The Minister of Culture: Bobby Grisham
May 06, 2008
Bobby Grisham, CSO of EDS, works sales magic through incentives, coaching and recognition
By Mike McCue
Looking back on it now, 1962 was a pretty eventful year. It was the beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the year the Supreme Court ruled that the reading of prayers in New York City schools was unconstitutional, and saw the first-ever launch of a U.S. commercial communications satellite. Meanwhile, on the entertainment front, Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a basketball game—a record that might never be broken—and Walter Cronkite was made anchorman of the CBS Evening News.
It was also the year that a man named H. Ross Perot, at the time a salesman in the data processing division of IBM, borrowed $1,000 from his wife Margot to found a company called Electronic Data Systems, more commonly known today as EDS.
Headquartered in Plano, Texas, EDS is now a $22 billion juggernaut, delivering a broad portfolio of information technology and business process outsourcing services to clients in the manufacturing, financial services, healthcare, communications, energy, transportation, and consumer and retail industries, as well as governments around the world.
Founded by one of the great business minds of our time, EDS has always had a special view of the sales function, according to Bobby Grisham, the company's senior vice president and chief sales officer. "At EDS, being in sales is viewed as a leadership position," he says. "That's because our customers rely on us for mission-critical business functions, so the deals we make are very complex. The selling cycle is also pretty long—often 12 months or more—and requires input from many departments, both at EDS and the customer’s organization."
Grisham should know. The sales cycle might belong, but he's seen a lot of them during his 30 years at EDS. More than that, he hasn't been a mere witness to the evolution of the sales function at the company; he has been one of its primary architects.
"When I joined the company in 1978, Ross Perot told me that EDS is the hardest sell there is, because it's an intangible service that has no color or flavor, shape or size," Grisham says. "On top of that, we don't ask our sales teams just to sell—we ask them to become trusted business advisors to their clients. If they don't understand the client's industry, they can't sell solutions. If they aren't selling solutions, then they must be selling commodity mips, gigs and seats—and we just don’t do that.
"For example, Continental and American Airlines entrust their reservation systems to EDS, and if the system goes down, they don't fly. Businesses don't make those kinds of critical purchasing decisions because the person is a good salesman; they need to trust that person and the company, and have confidence they can deliver a unique, high-value business solution."
With so much at stake in each and every potential sale, Grisham says it's sometimes difficult to not jump in on a deal and do it himself. "It's a tough transition from being a hands on salesperson to being a sales leader, and there are days when it's hard for me to not dive into a deal. I truly miss doing it, but that isn't my job any more. Now I have to channel that same energy and passion into enabling my salespeople to get the wins."
The Highest Highs and Lowest Lows
When Grisham—who has a degree in accounting and an MBA in finance and marketing—joined EDS, the company had just introduced its Marketing Development program, which trained people to talk to clients and prospects about the value of its IT services in a business context rather than a technical one.
By training, education and experience, EDS had always been a very military- and technical-oriented organization, but in the late 1970s the company realized that to effectively sell business solutions, it needed to improve its collective business acumen.
"We realized that our salespeople have to be more than order-takers, due to the nature of our solutions," he says. Through the program, EDS identified a set of characteristics that its most successful sales reps have in common:
• They need to have a high level of integrity, dedication and commitment, due to the long selling cycle and trusting nature of the sale.
• For the same reason, they need to be able to develop chemistry with clients and prospects and be proficient at building and maintaining relationships.
• Finally, they have to have vision. EDS solutions are enterprise-wide and mission-critical, so the purchasing decision is often made in the boardroom, making it an especially complex process that requires buy-in at the highest levels.
"On the other hand," Grisham points out, "our deals usually involve multi-year commitments and a healthy amount of recurring revenue, so even though it takes a long time and a lot of effort to get those wins, they pay off in spades once the business is in the books."
"In business, people always say, 'Don't take it personally.' But when you have daily contact with a prospect for a year or more and end up not getting the business, it's very personal. It hurts. But the wins are just as big, and it's not unusual for EDS salespeople and their clients to become friends for life."
 Grisham says there are three "legs" that an EDS sale depends upon:
1. Understanding the customer's business. Salespeople need to understand the client’s industry and speak their language. If the client is a bank, one of its measures of success is the number of account relationships it has per customer, so the salesperson needs to know what that means and how to improve it.
2. The application of technology. Selling EDS solutions is a different process from selling products, manufacturing machinery or industrial chemicals. "There are specific business drivers behind a company's decision to implement a technology-based solution, and understanding what those are is key to the success of EDS," Grisham says. It's all about how technology can enable their business to perform better.
3. Providing best-of-breed value. EDS solutions are rarely identical from one company to the next, even if those companies are the same size and in the same industry. That's because EDS is a best-of-breed systems integrator, which means that some companies will end up with hardware from IBM while others get hardware from Hewlett-Packard or Dell. "As a systems integrator, we need to be agnostic in regard to the technologies we use," Grisham says. "Sure, we have our preferred partners in an alliance structure. But we are partners and customers of all of these companies, and we decide which one to use on a case-by-case basis, based on the value it provides to that particular EDS customer."
Creating the Culture
Creating a culture that is conducive to successful selling is a difficult process, and worse, it can be a fragile one. A single poor decision can hinder a sales organization for years, as Grisham knows all too well.
"Our sales culture hasn't always been as good as it is today," he acknowledges. "A previous chairman of the company decided to eliminate the Inner Circle program, which rewards salespeople who reached 125% of quota with a three-day, all-expenses-paid trip. He thought it was just an expensive party, because he didn’t understand the importance of having a culture that values outstanding sales performance and rewards the extra effort we need from our sales team."
Every year without fail, Grisham says, companies send RFP requests in mid-December and need them back in 30 days. The depth and detail required in an RFP vary from one deal to the next, but completing one at a company like EDS is a very large task, often totaling hundreds of pages. With only a month to turn them around, that means salespeople spend a lot of nights, weekends and even holidays in the office.
And the stakes are high. No matter how big the project or short the deadlines, the response needs to be impeccable. Sloppy work or less than 100% effort could cost the company millions of dollars, because there’s no other opportunity to make up for a poor first impression. "Every year, at least one EDS field team ends up working over Christmas and New Year's Eve on an RFP, and if that first response isn’t of the highest quality, it's over.We blew the only chance we had and we’re out of the running."
That's why, in the last couple of years, the company reinstituted the Inner Circle program. The next time a member of Grisham's team needs to put in that extra time, it will be a little easier to do it, knowing that the effort is going to be rewarded.
Still, giving away an annual trip or a quarterly bonus is no replacement for reinforcing to the team how important their efforts are on a regular basis. "In complex deals that take a year or even more to win, it's easy to forget that one person can make a difference," Grisham says. "At EDS, that can be even tougher because so many people from other departments get involved, and salespeople sometimes feel like they aren’t in control. So that's one of the things I reinforce to my team: 'You are in a leadership position—you matter. One person can make the difference in that deal, and that person needs to be you.'"
Of course, there's more to successful selling than confidence and motivation; you need to prepare your team for success as well. The Marketing Development program that helped Grisham when he arrived at EDS was discontinued in subsequent years, but he's bringing that back, too. The new Sales Development program was relaunched in January of this year.
"The program does more than teach about what we sell and the value of our services. Salespeople actually do a rotation at an EDS customer account so they understand that business and how important it is that we live up to our contract with them. And they aren’t always performing an IT function; sometimes they spend time on the dock, shipping the client's product. To be an effective salesman, you need to know what
things are needed for the customer to succeed, and
then find the value you can add to their business."
Finally,Grisham ensures that his team knows where the lines are drawn. Sales is a highly competitive field to begin with, and at EDS, it's not uncommon to have hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue on the line in a single deal. Booking that business and getting that commission check any way possible is tempting, but absolutely forbidden. That's a position that sales leaders emphasize to their teams, Grisham says, because the consequences are simply too dire to risk, both for the company's external reputation and internal sales culture.
"I reinforce to my team that it's 50% what they do, and 50% how they do it. If an EDS salesperson does anything that isn't straightforward and honest to win a deal, that person will be fired. It's that simple. We want you to get the sale, but we don't want you to cut corners to do it. That's why, if you're a salesperson at EDS, you're a leader. You're better than that, and we expect more from you."
Sales & Marketing Management Magazine
This article is brought to you by Sales & Marketing Management, the leading authority for executives in the sales and marketing field.
|
|
RSS
