Michael Webb:         Some people talk about selling to senior-level decision-makers, making calls, and selling based on value. Other people talk about process tools and measurement of data, systems thinking, analyzing causes and effect. But not very many people talk about how these things can be brought together to motivate people and create wealth for everyone. Today, I'm delighted to have a kindred spirit who I've known for several years, Christian Maurer, a consultant in France. Christian, welcome here. Really, really excited about our conversation today.

Christian Maurer:     Thank you for having me.

Michael Webb:         Well, so this is going to be really, really fun. Now a couple of preparation notes here. Christian and I are talking on a recorded line, and we have the best audio quality we can get, but something is amiss in it and so I've asked Christian... and Christian has a slight accent, although he's an excellent English speaker, to my ear anyway, some of the stuff that seems to have been a little hard to understand, so we're going to kind of overcompensate. I've asked him to speak especially slowly, and I may even interrupt him, re-enunciate or confirm that I understand what he's saying. And we're not doing that because ... we're just doing it because we think there's an issue in the audio quality. So, I apologize for that in advance, but this I promise you is going to be worth paying attention to.

Michael Webb:         As we begin here, Christian, could you tell us 30 seconds of your background, and what kinds of things did you do, and what are you doing now?

Christian Maurer:     Thank you. Well, I started out as an electrical engineer. I have a degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and then I went into engineering in the sense of product manager and project manager. Then, I got into selling very complex systems, and from there my career took me then more into the corporate world where I was the director of strategic planning for a whole corporation. That's when I came to France. And then after a while, I had enough of the corporate life, and I was headhunted by a little boutique consultancy specialize-

Michael Webb:         Who is this again? I'm sorry. Who you were headhunted by?

Christian Maurer:     By a little boutique consultancy.

Michael Webb:         Okay.

Christian Maurer:     And this boutique consultancy was specialized on sales trainings and sales consulting. So, I started a second career as a sales trainer and sales consultant, and this little private firm then was gobbled up by a large CRM company which was gobbled up by a very large software company, and at the end the software company thought that we were a very interesting, special team, but we would strive more if we will be taken private. So, we got a private investor.

Michael Webb:         Okay. Hang on one second. I'm hearing ... I hope it's okay if I do this, but I'm suspecting it was target account selling, was purchased by Ceba, was purchased by Oracle. is that right?

Christian Maurer:     You got it.

Michael Webb:         Okay. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Christian Maurer:     You got it. Spot on right. And then-

Michael Webb:         Because I worked with IMPAX Corporation. I was, I was a competitor. When I was a sales trainer with IMPAX Corporation, I was a competitor to target account sell. One of the guys who founded target account selling started out his sales training career at IMPAX working for Dave Matlow. So anyways, small world. So, go ahead-

Christian Maurer:     Small world. So then, you also know how the story then ended that we became the task group for the private investors. Today, this company still exist. It's called [inaudible 00:04:08]. But after about a year or two, I found out that probably there was only one person who should think in this company and that was the CEO. So, I start become working on my own. But I continued into Royal Golf sales consultancy and sales training. Then a little later, I was approached by two universities in Germany if I would take some courses in the postgraduate level. So, I teach now graduate courses for master classes.

Michael Webb:         Okay. Very good. Very good. So, now we get to the fun part. In our conversations over several years, I've learned about Christian that he made some of the same observations I did as a salesperson, sales manager, sales trainer. And what we observed in being in those environments was that there was something amiss, something funny, odd, not right about the way that we were being managed, about the decisions that our sales department heads, sales vice president, sales and marketing executives, and CEOs were making in regard to resources, and people, and how to run things. And there was something wrong. Christian saw some similar things.

Michael Webb:         So, let's start there. Christian, what are some of the things that you saw during your time in sales that led you to start saying what's going on here? Why isn't this right?

Christian Maurer:     Yeah. You certainly know the old saying to have more feet on the street will make more sales.

Michael Webb:         To have more feet, yeah, on the street will make more sales. Oh, yes.

Christian Maurer:     Yeah. Right. Okay. The only trouble with that is that there is the law of diminished return on effort. So, if you have a territory which is saturated, if you put a second salesman in there, the only thing you do is that you have two salesmen who can no longer make their quota because there's not enough potential.

Michael Webb:         Right. So, you saw that happen I guess?

Christian Maurer:     Oh, yeah. That was always what was told, and then afterwards people wanted to ... Another one which is very funny is the must-win deal.

Michael Webb:         Cool.

Christian Maurer:     Today with CRM systems. If there's a big fish in system that goes up to the VP of sales, maybe even higher, and guess what? It's declared a must-win deal. Now, things are not sold. Things are bought. Now, if you want to force to buy before it's ready, the only way that maybe has a chance to is you lower your price, right?

Michael Webb:         Right.

Christian Maurer:     So, if you lower your price, guess what happens to the quota of your sales force?

Michael Webb:         It goes up. So, you discount your way out of making your quota. Not only that, you rob the company of profitability.

Christian Maurer:     Yeah. Or taking another way, sales managers going in at the last moment as the rebate uncle, he's counting deals, right?

Michael Webb:         Right.

Christian Maurer:     And in sales management trainings, I sometimes made a little thing and said, okay, you have four deals and you discount by 20%. Now, if you still want to make quota, you need to have a fifth deal, don't you? And you get people staring at you like ...