Recently, I was doing pipeline, deal, and territory reviews with several sales teams. In the reviews, they were clearly struggling—they had new sales processes, new tools to help them in executing their deal strategies, developing their accounts, and managing their pipelines.
All had been put in place to help improve their effectiveness and performance.
But they were struggling, performance wasn’t improving, they were spending a lot more time on the tools/processes than they were in actually engaging and executing with customers.
As we progressed in the reviews, it became clear they were getting caught up in the “form” of the processes and tools, not understanding the intent and “spirit” of why these were being put in place in the first place. Management, through their own misunderstanding, was coaching rigid compliance—check every box, dot every “i,” cross every “t.”
They were struggling, they didn’t understand, they were trying but much of what they were trying to do didn’t make sense to them, or didn’t apply in every situation they were encountering.
As I was conducting one review, the sales person was trying very hard to follow the sales process steps—precisely, but he was stuck, he didn’t know what to do or how to make progress. When I asked, “Why are you doing these things (part of the sales process), they don’t seem to make sense in this particular deal?” He looked at me, puzzled, and replied, “But we have to execute every step of the process!”
In discussing the situation, we discovered some things very unique about this deal. Some parts of the sales process didn’t apply. The sales person could look at them and explain why he had to deviate from the process and what he needed to do to move the deal forward. It made perfect sense, it was a great strategy, but he didn’t think he was “allowed’ to do this. He thought he had to execute every step of the sales process, even if some of it didn’t make sense.
Likewise, he (and others) were struggling with the tools. Again, they thought they had to fill in every detail, check every box—even if some were irrelevant to the deal/account/territory.
I see this too often. In our attempts to improve performance, to drive the highest levels of execution, rigid processes, absolute compliance is demanded. We script the conversations our people must have, we outline each step they must take. Sales people struggle, but run into road blocks because we can’t design something that applies to each and every buying scenario.
In doing this, we are taking away our key advantage, the ability of the sales person to engage, listen, respond and adapt to the situation. The ultimate differentiator is the ability of the sales person to think, analyze, challenge, probe, question, suggest, and guide the customer through their buying process.
Every customer is different, every individual involved in a buying decision is different. Our ability to engage each person in ways appropriate to them is critical.
Recruiting sales people who have the ability and desire to do this, developing critical thinking, analytic and problem solving skills enables them to perform and differentiate themselves. Providing processes, tools, playbooks are helpful, but letting them fill in the blanks and adapt the processes and tools to the situation enables them to provide the leadership necessary to create value for the customer, support their buying process and win.
We and our customers are best served when our people think and adapt rather than respond as robots.
This article was originally published by Partners in Excellence
Published: January 2, 2015
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