Spend time in fieldobserving

and listening to your customers

 

BY RICH SCHMITT

Management specialist

 

News flash! As I write this column, the economy is still down and showing few signs of recovery. 

Today’s prescription is: 

 

• Stay right-sized
• Manage your pricing to get everything you can out of every sale
• Keep selling.

 

A surprising number of wholesalers have become so internally focused with their personnel and financial problems that they are forgetting about their customers. That, in my mind, makes them sitting ducks. I know some readers have seen these topics in my previous columns but this ongoing reminder is probably still in order. For reprints of some of those columns to be used as reminders, e-mail me at rich@go-spi.com.

 

And now back to my regularly scheduled column. When I was growing up, my barber’s business was not doing well and, in his effort to keep expenses down, he decided not to keep his eyeglass prescription updated. Over time, this pretty-good barber’s work “headed” down hill — no pun intended. His skills were still good but his impaired vision caused him to send some of us back into the world looking worse than when we came into his shop. There were mothers, wives and girlfriends throughout our town recommending that a new barber was in order. (As I think about it, I don’t know which came first — the declining eye-sight or his business problems.) This problem can occur with any profession where clear vision is required. I would certainly contribute to a fund earmarked for keeping my surgeon’s, dentist’s, pilot’s, accountant’s and barber’s eyeglass prescription up to date. When any of these key people cannot see clearly, I am the one who will suffer. 

 

Clarity and focus can be especially important in wholesaling. Problems and opportunities that are seen clearly, are more often identified in a timely manner and then addressed properly. Problems and opportunities that are blurry might not be handled correctly and even worse, they might not be recognized at all. So a key component of successful wholesaling is to see the business very clearly.

 

In previous columns, I’ve discussed the need for senior management to get out into the market to view, with their own eyes, what is happening in the real world. In this struggling and rapidly changing economy, accurate market knowledge is absolutely critical. So I recommend that every manager get some customer/field time on their calendars. Customer/field visits will help you keep your company focused on succeeding in the new world of wholesaling.

 

Second-hand information and descriptions are, at best, blurry and, at worst, can involve the intentional misrepresentation of a situation to suit someone’s personal agenda. Now I don’t want to offend anyone but I remember when my father, Joe, had the “sex talk” with me. Some of you will remember Joe and, as good of a communicator as he was, his description did not do justice to the topic. My presence would prove that he had at least some first-hand knowledge of the subject matter and I know that he was not trying to misrepresent the facts. Yet, as I would learn years later, hearing about the topic is not as interesting as being personally involved.

 

If you need further proof, try this test. Ask your sales team to describe several of their top customers to you. Start with the person’s appearance as if describing the customer to a police sketch artist. Most of these descriptions will be laughable.  Then ask them to describe the customer’s business to you in terms of trucks, number of people, key players other than the owner, number in the office, who else they buy from, type of work performed, other family in the business along with any other information you might need to really understand the customer and his needs.

 

This shouldn’t need to be an open book test but most salespeople don’t do real well even after they refer to their notes and files. This should be from the top of their heads because you are only asking about, at most, a handful of customers. Some will try to bluff their way through by showing great confidence, but as you visit the customer to “grade” the answers, they will often earn a less-than-passing grade. Most of their descriptions should prove to you that using second-hand information to make important decisions can be dangerous — even when the person is sincere and has no hidden agenda. Even if the sales team does a stellar job, there is still much to be gained through a second set of eyes and a second perspective.

 

The only solution I know is to go out into the real world and see customers and competitors. I have told this next story before. We were working with a company to improve its performance. As we interviewed the team, one competitor was mentioned repeatedly as a tough competitor. As part of our process, we actually drove out to each competitor’s location and observed the operation and, when possible, took some snapshots. In the end, we found the “tough” competitor was far more legend and a lot less juggernaut. The operation was small and had very little inventory. It seemed well-run but it certainly wasn’t the goliath that had been described. As the team saw who their competition really was, they took heart and were able to compete more effectively with the paper tiger. 

 

One wholesaler recently told me that they actually had to start selling product, as opposed to filling orders, for the first time in many years: “We were able to just sit in our offices and the business poured over us. We were so busy just taking care of the hoards that we didn’t need to sell.  I guess we kind-of got out of practice. Now we’re scrambling for everything that we get.” 

 

The point is that you cannot “scramble” from the comfort of your office chair. The battle is being waged in the field, in the customer’s shops and at the work sites so that is where the best data gathering is conducted. For a reprint on customer visits, e-mail me at rich@go-spi.com.

 

Remember, field visits should also be made to all branch locations, warehouses and showrooms. You should be riding with your outside sales team and in your delivery trucks so you can see the world at ground level. You see how your team functions and how you are serving your customers. Unfortunately, a lot of what you see will be snapshots where people dressed up and “smiled-pretty” for the picture but, if you do it enough, there will be candid, unrehearsed moments that make the effort worth the trouble.  As a reminder, branch visits as well as sales and truck “ride-alongs” happen unannounced so you get to see the good, bad and ugly of the way the business operates. People don’t like the surprise but, done periodically, it can improve the daily operation of your business.

 

Spend time getting insights from your team. Your field team spends more time face-to-face with customers than anyone else in your company and they have valuable insights about your market and customers. Some are just waiting to be asked. In some cases, you will have to translate the insights significantly. One of my great memories was interviewing a truck driver who was uneducated (never finished high school) but very smart. I asked him for his thoughts. He told me that he had lots of time to think as he was driving the truck and had some ideas. I was expecting his perspective to be limited to delivery and their trucks. While he had a few insights in those areas, he talked mostly marketing ideas. He wanted to advertise their products on his truck: “Seems to me that if people saw some of our products, they would start to ask for them.” He talked about product lines that contractors used that didn’t have. He talked about getting the salespeople into the back of the shops to see what the customers were really using every day: “I see our competitor’s trucks delivering these products. Why aren’t they buying those products from us?” Take time to ask and then really listen to what they have to say.

 

Finally, take a look at your competition while you are out in the field. Simple “drive-bys” can yield a lot of information. (Just so I am clear, the “drive-by” that I am describing does not involve an Uzi.) Look at their yard and see how many customer trucks are in the parking lot. A competitive snapshot may help to assess whether you are getting your share of the business that is available in your market.

 

One important part of the field visit process is to take notes. When I conduct sales training seminars, I tell salespeople that they must take notes — even if they have a photographic memory. Note taking is a part of active listening. It shows respect for the customer by communicating that you value what they are saying enough to write it down. It shows you value their opinions and insights. The customer feels respected and valued. Even better, I tell them to occasionally stop the customer and say, “Let me make sure that I understand what you said. Did you say that you need a reliable source for left-hand widgets and that nobody in this market carries them?”

 

Field data gathering is just the first step in the process since decisions seldom leap from the data. The data must be converted into strategies and tactics for you and your team. The next step is to process your notes, to interpret and flesh out your cryptic scribbles so you capture your insights and ideas as soon as possible. The human mind has such a barrage of information coming at it from all directions these days that it is really tough to remember this morning’s meetings, much less yesterday or last week. So I recommend doing this asap.

 

Finally, as you look at your notes, create a punch-list of actions that you will take based on the data and insights you have gathered. Remember, when you are mining for gold, you have to process a lot of rock and mud to get a few nuggets. There may be only a few actions but they will be more on target and relevant when they are driven by insights collected first-hand from your adventures in the field.

 

Next month I will be discussing a different kind of gold mining. That is finding the gold hidden in your computer system. With the proper approach and the right tools, most companies find that they can unearth opportunities that will materially improve their situation. But as I discussed above, processing all the rock and mud is so difficult that many companies give up before they find the gold. For a preview, e-mail me at rich@go-spi.com.

For information about service contractor support tools, e-mail me at rich@go-spi.com.