Pin It To The Wall: A (Positive) Lesson from Lehman Brothers

Call reluctance is a ubiquitous disease among sellers, afflicting even high performers from time to time. A great description of this affliction comes from Gary Stauble, Principal Consultant for The Recruiting Lab: “Call reluctance is an emotional short circuit that diverts energy from the act of prospecting to the act of procrastinating. Instead of making calls, call-reluctant salespeople are busy preparing to prepare and avoiding the phone.”

There are any number of places to focus on the psychological source of call reluctance and great ways to attack the root cause. However, in the best cognitive-behavioral-theory fashion, I’d suggest the Lehman Brothers approach to tackling the problem head-on. (No, I don’t mean leveraging your company with meaningless derivatives to the point of bankruptcy!)

Those familiar with the Harvard Business School case on the incredible rise of Lehman’s equity research department know the tale of how in the 80’s, Research Director Jack Rivkin transformed a middling group into one that literally was the best on Wall Street.

Even though Rivkin’s equity analysts weren’t salespeople, he demanded that they make 125 calls per month to clients. More than that, he publicly posted their call volumes to the wall, and engaged positive peer pressure to insure that people got that he was serious about the requirement. It was also easy for all the analysts to see that there was a clear correlation between call volume and higher analyst ranking. When analysts who didn’t think they had the time to do that many calls saw that others did…and reaped the benefits…they got on board…regardless of the reasons for their call reluctance.

The lesson is clear for sellers, especially In an inside sales environment. When it comes to performance, there is no way around customer contact. Whatever your metric is for insuring customer contact, make sure everyone on your team knows what everyone is doing so they can make their own correlations and get over their issues.

Pin it to the wall.

Coffee Beans & Sales Process...Watch Out For Robusta

Had the chance to read a great story about how US coffee producers in the 1950’s almost ruined coffee. You can find the full rundown from Stanford’s Dev Patnaik at his blog http://www.wiredtocare.com/?p=429.

In a nutshell, in the 50’s, coffee manufacturers gradually began replacing smooth, high quality Arabica beans with small amounts of bitter, low quality inexpensive Robusta beans. Existing drinkers didn’t much notice due to the incerementality of the changes. Yet, a tipping point occurred in the 60’s when the Robusta ratio got too high, and new drinkers realized coffee tasted horrible…so they drank something else.

In the sales process, this cycle has particular application, especially due to the budgetary squeezes of the past few years. Many sales organizations have been slowly adding too much Robusta to their sales processes. Elements such as cutting back sales staff; lowering or eliminating training budgets; reducing rewards and recognition for sellers, thereby reducing their engagement have been rife during the downturn. Maybe their existing customers have stuck with them through this.

Yet, now that things are starting to turn to the uptick, how will your customers respond when approached by your competitors who have maintained their Arabica approach? Not to mention, your existing customers are only going to stand for so much bitterness in their mouths from being handled in a suboptimal fashion. One of the direct effects of the early 60’s Robusta tipping point was an unthinkable loss of segment share from coffee in a previously java-rabid nation. Coffee companies didn’t get it and lost out to Pepsi and Coke.

So, analyze the mix of beans you are brewing up in your sales process. If you have too much Robusta, you may be the one left with the bitter taste in your mouth.