Focus on attracting customers not making sales.
With effusive CEO testimonials and countless articles and books describing how companies have transformed themselves into tightly focused, totally energized commerce machines, it would seem that change should be easy. But let’s face it: If it were simple, there’d be more of it. Even when the evidence for change is compelling, most companies continue to cling to the known and the familiar.
Selling offers a case in point. The sales-driven approach to moving every type of product or service struggles to survive in the face of obstinate hurdles. Even though a marketing-driven strategy makes sense to more and more salespeople, there’s a reluctance to let go of the tried and true, even while there’s obvious evidence pointing to diminishing returns.
The difference between sales-driven and marketing-driven selling is anything but subtle. It has nothing to do with semantics and it isn’t “just a matter of emphasis,” as some would have us believe.
Marketing-driven selling represents a completely different way of looking at the sales process, a 180-degree shift in both thinking and behavior. “I’ve been in business for 15 years and I didn’t get the difference until last Friday,” says Daryn Ross of Your Image (Kearney, MO), a manufacturer of promotional products. “I don’t understand why it took me so long to realize that we see our products as commodities. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to us that we’ve been selling them with razor-thin margins.”
Even with all this, sales-driven remains the only way to go for many. The Life insurance industry has demolished thousands of potentially first-class salespeople over the years with it. After some training, the agents are sent out to accost friends, family, and neighbors. In effect, their task is to con them out of a premium payment. Once the list is exhausted and all the names have been crossed off, they don’t know what to do next and quickly leave the business.
Although this might be a blatant example of the sales-driven approach, it captures its essence. Dress things up, change the words, make it sound more sophisticated, but the process remains the same: Go find someone to talk to. Get out there, get in front of prospects, and get the orders.
When it comes right down to it, the goal is still to discover a way to get in front of the prospect and work the old magic, using such gimmicks as reading body language and applying a sure-fire close.
This picture was reinforced when I received a call from a man who described himself as a professional salesperson who had been in the field for many years. After speaking with him for a half hour, it was clear that he was bright and competent. About 15 years ago, he started his own service company.
Ready for a new challenge after selling his business and taking a few months off, he responded to a newspaper ad for a salesperson. When he walked through the door, he was handed a list of company names photocopied from a “manufacturers’ directory,” along with a handful of laser printer-produced business cards. In effect, he was being told to go find the needle in the haystack. As it turns out, the company also “hired” another salesperson the same day, who was given the same amount of job preparation.
All this is happening today. The instances aren’t isolated, either. They’re the rule, rather than the exception.
To be sure, there are “refinements” to the sales-driven approach. However, most of them are essentially little more than a new, and perhaps brighter, coat of paint. So-called “consultative selling,” for example, attempts to soften the sales-driven approach, offering more of an iron hand in a velvet glove. But the goal is still to get the order.
In effect, sales-driven selling isn’t as much a function of skill as it is of sheer luck. Salespeople get excited when they’re in the right place at the right time. Something went wrong. A supplier failed to deliver on time or made one too many mistakes. The regular salesperson didn’t show up. The vendor went out of business or was acquired. Prices went up. All are easily exploitable reasons for a prospect to leave a current supplier, and we should remember, rationales for dropping the new salesperson, as well.
Marketing-driven takes a different approach. It’s just as interested in sales, but it’s more interested in creating customers first. And it’s not a con game just to get the order.
If this sounds like a “soft-headed” strategy, so be it.
We’ve long held that sales-driven companies send the wrong messages to their employees, customers, prospects, and everyone else. Ultimately, they also get the wrong results.
The problem with a sales-driven company is that it’s willing to do everything and anything to make the numbers. The ads might talk about “customer driven,” “customer service,” and “client satisfaction,” but behavior tells a different story. Management might preach its gospel of doing good, but actions reveal the true motivations.
WorldCom, Inc. offers a case in point. On May 16, 2002, the Wall Street Journal reported that the company’s sales reps had been caught “boosting their sales figures by moving existing accounts from one billing system to another including three star employees” in one office.
The reason why this occurred was clear: commissions, commissions, commissions. But that was only the tip of the iceberg. As one former employee said, “It was really a numbers game with WorldCom. And people would do anything they could to make those numbers.”
There’s more. “It was the Wild, Wild West, with no sheriff and no rules,” commented another employee.
Even when the scam was reported to management, “Nobody wanted to hear about it,” stated an employee.
The alarms are going off in my head too often these days because of sales-driven salespeople. Beware when someone says:
“We want to help you”
“We’re ready to partner with you”
“Our goal is to help our customers achieve their goals”
“We can save you money”
The essential problem with sales-driven selling is that customers see through the scam. More to the point, we can identify it instantly in others but not in ourselves. Customers know when they’re being conned.
There are marked differences between sales-driven and marketing-driven selling. Here are a few:
Salesperson’s basic approach:
Sales-driven: figure out a way to get through the door.
Marketing-driven: be invited through the door as a result of being viewed as a valued resource.
Salesperson’s strategy:
Sales-driven: build a “personal relationship” as quickly as possible.
Marketing-driven: be perceived as a competent, helpful advisor.
Salesperson’s goal:
Sales-driven: sell something, i.e., get an order.
Marketing-driven: create a customer, i.e., someone who wants to do business with you.
Salesperson’s prospects:
Sales-driven: lucky breaks, being in the right place at the right time, cold calls.
Marketing-driven: a steady flow of new business by identifying and cultivating prospects carefully and continuously.
Salesperson’s behavior:
Sales-driven: contacts the customer when there’s something to sell.
Marketing-driven: stays close to the customer with ideas and suggestions for achieving customers goals.
Salesperson’s agenda:
Sales-driven: sell what salesperson wants customer to buy.
Marketing-driven: demonstrate that you’re a consultant.
Salesperson’s mission:
Sales-driven: get an order as quickly as possible.
Marketing-driven: build long-term value.
For salespeople to be respected as professionals, they must commit themselves to becoming experts who are valued because of what they bring to their customers.
The differences between sales-driven and marketing-driven selling are deep. One begins and ends with the order, while the other begins and ends with value to the customer.