SMT: Center for Sales Excellence

How well are your sales people doing with regard to those KSAs?

by Susanne Ball

Last week we posed a few questions to consider when getting customer input as you're 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 consider question 2. So here are a few things to think about - things I've learned from experience in conducting customer input activities on behalf of our clients:

1. Third parties are better at getting candid customer input
   Customers are significantly more comfortable, more open and honest, and more talkative when a third party conducts the survey. That's not surprising - they don't really want to say something bad about their sales rep to the sales rep's face (if that's who's asking the questions) or to someone in their vendor organization. In fact, the sales rep should be the absolute last person to ask the questions. The second choice: A person from your organization who is in no way connected to Sales.
2. Electronic vs. personal questions
   Given how busy everyone's schedule is and how notoriously difficult it is to get on buyer calendars, it won't surprise you that most customers/buyers prefer to complete electronic surveys than agree to a face-to-face or phone interview. Here are the differences to consider when you decide which route to go:
   > Electronic surveys tend to have significantly higher participation rates
   > In-person or phone interviews tend to have greater depth of feedback (most respondents really don't take much time to fill out those "any other comments" sections in a meaningful way vs. what they'll tell you impromptu)
3. Ask the right questions
   Once you have your organization's KSAs, don't forget to ask only about the appropriate KSAs when taking up a customer's time. Those that are appropriate:
   > Externally focused KSAs that involve an interaction with the customer
   > KSA's the customers can see demonstrated and make a judgment about.
4. Ask the questions the right way
   Wording is everything. Make sure you word questions so the customer can respond based on behavior/experience with your sales people. For example, don't ask "How good are our sales rep's creative thinking skills?" -- they don't really care and don't know. Ask what they care about instead: "Does our sales rep bring you new/innovative ideas to help you grow your business?"
5. Ask the right number of questions
   Don't strain your customer's patience - give some serious thought to how much time and effort the customer will need to commit to your questions. You shouldn't expect more than approximately 10 minutes under most circumstances. So, be selective about your questions to get the core information you need.
6. Give them a scale
   A scale of 1 to 5 works best. 1 to 3 isn't enough differentiation for you to judge performance - I'd put money on your ending up with a 2 across the board. A scale of 1 to 10 is too much nuance - what's the actual difference between a 6 and 7 average score????
7. Ensure anonymity of responses - and mean it!
   This is the surest way to get candid input - and a 3rd party is the best way to ensure customers believe their responses will be anonymous.
8. Beware the fallout or halo effect
   True story: I was recently conducting a customer survey for a client. All was going well. Suddenly, ALL responses to questions turned extremely negative and many previously scheduled respondents backed out of the survey. What happened??? Well, the vendor had just had a major logistics issue and couldn't ship product as expected. The vendor's anger was reflected in the survey - despite the fact that the sales rep had done absolutely nothing different and the logistics issue was not her fault. The opposite can of course be true as well: a customer is extremely happy with your product or service despite your sales rep and, therefore, rates your sales rep's KSA performance higher than it actually is. A customer will take the entire relationship with your company into consideration when you're questioning them - so a word of caution about knowing "what else" in the relationship is influencing participation or the way your customer responds. Careful questioning and asking questions a few different ways may help.

Next week, let's tackle question 3.

THE QUESTIONS FOR YOU:
What are your experiences getting customer input on KSA performance? What pitfalls or advice can you share?

Customer Input for Sales Leader Development

by Susanne Conrad

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?