t know how. Salespeoplecomplain that the coaching they receive is too basic to help themmeet their customers’ escalating demands.17 The critical coachingskill that sales managers usually lack is giving effective feedback andreinforcement.18
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MANAGERS AREN’T GIVEN INCENTIVES TO COACHCompanies  rarely  reward  managers  for  coaching  (with  incentivessuch  as  compensation,  promotion,  good  performance  reviews,  orsimple recognition). When was the last time you attended a recog-nition or award meeting at which a manager was recognized with aplaque for his or her development of people? 
Marion  Miller,  a  thirty-year  veteran  with  Xerox  in  sales,  sales
management, and human resources, had this to say: 
We are committed to developing our people at Xerox.We  train  them  extensively,  we  have  one  of  the  besttraining  programs  in  the  world,  we  include  peopledevelopment in management reviews, and we genuinelycare about our people, but I can’t remember when wehave recognized a manager solely for the developmentof his or her people.
ACTION POINTS➔ Salespeople need coaching in order to learn. Companies that want tosee a financial return on their training costs and want to see theirsalespeople improve need to either train sales managers to coachor subcontract coaching outside the company. 
➔ Reward sales managers for coaching. It’s good to include monetaryincentives and to devote a section of annual review to their effec-tiveness in developing their people, and it is even better to senda  message  throughout  an  organization  that  says:  “We  do  careabout our people. We want to recognize those who are respon-sible  for  the  development  of  our  people—people  who  developthe  best  in  others.  We  want  to  recognize  and  reward  them  inpublic  and  at  departmentwide,  divisionwide,  or  companywidemeetings.”
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➔ Salespeople should take responsibility. No one else can take respon-sibility for a salesperson’s performance. You must take the ulti-mate responsibility for your own development. A company cangive you extensive opportunities to grow and improve—provid-ing books, materials, training classes, and mentoring—but in theend, you are the one who decides how much effort you will putinto your development.
SALES TRUTH 22: Sales managers usually aren’tgood coaches.
6PRINCIPLE
use theinternet
TOP  PERFORMERS and  top  companies  usethe Internet effectively to enhance their sales efforts.They recognize that the Internet can be a customeracquisition tool, a low-cost distribution channel, anda lead generator. Internet technology and its uses aredynamic, limited only by the creativity of the sales andmarketing  people  using  them.  Top  companies  areconstantly figuring out how to use online selling as aneffective tool.
One  clever  sales  use  of  the  Internet  is  Dell’sPremier  Pages.  Premier  Pages  are  customized  websites  that Dell  offers  free  of  charge to  corporations,
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governments,  and  institutions.  Dell’s  Premier  Pages  offer  secure,personalized web sites that provide:
∆ Order history
∆ Order status
∆ Contact information for Dell account teams
∆ Troubleshooting services
∆ Product specifications 
Dell  claims  to  have  more  than  40,000  Premier  Pages  beingaccessed by customers in as many as twelve languages.1 Dell uses thisfree web service to entice potential customers when salespeople aremaking sales calls. “We use these as an acquisition tool—we can havethem up in less than 24 hours,” says Chris Hinkle, manager of DellLatin America Online in Round Rock, Texas. “These are especiallyimportant for multinationals with offices around the world.”2
Overall, the effect of the Internet is to transfer low-value salesfunctions  to  virtual  networks  because  these  networks  are  cheaperthan a direct sales force. This has meant a reduction in field salesforces, but it hasn’t replaced consultative salespeople. Consultativesalespeople are still needed for important, high-value activities (suchas getting new business, negotiating complicated pricing structures,and other key major account tasks).
Sales organizations that want to succeed today—let alone in thefuture—must figure out how to use technology to give them a lead-ing edge over their competitors in order to create customer value. 
WEB-BASED PRESENCEOf course, top performers have long recognized the importance oftechnology (both hardware and software) in managing databases andprospect  lists  effectively,  as  well  as  for  communicating  by  e-mail.
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Today, those functions are all in the ever-present laptop, which nowalso has wireless Internet access. Some sales organizations use lap-tops  extensively.  As  one  advertisement  suggests,  they  “don’t  leavehome without it.” Salespeople at these organizations, such as Oracle,IBM, Xerox, and Hewlett-Packard, not only swap e-mails with theirclients,  but  also  perform  tasks  such  as  inputting  orders,  updatingdatabases and forecasts, drafting proposals, and accessing informa-tion, all the while being connected to their company’s central com-puter.  Salespeople  also  use  such  tools  to  do  their  homework  andresearch prospective customers before the sales call. (See also SalesTrap 18, “A Skilled Salesperson Doesn’t Need to Plan Sales Calls.”)
E-MAILIs e-mail too impersonal a mode of communication for consultativesalespeople  to  use  to  advance  the  sale  and  to  develop  meaningfulcustomer  relationships?  Opinions  abound.  On  the  one  hand,  astrong sales personality we know says, “My customers want to pressflesh, not keys.” 
But there are a growing number of consultants and salespeo-ple who disagree. One colleague at The Dartmouth Group, Ltd.,who  heads  up  operations  in  the  high-tech  market,  believes  thatwhile it’s important to hold face-to-face meetings, these meetingscan be combined with e-mail when developing relationships. Hecautions against downplaying the usefulness of e-mail to build andsolidify relationships. 
According to this source, e-mail is a two-edged sword. On thedownside, because clients may receive up to 100 e-mails a day, theyoften don’t take the time to respond to each one. “On the upside,however, e-mail provides people an opportunity to respond, docu-ment, and offer pensive answers to thoughtful queries,” he claims.“The key to e-mail is constructing concise, high-impact statementsand asking thoughtful questions that almost come across as ‘thirty-second sound bites’ to the other party. Respect for one another can
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result  if  both  parties  use  e-mail  effectively.”  Naturally,  effectivewriting  skills  are  important  to  making  e-mail  work.  As  JeffreyGitomer, author of The Sales Bible, says, “Writing skills, grammar,humor,  and  prose  are  integral  in  showing  customers  how  sales-intelligent you are.”3
Whether through web sites or web-based technologies such as e-mail, the Internet is transforming the way companies buy and selland the way the sales consulting professions communicate. But com-panies should be aware of the sales traps that prevent the effectiveuse of the Internet. 
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sales trap 23:The Internet Has Changed Selling
People say that the Internet has changed selling. The Internet mayhave opened up new venues for selling, but it’s actually just anotherform of direct marketing. In moving selling online, the Internet hasopened up new sales opportunities and added new roles for buyersand  sellers.  It  has  also  changed  buying  patterns,  giving  customersmore choices. Despite these changes, virtual sales are still just trans-actional sales. 
CHANGES IN SELLINGBusiness-to-business (B2B) e-commerce has changed the way busi-nesses work with their accounts by offering new ways for accountsto connect with service providers (or manufacturers), and new waysfor service providers (or manufacturers) to connect with their sup-pliers.  B2B  e-commerce  shifts  low-value  sales  to  virtual  channelsbecause these channels are automated and electronic and are there-fore more efficient and cheaper than personal selling. It is difficultto create value in these sales (Sales Traps 11 and 12), and the cus-tomer’s primary decision criterion is price.
One way sellers use the Internet to foster loyalty, boost sales, andcut  costs  is  by  using  web-based  extranets  for  major  accounts.Cleveland-based Applied Industrial Technologies, Inc., added pri-vate  extranets  for  customers.  The  problem  that  this  $1.5  billion(1998) industrial parts distributor had faced was that customers haddifficulty choosing from among its thousands upon thousands of dif-ferent industrial parts. Selling was hard to coordinate for its 900 fieldsalespeople and 1,400 inside salespeople because each customer hadindividual price agreements determined by geography, sales volume,and corporate negotiations. Therefore, a simple web catalog for allvisitors  wouldn’t  be  appropriate.4 A  private  extranet  for  each  cus-tomer was the solution. An extranet is a para-enterprise network that
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organizations use to extend intranets to existing outside customersand suppliers. Applied Industrial Technologies’ extranet:
∆ Shows the prices for the individual company
∆ Allows customers to purchase products
∆ Allows customers to check the inventory of local branches
in real time
∆ Allows customers to review orders from the past two years5
The extranets increase efficiency. “They allow us to be more effi-cient, and therefore more profitable,” says John Dannemiller, chair-man  and  CEO  of  Applied  Industrial  Technologies,  Inc.  Theextranets are also expected to allow the company to open its marketto  smaller  accounts,  whose  small  purchases  wouldn’t  make  a  salescall by a field rep profitable.6 Interestingly, however, new customershave to go through a local branch and salesperson first. Prospectshave the alternative of filling out a form on the site, which is sent tothe appropriate local branch within twenty-four hours. Salespeopleare expected to contact the customer within a few days.7
CHANGES IN BUYINGB2B  commerce  on  the  Internet  has  opened  up  opportunities  forbuyers, too, allowing them access to purchasing opportunities theydidn’t have in the past. Procurement processing inefficiencies areeliminated because automation is substituted for manual process-ing of forms. Buyers are able to find the best price, product infor-mation, and resources that are in short or excess supply faster andmore easily. 
One way in which B2B e-commerce benefits buyers is by giv-ing them access to markets they wouldn’t have access to otherwise.For  example,  buyers  in  the  paper  market,  traditionally  a  highly
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fragmented market in which over 500 printers buy paper from afew giant paper manufacturers, can now take advantage of onlineweb  exchanges,  such  as  PaperExchange.com.  An  exchange  is  animpartial site that collects quotes from sellers and submits them tobuyers, and vice versa. For example, in what is called a reverse auc-tion,  a  buyer  can  post  a  particular  material  it  needs  and  cite  theprice  it  is  willing  to  pay  and  the  product  specifications  it  needs(delivery, size, time, amount, etc.). Suppliers can then give a quoteonline.8 PlasticsNet.com,  owned  by  Chicago-based  Commerx,Inc., is another example of an exchange; it offers buyers in the plas-tics  market  access  to  raw  and  manufactured  materials  throughonline auctions.9
The  Internet  increases  efficiency,  giving  buyers  the  chance  topurchase material that is in excess supply. In the paper industry, torecover high fixed costs, huge paper mills must run continuously.If paper demand ebbs, inventory soars. In the past, the manufac-turers had to employ large and costly sales forces to move the excessinventory. But field sales forces could profitably call on only biggeraccounts.  Today,  there’s  a  virtual  marketplace  of  buyers  that  themill’s sales reps might never have been able to contact. 
OLD WINE IN A NEW BOTTLEAlthough these changes are changes in ways of buying and sell-ing,  it’s  important  to  remember  that  in  the  larger  scheme  ofthings, they’re still plain-vanilla transactional sales. And transac-tional sales have been around for a long time. It’s hard to imagineconsultative sales taking place on the Internet.10 (For a discussionof whether the Internet will replace consultative salespeople, seeSales Trap 24.)
Selling and buying on the Internet is just another form of directmarketing. As Michael Dell himself has said, initially, in 1994, heviewed  the  Internet  as  just  another  way  to  sell  direct,  a  tool  thatwould strengthen Dell in its primary mission to be a one-on-one,
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direct-to-the-consumer  computer  company.  “Direct  from  Dell”pioneered computers as a direct sale with no intermediaries. Dellpioneered the strategy that instead of a catalog and a telephone cus-tomer service number, customers used the Dell.com web site. “It’sself-service,”  Michael  Dell  says.  “The  customer  is  now  going  [tothe web site], and they’re not calling us on the phone.”11
Others agree. “Direct marketers are the only true beneficiariesof the Internet,” states Lester Wunderman, one of the pioneers ofdirect  marketing.12 Internet  selling  and  buying  relies  on  the  samesales processes, principles, and techniques as other forms of directtransactional  sales.  (The  techniques  in  transactional  sales  are  dis-cussed in Sales Trap 20, “If You Generate Sales Activity, You’ll CloseMore Sales.”) 
With respect to selling, the Internet is old wine in a new bottle.Although it’s a new technology, Internet sales are transactional directsales, and direct sales are as old as money. However, the impact ofthe  technology  has  changed  both  selling  and  buying  patterns.  Itdoesn’t  change  why companies  buy  and  sell,  but  it  changes  what,when, where, and how companies buy and sell.
ACTION POINTS➔ Use the Internet to buy and sell direct. The Internet is a transactionalselling tool that is used to buy and sell direct. Period. Using theInternet to sell increases your profitability on low-margin prod-uct lines by taking the direct sales expense for salespeople out ofthe P&L statement. 
➔ Survey the market. What are your competitors doing online?
➔ Survey  your  customers. What  information  and  services  will  yourcustomers want from your site twelve months from now? How dothey want to use the Internet to stay in touch with you?
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➔ Use the Internet as a channel of distribution for low-value products.Allow your customers to use the Internet to buy certain lines ofproducts  for  which  sales  reps  will  provide  little  or  no  value  tocustomers.
➔ Use the Internet to offer your customers more choices and more infor-mation. The  Internet  offers  sellers  a  cheaper  way  to  reach  andinform customers than communication methods in the past. 
SALES TRUTH 23: The  internet  is  just  anothervenue for transactional sales.
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sales trap 24:The Internet Will Replace All ConsultativeSalespeople
Although the Internet has replaced some consultative salespeople, itwill never replace them all. Many of the low-value sales functions inbusiness-to-business  (B2B)  selling  that  were  formerly  handled  byconsultative salespeople have now been shifted to online sales. Thetransactions shifted to the Web include those related to:
∆ Routine purchases
∆ Product information
∆ Discount information
∆ Pricing information
∆ Contact information for account teams
∆ Smaller accounts
∆ Existing accounts
∆ Researching products
∆ Placing orders (for existing customers)
∆ Checking on the status of orders 
As Bill Gates says, “As the Internet drives down the cost of trans-actions, the middlemen will disappear or evolve to add new value.”13One  sales  recruiter  said  that  his  company  uses  a  combination  ofinside  salespeople  (outbound  and  inbound  telemarketing)  and  theInternet to sell computer hardware and software equipment to itscustomers. By doing this, the company doesn’t incur the costs asso-ciated  with  an  outside  sales  force.  One  might  argue  that  with  the
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sophistication of call centers, the Internet and web sites, field salesorganization must discover new ways to create value for their cus-tomers  in  order  to  justify  their  existence.  The  Internet  may  beresponsible for sales force reductions of between 35 to 40 percentby 2005.14
Tim Furey is CEO of Oxford Associates, Inc., a sales consultancyfirm in Bethesda, Maryland, and coauthor of The Channel Advantage.15He says: 
The Internet has clearly cut field sales forces and hasmoved  many  previously  face-to-face  functions  onlineor  in-house.  But  the  consultative  salesperson  willremain.  Most  of  the  hype  around  the  Internet—theAmazon.coms,  the  eBays—[is]  around  relatively  sim-ple, off-the-rack, commodity products that can be soldwith minimal human involvement. 
Getting a customer to sign a two-year, multimillion-dollar indus-trial  parts  contract  probably  won’t happen  online.  The  transactionsthat are staying with consultative salespeople include those relating to:
∆ Acquiring new business
∆ Negotiating individual pricing agreements
∆ Negotiating configuration exceptions
∆ Customizing solutions
∆ Resolving complicated issues, services, and products
∆ Handling major accounts
∆ Managing situations in which the sales consultant has to cre-ate value, i.e., situations that are too qualitative without hisor her involvement
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In the future, there may be fewer consultative salespeople. Thosethat  remain  will  have  to  be  sure  that  they  add  value.  Principle  4,“Create  Value,”  and  Sales  Traps  9  through  18  in  that  section  willremain as true tomorrow as they are today.  
B2B E-COMMERCEThe majority of e-commerce transactions are B2B, where most con-sultative selling has traditionally taken place. This more than any-thing  else  probably  accounts  for  the  decline  in  consultative  salespositions.  Forrester  Research,  Inc.,  reports  that  in  1998,  B2B  e-commerce  accounted  for  $43  billion  in  transactions,  compared  to$7.8 billion in business-to-consumer (B2C) transactions.16 The com-puter  industry  claims  the  largest  percentage  of  online  B2B  salestransactions; these transactions were valued at $50.4 billion (45 per-cent of online transactions) in 1999.17 And Forrester estimates thatthe online B2B market will grow to $1.3 trillion by 2003.18 GoldmanSachs estimates sales in B2B e-commerce by 2004 of:
∆ Chemicals, $349 billion
∆ Computer hardware and software, $221 billion
∆ Industrial equipment, $140 billion
∆ Energy/utilities, $133 billion19
Because of this expected growth in online sales, the number ofconsultative sales positions is expected to continue to be reduced,but these positions will not be eliminated.
ONLINE  SELLING. B2B  e-commerce  increasingly  uses  web-based  sitesand  extranets  (para-enterprise  network  organizations  that  extendintranets to existing outside customers and suppliers) for online sell-ing. Much of this selling is automated and directed by the customersthemselves. Larry Carter, CFO of Cisco Systems, even claims that
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55  percent  of  orders  pass  through  Cisco’s  system  without  beingtouched by anyone.20
NEW  CUSTOMERS. Despite  these  changes,  many  companies  still  referonline sales from new customers to a salesperson. Cisco may havehad $9.5 billion in online sales in 1999, more than three-quarters ofits total sales for the year, but if you try to order from Cisco and youhaven’t set up an account through a dealer, you can’t do it. New cus-tomers  have  to  register  with  a  dealer  before  they  can  purchaseonline.21 And Cisco is not alone in this. A recent study by ShelleyTaylor & Associates found that 90 out of 100 web sites (from the1,000 largest companies in the world) sold products to other busi-nesses, but only 9 allowed new customers to initiate a sale online.22Many  people  don’t  realize  that  companies  are  focusing  their  B2Befforts not on acquiring new customers, but on converting currentcustomers to web-based ordering, sales, and customer service.23 Thehigh-value activity of acquiring new business is still left for consul-tative salespeople.
REDUCTIONS  IN  SALES  COSTS  AND  SALES  FORCES. There  is  evidence  that  salesexpenses  have  declined  and  sales  productivity  has  increased  sincesales have moved online. For example, Cisco Systems, which sellsabout 80 percent of the routers and other forms of networking gearthat power the Internet, now handles 80 percent of its orders online.Cisco Systems sold an estimated $15 billion online in 2000.24 LarryCarter,  CFO  of  Cisco  Systems,  reports  that  in  1999,  Cisco’s  net-worked  business  model  saved  over  $800  million,  while  increasingsalespeople’s  productivity  by  15  percent.25 While  80  percent  ofCisco’s orders are online, the other 20 percent involve higher-valuesales  activities  carried  out  by  internal  and  external  salespeople(remember the 80/20 rule). 
Dell  has  also  lowered  its  sales  expenses  using  the  Internet.  Forexample, Dell Computer’s U.S. web site, which was launched in Julyof 1996, sells $40 million a day and accounts for 50 percent of Dell’s
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U.S.  sales.26 Dell  allows  customers  to  initiate  orders  online,  butalways follows up an online order with a call from a customer serviceperson.27 Salespeople  get  credit  for  online  orders  when  customerswrite in the name of their salesperson, and regional marketing man-agers set online revenue goals for the sales team.28 The Internet hashelped Dell lower its sales, general, and administrative expenses from15 percent of its revenues in fiscal year 1994 to 9.4 percent in 2000.Michael Dell believes that further reductions in these costs are stillpossible, even as much as half again.29
Several  leading  companies  have  virtually  eliminated  their  salesforces  in  favor  of  independent  solution  providers.  Microsoft  andDell  are  just  two  examples.  Other  companies  have  reduced  theirfield  sales  forces  and  chosen  to  go  with  distributors,  dealers,  andvalue-added resellers. After exploring alternative channels for yearsin  order  to  reduce  sales  overhead  and  be  more  price-competitive,IBM and Xerox have both turned to independent solution providers.A final note: As I look around, I see fewer road warriors on planesthan I used to. Companies have gotten smarter and are using feweroutside field salespeople. The message seems to be that companiesare looking for a few good field sales representatives to call on theirclients. Like the Marines, a few good people are left with getting thejob done on the outside. The salesperson and consultative marketerof tomorrow will have to be really good at what she or he does, sincethe competition will be so fierce for fewer jobs.  
ACTION POINTS➔ Expect further reductions in sales forces. The Internet is expected tocontinue to reduce the number of sales representatives and changethe ways in which businesses sell to each other. As sales expensesdecrease and the Internet continues to grow, employment in directsales forces is expected to continue to decrease. Sales organizationsshould plan on reducing cost of sales by opting for inside sales reps.
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➔ Consider  team  selling  with  higher-potential  accounts. Many  of  theFortune 500 companies approach particular industries (education,insurance,  utilities,  etc.)  and  high-potential  accounts  with  salesteams that include not only a manager from the sales departmentbut also managers and representatives from engineering, service,and  research  and  development.  Such  team  sales  efforts  bringstrengths  from  many  functional  areas  to  bear  on  the  account.Procter & Gamble and IBM are two examples of companies thathave used this team sales approach successfully. According to JillSummers, a former Procter & Gamble manager who is now withEli  Lilly,  “We  have  vice  presidents  who  often  head  up  our  cus-tomer teams who call on our larger accounts, such as Wal-Mart.”
SALES TRUTH 24: Consultative salespeople willremain, but in reduced numbers.
EPILOGUE
the nextgeneration ofperformancechange programs
AT  THE  beginning of this book, I stated that Iwould  begin  with  the  end  in  mind.  We  are  at  theend.  But,  is  it  really  the  end?  Yes,  it  is  the  end  ofthis book, but it is not the end of the sales profes-sion’s  attempt  to  discover  different  solutions  andnew  perspectives  to  improve  their  performanceresults in their chosen field. This quest will proba-bly never end. Whenever you insert the variable ofpeople,  in  this  case  salespeople,  into  an  equation,the answers are never absolute. However, there willprobably  always  be  the  quest  to  figure  out  this
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Rubik’s Cube of sales. And don’t think people aren’t working realhard at it. But how do we answer this most important question:How can we further optimize individual sales performance’s abovethe levels we have already achieved with the world’s finest per-formance change programs? 
This  book  has  taken  a  “best  practices”  approach  to  improvingsales results. It has identified 24 sales traps, based upon thoughtfulresearch, that top performers are likely to avoid. So, what is wrongwith  focusing  on  these  24  sales  traps  and  becoming  a  sales  star?Aren’t they the “best practices” that you need to process and exe-cute for stardom? Well, yes, but they are missing the same key ingre-dient that sales training programs of today—the first generation—aremissing. These “best practices” approaches must be customized tothe sales consultant’s customer organization at an entirely new levelif they are to ultimately achieve performance change and thereforeimproved  results  for  the  salesperson  and  his  or  her  company.Therefore, a second generation of training utilizing a higher-level,customized approach to performance change will most likely emerge.To put it another way, the value proposition will be different inthis  new  millennium.  Salespeople  will  not  just  be  delivering  thesame value proposition in a different way. For example, today themost effective training programs use some type of sales model thatneeds to be learned in order to bring about a change in individualand group performance. Some of these models are well researchedand formulated; others are overly complex, difficult to learn, andnot  correlated  with  top  performance.  All  these  models,  however,have one thing in common: They are totally free of business knowledge.They  are  simply  generic  frameworks.  In  other  words,  “We  willteach  you  our  sales  models,  then  you  need  to  figure  out  how  totranslate them to your real world.” 
For example, it’s not about learning the finer points of some prob-ing model for asking questions—it’s about learning the questions that
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bring  business  results  in  the  buying  scenarios  that  represent  thecustomer’s  marketplace.  More  specifically,  how  can  a  salespersonask really smart questions if she or he doesn’t really know the cus-tomer  and  the  customer’s  marketplace?  She  or  he  can’t.  That’sbusiness knowledge. The content of tomorrow’s generation of pro-grams needs  to  address  this  knowledge  issue  through  its  contentand its facilitators.
In summary, the major topic areas for improving sales resultsare  not  unique.  The  research  clearly  indicates  which  core  skillsmake  top  performers.  When  it  comes  to  face-to-face  customerinteractions, salespeople need to avoid the 24 sales traps. So, whereare we headed?
Dr. Richard Ruff, president of Sales Momentum in Scottsdale,Arizona,  and  coauthor  of  Getting  Partnering  Right  and  ManagingMajor Sales, strongly believes that the next step in achieving perfor-mance change and improving sales results will involve customizingprograms  to  a  second  generation  of  standards  using  a  “best  prac-tices” approach as the core strategies and skills.
According to