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In developing business leads it’s good to start by looking at your ideal customer group because their characteristics are likely the characteristics of your best new prospects.  Makes sense.  Salespeople usually look at volume, financial, and performance metrics of their top customers.  But since the majority of your company’s revenues come from existing accounts, you might also think of other traits that make great customers.

Years ago I was working with a group brainstorming initiatives to improve customer relations.  Seeking a way to identify great customers, those who had the highest emotional attachment to their company, we wrote all of their noticeable “action” traits on a whiteboard.  Then we reordered those actions into four groups.  Here’s what we found.

1. Communicative

• Great customers tell you first.  You don’t find out through their lawyers or in a press announcement.
• They ask questions.  They want to know as much as possible … from you.
• They drop hints.  If you’re competing for their business and they like you, they encourage you.
• They know you.  You’ve had professional, technical, and even personal discussions.  They know which sports teams you favor and what you will be doing on the weekend.

2. Active

• Great customers do as much as possible within the terms of your contract.  And then some.
• They are open to new ideas on how to better apply your products and services.
• They champion your positions and approaches inside their organizations.
• They think long-term.  If there’s a hiccup in your service they don’t panic because they know you’ll quickly make things right.

3. Responsive

• Great customers return your calls.  They like talking with you.
• They are confident and competent within their own organizations.  They make decisions and influence others in making decisions.
• They adjust their schedules and make time to meet with you.
• They refer you to others and offer to be a demonstration partner.

4. Engaged

• Great customers use “we” instead of “you” in conversations.
• They ask you for advice about problems and consider you a trusted advisor.
• They extend business with you even under pressure to re-compete vendors.
• They identify with your success.  Your achievements validate their thinking of you and your colleagues as a company they don’t want to live without.

You may have noticed that the first letters of the four groups spell “care.”  That’s what great customers do.  They care about you.  The question is, do you return that care?  That’s the secret of keeping great customers and getting more of them.

Listen to the customer.  You’ve heard that sound advice maybe a thousand times.  You agree and move on.   At your next customer encounter you try to listen better, but you still don’t get the results you want.  What happened?  Maybe you’re listening game is out of sync.  A good way to get back in sync with your customer is to think less about all the things you should do and more about the few things you shouldn’t do.  Here are five common customer listening errors.  If you avoid them, you greatly increase your chances of hearing what they are saying.

1. Listening too hard

Except for the severely hearing challenged, all of us can hear.  But we don’t always listen well.  In an effort to do better, you can easily fall into the trap of trying too hard.  You might try to capture everything you hear, which is impossible.  More likely you’ll fixate on one particular piece of information at the expense of more significant details.  It’s better to lighten up and sit back.  As comedian Bill Murray once observed, “The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything.”  

2. Jumping the gun

Now you’re so relaxed in your listening that you have time to anticipate what the customer will say next.  That’s another trap.  You could pre-filter yourself out of sync again.  Premature follow-up questions forming in your mind might head the conversation in a direction that won’t help the customer and certainly won’t help you.  Stay steady on course and let the talk unfold in the way most comfortable to the customer.  Let them float.  You steer the boat.

3. Lagging behind

The opposite of jumping the gun is lagging behind.  It seems like you’ve been with this kind of customer before.  They’re going on and on about something that doesn’t seem important to you and your mind wanders to solution scenarios, what kind of bonus you might be up for, perhaps the need to rotate your tires.  Suddenly the customer pauses and you panic.  Where are you in the movie?  You cleverly say, “What do you think?”  But the customer gets a quizzical look and responds, “That’s what I asked you.”

4. Omitting

In your zeal to shorten the sales cycle and conserve your notepad (you’re taking notes, right?) you skip over some of the boring stuff your customer is saying.  But maybe that boring stuff is most critical to their needs.  A moderate, comprehensive approach is best in most cases.  Slow it down.  I had a colleague from Spain who loved to quote a matador who found himself late to the arena and in need of being quickly dressed in his elaborate clothing.  He told his handlers, “Dress me slowly.  I’m in a hurry.” 

5. Adding

And the opposite of omitting is adding.  You so want the customer to say yes that you parse their words into a positive encounter.  I was in Europe working on aircraft solutions.  My corporate partner and I visited an aviation support company in one country seeking a strategic partnership on a bid in another country.  I was in the lead.  The conversation and lunch were terrific.  It was a touchdown.  Back at the hotel I wrote up the notes and emailed them over to my corporate partner.  He came back immediately with the headline: “Were we at the same meeting?”  I’d so wanted that company to join us that I “heard” yes.  It was really a maybe, which meant no.

I’m sure there are other listening errors that can turn customer conversations into customer calamities, but these are the ones that I’ve learned (painfully) to avoid.  If you can avoid them, too, you can stay better in sync with your customers.

As a business development and sales professional, you’ve prepared yourself to connect with a potential customer for the first time.  Your qualification process shows promise: they’re in your ideal customer group, they have a need, and you have a great solution.  You’ve been referred to them by one of your best clients and you’ve even connected via LinkedIn.  It all seems perfect – until the first conversation.  Then you’re back on your heels and off your game.  What happened?

No matter how much you prepare for a customer meeting, there are some things you can’t account for – such as the mood of the customer.  You may know a lot about their personal history, professional interests, and even seen them winning an ugly sweater contest on Facebook.  But when people meet people there are a lot of other things going on.  Such as moods.

I spent a lot of years helping engineers with sales.  They tended to discount my insistence that they needed to consider customer moods until I explained it in their terms.  In this model, there are two variables: active-passive and positive-negative, resulting in four moods: sad, angry, calm, and happy.  (We sidestep other moods like surprised, confused, and scared, which should never be in a sales scenario.)

1. Sad (negative and passive)

I’m starting with sad, because that’s the customer mood that positive-thinking, hard-charging salespeople tend to overlook in their zeal to get their pitch started.  If your customer is looking and sounding blue, pull back and think about what you want to do that day.  The important thing is to get your message across and you can’t do that if they’re not … in the mood.  You might ask, “Is this a good time to talk about all this?” and offer to come back later.  They may take you up on that offer; at the very least your courtesy will be welcome.  If you’ve already had some good, previous interaction with them you might ask, “Is everything okay?” and pause.  If they start talking, don’t interrupt and don’t try to fix them.  Let the conversation play out.  You’re now more than a salesperson.  You have the makings of becoming a friend.

2. Angry (negative and active)

Nobody wants to have an encounter with an angry customer.  But if it happens you might be able to reframe the situation and lower the temperature.  Who/what are they angry at?  If it’s directed at your company, find out what the problem is, own it, and get a plan to fix it.  If it’s somebody or something else, let them talk it out and be sympathetic (hopefully it’s about your contemptible competition).  After they settle down, offer them the options to continue or reschedule.  If they want to proceed, lighten things up and give them something positive to focus on.  Let the positivity transfer to you and depart with a promise to help.

3. Calm (positive and passive)

Okay, considering sad and angry, calm isn’t so bad, is it?  The customer’s calm, you’re calm, everything’s calm.  Good, right?  Not necessarily.  A calm customer could mean a lot of things.  Maybe it was the first night of good sleep for a new parent.  Or maybe the customer just that morning found the TPS Report they’d been searching for.  But calm can be the enemy of progress.  Great salespeople and great customers are always looking for how to move things forward.  If the situation is too calm, maybe it’s best to insert some urgency.  Not the creepy-car-sales-guy type of urgency, but the type that centers on both you and the customer recognizing that actions need to be taken for everyone’s best interest.

4. Happy (positive and active)

A happy customer is every salesperson’s dream.  Not suspicious.  Not indecisive.  Very much in the moment and giving off positive energy.  But there could be a trap here.  Say it’s Friday afternoon.  In the spirit of the moment you might make an offer that either can’t be done or will destroy profit margin.  And the customer might agree to things that won’t live past the fog of Monday morning.  In happy meetings, great salespeople keep a wary detachment to make sure the happiness continues in the future.  Build on the positivity.  Don’t undermine it with spontaneous offers you can’t or shouldn’t deliver.

That’s not so difficult, is it?  Four moods from two variables for one great way to reduce potential hazards for first meeting panic.

Whether you’re new to defense contracting or an experienced professional in the field, there’s a lot to learn (and laugh about) in two vintage movies showing the intricacies of how (not) to sell to governments.  I’m sure there are other films in this category that come to mind, but these are my favorites and very popular with my business colleagues.  Some remark they’ve even lived out the scenarios, though not quite in such comic detail.

1. Pentagon Wars (1998)

This is the perfect film for someone who has trouble understanding how a defense contract can start simple enough, stretch out for years and morph into a budget buster.  It’s based on the 1993 book of the same title by James Burton, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and former Pentagon acquisition official.  The HBO comedy film, directed by Richard Benjamin, won a Primetime Emmy award.  It follows the 17-year, $14 billion development of the Bradley Fighting Vehicle replacing the Vietnam War-era M113 armored personnel carrier.  Cary Elwes plays Colonel Burton and Kelsey Grammer plays his boss, General Partridge, who disagrees with Burton’s style and methods.  Richard Schiff gives a memorable performance as the beleaguered weapon system developer Lieutenant Colonel Robert Smith.

There are parts of this film, of course, which will delight people skeptical of anything the Pentagon does.  But those of us who’ve been involved with defense acquisition will find laugh-out-loud moments as we recognize personalities and situations we’ve seen before.  In my opinion, it’s worth investing time in this film if only to watch Scene 12 “Evolve” over and over again.  In only fifteen minutes, the arc of the Bradley development is hilariously portrayed from troop carrier, to scout vehicle, and to anti-tank platform through different administrations.  The big messages for all the great people who work as contractors and acquisition officials are to be as honest and as patient as you can to get programs to maturity.  Don’t get distracted from what needs to be done and don’t be afraid to speak up when it’s called for.

2. Deal of the Century (1983)

While the previous film deals with domestic defense programs, this covers international defense sales.  When I first entered international business development, one of my mentors told me tongue-in-cheek that all I needed to know was in this film.  Wally said he experienced what one of the characters went through – sitting in a remote country hotel room for months waiting for a phone call from the Minister of Defense.  Directed by William Friedkin, this dark comedy didn’t have financial success at the box office, but over the years it’s become an International BD fan favorite.  It stars Chevy Chase as a small-time arms dealer who becomes key to a major defense sale, Sigourney Weaver who helps him close the deal, and Gregory Hines as a former military pilot and technical expert.

The deal involves negotiations for the sale of a fleet of armed drones (unmanned combat aerial vehicles, more precisely) to a South American dictator.  There are some memorable scenes where the “Peacemaker” literally blows up a showcase demonstration, plus sleazy consultants illustrating violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.  If you want to hear a great sales pitch, see Scene 17 “Linking in the Links.”  Defense companies, of course, come in for some drubbing, but the outcome of the not-quite-happy ending does eventually lead to the moral redemption of the lead characters.  Perhaps that’s why the critics gave it low marks.  Anyway, international business developers can laugh and learn a lot while watching three great actors struggle with the “Deal of the Century.”

These are difficult times, but businesses still have to conduct strategy sessions on how to place the right bets, how to rationalize resources, and how to gain share.  You have to lean forward despite all the uncertainties.  If you don’t gain forward momentum you’ll eventually fall behind, like swimmers in a strong current or the NFC East.  

Yet you cannot be so fixated on the future that you ignore the past.  This concept was brought home to me years ago when my family and I were going through a typical airport security shakedown.  I was tired from a previous trip and concerned about getting to the gate on time.  After we started walking away, my wife calmly said, “Look back.”  I’d left a valuable bag on the screener belt.  After that incident, we’ve instituted a Look Back procedure in all of our travels: leaving the house, getting out of a cab, departing a plane, driving away, clearing a hotel room, stumbling out of the wine tasting.

I believe a Look Back procedure can be an essential part of any business strategy session.  The problem is, none of us wants to take time to go back over the often-painful details of past plans, especially business leaders who bet wrong.  But there’s gold in the digging.  I was working with a business strategy group as we were entering a down business cycle. Everybody had an opinion on the situation and how we should proceed.  Then, in a moment of clarity, someone asked, “What happened the last time we faced similar conditions?”  No one at the table could answer the question because it was a decade ago.  Someone remembered Bill was working on the strategy team at the time.  The group went to Bill and, despite corporate guidance to the contrary, he’d retained all the records of what happened, how the company responded, and the fortunate results.  Bill’s hoarding saved the company time and made the company money.

Companies use lagging indicators in their reports to look back over financial performance, but figures like cash conversion cycle and return on net assets won’t help you when the CEO asks you for ideas on how to “move the needle.”  And leading indicators of trends, such as the number of innovations and customer service perception, are tricky.  Plus, there’s usually someone on the team who says, “We tried that before” to an idea that might now work.

I think just about every business strategist can agree on one thing: there’s not a magic formula for building a good strategic plan.  So, maybe a place to start is to ask hard questions such as:

• Does what we contemplate align with our corporate vision?
• What were the lessons learned when we’ve won big before?
• What do the business units think we ought to do based on their experiences?
• What are our contemptible competitors up to?
• Is it better in this situation to think in or out of the box?
• Do we have the talent and resources necessary to execute new plans?
• What are clear, measurable, and achievable goals for action?
• And will someone please record and save the approved plan?  Bill retired.