A Consideration of Field Intelligence in Sales

You have endured the flights, expended the limit of the pidgin version of the language of your host country, listened to the stories at the hotel bar, and wished to forget 90% of them and now you are in your car, slipping out of the airport car park with only a few miles between you and the end of another sales trip. You can call it a business trip to your friends and colleagues, but it was a sales trip. You were selling the minute you sat into your plane seat and the John Candy-like character beside you removed his shoes, socks and any hope of a peaceful flight. And what is the most important thing to bring back from a sales trip that has cost your company money? Simple, just more money. Bringing back money is not always going to happen on the trips but there is a constant out there that you can bring back. It is a constant that makes the difference between a good trip and a great trip. That constant is field intelligence.

The Cost of Travel, The Value of Intel

So, let’s move thoughts of money, be it revenue for the company or commission for the sales guy, out of the equation in the context of this discussion. It is a given that everyone wants to earn. But, to enhance the earning capabilities of the salesperson and the company, they must be able to bring home those intelligence titbits that will help not just the sale but also the development of the product, the marketing team, the strategies of the leadership function, and the company as a whole.

This is field intelligence: the real-time, on-the-ground insights that are gleaned from every meeting and client interaction over the duration of the business trip. It differs from raw data, usage data and such information in that it is context-rich, timely, and drawn from human moments. Let me expand on that by going back to that keyword "constant" and why we look for the baseline, that even keel ploughing through the waves of intel out there waiting to be harnessed.

The Four Constants of Field Intelligence

When intelligence is being analysed, there are four constants to be kept in mind. Those are:

 I. Objective: What are you really trying to learn?

 II. Evaluation: Can you trust what you are hearing?

 III. Chronology: Is it timely and still relevant?

 IV. Cui Bono: Who benefits from what you are being told?

Why is this so? There is no shortage of intelligence applicable to crime, terrorism, or sales. The secret to success is knowing what is good and what no longer qualifies as intelligence. That begins with understanding the objective. If you do not start with the right questions, you risk bringing back noise. What is noise? Noise in sales is opinions, feature requests, gossip about competitors, and my favorite...aspirations. To dampen the noise, align yourself with the task at hand and be able to answer the one Objective question:

What decision does my team need to make right now? That simple question, before you go to the airport, will guide you as to what to listen for, how to frame your questions, and how to extricate the information you need.

What Salespeople Forget (and Why it Matters)

Next comes evaluation. We have all been there when asked why we have forecast a number with little to back it up in the CRM system. “They loved the demo,” “They are switching vendors next quarter,” and “They love our pricing!” All of this is what you want to hear, but it is only relevant if it can be absorbed and then acted on with high confidence. Take the comments and musings from a senior stakeholder versus the speculation of an eager junior staff member. What do you go for? 9 out of 10 times you go with the senior, right? Well, let’s say yes for now and get into it another day as to why you have to listen and take note of what the junior is saying. Either way, if you move from the meeting to lunch, then a stroll around the new building, stop for a coffee, see the labs or the factory floor…and on and on, before you know it, three hours have passed and you have not recorded the knowledge gained from the meeting, and that knowledge is now fermenting in the darkened corners of the mind of a salesperson. And we all know what happens in those dark corners. The hint of positivity towards the product (and therefore the sale) has its own little Big Bang when forecasting is required. Your memory of an event is not the same after three hours. Our memories are fragile, vulnerable to distortion and suggestion and can be infected by bias (yes, sales folk can be biased towards their product and processes. Who knew!) To counter these issues, challenge everything and grade your results.

Macbeth, Motive & Memory

Now, let’s bring that most unfortunate salesman from Scotland into the discussion. When he mused “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well It were done quickly” Macbeth was mulling over the timing of killing his King. For sales, the “if” and the “when” inform the importance of chronology in the consideration of intelligence. Capturing what was said is key, whether that intel is true, and when it became true, is the comforting click of the lock opening. Old intel is no intel so follow up with questions that will help clarify the timelines – “When did you first notice that?” and follow on gently with others such as “Has anything changed since?” And yes, I know Macbeth was not a salesman per se, but he was trying to sell himself as King!

From Recorder to Analyst

Finally, we move to point four, and back to Latin: Cui Bono, who benefits from this? Dial the expectation down from “It is nothing personal, just business” to a more balanced idea that every comment has a motive. Understanding what that motive is will guide you to the answers you need. Is that left-field feature request about usability or internal politics? Is the client's urgency real or a negotiating pressure play? The threat to move to another competitor is it genuine, or are you missing a deeper issue at play? Salespeople who think in terms of motive go from being recorders to analysts and generate a timely and actionable advantage.

Once you know who benefits, you know the questions to ask, how to ask them, and what to watch for, but I think my fingerprints are starting to fade from all this typing, so I ought to leave those tips to another day. I shall, however, leave you with the following consideration. In high-stakes conversations, keep in mind the intelligence that you gather rarely stands in isolation. You are looking for context, baseline behaviour and clusters, to name a few. The key one I used to look for is summed up in the following Limerick –

In interviews, sharp minds may roam,

But truth sometimes shifts close to home

If they squirm in their seat,

It’s a sign, not so neat,

That the answer might not stand alone.

Specta. Ausculta. Perge.

AJ