Let’s be clear. Doing things right is all about being efficient. Doing the right things is about being effective. So it isn’t an either/or situation, is it? We want both, don’t we? We want to do the right things and do them right. After all, why would we want to be very efficient at doing the wrong things, or do the right things inefficiently? Obviously, we wouldn’t. And nowhere is it more important to be doing the right things and doing them right than in our sales process. In his book, “The Secret to Selling More,” Mitch Gooze (pronounced Goo-zay) makes the point that most sales organizations are composed of a few top sales people along with a lot of average or below average performers. Billions of dollars are spent annually on sales training as businesses try to bring their low performers closer to the level of their top performers. And the improved sales performance those billions of training dollars buys? Not much. So if sales training is not the answer to making our sales process more productive, what is? If you want Gooze’s answer to this dilemma, please read below.
Gooze likens this to a manufacturing environment where, if you don’t like the output (quality and/or quantity of product) you’re getting, you probably have to look at the input (design/engineering) for an answer. As the saying goes, “An organization is perfectly aligned to get the results it is getting.” Garbage in, garbage out. In the same way, if you don’t like the sales results you’re achieving (the output), you should look at your marketing efforts (the input) to make any kind of real difference.
Gooze tells us that marketing has two critical responsibilities: defining the “Who” and the “What.”
1. First, it must define who our customer is. Who do we expect to buy our product or service. Who is our product or service ideally situated to serve? Is our ideal customer short, tall, skinny, fat, young, old, male, female? Does this customer need to be nearby or is geography not a factor? In short, we need to get as much demographic information as we can about who we intend to be our ideal customer.
2. Marketing must define what our ideal customer needs or wants to buy. Note he says “what our ideal customer needs or wants to buy,” not what we want to sell him. And we need to understand why our product or service is the best choice for our ideal customer. What sets us apart and makes us a better choice than any of our competitors?
Now, what does all this have to do with closing the gap between our top sales people and lower performers?
Gooze contends that if marketing does a poor job of carrying out these two critical responsibilities, or does not accurately communicate them to the sales force, sales people will try to figure it out for themselves. The top sales people are the top sales people because they have a sure sense of who needs our product or service, and what sets us apart from our competitors. The lower performers, since they don’t have that clear vision that the top performers have, waste a lot of time trying to sell to anyone who comes across their path . . . with predictably spotty results. So the real key to closing the gap between high and low performers is to level the playing field by making sure we’ve done a good job of defining the “Who” and the “What,” and an equally good job of clearly communicating the “Who” and the “What” to the sales force so all our sales people are armed with the same vision and understanding of our marketplace.
Try this. Ask all of your people who have direct customer contact (field sales people, inside sales people, customer service people) to describe your ideal customer. And just to test their complete understanding of this, you might also want to ask them who is not a good prospect for us . . . not a good fit. Then ask them to tell you why our ideal customers choose to do business with us instead of our competitors. You may be surprised to learn that their answers to those questions don’t align with each other, and maybe not even with you. If that’s true, then you’ll be well-served to distill the answers of your top sales people, make sure everyone knows and understands them, and periodically reinforce them to prevent people from “forgetting” or free-lancing.
Incidentally, Gooze makes the point that the most successful CEOs do not stay behind their desks and isolate themselves from their customers. They spend significant time in the field, talking with customers and testing their answer to the What question. As our customers grow and evolve, their needs change, and what they needed from us yesterday may not be what they need from us today. Smart CEOs know that, stay close to their market, and regularly test whether or not their What answer is still valid.
There’s a lot more in Gooze’s book than what I’ve shared here. I’ve provided an executive summary of his main point, but if closing the gap between high and low sales performers is an issue for you, you should read the whole thing. It’s fairly short, an easy read, and you’ll find it very useful.
Rock Solid Business Development
Phone: (847) 665-9134
andy@rocksolidbizdevelopment.com
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