Best sales managers...?

To my surprise I have recently ended up having conversations and heard comments who are the best sales managers and how to manage sales... and  I have held the opinion of the minority.

We have agreed that customer centric selling is critical skill or competence (but what is means we didn't quantify). We have agreed that they need to be driven by revenue - hungry for it. More or less everything after those two we didn't agree. So what have I heard? Comments are not from single conversation.

1. Best sales people are those who have invented the product in case of start-up. Why - because they have detailed level understanding of the product and passion to tell about the product
2. Best sales people have through out understanding of the industry product has its origin
3. In general more you understand about the product better sales manager you are
4. More you have new leads more you have sales opportunities because existing customer base have already bought "the big ones" and it is just some additional minor scale opportunities to sell them more
5. In start-up environment ratio of R&D people vs. sales people should be 20:1 because you cannot afford to hire more - company exists to create products not to hire sales people
6. International sales is not a special competence because when you know the products you can sell in what ever country or region i.e. product knowledge always overruns region knowledge
7. Solutions sales is not a special competence because when you know the industry's products you call sell solutions as well
8. Managing sales based on understanding customer's decision making process and time lags in it is not that important because then you just target new customers if any delays occur
8. If one is too fluent both in oral and behavioral manner he lacks credibility

The main thing and summary here is that detailed products knowledge beats everything else. I understand and even agree if the case is about selling rocket science to rocket engineers. In most of the case situation is not this. Buyer(s) (the actual people in customer's organization) do not normally have this detailed understanding of the product or solution and do not care to have it. Either they are buying value for their business (less work, reliability, time savings, etc.) or if the product has multiple similar competing options (or lack true interest towards the product) they base their decision to price (especially professional buyers (=sourcing function)).

So what did I try to say in those conversations? Best sales managers:
- Analyze in detailed level customer's business as a home work = how do they create value and what is our potential role in value creation
- take customer's view to products they sell (solutions they sell) and think it other way around.... what customer (these people in front of me) are trying to buy = the business value
- are masters in the art of negotiation
- Listen customers and learn to use same words as the customer is using
- Avoid industry and product slang unless the customer is using it
- Defend the business benefits of the item they sell above/other than product attributes against pure price related discussion
- And because they excel in everything above their industry and detailed product understanding can be limited. What needs to learned will be learned.

Are you on my side?

Why social media outperforms customer relationship marketing... or does it?

No warm-up, just straight shooting - 6 reasons why social media marketing beats customer relationship marketing...

1. All the world's customers are yours to interact - no matter where they come from or reside

2. Always on - 24/7 process to collect ideas, have a dialog and influence customers

3. Fastest way to test new product/service ideas with all the people in the world

4. Enables customers self-segmentation - customers show their interest areas by themselves

5. Easy way to gain coolness to your company

6. Social media marketing is the sexiest thing what you can do in marketing in 2010 - No need to analyze customer data, "data mining", or other too scientific stuff

(7) Social media provides endless new opportunities for ad agencies and start-up development while CRM has too little to offer for ad agencies and world is already crowded with CRM applications... and IT people stole and destroyed once a great idea

and 6 reasons why CRM beats social media marketing

1. Customers exist in your database for you to gain insights, no need to go fishing outside (unless your customer base is attracting weird creatures)

2. Always on - 24/7 process to collect ideas, have a dialog and influence customers in your database and you can compare written feedback/comments/etc. to actual behavior

3. Fastest way to test new product/service ideas - no one says you couldn't do this with your own customers as well

4. Enables customers self-segmentation - customers show their interest areas by themselves... likewise

5. CRM is not cool anymore but great CRM approaches have created cool companies - no reason you couldn't do it as well

6. CRM is not sexy and will not become sexy so social media beats CRM 6-5

Hmmm... Sounds to me that smart managers will integrate their social media and CRM development - I don't even understand how and why they should be managed separately