Author: tazewelldave

If you want to sell to the military, you need to acknowledge that all military customers are not the same.  It’s not just the different uniforms.  It’s their histories and the environments they operate in that mold the primary US military services.  I had a military career and then a defense company career and here’s how I believe the behaviors of the four services can be explained:

The defining characteristic of the Army is physical.  They can be likened to a gang, not in the criminal sense, but in their camaraderie, task-oriented structure and mission to seize and hold land.  Their leaders are also some of the finest scholars of all the services.  Sell them with lots of options.

The defining characteristic of the Navy is philosophical.  They can be likened to a club, where the ideas and relationships forged at the Naval Academy have great influence on their decision-making.  Of all the services, their leaders are the most adept at politics.  Sell them with a big vision.

The defining characteristic of the Air Force is technological.  They can be likened to a corporation whose technicians, with cool dispatch, project power through amazing machines.  Their warriors are mostly officers, but the cultural separation between officers and the talented enlisted force is the least of all the services.  Sell them with hard data.

The defining characteristic of the Marine Corps is emotional.  They can be likened to a cult, where their unrivaled esprit de corps binds them in unity, purpose and common interest to achieve astonishing results with very few resources.  There are no “former” Marines.  Sell them with collaborative partnerships.

In the military, we tend to express our separate cultures through humor.  The following are some well-traveled selections revealing those differences in behaviors:

Army: If the enemy is in range, so are you.  Tracers work both ways.  If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up with him.  When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend.  Don’t draw fire; it irritates the people around you.

Navy: Never trade luck for skill.  Any ship can be a minesweeper – once.  No combat-ready unit has ever passed inspection.  Don’t be the first, don’t be the last, don’t volunteer for anything.

Air Force: The only time you have too much fuel is when you are on fire.  Airspeed, altitude and brains – two are always needed to successfully complete the flight.  When one engine fails on a twin-engine aircraft, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash.

Marine Corps: Have a plan and have a backup plan because the first one probably won’t work.  Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice.  The only unfair fight is the one you lose.

And to further illustrate their different cultural responses, here’s the classic joke of how the services react to the same orders.  When told to “secure the building,” the Navy would turn out the lights and lock the doors, the Army would surround the building and post guards, the Marine Corps would assault and capture the building and set up a command center, and the Air Force would take out a three-year lease with an option to buy.

So the next time you call on a military customer, how will you adjust your approach?

I have a good friend whose personality is more task-oriented than people-oriented and is apprehensive at business and social receptions.  Rather than seeing these events as playgrounds, as I do, her instincts cause her to see them as jungles.  Over time, however, I’ve watched her stretch into the following behaviors and have more fun.  Here are five steps that can help anyone, but especially the reception-challenged, take the fear out of formal gatherings.

1. Enter the venue with determination

The first step to having more fun is in entering the room.  Take a deep breath and walk in with purpose.  Avoid hanging back and waiting for something to happen.  Unless you’re a movie star, a famous politician or just won the lottery, people will rarely come up to you and start a conversation.  If you’ve taken time before the event to consider who might be there and who might be fun and useful to speak with, all the better.  Try and convert “uncertainty” in your mind to “opportunity.”

2. Identify a person of interest

Stop for a moment and scan the room.  After locating the bar and food (always my first priority), notice the people. Usually there are clusters of conversations and some standing alone looking into their drinks.  These people probably have the same personality and feel the same way as you … a bit awkward.  Pick someone who looks interesting, avoiding the guy with the bolo tie.  Don’t worry if it won’t be a perfect choice.  You’ll know soon enough and can move on by announcing you’re going to get some food or a drink.  Then find someone else to talk with.

3. Approach and introduce yourself

This can be hard for some people.  Take another deep breath and introduce yourself and add your organization.  Pay attention as they give their name and organization, so you don’t fall into that Seinfeld episode where it becomes too late to ask their name again.  Sometimes nametags and business cards can help, but looking people in the eye right away and giving them a big smile is the best way to get a conversation going.

4. Ask friendly and genuine questions

People who have task-oriented personalities tend to talk less than those with people-oriented personalities.  Those tend to talk a lot, sometimes even too much.  Good conversations involve mutual interests, not just one person droning on and on and on (you’ve met this person, right?).  Ask an opening question involving the subject of the reception, something you want to know about the other person’s organization or anything else except weather and politics.  Then ask follow-up questions in a direction you’re interested.

5. Relax and listen to the answers

The secret to having a good conversation and a good time at a reception is to ask questions and listen.  If you’ve found someone who’s interesting to talk to, delay the urge to break off and talk to others.  If they’re of your temperament, they’ll be glad to keep the conversation going.  One good conversation is worth a whole lot more than any number of drive-by hits.  I once singled out a bystander at a large gathering, started a conversation and that man offered me a great job two weeks later.  What good thing could happen at your next reception?

You’re a business development and sales leader and you’ve just heard from the CFO that your company is facing headwinds and every section needs to control costs immediately.  You get with your team to discuss where to cut. Do you aim for the usual suspects, the easy ones?  If you reduce the following four categories, you might instead be reducing your top line, rather than controlling your bottom line.

1. Cutting Travel

Travel is invariably the biggest target in the “squeeze the budget” drill.  Many people across your organization don’t understand why salespeople need to travel so much.  Why should you get to spend all that money on airplanes, hotels and rent cars just to have a few minutes with customers?  Wouldn’t it be better and cheaper to just text, email or call them?  Maybe a videoconference?  The answer is no.  Because people buy from people they trust, there’s no substitute for periodic face-to-face meetings.  And if you’re not regularly seeing your customer, someone else is.

2. Cutting Training

This is an obvious target for cost-cutters (except in companies where training budgets are very low and that’s another conversation altogether).  Of course, you can’t cut the mandated compliance training because you could get in legal trouble.  So, you cut the sales training, the capturing new business programs, the competitive intelligence sessions, the positioning-to-win courses and the customer relations sessions – the very things needed to impart skills vital to generating sales and orders.  You keep the “what not to do” skills and sacrifice the “what to do” skills.

3. Cutting Conferences

I know of a business group in a large corporation that had too many separate BD conferences.  So they combined them all into one big conference to save money.  It was held every winter in Florida when airfares and hotel rates were low and the business cycle was slow.  Expert speakers were brought in and informative seminars and networking sessions were held.  Per capita, it was very cost-effective and resulted in many lucrative cross-selling initiatives. Plus, it was fun.  Then it was cut and all the BD connective tissue began to come apart.  That business group was never the same again and was eventually sold off.  You can have too many conferences, but you also can have too few.

4. Cutting Celebrations

Because business development and sales are in the people business, morale is important.  How a salesperson feels about his or her group affects just about everything.  Your group worked night and day for a really long time to pull in a big contract. Despite a bruising competition and seemingly endless challenges, your team won.  Then your boss, who was ordered to control costs, rejects the suggestion of a victory celebration.  Instead, you and your team get an email asking you to keep up the good work, especially on the next big project coming up.  That’s inspiring.  It inspires you to go onto your LinkedIn account and start looking for another job.

Becoming successful in sales can be puzzling.  Sometimes the pieces just don’t fit together well.  Why is it you can have a great product, belong to a great company, have great leads and still have trouble meeting your goals?  Perhaps the reason is not in the things you’re doing, but in how you’re doing them.  Here are three key behaviors to increase successful interaction with prospects and clients.

1. Be friendly

Don’t take your customers for granted.

Your prospects and clients don’t get up in the morning thinking of all the ways they can please you.  It should be the other way around.  Frost & Sullivan did research on why customers quit. They found that 68% left because they sensed an attitude of indifference.  If you don’t care, they won’t either.

Make them want to see you.

When I first got into sales I felt I was so busy that I only had time to see my customers when I needed to sell them something or when there was a problem.  Then I realized that the seller-buyer relationship thrives when it’s more like a friendship.  And friendships thrive when you make an effort to get together for no reason at all other than getting together.

2. Be Fair

Don’t game the customers.

I know salespeople who continually manipulate their prospects and clients.  They don’t make full disclosures and they instill a needless sense of urgency.  It’s a wonder they’re still in business.  Even their pets don’t trust them.

Give them a good deal.

Have you been in a competition and at the end the customer asks for a best and final offer?  What did you do?  Sure, some top prospects and clients are given discounts, but if your offer was fair you shouldn’t cave on price.  If you can easily lower your price was it fair?  It’s better in the long run to support your price by adding something extra and increasing trust rather than reducing your price later and lowering trust.

3. Be Fun

Don’t take yourself too seriously…

My mentor Tom was in a meeting of business development professionals.  He was asked what single piece of advice he could offer that would have the most immediate impact on new orders.  Without hesitating, he responded, “Lighten up.  Don’t take yourself so seriously.”  This doesn’t mean you should try out your stand up comedy routine in front of the customer (unless, of course, it’s a contract signing celebration and alcohol is involved).  It simply means … be fun to be with.

… But take your work seriously.

Being fun to be around has to be balanced with being professional about your work.  If you’re relaxed and know what you’re talking about, prospects and clients will listen to you.  And it won’t be a puzzle why you’re crushing your numbers.

Here are two miscalculations I’ve made and witnessed in others: from new-hires to well-seasoned business development leaders.  These are “Perfecting It” and “Winging It.”  It can be challenging to find the right balance between doing too much and doing too little.

1. Perfecting It

If you’re in an engineering or technology-based company, your product is performance.  And that performance needs to be perfect.  But such an environment can lead to thinking that everything else surrounding that perfect performance also needs to be perfect.

During college summers I worked in a defense plant machine shop.  We’d get a package with a piece of aluminum and a schematic drawing of what needed to be done with it: folded, rolled, punched, etc.  Each finished piece was inspected.  If it didn’t meet the tolerances, the piece would be rejected and its maker would get a sharp word from the shop manager and razzing from the other benches.

So I made up my mind to make my pieces perfect.  And I did. The only problem was I spent so much time making the pieces perfect my section fell behind in production and – you guessed it – I got a sharp word from the shop manager and razzing from the other benches.  Then I got it.  I needed to meet the tolerances, not perfection.

Have you ever been on a team wasting valuable time and resources driving the solution to eye-watering performance while the customer only wanted “good enough” faster?  Most of the time it’s better not to be too perfect – just perfect enough.

2. Winging It

This is the flip side of perfection.  It also involves time and resources, but in this case you think you don’t have enough of the first and you don’t need the second.  You’re a pro.  You may be young and smart or you may be a seasoned BD lead and it all seems second nature to you.  In either case, you can be in for a shock.  And it comes quick.

I was a U.S. Air Force officer in Europe and asked to deliver an address to an assembly of political and military leaders.  How hard could it be?  I was used to top-level briefings.  So I made a few notes on cards and showed up at the conference.  It wasn’t what I expected.  The gathering was very senior and very large.  Because not everyone could speak English there was an interpreter. But it wasn’t the slow-paced consecutive translation I was used to.  It was simultaneous translation over headphones.  And when I spoke I could hear the interpreter like a weird echo.  I lost my train of thought and to this day I can’t really remember what I said.

Afterward I asked a colleague how it went.  “You’ve done better,” he replied generously.  The thought of it still stings to this day.  The end result, however, was a great lesson learned: there’s always time to prepare for your customers.