Ryan24: I heard that Roger’s on a Sales Improvement Plan. He missed his quota last 3 quarters.
SLee: Seriously? He trained me when I was hired!
Ryan24: Selling’s changed. Roger didn’t. He still meets with customers F2F!
SLee: Can’t think of the last time I did that . . .
Ryan24: Same . . . 1 more bad qtr and he’s gone.
Ryan24: Hey—I made Club! U?
SLee: Yep. Can’t wait! Could use a week away from a keyboard.

Does this fictitious text message exchange seem far fetched? Josiane Feigon’s blog Sales Productivity Sounds provides a glimpse into the future. Numero uno on her list: “replace your talk time with keyboard time.” In 1990, my sales VP said, “Salespeople can’t sell when they’re in the office!” Today, a sales manager could just as likely growl, “get back in the office and sell something!” But in a detached, asynchronous world, could companies be losing valuable selling skills? Maybe . . .

At your last planning meeting, were you confronted with any of these questions:

How can we improve our sales productivity?
What will enable us to make better hiring decisions?
Can we reduce costs without impacting customer service?
How can we rid the world of debilitating poverty and disease?

Venture capitalist Jacqueline Novogratz has tackled all of these, which she described in her book, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World. Through trial and error, she has become skilled at recognizing innovations and projects that portend desired outcomes. Her success results partly from framing problems with the right questions.

Smoking.
Obesity.
Texting while driving.

Duh! It’s right after New Year’s. We’re well aware of what increases our personal risks.

If only there was a similar consensus for sales risks. Nobody wants to be risky, but the problem is, many people have an incomplete picture of the selling risks that surround them. As my cousin Jim (not his real name) who manages a venture capital company once told me, “we don’t worry about selling risks for our funded companies. If a VP of sales doesn’t make his number, we fire him!”

For Jim, managing sales risks boils down to “don’t hire a Sales VP capable of flawed judgment.” Good luck, Jim. As for the rest of us, it helps to know what sales risks matter. What could prevent you or your organization from meeting its revenue targets? And how do you manage those risks?

We completed a survey of sales risks on February 15th, and received approximately 100 responses from sales, marketing, and business development professionals from around the world. In the next few weeks, we'll release the findings. Stay tuned!

Thanks!

ROI. Finance for fools? “Guidance" for the gullible? It’s hard to say, but it’s chic to pay homage to its numerology. Today I read an article that stated “your best ROI starts with selecting the right team for the job.” Clear as mud.

Have salespeople and marketers corrupted a useful financial equation—and made it so generic that it lacks meaning? To find out, I dusted off my lightly-used college textbook, Techniques of Financial Analysis, by Erich Helfert. Here’s his definition, followed by an example:

“ROI = Average annual operating cash flow divided by net investment. = $25,000 divided by $100,000 = 25%.”

Then he wrote, "With no reference to economic life . . . all the measure indicates is that $25,000 happens to be 25 percent of $100,000. Note that the same answer would be obtained if the economic life were 1 year, 10 years, or 100 years. In fact, the return shown would be true in an economic sense only if the investment provided $25,000 per year in perpetuity; only then could we speak of a true return of 25 percent." (If you sell a B2B solution and are willing to commit to that interpretation, please share your contact information below.)

“All sales failures result from executing the wrong strategy, or from executing the right strategy the wrong way."

I just made that up, but it’s hard to argue. And if the idea is unsettling, it’s because all of us are capable of making mistakes. Little mistakes are OK—we’ll recover. But big, fat, strategic mistakes—the kind that cost millions, or billions of dollars? No thanks. I'd rather not repeat an error.

For those whose 2010 selling strategies are still percolating, here are some mistakes to avoid:

Q: How can you tell when a salesperson is lying?
A: When he or she is using a keyboard.

The popular salesman joke, modified for social media. More contemporary, but equally unfair: not every salesperson is dishonest, and deceit isn’t unique to salespeople. Social selling is inherently collaborative, and misguided motives can exist at many points in a selling network. As customers, we often don’t know—or don’t want to. Human evolution has always depended on trust--even when it's shaky.

November 19th marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Peter Drucker, one of the most influential business thought leaders of the 20th century. His predictions about the emergence of knowledge workers, the strategic value of marketing, and the importance of information in our society were amazingly clairvoyant. Were he alive today, Peter Drucker might offer us much needed help connecting two of his ideas:

“The purpose of a business is to create a customer,” and
“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

If “right” means including a dollop of good, old-fashioned ethics, solving the connection challenge becomes thornier. How would Mr. Drucker respond to otherwise-intelligent business executives who only pay homage to the first idea (see Pfizer’s Ethics Violations Hurt All of Us)?

Which choice provides the best answer for the statement,

An online social network requires each of the following, EXCEPT:

A. a computer or mobile device
B. an Internet connection
C. people you like, know, and trust

The correct answer, of course, is C. No need for familiarity, either. “You have one friend request. Click to confirm.” Done!—without even shedding your fuzzy bedroom slippers. But is your social network a trusted community of valued connections, or simply a collection of names?

Marketing technology has met social networking, and changed it. Whether it's for the better is another question. Once-private “black books” are open to the world. I can “connect” with people I don’t know. From the comfort of my office, I can solicit thousands who have never heard of me or my company to follow me on Twitter, to join my network on LinkedIn, or to become a friend on Facebook. Anyone can connect with anyone—or anything. No additional charge!

Every day, salespeople receive gobs of well-intentioned advice, including:

“Shut up and listen!”
“Being interested is more important than being interesting.”
"Telling is not selling."
“The Right Sales Questions Will Get the Right Answers.”

But simply asking questions and listening won’t solve our most vexing sales challenges. If only it were that easy. Probing questions followed by patient listening as the magic keys to sales success. But here’s a plain fact that many people ignore: Conversations carry questions. And sales questions minus conversation equals interrogation. I know. When it comes to conversational rapport, some sales meetings go better than others.

Yet, hard-sell hype about the power of questions drives many people to website altars in search of A Better Way. Do you really believe in

Despite centuries of discovery, salespeople are still cast in ancient agrarian terms as “hunters” or “farmers.” Organizations value aggressive hunters who dote on Big Corporate Game, compete for new major accounts, and ink million-dollar-plus deals. Hunt. Kill. Carve. Eat. Drool! Farmers, on the other hand, are installed-account focused. They’re patient, nurturing, and empathetic. Vision, without as much saliva. Even still, farmers are expected to grow cash crops, not weeds. Could any sales organization survive without them? The better question is can they survive with them, because these metaphors are dying. Today, such simplification no more reflects sales than it does food production.