It happens at airline gates, on planes prior to takeoff and immediately after landing when mobile phones are allowed. It happens in hotel lounges, in coffee shops, and (quite disturbingly) in public restrooms…

“I don’t know if we are going to get <customer name withheld> what he needs. These guys at <customer company name withheld> are being completely unreasonable.”

“We have got to do something about <customer company name withheld>. These guys at <presumed competitor name withheld> are going to be al over them if we don’t address this.”

Discussions such as these remind me of some of the U.S. propaganda campaigns from WWII that reminded citizens of the dangers of talking freely and in public about their manufacturing work and military personnel deployments.

I recently overheard both of these conversations within a 15 minute span in an airport club lounge. Although I admit that on a (very) few occasions I have allowed my mobile phone speaking voice to get a touch too loud in public, it is overheard discussions such as these that make me cringe. Like many of you, I travel frequently to spend time with customers and employees. Like you, I overhear many conversations in public spaces that I believe should be considered confidential. Of course all of us in the sales profession know that intentional eavesdropping on others’ business conversations is unethical – especially if we attempt to use that information to our advantage. This is especially true if we happen to overhear something that pertains directly to one of our customers, our competitor, our own company or, at the very worst, a specific individual by name at any of the above (I have overheard all). But it is considered eavesdropping when someone is in a public space providing details of their job to everyone within earshot? Unknown to the offender, many co-travelers consider such acts a bit of a show if the offender is animated or agitated enough. What truly amazes me is that these transgressions are often committed by what appear to be experienced professionals.

I’m not a complete Luddite and I realize that the proliferation of mobile communication and computing technologies has redefined many of our social mores. However, much as the Allies’ intelligence services knew of the existence of Axis infiltrators, the possibility exists that individuals from the companies omitted in the quotes above are nearby when they were mentioned. Based on my experience in some of the smaller markets in the midwestern United States, there is a very strong possibility that employees of the largest employers in those cities are present when their company name is yelled across the departure gate. So, a bit of advice…

Imagine if someone from your customer heard you blurting the status of a current proof of concept while seated at a table at a restaurant…

Imagine if the spouse of a customer stakeholder heard you bellow their beloved’s name in the line at the coffee shop…

Imagine if your competitor heard you discussing the roadblocks to obtaining the technical win with a new customer initiative…

Imagine if the VP of vendor relations at your customer heard your vitriolic verbiage about the challenges of doing business with them…

How would any of the above effect your ability to gain customer support and win the privilege of helping them use your solution to run their business? Lifejacket, anyone?

And besides, it simply makes the offender look like an obnoxious dolt. This is not the sort of professional that any enterprise IT supplier would want representing them in the marketplace. Professionalism and discretion should still rule the day, even with our new social mores. Although the fate of the free world may not be resting in the balance, loose lips can still sink ships.

The next perspective of the Technical Sales Balanced Scorecard is a view of progress on organizational learning and growth. This view not only encompasses the organization’s efforts to maintain a highly skilled workforce that can add maximum value to its customers and its business, but also the manner in which a culture of innovation is being fostered to bring new solutions to customers and position the organization for the future.

Some aspects that might be worthy of following for this perspective might be:

• Technical certifications that demonstrate various degrees of competence with the organization’s own products
• Technical industry certifications, such as those administered by the Open Group, IEEE or other associations specific to the organization’s industry
• Industry certifications and credentials that demonstrate competence in customers’ businesses, such as LOMA, the Mortgage Banker’s Association, or ASQ
• Internal programs tied to diversity, career movement, the support of high potential employees, education, etc.

Many proponents of the use of balanced scorecards as measures of organizational health include the term “innovation” in this measure and I want to acknowledge this as quite valid for technical sales as well. Some might question how the sales organization can play a role in driving innovation for the company. After all, the primary purpose of technical sales focuses on driving revenue by representing existing products and solutions to customers. Therefore, one might assume that any innovation regarding new features or products would happen in the company’s engineering labs rather than from its customer-facing sales organization. This is true to a certain extent. However, focusing on innovation from the customer’s perspective is where the most effective technical sales professionals can really shine, because a great deal of innovation happens when a new business problem is solved via a unique application of an existing product or combination of products. The technical seller who fully understands their company’s offerings, their customer’s environment, and their customer’s industry is best positioned to bring this sort of innovation to the marketplace. And it is every bit as important as any new offerings or the evolution of features that come from a company’s engineering labs. As a matter of categorization, I do not mention it in the bullets above because it is ultimately the customer who determines when the organization has delivered innovation, and therefore this notion lies in the Customer Perspective of the BSC.

The second element of the Technical Sales Balanced Scorecard focuses on a view of performance from an internal or business process perspective. It seeks to determine and measure the technical sales organization’s ability to engage in the right sort of behaviors in the right fashion at the right time to ensure that goals are being met. Some attributes of the internal perspective might be:

• Pipeline, or pipeline opportunity growth/contraction over a given period
• Employee opportunity identification participation, or the number of new opportunities that technical sales reps have discovered via their prospecting activities with customers
• Win/loss dollar amounts and rates
• Employee turnover
• Number or percentage of reps achieving their revenue targets in a given time period
• Specific metrics regarding identification and progression of strategic sales plays or brand-new-to-the-market solutions
• Usage of technical deliverables (architecture overviews, customer project documentation and/or implementation information, etc.) in opportunity wins vs. losses
• Success & failure rates of proofs of concept and whether those technical wins translated into opportunity wins
• Number or percentage of closed opportunities featuring more than one product or solution from the organization’s portfolio (i.e. “cross brand”)
• Performance of business partner & channel-led opportunities vs. those owned by the organization

These attributes may be viewed within a particular time period and, as history provides, it may be valuable to show them with year to year or quarter to quarter comparisons. Success and failure of many of these attributes might be tied to the broader organizational strategy so that they may be used as key performance indicators that contribute to the desired outcomes. For example, the organization might choose to examine how many successful customer proofs of concept were not parlayed into closed opportunities.

Obviously the principal objective of the technical sales professional is to drive revenue for their organization in the form of new products and solutions sold to customers. However, the first focus area of the Technical Sales Balanced Scorecard – the financial, or shareholders perspective – might also include other aspects of performance. There are many objectives, measures, and targets that might act as indicators of the organization’s financial success and therefore be important. Ultimately, the financial perspective endeavors to answer the question, “how do we look to our shareholders?” Some measures might include:

• Revenue – including not only new sales for a given time period (quarter, week, etc.) but also year over year and/or quarterly comparisons
• Profit- similarly, not only for a given time period but also with period comparisons
• Backlog – committed revenue to be collected based on contracts that have been signed but not necessarily yet performed
• Losses – aggregated value of opportunities lost
• Market Share – assuming the market for a given offering can be defined in economic terms, this indicator would demonstrate how well the organization is doing in penetrating that market

Each of the above might be further categorized based on established or “white space” customers as well as by customer industry, geography, product line, or any number of other relevant criteria. Like any company’s financial statements, these metrics will tell a story about how effectively the technical sales team is working with customers and whether their efforts are resulting in the revenue and profitability required to deliver value to the owners of the company. If not, it might provide insight into what product lines, geographies, or customer sets might require more or less focus.

Sales teams in many industries often struggle to determine the optimal measures of organizational performance and health. Enterprise technology sales is no different. Measures such as revenue per rep, attainment per rep, profit per rep, and similar per customer revenue and profit measures are all valid and relatively simple metrics. However, if we consider the mission of technical sales to include a broader set of objectives that include financial performance but also the more nebulous elements such as customer satisfaction, competitive displacement, customer technology adoption, etc., then a broader set of objective and subjective measures must be considered. This is where a balanced scorecard (BSC) may be of some use. A performance management system such as a BSC can be wholly representative of the organizational health of the technical sales force and will link overall sales strategy to planning and control.

Thanks to Kaplan and Norton, the concept of using a BSC as a holistic management tool has been around since the early 1990s. It focuses on distinct views of overall organizational performance in terms of executing strategy from four different perspectives:

1. Financial, or shareholder’s, which focuses on whether the organization is delivering the expected returns to its owners.
2. Internal, which includes the organization’s own process objectives and indicators of success.
3. Learning & Growth, which focuses on how the organization is going to improve and/or evolve for the future of its business.
4. Customer, which provides insight into customers’ perceptions of the organization.

Development and implementation of a BSC not only creates the organizational focus necessary to move the business forward, it also helps to gain the appropriate level of buy-in from staff and management as everyone becomes better attuned to the big picture. It provides a line of sight from strategic to operational activities and ensures that everyone is engaged in the appropriate activities that drive organizational success.  Over the next few posts I will present some ideas for how these categories might be represented for a technical sales organization.

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.