06/22/2020
"Don't go to a street fight with a tinker toy"
One of the things that amazed me about Kevin (and really about most of the older guys in the company) was how immaculate they looked. Kevin was always in pressed khakis and a company polo or dress shirt. If the event was a big one, he wore a blazer. His readers were always perched impossibly far out on his nose. His hair was a perfect salt-and-pepper coral reef formation that did not move or change or seemingly grow. It reminded me of the plastic hair of a Ken doll or Mr. Potato Head. I worked with Kevin a long time, and other than the single occasion I saw him in jean shorts (horrifying), he was the model of professional dress, except his shoes.
Man, those were some tired-looking shoes. He walked constantly—across the office and in the airport and across the dealer’s used equipment boneyard. The man never stopped moving, and the shoes showed it. When we got to the field, he would change shoes in a Mr. Rogers sort of way but the shoes he changed into were nearly identical—they just had a slightly thicker heel. On trips to see machinery running, he also traveled with a crisp company fleece and jacket pretty much all the time.
He was the picture of the company marketing man out with the customer—riding in the buddy seat, bouncing across the field with hair that stayed perfectly in place. Customers simply adored him and for good reason. He built strong and enduring relationships extremely quickly, and farmers trusted him. What people may not have known is he behaved this way everywhere. He was unusually close to the family that owned the local Quiznos. He knew details about their family and shared with them the advantages of added capacity, threshing and separating in the newest Gleaner, whether or not they were interested.
Kevin was a relationship guy in a relationship business. It’s funny. I’ve consulted sales and marketing professionals across a bunch of industries and more than a few years and that seems to be the common high mark of praise: “He’s a relationship guy.” It means he’s likable. He’s trustworthy. People enjoy having a relationship with him and find it worthwhile. And all of that illuminates the second side of all this. If you’re in sales and marketing, but you’re not a relationship person, what exactly are you? The answer is what some might call a left-handed compliment.
When you work in sales and marketing but struggle to build needed relationships, you get termed a “numbers person,” and it’s normally preceded with the words “well, he’s/she’s a great . . . .” I’ve known plenty of high-achieving accounting and finance folks. They’re often referred to as brilliant, clear-headed, thoughtful and unbiased. A few I’ve worked with are the most likable and trustworthy people I know. They’re not called “numbers people” because their job makes it clear that they know how to work with numbers. I’ve also worked with plenty of people who are great with numbers inside the marketing function—pinpointing demand, dissecting customer data and calculating programs. There is no shortage of great people whose numerical ability makes the machinery move. But the term “numbers people” is a consolation prize for people who can’t get the relationship side of the business done. We call sales and marketing people “numbers people” when they can’t form the needed relationships the right way, but they’re in a job that requires that skill. It’s a way of trying to excuse that they’re in a relationship job but aren’t relationship people. It’s an insult with just enough candy coating that folks won’t choke when it when they have to swallow that pill.
Kevin saw sales and marketing as an art and science that was refined over years and through experience. He spent decades studying selling techniques, learning new marketing approaches and then directly applying these techniques in the fields where he worked. He experimented, observed, adjusted and created systems from those results. He did it over decades and with a lot of success.
For Kevin, being a high-performing marketing manager was as simple as three steps:
1) The degree of command you have in knowledge of the consumer, marketplace, product and competitive landscape.
2) The ability to put the right people in the right roles and then coach, nurture and extract great work from them while not wearing them out or driving them away.
3) The ability to create, resource, communicate and execute strategies that people can understand, embrace and act on.
These three things require building relationships. You’re not going to understand the market beyond a spreadsheet if you can’t go out and immerse yourself in it. You can’t find, recruit or position the right people if you can’t recognize or attract them. And if you can’t inspire people to follow a strategy, they’re left aimlessly wandering.
Kevin saw marketing as a natural complement to the selling process. He believed that the processes and content of the marketing apparatus should be just as professional and just as technically savvy as the selling process. For this reason, he had very little patience with marketing that didn’t care about supporting the salespeople on the front lines. He made a point of calling out content that was tone deaf to the marketplace, inaccurate in its technical depiction and a waste of company resources.
“I don’t live in a world with pink frilly things”
Kevin very much disliked the tendency to substitute high production value, glam marketing and empty sparks as a replacement for a strong selling concept. It’s not to say he didn’t embrace production value—he did, and his work showed it—but he was resolute that any marketing we created had to be clearly connected to the selling objective.
In a similar sense, Kevin tended to dislike marketing programs that seemed more focused on process than result. Marketers can be so enchanted/entertained by the creative process that they ignore the fact that it actually accomplishes very little, but no one wants to say that out loud because of how much it costs.
For the Biener, sales and marketing was a calling. It was the combination of nature and nurture that made him likable, credible and effective. He could put points on the board like few others, but you’d never call him a “numbers guy” because he was so much more and did a job that required so much more.
Kevin would speak in pretend voices when telling stories from his past to illustrate the characters they contained, but they were all the same voice: his former drill sergeant and the lady at the hotel desk , the guy who wanted to buy a tractor at the Sunbelt show and the person he just got out of a meeting with. His imitations were terrible. But no matter who he was trying to imitate, the Biener kept on showing through. He was genuine in his task and purpose and more than prepared. And wherever he went, there was a group of folks ready to join his team and further his cause.
Relationship people tend to have that effect.
You’re Not Getting Any of This Are you Richard" is the story of one remarkable salesman, marketer, leader and friend told by those who worked by his side for years. It’s a collection of raucous accounts, emotional stories and needed lessons to inspire hearts, instruct minds and incite laughter. There will be a limited print release of the book available for purchase here: http://sn-ta.com/book-interest/
