When Everyone Sells

Marketing

When Everyone Sells
by Robert Ayrer



Some years ago, when I was first starting my consulting business, I was cold-calling companies to drum up business. I called into a company in my area and asked the very professional sounding voice that answered the phone, "Does your company have its own field sales people?"

Without missing a beat she answered, "Sir, in this company everyone is a sales person -- how may I help you?" I came right back at her, "Let me talk to the person who taught you that!" The next thing I know I'm on the phone with the President of the company.

He told me that his company only has two departments -- outside sales and inside sales. If you happen to be outside, you're part of the outside sales. If you happen to be inside, you're part of the inside sales. He went on, "Everyone in my company knows that if we don't sell, we don't eat!" What a great philosophy!

Better yet, this business owner put his philosophy to work. As Peter Drucker says, "The greatest knowledge that doesn't result in action is meaningless data." "Aye, there's the rub" to quote Bill Shakespeare, turning what should be done into what actually IS done. In their insightful book, The Knowing-Doing Gap, Jeffrey Pfeffer & Robert Sutton examine the barriers to organizations doing what everyone knows it should do. I highly recommend their book to anyone committed to making a difference.

Sutton & Pfeffer take the attitude that we should stop blaming the lack of quality people, a lazy human nature, etc., and start to examine the institutional causes of non-performance. Couldn't agree more. More than any other factors, the policies, procedures, practices and processes that run your business generate the behaviors you are getting. Without changing the institutional barriers you will never change performance.

By the way, before you start pointing out other businesses, understand that the problems are endemic to growing a business. The real culprit is the "compartmentalization" of your business. It happens in your "Go, Go" phase and if you don't take deliberate action, it will poison your long-term health and survival.

What do I mean by compartmentalization of a business? It can happen at any time but usually happens in the formative years. When you started with that small group of dedicated warriors you met around a work table, everyone knew that their contribution was vital to success, and everyone helped everyone else succeed.

Then came growth. First you hired a professional accounting manager and turned the accounting department over to the "expert." Immediately upon hire, the department manager begins to create a "compartment." They begin to develop policies and procedures to streamline their department. Their compensation is geared to the performance of "their" department. Their recognition and rewards are based upon their department's performance. And the pattern is repeated for IT, shipping, sales, logistics, etc. -- all starting out as departments and evolving into "compartments."

These department heads begin to squabble over scarce resources at budget time. They compete for attention at review time. They set their own policies and procedures based upon the department's goals and not the company good. They take on an "us against them" attitude toward the other compartments in the company. The war is on!

Back to Drucker. He says that "...the only reason to be in business is to create customers." I would add "loyal customers" to that. However, when civil war is raging inside a company, everyone forgets their real job -- creating loyal customers -- and focuses on their tasks. There is a big difference between their tasks and their job!

The mythology that came out of the Saturn plant in Tennessee was that you can stop anyone in the organization and ask them what their job is and get the same answer, "We build great cars!" Not I'm a cost accountant" or "warehouse worker," but "We build great cars!"

I challenge you to look at your company's job descriptions and see if they aren't really task lists.

When we're called in to help get the revenue up, get more market share, or improve margins, we are initially pointed to the sales compartment to "fix" them. Here's the dirty secret: business to business sales people don't make sales -- they get buyer agreements to buy. What's the difference? The clerk at the 7/11 makes sales -- takes money and gives out merchandise. Girl Scouts make sales -- remember the Girl Scout Oath: "Get the money before you give them the cookies!" -- they take money and give out merchandise.

Business-to-business sales people only get an agreement to buy from you. It doesn't become an enforceable sale until the company delivers on the order, bills correctly and collects the money. 75% of the sale is in the fulfillment!

Our business is tearing down the compartment walls and getting everyone on the sales team. We revisit all of the policies, procedures, practices and processes that divide a company and focus the energy and attention on the real job, not the tasks.

Until you tear down the compartment walls and focus the entire organization on their job of creating loyal customers, you will always have revenue, market share and margin problems.


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Bob Ayrer, Consultant, Speaker, Trainer(714) 968-4136 perform@improvingsales.comwww.improvingsales.com