? What should I have done differently?… and then I read: The Motive by Patrick Lencioni. This book is written in the form of story to help the reader connect to the message emotionally. Once I picked this book up I had to finish it. The way the author shares the message of the book through a series of conversations between two CEO’s is brilliant! The Author helped me see one of the main reasons I failed as the CEO of this turnaround was my motive. My motive was my rewards and not building the team and processes like I have done in the past.

 

Let me ask you a question….

 

If you lead a team what is your Motive to be the leader?

 

The author keeps it very simple;

 

you have two options… your motive is…

 

The rewards you will receive personally like compensation, benefits, tile, …..

 

Or

 

Leading and serving others and doing whatever it takes to bring about something good for the people you lead.

 

If you lead a team for the wrong reasons you will avoid the unpleasant situations and activities leadership requires. If this behavior is left unchecked long enough your people will not be motivated, and not feel safe, will not have high trust and this will become evident in your bottom-line results.

 

The author does an excellent job of unpacking each motive to be a leader and asks a number of soul searching questions that once again created emotional responses in me I did not expect.

 

For example, the author asks:

 

Do you feel you should be able to trust them (your leadership team) to manage themselves?

 

Do you justify not knowing what your direct reports are doing by claiming you do not want to be a micromanager?

 

Do you complain about your meetings for being boring and ineffective?

 

At the end of the book the author does an excellent job of sharing 5 key responsibilities of a CEO. (and or anyone who is leading a team)

 

I highly suggest if you lead a team today, want to lead a team, or have aspirations of being a CEO one day you read this book and answer why you want to lead.

 

Have you ever worked for someone who was focused on their rewards of their role more than the welfare of their team?

 

What symptoms have you seen of teams led by someone who accepted the position for the wrong reasons?

 

Have you ever reported to a true leader led by the right why?

 

How did they make you feel?

 

What were your team’s results?

 

What do you think was their motive in being a leader? Why?

 

I have been blessed to have been led by leaders like Harry Jones, my first manager at Frito-Lay who created a personal learning and coaching plan for me long before there was such a thing. (we are talking late 1980’S) Or Jim Sankey who taught us all how to listen for customer unresolved problems and solve them with new products and services. He taught us how to create a business case based on the value the product delivered the customer. Jim invested in my training, coached me and sent me to College to earn my EMBA. None of these leaders were “easy” but I never questioned their motives.

 

As for me this book helped me find my true whys, the things that make me wake up before the alarm each day…

 

 

Fixing complex sales problems and helping others have the tools, training and coaching to serve their customers and solve the customer’s problems.

 

Building and growing sales team effectiveness, buyer centric sales processes, systems and training that help teams to create sustainable sales velocity.

 

Helping to diagnose business profitable growth friction points then helping the team heal the businesses to serve their customers, shareholders and employees.

 

Have you read The Motive yet?

 

If you strive to lead a team and or become a CEO, or if you are a CEO I strongly suggest you read The Motive.

 

If you would like to chat let’s schedule a call.

 

 

Are B2B “Lunch and Learn” Trainings Leaving You Hungry For More ROI?

By Mark Roberts

 

As I shared in my last post about how B2B Sales is heading into a perfect storm for sales effectiveness and training, we also need to look at each way we train our distributors. One of the most popular training I have seen over the last 35 years is manufacturers providing what we refer to as “lunch and learn training” for their distributor branch locations. The idea of training distributor salespeople to help them have great conversations with their customers is strong however lunch and learn training often leaves both manufactures and distributors hungry for more ROI. In this post we will discuss why lunch and learn trainings no longer serve manufacturers or their distributors and how we must adapt the ways we provide knowledge transfer to our distributors.

 

For as long as I can remember working for manufacturers we delivered “Lunch and Learn” trainings to our channel partners and distributors. If you are not familiar with the team “lunch and Learn” let me explain. As the name of the training implies the manufacturer salesperson buys lunch (sometimes breakfast) for the distributor branch. While the distributors team eats their free lunch you have about 30-40 minutes to train the distribution salespeople. The goal is to help the distributor salespeople have a better understanding of your product and or services so they would sell more. Each of the distributors we sold often had competing products that solved problems in a similar way, so we tried to get in front of the distributor’s sales team more than our competitors. We tried to buy the hearts of the distribution salespeople with donuts, breakfast burritos, pizza and sometimes catered lunches. At each training the manufacturing salesperson for that region would share product features and benefits and, on some occasions, provide application advice. The regional salesperson for the manufacturer would distribute sell sheets and answer any questions. This was a great model for baby boomers and before 2008, before the Internet and all the training models we have available to us today.

 

Today, lunch and learn training is adding to the cost of sale and rarely produces the ROI both manufactures, and distributors want and need.

 

Why?

 

Let’s start with the distribution sales team receiving the training.

 

  • The training is delivered by a manufacturer salesperson (not someone trained to train adults) and the topics covered are forgotten within hours without reinforcement.
  • As a distributor with 100’s of product lines you could have manufacturing salespeople wanting to feed product information into your salespeople every day, multiple times per day.
  • Now the branch manager must monitor and manage vendor training (along with everything else they are in charge of).
  • The training is often focusing on what is important to the manufacturer not the distributor and their customers (product focus of the month, a SPIFF incentive, a new product to drive manufacturer objectives).
  • The manufacturer salesperson is not aware of the sales competencies of those they are about to train at the branch.
  • The product(s) in the training may not be relevant to some of the distributor salespeople.
  • Lunch and Learns have become a distraction for distributors wanting to guide their salesperson’s focus, time and behaviors that deliver the most value.
  • Often distribution outside salespeople are taken away from their customer facing activities to attend manufacturer lunch and learn training.
  • For the financial folks reading this …. let’s say each lunch and learn for your distribution branch has 3 inside salespeople, 4 outside salespeople, two customer service team members and the branch manager? (don’t forget the warehouse team who smelled a free lunch and stopped processing orders for an hour) So work with me here…I am estimating an hour of your team’s time is $400 -$750 or maybe even $1000. Based on their compensation. Then we consider the opportunity cost, what they could have been doing not attending this training. Let’s say your daily sales are $20,000 so an hour of time is worth around $2,500. What happens when a customer calls and your team is away from the phones? They call another distributor. If they have a great experience they may never return. Can we agree the cost in compensation and business for your branch is worth $3,500 -$5,000 for an hour of time?( maybe much more)
  • What is your ROI from that training? If the lunch and learn  produced $350,000 to $500,000 in new revenue by all means keep doing them, …heck do more!
  • From my experience Lunch and Learn trainings have become a distraction and are no longer the best method to train distribution sales teams for knowledge transfer.
  • If you are a distributor and not realizing an ROI from manufacture lunch and learn training, its time to find another way to train your salespeople.
  • One last thought….Think about the message you are sending your staff with taking their lunch hour for training. Our company believes in training but we will not invest any of our time in it but we will take your personal time?

 

Let’s not forget about the manufacturer and their local salesperson.

 

  • A growing problem in sales today is salespeople are too distracted. This is resulting in less than 20% of the time they are customer facing and actually selling. They need to be having discussions with customers who have problems they can help solve. Lunch and learns take time away from customer field visits with distribution salespeople.
  • There are only so many hours in a day. The salespeople I have worked with, coached and trained have shared they see little if any retention and return from distributor lunch and learn trainings.
  • The manufacturer regional salespeople spend more time planning the food than their presentations.
  • If you prepare properly for a lunch and learn it should take about 2-4 hours, time most field salespeople do not have today.
  • Let’s review costs: The food can cost $50-$250. The brochures you had shipped next day to you another $100. Time: planning, drive time, delivery can be 5 hours to over 10 if you needed to fly into the city for the branch. Let’s agree the average hourly cost of a field salesperson for a manufacturer is $50-$75 per hour or $750 to deliver a lunch and learn. We have the travel cost in mileage to consider and that could be $100 if the branch is nearby and air travel could be over $500. You came in the night before and had a hotel stay at $140. Let’s roll with this scenario and agree your cost to deliver the lunch and learn is around: $750 to $1,800.
  • Oh, I almost forgot the big cost…the opportunity cost. You have experienced if you go on end customer calls with your distributors, you win the business and your average new customer order from your CRM data is $45,000 in the first 12 months.( some much larger)
  • So that one-hour lunch and learn training is really costing your company $45,650 to $46,800. Let me ask you a question…will you see a sales increase from your training at that branch of $400,000 to $500,000? (I kind of thought you wouldn’t, but I was hopeful)

 

As I shared in my last post turnover at distributors is growing. The market forces are converging on distributors like never before. The new Millennial and Generation Z workers only plan to stay 24-36 months. Manufacturer salespeople often meet new salespeople on each lunch and learn training. Something needs to change. As manufacturers can you afford to have weekly lunch and learns with this kind of turnover? We must challenge what we have been doing for 30-50-100 years and explore new and better ways of training our distributors.

 

What is some market leading manufactures doing?

 

They are investing in online micro learning product courses. Small courses designed to help distribution salespeople understand the product, application quickly. They are redirecting the funds they spent per year in lunch and learn training to online learning. Distribution sales teams are seeing this training just in time, just enough, and online learning is perfect for the millennials and Gen z new associates.

This model frees distributor outside salespeople to stay in the market with customer facing activity and they can take the short 10-20 minute product training updates on their cell phones over lunch or in between customer appointments. Manufacturers who are leveraging online learning for their distributors and going on more field visits to end customers.

Manufacturer field sales managers who have been trained in product and application knowledge are now spending more time with distributors doing behaviors that have proven to move the sales needle for distributors and manufactures.

 

What is market leading distributors doing?

 

They are investing in LMS systems to train new and current salespeople. These systems provide bite sized courses with just enough, when you need it and it is relevant to the sales role and the customers they serve. These courses are mobile friendly, and if designed properly provide knowledge checks, job aids and application exercises. The knowledge is transferred over time in little drips blended with other training that works with the distributor sales rep’s everyday workflow. Because it is delivered over time and reinforced it is remembered.

 

The really advanced distributors are recruiting their top performing salespeople to be a part of their training and on-boarding and asking experienced salespeople to record insights they have learned over the years by customer type, product and industry. These innovative distributors are gathering and creating learning libraries of the tribal knowledge their senior sales performers have gained over the years  before they retire. These knowledge libraries will equip their LMS system with peer-to-peer knowledge transfer insights that we are seeing has huge returns in retention.

 

Market leading distributors are also investing in their sales skills training and branch manager training. As I shared in the last post, the new workforce wants and needs frequent coaching and feedback. Leading distributors are converting their branch managers from players to coaches and this results in scalable sales results.

 

Market leading distributors and manufactures alike is having their sales teams take sales skills assessments and prescribing individualized learning plans based on need.

 

I hear some manufacturer salespeople expressing concerns: What about relationship building? When I deliver a lunch and learn I am also building relationships.

 

Two thoughts…

 

First if you want to build relationships do so on end customer visits helping the distribution salesperson make more commission.

 

If you want to build relationships with the distributor’s team have an after hours event that is local to the branch and fun. Focus this experience on relationship building and not products, features and benefits. Get to know each person by name and strategically build business relationships. Understand how your distributor makes money and stop pulling their team away from servicing their customers in business hours.( its costing you both sales you could have won)

 

In conclusion, I want to emphasize I am not suggesting we stop training our distribution and channel partners. What I am suggesting is we design modern sales training programs that are cost efficient, time efficient and leverage the way the new workforce wants and needs to learn, and are adapted to the trend of only staying with an employer for 24-36 months..

 

If you are a manufacturer, how many lunch and learns did your field team deliver last year?

 

If you are a distributor, how many manufacturer lunch and learns and meetings did your branch have last year?

 

How do the new salespeople want to learn?

 

Aside from free food, what is the benefit of manufacturer lunch and learn training today?

 

Have you seen a strong ROI from lunch and learns as a distributor? If so please share, there has to be some great success stories,

 

As a manufacturer, what is the value of 3 more end user visits with your distributors this month?

 

We  need to change how we provide product and sales training and I suggest manufacturers provide online product and sales skills training and equip the branch managers to coach and lead their teams. I suggest manufacturers learn the economics of running a distributor branch and plan relationship building events prior or after working hours.

 

If you are sold on lunch and learns and do not plan to change, below are some articles to improve your lunch and learn experiences and hopefully improve the ROI.

 

7 steps to successful lunch and learn 

 

How to create a Learn at Lunch program 

 

How to run a successful lunch and learn program 

Wholesale Distributor and Manufacturer Sales Training Must Transform Due to Market Perfect Storm

 

By Mark Allen Roberts

I enjoy training and coaching salespeople, it’s a passion mine. I led sales training for a global manufacturer, helped develop online training as well as flipped classroom training. I have often helped train wholesale distribution sales teams and coach sales managers. There is a perfect storm brewing that will capsize most manufacture and whole distributor training programs ROI if learning and development teams do not make some strategic course corrections now and batten down the hatches. This post will share the top 4 forces quickly converging on how train and we onboard manufacture and wholesale distributor salespeople.

 

There was a great movie based on a true story titled: The Perfect Storm. This movie shares the story of courageous men and women who risk their lives on rescue vessels and fishing boats. On Halloween night 1991 a fishing boat faced three raging weather fronts that unexpectantly collide to create the fiercest storm in modern history. If you have not seen the move here is a movie trailer. The experienced crew has weathered storms at sea before but never three storms converging all at once making the Perfect Storm.

 

Having trained manufacturer and whole sales distributor sales and sales managers I see a perfect storm, a sales problem brewing on the horizon and in this post I will share the 4 converging forces that will capsize the ROI of sales training if you do not transform your sales training programs now. The bigger impact of this perfect storm will be felt by manufactures and distributors alike in the next five to seven years and will be seen as:

 

  • Sales growth quotas not achieved
  • Lost sales you should have won
  • Decline in customer experience
  • Decline in customer satisfaction
  • Reduced profit margins
  • Higher sales unplanned turnover
  • Large account defections to new competitors
  • Poor Training ROI
  • Manufactures not happy with their distributors
  • Distributors not happy with manufactures

 

So what are these four converging forces about to rain down on how we train our sales people?

 

  1. New Generation of workers: Millennials and Gen Z
  2. Buyers changing how they buy and what they need to buy
  3. The Amazon affect and how it’s shaping buyer service expectations
  4. Top sales talent leaving the workforce

 

 

I think you will agree any one of these would have an impact on your salespeople and how we need to train them differently. However, all these 4 forces are converging over the next few years to make a sales training perfect storm.

 

Let’s unpack each a little more.

 

New Generation of Workers: Millennials and Gen Z Workers

A new generation of workers are entering manufacturers and distributors. By (2025) they will be the majority of your sales team. Each generation is influenced by their education, experiences, technology and geopolitical environment. That is why each generation has its own unique characteristics.

 

On an article titled: 7 surprising traits that make millennials excellent employees the author shares Millennials are:

 

  • Curious
  • Individualistic
  • Want Financial Stability
  • The digital Generation/ tech savvy
  • Want and need regular feedback
  • Like to Collaborate with others

 

Other things to consider is they plan to stay with employers 24-36 months and move on to new roles that teach them new skills. They expect their employers to invest in training and if employers do not, they move on quicker.

 

Let’s take a look at Gen Z workers.

 

The Warton University article shares this about Gen Z in the workplace:

 

“As a group, they are “sober, industrious and driven by money,” reports the Wall Street Journal, but also “socially awkward and timid about taking the reins.” They are risk-averse and more diverse, says Inc. magazine. Forbes says they “want to work on their own and be judged on their own merits rather than those of their team.”

 

 

 

Another article shared these traits for Gen Z:

 

  • Preference for traditional communication
  • Work individually
  • Mobile first habits
  • Motivated by Stability
  • Naturally Competitive
  • High Priority for healthy work life balance

 

Millennials and Gen Z workers will need new forms of training and managers will need to provide frequent coaching and not micromanagement. Both generations want to know the why of what they are doing and they plan to change jobs often.

 

Buyers Changing How They Buy

 

Due to the Internet Of Things buyers can and do conduct online research like never before.

 

  • 70% of the buying process is over before they speak with a salesperson
  • 44% of buyers have already made their buying decision
  • 20% of buyers are only speaking with sales to finalize the shipping and other transaction information.

 

Buyers today want and need salespeople who are trusted advisors who provide valuable insights they cannot find online. 85% of buyers in one survey shared they expect salespeople to connect the dots from what they are selling to the impact it will have on the buyer’s bottom line and sadly only 15% of salespeople are meeting that expectation today.

 

In the past buyers made decisions based on regional proximity. Today with two clicks buyers can buy from all over the world opening up many new competitors you never faced in regional markets.

 

“The Amazon Effect” and how it’s shaping buyer service expectations

 

Entreprenuer.com article shared the Amazon Effect as:

 

“it generally refers to the difficulty many stores — particularly brick-and-mortar outlets — face when they compete with Amazon. The online retailer’s vast selection, fast shipping, free returns, low prices and “Prime” subscription service all serve to create high customer expectations for any retailer hoping to compete.”

 

More and more of Amazon revenues are from B2B sales each year impacting both manufacturers and wholesale distributors alike.

 

When buyers leave work and they go home to their families they are consumers. Each month 197 million consumers get on their devices and visit Amazon. They are experiencing what frictionless purchasing feels like and they can’t help but let it shape the type of experience they expect from their vendors at work.

 

Is buying from you as easy as two clicks?

 

How much friction do your buyers experience when buying from you?

 

Top Sales Talent Leaving the Workforce

 

Each day 10,000 boomers are leaving the workforce. This generation (my generation) often are in leadership positions in manufacturing and whole distributors. We did not grow up with technology but most of us adapted but many did not.

 

I just met with a sales branch manager at a distributor that has a 3-ring notebook with all his key account business cards, vendor sell sheets and a handwritten targeted account list. By the way he consistently is in the top 3 producers in his company. The challenge becomes he has so much what I would refer to as tribal knowledge. Because technology entered into his world at a later time the majority of what he knows is in his head. If you ask him how he consistently delivers the results he produces each year he often cannot tell you. If you complete a top producer analysis assessment you will discover the knowledge and sales competencies that he has.

 

In distribution in particular there are so many vendors, and SKU’s and nuances you just learn to know that are often not captured and it should not surprise us some distributors find it takes a new salesperson as much as six years to truly become effective generating incremental revenue. The manufactures I have served typically see a new salesperson deliver incremental revenue in 12-18 months on the job.

 

What are common characteristics of top performers today?

 

The business owners play book shares how to identify top performers and future leaders:

 

  • Quality – if you are going to do something do it right
  • Skills Development– continuous learning
  • Fearless decision making – they leverage data and make decisions
  • Desire input from others
  • Self-Directed – they have a plan and work the plan
  • Emotionally intelligent-cool under pressure
  • Strong people skills– interpersonal communication and listening skills

 

Boomers who often lead departments and are top performers will be leaving over the next five to seven years. One distributor shared with me they estimate over 50% of their workforce will be retiring over the next eight years.

 

I hear some of you saying: “This is all interesting and I knew most of this, so what about this perfect storm again Mark?”

 

Glad you asked.

 

Your sales training and onboarding must change to support the audience you are now training.

 

You must immediately start capturing that tribal knowledge digitally today.

 

Some key characteristics of modern learning?

 

Asynchronous

Online and flipped classroom application

Trainee is in charge

Fast paced

Just enough

Relevant to the sales role and customers

Just in time with workflow

Mobile friendly

Peer to peer learning critical component

Interactive

Gamification will appeal to the new generations

Virtual Reality and Augmented reality will become the norm

On the job tool and learning aids will be critical

 

If you would like to learn more about modern sales learning programs I wrote a whitepaper titled: 17 training innovations for the future and you can download a copy here.

 

Other consideration before we close?

 

You don’t have the time (6 months) to train new salespeople like the past.

 

Death by PowerPoint instructor led training alone does not work with new workers.

 

Instructor led one and done training without reinforcement or application exercises does not stick.

 

You don’t have 6 months to train salespeople who plan leave in 24 months.

 

On the job training is great if managers do it (50% of the time they do not)

 

The new generation wants coaches not managers.

 

Your sales managers will need strong coaching skills.

 

With every new challenge an innovator will design and deliver new solutions to meet the challenges.

 

What will sales training look like in the next 5 years for manufacturers?

 

What will distributor onboarding and sales training look like?

 

How will these converging four forces impact your sales?

 

What will sales training need to look like if employees only stay 24 months?

 

So there you have it. All the above forces are quickly converging and will create a perfect storm for training manufacturer and wholesale distribution salespeople.

 

What do you think?

 

Is my argument that sales training must change all wet?

 

Is there something I forgot to consider?

 

How does your team plan to weather this storm like we have never seen before?

 

I see this as an urgent and pervasive problem that is growing each month and must be solved.

If you have some ideas how to solve this perfect storm of a sales training problem I would enjoy chatting.

Fix Sales: Could a Business MRI (BMRI) Make Your Sales and Profits Healthier?

 

By Mark Allen Roberts

The new year is underway and soon we will be ending the 1st quarter. When I ask CEO’s and Sales leaders: do you feel you will achieve this year’s plan? I hear I hope so, I think so, and more often than not I hear I’m not sure, it’s too soon to tell. I recently spoke at the NAW event in Washington DC and asked a room of CEO’s and business leaders to raise your hand if you felt with 100% certainty your sales organization would hit your sales and profit objectives in 2020…. not one hand was raised. Will 2020 be like the movie Groundhog Day and be another year like last year where more sales team’s missed quota than achieved it? Or will 2020 be the year you make strategic adjustments to transition your sales organization? In this post we will discuss how to run a BMRI for your business now and detect problems before the end of year when they can become terminal.

 

There was an interesting article in the Wall street Journal some time ago about a reporter who wrote about healthy lifestyles discovering he had a blocked Carotid artery although he was not currently showing any symptoms. As I read this article it reminded me of how many business owners, CEO’s and sales leaders I speak with have deep issues in their businesses that need some kind of an early warning, a business health MRI maybe to identify issues today that could be potentially crippling  at year-end or fatal in the future.

 

Meet Thomas Burton, age 68 a journalist covering the medical field, and he has spent years writing about strokes, most of which are caused by clots blocking blood flow to the brain. Now he faced a question as he shared in this article: “Am I going to become a weird punch line? As in: Did you see that the guy who writes all those stories about strokes just had a big one?” He felt healthy, ate right and exercised. He considered himself a young 68, but inside his body small fat cells were traveling in his blood and forming a clot.

 

He had none of the common stroke symptoms like:

 

Slurred speech

Temporary loss of vision

One side of face droop

Arm or leg weakness

 

As I read the article I learned 700,000 strokes a year are caused by blood clots and 130,000 of them end in death according to the American Stroke Association.

 

A simple scan, an MRI saved this reporters life. I was so moved by this article I signed up for a body scan myself.

 

This led me to a a couple of questions:

 

What if we could provide a scan for the health of your business today and predict the future health of your business?

 

If we used a scan of your businesses health today could it help us prevent your business having a stroke and or going out of business?

 

Would you do it? Why or Why not?

 

What if we had a Business MRI (BMRI) and we could scan your business and share specific areas that need to improve before they become fatal?

 

For over 30 years of my career I was hired to “fix sales problems”. The first thing I would do is assess various parts of the business, understand the voice of their customers today, and determine the organizations’ overall health then work with the leadership teams to improve any areas that are not performing or could be a risk for the organization in the future. This process I used was the same but the time to complete it varied from 3-6 months to a year. (but that was many years ago) As a leadership team we would find, divide and concur the data and I would conduct four legged sales calls with the sales team and visit all the customers who represented 80% of the profits. I was assessing the sales team skills, beliefs, motivation, process, strategy alignment and the tools they were using. I was also capturing the voice of their customers today. Luckily today we have the technology and systems to complete a business health scan (BMRI) in less than three weeks.

 

What if, buried deep in your transaction data and your sales team itself are the answers you are seeking?

  • How effective are we?
  • How much more effective can we be?
  • How long would it take?
  • Does my sales team have the beliefs, motivation, skills and systems support to drive the sales and profit growth I need?

 

Could clots be forming that can cause a sales and or profit stroke in your business or worst?

 

If we could run a diagnostic scan of your sales and your overall business health what would we look for?

 

I would suggest seven (body) parts of your organization to scan.

 

Voice of your customers

 

Net promoter score

Customer satisfaction score

Company knows why they win and why they lose sales

Understand your customer’s buying criteria today

Understand your customers buying process today

Understand the business of your customer’s business

 

 

Systems and Processes

 

Sales Plan

Sales Process that is buyer centric

Systems to support profitable growth

Sales skills and competencies

Is the CRM your single point of truth or a box of lies?

Sales Support

Excess capacity

On time shipments

Shipment accuracy

 

Marketing

 

Web page rank

Web bounce rate

Web content in the form of problems you solve

Testimonials

Lead generation

Quality of leads generated

Cost per lead

Lead rolling 12 months close rate

Case studies with economic impact

Social Media presence

Digital marketing competence

Ease of online engagement

Content

Content, thought leadership positioned in key channel associations

Leads from events

 

 

 

Sales support

 

Ideal customer profiles

Buyer personas by channel and product type

Sales Enablement

Sales tools

Sales Management Skills

Sales Manager Coaching Mastery

 

 

Sales Mindset

 

Beliefs of your salespeople about selling

Motivation of your salespeople

Sales team Accountability

Will they sell?

Emotional intelligence

Figure it out factor

Empathy

Beliefs about your pricing

Beliefs about your quality

Beliefs about the economic value your team delivers

 

 

Sales Skills

 

Qualifying

Discovery

Value based sales skills

Product knowledge

Follow up

Build and leverage relationships

Account management

Project management

Problem solving

Critical thinking

Do what you say you will do

Listening, active listening skills

Business acumen

Market knowledge

Understanding of your customer’s customer

Understanding of how your customer makes profit

Negotiation skills

Closing skills

Understanding of company strategy

Understand sales behaviors that support company strategy

 

 

Metrics and Data

 

On boarding new sales associates and time to revenue

Sales skills assessment

Sales training content, time and delivery method

KPI’s (leading and lagging indicators)

Sales $’s

Cost of sale by customer

Sales growth trend last 24 months

Cash flow

Average sales profit last 24 months, total, by region, by salesperson

Net profit by customer

Share of wallet by key customer

Customer retention %

Customer defections $’s

Net new customer $’s and profit

Net new product and or new service sales and profits

Price override %

Cost of new customer acquisition

Sales turnover (planned and unplanned)

Sales close rate

 

Once we scanned your organization for all of the above, we could diagnose the overall health of your business today and predict the future success of your organization. We are establishing your current state.

Most of the teams I have served have a much clearer vision of their future state they desire than the current state they are working in today. We look at your business and customers today then create a plan, connect the dots between today and where your team desires to be,

 

What would you add to the list?

 

What else would you want to diagnose?

 

How healthy is your business?

 

How healthy is your sales and profits?

 

Are your salespeople doing the sales behaviors you need today?

 

I hear some of you saying: “Wow Mark that’s a lot of work, I am already buried in work and so is my team how will we find the time to gather this information? “

Or another common concern: ” This sounds like a pretty big change and we are not typically strong at change management.”

If you have been following any of my articles or attending webinars there is an assessment tool and process to gather the above data points. We leverage technology to gain the insights we need to shape a healthy business plan for the future.

If you want to DIY your assessment have at it. Before the tools we available today I helped teams gather this much needed data and it typically took 6-8 months.

With the rate of change we are experiencing in this VUCA economy by the time you gathered everything yourself it may not be relevant anymore.

The other consideration you must assess is the organizations culture if you want to DIY your sales and profit health project. Your organization culture is like the blood flowing throughout your body. It touches every organ or as in this case every process and system.

 

Culture 

Innovative or Protect the Fort?

Comfort with change?

Leaders have fixed mindset?

Matrix structure, top down, very flat?

Decision making process?

Leaders open to new ideas or do they have deep biases that may slow down the process?

 

My recommendation is you want a 3rd party to give your business a BMRI so the data is not biased.

 

Be prepared some of what you learn will be great and confirm your beliefs and some of what your 3rd party discovers will make them seem like a Heretic. There is a tremendous value of hiring a heretic when it comes to adding value to your bottom line.

Keep your focus on the desired future state, processes and customers.

Create cross functional teams to help you get there.

You have a smart and experienced team give them data and watch them shine.

When you find the above you will complete a health assessment of your business.

You will have all the data. Where the art of this comes in is seeing all these puzzle pieces and knowing how to assemble them into a plan your team can execute that drives short term gains while establishing long term profitable sustainable growth.

 

If you want help let’s chat.

 

I can help you answer the above questions in 3-4 weeks and establish your current state, then together we can collaboratively build your sales and profit health plan.

 

 

 

 

Fix Sales: Is Your CRM a “Box of Lies”?

 

By Mark Roberts

More and more sales teams are investing in a CRM to improve their sales effectiveness and drive more revenue to the bottom-line. (or that’s what the business case you wrote said to justify the investment) The right CRM becomes your single voice of truth to determine sales pipeline, sales behavior and customer activity. Salespeople often push back because the tool was thrown on them and not sold to them on how it could benefit them. Most salespeople believe a CRM is basically one more way for the organization (big brother) to watch them and challenge what they do. Sales organizations are already the most measured business team in most organizations. One-way salespeople push back on a CRM is making it a “box of lies”. In this post we will discuss why sales teams often hate CRM’s, the value a good CRM will deliver and how to tell if your current CRM is just a “box of lies.”

 

I was watching the Jimmy Fallon show not long ago and he had a guest Mellissa McCarthy and they played a game called box of lies. If you are not familiar with this game click here and watch a short video. The game is set up with two players facing each other and they have a small window to make eye contact. One player picks a box from the shelf and opens it and can describe what they see or lie. The other person must try to guess if what they are being told is the truth or a lie.

 

As I watched this show it reminded me how this is often how sales leaders feel when they look into their CRM systems trying to find valuable insights about the accounts their salespeople are working with.

 

Working with senior sales leader I often hear two common concerns about their CRM:

 

  1. The doubt the accuracy of the data
  2. They struggle to have their sales teams use the tool they invested in

 

Salespeople who have the right CRM for their application and have received training on how to use the technology to become more efficient and effective love their CRM. The CRM is the first thing they open each day, they can enter updates from their cell phones and they have seen how this tool helps takes the complexity out of account management and helps them close more sales faster.

 

However this is not the norm in most sales organizations I work with. Salespeople do not use the CRM in many cases and if asked they share they hate it.

 

Why?

 

If we seek the root of a problem we can often better understand it and fix it. To fix this sales problem I Goggled: “Why Sales hates CRM systems” It seems I am not the only one who has noticed salespeople hating their CRM and wanting to know why.

 

Why sales (don’t) hate CRM, but why they won’t use it 

Why do salespeople hate CRM? 

5 Reasons Salespeople Hate CRM 

Why do your Sales Reps Hate your CRM 

Why salespeople hate their CRM (you tube)

Why Your Sales Reps Hate CRM Software [Infographic]

 

I read these posts and watched You-tubes and identified 5 common reasons salespeople Hate CRM.

 

  1. Trust – they believe it was implemented to check on them, hold them even more accountable. They believe its one more way for big brother to watch them and challenge them and their sales leaders have no idea what selling is like today.
  2. Written for sales managers not salespeople– this came up often and I hear it from salespeople I work with and coach. The tool their leaders invested in (often in a big way) does not add any value to the salesperson. The tool they use, if they use it, was not designed for the user but the manager.
  3. Access– some salespeople complain their CRM system is not accessible when they are in the field working with customers. Many complain they cannot update account data from their cell phones. One team expressed the concern their CRM is so poor they spend hours entering the updates and it is lost.
  4. Not easy to learn or use– many of the salespeople I coach share they received little if any training on how to use their CRM and if they did receive training it was on the basics and not real life examples of what they do in a typical day.
  5. Adds more time and complexity to their day not efficiency – this comes up in every conversation. Some CRM tools have such a poor user interface they just add frustration to the salesperson’s already frustrating and stress filled day. As one seasoned salesperson shared with me off the record: “ What does my CEO and Sr. VP of Sales want? They said it very clear in our last meeting. They want more organic growth, more customer face time, more net new business and sales selling based on value not price. The trouble is the CRM system we chose is not adding efficiency to my day it is taking time from the hours I could be selling.”

 

One article shared the below quote:

“The valuable data and sales process flow reviews and improving your sales forecasting you hoped to gain from the investment is now a bunch of meaningless data that is not worth the time it took a salesperson to enter it.”

 

Another article went on to share:

“Salespeople should be doing one thing and one thing only: talking to prospects and building real human relations in the process. Traditional CRM systems are keeping them away from that. Instead of facilitating relationship building, CRM’s hold sales people from their prospects and force them to log calls, update contacts, attach emails and other mindless admin work humans are not meant to be doing.”

 

What good is a tool if you need to help it to make it help you?

 

One last quote from SalesBox.com (I promise):

“We have personally discussed CRM with thousands of people worldwide. The general feedback from the salespeople is usually unprintable, we usually say they get something dark in their eyes when you mention the word CRM”

Why have a CRM if a sale hates them so much?

What are the key benefits of CRM software?

The right CRM can help your sales grow profitably with:

  • Improved efficiency
  • Improved customer retention
  • Get greater customer satisfaction
  • Increased sales productivity
  • Do better forecasting and reporting

Former CEO of General Electric, Jack Welch insists that the secret to making it to the top of your industry (and staying there) starts on the inside:

“An organization’s ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage.

I thought this quote was a compelling reason to have a CRM:

“Digital transformation is no longer an initiative used by progressive companies to increase efficiency or gain a competitive edge over their peers—it is a requirement for all businesses to thrive in the future.” – Gartner

How do you know if your current CRM is the wrong CRM?

  1. Sales Managers have to force salespeople to use it
  2. The tool is not accessible 24/7
  3. The tool is not accessible on mobile devices
  4. Sales is not updating account records timely
  5. You have zero confidence in your sales pipeline
  6. Salespeople are spending less time selling and more time with data entry

So how about your team?

Are you looking for a CRM?

Does your sales team hate your CRM? If so, why?

Did your CRM training include applications for typical sales activities?

Did your sales team receive CRM training?

I purposefully did not call out any CRM Software companies in this post. You need to find the right tool for your sales process. As Covey said: “start with the end in mind.” Why do you want or why did you buy the CRM you have? We need to help salespeople by improving the user experience and with training. Fail to have a good user experience and fail to train your sales team…you will have an expensive box of lies.

To close, I want to share I do not work for any CRM company. I would also like to share I am a huge fan of having a CRM if it is the right application and interface for your business and supports a better buyer experience and adds efficiency and effectiveness to your sales team.

 

What is my advice if your sale hates your CRM and they are not using it?

 

  1. Understand your current sales process and make sure your CRM matches how your salespeople sell, or are supposed to sell today.
  2. Ask the users what they want and need to make the CRM more useful.
  3. Continuously train and facilitate peer to peer sharing of best practices
  4. Coach your salespeople
  5. Share with your sales team how you will use this tool to identify needed new sales tools and job aids based on the data they are entering.
  6. Share how critical it is to enter account updates and why we win and why we lose sales and the role that data will play in the future

Increase Your Profits? Show Me Your “Whale Curve”

 

On a scale of 1 – 10 (one being not strategic at all, ten highly strategic) how strategic would you say your pricing is with your customers?

Do your sales teams’ price your products and services based on cost plus or value?

Do you have price tiers and discount structures?

Do you price by market or do you have one price for all the markets you serve?

Do you know what percentage of sales transactions had price overrides in the past twelve months?

If these questions make you pause or feel a little nervous, you are not alone. Far too many companies are breaking even and often losing profits on the majority of their customers without realizing it.

There is a solution. Every business has a Whale Curve.

One of the quickest ways to stop the bleeding and improve profits is using your Whale Curve to identify accounts that are not profitable and create strategies to make them profitable.

For years we have heard how the Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, can be seen everywhere in sales results. In business, 20% of your customers produce 80% of sales. Within those customers, 80% of profitable sales are often generated by only 20% of your salespeople.

Unfortunately,even Pareto’s 20% number is shrinking to 17%, and we are experiencing a shift with up to 90% of sales now being delivered by 10% of customers for some companies.

We need more than Pareto to fix this sales and profit problem.

Traditionally, Sales Leaders work with sales teams to create strategic account development plans for LARGE key accounts.

We help our LARGE accounts improve their sales and profits, and
we grow top line sales in the process. This model has worked for years. When key account sales increase, CEO’s are happy (OK, happy is not the right word because we
can always sell more, am I right?), but if we bring in the sales and profit numbers they require, they have happier board meetings.

That strategy addresses LARGE key account sales, but what do we do with the smaller and small accounts that often create a great deal or equal amounts of activity and cost of sales but contribute little if any to the bottom line?

In April of 2019, I was asked to join SPA and SPASIGMA as the Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Since 1993, SPA has helped their customers improve their bottom-line profitability leveraging pricing analytics with proprietary tools, processes, and training.

When I am asked to serve a team and their customers I prefer to start in the market and
listening to the voice of their customers. During my first week with SPA, I met with one of our customers and listened to our team share how we have been on a strategic pricing journey with this account for the past few years. This key account’s customer price analysis and strategic pricing recommendations has resulted in an incremental $110,000 to the bottom line per month.

In the next meeting, the numbers were even more impressive: SPA’s work has added an
additional $26 million of incremental profits since starting their strategic pricing journey in 2015.

I have always focused my energies on helping sales teams with sales enablement, capturing the voice of their customers, and teaching their organizations to serve their customers and markets with a value based sales and price strategy. As I continued to have meetings with client partner after client partner, I grew surprised how little I knew about the Whale Curve.

Leading sales teams, I have always had several reports at my disposal. These reports show sales, sales by customer, sales by market, sales by region and sales by salesperson.

Each of these reports also showed profitability by customer, market, and salesperson. In addition to growing top-line sales, I often challenged sales transactions made at profits below targeted market pricing.

The one report I didn’t have was the Whale Curve.

Knowing what I know now, I wish I had because it would have been helpful.

What is this Whale Curve?

The Whale Curve shows you accounts where your team is making healthy profit margins and accounts where you are breaking even and where you are losing profit dollars with each transaction.

In a whale curve, customers are cumulatively ranked by profitability, from highest to lowest.The resulting curve is said to look like a whale coming out of the water.

Looking at the right side of the curve can be alarming because you can visually see the impact of the bottom customers draining your overall business profit.

According to Harvard Professors Robert Kaplan and V.G. Narayanan, the 80-20 Pareto rule does not apply to customer profitability for organizations.

The whale curve for cumulative profitability reveals that the most profitable 20% of customers generate between 150 – 300% of total profits.

Let that sink in a minute….if that’s true why is your business not more profitable?

The middle 60 – 70 % of customers break even, and the least profitable 10 – 20% of customers cause a decrease of 50 – 200% of total profits, leaving the company with its 100% of total profits.

Put another way, your bottom 20% of customers is draining your peek operating profits and in so doing you realize the profits you see today.

On the profitability whale curve, the difference between the highest point of the chart and current company profitability (100% profitability) represents unrealized profit potential for the company.

The average organization has both customers having a positive impact on company profitability, and customers who negatively impact potential profits of a company by generating less revenue than costs – creating a negative effect on company profitability.

Often even managers who understand the issue are not able to easily distinguish between
customers belonging to these two groups because they lack a price analytic tools that include the cost of sales.

The total sales size of customer does not always show the customer is automatically the most profitable; in our experience, the largest customers may turn out to be the most unprofitable.

How did customers not know?

When a manufacturer and or distributor has 1.000’s of customers and over 40,000
SKUs over time, 100’s of salespeople, various price programs, numerous product groups and many locations you would be surprised how often we see it.

How does this happen and why didn’t they see it in their monthly reports?

Is this something that happens slowly over time or is it something in response to new
competitors?

What is the best way to solve this problem?

How long does it take to identify customers and their profits and plot them on the Whale
Curve?

What are the best practices for improving profitability in managing the whale curve data?

How long does it typically take from the day we share the whale curve data to improved
profitability?

How much profit should a company expect to improve in the first 12 months?

How do sales teams react to this data?

Are most sales teams trained and capable to negotiate price increases?

Why not just cut the tail off the whale? Wouldn’t that quickly fix the problem?

Is the pricing analytics exercise a one and done exercise or something that happens over the years? Why?

What I am finding is the Whale Curve is a valuable tool to help companies realize what
accounts are driving their profits, what accounts are at break-even, and what accounts are eroding your profits. In essence, the tail of your whale is eroding your total gross margins the longer it is allowed to swim freely without price guidance and a strategic pricing methodology.

As I learn more about the Whale curve and pricing analytics, I will post content so we can all learn how to improve our profits and the bottom line in the hyper-competitive markets we serve today. We will answer the above questions and many more to help you and your teams improve your profits and gain a higher return on the value your organization provides.

Have you heard about the Whale Curve before?

If so, what did your team do to improve your profits?

Did you cut the tail off the whale or did it take on a new shape over time?

What are some other applications for the Whale Curve that can help us make better decisions?

Are there other cost considerations companies are not considering when they build their Whale Curve?

Hand Tattoos and Fixing Broken Windows in Your Marketing

 

 

 

What does your company really know about your customers and targeted new customers? Is your web site an inbound lead generation machine or a virtual brochure just taking up space? How strategic is your marketing and is it creating value or just costs? In this post we will discuss how to identify if you have any broken windows in your marketing.

This week all the news and radio stations are sharing the story about Ariana Grande’s new Kanji tattoo and how it says something totally different than it was supposed to say. Ariana went through the pain and cost of having a tattoo on her palm and wanted it to say “ 7 rings” to promote her new Album. What it did say was “small charcoal grill”. When she was informed of this error she immediately went back and had it corrected. Now her Tattoo reads “small charcoal grill finger heart” Huh? I have heard people laughing about this mistake and the star herself is making light of it. The trouble is she assumed people would read the tattoo as she does left to right then top to bottom. Here’s the trouble you read Japanese right to left. She shared a picture of her hand as seen below.

 

 

How could she let this happen?

 

How could such a fun message get so screwed up?

 

How could a promotion strategy become such a market joke now?

 

Ariana had a vision and she went to someone she trusted to execute that vision. She had a strategy, she invested money, time and pain to have her vision become a reality. Sound familiar?What if you discovered all the time, pain and cost you put into marketing today is a joke to your target customers?

 

What if I told you your marketing may be sending the wrong message or no message at all to your customers?

 

What if your customers read your promotional material and laugh and ridicule your company instead of want to learn more and want to buy from you?

 

Ouch…that’s not so funny anymore.

 

In my last post we discussed Broken Window theory. If you missed it, this is work completed by psychologist Philip Zinbardo from Stanford  who ran an experiment and it showed if you allow small crimes it will create chaos and even law abiding citizens will commit crime. The longer you allow small crimes the more serious crimes increase. In my last post I shared signs, broken windows you should look for in your sales organization. If they exist they must be repaired or replaced to have a sales team that meets and or exceeds it sales and profit growth targets.

 

Does your marketing efforts have broken windows that need to be repaired?

 

Do you know where to look?

 

Below are some common marketing broken windows you need to look for and repair before your marketing efforts can create the value they were meant to drive.

 

No web site

 

A web site that is a virtual brochure not a strategic lead generation tool

 

Bounce rate greater than 70% 

 

Not knowing what a bounce rate is

 

Not understanding who your ideal customers are and why they are ideal for your business 

 

Not knowing and understanding the language of your customers

 

No buyer personas 

 

Your vision is about marketing activities today not strategies for future

 

Not knowing what a buyer persona is 

 

Salespeople are selling naked: do not know what sales tools you have or where to find them 

 

Salespeople are not using new sales tools because they so not work

 

Salespeople creating their own sales tools

 

You do not understand the current voice of your customers’ 

 

Do not understand the problems you solve for your targeted customer

 

Do not have clear-targeted markets

 

If you search for problems you solve on Google and your company is not found on first page (ideally in the top three)

 

You are in B2B space and marketing believes “content marketing” is only for B2C

 

No content strategy

 

No thought leadership published in your markets and industries

 

No content map

 

Not speaking at industry trade events

 

Do not understand how buyers buy today

 

No WebEx strategy to demonstrate your team’s knowledge

 

Do not understand what buyers need to buy today

 

Do not understand the buyer journeys of your buyers today

 

No blog

 

All your marketing talks more about you than the problems you solve

 

No LinkedIn presence or strategy

 

Someone on marketing team says: “Our buyers do not shop for products like ours on the internet”

 

No Facebook presence or strategy

 

No Twitter presence or strategy

 

Not leveraging pintrest and instagram

 

Your team cannot all agree on your target audience

 

You do not have enough team members to execute effective marketing

 

No You-Tube content

 

If you publish content you share same content in every social platform

 

Your content is selling not educating

 

Your content is gobbledygook (check out his link gobbledygook manifesto) 

 

Does your team have any of the above broken windows that need repaired?

 

Is your web traffic growing each month?

 

Are your inbound leads growing each month?

 

Have you strategically created a community…your tribe? 

 

Are your inbound leads converting into sales and profits?

 

What is the sale close rate on inbound leads?

 

Or does your marketing say “small charcoal grill finger heart” and you don’t even know?

 

Running a market leading business is very difficult. It starts with being customer centric and intimately listening and understanding your customer’s voice.

Marketing teams that add tremendous value know how to leverage the voice of their ideal customers and they strategically speak the language of their customers correctly. You must clearly understand your customers’ problems, solve them and capture the success stories and share them in strong content.

If you have any of the broken windows above in your marketing please repair them. The longer they are allowed to exist the more time your competitors are winning business you could have won.

As for Ariana Grande? TMZ just reported she now has a $1.5 million opportunity to remove the tattoo LazerAway.

Talk about jumping on an urgent problem and being able to solve it brilliantly and have all her fans and media share the problems you solve to a key target demographic ! Excellent Strategy!

In our next post we will discuss broken windows in leadership you need to repair.

Increase Sales: Fix Broken Windows in How Your Team Sells

 

 

Is your sales team prepared to win and achieve their sales goals  today? Do your salespeople consistently exhibit the discipline to drive profitable sales growth? Do your salespeople clearly understand your expectations and they are accountable to them? One way to ensure your sales team breaks the growing global trend of sales teams not achieving sales growth goals is to fix broken windows in your sales organization. In this post we will discuss where to look for broken windows that are hurting your sales performance.

 

I am very thankful to a number of my mentors over the years. They taught me how to capture and leverage the voice of the customer and how to serve customers by providing industry insights and best practices to improve their bottom line. One mentor taught me how to listen, actively listen for unresolved problems. Mentors help salespeople understand the discipline required to drive profitable sales growth and to be accountable for key behaviors that if performed consistently will drive profitable sales growth. Having disciple and being accountable is not about doing 1,000’s of things perfectly. Being accountable and having discipline is about is having clear goals and expectations on how you will achieve those goals. As the sales leader it is about inspecting what you expect and understanding the behaviors and attitudes to support key goals.

 

I am very proud of my children. My dream for my children was I would grow a business and give it to them one day to run. In running the business they would learn the life lessons I experienced and have financial freedom. I discovered about 15 years ago this was only my dream. My children had much different plans. My daughter became an amazing artist and now is the social media marketing manager for a company driving 3-5 times the traffic to their trade events and website leveraging her artistic skills creating innovative content. My son has a burning desire to serve and protect others and a police officer.

 

Over the holidays my son and I were talking and he shared something called “Broken Window Theory” and I thought it was fascinating. Broken window theory suggests that visible signs of crime like cars stripped and up on blocks in the street, street signs missing, traffic lights not working, people consuming alcohol in public and other anti- social behaviors create an environment for more crime and more serious crimes. The theory suggests that policing methods that target minor crimes such as vandalism, public drinking and others create an atmosphere of order and lawfulness, thereby preventing more serious crimes.

 

In the 1969 a psychologist named Philip Zinbardo from Stanford ran an experiment. He parked a car with no license plates in two neighborhoods. One that was run down, broken windows and signs of crime and one in an affluent neighborhood in Palo Alto California. The car parked in the run down neighborhood was vandalized within 10 minutes. Next he smashed the front window and what he observed surprised him. Others in the neighborhood with vandalism and other crimes joined in and within 24 hours the entire car was stripped to the frame. Who did the vandalizing is what was disturbing: It was respectable adults in the community often with their children not …street gangs.

 

The car in Palo Alto remained untouched.

 

The findings from the study?

 

Unintended behavior leads to a breakdown of community controls

 

One broken window leads to many if left unaddressed

 

Disorders drives fear and withdraw from community laws and norms

 

Even the best citizens in a community can start bad behaviors if the behaviors are left unchecked

 

My son has been a police officer in a large city now for a number of years. He has personally experienced how policing and correcting what seems like minor misdemeanor crimes helps bring a neighborhood back to life. He has seen the impact having the discipline to enforce common community norms and expectations that support a safe and prosperous community and how this reduces crime significantly.

 

“Ok Mark, this is all interesting … but how does this apply to driving profitable sales increases year over year?”

 

I thought you would never ask!

 

How many broken windows exist in your company’s sales organization?

 

Do you know where to look?

 

The good news is you have a good smart team and there are many things about your company you and your team should be proud of. When I did business development consulting work I asked a lot of questions and looked for broken windows that are signs of much bigger sales problems to be solved. It is not unusual for my past clients to not even see the broken windows they walk by each day. Many broken windows have been broken for years and they became “ how we do things around here”. New team members will see them immediately but if they want to survive they learn to look the other way. Instead of repairing the broken windows teams try to just cover them up.

 

Let me help you see the broken windows that I have seen because you too may have grown accustomed to seeing them and may walk by them everyday and they are hurting your business development and sales growth efforts…

 

Majority of salesperson’s time spent in non-sales activities

 

“Hi how are you meetings” …Salespeople bringing donuts to their distributors with no other business reason for the visit, no one at the distributor even knew you were coming

 

Not being properly groomed

 

Company car dirty inside and out

 

Not making eye contact with customers in meetings

 

Sales people not taking notes in meetings

 

Salespeople not having a pen visiting a customer job site and having to “remember” the requirements

 

No pre-call plans 

 

No CRM entry for future meetings or past meeting notes

 

Outdated company brochures in sales associate’s vehicles

 

Damaged and stained brochures from not being properly stored used in customer presentations

 

Poor or no customer follow up

 

Not following up on leads provided, QDD disorder

 

Salespeople leaving sales training to make/ take phone calls

 

Customer email not responded to in 24 hours

 

Out-dated sales process

 

Salespeople working on laptops in meetings and not paying attention

 

Missing team weekly meetings

 

Salespeople openly criticizing others on sales team, others on other teams ( not constructive criticism ) 

 

Not responding top your email of voicemail in 48 hours if you asked them to

 

No plan to achieve their sales goals

 

Showing up late to weekly meetings

 

Salespeople playing feature and benefit bingo 

 

Not being prepared for weekly meetings

 

No cadence for how often they visit with each customer

 

Not completing expense reports timely

 

Poor interpersonal exchanges with team members from other business groups

 

Talking too much in meetings with customers

 

Salespeople who have never been trained in sales (product-yes, sales-no) 

 

Not understanding their customers’ businesses

 

Not understanding their market or market language

 

No dollar value in CRM for new opportunities identified

 

Not understanding how your product or service impacts your customers’ bottom line

 

Not qualifying potential customers

 

Salespeople seen as just another rep not a trusted advisor

 

Salespeople not spending the majority of their time in sales behaviors

 

Not updating sales stage in CRM

 

Asking poor questions in meetings

 

Poor listening, talking over customers 

 

Selling on price not value

 

No ideal customer profile so everyone could be a customer 

 

Company vehicle not maintained

 

Poor to no relationships at key customers

 

Key account budgets/goals… but no strategic growth plans on how to achieve them

 

Only knowing the buyers at key accounts no relationship with other influencers 

 

Sales pipeline bucket not a funnel 

 

Poor new product sales 

 

Poor sales customer visit trip planning (more time driving and flying than in front of customers)

 

No formal sales process

 

Salespeople staying at very expensive hotels

 

Salespeople submitting very expensive dinners without customers

 

If you see some of the above you have broken windows that need to be repaired before your team can experience explosive sales growth.

 

The above are some broken windows I have observed but there are plenty more I am sure.

 

How about you…

 

What broken windows have you observed in your sales teams that are negatively impacting your profitable growth plans?

 

Do you have associates in key sales leadership roles that have not been trained to lead salespeople?

 

Are their politically incorrect secrets that your salespeople know but are afraid to discuss?

 

If we allow broken windows in how we sell they hurt our ability to drive profitable sales growth and increase shareholder value. We are not saying everyone has to be perfect and 1,000’s of things. What we are saying is we need discipline and accountability in our sales teams. As the leader you need to set the expectation and insure compliance. If you observe a behavior that is not consistent with what your team has identified as your core values you must be safe to address it and correct it. If not the little broken windows become chaos and good team members in your sales community will start behaving in ways counter to driving profitable growth.

 

In our next post we will discuss common marketing broken windows to look for and repair.

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