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How Can I Enjoy My Business Development Job?

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When you’re fortunate enough to be marketing or selling something you believe in to a client or industry that truly interests you, your marketing or selling day can be enjoyable; it can be a lot of fun.   I had days of real enjoyment selling needed engineering projects to the U.S. Air Force.  They needed the projects, I believed in our team’s good work, and I actually had fun learning more about how the Air Force does business.

It Felt Like Fun

As a beginning Air Force “Seller-Do-er”, I had a lot of reading and information-gathering to do to learn my craft.  I spent hours and hours studying Air Force contracting and the art of Large Account Management.  It felt like fun.  Info junkies like me call it fun.  But I didn’t control the amount of time I spent nor hold myself accountable for results in proportion to the amount of time I spent gathering information.

Hours of Fake Fun

The excess hours spent in “hunter-gatherer” mode didn’t being me any closer to “shipping product“, as Seth Godin says.  The excess hours didn’t scale into extra product.  They were fake fun.

Real Fun

Real fun would have been to strengthen my emotional intelligence enough to put the reading aside, go out and get to know my client, and begin a relationship.  Seeing results and building on those results.  Learning how to do it more and more.  Now that would have been fun.  I was having fake fun when I could have been having real fun.

Are you sometimes an information junkie when you could be actually doing something to help the client and advance a sale?  Do you think, like me, that it’s possible to have fun in the business of selling?  Please click “comment” and tell me what you think!

 

I Blew It – I Omitted Two important “P’s”

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I blew it in my recent post The 16 P’s of Becoming a Leader in Marketing and Selling.  I defined the 16 essential tasks in the job description of a Large Account Manager or Client Account Manager.  It’s a good list.  The list made me successful.  But it’s incomplete.  I omitted the two most important “P’s”.

I Took It For Granted

My excuse is that these two “P’s” are so intrinsic and crucial to our success as Marketers, Sellers, or Account Managers and have been accepted as crucial for so long, they’re so much at the core of what we do and must do as Seller-Doers and as leaders, that I took it for granted that I didn’t have to put them in the list.  A client corrected me.

“Personal Relationship” Is New #7 On The List

Most Client Account Managers in professional services firms practice Relationship Selling.  Relationship Selling begins with and can’t succeed without relationship building.  The first “P” I omitted was to have a Personal relationship with your client.  Get to know your client personally, as much as is appropriate.  Make it clear that you want to be of service to the client and her firm, that you want to be useful over a very long term, and that you want to build a relationship.   Ask earnest questions.

Earn The Client’s Trust

Earn credibility and the client’s trust by asking earnest questions about their company and their situation, not for the purposes of making a sale but for relationship building.  Asking questions, earnestly inquiring of the other person, makes anyone feel valued and valid.  Inquiring of the client and her firm makes you seem friendlier, more knowledgeable, more understanding.  As Stephen Covey told us, “Seek first to understand.”

The Most Important Part Of Your Questions

The most important part of your questions?  Leave lots of time for the client’s answers.  When she’s done speaking, let a couple of beats go by before you speak.  Maybe she will enlarge on her answers.  Your questions are no good without her answers.

My Journey

I recently wrote about my journey to building a client’s trust.  Never forget that the client has loaned you the time to meet with her.  You must use it to prove your genuine desire to help her personally.

 “Pain” Is New #8 On The List

Now that you know your client and her situation better, we come to the most important “P”:  you must discover – and deliver the cure for – the client’s Pain.  There is the slimmest chance that the only problem or pain the client wants a solution for is the common problem occurring in her industry right now, or the current problem that brought you together at that convention.   But if that is the only pain she’s telling you about, then one of these is true:

  1. All the other salespeople know her problem too, so you’re in a large crowd of competitors with nothing special to offer; i.e., you’re wasting your time, or
  2. You haven’t looked hard enough, your questions aren’t phrased well enough, or you’re not listening well enough to the answers.

Your Client’s Deepest Need

“Discovering the Pain” is what I call knowing your client’s deepest need.  You’ll see it called that in my Relationship Selling posts.  It appears all over those posts, so intrinsic to what we do that I didn’t put it on the “P’s” list initially.  Discover your client’s pain through your presence and your patient earnest questions.

Skillful Questions to Discover the Deepest Need

  • Make sure your questions don’t sound self-seeking.
  • Stop short of wearing your client out with your questions; if you don’t stop early enough, she’ll feel manipulated.
  • To keep her from feeling like she’s under a microscope, offer some insights and possible solutions along the way.  Offer them graciously and make them brief.
  • If you don’t know any solutions, say so, and ask her if she’d like to brainstorm.  Try to make this a real conversation.
  • Just make sure that you’re not just parroting the solutions you came there to “sell”.

So that’s new “P” #8 – discover and develop the cure for your client’s Personal Pain.  Thank you to my client for asking me for this new post.

That brings the list to 18 P’s.  Sounds long, but you can do it because it’s systematized.  And you can teach the system to others too.  Just stick with me, stick with us here.  You can do this.

Please click “Comment” and join in the discussion.

 

 

The 16 P’s of Being a Leader in Marketing or Selling

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When I first became a Program Manager and Client Account Manager (CAM) years ago, I was daunted by how much work there was, and how many facets there are to the work.

What If You’re Not In Marketing or in Sales?

If you’re not in Marketing or in Sales, but you would like to be a strong leader in your company, then you should study these tasks, help out or lead an effort every single time you can, and become a valued contributor in one or more of these areas.  The absolute quickest way to the top in most professional services firms is to be a strong contributor in these areas.

I Thought Someone Was Kidding Me

Frankly, I thought someone was spoofing me that I was expected to perform well at all the tasks and duties.  But the CAMs at engineering companies – and at other professional services firms – are usually “Seller-Do-ers” and these are their tasks.  I made the list so I wouldn’t forget anything, and I regularly monitored my performance against the list.

I Didn’t Do It All Myself

I didn’t do all the work myself; I was a small part of an extremely smooth-running and cooperative team (you know who you are).  But on my client account, I was responsible for our results.  The amount of work was daunting.  The enormous effort required caused me to break out in nervous laughter.  I loved it.

The Customer Journey

To be a leader in marketing or selling, everything we do must be absolutely centered on the customer’s needs, the customer’s point-of-view, the quality of the customer’s journey with us.  This list gives the CAM’s duties, but above all, the experience the customer is having with us that day comes first.

The 16 P’s of Being a Leader in Marketing or Selling

These are not all the tasks of a Client Account Manager (CAM); I’m sure I’ve forgotten some from my original list long ago.  Here they are in no particular order.  Please tell me what “P’s” you would add.

1.  Product – the CAM’s job is to be thoroughly knowledgeable about her firm’s products/services/offerings, to understand how they can be tailored to fulfill her client’s needs and desires, and how the offerings can be improved to please the client and can best be delivered.

2.  Positioning – the CAM’s understands her firm’s position in the field of competitors, her firm’s strengths and weaknesses in that field of competitors; she understands and knows how to improve her firm’s position as a provider and a competitor in her client’s eyes.

3.  Promoting – the CAM stays aware of how the firm is promoting itself in the marketplace, what special skills and benefits are being touted, aligning her efforts with those efforts, and contributing data about marketplace and client needs and trends.

4.  Pitching – this “P” is about speaking in a public setting.  From networking events to convention crowds to business lunches to one-on-one meetings, the CAM’s job is to speak in an attractive, intriguing way about her firm and its services, positioning the firm well in the minds of listeners and prospective clients.  But the CAM is always gracious, brief, and concise when speaking publicly.  She leaves lots of time for the second and equally important part of this task:  listening to the clients.

5.  Prospecting – the CAM’s job is to prospect for clients, that is, to search out and discover potential clients for her firm’s services and products, either within industry sectors targeted by her firm, or by suggesting and supporting why new sectors and new types of clients should be pursued.

6.  “Pairing” – the CAM “pairs up” the best potential clients with the elements of her Sales Funnel; that is, she qualifies the prospects, identifies the prospects that meet her requirements for “ideal client” and develops a marketing, sales, and resources plan to turn the qualified prospect into a client.

7.  “Proposaling” – the CAM knows how to write a winning proposal.  Writing entirely from the client’s point-of-view, she re-states the client’s true need as the Problem Definition and states her team’s solution to the problem.  She describes the benefits of the particular solution, the technical team and resources she’s assembled to solve the problem, and states a winning price.  She has taken all the risks of the proposal and the project into consideration, and makes the proposal brief and compelling.

8.  Pricing – the CAM and her team know the intricacies of constructing a winning bid/price for the project.  She has taken into account the client’s true, often unspoken, needs and schedule demands and the team has written a fair price, amply defended by the rest of the proposal.  She has pointed out the savings and advantages built into her team’s solution to the problem.

9.  (Party! – crucial task #9 does not appear on most CAM job descriptions!  After winning the work, the CAM throws a celebration to thank her proposal team and welcome the project team.)

10.  Production –  the CAM and her team swing into action on the project and produce results.  The Project Managers who report to the CAM set up Project Instructions, task leaders, task teams, schedules, task budgets, etc.

11.  Performing and Pleasing – everyone on the team is accountable for performing the project and pleasing the client, but it is the CAM’s responsibility to regularly and honestly ask whether the client is pleased, discover the cause when the client is not pleased and make the necessary changes, while keeping the program on budget and on schedule.

12.  Profit – the CAM approved the price and scope-of-work in the proposal and now it is her job to bring the project in on budget, making the percentage of profit agreed to with her management.  Project monitoring and meetings with project managers are required; changes in staff may be required.  The CAM or Program Manager foresees changes in the project scope or price and, if necessary, takes the requested change order to the client, together with work-around plans and solutions.  All these efforts are directed at pleasing the client while bringing the project in at the agreed-to profit.

13.  Paperwork – each of the tasks has its own, sometimes enormous, “paperwork” requirements, everything from Sales Funnel updates to reviewing job-cost-and-profit reports to authoring sector growth plans. The CAM knows there is no more sure route to failure and loss of support in her company than being late on her paperwork requirements.  Some can be delegated but the CAM is accountable for accuracy and for knowing and meeting her “numbers”.  She knows that accurate, on-time paperwork is her ticket to the show; that her boss can cover her back more easily if her paperwork’s done.

14.  Propagation/Scaling – a successful CAM knows how to repeat her success and propagate the winning formula into more project wins, revenue, and profit.  She knows it saves time, energy, and resources to identify the winning patterns in her prospecting, proposaling, and building client relationships.  She takes it as a challenge to scale those patterns into systems, and scale those systems into methods for her team and other Seller-Do-ers.

15.  People and Appraisals – in addition to the other 15 duties listed here, the CAM has no more important duty than training and developing her team and her people.  Her firm’s product is the imagination and problem-solving of its people; all the proposals and project wins come solely from the initiative and problem-solving of the team.  The CAM takes care to give prompt, brief, encouraging feedback; she looks for opportunities that will let her teammates dare themselves to get better; she welcomes training opportunities for her team and makes sure the overhead time is available; she prepares hard to give fair and balanced appraisals.  She thanks her team, defends her team, keeps her team out of trouble, and goes to bat to see they are recognized and rewarded.

16.  Programs – the CAM contributes her findings, plans, and her creativity to corporate programs for growing the firm, growing its people and teams, growing its customer base, and growing the community.  She knows that the programs and the other 15 P’s add up to all-important employee engagement and customer engagement.

You Seller-Do-ers out there will recognize that “Sales Funnel” management is covered by the first 8 P’s.  Other P’s – priority-setting, productivity, problem-solving – are just as important but they apply to everyone, not just CAMs.

How do you like the list?   What did I leave out?  Please join in the discussion.

If you’re not a Client Account Manager or a leader in your company and you’d like to be, this list is a terrific place to start assessing and growing your skills.  If you need any help, just click “Comment” and ask.

 

Does This Help You Start?

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Go ahead and start that thing you’ve put off starting.  I mean, what else were you going to do today?  Dillydally around some more, thinking about starting?

Go ahead and start. In baby steps like always.  Like most adults do.  Check on your results as you go; tweak your baby plan to alter your results.

I’m Pulling For You

Go ahead and start.  We’re pulling for you. We’ll be here when you’re done.

Let us know how it went.  Get ready to tell us in brilliant colorful detail all the pains and bumps you went through at the beginning, all the challenges and peaks and valleys of getting it done.  Then click above and describe your victory celebration.  Or the one beer you had, toasting yourself.

Ready?  .  .  .

 

 

 

Is the “Unique Selling Proposition” Outdated?

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C. Richard Weylman says in the Aug 2013 issue of Customer Relationship Management that his notion of a “unique value promise” should now replace the “outdated ‘unique selling proposition’ approach, which emphasizes product features, company attributes, and price.”

This part he’s got right.

Mr. Weylman is correct that marketers and managers must forget about touting their company’s attributes and their products’ features, and speak to the customer only about what she cares about emotionally: the brand’s promise of benefits, valuable outcomes, and experiences.

This part he’s got wrong.

Successful firms I’ve worked with have always defined their “Unique Selling Proposition” in the modern customer-centric, customer-values-centered way, and never defined it as product features and price. We wouldn’t have been keen to switch to Mr. Weylman’s jargon of “unique value promise”. We don’t need any more jargon confusing our budding marketers and salesmen.

His points are already covered by the modern concepts of the successful customer-centered brand. Enough with the new jargon to make our brands sound stronger. Let’s just make our brands actually perform strongly.

Do you agree?  Please click “comment” and let’s talk about it.

One Way to Discover Your Client’s Deepest Need

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Discovering your client’s deepest need is your most important objective.  There is one best way to discover it.  (This post is part of my Core Content and curriculum about Relationship Selling and your client’s “deepest need”.)

Here’s how I learned once and for all about discerning the client’s deepest – and often unspoken – need.  At my old engineering firm, I was the Client Program Manager serving a particular Air Force client. We were doing a lot of work for them and hoped to do a lot more. I spent hours of face time with the chief point-of-contact at the Air Force, paying attention to their wants and needs and being helpful.

Doesn’t the client know how difficult this is?

The client had a challenging and dangerous engineering problem he wanted solved – the destruction of tons of dangerous, aged, decrepit-but-still-full gas cylinders. We hadn’t been given the project yet, so the hours I spent with the client each week devising plans and alternatives – I couldn’t bill any of that time. We didn’t have the project yet. I was on overhead.

As client Jim continued to offer that I could attend these (unbillable) meetings, I said to myself, “I like working with Jim, but he’s had enough contractors work for him that he knows I can’t bill any of this time. But we claim we want to be helpful, so I’ll work it out at the office somehow.  I’ll find other billable work and work extra hours.” At least I knew that my firm and I were proving to be helpful and to put the client’s needs above our own. We had shown that we could be relied on to help whether or not the time could be billed.

The client was about to compete a very large umbrella contract. As Program Manager it was my job to know the client’s deepest need and make sure my firm and our proposal satisfied that need.

Then it hit me.

“Jim is showing me every way he can – without saying it out loud – that the winning bidder will be the one who put this client’s needs ahead of their own. Even when it was difficult. Even when it was unbillable!  That is this client’s deepest need about their next contractor. That is this client’s discriminator. He’s shown me how to win this!”

Our proposal proved we were helpful and effective for this client, that we went above normal expectations about how much time we would spend. We won the contract, did terrifically hard and satisfying work, and made back every penny we’d spent in unbillable time. He had made his deepest need and discriminator perfectly clear; all I had to do was listen.

Please leave a comment and let’s talk.  This is such important stuff and can make a major difference in your career.  (This post is part of my Core Content and curriculum about Relationship Selling.)

What is a “Brand” Exactly?

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It’s very useful and challenging that the word “brand” has taken on so much meaning lately. It hasn’t been that long ago that “the brand” was thought of as only the item’s logo and slogan. “Brand” is now centered exclusively on the customer and her needs.

The Definitions of “Brand”

I like to go over the definitions of “brand” with my clients because there are layers of meaning in each definition, and the meanings make us think. Here are some:

“A brand is the memory of a valuable experience or outcome.”
“A brand is a promise of value.”
“A brand is a promise of the company’s values.”
“A brand promises the same valuable experience as last time.”
“A brand promises an emotional experience tied to personal benefit.”

And one of my favorites: “A brand is the evidence that the company knows and understands the customer’s deepest needs and the customer’s journey.”

What we have to do

Do you see the work that’s cut out for us?  Can you see in these statements what we as business leaders, project managers, or marketers can do that will lead directly to the customer’s happiness, and thereby the success of our brand?  Inside every one of those statements are ways to increase customer happiness and engagement, whether you’re a candy maker or an engineering firm.

Which one of the definitions will be most useful to your brand’s success?  Or do you have another favorite definition?  Please click “comment” above!

13 Essential Ways to Team Build

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We can’t discuss coaching the sales team without talking about developing a terrific proposal team, a terrific project team, a fabulous team, period.  Program managers have to be very good at nurturing and leading all those teams.  There is plenty of education about teams on the interwebz.  I’ll add the 13 essentials that worked so well at Radian Corporation:

  1. hire well:  hire well-spoken, composed, mature people we actually wanted to work beside late into the night
  2. which made it easy to lead them and train them with a light hand
  3. their good work made it easy to leave them to work autonomously
  4. and not interfere or micromanage them
  5. but being the one pushing the boundary of high-risk, scary big sales meant I had to watch my words, namely,
  6. I had to explain myself extremely well, making the goal specific and meaningful
  7. be encouraging and challenging
  8. let them know they were valid and valued
  9. then leave them alone, because they had to feel trusted
  10. when trusted, they excelled
  11. when all that worked, “correcting” them was a matter of one or two good questions from me
  12. and I was always grateful and very proud and they always knew, and
  13. we won a lot of our proposals.

The Fastest Way To Lose the Loyalty Of Your Teams

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The fastest way to lose anyone’s loyalty is to break your word.  Related to that, you can lose loyalty by failing to follow though on what the two of you have worked so hard on perfecting.

When was the last time you lost your glasses or your keys?  Maddening, isn’t it?

If I’d Only Used The System

The last time I lost my glasses I found them 15 minutes later in their new holder, exactly where they were supposed to be.  The “me” who doesn’t put things away never thought of following my new system and looking in the holder.  I didn’t follow though.

Message:  Follow-Through Is Everything

When you and others have worked so hard to devise new systems – new sales systems, new customer relationship systems, new team systems – don’t be like me and not follow through.  Keep working until you use them consistently.  Be the model for your team.  Certainly don’t fail to use the systems while you’re expecting everyone else to use them.  You’re the leader (or you’re trying to be).  Please show that you are careful and consistent with systems.

It’s One Way To Lose The Loyalty Of Your Team

Just like when I had a system for my glasses and didn’t use it, I used to ignore some systems at my old engineering firm.  As a Senior Program Manager, I had my little list of reasons:  “I’m too busy…this major sale is heating up and it’s way more important…besides these projects are my responsibility; if my timesheet is a little late, it doesn’t matter, I can keep track…no one notices…”

Except everyone noticed, and the loyalty I counted on from these folks suffered.  They knew I’d made myself exempt from the systems we’d all put in place.

When you are involved in high-stakes, high-risk projects and sales, and need the loyalty of your team, everything counts.  As a matter of fact, even when you’re not involved in those things, everything counts.  Everything.  Counts.

Isn’t it maddening when the managers around you don’t comply with the company systems?  What system do you wish you used more consistently?  Please “comment” and let me know.

Do You Want The Truth or The Consequences?

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Scanning Hulu.com I saw the movie title Truth or Consequences fly by.  It reminds me that there is only ever the truth about something or the consequences.

The Truth?

Does this sound familiar?

The truth is “I could’ve been friendlier with the new employee just now, could have asked about her move here” because the consequence weeks later will be “It’s no wonder she never warmed up to me.  Now she thinks I slight her.  I’m at the bottom of her list.”

The truth is “One day I’ll have hurt my health with all this stress and lousy eating” because the consequence is “I sure hope the doctor can help me.  The last one couldn’t.  Gosh, I better not lose my job ever – – I need the insurance for all these doctor visits.”

Or The Consequences?

Does this sound familiar?

The truth is “I have to find more clients.  Since I hate cold calling, I better work my network today to get a warm introduction to the buyer at Acme Corporation” because the consequence is “I procrastinated too much.  I was too anxious, I didn’t get coaching, and now I’m getting fired.”

There’s only ever the truth or the consequences.

Do you agree?  Please comment and tell me your opinion.

 

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