A fresh take on Celling

It is an interesting time for Vodacom. The company has spent the first twelve years of its existence serving customers who understood what they wanted, why they wanted it and who bought products without the need for much consultation. But the world has changed, the cellular market has substantially matured, and the role now is to re-focus its approach to sales.
Today, the goal is deep-penetration selling; of striving to understand the areas in a customer’s business that can be improved by Vodacom’s technology and services. Whether that offering comes through a Vodashop or a business partner that specialises in computer sales is almost beside the point. What is important to Vodacom’s Business Solutions Sales business, run by Chris Lazarus, is to become strategically relevant to business customers by uncovering a broader scope of their needs through a consultative selling approach. That is a very different view of Vodacom than most people typically have. But it is one that gives Lazarus a huge amount of energy. During a late afternoon interview in his office at Midrand’s Vodacom Commercial Park, SALESGURU did some deep penetration questioning of our own.

As Executive Head of Business Sales, Lazarus has the role of driving the sales strategy across the various product lines focused at business and Government customers. In that, there is a direct responsibility – for his internal sales team – and an indirect responsibility – in the form of external business partners. Adding an extra layer of complexity, Lazarus’s direct and indirect reports are split between those who sell directly to customers and those who manage relationships and sales through the business partners.

Establishing Value
Lazarus prefers to speak of ‘value-based’ selling than the more traditional ‘solution selling’, though fundamentally, he is comparing apples with apples. He teaches his people to dig deep and investigate aspects of a customers’ business that may not initially be perceived to be relevant, to find unexpected areas in which Vodacom’s products and services can be of value. “To me it is about understanding the total value chain of a customer and all the processes that are used. Through a process of questioning, you find out about their entire business. Nothing is irrelevant. If it is a manufacturing customer, ask them how they go about transporting raw materials to the factory because just by going through that process, you can uncover possibilities and understanding of the customer’s specific way of doing things. And you can look for opportunities to improve that,” he says.

Understand the Problems
Value-based selling has the accentuated goal of understanding the specific nature of the problems that might be solved. According to Lazarus, it may be something of a no-brainer that a company with salespeople in the field can benefit from a data card for their notebook computers. But if the customer doesn’t perceive there to be a current problem in the amount of time it takes for those salespeople to get an order back to the office, they will never equate any value to that data card. “The customer has got to perceive there to be a current problem this data card can solve so that you can say to them: if I could change that for you, would you find benefit in that? And the answer has to be a definite yes because you have already established that there is a problem, by going through a questioning process.”

Sales 101
“I am old school. I still believe in Sales 101; I still believe in the absolute basics which haven’t changed in the last 100 years. I get upset sometimes when I see people confusing the basics with strategic selling. One of my colleagues tells me that before they go to a customer, they do their homework, find out about the business, and even – if the customer is a listed company – to acquaint themselves with the share price. That is fine, but that isn’t strategic selling, that is Sales 101. Strategic selling is a much more intricate process and requires intelligent questioning. It also requires some intuition and a curious mind. If you walk into a customer’s office and you see that he has a picture of Napoleon on his wall, you get an idea of his personality,” he says

To sell or to lead? That is the question
According to Lazarus, a big mistake a lot of sales leaders make today is that they want to play the role of super-salesperson. “Look, I know how to sell. My boss is another super-salesperson. But is that our role? Is that why Vodacom brought us here? The whole trick is to take our experience and motivate others into doing it. The danger for a sales leader is that they can cross that boundary. I still go to see customers, to stay in touch where it really matters and because I miss it when I am not visiting customers. But I limit my time at the coal face to 20-30%.”

Bring me coaches
“I would be very relieved if I could have sales managers that are more about coaching than management. Because of the changes going on in our industry and the new challenges my salespeople face, the coaching is more important to me than the management skills. That doesn’t mean I can afford to lose the role of management completely because it will always be a fundamental part of our world. But coaching is hugely important,” says Lazarus.
“It is a complex role to define exactly. You don’t get to be the coach of Bafana Bafana by getting into the game and kicking the ball. The coach has to stand on the sidelines and establish policies, create direction and provide motivation.”

On having the right attitude
“The secret of life is the law of attraction. If you are prepared to emit a positive frequency, positive things happen. That may sound a little bit ‘out there’, but I can promise you that if you came into work today and believed that you wouldn’t get a particular deal then you will not get it. This is something that we are trying to teach people, but in order to learn it, you have to have the will to learn and to accept it. Personally, if I was going to teach someone to sell, I would rather teach them about the law of attraction than how to make a phone call or create a good report. I think that is far more important,” says Lazarus.

On taking the knocks
“Knocks in life treat us all differently. You see people experience exactly the same knocks, but all come out looking different and feeling different and taking the next stride differently. To me, one of the fundamental differences between a good salesperson and a bad one, is the ability to acknowledge that it isn’t personal when you get knocked down. You got knocked down only because the customer didn’t perceive value in the product, and that is all there is to it. If you can learn from the last customer and move onto the next quickly, that is what makes a good salesperson,” he says.

On being positive
The reason being positive in sales is so important is because it gives you tenacity, according to Lazarus. Sales is the one career where you just have to keep going. It starts on the first of the month, it ends on the thirtieth and it begins again all over again the following day; especially in an annuity driven business, where if you miss your monthly number, it has a trickle down effect over the entire year.

On creating balance
“I try to teach the guys here about balance. When presented with two customers, a major bank and a Joe’s Plumbers, which one do you think they are going to want to go for? I advise them to hang onto the major bank for sure, but also to try to get about 15 Joe’s Plumbers, because the chances are, you will swing those Joe’s Plumbers a lot more quickly than you will swing the bank. OK, you may not make your full target, but you will keep things running. No sales manager wants to see zero sales, but if you can show that sales are trickling in and building, at least you can justify that,” he says.

On being liked (versus being feared)
Lazarus says that being liked and respected is by far preferable to being feared. “I thrive on creating and maintaining a personality that is likeable because being likeable means being approachable. That is critical. Combine that with respect and you have the optimal situation. The structure here is quite flat and quite fluid. There are reporting lines, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t speak to salespeople and that they don’t speak to me. I don’t want them to fear me. I want them to feel free to come in and speak to me,” he says.
“And I am honest with them; I tell them I don’t know all the answers. If there was a book I could buy that would give me all the answers, I would buy it, but the truth is that we are writing that book here every day.”

On staying fit
Lazarus says that a healthy lifestyle is critical to success in sales. “I have found from personal experience that to stay alive in a sales role, you have to have a healthy body. You have to be on top of your game,” he says.
“My boss and I are into fitness and we have had a strong impact on others around us by jointly giving off these positive messages. Sales is not an eight-to-five job; since your core time is spent with your customer, the only time you are going to get to answer those emails and write proposals is through doing homework. I believe the ability to keep going for an extra time can only come from a physical ability which then stimulates the mental side.”

HOW I GOT STARTED by Chris Lazarus
“I don’t know exactly when I came to the idea of sales as a career, but it probably started in my late teens. In a youth club environment, they asked what everyone thought was their greatest asset, and there was one girl who was into tennis, who said her greatest assets were her hands. And I remember when it came to me, I said “I think it is my mouth”. I think that was a subtle defining moment because it has stuck in my subconscious.”
Lazarus remembers being drawn towards a commercial environment, even at school. “In fact, in those days, I wanted to work in a bank. My uncles worked in a bank and they wore pinstripe suits and drove the latest cars and I thought “cool, if they are doing so well, then banking has to be it”,” he says.
He not only joined the New Republic Bank, but showed an early flair for selling by turning his branch’s revenue stream on its head. “I was lucky enough to go through the ranks very quickly at a young age, and I figured out along the way that I could sell things to customers and they would just buy them. And as soon as I found that there were other value adds that you charge customers for and that they were prepared to pay for them, I was able to put a very different spin on things. A bank branch’s primary stream of revenue usually comes from earning interest, but that year, the branch made much more money from other income than it had ever done before,” says Lazarus.

Protecting the whole company
The organisational structure at Vodacom resembles a matrix, in recognition of how one set of results can impact another. So while Lazarus’s people sell across all product lines – moving vertically up and down the matrix – they also have a responsibility to ensure that the horizontal line doesn’t get disrupted. If that seems complicated, it is because it is, but a simple analogy might explain it like this: Lazarus has a colleague who looks after customer support, but within her KPAs, she also carries some of the burden for sales results. Similarly, while Lazarus is responsible for sales in his area, his KPAs carry a number for customer retention. The simple idea behind it is that although Lazarus isn’t responsible for managing the call centre as part of customer retention., his actions and the actions of his team have a direct impact on the company’s ability to do so. “If a salesperson makes a lousy deal, it impacts in other areas, and we have to take some responsibility for that. By doing things this way, we interlink the thinking all down the line and end up protecting the whole business,” he says.

A classic sales trait
Lazarus never had any formal training, but he was born with something that he believes is substantially more important: he genuinely likes people. Walking with him through the wood-panelled hallways at Vodacom Commercial Park – part of a complex in which about 700 people work – he greets everyone he sees, by name. He gets a kick out of talking to them. “I have done sales training courses and so on, but those mostly allowed me to put some theory on top of the things that I already knew inside. If you don’t like people, and if you don’t enjoy them, you shouldn’t get involved in sales,” he says.


< Back