The Delusion of Sales Professionals: Proclaiming client-centricity yet acting with self-interest

Prelude: This article is written in support of sales professionals not as a criticism. Every sales professional (and leader) I know cares about their clients...but it's hard to maintain in action.

Sales professionals play a crucial role in every business, bridging the gap between products or services and potential clients. It's widely accepted that a client-centric approach is the key to building trust and fostering long-term relationships. However, a common delusion persists in the world of sales: many professionals believe they are client-centric when, in reality, they often prioritise their own companies interests by aggressively pushing products and services to secure a sale.

Let’s explore this delusion, its underlying causes, the implications it holds for both salespeople and their clients, and why short-termism or a focus on the 30-day or current quarter results are often prioritised over genuine client-centricity.

The Illusion of Client-Centricity

Sales professionals often proclaim their dedication to the client's best interests, using buzzwords like "customer-centric" or "client-focused" or more recently “business outcome-based” to describe their approach. They may genuinely believe they are serving their clients well, but there's often a misalignment between their words and actions or as we say “behaviours betray beliefs”.

Why Sales Professional Behaviours Don't Match Their Beliefs:

1. Incentive Structures: Sales professionals are often incentivised to achieve short-term gains, such as meeting monthly or quarterly targets. This focus on immediate results can create a conflict of interest between what is best for the client and what is best for the salesperson's wallet.
2. Sales Targets and Quotas: Sales teams are typically driven by targets and quotas, creating a strong incentive to close deals quickly. This can lead to a focus on meeting personal and company objectives rather than genuinely addressing client needs.
3. Pressure from Management: Sales managers often emphasise meeting sales goals above all else. This pressure can encourage salespeople to push products or services aggressively, even if it's not in the client's best interest.
4. Training and Coaching: In many organisations, sales training may emphasise aggressive tactics and closing techniques that prioritize securing a sale over genuinely serving the client. This can perpetuate the belief that pushing products is the way to success.
5. Company Culture: The culture within a sales organisation can heavily influence behaviour. If the culture values aggressive sales tactics and prioritises hitting quotas at all costs, sales professionals may feel compelled to conform, even if it conflicts with their personal beliefs.
6. Fear of Job Security: Sales professionals may fear that if they do not meet their targets consistently, they could face job insecurity or even termination. This fear can lead them to prioritise their own interests over those of the client.
7. Lack of Accountability: In some cases, there may be a lack of accountability for unethical or overly aggressive sales practices, further reinforcing the belief that such behaviour is acceptable.
8. Lack of Product Knowledge: In some cases, sales professionals may not have a deep understanding of their products or services, leading them to rely on scripted pitches and pushing products they are more familiar with, rather than what's suitable for the client.

Yet of all those above the #1 reason that Sales Professionals struggle to genuinely align their client-centric beliefs with action is: Company-wide Ruthless Short-Termism.

I like to run an experiment with my clients.? In the last 2 weeks of a month or quarter I ask “In your circle of 30-50 people you interact with who is actively talking about next month or next quarter”….the answer is almost always “no one”.

The prioritisation of short-term results, often focusing on the current quarter or the next 30 days, over genuine client-centricity can be attributed to several factors:

1. Immediate Financial Pressures: Companies, especially publicly traded ones, are under immense pressure to meet quarterly financial targets. This pressure cascades down to sales teams, who may be pushed to prioritise closing deals quickly to ensure short-term revenue growth.
2. Incentive Structures: Boards and C-Suite executives may receive bonuses or rewards based on achieving short-term sales targets. This can encourage them to focus on immediate gains rather than long-term client satisfaction.
3. Competitive Landscape: In highly competitive markets, the emphasis on short-term results may be driven by the fear of losing clients to competitors. Sales teams may feel compelled to secure deals rapidly, even if it means neglecting the client's best interests.
4. Stockholder Expectations: Companies with shareholders may face scrutiny from investors who demand immediate returns on their investments. This pressure can lead organisations to prioritize short-term profits over building lasting client relationships.

The Cost of Short-Termism

Prioritising short-term results over genuine client-centricity can have detrimental consequences for both sales professionals and their clients:

• Lack of value: Five major elements influence a client’s decision to buy.?

The product/service is “good enough”

Price / commercial terms are “in the ballpark”

In eyes of the client they can achieve the highest value with you

In the eyes of the client you are the lowest risk

And in the eyes of the client you are the easiest / fastest to do business with

Short-termism generally sees sales teams focus only on A and B above, resulting in the client choosing another option that better aligns with all five

• Commoditisation: ?The above results in the classic race to the bottom, where product and price are the two sole areas of “competitive advantage” which long term harms performance, and by consequence results in increased short term pressure
• Client Churn: Focusing solely on closing deals in the short term can lead to a high client churn rate, where clients quickly disengage or leave due to dissatisfaction with their purchase experience.
• Lost Upselling Opportunities: Long-term client relationships often provide opportunities for upselling or cross-selling additional products or services. Short-term focus can result in missed revenue potential.
• Reputation Damage: Pushy sales tactics and a lack of client-centricity can harm a company's reputation, making it harder to acquire new clients and retain existing ones.

It would be remiss to talk about client-centricity without talking about the impact of short-termism on clients

When sales leaders, teams and professionals prioritise their interests (consciously or unconsciously) over those of their clients, it can lead to several negative consequences for the clients:

• Mismatched Offerings: Clients may end up with products or services that don't meet their actual needs or preferences, resulting in dissatisfaction and potential regret.
• Loss of Trust: Pushy sales tactics can erode trust between the client and the salesperson, making it harder to establish a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship.
• Long-Term Disengagement: Clients who feel coerced into a purchase are less likely to engage with the salesperson or the company in the future, potentially resulting in lost opportunities for upselling or cross-selling.
• Negative Word-of-Mouth: Unhappy clients are more likely to share their negative experiences with others, potentially harming the company's reputation.
• Financially unviable: Commoditisation results decline margins over time which h in turn require companies to reduce cost in service, support, R&D, marketing and other critical functions.? Further putting pressure on short term results and at worst, massively under-delivering against client expectations

The Path to True Client-Centricity

To break free from the delusion of client-centricity and build authentic, client-focused relationships, sales professionals can take several steps that do not require the permission or support of the company:

1. Understand the Client: Take the time to truly understand the client's needs, preferences, and pain points. This involves going deeper than the simple “save money and grow revenue” goals.? It means delving into the detail of their clients strategy, business model and major initiatives
2. Ideas: Instead of leading with products and services, lead with ideas.? Ideas that help clients transform / change / innovate their business model, talent model, customer-experience model, economic model, risk model and operating model.? Client-centric sales professionals are “ideas factories”
3. Three-legged stool: Success is not technology-driven.? Technology is a lever for change.? But meaningful change to the models described on point 2 above requires changes in models, process, behaviours, culture and beliefs.? Not just technology.? Successful sales professionals understand there are agents of change and focus their efforts on helping their clients plan, navigate and risk mitigate changes in all three legs of the change paradigm: People, Process and Technology (or as we say – Models, Platforms, Behaviours)
4. Questions: The most powerful question that one can ask is a question that cannot be answered.? Often the questions sales professionals ask are value to the sales professional.? The best questions are ones that are valuable to the client.? They help the client reflect, think, inspect, challenge.
5. Ecosystem: In today’s complex business landscape no company can do it all on their own.? They are no longer vertically integrated.? Companies outsource so much.? Accounting, manufacturing, marketing, sales, services etc.? Thus, the best and most successful way to help a client transform the 6 models described in point 2 above is to work as a highly collaborative cohort with their existing strategic partners.? This ecosystem is critical to successful low risk change.? The challenge is most sales teams only know their major competitors in a client, and not the other significant companies the client uses to execute their business model. To give an example a recent co-created 9 stage business case with a client of ours and their client, saw 8 internal business units and 7 external companies would need to be involved to successful execute one idea that would transform their distribution and delivery model
6. Risk: In the complex world of B2B sameness, where every competitor basically has the same offering, commercials and service model, one of the biggest factors in buying decisions is risk.? To become more client-centric sales professionals should equally consider the risk OF doing it and the risk of NOT doing it – with a lens on the three-legged change stool
7. 9 Stage Business case: Technology ROIs are, to be brutal, a joke.? No CIO, CFO or CEO I’ve ever spoken to actually believes them.? They’d like to but history says they are almost always factually incorrect.? The reason.? They focus on technology change only, and generally look at a “cost savings” goal…mostly around technology operating costs.? A 9 stage business case is not an ROI.? It is a co-created (with the client) genuine business case that explores, in detail, what models to change (point 2 above), the three legged stool, who needs to be involved (ecosystem), how success will be tracked (leading and lagging), anticipated benefits / outcomes, investments (not just cash but time and resources) and the risk of and of not doing it.? Anything less that this is like navigating the oceans at night with your eyes closed.? The probability of success is almost nil.
8. Continuous Learning: Peter Senge said “the only sustainable source of competitive advantage is to learn faster than your competitors”.? I would argue that this is not enough, now it is to learn faster than your clients.? To become an ideas factory, to help them see what they can’t see and to be able to ask powerful questions, sales professionals must significantly prioritise personal continuous learning…which is NOT product, technology or sales methodology learning.

Conclusion

The prioritisation of short-termism and a focus on the current quarter or the next 30 days over genuine client-centricity is a challenge that many sales professionals and organisations face. While short-term results are essential for financial stability, a myopic focus on them can undermine long-term success.

To strike the right balance, organisations must implement a leadership culture that incentivises client-delight. This may involve re-evaluating incentive structures, providing sales professionals with tools and development they need to prioritise client needs, and fostering a culture that values ethical, client-centric practices.

In the end, a holistic approach and commitment to client satisfaction is the path to sustainable success in sales. By addressing the factors that drive short-termism and fostering a client-centric mindset, sales professionals can break free from the delusion of prioritising self-interest over the genuine needs of their clients. Which will in turn break your company free from the vicious cycle of short-termism and deliver genuine game-changing differentiation.