Blog

Buying and selling are fundamental to human life.  They came to us early when someone had too many pieces of one kind of thing and not enough of another – and a neighbor with the same problem in reverse.  So they traded and all was well.

Then things became more complicated.  As people prospered they settled down and upgraded their dwellings.  Perhaps moments like these were when the buyer-seller relationship became tense.  Imagine a village in a remote place in a time long ago.  Bog wants to marry and raise a family, but first, he needs to build a proper house of stone walls and thatched roof.  He knows nothing about stones and building houses.  But Bog’s a crafty hunter.  Ort, however, does know how to build things.  Ort hears that Bog needs a house and approaches him with an offer to build it for him in return for wooly mammoth hides.  And they talked and thought about it.

Bog and Ort both had concerns and questions about the house but were coming at the issues from different directions. Perhaps their thoughts and were similar to the following:

1. Bog the Buyer’s Perspective

Can I trust Ort?  I heard he built a house for Dak and the roof fell in after two weeks.  I don’t know him.  His people came from over the hill and he talks kinda funny.  He seems capable enough and his plan sounds good, though I’d like the door facing South and a bigger smoke hole in the roof. He says those are difficult to do and would cost me extra.  Speaking of which, wooly mammoth hunting is a little soft these days with all the wolves migrating in.  Jeez, I hate those guys.  Ort wants a hundred hides.  That’s a lot of mammoth humping and skinning.  Should I go with a lowest price technically acceptable proposal and bring in Garg as a stalker competitor?  I’d never pick Garg in a million moons as he can’t put two sticks together, but maybe I can pressure Ort on his price and not have to hunt so much.  And he wants half the hides as a down payment before winter, even though I bet by then he’ll be on vacation with his family at the beach and won’t start the stonewalls until spring.  But I’d really like this house to be built quickly so I can ask Arla if she’ll move in with me.  I’m not getting any younger and I’ve noticed that life for hunters is a lot shorter than other professions.  I wish Ort could understand what I’m going through.  Can I trust Ort?

2. Ort the Seller’s Perspective

Can I trust Bog?  He’s big and waves that spear around all the time.  Bog’s people talk a lot and seem to change their minds all the time.  I gave him a great house plan, but all he said was that he wanted the door moved and the roof opened up.  A southern door would face the wind and a bigger smoke hole in the roof would make it unstable, just like what Dak demanded and his roof fell in.  To do the door and roof the right way I’d have to add a wind deflector and more cross beams at additional cost.  My offer of a hundred hides for building the house was fair and it would cover all the little changes I know Bog will make as I build it.  I bet he’ll spend more time supervising me than hunting.  And I wouldn’t put it past him if he tries to get an idiot like Garg involved in a false competition so he can drive down the price.  If he does that I’ll give him that lower price, but will have to use fewer stones and thinner thatch and he won’t be happy.  I asked for half payment upfront because in my last job I nearly finished a house for Tok, a hunter like Bog.  Then Tok did a strategic review of his operations and decided to relocate over to the next valley and didn’t pay me.  That hurt.  If Bog would quit overthinking this and make a decision, I could have his walls and roof up by winter.  Don’t think that’s going to happen, so I’m making plans to go south and spend time with my wife’s tribe on the coast.  Life is short.  I wish Bog could understand what I’m going through.  Can I trust Bog?

Has anything changed since Bog and Ort?

There are many ways to misfire in hiring new business developers, four of which I covered in a previous blog.  Many companies, of course, successfully acquire new sales talent every day, so it stands to reason that there are ways to do this right.  In my opinion, companies that consistently succeed in bringing aboard great business developers do these three things:

1. Assess Sales Aptitude

This is the hardest step.  Many business leaders don’t want to “waste time and money” in finding out how suited candidates are to inside sales, outside sales, account management, etc.  But would you hire a philosopher to build your house?  Think of a good person you know who was hired to be a business developer and it didn’t work out.  It may be because they weren’t in what Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, refers to as the right seat on the bus.  I know a senior officer in a large bank who says he only made one hire without an aptitude test and after that costly and painful failure never made that same mistake again.  There are many good aptitude tests.  I recommend the Advanced Personality Questionnaire (APQ) by Dr. Larry Craft.  It’s tuned for sales coaching and developing EQ.

2. Thoroughly Interview

In smaller companies, the interview process might simply be a conversation with the sales manager or head of BD.  That could work out okay, but successful businesses use the interview process to see how the candidate would fit into both the sales team and the company culture.  Have you ever noticed that winning sports teams don’t have drama in the locker room?  A star performer who isn’t a team player can wreck your growth plans.  At the other extreme is the formal hiring interview arranged by corporate HR.  These are well-intentioned and necessary for compliance with large company rules, regulations, procedures, and policies … but they can suck all the fun out of hiring someone.  The result can be the selection of a business development candidate who fills the squares but won’t be able to fill your needs.

3. Train and Motivate

Sometimes I see train and motivate used in separate steps.  I think they are essentially one and the same.  If you send new hires out ill-prepared to engage with prospective customers, their confidence level quickly drops.  Not all that many universities offer majors in professional selling (ironically, there is no end to sales management offerings).  If you have selected a candidate with good aptitude and in the interview found them to have good attitude, set them up for success with formal sales training and a mentor or sales coach.  Give them the equipment and tools they need to do their jobs and then, and only then, send them on their way.  Good salaries and incentives are desirable, of course, but purposeful work with a team they like headed by a boss they respect will do far more in helping your new business development talent meet your sales objectives and their career goals.

Your company needs sales and you need people to bring in those sales.  If you’re head of business development, how do you make decisions on whom to hire?  In smaller companies it’s all up to you to figure it out.  In larger companies you may have to contend with the HR labyrinth.  In either case, the final decision is yours.  To avoid making very costly and time-consuming mistakes in your decision making process, be aware of these four potential pitfalls:

1. Gut Feel Instinct

A lot of great business development professionals have great intuition.  Many times they can “feel” when a deal lines up or is falling apart.  But success in this singular dimension can be a blind spot, as well.  If your first instinct is “I really like this person,” try to curb your enthusiasm.  I come from the Air Force, which teaches pilots to trust their instruments, as erroneous inputs from their bodily senses can lead to disaster.  The old saying is: Truly superior pilots are those who use their superior judgment to avoid those situations where they might have to use their superior skills.

2. Glittering Resume

During your review of candidates, there’s likely at least one resume that pops out.  The description may be so compelling that you may overlook someone more suited for the job (you’ve scrubbed the job requirements, right?).  Maybe some healthy skepticism is called for.  If the candidate is so great, why is there a job search?  Can there be over-qualification that will lead to unhappiness in doing all the annoying things you’ll be asking them to do?  Did that person really develop a community non-profit to entertain French bulldogs while their parents were working?

3. Friend of the Family

You very well could receive a glowing recommendation to hire someone’s child, sibling, or cousin.  In certain company cultures this might work out okay for some jobs, but probably not business development.  If you’re a business developer, by definition you have to produce.  You’re only as good as your last sale.  A good many people love this challenge, but just as many don’t.  If you’re head of business development and the family friend is not producing, you have a difficult decision to make.  And if you don’t make that tough decision to let Wally go, your new hire becomes a boat anchor on your top line.

4. Career Broadening

Your company has been growing and there’s need to groom people for upper management.  The finance guys are going into operations and the operations guys are going into business development.  You get a recommendation to turn a star program manager into a business developer.  Makes sense, right?  That would be a good combination of experiences for a future vice president.  But is every promising program manager (or technical expert or financial whiz) a good fit for prospecting for new business?  Are the skills that brought them success in one field transferable to another?  And what happens when they’re set up to fail?  Be especially careful with this situation.  You might do more harm than good.

There have always been business pressures and things that don’t go right, but it seems customers are getting even grumpier.  They’re impatient.  Little things annoy them.  Their kids don’t behave.  Their teams aren’t winning.  Their cellphones are exploding with useless messages.

It’s like this.  You’ve delivered a product to a particular customer and it’s working well … but not perfectly.  You get a call.  The customer vents like a volcano.  You’ve just started on your Java Chip Frappuccino and suddenly you’re torn away from your happy place.  Your head spins.  Panic sets in.  What do you do?  Take a deep breath and follow these five steps:

1. Have an open mind, because bad news can be valuable

No one wants to hear something’s going wrong.  But a customer telling you about a problem can be an opportunity to get it fixed before more damage is done (or even before your boss finds out).  Flip off your worry switch and press your action button.

2. Be attentive and acknowledge the customer’s words and feelings

One of your first impulses could be to try and fix the problem immediately.  But that won’t really help until you fully understand the customer and connect empathetically.  Give full attention to what they’re saying even if they seem to be speaking in tongues.

3. Ask questions and then ask more questions

Let the customer vent and expend that pent up emotional energy.  When they slow down a little, quickly move to fact-based questions.  This will get the rational part of their brains engaged.  Keep asking questions until you can piece together exactly what the problem really is.

4. Make no excuses and avoid being defensive

No one wants to be blamed for something that goes wrong.  But you’re the front line for your company and it’s up to you to take responsibility.  Don’t say, “We didn’t do it, nobody told us, we weren’t there, it was the other people.”  That’s too much like the Bart Simpson defense: “I didn’t do it.  No one saw me do it.  You can’t prove anything.”

5. Work out a mutually beneficial plan of action

If a get-well plan has not yet presented itself, ask the customer “What do you want?” “How can we make this up to you?”  There are things that can easily be fixed and then there are things that are not possible in the space-time continuum.  Somewhere in between is a solution you both can agree on.  Now you have a plan.  The customer is calm and reassured and you can get back to that Frappuccino.

When going through my father’s World War II keepsakes I found a stack of letters alongside a painted coconut and a bolo knife from the Philippines.  George Potts was in the 96^th Infantry Division on Leyte.  The letters were sent to my mother, Vivian, in the dark days at the beginning of the war.  He lived to become a great father and I’m glad he did, or someone else might be writing this.

Dad wrote that in his Army training he learned four things that could help him survive: (1) Salute everyone and let them sort it out, (2) Never break into a chow line, (3) Don’t reveal you have special talents, and (4) Avoid causing disturbances for which you could be blamed.

There’s something about military humor that transcends tragedy and lifts us up.  Humor rebalances our lives and helps us laugh away our fears.  Dad loved the Army (not the war) but wanted to return to a quiet life.  He became a paint salesman and said his wartime experiences helped make him a better man and better at business.  In keeping with that line of thinking, what can we derive from these four survival skills that can help us with business relations?

1. Salute everyone and let them sort it out

In the military, you can see someone’s rank on their uniform and you know to whom you should show respect with a salute.  In business, it’s not so clear.  We’ve all seen businesspeople suck up to bosses and key buyers and be condescending and rude to co-workers and staff.  That’s not good long-term behavior.  If you want to work for everyone’s success, you should give respect to everyone.  Besides, it’s the right thing to do.

2. Never break into a chow line

Nobody likes a line cutter.  It’s not fair.  In a chow line of hungry troops, they’ll remember you and get even when you least expect it.  The same goes for business.  If you do an end-run around someone to get an advantage, you may have scored a tactical win, but you’ve made a strategic enemy.  That aggrieved person may not overtly do something against you, but in the hour when you need their help the most – you may not get it.  And that’s an avoidable loss.

3. Don’t reveal you have special talents

If they know in your military unit that you can do something special, like holding your hands steady with explosives, you run the risk of getting to do that all the time.  It’s better to be modest about your talents and let others discover them.  We’ve all heard businesspeople brag about their achievements, apparently feeling the need to demonstrate how much better they are than the rest of us.  I’ve always admired the ones who are more modest and authentic – the people with patents in biophysics who are just one of the gang.

4. Avoid causing disturbances for which you could be blamed

This is different than just keeping a low profile.  In the military you want action, but you don’t want to call in artillery fire on your own position.  That’s counterproductive and upsets those around you.  In business, it’s much the same.  You want action, especially more sales, but without unpleasant surprises.  I believe the single most important thing you can do to improve internal business operations and gain more business with customers is to be easy to work with.  No tricks.  No drama.  No incoming rounds.