Readers’ Comments
“RDS is truly a bold and daring total company approach to customer management and long term relationship building. RDS opens and clarifies communication, relationship (customer and internal), and a new understanding on internal capability. If the intent of this book is to get someone to look seriously at change, this book hits a home run.” - Terry Haverkost, Retired Director, PepsiCo
“RDS is compelling. Different. Meaningful. Contemporary. RDS takes the real concept that buyers buy, sellers don’t sell anymore into action and the approach is truly valuable. Negative Planning and Knowledge Quest are not intuitive and therefore will stick with you long after you finish reading.” - James Mock, Midwest Financial Staffing LLC
“Selling Without Salespeople is surely a no holds barred book. The references to former clients and individuals were straight to the point. Being involved in business and politics for years, I find this approach very different and refreshing.” - Robert Priselac, Technology Consultant, Government Relations
“After several decades in sales and managing customer relationships, I couldn’t help but think how much more successful we could have been had we fully utilized the resources around us. If you are in any sales role, take a hard look at your current situation and get involved in RDS if your company is fortunate enough to have the vision to embrace this philosophy.” - Bob Daniels, Retired, Adhesives Industry Sales Manager
“I am thrilled with this book and the simplicity and practicality of its approach. I especially appreciated the stories and highlights as well as the nuts and bolts to build RDS at our company. I have made it required reading for our business development and leadership teams! We will be implementing this approach in our next monthly meeting.” - Kathy Carrier, President and CEO, Brilliant and Keepsake Threads
“Resource-Driven Selling is the most logical argument and conclusion as to why salespeople in today’s world struggle to drive growth within an organization. This is a MUST read for everyone, including Accountants, Engineers, Shipping Clerks and Customer Service organizations. The anecdotal stories made me laugh and the outlined Core Elements gave me the confidence that as a team, we can change our sales approach and how we retain customers.” - Kevin Davis, VP Strategy and Business Development, Amedica Corporation
Selling Without Salespeople
The Death of the “Old-Style” Salesman
Timothy J. Morrison and Christopher J. Morrison
Selling Without Salespeople. Copyright 2011 by Timothy J. Morrison and Christopher J. Morrison. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact The Geode Group.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to others. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the work of the authors.
CONTENTS
Authors’ Notes
Introduction
THE FOUNDATION OF RDS
1: Unintended Brilliance
2: Roots of the Revolution
3: Assessing and Balancing Resource Strength
4: Reengineering, Planning and Pipelines
THE MECHANICS OF RDS
5: Pipeline Probability Measurements
6: Customers and Companies Have No Needs
7: Planning = Confidence
8: What Do You Know?
9: Stages of Buying
10: Any Questions?
11: The Deep Dive Strategy
THE EXECUTION OF RDS
12: Retention Feeds Growth
13: Postmortems Invoke Life
14: Prospecting Made Easy
15: Tying it all Together
RDS Guidelines
About the Authors
Acknowledgements
First and foremost, Chris and I dedicate this book to our families. They provided invaluable patience and support during the financially challenging years as we developed our Resource Driven Selling (RDS) approach and business. We also acknowledge that without the contribution of content and editing by Julianne Morrison and Kyle Morrison, this book in its current state would have not been possible.
We would like to thank:
-The companies who employed our methodology and the many Geode Group coaches and associates, who learned with us and stood by us as our approach evolved.
-The brave souls who took the time and effort to preview and provide feedback on our first publishing endeavor.
-The several truly courageous executives who put their careers on the line by endorsing our concepts even though doing so was often a direct affront to their companies. They could have responded to superiors with malicious obedience, watching ill-conceived strategies fail, but instead they generally risked their reputations by adopting our approach. Their inherent belief that employees attract and retain customers provided us with the canvas to create our life’s dream and for that we are very grateful.
Author's Notes
Selling Without Salespeople is not a step-by-step, how-to manual or a sales guide for dummies. It does however, explain the steps to take and to avoid when networking, selling and servicing customers and chronicles how to affect significant change when individuals and companies approach buyers. Although we detail why and how to change outdated approaches to grow and retain customers, we don’t do so by moving cheese or conveying topics involving rodents, aquatic life or other nonsensical characters. Several examples based on true stories are used to illustrate aspects of Resource-Driven Selling (RDS), a counter-intuitive approach to selling in today’s marketplace. Because Selling Without Salespeople is written for multi-departmental resources, and not just salespeople, each chapter will cover the highlights, Epiphanies and Core Elements in a practical and logical format. Because RDS tools are unique to each application or company, they are not included in the book. However, if you require additional detail or would like to customize your own tools, please contact us at mailto:info@geodegroup.com and we will provide complementary templates and suggestions.
Introduction
Do people buy big-ticket items like flat screen TV’s, cars, houses and vacations the way they did 15 years ago? Do they walk into a store or showroom and allow the salesperson to educate and sell them? Do they believe that all salespeople sincerely and objectively educate them on all the features, drawbacks and values of the best product or service available that will suit their needs?
Are most consumers more comfortable turning to the Internet to research and review the ratings and ravings of others who already made a similar purchase, or do they prefer to be sold and told what they need by a sales “expert?” To what extent has the reliance on salespeople changed since the introduction of the Internet?
The Internet has changed our culture and continues to modify the way we approach everyday tasks. American business hasn’t faced a shift this dramatic since the automotive industry put the buggy whip trade out of business practically overnight. Modern companies in all fields, namely newspapers, banks, book publishers, the music industry, libraries and real estate companies, have been forced to adapt and reinvent themselves by providing online access in order to avoid the fate of the buggy whip companies.
The Internet has changed the manufacturer-driven local and regional marketplaces forcing them to evolve into dynamic consumer-driven, internationally linked economies lead by consumers. Easy access to product and service options and information has caused this major shift in power. The buying and selling relationship has been impacted even more than any one business, as many sales organizations and salespeople still do not understand why their style, approach and past experiences are ineffective in present day interactions.
The Information Age has dealt a severe blow to the nature of traditional negotiating, forever changing the relationship between sellers and buyers. Information and options equate to power, and this power has clearly shifted from the seller to the buyer. Unlike the last century when salespeople provided brochures, data and a reason to buy, consumers today prefer to research their options and therefore have little need for a salesperson other than to process the purchase agreement. This has made the old-style salesperson practically obsolete and their sales pitches demeaning and often insulting. Thankfully, many of the fast-talking, pushy used car salesmen-types of the 1960’s and 1970’s have retired. Unfortunately, some old- style salespeople still remain sadly unaware they are being eliminated in cyberspace before their product is even considered as an option by the buyer. Because of the vast amount of information available, many options are eliminated before a salesperson is even contacted.
Please note that although the subtitle of this book is The Death of the Old-Style Salesman, we are not saying all salespeople are ineffective or obsolete. In fact, many modern day salespeople tend to have greater ease adapting to and participating in RDS. Some of these individuals, although initially skeptical of RDS, have provided tremendous value to the resource teams and customers, and the results are evident. Salespeople open to contributing and willing to collaborate have become staunch supporters of this approach.
The buying vs. selling shift is not limited to the consumer segment of the market. As consumers, we instinctively take our assumptions and experiences to the workplace. At work, many feel that research and options are just as abundant and in the control of the buyer as they are in personal buying decisions. The buying process itself is no longer as simple as it was ten or fifteen years ago. Many purchasing groups now share the steps of a complex decision-making procurement process with virtually everyone involved in touching the product or service. It seems that today nearly everyone has a voice in approving or blacklisting the options. When purchasing decisions are made by process of elimination and are combined with discussions and/or decisions that take place prior to meeting with a salesperson, the traditional sales process is less effective. A supplier may never know they have been evaluated and disqualified before they even have a chance to speak!
THE FOUNDATION OF RDS
CHAPTER 1: Unintended Brilliance
Selling Without Salespeople was written to assist organizations and individuals struggling to maintain and grow customer revenue. Many organizations still have an allegiance to communicating with customers within the confines of their traditional organizational structure and therefore fail to utilize the collective expertise necessary to meet a customer’s needs. Buying is no longer about being sold. There is an alternative, easy to learn and vastly different way to go about increasing sales revenue.
Most salespeople have confidence, but little depth in understanding the complexities of their own products and services. Many technical resources have that depth, but little confidence in their ability to effectively communicate directly with customers. Today, to meet the buyer’s needs, both depth and confidence are essential for success. If you need a compelling reason to alter or change the way you communicate with customers, honestly and objectively look at your own organization. If sales is a silo separate from finance, customer service, technical support, claims and delivery, then perhaps you have found your compelling reason. Resource-Driven Selling (RDS) harnesses multi- departmental depth, providing a balanced resource team with the confidence necessary to grow and retain revenue by assisting buyers to buy. The assumption that the greater the sales experience, the higher the likelihood of success, will be shattered as RDS proves that notion obsolete.
I always thought that great inventors were brilliant visionaries who simply sat down and drafted innovative concepts. These innovators introduced something revolutionary while rendering something else obsolete, such as Edison’s electric light replacing the candle. When I became part of originating a new way to sell, I didn’t feel like a brilliant visionary, nor did I set out to render anything out of date. I wasn’t even sure that what we were doing was going to work, let alone be better than the status quo. I’ve never been known for being a virtuoso or futurist. In fact, in the eighth grade, I think I was silently voted the least likely to succeed. A similar vote may have also have taken place in high school and college. Yet, with an ember of indignant desperation, my partner and I have sparked the creation of a way to increase sales revenue and customer satisfaction, while significantly reducing costs, shortening the sales cycle and virtually eliminating the need for old- style salespeople.
With the creation of RDS, we had shaped a new paradigm, innovative and perhaps so different from the accepted norm that it may have actually preceded the market need. Until a cataclysmic event triggered an anxious market and a once in a lifetime opportunity, there was no appreciable demand for RDS. Our triggering event came compliments of the market crash of September 2008, and the depression-like market contraction that followed. This unfortunate series of events provided us with an opportunity to prove that non-salespeople can be better at growing and retaining customers than old-style salespeople.
Whether used as a stand-alone process or an overlay to an existing sales process, RDS has proven to be an effective method of growing and retaining customers. When old- style salespeople balked at RDS, we knew we were onto something! What’s more, the operations and finance resources found the methodology easy to follow and execute while management applauded the resources for the quick results and cost savings.
CHAPTER 2: Roots of the Revolution
Chapter Snapshot
-Exploring a better way to approach revenue generation and retention, and getting others to adopt it
-Understanding the benefit of having non-sales, technically proficient resources take the lead
The greatest successes are often times the result of failures, and our company is no exception. Our success was partly the result of a bet made between a CEO and his second in command, that we would fail in our endeavors to help their highly technical, non-sales resources generate revenue. This chapter summarizes how we grew our company with failure-inspired innovation based on the belief that selling has been replaced by buying. Our approach to securing and keeping customers exposes The 7 Deadly Sales Traps, the current habits salespeople should avoid at all costs when communicating with prospective and current customers. We will also introduce the foundation of the RDS approach, utilizing non-sales subject matter experts to communicate directly with customers, as they are often better positioned to generate new customer growth and satisfy current customers. When the fear of failure is removed, non-sales resources can be much more effective than some seasoned salespeople who out of habit, continue to sell, tell and push.
Many are too young to know or care about the legacy of William Edwards Deming, who is best known for creating Statistical Process Control (SPC), a production improvement technique, in the 1940’s. Much like the market crash of 2008 that was the triggering event for RDS, post World War II was Deming’s triggering event that provided a decimated Japan with his counter-intuitive approach to manufacturing. Unfortunately, for decades US manufacturers had an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” complacency and therefore didn’t see a need to change until the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, when it was almost too late. He is pertinent to our story because, like us, he created something that would change the way business was approached, but couldn’t get others to try it.
Most people today view Honda and Sony as brands synonymous with quality and value. Much of that credit goes to Deming, as his process shifted Japan’s reputation from one of producing cheap junk to delivering consistently innovative, high-quality products, transforming Japan into an economic powerhouse. I vividly recall being required to study SPC in the mid 1980’s, when I was a young salesman for Bethlehem Steel. Low cost, high quality steel from Japan nearly put the entire U.S. domestic steel industry out of business. Most of us thought SPC was the latest approach to improving quality, lowering costs and enabling us to compete with the world class Japanese. We were wrong. In reality, we were playing catch up on a process created in the United States in the 1940’s but largely ignored until the 1980’s when it was almost too late. The Japanese innovation, growth and profitability looked like a lot more fun than the decade of red ink and salary and job cuts the domestic steel industry endured. Although still involving immense change, being the first to innovate usually results in proactive, not reactive, process and attitude changes. Japanese innovation lead to cost advantages and global market share growth as well as soaring profitability and employment security, but for the domestic steel industry, playing catch up meant just the opposite. I left the steel industry to try my hand at processing and distribution, and ultimately high tech telecom, but all seemed to be plagued with similar catch up afflictions.
In 2003, after 24 years in various front line and management positions, I decided to leave the bombardment of catchy buzzwords, acronyms and frequently re-spun narratives of corporate America and start over. I had worked in large and small, public and private, manufacturing and service, high and low tech companies. Although each was different in what they produced and sold, all were approaching their employees and customers basically the same way others had for over 30 years. Even though I grew up in sales, I knew there had to be a better way to increase revenue and retain customers. I also knew that if a better way was ever devised, the Kool-Aid drinking, old-school traditionalists would dismiss it immediately as a threat to how they sold. I needed a fresh approach from experienced individuals who were capable of identifying what needs to change by understanding what does not work as well as works. I thought that entrepreneurs with corporate experience would know exactly what to do, what to avoid and how to create an entirely new approach. The problem is that corporate America, although known for entrepreneurs and seasoned executives, appears to lack the combination of both virtues in one individual. Therefore, I decided it would be easier to create the type of innovators I needed than attempt to find them.
I solicited the help of my brother Chris, a seasoned sales professional from the service sector. I didn’t ask Chris to help because he was known as a risk taking genius, but because I knew that together, we could try and fail and try again until we could succeed at creating a better way to sell. Despite coming from completely different backgrounds, Chris had similar concerns with the selling and buying trends I saw emerging. Chris sold financial and high tech services for over twenty years, providing a much needed viewpoint. I trusted him and knew he would challenge me, question me and tell me when I was full of crap - something he relished.
Chris and I were considered “experienced,” but neither one of us had been labeled an entrepreneur, at least not since we cut grass and painted houses in high school and college. However, we were ready to explore the possibility of trying something completely different, since we knew that the selling we grew up with had changed. Few businesses, if any, recognized the paradigm shift we clearly saw, and none appeared poised to adapt to the change. We felt the market void would eventually present an opportunity, so we decided to create a completely different approach to growing and retaining customers. We started by mapping the flow of what failed and why in our vastly different careers. Mapping those failures led us to the first of 10 Core Elements, Embrace Negative Planning for Positive Results. Negative Planning is nothing more than putting oneself in the customer’s shoes and then second- guessing and shooting holes in one’s own approach. It is anticipating issues and concerns that the customer may have at any time during the buying process. A team that plans for the worst from the customer’s viewpoint is generally better prepared to realize root customer needs and concerns and therefore provide valuable suggestions and solutions that will build mutual trust and respect between the buyer and seller.
CORE ELEMENT 1 - Embrace Negative Planning for Positive Results
Negative Planning exposes and minimizes the risk for failure by concentrating on what can go wrong before anything actually goes wrong. Anticipating the worst from a buyer's viewpoint (what they might say of do) can help prepare a resource team with valuable, proactive, problem solving solutions. Traditional sales approaches focus on the positive outcomes a salesperson may hope will happen. A can-do sales attitude can be another term for happy ears. Resources with happy ears successfully sell themselves but often fail to understand what it takes to satisfy a customer.
Although Chris sold accounting services and technology solutions to the banking industry, he had no formal finance education or training. I sold steel products and steel processing and distribution services, but was not an engineer or metallurgist. We both worked for the same company selling teleconferencing products and services before launching our consulting business and neither one of us had electronic or engineering education. Aside from the differences in our education and work experience, we knew we could work together. We also shared an appreciation for the times we failed as salespeople, since most of our collective failures were linked to attempts to sell without involving a technically proficient resource, a foundational and very essential element of RDS.
The Negative Planning for Positive Results concept evolved into a fundamental yet comprehensive communication approach. RDS is the final product of our Negative Planning brainstorming sessions because it is rooted in Negative Planning, but it is much more than just planning and Negative Planning. RDS utilizes a blend of non-sales resources throughout an organization and enhances, or even replaces old-style salespeople. The probability of earning new customers and retaining current ones is amplified with this approach. Cross-functional resources plan for and pursue only prospective buyers who clearly demonstrate a considerable possibility of becoming a customer. The resources can be mostly non-sales, subject matter experts from every discipline of the organization.
The early drafts of RDS made one thing abundantly clear: this approach needed to be based on our own experiences and our collective success was more the result of avoiding failure than targeting success. Therefore, we based much of our initial approach on an atypical philosophy rooted in the belief that fear of failure causes people involved in selling to act differently, not always appropriately. However, when that fear of failure is minimized or removed, individuals involved with the customer tend to approach selling with genuine empathy and therefore can be more willing to make “selling” or directly communicating with prospects and customers a common practice in their day-to-day duties.
The RDS approach evolved much the way I learned to swim. My first swim lesson was not intended to teach me great Olympic swim techniques; I swam simply to keep from drowning. With that in mind, we set out to design a methodology that relies on a common sense, no BS approach to basic and direct communication that keeps the participant from failing, being rejected or being told “no.” We decided to minimize the likelihood of failure in order to increase the likelihood of success and in turn, build confidence and courage, two essential attributes for communicating with customers. The basic blocking and tackling techniques at the root are nothing more than a simple, honest and empathetic approach to first learning what, if anything, the buyer needs and then honestly assessing if there is a fit between the buyer’s need and the seller’s sustained deliverable. This can be very difficult for some old-style salespeople who will do what they can to sell their product or service, regardless of whether there is a direct and exact need by the customer.
We assembled several hundred typical scenarios in an effort to expose even the slightest possibility of losing a customer or being rejected by a prospective customer. This proved to be a daunting task, as it was impossible to anticipate everything that might go wrong in every possible scenario, in every kind of business. We conducted our own Negative Planning for Positive Results. This excruciatingly self-reflective, devil’s advocate approach to what went wrong in a variety of painful experiences was essential in the evolution of RDS.
Listing the ideal win/win for each scenario, we drilled down to better understand what it would take to achieve a desired outcome. After shooting holes in a host of scenarios, it became clear that whether the products and/ or services are expensive or inexpensive, durable or non- durable, large or small, the approach to selling the products and services may differ, however, the actions and behaviors that threaten or actually result in failure, are nearly identical.
As we studied this pattern, we had our first Epiphany, that regardless of the product or service, the likelihood of failing to earn a new customer, or keep an existing one was usually related to several selling faux pas. Coincidentally, many of these were the same practices generally accepted by old school salespeople. We categorized them as The 7 Deadly Sales Traps, as illustrated in the left margin. Ironically, these killers of customer trust and relationships can be similar to approaches deployed by old-style salespeople and in some instances are still taught to sales teams today.
EPIPHANY 1 - Remove the 7 Deadly Sales Traps
Eliminating the following seven bad habits reduces the risk of failure and increases the likelihood of success.
1. Relationship selling.
2. Selling, presenting and promoting one's product or service.
3. Pitching one's value or solution when the customer voices a need.
4. Approaching from a perspective other than the customer's.
5. Drawing conclusions based on gut instinct or what one thinks, not what one knows to be a fact as specifically related by the customer.
6. Closing, telling and/or issuing price proposals.
7. Confident, experienced salespeople "Winging it" rather than planning and Negative Planning from the customer's viewpoint.
We concluded that since the root cause for the majority of sales failures could be identified, isolated, minimized or eliminated, we needed to prevent the resource team from falling into these deadly traps. As we designed RDS, we removed the traps and emphasized new Core Elements that would steer our clients away from following commonly practiced, but often flawed approaches. We then fine-tuned our approach to work with a variety of organizations in virtually any industry.
Reviewing The 7 Deadly Sales Traps shows exactly why RDS can be somewhat controversial. RDS eliminates aggressive old-style selling, making presentations and issuing pricing from a sales process. It can remove selling from selling! It focuses on the how the buyer buys, not the how the seller sells. It puts relationship selling in a different light, focusing on relationships forged from trust-based and customer-centric interactions. RDS advocates the Negative Planning of what could go wrong rather than perpetuating an obligatory positive can-do “selling” attitude. Most old school salespeople will tell you that selling is about relationship and positive attitude, so to them this approach can be unconventional and even uncomfortable. In fact, RDS is counter to what many salespeople and organizations have been doing for decades. Therefore, in order to test our counter-intuitive approach, we needed to find immensely unsuccessful organizations. Finding them was not difficult; convincing them to let us help proved to be the hurdle. We targeted results-challenged organizations because in theory, they would be more open to change what was causing them to fall short of their goals. Our assumption was that organizations who were sick and afraid of dying will risk trying an experimental cure if it means getting well again. We viewed ourselves as revenue doctors, ready to help those who knew they needed help. We were wrong, because companies in desperate need of revenue couldn’t afford to hire us. Those who could didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to implement a different approach because they were just one mistake away from bankruptcy. So we went back and fine-tuned our RDS approach, hoping that someone other than us would see its value.
Having technically proficient non-sales, subject matter experts completely involved and often taking the lead in the sales effort, although counter to most sales approaches, quickly became the cornerstone of RDS. In other words, RDS was specifically designed to be executed by a blended team of resources. Our intention was to get the non-sales resources to feel comfortable assisting salespeople in retaining and generating customers, encouraging them to get involved and provide support and credibility for the sales team. Most salespeople will admit that those who create the product or service can be very helpful in representing and promoting it; but that is generally where the credit from some salespeople ends. Most salespeople use operations, technical support and internal service providers for sales support, but very often the salesperson still takes credit for the sale, the customer relationship and of course the revenue generated. This approach generally does not foster a great deal of trust, respect, or solidarity with the rest of the team, or in many cases the customer. It also is not effective because a salesperson that tells, sells, distributes brochures and promotes features or price can strip away the credibility earned by non-sales, subject matter resources.
Some non-salespeople are better equipped to genuinely approach customers with empathy, quickly generating the trust and credibility necessary to maintain and grow relationships. Unfortunately, our first major challenge was most of the technically savvy subject matter experts were incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of making a sales call and said they would rather lose a limb than be considered part of the sales team. This phenomenon of dismissing old-style salespeople as extraneous was not just limited to the non-salespeople in the companies we encountered. We found that it was also widely shared by buyers, senior level decision makers and people in general and therefore resource team selling became the cornerstone and second Core Element of RDS.
CORE ELEMENT 2 - Better Positioning Non-Sales Resources to Satisfy Customer Needs
Selling has been replaced by buying because service and sincerity build trust and trust is essential in a buyer/seller relationship. Non-sales resources can be more credible and effective than old-style salespeople who continue to sell, tell and push products and services. Those who make and deliver the product and/or service to the customer can earn more credibility and trust because they view themselves as problem solvers who create and deliver, not salespeople who make promises.
For us, denouncing “sales” was the equivalent of changing the very fiber of our being and starting over again. Although we were both the product of countless sales training programs and had read most of the trendy motivational books over the years, it wasn’t until we truly looked at selling from the customer’s viewpoint that we realized we had to change nearly everything in our approach to selling. We had lived and breathed The 7 Deadly Sales Traps and struggled to remove them from our ingrained habits. If we didn’t turn our own preconceived, experienced- based assumptions upside down and inside out, we’d end up wasting RDS and time on just stubborn, old school salespeople. Experience demonstrates that most salespeople get momentarily fired up, but ultimately revert back to old and comfortable habits, even when given a new approach and opportunity to change. Since RDS advocates change we decided to concentrate on people and organizations eager for permanent change. To increase the odds of success, we embarked on a revenue growth and retention approach that would signal the death of the old-style salesman and introduce a true team selling enhancement to any sales process.
We didn’t get there overnight. In fact, RDS was initially nothing more than Sales 101 for non-salespeople. But what we encountered was an increasing trend of people who historically had little to do with selling, but needed to learn sales techniques because of changes in their responsibilities. Our target became individuals with new business development and revenue accountability as part of their responsibilities. We expanded our focus to include struggling and inexperienced salespeople as well as highly skilled subject matter experts. Both groups needed help learning how to better communicate internally and with customers. Some engineers, pharmacists, and state economic development people welcomed the help. Old school sales and customer service people, although reluctant to change their self-imagined stellar sales styles, were included, if for no other reason than to prevent them from sabotaging our efforts to include the non-sales resources. We found old-style salespeople to be the biggest obstacle in generating sales revenue when involving subject matter experts. Some very effective salespeople embraced RDS and appreciated the help. However, old-style salespeople routinely insist on holding their coveted customer relationships hostage from their employers and peers, which is counter to RDS and the good of the corporation and the customer.
Old school salespeople are bred to dominate, control and covet customer relationships, sales credit, praise and money, because salespeople in general experience more rejection and failure than most in a typical organization. A win that is preceded by ten humiliating losses is cherished and celebrated with boastful glee by most sales professionals. It makes sense; Salespeople commemorate their own success because their value and job security is based on what they win, so self-proclaimed credit is a matter of survival. As a salesperson I was no different. In 1990, as a young sales manager for Bethlehem Steel, I recall our CEO speaking to a room full of middle and senior level executives from every discipline in the corporation. He said that there were really only two groups in the company, those who made the steel and those who sold it. He went on to say that everyone else in the company was there to support operations and sales. At the time, I was thrilled to confirm what I always knew: salespeople were on top of the food chain. Unfortunately, like most salespeople at the time, I actually believed it, which fed my over-inflated ego and sales arrogance.
It took thirteen years and that little thing called the Internet to help me realize that selling and telling customers why they need to buy is no longer necessary. If Bethlehem Steel had not gone out of business, I would love to tell their former CEO that the focus should be on only one group in any growing organization. It’s not management, sales, marketing, operations, or finance; it is the combined group of cross-functional resources, creating and providing a product or service to the customer. These subject matter experts can be coached to provide credible information to customers who use or need what the company provides. I recently heard someone say, “Service is the new sales.” My reaction was “Oh great, another cheesy catchphrase,” but then after reflecting on the statement, I had to agree that in many cases, those who service have in fact replaced those who sell. The root of the problem with the non-sales service group isn’t a lack of skills, experience or ability in sales and service; they lack the time necessary to service customers and foster relationships because they have other full time jobs. Until RDS, dealing with customers was neither a priority nor what non-sales resources considered their core competency.
The start of our revenue generating consulting business in 2003 was truly a blessing, or as we say now, dumb luck. We attribute much of our humble beginnings and initial success to simply helping dysfunctional organizations take advantage of the strength of a very bullish market. Unless our clients blatantly shot themselves in the foot, (which happened more often than not) most experienced growth, despite their ineptness in business development and the evolving RDS approach. Our early clients appeared to have good products and services but lacked focus and a simple strategy to deliver them. They were, however, very skilled at shooting themselves in the foot, so our guidance, although unpolished, proved to be immensely successful.
By spring 2007 we had exhausted our supply of struggling, dysfunctional clients who had enough of a budget to pay for our services. We categorized some extremely conservative targets as a low probability because of their resistance to change or their affiliation with old school industries. For instance, most accountants proved to be too conservative to take a risk. Most engineers were initially interested, but required way too much proof. Many lawyers appeared to us to be nothing more than accountants with arrogance and attitude, which prevented them from admitting weakness or asking for help. Our small, privately held clients lacked the means to execute our rapidly emerging RDS. Our Negative Planning provided a very painful yet eye-opening reality; we had unintentionally disqualified nearly all of our potential customers. We therefore decided to subscribe to that old adage from many a labor union, “Give me dignity or give me death.” We chose death and decided to blow up our company if we couldn’t find someone to recognize they needed a better way to sell. We jokingly called this self-destruct approach “Kobayashi Maru,” the scenario made famous in Star Trek. Like the crew of the Starship Enterprise, we found ourselves in a no-win situation. We had a unique method, but no significant customers. Without customers, we lacked the income we needed to prevent us from having to put our tails between our legs and crawl back to corporate America to sales positions that promoted an outdated and inefficient sales process we no longer could tolerate. Like Star Trek’s Captain Kirk (the only federation cadet to deceive death by cheating on the Kobayashi Maru test), we needed a bold plan to cheat the death of our dream. We decided to test our innovative approach on someone who needed it. The problem was finding a customer who needed it.
With nothing to lose, we targeted struggling multi-billion dollar corporations who were willing to supplement their current sales process structure. They also had to be willing to do so in a matter of weeks – the time frame in which we needed to land something before closing our doors. Obviously, the odds were stacked against us. In fact, our second Epiphany was the direct result of the fact that there was no possible way to win. Knowing we could not win and failure was inevitable, our fear of failure disappeared, creating the courage and attitude it took to say and do things we never would have in the past. Similar to how an animal backed into a corner behaves differently with no possible way to win and countless ways to lose, we decided to behave like we didn’t have a care in the world, as though clients were banging down our door. Our desperate arrogance lead us to a friend of Chris’ from the consumer goods industry who was well connected with high-level buyers in a $7 billion grocery distribution company. Within two weeks, we were in front of the entire procurement group’s management team. Our networking worked like a charm, but we had failed to consider that in addition to being a two-person company attempting to diagnose and cure the ills of a $7 billion corporation, neither of us had any consumer goods retail experience. If that was not bad enough, we were about to pitch a sales revenue generating approach to a purchasing team! Other than that, our plan was spot on.
EPIPHANY 2 - Redirect Fear to Inspire Risk-Taking and Courage
When there is a feeling that there is nothing left to lose, combining courage with basic survival instincts is intuitively more effective than conservative or politically correct actions and reactions.
With two weeks to prepare, we needed a crash course in grocery industry acumen and issues and worked on feverishly turning our sales growth and retention methodology inside out. Our theory was if RDS succeeded in generating sales, logically, in reverse it should help procurement people to procure more effectively. I remember thinking we had finally crossed the line. Chris and I were two former salespeople, who designed an approach that could eliminate the need for old-style salespeople. We were helping a purchasing group gain even more power and control over their vendors by manipulating and out negotiating vendor teams. Although we felt a little like Benedict Arnold, we knew we had very limited time to cheat death and find some way to keep our dream alive. We had nothing to lose!
To our amazement, our discussion with the procurement team was very well received. In fact, we had a series of follow up discussions and genuine interest before we actually deemed them a very low likelihood prospect. Within days of expressing their interest in our reverse RDS, we realized that our $7 billion lifeline was out of control and therefore out of our reach. Why? Because they lacked the ability to handle the immense volume of voice mails, emails and meeting requests that plagued their day. Without basic, simple communication and follow up, our resource driven buying pilot would fall on deaf ears (or no ears in this case) and waste our clients money and our time, rendering our assistance unnecessary to them and frustrating to us. We had to decide whether to chance out-waiting this giant conglomerate of miscommunication or quickly move on to opportunities with a higher likelihood. Despite their sincere interest, our calls and emails were not returned, so we shifted our focus to Plan B. This lesson is one we still emphasize today - spend time where results are possible. Don’t labor where you want to succeed, focus where you can succeed.
We learned several things from the dead end adventure with the procurement group. First, by turning RDS inside out in order to benefit buyers, we reaffirmed what buyers expected from sellers and now we knew from being in the buyers shoes that RDS worked. We knew the need for a more current approach to selling was as important to multi-billion dollar organizations as it was in the much smaller clients we had serviced. Our crash course in the grocery procurement business also taught us how crucial it is not just to understand the buyer’s perspective, but to plan every aspect of the buyer/seller relationship solely with the buyer’s needs, concerns and expectations top of mind.
If our dream to keep our company alive was to be successful, we had to quickly move on and find other options. Chris found an opportunity for us as facilitators for a Certified Public Accountants association semi-annual meeting. I was impressed that he secured something so quickly. Then I learned that we were not being paid. Like Watergate’s Deep Throat, my initial suggestion to Chris was to follow the money. Then I realized at least we had exposure to potential clients so we’d better get to work and develop something that would catch and keep the attention of a room full of accountants. Other than lighting the room on fire and setting off the sprinkler system, we were at a loss for something that would excite a room with 50 accountants. With a little Negative Planning we decided to expose one of the accounting trades’ greatest nightmares. We entitled our session “Your Financial Forecast is Only as Good as Your Worst Salesman.” Our idea was to get the attention of CFO’s who surely would see the value we could provide. The session was a huge success and for what it was worth, we scored the highest grade of all the days’ sessions. Unfortunately, quantifiable leads were non-existent as was our income. The same group asked us to write an article for their quarterly CPA magazine. Again, in an effort to gain some visibility, we agreed to do so, albeit pro-bono because accountants are somewhat frugal. Drawing on the communication disaster we had just experienced with our short-lived grocery procurement target, our article was cleverly titled “Who Has Time for Anything But Email?” which dealt with the daily onslaught of high tech communication vehicles overwhelming most individuals and organizations. It had nothing to do with our core competency, but, as Chris kept telling me, it was exposure. Credit was given to just one author, so it was exciting, at least for me, to be “published.” Chris won’t admit it, but he never really got over it, so to this day I tell everyone that although he helped me write the article, his job was to do what he did best - to capitalize on my notoriety. That too failed, so I guess we were even. I began to wonder if Edison had to struggle this long to dethrone a lousy candle.
Just as we were about to breathe our last breath, we got a call from a network contact that asked us to provide a quote for developing and delivering a survey to employees and customers of another multi-billion dollar corporation. The opportunity involved helping this corporation roll out both internal and external messages based on their perceived image. Historically, we had refused to respond to formal Request for Proposal (RFP), so our first instinct was to walk away. But we thought of our soon-to-be-starving kids and decided to respond to the RFP. However, our response was somewhat unconventional by design. We responded in a way that would significantly increase the odds of getting an audience with the actual decision makers, so that we could question their need for RDS. We were still trying to cheat death, so anything that could provide a venue to test our concept was worth a shot.
We broke all the rules we had established and fired off a price quote with a letter detailing the scope of our undertaking. We outsourced data collection, minus the management interviews, because the scope of the job was out of our comfort zone, but it paid! Our proposal gave the customer exactly what they requested, but we created a clear point of confusion and a great deal of intrigue so that those screening the proposals would be forced to realize they couldn’t compare apples to apples with our bid. We knew no one else could possibly have provided more than what was required, so we figured we’d either be called in by the actual decision makers for a follow up discussion, or be immediately dismissed as insane by the bid screener.
The differentiator in the bid was a free assessment to “pilot” RDS within their operation as we conducted the messaging survey. This corporation was actually several hundred independent acquisitions in need of a united, internal and external message as indicated by their RFP. Brainstorming, combined with the research, allowed us to connect a few dots. We made the assumption that their declining sales were connected to their failure to position their highly complex solutions in a way that satisfied their fairly low-tech, unsophisticated customers. Our gamble to deviate from the standard RFP format, combined with our research, brainstorming and Negative Planning paid off. At last, a door was opened and RDS could be covertly piloted! But even our superior Negative Planning skills would be tested and stretched in the next series of events. We tested and slowly implemented our concepts with pharmacists, nurses, billing coordinators and medical technicians over the next year and a half, but only after being set up for what felt like a scene right out of Eddie Murphy’s Trading Places movie. Our “pilot” appeared to be a secret bet between the skeptical CEO of the pharmacy service company and a fellow executive over whether we, or anyone else, could teach pharmacists to sell. The CEO stacked the deck by presenting us with a group of pharmacists who apparently couldn’t sell if their lives depended on it. Adding insult to injury, in our first internal messaging interview, we asked the Senior VP of Operations what the company’s average sales cycle was from prospect to signed contract. On average, it took about eighteen months for the best salespeople, but as Senior VP of Operations and the self-proclaimed best salesperson in the company, he was known to occasionally shorten that cycle to seven months. After learning about their seven to eighteen month sales cycle, we realized we had just been duped by the CEO and had guaranteed that at least one of the introverted pharmacists would take a prospect to a signed contract by the company’s annual conference, which was just four weeks away.
Following a quick assessment of the ringers the CEO provided us with, we immediately realized that the pharmacists in our group, although not a finely tuned sales machine, were all genuinely good people who wanted to help grow their business but didn’t know how. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to teach them how to do anything other than to quickly disqualify everything that could not close in less than four weeks. We were right back in the no-win scenario. It was either time for another Kobayashi Maru to cheat death or to plan to help our team of subject matter experts to successfully disqualify low probability prospects and reveal the few possibilities having interest. We elected to go with the disqualifying because it was a major component of RDS and after all, we were trying to pilot RDS, not cheat death anymore. However, in a matter of a few days, death appeared to be inevitable once again because we collectively disqualified everything the team brought to us. But we stuck to our plan!
One of the pharmacists involved in the pilot casually mentioned he had a mildly interested prospective customer who was scheduled to come in for a pharmacy tour later that week. After asking a couple dozen questions, it was apparent to us that the pharmacy team knew nothing about this prospective customer and knew even less about how to turn the pharmacy tour into an opportunity. Based on the wisdom gained in this brief discussion, we concluded there was no chance to close this, or any other deal in the three weeks that remained. At this point, we deployed a planning segment of RDS and helped the pharmacy team prepare to host their guests. Our intention was to walk them through the planning process. Interestingly, the low probability of success removed the team’s pressure to succeed. Similar to the time we removed our fear of failure with the Kobayashi Maru, our once reluctant and apprehensive resource team was now engaged, motivated and very eager to get involved because they genuinely felt there was no way to win or lose.
Step one was to prepare Carl, the Pharmacy Manager, for a call to the VP of the prospective customer. It was imperative to know all of our guests and their common expectations. Carl and the VP agreed to expand the morning visit to include lunch and a reciprocal tour of the VP’s facility immediately following the pharmacy tour. A joint agenda was set and we went to work. With a list of attendees, we called in the pharmacy’s billing coordinator, nurses, a consultant pharmacist, several customer service representatives, Carl and his Regional Director. Each resource was given a theme, questions to ask and questions to prepare for if asked. Their individual theme was a simple topic or message they were to deliver. For instance, one of the customer service representatives was to point out that he lived within a mile of one of the prospective customer’s facilities and drove past another facility every day on his way to and from work. The message was that he was local and could stop by anytime an issue arose.