Salespeople: Innovators in Your Backyard

Can your salespeople contribute to developing wallet-opening “great products”?

The short answer is “Yes, they can.” The more important question is “How?” After all, selling is “outward looking,” isn’t it: Getting products and services out of a company and into a marketplace to increase the top line? New product development is ultimately “inward looking,” actually happening inside a company with greater or lesser support from marketing.

We’ll answer the “how” question by explaining the three key points at which the right sales skills and process can move things along from idea to marketplace-and even keep the best ideas alive long enough to get a fair hearing. Along the way, we’ll also introduce three new books that emphasize innovation for business owners in different ways.

Successful companies know that product and service innovation are forever linked to a strong sales process, especially to the effectiveness of consultative selling skills-that is, the “discovery” skills-of their sales representatives. In addition, an effective, discovery-based sales process can propel innovation throughout an organization because, ultimately, its result is to persuade. Innovators must persuade from the time they get an idea to the time that idea goes to market. These skills can be learned but without training are difficult to put to work in the field.

If you think about it, doesn’t it just make sense that sales forces should be great resources for innovation?

Key Point #1: On the Outside Discovering.  Productive salespeople have regular, frequent, and in-depth contact with prospects and customers-just the people for whom a company wants to innovate. And when they do they look for needs their companies can fill and problems they can solve.

The really good salespeople, the top producers, go further. They not only identify typical needs their target markets have. They also uncover  unmet needs for which the company currently has no solution at all or one that is non-competitive. Sometimes prospects and customers don’t even realize they have those needs.

Using consultative selling discovery skills to uncover unmet needs in the marketplace is the first point at which skilled salespeople using a customized sales process can contribute to innovation.

Key Point #2: On the Inside Communicating.  The second spot is inside the company, where they must know how to communicate the promise of new ideas from the field to new product development, marketing, and management. We teach salespeople how to filter such ideas and communicate them effectively. When salespeople can’t filter and communicate, the costs to corporate growth-not to mention sales commissions-are high.

For example, at least a few of the missteps Xerox suffered involved a failure to communicate internally the value of innovations later recognized as transformational-namely, the computer mouse, the graphical user interface, and the computer network. (Yes, it’s true. Xerox had these early on.) They never made it to market, reports Terry Jones in his new book,  On Innovation , essentially because product development could not communicate their value to management. Those dropped ideas eventually bounced back, practically to outer space, as other companies took them to market with incredible success.

Jones, now chairman of Kayak.com and a personal friend since junior high school, had a front-row seat-at times, the driver’s seat-to the catalytic innovation in software and technology as chief information officer of Sabre, American Airlines electronic reservations system. Jones went on to found Travelocity, a pioneer in Web-based disintermediation that allowed-and still allows-consumers to book reservations with airlines directly without the assistance of travel agents. The practice is commonplace now, but when introduced in 1996, it was catalytic.

When Jones was CIO at Sabre his lab came up with the mobile phone boarding pass, showing bookable hotels on a map, and a computer-driven way to track lost luggage.

“These were all great ideas,” Jones writes in his book. “The value and potential [were] there all the time; our lab team simply lacked the sales skills necessary to persuade decision makers to say yes.”

Key Point #3: On the Outside Again Persuading.  And of course salespeople can contribute to enabling successful innovation right where you would expect them to-selling an innovation-turned-product in the marketplace. But the sales force has to be capable of persuading by communicating value.

And this is also where the top producers stand out. Most salespeople simply educate the market about an innovation (or any product, for that matter) but are not trained to communicate value and persuade prospects of what that value means for them and their companies specifically. The top producers, however, can. They are the 20 percent of salespeople who bring in 80 percent of new business. Arguably, they are as important to a company as any innovation.

So, a strong sales process and consultative selling skills can contribute significantly to the accelerated birth, growth, and successful launch of innovative new products or services. Your people, not only front-line sales reps but also new product development folks and marketers, however, must be well-trained and managed for the process and the skills to work.

Bonus: The Innovation Bookshelf

“You must have an elevated idea not of what you do, but of what you can one day do. Without this it is not worth working.”  -Degas

In addition to  On Innovation  (  http://tbjones.com/terrys-book/ ), two other recently published books by authors we also know and trust offer insights and practical approaches to growth plus some inspiration to boot. As you’ll see, together this trio offers help with three different approaches to innovation: one for products/services, one for strategy, and one for tapping your operation internally.

In  Expressway to Growth: A Practical Guide for Business Owners , author Nick Arvis draws on 30 years of experience as a business owner as well as a valued confidante and counsel to other business owners. The result is an especially straightforward and easy-to-read guide to building and running a company, often relating the stories of owners who made it. In just 74 pages,  Expressway to Growth  provides eight “accelerator” questions for owners of growing companies to ask not only about their businesses but also about themselves:  http://expresswaytogrowth.com/

The premise of another book,  Think Inside the Box: Discover the Exceptional Business Inside Your Organization , is that innovation doesn’t have to come from the now conventional wisdom to “think outside the box.” Authors Tim Nelson and Jim McGee say that nearly everything you need to grow your company can be found  inside  your company. You just need to know  how  to find it and how to distribute time and attention by applying the tried-and-true 80/20 rule. The book offers a proven process for owners to identify and use key growth resources within their companies:  www.insidethe8020box.com

Whether you’re attempting to innovate  outside the box, inside the box, or on the expressway, we’d like to speak with you about how we can help. Our sales training, lead generation, and marketing services can support your innovation in myriad ways: 847-446-0008.

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