The New Information Game: Playing to Win
When I was president of a manufacturing company, a colleague and I flew to Little Rock, Arkansas, to compete for a contract for a new U.S. Army rocket program. It was a major piece of business with a multi-year contract as the prize.
The people seated in front of us on the flight were talking loudly, and my colleague and I gave each other a look that said: “This is our competition.”
We got their attention and suggested they might want to keep their discussion to themselves. (Why didn’t we just keep quiet and continue to listen? Well, spying—intentionally or unintentionally—wasn’t the way we conducted business, and it still isn’t.) And we did win the business.
The upshot, of course, is that it’s a small, small world, and you never know who is listening, so be careful what you say. On the other hand, sometimes holding key information close to the vest is not the right strategy for the greater long-term good.
When customer relationship management (CRM) software came on the scene, many salespeople resisted loading their contacts and other business intelligence into the corporate database. The thinking was twofold. First, it’s “my” hard-earned information. Second, if I’m the only one who has it, the company needs me. Keeping critical information in “my” little black book would make it harder for the company to lay me off.
Clearly, this thinking was wrong on both counts. Unless you’re an independent sales representative, that information belongs to the company and even then be sure to read the fine print. And, of course, if you’re not performing or if larger, structural issues come into play, a little black book won’t save you.
Companies must insist that salespeople keep the CRM database up to date and hold them accountable. Especially when used in concert with data from other sources, including other sales reps, that information can be leveraged into knowledge that leads to larger sales. You still don’t want the little black book information to walk out the door when a sales rep moves on either on their own initiative or yours.
While not all companies think about another, perhaps more subtle component, great leverage also comes in the form of a proprietary sales process that all salespeople should be trained in. That way if a top performer leaves, the process doesn’t leave with them. (Ask us about our popular consultative sales training course, FOCIS®, which helps our clients build proprietary sales processes and trains business developers to use them.)
Are your salespeople presenting your company’s product or service accurately? Two examples.
We once worked with a company whose people told prospects that they were in the oil business. No, they were not. Their highly effective service was helping to absorb oil off shop floors and disposing of it. The shortcut explanation made it sound like they were in the oil exploration business. Not even close. And not only was that description confusing, but it also called the reps’ competence into question.
Another instance that’s perhaps a little more subtle comes from a networking group I was in. Whenever one of our members gave the elevator speech version of his product, he said he provided sexual harassment training. No, just the opposite. He provided sexual harassment prevention training. He was not offering training in how to harass people.
Protecting how you’re different from competition can be a valuable investment.
For the Lettuce Entertain You restaurant group, restaurant design is a key differentiator. Before launching a new concept, the design is top secret, down to details like the tablecloths and the kind of wood that provided the concept’s style and personality. These things were protected with the help of intellectual property (IP) attorneys.
At one point we trained the business developers of the company that supplied the wood elements for a Lettuce Entertain You restaurant design—in this case, Maggiano’s Little Italy. The specific elements that made up the various woods themselves as well as how they were incorporated into the design were extremely detailed.
You don’t have to be in the restaurant business to take away a key lesson here.
We’ve found that too many business owners and executives assume that what they do is not different enough from what their competitors do to set their businesses apart. In some thirty years of working with myriad B2B companies, we have never come across a business that didn’t have important points of differentiation. Your business is different, whether you think so or not, and that difference can be invaluable not only in marketing but also in sales.
Keep in mind that information can be discovered and developed in many different and imaginative ways. For example, Subaru reportedly identified a new color for its cars—Cool Gray Khaki—by tracking trends in ski jackets. The insights improved targeting of at least one marketing segment for cars—young, active people—by better understanding what trends they were buying in other areas. In 2018, 18 percent of all the cars Subaru sold were Cool Gray Khaki.
Finally, while we all know this cyber information safety tip, it bears repeating—at least from our own experience as well as that of others. If you’re too eager to come up with new insights, you can put yourself in harm’s way by clicking on email links or attached files whose sources you don’t really know. It’s especially important when their appearance mimics trusted sources you do know. We all also know the solution. To determine a source’s validity, call, text, or email that source separately.
Some forty years ago, futurist and author of the mega-bestselling book Megatrends, famously said: “We are drowning in information but starved for knowledge.” That statement might or might not still be true. One thing that is true is that we’ve learned a lot more about how to turn information into knowledge, which makes the information we can absorb without drowning all the more valuable.
To learn more, please call us at 847-446-0008 Ext. 1 or pkrone@productivestrategies.com.
