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Misconceptions about Trust-based Selling: It Doesn’t Work

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This is the third in a series of three about misconceptions regarding Trust-based Selling™. The first was about naievete; the second, about time.

The third misconception is that it doesn’t make sense, it just doesn’t work.

Not unreasonable, since trust-based selling rests on some apparent paradoxes. For example:

a. managing your sales with short term metrics will drive your short term metrics down;
b. the best way to be credible is to admit where you’re not;
c. you have the most influence over customers when you stop trying to influence them;
d. the best way to improve your closure rate is to stop trying to improve your closure rate;
e. to gain control, give up control.

This shouldn’t be surprising. For an elegant statement of how this paradox plays out—nominally in golf—see Phil McGee’s post The Putt.

The thing is, buying is still a very human phenomenon—and we humans are obstinately perverse. We do not like being hustled. We do not like being told what to do by those who we don’t think understand us. And we do not buy from people we think are using us for their own ends.

That’s the heart of the paradox. A salesperson who puts his sale ahead of his customer will lose both. A salesperson who puts his customer ahead of his sale will win both. You have to care about the customer—for the sake of the customer, not for what the customer can do for you.

The language of paradox is alien to modern sales. Big corporate sales is all about linear process management: break it down into ever-finer pieces, and micro-manage each one. Fine-tune the sales pitch; tweak the yield rates by tighter lead qualification; get the close in this quarter; and measure everything by the effect it has on sale and the cost to get there.

That’s all about the sale—not the customer. The term “customer focus” itself is turned inside out when we evaluate “focus” by whether or not it produces the sale.
Trust-based Selling is not a process—it’s a set of principles consistently applied. They are:

1. customer focus—for the sake of the customer
2. an instinct for collaboration
3. a default toward transparency except where injurious or illegal
4. a medium-to-long term focus on the relationship, not a short-term focus on the transaction.

If you had to put it into one word, it would be “care.” The more complex, long, and specialized the sale, the more we buy from those who care about us more than they care about getting the sale.

Doesn’t make sense? On the contrary, it makes all the sense in the world.

——

If you’d like to learn more about Trust-based Selling™, why not join me for a Webinar tomorrow, Thursday, August 21, titled How to Build Trust in Sales Conversations. It is from 2PM to 3:30PM, Eastern time. See you there.

 

Misconceptions about Trust-based Selling II: The Time Thing

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Last week I wrote about the first of three misconceptions people have regarding trust-based selling—the idea that it’s naïve.

This post tackles the second misconception: that trust takes too much time, both elapsed time and in aggregate. You’ve heard this one as either:

  • “trust takes time and we can’t afford to wait that long,” or
  • “trust takes such a big time commitment I’m not sure it’s worth it.”
  •  

It takes too long; it takes too much. Neither is true.

Let’s start with “trust takes time.” How long does it take for you to read the degree on the doctor’s wall? To notice the doctor’s white coat? To share feelings with a surprisingly interesting seatmate on a transcontinental flight?

More pointedly: in a sales conversation, how long does it take to demonstrate interest, curiosity, caring, and enough self-confidence to shift the agenda on a dime in response to client interests? All these take less time than a conventional process-driven, presentation-oriented sales meeting—and create more trust.

Now let’s consider “trust takes such a big time commitment.” Behind this statement is the belief is the first belief—that people only come to trust slowly, in incremental parts, repeated frequently over time.

But trust has many dimensions: the “trust takes time” belief is mainly focused on reliability, which by definition does take elapsed time. It misses other senses of trust—credibility, integrity, intimacy, other-focus, for example. Those can be established in an event, in a moment, with a handshake, a word, a question asked at the right time in the right tone. These take very little time. And hence they don’t take a huge investment.

Let’s move away from B2B sales: consider online dating services. Do they take time? Do they require large investments of time?

Not if you consider the dating scene pre-Match.com. Think of the ability to read people’s self-descriptions, to hear about them in their own words, perhaps with video or audio, perhaps with some advance “metrics” on compatibility.

Now consider how long it took, and much invested time it took, to get to a comparable level of trust one date at a time, over days and weeks. Or consider the odds of a first date ending well in the online dating world, vs. the blind date world of not that long ago.

Rapid trust creation is not an oxymoron; if anything, it taps into something more powerful. Rather than waiting to develop trust by reputation, we can create trust by being bold, other-oriented, curious and courageous—quickly. And benefiting all.

 ———- 

Note: I will be giving a webinar this Thursday, on How to Build Trust in Sales Conversations.   It’s hosted by the good people at RainToday.com.  It’s from 2 to 3:30PM US Eastern time.  Again, that sign-up address is here.  
 

Live Webinar on How to Build Trust in Sales Conversations — Thursday, August 21

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I don’t do a lot of webinars—but I will be giving one live next week—Thursday, August 21, from 2-3:30PM Eastern Daylight Time--on the subject of Building Trust in Sales Conversations.

The session is being hosted by the good people at RainToday, a powerful site focused on marketing and business development for professional services; the cost is $90, you can sign up here at RainToday.com.

Why the topic Building Trust in Sales Conversations? Because it tackles a lot of myths and misconceptions about selling.

For one, most of us think that selling draws down on trust. Rightly done, however, sales interactions are one of the best situations in which to create trust.

For another, trust is largely created (in intangible services or complex sales) not by branding, eloquence, speeches or credentials, but by personal interactions. Conversations. Sales conversations, about what people need and want.

Finally, many people think of trust-based sales conversations as things that can happen only after a long period of time has allowed trust to develop and grow. The truth is, it is in sales conversations that the trust grows. Just like other types of human relationships, trust doesn’t happen before real, honest conversations—it is created in them. Trust doesn’t enable selling; selling enables trust. This means trust can be created far more rapidly than we oftne think.

Understanding how to create trust in a sales conversation is a great source of freedom; trust doesn’t take time, it isn’t a business process, it doesn’t come about from following metrics, and it isn’t a business process. It is something each of us can do, personally, far better than we think.

Join me in a conversation (well, a webinar anyway) about this exciting topic. Sign up here for How to Build Trust in Sales Conversations.

I look forward to the time together.

 

 

 

 

Enron Revisited: Commonsense from the Trade School of Capitalism

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Mal Salter, of the Harvard Business School, has written a new book: Innovation Corrupted: The Origins and Legacy of Enron’s Collapse (Harvard University Press),

Before you say “oh no, not another Enron book,” let me suggest this is Harvard Business School at its best.

In HBS’s always-provocative Working Knowledge series, Salter is interviewed by Martha Lagace in Innovation Corrupted: How Managers Can Avoid Another Enron It’s clear we have here not just a take on Enron, but a take on business takes.

Salter writes about Enron not as morality play, conspiracy, tragedy, or bubble (though if you like Trust Matters you’ll love Malcolm Gladwell’s indictment of “the war on talent” using Enron as the smoking gun in The Talent Myth: Are Smart People Overrated). Instead, Salter writes thoughtfully about an important phenomenon in our society—with the aim of gleaning practical lessons for improving our social future.

Salter doesn’t force upon us databases, 2×2 matrices, or even structural functionalism. There are “villains,” but they are not the stuff of fantasy—they are all too real and like us. Grotesque, maybe, but born of our own lauded institutions—including Harvard Business School. A cause for concern.

I always liked to think of Harvard Business School as Harvard’s only trade school. The other obvious candidates—law and medicine—are in thrall to the academic model, graduating professionals, not tradespeople. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The “profession” label probably fits law and medicine better anyway).

But academia breeds methodologies and specialists. Peer reviews. Tenure. Snobbery is a distinct possibility.

Yet honor doesn’t require “professionalism” or academics. There is great honor in the trades. A tradesperson takes great pride in his or her craft—and doesn’t confuse it with art or science.

I learned only one methodology at Harvard Business School—3 times a day, 5 days a week. It was simply to remember to ask, “What should Joe do? What would you do?” I think of that as a tradesman’s methodology—Git ‘r done, done right, and done well. For career value, it’s as good as they come.

A trade is best taught not by the smart, but by the wise. Inductive reasoning is favored over deductive. Reductive models are suspect—yet reductive commonsense is prized.
Fine tradespeople don’t take themselves too seriously, though they are serious. Character is a big deal. So are some sense of worth, mission, and purpose.

Mal Salter writes that way about Enron.

He is clear and positive about the brilliant innovations Enron—particularly Skilling—introduced. He is equally clear, and just as conclusive, about Mr. Skilling’s abysmal character defects (also an HBS graduate; not, however, one who learned much from Salter).

Here is Salter’s statement of the essential problems of Enron:

* Enron’s stated purpose was too general to permit disciplined and responsible decision-making in the face of difficulty.
* The lessons of Enron relate to strengthening board oversight, avoiding perverse financial incentives for executives, and instilling ethical discipline throughout business organizations.
* Directors of public companies can adapt key aspects of the private-equity governance model to ensure that they fulfill their oversight responsibilities.
* Incentive systems should reward accomplishments other than economic performance, and penalize failures.
* Companies can take steps to help senior executives avoid the two sources of leadership failure at Enron: personal opportunism and flights to utopianism.

Those are dense, content-rich, jargon-free, meaningful statements. They demand to be read carefully, else they yield up nothing. That is not the often dumbed-down “business English” of today. But neither is it fluff or jargonish. It’s dense because it packs a punch.
His aim is very much about practical conclusions—as he puts it:

I outline organizational processes that are required to reinforce the kind of discipline that was noticeably lacking at Enron.

These processes include:

1. Liberating evaluation processes by adding qualitative judgment to whatever standard quantitative measures of performance that business plans may require
2. Designing and implementing incentive systems that reward accomplishments other than economic performance, and penalize failures
3. Conducting routine, systematic audits of critical decisions by key executives where the rules of the road are clearly ambiguous
4. Helping senior executives avoid the two sources of leadership failure at Enron: personal opportunism and flights to utopianism

Too much of today’s business academia looks at statements like these and says, in deed if not in word:

• Qualitative judgment? No no, Mr. Salter, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”
• Rewarding non-economic performance? And penalizing its absence? Hey I thought you were teaching capitalism!
• Routine review of decisions made in ambiguity? Don’t study the decisions, Mr. Salter, bulldoze the ambiguity for Pete’s sake!
• Personal opportunism and utopianism as leadership threats? What is this, Mr. Salter, a liberal arts curriculum?

Salter’s take on Enron is radical in its distance from today’s thinking. And it’s conservative in the sense of preserving the best of the past.

Writing like this is old school in the best sense of the word. Above all, he celebrates commonsense—which despite the term, isn’t common at all. In this respect Salter is like, for example, Tom Peters, David Maister, Jim Heskett and Peter Drucker.

Not bad company, in my view.

Misconceptions about Trust-based Selling: Naivete

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I find people have three primary misconceptions about the idea of Trust-based Selling™.

• One is that many people are not naturally "good," and that trusting people is naïve; doing so will bring you grief, if not danger and penury.
• The second misconception is that being trusted takes a lot of time and effort; too much, by their view. “We can’t afford to spend that much time and resources to be trusted.”
• The third misconception is that it just doesn’t work. It can’t be measured, it can’t be profitable, it doesn’t make sense.

I’m going to address all three of these misconceptions in separate postings. This is the first, aimed at the “naivete” argument.

There are some lovely counter-examples; see a blogpost called “Do You Trust Your Customers” by Rebecca Morgan, at Grow Your Key Talent  about the use of honor boxes and self-assessed service guarantees.

But counter-examples usually don’t convince doubters. So let’s try logic.

I’ve noticed that the “naivete” objection to Trust-based Selling is perversely aimed at buyers, not sellers, as in, “I could get really hurt by trusting others—they might take advantage of me.”

They miss the point: they confuse trust with trusting and with being trusted.  Trust-based Selling is mainly about the buyer trusting the seller, not vice versa.  While you can’t be trusted without being willing to do a little trusting yourself (the blogpost from Rebecca Morgan is just such an example), the bulk of the risk in trust-based selling is not taken on by the seller, but by the buyer. Trusting is but one strategy for being trustworthy— not the only one, or even the most important.

If indeed it’s naïve to believe that people can trust a seller, then the right question to the seller would be, “if even only a few people are willing to trust—are those few willing to trust you? And if not, why not?”

I have never heard a seller say “the trusting-buyer segment is too small to be worth it.” Instead, most recognize a trusting buyer is a wonderful thing.

I think the naivete argument is much more about the one making the argument than about any objective behavior. “You’re naïve” is typically said by someone who feels their beliefs are being attacked; someone who is personally vested in a fear-based psychology.

They are being truthful, in their own personal way. For them, trusting others feels risky. They attribute that same perception to others, so as not to feel alone. Therefore they don’t behave in a trustworthy manner, because then someone might trust them–thus proving their self-vested worldview wrong.

It turns out counter-examples are valuable—they force us to say, “well, it is possible to trust, and be trusted, and not get burned. So why are people not trusting me? Is it because I’m not selling in a trustworthy manner?”

Trust-based selling works, because most people respond very favorably to someone who consistently behaves in a trustworthy manner.  One such behavior is, occasionally, to do some trusting of others. 
 

Employees Win a Big Round Against Non-Compete Agreements

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Occasionally, the law appears to coincide with commonsense. The longer the view one takes, the more likely this is.

Occasionally the long view seems captured in a single case; one which appears obvious in the rear-view mirror, but which was anything but at the time of the decision. In the US, Brown v. Board of Education comes to mind.

Last Thursday, as reported in law.com, “the California Supreme Court effectively invalidated the use of most non-compete agreements in the State.”

"In sum, following the Legislature, this court generally condemns noncompetition agreements," Justice Ming Chin wrote. "Under the statute’s plain meaning, therefore, an employer cannot by contract restrain a former employee from engaging in his or her profession, trade, or business unless the agreement falls within one of the exceptions to the rule."

As the Industry Standard put it more directly, “California Supreme Court says non-compete agreements are illegal.”

While this doesn’t reach Brown v. Board of Ed status, nor is national, nor is it conclusive—I think it may come to be viewed as “about damn time.”

Non-compete agreements, in my humble opinion, are of a class with indentured servitude and restraint of trade—both of which are (largely) illegal.

(Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, and I welcome the opinions here of those who are: I’m just speaking as a businessperson and an observer of business—and, Iike to think, on behalf of commonsense).

Non-compete clauses are common in many industries. They typically are required as a condition of employment, and they restrict an employee’s ability to leave to go to work for a perceived competitor or related business for a period of time (often 1 to 2 years, sometimes more).

One reason many employers use non-competes because they feel the company “owns” its customers or clients, and the employee shouldn’t “be allowed” to “steal” the customer. This reason is the parallel to restraint of trade.

But I have yet to meet a client or customer who enjoys being thought of as “owned” by a provider. Most of them resent that framing of the relationship. Most customers feel, as I do, that the choice should be theirs—that neither employer nor employee “owns” them, and that if they want to follow an employee to a new employer, their right to do so shouldn’t be infringed.

From a commonsense capitalism point of view, I’d simply add that if a company hasn’t been able to transfer the personal relationship to a corporate one, then the resort to heavy-handed legalisms only spotlights their management failure.

The second reason some employers like non-competes is they feel they have some “right” of control that exists after the employment contract is up. This reason is the parallel to indentured servitude, where an employee is required to “work off” an obligation over time.

Smart, successful companies—McKinsey, Goldman, PwC—have long known the value of alumni. The value of post-W2 form relationships is enormous. But not if it’s coerced.

This is simple human dignity; employers do and should have many rights, including various forms of intellectual property protection (trademarks, patents, copyrights)—but those rights have their own distinct protections and can stand on their own. Using employees as chattel to further a former employer’s competitive adventures is unnecessary—and thoroughly out of sync with a modern global business world.

That’s how I see it. What do you think?

Great Moments in Marketing Fear

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I may not be a marketer by profession, but I doubt I’d get much argument from the pros about what sells best—reliably, dependably, year in and year out.

Sex. And fear.

Maybe sex is number one. But if so, it’s not by much.  Fear of fill-in-the-blank. Being left behind. Being left out. Not getting the joke. Looking dumb. Dressing wrong. Knowing the wrong people. Doing the wrong thing. Not doing the right thing. Being stuck with something that smells. Having a house that smells. Being the smell.

Identifying the right “pitch” or “hook” is, I suspect, even more important for fear-based products. Case in point: a particularly clever new product.

Introducing Slydial—see the August 2 New York Times article, Don’t Want to Talk About It? Order a Missed Call, by Matt Richtel:

When Alexis Gorman, 26, wanted to tell a man she had been dating that the courtship was over, she felt sending a Dear John text message was too impersonal. But she worried that if she called the man, she would face an awkward conversation or a confrontation.

So she found a middle ground. She broke it off in a voice mail message, using new technology that allowed her to jump directly to the suitor’s voice mail, without ever having to talk to the man — or risk his actually answering the phone.

The technology, called Slydial, lets callers dial a mobile phone but avoid an unwanted conversation — or unwanted intimacy — on the other end. The incoming call goes undetected by the recipient, who simply receives the traditional blinking light or ping that indicates that a voice mail message has been received.

Genius. Elegant in its simplicity. The sweet relief of being able to plausibly lie and avoid conflict at the same time.  It’s calling when you know someone will be out—squared.

Where does this fit in the pantheon of problem-solving inventions? It’s gotta be up there with Get Out of Jail Free cards, the morning-after pill, the hangover pill (slot as yet unfilled), homework-eating dogs, and the deus ex machina plotline.

Because almost all our worst fears involve other humans. Fear of being eaten alive in the forest by bears? Chicken——, compared to the mortification of a teenager shunned by peers. Hearing Sister Mary say you’ll rot in hell for doing whatever it was you already did. Receiving a dear John call. Calling dear John.

Slydial is unique only in one tiny detail. You already have access to voicemail. You can already send digitized voice messages. Slydial’s tiny tweak is the shortcut straight to voicemail, unbeknownst to the receiver. It is the caller’s equivalent of caller ID or spam filters. One small step for technology—one giant leap for Freudkind.

Because this permits the caller to lie. Plausibly.

The caller’s lie is this: “Hey, I tried to call you, but you were out. So I guess I’ll just have to leave this message on voicemail—not that I want to, gosh I hate to do this kind of thing so impersonally. Sorry about that, but—well, it wasn’t my fault. So, anyway, hey—I’m breaking up with you. I couldn’t make it into work today. The dog ate my homework. About your party, you know, pre-existing commitment. We’ll do lunch another time. Sorry I missed your birthday.”

All without that distaste that accompanies having to talk to the Other.

Seinfeld’s George Costanza—the patron saint of avoidance—would have loved Slydial. His spiritual progenitor, Larry David, would know just how to market it. Perhaps Slydial’s owner, MobileSphere, should hire David to consult, based on this from the article:

MobileSphere’s co-founder, Gavin Macomber, said the tool was a time-saver in a world in which conversations could waste time, whereas voice mail can get directly to the point. Part of the reason people are so overwhelmed, Mr. Macomber said, is because they are connected to devices and streams of data around the clock.

Puh-leeze. Alexis Gorman knows better. She works in marketing, and says of her Dear John slydial, “I can do without the drama…I wanted to avoid an awkward conversation.”

So does Manny Mamakis, also quoted in the article as finding it a time-saver. But then Manny speaks the Truth:

“It does make you more cowardly,” he said.

Slydial’s effectiveness—like Borat or Punk’d—depends on being relatively unknown. It loses power once it goes mass-market. “You rat, don’t think you can Slydial me!”

I predict a meteoric—albeit short-lived—success for Slydial. Anything that feeds fear of other people will sell well. Sex it up and the sky’s the limit.

Sometimes fear sells you what you actually do need—say, the morning after pill.  But other times it sells you the illusion of what you need.  What you need is usually closure, not avoidance.  

 

Using Trust-based Selling in Banking: St. Meyer and Hubbard

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Two years ago, I got a call from Jack Hubbard of a firm named St. Meyer & Hubbard . They did sales training for bankers, or so I understood, and were developing a "Trusted Advisor Prospecting System."  I was initially skeptical.  I viewed Trust-based Selling as more suited for B2B clients, and largely for later-stages in the sales process.

They showed me otherwise. 

We spoke a few times by phone, and exchanged some writings. I was quickly impressed with their unusual combination of vision-and-values perspective and down-and-dirty detailed, tactical programs.  They were teaching clients to apply trust principles at earlier stages and more retail-focused levels than I had appreciated was possible.

Jack and his partner Bob St. Meyer and their team have now written their own book—Conversations with Prospects—which I can enthusiastically recommend.

Recently I got to see them in action at an annual conference they put on for bank CXOs, mostly existing clients. And I don’t know when I’ve seen such a uniformly positive, enthusiastic and solidly appreciative set of clients.

Until a week ago, I had never personally met Jack or Bob—yet I felt like I was catching up with old friends even before meeting up in the hotel lobby. At dinner, they were Midwest-friendly, but also New York direct and to-the-point.

They clearly know banking. And here they were putting on a conference for their clients about their own subject matter—selling. But they always steered the conversation around to the others at the table. They never mentioned selling their own services. Which of course sold me even more.

In other words, they walk the trust talk.

Jack, for example, sends out over 500 emails a week of the “you might enjoy this article” variety. He doesn’t use a tracking system to follow each one up; he’s not looking to connect each of his actions to a client profitability analysis, nor does he constantly examine his behaviors to determine his sales efficiency. He just focuses on his clients, both those with whom he has signed contracts and those who have yet to do so.

Here are a few excerpts from “Conversations with Prospects.”

One thing all prospects want is the same thing any of us want in our most valuable personal relationships. They want to be visible. They need a bank, but they want a banker—someone who knows who they are, what they do, and what are their challenges and opportunities.

Bankers often try too hard to prospect using techniques that are all about the bank, relying on persuasion instead of conversation. Unless the banker gets lucky and hits the prospect at a moment of desperation or unfulfilled need, the prospect invariably pushes back with any number of brush offs, but most often the shut-down line is: “I’m happy with my present bank.”

Bankers will introduce themselves to prospects by saying things such as, “I’d like to come out and introduce myself because I think I can save you some money.” Or, “I’d like to discuss our cash management offerings.” Who really needs to spend time listening to another banker peddling the same products as the rest of the pack? We see a lot of sales letters that are just as bad, talking about the sales person and company, but not the potential customer and their issues.

Needs are not products. Bankers that discover, create, and exceed the need will always have business. When the push to sell products overrides the best interests of the client there is little discussion about managing anything.

When sales people are measured solely on the basis of production, the client is the ultimate loser.
In trust-based selling, the sales person stops trying to be interesting and learns to be interested. Banks that understand this work hard to focus on and understand the buying cycle of their prospects and clients. When banks match their sales cycle to the customer’s buying cycle, it’s a trust connection and they are well on their way to a sale.

Bingo.

Carnival of Trust Taking August Off

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The Carnival of Trust is going European this year–taking August off.

If you’ve submitted a post, don’t worry, it’s not lost; it’ll be included in the September foundup.

And if you’r’e jonesing for a Carnival fix, go back and review some tasty material from Carnivals Past at http://trustedadvisor.com/carnivalofTrust/ .

(Your regulary scheduled next post will appear tomorrow morning, August 6–about a trust-based sales organization in the banking industry. Stay tuned).

 

Is Sales Efficiency Killing Your Sales?

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A search on Google for the following sales-related terms shows:

• Sales force management 315,000
• Sales force effectiveness 113,000
• Sales force productivity 44,500
• Sales force performance 37,200
• Sales force efficiency 28,100
• Sales force compensation 15,300
• Sales force motivation 6,150
• Sales force measurement 577
• Sales force relationships 244
• Sales force trust 33

The numbers alone suggest a certain sense of priorities in the world’s interest in sales. In the broadest sense, let’s just say the reigning focus seems highly seller-focused.

Here’s a quote from what I would suggest is a fairly typical piece on selling:

XYZ has developed proprietary approaches to measuring and maximizing salesforce efficiency. Sales managers can learn, quantitatively, how their best people invest available selling time, including a measurement of expected sales dollars per sales call. This knowledge is used to improve the efficiency of others in the salesforce. Simple tools can tell the sales manager what the expected outcome would be of adding one additional sales person, of getting each salesperson to make one more call per week, and so on.

[Our] model addresses several common sales planning flaws:
* Salespeople call on too many accounts, and therefore don’t have enough time to call on those accounts often enough to be successful.
* Salespeople don’t spend enough time with the accounts that provide the best opportunity for growth.
* Salespeople spend too much time calling on low potential accounts.
* Salespeople don’t realize how precious few sales calls they have to invest [sic] each year.

Let’s refine our statement of focus in selling. The usual treatment of sales goes beyond just “self-focused.” It also defines sales heavily in terms of return on investment, and of processes. The solution to higher ROI is often found in changing processes.

For a more academic example, see a 2006 Harvard Business Review Article, The New Science of Sales Force Productivity, by Ledingham, Kovac and Simon:

Today’s most successful sales leaders are taking a more scientific approach. Savvy managers are reshaping their tactics in response to changing markets. They are reaching out to new customers in innovative ways. And they are increasing productivity by helping the reps they already have make the most of their skills and resources.
Leaders who take a scientific approach to sales force effectiveness have learned to use four levers to boost their reps’ productivity in a predictable and manageable way.
1. They systematically target their firms’ offerings, matching the right products with the right customers.
2. They optimize the automation, tools, and procedures at their disposal, providing reps with the support they need to boost sales.
3. They analyze and manage their reps’ performance, measuring both internal processes and results to determine their teams’ strengths and weaknesses.
4. They pay close attention to sales force deployment—how well sales, support, marketing, and delivery resources are matched to customers.

What is remarkable in all these lists is the virtual absence of the “R” word: relationships.

There is “scientific” (read “quantitative analysis”) study of products, automation, tools, procedures, internal processes, results, and deployment;

There is general agreement that the end result is to be judged in financial terms (ROI—effectiveness), which can be decomposed into various ratios (efficiency in general);

Mirroring this self-absorbed perspective of both design and outcome is the treatment of the customer. Almost all sales models are based on a single-transaction—with the usual “feedback” arrow saying “return to beginning and start over."

Try substituting “relationship” into this self-oriented, mechanistic and transactional mindset and there is only one kind of relationship it applies to: a one-night stand, repeated endlessly, with only the names changing.

There is no forward momentum in a series of one-night stands. No growth, no development, no connection—and no relationship. (I’m not knocking one-night stands, by the way, or saying they are "wrong;" I’m just saying call them what they are).

There is nothing wrong with counting sales dollars as a pretty good indicator of sales success. And it’s natural to want to dig deeper. But if all the digging is focused on ourselves, our processes, our metrics; and if all the relevant timeframes are shorter and shorter; and if we fall prey to the Skinnerian belief that you must shorten the time between action and monetary reward for the rats salespeople—then we conspire to reap what we sow—the one-night stand.

Great short-term performance doesn’t come from short-term selfish, transactional management. Great short-term performance is simply one part of a longer success story that comes from a long-term, relationship-driven concern for the customer.