The Customer Analysis Burden — And the Value of Unleashing Sales Reps from its Time Sink

In my previous post on “Why Important Customer Meetings Fall Flat …” I wrote about the importance of deep-dive customer analysis for large-scale, strategic opportunities.  Here I extend the discussion to show how today’s huge time investment to analyze enterprise customers screams for divvying up the dual-duties of analyzing customers and selling to them – and how that will rapidly increase sales. 

Sure, many firms suspect they overpay sales reps (just ask anyone in Marketing).  But that’s because firms pay the reps to Google, read SEC documents and analyst reports, search tweets, blogs and other social media sites, dig up marketing reports, interpret endless company earnings and investor calls, and so on.  And quite frankly, sales people are not so good at all this – nor want to be.  It’s not their bag.  But they do need to deeply understand their strategic customers – for account planning, messaging, sales calls and proposals, relationship-building, and executive briefings.

The Time Drain – 100+ Hours per Year per Strategic Customer:

To deeply understand and monitor just one strategic customer takes over 100 hours of research annually (see table below) – i.e. sales reps need to spend over two and ½ weeks each year on research and analysis for each key customer.  If they have 5 key customers, they would need to spend 500 hours or more than 25% of their working year (3 months per year) on research alone.  (And don’t forget they also need to spend time on paperwork, internal meetings, training, and traveling.)

Sounds silly I know, and I doubt many successful sales people can spend this much effort researching and analyzing.  But look at the table below to see which information sources you would leave out of deep-dive analysis.   Of course, services such as Boardroom Insiders can help you more quickly identify much of this intelligence, but in-depth customer analysis requires a full market scan, as ever-changing customer puzzle pieces are everywhere.  Your competitors may assemble a clearer final picture and take the advantage.

Trending large today in the enterprise tech solution space is the increase in the sheer number of decision-makers and influencers (the buyer ecosystem) a sales team needs to consider.  CIOs, CEO’s, CMOs, CTOs, CISOs and CFOs often now weigh in on complex enterprise solutions, markedly extending sales team research requirements.

Add to this to the trend to drive the “Challenger Sales Model” which requires much more customer knowledge and true insight. The “Challenger” sales rep is one who uses deep understanding of a customer’s business to serve them and to teach them, pushing their thinking, and providing different views on how to manage and compete.  – Try doing all that with just a D&B report and Google.

The Catch-22:

1. a)      If enterprise sales reps do all the necessary customer analysis, they will win some big deals, but will run out of time to sell to others.
2. b)      If sales reps don’t do their homework, they will have more time to work deals, but will be much less effective selling.

How do you balance this trade-off – spend more time analyzing (with less customer interaction) or more time selling (with shoddy intelligence)?

The Sales Organization Opportunity:

Herein lays an unmistakable opportunity for forward-thinking sales organizations:

Provide the deep-dive customer analysis to sales reps for strategic opportunities.  More than simply giving access to Hoovers and the other generic syndicated sources, sales organizations should also assign a qualified research and strategy professional to exploit all these research sources for strategic customer opportunities.  Take your sales reps out of the searching & filtering business (which no one in your company wants to see them spending their time on) and let them focus on strategizing and executing (which they live for and excel at).

Imagine each of your key enterprise sales reps having 5+ weeks more time to sell each year, plus using professional in-depth customer analysis — all for the cost of a qualified analyst, whom I call the embedded “Briefing Insight Strategist”.  This Strategist could help map the intelligence below to actually opportunities — providing sales teams, executives, and product leaders the insight they need to meet with and inspire customers.

The Nub: For strategic opportunities, you’ll find a substantial ROI by redirecting the deep-dive customer analysis burden to professional customer analysts, and unleashing your sales force to drive higher-value sales activities.  The many bennies:

• much more time to execute sales
• much higher quality customer analysis and strategies for all sales activities
• much more effective (informed) discussion leader performances at executive briefings
• more sales, stronger, accelerated relationships, and more satisfied sales teams
• much more satisfied customers who will feel more understood and inspired

– everyone wins.

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Why Strategic Customer Meetings Fall Flat – and How Intelligently Applied Customer Analysis Wins Deals.

We all know how important strategic customer meetings are — you never get a second chance to make a great first impression. In this article, I discuss how “must-win” customer meetings can fall flat, and how intelligently applied customer analysis can change the game.

More specifically, I introduce the role of an embedded “Briefing Insight Strategist” as a member of the sales team, to focus on understanding customer strategy and aligning it with what your company offers.

Many key customer meetings fail because the sales team didn’t deeply understand and effectively exploit the opportunity — they didn’t do all their homework. The “opportunity” is not just what the team thinks it can sell. It is more about knowing how to best position and present what they can sell, given the corporate strategies, executive personalities and competitive offerings. And for that they need an information-fed customer strategy.

Cases in Point:

The good:
— A sales team planning to sell a large-scale enterprise IT solution to Sears Holdings changed its strategy after research found Sears was in no condition to make the purchase. Sears had serious IT deficiencies and greatly lagged its top competitors technologically. However, just post-merger with K-mart, the combined entity had serious leadership and decision-making issues, and the team now expected slow comprehension and execution of the solutions. Based on these findings the sales team decided to pitch smaller, point solutions, and provide a vision for longer term solutions.

— A leading IT outsourcing firm selling ERP services to a large chemical firm tweaked its positioning after research found that the firm’s new CIO was “in way over her head”. We learned that this CIO had no formal IT education, had just been hired away from a much smaller firm, and that her last ERP implementation was now failing miserably. Her new CEO had publicly promoted his new ERP plan and his new CIO as its champion. We suspected she was a bit overwhelmed. Based on this intelligence, the IT firm subtly positioned its ERP outsourcing service as a way to the take the load of her back, and even more delicately – as a way to save her job.

The bad:
— At a customer briefing, the CIO of mid-size manufacturer began by asking the sales team if anyone was familiar with his firm’s business strategy. After an awkward silence, he dejectedly looked down and explained their strategy. Clear to me was that this deal was already lost – the sales team didn’t do its homework.

— Just recently, a state government CIO told me how frustrated she was with IT vendors lack of preparation — and respect, and she now insists that vendors understand their business strategy before they walk in her door. “This is public information”, she tells them, “Find it”.

…and the ugly
— I witnessed a Fortune 100 firm senior executive, in support of a regional sales team, fly cross-country to attend a regional executive briefing — and swore never to return as he witnessed an unprepared, unfocused sales team stumble its way through the meeting.

From what I have seen, too much expectation is put on each sales person to analyze their strategic customer opportunities – and so this analysis rarely gets done to any acceptable level. Customer meetings often take place with sales teams recognizing a lot more could have been known about the opportunity and decision makers. No real connection is made with attendees. Meetings meander. Presentations are less customized, executive speakers less focused, and conversations less relationship-oriented. Customers leave under-whelmed. Sales teams leave potential relationships on the table. Selling to strangers is a drag.

Sound familiar?

Despite the availability today of just about any customer information, few do the hard work of deep-dive customer analysis. Everyone recognizes the need for customer research before a meeting. Crucial information lies not just in SEC documents, Hoover’s and Crush reports, but also in blogs, Tweets, Facebook, LinkedIn, and every trade magazine and website on earth. Add to this your firm’s hidden internal knowledge both from former sales teams and from your Market Research team. Ignore the entirety of available strategy-setting customer intelligence and you are your competitors’ dog meat. Ok, that was harsh, but you get the point.

What is Deep-Dive Customer Analysis?
Deep-dive is digging further into issues, reading between the lines, and constantly asking why. Say you find a customer’s CEO quote in his quarterly earnings update that indicates a future 50% reduction in IT expenditures. Digging deeper is trying to find out why. What is driving this reduction? Are they simply finishing off a large IT contract or are they fundamentally changing their IT approach? How should you re-position your solution in light of these deeper findings?

The problem is this — Sales people simply don’t have the time, skill, or will to dig deep –and it is a tough assignment. Research is not their specialty — and I would argue that today it takes a specialist. Few world-class meetings result from second-rate research efforts.

Funny to me is how firms spend big bucks on McKinsey, Accenture, Gartner, IDC and even their own in-house research departments for overall market assessments, but when it comes to an actual, live strategic opportunity, they expect their sales people to Google and Hoover their way to the finish line. Why does quality research support stop when it is most needed and when the ROI is so clear?

–Serving a nice hot beef brisket lunch to a CIO who had recently blogged about his family’s devotion to Veganism? Oops. I bet the competition served nice hot Soba Noodles with Peanut Sauce.

Widely available public information may be your gift, but it’s also your burden.

Here’s a solution — and what some top firms do: Embed a “Briefing Insight Strategist” into sales teams for strategic accounts. Appoint or hire a senior level consultant who understands the sales process, and who can gain the respect of, and influence “Type A” sales people and executives. The Strategist is responsible for deeply analyzing select customer opportunities, and for helping to construct intelligence-fed account and meeting strategies.

The Strategist’s should ask the sales team; “So what information do you need to close this deal?” Then they use their skills to answer these questions, and proffer their own ideas and recommendations. They filter, analyze and help integrate customer intelligence into the overall sales strategy. They ensure the sales team conducts a focused, coordinated, visionary, and relationship-building customer meeting.

This illustration depicts the role of a Briefing Insight Strategist:

For big-ticket, strategic opportunities, having a professional “Briefing Insight Strategist” perform deep-dive research duties for sales teams will accelerate opportunities and relationships.  Let the top sales people sell, and an embedded Strategist support strategic opportunities – together they can deliver much more effective, focused and fun customer meetings.