Black Sales Journal

Even the number one business in its field has problems in need of solutions.  The best of breed businesses and industry leaders struggle to find solutions so that they can stay on top.

As a sales professional, implicitly what your customer pays you to deliver solutions.  Many times those solutions are underpinned by your own product or service, and sometimes it is the packaging and perception that gives them value.

If you are the sales professional for a firm, and you are ignorant about hat they need, you cannot produce solutions.  You have to ask.  You must gather from them enough information to “make a difference.”  Know how to make your product and services convenient for them.  It is called “ease of doing business.”  If you give the customers an easy way to interface with you, you will make a difference.

Diagnose The Issues

The only way to know what would give ease of business is to communicate deeply and frequently.  Communication is at the root of this diagnosis, and action is the result.

• Investigate – Seize every opportunity to ask your customer what are their greatest opportunities and threats from a business standpoint.  As companies determine these in their SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis you can focus on what your organization can do.
• Knowledge – Know your company’s industry, and have a strong knowledge of the customer’s industry.  Know how you can use your current product offerings packaged differently to satisfy needs.
• Record – Keep a good record of customer’s problems, and take time to group problems of like-customers together.  If you do this well you can pick where to spend your time trying to develop superior solutions.
• Research – Spend time researching the best way to solve problems, once you have determined what can efficiently be solved.  Use your competitor’s ideas, your imagination, and yourexpertise as you research how to solve.

Stand and Deliver

Once you have determined what can be solved efficiently and have researched the solutions that can be used, you have an excellent opportunity to be a “star” if you deliver it correctly.

I am going to give a practical example of how this works:

An office products sales professional recognizes that his list of clients includes a large number of non-profits.  Much of his customer list had similar needs, and similar restrictions from the standpoint of finances.  Non-profits are similar, although not the same.  Knowing this market segment, he began to structure a program that had some unique offerings.

Realizing that many of these non-profits buy many of the same products, he began the process of packaging them.  He came up with unique “offerings” that were mainly packaging that satisfied a need regarding the products purchased, and the way they were consumed.

He then lobbied for unique credit terms (trade terms) that he could offer, knowing that they would need to stretch out payments for a longer period based on them being funded by governmental agencies and donations.  Once he got them, he made that a part of his “Non-Prof-Pak”.

He then worked to do that which you can only do if you know the buying habits of your customers.  He worked to do a separate mailing to his customers (“Non-Prof-Pak) with the most frequently purchased products in it.  This was based on his research of what products were being purchased by all of them.  His mailing amounted to a specialized catalog of items that were most used by non-profits including some items that his organization did not carry; yet he knew they needed.  He arranged for those items to come from a “friendly” competitor that allowed those items in the mailing.  It was “win-win”.

The result was that his customers did not have to search for their most common items.  Someone who “specialized” in non-profits sent them to them!  We know that it was the way it was packaged, and received.  They did not have to hunt through a long catalog; someone had marketed directly to them.

This sales professional picked up business from this sector, and attained a certain stature in the business community.  This individual has retired since then, and there are not catalogs for the most part with on-line marketing, yet the example is solid.  Packaging is important, marketing is important, and specialization is important.

Product and Promotion

That is a question only you can answer.  There is a possibility that you can identify a group of customers who have a similar need and operating pattern.  Examples are storefront merchants, Black churches and religious organizations, truckers, printers, publishers, and a host of other semi-homogeneous groups.  You want groups with more in common, than differences.

Structure them with an eye toward what solutions they need, then deliver it.  Your research is important, so do it correctly.  You can figure out what makes them the same, and market to them with the application of some of the steps above.

Remember the 5Ps of Marketing:

• People
• Place
• Product
• Promotion
• Price

In this effort, you are concentrating on the product, or perceived product and promotion.  Your packaging of the product promotion makes all of the difference in the world in this case.

You can only do what your organization lets you do; yet there is some latitude here.  Remember some of the discussions in Black Sales Journal 12/20 – Your Customer Needs an Expert- Let it be You.  We are not talking about you being a sophisticated expert here, yet your ability to package and promote will be the ultimate asset.

By doing this you can provide an ease of doing business that others might have missed.  You can orchestrate the designing of product packages that hit the mark.  We all have seen it, known what it is, and still purchased because it had “perceived” value.

I think you can provide more solutions than you think.  You might be surprised.

Your comments are appreciated.

The role of any sales professional is challenging, even sometimes difficult.  It is a role that comes with many contrasts for those who are Black.  The perceptions that I am speaking of are racial perceptions, and they are a reality (because perceptions are reality) until they meet someone who starts to change them.  These contrasts paint a picture that does not always work favorably for a Black professional.

The number of Black sales professionals is not representative of the number of Blacks in the workforce.  Some of this was touched on in Black Sales Journal 1/31/11 – Why are There So Few Blacks in Sales?, yet there are so many reasons.  There is one main reason:

There are perceptions regarding whether white (or other) buyers would widely accept Black professionals in roles that have strong fiduciary and/or consultative roles as many sales professionals face.

It is difficult to recognize how many Black sales professionals leave their position before achieving their goals because they are not given an opportunity to show their worth.

Why am I Calling it Easy?

There is simplicity to changing perceptions. It involves a set of basic activities on the part of a large majority of the Black sales professionals and other Black employees that are in the market place.  It does not require a revolution of any kind, and will gradually work to change the perceptions of so many in a positive way.

Note the following statement:

Each Black sales professional or other Black employee must ‘represent’ correctly…being the consummate professional showing exemplary performance in all aspects of manners, skills, and personal interactions.  Being responsive beyond all others, and respectful of one’s time and efforts.

If that is done, we will be well ahead of the game.  As a matter of fact, if 80% of the Black professionals did this, we begin to slowly change perceptions.  There is no doubt about it.  This would be a game changer that would show the professionalism that a few bad performers could not tarnish.

There are many that will object to my premise.  I understand some of their concerns.  They will say “Why should I change anything when others in the majority do not necessarily change anything!”  My response is simple “If it is what you need to do to be successful and make the living for yourself, and your family, it is worth the consideration, you should consider it.”  If we do that, we also change perceptions.

There are times when you do all that is right and still don’t get the credit for “doing the right thing.”  Here is an example of what happens when you do the right thing, yet are subject to perceptions.

Perceptions – An Example from My Past

This is an incident that I cited once before.  I was a sales representative for a major insurance company in commercial business sales.  I was young, and thought that I was on track to get somewhere, yet nothing was assured.

I was at a sales meeting, and was sitting at a table with the Divisional Sr. Vice President, who was someone that I had only seen a picture of him in company publications.  I don’t know why he sat at our table, yet we were all exhibiting our best manners.

During a lull in the meeting a sales associate of mine, who happened to be Black as well (there were 3 of us out of 62 sales professionals) began to criticize one of the local college basketball coaches.  He was a venerable older coach who was not winning the big one but was respectable.

The SVP listened to us from behind his newspaper, and then slammed his had down on the table and said, “How dare you criticize him.  One day you will be judged on your record, just like him, and you should hope you stand up to the criticism.” He went on to say, “If you two would stop reading the sports pages, and read the financial pages, one day maybe you will amount to something.”

I wanted to be rude in my response, but was calculated.  It is unfortunate that someone is “judged” like that.  He did not know either of us.

To this day, there is nothing that has ever infuriated me like that comment.  He did not know, but I was reading a lot more than the financial pages.  Whether I did, or did not, it was not his business.  We were merely having a conversation within his earshot.  What is larger than that was the perception that we were absorbed in the sports pages, which was something that I seldom read, or read now.

He made that assumption based on his perception, and how categorically wrong it was.  Needless to say, he was long retired before I was moved up in to a senior and executive management role, yet I have often relived how I should have reacted to him.  When I reached and exceeded that level, I made sure that I respected our young professionals regardless of color and gave good constructive counsel without inserting my view of what they “must” be like.

Changing the View

You will not know how someone perceives you based on experiences and situations in their life.  What you can do is to put your best foot forward, giving them the view of a professional who is prepared for the opportunity.  We have discussed this type of professional many times in Black Sales Journal (Black Sales Journal 3/7/11- Be The Consummate Professional).

You change the landscape by being the professional that you ultimately are.  You show that race and color have nothing to do with being a solid professional, and that you might have more pigmentation, yet the result will be the same or better.

Your comments are welcome.