When managing sales relationships with major accounts, is it better to have more points of contact between vendor and customer—or fewer?
The answer depends on whether those interactions add value to or subtract value from the customer relationship, according to Rob Cross, an author and expert in social networking, who led a symposium I attended last week, “Leading in a Connected World.”
More than "fuzzwords," social network value added and value subtracted are measurable and meaningful in financial terms. Yet C-Level executives don’t think that way when creating CRM processes, account teams, and collaborative sales models. Oddly, the same companies that routinely scrutinize the cost of airline tickets don’t track efficiency of collaborative activities—a potentially far greater expense. That irony was underscored when the majority of the symposium attendees indicated that well over half of their time was undocumented, and spent in internal meetings, on the phone, or answering email.
Ever since the words “social” and “networking” were joined to mean informal channels of communication, CRM practitioners have offered conflicting ideas about how to make collaboration more effective. One Symposium insight: sometimes, “less is more.” This is because not every interaction produces value. Which interactions are the most valuable? According to Professor Cross, the best opportunities for value-producing collaboration are best-practice knowledge transfers, innovation, and revenue generation activities. The absence of those value-producing activities might be considered “white space” in the customer relationship. In Professor Cross’s words, effective collaboration doesn’t mean “everyone in the woods singing Cum By Ya to each other.” By uncovering where value is added or subtracted in collaboration, companies can garner the right resources, manage staffing, and organize teams.
So where is collaborative value added and where is it subtracted? Value is added when tacit knowledge for best practices, innovation, and revenue generation is exchanged between individuals. As for subtraction, there are two major sources. If the outcome of collaborative activities provides neither productivity improvements nor cost reductions, then those activities are value-subtracting to an organization. Second, consistent negativity from even one employee can have a measurable, cascading impact on the value an organization produces. And the impact is magnified in organizations that depend on collaboration for executing strategy.
In a PowerPoint slide, Professor Cross illustrated a basic social network. When individuals in a large, multinational company were asked “who do you receive information from and provide information to,” the network’s visual similarity to a giant hairball was stunning. It's easy to get the impression that everybody talks to everybody. I would be challenged to explain to a CFO how that picture portends to drive value for his or her company.
But underneath that picture, communication silos exist. These silos are losing favor, particularly for business development operations. One symposium panelist, Tracy Cox, Director of Performance Consulting for Raytheon Corporation, debunked the idea that selling activities should be the exclusive domain of the sales department. He recommended that companies consider different collaborative routes to engage with high-potential prospects, noting that it’s important to “understand the key influencers and reputation holders in the customer community and how to leverage those connections for new business.” It’s myopic to think of the Account Executive as the focal point for facilitating those connections.
When more specific relationship questions are asked to produce the social network model, the lines in the amorphous hairball social network strip away, yielding valuable insight. Who energizes you in your business activities? Who do you go to in order to generate revenue? Who gives you a sense of purpose? When these connections are mapped, patterns emerge that are highly predictive in how real value is transferred within and between companies. Not surprisingly, for these questions, the best performing account teams not only had strong client connections, but also better networks into their own organizations.
In addition to the Raytheon panelist, two other panelists, Lisa Vertucci, Managing Director, Global Head of Talent Development of Lehman Brothers; and John Helferich, former Vice President of Masterfoods USA shared how their organizations have used social network modeling to create value through collaboration. The operational decisions they made began with asking these questions:
How can we make invisible value visible to our customers?
How can we create the most effective cross-boundary relationships?
How can we identify key new business opportunities?
How do we uncover which people provide greater than average value in cross-selling products and services?
What is the most expedient way to “grow the conversation” about an important topic?
As with forensic sleuthing for suspicious financial transactions, following the money path in a social network context provides a good starting point for figuring out what’s valuable—and what’s white space—in your customer relationships.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Age Verification Bypassed By Cashier
It all started with a half-case of Corona beer . . .
Amid the routine supermarket cacophony of bar code scanner beeps and crying babies, I almost miss a message that whirs onto the register’s colorful plasma display at my checkout station:
**Age verification bypassed by cashier**
The cashier barely looked up while scanning my items, but she had already made an age assessment. As the verification message scrolled up and off the screen, replaced by the odd character strings that comprise the retail shorthand for my purchases, I pondered how the cashier could have made such a hasty decision regarding my age, given the gravity of the consequences she faced had she been wrong.
What influenced her decision? I’m dressed in a black T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes. Was it a little gray hair? Slight balding at the temples? Crows feet around the eyes? Maybe I really do look fifty. In the name of Positive Customer Experience, couldn’t she have feigned a shred of age confusion, prompting her to ask me for an ID? But could my reaction of flattery be someone else’s annoyance over privacy invasion, or a twenty-something’s frustration that he doesn’t appear sufficiently old? Whatever the answer, could the enforcement of age verification be achieved without the ruthlessly cold message the Point-of-Sale system displayed?
Welcome to the murky world of personal profiling, and its collision with technology. Headline: A customer’s personal appearance is judged when managing a transaction. While web analytics enable companies selling products over the Internet to profile people at arms-length with clinical precision, face-to-face transactions require on-the-spot judgment and strong interpersonal skills. That’s a tall public relations order for anyone who must decide who to interrogate when selling alcohol or tobacco, allowing a senior-citizen discount, providing entrance into a bar, or pricing a kid's haircut (are you eight—or nine?). Jim Barnes described related pitfalls in his March 16th blog "The Tripping Point."
It’s not just age-related profiling that creates customer relationship problems. In 1994, Denny’s Restaurants paid a $54.4 million class action settlement to thousands of black customers who sued the chain for discrimination, alleging they were refused service or had to wait longer for service than white customers. And during a recent cab ride to the airport, I endured the driver’s diatribe about the bad tipping habits of a certain nationality (did he assume I had a different heritage?).
A recent article “Confessions of a Car Salesman,” by Chandler Phillips,
elucidates how institutionalized customer profiling infects the customer experience:
“Since I was still a "green pea" the other salesmen tried to push me to wait on undesirable ups — the undesirable customers who the salesmen thought wouldn't or couldn't qualify to buy a car. My manager had, at one point, described the different races and nationalities and what they were like as customers. It would be too inflammatory to repeat what he said here. But the gist of it was that the people of such-and-such nationality were "lie downs" (people who buy without negotiating), while the people of another race were "roaches" (they had bad credit), and people from that country were "mooches" (they tried to buy the car for invoice price).”
Data mining has freed many e-commerce companies from the burden of coaching employees on such sensitive issues. Sequestered in Spartan cubicles that could be anywhere in the world, analysts can look at a myriad of variables and target messages and tailor processes without offending customers. Amazon.com made business intelligence-generated recommendations famous with “Customers who bought this item also bought . . .”
The so-called statistical objectivity of analytics makes it possible to sell billions of dollars of products without customers taking umbrage. No value judgments, no offensive antecedents such as “People like you want . . . “ If a poor recommendation is made online, it’s an anomaly in the algorithm, and no one person is to blame. Most of all, no one makes a hurtful request based on how a person looks or thinks. In the cyber-world, psychographic judgments are deeply hidden in lines of code. In the bricks-and-mortar world, they're not.
It’s not that technology and analytics hasn’t brought new ugliness to the customer experience. When caller-ID technology became widespread, many feared that it would create a two-class customer service system by routing inbound calls differently, depending on the neighborhood a person happened to be calling from. And technology-enabled profiling made headlines again when civil libertarians debated the potential abuses resulting from embedding RFID chips into clothing.
But the fact remains that for all the heavy lifting carried by today’s e-commerce workflow engines, billions of face-to-face customer-relationship interactions are conducted every day, and managing them is a less-than-perfect science. Add to the equation that any judgment based on an individual’s appearance might be considered offensive, you quickly realize this is not a job for amateurs.
As with many issues that reside in the union of social mores, technology, and the law, there are more questions than answers. Given the sensitivities over personal profiling, how should companies enforce regulations for sales of certain products to underage consumers? What constitutes appropriate management of policies? How should an appropriate customer interaction be defined? How should employees be trained? What is the role of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems in supporting employees when profiling must be part of the transaction? What constitutes unethical physical profiling? What risks are associated with profiling?
Companies such as Disney have addressed some challenges by regarding customer-facing employees as actors and patrons as guests, and providing interpersonal skills coaching along the way. Other companies need to think further about how profiling impacts the customer’s experience. Unchecked, customer profiling mutates into dangerous “—ism’s:” racism, sexism, and ageism, to name a few. Has the car dealership referenced earlier already crossed a perilous threshold? It’s worth thinking about, since once the fuzzy line has been crossed, the issues discussed around the boardroom table relate to litigation and damage control.
But companies should not ignore the opportunities as well. When you’re buying beer at age fifty, life seems brighter when a cashier asks you for an ID. You can bet I would tell at least twenty people, after first telling my wife! Talk about evangelizing the customer experience!
Amid the routine supermarket cacophony of bar code scanner beeps and crying babies, I almost miss a message that whirs onto the register’s colorful plasma display at my checkout station:
**Age verification bypassed by cashier**
The cashier barely looked up while scanning my items, but she had already made an age assessment. As the verification message scrolled up and off the screen, replaced by the odd character strings that comprise the retail shorthand for my purchases, I pondered how the cashier could have made such a hasty decision regarding my age, given the gravity of the consequences she faced had she been wrong.
What influenced her decision? I’m dressed in a black T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes. Was it a little gray hair? Slight balding at the temples? Crows feet around the eyes? Maybe I really do look fifty. In the name of Positive Customer Experience, couldn’t she have feigned a shred of age confusion, prompting her to ask me for an ID? But could my reaction of flattery be someone else’s annoyance over privacy invasion, or a twenty-something’s frustration that he doesn’t appear sufficiently old? Whatever the answer, could the enforcement of age verification be achieved without the ruthlessly cold message the Point-of-Sale system displayed?
Welcome to the murky world of personal profiling, and its collision with technology. Headline: A customer’s personal appearance is judged when managing a transaction. While web analytics enable companies selling products over the Internet to profile people at arms-length with clinical precision, face-to-face transactions require on-the-spot judgment and strong interpersonal skills. That’s a tall public relations order for anyone who must decide who to interrogate when selling alcohol or tobacco, allowing a senior-citizen discount, providing entrance into a bar, or pricing a kid's haircut (are you eight—or nine?). Jim Barnes described related pitfalls in his March 16th blog "The Tripping Point."
It’s not just age-related profiling that creates customer relationship problems. In 1994, Denny’s Restaurants paid a $54.4 million class action settlement to thousands of black customers who sued the chain for discrimination, alleging they were refused service or had to wait longer for service than white customers. And during a recent cab ride to the airport, I endured the driver’s diatribe about the bad tipping habits of a certain nationality (did he assume I had a different heritage?).
A recent article “Confessions of a Car Salesman,” by Chandler Phillips,
elucidates how institutionalized customer profiling infects the customer experience:
“Since I was still a "green pea" the other salesmen tried to push me to wait on undesirable ups — the undesirable customers who the salesmen thought wouldn't or couldn't qualify to buy a car. My manager had, at one point, described the different races and nationalities and what they were like as customers. It would be too inflammatory to repeat what he said here. But the gist of it was that the people of such-and-such nationality were "lie downs" (people who buy without negotiating), while the people of another race were "roaches" (they had bad credit), and people from that country were "mooches" (they tried to buy the car for invoice price).”
Data mining has freed many e-commerce companies from the burden of coaching employees on such sensitive issues. Sequestered in Spartan cubicles that could be anywhere in the world, analysts can look at a myriad of variables and target messages and tailor processes without offending customers. Amazon.com made business intelligence-generated recommendations famous with “Customers who bought this item also bought . . .”
The so-called statistical objectivity of analytics makes it possible to sell billions of dollars of products without customers taking umbrage. No value judgments, no offensive antecedents such as “People like you want . . . “ If a poor recommendation is made online, it’s an anomaly in the algorithm, and no one person is to blame. Most of all, no one makes a hurtful request based on how a person looks or thinks. In the cyber-world, psychographic judgments are deeply hidden in lines of code. In the bricks-and-mortar world, they're not.
It’s not that technology and analytics hasn’t brought new ugliness to the customer experience. When caller-ID technology became widespread, many feared that it would create a two-class customer service system by routing inbound calls differently, depending on the neighborhood a person happened to be calling from. And technology-enabled profiling made headlines again when civil libertarians debated the potential abuses resulting from embedding RFID chips into clothing.
But the fact remains that for all the heavy lifting carried by today’s e-commerce workflow engines, billions of face-to-face customer-relationship interactions are conducted every day, and managing them is a less-than-perfect science. Add to the equation that any judgment based on an individual’s appearance might be considered offensive, you quickly realize this is not a job for amateurs.
As with many issues that reside in the union of social mores, technology, and the law, there are more questions than answers. Given the sensitivities over personal profiling, how should companies enforce regulations for sales of certain products to underage consumers? What constitutes appropriate management of policies? How should an appropriate customer interaction be defined? How should employees be trained? What is the role of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems in supporting employees when profiling must be part of the transaction? What constitutes unethical physical profiling? What risks are associated with profiling?
Companies such as Disney have addressed some challenges by regarding customer-facing employees as actors and patrons as guests, and providing interpersonal skills coaching along the way. Other companies need to think further about how profiling impacts the customer’s experience. Unchecked, customer profiling mutates into dangerous “—ism’s:” racism, sexism, and ageism, to name a few. Has the car dealership referenced earlier already crossed a perilous threshold? It’s worth thinking about, since once the fuzzy line has been crossed, the issues discussed around the boardroom table relate to litigation and damage control.
But companies should not ignore the opportunities as well. When you’re buying beer at age fifty, life seems brighter when a cashier asks you for an ID. You can bet I would tell at least twenty people, after first telling my wife! Talk about evangelizing the customer experience!
What Would Mark Twain Click On?
Imagine that you’re living in 1895. You’ve just sat down to dinner with your family when you’re interrupted by a knock on your front door. It’s a travelling salesperson holding a sample of a new book by Mark Twain. Would you listen to his pitch, or would you just close the door and mutter about annoying salespeople?
I recently learned that was how Mark Twain’s writings were originally sold. The hard sell was normal marketing for Twain’s books, and he was one of the first writers to trademark his name to promote sales. Although today we might appreciate Twain’s writing on literary merits, business considerations influenced what he wrote, and how he wrote it. He said that the money he could make from publishing a book “has a degree of importance for me which is almost beyond my comprehension.” Most of us would associate those words with the ambitions of a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, but not an artist.
The financial calculus of book publishing drove Twain to innovate in other ways. He deployed a subscription sales model along with a dedicated sales force to cover a wide geography. (At the time, this itinerant sales force was one of the first to recruit women for jobs.) Using brand-name recognition common today, sales agents sold his books on the promise of the enjoyment the reader would get over time.
The salespeople engaged with customers by reading the publisher’s selling script, which included choreographed conversational details. Because the subscription sales model required selling some works that hadn’t yet been published, salespeople didn’t possess complete books. They sold entertainment, using samples that contained rich content at the time, including portions of text, pictures, page layouts, and choices for bindings.
Here’s the pitch you might have heard, quoting from an actual script: “I’ve got specimen pages of Mark Twain’s latest and greatest book! . . . there are nearly 700 pages in this book, and there’s a laugh on every page . . . The title of Mark Twain’s work (open the title page) is Following the Equator.” Even then, promoters and salespeople knew the importance of “controlling the conversation.”
Given Twain’s penchant for sales innovation, how might he exploit digital media if he were writing today? It’s interesting to think about what he might click on. In which formats would we discover and enjoy modern versions of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer? Could their adventures be distributed through a series of two-minute YouTube videos or Podcasts? Would this presentation enhance—or detract from the enjoyment we’ve derived from Twain’s stories. Would his ideas be equally inspiring and memorable without the written word? Or, you might think that because no other packaging can eclipse the eloquence of Twain’s prose, we should consider ourselves fortunate that when Twain was alive, print publishing was the dominant vehicle for mass recording and sharing of thought.
I can’t help but wonder what we’re sacrificing as information technologies develop and converge, and we embrace digital media. With similar uncertainty, in his book The Big Switch, Nicholas Carr questions the eventual outcome from the actions we take when exchanging thoughts and ideas:
“The Internet turns everything, from news-gathering to community building, into a series of tiny transactions—expressed mainly through clicks on links—that are simple in isolation yet extraordinarily complicated in the aggregate. Each of us may make hundreds or even thousands of clicks a day, some deliberately, some impulsively, and with each one we are constructing our identity, shaping our influences, and creating our communities. As we spend more time and do more things online, our combined clicks will shape our economy, our culture, and our society.” Clearly, Carr is ambivalent about the outcome. His insight leaves it up the reader to determine whether the future impact will be sustaining or debilitating.
Jeffrey Bezos, quoted in The Wall Street Journal (“The Way We Read,” June 9, 2008) said, “Over some time horizon, books will be read on electronic devices. Physical books won’t completely go away, just as horses haven’t completely gone away. But there is no sinecure for any technology. If you think about books, it’s astonishing. It’s very hard to find a technology that has remained in mostly the same form for 500 years. And anything that has stubbornly resisted improvement for 500 years is going to be hard to improve. That is what we’re trying to do with Kindle. We see this as an effort to improve upon the book, even though it’s resisted change for 500 years.” He continued, “Over the last 20 years, most of the tools that we humans have invented have made it easier for us to be information snackers. If one of the outcomes of Kindle and other devices like it [is] making long-form reading more frictionless so that you end up doing more of it, I think that’s a good thing.” But is the trend toward “information snacking” a signal that we’re sliding toward an abyss that denies society literature on the level of Mark Twain’s creations?
Maybe not. Twain, who made his narratives intentionally long to fit the subscription distribution model he pioneered over a century ago, would have already sent an instant message to Mr. Bezos. “I have a great idea for a story! Let’s meet and we’ll talk about how we’ll both make money.” I applaud Mr. Bezos for his vision. I hope that 100 years from now we’ll look back, recognizing that Kindle—or something like it—facilitated a literary achievement on par with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
I recently learned that was how Mark Twain’s writings were originally sold. The hard sell was normal marketing for Twain’s books, and he was one of the first writers to trademark his name to promote sales. Although today we might appreciate Twain’s writing on literary merits, business considerations influenced what he wrote, and how he wrote it. He said that the money he could make from publishing a book “has a degree of importance for me which is almost beyond my comprehension.” Most of us would associate those words with the ambitions of a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist, but not an artist.
The financial calculus of book publishing drove Twain to innovate in other ways. He deployed a subscription sales model along with a dedicated sales force to cover a wide geography. (At the time, this itinerant sales force was one of the first to recruit women for jobs.) Using brand-name recognition common today, sales agents sold his books on the promise of the enjoyment the reader would get over time.
The salespeople engaged with customers by reading the publisher’s selling script, which included choreographed conversational details. Because the subscription sales model required selling some works that hadn’t yet been published, salespeople didn’t possess complete books. They sold entertainment, using samples that contained rich content at the time, including portions of text, pictures, page layouts, and choices for bindings.
Here’s the pitch you might have heard, quoting from an actual script: “I’ve got specimen pages of Mark Twain’s latest and greatest book! . . . there are nearly 700 pages in this book, and there’s a laugh on every page . . . The title of Mark Twain’s work (open the title page) is Following the Equator.” Even then, promoters and salespeople knew the importance of “controlling the conversation.”
Given Twain’s penchant for sales innovation, how might he exploit digital media if he were writing today? It’s interesting to think about what he might click on. In which formats would we discover and enjoy modern versions of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer? Could their adventures be distributed through a series of two-minute YouTube videos or Podcasts? Would this presentation enhance—or detract from the enjoyment we’ve derived from Twain’s stories. Would his ideas be equally inspiring and memorable without the written word? Or, you might think that because no other packaging can eclipse the eloquence of Twain’s prose, we should consider ourselves fortunate that when Twain was alive, print publishing was the dominant vehicle for mass recording and sharing of thought.
I can’t help but wonder what we’re sacrificing as information technologies develop and converge, and we embrace digital media. With similar uncertainty, in his book The Big Switch, Nicholas Carr questions the eventual outcome from the actions we take when exchanging thoughts and ideas:
“The Internet turns everything, from news-gathering to community building, into a series of tiny transactions—expressed mainly through clicks on links—that are simple in isolation yet extraordinarily complicated in the aggregate. Each of us may make hundreds or even thousands of clicks a day, some deliberately, some impulsively, and with each one we are constructing our identity, shaping our influences, and creating our communities. As we spend more time and do more things online, our combined clicks will shape our economy, our culture, and our society.” Clearly, Carr is ambivalent about the outcome. His insight leaves it up the reader to determine whether the future impact will be sustaining or debilitating.
Jeffrey Bezos, quoted in The Wall Street Journal (“The Way We Read,” June 9, 2008) said, “Over some time horizon, books will be read on electronic devices. Physical books won’t completely go away, just as horses haven’t completely gone away. But there is no sinecure for any technology. If you think about books, it’s astonishing. It’s very hard to find a technology that has remained in mostly the same form for 500 years. And anything that has stubbornly resisted improvement for 500 years is going to be hard to improve. That is what we’re trying to do with Kindle. We see this as an effort to improve upon the book, even though it’s resisted change for 500 years.” He continued, “Over the last 20 years, most of the tools that we humans have invented have made it easier for us to be information snackers. If one of the outcomes of Kindle and other devices like it [is] making long-form reading more frictionless so that you end up doing more of it, I think that’s a good thing.” But is the trend toward “information snacking” a signal that we’re sliding toward an abyss that denies society literature on the level of Mark Twain’s creations?
Maybe not. Twain, who made his narratives intentionally long to fit the subscription distribution model he pioneered over a century ago, would have already sent an instant message to Mr. Bezos. “I have a great idea for a story! Let’s meet and we’ll talk about how we’ll both make money.” I applaud Mr. Bezos for his vision. I hope that 100 years from now we’ll look back, recognizing that Kindle—or something like it—facilitated a literary achievement on par with The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Why Do You Use an Umbrella?: The Best Sales Questions Dig Beyond the Obvious
By Andrew Rudin, Outside Technologies, Inc.
Why do people use umbrellas?
It’s not a trick question. But before you answer it, substitute your own product or service for the word “umbrellas.”
My client uses this Umbrella Question to help salespeople learn the importance of digging past biases when asking questions. Like all discovery, there are many pathways to the answer. Here’s one from a recent meeting:
“Why do people use umbrellas?”
“So they don’t get wet.”
“Why is it important for them not to get wet?”
“So they don’t catch a cold.”
“Why is it important for them not to catch a cold?”
“So they won’t get sick.”
“And why is it important for them not to get sick?”
“So they won’t die.”
Wow! Using an umbrella prolongs life!
The person who answered these questions had clear ideas about the connections between cause and effect. Whether or not you believe an umbrella will enable someone to live longer, the exercise underscores the importance of continuing the discovery past the obvious answer, “so they don’t get wet.”
An article I wrote, "The Right Sales Questions Will Get The Right Answers" describes a sales opportunity I lost by failing to do just that—to get beyond the obvious. It would have been great to know the Umbrella Question at the time.
The value of asking questions that dig beyond the obvious doesn’t just apply to sales calls. It applies to anyone who must understand needs, wants, desires, and motivations of the individuals who purchase from them. In a CRM scenario:
“Why do customers choose to call our contact center?”
“To place orders.”
“And why do they use the phone?”
“Because they’re uncomfortable using live chat.”
“Why are they uncomfortable using live chat?”
“Because they feel more at home communicating by talking to another individual.”
“And why do they prefer talking vs. typing?”
“Because they feel lonely.”
“And why do they feel lonely?”
Etc.
Think of how an organization might shape the Customer Experience by uncovering the root causes of customer preferences.
Whenever I buy pharmaceuticals for my dog, I place the orders through the call center of Drs. Foster Smith, a catalog retailer for pet supplies. The call center agents are invariably helpful and knowledgeable. Although I’ve never asked, I wonder how many pet stories they patiently endure as they guide callers through how to select the best squeaky toy for their dog.
Could the company already understand something that most companies don’t—that customers call them for reasons that go beyond one obvious answer—to place orders?
Why do people use umbrellas?
It’s not a trick question. But before you answer it, substitute your own product or service for the word “umbrellas.”
My client uses this Umbrella Question to help salespeople learn the importance of digging past biases when asking questions. Like all discovery, there are many pathways to the answer. Here’s one from a recent meeting:
“Why do people use umbrellas?”
“So they don’t get wet.”
“Why is it important for them not to get wet?”
“So they don’t catch a cold.”
“Why is it important for them not to catch a cold?”
“So they won’t get sick.”
“And why is it important for them not to get sick?”
“So they won’t die.”
Wow! Using an umbrella prolongs life!
The person who answered these questions had clear ideas about the connections between cause and effect. Whether or not you believe an umbrella will enable someone to live longer, the exercise underscores the importance of continuing the discovery past the obvious answer, “so they don’t get wet.”
An article I wrote, "The Right Sales Questions Will Get The Right Answers" describes a sales opportunity I lost by failing to do just that—to get beyond the obvious. It would have been great to know the Umbrella Question at the time.
The value of asking questions that dig beyond the obvious doesn’t just apply to sales calls. It applies to anyone who must understand needs, wants, desires, and motivations of the individuals who purchase from them. In a CRM scenario:
“Why do customers choose to call our contact center?”
“To place orders.”
“And why do they use the phone?”
“Because they’re uncomfortable using live chat.”
“Why are they uncomfortable using live chat?”
“Because they feel more at home communicating by talking to another individual.”
“And why do they prefer talking vs. typing?”
“Because they feel lonely.”
“And why do they feel lonely?”
Etc.
Think of how an organization might shape the Customer Experience by uncovering the root causes of customer preferences.
Whenever I buy pharmaceuticals for my dog, I place the orders through the call center of Drs. Foster Smith, a catalog retailer for pet supplies. The call center agents are invariably helpful and knowledgeable. Although I’ve never asked, I wonder how many pet stories they patiently endure as they guide callers through how to select the best squeaky toy for their dog.
Could the company already understand something that most companies don’t—that customers call them for reasons that go beyond one obvious answer—to place orders?
To An Octopus "50" Means Nothing: Why Empathy Matters
What qualities make a salesperson a top performer? Being young and energetic? Money-motivated? Aggressive? Outgoing and gregarious? Or having strong product knowledge? Experience selling big-ticket items?
None of these describes "Denise," a top-performing salesperson I interviewed recently. In fact, her resume probably wouldn't reach the inbox of most prospective employers. She's over 60, friendly but not outgoing and motivated by more than commissions as a measure of success. She has so little product knowledge that she emphasizes that fact when working with prospects (more about that in a moment). But if you met her, you'd be glad you didn't have to earn your living selling against her. She dominates her competitors.
Wondering what killer attribute she has? It's empathy. In a sales world in which her competitors are shouting in their own language, Denise learned a long time ago that, "to an octopus, 50 means nothing."
‘One question that should be at the top of the list: How does the world look through your customer's eyes?.’
When I saw how empathy creates sales success for Denise, I wondered if other sales professionals had similarly identified this essential competency. So I asked an experienced sales recruiter, Natalie Buford-Young of The Rainfield Group, whether empathy matters. I was surprised by her answer because she told me that she has never worked with an employer that has specified "empathy" as a candidate requirement. Not once. But Buford-Young's expertise enables her to fill the knowledge gap for her clients because she views empathy, along with ego, as the attributes that every salesperson must possess for success, and she carefully screens her candidates accordingly.
Buford-Young's straightforward answer belies the complexity of uncovering the empathetic behaviors of a great salesperson. While most sales managers eagerly focus on ego-related interview questions (How did you perform against quota in the last five years? What did you W-2 last year? What was the amount of your latest quota? What was your largest sale?), they are much less adept at uncovering empathy. One question that should be at the top of the list: How does the world look through your customer's eyes?
Here's how Denise became a top performer by imbuing that perspective in everything she does.
Outside-in viewpoint. According to Denise, "Before my (prospecting) phone call, I envision the person I'm calling in their office, along with what's in their surroundings. I think about what they are doing when my call comes in. I think about what they did five minutes before, what's on their calendar that day and what pressure they might be facing at home. From there, I think about what I'm going to ask and say. Then I make my call."
Common concern for the prospect's objectives and goals. Denise not only knows what motivates her customers, but also, she believes in the same principles. She described it this way: "My clients are cause-driven. I share the same interest in those causes." Shared values create a bond.
Meaningful discovery through asking the right questions. Here's where Denise's limited product knowledge serves her well. She eliminates the common trap of "showing but not selling." And because her ego enables her to know where she wants to lead her prospect, she guides the person there by asking the right questions. In fact, she has sold many software licenses by beginning with this caveat before a demo: "I've never run this function before, but let's step through this together and we can see how easy it is. Now, how would you start out with ... ?"
Insightful dialog. A conversation with Denise is a far cry from the cliché salesperson portrayed in Dan Ackroyd's famed Saturday Night Live Bass-o-Matic sales infomercials. Denise is soft-spoken and articulate. While her voice quality is pleasant, she commands attention because she is adept at sharing her insight about what her customer has said. Her conversations follow a self-supporting pattern: Ask a question. Listen. Restate the answer better than how she heard it. After hearing several of her customer calls, I could clearly see that in the course of going from Cold Call Telemarketer to Trusted Advisor, Denise is a Lamborghini.
Appropriate humility. Denise always walks a fine line where others fall off. She's intelligent without being pompous. Articulate but not highfalutin. Knowledgeable but not pedantic. Most important, she knows her customer's priorities and how the product she sells fits into that schema. She knows the daily pressures her customers face and how her interactions are perceived. These important aspects are often lost as salespeople pursue ever-higher quotas and sales goals. Compare Denise's approach with the get-around-the-gatekeeper-any-way-you-can mentality, and you'll recognize why most telemarketing voice mail messages never get heard and most emails hit the spam bucket, forever unread. In a statement that at first seems counter-intuitive, Denise attributes her high-close ratio to the fact that "there is no sales urgency in my voice."
Courtesy. Denise doesn't deny that some people she must work with can impede her, but she treats everyone with appropriate courtesy and respect. She believes that the same people her competitors may try to avoid can be of critical importance for gaining access to decision makers.
Knowledge of the world outside of business domain. Denise brings a broad view of the world to her sales relationships. She's well-read and very comfortable talking about complex issues that transcend geographic and topical boundaries. Think that's not important for a person who mainly uses the phone to complete sub-$10,000 sales? I listened intently as she spoke to an Indian-surnamed prospective client three time zones away in Atlanta about literacy issues in India and what those issues mean for that country's global competitiveness. She booked an appointment to talk with the client again the following week. A Lamborghini going from Cold Call Telemarketer to Trusted Advisor.
As Denise demonstrates, empathy is really an umbrella-term under which strategies, tactics and processes should be formulated. And because strategies are directional, the best sales results will be achieved when empathy is viewed as a guideline, not as a prescription. Empathy yields patterns of positive sales behaviors that don't need to be culled into neat checklists, micromanaged at every quarterly sales review. "Be courteous to the front desk receptionist," is a hollow admonition to a salesperson who doesn't understand what empathy means for building a valuable business relationship. Uncovering a salesperson's propensity for empathy will help identify a potential sales star. Nurturing empathetic behavior once it's found will be the next great management challenge.
None of these describes "Denise," a top-performing salesperson I interviewed recently. In fact, her resume probably wouldn't reach the inbox of most prospective employers. She's over 60, friendly but not outgoing and motivated by more than commissions as a measure of success. She has so little product knowledge that she emphasizes that fact when working with prospects (more about that in a moment). But if you met her, you'd be glad you didn't have to earn your living selling against her. She dominates her competitors.
Wondering what killer attribute she has? It's empathy. In a sales world in which her competitors are shouting in their own language, Denise learned a long time ago that, "to an octopus, 50 means nothing."
‘One question that should be at the top of the list: How does the world look through your customer's eyes?.’
When I saw how empathy creates sales success for Denise, I wondered if other sales professionals had similarly identified this essential competency. So I asked an experienced sales recruiter, Natalie Buford-Young of The Rainfield Group, whether empathy matters. I was surprised by her answer because she told me that she has never worked with an employer that has specified "empathy" as a candidate requirement. Not once. But Buford-Young's expertise enables her to fill the knowledge gap for her clients because she views empathy, along with ego, as the attributes that every salesperson must possess for success, and she carefully screens her candidates accordingly.
Buford-Young's straightforward answer belies the complexity of uncovering the empathetic behaviors of a great salesperson. While most sales managers eagerly focus on ego-related interview questions (How did you perform against quota in the last five years? What did you W-2 last year? What was the amount of your latest quota? What was your largest sale?), they are much less adept at uncovering empathy. One question that should be at the top of the list: How does the world look through your customer's eyes?
Here's how Denise became a top performer by imbuing that perspective in everything she does.
Outside-in viewpoint. According to Denise, "Before my (prospecting) phone call, I envision the person I'm calling in their office, along with what's in their surroundings. I think about what they are doing when my call comes in. I think about what they did five minutes before, what's on their calendar that day and what pressure they might be facing at home. From there, I think about what I'm going to ask and say. Then I make my call."
Common concern for the prospect's objectives and goals. Denise not only knows what motivates her customers, but also, she believes in the same principles. She described it this way: "My clients are cause-driven. I share the same interest in those causes." Shared values create a bond.
Meaningful discovery through asking the right questions. Here's where Denise's limited product knowledge serves her well. She eliminates the common trap of "showing but not selling." And because her ego enables her to know where she wants to lead her prospect, she guides the person there by asking the right questions. In fact, she has sold many software licenses by beginning with this caveat before a demo: "I've never run this function before, but let's step through this together and we can see how easy it is. Now, how would you start out with ... ?"
Insightful dialog. A conversation with Denise is a far cry from the cliché salesperson portrayed in Dan Ackroyd's famed Saturday Night Live Bass-o-Matic sales infomercials. Denise is soft-spoken and articulate. While her voice quality is pleasant, she commands attention because she is adept at sharing her insight about what her customer has said. Her conversations follow a self-supporting pattern: Ask a question. Listen. Restate the answer better than how she heard it. After hearing several of her customer calls, I could clearly see that in the course of going from Cold Call Telemarketer to Trusted Advisor, Denise is a Lamborghini.
Appropriate humility. Denise always walks a fine line where others fall off. She's intelligent without being pompous. Articulate but not highfalutin. Knowledgeable but not pedantic. Most important, she knows her customer's priorities and how the product she sells fits into that schema. She knows the daily pressures her customers face and how her interactions are perceived. These important aspects are often lost as salespeople pursue ever-higher quotas and sales goals. Compare Denise's approach with the get-around-the-gatekeeper-any-way-you-can mentality, and you'll recognize why most telemarketing voice mail messages never get heard and most emails hit the spam bucket, forever unread. In a statement that at first seems counter-intuitive, Denise attributes her high-close ratio to the fact that "there is no sales urgency in my voice."
Courtesy. Denise doesn't deny that some people she must work with can impede her, but she treats everyone with appropriate courtesy and respect. She believes that the same people her competitors may try to avoid can be of critical importance for gaining access to decision makers.
Knowledge of the world outside of business domain. Denise brings a broad view of the world to her sales relationships. She's well-read and very comfortable talking about complex issues that transcend geographic and topical boundaries. Think that's not important for a person who mainly uses the phone to complete sub-$10,000 sales? I listened intently as she spoke to an Indian-surnamed prospective client three time zones away in Atlanta about literacy issues in India and what those issues mean for that country's global competitiveness. She booked an appointment to talk with the client again the following week. A Lamborghini going from Cold Call Telemarketer to Trusted Advisor.
As Denise demonstrates, empathy is really an umbrella-term under which strategies, tactics and processes should be formulated. And because strategies are directional, the best sales results will be achieved when empathy is viewed as a guideline, not as a prescription. Empathy yields patterns of positive sales behaviors that don't need to be culled into neat checklists, micromanaged at every quarterly sales review. "Be courteous to the front desk receptionist," is a hollow admonition to a salesperson who doesn't understand what empathy means for building a valuable business relationship. Uncovering a salesperson's propensity for empathy will help identify a potential sales star. Nurturing empathetic behavior once it's found will be the next great management challenge.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Can Johnny Raise Money? How Public Schools Exploit Social Networks
Reading, writing, ‘rithmetic, and raising money. Today, for public education, building the latter competency has never been more important. Schools want your money and they are pushing harder than ever to get it. If you haven’t already felt the heat, you will soon.
This month, a strange envelope arrived in our postal mailbox at home. It looked like a bill, but different, because the envelope had three windows instead of the usual one, and because our name and address was scrawled in freehand. On closer inspection, I saw the handwritten name of our nephew above the printed name of his elementary school in Florida. (My wife and I live in Virginia.) I bit the curiosity bait and opened the letter.
It begins with a handwritten salutation: “Dear Aunt Barbara and Uncle Andy,” followed by preprinted text saying, “We’re hoping to raise much-needed funds through the sales of magazine subscriptions—either new ones or renewals!” At the bottom: our four-year-old nephew’s name—written in adult cursive. How’s that for bravado? And just the week before, we received a similarly-packaged solicitation from our niece (not related to our nephew) asking us to buy magazine subscriptions to benefit her school in California!
Both letters contained several pieces collateral, and a convenient postcard to send to our school-aged loved one informing him or her of our donation to the school. The postcard was thoughtfully pre-printed with the salutation “Dear,” a message, and amazingly, a closing sentiment, “Love,” followed by a blank line for me to fill in my name. (This technique of fundraising enables all parties to be equally perfunctory!)
Even stranger is what’s not included. The communication didn’t provide any information about how the proceeds will be used, or how our relatives will benefit. (Great American Opportunities, the marketing company that sent one of the solicitations, doesn’t provide an address or corporate website to learn more.) There isn’t a website listed for the school, or even a picture of the school (or of any school, for that matter!) to make a visual connection.
All of which leaves me feeling weirdly hollow about my role in a value chain that encompasses magazine publishers, marketing promotion companies, school districts, nieces and nephews—and finally, me. Here’s why:
1. Schools are part of the fabric of local communities. I support close family ties, but those bonds don’t mean I feel compelled to fund my niece and nephew’s schools. That’s the fiscal responsibility of their neighbors, and local government and businesses.
2. The marketing junctions don’t work. Family members making product pitches on behalf of big media companies ostensibly in support of vague school programs seems an odd and convoluted arrangement.
3. The charity request is utterly insincere.
4. The economics are flawed. One letter touts that “Forty percent of every dollar goes to our school.” Wouldn’t my niece or nephew’s school be twice as well off if I contributed 80% directly, and saved the remaining 20% percent myself? Clearly, the media companies are the primary beneficiaries of this marketing program.
The low-overhead appeal of this fundraising tactic is undeniable. Schools compete for the diminishing number of volunteer hours of time-strapped parents. So they ask parents to tap address books and dash off thirty or so letters to relatives and acquaintances, and voila! Money for the school! And no one even had to get off the sofa!
But what’s sacrificed in the process? For starters, sixty percent of every dollar spent. In addition, local communities are circumvented and kids lose the valuable experience of learning face-to-face sales—an important skill no matter what field they enter. Finally—as I can personally attest—away goes the goodwill of otherwise affectionate relatives who now get hit up for donations anytime and anywhere.
Maybe I’m wistful for a kinder, less harried time. When I was in elementary school, a fundraising drive meant hopping on my bike to get every neighbor on Oak Leaf Lane to buy one or more boxes of peanut brittle. That was before “working mom” became a mainstream term, before No Child Left Behind, before federal and state school budget cuts, before child predators, and yes, before big marketing companies salivated over how social networks and heartstrings promotions can stem declining sales for products like magazines in the age of the Internet.
Whether or not such promotions are successful, I find them degrading. If schools need to raise money, they might be better served to hire marketing specialists that understand the nuances of fundraising. In the meantime, my advice: don’t overlook appealing to local community. The most valuable social networks are just a bike ride away.
This month, a strange envelope arrived in our postal mailbox at home. It looked like a bill, but different, because the envelope had three windows instead of the usual one, and because our name and address was scrawled in freehand. On closer inspection, I saw the handwritten name of our nephew above the printed name of his elementary school in Florida. (My wife and I live in Virginia.) I bit the curiosity bait and opened the letter.
It begins with a handwritten salutation: “Dear Aunt Barbara and Uncle Andy,” followed by preprinted text saying, “We’re hoping to raise much-needed funds through the sales of magazine subscriptions—either new ones or renewals!” At the bottom: our four-year-old nephew’s name—written in adult cursive. How’s that for bravado? And just the week before, we received a similarly-packaged solicitation from our niece (not related to our nephew) asking us to buy magazine subscriptions to benefit her school in California!
Both letters contained several pieces collateral, and a convenient postcard to send to our school-aged loved one informing him or her of our donation to the school. The postcard was thoughtfully pre-printed with the salutation “Dear,” a message, and amazingly, a closing sentiment, “Love,” followed by a blank line for me to fill in my name. (This technique of fundraising enables all parties to be equally perfunctory!)
Even stranger is what’s not included. The communication didn’t provide any information about how the proceeds will be used, or how our relatives will benefit. (Great American Opportunities, the marketing company that sent one of the solicitations, doesn’t provide an address or corporate website to learn more.) There isn’t a website listed for the school, or even a picture of the school (or of any school, for that matter!) to make a visual connection.
All of which leaves me feeling weirdly hollow about my role in a value chain that encompasses magazine publishers, marketing promotion companies, school districts, nieces and nephews—and finally, me. Here’s why:
1. Schools are part of the fabric of local communities. I support close family ties, but those bonds don’t mean I feel compelled to fund my niece and nephew’s schools. That’s the fiscal responsibility of their neighbors, and local government and businesses.
2. The marketing junctions don’t work. Family members making product pitches on behalf of big media companies ostensibly in support of vague school programs seems an odd and convoluted arrangement.
3. The charity request is utterly insincere.
4. The economics are flawed. One letter touts that “Forty percent of every dollar goes to our school.” Wouldn’t my niece or nephew’s school be twice as well off if I contributed 80% directly, and saved the remaining 20% percent myself? Clearly, the media companies are the primary beneficiaries of this marketing program.
The low-overhead appeal of this fundraising tactic is undeniable. Schools compete for the diminishing number of volunteer hours of time-strapped parents. So they ask parents to tap address books and dash off thirty or so letters to relatives and acquaintances, and voila! Money for the school! And no one even had to get off the sofa!
But what’s sacrificed in the process? For starters, sixty percent of every dollar spent. In addition, local communities are circumvented and kids lose the valuable experience of learning face-to-face sales—an important skill no matter what field they enter. Finally—as I can personally attest—away goes the goodwill of otherwise affectionate relatives who now get hit up for donations anytime and anywhere.
Maybe I’m wistful for a kinder, less harried time. When I was in elementary school, a fundraising drive meant hopping on my bike to get every neighbor on Oak Leaf Lane to buy one or more boxes of peanut brittle. That was before “working mom” became a mainstream term, before No Child Left Behind, before federal and state school budget cuts, before child predators, and yes, before big marketing companies salivated over how social networks and heartstrings promotions can stem declining sales for products like magazines in the age of the Internet.
Whether or not such promotions are successful, I find them degrading. If schools need to raise money, they might be better served to hire marketing specialists that understand the nuances of fundraising. In the meantime, my advice: don’t overlook appealing to local community. The most valuable social networks are just a bike ride away.
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