Seven years ago I was flown to Lake Como, Italy, by the CEO of a global corporation based in Sweden. I was to facilitate a full-day workshop with ten country managers and division presidents. The subject was strategies for improving sales effectiveness within their business units. Not exactly sales training, but close enough…

I arrived at the resort on Lake Como after three flights—Martha’s Vineyard to Boston, Boston to Geneva (overnight), then Geneva to Milan—exhausted and needing sleep very, very badly. My hosts saw me arrive in the late morning and convinced me to spend a few hours getting acquainted with the team and the venue before a brief workshop I was to run that afternoon. By the time dinner rolled around it was too late for a nap, so I stayed with the group until 10:00, then went back to my room. I would catch a solid 8 hours and be in fine shape for the challenging day ahead.

At nine the next morning, the U.S. country manager banged on my door, screaming, “Dave! Dave! DAVE!” We were supposed to start at 8:30. I had slept through the two alarms I set. And the wake-up call from the front desk never happened.

I jumped into the shower, lacerated my face in three places in my attempt to shave. I was out of the door in 15 minutes. Fortunately I had pressed my shirt and slacks before I went to bed. I ran as fast as I could to the conference room, dragging my open laptop with the power cords trailing…

When I arrived at the conference room, sweaty, out of breath, with patches of tissue staunching the flow of blood from the cuts my face, one of the country managers was in front, moderating a discussion. The CEO cornered me and said, “Stein. You are off to a very, very bad start. I don’t know what you are going to do to recover. I am not happy at all. You have until lunch to get our interest.” With that, he sat down, crossed his arms, and stared at the front of the room. Mamma Mia!

Sharing with my audience the fact that that this had never happened to me before didn’t do anything but anger them further. What I considered a sincere apology didn’t help either.

By the time we took a break for lunch, I got two raised eyebrows from the CEO, which I interpreted as, “Okay, you have my interest.” Evidently I did, because he said we would resume our session after lunch. I decided to eat at a table by myself in order not to make anyone I sat down with uncomfortable. There was only one American in the group, and he stayed away from me. Smart guy.

By the end of the day everyone was engaged, including the CEO. They were very appreciative of the content, how I managed the session, and my ability to recover from such a disastrous start. I was beyond happy when they invited me to a special dinner for the team. By the end of the evening we were all joking about the incident. (I wrote this story up in an article a year or so after the event. Coincidentally the CEO happened to read it. I got a very nice note from him.)

I got back to my room at 11:00. I had to get up at 4:30 am for the limo to the airport for the flight home.

You guessed it. I stayed up all night.

There were other stories and some great comments on this discussion, including those by Tibor Shanto, Leanne Hoagland-Smith, Josiane Feigon, and Craig Rosenberg.  Lots of fun.

Photo source: ItalianVisits.com

Please take a few minutes and complete the 2011 Sales Person Onboarding/New Hire Sales Training Survey, register for our upcoming Sales Expert Thought-Leader Panel Series, and…

Happy holidays and a healthy and happy New Year to all of you and all of yours.

Three flights over and three back from Martha’s Vineyard were a haul, although Turkish Airlines’s reputation as the best carrier in Europe is well-deserved, especially in luxurious business class. What service. What food. What reclining seats!

My wonderful hosts, the ever-thinking Dr. Ayhan Artar and a future CLO in-the-making, Ílhan Çağlar, from the Türk Telekom Akademi, are real thought-leaders; smart, insightful, knowledgeable, open to new ideas, and as gracious as you could imagine. I felt like an Agha. Many thanks to you both.

Turkey is on a roll.* Manufacturing is up, exports are up, tourism is up, employment is up, the economy is growing, and debt is down.  That’s in a world (and more relevantly for them, Europe) of economic recession, currency problems, and increasing unemployment. This isn’t by accident.  If you’re interested, as I was, read up on what they’re doing.  Pretty smart people.

With that said, things are far from perfect there. I presented to sales training, marketing, customer relations, and product managers and executives from 111 companies, and even with all the good news on the economic front, they are faced with many of the same issues we are in North America and the rest of Europe: tougher buyers on the B2B and B2C side, commoditization, diminishing customer loyalty leading to more attrition, getting the right people in the right selling jobs, and the need for more effectiveness and efficiency among selling organizations.

As you can see if you click on the photo, my keynote covered ESR’s strategic approach to learning. My hosts told me there was a lot of discussion about that content during the rest of the one-day summit. Regretfully, it’s hard to measure the business value of a single keynote speech, but to have so many people excited and actively deliberating what I spoke about is encouraging.

I ran a 90-minute workshop in the afternoon for directors from customer relationship management, sales, and marketing relating to how better understand the real needs of their customers and to meet those needs.  That’s a subject about which I am very passionate.

I studied up on doing business in Turkey before I left.  That’s part of my process for doing business internationally.  I’ve made some serious blunders over the years and am not interested in repeating them or falling into new traps.  All it takes is an hour or so on some credible websites.

I’m off to Ireland the week after next for another keynote.  Then back to Europe in late November for yet another.  Want to carry my bags?

* For my English speaking friends,”turkey is on a roll” is a (bad) pun intended.  For my Turkish friends, please don’t take offense. The alternative interpretation, “Turkey is on a roll,” means as a country, you are doing very well, and it is something you deserve to be proud of. You are on a roll.  We wish we all were, as well.

Photo source: Ílhan Çağlar

The story

My wife and I are back home in Massachusetts after spending five weeks in Florida.  Regretfully this wasn’t a vacation, but rather a temporary (and evidently yearly) relocation of ES Research Group’s headquarters to a considerably warmer place.

This year we decided to fly our plane down. There were two reasons:  First, it’s been a while since I flew this distance.  I certainly enjoy the short hops to visit family and friends here in the Northeast, but to fly again from the top to the bottom of the U.S., along the coast, is a special treat. The second reason was more practical. I head off to Ireland on business next week and didn’t want to spend too much time before I leave in a car driving nearly 1,500 miles.  Doing 750, or even 500 mile days isn’t an option due to all that’s going on at ESR and my need to take care of business during business hours. So, it would have been a four-day drive.

The flight down was uneventful.  We landed at Fernandina Beach airport on Amelia Island on the second day and spent six days at a friend’s ocean-front condo before heading down to Naples, a two-hour flight.

What I wasn’t prepared for was the weather and the significant preparation and planning the flight home would require.

Moonwalking with Einstein

While I was in Florida, I read a fascinating book, Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (Joshua Foer), about how memory experts remember things. It’s always been a subject of interest for me.

What prompted me to again think deeply about mastery (memory, flying and selling) begins on page 171.  The author discusses how experts tend to “engage in a very directed, highly focused routine…deliberate practice.”  Top achievers develop strategies for staying out of (pardon…) autopilot mode. “They force themselves to stay in the ‘cognitive [learning] phase.’”

I love this one:  “The best ice skaters spend more of their practice time trying jumps that they land less often, while lesser skaters work more on jumps they’ve already mastered. Deliberate practice, by its nature, must be hard.”

And, this one as well. “…To improve, we must watch ourselves fail, and learn from our mistakes.”  What the author was describing was how to become a memory master, but the parallel to increasing, rather than merely maintaining, my flying skills resonated with me through every word of those several pages—in fact, the entire book.  I highly recommend it. (You too can learn how to remember Pi to the 10,000th decimal place.)

Mastery

In previous posts I’ve discussed mastery and I’ve discussed how the FAA requires pilots to comply with certain reviews and standards, depending on their rating.  As a private pilot, I must complete a flight review every two years with an instructor, which includes discussion and questioning on the ground and a series of maneuvers in the air.  This is at least a two-hour session.  In addition, as a single-engine instrument-rated pilot, I must have executed six instrument approaches, entered and flew a holding patterns, and intercepted a virtual course in the sky (an airway or signal from a navigation broadcasting station on the ground, for example) during the previous six months. (Wouldn’t the profession of selling be different if there were any standards at all.)

Part of my ongoing personal learning and reinforcement plan includes at least two hours in an FAA-approved flight simulator every spring.  This is not required by the FAA to maintain my rating, but I find that the time in the simulator returns significant value for me.  The fine instructors with whom I consult provide me with challenges that just wouldn’t work for a practice session in an airplane: failing the engine, disabling critical instruments at critical moments, simulating difficult weather conditions, such as an un-forecasted 30-knot wind across the runway on short final approach.

So I spent that time on a simulator with an instructor prior to the trip.  Although I’ve logged nearly 1,700 hours, for about half the session I felt like a beginner. I left the simulator exhausted, having been stretched, tricked, manipulated, and pushed past my limits.  But I sure nailed those last few instrument approaches.

The flight home

Among all the other skills pilots must master, understanding the weather is one.  We were dealing with unstable weather in Florida and an impending cold front across the mid-Atlantic states. Wet weather is no problem for a single-engine Cessna when its warm, but at 6,000 feet, where it’s more than twenty degrees colder than on the ground, moisture freezes on surfaces that don’t have anti-icing protection as larger planes do.  I spent at least three hours during each of three days in advance of the trip home reading weather maps and forecasts, and consulting with Lockheed Martin’s Flight Service for pilots trying to figure out the best game plan. Planning this trip reminded me of the sales opportunities I coached sales teams on how to win over the years. Assess, determine an objective, devise a strategy and layer in the tactics.

What was supposed to be a two-day trip, Naples, FL to Wilmington, NC, then on to Martha’s Vineyard the next day, would have to be done in one day to beat the weather—but only if it was safe. My planning included backup contingencies. Land and rent a car anywhere along the route, drive home (with our two dogs that wouldn’t do well at all in the cargo hold of a commercial airliner), go to Ireland, then fly back to wherever I had parked the plane once I returned home to the States. I wasn’t into taking chances, although some might say flying a plane from Florida to Massachusetts is a risky thing to begin with.

We left Naples at 9:00 am on the 29th. We flew three legs averaging three hours each, IFR (instrument flight rules) all the way.  First, Naples to Savannah for refueling and a nature break for people and dogs, checking conditions ahead, and filing the next flight plan. Savannah to Norfolk, VA. Same routine. At Norfolk I checked weather one last time to see whether we might stay in the area overnight, but wet weather was coming in along with 43 degree temperature on the ground first thing the next morning.  If that happened we’d be stuck there for a few days or have to resort to Plan B. We decided to fly the final leg home. (The three screen shots are actual FAA radar tracks of the flights, available on FlightAware.com. Click the graphics for full size.)

After we landed, I realized I had accomplished the most competent and precise flying I had ever done. Safe, focused, and, as pilots say, ahead of the plane, predicting what would happen and having options and alternatives if they didn’t. Why? The instruction, practice on the simulator, all the time analyzing the weather, making sure the plane was in perfect working order (I had to replace a broken radio in Florida), the contingency planning, and just flying the plane with a greater degree of precision than what I had accomplished previously.

Here’s the question for you.

Have you invested in what it takes for your sales people to achieve mastery in selling?  The infrastructure, the tools, the methods and processes, the learning, the reinforcement, the coaching, the metrics, and the rewards?  Or are they just winging it?

Although I have a workshop to facilitate tomorrow morning, I’ve been in observation for the past two days.  Yesterday there were three presentations:  the president and co-chairman of the parent company, the EVP who oversees this and other divisions, and the SVP who runs the division.  In addition, Brent Adamson, a senior director from Sales Executive Council presented as well.  Brent ran another session all morning today.

Here are some noteworthy points for you to consider:

• All sales, client relationship advisors (account execs), and underwriters(!) are participating in the three-day event.  These teams work together in winning and retaining clients and senior management understands how important it is for them to experience the learning, team building, and fun collectively.
• All senior executives sat through every minute of each session.  How novel an idea! I had dinner last night with both the president and the EVP.  I commented how unusual this was.  The EVP said to me, “I attend not only to show support, but to learn and get motivated myself.”  I don’t remember ever hearing anything like that before from a senior executive at a sales conference.
• There wasn’t a Blackberry or PC to be heard or seen during any of the sessions.  This is part of the company’s culture.  I saw no directive, warning, or reminder about this.  Everyone just knows that when they are in a session, they focus 100% on being present.
• Also part of the company’s culture is those same senior executives embedding themselves among the troops for all activities—a great scavenger hunt, meals, karaoke, golf, and especially the workshops.  No special treatment, no “emergencies” that require their presence elsewhere, and no B.S. about anything being more important than supporting the selling effort.

It’s no wonder this company is at the top of the class in sales productivity, client satisfaction, and a host of insurance industry-specific metrics.  A lesson for us all.

Photo source: FamineCity.com

The program is in its fourth year. I was also fortunate to have contributed to its predecessor, SalesSTAR, which went from 2003 through 2007. That was for technology CEOs and their VPs of sales.

Here is what I love about this program. Almost without exception, the participants, including the Managing Directors and CEOs, are hungry to learn, open to new ideas, intelligent, motivated, and willing to take a serious look at themselves. They want the truth.

How apropos was this sign I spotted on the side of a store in Letterfrack in the Connemara, in the western part of Ireland. I saw the sign and I thought about all the sales leaders and salespeople I’ve interviewed over the years who spend too much time looking outside themselves—at excuses, other peoples’ or departments’ shortcomings, product and service issues, the economy, and anything else they could blame their lack of performance on. They dream about a better day, a silver bullet, a quick fix, a better product, fewer competitors, an easier time.

Awakening is the word that best describes what to many of the participants in these two-day workshops experience. I don’t want to get philosophical, spiritual, or metaphysical here. What I’m talking about is many of the participants of the program getting deeper in their understanding that they are the ones who determine their own destiny with respect to building an international selling capability within their companies, and that any limitations are theirs and theirs alone.

The Irish economy is of course the elephant in the room in every session. What I tell the participants is this: “There are deals going down. There is money being spent. Yes, the pie has shrunk. Now it’s your job for your company to win a bigger piece of a smaller pie.”

Because professional selling as we know it (in the U.S. and as exported to other parts of the world by American companies) is less than a decade old in Ireland, we talk about who these sales and business leaders need to be and how they need to change their way of thinking for their companies to compete more effectively.

What I really love is that they get it. And the sales performance improvement results of the program’s participants year after year bears that out.

The facts:

• Two pilots flew an airliner with 144 passengers 150 miles past their planned destination.
• The pilots were out of radio contact for 91 minutes (revised from the 78 minutes originally reported).
• ATC (Air Traffic Control) tried a number of different ways to contact the pilots.
• The pilots said they were both distracted looking at a new crew scheduling package on their PCs when they were responsible for flying the plane.
• The pilots have 31,000 combined hours of flight time.
• The pilots have already lost their licenses.  Their careers are ruined.
• No one was injured nor was any damage done to any property.

I don’t have any answers.  I’m merely a private pilot, proudly coming up on 2,000 hours, not 20,000.

Not a single pilot I’ve spoken with could ever imagine a situation where they were out of contact with ATC for that long.  So that prompts me to pose these questions:

1. Since the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) has only a 30-minute loop, what happened before the plane reestablished radio communications has probably been overwritten.  However, will the flight data recorder show any pilot inputs to any control systems during the 91 minutes in question?  If the answer is no, one should not conclude the pilots were asleep.  If the answer is yes, it probably means they were not.
2. Is it possible that the pilots used the 30-minute CVR loop deliberately to cover what happened if their story about the scheduling software isn’t true?  For example, realize what was recorded by CVR would be damaging, so extend the trip long enough so that the U-turn and flight back to the destination would be long enough to overwrite what had been recorded earlier?
3. Were the pilots in fact sleeping, but agreed between them that saying they were using their PCs during flight would be considerably more acceptable to the public, the FAA, and perhaps Northwest (Delta) Airlines?  I’m not accusing them of lying.  Just posing the question, since there has already been an acknowledgment of a  severe lack of judgment on the part of the pilots.
4. Does the new crew scheduling system require connection to the Internet?  If so, how did the pilots connect?

One other point:  A lot of people (including pilots) complain about the FAA.  I think they generally do a remarkable job.  Since a critical communication process broke down, I trust they will get to the bottom of this and that actions will be taken to prevent this from happening again.

Photo source: NWA.com

We’ve seen different approaches to this critical reinforcement process at ESR. I really like Ricoh’s for several reasons.  First is that they actually do it.  Second is that they have a process.  Third, it’s a good one.

Ricoh has very specific and measurable objectives for field rides:

• Decrease days to first sale;
• Reinforcement of skills learned in formal training;
• Evaluation of the degree to which skills are applied.

Eligible for field rides are new hires, those who are performance-challenged, those without a current manager, and even veteran sales people needing a tune-up.

Teresa Hiatt is the Director of Sales Education at Ricoh.  Teresa’s staff includes Laurie and her sales development manager colleagues in other regions.  The ride-alongs performed by this team are in addition to those (hopefully) done by sales management.

In order to have an effective ride-along program, knowledge of the sales cycle as well as training and development practices are critical.  Laurie described other important competencies including listening (not leading), communication, and patience.

The sales development manager team members expect briefing information to be prepared in advance for each of the two to three sales calls for that ride-along day. There is also a checklist to increase the odds of the calls going as planned, including leave-behind collateral, business cards(!), pen/paper for notes, and a GPS or printed maps.  You’d think no salesperson would miss any of those, but that’s evidently not the case.

Laurie shared with us two forms which Ricoh uses for reporting on and measuring the impact of these ride-alongs.

When we assess ride-alongs for our clients we often find these issues:

• Manager takes over the sales call, leaving the rep embarrassed and demoralized;
• Salesrep is judged, rather than coached;
• Salesrep isn’t coached to a call process, since there often isn’t one.  They are told to do what the manager believes is the right approach for the situation based upon their experience;
• There is no ride-along process, so each sales manager handles each call with each rep differently;
• Sales managers don’t have the time for ride-alongs, since they have significant personal (in addition to team) quota responsibility.

Let me know of any successes you’ve had with ride-alongs, and any aspects of this important process that I didn’t include in this post.

Photo credit: © Imagery Majestic – Fotolia.com

I continue to be amazed by Enterprise Ireland—Ireland’s Department of Commerce.  The support they provide start-ups and high-potential Irish companies is something we can all learn a lot from.  EI provides funding, programs, advisors, resources, introductions to key decision makers, market research, competitive intelligence, advice on market entry strategies, partnering and acquisition strategies, and what appears to be endless support.  They’ve got offices in 31 countries with support in an additional 39.

During the past two weeks I’ve heard story after story from CEOs about how they’ve been helped by Enterprise Ireland.  In fact, they’re subsidizing the program for which I am a facilitator.

Although Ireland is suffering through the same recession as we are in the U.S., Enterprise Ireland continues to invest.  That investment in many hundreds of companies run by smart, hardworking, and determined CEOs will continue to leave Ireland in the best possible now and coming out of the recession.

There is no question that all this costs a lot of money.  We don’t have the stomach for this degree of federal spending in the U.S.  Our needs aren’t the same.  Ireland depends on exporting its goods and services.  Evidently this country of only 4 million considers the significant ongoing investment in Enterprise Ireland, coming out of the pockets of the Irish people, worthwhile.

Photo credit:  This blogger, trying on his Swine Flu mask anticipating the Dublin to Boston flight home on Saturday.

The best sales methodology, training, tools, technology, coaching, and reinforcement doesn’t have much impact if the people in the sales jobs don’t have the foundation for selling effectively.  It drains the enthusiasm and motivation of the team, wastes money, and forces sales management to spend time selling for the misfits rather than supporting and leading the rest of the team.

I’m in Ireland for two weeks facilitating a series of workshops with Irish CEOs and sales executives.  Hiring is a big issue here.  The record among Irish companies in this area hasn’t been good.

Here’s a refresher.  ESR recommends:

• Build or buy (then customize) a profile-based, structured hiring process;
• Use psychometric and predictive tests as well as income verification and background checks;
• Train hiring teams on the skills required for effective employment of the process, including interviewing and reference checking;
• Don’t by-pass the process under any circumstances;
• Understand that a key to successful hiring is objectivity.  Hiring salespeople on gut feel, the old-fashioned way, doesn’t work.

Consider adding a subjective measure or two where appropriate:

• Walk the sales candidate to their car and do a quick appraisal.  Clean inside and outside, or junk strewn about?  Untreated rust spots?  What about those bumper stickers?  How would your customers react?
• Invite the candidate and their significant other to a social evening along with you and yours.  Dinner in a nice restaurant gets the job done, especially if part of their job is entertaining prospects and customers.  Observe how they and their partner communicate for a hint of how they build and maintain relationships.

The definition of A, B and C players differs from sales vp to sales vp.  My take is you can’t make C players into B’s, because, by my definition, C’s don’t have the requisite traits.  And you can’t train someone to improve what’s in their DNA.

If you follow that logic, you’ll want to never hire a C player again.

Photo credit: © Dmitri MIkitenko – Fotolia.com

I cover three of the most critical processes for building an effective sales capability: qualification, hiring and planning.  Sales process itself is covered in another module.

Timeline to disaster

One of the big challenges here is similar to that in the U.S.—selecting a sales VP (or director) who can get the job done. Considering the average tenure of sales VPs these days—less than two years—I created a pro-forma timeline for the newly-hired sales VP who isn’t going to work out long-term:

• Months 1-3: On-boarding. VP learns about the company, salespeople, colleagues in marketing, services, customers, competitors, etc. Asks a lot of questions.  Generates excitement and hope.
• Months 4-6: VP makes changes in approach, terminology, territories, business partners, marketing materials, routine (sales meetings, forecast calls, etc.) VP may bring in former salespeople that worked for them in the past.
• Months 7-9: Little to no performance improvement realized. VP says that new mechanisms haven’t “gained traction.” Or that their new reps “need a little more time.” VP suggests that there have been changes in the market/economy/environment since they joined. Assures the executive team a little more time will do the trick.
• Months 10-12: An occasional success! The heat is off for a time, until the CEO realizes that “one big win does not a trend make.” (Dave Hathaway, partner, now retired, from prestigious VC firm Venrock Associates said that to me in a board meeting when I was an inexperienced VP of sales and bragged about a big deal we had just won.)
• Month 13: Consultant or board member or expert is brought in to assess the situation. Meetings, reports, discussions, back and forth
• Months 14-16: VP and CEO see the handwriting on the wall, but keep it to themselves, hoping that the situation will magically approve.
• Months 17-20: CEO covertly searches for new VP. VP covertly taps into his/her network while updating their resume with the appropriate spin on this latest position.
• Month 21 (or The New Month 1): New VP of sales arrives… On-boarding…  It’s Groundhog Day!

Who is responsible?

You might wonder who are responsible for this all-too-common situation.  It’s the people who continue to hire the wrong VPs of sales or promote their best salesrep to the job.

What is the root cause?

The profiles for a Sales VP and a salesperson are, by definition, different.  Granted, most successful sales VPs have a sales background.  But promoting a successful salesperson into a management role doesn’t work unless that person has the skills and traits required for that job.  Here are a few generic sales leader skills:  management (!), team building, conflict resolution, strategic planning, coaching, hiring, and motivating.  There are numbers of additional skills required for success in each unique sales leadership position.  Plus there are a list of traits, too, many of which even top-performing salesreps just don’t possess.  Process orientation is just one.

Wait, wait!!!

If you’re about to hire a sales VP, director, or sales manager (or are about to promote a rep into one of those positions) and you don’t have a profile for that position specifying the skills and traits required for success with your company’s sales people selling your products to your customers against your competitors, STOP.