Leadership Caffeine-Need Market Insight? Ride with a Sales Rep and Learn

June 13, 2011 By 4 Comments

I had just been hired on in a senior strategic marketing role in an industry new to me, and job one was acclimating to the market and industry dynamics and trying to understand what a customer looked like in this world.

After the obligatory round of meetings with company executives, division heads and as many of their team members as I could convince to allocate some time, I recognized that the context, while appreciated, lacked the depth you can only gain from connecting with customers and industry players on their home turf.  No rocket science here, just good common sense.

The sales and customer teams were happy to schedule some client meetings with me, and I appreciated their courtesy, but I wanted to go about this in a different manner.

The typical “new executive wants to meet customers” meetings (or, as I’ve heard them referenced, “educate the idiot from corporate” meetings) many of us have attended or at least witnessed, are largely ceremonial and usually highly caloric. Long lunches or factory tours followed by fancy dinners are lousy ways to do anything other than waste everyone’s time and expand your waistline. I suggested an alternative.

I asked for the opportunity to ride-along/travel with the firm’s top sales representative from each region. I wanted to gain my insights through the windshield and eyes of the people out finding and serving clients and partners. I had the good fortune to be working with a sales executive who understood that the better educated I was, the better I could work with and serve his team. And to ensure that I was in for the full experience, he set me up with two week long trips…Sunday night to Friday.

5 Valuable Lessons You Learn Riding with a Great Sales Professional:

1. Success knows no shortcuts. There is no down time. Waking hours are working hours. From planning time over breakfast to strategizing in parking lots to setting up the next few days activities during the evenings. The only thing that a sales representative has to invest is time, and the best ones invest this time wisely.

2. Follow the money after you understand the real problems. You need to know both the people with the budgets and the people with the problems. We met with plenty of decision-makers on our tour, usually after spending considerable time with the people doing the work and feeling the pain points.

3. The best way in to a new client is usually not through the front door. When we found ourselves with rare time between scheduled meetings, I learned a few lessons in people skills and chutzpah as this rep pulled into a gated parking lot after saying out loud, “I’ve been meaning to get into this firm for awhile. Let’s try it.” He proceeded to talk our way through the guard gate. Instead of heading in the front door, we started at the docks and ended up eventually finding the person with the right title for a 30-minute introduction meeting. This person was so impressed with the creativity of getting in to see him, he agreed to give us time at his team’s monthly meeting. While security measures may have tightened since he employed that approach, the lesson was very real.

4. It’s impossible to know what’s really going on in a game from the skybox seats. After weeks of listening to glowing reports of all of the great things my new company was doing (and why competitors were flummoxed in the process), it was painfully clear that the market reality didn’t match the corporate messaging. Warts, bumps, bruises, bruised egos, the emotions from the customers and alliance partners impacted by the programs, and the true strengths of competitors suddenly became much clearer after talking with the people using and selling our systems.

5. After riding with a rep, your view on supporting the front-line team members will never be the same. Spend a few weeks total riding or travelling with your top representatives, and in spite of the early awkwardness, you will form an important bond with these individuals, and you will cultivate a level of empathy for the challenges of everyone in that role that will make you a better professional.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

I recognize that not everyone has the latitude to “ride with a rep.”  However, you can foster relationships and seek out the insights and wisdom of the people carrying the bags and cultivating the clients.  Find ways to provide help to the people in the field and show genuine interest in learning from and supporting these professionals, and they will repay you with insights and observations you can only learn in the trenches.

For those who come into senior roles, you will likely have the opportunity to gain access to clients and other staff members. Say “no thanks” to the ceremonial and mostly superficial client meetings at this level, and roll up your sleeves and help carry the bags for your top producers for a few days. The education is priceless.

Filed Under: Career, Leadership, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , ,

Three Great Hiring Habits I Learned from a Remarkable Manager

June 9, 2011 By 2 Comments

One mis-hire can poison the workplace pond, tarnish your reputation and impact your team’s/firm’s ability to execute. Do this a few times and your mistakes will likely knock you out of the hiring game and potentially into the cozy confines of today’s crowded unemployment lines.

Unfortunately, the average manager isn’t very good at assessing talent and making the right call.  Many managers receive little training in the hiring and evaluation process. Most of us are not psychologists, and let’s face it, it’s darned hard to get a good read on people and their true strengths, skills and attitudes during the interview phase.  Throw in the need to assess cultural fit, and making the right hiring call truly is a daunting task.

If you are fortunate enough to have a strong HR pro or team supporting you, that’s great. Use them…they will help you do great things. If not, join the club. You own the hiring issue, and it’s important for your career and for your firm that you get this right more often than not.

Three Great Habits I Learned from a Remarkable Hiring Manager:

1. Great Hiring Managers are Relentless Talent Scouts:

A great former colleague of mine is the best talent scout I’ve ever met in a sales capacity. He worked relentlessly at industry events and during his busy weeks to identify, engage and get to know the sales talent in his area and in and out of his industry.  In the rare event of an opening (almost always due to growth), he inevitably had multiple strong candidates teed up.  His talent pipeline was always full, and served as an example for the rest of the organization. This sales manager cultivated a remarkable team and made us all a great deal of money.

2. Great Hiring Managers Understand the Job and the Key Success Factors for the Position at a Detailed Level:

My sales colleague above had such a strong grasp of the role that he was hiring for and what it took in terms of experience, skills and attitude, that his vetting process was honed to very specific behavioral issues from career and life.

In a two-hour meeting over coffee, this manager would walk away with a sense of fit, based on the very behaviorally focused dialogue.  However, given his approach to building a pipeline of candidates, the first discussion was never the last. Most of his hires took place after a year or more of periodic interactions.  The discussions were always framed as just that…discussions, and over time, both the manager and the prospective hire had a chance to get to know each other and to evaluate mutual fit on many dimensions.

3. Great Hiring Managers Look for Complementary Life Experiences: “What Position Did You Play?”

I can’t leave behind the story of this great hiring manager, without offering one anecdote. He once shared that he preferred to hire individuals who had occupied leadership roles in team sports.  His favorite candidates were baseball catchers. He loved the fact that catchers by vocation scanned the entire field, directed much of the game and participated actively in every play.  Pitchers on the other hand, had no chance with this manager.  They only played every third or fourth game, were focused mostly on themselves and the batter, and didn’t have the leadership and field of view habits of the catcher.

Unique and maybe just a bit odd, but it worked!

His integration of other life experiences into the process was a nice extension of the behavioral evaluation process that all of us should apply when getting to know our candidates. His patient, let’s do this over a period of time, approach allowed these types of discussions to emerge, and added to the richness of understanding for all parties.  And yes, life experiences count…often as much as the professional experiences we focus on during our evaluation processes.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

Too many hiring processes are mechanistic in nature and lack the depth of the practices employed by my sales manager colleague above.  While your circumstances may be outside of sales and slightly different, the take-aways, including: know the job intimately, take your time getting to know the candidate and look beyond the CV to life experiences, are applicable to all of us.

Now, what position did you say you played?

Filed Under: Career, Decision-Making, Leadership, Professional Growth Tagged With: , , ,

Smiles, Sales and Leadership

December 20, 2010 By 12 Comments

The smile may be the single most powerful sales tool ever.

I enjoy observing how the help in stores engage with their customers. What you see and hear speaks volumes about the leaders they work for.

Want to know how people feel about their jobs and their bosses? It’s on their faces. Employees mirror the treatment they receive from their leaders. While this theme begs some additional reading in the emerging field of social neuroscience (Goleman et. al), it really comes down to common sense.

My Experience in the Big Box: Welcome to Zombieland!

Walk into some big box stores and spend a few minutes observing people. The cashiers don’t make eye contact with their customers and a smile is a rare sighting. The few available floor clerks seem to head the other way when a customer with a puzzled look on his face enters the area.  You get the impression that some transformation has taken place, sucking the joy of life out of the employees.

Seriously, for people to be so socially cold, they truly must hate their work, their boss or whatever fate brought them there.  Evidence wasn’t far away during a recent, rare visit, as I was able to observe someone in a suit (probably corporate) dressing down a small team of employees (in front of customers) for clearly not following some arcane procedure somewhere. The employees were staring at their shoes, while this creepy, arrogant little reject from leader school attempted to showcase his authority.

I couldn’t wait to get of out that store, and I wondered why it was that compelled me to walk through the doors in the first place. The bosses own responsibility for creating that hell-like, night of the living dead atmosphere.

A Little Honey, A Little Vinegar on Main Street

Once I recovered from the big box experience, I continued my holiday rounds on our community’s Main Street, where I experienced both the good and the bad from small business leadership.

I visited one of my wife’s favorite shops and shop owners, where I was greeted with a handshake and personally walked through the process of selecting items that I have no qualifications to select. I spent at least twice as much as I intended and left feeling great.

The treatment was fantastic, and it appeared to be the de facto standard for everyone who walked in the door. The employees dealt with customers in the same happy, respectful and helpful fashion as their boss, and the cash register was clearly ringing.

Now,  I needed one more item, and this great shop owner sent me down the block to another Main street merchant, where once again, I was back in retail leadership hell.

I walked into the brightly colored store (good) and observed the owner and an employee huddled over something that must have been really important. I said “hello” and received two clearly annoyed stares followed by a curt and unsmiling greeting.  Intrigued, I mentioned the shop owner that had sent me this way, and this time was met with silence. I milled around a little, found what I was looking for, and decided that the lack of interest on their part was mutual. I set the item down, went home and ordered it on-line.  No smile, no interest, no sale.

As an aside, all of you sales and marketing pros, contemplate what just happened in this last incident. A customer with need and money (highly qualified), was sent to the store (a referral) by a store owner (high credibility, high probability of making a purchase) , and all of that hard work was flushed down the toilet of indifference. Repeat that a few times over every month and one might bet (hope) this store is no longer around next year. A qualified lead and a valued referral…all retail road kill due to indifference.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The greatest selling technique ever, might just be direct eye contact and a smile. Leaders, send someone out to shop in your stores or visit your place of business and observe how employees are dealing with customers.  The results might truly frighten you. And then do something about it!

And leaders, in what parallel universe do you come from where “not giving a crap” about your customers is a good plan? I don’t care if you’re the general manager of a Big Box or, the owner of a small retailer, know that one of the unarguable rules of the universe is that happy employees make happy customers.

Give your employees a reason to smile, and they’ll make you smile at the top and bottom lines.

Filed Under: Career, Leadership, Performance, Surviving Lousy Leaders Tagged With: , , , , , ,

10 of My Favorite Dumb Ass Management Mistakes

December 7, 2010 By 9 Comments

Rear view of a brown horse. Note 1 from Art: this one is rated something or another for strong language and emotional intensity.

Note 2: In the spirit of my post, “At Least 20 Things to Stop Doing as a Leader,” which has grown well north of 50 thanks to a deluge of reader comments, I’m back with a list of some insanely stupid and all-too-common management mistakes. These focus more on the decisions, actions or inactions that contribute to creating even bigger problems. While I’ve remained on the positive side of the law here (felons, you’ve had your day!), some of these mistakes are truly criminal. Please feel free to chime in with your additions.

1. Locking the corporate strategy in a drawer. Hey, I’m all for security, but this wasn’t just protecting important documents. This executive didn’t bother to share the strategy with employees either. It was a secret.

2. Not rolling out the sales compensation plan until late March. The sales team was on a calendar year. Hmmm, what did everyone do for Q1?

3. This one is epidemic…sucking the value out of an acquired company by folding, spindling, mutilating, disrespecting, vanquishing and otherwise conquering and plundering the target. We’ve got a mountain of evidence of this, and still, dumb a@@ executives focus on the deal (the easy part) and forget the real work of properly and positively managing the new relative. Welcome to the family! Now bend over and cough.

4. Looking for cause in the effect. This is a daily occurrence in many businesses, where managers run around trying to explain the drivers behind company, competitor and market outcomes. “Hey, our competitor keeps putting up great numbers. They’ve gone to a formal dress code at the office. It must be the clothes.” OK, that’s a little far-fetched, but I double-dog dare you to find a few instances of misguided cause and effect in your workplace today.

5. Losing sight of the core issues in the heat of argument. The decision making process is complex. Add in a group of high powered and big ego managers and you’re certain to be pressured into a dumb a** decision. My favorite evil tactic, “Take of your (insert function) hat and put on your business hat.” You might as well have a lobotomy prior to making that decision, because that’s what your evil counterpart is essentially asking you to do.

6. Letting marketing define its own key performance indicators. Hey, I’m a lifetime marketer, and I still rankle at this one.  If the marketing activities don’t specifically connect to the key levers that move the business forward, they are interesting to some but useless to many.

7. Sliding down the slippery slope of consensus decision-making. Everybody doesn’t get a vote unless we’re talking about ordering pizza. We’ve all seen the cartoon that indicates in a series of panels what various functions wanted in a new product development effort. The Rube Goldberg outcome looks nothing like what the customer wanted. Start looking for the moves away from smart and good in the consensus-based decisions on your teams. It should frighten you.

8. “It’s sunk cost. We can’t worry about what we’ve spent, we need to keep moving forward.” Ha! This rationale has derailed careers and destabilized nations. For the love of all this is good in humanity, quit burning money when all the signs say “Stop!”

9. Daily occurrence in this economy: failing to acquire the right talent because of cost controls. Yeah, let’s fix this one once we’re making money! (For 20 bonus points, identify the insane and inane thought processes that went into that last statement.)

10. Annual occurrence: putting a group of managers in a room one time per year and expecting that out of the collective group grope, market winning strategies will emerge. “Hey, great meeting. See you next year.” We’ll maybe…unless our competitors leave us for global road kill.

The Bottom-Line for Now:

The common denominator in all ten of those very real mistakes is that they are controllable. We can decide to not make these mistakes. The sales comp plan can hit the street with the new year. We don’t have to throw good money after bad, and we don’t have to engage in practices like the annual strategy planning retreat (it’s a process!) that are just stupid. If you can’t go out and get the talent that you need now with what’s walking around on the street, you’re either not trying hard enough or you need to find some other people to work for.

Instead of thinking deep thoughts about making good decisions as part of your New Year’s Resolutions, why not resolve to simply not make the same bad old decisions over and over again. Now that would be progress.

Filed Under: Career, Decision-Making, Leadership, Marketing, Performance, Strategy, Surviving Lousy Leaders Tagged With: , , , ,

Sales & Strategy Playbook: Competitor Acquired? It May Be a Gold-Plated, Gift-Wrapped Opportunity

August 11, 2009 By Leave a Comment

While M+A activity has cycled along with the economy there are some signs that deal volume is picking up.

In talking with a CEO friend running a smaller tech firm, he indicated that there is increasing buzz about various potential combinations and roll-ups that will impact his specific sector. He said this with a smile, and an interesting observation that “when my competitors are acquired, our business spikes and new opportunities are uncovered.”

That’s an Interesting way to look at the situation. I know a lot of people who fear the outcome of Competitor X merging with Firm Y and respond by cowering behind corporate walls or flailing internally. Instead, my CEO friend advocates methodically seizing upon this as an opportunity.

A quick sidebar: The external pundits and internal fear-mongers like to exploit M&A situations for personal visibility.  It’s easy to sound like an expert and spread fear when no one can conclusively prove you wrong. In my opinion, if you were to provide the pundits and fear mongers with truth serum, they would be forced to admit that they have no more idea about the outcome of this merger than they do about the specific weather forecast for noon on a day far in the future.

While I would never counsel ignoring the potential disruptive or market-changing impact of a new combination, just like my CEO friend, I see ample opportunities to gain from an acquisition announcement for the smaller and more fleet-of-foot market participants.

Here’s why:

-Customers are immediately spooked. In the tech sector in particular, customer have been well-trained to react to an acquisition announcement of one of their suppliers with the knowledge that “this is going to hurt.” As a result, purchase decisions slow to a crawl, proof of concepts are derailed and risk-averse buyers begin looking for options that they can justify to their bosses.

You can professionally and ethically exploit this sales interruptus period.  You don’t have to and shouldn’t engage in hearsay and spread rumors as some firms do, but you should absolutely engage prospects (including those that you believed were recently lost to your competitor) and make certain that they know that you are the safe, secure choice focused on serving them.

-The company being acquired is horribly distracted. The press announcement is the beginning of the internal churn at the company being acquired. Confusion reigns supreme. Long-term projects are suspended. It’s not clear who will survive and what products will make the cut, and no matter how much cheerleading goes on from executives silently wondering the same thing, the business goes into autopilot mode.

Customers sense when a firm goes into autopilot mode and this makes them very uncomfortable and risk averse.  See the point above. It’s time to make hay.

-Consider cherry-picking talent. It’s a great time to approach the competitor’s top reps in particular.

There’s nothing an Alpha Rep hates more than having his/her potential sales glory impacted by extraordinary circumstances.  Any threat to the success of the hunt and the opportunity for commission accelerators and another club trip is a chance for your firm to gain some top sales talent.  Some will remain fiercely loyal, and others will seize the opportunity.  Again, do this professionally and ethically and consult counsel on non-compete issues.

-Watch for markets being abandoned. As the post-merger integration activities proceed, the newly combined firm will de-emphasize certain market segments in favor of others. This momentary “white space” can be just the opportunity to fuel your growth.

Make certain that your firm is watching closely and keenly attuned to any overt or even silent decisions to de-emphasize.  Listen carefully to your customers and prospects, they will sense this before anyone else. One firm’s unattractive market may be your treasure.

-Leverage the situation to build internal excitement and to fuel performance

There will never be a better time to get your teams fired up about serving new and long-standing customers and focused on identifying new products and services to exploit the changing market dynamics. Communicate and celebrate successes, encourage innovation and reward efforts that create value.

The Bottom Line for Now:

While the acquisition of key market competitors and participants can have profound long-term implications for your firm, there are often windows of opportunity created by these events that you can exploit to capture clients, strengthen market position and turbo-charge employee enthusiasm. Instead of fearing the worst, seize the opportunity to propel your business.

Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Change, Marketing, Performance, Strategy Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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