Detailed Talking Points

This Telephony column was written specifically with the intent to relate with weary telecom service provider senior executives (i.e. they believe -- this case study describes my organization, my challenges, and perhaps a potential solution to my dilemma). Key points are underlined for emphasis.

• Granted, enterprise IT, telecom and finance managers are seeking ways to cut their communication costs, but only because no carrier has really given them a reason to think of something more compelling than a cost-centric perspective. Why is the term "professional telecom marketer" still an oxymoron? Perhaps it's because business model creativity and originality is clearly undervalued.
  

• Consider this scenario -- two very similar size major account customers with essentially the same network services from the exact same telecom service provider can have a totally different experience and satisfaction level. How can this happen? Because one has a competent account manager, and the other doesn't.
  

• Most major account customers crave a multifaceted salesperson, but often don't have one assigned to their account. If they like the communications service provider, then they'll ask for a new salesperson -- and if the carrier doesn't comply, they often look elsewhere. One of the most effective account retention strategies is therefore to assign a competent salesperson. How many accounts are actually lost due to a lack of sales professionalism? Empirical research indicates that it's too many.
  

• The limbo-dancer syndrome is prevalent -- inexperienced or lazy salespeople with a facilities-based carrier often use a sales proposition that's virtually identical to a tiny telecom reseller with zero customer support -- meaning, ineffective salespeople often give-away a carrier's profit margin, and price discounting is always the lowest common denominator they use to win the business. Is something being done to address this problem? Yes, but it's a sham, not a long-term viable solution.
  

• Carriers are punishing ALL salespeople with micro-management of their daily activities, as a result of the overall sales channel's poor performance. On the one hand, this approach has helped to expose the under-achievers, but the byproduct is that it unintentionally lowered the bar of expectations to further propagate commodity-selling practices. Where are the value-centric sales manager mentors? They're few and far between, and so "transaction selling" is often still the norm.
  

• On this backdrop, most carrier sales leadership is unduly focused on negative outcomes -- the lost sale post-mortem. In contrast, organizational success propagation can only occur when you re-focus on positive outcomes, and you take the time to fully comprehend the substantive reasons for winning high-margin deals. Why do you win, only sometimes? Carriers need to know the facts, and then reinforce that preferred behavior for every salesperson.
  

• All carrier salespeople must learn the applied-science of selling value from their proven thought-leader peers, and the when and where to apply those key definitive value points during the typical sales cycle. Are you confident that your current President's Club members really set the right behavioral example for other salespeople to follow? If not, then realize that you're probably sending the wrong message to your sales force.
  

• Unfortunately, most carriers don't KNOW what they've collectively learned about world-class selling, because nobody's assigned to capture this insight, or to utilize it. So, first step, carriers should provide incentives to their consultative selling thought-leaders who choose to share and propagate best practices (fund this program by NOT paying salespeople so much to merely take orders for the commodity services).
  

• But, where should carriers place the tacit workflow knowledge that they've collected from the front-line? Certainly not in the SFA or CRM platform, or even the Enterprise Portal on their intranet, because these efficiency-centric systems are typically disjointed from the act of selling. Then, what's the practical alternative? Just because you've already invested $20,000/seat (the carrier average) for a Siebel Systems (Oracle) implementation doesn't mean that you have to continue sinking resources into this bottomless money pit.
  

• As a new breed of business process automation tools, Sales Effectiveness Systems (SES) enable carriers to make KNOWN pragmatic wisdom actionable by ALL salespeople within the context of the typical complex product sales cycle. These systems fill the void between SFA/CRM and OSS/BSS platforms. Inherently, they help raise the mainstream bar of expectations for sales teams. Practitioners now have the means to rid themselves of oversight and punishment policies, and instead embrace the uplifting culture that results from success propagation. Everybody wins in this scenario, including your most astute value-conscious major account customers.
  

• Moreover, as already stated, proven sales effectiveness methodology isn't just about penetrating new accounts -- it's also about keeping the accounts that you've already won. Therefore these software applications can be instrumental tools to break the debilitating cycle of perpetual account churn.