If Your Customer Doesn’t Have Problems, They Don’t Need You!

The only reason sales people exist is to help customers solve their problems, grow, and improve.  The corollary is, if the customer doesn’t have the problems you can solve, they don’t need you!

But, judging by most of the prospecting calls I get, and most I observe with sales people, too many sales people fail to recognize this.

Too often, sales people call blindly, reaching out to anyone, any company, any name on their list.  Inevitably, they start their conversations with, “I’d like to tell you about my company and our solutions…….”

Too often, sales people don’t focus their efforts on customers that have problems the sales people can solve.  As a result, they waste a lot of their time and the customers’ time.

Prospecting efforts are best focused on finding these customers with problems.  These problems may be explicit–the customer recognizes they have challenges, they need to improve, they recognize there are opportunities they are missing.

Alternatively, the customer may not recognize they have problems.  Through deft questioning, or provocative insights, the sales person can incite the customer to consider, “Is there a better way?  Can we improve?  Are we missing opportunities?”

But until we find customers that fit into either of these categories, we are wasting our time and pissing off those caught up in our clueless prospecting.

Too often, I sees organizations and sales people caught in this flywheel of ever escalating desperation and meaningless activity.  They have their numbers they have to make—number of dials, number of conversations.  They dial endlessly, reaching prospects who have no need or desire.  They continue to dial, producing unsatisfactory results.  What used to take 10 conversations to find an opportunity, now takes 50, and tomorrow will take 100.  The results from this clueless outreach plummet, but rather than change the approach, we double down on the calls, going after ever increasing volumes and velocity.

Imagine what would happen if we changed our approach.  What if we focused on a well defined “sweet spot?”  What if we focus on companies and people within those companies that are highly likely to have the problems we solve?

What would happen if we spent some of our call time researching to narrow our focus to companies we know have problems are are looking to address new opportunities?

It isn’t difficult to do.  There are tons of analytical tools that help identify prospects that may have problems or challenges.  If you study your markets and target industry segments, it’s easy to identify the top performers and those that could improve.  Likewise, by studying customers, markets, industry segments, it’s relatively easy to understand and target those that may be missing opportunities.

Rather wasting time and resource on those that are doing well, what if we, instead, focus on those that need to improve or want to improve?

It is, also, easy to identify those people that should change, but may not have recognized the need to change.  They won’t be the top performers in our target segments.  If we focus on them, focusing on the opportunity to grow and improve, to match and compete with their top competitors, we will find customers much more interested in learning and changing.

Even if we can’t determine these things from research, if we change our approach, focusing on helping them discover they may have problems/opportunities/challenges, instead of pitching our products, our engagement rates will skyrocket.

Customers don’t buy products/services because we have sold them those products/services.  They buy them to solve problems and address opportunities.

Until we discover what those problems are, engaging customers in conversations about those problems, we are wasting their time and our time.

 

 

Related Posts:

• “I’m Not Paid To Have Conversations, I’m…
• What About My Goals? A Time For Selfishness
• Putting Aside Our Agenda For The Customer’s
• Stop Making Sales People Look Stupid!
• Please Stop Insisting We Have A Problem

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The Backup Catcher

Bill James wonders if David Ross set some kind of record for fewest games in a long career.

After floundering around, I finally realized that the way to measure this is to multiply the years by 90 and subtract the games played, so that if a player plays 90 games a year or more he doesn’t show up in this category, but if he has a long career playing LESS than 90 games a year, he will register. 90 games, 100, 80, 110. . .it doesn’t matter; the same guy is going to show up as the leader in this category no matter how you figure it, because he is way ahead of everybody else.

The guy who is going to win this no matter how you figure it is Tom Prince. Tom Prince played 17 seasons in the majors, but only 519 games. He played fewer games than anyone else who played 16 seasons (except pitchers), or 15, or 14. He is the absolute king of this category, the Prince and the King. There was a player in the late 1990s named Mike Frank, which gives us a name string: Mike Frank Thomas Prince Fielder Jones.

The most interesting bit to fall out of the research, however, was this:

Of those 23 players, at least ten are great human interest stories, but anyway, the other thing that struck me about the list is: This does not change over time. Everything in baseball changes over time, right? Rosters are different, playing styles are different. . .everything changes. When you make a list like this, it is almost always dominated by the players from one era, because some era always has a relevant edge.

But not here. The role of a backup catcher is EXACTLY the same now that it was in 1900 and before, basically.

What’s even more interesting is this changed despite teams carrying one less catcher. When teams carried just nine or ten pitchers, two catchers were often on the bench. That allowed managers to pinch hit for catchers as often as they did pitchers, and protected the team against in-game injuries to the backstops.

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Two for Two for the Astros

The Astros receive two draft picks and $2 million from the Cardinals to compensate Houston for the computer hacking by a Cardinals employee:

Houston will receive the Cardinals’ top two Draft selections — Nos. 56 and 75 — in the 2017 Draft, which is the most severe penalty of its kind imposed on an organization. The Commissioner’s decision to have the Cardinals pay reparations to the Astros was because he determined that Houston suffered material harm as a result of Correa’s actions.

The Cardinals also are required to pay $2 million to the Astros within the next 30 days. The amount is substantially higher than the damage calculation relied on by the federal government in its case against Correa, who is serving a 46-month prison sentence for unlawfully accessing another company’s information. As part of Manfred’s ruling, Correa was placed on the permanently ineligible list.

Very good. The Cardinals are lucky in a way they are not losing a high draft pick, but for a team that is very good at recognizing and developing talent, they are going to have a bit of a hole in their system for one year. It’s a bonanza for Houston, which will have at least four picks in the top 100.

This sends a very clear signal to clubs that hacking won’t be tolerated.

I hope the two players chosen with the two forfeited picks make the majors together so we can call them the Hack Brothers.

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Rodriguez Accident

Via BBTF, Sean Rodriguez and his family were in a traffic accident caused by the driver of a stolen vehicle:

The Atlanta Braves have confirmed one of the team’s new players, Miami native and infielder Sean John Rodriguez, his wife Giselle and their two young children were inside the black Chevy Suburban that was T-boned by the cruiser, near Southwest 99th Street and Coral Way, in West Miami-Dade, Saturday, at around 1:45 p.m.

Team officials said Rodriguez, 31, was behind the wheel of the SUV. He was not hurt.

Giselle and the children, ages 8 and 2, were taken to area hospitals in serious but stable condition. On Sunday, Giselle is listed in fair condition at Kendall Regional Medical Center, and her children remain in serious but stable condition at Nicklaus Children’s Hospital.

The driver of the stolen vehicle died. I wish Rodriguez’s family a speedy recovery.

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The Hack was a Hack

Via BBTF, new information about the Cardinals hacking the Astros:

According to the documents, portions of which remained redacted, Correa intruded into the Astros’ “Ground Control” database 48 times and accessed the accounts of five Astros employees. For 21/2 years, beginning in January 2012, Correa had unfettered access to the e-mail account of Sig Mejdal, the Astros’ director of decision sciences and a former Cardinals employee. Correa worked in St. Louis as an analyst under Mejdal, who came to Houston after the 2011 season with Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow, also a former Cardinals executive.

“(Correa) knew what projects the Astros’ analytics department was researching, what concepts were promising and what ideas to avoid,” said one of the documents, signed by Michael Chu, the assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case against Correa. “He had access to everything that Sig Mejdal … read and wrote.”

The story was that Correa thought the Astros staff had taken information from the Cardinals. If so, the first couple of days would have confirmed that. This looks like a much more aggressive hack, one aimed at stealing information instead of uncovering wrong-doing.

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Guidry Speaks

Via FanSided, Ron Guidry visits Syracuse thanks to the Washington Nationals farm team.

“Someday, it’s going to be a Nationals town,” Smorol said, smiling. “For now, it’s a Yankees’ town and we’ll keep bringing guys in that the people want. We recognize that we get a lot of good feedback from the fans when we bring in a guy like Ron Guidry.”

That’s smart to know your fan base. Guidry didn’t disappoint, speaking about baseball in his era very intelligently:

On whether former Yankees owner George Steinbrenner should be in the Hall of Fame (the Hall of Fame’s special veterans committee has so far rejected Steinbrenner three times since his death in 2010):

“It’s not so much that he changed the game, he changed the Yankees and that team made a lot of teams change what they set out to do and how they went about doing it. Because he was the first one to get into the free agency stuff, everybody else said, ‘OK, this could be lucrative, this could be beneficial to the organization.’ Now, it plays a huge role in a lot of teams’ success.”

He also would vote for Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens for the Hall of Fame.

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Icarus Miniatures Alliance Starter Set Unboxing

I wasn't expecting to be posting another Kickstarter unboxing so quickly after the last one, but I got a nice little box from Icarus Miniatures on Monday, containing their Alliance Starter Set. After having a quick peek at the figures, it would be rude of me not to show them off to people!

The aim of the Kickstarter was to fund production of both the Alliance and Nexus Starter boxes. I went for Alliance, while Necropocalypse has previously painted up a Feral Nexus he received in his Model Box monthly subscription.

The Alliance Starter set consists of 5 detailed, 35mm scale resin miniatures, their stat cards and a quick start rulebook, all sandwiched safely together between some foam. As with Knight Models and their 35mm scale miniatures, the 35mm scale here feels very close to GW's heroic 28mm, so don't be put off by the the seemingly large difference!

The miniatures are digitally sculpted before being 3d printed and cast by Zealot Miniatures. The digital process works really nicely with the Alliance set, keeping all the armour crisp and clean.

Starting off, we have the model that attracted me to the project in the first place - The Gunslinger. He's a 3 piece, no nonsense space cowboy/bounty hunter type badass.

The bottom of his jacket

Pistol arm.

Along with the Gunslinger comes three troopers. The first bloke comes with a nice modern looking LMG. It's not a bulky Assault Cannon or chain fed minigun, just a slightly larger version of the regular rifle with a larger box magazine that fits nicely with the clean overall look of the Alliance troopers.

As you can see on the LMG Trooper, there is some flash on the models along with a few mold lines, but for the most part they're in easy to clean places so shouldn't be a problem to remove.

After the LMG Trooper comes the regular female trooper. She comes in three parts, with the head separate to the body (and then the gun arm). Without the head and any other models for context, she's not immediately recognisable as female - no molded boob armour chest plates here! Instead she is wearing the same armour as the others and you then start to notice that she's slightly less chunky than the two male troopers, in both pose and torso width. With the added pixie crop hairstyle, you definitely get the feeling of soldier first, woman second, which fits the feel of the squad.

The final male trooper rounds out the regular grunts, another clean sculpt.

The final member of the party is the Outrider Scout, a masked and cloaked individual armed with a sniper rifle and tactical rock. There is no gender listed on the Kickstarter page for this individual and with the female trooper being as close as she was to the look of the men and most of the distinguishable features of the scout being shielded from view thanks to both cloak and mask, it's tough call on whether to go male or female. The legs are a little chunkier than on the female trooper, so I'm going to edge it towards male.

The Outrider Scout comes in 4 pieces - legs, torso, head and pistol arm. 

Slightly strangely, both the torso and leg sections have negative peg impressions, though the fit isn't affected by this. 

Some slight pitting on the cloak. but overall the quality of the casting has been excellent. Thumbs up to Zealot Miniatures!

The Outrider's head - a slightly Adeptus Mechanicus vibe with the combo of hood and mask.

When I backed the Kickstarter, I backed it because I get enjoyment from feeling like I've helped a new company that is finding it's feet to move forward, along with liking the clean look of the Alliance set. I wasn't quite sure what I'd end up doing with them as I'm unlikely to play the game itself (I haven't had a game of anything since June!) so they were probably just going to be a painting project.

However, since the campaign concluded Games Workshop released their Imperial Agents Codex and with it my imagination started running away with me at the thought of a combined Imperial Army. In the Imperial Agents book, if you take an Inquisition warband formation, you have to have at least three acolytes to an Inquisitor. Not owning any GW acolyte miniatures to go with my couple of Inquisitors, I now have some that fit the bill perfectly!

Icarus Miniatures are currently still in the fulfillment stage of the the project and delivered my pledge in the expected delivery month (a highly unusual event, even more so as last week's KS arrival was also on time!), but if you fancy picking up some of these guys at retail, you can find the Icarus store on their website, or go like their Facebook Page to keep up to date with their goings on.

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Squeezing Amateurs

Jack Moore traces the disappearance of the bonus in dealing with amateur players:

I fear that a CBA that puts a hard ceiling on the incomes of foreign players will deter top-level talents from leaving their domestic leagues to come play in the United States or from picking up baseball altogether. I fear it will stifle the growth of baseball in countries new to the game, like Brazil, which showed promise in the World Baseball Classic but may not have the financial incentives to draw athletes away from sports like soccer or basketball.

Ownership never will eliminate the bonus, but owners have done their best to cap and restrict it. That’s all well and good for profit margins, but who else wins? Major league players won minor concessions like a shorter disabled list, more off days, and a higher minimum salary. The cost? Players at every lower level across the globe lost significant bargaining power, dynamic foreign stars like Shohei Otani may be dissuaded from bringing their talents to major league baseball and teams have fewer ways to upend the competitive balance through shrewd or innovative spending on amateur talent.

We’re all happy there won’t be a lockout or a work stoppage, but it’s otherwise hard to find the positives in the changes in the newest agreement. To protect the owners from their own thriftless ways, the agreement threatens to dilute baseball’s talent pool and divert money from the pockets of a largely poor work force into the well-lined coffers of the teams. That may be business as usual for MLB dating all the way back to Branch Rickey’s heyday, but it’s disheartening all the same.

Note that no team ever gave out a bonus under duress. It was the owners who didn’t want to spend the money to improve their teams that drove this, and the big spenders are happy to play along, because, like the Red Sox, they’ll bend the rules anyway. And like many unions, the MLBPA is about protecting the jobs of MLB players. Less competition from amateurs means longer MLB careers and more money for the membership. You would think the players would take the moral stand that allowed everyone to make as much money as possible. It’s a nice example of Bootleggers and Baptists.

I will make the call once again to end the draft and institute universal free agency, because it’s the way players and owners will make the most money and put the best product on the field.

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“Pissing On The Ashes”

A colleague had a wonderfully colorful term to describe situations we both found ourselves in.  We were both senior executives in a large corporation.  Often, we found ourselves on the phone with desperate sales people.  A deal was about to close and they were worried about losing it.  They were pulling out all the stops, trying to win the deal at the last moment.  By that time they were so desperate, they would call on anyone for help–often it ended up being either Jerry or myself.

Jerry called these, “Pissing on the ashes” calls.  He likened it to a house burning down, calling the fire department too late, when all that was left was ashes.  Too often, we were called in where there was virtually nothing we could do to help win the deal.  Sure, sometimes customers were impressed by senior executives flying across the world begging for their business, but too often it was too little, too late.

The underlying issue is that too many sales people don’t understand when and how we win deals.  They think deals are won at closing.  They think a fantastic proposal or presentation, leveraging their best closing techniques, or talking about how wonderful their solutions are and the great reputation of the company is how to win deals.  Consequently, they spend all their time developing compelling presentations, working on their closing skills, and pitching their products.

The problem is, that’s not when you win deals.  Certainly, at the close is when you get the decision and, hopefully, win the order; but you never win deals at the closing stages.

Ironically, deals are won and lost in qualification and discovery.  And too often, that’s where sales people are the weakest.  Too often, sales people do a bad job at qualifying and discovery.  It may be in their rush to pitch their products, it may be their desperation to find deals to fill anemic pipelines, it may be just through pure sloppiness or cluelessness.

In past articles, I’ve mentioned the fastest way to improve win rates is to do a better job of disqualifying.  Too often, we waste time by chasing the wrong deals, deals outside our sweet spot.  Or we engage in wishful thinking with a customer that may be interested, but has no commitment to change.  The best way to win more deals is focusing viciously on customers and opportunities in your “sweet spot,” ignoring everything else.  Then make sure your customer has a high sense of urgency to change.  Perhaps there is a compelling event, or the consequences of doing nothing overwhelm the pain of change.

Once you are chasing the right deals, the where sales people win deals is in the discovery stage of the sales process.

This is where the customer tells you everything you need to do to win the deal.  It’s in the discovery process, we understand the needs and requirements of the customer.  It’s here we learn who will be involved in making the decision and how the decision will be made.  It’s in discovery we learn their attitudes about us and our competition.  It’s in the discovery stage that customers are eager to learn, to consider alternatives, to be open in shifting their points of view.  It’s in discovery, that we learn what they value, enabling us to present our solutions in the context of what they most value.  It’s here, where  we create our greatest value, helping the customer learn, helping their buying team align agendas, helping them learn how to buy and moving them through their buying process.

If we are trying to lead with insight or provocation, it’s in qualifying and discovery these insights are most impactful and when the customer is most open to learning about them.

Everything we do in the rest of the selling/buying process is shaped by the quality of our qualifying and discovery.  The time to win or lose deals is here, not in the final proposals and closing.

 

Related Posts:

• It’s Not Your Close That Causes You To Win!
• Critical Closing Skills
• Win Fast, Lose Faster!
• Stop Spending So Much Time Coaching The Bottom Of The Funnel
• When Do You Stop Qualifying?

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Living With a Hernia

Victor Martinez suffered from a hernia during the 2016 season. He started out great, with a .352/.394/.553 slash line through June 5. He hit .254/.327/.432 the rest of the way.

“He had a small hernia throughout the season,” Avila said. “And I don’t know if you guys noticed, but during the season, he would always touch his stomach area.

“He had a hernia — it’s not a sports-related hernia. It wasn’t one of those that would keep you out. It’s more of a hernia like we would get. He was able to play through it, so he had that taken care of in the offseason. Obviously, it was successful, so he went back and started working out.”

He was pretty tough to play the rest of the year with a bulge in his intestinal wall.

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WW1 tank officer Showcase

 

Come and have a look.

Hope you all enjoy and comments welcome.

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