Sendo was a new mobile phone company, and we launched when most network operators didn’t feel a pressing need for yet another supplier. It was tough - even getting a meeting with the phone buyers was like pulling wisdom teeth. So we searched for sales people who worked for our competitors, and we hired a few – nothing too innovative about that. We reasoned that they would know how to get into a buyer meeting. But I was suspicious it was all too easy.
On interviewing these individuals I would ask, “What approach would you take to sell our phones into the Operator?” The response was, “I’ll phone up the buyer, who I know really well (I learned to question that association quite deeply – could range from his brother-in-law to a chance meeting at a company golf day) and I’ll get a meeting. He trusts me. Once I’m in, it’s a cert!”
And that was the problem. In those days a Nokia sales exec was an order taker, such was the popularity of their phones. They didn’t have to construct a persuasive sales argument, they just had to answer an email asking for more phones. In fact each month they’d go to their customer and say they couldn’t have the entire quantity they wanted – demand was too great and they were supply constrained.
They couldn’t have sold a blind mouse with a limp to my hungry cat.
When I hired the Nokia order-taker he got his buyer meeting, marched in through the front door, and found himself back out on the street before he’d removed his Ray-Bans. The tables had turned! The customer said no - they wanted his phones, not him. Order-taker was dumbfounded, and had no Plan B. He really thought his relationship with the buyer was going to swing it for him, and it didn’t. I let him go.
Then I hired a bloke who had a different approach. Go in through the back door. I liked it.
He wrote a list of all the people at the customer who would influence the decision to take on a new supplier. Not the ultimate decision maker, but the influencers. From Marketing, Logistics, the Order Desk, Finance, Legal, Sales, Customer Service, Approvals, Network, and System Support. And more. Then he had meetings with each of them (going in through the back door, so to speak) to introduce the idea of a new 'innovative' supplier and asking what concerns they might have or opportunities they could envisage. He brought these back to base and we worked on them, so when he went back to see them again he had concrete proposals. For example, the customer’s logistics people wanted to know all about our distribution and delivery systems, so we prepared a presentation and invited them to visit the distribution centre and see for themselves. We showed them that we could also integrate with their order management system to provide real-time delivery updates. Bloody impressive!
Having done all this work and answered all these objections we were ready for The Big Kahuna meeting. We knew what problem we were solving with our product and were able to say with certainty that we’d considered the implications of them buying our phones. When Kahuna raised a concern we said we had addressed that with his manager, and explained how. And when he subsequently spoke to them, they confirmed it.
We also had to make some changes to our ways of working to accommodate their needs – particularly on customer service, as I remember. And, by the way, their marketing team loved the concept of brand and customisation.
So, we got a trial and we were off. Smart sales bloke then managed what became our biggest customer.
People say, “Know your customer.” That means know in detail the problems, concerns, and opportunities they have and offer tangible solutions that you can deliver. Be specific about how this is going to improve their business.
Go in through the back door a few times, do the legwork, and when it’s time to go round the front you’ll know you’ve covered all the bases.
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