Humanize Your Selling Strategy

You are sitting in a conference room with your marketing manager and sales staff, engaged in reviewing the account of a key customer. To begin her analysis, the account executive opens up the file folder and reads aloud: “Staunch Republican” “Midwestern value system” “Enthusiastic booster of the Boy Scouts” “Avid stamp collector” “Procrastinates on major buying decisions…needs strong follow-through” Of course, the report also includes data on the market position, new product lines, and plans for factory construction of the customer’s company. But a sizable portion of the discussion focuses on the customer’s personal chemistry and characteristics…and how well the salesperson understands these traits and creatively markets to them. Sound like a peculiar use of management time? For many marketers such a discussion would border on the unorthodox, but companies that ignore such vital and revealing information are at a distinct disadvantage in the marketplace. Many companies are becoming ever more adept at using segmented marketing strategies. In mere seconds, video and print messages can establish instant rapport with a targeted customer. But in the meantime, businesses have lost sight of the need to humanize their selling strategies. Computerized purchase orders, rampant cost analysis, and sophisticated financial modeling have overwhelmed the salesperson-corporate customer relationship. Envelopes are not a glamorous business. In fact, they are about as drab a commodity as you can imagine—in what is nearly the textbook definition of a mature industry. That means you have to be especially good at differentiating your company if you expect to gain market share. In the envelope industry, Mackay’s products are constantly being assaulted by newer, sexier, more convenient ways to communicate, like telephones and computers and electronic mail. A company’s margins can be paper thin. Despite these drawbacks, in the past five years Mackay Envelope has seen its sales volume rise an average 18 % a year to $ 35 million, and its market share rise to 2 % nationally (pretty good in this fragmented industry; there are 235 envelope companies in the country). Mackay has also become one of the most profitable companies in the industry. We credit our success to one factor more than any other: salesmanship—inspired, energized, superior salesmanship. For years it was fashionable for U.S. executives with any decent pedigree to sneer at sales, the land of Willy Loman. But today we are beginning to see a mighty redirection of the resources of the American corporation. Head counts in administration, production, and R&D are dwindling, but sales forces are on the rise. When IBM announced it would trim its staff by 12,000 by the end of 1987, it simultaneously reassigned 3,000 people to its sales force. The transformation of Campbell Soup from a gray lady to a leading business innovator is largely attributed to a new marketing strategy that has focused on targeting and selling to sharply defined customer niches. Former Porsche CEO Peter Schutz, in an interview in this publication two years ago, stressed how much time he spent in the Porsche delivery room talking with customers and learning about their motivations and idiosyncracies.1 At Mackay Envelope we use every means we can think of to exalt selling and salespeople. The parking place just outside the door of the main office is not reserved for the CEO. Above it is this sign: Reserved for [we fill in the name] Salesperson of the Month. This is our way of declaring to our 350 employees, our visitors, and the world at large that sales are at the very heart of our business. During speaking engagements at management seminars from Athens to New Delhi, I have talked with operators of myriad other businesses, from truffles and textiles to trucks and high technology. The problems and challenges I have heard described are extraordinarily similar, and most of them turn on a failure to manage selling fundamentals. Use of a few simple tactics and disciplines can alleviate many problems. Know Your Customer…in Spades In a one-hour lunch you can learn everything from a golf handicap to views on the federal deficit, from size of home to favorite vacation spot. “So what?” I’ve heard people say. “It’s hard enough to remember my sales and inventory turnover from last month. Why should I clutter my brain and my files with this new version of Trivial Pursuit?” Because it establishes you as an effective listener, that’s why. Effective listeners remember order dates and quality specifications. They are easier to talk with when there’s a problem with a shipment. In short, effective listeners sell more customers…and keep them longer. For 27 years at Mackay, we have used a device to get people to record and review this kind of data. It’s a questionnaire form. People inside our company have taken to calling it the “Mackay 66” (because it has 66 questions). We complete at least one on every customer. It lists all the vital statistics we gather, such as our contact’s educational background, career history, family, special interests, and life-style. It’s continually updated and it’s studied to death in our company. Our overriding goal is to know more about our customers than they know about themselves. I’ve had people ask me, “Don’t you feel like the FBI or the KGB, running dossiers on your customers?” I don’t. The questionnaire is merely a system for organizing what the best executives and salespeople have done for a long time: demonstrate exceptional understanding of their customers as people. The point here is that people don’t truly care how much you know until they know how much you care. One purpose of the Mackay 66 is to empower the perceptive and empathetic salesperson with information that, channeled properly, produces a response that says “I care.” For example, question number 48 asks about the customer’s vacation habits. These say a lot about people. Is he the outdoors type who loves to white-water raft on the Colorado or camp out at Yosemite? Does she like to tour Europe and Japan by bus? Is she a tennis enthusiast who plans her vacations around major professional tournaments? How would that lover of the outdoors react to a book of photographs of Yosemite by Ansel Adams? What would the sighteeing type say on receiving an array of hard-to-get brochures of unusual and exotic tours? Imagine the reaction of that tennis buff as she reads previews of Wimbledon and the U.S. Open we sent her a few weeks before those events. Each of these instances happened. The donor wasn’t a husband, wife, friend, or neighbor but a Mackay account executive. Were these gestures perceived as insincere? They could have been, but they weren’t. They represented actions taken after seller and buyer had achieved a certain level of communication and rapport. The best salespeople are “other conscious.” They’re sensitive people who are genuinely interested in others. They don’t do things to people; they do things for people, after they’ve learned something about those people. Who were the sources of information regarding the vacation habits? They could have been secretaries, receptionists, or other suppliers. They often are. In these situations, however, they were the prospective customers themselves. The information about vacations was cross-referenced to question number 51, “conversational interests.” In each instance, this information was culled from the customer over breakfast or lunch (naturally, after the name of the customer’s favorite restaurant was elicited from the secretary). When the little gift came, it arrived on the prospective customer’s birthday (the date is asked in question number 5), long after that introductory lunch or breakfast. Was the customer aware that the giver had an ulterior motive? Yes, in part. But what also came across was the salesperson’s thoughtfulness and sincere desire to establish a solid, long-term relationship. The personal touch is so rare a commodity today, it becomes a standout. Does it always translate into new business? Not always, but often; and not always immediately, but eventually. I learned the impact of using one’s intelligence on customers when, as a young constituent, I walked into Senator Hubert Humphrey’s Washington office for the first time and he amazed me by showing he knew about my goals and avocations. Although we had only a brief conversation, his genuine likability and superior information turned me into a friend, a supporter, and a loyal contributor. The intent is not to get something on somebody. The goal is to pay attention to the person across the table. Salespeople sell to people, not computer terminals. I have found that salespeople who can’t understand and empathize with the goals of the people they sell to are incapable of understanding and empathizing with the goals of the broader organization they later have to serve in filling the order. At any big social function you see effective top executives creating mental profiles on the people they meet. Leaders learn to pay attention to what’s important in other people’s lives. That means keeping your antennae up and noticing the details. It’s not manipulation but disarmament. All of us are naturally hostile to persuasion and salesmanship. Well, everyone whose livelihood relies on making a sale had better learn to neutralize that hostility, so he or she can get on with the business of honestly selling the product. Our format simplifies the method and puts it into the hands of the little guy. With practice and a modicum of discipline, anyone can master the skill of harvesting customer awareness. Once each year, our marketing people and our top operating people sit down and review the material on our key customers, with special emphasis on the last page—the page that deals with the customer’s view of the goals and issues facing that company’s management, as stated to our salespeople. This analysis of common customer issues is the launching pad for our planning. When a salesperson quits or retires, it is very difficult to sustain valuable personal relationships in business-to-business selling. But these continually updated files have allowed us to put a new client contact into position far faster than most businesses can. The greatest danger when you lose a veteran salesperson is, of course, that the client will be spirited away too. The documentation that the salesperson has built up (often over years) gives us a big edge in establishing a lasting relationship between the new Mackay account representative and the customer. Ask the salespeople in any company, “Are you dealing with the same purchasing agent at Jones & Smith today as you were five years ago?” The answer is quite probably no. In international businesses especially, purchasing people are transferred often. Therefore, make a point of getting to know the whole department—especially the up-and-comers—and learn the company’s practices on moving people. In short, dig your well before you’re thirsty. As a manager, I judge the intensity and the discipline of our 20-plus salespeople by looking at how up-to-date their customer profiles are. Scanning the profile is stage one of any account review. Sometimes a superficially completed profile or one filled with awkward hedges is a godsend of an early warning. It can signal a salesperson mismatch with an account. And that means a switch in account assignments before the customer decides to take a hike. As important as the questionnaire is, it’s vital not to confuse the form with the mind-set and discipline it represents. The form is just a tool to readjust people’s vision. You and I have both sat across the table from too many salespeople whose eyes became glazed over with indifference, whose sighs of boredom betrayed their thought, which was: “Just sign the order, you’re wasting my time”—as if you, the customer, were obligated to help boost the caller’s profits. The method built around the questionnaire arms the seller with superior information and intelligence and inspires a positive attitude toward making the sale. A salesperson never has to make a cold call. Ever. Granted you aren’t likely to learn much about family background and career history until you actually have your first meeting, but there is no reason you can’t become an instant expert on a prospect company in advance. If it’s a public company, your broker can round up an annual report and may be able to offer valuable insights too. I own at least one share of stock in every publicly traded company that is a customer. The public library is a powerful information arsenal, with countless business periodicals and readers’ guides for tracking articles down. D&B reports are readily available and highly informative, but I think their existence must be “one of the best kept secrets” in U.S. business. The prospect’s own customers, its other suppliers, and even former employees all can be fertile sources. Ask your friendly banker. “Isn’t that breaching a confidence?” you ask. Not if your banker doesn’t happen to be your customer’s banker too. Then there’s the chamber of commerce buyer’s guide. (Every chamber has one.) You can even subscribe to a clipping service to monitor the local and trade press. The list of easily available background sources is nearly endless. This research requires the same skills that went into writing a good term paper. But so few people think of applying these disciplines in a sales situation. So many people close the door on their education and training and don’t even think of using in real life what they spent dozens of years learning. The best business recruits recognize that their real education doesn’t begin until they enter the workplace—because then education becomes application. I constantly remind my people that knowledge doesn’t become power until it’s used. That’s why we use the “Mackay 66.” That’s why we write it all down. In 33 years of selling, I have never called on a buyer I haven’t sold. In that I’m not exceptional. The diligence and perseverance of our company’s selling strategy are, however, unusual. Hardly anyone ever makes a sale on the first call. That’s just as true for us as anyone else. Not every lead qualifies as a legitimate prospect. But when we decide that we want a company’s envelope business, we’ve ultimately made the sale in virtually every case. Years ago, as the business was building, I (as CEO) made the first call on most major prospects, and that call was invariably brief. I asked for 300 seconds of my counterpart’s time, and usually the meeting lasted no more than 180 seconds. “We very much want to be your supplier,” I’d say. “It means a lot to us. Here’s what we can do…” My comments were confined to differentiators like price, quality, service, or delivery time—whatever distinguished us from the competing supplier. Courtship & Marriage Many CEOs were terrific salespeople at early stages of their careers. But too often, after being installed in carpeted corner offices at headquarters, they have allowed a distance to grow between themselves and the sales arena. Then the CEO’s only selling involvement takes place behind closed doors, pitching the board on a strategic plan or the executive committee on a management succession scenario. That’s a big mistake. Salespeople need to see the top people out there, mixing it up, setting the example. That’s a prime reason why some of America’s most visible chief executives, the Frank Perdues and Victor Kiams and Lee Iacoccas, are so effective when they get out in public to pitch their products on national television. They’re not just selling products. They’re also motivating their people to sell the products. Selling chickens may not be the most pleasant job in the world, but if the boss thinks it’s important enough to do himself, then maybe it’s important for the chicken salesperson too. Most initial contacts are lengthy presentations with glowing claims concocted for audiences that are often too large and too highly placed. They abuse the customer’s time. You don’t need a Wagnerian epic to communicate a persuasive message. After all, the Gettysburg Address has only 270 words and the Lord’s Prayer, a mere 54. The follow-up happens on the technical level. What the CEO as salesperson should be selling is not product. It is a strategic idea…and it is trust. The relationship is just like a marriage: small shows of sensitivity and awareness keep the spice in it. We have one customer whose version of heaven is salmon fishing in Scotland. You can bet that at least once a year an article on salmon angling from a fine British sporting magazine shows up on his desk, together with a handwritten note. A prospective customer, whom we have pursued for a year and a half, makes a pilgrimage to New York twice a year to feast on operas and concerts. Each September this client receives, in a Mackay envelope, the Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center season programs. The personal touch is noticeably changing his attitude toward us. We have a customer who is a University of Michigan alumnus and a passionate Wolverine football fan. In 1986, Michigan won the Big Ten football title. My secretary found out where Rose Bowl programs were being printed, ordered a copy, and had it sent to him. He was unable to attend the game on New Year’s Day, but I’m sure he sat in front of his living room TV with that program clutched in his hands. It takes time. Strategic, humanized selling always does. It is also based on very self-evident precepts…astonishingly simple. As the Prussian strategist Karl von Clausewitz wrote in On War: “Everything in strategy is very simple, but that does not mean everything is very easy.” Care & Feeding of Salespeople The stereotype of the huckster who cajoles his mark into resigned submission—that portrait is one for the business history books. Today’s seller must understand modern communication styles and concepts. That begins with knowing when to close one’s mouth and open one’s ears, but it entails a whole lot more. Before we hire a salesperson, I always socialize with the candidate and the spouse. Too many important deals are secured in a social setting, like the ballpark or the ballet, for ease in handling contacts to be ignored. It’s also important to see a candidate in his or her home setting. Is what you find at all like what you were told it would be? That is, is this person a straight shooter or prone to exaggeration? You don’t want to learn later that a decade-long customer has been victimized by overpromises. I make a point of having a long telephone conversation with the candidate and sprinkling it with awkward pauses just to see how he or she handles them. Given the amount of business transacted by phone these days, you had better find out if you’re signing up Ted Koppel or Archie Bunker. We send our salespeople through Dale Carnegie or Toastmasters training because these courses emphasize how important listening is to effective speaking. Any outstanding public speaker will tell you that a speech is nothing more or less than the sale of an idea. The best speakers anchor their skills by monitoring audience feedback, from body language to the cough count. Our constant exposure to electronic media has changed the way we expect to be persuaded. Persuaders must get to the point faster, speak in a vivid and engaging way, and blend their pitches so cleverly with customized information that it never sounds like mere patter. An entire industry, insurance, has been built on the Law of Large Numbers. There are 264 million living Americans. The insurance people can predict within one-fourth of 1 % how many of us will die within the next 12 months. They can tell us where, and how, in what age bracket, and of what sex, race, and profession. The only thing they can’t predict is who. The sales force must apply this same principle to its prospect lists. If the lists are long enough, there will be salespeople for Number One suppliers who retire or die, or lose their territories for a hundred other reasons. What you can’t predict is which of your competitors will succumb to the Law of Large Numbers. But fortunately, as in the insurance business, which one doesn’t matter. All that matters is that your sales-people have the perseverance and patience to position your company as Number Two to enough prospects. If they’re standing second in line in enough lines, sooner or later they will move up to Number One. In our company, we recognize that the kind of dogged persistence and patience it takes to convert a Number Two position to a Number One position is very tough for the typical salesperson to master. By nature, salespeople tend to be more like racehorses than plowhorses. The instant gratification syndrome that gets a salesperson to the finish line first is an ingrained part of the salesperson’s makeup. That’s why we insist on the customer profiles, the follow-ups, the disciplined account review, and, most of all, the emphasis on human sensitivity. Doubtless, it is not the fanciest marketing management system, but it is uncommonly effective for managing salespeople. Let me illustrate by passing on a conversation I had with a young salesperson named Phil (I’ll call him). It was like a lot of talks I’ve had with my salespeople over the years. Phil came into my office looking agitated. Phil. Mr. Mackay, I need your help. I’ve been wrestling for over a year now to get the account at International Transom, and it’s just no use. I think I’d better give up. Mackay (motions him toward a chair). They buy from Enveloping Envelope, don’t they? Phil (sits). Yes, for seven years, and they don’t have the slightest interest in changing suppliers. I think it’s time for me to write off this particular prospect and spend my time on business with greater promise. Mackay. International Transom is a very attractive account, Phil. I wonder if you’re not chasing the wrong goal. Accept for now that they’re happy with EE. Your objective isn’t to become their supplier overnight; it’s to become the undisputed holder of second place. (Phil looks skeptical, so Mackay proceeds to explain the Law of Large Numbers.) Phil (gloomily). Based on what I’ve seen in calling on Bystrom, the purchasing agent at International Transom, it’s going to be a long wait. Mackay. I see you’ve got the customer profile there. Let me take a look. (Phil hands him the folder. Mackay reads it.) Aha. Just as I thought. This questionnaire reads like a dry and pretty spotty profile on someone you find intimidating, if not a little hostile. There’s no vitality, no real grasp of the customer or his motivation. It’s lifeless. Phil (agitated again). But this guy is a clam, not at all outgoing. Mackay (sternly). Did you read his desk? Were there any mementos there that told you something about him? How about plaques on the wall? What’s his alma mater? If he’s businesslike with you, what are his aspirations? How does he identify with company goals? You don’t have in here a recent article or current analyst’s report on this company. (Arises from his desk and gesticulates as he paces to and fro.) How well have you shown him that you know and admire his company? That you know how it fits in its industry? Do you know the strengths and weaknesses of Enveloping Envelope in terms of International Transom? Have you emphasized to Bystrom those strengths that Mackay has almost exclusively, like centralized imprinting? Phil. Well, I… Mackay. Have you, in short, made Bystrom feel absolutely terrible about not buying from you right now? Terrible because you are so knowledgeable, aware, interested in him as a person, and representing a company that is clearly differentiated from EE in important and positive ways? Phil (looking more excited now than upset). I see what you mean, Mr. Mackay. You’re asking me to aspire to the Number Two position, if we can’t be first. Instead of telling me to win, you’re telling me to prepare to win. Mackay (patting Phil on the back as they move toward the office door). Exactly, Phil. (He beams at Phil.) You’ve got the right idea. It wasn’t long before Phil’s folder on his prospect sharpened and fattened considerably. In this he had a lot of help, by the way, from others at Mackay Envelope who knew International Transom, Bystrom, and Enveloping Envelope. We have a reward system that recognizes outstanding individual performers and reinforces collaborative behavior. We don’t focus on just the top salesperson. Each month we also reward the best networking that leads to a sale. We recognize a salesperson whose persistence has paid off with substantial new business. We spotlight a salesperson whose customer or competitive insight produced a significant change in the way we do business. Your Selling Strategy My definition of a great salesperson is not someone who can get the order. Anyone can get the order if he or she is willing to make enough promises about price or delivery time or service. A great salesperson is someone who can get the order—and the reorder—from a prospect who is already doing business with someone else. No salespeople can aspire to that kind of selling unless they are prepared to think strategically and humanistically about their customers. The beauty of it is, though, that with patience and some simple tools, you don’t have to be a strategic genius or a management psychologist to excel. If, however, you are a CEO or a manager who determines the climate and attitudes in your company, then I counsel you strongly to ensure that selling and salespeople in your organization get proper leadership and the recognition they deserve. No matter how many strides you make in product quality or asset management or new design features, there is no tool more likely to harm or help your market share than your selling strategy. This is a lesson companies can learn on their own initiative…or, I have no doubt, they will learn at the hands of their competitors. 1. David E. Gumpert, “Porsche on Nichemanship,” HBR March–April 1986, p. 98.

Humanize Your Selling Strategy

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