Last week we started a discussion of "sales leaders". This week I wanted to touch on how important it is to get your customers' input when determining how best to develop your sales people. When asking for input, it's absolutely critical that you ask the right questions. And, those questions should be:
1. What key knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) sales people bring to the table are important to the customer
2. How well your sales people are doing relative to those KSA's
3. How well your sales people are doing on those KSAs relative to your competitors' sales people
This week, let's examine the first of these questions a bit more closely: What key knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) sales people bring to the table are important to the customer
Why bother asking this question?
To answer this question, the first step you must take is to identify all the possible KSAs you'd like your sales force to have - internally and externally facing KSAs that is. Rank how important each KSA is to your organization. Then, ask the customer to rank what's most important to them.
Realize that what's important to your organization may not necessarily be important to the customer. For example, in DHC's Sales Force of the Future study series, it's always true that some KSAs are ranked extremely highly by manufacturers/suppliers while they are ranked extremely low on the customer's list (e.g., internal financial acumen - customers really don't care if your sales person understands the financial model of your own organization. They DO care that the sales person understands the customer financial model).
Now, just because your customer doesn't care so much about some of the key KSAs does not mean you shouldn't be developing those in your sales force. In the example above, it's obviously extremely important that your sales people understand your company's financial model.
The point is this: if you're going to put your limited resources against something in sales development for the year, you need to determine what that will be and what impact it will have on your bottom line - if for no other reason that to set expectations for your management team. Asking the customer what's most important to him/her will help you decide how to use your resources. You may still decide to focus on developing an internally facing skill, but you'll understand the bottom line impact will likely not be the same as the bottom line impact of developing a KSA that's important to the customer.
Developing a sales force stronger in the KSAs that are important to the customer may very well give you a leg up over the competition. Consider this example. You pride yourself on having a sales force that develops extremely strong relationships with the customer. In fact, you focus a good part of your development on interpersonal skills and relationship building and that's come through in customer satisfaction surveys that indicate your sales people are great at the vendor-customer relationship.
But, what if you find that your customer ranks the relationship of average importance, far overshadowed by the ability of sales people to apply consumer behavior statistics and data to develop strong consumer marketing campaigns for them. The vendor-customer relationship remains important, but if you could also develop strong analytical skills and the ability to creatively use the data during the sales process, your sales people stand a far better chance of being considered best-in-class all around.
You mean you want me to actually ask them directly?
Uh-huh! As in, "Hello Mr./Ms. Customer, how important are these to you?" vs. "our sales people tell us this is what's important to the customer." Trust me, sales people don't know as much about what the customer thinks as the sales people think they know about what the customer thinks. Why? Well:
- These aren't conversations sales people usually have with customer -- they simply aren't part of a typical sales interaction. Sales people extrapolate what they think is important to the customer based on the the sales conversation.
- Customers are often loath to talk so directly about KSAs with sales people for fear of implying something negative about the sales person's abilities or knowledge. They'd much rather talk to a third party about these issues.
Why do we hesitate to ask customers?
Many companies back away from directly asking customers for input vs. relying on the input of the sales force. Why is this the case?
- Companies fear an implied obligation to act on the input
- Customers may not wish to participate in the survey and being turned down may be awkward
- Sales may fear loss of relationship control if a third party speaks with the customer
- Companies may not really want to know what the customer input is because they have a customer paradigm they'd rather not alter
A couple of notes on my experiences in conducting customer surveys of KSAs:
- Customers will often be very frank with a 3rd party about their expectations and their vendor's performance
- Customers like it when they're asked directly - it indicates the vendor is truly interested in them &the relationship/performance
- There's no shame in being turned down by a customer you've asked to participate in a survey - it may be nothing more than corporate policy or schedules that hinder participation, not a relationship problem
- You will get more valuable, robust and accurate information from your customer directly than any other source
Let's pick up with question 2 next week - see you then!
THE QUESTIONS FOR YOU:
Do you ask your customers about the KSAs that are important to them?
If so, how do you go about asking them these questions?
If not, why not?
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