LIFE AT THE SELLING FRONT: THOUGHTS AND REPORTS

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. (Times change and we change in them.) — Sixteenth century

WAS EVERYTHING BETTER IN THE PAST?

Do you remember the smile on Mr. Johnson's face? Until a few years ago he travelled the country, always friendly, smiling and waving at you from miles away. He was always there for his customers, always on duty for his renowned contractual partner. How wonderful those times were! Salespeople were truly busy with selling. They listened to their customers, focused on their core business and spent most of their time out of the office.

If a salesperson did hang around in their office, which was often just a home office, hardly anything happened except for an occasional phone call or the daily mail delivery. Sure enough, even then certain administrative tasks had to be performed. Data had to be filed into folders that, over the years, started to fill huge cabinets. Everything was neatly arranged. Though growing in volume, it remained manageable.

The world outside the office was still whole and healthy, with the customer at its very centre. Once a sales conversation had been conducted, a contract would be sent out. The salesperson would bag his success by hand, adorn it with a stamp and dispatch it. Licking or wetting the stamp was a ritual in itself. Depending on salespeople's diligence, commission statements would fill many pages. They would arrive in the mailbox, where else?

THEN THINGS CHANGED ...

In the mid-1980s the mobile phone appeared, ending this peaceful idyll. Round-the-clock availability became the epitome of a new quality of customer focus. Just give me a call! Those taking part in the first technical experiments would carry a case of considerable size equipped with a handle and telephone receiver. For security reasons, today's airlines would probably bar them from being brought into the cabin. However, to this day, you will still encounter field staff affectionately reminiscing about their first Motorola "bone".

The late 1980s brought the fax machine into the office. Letters could now arrive at any time of the day. Possessing a fax machine put you in the front row. In the early 1990s, digital phone networks became universally accessible. Modern-style mobile telecommunication was born. The devices were getting smaller. Having been the privilege of the technically advanced sales representatives, they now became an essential tool for every field worker.

Around this time, fax machines and traditional mail began to experience serious competition. The e-mail, which first surfaced in the mid-1980s, now began its triumphant advance. By the mid-1990s the World Wide Web made the Internet accessible for ordinary users. At around the same time, various applications changed everyday office life.

NOT TO MENTION TODAY

During the first decade of the new millennium, customer management programs and various online applications underwent further fine-tuning. Mobile access to customer data and various applications became routine practice in the sales process. Social networks such as Facebook, Xing and Twitter started to gain ground in the workaday life of an increasing number of sales representatives during the second half of the first decade. It remains to be seen which networks will remain relevant in the long run, what kind of new networks will emerge, and which will disappear.

In the era of the smartphone, what we are carrying with us at all times is not only the capacity to receive and make calls, but constant access to all of our e-mails and the full range of our social media activities. It goes without saying that customer data is available as needed. At any time, be it 7.10 a.m. or 11.30 p.m., office time never ends. We are equipped for any contingency. Welcome, sales of the future?

DO YOU STILL GET ALONG?

Many things have changed in recent years. Let us suppose a sales representative left our world in 1980 and returned thirty years later. It would certainly take some time to explain everything to him or her. Although deals are still being struck by human beings — one of whom makes an offer that the other accepts — the details of the procedure have changed significantly.

In today's environment, if you do not organize yourself and focus your attention you will barely be able to see any customer, due to an overkill of multidimensional distractions flowing in from all sides. Communication and administration needs alone can be overwhelming. In order to perform any task there is a need for an endless stream of back-and-forth mails, fax and text messages, phone calls and sometimes even face-to-face conversations. All of which takes up maximum time. All of which is invariably urgent.

Many business people, salespeople and sales representatives have got used to leaving their offices in the evening with various tasks unfinished. More importantly, they end the day without a valuable, measurable and presentable sales outcome. Of course, there have been similar days in former decades too, but now they have become more frequent. Today it is much more difficult to work in an organized way and to focus on the core business of selling. To be able to do so you have first to organize everything else — or to ignore it completely, thus risking an increased customer defection rate. This is no way to achieve outstanding customer care and customer retention.

Unfortunately, as a rule, salespeople aren't good at organizing. On the contrary, true sales talent and professional administration capabilities often seem to be mutually exclusive. It is necessary and helpful therefore to create automation systems to take care of the bulk of those tasks that simply have to be done. Great organizing skills are indispensable for anyone who wants to succeed in today's world of selling. A systematic approach to selling is all about standard practices and automatisms. It's these practices and automatisms that have to be filled with life when working with customers in today's world.

How do you manage your sales process? How do you organize your process of working with customers? Are any of your tasks done in an automated and highly professional manner? How do you guarantee that you can devote maximum time to your core selling activities? How do you make sure that your sales process is running smoothly, practically by itself?

For starters, I'd like to take you on a tour of how salespeople, employees and customers think. Each testimony comes from a real person I have met in recent years. They are all unrelated to each other. By the way, those of you who more or less recognize yourselves in what is described on the following pages aren't by any means in the minority ...

HEADING HOME

A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools. — Spanish proverb

A SALESPERSON'S REPORT ABOUT THE END OF HIS WORKING DAY

It is late again. The evening news starts in five minutes. I won't be able to watch it since I'm still twenty minutes' drive away from home. Time to switch off and relax, which, as so often, won't be easy, with too many things still waiting on my to-do list. I completely forgot about Kruger who has been waiting for me to call him back since last week.

It is more or less the same story every day. Sometimes I wonder if things will ever change for the better, back to how it was in the past when the ringing of the phone was music to my ears because it might be a customer calling! Now each call is just a new task to add to my ever-growing to-do list — or underneath it, for that matter.

It's true that over recent years my customer base has largely increased. It all started at the kitchen table. Moving into my first little office made me really proud, and I now have a prime site next to the town hall. Well, it is a small town with not more than 8000 inhabitants, but nevertheless, building it all up from scratch has been no small feat, I should say. Yes, I like my job.

However, it cannot go on like this forever. Last month was my wedding anniversary, and I wasn't even aware of it until my wife gave me a queer look, as I was about to turn on the TV news. It was definitely too late for flowers! Though inexcusable, it was quite symptomatic of my running behind events in recent times. Feeling guilty for missing out yet again is becoming a normal part of my everyday life. I do not feel comforted even when people slap my back and congratulate me on my achievements. If they only knew ...

I'll shut down my computer now. The 142 unread e-mails will have to wait until tomorrow. That is the ultimate motivation killer, anyway. As soon as you manage to empty your inbox it fills up again. Everybody puts you in the cc. The worst kinds of nuisances are people who send an e-mail only to call an hour later in case you haven't answered yet. I should probably send out-of-office notifications even while I'm in the office. Some people simply do not seem to realize that I am earning my living by selling stuff rather than by answering stupid mail. In any event, things have to change. Going on like this forever is not an option!

I am therefore going to turn on the answering machine, switch off the lights, and close the door. I am off for today!

OFFICE WORK ISN'T EASY EITHER!

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. — Attributed to George Orwell

REPORT BY AN EMPLOYEE

I have been working with Meyer for twelve years. During the first years, work was real fun as there weren't that many customers. My boss would even have time for an occasional chat. Now, however, it is all chaos. Sure, we are successful — one of the top players I would say, residing in one of the best locations in town!

Now I have to go and do the daily shopping. Our office is open until 6 p.m., and the supermarket until 7 p.m. In the country distances are short, at least. Whenever I have to work overtime I have a problem. I have to call home and ask my oldest to go and buy the most needed things. Being twelve years old, he is already able to do that. Most people don't realize how much time and effort goes into all these little chores. As soon as I arrive home my second shift begins. Of course, the company must be taken care of, but life is more than just the company.

The bigger our company, the more tasks my boss puts on my plate, often without telling me how I have to go about it. "You'll master it", he would say before heading off to a customer. I call it working in blind-flight mode. Having more to do than I can possibly manage, I'm constantly lagging behind. In fact, my boss is in the same boat. From time to time he sends me an e-mail at nearly 11 p.m. That cannot be healthy. I do not read it until the next morning, anyway. We definitely need more hands. We have even talked about it, but nothing has changed since.

Our business simply needs more organizing. Everyone should know what he or she is responsible for and how everything should be done. It would be best to write it down. My boss is a passionate seller, but not a big organizer. Sales activities would certainly benefit from a more structured approach, something my boss doesn't quite get. Whenever things do not work out, he knows no better than to ask everybody to work overtime. I should try and convince him that this cannot be a long-term solution. Let's see if it works.

It's time to leave the office.

WHO ON EARTH IS SMITH?

You see, but you do not observe. — Sherlock Holmes

THE CLASS A CUSTOMER

It is 3.27 a.m. You wake up thinking of Smith. Does that sound familiar? You wanted to call him but then forgot about it. It wasn't the first time, and nothing to be proud of. Smith is one of the customers you have been putting off for five weeks now.

It's quite a challenge to find enough time for all those things you must, should, or want to do. You should bring in customers — good customers. By the way, what is a good customer — and who decides? Never mind, you're supposed to bring in customers, and that's what you are measured against. Even worse, in this discipline of bringing in new customers, the count starts anew each month.

Moreover, you have to service customers, a task getting increasingly difficult as customers become more demanding and better informed — even if such information tends to be rather superficial and incomplete, which does not make things easier. Each customer brought in yesterday has to be serviced today and tomorrow.

A while ago you calculated the number of customers you could still bring in, provided you wanted to be able to spend enough time servicing each of them. You really had no choice, however, as monthly customer acquisition targets had to be met. Luckily, you were able to solve the riddle in your own way. Your solution had two parts:

1. You put in more work time.

2. You spent less time on each customer.

In that way you could continue to bring in new customers, meeting the targets you were being measured against, even though little or no time was left to service those same customers.

Let us come back to Smith, one of those customers you brought in years ago. Back then you promised him, "I'm always there for you. I'll service you on a regular basis. If in the meantime there is anything, just give me a call." Well, from time to time he actually does call, and so you, the stressed out acquirer and servicer of customers, are having regular feelings of guilt.

Smith has done quite a lot of business with you. He is certainly a good customer. When recently categorizing your customers, you gave him an A, the best possible mark. You can totally rely on him. However, can he also rely on you? Each year on the 22nd of December you drown your feelings of guilt in a bottle of red wine. Rather than having a private booze party, you take the red wine to Smith. Recently, though, you started to send it by post. That's much easier. Time has become so precious!

Smith has never campaigned for you. Nor did you ever ask. You would not even campaign for yourself, would you? It's really too bad!

You should finally try and sleep again. You'll have to get up early in the morning, at 6 o'clock when the alarm goes off. There is a handy post-it note pad on your bedside cabinet, on which you drowsily scribble "Smith".

As you doze off you have a final thought: There must be another solution.

ROTH AGAIN!

The most things we learn, we learn from our customers. — Charles Lazarus

THE CLASS C CUSTOMER

382. There it is again. The display doesn't lie. Sooner or later, everyone gets familiar with the final three digits of this phone number. Even the apprentice — whom, I think, we introduced to them right in the second week.

Someone who calls in, again and again, once a month, or even more often? Usually he does so at 5.30 p.m. That is half an hour before office closing time — at least in theory. Today it is Barbara's turn to answer, as she has not had the pleasure for quite a while. Sometimes he even drops in. As soon as his head pops up in the window spirits drop. Some feel the spontaneous urge to visit the loo. A grim sense of humour takes over. Roth again!

Whether he phones in or stops by, the time requirement is enormous. He doesn't actually have any important questions, and he certainly doesn't generate significant sales. He has, however, a lot to tell you. What is special about Roth is that he has been there for years — or maybe even decades? In some distant past — it must have been in the last millennium — a mini customer relationship had been established. And he has been there ever since. He has never once brought in any more significant business! He wants to be serviced, asking questions nobody else is asking. He calls it customer service — and so do we. According to our company brochure, "We are always there for you, guaranteed". It goes without saying that we are there for Roth.

Most of the time he wants to talk to the boss, as he did back when the first contact was established. For the past two or three years, however, the boss has pretended that he's not there. Recently Roth asked whether our boss was still working with us, so we told him he is constantly on the road where he can't easily be reached. "He may as well pay me a visit. How about next week?" Roth replied. The boss was absolutely delighted, as you can imagine!

Sure, customers like Roth deserve to be taken care of. Actually, we have more of that sort; at least two-thirds of our customers may be of Roth's category, though none of them requires as much attention or poses as many questions as Roth. Roth is in early retirement, so he has time. We don't!

A year ago we tried to categorize our customers into class A, B , and C customers. Roth ended up in class C, with a tendency to D. But there was a problem. How to explain to a class C customer that he or she is a class C customer? Even more important, who will explain to a class C customer that he or she is a class C customer? What does servicing a class C customer look like? Our boss finally said, "Let's leave it as it is. Try to use up less time on class C customers — five or ten minutes should be enough." How can I do that? Am I to put up an hourglass and shoo the customer away as soon as the sand has run out?