by Cord Cooper
March 15, 2006

To transform your business, be passionate about customers’ results. How does your product impact clients’ rivals and help your clients gain market share? How does it help your clients’ customers? What other key needs does it fill?

One place to start with a client-results inventory? Your sales force.

Transform the way salespeople think, act and relate to customers, and you’ll start a ripple effect with far-reaching results, say business coaches Richard Hodge and Lou Schachter, authors of the new book “The Mind of the Customer.”

To set that ripple effect in motion:

• Acquire the voice of customers. You can’t build value with clients until you know how clients build value with their customers.
• Assemble a client advisory panel and hold regular meeting to assess your firm’s performance. Conduct frank win-loss interviews to pinpoint where you’re filling a need or missing a mark.
• Fire ‘em up. Each quarter, announce the biggest wins to your sales force, underscoring victories as examples for future performance.
• Have top performers attend meetings at the next level up in your firm, outlining account strategies and key client issues.
• Put quarterly award systems in place and reward client value-based performance.
• Match ‘em up. Without mentioning salespeople by name, list the traits of your best performers and make them the benchmark for the sales force to strive for.
• Use the trait list to assess potential new hires.
• Rethink responsibilities. Free sales superstars from roles as coaches so they can deliver maximum returns.

Coaching’s the job of sales managers. To ensure targeted coaching, make sure managers are making joint calls with salespeople at least 50% of the time.

Coaching should run the gamut from business acumen to the most effective use of technology and the mind-set of customers, Hodge and Schachter stress. Establish systems that track coaching time.

• Create cross-functional support. Have reps from several departments sit in on monthly or quarterly sales-review meetings. Then have salespeople share customer concerns.
• Link marketing initiatives to sales training efforts. Consider making a marketing staffer part of the sales team, acting as a liaison, advisor-and learner.
• Blend it. Offer data to clients in several forms- from straight Web access and e-mail to downloads and other content tailored to client’s enterprise systems.
• Drive home the message. “From the top of our organization to the professionals in the field, we tell our story,” said Mike Wells, vice president of marketing at Lexus.

Part of Lexus’ story? “We will never succumb to arrogance or complacency. We have a long way to go to be the greatest luxury brand in the world,” Wells said.

“We are always on the same side of the table with our dealers and their customers. We make every effort to communicate, and to us that means listening more than telling.”