This article for Tekedia became prompted from a poll post by a third level connection in LinkedIn that I didn’t know. I didn’t participate in the poll, but the thought about the leading question stayed with me.
I don’t generally participate in polls. It’s usually for two reasons. 1. Because the polls often serve no business function and have just been created by someone trying to create activity around themselves and 2. Because if I (reluctantly) take part in a poll, I will probably inadvertently end up inflicting it on others in my network.
This poll had a good lead-in narrative so I remembered it. It was focused on interview experience of candidates for sales roles and it posed if anybody had been asked in an interview if they had potential clients they can bring to the company. This got me thinking about ‘Black Books’ , how Technical Sales happens, and wondering to myself what do young Nigerians embarking on Technical Sales need to approach it to be successful?
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What is a Black Book?
Many years ago, before internet and mobile phones, travelling salespersons kept a little address book on them everywhere they went. This contained details of their sales key accounts, contacts, and prospects. If they were on the road and an existing client or prospect was a no-show, then they would go to the book and see if there was any other potential they could explore in the immediate vicinity. If they learnt something new in their travels, they would add it as they went. Black was a common colour for the covers of these little address books – hence ‘Black Book’
Today, a ‘Black Book’ is notional. It can take many forms. It can be set up on corporate MS outlook and ported to an account holder’s phone. It can be stored in a webmail account, and productivity tools in portal systems such as Google offer enhanced ways to manage information.
As it is now the norm for anybody career driven to have a LinkedIn account, it’s becoming common to consolidate it there as well. Some even use Facebook or Whatsapp.
It’s the principle rather than the data container that is important. The ‘Black Book’ is a reservoir of data defining business relationships built over time.
Original ‘hard copy’ Black Books became disorganised and degraded quickly as a tool, due to people on the move frequently scribbling notes. Every few months, busy professionals had to get a new book, and transcribe contact details, along with the most valuable of additional information and this was very time consuming.
Many modern portals and platforms have their own CRM tools, so professionals can build a resource there, independent from any corporate CRM that may be in use. It’s always a good idea to develop a standalone resource, particularly those who are on short term contracts, or any situation that has potential for ending at fairly short notice. It avoids a ‘mad scramble’ towards the end to secure business intelligence that has value in career continuity. Zoho and Yandex are good alternatives particularly if separation from Google is valued. With apps like ‘Siri’ for iphone, the future is bright for the integration of speech AI apps with communication functions and CRM data.
Where Technical Sales sits
Technical Sales is pretty much the opposite to commoditized, consumer or mass market sales, which is generally ‘Transactional’ Selling. ‘Transactional’ sales make little or no effort to develop customer relations and the focus is generally on shifting volumes of products at pace, with low unit profit margin. There is little product understanding needed from the operative.
Technical Sales is usually a combination of Needs Oriented and Insight Selling.
Relationship Building, Intelligence led solution discovery, and Idea Partnering are essential skills in Technical Sales.
Technical Sales opportunities may only come along once in several years, or maybe more for a number of reasons. For example, a cloud services customer may not want to entertain discussing an alternative provider, not because they believe their current provider is technically the most superior or cheapest, but because migration to a new service will disrupt their day to day activities, there will be a data transfer overhead, and an unfamiliar solution will bring a new learning curve and training needs for staff. A change would have to mean profound improvement enabling the company to find a completely higher gear, in order to be worth the trade-off.
Another example would be FMCG/Light Manufacturing machinery, as current machinery in service won’t get replaced unless the prospect has major diversification or up scaling plans, or until such time as existing machinery reaches ‘end of life’ consistent with the companies term replacement policies. This means that Technical Sales opportunities are small windows, and they are far apart. So it’s necessary that a lot of hard work is put into sowing the seeds that will bear future fruit. It’s also essential to plant many fields so as effort matures, there are many potential ‘outs’.
So now that we have some understanding of Technical Sales, let’s move on to some of the things a beginner should consider.
Listening to Problems
For those of you who have done the Tekedia Mini MBA, one thing you will find Prof. Ndubuisi Ekekwe mentioning frequently is ‘fixing frictions’. Well, it is not possible to establish what frictions exist, without creating the dynamic where people will spontaneously start talking about challenges, and then listening to what those challenges are.
One of the biggest mistakes made by people that are new to Technical Sales is to be bursting with enthusiasm to launch into detailed information about the company and its products. Understand this kills the process. What is needed is to get the prospect talking. The first thing to do is to get the person talking about themselves and how they came to be in the company. Then move on to their vision, and of course, what the current obstacles are. Only then can discussion start about what possible solutions may work.
Initially, our job is to present ourselves and our employer as more ‘interested’ than ‘interesting’.
Keep the intro about ourselves initially very short and simple.
Client Capture
The client capture is the process of documenting what is learnt from a visit to client premises or site. It’s probably not a good idea to use a device to do this, and go ‘old skool’ One of the reasons is that if you are in a 1-2-1 situation with a client rep, then it’s easier to scribble notes as ‘hook’ word groups on a page and maintain some level of eye-to-eye contact with the client than it is while doing data entry on a device.
Many companies, depending on sector, and what your product/service delivery is, are very secretive about their processes. Some will not allow phones or devices to be taken out in plain view in sensitive areas such as a factory floor. Never try to take a picture of anything unless given permission first.
Larger companies in things like Food or Pharmaceuticals, will have a specific hygiene and barrier clothing station. At this station all entering the manufacturing floor will need to perform some basic hygiene actions, and don some sort of disposable overall, coverall or hazmat suit. Disposable shoe and hair coverings are also common.
Some companies require visitors to leave their devices at this station before entering, and collect them on the way out.
In technical sales, if fortunate to be agreed access to a process floor, it’s really important to document everything to be seen. Always take down makes and models of any devices, machinery, equipment etc. If anything seems unfamiliar, recording make and model numbers are important. It can be searched online later.
Complete write up to CRM/Black Book Resource/Project Discovery Records without delay
There are many scenarios where people cannot successfully create detailed documentation on the fly and give full attention to what needs observing, and/or a conversation with a prospect.
Quite often, people jot down ‘hooks’ i.e. single words or phrases that will prompt a recollection of wider detail, accompanied by headings and numbers. They’ve probably got a ‘tick-box’ based capture form to establish basics but that is too minimalist to record subjective detail and ‘soft’ content.
Formally recording the visit outputs quickly is essential as the relationship between the ‘hooks’ and the full experience committed to memory degrades rapidly. The quality of this information underpins the success of relationships and the opportunity for sales that build later. We are not our prospects source of income, they are ours. Captures that are incomplete or lacking useful insights that were previously shared, can lead to proposals that are either flawed or have major omissions.
They may also prompt pre-sales technical design teams or solution authors at the back end to approach the client directly. Over engagement with a prospect in ‘piece meal’ is frustrating and annoying and may drive them away.
Knowing competitors and building partnerships
Knowing competitors and their products or solutions is a key part of being successful in Technical Sales. We need to know the full value proposition of anything we represent. In some cases this may be about equipment, machinery or devices alone. In other cases it may be about a number of resources combined together to make a unique solution.
Knowing our value proposition means knowing that of our competitors. Comparison is an art. We need to be able to emphasize the superiority of our offering while neutralizing the selling points of competitors without being derogatory.
Overly bad-mouthing competitors doesn’t stand in good stead in any industry.
In technical sales, we are selling to people who are technically knowledgeable in their industry, and they will know different vendors covering different options. Raising issues of cost, support quality, features, performance, efficiency and other variables of competitors is common.
It is important to have plausible responses but it is also important not to volunteer such comparisons unsolicited. It’s essential that the introduction of a competitors brand to the conversation only comes from our prospect or not at all. When the technical sales person introduces a competitor to the conversation, it unwittingly sets that competitor up as the Standard Bearer, and the Category King, making the sale harder.
Finally its useful to build a more symbiotic rather than combatant relationship with competitors in many areas of technical sales. Whether it is Telecoms Infrastructure, Industrial Machine Lines, or even large scale Complex Construction Projects (like the $64 billion ‘Dubailand’ scheduled for completion in 2025), the integration of efforts and/or products of competitors is frequently inevitable in client solutions. When competitors have a track record of successfully working together, the client gets a well harmonized solution delivered on time and within budget.
Moreover, technical sales professionals will probably change employers several times in a working life. As a professional individual, it’s difficult to find long term success in a technical sales segment where bridges have been burnt with prospective employers or fate brings peers with an acrimonious past to work together at the same company.
Motto: Compete when you need to, co-operate where you can!
Tribalism and its impact on Technical Sales
I’ve covered Nigerian Tribalism in a number of ways already but in different contexts. Tribalism in what became Nigeria was probably always there, though it became further complicated and exasperated through colonialism and Anglophone-francophone borders. These borders did not reflect tribal lines. ‘Assisted’ independence led to constitutional and internal territory structures which best preserved the concepts of ‘Commonwealthism’ than new nation’s unity. Multiple conflicts (including a war) followed which further heightened tribal mistrust. We will leave the history of cause and effect at this minimalist and somewhat glossy level and not enter detailed root cause analysis. The purpose of this article is not to help the youth of Nigeria on a journey to a Doctorate of Philosophy in African Studies, and in this section, we limit ourselves to the real world issues of where tribalism sits in its impact on technical sales in Nigeria today.
Tribalism in Nigeria isn’t a clear ‘black and white’ it’s more like shades of grey. Nigerians can be very astute business owners, who take maximising the benefits from a substantial investment to the nth degree. This creates a counterbalance to prejudice. While there are three so called notionally ‘main’ tribes, together they account for 40% of the population while the other 60% is made up of over 230 tribes. It’s clear mutually beneficial inter-tribal actions happen, because if they did not Nigeria would come to a complete halt. Inter-tribal marriages for instance are not the norm, but they are not rare either. When a street hawker is hailed in traffic jam for cold water, nobody wonders about which tribe the seller comes from.
Technical or value chain purchases can be high CAPEX and/or have profound impacts on a business. Decisions need to be measured and deliberate. When new and far reaching decisions need to be made, this is when all uncertainties begin to surface.
Time for a story.
There is this Ibibio factory owner named Ekaete. She has a factory in Ogun State. Ekaete does not like Yoruba and is openly vocal about it. Somebody from technical sales has been up to see Ekaete before and there are records of a few meetings on CRM. The staff member is no longer, and has moved on to another employer in a completely different field.
A senior technical sales officer of four years experience named Folake is the only resource available to fill a scheduled appointment which has somehow been overlooked. Folake is aware of the dynamic, reads all the notes thoroughly and heads off to make the standing appointment.
Ekaete isn’t very approachable so Folake instead of investing in rapport building, which does not seem possible, dives into an issue instead. ‘Maam I see you regularly purchase Sodium Propionate from us. I would suggest you try Potassium instead.’
Ekaete: ‘Why would I buy Potassium Propionate? It’s more expensive. I had idea this meeting would be a waste of time. I am a busy woman.’
Folake: ‘Maam you are right. Potassium is more expensive, but for this application, you will not need as much as the Sodium one you regularly buy. It will work out cheaper and the texture of the product will be more pleasing for the consumer….
You don’t need to take my word for it. Since you still have some Sodium Propionate, you don’t need to buy now. I will arrange for a production sample for free, and you can do a production test run. If you are not happy with the result, then you can process your usual Sodium Propionate order when it is time.’
The production test was excellent and Ekaete was impressed. Two months later, Ekaete asked Folake to discuss a stand-alone processing machinery in bakery/dry snacks. Ekaete was on the verge of a purchase and wanted impartial advice. Folake said the machinery was mostly distributed through agents who have poor support from the foreign manufacturer, which isn’t a good fit for some of the maintenance challenges common to the unit. Some moving parts are prone to premature wear, are proprietary, and difficult to source timely. She advised on an alternative which while it represented a 60% increase in cost, it had much better manufacturer support, less frequent scheduled maintenance requirement, better headroom for increasing production capacity, and much greater flexibility for integration into an automated line. All told, about 10x more reliable and future-proof.
Ekaete purchased Folake’s recommendation. Two months passed. Ekaete was due a scheduled visit but Folake was away for a medical procedure. The team decided to send a sales intern who was training under Folake, and by a twist of fate, happened to be Ibibio.
So when Ifiok arrived, she was treated well, and after a short exchange, she was handed to a production manager who gave her a tour of the plant. Ekaete explained to her that she did not need to make any purchasing decisions right away, and business can wait until Folake resumes.
Ekaete could only now call ‘Folake… Folake… Folake… Yes if Ekaete had been a leading politician, Folake world already be conferred with the ‘Freedom of Uyo’.
The lesson here is that though tribalism is real, Nigerian business owners can generally be relied upon to take the course of action that is best for that business. Sometimes a strategy or a tactic needs to be adopted so that they don’t see value proposition through tribalism’s blinkered lens.
Businesses that need a B2B Technical Sales Team should work to build one that is diverse tribally. As the business develops key clients, it will internalize intelligence on how tribally tolerant individual clients are. If a business owner of a 30+ staff business is not tribally native to a state and 60+% of the employees are from her/his tribe this signals caution. Initially, try to achieve tribal accord matching Technical Sales Officer (TSO) with prospect rep until more is known.
Ultimately it is not about adopting a Social Policy, it is about mitigating potential risk to sales conversion.
Have a broad and diversified Social Toolkit
Following on from the tribal dimension, there are also many social dimensions to achieving Technical Sales in Nigeria. Any form of sales in Nigeria is highly competitive and there is an old saying that everyone in a company needs to be a salesperson by proxy.
The TSO, however has to take point on being the force that translates social engagement into leads. While an understanding may be reached to visit a premises that eventually results in a technical sale, the seed from which that lead grows can often come from a social or other setting outside the business world.
In Nigeria there are people of different religions and with different levels of personal adherence to the one they identify with.
There are decision makers among foreign ethnic groups such as Indians, Chinese and ‘Lebanese’ (may be ethnic Syrians). There are Jews. There are smaller numbers of North Americans and Europeans.
The TSO needs to identify collective social and life habits and venues. It isn’t as simple as just hanging out in fashionable and upmarket pubs or clubs. The TSO needs to find ways of penetrating different communities. religious events and festivals, personal religious celebrations, weddings and wakes, sporting and association, and national celebration events are all important.
Sometimes it may be necessary to socially profile a single individual who is a key decision maker for a high value Technical Sales target.
In addition to this the TSO should attend as many relevant industry and trade shows, annual sector celebrations and corporate events as possible.
Never Missell
Misselling comes in many guises. ‘Misselling is the deliberate, reckless, or negligent sale of products or services in circumstances where the contract is either misrepresented, or the product or service is unsuitable for the customer’s needs.’ (Wikipedia).
In Technical Sales, Misselling rarely occurs where a client makes a purchase that are not needed at all, because there is usually a level of technical competence at both the seller and buyer side, and the technical buyer will know that some equipment or solution is not needed.
What is more likely to happen is a mismatch involving the under-provision or over-provision of capacity and/or features.
In an under-provision, the client has to spend further to plug the feature or capacity gap to meet the requirement. This adds avoidable cost, complexity and time wasting to a solution which could have been more simply fulfilled initially . In an over-provision , excess capital was spent on capacity and/or features that are not needed. This is some dead capital not working in the company’s best interests.
While some Missales happen as a result of lack of technical sales experience in the product range and segment, deliberate Misselling is more likely to occur out of desperation to make a sale, especially if a TSO is operating in an ‘Associate’ role, working at risk on commission.
The TSO is probably aware of the misalignment, and it may be that the ideal client specification is somewhere between two fixed options on the sales portfolio, one which is inadequate and the other is overkill. However there may be an option available in a competitors range which is a much closer match, and the TSO officer may be aware of this.
Misselling is absolutely NEVER the right thing to do especially in Nigeria.
A TSO who has trouble closing can be coached. Poor personal hygiene, badly appointed dress sense, poorly aligned language skills… they are problems but they can be worked upon. Technical knowledge in a particular sector or focus on a particular portfolio can be built.
These are all things that can be fixed. It is just a matter of the level of dedication and perseverance of the TSO in question as to how long some may take.
Misselling can NEVER be fixed, especially in a country like Nigeria where word-of-mouth is the fastest optic fibre.
Misselling is dropping a NUCLEAR BOMB on a TSO’s market. Those who do it can expect their career to live in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki effect for decades.
This is probably the most essential concept to grasp for a ‘Transactional’ seller who wants to graduate to Technical Sales.
Nigeria’s B2B NEVER forgives a technical Misseller.
Being willing to bring something different
Being willing to bring something different requires a mind-shift. It requires positioning oneself in the shoes of the client. It transitions the TSO to the position of Solution Partner. Instead of being overly focused on a sale, the process aims to convert the prospect to a long term fan.
With some capital purchases made many years apart, a TSO needs to look at opportunities to contribute measurably to the prospects success story.
One of the ways to do this is to offer upgrade, refit, or diversification engineering to companies who need to carry to a fiscal milestone with production resources that are no longer fully fit for purpose.
They may have process resources that are obsolete and no longer in the officers portfolio. If an engineering solution can be found for equipment that is third party, even better.
Incumbent key account holders delivering ‘Big Brand’ B2B sometimes become arrogant, and always think if they push the client hard when they have challenges that are a critical failure risk, that they will capitulate before end-of-life milestones and make purchases.
They often ignore attempts to engage on ‘interim’ solutions to delay the inevitable. Sometimes there is nothing feasible, but also much of the time, key account managers can’t view the challenge from the perspective of an engineer, and have their eyes pinned to their sales targets.
Being willing to disrupt that situation by being the one to bring a temporary fix to the third party problem might not bring in a huge (or any) profit, but it is an opportunity to poach a key account and it is a way of achieving that without losing respect within the peer community.
Avoid competing on tech awareness with the in house tech ‘guru’
I’ve been in this situation myself so many times, and working for several companies, across different types of technical solutions in different sectors. I’ve been the Sales lead myself, and I’ve been there as a Management Representative or Technical Advisor supporting the Technical Sales on point.
There is often this situation where the CEO or decision maker sends for the ‘resident’ tech person (whose job titles tend to vary widely).
Then.. the awkward moment comes… the resident techie says something that isn’t exactly right.
How this is handled moving forward is very important. This can go very wrong if anybody in the visiting crew uses the opportunity to show how clever they are at the expense of the in-house techie.
A little bit of empathy and understanding is needed here. Something needs to be said to get passed this point without conflicting overtly with the tech guru, while at the same time not diminishing the appreciation of the solution being proposed, and keeping the introduction on track. Some diplomacy is needed here.
These are often the moments in-house technical leads live for – the opportunity to shine in front of the company’s big guns. Understand that if they are made look foolish, or the wind is taken out of their sails, the proposal is in for rocky times ahead.
The heart of the resident techie needs to be won as much, if not more than the final decision makers. This isn’t going to be achieved by one of the visitors showcasing themselves as the brightest light bulb in the room at his or her expense.
Understand that the resident tech guru has sustained access to all parts of the decision team while the visitors only have intermittent meeting windows. The last thing needed is an internal officer feeling slighted and on a mission for that proposal to fail.
So after exercising diplomacy to get passed the technical ‘departure’ of the resident techie’s contribution in the meeting, it is probably a good idea to phone or go on video chat with them soon after. The techie, following a detailed brief, can then give a ‘follow up’ brief internally, consolidating status as the internal expert.
The TSO now has a new internal asset in the client company.
Be patient and don’t be intrusive.
Prospects are each in their own way unique and there is never any one size fits all. When someone resumes as a TSO they will build up prospects that require different types of solutions, have different purchasing capacities, and approach multiple issues such as ‘end of life’ differently, if at all.
This means that the communication approach will be unique for each prospect.
I will repeat a statement made earlier in the article: ‘We are not our prospects source of income, they are ours.’
We therefore need to have a strong sense of respect for their time. While it’s important to keep the relationship ‘warm’ , we also need to give them space, particularly when there is nothing active to discuss.
One of the problems with CEO’s and Group Sales Leadership in the Technical Sales space is that they don’t always get to fully appreciate all aspects of the Sales Life Cycle. They know that KPIs and metrics can’t be treated like Transactional Sales, but often, the alternative mechanisms they use to determine the quality and consistency of work and effort are too rigid and a TSO needs to use their own initiative. There is no point in scheduling meetings that reduce the enthusiasm with which the TSO is received, purely to tick a box. A TSO needs to manage their relationship with the prospect, but also manage the relationship with the employer so they are not penalized for making sensible decisions.
Don’t ‘burn’ your Black Book
What is burning your Black Book? When a TSO newly resumes in a company, they bring with them a Black Book, as per the introductory part of this article.
The Black Book grows as a professional journeys through career. At the start it is quite thin. A trainee may come in with just a few contacts through parents and other senior family members, or favours they have secured from their close friends.
Think of a Black Book a little bit like a phone or laptop battery. The charge will not last indefinitely. At some point the device needs to be plugged in and charged. Think of the device as career performance.
To manage career well, in other words, keep performing, is like ensuring the device does not run out of charge.
The thin black book a new TSO starts with is like a bad battery. It will run out quickly. This means there is more pressure on the TSO to get charging early and quickly. ‘Charging’ is the metaphor for finding new customers.
A seasoned TSO will have a stronger ‘battery’ because they have built the Black Book over time, and they can go longer between charges, but they still need to charge (hunt new prospects) before the battery runs out.
What must be avoided at all costs, is running down the battery.
The core consideration to how a Black Book is used, is managing the employer expectations. Regardless of how KPI’s and metrics are structured between the TSO and employer, a line manager is driven by human emotions in the work place as anyone else, and becomes impressed with results and disappointed with the lack of them.
It is important that a new TSO in the door does not run down this battery faster than it can be charged. Should this happen, the new TSO may have an extraordinarily good period, when ‘spending’ the ‘charge’ from the Black Book kicks in, but after, their results fall off a cliff.
Balancing this is a challenge because while it’s a good thing to control the tap from the Black Book giving results, it’s still not a good idea to stall opportunities that could go to a competitor.
Ultimately, the agility to constantly build a ‘Black Book’ moving forward, is more important than the legacy of its content.
This reaches back to the thesis of the thought of the article’s beginning, and the poll question posed, if anybody had been asked in an interview if they had potential clients they can bring to the company.
They asked the wrong question. The question is not ‘Do you have a Black Book?’ The question should be: ‘Tell us how you would build one’
‘Bad Cells’
Every battery has bad cells. A TSO with a poor reputation can’t make sales. If a TSO made a compelling argument as to why one employers solution is best, it may not be possible after moving companies, to visit the same prospect and now claim the new employer’s solution is best. Contexts vary, but in many such scenarios, this has potential to damage the professional credibility of the TSO, and will probably also fail to convince the prospect, so it would be lost credibility to no useful end. This is a ‘Bad Cell’ in the battery that is the Black Book, and can only be recovered when the dynamic of either the prospect requirement or the employers offerings change.
There are several other consideration for a TSO beginner, but these are the main ones. I hope they have given an insight into the world of Technical Sales. Suggesting others can continue in the discussion.