COMMENTS
Dave
The above two study examples strike me as similar to asking Red Sox fans what they think of the Red sox chances of winning the pennant are; then asking Yankees fans what they think of the Red Sox chances of winning the pennant are. You will get two totally different answers both of which are probably wrong due to the overinflated belief of both groups that they know what they are talking about. (present company excepted of course)
Hi Dave,
The distinction you set up between our conclusions at the Sales Executive Council (a division of CEB) and those of IDC—and, for that matter, your own work—only hold up under the most superficial of readings. A careful reading of our work would tell you two things. First, our methodology, while different from yours, is equally robust. Our conclusions have held up across well over 10,000 reps from around the world as we’ve continued to pursue our work. And as I think you can imagine, we control very carefully for all sorts of variables that might impact the results we’re seeing. Bottom line, we stand by them 100%. Indeed, we have seen hundreds of sales organizations around the world place a great deal of value on our work and realize some spectacular commercial outcomes as a result. Second, in terms of the “story” of the data, what we’ve concluded from all of this work is that a traditional relationship-based approach to selling—based largely on making oneself available to reactively respond to customer needs—is simply a bad bet to place in today’s environment of complex sales and reluctant customers. Instead, the reps most likely to win today create a very different kind of relationship altogether based on challenging customers to think differently about their business. It’s not that relationships don’t matter; it’s that the nature of quality customer relationships has changed radically across the last several years. We’ve corroborated this conclusion dramatically through very robust B2B customer research which tells us that the number one thing customers value in a supplier is their ability to challenge their thinking and teach them new ways to compete more effectively. In that same work, we also found that the number one thing C-Suite executives care about in choosing a supplier is whether that supplier has widespread support across his/her organization. That means the reps will have to reinvent their relationships with customer stakeholders at all levels, not just in the corner office. To your point, Dave, this means we need to rethink “sales team's selling skills, formalize and optimize their sales processes and significantly develop and improve their sales management skills” in order to survive and thrive in this new world. We’re in complete agreement. Your readers can find more about how to build Challenger reps (and managers who can coach them) at: <a>http://www.saleschallenger.com.
Brent Adamson
Senior Director, Sales Executive Council
@Brent - Don't you love controversy?
Because you disagreed with what I wrote you had the opportunity to create a free 500 word plug for the Sales Executive Council. Pretty nice!
As long as you provided the opportunity, the traditional relationship-based approach is only traditional if one goes back a few decades! While some companies may still rely on it, I can't think of a single sales training/sales development firm that's teaching a relationship-based approach, can you?
I agree with what you wrote about the number one thing C-Suite executives care about in choosing a supplier - their ability to challenge their thinking and teach them new ways to compete more effectively.
That said, there aren't many salespeople who have the skill set to reach these executives, get their respect, and the key ingredient, push back and challenge their thinking. Going back to the statistics,
74% have Need for Approval - the weakness that prevents salespeople from doing just that.
Nice chatting with you.
Dave,
A relationship-selling approach is what nearly EVERY training vendor teaches.
Brent isn't talking about Mad Men-style selling (golf, cigars, four martini lunches), he's talking about relationship-building in the "modern," solution-selling sense: open-ended needs diagnosis ("what's keeping you up at night, Mr. Customer?") where the rep's role is to probe deeply to understand customer pain points and then custom-design a solution to fit those uncovered needs. This should sound familiar, I think.
SEC's research clearly indicates that customers don't value this type of sales experience at all. What they value is a rep who brings a unique, often provacative perspective about how to compete more effectively--in other words, don't ask me what's keeping me up at night, TELL me what SHOULD be keeping me up at night. But again, that's not what most companies teach their reps to do, nor is it what most training vendors teach reps to do.
Our own training arm, SEC Solutions, has developed an offering that is about helping reps to lead with insight in the sale. This offering has been quite successful in the market after just one year. Why? Because it's completely different from what other vendors offer and is grounded in research about what customers really value and what sales reps can do to capitalize on that knowledge.
We'd disagree with you on another point too. You say that there aren't many salespeople who can challenge a customer's thinking. That's probably true, but it misses a major point from our research that maybe you missed: it isn't the rep's job to come up with challenging things to say to a customer, it's the company's job (marketing, in most companies).
Leading companies have developed scalable "teaching messages" that map to key customer segments and have taight their reps how to deliver them. Challenging, in other words, is only partly individual skill. It's just as much about organizational capability. This is another way that our offering here is actually differentiated--we help companies come up with those unique "Challenger" insights and, only once identified, teach their reps how to deliver them.
Thanks for your blog and for the energetic debate on this important issue!
@Matthew
We obviously disagree on what every training vendor is teaching. Over the past 20 years Objective Management Group has worked with nearly 400 partners, most of whom are sales, sales management, sales training, and sales development experts, along with an assortment of sales gurus, sales authors and sales strategists. None of them were teaching relationship selling. Their deliverables were focused on sales process, strategies and skills.
While I agree that the company should come up with the challenging questions, most companies - their marketing departments and sales departments don't come up with the right ones and the best ones aren't scripted. That's where companies like yours and mine come in. We help them come up with the questions. But here is where science gets in the way of your point. The science (not research) lacking in the IDC study and the SEC/CEB study - says that 74% of the salespeople - even if they have been handed the challenging questions to ask and taught how to ask them - won't ask the questions because of their Need for Approval.
You can teach their reps how to deliver them, but if you can't identify the salespeople who have weaknesses that prevent them from executing, and overcome them, you won't be able to scale the successes of the top 26%.
Dave - I gotta say I agree with you. Marketing almost always misses the mark when they develop "playbooks" full of probing questions. So much so that they hire outside firms to produce them. I am consistently surprised at how poor the average sales force is at having authentic conversations with executives.
The top producing reps are usually not much better but they live in the same golf community of several of their largest clients and they socialize their way to higher sales. There's really nothing wrong with that but let's be honest - they are not bringing insights.
The lowest common denominator effect actually protects these folks from being displaced b/c there might only be 5 sales people in their entire industry that can have a strategic discussion with an exec and hold their own.
I know these skills can be taught but it takes years of reading books, taking courses, role play, manager coaching and tons of live ammo experience. Plus a good understanding of the prospect's business. We have come full circle though...coaching is a critical component and a great number of sales managers would not be up to task.