BY MARK WALKER

In the May 8-14 edition of the Atlanta Business Chronicle there is an on-target opinion piece written by Tim Bentsen, the Managing Partner for the Atlanta office of KPMG, LLP.  He discusses the opportunity in this economic downturn to step back from the short-term focus, and think for the long-term.  He suggest three areas for this long-term focus, but leaves out an important fourth – building up your people by training them.

If your phone is not ringing off the hook, then you have available time to invest an hour a week training your people, at all levels, on the key ways your company creates value and makes money for your clients. 
• Work with your executive, management, sales and service teams to identify the areas in which your products and services bring value to your clients.  What do you do for clients that helps them create value for their customers? 
• When you gather them for weekly training, invest  10 – 15 minutes talking about client success stories in applying your solutions.
• Focus on teaching your employees how to uncover ways to build additional value through your offerings for your clients. 
• Help them create the diagnostic questions they can ask to uncover needs that you can fill, and share those questions with everyone.

When you meet for your weekly sessions make sure to:
• Equip your employees to really find out what your clients need.  Help everyone learn how to uncover what the clients can do now to grow their businesses, and look for needs that your products and services can fill.
• Train your employees at all levels to make your key products and services known to your prospect and clients as solutions. 
• Rehearse ways to show  clients how your solutions will help them get business, now and for the long term.
• Convert your solutions in to dollar savings to demonstrate to your employees direct value for clients.

When the economic times are uncertain, people become fearful about a lot of things.  They stand around the coffee pot or water cooler and commiserate about the troubles – unless you give them something good to talk about; something challenging to focus on in helping your customers succeed at their businesses.

The organizations who are now focusing on the basic issue of building value for their clients in this tough market, will be in the best position to break through when the recovery begins.

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BY TODD SCHNICK

Over the past several months, I have done a lot of thinking about how to better assist my clients with their business. One thing we are doing is focusing on the customer experience.

Here are a few things you can do to improve your customer’s experience:

1. Get your customer’s FEEDBACK. While you may not want to hear negative complaints from customers, trust me - you do. This is the only way you can solve problems - and actually it is the best way to build loyal customers. They will appreciate when you bend over backwards to handle their concerns, thereby building a stronger relationship. Here are ten questions you can ask your customer.

2. OBSERVE your customer. What they say, and what they actually do, are sometimes different. Point is, you should always monitor the behavior of your customers, and see how they go through your company experience. It won’t be a smooth as you might expect…

3. Be sure they understand the VALUE you bring. Tell them that story. Often. Be sure they understand what value you bring to their business - how you are making them better. This enables them to better spread your story to their network.

4. EMPOWER your employees. It is critical that you give your employees the freedom to handle customer complaints and needs - on a moment’s notice. If you do not empower your employees to make decisions on their own - then you are seriously limiting your ability to satisfy and serve your customer.

5. Make yourself ACCESSIBLE. Make it easy for your customers to find you when they need you. In this day and age of easy communication - there is no excuse not to be easily found.

6. BE your brand. You must always live your brand. If you position yourself as a green company, you better always live that brand. If at any time you deviate from your brand, you will injure that reputation, and business will suffer. People will pay a premium to live the brand with you.

7. Never stop INNOVATING. Looking for ways to improve your service, product offerings, and customer experience - never stops. The minute you stop seeking improvements is the minute your business begins to fade away. As soon as you bring a new innovation to market isn’t the time to start looking for the next one - you should already be on that path.

8. Make your website EASY. Sometimes you, the business owner, may like the look and feel of your company website, but what does your customers and prospects think? Your site won’t always make the same sense to a new user as it does to you.

9. Make the experience UNIQUE. A person makes lots of transactions and decisions each day. They buy goods from the grocery, pay a utility bill, buy songs from iTunes, etc. What you should strive for is a unique business experience - one that stands out and is memorable. And what happens when your customer experiences this? They come back. And they tell others!

10. COMMUNICATE. Reach out to your customers. Often. Use social media tools. Blog. Send newsletters. E-newsletters. Progress reports. Keep them in the loop about what is going on.

11. TRAIN. If you want your employees to behave a certain way, and learn habits that will serve customers well, you need to establish good training programs. But also know that training never stops. The best athletes never stop practicing.

12. Install SYSTEMS. Establishing set processes and systems that are meticulously followed by you and your employees can create a standard that customers will come to trust and expect. Don’t get trapped into never changing (always be looking for improvements), but a system allows your company to perform consistently, and systems bring comfort to customers.

13. Have FUN. If you aren’t enjoying yourself and having fun running your business, you are not providing an environment suitable for you and your employees to give a good customer experience. Make working your business fun - and the customer will certainly benefit.

14. Think Customer FIRST. It is a mistake we all make. When we make decisions, we sometimes don’t think about how those decisions will impact the overall customer experience. You should not do ONE thing (however remote) in your business where you don’t question how it will impact the customer.

What are other ways to improve the customer experience?

Be Intrepid.

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BY MICHAEL MCCLELLAN

“Converting prospects into customers” – which is what GrowthANSWERS calls the “Customer Gap” – should be an important issue to most small-to-mid sized manufacturers.  The reason?  Most manufacturers under $75M in annual revenues rely heavily on niche markets for business – which means that they generally will have a limited pool of current and potential customers to do business with.  This makes it imperative that they convert as many prospects as possible into customers in these niche markets. 

(By the way, this also means that keeping as many customers as possible from these niche markets – i.e. closing the “Loyalty Gap” – and servicing them in as many ways as possible, which is addressed by the “Expansion Gap” – are also important issues.  These will be addressed in future editions of this newsletter.) 

Given the limited nature of the prospect pool in niche markets, some market research into the needs and pain points of prospective customers may be cost-justified.  In addition, it is equally important to explore the key reasons that current customers buy your products and/or services, as well as the reasons that fallen-away customers no longer buy from your company.  Only then will your sales force be truly prepared to convince prospective customers that your product or service is the best solution to address their needs and areas of pain.

Whether you use a professional market researcher or decide to have one of your internal team members conduct the interviews, here are a few tips and techniques for interviewing prospects, current customers, and fallen-away customers:

1) USE OPEN PROBES: Open-ended questions allow your prospects and customers the opportunity to think and respond in ways you might not anticipate.  Be ready to ask the question in another way if you meet resistance or if they have trouble getting started with their answer.  Probe deeper when you aren’t certain you have a clear understanding, or if you think they might have more opinions and insights to share.  Most importantly, listen.  Your goal when making the phone call is to uncover points of pain that perhaps you didn’t realize your prospect or customer is experiencing.  Even nuances make a difference in how effectively a piece of marketing collateral is written. 

2) GET FEEDBACK ON PAST EXPERIENCES:  Take the bad with the good — and don’t get defensive.  Asking for specific details regarding a bad experience will give you valuable problem solving material.  Address concerns at the end of the conversation or, better yet, set up a future meeting so that you have time to prepare and offer a well thought out solution.  You are just trying to pinpoint the key gap areas during this interview.  But, don’t forget to ask what your company does particularly well.  Good performance is just as important to know about as bad.          

3) TEST SOME NEW CONCEPTS: Use the questionnaire as an opportunity to test some new concepts or approaches that you would like to explore with your prospects or current customers.  It’s a perfect time to informally introduce a new idea or product/service offering.

4) KEEP IT SHORT: Do have a dialog, but don’t ask so many questions that it overwhelms your customer.  Normally, 8 to 10 minutes is what you want to allow for this type of interview.  Let the customer be your guide here, though.  Sometimes they want to talk a lot longer.  Do enough to make it meaningful, but don’t make the set of questions so long that you can’t complete it.  Focus on your key objective areas, and make questions in those areas count.  End the call by letting the contact know how important their comments are to you and your business.

By conducting interviews with your current customers, you are creating deeper, more meaningful relationships.  Conversations with fallen-away accounts help you to discover why certain customers fell away and what steps you might take to bring them back.  And, periodic interviews with prospect companies in your targeted niche markets will help you to understand what you can do to become even more valued and differentiated in that niche. 

Finally, remember that current customers (and sometimes those who once were your customers) are your best source and most cost-effective business prospects. 

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BY J. MARK WALKER

Several years ago I was the regional sales manager for a small manufacturing company.

One of our product lines was made by this German parent, and was often used in OEM applications.We had a prospect in my Region who bought $500,000 per year worth of a product like one of ours, and we wanted their business. I worked through their Purchasing Department and Engineering Group to insure that we met or exceeded all their design specifications, and that our price was right. After more than a year, we still did not have the order.

I called the Purchasing Agent and asked, “We have the best product at the best price. Why don’t we have the order?” His answer floored me. “Our Vice President of Sales and Marketing does not want to change suppliers?” I asked, “That seems a little out of the ordinary. Why is that?” He responded with a story about a big problem with their present supplier which caused a major public relations disaster in one of their markets. They eventually got the problem resolved, but the VP of Sales and Marketing did not want to risk going through that kind of issue with a new supplier.

After verifying that he wanted to order our product, I asked the purchasing agent to set up a meeting. My Vice President of Sales, Director of Engineering, and Product Manager met me at their plant and we sat at the table with their Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Director of Engineering, Quality Control Manager, and Purchasing Agent. We got all the concerns out on the table and demonstrated how the problem they experienced in the past could not occur with our product. We then agreed upon a plan for a site visit to our facility by their people to verify that we could serve them.

From then on it was just a matter of working the plan, and we got the order.

What was the question that I had failed to ask one year earlier? After we became an approved vendor, I should have asked the Purchasing Agent something like this: “Who else needs to agree to this before you can place the order with us?” I could have saved a year of time and earned an extra $500,000 in revenue had I uncovered the issue with “changing suppliers.” Often there are factors in a purchase decision which don’t make sense to us, but which relate to a cultural issue or a historical problem like my customer had.

You will only learn this when you ask questions to pull out the information.

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Many years ago I worked for a small manufacturing company. As one of four regional managers, I was invited to the home office the first week of the second month of each quarter, to meet with our Vice President of Sales for a five-day “Sales Meeting.” We really had a good time eating at our favorite restaurants in the area, but we all HATED those meetings!

We were never sure just why we were called in for a full week, four times a year. These meetings consisted of hours of random discussions without meaningful decisions, bull sessions about sports teams or favorite cars and where we would have lunch. These hours were punctuated by moments of interesting discussions with engineering, marketing and manufacturing, which helped us feel a part of something larger than ourselves. Here is what I observed about how not to conduct a sales meeting:

No advanced agenda. We were often unable to contribute effectively to a particular discussion because we did not know the subjects in advance. Lack of preparation resulted in frustration and poor decision-making.
Failure to adhere to the established agenda. The first morning of each event we were presented with the week’s agenda. We rarely stuck to those topics, and often got behind. We all felt like two of the five days were wasted.
Avoiding the “elephant in the room.” Sales were flat for four of the five years I was part of this group. While we discussed ways to increase sales (of course!), the “elephant” of our antiquated technology and poor market positioning was ignored.
Lack of a marketing and sales plan. I do not remember any cohesive marketing programs or plans of action which would increase our market share or customer awareness. It was difficult to generate excitement in the field.
No business fun. We had four talented, capable managers, who wanted to succeed and make money. There was no “motivational speaker” or trainer or consultant brought in to help us grow personally, to get outside our habits and look for innovative ways to grow our business.
No follow up from the top. The CEO and the VP of Sales were great people. We became friends. But they had no action plans to work with us in the field to identify markets, build distribution or increase OEM sales. We may or may not see them in the field between quarterly meetings.

From these experiences I have three recommendations for effective sales meetings:
1. Identify and promote a specific and definite objective for each meeting.
2. Keep it short and stick to business. Generate excitement to make the meeting personally rewarding and business profitable.
3. Follow up with executive presence in the field to reinforce the initiatives or the plans decided in the meetings. Field managers need to be accountable and feel supported.

If you want to have fun, build the business meeting around a fun location, but make sure that the business is the focus of the meetings part.

MARK WALKER  http://www.jmwalkergroup.com/

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BY STEVEN WINOKUR - www.tpstrategies.com

The adventure with AT&T continues. Ok, so as it got closer to the “new” scheduled date, I realized I hadn’t received a confirmation call about the appointment that weekend. And guess what?!? When I called them, they had no record of the re-scheduled appointment. So, I had to make another new appointment.

If you remember, they told me I had to cancel my old service before I could get their new one. So, two days before the installation I called a different part of AT&T (I had my DSL through Bellsouth, which then became AT&T) to cancel my current service. When the agent asked why I was cancelling (great question by the way - always try to find out why clients leave), I told her I was switching to U-Verse. She then proceeded to tell me that I was not supposed to cancel the service and that when the service gets installed, they would cancel it then.

I broke into laughter because while this was how I thought it should work, several people over at U-Verse told me otherwise. This agent, who was not in the U-Verse department, explained to me how it would work. Finally, someone who knew what they were doing! She tried to make excuses for them by saying U-Verse was new and that the agents would learn over time. Not a good excuse in my book…

So the installation date finally arrived - the technician called ahead and arrived on time. Great so far. But there was no way this was going to go completely smoothly, was there? Nope - first, my wiring was screwy so they had to run new cable. Certainly not their fault, just an annoyance that was tackled well by the technician. But the outside wiring guy never showed up so the technician had to call the dispatch and get someone out right away to put in a new box outside. To their credit, they did get someone out pretty quickly.

I won’t get into the problems I had getting my email to work and AT&T’s attempt to get me to pay for service. Well, wait, I will say something about it because I think it demonstrates a good lesson.

I was having trouble getting my email to send out using my own domain name. I was transferred to a service department that wanted me to pay for support to get it work. I complained that I didn’t think I should pay for support for something that didn’t work. The agent then proceeded to argue with me, telling me that since the Internet worked, that’s what I was paying for. They didn’t guarantee the mail working the way I wanted it to. Huh? I proceeded to explain to her that I had no problem with email before U-Verse and since I did now, their service was not working the way I needed it to. I finally got to someone who helped me for free. Word of advice - if a customer calls to complain about your service, DO NOT ARGUE WITH THEM.

Let me repeat - DO NOT ARGUE WITH THEM.

Even if they’re wrong, figure out how to deal with the situation WITHOUT arguing with them.

That’s one lesson - the second had to do with training. If you bring out new products or services, make sure your staff is well-trained on how the product works, how it gets installed and what the user has to do to purchase the new product. Like I said in the previous post, most of us have many competitors. It’s too easy to switch to a competitor that has their “ducks in a row”. Don’t make the mistake of unveiling something new and not have your processes in place to make it a smooth transition because you know what, someone else will.

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BY MARK WALKER – www.jmwalkergroup.com 

I once observed a panel of sales executives who answered the question, “What are the characteristics of a good sales training program.”  As the discussion warmed up, one of the panelists, a Senior Vice President of Sales for a large financial service company, said, “Training is like Viagra – it is over-prescribed and only lasts about two hours!” 

He got a good laugh because there is a lot of truth to his statement.  We could call this the “Viagra training syndrome.”  Later in the discussion he made the point that there are external factors like competition, product design, and market place changes that should influence training for sales people.  Then he made a point that is often overlooked:  there are internal factors which include individual morale and skill.  He concluded that point by saying, “Remember that everybody doesn’t make the cut.”  My interpretation of that is that there are some things that training cannot cure. 

That brings me to the question, “How do we avoid the Viagra training syndrome?” Here is what I think. 

1.   As our panelist pointed out, you can only know if training is successful if you define what success is before you start.  For example:                       

a. Increased sales are not necessarily such a measure.  I have a client whose manufacturing plant is maxed out.  He wants better customers, who want value and with whom they can align as partners, not just people looking for the lowest price.  That will mean smaller dollars, but larger profits. 

b. More repeat business could be such a measure.  It is significantly easier and more profitable to sell to a satisfied customer than to find a new customer.   

2.  Much of what is labeled as “sales training” is a one to three day motivational speech.  Everybody has a good time, but 30 days later nothing in their behavior changes. 

3.  Sales training is not an event.  It is a process that includes: 

a. Values-based content that seeks to uncover customer needs, not manipulate people into buying. 

b.  A cordial learning environment that builds trust as people learn from each other as well as from the content of the program. 

c.  A sales system, so sales people understand where they are in the selling process.  This helps them know whether they have a genuine prospect. 

d.  Accountability over a period of time such as six to eight weeks for application of the principles taught.  This avoids the “two hour” part of the syndrome, and leads to lasting behavior change. 

If you want sales training to result in long term sales person behavior change, and achieve specific business goals, consider these ideas to avoid the “Viagra training syndrome.”

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BY MARK WALKER – www.jmwalkergroup.com 

Recently I met with a young sales executive for the first time.  He inherited a sales organization of about 15 people in a technical industry.  They are in a rebuilding mode with new corporate initiatives.  As we shared breakfast and talked, I asked him about his management style.  He made several excellent points:

§         He recognizes that everyone is not a super star, but that each one has value.

§         Regardless of his opinion of the person, he gives them all the same opportunity to succeed by providing the training and the infrastructure. §         He does not micro-manage.  This attracts potential super stars.

§         He looks at results and the activities that he knows will lead to those results to determine how a person is progressing.

§         He teaches that their first job is to find out what the prospective customer needs, and then get their products specified, if possible. 

I predict that this young man will soon lead a much larger organization, making more money and enjoying higher levels of personal gratification.  Here is why:

§         He is a “people builder.”  Rather than “beating them up,” he encourages them.

§         He is customer needs focused in his philosophy, his training, and his work in the field.

§         He focuses on results first, not just activity.  He knows that any sales person can look busy – can learn to “play the activity game.”

§         He trusts people to go out and do their jobs.  If they prove untrustworthy, he can decide whether training them can solve the problem, or whether they need to be doing something else. 

After more than 40 years in sales, I have concluded that the most successful sales managers don’t just “manage.”  They lead and coach!   Think about a person in your past who was influential in your personal and professional growth.  While the personalities will almost always be different, if we could all meet and compare notes we would see some common characteristics, such as:

§         He saw more in me than I saw in myself.

§         She helped me understand that I was growing to become the person I want to be.

§         He would not let me goof off, but forced me to think thr