McCrone Microscopes & Accessories (MMA)

The technical sales representatives at MMA all came from science-based backgrounds and were primarily tasked to process inbound orders when customers called in to request products featured in MMA's product catalog. As such, they were reactive rather than proactive, and the organization needed everyone in this group to be more customer focused, ask more questions, and make better recommendations for the instruments and equipment in order to better serve their customers. Not doing so was creating missed opportunities—and lost sales—and keeping them farther to the left on The Relationship Continuum than was desired. The primary challenge with MMA was to improve the skill set of their sales staff and teach them to become true trusted advisors to their customers.

McCrone Associates (MA)

MA was comprised of scientists whose jobs included a project management component and who worked directly with clients on a daily basis. The scientists simply didn't see themselves as salespeople, and selling did not come naturally for them. Most were comfortable discussing the scientific portion of a project, and from that standpoint were trusted advisors. However, few had any formal sales training that supported putting them at ease with the “sales” portion of a project and building stronger customer relationships. The MA scientists faced challenges with both skill set and mindset.

Hooke College of Applied Sciences (HCAS)

Similar to the MA side of the business, the team at Hooke College was highly reactive. This group needed to do more outbound business development in order to establish new channels and reach new students. At Hooke College, individuals in administrative positions also acted as registrars, and growing relationships was new to most of them. Less experienced in this area, the team at Hooke College was challenged with gaining the skill set needed to conduct more outreach to potential students and be more proactive.

Because the staff at The McCrone Group tended to be more reactive than proactive, and because most had never gone through any formal sales training, it was difficult for them to move beyond order-taker status to the status of trusted advisor. Think back to our discussion in Chapter 1, in which we discussed the four different and distinct levels of customer relationships that sales professionals can earn. These levels form The Relationship Continuum, which ranges from order taker to friendly salesperson to effective salesperson to, finally, trusted advisor. It's at that trusted-advisor status that top-performing sales professionals are best able to accelerate the sales process, close deals, and grow business (both their own and the businesses of their customers). And it's to trusted-advisor status that The McCrone Group wanted to advance its team of scientists/salespeople.

Leaders at The McCrone Group knew they were experiencing positive year-over-year growth, but they also realized that there was more out there—more clients they could serve and more opportunities they could capture. Furthermore, they recognized that, although they were scientists first, they also were salespeople who worked with customers on a daily basis. As scientists/salespeople, they realized they might not be approaching sales in the right way if they wanted to continue to grow the organization. As a result, the scientists/salespeople were missing opportunities, which precluded them from expanding relationships and getting more business from existing customers. They needed some training—but, first, they needed to change their mindset.

Prepare and Plan

Janek's professionals worked closely with leaders and staff throughout The McCrone Group in order to understand the company as a whole and its various divisions. Customizing a training program that was specifically tailored to their unique organization was instrumental in The McCrone Group's choice to work with Janek. So, over the course of several days, Janek's team met with key stakeholders during on-site visits, talking with leaders and managers. Janek spoke with individual staff members within each unit and observed live sales interactions. It was important to understand the current state of the organization and the challenges that brought The McCrone Group and Janek together. Together, key stakeholders from both firms worked to identify how scientists/salespeople across MA, MMA, and HCAS were interacting with customers, where the gaps were, and what kind of training was needed for each business. Interviews were held with key stakeholders and managers during an intensive information-gathering process designed to build a tailored sales training experience.

Planning and preparation were critical when it came to letting the scientists/salespeople in each business know that Janek understood where they were coming from, and that Janek understood the need both to become a true sales team and to instill a sales-and-selling mindset across the organization. Also important was using some of the same lingo used by The McCrone Group. For instance, because the scientists at MA saw themselves first as scientists and not so much as salespeople, Janek's team members were careful to recognize the audience for their highly technical expertise and background. This went far in making them feel comfortable and be more open-minded to the training process.

Train the Team

Knowing that MA and MMA, in particular, had different mindsets when it came to sales and selling, Janek wrote unique learning examples for each business and performed various levels of customization for the sales training, which employees would undergo through in-house workshops and other sessions. Janek provided customized training for the scientists/salespeople as well as for leadership and management at The McCrone Group.

Sustain the Skills

After the training sessions, during which scientists/salespeople, leaders, and managers were introduced to the Critical Selling skills framework, Janek worked closely with The McCrone Group to identify what the organization needed to do to lead change, reinforce skills, mentor managers, and supplement training. Follow-up was provided in the form of webinars, refresher courses, and ongoing discussions in order to ensure that the lessons learned were implemented and that the associated skills became second nature for both the individuals and for the organization as a whole.

Only once the issue of mindset was addressed could The McCrone Group and Janek work together to craft a solution that would help MA, MMA, and HCAS better meet the needs of their customers, build relationships, and expand their businesses. That solution needed to address The McCrone Group's key issues, which included building long-term relationships, growing the business, and moving the scientists/salespeople to trusted-advisor status, but without sacrificing the scientific and technical expertise required to sell such specialized products and services.

“The products we sell are technical in nature, so there's a level of education that's required in order to sell these products,” says Jeff McGinn, president of MMA and HCAS. “So, the whole notion of ‘trusted advisor’ and how you define that and how you become that for your customers is important when it comes to these highly technical pieces of equipment. We want people to rely on us and come back to us. It's not just about the big sale. It's about forming the relationship and being able to carry it forward, whether it's follow-on sales with accessories, another system they might need, or supporting the purchase they've made. We felt like that was an important part of what we needed to do as an organization, not only to grow, but to do our jobs better.”

Implementing the Solution

Every industry is different, and every salesperson is different. It was important that the sales training geared toward The McCrone Group focus on their specific needs, particularly because of their unique mix of scientists/salespeople. As such, every piece of the sales training had some sort of application to what The McCrone Group needed. According to leadership at The McCrone Group, no one came away thinking they got only a couple things out of the entire training and that otherwise it was a waste of time. A modular approach to the training helped employees feel engaged and that their time was well spent.

In addition to customized training workshops, practice sessions also helped The McCrone Group implement the skills and strategies they learned. After learning about new concepts, employees were encouraged to practice new skills and strategies on each other, testing out real-world scenarios together. These practice sessions were conducted in-house before The McCrone Group sales professionals tried out the new skills on their customers, which helped them build their confidence. In addition, because all the employees were from the same company and had similar scientific and technical backgrounds, they all had similar needs and understandings, which made them feel more comfortable about both undergoing training and practicing their newfound skills with each other.

In addition to adopting a sales-and-selling mindset and practicing critical skills and best practices, growing the organization and shifting from order taker to trusted advisor were important to The McCrone Group. They learned to do that by augmenting the conversations they were already having with their clients and customers. Whereas the scientists/salespeople at The McCrone Group had long been having in-depth discussions with customers in order to discern particular needs, they weren't going beyond those initial issues to uncover additional needs. Furthermore, they didn't necessarily consider the conversations they were having as part of an overall discovering process that would help them meet their customers' needs and close more deals.

In recognizing that the scientists/salespeople at The McCrone Group weren't necessarily thinking about discovering as part of an overall sales process, leaders at the company realized that they hadn't even known that they didn't know how to ask the right questions. They hadn't been focused on asking questions to uncover needs or to dig deeper into the customer's values and objectives. They weren't actively undertaking a discovering process that would help them uncover needs.

As a result of the training and practice sessions, the scientists/salespeople quickly came to understand the importance of better customer focused questions. As a result, the scientists/salespeople became better equipped to have meaningful, productive conversations with their customers. They learned how to cater their questions to their clients and how to frame their questions around the unique products and services they offer, as well as around the specialized insight and advice they could share with their customers. At MA, the scientists were better equipped to discuss with their clients the full scope of their projects in order to launch them successfully and with fewer challenges down the road. Learning how to use questions to uncover important points earlier in the process was, as Wiley said, “a light bulb moment.”

In learning how to ask the right questions at the right time—and how to better listen to the answers—they were able to discover more about their customers, uncovering those unknown unknowns that could lead to additional sales. This is very much in keeping with what we discussed in Chapter 5, in which we focused on the importance of discovering. In learning how to ask questions and listen to answers, the scientists/salespeople became better able to dig deep in order to expand relationships, accelerate the sales process, and close more deals.

It's also important to note that many of the scientists and sales reps at The McCrone Group were, in fact, already utilizing many Critical Selling skills, even though they at first didn't see it as such. At issue was the negative perception of how they viewed selling skills. The skills that were provided in the training were already being used—the mindset around those skills needed adjusting. In essence, some of the individuals involved in selling needed to accept the notion that a selling mindset wasn't a negative and that they could use Critical Selling skills to better educate customers and provide a better customer experience. In fact, the scientists were surprised to see that the selling skills Janek provided were things they were already doing and that if they perfected those skills they could improve the customer experience. Although at first reluctant to undergo sales training, they soon realized that they were all headed in the same direction, that they were using similar skills, and that they did in fact all want to better help their customers using improved selling skills.

Increased Sales

As a result of the sales training, The McCrone Group has seen consistent year-over-year improvements in sales. In addition, the organization has seen more repeat customers, improved customer interactions, deeper reach into new markets, and more effective outbound sales efforts. The average deal size has increased because a more customer-focused approach has turned sales reps into trusted advisors, who are able to better identify needs and sell a broader array of products and services. As a result, trusted advisors enjoy richer customer relationships across the organization.

Bringing in Janek as an outside organization provided The McCrone Group with a more objective view of their situation. It allowed them to look at things differently. The training also provided the sales force with new strategies and tools to approach their customers, left the staff with a positive vibe, and had a direct effect on growing sales, which continue to increase year after year.

In the past, a customer would ask for a quote and a salesperson would provide it. It was a simple order-taking process. Leaders at The McCrone Group recognized the need to grow. “We all wanted to grow,” said McGinn. Opportunities would pop up time and again, and their scientists/salespeople would discuss issues with their clients, but there wasn't effective follow-up or management of customer relationships. “We realized that there was more here than what we were doing,” says McGinn. “There are better ways to manage these relationships.”

Since taking a customer-focused sales approach, The McCrone Group has been better able develop customer relationships. The training has resulted not only in increased sales but also in improved customer relationships—without sacrificing the technical and scientific expertise that the sales professionals at The McCrone Group needed in order to sell their products and services with confidence and authority.

“We're all salespeople now,” says McGinn. “We love microscopy. We're scientists as well.”

Culture Shift

The McCrone Group businesses experienced a shift in culture once they saw themselves as all part of one company, a whole team working together to connect with customers. In addition, everyone now sees that sales is an important aspect of what they do, which is better understanding customers' needs so they can tailor unique solutions to meet those needs.

As an organization, The McCrone Group today is better able to support their customers and to provide follow-up sales. When they started to ask the right questions of their customers, they were able to uncover new business in the form of future maintenance visits, qualification visits, and cross-selling opportunities. With their new skills in place, they were able not only to increase revenue but also to expand relationships, even at a time when their competitors were consolidating or merging. In short, they're all able to do their jobs better—and to do their jobs as trusted advisors in a way they weren't before.

“It's changed the culture,” says McGinn. “It's changed our approach.”

Leaders at The McCrone Group have seen a clear shift in their approach to selling, and their sales force has been effective at moving along The Relationship Continuum from order takers to trusted advisors. “It really has changed the mindset of the whole group,” says Wiley. “Trying some of these things and feeling more confident asking questions made them realize that the part of the whole process that they were having difficulty with just took asking the right questions or using the right approach to make that not seem like it was the more difficult or bigger part of the project and allow them to focus on what they're good at and passionate about, and that's the science.”

In the past few years, since undergoing sales training, The McCrone Group has seen some of their best business. Having learned how to ask the right questions at the right time has allowed the sales force to move into these new areas with aplomb, largely because they are more seasoned and more comfortable in working with customers to discover needs. The McCrone Group has seen new customers in new industries, increased revenues, larger projects, more repeat customers, and revived customers, not to mention happier staff members who are enjoying more success. In addition, the company has seen a motivational shift, with salespeople feeling more optimistic, enjoying stronger customer relationships, and knocking their sales figures out of the park. Since undergoing the training and putting their newfound skills to work, the scientists/salespeople at The McCrone Group have worked diligently to transform themselves from order takers to trusted advisors.