Robert ZANESCU's Blog

Sandy Vaci – Adjunct Senior Professor at CEU Business School (MBA Studies)

“I believe selling, when done right, is a higher level of service.” – Sandy Vaci.

Cu cateva zile in urma am avut un blog post despre doua seminarii pregatite de catre Sandy Vaci, Adjunct Senior Professor la CEU Business School (MBA Studies): “Global Best Practices in Sales Management” (16 Iunie), si “The Latest in Channel Innovation -  A Practical Guide” (29 Iunie).

In aceasta saptamana public o discutie avuta cu Sandy despre marketing, vanzari si despre customer experiences.

Robert Zanescu: Sandy, we’ve met at Raiffeisen Bank (you contributed decisively to my hiring decision there as Marketing Director back in 2002, and I say thank you again for this). You were a top ranked Executive at Raiffeisen International, the owner of 15 network banks in Eastern Europe. Now, you became and “academic”. Knowing you as a man that seeks challenges, I cannot start by not asking, what challenges, what hurdles do you have in front of you in your new role?

Sandy Vaci: Being an “academic” gives me wonderful challenges and opportunities in many areas. First, I can develop new managers and share my knowledge. This is something I always enjoyed doing in the “industry”. Second, I get to work with lots of interesting, different companies. I see interesting issues in different industries and work with different people to help solve them. Obviously, I could not do this while working for any specific company. Finally, I get a chance to “blow up management myths”. And without getting fired for it! There are so many fads going around at any given time. Being able to expose them, and learn from this, is great fun. Again, this is hard to do while working in the industry. Your boss may believe too strongly in them…

As for the hurdles, the first one was getting accepted in academia, as someone coming from industry. Luckily, both CEU and MSM (Maastricht School of Management, just opening in Romania) decided to give me a chance. I owe them big thanks for that. The second hurdle is handling the academic bureaucracy which I am not used to. But it’s a small price to pay for doing something I really like.

You are very active in many fields, you teach, you are playing a role in the management board of a bank, you write books. Do you have more than 24 hours in a day? How do you manage your time, is there life after work?

It’s not as bad as it looks. I enjoy everything I do, so that makes it easier. And my board job is actually at the Supervisory board level, which is easier than a full time Management board job. All of that still leaves me time for my wife, for friends, concerts, hikes… and renovating our house. And I like to keep 25 to 30% of my time available for “last minute opportunities” like consulting requests, conference invitations and the like.

My marketing mantra is: “marketing is selling to as many people, as frequent as possible, as profitable as possible” and as a marketeer, I do believe that nothing happens unless someday sells something to somebody. Sandy, your experience spreads over marketing and sales roles in companies that were and are very aggressive on the market. Your current class at CEU Business School is “Transnational Sales Force Management”. You run sales workshops. Our appetite for sales and our consumers delight in buying ended up in quasi-general consumption crisis. What changes should we do in our approach? What really went wrong? Shall we aim towards a transformation of consumers into shoppers (sell them more commodities, rather than brands)?

Wow! That’s a lot of questions in one. Yes, I believe that there is a level of “over-consumption” in some parts of the world. But I think the current crisis is more of a financial one that ended up infecting “real industries” than anything else. And I have my own mantra for how it could be (or should have been?) dealt with.

If someone is trying to sell me something complex I always need to understand it before I buy. If they cannot explain it in simple terms which I understand, I don’t buy. And I always want time to decide. If they push me to give an answer on the spot, my answer is always “no”. Think about it: would we have got into this mess if regulators and consumers had followed these rules when banks tried to sell them those overly complex financial deals that exploded later?

Now, for sales. I believe selling, when done right, is a higher level of service. Good sales is not shoving down something someone’s throat that he doesn’t want. Good sales is understanding the person’s real needs and offering the best solutions for them. My belief is that the world is moving in the opposite direction of what you mentioned: away from selling commodities.

There is a theory about “experience based economy” which says that we keep moving from “resources” to “goods” to “services” to “EXPERIENCE”. Think of cows as “resources”, a cut of meat as “goods”, the steak dinner at a restaurant as “service”. When a restaurant differentiates itself based on its ambience, based on how you feel there – that is creating an “experience”. As we move from the early resource based economies through goods to services and beyond, each new stage turns the offers of the previous ones into commodities. They are differentiated mostly on price, while I differentiate myself by better satisfying consumers’ real needs.

So to me the challenge is to find out what experiences people want and REALLY target our efforts towards satisfying those. I believe this will be the real challenge for both marketers and sales professionals in the coming years. That is what being “consumer centric” should mean. Of course, smart businessmen (and women) will then try to build brands around these “experience offers” to give them a sustainable advantage. I see nothing wrong with that.

Banking industry is among the most hurt ones in the current environment and retail sales have gone from bad to worse. Steven van Groningen, the CEO of Raiffesen Bank Romania says on his blog that “NO CONFIDENCE, NO BORROWING. Consumer confidence fell more in Romania than it did in the EU and other CEE countries. Not only did it fall more, it also remained lower for longer and is still low today.” What would you recommend to a retail bank sales force management to do in such harsh environment?

First of all, understand and focus on the real needs of your customers and prospects. Try to address their needs, instead of feeling depressed because you are not allowed by your Credit department to sell them loans. For example, borrowing is one way to satisfy the need for decent housing by buying a new home. But you are not allowed to grant a large loan. So what about suggesting saving up for a larger downpayment? (And offering a savings product to do so.) Or renovating with a smaller renovation loan? How about taking a loan for a longer term with lower payments to make it more affordable, or actually suggesting that they borrow some of the money needed from family, so that the bank can give them the rest?

Second, keep in contact with your best customers and continue to delight them with service. You need to preserve your ability to sell them something in the future. That means keeping their trust, staying top of mind for them.

Third, try to make sure your bank helps them if they have credit problems. This is not simply being nice and being customer centric. It makes hard nosed business sense. Rule number one of cross selling is: “like to like”. Tobacco companies sell their brands to those who already smoke. Beer companies sell beer to those who are allowed to drink and already do so. Banks can only sell credit to those who are not afraid of it. If your customers have bad experiences with borrowing they will think very hard the next time before they ask for a loan. If you don’t help them today, you will lose them tomorrow.

Continuarea interviului cu Sandy Vaci in blog post-ul de maine.

Despre Sandy Vaci

Sandy este in prezent Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Credit Bank of Moscow si Partener la Leaders’ Den – o companie globala de consultanta cu sediul central in Marea Britanie.  A publicat doua carti despre practici globale in domeniul vanzarilor la VRL. Un cetatean global, Sandy are ca baze ale activitatilor sale Toronto, Vienna si Budapesta.

Mai multe despre seminariile pregatite de catre Sandy la Bucuresti pe site-ul Business Review.