"Why our sales are so bad this quarter?"
You see:
In general, and it's well accepted, that low sales could come from bad economy, bad product and lousy marketing. It's always the function of these three.
Right now, the company I worked with, is facing a challenge with declining sales. It is made worst by government policy and overall stiff market. Everybody was going for the same slice of pie.
And how did the company react?
I can feel that it's looking for the scapegoat - a person or strong enough reason - to put the blame on.
Yes, something got to shoulder the blame.
Currently, it has tightened up the check up on sales reps reporting system, cut back on the amount spent for each rep for marketing activities and increase expectation for the sales amount that a rep has to deliver.
In short, less marketing budget, more sales revenue expected...
And how the reps react?
Not pretty at all. But all they can do only reach complaint level. It never go beyond complaint.
Maybe:
They think about the car payment, house payment, children school fee and overall slow job market. They'll do more if they already have a better job waiting for them, I believe.
But this is not what I want to explain.
Based on the idea in NEWSELL:
When revenue gone bad, companies will typically react by tightening their belts. I can see that already happened.
The catch is:
They're tightening the wrong belt, most of the time.
For example:
Checking on sales reps daily call report and scrutinize their spending to the last dime are not going to rectify the low sales situation. They might help with budgeting but that's the wrong belt!
To increase sales, we must work at selling and marketing.
Newsell had outlined two activities when we talked about selling, known as:
Check! (C!) move
UnCheck! move
To increase sales, the focus must be on the C! move...
...and checking call reports is not considered as one.
What is C! Move?
The criteria for this move are:
It is strategic, meaning, we are in total control of putting it into action, and the response to that move is totally up to the prospects.
One important thing underlie the move though: all moves are determined by what's considered important to the prospects.
And who get to decide what's important for prospects? Company?
Nah!
Prospects decide what's important to them.
For example, talk by foreign speaker expert on a given subject could be quite impressive to prospects and quite an achievement for the company.
But, is that what the prospects want?
Do they want foreign speaker talk on the subject or they would rather have a small peer-to-peer round-table discussion?
The only way to know is to ask them...
That is called "market research".
Since there's marketing related job function attached to it, people will say:
"Let the marketing people do it. That's what they're paid for."
And sales people, who were asked to help marketing to run such research, typically, will say:
"We do sales. Why we need to call on customers to survey them? We got more important things to talk about with them."
And the debate goes on and on...
I've wrote about the parables of stoke and its friends in one of the Chinese New Year's celebration, and the only animal that gives the correct answer is the Snake.
It just said,"Because frog is my food," when it was asked why he ate the slimy animal.
Other animals point to others when asked why they did something, like the buffalo that blame the frog for calling out for the rain that soaked the firewood that causes the rice uncooked.
It's a long tale but the snake gives the most strategic answer.
Now:
I feel that the company is going to tell its "stoke tale" and do all these funny micromanagement stuffs and asks for sales reps understanding.
Do you know the paradox of happiness?
Check it out on Ted Talk!
But I can tell you that:
When people have no other choice, they'll synthetically produce happiness for what they already have. It's much easier that way.
Since the reps got no other choice than to nod, well, they need to pretend that they understand.
Perhaps:
Up to the point where they'll lose their jobs, speaking of which, at this point of writing, Astra Zeneca is planning to cut 2,600 jobs, up 1,000 jobs from the previous estimate.
HINT: for AZ reps who might involve with this job cut exercise, not having the job might be the best thing still. Just work on how to move on. Start reading this blog, for example. Been there myself folks...
So:
My simple explanation why sales are not increasing, based on the idea from Newsell, is because the company is currently focusing on the wrong sales-increasing activities.
Focusing on Un-C! moves is not going to add numbers to the revenue.
It simply cannot.
UnC! is not design to achieve that.
Only C! Move can do that.
But then again:
Will company heed advice from sales rep?
It has listened to so many advice - advice from senior leadership team, from regional, from global, from everyone else - except from the people that really matters:
The customers.
My bet is, company won't listen to these Very Important People either because, to the company, what's best for the customers is determined by the company.
That's a total violation of what's been taught in Newsell.
Should I be amazed when sales are not increasing a bit?
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