Dueling agendas: Revenue inhibitors

My old buddy Jim Sterne wrote an article recently in which he said that I had taught him two things:

1. It's about the customer

2. It's political

Throughout my career, these two realities have remained constant. It's very tough for company managers to think like their customers, and every decision made in marketing and sales is agenda-driven. The agendas of the internal people conflict with the agendas of both customers and other internal people. These never-ending conflicts prevent sales from happening. They restrict the revenue flow.

I experienced this just this week. I recently finished revamping a content repository for a Fortune 100 company. The goal of the repository is to give internal salespeople and business partners a fast way to find the sales presentations they need (in seconds). This required proper categorization and tagging of the content, which was not an easy task, given that the company sells literally thousands of products via dozens of business units all over the world. Tags had to include target audience, target industry, customer goals, language, country, business unit, and so on.

Sounds straightforward, but when you have different groups of people, each wanting to categorize their particular content in their particular way, with their own words and phrases, it can get really, really messy. Many meetings later, we had managed to resolve the internal conflicts. The tagging is now standardized across all the different business units, which means salespeople will be able to find the content they need using drop-down menus and "further filtering" mechanisms.

Then we gave the design specs for the repository's home page to the outside vendor. Their first draft was great. Right there, in the middle of the home page, were the drop-down menus. Sellers could immediately select the criteria they needed, and then filter any subsequent results (in a company this big, there is a danger of "too many results" instead of too few, so that extra filtering capability was necessary).

I was happy, because it met my overriding website design goal: "two clicks to the payoff."

Ah, but then an agenda started to creep in. In a later meeting, the vendor suggested that the drop-down menus be moved above the page banner, and that the main section of the home page be devoted to the usual marketing portal-like things: tips, "what's hot," "latest initiatives," and so on.

Apparently the vendor has been creating portals for other clients, and, after looking at some of the portals that the vendor showed us, I can see why they want this big, well-known client to follow suit. The portals do look prettier than a home page that has drop-down menus in the action area. The vendor's agenda? A stunning portal portfolio piece.

It's easy for the vendor's client to agree that the portal approach is better. Corporate portals get messy because everyone in the company considers every portal a "billboard space" for their own agenda-driven message. The product managers and marketers fight to be the Big Icon of the week. The people responsible for the portal are proud of their "tips" and "latest news." Their agenda? A portal that proves to their bosses that they are pushing the latest corporate initiative and the hottest products.

The salesperson, on the other hand, sees all this "messaging" as an impediment. He's got a client on the phone, who has asked a specific question about a specific product. The salesperson is responsible for selling hundreds of products for this company. Often he isn't as familiar with the product as the customer is. He has to get smart, fast. While he's on the phone, vamping, he's furiously searching for something that can educate him - and help him answer the customer's questions.

He's like Indiana Jones, frantically hacking his way through a jungle of useless content, with only a few seconds to find the hidden treasure. This is the reality of the salesperson's daily life. And marketers wonder why salespeople complain about their portals, which look like they are designed for someone sitting calmly at his desk, casually sauntering his way through "interesting content."

Google is a great example of what the salesperson really needs. Google's basic page has a search box, a logo, and a couple of other clickable words. That's it. No advertising, no fading or twirling or flashing images, no "messaging." Just one simple utility. Want to find something? Type here. Hit Enter. Bing. This kind of simplicity does not survive in the corporate environment because of dueling agendas.

There is only one way to eliminate this problem. Customers must be interviewed in a conversational manner, using open-ended questions, such as "How do you feel about our product? What was your buying process? What frustrates you the most about buying and using these types of products? What suggestions would you have for the CEO?" Salespeople must also be interviewed, to find out which questions they find most difficult to answer and which part of the sales process they find most frustrating.

The suggestions and complaints gleaned from customers and salespeople must then be categorized and analyzed in a detailed report. The content of this report should become common knowledge to everyone in the company. Meetings should be held to discuss the findings in the report and what the company should do to align its activities and decisions with the customer's agenda. A set of prioritized directives should then guide decisions about product development, marketing, sales, and customer support. Of course, the website and all marketing and sales tools should be changed to address the concerns and needs of customers and salespeople.

It takes maturity and leadership to make this happen. It's easier at first. However; as time goes by, the internal agendas can easily overwhelm the clarity and direction created by the report and subsequent decisions. Managers must continue to make sure that, as the company carries out the new initiatives, everyone is still being driven by the customer's agenda.

If this interview, analysis, and alignment cycle is repeated every six months, the company will do a better job of meeting customer needs, and managers will be able to reduce the negative effects of dueling agendas on the revenue stream.

And, of course, sales will go up.