Tomicide Solutions, May 2011

Two Business Development Diseases And What To Do About Them

By Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan

Podcast: MP3 Version

Do you know that Americans, on the average, eat 18 acres of pizza every single day? That's almost the size of 10 soccer fields side-by-side.

The other interesting fact about these 10 soccer fields is that they could easily be filled up with people who sell various IT solutions but suffer from two major sales diseases.

One disease causes salespeople to piss off their prospects with their bully-like persistence, and in many cases prospects just pack up and go to the competition.

The other disease leaves prospects on the lurch as to what to do next.

Let's start with the first disease that has been termed as...

The Texas Tower Syndrome

It relates to a sad event in on 1 August 1966 at the University of Texas in Dallas, when Charles Joseph Whitman a student and a former Marine went on a shooting rampage, killing 16 people and wounding 32.

He shot three of his victims from the university's tower, and 10 others from the 28th floor observation deck of the University's administrative building. This killing spree was the aftermath of Whitman's having murdered his wife and mother at their homes.

Eventually he was shot and killed by the police.

Upon some examination into Whitman's background, it turned out that his upper-middle class family had serious problems, and his mother left her authoritarian, both emotionally and physically abusive husband who demanded perfection from everyone in the family.

On the top of all this mess came Whitman's personal issues, including drug abuse, extensive headaches (caused by an aggressive tumour that was discovery during autopsy), court martial and failing at his university course.

And the way The Texas Tower Syndrome plays out for snipers is that once they start shooting, they can't stop. They take out their assigned targets and then keep shooting at anyone in sight.

The Texas Tower Syndrome In Business Development

"We tend to use arguments like a sledgehammer with which we deal blow upon blow upon the head of the unfortunate victim of our apostolic zeal, as if we could stun him into belief and convert by concussion." ~ Caryll Houselander, English mystic

Now some may say The Texas Tower Syndrome can be a good thing in business development, calling it "being on the roll" or "being on a winning streak".

In that sense it can be good.

The shadow side of it is when salespeople just can't shut up and listen. According to "How Clients Buy Benchmark Report 2009" by RainToday, the most commonly experienced problem (38%) by buyers is that salespeople don't listen to them.

This usually happens to content-less salespeople who don't really know what they sell, but they make their quotas by bulldozing their ways all the way to their buyers' purses.

These are the folks who suffer from the shadow side of The Texas Tower Syndrome. They keep puking their hype-laden, bullshit-riddled sales pitches, and they just can't stop.

Do you recognise the typical car salesmen (at least, most of them are men) or real estate agents?

So, they keep shooting their canned pitches and dog-and-pony presentations until either buyers buy or throw them out of their offices.

But what do they teach you in peddling school?

If you get thrown out through the door, go back through the window and continue as if nothing had happened.

And now let's add some other commonly taught rubbish to the pile, like don't ever take "No" for an answer and an objection is a sign of interest. To me they sound like the modus operandi of a serial rapist. But you may want to discuss this with some rape victims just to make sure I'm on the right track.

Most salespeople, especially the ones trained in traditional high-pressure, manipulative sales tactics, are so engulfed in their own sales pitches, and they enjoy pitching their stuff so much, that they can't believe when their prospects don't have the same level of enthusiasm as they have.

Yes, let's be enthusiastic, but there is a difference between enthusiastic and enthusiastic.

I think there is a kind of bouncing off the wall type enthusiasm and a kind of grounded enthusiasm. You know the former if you've seen motivational speakers or B2C salespeople in action.

In the B2B world, salespeople had better be a touch stoic to kerb their enthusiasm, because too much of it can frighten buyers.

Why?

Because the buyer is about to make a significant investment, and in doing so putting his balls on the line. If something goes fubar, he can get fired.

So, even though the buyer agrees to the sale, I don't think he's in the right emotional state to see the seller high-five his colleagues and celebrate the next "invoice number" as he reaches his quota.

I truly believe that when a sale is made, the buyer should celebrate more than the seller. When the seller celebrates more, then I think there is a problem that can lead to buyer's remorse, and the reversal of the buying decision in a few days.

Why is this important?

For the seller, making this specific sale is just one of the many successful sales events. Clients come and client s go.

But for the buyer, the seller's solution and the seller's willingness to accept him as a new client can be the proverbial life raft to solve a crippling problem or to seize a huge opportunity. For the seller, the buyer can be the proverbial messiah.

And this is why the buyer should celebrate more than the seller.

When the roles are reversed, we have a temporarily docile and obedient buyer and a troubled seller.

Why doesn't the buyer celebrate?

Because he knows he would wiggle out of the deal in the last moment.

It happens to buyers either because they are of the hesitating types that can't make up their minds one way or the other or because they just want to milk sellers for information, and then pass the information to their in-house staff for implementation.

And why does the buyer celebrate? Because he wants to buy more than the seller wants to sell. Upon seeing the right solution, he's desperate for the sale to solve a problem or to seize an opportunity.

So, who does the Texas Tower Syndrome affect the most?

Lots of content-less salespeople. That is, career salespeople who sell for a living, and go from company to company in search of better compensation structures. What they sell is really irrelevant because they don't really know anything about what they sell.

Yesterday they sold used cars in car dealerships, today they sell ribbed condoms door to door and tomorrow they sell, well hell, complex, high-ticket IT solutions.

And they try to sell them as if they were used cars or ribbed condoms. Asking typical peddler questions like...

They bring out their arsenals of schmoozing questions, leading questions, thousands of closing tricks and hundreds of objection-handling techniques.

They can't shut up and listen. They just keep firing just as Whitman did in that university tower in Texas in 1966.

And how do buyers respond to this lunacy?

They chuck these peddlers out of their offices and send them down to the purchasing department where a salivating procurement agent is already eagerly waiting to crush the balls of this new vendor and squeeze the lowest price and best possible terms out of him.

And as sitting in the hallway in the company of 20 competing peddlers of the same solutions, waiting to present to the purchasing agent, our hero realises that the sale was basically lost, and deep inside he starts singing a requiem for his lost commission.

And now, let's look at the second disease that wreaks havoc among IT salespeople, the dreaded...

Munich Massacre Syndrome

The Munich massacre has become the informal but commonly used name of the event that occurred during the 1972 Summer Olympic Games in Munich, Germany.

A small group of Palestinian extremists, the Black September Organisation, infiltrated the Olympic Village and kidnapped members of the Israeli Olympic team.

By the end of the drama, 11 Israeli athletes and a German police officer had got killed.

But during the prelude leading up to the rescue mission, police snipers had spent a long time observing the terrorists.

Watching the terrorists' movements and behaviour through the powerful scopes of their sniper rifles, the snipers had developed some kind of sympathy for the terrorists.

Why?

Because the snipers watch the terrorists from a distance, and they know that the terrorists can't see them, so they are not in danger. But during the observation, the snipers become intimately familiar with the terrorists. So, in their eyes, those terrorists soon become innocent people.

So, by the time the order was given to the snipers to shoot, they had got so emotionally entangled with the terrorists that they were unable to pull the trigger.

As a direct consequence of this inability, the terrorists were free to kill their hostages... and they did.

Munich Massacre Syndrome In Business Development

Who does this problem affect the most?

Most career IT professionals inherently hate business development and look down on people who are so revoltingly low on the evolutionary and moral pecking order that they do business development for a living.

And here is the split in the world of IT professionals.

Some keep hating business development for the rest of their lives, and rely on salespeople to bring them business, so they can remain employed and paid.

Some IT pros think differently, and realise that in their worlds of complex, high-ticket B2B selling, selling is not about persuasion, manipulation, objection-handling and closing.

They know that in that world, selling is really diagnostics, education and facilitating buyers' decision-making.

So, many IT pros decide to acquire industry-specific business skills that allow them to talk to buyers directly.

And while buyers do their best to avoid salespeople, they are willing and eager to meet knowledgeable subject matter experts.

But something interesting is happening here.

Even if consciously IT pros embrace business development, subconsciously they still feel a bit strange about it, and when it's time to ask for buyers' commitments, they often miss the moment and don't ask for that commitment.

Let's remember, that as technical professionals, diagnostics and education are in IT pro's blood, but they're not comfortable to ask for commitment.

But this is not the peddler-type commitment when peddlers are aiming for a sale no matter what. They just want to get their money even if what they sell is useless to their buyers.

Asking buyers for commitments is not about asking for the sale, but asking for a decision.

Granted, hopefully, after all that diagnostics and education, it's a "yes" decision, but we have to learn to feel all right even if some buyers decide not to go ahead.

Can you imagine your dentist to be upset because you've decided to procrastinate on that root canal?

Yes, it would be good money for the clinic, but she is not attached to the sale. She regards you as a person intelligent enough to make the best decision for yourself.

And you know what? The clinic manager is not going to reprimand her for missing quota.

The Healthy Middle Way

So, what is the best way to avoid both the Texas Tower Syndrome and the Munich Massacre Syndrome in business development?

In the drawing above, on the far left of the continuum we have sellers who have do great diagnostics and valuable client education, but are afraid of asking buyers about what they intend to do next.

On the far right we have the bulldog sellers who just can't stop. They can't take no for an answer, and keep harassing buyers until they get thrown out. Then, as per their sales training, they climb back in through the window, sneak up on buyers and continue their pitch-puking practices.

And here is the interesting dynamic.

If you've done good marketing, no matter how shy you are and how scared you are to ask for buyers' commitments, they come down on you like a bulldog, basically demanding that you accept them as new clients, and most importantly, on your terms and at your fees.

Through your marketing, buyers know that you have limited capacity and there are only so many projects you can handle on an annual basis. Of course, buyers want to be one of the lucky ones to have the privilege of becoming your clients.

And at that point you can play The Munich Massacre Syndrome on buyers because they will be eager to play the Texas Tower Syndrome on you in order to become your clients.

Now I'm an introvert guy, and so are so many IT pros. And when it comes to selling, I don't think I'm the only one who gets a tad shy.

So, I can see more and more why I failed rather miserably when I tried to use the old-fashioned manipulative hard-sell approach that I had learnt from the so-called sales aces in the 90s. Then I discovered that the so-called sales aces hadn't sold anything since the 60s and 70s, but they had been teaching what worked for them 20-30 years before.

Surprisingly, they didn't even notice that their methods got a bit obsolete. Well.

But with good marketing, even if you're on the far left of the continuum, you still wind up with some nice clients and lucrative opportunities.

On Summary

The military has done extensive research on what can cause both of the syndromes we've discussed here.

One account Lieutenant Colonel Dave Grossman's brilliant book, entitled On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society.

The author explains that the closer the range between combating soldiers, the higher is the resistance to kill the other person.

This is why bomber plane pilots and crew members, although causing incredible devastation, have no resistance to doing their jobs because they almost never see the devastation they cause. They can easily end up with the Texas Tower Syndrome. They keep dropping their bombs until their bomb racks go empty.

By contrast, mid-range riflemen have higher resistance, because they can see the results of their handiwork.

And highest resistance to kill is in closed quarter combat and hand-to-hand combat, which are fought in close range with bare hands, knives, garrottes or other devilish instruments.

Although here the resistance to kill is overcome by the persistence of staying alive and fending off the constantly attacking enemy.

I notice this difference in myself when I do farm work.

When I slaughter livestock on one of the farms where I'm actively involved in raising the animals from birth, I have a higher level of resistance to kill them than slaughtering unknown animals.

When friends invite me to process their cattle, Xmas pigs or Easter lambs, I can do that at a pretty low resistance level.

Being an animal lover (And don't laugh, please), I still have some resistance, but my only concern is to do the work as painlessly as possible.

Yes, over the years I've refined humane slaughter to the nth degree, so my process is very quick, very clean and as painless as it can be, but there is still a little resistance.

Research indicates that pain occurs when animals (or humans) sense what's coming to them. When animals (and humans too) can't figure out what's happening and the process is fast, then pain is negligible.

Research done on sniper victims, who were killed under calm and relaxed circumstances and didn't know what was coming, indicates that they basically didn't feel any pain. Pain would develop and remain on the face after the body goes into rigor mortis.

Have you thought about why certain dental clinics scare the shit out of even those patients who only need their biannual check-ups, while in other clinics even root canal patients are smiling?

It's the environment.

In the former clinic, the environment creates psychological pain even if the procedure is relatively painless.

And the same applies to the sales environment.

Sellers suffering from The Texas Tower Syndrome create a painful energy around them. That's why buyers avoid them.

But sellers who suffer from The Munich Massacre Syndrome, can put buyers at ease, and if they can just ask for commitments at the right times, they can produce amazing results.

And buyers will be eager to meet them again and again.

Now think about your own salespeople's styles. Which syndrome do you think they suffer from?

Maybe none of them.

But if they suffer from The Texas Tower Syndrome, then take them off commission, so they seize to be commission-chasing peddlers. Put them on salaries with bonuses, and base the bonus on company-wide performance NOT individual performance.

If they suffer from The Munich Massacre Syndrome, then get them educated in diagnosis-driven (as opposed to presentation-driven) consultative selling, so they have the expertise and the confidence to ask the right questions at the right times.

Come and let's discuss this newsletter issue on my blog...


Attribution: "This article was written by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan who helps privately held information technology companies to develop high leverage client acquisition systems and business development teams in order to sell their products and services to premium clients at premium fees and prices. Visit Tom's website at http://www.varjan.com.