It is fascinating how we business professionals co-opt specific English language words for our own use. Recently for me, “actionable” and “dehire” have joined phrases such as “leveraging our synergies” in the pantheon of pithy peevish palavers. In technical sales in particular, we have managed to turn “solution” and “architect” into verbs, which has resulted in a few debates regarding the difference between “solutioners who are solutioning solutions” and “architects who are architecting architectures”. I recently read of a middle manager who uses “road map” as a verb. As I consider “cadence” and its use in the sales profession, I suppose its relation to “rhythm” makes it acceptable as a term to describe a discussion of current opportunities, their status, next steps to closure, etc. But like many devotees of Horstmann and Auzenne’s “Manager Tools”, I prefer the even less descriptive but more flexible term “one on one” and its hip derivatives “1:1”, “OoO” and “O3”.

But enough about semantics, let’s talk about regular conversations between technical sales professionals and their managers. Obviously direct discussions between managers and employees help to develop and solidify the professional and personal relationship between the two in the interest of advancing the organization’s goals. For technical sellers, these discussions are critical to maintaining focus on progressing opportunities, engaging in the right activities to increase customer value, career growth, and receiving appropriate coaching on all of the above. For managers, effective 1:1s will ensure that opportunity status and next steps are communicated up-line, potential issues with customers are brought to light before they become problems, that employees are generally doing what the organization is paying them to do, and provide ample information for employee reviews and assessments. Generally speaking, all pre-sales, post-sales, and career topics can be efficiently covered in a short amount of time if both the manager and the employee come prepared to discuss:

Current Opportunity Status: In viewing the near term (current quarter, month, etc.) pipeline, what needs to be done to ensure that we have gained the “technical win” in the eyes of the customer for each opportunity? Are they confident that they can successfully implement our solution in their business and technology environment? Is the customer taking 100% responsibility for the implementation or does other expertise need to be engaged? Do we have the right level of support amongst those who own the infrastructure? Does the customer agree with the business and/or technical benefits of the solution? Does the customer understand the long-term benefits of our solution over the competition? Are you in sync with sales peers regarding any issues that might arise during negotiation of terms?

Customer Relationship: What is the “temperature” of our organization’s relationship with the customer? Have they had any issues in implementing our solutions that are going to result in delayed realization of value to their business? What sort of movement is being observed amongst our competitors regarding this customer? What are you doing to differentiate our organization from our competitors? What benefits does our customer see in doing business with us vs. our competition? How can you be more effective in demonstrating those benefits? What are you doing to ensure that the customer is continuing to receive value from their investment in our solutions?

Future Opportunity Development: What are you doing to bring new ideas to your customers? What new solutions will those ideas require the customer to invest in? Have you given them any ideas on how to make better use of what they have already invested in? What complementary offerings that the customer has not yet invested in are you positioning next to solutions that the customer currently has? What new contacts have you made and in what parts of the customers business? What new business opportunities is your customer engaged in that would require more solutions from our organization? How are you setting the vision of how our solutions can be used to move the customer’s business into the future?

So what about employee career planning and coaching? Over time, regular one on one discussions covering the above topics will bring to light the skills, aptitude, and interests of the employee. As employees experience success in different aspects of the technical seller role, strengths and development opportunities will arise. From there, a natural progression into a “what do you want to do next?” conversations will occur.

If you are a technical sales manager and you are not having regular discussions of this nature with your employees, schedule them now. If you are a technical sales professional and you are not having regular discussions of this nature with your manager, ask him or her to schedule them now. Your organization may have many tools to help document and communicate similar information up and across, but if you are not having direct, 1:1 discussions, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to much more effectively engage in your business, increase sales, and enhance customer satisfaction.