Field salespeople and corporate managers fight like Hatfields and McCoys. Neither side thinks the other truly understands the business. And as the dust kicks up, opportunities evaporate.
But here's the thing: Salespeople really do know what's going on because, well, they're in the trenches. The best field folks have bothered to understand what customers want and how their products can meet those needs. The challenge--too often--is getting those clowns in corporate to listen.
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My friend 'Bob' knows all about this. Back in the late '90s tech boom, he sold for a company that made nifty switching gear for big telephone companies. I'll spare you the gorpy details, but suffice it to say that the cost of ownership on this product was far lower than that offered by the competing switch technology. It also integrated easily into customers' current systems. In short, it was a great product.
Not that his customers--the former Bell companies--weren't demanding as hell. If they were going to spend tens of millions with a vendor, they wanted better functionality and lower pricing--and Bob was the messenger waiting to be shot. The reaction at corporate: "All that extra engineering work will crimp our margins. Why can't you just sell what we give you?"
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But Bob was persistent. He also knew what it would take to snag market share in this business.
Together with his boss, the vice president of engineering, they went to the top dog in the engineering department. Bob's vision: a new network management system that allowed the phone companies to throttle their bandwidth capacity up or down, remotely, without having to physically manipulate switches, boards and other hardware embedded within their sprawling networks. It turned out that the engineering staff had a prototype that did just that--they only needed a reason to polish off the software code. Bob gave them a reason.
Next, Bob went to the chief bean counter. Yes, the margins would be lower on this product, but the size of the deal was larger and the length of the contract longer. Icing on the cake: When the deal was announced, the company hyped the news to sell shares to the public at a richer valuation. Can't beat that.
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Bob knew how to work a prospect; just as important, he had the moves--and the mettle--to make the internal sale. Better yet, his company had the common sense to listen. (That means you, entrepreneurs.)
Am I biased? You bet. I have seen companies stumble because they didn't listen to what their folks in the field were saying. IBM (my old employer), for one, turned a deaf ear when its own salespeople hollered that new protocols governing computer networks would soon challenge its own. (Cisco now dominates much of the market for networking gear.)
Don't shy away from a scuffle. If the corporate office isn't willing to listen to what you know the market is saying, make them listen. If you can't, find a new company.
Glenn D. Porter has 25 years of professional sales and sales management experience, much of it with IBM. He is the founder of Dolphin Nextgen, a business advisory company.
