But selling isn’t the only profession that needs to excel at asking questions. In journalism, the Five Ws (also known as the Five Ws (and one H), or Six Ws) is a concept in news style and research, and in police investigations it is regarded as a formula for getting the “full” story on something. The maxim of the Five Ws (and one H) is that for a report to be considered complete it must answer a checklist of six questions, each of which comprises an interrogative word:

• Who? Who was involved?
• What? What happened (what’s the story)?
• Where? Where did it take place?
• When? When did it take place?
• Why? Why did it happen?
• How? How did it happen?

Another “profession” where gathering information is a top priority is espionage or spying. Rudyard Kipling’s story Kim published in 1901 unfolds against the backdrop of The Great Game, the political conflict between Russia and Britain in Central Asia. Throughout the story Kim is trained by a British spymaster in the art of information gathering, and some have suggested that Kipling himself was a British spy.

Interestingly, a year later in 1902 The “Five Ws” (and one H) were memorialized by Rudyard Kipling in his “Just So Stories” (1902), in which a poem accompanying the tale of “The Elephant’s Child” opens with:

I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

For sales people remembering to ask good, open questions is important. But just as important is your attitude in your dialogue with the customer. I found treating the information gathering process as a game where I was fully focused on understanding everything I could about the whole situation meant that not only did I got lots of information but the customer felt that I was really interested in them – great empathy.

Tell me how you develop questions for your customers.

Personally, I think we all have to move away from what we are selling and towards what problems the customer is grappling with, and how we can help them solve them. But that’s obvious, that’s what we do today! Well actually when I listen to sale people, 90% of them are still trying to force their “square” products into the customer’s “round” problem hole. They just aren’t listening to their customers and their questions are veiled attempts to position their products and solutions for selling.

So, how can we change our approach? I like to use the 4 stages of a customer/supplier relationship to graphically illustrate the point – and actually this makes a great sales team energizer. Individually get each sales person to say where they think they are on the left hand axis with an average customer. Go round the group and mark their answers on a pre-drawn flipchart of the diagram.

Remember to challenge people who claim they are trusted advisors – so you work at board level shaping the customer’s future strategy? Most people will acknowledge a relationship around the Preferred Supplier level. The question is “where do you need to be in the customer’s eyes to sell more effectively?” My view is that for most suppliers the Problem Solver level is a good level – where the customer values your opinion on problems they have and use you as an independent sounding board.

So, the second part of the energiser is to get the group to come up with what actions they can take to fill the GAP between, say, Preferred Supplier and Problem Solver. This is a great discussion point, and can lead to a powerful debate around how the sales force should engage with their customers and prospects. Fundamentally, it is a question of attitude, of wanting to really understand and explore the issues that are key priorities for the customer. Never lead with products, but lead with an attitude of coaching and helping the customer work through their issues.

Do you think I am right, or do you have a better engagement strategy – let me know!

You can then capture the best questions from the teams on a flip chart, throw in a prize for the best team questions and publish a best questions list for the whole team. Just getting sales people to ask two SMARTER questions per call will raise the quality of each discussion with your customers.

No Clear Objectives
Many times we have been told by sales managers that their sales team can’t close, so they obviously need training based on closing skills. When we actually analysis the issues, we normally find that the problem lies much earlier in the sales cycle. Often the issue concerns poor questioning and qualification skills which leads to the sales person trying to close the customer inappropriately, with a product/service that doesn’t meet their real needs.

Another classic misunderstanding often occurs when a new product/service has been launched, but the sales team aren’t selling it. Obviously, they need some product training – get product marketing to do a day’s powerpoint detailing all the features and benefits of the new product. Unfortunately, the newly launched product may need to be sold at a higher level in the customer’s organization, and the sales force have no experience of how to engage with customers at this level.

There are many examples of misaligned training. It is important to put thought into what you want to achieve and what analyse what the gap between where you are now and where you need to be is. This is often termed a Training Needs Analysis (TNA), often accompanied by a sales force assessment.

The other situation that occurs is when the training is seen as a catch-all day, where all the things you need the sales team to know are crammed into the day. No focus, no clear objectives and lots of brief sessions with no theme or linkage.

It’s Not Sales Training
Sales training tends to be a catch-all phrase for any communication to the sales team. We have witnessed many times a technical trainer running through a very detailed PowerPoint presentation, originally developed to train the technical department. This is not sales training, it’s not an effective way to train the sales force, but it is cheap based on existing training materials.

But if we stop and think for a minute, do we actually want our sales force to be as technical as our systems consultant, do we want them to engage our customers at a detailed technical level. Hopefully the answer is no, we actually want the sale team to be able to engage our customers at the level of their business needs and drivers. For them to be able to get their customers to commit themselves to action because they now recognize the size of the business problem, and the sales person has built a bridge between that problem and your solution. So the sales training required is around business drivers, case studies and role plays to re-enforce the skills.

Other examples include getting 200 sales people in the room and getting people to talk at them for a day without any interaction. Again this is cheap, but of almost no value. Good sales people are used to being active and challenged and doing things. Good sales training is built to engage the sales team, create lots of interaction and move at a pace that keeps them moving.

What Changes?
Your sales people have just attended a 3-day sales training course. It’s theme was account strategy and opportunity management, how to develop a more long-term relationship with your customers. The sales people enjoyed the course, it was thought provoking, and gave them some tools to help change their behaviour.

They get back to their desks and their sales manager says, because of the training you are $60K down this week, get on the phone and get some business, even if you have to drag it from next week. So they phone their customers and try and force them to pull orders they had promised for next Tuesday into this Friday. We know today’s business is crucial, but think of the affect this management style has on the sales people and the customers. What has changed, when will the new skills and behaviours discussed on the course ever be implemented.

This example is not uncommon, and raises issues around management buy-in (see No Executive Sponsorship) and whether thought has been given to how the required changes will actually happen. In fact, we now recommend that the sales managers go through a workshop that shows the sales training concepts at high level and asks them to produce a coaching plan to sustain the behavioural changes in their teams.

Many people confuse objectives of a training program with the outcomes of the program. We use a simple definition: objectives are what the training course was developed to achieve; outcomes are what happen if the sales people actually take actions from the course and use the new skills or change their behaviour. If there is no mechanism to get from objectives to outcomes nothing will change.

No Executive Sponsorship
This section fits together with What Changes?. Real change in the sales force can only happen if there is a top-down desire throughout the management team to make change happen. In our view, this is the most common reason for sales training failing, no management buy-in to change their behaviour and how they work with their sales people.

There are really two situations where the whole organization gets fully behind the change program. Firstly, and most commonly, when the company is in real, and obvious, trouble. There is no doubt that change must take place. This can be competitive threat, a fundamental change in the market, an economic downturn, etc. Secondly, when the company is doing so well that it’s velocity of growth is causing the business to stall. Not so common in the IT business today (maybe more common prior to the dot.com crash), but still a possibility in new, niche technologies.

Other examples include, when the sales team changing their behaviour also affects other departments who haven’t been engaged and are not prepared to change their way of working. For example, sales are trained to drive more customers to order over the web, but the operations and order entry departments have not visibility of these changes, and no processes or systems to cope.

An Isolated Course
Sales training initiatives often start with grand ideals but crash and burn after the first course. Say, we need to move the sales force from selling products in a transactional environment to selling managed services into the heart of our customers’ businesses. The training program could consist of three phases:

• Phase I – will be a basic sales skills refresher to get everyone to a common level of understanding.
• Phase II – will look at the market and business drivers in our customers’ businesses creating the need for managed services.
• Phase III – will focus on our managed services deployment, how we meet a customer’s needs, the competitive landscape, and role plays to re-enforce the learning.

How many phases of the program do you think get rolled out? Well normally it ends up being just phase I, and the sales team are yet again put through Sales 101, with the promise of more advanced courses to come. This is one of the main gripes of sales with regard to training, we just keep doing the basics time after time.

To change this situation, there is a need for long-term executive sponsorship (see No Executive Sponsorship) and a business that is prepared to continue a training program even if the figures are bad. Now in reality, with quarterly reporting and OPEX freezes, maybe a business can never make such a commitment. We consider the implications of this in The Way Forward (see the link below).

No Sales Engagement
A technique that we have used on some training courses, is to ask each participant to write anonymously on a post-it the following information

• How well do you understand the need for this course.
• How positive are you about attending the course
• For each point, score 1-10, 1 being no understanding – not positive and 10 being full understanding – totally positive.
• For example – understanding 4, positive 3

We then create a scatter diagram on a flip chart, divide the diagram into 4 quadrants, and look at the result. What percentage of results do you think appear in the top right quadrant (good understanding and positive)? If you said less than 20% for most courses, sadly you would be right.

This comes down to communication. Have your sales people been sent a crisp, precise email summarizing the need for change, why they are on the course, how it will benefit them and the business, any pre-work they need to do, and what the expected outcomes (changes) will be. If this call to action comes from the executive sponsor then so much the better. Too many training courses are run with sales people attending who have little idea why they are there, and even less interest in being there.

Do these ideas ring true with you? Let me know what you think.