Tunnel vision and the hat syndrome

"Online services and stores are so gone & history, long live the social media". "You have to understand that mobile internet is so different than "PC internet"". "We are professionals in branded consumer goods digital campaigns". "Digital B2B marketing is so different from B2C digital marketing". "CRM is so old dated when you can have all the possibilities of social media". "Your company does not have competence from our industry's digital strategies".

Oh man where does all this wisdom come from. Who creates all these silos? Who sets these "facts"? What kind of background you need to have to believe all these as facts? How much time you need to spend in one function? Or industry? Or particular company culture? Or listening to "gurus"?

Let's take another view. Susanne is 32 year old woman with two children and she is working as a sourcing manager in company XYZ. Susanne is a normal human being so she reads newspapers, buys consumer goods & groceries, spends free time and acquires information from various sources both for work and household purposes. Susanne has a mobile phone and a laptop. Basically she is like all of us with her habits, thoughts and behavior.

If we take as granted all the beliefs above then Susanne is a different person or driven by totally different motivations while she is using her mobile phone vs. laptop, reading newspaper's online version vs. buying from apparel brand's online store, her analyzed behavior at department store's customer database is  far from her social media analyzed habits, she is always 100 % analytical while working but driven by emotions at her free time, she is tired of using any online service when social media spaces are available. She adjusts herself to behave differently with every industry, every gadget,  with everything. Susanne has 22 different personalities.

Sounds out of space but that is how many companies see her - or actually do not see her at all. Instead of we are driven by tunnel visions of different gadgets, industry competencies, different technologies, trendy hypes, company's internal structures & power games and one idea gurus.

Therefore we need to wear hats. Someone cannot be a professional of mobile and PC internet because it is different technology. Someone cannot be a professional of consumer (digital) services because it requires industry competence to develop those. Someone cannot be a professional of CRM and social media because different emerging time of hype and again technology. So you are given a hat to wear how to describe you - named function's one subgroup professional and/or professional in one named industry. Customer just cannot be the starting point, it just cannot because it would ruin too many beliefs and "facts".

Still we have Susanne, Mary, George, Ian and thousands and millions others.

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?

Competences - Single idea guys and swiss knives

I have always wondered how easily you get understood and branded with one single competence area. Long time ago (if ten years is a long time) I was very into CRM both from strategic and assets perspectives... but actually for me CRM was just a way to build service business and manage customer base driven business model. But many labelled me as a CRM guy.

Two years ago when I returned from abroad back to Finland and took a role related to online business... and held the role just 11 months - suddenly I noticed that was labelled in Finland as online business guy. It didn't help to explain that yes these services are related to eCommerce but actually we are selling a portfolio of services (even solutions) and the required competence is B2B solutions and service business.

So if I meet people from ten years back they still label me as a CRM guy and these newer relationships label me as online business guy. Actual truth about my competence is that past experiences and responsibilities have shaped me to be a professional in contractual solutions and service business both in B2B and B2C segments with international twist. And on top I can take a sales, marketing, business development or general business mgmt. angle to this arena depending on the case. But it sounds that this is as well unheard of - either you can be a marketeer, seller or general manager but not all of these. It just does not fit to the simple way of labeling people with single competence area.

Of course this is not related only to myself. I have had so many occasions and discussions where you notice that people get labeled as a single idea guy - "oh yes he is the key account management guy or she is the brand expert" - when the truth can be that these persons have this kind of role for the very first time... or it is just one angle in their work.

Another twist for this are the industries and what kind of past experience is suitable for different jobs. Many people work in one industry through their career (and therefore gain beliefs how their industry is so different from others).

For example there are many people who define themselves as IT industry professionals and also want to be labeled as such. When IT/tech. industry has finally understood benefits of service business ideas there needs to be inside IT industry grown service business professionals (and labeled as such). For many in IT industry it does not matter that in reality for example hotel business/travel industry has been a service business for ages and there could be something to learn from. For some reason IT service is so different from hotel service despite you end up serving same people with similar service business encounters. Back to the idea of getting a single label - service business experience from hotel business is not considered to be a valuable asset for IT company when it is transforming itself from products to services. Personally I would hire an executive from Hilton hotel chain to run a consumer IT service business than an IT industry executive. But majority would not.

So why do we label and understand individuals based on their single competence or experience areas? One reason is that there exists so many with single mindset and competence area... so it is easier to treat everyone in the same way. Swiss knife can be used in many occasions but it not perfect in any of them, there is always a single tool which can do a better work. But is it the same with people? Which is better - year after year same industry within same functional area (and very easy to label this person) or multiple different experiences from multiple industries and functional areas (very difficult to label) - if there is a need to for example to do a business turnaround? Many would pick the industry old timer as a safe bet - I just think it is much riskier because nothing transformational will ever happen.

So you get a label - a personal brand - whether you like it or not and most likely it is not the brand you want to be unless you are a single idea guy... and to fight against this I have noticed to be a challenging task