Everyone, especially men, seems to love the tooling analogies in business. “That’s a great tool for the job.” “This is an extra tool in your kit-bag.” This metaphor for the digital world – the manual, physical paradigm – may suggest positive images of visible progress, but can obviate the need for what should be an obvious question. What job are you trying to get done? What problem are you trying to solve?
In the homophily that was the recent Sales 2.0 conference, vendors or different color, shape and size engaged in what someone [reasonably] characterized to me as a ‘vendor tools love-in’.
“We want to be the Facebook for sales – this tool will change forever how you sell!’
“Use this tool to better analyze your sales forecast.”
“Look, my tool will let you talk to your CRM system.”
But maybe I don’t want to ‘change forever how I sell’. Analyzing my forecast data is useless if the data on which I base my forecast is inaccurate. And, at times if I ‘talked’ to my CRM, it might just be offended. So much jargon, techno-speak and management babble – all reinforced in its inefficacy by the tool label.
Beware vendors bearing tools.
Seek out instead those who’ve taken the time to understand the real issues sales people need to face. Sales professionals need [automated] solutions to help progress deals. Solutions that entice adoption because the reward is greater for participation than the effort required to participate. I’m talking about ‘voluntary use’ not forced compliance. Sales people and sales managers need solutions that help them get accurate sales forecasts. Please don’t unleash anymore analytics tools that just regurgitate pretty versions of inaccurate data. For a sales forecasting solution to be valuable it must embed, at its core, an understanding of sales cycles, buying processes, procurement procedures, and normalized sales performance. If you think about it, all the data and knowledge is available. Someone’s being lazy.
I spoke recently with the executive responsible for all product direction at one of the world’s top ten CRM companies. I asked if they [the CRM company] were ever going to fix sales forecasting for their customers. His response was “Look, nobody in the world really uses CRM to create their sales forecasts. It’s all done in Excel. Then the sales person and sales manager negotiate about what to enter into the ‘Commit’ field in the CRM – and that’s what’s reported to management. That’s what my customers expect to happen.” Aaarrgghh! Maybe we get the CRM systems we deserve.
Everything now has a 2.0 moniker – this blog included. But Sales 2.0 tools will likely cause more angst than benefit if they’re not designed exclusively from a ‘what problem is it solving’ perspective. Here are a few things to consider.
‘Tools’ are tactical, not strategic. Strategic issues should get priority; the ones that are company-wide and address the business drivers your company is facing. If you’re looking to get internal sponsorship for a ‘tool purchase’, you should be pigeonholed straight away, filed away and relegated to maybe a ‘nice to have’.
‘Tools’ means IT, not business. You want to solve business problems, not technical issues. If you’re having technical conversations and not business conversation with your supplier, then they’re not getting to the heart of your problems and figuring out how to help you.
‘Tools’ mean Service Units, not Business Units. Business Units should be the power-center in your organization. They are the revenue/profit centers, not the cost centers. Business Units don’t buy tools – they buy solutions to problems. Service Units buy tools. You need to be a Business Unit – or think like one.
So, next time a vendor wants to show you his shiny Sales 2.0 tool, ask these four questions:
- Do you understand my business?
- What’s the most important task on my list?
- Which urgent business problem of mine does your ‘tool’ address?
- How does it fit in with my strategic priorities?
You will save a lot of time.
April 13th, 2010 at 10:25 am
Donal, what a cool drink of water your post is. I figured this out last year and hadn’t seen anyone else write about it. Don’t back off your assertions. Sales 2.0 applications collectively is the lipstick on the pig spoken of in a recent SellingPower online conversation.
While each Sales 2.0 application in and of itself in some way facilitate sales, collectively they are:
1. Expensive and labor intensive to maintain
2. Have vary degrees of functionality and capabilities
3. Difficult to integrate into a single holistic selling system
4. Don’t resolve more than a quarter of the complex issues of a B2B sales ecosystem
Interestingly enough finance, accounting and manufacturing had the same hodgepodge of spaghetti systems, band-aids if you will, until ERP systems provided all stakeholders with simplicity, transparency, accurate data, quality control under a single system umbrella.
Who or what will be sales’ ERP?
April 13th, 2010 at 11:33 am
Ken,
Thanks for your comment. Sales 2.0 holds great promise. I believe that the benefit can greatly outweigh the cost and effort, ut only if conceived in the context of the business problem that they are trying to solve.
Donal
April 13th, 2010 at 11:34 pm
Donal,
Good post. My issue with the Sales 2.0 conversation these days is it is too quickly dragged over to tools. I say dragged because Sales 2.0 is a methodology and a practice first. We should be looking at how we communicate, what we share, and the efforts placed in making the entire sales process perfectly align with a buying process. We should engage in efforts to become buying enablers. We should learn to use systems and practices to better source leads, cultivate leads, develop opportunities, and work with clients.
The need for a Sales 2.0 philosophy is driven by the empowerment of the buyer by the internet. You can research, compare, and buy online; all without ever leaving your cubicle or speaking to another human being. As sales organizations we need solutions as to uncover who is sales ready and educate them to make the best decision. Sure there are tools to assist in these measure, but as you stated start with the business problem first. If you focus there, the rest will come.
April 14th, 2010 at 5:29 am
Great article, really interesting stuff. I’m close to the issue as our company provides automated sales intelligence and the human side of the solution is really important. The key seems to be adapting what your product can do to fit the needs of each individual customer, rather than just selling the best points of what you believe is on offer. Every client is different, and every client has differing needs. It’s about blending the software into current practises rather than simply toppling them with something alien.
April 14th, 2010 at 10:36 am
Hi Karl,
Thanks for the comment.
I think what happened along the way is the same as happened with CRM. It became all about the technology.
What’s missing is built in intelligence, knowledge, etc.
Donal
April 14th, 2010 at 10:40 am
Craig,
I agree to a point. I think with a little care and some smart technology we can move much closer to the human side, though never replace it. Take my example of forecasting in the post. The CRM system ‘knows’ today’s date. It knows the date the sales person entered in the ‘forecast close date’. Ignoring what it knows is laziness on the part of (the developers of) the CRM system.
Thanks for joining the conversation.
Donal
April 19th, 2010 at 11:16 am
I’m not sure I would call it laziness Donal, rather a term like ‘premature satisfaction’ seems more fitting. CRM developers and their partners introduced an element of science into sales and then seemly satisfied with their success, stopped innovating.
As a result not only are intelligence and knowledge missing as you pointed out in your April 14th comment, but so is consistency, coordination, transparency and quality, all elements essential to maximizing sales ecosystem effectiveness.
April 21st, 2010 at 2:49 pm
I look at it this way – tools essentially equate to tactics and as such tactics are only as good as the strategy they support or to use my favorite Sun Tzu quote
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”
In other words the tools can be neat but as Donal points out, if they don’t solve a clearly identified business problem then they can become a distraction – (that noise before defeat).
Start with the strategy, look at the business issues that need to be supported or overcome to achieve that strategy and then look at how technology can enable either or both.
April 22nd, 2010 at 4:23 am
Ken,
Think about this. If one developer took one month to fix that problem, it would save the hundreds of thousands of users hours each month.
I think I will stick with lazy.
Donal
April 22nd, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Donal, I am a “tools guy” and yet I still agree with much of what you have said. I find that the biggest positive impact of tools is in those companies that 1) have a documented, complete sales process that is understood and supported by the sales, operations, marketing, finance and executive teams in their entirety. 2) are able to identify an under-performing stage in that process, and 3) are willing to commit the time, money and resources to introduce a new “tool” into their process to address that specific need.
I have written a previous post that states that web tools are the fastest way to fail in sales. Too often, these tools are rolled out after the sales leader comes back from Sales 2.0 or other conference, and deploys many of the tools that were discovered at the event. No training, no guidance, and no thought on how these tool(s) will impact the existing process.
As John Golden suggests so eloquently in his post, tools are a tactical device, not strategic. his reference to the Sun Tzu quote is spot on!
Tools can drive measurable productivity and results improvement if deployed appropriately.
April 23rd, 2010 at 3:55 am
Miles,
Thanks for the comment.
I think I’d summarize what you and John have said as “Solutions without strategy are just tools with tactics”, and we are all aligned on that. I’ve seen technology solutions adopted really well, and I’m in that business – but if the right approach is not adopted then tool just make you screw up faster.
April 30th, 2010 at 1:57 am
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May 4th, 2010 at 5:40 am
Well, I tend to agree with Donal. There’s just way too much clutter out there. Trying to figure out which “tool” will actually help is probably the biggest question one faces. It’s imperative for your vendor to understand your business first, the problem you’re trying to solve for your sales organization, and then pitch their product/service.
I’d say 90% of the Sales 2.0 vendors out there clamor to do just the opposite. try and sell their application down your throat. I wouldn’t say our sales team does anything different. The only difference being, I personally think we do actually care about whom we’re selling to. There have been deals in the past which we couldn’t crack, only because we truly weren’t a good fit for them.
That said, I think both the businesses and vendors need to get satisfactory answers to the questions listed by Donal, before even going through a demo with the sales rep.
May 16th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
Hi Donal,
I read one of your other posts and I am happy to see that everyone gets your name right here
Donal, I somewhat agree with you. I feel that Sales2.0 is 95% about Sales and 5% about technology.
However, I would like to say that even though the game that is Sales has not changed but its rules have. Read more on my article titled: Sales 2.0 : 95% Sales 5% Technology
Everyone is creating their own definitions of Sales2.0
I have created my own: “Making sales better, whatever it takes!”