Editor's note: Michael Rosenberg is a global market research business consultant. He can be reached at michael.rosenberg10@comcast.net. This article appeared in the September 23, 2013, edition of Quirk's e-newsletter.

OK, quick: Locate 10 Seller/Doers from your company and invite them to sit around a table with you for a few minutes, sans laptops.

Seller/Doers - you know them. Maybe that's not the particular name that comes to mind but Seller/Doers are no doubt a part of your company. They are the people with research backgrounds who generate revenue from clients. Call them, e-mail them, knock on their doors, fly them in if you have to and then look into their eyes and pose the following question: Off the top of your head, please say out loud the first and last name of your 10 most important clients and your five most important prospects.

If you're keeping track, that's 100 pieces of important information that should be hitting the airwaves in a matter of minutes. And now that you've got everyone's attention, ask one final question of your friends (and it's a doozy): For every client and prospect name just mentioned, please state the next three sales activities you have planned.

In a perfect world, you just uncovered 300 critical data points. The reason why I didn't want you to conduct a teleconference is because I want you to study the facial expressions of the attendees as they react to your questions. What do you see? Do you see smiles and confidence or blank stares, deep breaths and puzzled looks? Your max potential of 300 valuable action items that could have a profound effect on the future success of your organization is most likely a significantly smaller number by the time everyone is finished talking. And do you know why?

It's because Seller/Doers do not sell.

Before you utter an expletive, close the browser window and threaten to never read Quirk's again, understand I've been in marketing research for more than five minutes. I'm no rookie. In fact, I generated revenue for many years (something I'll cover later on). I know, this little interlude didn't calm you down, which may be a good thing after all is said and done.

I'm sorry but it needs to be said again: Seller/Doers do not sell.

Note: I didn't say can't sell.

Why they do not sell

If you ask Seller/Doers why they do not sell, they will tell you that you are terribly mistaken. They will talk about their projects and the fact that their projects do the selling for them. You know how it works. A project done extraordinarily well begets the next project.

Throughout the years, I've heard many stories about sitting behind the glass with clients during a day's worth of in-depth interviews and how that's connected to selling. No, it isn't. It is a selling opportunity only if you turn it into one. If you only discussed the project at hand for eight long hours, you weren't doing any selling. As a Seller/Doer, even if you defend yourself with all your might, your thinking is naturally flawed because it only pertains to clients. Prospects are people who don't award you projects and your "selling" philosophy keeps them in a vast wasteland.

About the nomenclature

Seller/Doers are not mindless, crazy people roaming the earth. Seller/Doers are good, conscientious, hard-working people. The problem that exists in the industry isn't so much about these folks as it is about the nomenclature being used to describe them. There is naturally an expectation on the part of CEOs, presidents and business owners that there must be a lot of selling going on. Otherwise, why would you call them Seller/Doers?

If only the industry in its infancy had adopted a different name to describe this important role. Can it be as simple as a different descriptor would have produced different thinking, resulting in different behaviors? I think so. I, for one, have never used the Seller/Doer label. For me, the appropriate name is Do/Rev. It rolls off the tongue nicely, don't you think?

The name says it all but I'll clarify it anyway. You do a project and the project results in revenue. That's it. Short and sweet. Hopefully, you survive by getting more opportunities to do more projects and earn additional revenue. You'll notice there's nothing in the name about selling - only doing and getting revenue.

If senior management, way back when, had used this term as part of their daily lexicon, I believe the MR world would be in a different place today. First, Do/Revs would have received greater sales support and training because as the name implies, the assumption is there's no selling going on. Second, senior management would better embrace the business development function because it would be seen as a natural complement to the Do/Rev role. There are too many companies today where business developers and Do/Revs are just two ships passing in the night. The combination of business development and Do/Rev working side-by-side would cover most aspects of the selling, doing and client interaction that takes place in MR.

Don't as opposed to can't

Let's go back to the earlier point when I said Seller/Doers don't sell as opposed to can't sell. Most people will tell you they don't like being sold to. No one wants to feel they agreed to do something because their arm was twisted and that includes marketing researchers who generate revenue.

So the question is, how do you get Do/Revs to start walking down a path that eventually leads them toward a better life of true selling/doing? The answer lies in a simplistic but seldom-used approach that I call stratical storytelling. It's not rocket science but then again, most of us are not rocket scientists. It contains a word that makes you scratch your head but has no mention of "selling" - and that's not by accident.

Uncover the tactical story

The objective of stratical storytelling is very simple: Uncover the tactical story behind every contact (clients and prospects) and develop an overall strategy to support the Do/Rev's action steps as s/he evolves into a Seller/Doer. The secret sauce is that stratical equals tactical stories that produce a strategy.

To put it into research parlance, think of it as an in-depth interview with the Do/Rev and management playing the respondent and moderator roles, respectively. It unfolds as a conversational exercise where you learn about each contact by simply asking questions. One simple opening question can open the floodgates. Below is a sampling of questions that are part of the stratical storytelling process.

Questions about clients

  • How long have you worked with this client?
  • How would you describe your relationship with this client?
  • Have you worked with this client at companies other than where you presently work?
  • What is your typical form of communication with this client?

Questions about prospects

  • Does this prospect work at a company where you have clients?
  • How long have you known this prospect?
  • Why do you think this prospect doesn't work with you?
  • Do you think the reason this prospect doesn't work with you has more to do with you or your company?
  • What is your typical form of communication with this prospect?

If the conversation surrounding a contact is productive, it will eventually turn into one-to-five action steps carried out by the Do/Rev. The exercise aims to uncover a massive amount of information that turns potential sales chaos into concrete steps that appear not to have anything to do with selling, which is music to the ears of Do/Revs. Multiply one-to-five action steps by each contact and you arrive at a stratical plan, catapulting the Do/Rev into the life of a Seller/Doer. 

Two huge reasons

Let's try to understand a little bit more about Do/Revs and their aversion toward selling. There are two huge reasons why Do/Revs don't want to sell. First, they are not comfortable selling and second, they don't feel they need to. Hopefully, stratical storytelling will allow them to become more comfortable selling, even though the S-word is never part of the discussion.

Now let's focus on why many Do/Revs believe they don't need to sell. This reasoning surrounds an inheritance of clients that is fairly commonplace as one climbs the MR ladder. Many project directors and research analysts are given an opportunity to become Do/Revs because either a Do/Rev left the company and someone had to step up or there was too much business in place and again, someone had to take on new responsibilities. In other words, you inherit a piece of business. When you inherit business, you may work very hard to do outstanding research but there's a certain degree of comfort in knowing that there's a stable of clients who may be moving work your way. When you have revenue responsibilities but didn't inherit anything, you are forced to develop a different mind-set to survive. You essentially become two people - a researcher on the inside and a salesperson on the outside. Good-bye Do/Rev and hello Seller/Doer. Welcome to my world.

Bizarre ways

Opportunities for those who haven't inherited clients sometimes present themselves in bizarre ways. A million years ago, I was playing on my company softball team. We had a few guys on the team who worked for other companies. One of the guys worked for a pharmaceutical company and he told me about his friend who worked for a different pharma company and wasn't enamored of the MR account execs handling her business. He said "I'm going to tell her to have you come over and talk research."

This was surprising to me since there wasn't much time to talk shop during a softball game but luckily for me, maybe he assumed a high batting average correlated with a lot of MR knowledge. There was one little catch. I was a research analyst, not a Do/Rev or a Seller/Doer.

But with nothing to lose, the next thing I knew I was sitting there talking research with the left-fielder's friend. One conversation led to another and soon I was handling my very first project as a revenue generator. The problem was I had no idea when or if my next project would ever materialize. I also knew you probably couldn't make the transition to revenue generation with only one client so how would I get more of them?

A very different mind-set

My friends, that is a very different mind-set than that of the Do/Rev, who sees projects at every turn. There was no time to relax or wait for the phone to ring because I had to make my own luck. Consequently, I began to think of myself as the CEO of Mike Rosenberg Inc., knowing that the success or failure of my little business was squarely on my shoulders. That type of thinking forces you to behave in some ways that are inside your comfort zone and some that are miles outside of it.

The only thing that matters is creating opportunities for success. It's easy to pass on something that makes you feel a little uncomfortable when you can fall back on multiple projects and clients. When that's not the case, you push through your uncomfortable pain points to take a shot at career growth. Oh, I was still a researcher at heart but I had forced myself to take on selling activities and that's exactly what a Seller/Doer should be doing.

Although I adopted this sales mentality, I never saw myself as a salesman since I, too, am not a big fan of being sold. I realized that I enjoyed seeing progress as I completed action items on the to-do list connected to my contacts, all being done in hopes of advancing my little enterprise. I didn't think about what I was doing as pure selling. I just wanted one project to become two projects and one client to become two clients, etc.

Afford to make a mistake

One of the best pieces of business advice I ever received was from a very successful revenue generator who said many years ago "When you have great rapport with a client, you can afford to make a mistake or two along the way."

No one wants to think about mistakes but MR projects have lots of pieces and every so often, something doesn't go as planned. Sometimes it's miniscule and doesn't even appear on the radar. Other times it's monumental and can cause great stress, even the potential loss of a client. My experience has been that Seller/Doers are much more likely to retain clients when a major snafu takes place compared to Do/Revs.

In other words, Seller/Doers are more likely to forge relationships with their clients than those who simply do projects. Seller/Doers - they're out there but unfortunately, many are disguised as Do/Revs. With a little push - or maybe a big one - we can dramatically increase the population of Seller/Doers.