Telling companies they should not be creative is absurd. But, when it comes to sales and managing a business, on-the-fly-creativity can do more harm than good in weathering a storm like the economy has been the last few years for many businesses or developing sales opportunities.

Fundamental business practices help companies maintain baselines and standards, focus on appropriate and effective decision making through the unpredictable dynamics of a roller coaster market and execute a proven sales process that companies can manage and execute more effectively and efficiently.

Rick Kurtz, CEO of Ann Arbor’s Advanced Photonix -- maker of light to electricity conversion “optoelectronic” units, high-speed optical receivers and Terahertz instrumentation (cutting-edge optoelectronic micro-circuitry components for defense and telecom) -- shares his biggest challenge since the market nose-dived in 2008 was keeping enough capital on hand to meet operational requirements.

“As a public company with the tightening of commercial credit, it hasn’t been easy raising capital. So we made some tough decisions to cut capital expenses and we implemented a manufacturing strategy of ‘mass optimization’ to achieve greater production efficiency to reduce product cost, and it worked.

“We’re now in better shape than we were going into 2008 as a result, and the sustained recovery and volume of our sales makes us confident that these improved sales are more than just a restocking of the supply chain," he said.

Kurtz’s application of the fundamental measures of cutting or delaying capital expenditures, while driving costs out of production is making Advanced Photonix stronger through and after the storm.

While it’s often necessary to get creative solving prospective customers’ problems, a company should be creative with tactics and operational fine tuning, but not stray from tried and true business practices.

In a tough economy, many companies abandon their discipline of qualifying prospects and engage in desperate tactics, such as cutting price and neglect to follow a process like the one below for taking a selling opportunity to a close is dangerous:

1) Establish trust: The salesperson must begin by bonding and establishing credibility with a decision maker to improve the efficiency of the interaction. Without trust at the outset, communication is inefficient and progress slow.

2) Be upfront: Verbally stating intentions for the interaction including the anticipated agenda of the prospect and the possible outcomes, including the real possibility of finding “no fit,” sets the context for candor in the rest of the process.

3) Qualify: Qualify or disqualify opportunities by:

• Identifying the decision maker’s compelling reasons to buy

• Uncovering the investment resources they have to make the buy

• Understanding the prospect’s decision process and criteria

4) Presenting to fit: Gain agreement from the decision maker to present solutions, in exchange for a decision, to proceed or terminate, then present the solution in the terms that the prospect used to describe their situation.

5) Plan next steps: For a healthy relationship, it’s critical that both understand to which actions each are committed to get the relationship off on the right footing.

The decision maker is key Note that this process must be applied with the decision maker. One way companies “get creative” when they are desperate is they compromise in trying to develop opportunities with contacts in a company that can’t render a decision. This all but assures that the selling company will miss the mark in devising a best fit solution, often putting them in a commodity position, making differentiation a guessing game.

If they don’t know what the decision maker cares about, they have to try and guess, perhaps making elaborate and labor intensive proposals, often with a less than 10 percent chance of closing. Worse yet, if they don’t know what the decision maker has to invest, desperate and undisciplined companies “get creative” and unnecessarily cut price, saddling themselves with thin margins even if they do get the business.

Running a business and selling are processes to be managed A CEO who scraps a strategic plan wholesale in the middle of a year when the market nose-dives is likely to accelerate and deepen the losses. Working within the strategic plan and adjusting tactics and making production efficiency improvements can help a company weather the storm and get operationally stronger.

Rick Kurtz could have turned Advanced Photonix upside down in 2008, leaving the company in a real struggle when they had to turn up the volume as his market rebounded in 2010. Instead he used the trough in sales to refine his management team’s approach and improve manufacturing efficiencies.

“We adopted a three general manager approach with myself and my other top officers, each of us focusing on one of our three distinct product lines as our own business unit to manage. This helped us each focus our energy on shoring one product line top to bottom, rather than the three of us together trying to optimize all three,” he said.

This was an efficient yet creative change in the division of executive labor that allowed the company to continue to operate within strategic plans.

A salesperson who is creative and wanders through sales processes with no clear sequence typically gets poor and unpredictable results. While it’s often necessary to get creative socially or technically when dealing with prospects, being creative in changing your business strategy on the fly or in sequencing a sales process is dangerous and can produce more trouble than revenue.

©Copyright 2010 Marr Professional Development Corporation

Joe Marr is a public speaker, sales and management consultant and trainer, and runs the Sandler Sales Institute at 501 Avis Drive in Ann Arbor. For information on training sessions being conducted this season, call: 734-821-4830 or visit his website at www.sandlerannarbor.com